CC Minutes - 01/21/09 Work Session

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M I N U T E S Eugene City Council Work Session McNutt Room – City Hall 777 Pearl Street—Eugene, Oregon January 21, 2009 12:00 p.m. COUNCILORS PRESENT: Chris Pryor, Mike Clark, George Poling, Betty Taylor, Alan Zelenka, Jennifer Solomon, George Brown COUNCILORS ABSENT: Andrea Ortiz Her Honor Mayor Kitty Piercy called the work session meeting of the Eugene City Council to order at 12:01 p.m. A. WORK SESSION – Adoption of Federal Priority Project Lists Intergovernmental Relations Manager Brenda Wilson provided a brief overview of the federal budget appropriations process, which she noted was under a continued resolution until March 6, 2009, and explained that the City and its regional United Front (UF) partners—Lane County, the City of Springfield, Lane Transit District, the City of Cottage Grove, the City of Coburg, the Springfield School District, and the Willamalane Parks and Recreation District—would be determining the regional project priorities to be addressed as part of the federal appropriations process. She noted that the City’s prioritizations were the result of discussions between City staff and the City’s federal lobbyists Smith, Dawson & Andrews and they were designed to not compete with similar federal funding allocations sought by the City’s partner agencies. Ms. Wilson additionally provided a brief overview of the federal government’s reauthorization of the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU) and described how the reauthorization would be used to allocate funds in accordance with the City’s recommended Federal Transportation Reauthorization Project List. Ms. Wilson noted that, because the federal allocations process was currently under a continuing resolution, Congress had not made any appropriations for FY09 and that subsequently the UF project lists for 2008 had gone unfunded. Ms. Wilson had very high expectations that several of those projects, particularly the Delta Ponds project, would eventually be funded once federal appropriations budgets had been passed. Ms. Wilson reported that all of those 2008 projects that had gone unfunded due to the continuing resolution were being carried over to the 2009 list with the exception of the West Eugene Environmental Education Center project, which had been removed due to the lack of supplemental funding for that project from the Willamette Resources and Educational Network (WREN). Ms. Wilson, responding to a question from Ms. Piercy, noted that not all of the projects listed on the 2009 Federal Priorities Project List and Federal Transportation Reauthorization Project List would necessarily qualify for federal economic stimulus funding. MINUTES—Eugene City Council January 21, 2009 Page 1 Work Session