MINUTES OF THE METRO COUNCIL

TRANSPORTATION COMMITTEE MEETING

Thursday, June 20, 2002

Metro 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 ON NON-AGENDA ITEMS. None.

4.  CONSIDERATION OF THE MINUTES OF THE JUNE 6, 2002, TRANSPORTATION COMMITTEE MEETING.

3.  RELATED COMMITTEE UPDATES.

•  Bi-State Transportation Committee. Councilor Monroe reported that he had attended a meeting this morning in Vancouver to set the agenda for the June 27^th meeting. On that agenda was the I-5 Transportation and Trade Partnership’s Final Report on their recommendations that came out on June 18^th. The agenda also included a discussion on the possible expansion of the Bi-State Transportation Committee to include some land use opportunities, and a request to update Metro’s Regional Transportation Plan (RTP) to reflect the I-5 Transportation and Trade Partnership recommendations. Everyone was always welcome at these meetings, Councilor Monroe said.

•  JPACT. JPACT met last week, Councilor Monroe said, and their meeting included a report from NW Environmental Watch on some of the development and density differences between Vancouver, British Columbia, the Seattle area and Portland, as well as several other issues of concern to JPACT – planning for the next Metropolitan Transportation Improvement Program (MTIP) which is ongoing; the Boeckman Road/Oregon Transportation Improvement Act (OTIA) II decision; the RTP conformity adoption which included a presentation on Green Streets; and an interesting commodity flow forecast and what it would take to keep the economy moving in this area. Mr. Cotugno offered to schedule that presentation at this committee, and Chair Burkholder said that might be useful and would be good for discussion. After discussion, Chair Burkholder asked that this take place possibly in September. Mike Hoglund, Regional Planning Director, said this could relate to a job discussion on Periodic Review in Community Planning Committee, so Chair Burkholder said he and Mr. Cotugno would talk with either the Presiding Officer or Chair of Community Planning. Mr. Cotugno said the information was good and would apply to the large lot industrial issue and its connection to the warehouse component they’ve been talking about and it could help with the decision. He said he was impressed by the presentation and the information.

 Councilor Monroe ended this report, saying that JPACT had also discussed channel deepening of the Columbia River at their last meeting. Councilor Atherton and Mr. Cotugno had a short discussion on industrial land, and Chair Burkholder asked that that discussion be before the whole council. Councilor Monroe said Councilor Atherton’s comments reemphasized the need for the expanded Bi-State Committee to have some land use authority as well as the Bi-State Coordinating Committee so that mutual needs could be talked about, or at least have a venue for that discussion to take place which hadn’t happened in the past. Chair Burkholder said it also needed to be stated that land use responsibility for this committee did not mean land use authority. Councilor Monroe said he thought the land use decisions made in the Portland metropolitan area have a greater impact on Clark County than Clark County’s decisions on the Portland metropolitan area, and they need to have input into our decisions as much as we need input into theirs.

•  Southwest Washington RTC Board. Councilor Monroe said the RTC Board met June 4^th and, again, discussion was on the I-5 Transportation and Trade Partnership Task Force recommendations and to accept them.

•  South Corridor Policy Advisory Group. This group was scheduled to meet June 24^th at 3 p.m. at Metro, Councilor Monroe said, and that agenda would be primarily updates on the Environmental Analysis Study (EIS) process for both the I-205 and McLoughlin corridors.

6.  UPDATE ON GOVERNOR’S TASK FORCE DRAFT FINAL RECOMMENDATIONS FOR I-5 TRANSPORTATION AND TRADE PARTNERSHIP. Ms. Christine Deffebach, Principal Transportation Planner, reiterated Councilor Monroe’s report update (above) regarding the I-5 Transportation and Trade Partnership final recommendations that were adopted Tuesday, June 18^th. As a newspaper reported, she said, it was an historic event as the recommendations were far reaching and would take many years of work and effort to continue to develop. Overall the plan recommendations were approved 24-1. She distributed a copy of the Final Draft Recommendations at a glance (said document is made a part of this record) which had not been updated since June 18^th, so she reviewed the changes that were made to it then, and she also spoke about other recommendations that were not included in this document but that this committee should be aware of, as well as Metro’s role as the process moved forward. There was some clarifying language that the Task Force adopted to differentiate the amount of work that needed to be done in the short-term vs. the long-term in terms of coordination.

In the Environmental Justice area, there was a unanimously approved recommendation to set aside a mitigation fund for project costs similar to Metro’s 1% for Art fund. This fund would be for use in the impacted areas in the Corridor and the intent was that it be in addition to any of the costs from project mitigation that are identified and included in the EIS. There was some discussion about the variety of ways this could be set up, as endowments, as direct grants, etc., and she said that all would be determined later. The Task Force did pledge the concept of setting aside a portion of the construction costs for use in the I-5 corridor, both in Vancouver and in Portland.

There was quite a bit of discussion, Ms Deffebach said, about connecting either Hwy. 26 in one scheme or Hwy 30 in another scheme with a bridge that would parallel the St. Johns bridge, come across the slough, the Columbia River, and into Vancouver, and there were various ways that this idea was manifested during the course of the study. There continued to be recognition that there was a truck problem in St. Johns, recognition that a new bridge would bring additional traffic through downtown Vancouver and there would be impacts in Vancouver that Vancouver thought were not acceptable.

The current recommendation was to continue looking at a possible west arterial road in the future, recognizing that in the shorter term improvements needed to be focused on I-5 and in the immediate vicinity of the I-5 Corridor. In the end, the Task Force voted to not look at this in an EIS now, but that it did merit study as a future concept.

Another issue from early on, Ms. Deffebach said, was that when this study originally started it was designed to address I-5 all the way down to I-84. There was an early recommendation the Task Force made that she thought important to remember for another study to be done to look at the I-5 / I-405 loop.

In the shorter term, Ms. Deffebach said, there was a commitment from the Task Force to move forward as a priority the widening of the Delta Park/Lombard two-lane section into a three-lane section, there was a commitment to begin, at least conceptually, to plan for the full Columbia Boulevard interchange as part of that design, and there was a recommendation to make that Columbia Boulevard interchange a full interchange.

Metro would see these recommendations as they come back as modifications to the RTP, she said. Metro would also see the work for creating the expanded Bi-State Coordinating Committee, and, as Councilor Monroe mentioned, the operational details of that were something the Bi-State Committee would discuss at their next meeting. These recommendations are really far reaching, she said. There was a recommendation to do more work on transportation demand management in the short-term, and some more progress in moving those recommendations forward should be expected. Closing, Ms. Deffebach said there were many ways in which these recommendations would move into the next phases, and those would be seen in a variety of forms.

Chair Burkholder said the direction and scope of the project came out in the end very well. So many people contributed, he said, and so many people in the community felt they’d been suffering for a very long time. The establishment of this fund seemed to be a creative way to try to deal with past events, as well as making sure future projects were mitigated as they were built. This was his home community, he said, and he said this was a good step toward dealing with the poverty and health problems there while dealing with the major issues of trade, moving people, and the light rail. ODOT and WSDOT were to be commended for bringing everyone together, he added, and he also thanked Ms. Deffebach and Mr. Cotugno for their work.

Councilor Monroe said he found it interesting what happens in terms of the economy and livability of neighborhoods next to freeways vs. next to a light rail line where just the opposite happens, where redevelopment takes place, land values increase, and the socio economic status of those communities tends to be on the upswing instead what happens along interstate highways. He said he was hopeful that if a light rail line goes through the Lents area, some of the trends there could be reversed

5.  MTIP DRAFT POLICY PROPOSALS. Mr. Mike Hoglund spoke to the material included in the agenda packet and asked for the committee’s permission to begin the process of releasing the staff recommendations for discussion through the committee process. The MTIP Refinement Schedule (also in the packet) listed the dates for this process and he reviewed them.

Mr. Hoglund said staff had put together a Draft and were still refining the distributed Exhibit A, Metropolitan Transportation Improvement Program Refinement and Policy Report (made a part of this record), and he reviewed this for the committee. He also used large charts to explain the annual allocation and spending of MTIP funds as well as all annual transportation spending in the region ($625 million in the region, with $25 million or 4% of that in MTIP funds). These charts are not available for this record but will be included in the final copy of the Report, he said. Mr. Hoglund closed by asking for the committee’s go ahead, and said there was still quite a bit of work staff needed to do on this.

Councilor Burkholder thanked him, and asked Mr. Ted Leybold, Senior Transportation Planner, if he had more information, but Mr. Leybold said he did not.

In discussion, Councilor Monroe said his primary issue was still that there was very little discretionary funding for the transportation needs that could not be funded out of highway funds because of constitutional limitations. He said it was too bad that people thought Metro was anti-highway and only wanted to emphasize bicycles, pedestrians, etc., which wasn’t true. There are funding sources available for these highways, he said (OTIA funds being an example). He added that it was important to have these funding charts, as shown today, to help continually educate JPACT members and others on where the funding comes from and where it goes.

Councilor Atherton suggested this principal be spelled out to eliminate uncertainty and said he’d been talking about this for years. He suggested it be in legislative form so it wouldn’t need to be revised so frequently. He gave Mr. Cotugno a copy of his draft proposal and suggested it be proposed to JPACT for adoption to amend the RTP (this draft proposal is included as part of this record). The policy right now was so broad, he said, it didn’t work for him. Chair Burkholder said he thought a recommendation to take freeway expansion off the list of eligible projects would be appropriate, and, addressing one of Councilor Atherton’s concerns, suggested a possible recommendation for a way of having infrastructure in newly developed areas paid back. He said he realized this was a financial issue and that it may require a broader based concept, but perhaps it could be looked at it while working on how to be more strategic with the money that is available.

Mr. Michael Morrissey, Council Analyst, made a suggestion on adding a section to the report that would address policy focus or direction, that he said he assumed was what would come of this exercise and that he thought was missing in this report. Chair Burkholder said that was a good idea, and added that the range of projects that would be considered would fall into that, too. Another was the focus on access to these sites vs. giving credit if a facility happened to pass through it. He then told Councilor Atherton that an RTP amendment would be on a different timeline from this, that it could be proposed but would not be done in time to influence this MTIP process. Mr. Leybold, providing clarification and focus for the MTIP dollars, said the transportation funding policies in the RTP were generally applicable to all transportation funding in the region, not just the MTIP dollars. This document today was the appropriate document to lay out the council’s policies for the direction of the MTIP dollars, he said.

Councilor Atherton commented on the two policies just discussed where clear direction was needed: 1) the use of flexible funds and that they be targeted for those uses for which there’s no other funding, and 2) growth paying its own way. Mr. Cotugno said he thought Mr. Morrissey’s suggestion was good, and the modified regional option would become a means of fleshing out the policy options recommended for implementation. Mr. Cotugno then said Councilor Atherton was suggesting flexible funds go to those types of activities that don’t have another source; this was suggesting the money go towards those places of the highest interest. More discussion on this topic continued.

Councilor Monroe said he believed in an interconnected transit network that made sense, and this region’s system was transit friendly in the core area but more auto dependent as one moved out. If Metro’s policy was to try to use MTI P money primarily (not exclusively because there could be exceptions) for things that could not be funded out of highway funds, that would mean completing transit, bike, and pedestrian links more in the core of the region because that would be where those investments would be made. That then would generate political difficulties with Metro’s partners who represent outlying areas as they would want their share of the funds as well. It was a delicate balance, he said. A gap in the transit network, he said, yes, that should be closed, or a linkage where construction couldn’t be funded, maybe the P and E of that could be funded with MTIP funds. He did say he liked the “place” concept with the emphasis on alternative modes, but toward completing projects and tying things together as well as making everything that’s funded 2040 oriented. All balancing the political realities, he said in closing, and it would always be difficult to do this, and yet the JPACT process of agreement continued to remain a wonder to him. The realities of holding the region together and collective decision making were something Metro could hold up to the world, if not the rest of the country.

Chair Burkholder said he thought it a good idea to pull out the place based concept of Centers and industrial areas as a policy focus and not put it in an option. While the committee was taking no formal action at this time, he asked staff to go on with the variety of options, to have discussions, and to come back with more information. Another piece he thought might help was to look at match ratios in that we might want to be a little more sophisticated there, to look at different types of projects that may have other funding sources which could make a different match. He added that these were suggestions for staff to work around with. He said he hoped to see something along the line of this is what we’re doing, this is what we’ve heard in feedback and, based on that, this is what we recommend. On the policy focus and direction, be strategic with it, he said, as it’s very small and should be used to help leverage 2040 as the main concept that builds up our economic vitality and prosperity. Chair Burkholder said he was hoping staff would take these thoughts from the discussion today and bring this back to the full council at the Informal meeting on July 9^th.

Chair Burkholder told Councilor Atherton that staff had heard his concern regarding his suggested RTP amendment, but since the MTIP timing was critical now, he hoped that could be looked at at a later date. He told staff this report was getting more sophisticated and more difficult, and he appreciated their work. He asked them to keep in mind the Leland/Parsons Brinckerhoff study.

8.  TRANSPORTATION INVESTMENT TASK FORCE – STATUS REPORT. Richard Brandman, Deputy Planning Director, distributed what he called a nearly final list of people Executive Officer Mike Burton had appointed to this new Task Force (the list is included in this record), and he briefly discussed the variety of public/private sector members. The first meeting was tentatively scheduled for July 16^th, he said, and the Task Force charge was to have their work completed by early November in order to take it to the legislature in December. A very great deal of information needed to be given to the Task Force in a very short period of time, so they would probably have two meetings each in July, September, October and November, with none in August.

The projects being presented to the Task Force for implementation must come from the RTP, and here Mr. Brandman reminded the committee that there were about $7.6 billion of unfounded projects in the RTP over a 20-year time frame. Mr. Brandman went into more detail here on revenue sources and the priorities of the projects, and how staff hoped to give the Task Force a good knowledge base from which to work. He then compared the region’s transportation funding shortfall to Seattle’s, and said we have a far more manageable funding need task, albeit a big task.

Councilor Atherton and Mr. Brandman discussed past transportation improvement spending in the region, from all sources. The meeting chamber was scheduled for a noon presentation by Minnesota State Senator Myron Orfield, so Chair Burkholder suggested that Mr. Brandman get more information for Councilor Atherton on transportation spending. The Chair also said he was strongly encouraged by the information Mr. Brandman had shared on the Transportation Investment Task Force and the strategies he mentioned to give them some groundwork with which to start, and he thanked him.

7.  REGIONAL DISCUSSION DRAFT – REAUTHORIZATION OF THE TRANSPORTATION EQUITY ACT FOR THE 21^ST CENTURY (TEA-21). This item was rescheduled for the next Transportation Committee meeting, scheduled for 11 o’clock on Tuesday, July 2^nd.

9.  COUNCILOR COMMUNICATIONS. There were none.

There being no further business before the committee, the meeting was adjourned at 11:46 a.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Rooney Barker

Council Assistant

ATTACHMENTS TO THE PUBLIC RECORD FOR THE MEETING OF JUNE 20, 2002

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

TESTIMONY CARDS. None.