MINUTES OF THE METRO COUNCIL

COMMUNITY PLANNING COMMITTEE REGULAR MEETING

Tuesday, June 4, 2002

Metro Council Chamber

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

Members Absent:  Councilor David Bragdon was excused.

Chair Park called the meeting to order at 2:10 p.m.

2.  CONSIDERATION OF THE MINUTES OF THE MAY 21, 2002, COMMUNITY PLANNING COMMITTEE MEETING.

2a.  Chair Park welcomed Executive Officer Mike Burton. Mr. Burton spoke to his upcoming August recommendation regarding the potential expansion of the Urban Growth Boundary, saying he intended to unveil a new vision that would be a considerable shift from what had been done in the past. (Mr. Burton’s comments are attached and made a part of this record.) He closed by saying he looked forward to working on this with the council over the next few months.

6.  I-5 LAND USE ACCORD. Ms. Christine Deffebach, Principal Transportation Planner, came before the committee again regarding the I-5 Trade Corridor Task Force’s Draft Recommendations. She said the Task Force would be making their final recommendation June 18^th and this would be the last opportunity for Metro to review and comment on the recommendations before they were finalized. After June 18^th, the recommendations would be brought back with recommendations for amendments in the Regional Framework Plan (RFP) and other relevant documents. Ms. Deffebach said the last time she spoke to this committee, they agreed to send a letter to the Task Force on the draft recommendations that came out in January. That letter was sent (a copy is made a part of this record) and is into play, she said. The Task Force in May released their final draft recommendations. She then reviewed these (as shown in the agenda packet) and provided an update on the proposal to expand the Bi-State Transportation Committee into the broader Bi-State Coordinating Committee, and she asked for the committee’s opinion on whether or not to include a citizen member on the Bi-State Coordinating Committee.

Councilor Monroe asked if Ms. Deffebach had any information from Congress on whether or not the rail crossing over the Columbia River would be funded under the Truman-Hobbs Act. He explained to the committee that this Act provided funds to rebuild rail crossings and bridges that were deemed dangerous. Ms. Deffebach said she had not heard, and Councilor Monroe speculated that perhaps the federal government didn’t see that particular bridge as dangerous.

Councilor Monroe then asked the committee to tell him what voice they wanted him to take to the Southwest Washington Regional Transportation Council (RTC) board meeting later that day on the issue of full-time citizen membership on the expanded Bi-State Coordinating Committee. He explained that the Bi-State Transportation Committee was an advisory committee to the Joint Policy Advisory Committee on Transportation (JPACT) which was an advisory committee to the Metro Council, and to the RTC. He said that JPACT did not have citizen members, but the Metro Policy Advisory Committee (MPAC) had three, and that should this expanded committee choose to have citizen members, there were some difficulties to be addressed regarding how that/those member(s) would be selected. Some discussion followed on this. Another serious concern Councilor Monroe shared was how the expanded committee would be staffed and the cost of that as well as for the meetings.

Councilor Atherton said he thought citizen comments were most useful and persuasive. Councilor Burkholder said he was excited that the coordination between the two states was taking place, and asked if there would still be a Bi-State Transportation Committee. Councilor Monroe explained that the Bi-State Coordinating Committee would be just the one committee, an expansion of the Bi-State Transportation Committee, in order to deal with land-use issues, particularly those affected by any transportation improvements between the states.

Councilor Burkholder then told how JPACT incorporated in their agenda an invitation to citizens to address the committee, and asked how having citizen members on MPAC affected that committee’s work. Councilor McLain said she thought it had been effective and important, and that MPAC had always had extremely good citizen members. She said, however, that she thought the Bi-State Coordinating Committee would be a little different but that if there were a clear way for the citizens to involve themselves in it, she said she thought that would be great.

Chair Park expressed concern about how a citizen’s function on the committee would be different from that of an elected official. Ms. Deffebach said the initial proposal was along the line of having the citizens sit on the Bi-State Coordinating Committee to be part of the process. Councilor Monroe said there had been discussion on having nonvoting citizen members, although he said he did not support that. If the committee decided to have citizen members, they should be full member participants, he said. The overwhelming discussion, he said, was on staff and the time involved, and even though the committee would meet approximately six times a year, everything could grow with expanded responsibility. Where the money to pay for all of it would come from, he said, was another issue that needed to be solved.

Councilor Hosticka said the issue for him on citizen members was if they were there to represent some interest or geography which he thought opened up many more questions about their selection. He said he thought if people wanted to express their ideas to the committee, there were avenues to do that.

Chair Park said his feeling was that this body needed a clear understanding of the proposed citizen member function and purpose. If they’re to represent a point of view or geographic area, as Councilor Hosticka said, then that was the elected official member’s function, and if they were there for another function for citizen input, there were alternate citizen communication routes, including through their elected official. He asked the committee if they wanted to recommend citizen members on the Bi-State Coordinating Committee or to recommend no citizen members on that committee.

Councilor Monroe said he was inclined now to not favor full citizen members. For true citizen participation, he said, there would need to be a long and complicated selection process, with more than one or two from either side of the river. He did remind the committee, however, that this was the creation of a new committee and that its functions could be changed in the future.

Chair Park posed to the committee that their recommendation be, at this time, to not have citizen members on the Bi-State Coordinating Committee. He said the door would still be open to prove the case for it, but would require full Council action. The committee concurred. Councilor Monroe thanked the committee and said he would take their recommendation to the RTC.

4.  DAMASCUS CONCEPT PLAN. Robert Liberty, Director, 1000 Friends of Oregon, introduced Patrick Condon, the James Taylor Chair of Landscape Architecture and Livable Environments at the University of British Columbia, B.C., Canada. Mr. Liberty gave a brief introduction to the Damascus Design Workshop project, saying it came out of 1000 Friends of Oregon asking themselves the question: Can we have a model kind of development, having it all in every neighborhood, in the areas designated for expansion? He said the Workshop, amongst its other challenges, yielded a package of useful results which he said he thought may have application outside of the specific study area, and those were the set of design principals (available on www.designdamascus.org) and design instructions. The hybrid process involved a set of stakeholders, interest groups and some local citizens, he said. The function of the Workshop was to bring this variety of people together, working in three different teams, to come up with an expression of the design principals. The next point was to show that one could take the same principals and end up with different designs, all of them honoring those principals but in a different expression. The three teams convened after a field trip May 29^th and worked Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday, and there was a presentation of the results Monday evening, June 3^rd.

Mr. Condon said it was an honor to be making this presentation. He then presented the previous evening’s Design Workshop in Damascus results (a copy of which is included in this record). The process, he said, was to boil down and attempt to accentuate what it was the democratically elected officials at various levels of government had proposed as a means by which to make the community better for their children, provide jobs for their people and protect their natural resources. The six principals the Workshop came up with, as shown in the first slide, were: 1) Design complete communities, 2) preserve present homes and introduce new ones, 3) provide a linked system of streets, parkways, greenway, and spaces for growing food, 4) establish green infrastructure systems to bound, protect and reinforce all neighborhoods, 5) shift to lighter greener cheaper infrastructure, and 6) build a healthy economy. Mr. Condon continued his presentation, interspersed with short discussions with the committee.

Mr. Liberty concluded by saying there was a modest amount of funding left to do follow-up work, and part of that would be used to produce a tabloid they hoped to distribute to all residents in the area explaining the process, the principals and sharing some of the images. He told the committee that if they had any suggestions they thought might be helpful, to please let him know – the committee then shared some of their more of their thoughts and observations with him and Mr. Condon. Mr. Liberty thanked them for the donation of the Metro mapping service. Chair Park in turn thanked them for their work and for sharing it.

5.  ALTERNATIVES ANALYSIS/REGIONAL FRAMEWORK PLAN. Mary Weber, Community Planning Manager, briefly reviewed Mr. Cotugno’s memo regarding Regional Framework Plan and Regional Transportation Plan Policies and UGB Amendments, as it explained the policies of the Regional Framework Plan (RFP) and the Regional Transportation Plan (RTP) as they relate to the legislative decision to amend the Urban Growth Boundary (UGB), saying these would need to be considered. Page 6 of the memo, she said, summarized the policies and the urban form direction.

Councilor McLain expressed concern about cleaning up the edges of the current boundary. Ms. Weber said that was in the Periodic Review Work Program and that some could be fixed as part of the legislative process. Councilor McLain said these were a #1 priority on her list, and that for any future boundary she wanted the edge to make sense. There was some discussion on use of the RFP as the binding document.

Ms. Weber asked the councilors to review her memo in more detail and said she would bring it back for discussion at the next meeting.

Ms. Weber then reviewed Andy Cotugno’s memo of June 4^th to Mike Burton on the June Periodic Review Outreach Schedule (made a part of this record), and said some of the jurisdiction meetings had not been scheduled yet, but would be. Councilor McLain said she thought it important that an outline or handout for the speakers at these meetings be available for the councilors. This had been helpful in the past, she said, and she would appreciate having something like that for the first meetings and open houses. Ms. Weber said that could be provided.

7.  URBAN GROWTH REPORT – INPUT ON RESIDENTIAL REFILL RATE. Lydia Neill, Senior Regional Planner, Planning Department, spoke to her June 3^rd memo regarding 2002 Urban Growth Report (UGR) Dwelling Unit Calculations, having to do with Refill Rates (distributed and made a part of this record). (Attachment A to this memo was the June 3^rd update of the 2002 Urban Growth Report Methodology memo [UGR Primer], also made a part of this record.) Councilor Hosticka had a question on the basis of her percentages, which led Chair Park to say if she was bringing the numbers forward, would she please bring the capture rates forward as well. Ms. Neill said that was an excellent point and called attention to Table 1 on p. 3 which showed case studies and employment numbers.

There was discussion on a refill rate average and on policy adjustments, and Ms. Neill briefly explained the current Centers Study and the market aspect of it.

Chair Park thanked her and said the committee had no direction for her except to ask her to provide the capture rates, and the actual dwelling numbers. Ms. Neill agreed that this would be helpful and that she would provide the information.

More discussion followed on how Ballot Measure 26-29, which was passed by the voters in the May primary election, and Mr. Cotugno and Mr. Dick Benner, Senior Counsel, explained how it would affect existing Metro policy.

3.  RELATED COMMITTEE UPDATES.

•  JPACT – There was no report.

•  Transportation – There was no report.

•  Natural Resources – Councilor McLain said the Natural Resources Committee would meet June 26^th, which would be an extra meeting, and also June 5^th. At the June 5^th meeting, they would work on housekeeping issues, they would hear public testimony on the riparian corridor, and would work on the wildlife maps, and on the wildlife inventory they were looking at what was significant and what was regionally significant, and what it meant to put the riparian and the wildlife corridor together just for the practical purposes of looking at it. Public testimony would also be heard on these issues on June 26^th.

•  WRPAC – WRPAC would meet June 10^th, Councilor McLain reported, and she said she hoped it would have the opportunity to give advice in the form of a recommendation on these same issues (as Natural Resources Committee’s). This committee may also schedule a meeting the last week in June.

8.  COUNCILOR COMMUNICATIONS. Chair Park relayed a reminder from Councilor Burkholder that the Tax Supervising and Conservation Commission (TSCC) meeting on the Metro budget was scheduled June 6^th, and he asked all the councilors to please be there.

There being no further business before the committee, the meeting adjourned at 4:55 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Rooney Barker

Council Assistant

ATTACHMENTS TO THE PUBLIC RECORD FOR THE MEETING OF JUNE 4, 2002

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

TESTIMONY CARDS. None.