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a City street, saying that preventing a land owner from taking access to a local street "smelled like a land use decision" to him. He suggested further research be done on the question. Mr. Kelly anticipated that the project would take many years to come to fruition if it ever did, and asked when and how the community could say "okay, the 'WEP' will be what the WEP will be and may not get built," and place serious staff time and money into looking into other alternatives. Ms. Bettman concurred with Mr. Kelly. She said the council should be looking at alternative transportation strategies for improving congestion in west Eugene, and the farther the community went with the parkway, the farther away it got from a solution. Ms. Bettman thought access management was a very serious issue. She said the information provided to her suggested there would be no access management, leading to serious problems given the fact the street was to be a local city street. Ms. Bettman spoke to the issue of funding, noting that in her review of the packet she kept encountering past letters from ODOT calling for instant decisions on the part of the council or the funding would be at risk, and four years later the $17 million was still available. She believed the City could have benefited by negotiating to use that money for a different solution, and it would have been spent long ago with some effect. Ms. Bettman reiterated her interest in looking at other alternatives. She advised City Manager Dennis Taylor to consult with legal counsel before he signed the MOU. She wanted to know how the change being proposed affected TransPlan and the Eugene-Springfield Metropolitan Area General Plan. She wanted to know the legal parameters involved. Mr. Klein said there would be many authority questions that arise depending on the nature of the negotiations. He said that Ms. Bettman's questions were good questions that must be answered, depending on the nature of what was in the IGA. Mr. Klein stressed the non-binding nature of the MOU, which stipulated that negotiations between Eugene, Lane County, and ODOT would happen. He said the manager had the authority to sign this MOU, but there were other authority questions legal counsel must resolve before he could advise the manager to sign the IGA. Ms. Bettman agreed the MOU was not legally binding, but was intended to document that future discussions will occur to define operations and maintenance roles and responsibilities. It states that the rules would change without telling the council how they would change. If the MOU had no significance, ODOT would not insist upon it. Speaking to the remarks of Ms. Bettman and Mr. Kelly, Mr. Pap~ recalled the two-day charette moderated by Judge Michael Hogan in 2002 and said no other viable alternatives had arisen out of the meeting. Mayor Torrey asked the manager to keep the council informed on the status of negotiations with the State. Speaking to the ODOT representatives, he asked them to let the council know sooner rather than later if the project was not going to happen. Mayor Torrey believed that further delay did the community a tremendous disservice. He pointed out that the City lost opportunities to participate in the Oregon Transportation Investment Act (OTIA) 1, 2, and 3 because the TransPlan budget had been fully dedicated to the parkway and the community had no way of applying for those dollars. He said the parkway had never been the top priority project in the community; the highest priority was between River Road and 1-5 on the Beltline. Mayor Torrey said government should not be so slow in solving such problems. MINUTES--Eugene City Council September 22, 2004 Page 9 Work Session