MINUTES OF THE METRO COUNCIL

COMMUNITY PLANNING COMMITTEE REGULAR MEETING

Tuesday, April 16, 2002

Metro Council Chamber

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

Members Absent:  David Bragdon and Rod Monroe were excused.

Chair Park called the meeting to order at 2:05 p.m.

3.  RELATED COMMITTEE UPDATES.

•  Transportation – An upcoming action item at Transportation Committee, reported Councilor Burkholder, was a resolution to revise the Transportation Management Association (TMA) policy and to provide additional funding options. The committee would also review the report on the Executive Officer's proposed Transportation Investment Task Force, he said, and hear a presentation on Tri-Met's Transit Investment Plan. Tri-Met staff has been briefing Metro councilors on this individually, he said.

•  JPACT – Councilor Burkholder said discussion at the last JPACT meeting focused on information from the Oregon Transportation Commission (OTC) on the Oregon Transportation Investment Act (OTIA) on a few alternatives for the next round of funding. The dollar amount discussed was $8 million, distributed as $2 million each for Metro, the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT), Clackamas County and the City of Wilsonville. Councilor Burkholder said this was what the OTC had decided. JPACT also reviewed Metro's response to the I-5 Task Force letter and the potential changes to the Bi-State Committee, also coming up later on today’s agenda. After the JPACT meeting, he added, those who were interested were given a ride on Tri-Met's new diesel/electric bus which they were testing. He invited Ms. Barker, Council Assistant, and Mr. Andy Cotugno, Planning Director, to share their opinions/experience from that ride.

•  Natural Resources – There was no report on this committee.

•  WRPAC – There was no report on this committee.

4.  I-5 TASK FORCE – RESPONSE TO RECOMMENDATIONS, DRAFT LETTER. Ms. Chris Deffebach, Principal Transportation Planner, opened by speaking of the draft letter to the co-chairs of the I-5 Partnership Task Force in the agenda packet. Chair Park said MPAC and JPACT had reviewed the letter. Ms. Deffebach asked the committee to review the letter to see if it reflected the concerns or comments they had on the I-5 Task Force recommendations. Chair Park said he thought it best to review this and the next agenda item together.

5.  I-5 TASK FORCE – LAND USE ACCORD/BI-STATE COMMITTEE. As mentioned above, Ms. Deffebach continued by reviewing the April 20, 2002, I-5 Task Force Working Draft Land Use Recommendation (distributed and made a part of this record) by outlining the background of why this was included as part of the Task Force recommendations and what the current proposal was. She asked this committee for their comments on anything they’d like to see carried back and included in the Accord.

The whole land use issue came up, she said, through an I-5 Land Use subcommittee to the Task Force, in which Chair Park had participated, and that had called the Task Force’s attention to the importance of managing land use as transportation capacity is added in the corridor. This Accord was the result of the Task Force’s understanding of the problem. Ms. Deffebach then reviewed the Accord for the committee, and answered their questions. Discussion items included the membership of the proposed revised Bi-State Coordinating Committee, which Ms. Deffebach said had not been discussed by the Task Force yet, and whether or not the land use responsibilities in Washington were comparable to Oregon’s Goal 12 on Transportation (Ms. Deffebach offered to present the similarities and differences to the committee at another meeting), and who the signatories would be on the Accord. Mr. Cotugno added that the Bi-State Committee would be a supplemental rather than a substitute committee, and would focus on bi-state issues.

Ms. Deffebach said the controversial parts of the discussion at the subcommittee were marked in the margins of the document. The Task Force was very clear, she said, that before a new river crossing was added and before anyone agreed that that could happen, a trust needed to be built up on how land was managed on each side of the Columbia River. She closed, saying that soon this version of the Accord would go out to the I-5 Task Force and would be on their agenda for discussion April 23 or 30^th, and at a May meeting they would have the first draft of their final recommendations. Those would be taken to the public and then acted upon at the Task Force’s June 18^th meeting.

Councilor Burkholder said, in light of the more developed Accord, that the Metro councilors may want to look at revising their letter (see Agenda Item 4) as the language in that stated that they thought it was important, but there wasn’t very strong language saying how far they thought something should go. He asked Chair Park, who had participated in the land use subcommittee, what his take was and what he thought was necessary. Chair Park deferred to Mr. Cotugno who participated on the Task Force. Mr. Cotugno said the recommendations were not like concurrency and not like what the state of Washington implements in terms of concurrency requirements, they were more like what Oregon implements in terms of aligning their land use plans with their transportation plans. It was more of a Comprehensive Plan level connection than an individual building permit concurrency step, he said, and the full Task Force was engaged in making that land use connection. He said it was very high on their agenda and there was a good, strong recognition that the two issues were linked. There was also strong insistence on the part of the Oregon members, he added, that this kind of agreement be in place because the effect of increased accessibility was principally to induce growth over there. This was an attempt to recognize that land use controls needed to accompany that inducement factor that accessibility provides. Clark County accepts that it’s necessary, but is wary that this side of the river not dictate.

Responding to a question from Councilor Hosticka regarding who at Metro would be the authority to sign this Accord, Mr. Cotugno suggested it be through a resolution recommended by both JPACT and MPAC for adoption by the Metro Council. He wasn’t sure who in Washington would sign, but thought it would be more than one jurisdiction. Ms. Deffebach said now it was a resolution between Metro and the RTC, but asked if it should be an Intergovernmental Agreement instead of a resolution and if every participant should be part of that.

Providing direction to staff, Councilor Burkholder and Ms. Deffebach discussed having an interchange program without a protection plan in place already, and Ms. Deffebach said this part of the Accord could be modified. Councilor Burkholder said Metro should reference directly to the memo and the recommendations in it (and the date of the memo in case it changed), as written, as it would give more strength to Mr. Cotugno’s position when he next went to the Task Force. Metro should say in their letter to the Task Force, Councilor Burkholder said, that Metro would like to have a fairly strong approach to the land use and that they do want to tie any future projects to land use changes that would make sure they maintain their capacity.

The question would be the functional mechanism to make that particular piece happen, Chair Park said, and that it sounded like the committee was groping with what was the right mechanism. He said he thought the Oregon side was pretty much nailed down but without having a better understanding of the Washington side, he wondered if Metro would be signing something that would be enforceable equally on both sides of the Columbia River – and that’s what needed to be fleshed out, he said.

Councilor McLain referred to the Rights and Responsibilities (on p. 3) in the Accord, and said these retained the rights and responsibilities to control everything Metro does, so what would be signed would be the vision, that this should continue to be discussed. She said Metro was basically saying there were commonality problems and that we hoped to have solutions, that we understand we have to do some things together or it’s not going to work at all for either side. Signing the Accord meant a commitment to her that Metro would stay talking at the table. Mr. Cotugno said this left in place the authority on each side of the river.

Chair Park said he’d be more comfortable if more emphasis were written into the Accord to look at mitigation first before adding any capacity. Mr. Cotugno said the Accord addressed interchanges, but central to the debate that was taking place was whether it would be triggered prior to the Delta Park widening or triggered prior to a new bridge. It would take some pushing, he added, to make sure the TDMs were implemented progressively over time, and it should be emphasized that that needed to happen concurrent with and prior to new capacity.

Summarizing the direction from the committee to staff, Chair Park asked them to gather more information on how land use management worked in Clark County, how that compared to the Oregon side, and what the right cast of players would be, including what size it needed to be on the Oregon side. He asked that they strengthen the language in the April 10^th Accord document that referred to the importance of the TDM part of the program, and asked Mr. Cotugno and Councilor Burkholder to work with staff to refine the letter and bring it back for final approval. Councilor Burkholder agreed that the letter needed to be specific and provide as much information as possible.

Chair Park said he knew this was a difficult project, and he thanked Ms. Deffebach and Mr. Cotugno for their work.

2.  CONSIDERATION OF THE MINUTES OF THE APRIL 2, 2002, COMMUNITY PLANNING COMMITTEE MEETING.

6.  URBAN GROWTH REPORT:

•  DEMAND NUMBERS

•  METHODOLOGY UPDATE

Mr. Cotugno said the committee had discussed the UGR primer at their last meeting and there were questions from this committee where staff was still tracking down requested information, so he said he was not ready to respond to previous inquiries today. However, he was able to address the questions they’d had on the demand side.

He then referred to the forecast in two handouts (distributed and included as part of this record): Draft 2000-2022 Urban Growth Report Dwelling Unit Capacity Estimate and Need, and the accompanying chart, Households – Share of Growth, 1980-2025. Councilor Hosticka and Councilor McLain said they thought the same results could be achieved without so much detail, that they preferred more simple data so that could easily be explained to people who were not technically oriented. Mr. Benner clarified, at Chair Park’s request, that this information was responding to ORS 197.296 which said when doing Periodic Review or a legislative review, Metro had to figure out what the housing needs would be for a 20 year period, and ultimately it had to translate that into acres. He said the calculations couldn’t go directly from people to acres. Mr. Cotugno explained that in the conversion formula from population to households, documentation was developed as they went along so that all of the details allowing a person to track from one step to the next were evident. What he had brought forward today, however, was just enough information to explain how the numbers were backed up. He said support document ran parallel to the numbers but it was easy to overkill with too much documentation, and he was trying to give the committee just enough documentation so they could understand where the pieces came from, and how to weigh in on the pieces where there was a judgment call that needed to be made.

Regarding the forecasts and how they were chosen and their history, Mr. Benner said that, as the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO), as long as Metro could demonstrate that the basis for their methodology was scientifically as good as it could be, there was a great deal of discretion for what bases they could use. He suggested they look at how Metro’s forecasts looked compared to what had been forecast in the past, that that would be the best take on how reliable they were. Mr. Cotugno offered to provide those. Councilor McLain said that would be interesting and would help.

Chair Park interjected that every five year period the numbers were self-correcting, and he thought the committee needed to concentrate on the principals behind the numbers and, as they continued to move ahead, they could look at the standard and if that was the best to provide the information.

Mr. Cotugno then spoke to the distributed chart, Households – Share of Growth, 1980-2025, explaining how decisions in the Metro region affect Clark County, and vice versa. The assumptions shown in the chart were based on MetroScope data. Councilor Burkholder said he thought the chart showed how closely this region was connected with Clark County and that it supported the argument for bi-state coordination on these issues. Mr. Cotugno said Clark County didn’t want to be the absorber of Oregon’s growth, that they were trying to hold down their own urban growth boundary.

Councilor McLain commented that she liked hearing these numbers touted as educated guesses, and said every time Metro did five years’ worth of analysis, more details are added, which meant that every time Metro did a study and added more information, they did a better job each time. Councilor Burkholder expressed a concern about these projections being unstable at a certain future point, and he agreed with Councilors Hosticka and McLain that education of this information was important and needed to be made understandable, especially to other decision makers.

Chair Park said there would be a lot of choices as the committee went through this, and they would have to make those choices from within the constraints of what could be shown as good cause. The key was that whatever was chosen would have to be supported in the findings.

Chair Park said Mike Burton’s April 9^th letter on the Fish and Wildlife program would be discussed at the next committee meeting as it tied into the supply question.

7.  COMMUNITY SOLUTIONS TEAM (CST), RESPONSE TO PERIODIC REVIEW. Mr. Cotugno talked about the review of activities last fall on Centers and the report outlining the impediments to growth in Centers. As a result of a review of that with MPAC, a series of possible actions were developed that might be taken to increase development activity in Centers. MPAC asked what the state could do to help, so that question was posed to the CST and they were asked for their help. A series of actions was identified that they could do under their existing program to add more support for Centers, and there was a meeting with them to encourage their support. Mr. Cotugno said the response to that was the information included in the agenda packet, and he briefly reviewed that for the committee. He suggested the committee study the material and let him know if they had questions or comments.

8.  COUNCILOR COMMUNICATIONS. Mr. Cotugno distributed a memo addressed to the committee (April 11, The “Density” Question, and included as a part of this record) regarding density in the community and the use and communication of data.

Chair Park shared with the committee information provided to him from Lynn Peterson of Tri-Met (distributed and made a part of this record) on the productivity of certain routes of theirs and the correlation of average population and employment per acre to ridership.

Chair Park invited Ms. Kimi Iboshi Sloop to the dais to welcome her and congratulate her on the birth of her son.

There being no further business before the committee, the meeting adjourned at 4:22 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Rooney Barker

Council Assistant

ATTACHMENTS TO THE PUBLIC RECORD FOR THE MEETING OF APRIL 16, 2002

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

TESTIMONY CARDS. None.