Item 3A: Approval of City Council Minutes

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Ms. Taylor recalled the conference on “walkability” at Tsunami Bookstore and asked what happened to the recommendations from that event. Mr. Roth said the report from the event was used as background for the Bicycle and Pedestrian Plan. Mr. Yeiter said the City had unsuccessfully applied for a grant to implement some of the concepts in the report. The corridor discussed by participants at the event was being studied as a pilot project for opportunity siting, and there was a possibility of another grant application to take another look at the area in question. Ms. Taylor thought it was important to give people choices, which made them more likely to do positive things. She thought more efforts should be made to combat bicycle theft. It was hard to feel good about riding one’s bicycle if one was worried it would disappear when one left it. She asked if staff had discussed thth widening the bicycle lanes on streets such as 11 and 18 avenues to avoid conflicts with large vehicles such as buses. Mr. Roth said staff was discussing different bicycle lane treatments to provide extra buffer space. Ms. Taylor asked if anyone was contemplating expansion of the pedestrian flag system started by Ken Saxton. Mr. Roth said the pedestrian flag system was an example of a low-cost tool that was currently in use. He believed its use in Eugene could be expanded. Ms. Taylor suggested if dogs were allowed on buses people would use the bus to take their dog to the vet. Mr. Yeiter said he would forward the suggestion to LTD staff. Mr. Clark agreed with the mayor that the best outcome of the TSP was to provide people with multiple choices and allow them freedom to choose. His concern was that was not what was happening. He said his problem with using VMT as a metric was that it resulted in planning for less capacity in those choices and did not help in emissions reductions. While no one was forced into a different mode, the result was increased congestion. People drove the same number of miles, only more slowly, which increased emissions. He believed VMT was a terrible metric if the desired outcome was decreased greenhouse gas emissions. Continuing, Mr. Clark said he was challenged by discussion of increased infill in areas such as those near the Beltline and Delta Highway because while he thought such infill was a good thing, he pointed out that Beltline was a failed facility in multiple places. To date, there was only one proposed plan for improving Beltline that came close to addressing the standards, and when he asked ODOT staff members how the State could chose any option but that, they suggested that they guessed the State would have to change the standard. Mayor Piercy acknowledged differing points of view held by different councilors and said each councilor would have a different perspective on Mr. Clark’s points. B. WORK SESSION: City Council Process Session The council held a work session on its processes for addressing Contingency Funds, for conducting work session polls as part of regular council business, and for providing time for more detailed council committee reports. Council and Intergovernmental Affairs Manager Keli Osborn and Council Coordinator Beth Forrest reviewed the staff recommendations related to each process. Councilors accepted the staff recommendation related to contingency funds. MINUTES—City Council October 27, 2010 Page 4 Work Session