MINUTES OF THE METRO COUNCIL COMMUNITY PLANNING COMMITTEE MEETING

Tuesday, June 19, 2001

Council Chamber

Members Present:  Rod Park (Chair), Bill Atherton, David Bragdon, Rex Burkholder, Carl Hosticka, Susan McLain and Rod Monroe

Members Absent:  None.

Chair Park called the meeting to order at 2:06 p.m.

1.  Consideration of the Minutes of the June 5, 2001, Community Planning Committee Meeting

2.  Related Committee Updates

•  Natural Resources

Councilor Hosticka reported that the Natural Resources Committee would be taking public input on the proposed criteria for determining significance of natural resources riparian areas, habitat, etc. He said the committee was considering the question of whether and how to also include uplands in their riparian wildlife habitat conservation protection and restoration strategy. The committee will be thinking about this, but he said it looks like most of the people in the region are going to want them to do uplands simultaneously with riparian. He said they’re trying to do it in a way that won’t slow them down. The other major issue is the Parks report from MPAC. The committee will look at that report to determine what actions are necessary and how much money will be required in order to fund those activities, and then start look at sources of funding.

•  JPACT

Councilor Monroe reported that next meeting would be July 12^th, but prior to that, on June 29^th and 30th, Clark County Commissioner and Vice-chair of the Bi-State Committee, Craig Pridemore, would be going with him to the Cascadia 2001 conference in Whistler, British Columbia. They will be involved in a workshop and making a presentation about the bi-state movement and the Bi-State Committee and how it functions.

Agenda Item 6 was heard at this time.

6.  Corridor Initiatives Update

Richard Brandman, Deputy Planning Director, before speaking to this agenda item, gave the committee a very brief update on his meeting the previous week with officials from the Federal Transit Administration

(FTA) regarding, primarily, rail projects. He said the FTA is still looking favorably on Metro’s proposed strategy in the South Corridor of examining two corridors simultaneously, both McLoughlin and the I-205 corridor.

Mr. Brandman also mentioned a conference being scheduled in San Jose at the end of July for referenda on transportation projects. The focus of it is to get communities from all over the nation to share what they’ve done right and what they’ve done wrong regarding referenda on transportation initiatives. As he gets more information, Mr. Brandman said he would share it with the committee.

Addressing the agenda item, Mr. Brandman said that on March 20^th this committee received an overview from staff on the Corridor Initiatives process, on the 18 corridors that have been outstanding issues in the RTP and which still need further definition. At that briefing, a status sheet on each corridor was provided that showed where they were in the implementation process and went over the technical evaluation criteria. That technical evaluation is now complete, so today he said he wanted to share the results of that technical evaluation process and ask the committee for their thoughts on this information. The process is at the stage where the Project Management Group (PMG), which is a staff level group, would be making a recommendation on how these corridors should move forward.

Mr. Brandman then referred to the agenda material re the ranking and scoring, and explained why those in the highest grouping were chosen. He said staff was looking for feedback from the committee, and introduced Bridget Wieghart, Transportation Program Supervisor, Planning Department, to briefly review the technical scores.

Responding to a question from Chair Park, Ms. Wieghart said the City of Portland said they were very interested in the Powell/Foster corridor in general, but she’d also heard that they weren’t quite ready within the next two years to undertake anything. She said she expected to hear something from them at the PMG meeting the next day.

Ms. Wieghart then referred to the summary material included in the agenda packet and explained how it pertained to the large map she used in her briefing (and that had been prepared for the MTIP open house the previous evening).

Councilor Burkholder cautioned that sometimes projects are ranked higher because of a better lobbying effort rather than their actual ranking criteria. He hoped staff would err more on the technical side and not let something slide because of strong lobbying. There was discussion on the technical criteria used as well as specific corridors, e.g., Highway 217, Powell/Foster, Sunrise Corridor and Sunset Highway. Mr. Brandman said funding of any of the corridor projects was still an issue. Recognizing the value of objective criteria and objective analysis was very important, Councilor Burkholder added. The numbers may support something not perceived as a problem, so those projects should not be easily dismissed just because someone doesn’t “think” that area is a problem. Councilor Atherton said perhaps ability to fund the project should be another criteria.

Councilor McLain said she felt another part of the criteria she thought important was the timing and the stepping of all the corridors, and how the completion of the projects will work to help other corridors function, either well or not well. The corridors being studied were part of the regional system, she said, not as individual pieces, and it was this connectivity that she didn’t see in the present criteria. Ms. Wieghart said this was discussed with the county coordinating committees, and rather than try to solve that quantitatively, Metro asked the jurisdictions to supply the information on how these tie in with other important projects or studies. Councilor McLain said Metro staff had the technical information and expertise of their own, they’ve done studies themselves that indicate what makes a certain corridor, or

system, or piece of a system function best, and she expected staff to provide that regional perspective, which was something the local jurisdictions would never provide. Ms. Wieghart replied that that was a level of detail when dealing with eighteen corridors that was technically difficult to achieve.

Chair Park paraphrased a question by Presiding Officer Bragdon, asking if, when staff looked at the off-street mitigation that may create problems on the corridor, and if the other part were fixed first, would there still be a problem. Presiding Officer Bragdon added to that, asking how they made sure these would come together at the same time.

Andy Cotugno, Planning Director, replied that this was not the only issue that represented how to refine and further implement the RTP, that this was a study of the major corridors and how to refine those and implement the RTP. There was a lot of specificity defined in the RTP, and in the local TSPs. This was a major corridor project, not the whole thing. This was not attempting to substitute for any annual plans or any local TSPs. This was a question of which of these major corridors should be studied.

Chair Park asked staff what direction they were looking for. Responding to Mr. Brandman's comment on what the councilors thought about this study, Councilor Hosticka asked if the Council was going to work plan before it for approval that dealt with which corridors would be studied, and if so, when and how would they do that. Mr. Brandman said staff proposed an RTP amendment that would address outstanding corridor issues, in the form of a resolution, anticipating that that resolution would go before TPAC in June, JPACT in July, then back before this body July 17^th, and Council July 26^th. He said he wanted it to come back to Council before the MTIP scheduled for September.

Councilor McLain said she thought the criteria was still confusing and still wasn't clear what staff was going to do with the comments they received from this meeting or what they were going to take to the PMG meeting the next day or what they would bring back to this committee.

Presiding Officer Bragdon said there were the two categories of rankings, the technical and the jurisdictional. His concern was when this goes back to TPAC and JPACT who are by definition not regional thinkers, they’ll emphasize the latter category, and therefore the technical rankings will become obscured. If the interest of this Council was that the technical rankings be relatively important and parochial interests should be relatively unimportant, this was where that would happen.

Councilor Monroe said he thought this committee was clearly saying the technical criteria came first, but if there was not a high degree of interest on the part of a local jurisdiction for studying a particular corridor, it ought to be rejected and we move on to another corridor that ranks high technically. Both the technical and jurisdictional interests need to be included, he said.

Mr. Brandman said he believed this committee had concerns with how the technical rankings were performed, and he also felt the lack of a definitive answer, and that staff needed further input from their working groups and would bring that back to the committee for more conversation.

Chair Park added that off-site coordination with the corridors was very important. He said he didn't think that part could be separated, and if anyone wanted to separate them they would have to be told no.

Transportation Policy Discussion

•  MTIP Process

Chair Park explained that Councilor Burkholder and Presiding Officer Bragdon asked for a discussion on transportation policy issues in a way that put more of an imprint of the Metro Council on the transportation portion of the MTIP process and why there needs to be a land use/transportation connection.

Councilor Burkholder explained how the transportation infrastructure shapes our communities. In the spirit of examining how Metro and other government policies affect the future of our communities in the sense of looking at the land use systems with so much scrutiny, attention, energy and involvement, he proposed that the same be done here with the transportation efforts. He then spoke to his handout, a memo dated June 19, 2001, and included as part of the official public record of this meeting, regarding Transportation Policy Discussion at the June 19^th committee meeting. He said some of the questions he submitted were procedural in terms of how Metro and the region look at issues, and some were substantive in terms of what kind of future do we see developing here, what kind of projects and how they affect the future. His idea, he said, was to put out a lot of issues, many of which were complex. The MTIP decision-making process generated a short time-frame for the committee to look at some of these questions, so he spoke first to whether the Metro Council should prepare a list of the projects they think most would help achieve Metro’s 2040 Vision of protecting neighborhoods, providing transportation choices, and enhancing development centers. This list would be made up of $19 million worth of projects that the Metro Council thinks, from a regional perspective, are critical in moving toward that vision. He asked if the councilors wanted to approach this as a committee, if they wanted to create a task force, or if they wanted Council staff to prepare a list.

Councilor Burkholder said he’d like the Council to provide direction on how they would like to influence the MTIP decision, and he recommended they quickly make a list that will be ready for the next JPACT meeting.

Councilor Monroe said his goal was to see that the JPACT process work, and that they and the Metro Council be on the same page through the MTIP allocation process. Because of that, he said he’s asked for some time for input from the Metro Council on direction. Staff can go one of two ways, he said. They can cut the project list, hone it down to 150% or 125% of the available money. The projects were double that now, at 200%. The second thing staff can do is work at it from the other direction, identify a 50%, 60% or 70% list of high-priority projects, those that Metro staff and Council, and the regional partners insist must be funded. In either case, Councilor Monroe said he would much prefer that this Council weigh in prior to the staff recommendation going to JPACT in July so that that recommendation reflects the will of this Council. Another alternative is that staff make a recommendation to JPACT who may modify it a bit, and then have that come to the Council but there would not be much time to review it. He liked the idea of the Council looking at it early in order to avoid disagreements with JPACT. He asked the committee to tell staff which way they should go.

Presiding Officer Bragdon said he was very supportive of the Council getting much more involved and doing so at this stage. He said this Council needed to have an alternative vision and clear objectives for what that vision was attempting to achieve. He said he felt this was the role of the Council and one that’s been missing from transportation planning for a long time. This has been discussed for years at growth management meetings but not at transportation committees, but coming back to the fundamentals and values that support 2040 is important. The list of projects would then flow from that. Generating lists is not what it’s about, but translating the values into a list that supports them is. Regarding federal flexible

funds, he suggested listing the things that can’t be done otherwise in that category. He closed by cautioning that competing lists was part of the problem, that what we want is a different vision and this was the organization that had that, that JPACT never would.

Councilor Atherton seconded Presiding Officer Bragdon’s ideas. He added that he’d like to see a focus on principles such as which facilities can’t be funded by any other source and ranking those as high.

Councilor McLain said there was nothing here to disagree with, but said this was a request for a change in process and a change in interaction with JPACT that has functioned in a certain way for a very long time. She said once the list of goals was compiled, a complimentary or parallel process would have to be created for the timing, in order to make it successful, and this would be just as complicated to accomplish. She felt that the RTP, the RUGGOs, the Future Vision and the Regional Framework Plan have all the material anyone could ever want to help build this list. Then take those visions and goals and those criteria that we said were not tradable, and apply this to the list. She said, to Councilor Burkholder, that his question was a very fundamental one and she didn’t think they could move much further beyond what was working well, what needed to be changed and what to look for in a relationship between JPACT and the Council, because that foundation needed to be solid, before moving on. She suggested a task force be created, within this committee, to help address that basic question.

Chair Park said he thought there were no right or wrong answers in this process, but that some answers do give a higher probability of success. Given the limited amount of funding, if this Council takes the philosophy that they do anything they can to enhance the regional and town centers, they would probably be correct. Another area suggested at the MTIP public meeting was to put the money into new freeway construction, and that solution has a higher probability of being incorrect. The right answer won’t be known at this time, but this committee can shade it to which way they think will have a higher level of success, and he would choose to err more on the conservative side and the side that would help 2040 to actually happen.

Councilor Atherton interjected that the total dollar amount of all the projects with no other funding opportunity except this flexible funding would be $52.7 million. The other councilors added more categories he needed to remove, and the final amount was $20.8 million.

Presiding Officer Bragdon referred to Resolution No. 01-3025B, on p. 3 of the staff report (and included as part of the official public record of this meeting), where it said that the final list of the projects or programs proposed for funding should facilitate implementation of:

1)  development and redevelopment in support of the central city, regional and town centers, main streets and station areas;

2)  development of transportation infrastructure that supports industrial centers and their inter-modal connectors,

3)  efficient management of demand and enhancement of the operation of the existing transportation system,

4)  development and promotion of alternatives to single occupancy vehicles,

5)  development of a multi-modal transportation system,

6)  projects for which there is no other readily available source of funding.

Councilor Burkholder said he was willing to lead the effort on this project, with direction from Chair Park. Chair Park asked Councilor Monroe if he would work with Councilor Burkholder, and asked them to have a list back prior to the July 12^th JPACT meeting. Councilor McLain felt having this list available to TPAC was a good idea and would help the JPACT acceptance, just as a courtesy but not seeking review or approval as they are an advisory committee and should have the list prior to JPACT. Councilor Monroe said he and Councilor Burkholder, with staff help, could do the work quickly and possibly report to the Council at their regular Council meeting before the JPACT meeting. He hoped for more guidance, however, as to whether or not the committee wanted a “short” list of high-priority projects that constitute less than 100% of the money available (which was his preference), but said they needed to hear that recommendation from the committee. With a strong 2040 bent, he added. And Presiding Officer Bragdon added the particular elements mentioned from 01-3025B (above).

Mr. Cotugno said he thought it a healthy process for TPAC and JPACT to first do a cut from something like the 150% list because it would weed out the clear outliers, and it allowed the remainder of attention to be focused on a fewer set of projects, making for a more focused debate. He thought they needed to take that step, and asked the committee if they felt they wanted to duplicate that step or if they wanted to give them the committee’s 50% list and tell them this was the part the Metro Council wanted funded as the highest priority. Also, if a 150% short list were done in July, there would be a more refined list in September when that decision was made.

The possibility of bringing Councilors Burkholder’s and Monroe’s list before the full Council at the July 10^th Council Informal meeting was discussed and tentatively approved as there would be no committee nor full Council meeting prior to the JPACT meeting.

There was discussion on the type of list the Councilors should create. It was decided to rank everything based on the current criteria, then select projects the Council felt must be done and rank them highest; the remaining projects will be listed by their ranking. This list would be available to both TPAC and JPACT, and the committee agreed they would be flexible on the projects coming after their “must be done” projects. Chair Park closed the discussion and asked that the list be prepared as directed. Councilor Burkholder said the list would be circulated to the councilors in draft form for them to review.

Councilor Burkholder briefly spoke to the General/Long Term Issues and Questions page attached to his memo and asked the councilors to review it and consider some of the ideas suggested. One item he didn’t have on it, he said, was how to look at the big projects that aren’t in the RTP and that need to be discussed, like putting light rail underground in downtown Portland or removal of the Eastbank freeway, etc.

4.  I-5 Trade Corridor Update.

Andy Cotugno told the committee the project was at a good juncture and was now in an analysis mode. This update was to provide the committee with the information to date, and to ask if there were issues they wanted incorporated into the study or if there were other types of information they wanted to see before this fall.

Mrs. Chris Deffebach, Principal Transportation Planner, Corridor Planning, Planning Department, introduced Ms. Kate Deane of ODOT, the lead agency with WSDOT on the study. The new title of the project, Ms. Deffebach said, was the I-5 Transportation and Trade Corridor Partnership. Ms. Deffebach distributed a packet of some of the key information produced by the study (and included as part of the official public record of this meeting) and spoke to that.

The Task Force of this study includes 28 members, the two mayors of Portland and Vancouver, as well as Metro’s Executive Officer, Mike Burton. She said she would forward a list of this membership to the committee. In the interim, they could find it on the Internet, at www.i-5partnership.com. The evaluation factors would be the focus of the next task force meeting, she said.

Councilor Monroe added that this process was critical to get Metro to approve these project(s), then funding approval, in a bi-state way, would need to be dealt with, although he said there were significant federal funds available for interstate highway projects. He said he was very pleased with the study, on getting a regional decision on what needs to be done.

Mrs. Deffebach said she would like to come back this fall to provide findings and more information.

Ms. Sharon Nasset, representing the North Portland Business Association, Transportation Chair, asked to testify. Chair Park invited her to do so. Ms. Nasset distributed a plan and a page of Highlights from her plan (included as part of the official public record of this meeting), The Northwest Passage Expressway which outlined a plan to create a new route through North Portland, using the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad tracks which run from downtown Portland through Swan Island and the northwest Industrial District, through the “cut” in north Portland, across to Jantzen Beach, and on to Mill Plain in Vancouver, Washington. This would not only facilitate traffic and provide multimodal/layers transportation, it would take trucks off this highway. Chair Park thanked Ms. Nasset for bringing her idea to the committee.

Ms. Deffebach added that the previously mentioned task force included the portion of Hwy. 30 in their study and the engineers were currently looking at it. She would be able to provide more information about who could use it what the traffic would be when she came back before this body in the fall.

Councilor Hosticka asked if, when this was being evaluated, those bridges could be looked at from the boaters’ perspective, from the river.

5.  LCDC RTP Acknowledgement.

Chair Park said the team who went to this meeting in Salem – himself, Andy Cotugno, Planning Director; Mike Hoglund, Regional Planning Director; and Tom Kloster, Transportation Program Supervisor – was very well received, and it was good to see the commission deal with something on a policy level that was not tedious.

Mr. Cotugno agreed that the meeting with the LCDC commission was great, that in 2-1/2 solid hours they were able to get into the substance of the RTP. Mr. Bob Cortright of DLCD staff laid out the action in front of the commission, and they really didn’t get into the content of the RTP but into which parts were being acknowledged, which parts need more work (but Mr. Cotugno said he thought they were close), and which parts would need more work over the next 12 months. Once Mr. Cortright did this, Mr. Cotugno said, the Metro team was able to get into the broader picture of the whole underpinning and philosophy of the RTP. The commission understood the issues; there was a terrific discussion with Steve Pfeiffer on parking ratios and he felt there was great improvement on the ratios Metro had adopted.

The actual commission action contained three parts (the label of the action was called a Continuance Order, which means they acknowledging many parts and were continuing a few parts to be addressed and considered for acknowledgement after Metro’s met those requirements – with a one-year deadline on meeting those requirements). They took action on 98% of the RTP, 2% was continued to be acted on at a later date. One of the continued actions was Performance Measures. They knew we were not yet in a position to give them Performance Measures in a month or two, but that we would have something in draft form by fall, probably a final by spring. When done, it will all be turned in for complete acknowledgement and they’re comfortable with that time frame.

Mr. Cotugno said some draft amendments, previously discussed here in March, were discussed with them and they said if we adopt those drafts they will acknowledge them, and they gave the director the

authority to issue their acknowledgement of those things once Metro has adopted them. Those will come back before this Council. Mr. Cotugno reviewed some of the issues, and told the committee they would be seeing some Code amendment ordinance actions coming up.

Chair Park reiterated what excellent work this was. It took longer than anticipated, he said, but the legal, transportation and growth staff produced an end product to be very proud of in how it was received, and that the LCDC commission wants to use it as a model to the other MPOs, and the commission used that words like “cutting edge”. Mr. Hoglund was going to Eugene to share some of it the following week, he added.

6-A. Part of the Phase II Land Study – Discussion

The discussion Chair Park instigated was regarding land located below Highway 26, west of Shute Road and north of Evergreen. The question was whether it should be studied. Mr. Cotugno and Mr. Shaw have brought up the question of the justification for not going farther west, all the way to the wetlands piece, for the purpose of MetroScope modeling.

Mr. Cotugno referred to a map (not available for this record) and said the question was whether this piece was better than other places, and added that studying it didn’t mean it would be brought in. It was zoned EFU, 2^nd tier.

Councilor McLain said this had been studied, and had been turned down. This piece of land had been looked at before for jobs, and she felt that if anyone was looking out there, they’d better be looking for housing, not for jobs. She wanted to know why this conversation was taking place.

Mr. Cotugno said his question was whether any of this land should be studied; if any of it were studied, he thought comparable land should be studied.

There was a discussion on what the previous studies had produced, and what was on record. Chair Park expressed concern about a possible legal appeal and having enough information to withstand a court case. Chair Park said if the information was available, that was good, but that this piece was going to be looked at. He wanted enough studies done in the right amount of time. (Councilor McLain did not turn on her microphone here so her discussion here was not recorded.) He brought it forward now so that everyone knew where it stood. Councilor McLain said if this was coming back before the committee, she’d like it to be on the next committee agenda since there was no longer a quorum present, that this was a major discussion affecting funding and the work plan.

Chair Park said a discussion on the Regional Transit Authority would take place another time.

7.  Councilor Communications

None.

There being no further business for the committee, Chair Park adjourned the meeting at 4:43 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Rooney Barker

Council Assistant

ATTACHMENTS TO THE PUBLIC RECORD FOR THE MEETING OF JUNE 19, 2001

The following have been included as part of the official public record:

Testimony cards

Sharon Nasset

North Portland Business Association

Transportation Chair

Re: I-5 Corridor