Item 2A: Approval of City Council Minutes

Home Browse Search

In response to a question from Ms. Ortiz, Mr. Schoening affirmed that it would be more cost effective to include the pedestrian and bicycle amenities with the pavement preservation projects. Mr. Clark asked if Mr. Zelenka’s amendment would increase the chance that the City would not be able to do a project at this point and would have to spend more on it in the future. Mr. Schoening responded that the chance this would happen was small. Mr. Clark said he would be happy to add that amendment to the motion. Mr. Clark, seconded by Ms. Taylor, moved to approve submittal of Surface Transportation Program – Urban funding applications for the Hilyard Street, Martin Luther King Boulevard, and Coburg Road pavement preservation projects as well as the pedestrian and bicycle projects on Martin Luther King Boulevard and Coburg Road. Mr. Poling asked if it would be possible to drop the last two projects if it appeared the City would not get full funding. Mr. Schoening replied that if the City was allocated less funding, the Hilyard Street project would need to be dropped or they would have to scale back the Martin Luther King Boulevard project. He noted that the Coburg Road project needed to go forward because of the preservation work that was also being done on that road using bond money. He said it was possible that they could put in more local funds should they want to fund all three. Mr. Poling surmised that the most likely scenario in the event that the funding allocation was less than the projects would cost would be that the Hilyard Street project would be dropped from the list for the current round of STP-U funding. Mr. Zelenka said Eugene’s share would be between $1.6 and $2.6 million. He pointed out that the staff proposal would cost $2.77 million and with $200,000 more for the bicycle/pedestrian amenities this made $2.97 million. He thought that if the money from STP-U came in at $3.1 million, the City would be down to one project anyway given that its allocation was half of that. He noted that this had happened all three years he had served on the MPC. In response to a question from Mr. Pryor, Mr. Schoening said he understood the direction to be that if full funding was not allocated, the Hilyard Street project would be deferred first and then the scope of the Martin Luther King Boulevard project would be reduced. Mr. Pryor commented that he wanted to do the project that had the best outcome. He would be interested in knowing what material impact there would be to shortening the Martin Luther King Boulevard project, for instance. Mr. Schoening thought the most likely outcome would be that some other funding source would be tapped to complete the project, such as the local gas tax, and a project that was not even on the table at the present meeting would be deferred. Mr. Pryor was willing to support the addition of the bicycle/pedestrian amenities to the motion, but he wanted them to be the first things to be backed out if the City did not receive enough money. Ms. Taylor asked why Hilyard Street was on the bottom of the list. Mr. Schoening replied that Coburg Road had been on the top of the list because of the gap that needed to be filled between the two bond measure projects. He said the difference between the Hilyard Street and Martin Luther King Boulevard projects had to do with magnitude in that the latter was estimated at $1.8 million and Hilyard Street was only projected to cost $800,000. He said it appeared that the pieces would come together for the larger of the two projects. MINUTES—Eugene City Council February 8, 2010 Page 4 Work Session