MINUTES OF THE METRO COMMITTEE FOR CITIZEN INVOLVEMENT
REGULAR COMMITTEE
Wednesday, February 4, 2004
Room 270
Members Present: Elizabeth Tucker (Chair), Norm Andreen, Kathy Henton, Jim Kimball, Christine Roth, Ed Ruttledge, Scott Seibert, Lori Waldo, Don Warner, Skip White
Members Absent: Kathy Everett, Dresden Skees Gregory, Dick Jones, Moji Momeni, Darren Pennington, Kate Schiele
Also Present: Cheryl Grant, Office of Citizen Involvement, Gina Whitehill-Baziuk and Kristin Hull, Planning Department
Call to Order/Introductions/Welcome
Chair Tucker called the meeting to order at 6:04 p.m. and appointed Ed Ruttledge as timekeeper.
Approval of Agenda
The web calendar item was removed from the agenda
Approval of December 17, 2003 and January 21, 2004 minutes
Motion: Ed Ruttledge moved, with a second from Christine Roth, to approve the
December 17, 2003 minutes.
Vote: The vote was 9 aye/0 nay/0 abstain. The motion passed.
Motion: Kathy Henton moved, with a second from Skip White, to approve the
January 21, 2004 minutes.
Vote: The vote was 8 aye/0 nay/1 abstain. The motion passed. Christine Roth
abstained.
Chair Report
Chair Tucker updated the committee on her appearance at Council on January 22 (see written report included in the agenda packet in the permanent record of this meeting). She will speak to the Council at their fourth Thursday meetings to update them on the committee’s work.
Chair Tucker reported that Lori Waldo is leaving the committee. She presented Ms. Waldo with a certificate of appreciation and a cake. Ms. Waldo thanked everyone for her time on the committee and said she is sorry to be leaving but personal obligations make it necessary. She said the committee was on a good road to do great things. She said she would try to stay active in Bethany and would be available by telephone if anyone needed to contact her.
Auditor Liaison report
None
Transportation Planning Public Involvement Policy Update
Gina Whitehill-Baziuk reviewed the history of the Transportation Planning Public Involvement Policy (PIP) that had been two documents when it was first written in 1992 in response to federal funding for transportation. She said the two volumes were cumbersome and the new version combined both volumes into one.
Kristin Hull presented the public review draft of the new PIP document and told the committee she would return in two weeks for feedback. The comment period is open until March 18. She noted the document is also posted on the Metro website. She said it would be shared with the Transportation Policy Advisory Committee (TPAC) and the Joint Policy Advisory Committee on Transportation (JPACT) and then go to Council in late April.
Ms. Whitehill-Baziuk added that during this same comment period they would be involved with Industrial Lands and Goal 5 comments so they have created a detailed intake system to track all comments. She hoped some MCCI members would attend the open houses and said she would have a role for any she knew were coming.
Ms. Hull reported about the Highway 217 web survey and urged the members to take it and encourage their neighborhood associations to do so.
Web Calendar
This item was moved to a future meeting..
Draft proposal for information gathering through citizen outreach
Chair Tucker said she wanted to send letters to other Metro committees asking them to report back to MCCI on issues before their committees that should be on MCCI’s radar. The committee discussed ways of communicating with other committees. Ed Ruttledge will draft such a letter explaining MCCI’s role and asking for their help with this.
Motion: Scott Seibert moved, with a second by Christine Roth, to have Mr. Ruttledge draft the letter.
Vote: The committee voted unanimously in favor of the motion.
Mr. Ruttledge will bring the letter to the next meeting on February 18 for the committee’s approval.
Cooper Mountain public involvement
Chair Tucker distributed documents regarding the Cooper Mountain project. The committee discussed the public involvement portion. Members felt the PIP should have been done before the committee was formed. Christine Roth will meet with Ron Klein about their concerns regarding whether there is a PIP in progress, what kind of advisory committee has been formed (advisory to the Council or to the department) and invite him to the next meeting to discuss the PIP.
There was committee discussion of how other Council advisory committee members were selected. Ms. Whitehill-Baziuk will get a copy of the advisory committee legislation for committee review.
Local/Regional imbalance of citizen involvement
Ms. Waldo reminded the committee that this item was to be on the agenda monthly for a 10-minute discussion of the six questions they had formulated at the last Community Planning subcommittee meeting. They decided to pick one question to discuss at each meeting instead of trying to deal with them all at once.
Additional items to consider include
• a wish list – CPOs and CCIs
• accountability – surveys for local and regional projects with Metro dollars
• research programs that use Metro dollars and their public involvement.
• the varying levels of public involvement is expected for different projects.
Chair Tucker suggested this would be a good retreat agenda item as 10 minutes a meeting may not be enough time for a good discussion. Ms. Waldo suggested the accountability question should be taken up at the mini-summit with the CPOs and CCIs as well. Mr. Seibert suggested discussing issues tied to money separately from issues tied to process in order to keep confusion to a minimum.
Retreat Planning
Chair Tucker reported that the e-mail comments she had received from the committee agreed that a Wednesday evening retreat was preferable to a Saturday time. It was decided the retreat will be held April 21st at a place to be determined. General goal planning for the next year will be on the agenda as well as comments from Kate Marx regarding MCCI’s relationship with others and how the committee can best leverage their time.
Office of Citizen Involvement report
None.
Round Table
Don Warner said his father had recently passed away and he was back now and would be more involved with the committee.
Christine Roth said her CCI is working on best practices. The next topic of discussion would be slap suits regarding CPOs. She will report back at the next meeting about the discussion.
Jim Kimball said he had attended two symposiums. One was about affordable housing. The other was at Pacific University and was organized by the City of Hillsboro, Washington County and the Westside Economic Alliance and brought together parties in dispute over industrial lands, i.e., farmers, small cities pushing to expand their tax base, and industry which had a good case to make because of Washington County’s rapid ramp up of hi-tech manufacturing and research. He said the City of Hillsboro’s website has links to the issue papers.
Skip White said funding for the new Sauvie Island bridge could not come too soon as they had to put another patch on the bridge last week. He said they are shooting for 2006 as a completion date.
Lori Waldo said Bethany was still politically in limbo. She said no efforts had been made publicly to get any concept planning done because they said there were still appeals going on. She said the Bethany Neighborhood Coalition was aggressively working to do a public involvement process themselves with donations. They plan to get 7,000-8,000 informational flyers mailed out. She is taking an educational PowerPoint presentation to area groups.
Norm Andreen thanked Lori for being a valuable member of the committee. He reported that Clackamas County is still in the process of creating hamlets and villages. He said there would be a meeting in Beavercreek on February 19th and they are trying to round up funds for mailers to notify citizens. He noted two new gravel pits would be coming before the planning commission. He said they had a meeting with the Commissioners last week regarding their concerns about choosing industrial lands.
Scott Seibert said they had been requested to come up with a wish list of interesting stuff that the neighborhood would like to have when Northwest 23rd was redone. After presenting the list they were told there was no funding and it would just be repaved after all. He said Portland’s Public Involvement handbook process was flying along and would have tons of good information. He said the handbook will be a good guidebook for anyone, not only the City.
Adjourn
There being no further business before the committee, Chair Tucker adjourned the meeting at 7:59 p.m.
Respectfully submitted,
Cheryl Grant
Office of Citizen Involvement