MINUTES OF THE METRO COUNCIL TRANSPORTATION COMMITTEE MEETING

Thursday, February 7, 2002

Council Annex

Members Present:  Rex Burkholder (Chair), Bill Atherton (Vice Chair), and Rod Monroe.

Members Absent:  None.

1.  Call to Order and Roll Call. Chair Burkholder called the meeting to order at 10:06 a.m.

2.  Citizen Communications. None.

3.  Consideration of the Minutes of the January 17, 2002, Transportation Committee Meeting.

4.  MTIP Refinement ’04-’07. Chair Burkholder referred to the February 6^th memo to JPACT Members from Andy Cotugno regarding the MTIP Refinement Work Plan and the Metropolitan Transportation Improvement Program Policy and Process Refinement and 2004-2007 Allocation piece attached to the memo (distributed and made a part of this record). He said his intent was to examine the process for ways for it to be more effective, and to help keep Metro’s 2040 land use and urban growth objectives.

Mr. Mike Hoglund, Regional Planning Director, Planning Department, informed the committee that Mr. Ted Leybold, Senior Transportation Planner, would be the project manager for this year’s MTIP. Mr. Hoglund said this presentation represented the kick-off of the upcoming MTIP cycle, and he then walked through the key steps and the timeline in the charts on the last two pages of the attachment to the memo.

In reply to a question from Councilor Atherton, Chair Burkholder said another of his goals was to look at how resources were spent, and how much staff time per dollar, in this agency and others, was used in this process, saying that nine months was an incredible amount of time to spend on the dollars allocated. He said he hoped the process could be streamlined. Councilor Atherton said that was addressed in his proposed RTP amendment ordinance, to break down large, complex problems into manageable pieces. He agreed with Chair Burkholder that a lot of time was spent each year for this amount of money.

Mr. Hoglund then spoke about the draft work program and gave the committee a brief explanation of that outline, saying the dates to bring it back before the committee were underlined in the work program under the Decision Body and Due Date for each phase. He concluded his briefing saying this would go before JPACT February 14^th, and then stakeholder groups would be lined up, with hopefully a report back to this committee again in March.

Since this work plan was before the committee for approval, Chair Burkholder asked the members for their thoughts. Councilor Atherton commented that he was not enamored of public polling, but Mr. Hoglund made the argument that questions could be shaped at the Metro Growth Conference to provide education tools, and Mr. Cotugno said this plan did not include a budget for polling. Councilor Atherton’s other comment was that, as a biologist, his point of view was less controlling and less engineered, which led to his concern that the system was falling apart and this discussion of the details was not productive. Chair Burkholder told him that this was one of the reasons for the early look by the Council at this project, so they could better help direct the outcome. This was a small piece of the big picture that the Council could work on, he added.

Councilor Monroe said the MTIP process had worked previously but that didn’t mean it couldn’t be improved. It was a political process, he added, and it was appropriate for the Council to review that process and it was always good to broaden their outlook with the stakeholders and get a reading on what worked for them. The critical thing, he said, and the reason he applauded this effort and the early start, was getting JPACT’s buy-in and to make it clear to them that it’s a collaborative process, that there must be agreement in order to get anything done. The ultimate decision would be a joint decision for Council and JPACT, as JPACT alone is not the federal MPO, nor is Metro. He went on to say that Metro needed to be cognizant that a few feathers were ruffled last year (although the final process was agreed upon unanimously) and this process hopefully would allow that to not happen again. Councilor Monroe applauded staff and the committee chair for facilitating this work, and agreed it needed to move forward.

Chair Burkholder said the committee had given their approval of the plan, and he asked staff to continue with it. Mr. Cotugno said he felt it would be beneficial if one or two councilors would remind JPACT that this process has been reassessed the last two times and revised, although not as comprehensively as this, and this time the Metro Council was weighing in at the beginning of it instead of toward the end. Councilor Monroe said he was planning on doing just that. Unrelated to that, Mr. Cotugno said the dollar amounts to allocate next time could be down easily by 20%, and he didn’t know how that would ripple through. He explained the four-year allocation periods and how allocations needed to be adjusted, and that this time it may be worse and we should be prepared. Last, he said the state was thinking of restoring Transportation Enhancement Funds in the next two-year update, and possibly running it as a state program instead of a suballocated MPO program. (This program had been eliminated the previous year by the state Transportation Commission, Mr. Cotugno said.) The dollar amount was only about $1.5 million, but he thought Metro needed to think about how and whether to apply, if the program were reinstated, and/or how to respond to it being a state program, which was the reason he mentioned it here.

Associated with that issue of Transportation Enhancement funds, he said, was the whole web of the rest of the state process, that they were on the same timeline as Metro and going through similar allocation process reviews although theirs involved more stakeholders. Responding to a question from Chair Burkholder on whether or not there was a process for state priorities from JPACT, Councilor Monroe and Mr. Cotugno said the final decision on those was with the Oregon Transportation Commission, and Mr. Cotugno suggested Metro was better off advocating regional priorities, as a region, and not being subjected to state priorities.

3.  Committee reports. Chair Burkholder said he would like the councilors to share significant upcoming issues as well as significant actions taken by the various committees on which they serve.

•  Bi-State Transportation Committee – Councilor Monroe reported that the committee was now emphasizing the I-5 Corridor Study, and a report on this was to follow in agenda item 7. For this committee’s information, he explained that the Bi-State Transportation Committee could only recommend to JPACT and the Southwest Washington RTC since that was all the authority they were given under their charter. All their recommendations must go to JPACT and the SW RTC.

•  JPACT – Federal Priorities was the big issue at JPACT the following week, Councilor Monroe said. (See agenda item 6., below.)

•  Southwest Washington RTC Board – The Board met February 5^th and the Federal Highway Department Regional Administrator was there (from Washington). Councilor Monroe asked him, since the September 11^th events, and given the difficulty of expanding airports and their congestion, if the thought the Bush Administration would give any emphasis to funding high-speed rail as an alternative to short-hop air travel. The Administrator acted, Councilor Monroe said, as if he’d never heard of it and didn’t have a clue. Councilor Monroe said he already knew that the Bush Administration would be cutting high-speed rail funding instead of enhancing it, and that he found that appalling.

•  South Corridor Policy Advisory Group – The committee took action at its meeting the previous week, Councilor Monroe reported, and unanimously approved going forward with the EIS, studying light rail from Milwaukie via the Hawthorne Bridge to downtown Portland, and a busway from Clackamas Town Center past Milwaukie to downtown Portland (as an option to the light rail). The EIS was approved unanimously, he said, and the EIS process was very precisely defined, and there was another study approved that was more open-ended and flexible that could look at other possible options, but was separate from the EIS. Chair Burkholder asked Councilor Monroe to please bring updates on these back to this committee.

6.  Annual Federal Priorities Paper. Mr. Cotugno explained that this would be going before JPACT on February 14^th, and then to the Metro Council. Chair Burkholder suggested that it go before the Council at an Informal meeting, and then asked Mr. Brandman to review it with this committee. Mr. Brandman complied, and he also distributed a page from the Web titled “for clients only, Department of Transportation, FY 2002 vs. FY 2003” created by Peyser Associates (and made a part of this record) on President Bush’s transportation budget request. He also distributed a draft resolution for committee approval (also made a part of this record) that would adopt the federal priorities at a later date. Chair Burkholder said the Interstate MAX project was the number one priority, and that needed to be clearer, and that he would like to emphasize high-speed rail more. Mr. Cotugno suggested he say that at the JPACT meeting, and Councilor Monroe said he'd done that already. Mr. Brandman said he would get guidance from Tri-Met on how to phrase that, and he also suggested Mr. Burkholder talk with Mr. Hansen about it. Councilor Monroe said the D.C. people were very interested in Interstate MAX because they saw it as going across the river. Mr. Brandman also distributed a one-page sheet, undated, named (at the bottom of the page) 2002 Cong. Brief Trade Corridor on funding requests (and made a part of this record).

Mr. Cotugno pointed out that the JPACT Chair would introduce this resolution, and that a resolution number would be assigned at a later date.

8.  Draft Resolution No. 02-xxxx. Because of time constraints, this item was held over until the February 21, 2001, committee meeting.

7.  I-5 Transportation and Trade Partnership, Draft Recommendations. Chair Burkholder, before hearing the draft recommendations, initiated a discussion on the possibility of the Portland Meadows property being rezoned from industrial to commercial.

Ms. Chris Deffebach, Principal Transportation Planner, Planning Department, distributed and spoke to the January 29, 2002, Draft Strategic Plan Recommendations and the Working Draft Strategic Plan Recommendations for the I-5 Corridor map (made a part of this record). Ms. Deffebach also gave a brief overview of where staff was in each task assigned by the committee.

Mr. Cotugno commented on the motivation for the land use component coming from the Oregon side as concern about added highway capacity to Clark County, and he cautioned that this was as much about how Metro made decisions on land use as how Clackamas County made decisions on land use. What was called for, he said, was two different issues, the interchange issue coming home to roost for Oregon at Hayden Meadows and that will come home to roost at Ridgefield for Washington. Another point he raised was related to Periodic Review and the decisions they make on the size of their urban growth management area that will interrelate with the decisions made here. There needed to be a way to deal with that coordination, and he thought it important that this be tried now, not five years from now. The mechanism for this was not as important as the attention to it, he said.

In closing, Ms. Deffebach said there was a long way to go on this project, and there were many opportunities to weave this in. She added that it was important, as Mr. Cotugno had said, that over the next year as the Council makes UGB decisions that those decisions will have a great affect on how growth will affect Clark County. The Task Force was sensitive to who was causing what, she added.

Chair Burkholder asked what the next steps for Metro were in this, and how staff felt about that. Mr. Cotugno said they were comfortable with it to date, and asked what the committee or the Council wanted to do, and were there questions or issues they wanted to raise or respond to. He suggested that now was the time to do that, not six months from now. Chair Burkholder said developing a comprehensive regional response was a very big step, and although he thought it was a great concept and the Oregon/Washington fates were intertwined, the governments weren’t, as yet. Ms. Deffebach said staff would continue to bring information back to the committee as the project moved along, and March would be the next briefing. Chair Burkholder asked her to schedule this same briefing at a Community Planning Committee meeting to solicit councilor support. Mr. Cotugno suggested having the Presiding Officer attend a Task Force meeting and present to them the council’s ideas and requests. Chair Burkholder agreed, and he also said he would speak with Councilor Park regarding staff presenting this update to the Community Planning Committee.

9.  Committee Work Plan. Mr. Michael Morrissey, Senior Council Analyst, distributed a draft 2002 Committee Work Plan (and made a part of this record) and asked the committee and staff to review it. Chair Burkholder asked that the MTIP dates in March (for reports) and June (for policy direction) be added. The committee approved the Work Plan without a formal vote, as amended, understanding that it would change regularly.

There being no further business before the committee, the meeting adjourned at 12:12 a.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Rooney Barker

Council Assistant

ATTACHMENTS TO THE PUBLIC RECORD FOR THE MEETING OF FEBRUARY 7, 2002

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

Testimony cards.