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HomeMy WebLinkAboutCC Minutes - 07/15/08 Joint Elected OfficialsM I N U T E S Joint Elected Officials Eugene City Council/Springfield City Council/Lane Board of County Commissioners McNutt Room—Eugene City Hall July 15, 2008 Noon EUGENE CITY COUNCILORS PRESENT: Betty Taylor, Bonny Bettman, Jennifer Solomon, Mike Clark, Alan Zelenka, Chris Pryor, George Poling. Andrea Ortiz was excused. SPRINGFIELD CITY COUNCILORS PRESENT: Christine Lundberg, Hillary Wylie, Anne Ballew, Joe Pishioneri, Dave Ralston. John Woodrow was excused. COMMISSIONERS PRESENT: Faye Stewart, Bobby Green, Peter Sorenson, Bill Fleenor. Bill Dwyer was excused. Call to Order – Three Governing Bodies Her Honor Mayor Kitty Piercy opened the meeting of the Eugene City Council and welcomed everyone. Chair for the Board of County Commissioners Faye Stewart opened the meeting of the Lane Board of County Commissioners. He acknowledged that Commissioner Dwyer had a meeting conflict and was excused from the Joint Elected Officials meeting. His Honor Mayor Sid Leiken convened the meeting of the Springfield City Council. Mayor Piercy indicated that the Joint Elected Officials (JEO) would be joined by Coburg Mayor Judy Volta. A. WORK SESSION: Regional Transportation Planning Eugene City Manager Jon Ruiz said the JEO had last discussed regional transportation issues in its meeting in May. He reported that since then local jurisdiction staff had been working together with state agencies to develop a regional transportation planning work plan to present to the Land Conservation and Development Commission (LCDC) in October for its approval. He hoped to garner JEO input on the draft plan. Rob Inerfeld, Transportation Planning Manager for the Eugene Public Works Department, stated that the Metropolitan Policy Committee (MPC) had adopted an updated federally required Regional Transportation Plan (RTP) in November, 2007. He said this had triggered a requirement that the TransPlan, the state- mandated transportation system plan for Eugene, Springfield, and metropolitan Lane County, should be made consistent with the RTP or that the jurisdictions should present a work plan to the LCDC for making TransPlan consistent with the RTP. He noted that the City of Coburg had its own Transportation System Plan (TSP) and had made a finding that it was consistent with the RTP. He said aside from Coburg the MINUTES—Joint Elected Officials— July 15, 2008 Page 1 Lane Board of County Commissioners and Eugene and Springfield City Councils other local jurisdictions did not make a finding of consistency for a number of reasons. He conveyed staff’s recommendation that they take the work plan approach. He said since the MPC adoption of the RTP, staff for the local jurisdictions had met with the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) and the Department of Land Conservation and Development (DLCD) to develop a draft work plan that was coordinated with local land use efforts. Mr. Inerfeld stated that the work plan was divided into three elements, short-term, medium-term, and long- term actions. He explained that the short-term actions would address more immediate concerns from DLCD and ODOT regarding RTP TransPlan consistency and included deleting the completed projects from the TransPlan project list, extending the TransPlan planning horizon, and elimination of language addressing the West Eugene Parkway (WEP). He said the mid-term actions could be initiated prior to the LCDC meeting and included a decision on whether Springfield and Eugene would have their own TSP or whether they would continue to have a shared TSP and a shared Regional Transportation System Plan (RTSP). He noted that another issue was to determine whether the four ODOT facility projects that had been moved from the illustrative list to the financially constrained list in the RTP should be moved from the one list to the other in the TransPlan. He related that the long-range regional transportation planning work plan that would lead to having both the TSP and the RTSP consistent with the regional transportation plan. He stated that at this point staff had identified the major developments of the long-range work plan, but staff intended to refine this into a more detailed work plan that would be brought before the JEO in September. In response to a question from Commissioner Sorenson, Mr. Inerfeld explained that TransPlan was a state required plan and it would be important to coordinate the update to the TransPlan and any land use planning work. Commissioner Sorenson wanted to know about the federal requirement to have a consistent plan and asked what that was called. Mr. Inerfeld replied that it was called the RTP. Commissioner Sorenson asked if the jurisdictions would have to do the RTP and the TransPlan at the same time. Mr. Inerfeld responded that the federal government required the RTP to be updated every four years, with the next update scheduled for November, 2011. He said ideally that would be coordinated with and would reflect the local land use and transportation planning that was done, so that when passed by the MPC it would be consistent with local plans. Eugene Councilor Bettman had not seen any public involvement in the outline. Mr. Inerfeld responded that staff intended to have a public input component in the plan when staff returned before the JEO in Septem- ber. Councilor Bettman opined that there would be pressure in September to approve it; this created a short timeline. Mr. Inerfeld said if the JEO needed more time it would be possible to request more time. Councilor Bettman asked if the language deletion regarding the WEP would delete the project from the TransPlan. Mr. Inerfeld said it would not. Eugene Councilor Zelenka arrived. Councilor Bettman requested a memorandum from the Eugene City Attorney on the impact of not taking the WEP out. She understood that the Eugene City Council had taken action to delete the project from the list and to replace it with other projects that had been “futured” to fit the TransPlan. MINUTES—Joint Elected Officials— July 15, 2008 Page 2 Lane Board of County Commissioners and Eugene and Springfield City Councils Commissioner Fleenor said Lane County was contemplating “doing a Lane County coordinated population forecast” and was looking at the MetroPlan to see whether it needed to be updated due to the passage of House Bill (HB) 3737, Oregon Revised Statutes (ORS) 221.222, and the new Oregon Administrative Rule (OAR) 660. He questioned if this was a good time to take a look at the TransPlan given these activities. Mr. Inerfeld responded that there were elements to the TransPlan update they could take a look at. He said the important thing would be to do things in a coordinated way and to be flexible. Commissioner Fleenor asked if a population forecast would have “major ramifications” on the transporta- tion infrastructure moving forward. Mr. Inerfeld responded that he was providing the shape of what kinds of changes could come out of the land use planning effort. Commissioner Fleenor opined that with increasing gas prices there would be fewer people on the roads. He wondered if that would have an impact on transportation needs in the future. Councilor Bettman asked if there had been an opportunity for the jurisdictions to weigh in on the whole project list. She did not think the Eugene City Council had done so. She averred that when discussing an individual versus a joint update, it seemed they were already doing individual updates. She asked why they would move to a joint update and if they did move to a joint update would it not mean that they would have to have a regional priority setting process. Mr. Inerfeld reiterated that one of the directions staff was seeking was whether to pursue individual TSPs or a joint TSP. He said from a staff perspective it made sense for each jurisdiction to have its own TSP. Councilor Bettman declared that since the City of Springfield had pursued having a separate Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) they had already split the land use component. She opined that two projects in Springfield were being elevated and offered primarily to serve the expansion of the UGB. It seemed to her that they were already moving in an individual direction and this decision had already been made. Mayor Volta stated that the City of Coburg had an individual TSP though it wanted to work collaboratively. She said to involve Coburg in the process that Eugene and Springfield go through would put a big strain on Coburg and did not represent what Coburg wanted to do. She thought there would come a time when each jurisdiction would have its own plan, but she wanted to see it expedited as much as possible. She would not want to have the transportation planning process held hostage due to the population growth forecast that was being redone, something she was not certain was necessary. Springfield Councilor Ballew clarified that the two projects Councilor Bettman referred to had been included in the TransPlan since 1986 and were at least one mile away from the UGB. She wished to dispute misinformation that was being disseminated. In response to a question from Councilor Ballew, Mr. Inerfeld said rough projections indicated that the regional population would hit 296,000 in 2023. He said if they did a full TransPlan update they might want to use 2035 as the horizon year instead of 2015. Commissioner Fleenor disagreed that the population forecast could be considered unnecessary. He averred that there were contradictory interpretations of the forecast by the DLCD and local jurisdictions. He felt that doing another forecast would provide certainty. He predicted that if the jurisdictions did this individu- ally they would be faced with multiple Land Use Board of Appeals (LUBA) “claims” and multiple lawsuits in the Circuit Courts. He said HB 3436 gave jurisdictions an option to use safe harbor. He had extrapo- lated that the legislature knew that this would be contentious. He opined that if they moved forward as a MINUTES—Joint Elected Officials— July 15, 2008 Page 3 Lane Board of County Commissioners and Eugene and Springfield City Councils united county to perform the coordinated population forecast they would be able to move forward “faster and in a coordinated manner.” Eugene Councilor Clark asked if there were consequences if the jurisdictions moved forward in a separate way. Mr. Inerfeld replied that he was pretty certain that the RTSP would still have to contain facilities of regional significance. He thought it would help each jurisdiction to have its own plan, adding that he was not aware of any other jurisdictions in the state that had joint plans. Commissioner Fleenor asked how revising or dispensing with the MetroPlan would impact the RTSP. Eugene City Attorney Katherine Brotherton responded that the TransPlan was the functional part of the MetroPlan. She said if the MetroPlan stopped existing as it stood today it would have impacts on the way that the TransPlan would look in the future partially because it was implementing the transportation element of the MetroPlan. Commissioner Fleenor said he had analyzed the MetroPlan and he opined that it had no legal underpinnings; he was not certain it would be legally defensible. He averred that before they go any further they should restore the underpinnings of the assumptions that they were working on and address the MetroPlan first. Mayor Leiken thought the two cities would still have to have a comprehensive plan. He agreed that it would make more sense for the two jurisdictions to have their own plans except in the case of projects that had regional significance such as the Interstate 5/Beltline Highway interchange. He believed that it would make sense for the jurisdictions to continue their United Front efforts. He also had some issues with the MetroPlan and felt it was worth continuing to look into. Springfield Councilor Lundberg assumed that if the jurisdictions had their own transportation plans they would still make decisions about regional facilities as they did now. She asked if this had been defined and who would make what decision. Mr. Inerfeld responded that it was not entirely clear where the line would fall between what would be considered a regional transportation facility and what was not. He said it had yet to be worked out between the local jurisdictions and ODOT where the line fell between what should be in the RTSP, what should be in the local transportation plan, and what should fall under the heading of both. He noted that the City of Eugene had an Arterial and Collector Street Plan that classified the streets according to transportation needs as local streets, collectors, or arterials. Tom Boyatt, Transportation Manager for the City of Springfield, stated that Springfield was about to initiate a street classification process. Commissioner Fleenor said he wanted to “dovetail on the coattails” of Mayor Leiken regarding the current financial circumstances. He reiterated his belief that a coordinated population forecast was an essential building block by which they should begin this process. He opined that without such a forecast any structure above this would be “susceptible.” He averred that they should take a slow approach and ensure they had a solid foundation to work from in order to move forward 25 to 75 years ahead. Eugene Councilor Pryor agreed that it would be appropriate to conduct the majority of transportation planning at the local level. He observed that there were large transportation systems that had a regional impact as evidenced by the large amount of traffic traveling from east to west and vice versa during rush hours. He said defining what that level would be and how the systems would interface would be the exercise that would have to be undertaken. He was more concerned about what the underpinning assumptions each MINUTES—Joint Elected Officials— July 15, 2008 Page 4 Lane Board of County Commissioners and Eugene and Springfield City Councils of the jurisdictions would be making and the degree to which they would agree or disagree about them would be. He wanted to work out a way to coordinate the underlying assumptions. Councilor Bettman questioned whether the underpinning assumptions could be coordinated. She asserted that the City of Eugene was trying to build more densely and the City of Springfield was building out at 50 percent of allowable density. She declared that those assumptions were “extremely different” and she could not see how they could be coordinated. She thought the Metro Plan should be included in the work plan as it contained the land use assumptions that dictated transportation assumptions and the projects. She opined that they would have to be individual plans because the two jurisdictions no longer shared an Urban Growth Boundary (UGB). Springfield Councilor Ralston agreed with the assumption that the Metro Plan was no longer useful or that there were components of it that were no longer useful. He supported separate TSPs and averred that if the Regional Transportation Plan took care of the large projects that related to both communities it would beg the question how important the TransPlan would be. He felt that if the MetroPlan was invalid, then it would make the TransPlan invalid, especially if the two jurisdictions developed their own plans. He wanted to know why the TransPlan was important. Mr. Inerfeld responded that the TransPlan was what was considered the TSP and the RTSP at this time. He said they could make TransPlan the name of the RTSP, which was required by the State or it could be called by another name. Commissioner Sorenson remarked that the County had a sense of urgency about economizing the plan so that the federal, state, and regional requirements should be pulled together. He agreed that a local facility that affected one community should be handled locally. He related that the commissioners had directed their staff to return in September or October with an estimate of how long the County had before it would run out of its Road Fund. He predicted that for the County the brakes would stop on its financial ability to participate in regional activities where the Road Fund was a principal source of funding. He was bothered by the idea of not merging the federal, state, and regional requirements. Mayor Piercy asked if Commissioner Sorenson was echoing Councilor Ralston’s sentiments. Commissioner Sorenson affirmed that he was. He said they needed to keep doing the state regional work separately from the federal regional work, but help from the County in certain projects was required by federal and state laws and the jurisdictions would have to help the County look for ways to economize on its participation. Councilor Ballew said before they made a decision about how to develop the transportation plans, whether to do them individually or in conjunction with one another, there needed to be a clearer understanding of the financial ramifications. Councilor Zelenka averred that they were in danger of making three separate plans. He agreed that the local and regional plans should be separate, but he hoped that in consideration of the County’s financial constraints the state and federal planning would be combined into one plan. Councilor Bettman did not want to take regional priority setting out of the purview of local decision-making. She noted that federal funding sometimes required a local match. Commissioner Fleenor encouraged his colleagues and the staff of the jurisdictions to realize that the area could be in a persistent economic downturn that could last “years and even decades.” He also wanted to encourage staff to “keep it simple, reduce the layers of bureaucracy, [and] reduce the policies and procedures.” He predicted this would add less of a burden on taxpayers. He wanted things to be simplified MINUTES—Joint Elected Officials— July 15, 2008 Page 5 Lane Board of County Commissioners and Eugene and Springfield City Councils and made less expensive. He said they needed a simple understandable transportation system plan that was affordable. Mayor Piercy observed that transportation planning was complicated for the public. She did not think people understood how or why to participate in the planning. Councilor Zelenka agreed that having the public get involved at the local level and having that inform the regional plan would be good. He remarked that public involvement was broken and the “usual suspects” came to meetings to provide testimony. He noted that the Citizen Advisory Committee for the Metropolitan Policy Organization (MPO CAC) had been charged with bolstering public involvement. Eugene Councilor Taylor thought the reason people did not participate sometimes was that they did not recognize they had an impact. She opined that this was especially true regarding the Metropolitan Policy Committee (MPC). She felt that people were closer to their councilors than to members of the inter- jurisdictional group and would be more comfortable providing input locally. Councilor Bettman opined that the MPO CAC had been “morphed into” a marginalized committee that was in charge of telling the MPC “how to have a nicer forum or better ads in the newspaper.” She declared that this was not the intended role for the MPO CAC; it was to be a body to provide public input. Councilor Zelenka averred that it took perseverance to participate in this kind of planning. He felt they should redouble efforts at the local level to involve not just the institutionally financed groups but also the regular citizens. Councilor Ballew observed that a better job could be done at the local level to garner public input when putting together the Capital Improvement Programs (CIPs). Councilor Ralston noted that amending the TransPlan so that the completed projects were deleted was part of the short-term goals. He thought they ought to consider the TransPlan the RTP and update it so that they would not have to change all of the documents that referred to it. Councilor Ballew did not see anything in the short-term actions that were objectionable. She also did not think the mid-term actions were unreasonable. Councilor Bettman said Eugene City Manager Jon Ruiz should take from the discussion what the decision points should be and then the council should have a work session in order to make those decisions. She thought the decisions could then be forwarded to the JEO. Commissioner Fleenor concurred. Mayor Piercy surmised that each group would return to their jurisdictions and make the decisions and then reconvene as the JEO. MINUTES—Joint Elected Officials— July 15, 2008 Page 6 Lane Board of County Commissioners and Eugene and Springfield City Councils B. WORK SESSION: Public Safety Commissioner Stewart recalled that at the previous JEO meeting they had tried to find a long-term solution for public safety. He asked County Administrator Jeff Spartz to work through the item that was in the packet in order to garner direction. Mr. Spartz observed that everyone was aware that public safety in Lane County was heavily dependent on funding in the County’s General Fund and with the failure of Congress to reenact the Save Our Rural Schools appropriations in this fiscal year it had experienced a huge shortfall. He said going forward into the next presidential administration there was some hope that a successor program to the funding would be created but there was no certainty of that. He stated that the swap the County had made with the City of Eugene would help in the present year and the next year but it still left the County with a reduction of $13 million in public safety which would reach a magnitude of $15 million when the agreements with Springfield and Eugene run out. He declared that this was both a mid-term and a long-term problem. He suggested that a subcommittee or subgroup of the JEO that was cross-jurisdictional should be convened. He felt the lack of jail space was the “tip of the iceberg.” He wanted the JEO to consider what role the Public Safety Coordinating Council (PSCC) should play, what models should be used for the staff report, and how it should get the necessary public involvement that would fully appreciate the nuances of the issues and drive the group forward to a decision-making model. Commissioner Fleenor said he had raised the question in community dialogues of what it meant to be safe and how they should achieve public safety. He declared that they needed to get “back to basics” and ask fundamental questions like why Lane County existed and why the City of Eugene existed. He challenged the JEO to answer the question of what it meant to be safe. He averred that they would never reach the target if they did not know what the target was. He remarked that more people died on Highway 126 than died as a result of crime. Councilor Bettman asked what a third party evaluation of the system would mean. She believed that the County wanted to move toward a regionalized model with regionalized decision-making. She did not understand under what authority the JEO could be a decision-making body. She averred that the City of Eugene had different community values; it had a Police Auditor and the other jurisdictions did not. She thought a merge of public safety services would cause Eugene to lose “what [was] very specifically Eugene community values.” While she was concerned about the County’s public safety crisis she thought the proposed model was “going down the wrong path.” Eugene Councilor Clark noted that they had already “gone down the road” of proposing a public safety district. He surmised that regionalizing the response to public safety issues contained some challenges. He pointed out that criminals did not respect boundaries and he did not imagine that the public safety response should either. He admired what the combined fire departments had done in their third battalion response between Eugene and Springfield. He related that they look for how they could fill in each others’ gaps. He liked the idea of looking into creative ways to collaborate. He believed that regional economic development was the answer as it would provide the appropriate tax base to address the shortfall on a countywide basis. Eugene Councilor Poling concurred. He believed the discussion should be on a broader spectrum and should address the prevention, intervention and treatment services. He said the perpetrators did not care about city limits and a person calling for help did not care what color the car or uniform were of the respondent to the call. He remembered the discussion they had several years earlier about combining some of the present MINUTES—Joint Elected Officials— July 15, 2008 Page 7 Lane Board of County Commissioners and Eugene and Springfield City Councils overlapping public safety efforts, but there was such strong opposition on the Eugene City Council that it did not progress. He felt there were a number of different areas in which some of the duplication could be eliminated. He acknowledged the City of Eugene’s police oversight process, adding that he knew there were officers in other agencies that would not be willing to work under the Eugene system. He believed that the PSCC would be a good starting point as it involved the three public safety systems. He wanted to ask how they could come up with a solution so that the entire population of Lane County was served by the public safety system. Councilor Zelenka reiterated his appreciation for the proposition for the fund swap that Councilor Bettman had made. He thought the discussion about the issue should be at the JEO table but the votes should occur in the individual jurisdictional level. He also agreed with Councilor Poling that a public safety solution should include prevention and intervention. He added his support for cooperation and efficiency and also agreed that they should try not to duplicate services as much as possible. Mayor Piercy remarked that differences exist. She felt that the county and the two communities could work together creatively to find solutions without losing sight of their differences. Councilor Pryor recognized that there were two parts to the public safety discussion: the crime and incarceration component and the other parts such as prevention and intervention. He believed that with sufficient funding the two police departments and the sheriff’s office would run well. He stressed that at present the system was “grossly underfunded.” He thought that things like the third battalion could be worked out between the jurisdictions, such as community policing. He said the JEO coordination needed to occur around services the County had traditionally provided, such as juvenile services and court services. He said they could talk about this as a coordinated effort but he pointed out that the PSCC had put measures on the ballot and all had failed. He related that the PSCC had come up with plans and then had not had the resources to follow through with them. He did not want to keep doing the same things that were not working. He wanted to find “a new mechanism” that would address that side of the equation. He preferred to focus this effort on drugs, prevention, youth, and education because he believed this was where the region was “floundering.” Springfield Councilor Wylie stated that the region needs adequate parole, probation, supervision, and jail time. She remarked that she worked in the treatment field and believed more treatment services were needed. She said some of the responsibility for the funding belonged in other places. She noted that the State had continually cut back treatment funding and area representatives needed to put pressure on the State to get that money back. She related that she had talked to Springfield Police Chief Jerry Smith about regional issues and how the cities could cover the areas that would be affected as the Lane County Sheriff’s Office (LCSO) “got thin.” She said Chief Smith had indicated that the departments were already looking out for one another. Councilor Wylie pointed out that a person who was wearing a Eugene Police Department badge would know they were responsible to the police oversight process. She thought the two chiefs and the sheriff could work together and do a lot of streamlining. She noted that they were already doing a lot of radio and information sharing. She underscored the importance of being responsible to the citizens and keeping them safe. She averred that there were a lot of things they could do; they could talk about what they needed to place on the ballot and how to get legislators to bring more funds to the issue. She added that one idea she had for the ballot was to provide voters with a choice on what amount of money to allocate to which portion of the public safety system. MINUTES—Joint Elected Officials— July 15, 2008 Page 8 Lane Board of County Commissioners and Eugene and Springfield City Councils Commissioner Fleenor said he was not sure it was a revenue problem or a resource problem. He averred that it was an allocation of the resources and the “lack of a goal, a vision.” He thought they should take a look at some of the laws and ask why they were locking up “so many people.” He wanted to find ways to intercede earlier. He called it an “idea problem.” Eugene Councilor Taylor thought they should appoint Commissioner Fleenor to a committee to talk about the allocation of resources. She believed he had “an excellent point.” She opined that the area continued to do public safety “in the wrong way.” She thought the PSCC was a waste of time and money. She averred that the PSCC “put out a lot of reports” and she did not know if that made any difference. Councilor Taylor did not believe that the fire and police were comparable because the firefighters put out fires in every jurisdiction and what the police did could be very different in different jurisdictions. She felt it would be more difficult to combine the efforts of the police. She said they should cooperate in the areas of prevention and treatment. She opined that when the County started charging to go into parks it was contrary to the philosophy of prevention. She averred that she had seen people with children at Mount Pisgah wishing they could go for a walk but unable to afford it. She had also “heard from a lot of people” that people should just be sent to Eugene if they were homeless. She said taking care of things like that was a cooperative thing. She felt the jurisdictions would have different philosophies about community policing as well as what a crime was. Commissioner Green felt the discussion on funding for public safety was premature. He declared that criminals committing crimes have a better knowledge of the system than most of the people around the table. He said they needed to bring the community and people with a certain level of education about public safety to the table. He thought ultimately decisions would be made by the communities. He underscored the need for keeping the perspective of the victims in mind. He had not heard anyone talk about the victims, the people who were susceptible to the crimes. He pointed out that some of the people in the room had experienced having their car or their house broken into or having their purse stolen and knew how that felt. He said the other element that was missing from the conversation was the work of those who were in the non-profit arena that were trying to accomplish a lot on minimal dollars. He felt that those working on prevention and treatment were doing the best they could with the resources. He stressed that they needed to start the conversation with the non-profit agencies and the community to get an idea of what public safety was to them. He said they needed to talk to the people who disagreed with them to try to understand why they disagree as well as those that agreed with them. Commissioner Green stated that there were different components to the system. He said Senate Bill 1145 mandated that the area form the PSCC in 1995. He pointed out that if people found it useless or a waste of money they needed to tell that to the State Legislature who created it. He reiterated that they should be talking about what the area really needed for public safety and what the community was willing to support. He predicted that the funding would happen once people got the idea that they did not want anyone to be a victim. He suggested that the JEO members look in the paper every day and see the reports of sex offenders and that people were getting stabbed; those were victims. He suggested they look at the system through their eyes and the solution would come to them. Councilor Bettman declared that the City of Eugene provided more money per capita in the areas where the jurisdictions provided joint funding, such as the Human Services Commission. She alleged that there were other services that Eugene cooperated to provide where the City paid a larger share. Regarding the PSCC, she commented that the public did not know where their tax money went. She opined that Eugene did not have any control over the prioritization in outlying communities and what they decided to prosecute or not to MINUTES—Joint Elected Officials— July 15, 2008 Page 9 Lane Board of County Commissioners and Eugene and Springfield City Councils prosecute. She felt this was why there had to be localized decision-making. She agreed that the PSCC was not a good use of resources. She averred that both Lane County and the City of Springfield had “pretty remarkable success at the Legislature when they go up there and they ask for favors.” She asked if anyone had ever asked for a repeal of the requirement to have the PSCC. She also wondered if anyone had ever asked for an exemption from the tax-base freeze that had been enacted by Ballot Measures 47 and 50. She claimed that the ballot measures had caught the County “unawares.” She asked why they were not coming up with a strategy at the Legislature so that they could access more funds. She remarked that she had been impressed by the success that Lane County and Springfield had with other issues that were “maybe not as high a priority.” Commissioner Sorenson pointed out that the County had laid off 57 deputies. He said to say that Lane County was in deep trouble was an understatement. He commented that Springfield had built its own jail, which he considered “remarkable.” He felt that Eugene’s contributions to social services and corrections were good but ultimately the jurisdictions had to look after the taxpayers. He felt that if the board could show substantial public interest in a ballot measure, they would do so, but the ballot measures that they had mounted thus far had not passed. He averred that Springfield “had gone its own way with public safety” by building its own jail. He called this “further evidence of the divorce” that Springfield had obtained when it had been able to get out of the Eugene/Springfield metro planning process. Councilor Ralston was not interested in regionalized public safety. He felt that Springfield had been proactive and had citizen support for its jail project. He stated that the citizens of Springfield elected their councilors to represent them and to be responsible to them. For him it was a financial issue and Springfield did not have the resources to solve the County’s problem. He averred that Lane County residents needed to buy into the public safety system. Mayor Leiken noted that Springfield started planning for the jail in 2002 and passed its ballot measure in 2004. He said they had not profited, it was just an area they had looked at and worked on. He underscored that the bottom line was that Washington, D.C. had turned its back on Lane County and several other counties in Oregon. He averred that this area would need to “pull itself up by its bootstraps.” He noted that even when they were making plans for the jail it had appeared to them that the Save Our Rural Schools funding would continue, though it might “look a little different.” He thought Councilor Pryor was on the right track, but it was a funding issue. He pointed out that if it had not been for the levies that Springfield had passed and re-passed in 2006 the city would have roughly the same amount of police officers on the street as it did in 1980, though the town had grown by a third. Instead, he related, Springfield now had six or eight more officers. He underscored that Lane County had more officers in 1980 than it did today. He was not interested in forming more committees, but if the JEO wanted to focus on what the jurisdictions could do together to “take care of business” he was “in.” He indicated his support for potentially lobbying the State to eliminate the PSCC. He felt that Springfield was in a good position, noting that it had passed the Lane County measure. Additionally, he agreed with Commissioner Green: the criminals knew the system better than they did. Mr. Ruiz asked how staff could best support the JEO. He asked if it would be helpful for staff to identify options for how to move the discussion forward. Councilor Bettman wanted to vote on that at the local level. Councilor Ralston concurred. MINUTES—Joint Elected Officials— July 15, 2008 Page 10 Lane Board of County Commissioners and Eugene and Springfield City Councils Councilor Ballew underscored the need to be focused when putting ideas together so that they were targeted on jail, prosecution, and the hard-edged issues. Mayor Piercy commented that they should consider having a lobbying effort for Salem that was similar to the United Front lobbying trip to Washington, D.C. Commissioner Stewart thanked everyone for their comments and adjourned the Board of Commissioners. Mayor Piercy adjourned the meeting of the Eugene City Council. Mayor Leiken adjourned the meeting of the Springfield City Council. The JEO meeting was adjourned at 1:51 p.m. Respectfully submitted, Jon Ruiz (Recorded by Ruth Atcherson) MINUTES—Joint Elected Officials— July 15, 2008 Page 11 Lane Board of County Commissioners and Eugene and Springfield City Councils