ECONOMIC TECHNICAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE MEETING RECORD

September 22, 2003 – 2:00 p.m.

Metro Regional Center, Council Chamber

Committee Members Present: Al Burns, Cindy Catto, Brent Curtis, Jim Labbe, Gene Leverton, Terry Morlan, Noelwah Netusil, Kelly Ross, Dick Sheehy, Dennis Yee

Also Present: Valerie Counts, Steve Kountz, Ed MacMullan

Metro Staff Present: Kim Bardes, Dick Benner, Chris Deffebach, Natasha Ernst, Paul Garrahan, Justin Houk, Carol Krigger,

Acting Chair, Chris Deffebach, called the meeting to order at 2:03.m.

1.  Member Self-Introductions

Those present introduced themselves.

2.  Approval of Minutes: July 28, 2003

Approval of the minutes was deferred to the next meeting.

3.  PUBLIC OUTREACH STATUS AND SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

Acting Chair Chris Deffebach introduced Gina Whitehill-Baziuk.

Gina Whitehill-Baziuk said they had had about five events this year so far, three of which were in the Tualatin Basin. She said that they had about seven or eight more events slated for Goal 5. She reviewed the outreach schedule for the next few months. The purpose of those various activities was to broaden the public outreach and inform people of Metro work and events. She anticipated a greater outreach in the spring.

Terry Morlan asked when public input would end for the economic phase of the Goal 5 ESEE project.

Chris Deffebach said that it ended on October 31^st. She proposed rearranging the meeting agenda. She wanted to start by presenting the Executive Summary before the ECONorthwest portion.

6.  METRO’S DRAFT REGIONAL ESEE ANALYSIS AND EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Chris Deffebach reviewed the executive summary, which is attached and forms part of the record. The current ESEE schedule: at the end of October Metro Council would hold a public hearing to review the ESEE findings; in the spring they would focus on public outreach to present the results of the evaluation; in May they would be seeking direction from Council on a protection approach; by December 2004 the schedule calls for Council to adopt a program and then the jurisdictions would have generally two-four years to employ the program.

Al Burns asked if, when it was done, there would be just one protection program or would alternatives be available?

Chris Deffebach said that it would be done in December 2004 and that more than the map would be adopted.

Cindy Catto asked if this was the presentation that was going to be used in the outreach efforts.

Chris Deffebach said that it was the presentation that would be used in the outreach efforts. They had until October 10^th to provide comments on the full report. She reviewed the ECONorthwest report. There were five areas where the report had changed between July and the present copy: 1) the sensitivity analysis, 2) interaction between economic values and how they fell in relation to land values (economic versus ecological), 3) the 2040 design types, 4) ECONorthwest had revised the analysis and the descriptions of the environmental consequences for the whole allow, limit, and prohibit discussion, and 5) the matrixes were greatly expanded.

Terry Morlan asked about the relation between the ECONorthwest report and the economic section of the ESEE report.

Chris Deffebach said that the first task for ETAC was to understand how it fit together, the second task was submitting comments for ECONorthwest on the assumptions and analysis, and the third task was to determine if staff had done an adequate job of editing the ECONorthwest report for use in the ESEE report. She said that the report was substantively still the same.

4.  “FINAL DRAFT REPORT FOR THE ECONOMIC PORTION OF METRO’S GOAL 5 ESEE ANALYSIS” PREPARED BY ECONORTHWEST.

Justin Houk gave a presentation on the economic mapping methods for the ESEE report. He reviewed the two documents handed out, and those documents are attached and form part of the record.

Dennis Yee said that the breakpoints for employees per acre were very highly spatially correlated. He said that the different regional centers could help them to determine breakpoints.

Chris Deffebach said that they had started out with a spatial allocation. There was so much in the low category, however, that people asked the staff to go back and take a look at how the data fell out. She said that they had tried to make the breaking points parallel to how they had approached the ecological scores on the environmental side. A discussion on land value calculation ensued.

Al Burns said that we were looking at the value of land through three lenses: employees, development value, and policy.

Justin Houk continued his presentation with a discussion on Development Value and Policy Value.

Dick Sheehy was concerned about the classification of Nike and Design Types – he felt that the classifications were not accurate.

Chris Deffebach said they would check the accuracy.

Justin Houk said that the reason they were using three measures was because no one measure was perfect.

Al Burns said they had the 2040 growth process, which described the design concepts. That was not weighted, however. He suggested that maybe they shouldn’t use the same hierarchy on the economic analysis.

Justin Houk said that they had looked at all three measures and compared them to each other. That gave a lot of value to land that currently wasn’t developable. For instance, when they look at industrial land near Hillsboro – it had not realized its development potential yet. There were no jobs there yet, and the land value was not what it would be had it been developed. So, that was rising on the map because creating employment there was a policy goal. That reflected future value. He said that the same thing applied to other industrial areas that had been set aside.

Al Burns said that there was a big difference between the value of industrial land now and the value of what they wanted it to be.

Gene Leverton said that he did not find the maps clarifying. He said he would like more specific examples of areas that manifest the definitions set by Metro staff and ECONorthwest. He felt that the Nike plant would be a good example. If they had campuses that were widely recognized as critically important to the economy, they should be clearly defined and included.

5.  IEAB COMMENTS

Noelwah Netusil presented the materials included in the packet. Those materials are attached and form part of this record.

Chris Deffebach said that the IEAB would have a board meeting the following day, which would give them a chance to review the documents and return comments to staff. She said that October 10^th was the tentatively deadline for comments on Goal 5. The staff would then revise the documents based on comments.

Al Burns asked if they wanted comments from the City of Portland or his comments as an individual.

Chris Deffebach said that they would get the City of Portland comments at MPAC, so he should submit his comments as an ETAC member.

Jim Labbe said he was impressed by the framework laid out with respect to ecosystem services, however disappointed by some of the content. He said it would be helpful to have illustrative examples about costs associated with ecosystem services. He specifically talked about bank stabilization.

Ed MacMullan said that they had built that report off of Metro’s biophysical work. He said that bank stabilization fell into ecological function, and from an economic perspective he didn’t think that it mattered where it ended up.

Jim Labbe said there needed to be some thought as to how the inventory laid out and how it related spatially to functions.

Ed MacMullan said that there were a number of examples in the literature review of the costs of replacing ecosystem services: flood management, water quality, etc. He said that they had focused on regionally specific information.

Al Burns said that there were four economic values on the Four Different Types of Competing Uses for Land chart, but only two appeared to be addressed by staff.

Ed MacMullan said they had discarded that chart due to some constructive comments from the IEAB. Then they described the values differently and more clearly in the report.

Gene Leverton said (referring to the bound report that was sent out in the mail) that they should get to the economic material earlier in the document, and not all the way at page 50.

Chris Deffebach said that they had discussed where to put it at length, but the section that was supposed to set the groundwork for the rest of the ESEE process was the conflicting uses section, and that was 25 of the first 50 pages.

7.  PROGRAM OPTIONS

Program Options would be discussed in detail in October.

8.  NEXT ETAC MEETING

Chris Deffebach said that the next challenge was to begin thinking about developing a range of protection programs that were fair, efficient, and reflected the range of public priorities. To do that they were proposing to combine options based on variables already discussed at ETAC. She said that it would go before Metro council in two weeks. She said that staff expected the options to change with review by MTAC, MPAC, and the public. She proposed that ETAC review the proposed options and criteria at the October 20^th meeting. She suggested that ETAC meet with other advisory groups to review the work sometime in December.

Gene Leverton said that if they were going to use 2040 Design types, along with jobs and assessed values as the criteria to evaluate land, then it would help to have a one-page summary of what that means.

Chris Deffebach said that the staff did not have the resources to develop a methodology for defining multiplier effects.

Ed MacMullan said that they could include Terry Moore’s work on multiplier effects, now that it was complete.

Terry Morlan said that the 2040 work captured that and that was one of the reasons for using the 2040 Design Types. He said they should just state that the role of the 2040 Design Types was to capture the potential value of industrial land.

Chris Deffebach said that if the land generated employment it would have a greater value than residential land.

Mary Gibson, Port of Portland, said that the Port would have the distribution study done in mid-October and that would have location and primary and secondary economic impact of some of those sectors. That study would include 277 firms regionally.

Chris Deffebach said that the multiplier effect by sector may or may not have been captured well enough by the 2040 policies of all industrial lands.

Cindy Catto that if there was readily available information that could be overlaid on the 2040 piece to see if there was a close correlation, then the 2040 piece was okay. If, however, it was not a good overlay, then they should reconsider that information.

Dennis Yee said that he thought it would be a good overlay piece because that was where zoning should match up with the 2040 Growth Concept.

Chris Deffebach said that the more valued employment areas show up higher in terms of property value and employment densities indices so they have a chance to be captured in the other measures; whereas industrial land without the policy would have fallen off. She said that the next meeting would be in October, followed by a meeting in December (possibly a joint meeting) and then another meeting in February. She said there was a possibility that they would need an extra meeting in November.

There being no further business before the committee, Acting Chair Deffebach adjourned the meeting at 4:03 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Kim Bardes

Council Office

ATTACHMENTS TO THE RECORD FOR SEPTEMBER 22, 2003

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