CCMinutes - 01/28/04 WS - Laserfiche WebLink

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this issue. In response to the question of how Lane County could assist the City, she had the following recommendations: 1) Share money that was already available; 2) initiate a countywide solution that would help the County and all of its cities; 3) Support individual efforts in cities that wish to control their own destiny by assisting, support- ing, or acknowledging that some things needed to be done locally. Regarding the amount that the City should ask for, Ms. Nathanson said it was yet unknown what sort of funding would be designated for this. She advised against designing a solution based on what was predicted to happen two years from now. She felt the main question was how quickly the City would make progress on its backlog of road maintenance. Mr. Poling concurred with the comments made. He thanked the County commissioners, officials, and staff for the work done at the joint jurisdictional meeting. He felt that, with support from the cities, the County and the Eugene Area Chamber of Commerce, progress could be made. Ms. Bettman approved of the formula based on an average of the miles driven and population. Ms. Bettman asked if the City received OTIA moneys directly. Mr. Corey estimated the OTIA money that would come to the City of Eugene to be $900,000 to $1 million per year. Ms. Bettman adamantly opposed any new transportation taxes. She read aloud from the audit and asserted that the City had enough existing revenue from different sources to put together a "healthy sum" to address the existing problem and the backlog. She said that the Metropolitan Policy Committee (MPC), staff, and community leaders chose to spend the money on new road projects rather than on preserving existing roads. She noted that the State had doubled registration fees. Mayor Torrey agreed with the recommendation with one exception. He said he did not want a process that would take two years to get an answer. He recommended identifying a few key areas that would produce "good results" and that it should take no more than 120 days. Mayor Torrey urged the council to go to the meeting and convey that the City had a $6 million problem and that the City was prepared to work with the County to achieve an answer to the problem. He was willing to look at the gas tax but asserted that it would need to make sense to the City of Eugene. He supported looking into an increase in registration fees. He stressed the importance of coming forward willingly to take a portion of the General Fund money for spending on transportation. He averred that if in the end the City needed to cover what was not there, the City should go back to the TSMF passed in the previous year and either submit it to the voters or pass it and face a potential referendum. He conveyed his willingness to look at every possible solution to the problem the council faced. Mr. Kelly agreed that it would take time to "knock down" the backlog. In response to a question from Mr. Kelly, Mr. Corey explained that of the $9 million that was recom- mended by the citizen members of the Budget Committee, $3.5 million was necessary to address ongoing need and $5 million was requested to keep the backlog from increasing. Eric Jones, Public Affairs Manager for the Public Works Department, stated that the numbers that were used at the time of the last analysis and presented to the Budget Committee were likely to be updated for the February 18 presentation. He recalled that the numbers from the previous analysis were that the current problem amounted to $67 million that would, with no treatment, grow to $231 million, and that the annual application of $9 million