MINUTES OF THE METRO COUNCIL

TRANSPORTATION COMMITTEE MEETING

Thursday, June 6, 2002

Metro Council Annex

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

Members Absent:  None.

Also Present:  Rod Park

1.  CALL TO ORDER AND ROLL CALL. Chair Burkholder called the meeting to order at 10:09 a.m.

2.  CITIZEN COMMUNICATIONS ON NON-AGENDA ITEMS. None.

3.  RELATED COMMITTEE UPDATES.

•  Bi-State Transportation Committee. Councilor Monroe said the Bi-State Transportation Committee would be meeting June 27^th and would be looking at a number of issues, the most important being the expansion of that committee into the Bi-State Coordinating Committee by adding land-use responsibilities to that advisory committee of both JPACT and the RTC. That change would require approval not only of JPACT and the RTC, but the Clark County Commission, possibly some other local jurisdictions within Clark County, and Metro.

Chair Burkholder asked, since June 18^th was the Task Force’s final meeting, how Metro wanted to respond. His goal was for the Metro Council to review their letter sent to the Task Force in April, and then schedule some time to discuss it. Councilor Monroe and Andy Cotugno, Planning Director, said Chris Deffebach, Principal Transportation Planner, had taken notes at the last Community Planning Committee meeting to reflect the discussion there, and she would do the same at the upcoming JPACT meeting. Then, he said, she would put those together for the June 18^th meeting. Mr. Morrissey asked if this could be in summary form for the councilors to review.

There was additional discussion on the Accord and whether or not it would include other roads/highways that feed into I-5 and I-205. Other highways that don’t directly impact those wouldn’t be in the Accord, Councilor Monroe said, but that once this advisory committee was constituted, if an issue came up that was appropriate for them to discuss, they could do so, in their advisory capacity. Chair Burkholder said he was concerned that this was not specifically stated in the Accord, but both Councilor Monroe and Mr. Cotugno agreed the current wording was adequate at this time. Mr. Cotugno said he shared Chair Burkholder’s concern, but said this needed to be done carefully and the opportunity to correct that would present itself soon.

•  JPACT. The June 18^th JPACT agenda was distributed (and made a part of this record). Councilor Monroe pointed out the 7:15 a.m. start time saying the agenda was very full, and Mr. Mike Hoglund, Regional Planning Director, called attention to the actual times listed for each item, in hopes of moving the agenda along. Councilor Monroe asked him if these could be listed on all future JPACT agendas and he then briefly reviewed the agenda for the committee.

•  Southwest Washington RTC Board. This board met June 4^th and they talked about the I-5 Study issues and also their local issues. Councilor Monroe reported that Congressman Brian Baird had assigned a new staff person to transportation issues and bi-state issues, and that he wants to and has shown that he can work very closely with the delegation on bi-state issues. This assignment was a positive sign from Congressman Baird’s office, Councilor Monroe said.

•  South Corridor Policy Advisory Group. June 24^th was the next scheduled meeting for this Group, Councilor Monroe said, and there would be a full report on how the EIS’ were coming both for the McLoughlin and I-205 corridors, as well as a discussion of funding options. This would be an important meeting, he said, and he invited Councilor Atherton and Councilor Park to that meeting.

4.  CONSIDERATION OF THE MINUTES OF THE MAY 16, 2002, TRANSPORTATION COMMITTEE MEETING.

5.  ORDINANCE NO. 02-945, For the Purpose of Amending the 2000 Regional Transportation Plan Financial Constrained System; Amending Ordinance No. 00-869A and Resolution No. 00-2969A to Reflect Resolution No. 02-3186. This ordinance and Resolution No. 02-3186 (Agenda item 6) were companion documents, Mr. Mike Hoglund said, and he spoke to both (he distributed an updated version of both, said updates included as part of this record). Because of Oregon Transportation Investment Act (OTIA) Phase II funds and in order to receive those funds, there were a few projects that needed to be brought into the air quality conformity determination, as stated in Exhibit B, in order to amend the Regional Transportation Plan (RTP) and the Metropolitan Transportation Improvement Program (MTIP). Ordinance 02-945 would amend the RTP and Resolution No. 02-3186 would amend the MTIP, he said. These actions would bring the projects into the financially constrained list so the MTIP could be amended, conformity could be done and the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) could begin spending their money to design and implement the projects.

Mr. Hoglund then explained another issue that had come up from an inconsistency in the RTP in how the Sunrise Corridor was laid out. He said Metro staff tried to clean that up but unfortunately didn’t communicate this soon enough with Clackamas County, and now Clackamas County was concerned with that clean up. He explained that the old conformity determination had the Sunrise Corridor as a project that was funded out to the Rock Creek Junction, but it was only conformed to 122^nd. In reviewing the amount of money available, there were two choices for this project: 1) conform out to 152^nd and match it up to where the project was, or 2) bring the project back to 122^nd to where the conformity determination was. Staff brought the project back to 122^nd because 1) there had been discussion with the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) that they wouldn’t approve a project out to 162^nd, and unfortunately, he said, those discussions were still open, and 2) the funding, at a glance, didn’t appear to get the project all the way to 152^nd. Clackamas County said they were concerned and that they felt Metro had downplayed the project. That was not the intent, Mr. Hoglund said. There were a lot of issues, policy discussions, etc., that needed to be sorted through, and although he realized this wasn’t the place for airing this, he wanted to explain it to the committee.

The salmon-colored handout (Ordinance No. 02-945), he said, explained on p. 1 and 2 of Exhibit B that the dialog was still open with the FHWA, ODOT and Clackamas County, and the RTP would be amended accordingly. Although he said he didn’t think JPACT on June 13^th was the appropriate time to discuss this, he told the committee he thought it might be brought up. Metro staff position was, he said, that a mistake had been made and they had apologized, and there should be some longer-term discussion about what would take place in the Sunrise Corridor.

There was a brief discussion on some of the projects, as listed in Exhibit B.

6.  RESOLUTION NO. 02-3186, For the Purpose of Amending the Metropolitan Transportation Improvement Program (MTIP) to Include State Bond Funds; Programming Preliminary Engineering Funds for US 26 Widening, and Approving a Conformity Determination for These Actions and Those of Ordinance No. 02-945 That Amends the Regional Transportation Plan.

Mr. Morrissey clarified that Ordinance No. 02-945A and Resolution 02-3186A would be heard at Council on June 20^th.

Mr. Hoglund asked if he could speak to Ordinance No. 02-946 which had not yet been first read at Council but had been to TPAC and MTAC, and would be going to JPACT and MPAC. Chair Burkholder and Councilor Park, as Chair of the Community Planning Committee, agreed that this would be taken up at the next Community Planning Committee so that all the councilors could be involved.

8.  GREEN STREETS UPDATE. Mr. Tom Kloster, Transportation Program Supervisor, handed out slide pages on the RTP Post-Acknowledgement Amendments (but did not give a PowerPoint presentation, however). He said the RTP amendments were four exhibits to a single ordinance and distributed a memo to MTAC, which explained TPAC’s changes. Mr. Kloster explained that the technical amendments were not optional, but necessary for full compliance with the State Transportation Planning Rule (TPR). The other three amendments to be included were the implementation of the Elderly and Disabled Plan, the Corridor Priorities Project, and the Green Streets Amendments. He briefly reviewed these amendments for the committee.

There was discussion on the Green Streets Amendments, and TPAC’s recommendation of “shall consider” language, confirmed by MTAC. Chair Burkholder expressed concern that the language in the memo didn’t clearly state what Mr. Kloster was relaying to the committee. Mr. Kloster said he’d bring the full language from the Plan when the full council heard the ordinance. Mr. Hoglund said there might still be some education process to be done, and that since Metro was amending the regular requirements, there was a request for Metro to monitor how much and how well these were being considered. Mr. Kloster said he thought there was plenty of local support to do the code revisions. Chair Burkholder asked that staff have Metro counsel to read this to make sure it was legally binding. He added that he thought it was a wonderful part of the MTIP criteria. Mr. Hoglund added that Metro probably wanted to be proactive and go out and ask to do Green Streets pilots.

7.  MTIP UPDATE – PROCESS AND TIMELINE. (Chair Burkholder said this agenda item should be MTIP REFINEMENT UPDATE.) Mr. Hoglund handed out a memo on the MTIP Refinement Schedule (made a part of this record). He instructed the committee to add a June 14^th TPAC work session to this list, and then reviewed the dates and meetings and explained what would take place. Councilors would be provided, in no particular order, with copies of all the correspondence received to date, with meeting summaries of the stakeholders’ groups, and survey data summaries. Key issues will be analyzed and a number of options developed, and recommendations. This is what MPAC, JPACT and Council would take action on, he said. He said staff needed to schedule meetings with the individual councilors for their ideas, and that a resolution would be filed, probably, in June. At the end there would be a set of project objectives and goals for how to spend the money.

Mr. Hoglund then expressed his hope that this schedule could be met. The local jurisdictions asked for more time to fill out the applications for projects, he said, and they’ve asked for examples. The deadline for actual projects was set for around November 1^st, and late January 2003 would be the first outreach to public, as things stood now. The brunt of the work should be completed by April 2003, Mr. Hoglund concluded.

Chair Burkholder said he appreciated the effort staff put into this. He said he was glad the council weighed in on this project last year, and that he thought they could have better impact this time and that the product would be good. Mr. Hoglund added that Ted Leybold had done a great job.

9.  COUNCILOR COMMUNICATIONS. Chair Burkholder, regarding the OTIA II funds, said a follow-up letter had been drafted but not sent, mainly because of the timing in that the OTC would be meeting June 10^th at the City of Wilsonville. He asked the committee if they wanted to wait for the results of that meeting, since there may be a solution that comes out of it. Councilor Atherton said he thought that would be wise. Chair Burkholder asked Councilor Monroe, since he would be attending that meeting with Mr. Cotugno, if, when he came back from it, the committee could review the draft letter to determine whether or not to update it. Councilor Monroe agreed.

There being no further business before the committee, the meeting was adjourned at 11:41 a.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Rooney Barker

Council Assistant

ATTACHMENTS TO THE PUBLIC RECORD FOR THE MEETING OF JUNE 6, 2002

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

TESTIMONY CARDS. None.