CC Minutes - 01/13/09 Joint Elected Officials

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January 13, 2009 Joint Elected Officials Meeting City of Springfield City of Eugene Lane County Page 3 of 10 spoke to the applicability of the plan beyond the UGB. These revisions could be implemented and concurrently adopted along with other upcoming HB3337 amendments. Mr. Howe said in summary, the Board was trying to position itself with its metro partners to address changes to the Metro Plan as Eugene and Springfield made changes to implement HB3337. Doing this strategically was all the more important with recent County staff reductions made in the planning program because of the current economic downturn. Staff requested the elected officials’ consideration of the two issues and direction to continue coordinating these Metro Plan efforts with the work done to implement HB3337. Chair Sorenson thanked staff for the report. He suggested starting with the elected officials to his right and moving around the room for comments. He asked that they keep their comments to 2 minutes. Mayor Leiken thanked Mr. Howe for a nice presentation. He said the Springfield Council hadn’t had much chance to discuss this issue, so he would like to listen to the County Commissioners’ thoughts on these issues. Some of the issues regarding HB3337 affected all three jurisdictions, but he was interested in hearing what the Commissioners were looking for. They had his attention and the attention of the Springfield City Council. He noted that he had discussed rural reserves with the Springfield Commissioner Bill Dwyer and was supportive of Commissioner Dwyer’s concepts regarding that issue. Mayor Piercy also thanked staff for their presentation. She said that when she and Mayor Leiken met with Commissioner Stewart to look at the five issues brought forward by the Lane County Boundary Commission (LCBC), their thought was to pick a couple of issues that could easily be worked on together with success as a start. It was not a matter of determining the two issues that were the most significant, but rather the easiest. They did understand that all of the issues were important. She watched the LCBC meeting when these issues were discussed. During that meeting, the Commissioners said they wanted to listen to the cities and now the cities wanted to listen to the County. Last night the Eugene Council talked about these issues and wanted to understand which problems the County wanted dealt with and what questions they wanted answered. Councilor Ortiz passed. Councilor Zelenka spoke regarding issue #2. He said he understood the proposed solution, but was not clear on the problem. From the information provided, he gathered it was the lack of definition which made it more difficult for special districts to get funding. He had heard about a public safety special district, and while he was in favor of funding public safety, he had concerns about creating another layer of accountability to the voters in forming a district. He spoke regarding issue #4. He said he was not supportive of either solution on that issue. Commissioner Fleenor thanked staff for their good work. He did not disagree with all the proposed solutions, although he felt the question should be whether or not the Metro Plan should continue to exist. That needed to be resolved before changes were made. It may no longer be the right vehicle. The Metro Plan had evolved over the years and staff’s recommendation was to just add more to it, and he didn’t think that was good for any of the jurisdictions. He had always promoted separating the Metro Plan into separate Comprehensive Plans and with HB3337, now may be a good time for that discussion. Fixing issues # 2 and #4 was premature and could be a waste of time if they determined the Metro Plan was not the vehicle by which they want to move ahead. He would like that discussion today, at the next JEO, or in