MINUTES OF THE METRO COUNCIL

TRANSPORTATION PLANNING COMMITTEE MEETING

Tuesday, December 7, 1999

Council Chamber

CALL TO ORDER AND ROLL CALL

Chair Kvistad called the meeting to order at 3:45 PM.

1.  CONSIDERATION OF THE MINUTES OF THE NOVEMBER 16, 1999, TRANSPORTATION PLANNING COMMITTEE MEETING

Councilor Atherton asked to defer approval of the minutes to a future meeting when Councilor Bragdon was present. Chair Kvistad agreed.

1.  RESOLUTION NO. 99-2878, FOR THE PURPOSE OF APPROVING THE 1999 UPDATE TO THE REGIONAL TRANSPORTATION PLAN AND REFINEMENT PROCESS

Andy Cotugno, Transportation Director, noted the November 5th draft document had been circulating through the public comment period. Hundreds of comments had been received and were included in the public comment book he distributed to the committee. He also distributed a supplemental comment packet, which included comments received since Thursday. He said staff had compiled those comments into a comment response recommendation document which included recommendations for comments through Thursday. Additional comments would be received through December 16 when the public comment period closed. He said another packet of comments and recommendations on additional comments would be ready for next Thursday’s Transportation Committee meeting.

He explained the resolution was structured into 4 parts. Part 1 adopted the November 5 draft, Part 2 adopted recommendations in this packet for changes to the November 5^th draft. Part 3 represented comments received that would not have JPACT recommendations yet because of timing of the comment period. He added that they anticipated having JPACT recommendations on these after their next meeting on Thursday. He explained that Part 3 was proposed because JPACT had a bylaw that anything recommended by JPACT had to be approved by them. He said rather than scheduling another JPACT meeting between this Thursday and council action, the council would adopt the additional comments and refer them back to JPACT for confirmation.

He said the fourth part of the resolution acknowledged that they were not done with the matter as this was a resolution to adopt the RTP, not an ordinance. The resolution directed staff to develop findings to support an ordinance, and those findings would involve findings for the state transportation planning rule. He said that entailed developing a fiscally constrained component of the RTP and would ensure that air quality conformity was met for that fiscally constrained scenario and develop a better financing direction for the RTP. Finally it would include federal findings to support an ordinance. He felt that the same approach on the 2040 growth concept proved to be useful and allowed a period for people to understand and comment. The ordinance was expected to come back to council by May or June next year. They anticipated that after the Council adopted the resolution with all the appropriate amendments, they would incorporate the changes into this document and print a final document that included all the comments. He recommended that the comments be adopted by consent unless the committee felt any one of them should be pulled off of the consent list for individual attention.

Chair Kvistad asked if JPACT members and their staff had copies of this so everyone would be ready Thursday morning. He asked if they knew they could flag items out for discussion.

Mr. Cotugno said the information had been included in the agenda. He said they had also used that approach with TPAC last Friday. He recommended that if the committee wanted to discuss some of the significant comments from the comment period, the relevant section to focus on would be the first six pages of the discussion items.

Chair Kvistad asked Mr. Cotugno to review what the RTP was, how much was at stake, and the timeline because that would frame the issue and could be helpful to Councilor Bragdon upon his return, in case he wanted to review this discussion before Thursday.

Mr. Cotugno explained that there were RTP requirements under Metro’s charter as well as federal and state requirements. Those requirements were similar but not the same. The federal requirements were for a long-range transportation plan as the basis for defining the needs of the region. Any federal money allocated had to be consistent with that RTP and Metro would only get money for projects in the RTP. The feds required the RTP to be based on a fiscally realistic level of resources. He said Metro’s plan defined how much money they expected to have throughout the region given existing revenue sources, what they would do with it and how well it would work. Metro’s strategic RTP defined what they wanted to do that would require new resources in order to be achieved. Metro had to identify a fiscally defensible level of resources to justify to the federal government. The fiscally constrained scenario was required for federal purposes principally for air quality reasons. Metro would have to demonstrate that the fiscally constrained scenario met air quality standards before it could be adopted. He believed the plan represented a good policy discussion of where Metro would like to go. The next discussion to have would be how far Metro thought it could get toward that goal.

He explained the state’s transportation planning rule required adequate transportation services to serve the lane uses Metro adopted in their comprehensive and 2040 Growth Concept plans. The strategic RTP was what Metro proposed to support the 2040 Growth Concept and local comprehensive plans. The difference here was that the state requirements were more aspirational and not as fiscally constrained as the federal requirements. He said Metro would have one plan to meet the federal requirements and a second plan, at a higher level, designed to meet state requirements.

Metro’s own charter requirements, he said, expected the transportation system to move people toward the 2040 Growth Concept. He said there was a strong thrust in the strategic RTP toward projects to help shape the region toward the 2040 Growth Concept. He said his department believed the RTP accomplished the 2040 requirements but did not meet the fiscally constrained federal requirements. The implication of this for the future was that in order for a project to be federally funded it would have to be in the RTP and In order to create a zoning amendment to increase densities, the local government would have to demonstrate there was an adequate transportation system. He said the RTP provided a basis for determining if there was an adequate transportation system. Future lane use and funding actions taken by both Metro and local governments would be affected by the RTP.

He said the issue that had dominated TPAC’s focus was the size of the funding gap, now at four times the level of resources. He said there was a sense that Metro couldn’t be accurate about what they wanted if the figures were so far from what the agency would be capable of funding. He said in Metro’s judgement, there were two ways to look at it. One was to determine if the expenditure was right relative to the size of the Portland region or were they trying to build a system too big for the region. To that end, he said Metro looked at the expenditures for the plan relative to historic levels of transportation, and the impact on income levels and the percentage needed toward building the transportation system. He said they also compared that cost to other utilities and felt relative to those, i.e. cable television or water, the level of expenditures for transportation was very low. He said the Department felt it was a prudent level of investment.

The second way would be to measure the political effort necessary to raise the funds. He said Metro’s track record over the past eight years had not been good for raising the necessary money to get to where the agency wanted to be. He noted Metro had another ballot measure in May and given the actions of voters and the legislature on gas tax measures, it was easy to be pessimistic as the funding measures had been repeatedly turned down. He said TPAC felt Metro had a politically difficult task with a financially prudent level of investment and had asked for the Metro Council and JPACT to determine how Metro could bridge the funding gaps.

Chair Kvistad asked the total amount of RTP dollars needed.

Mr. Cotugno responded that the strategic system total was $7 billion over the next 20 years. He said it was divided roughly 50/50 between transit and other projects, like bicycle, pedestrian, highway, street, boulevard and road right-of-way projects.

Councilor Atherton said he had prepared a suggested response on how to attack the funding gap and asked Mr. Cotugno if TPAC or the MPAC Funding Committee had responded to his strategy.

Mr. Cotugno noted for the committee that Councilor Atherton’s strategy was to dedicate traditional funding sources like gas taxes and vehicle registration fees to maintenance and have growth and tolls pay for expansion.

Councilor Atherton said the fourth part of his strategy was to use the money for what it was collected from, i.e. broad-based sources would go for broad-based needs. He felt the biggest broad-based need was maintenance of the existing infrastructure. He said his strategy would let growth pay its own way. He felt it was a logical funding scenario.

Mr. Cotugno said TPAC had not commented specifically on whether this was the right scenario. They had, in principle, simply acknowledged that the choice on how to fill the gap represented a trade off between the types of choices. They were not prepared to say it was the right choice but agreed those were the kinds of choices that needed to be made. He thought the reason for reservation on their part was based on past analyses related to those two things. For example, ODOT had done an assessment of the toll potential of a Tualatin Expressway and a Sunrise Corridor. Both studies concluded they would only partially pay for themselves out of toll revenue. If your proposal was to build those only if they got funded with toll revenues, their response would be that it wouldn’t generate enough money to pay for itself in toll revenues.

Councilor Atherton said his response would be then that it would not get built.

Chair Kvistad asked about inequities in the existing system where certain communities had decades of infrastructure that others did not have. He wondered if they would be told they were out of luck if they didn’t already have adequate infrastructure.

Councilor Atherton said that was a growth question.

Chair Kvistad responded that it was an “existing” question now, but from this point forward it would be a growth question.

Councilor Atherton said a way to address the problem might be to break it down into existing versus growth areas and have a different funding strategy for the growth areas as opposed to the existing areas.

Chair Kvistad said nobody had expected the last 20-30 years growth that happened in his district that left them without transportation because the funding was not available, and other communities, such as Portland, had extensive infrastructure. He said while Portland’s issue may be maintenance, his community’s issue was equity. To say everything new went into Councilor Atherton’s scenario would cause friction in suburban communities who wanted better transportation. He said Metro couldn’t meet 2040 goals with existing infrastructure and they couldn’t fund the new scenario because it would affect the communities that would have to accommodate the growth and redevelopment in 2040. He noted there were two regional centers in his district connected by an under-built road with north/south connectors that did not function, and only 4 east-west connecting roads. He said he didn’t mind looking at a new scenario as long as they went to other communities to achieve parity among all the communities.

Councilor Atherton said he could prepare a reasonable response to that, breaking the strategy into existing land-use commitments. He said Metro could meet the regional commitments already agreed to, then as they moved to growth areas, there could be a whole other dynamic in place. He suggested balancing the needs and wants and who paid for it. He felt that part had been missing in the land-use – transportation connection.

Chair Kvistad said it was a debate worth having because they were heading into a different kind of growth strategy based on changes made by local communities and Metro. He said the problem was under-funded existing infrastructure. He felt the outlying communities were due for help with their infrastructures in order to have just basic, functional core transportation. He added that in addition, Metro required density, which was different from growth areas where an urban growth boundary would expand or a town center would be built. He said there needed to be a balance there as well. He noted that Metro was approximately $4 billion - $4.2 billion behind in funding at this time to complete already existing projects or bring them up to standard.

Mr. Cotugno said, in response to a question from Councilor Atherton, that the $7 billion included both catching up and dealing with growth.

Councilor Atherton commented that even resources for maintenance were not available.

Mr. Cotugno said that was correct. He added that TPAC’s reaction to growth related issues reflected policy discussions from their own jurisdictions. He said consistently, when they did an SDC type of exercise to figure needs for existing problems versus growth, they chose funding about 25% of the growth need based on impacts to affordable housing and other issues.

He reiterated that Councilor Atherton’s scenario relied on growth paying all growth costs and tolls paying all transportation costs. He said TPACs reaction to that would that they couldn’t get to either based on what tolls generated and how much they decided locally that growth should pay for growth related components. For that reason he suggested those were the right tradeoffs, but it was a policy debate, not a technical one.

Councilor Atherton said it was not reasonable to spend all the available resources on planning a street of dreams when you knew you could only afford a trailer house.

Mr. Cotugno said that was his reason for saying there were really two aspects to the size of this gap, 1) was it a gold plated system and 2) what would be the political effort necessary to adopt fees and taxes to get there. He said it was not a trailer park or a street of dreams, it was an average median single family house and it still took a heroic effort given the track record of no votes throughout the Metro region and the legislature. It is a political imbalance to fund an affordable house.

Councilor Atherton said that was why he was putting so much effort into this because they would never be able to sell this level of investment to people unless there was a clear picture of what they were working for.

Chair Kvistad said big issue was what did that mean. For example, he said Washington County needed some new infrastructure to make what they had workable, as well as some upgrades. If Metro said backfill and pay for that before starting into a new taxing system, that might work, but if Metro said everything would go to system maintenance and anything new would have to come from the new pot of money, they would say it was all going to Portland. He said the unmet current need was $4 billion and that was a lot of money to get to parity. He agreed that once you got to “x” level, it would be valuable to look at a different way of doing business. He did not know where the money would come from.

Councilor Atherton said that was one of the key things he had in mind when he prepared his suggested strategy.

Chair Kvistad said Washington County was in desperate need of another north/south connector. It was taken off the list. That took away Washington County’s ability not only to grow, but to exist in current form. He said there was no way to get by on current infrastructure for the next 20 years. In response to the loss of that project, which some thought was critical, they got “nothing”.

Councilor Atherton said one of the key problems of regionalism was the tyranny of the majority.

Chair Kvistad said this was before the committee this day to have the opportunity for dialog and observations before recommending it to council.

Chair Kvistad opened a public hearing on Resolution No. 99-2878.

Larry Derr, 53 SW Yamhill St Portland, appreciated the committee’s conversation as the kind of conversation he and others had been waiting for quite some time. He hoped the entire council could engage in such a conversation before taking action on this RTP. He agreed that the general public would never go for it unless they could see what they would get for their money and were convinced it would happen. His problem with the RTP was that the 3^rd category, fiscally constrained, when linked with state land use planning, development consistent with that planning would be allowed to go forward based on the strategic resource level of improvements. That said to him that growth would be allowed based on a system that said they knew they could not provide the infrastructure. He said that made no sense.

Steve Larrance, 20660 SW Kenneman Rd., Aloha, spoke on behalf of Citizens Against Irresponsible Growth (CAIG). He said they were not against growth if there was a strategy in place to pay for it. He noted that he was on the Board of Commissioners in Washington County about 15 years ago when they instituted traffic impact fees on growth. He said it was a lot of work for about 50% of the cost. He noted Mr. Cotugno’s comment that today people were willing to politically support about 25% of the cost of growth. He felt it begged for credibility of decisions as well as wisely making the decisions.

He gave the TV Highway, which he asked to have taken out of the RTP, as an example. He said it was not time for that decision yet. By changing the designation, the Hillsboro, Beaverton and Washington County planning departments would have to take people’s accesses away immediately when they applied for a building permit. He felt it was a drastic strategy they were putting in gear and unless they also chose the drastic growth measure of adopting the South Hillsboro Urban Reserve (SHUR), they did not need to reach quite that deep. The other part of the TV Highway example was downgrading the function of TV highway to Beaverton and Hillsboro. He said overlaying the 2040 need to not have through highways would take away the ability to use the TV highway to access 217. He said 217 access had been the only reason the bypass project was laid to rest. He said it would be a cheap thing to do now, not downgrading the TV Highway. All they would have to do would be change the orientation of 2040 buildings to not face the TV Highway He said connectivity meant a lot more to people moving through the area than hooking up town centers. It also meant moving through towncenters. He felt it would be best to take care of it now because it would be a lot harder to re-implement that through carrying capacity through Beaverton. He said the expressway part did not need to be looked at now because it might not be needed at all. He noted that this would show the public the council was making wise decisions for future spending. He urged the committee to consider that adopting things without funding did not create credibility with the public

Chair Kvistad closed the public hearing and asked Mr. Cotugno to review the comments.

Mr. Cotugno referred to the discussion draft (see Exhibit “B” to Resolution No. 99-2878 1999 Regional Transportation Plan, Part 1 JPACT Discussion Items attached to the permanent record of this meeting.) He explained the TPAC and JPACT recommendations for each of the comments.

In response to a question from Councilor Atherton, Mr. Cotugno said this RTP considered the UGB and UR amendment decisions made by the Council as a given and attempted to design the transportation system to serve that.

Chair Kvistad thanked Mr. Cotugno for his review. He said the other jurisdictions would have reviewed the consent items from Part 2 of the JPACT recommendations by the next JPACT meeting, and if there were items they wanted removed for discussion, they would be added to the end of the discussion item list for the agenda.

Mr. Cotugno asked Chair Kvistad if he wanted to take action on the resolution with any amendments to be pursued next Tuesday or this meeting.

Chair Kvistad said next Tuesday would be final committee action based on discussion at JPACT Thursday. He said it would go to JPACT with or without the committee formally moving it but it would require a formal vote of the committee before going to Council.

Councilor Atherton asked Mr. Cotugno if he had any comment about today’s testimony from Mr. Derr and Mr. Larrance.

Mr. Cotugno responded that the functional classification system in this draft document had several aspects to it, one of which was the motor vehicle function of a particular street. He said they had recommended that Murray Boulevard in Beaverton to 209^th in Hillsboro retain the principal arterial designation and the balance of Murray be downgraded to major arterial status because the intent of a principal arterial was a higher order “through-traffic” oriented facility. He said the principal arterial designation was a higher speed function and a major arterial was more a local access function.

Chair Kvistad’s assumption was that there was a process for upgrading something once it had been downgraded. He asked for clarification.

Mr. Cotugno said the policy declaration had to match the physical project.

Chair Kvistad clarified that if the RTP were to be changed at a later date, it would only require a formal vote of the Council and JPACT because it would not change the dynamics of what was before them now. He asked if would be a separate stand alone issue at that point..

Mr. Cotugno said yes.

Chair Kvistad reiterated that if they did this, an upgrade would require public hearings and regional and/or local process, Council didn’t just vote on the upgrade

Mr. Cotugno said the upgrade would need to be supported with findings and everything.

Chair Kvistad said downgrading existing infrastructure in Washington County was an issue for him. He said he would speak with Mayors Drake and Faber and other Washington County folks over the next few days about this particular project.

Mr. Cotugno said his point was that ODOT was completing construction on a TV Highway/Canyon Road project through downtown Beaverton right now. He said Beaverton had gone through a difficult design process 2 years ago to balance the interests of through traffic, which ODOT was representing, with the business needs that Beaverton’s business district was representing, to arrive at the design for that project.

Chair Kvistad said they were able to do that within the constraint of its current existing designation.

Mr. Cotugno’s assertion was that the design they were now completing construction on was reflective of a major arterial, not a principal arterial designation.

Chair Kvistad said it was a fair interpretation and made sense. He said he wanted do some checking to see where the county people weighed in on that.

Mr. Cotugno noted that in the consent agenda, comment 88 recommended adoption of the major arterial downgrade. He said they would need to pull it off the consent agenda if they wanted to change it.

Chair Kvistad said as Chair of JPACT, he was technically preliminary doing that, but wanted to talk to Mayor Drake and the others to be sure of their views.

ADJOURN

There being no further business before the committee, Chair Kvistad adjourned the meeting at 5:15 P.M.

Respectfully submitted,

Cheryl Grant

Council Assistant

Attachments to the Record

Metro Transportation Committee meeting of December 7, 1999