CCMinutes - 04/28/04 WS - Laserfiche WebLink

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who called for the development of a master plan to illustrate to the public what it was purchasing. She agreed with the remarks of Mr. Meisner regarding ways to offset the cost through the sale of assets and bonding against leases. That made the project more fiscally responsible and acceptable to the community. Ms. Bettman thought the project needed to be the City's police headquarters and City Hall. She thought it important to preserve the identity of the municipality. She said if the City was to build the center it had to be a City facility, although it may contain additional capacity that could be rented to other jurisdictions until needed. She thought the City needed to distinguish between public and private space and to place people- intensive uses instead of storage, for example, in downtown. Ms. Taylor thought the council should first discover if the public wanted new buildings. She did not think that had been determined. She said that there were many people who thought the existing city hall could be retrofitted and retained, but that idea seemed to have been dropped. She wanted to know how much space the building could accommodate when the police and fire staff were relocated to other facilities. She agreed with Ms. Bettman about people-intensive uses downtown. Ms. Taylor said the City Council should not consider putting a police station bond measure on the ballot unless it was sure it would succeed. She said the council needed to consider whether the time was right. Mayor Torrey said he would like to see a matrix of projects the City had done over the last five years showing the impact of interest rates on the bond. He said that now was a favorable financial time to construct a building because of low interest rates, and the council should consider taking advantage of that in face of the needs that existed. Mayor Torrey said that no one had taken the current building off the list of options. He wanted to know if the building was strong enough to sustain multi-story development on the north edge. He liked a concept he had heard at the design forum regarding possible modifications that could be made to the building. Speaking to Mr. Papa's comments, Mayor Torrey pointed out his suggestion about the 20-year dollar arrangement included a lease-back, and the money that supported the lease would come out of the General Fund; he questioned how the City would pay for that. He acknowledged that cities do take that approach, but it then became an operating cost for those who use the facilities. Ms. Nathanson thought there were internal and organizational efficiencies to be gained from a new civic center. She raised the question of what services were located in a civic center downtown, where the land values and construction costs were high. While she agreed with the goal of consolidating services to the extent possible, Ms. Nathanson suggested that some services did not need to be downtown because their presence did not contribute to organizational efficiency or were unnecessary in downtown. She anticipated the City would continue to have several buildings and not all services would be housed in one place. Ms. Nathanson asked if the City had ever employed a combined general obligation/revenue bond approach to fund a project. Ms. Cutsogeorge said yes, in the case of the airport. She said more than one kind of bond could be used, and confirmed, in response to a question from Ms. Nathanson, that staff was developing such scenarios. Ms. Bettman looked forward to seeing the ~framework of facts" Mr. Carlson had promised the advisory committee. She was also interested in seeing a project time line. MINUTES--Eugene City Council April 28, 2004 Page 3 Work Session