ECONOMIC TECHNICAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE MEETING RECORD

October 20, 2003 – 2:00 p.m.

Metro Regional Center, Council Chamber

Committee Members Present: Al Burns, Cindy Catto, Jim Labbe, Terry Morlan, Patty McCoy, Noelwah Netusil, Dennis Yee

Also Present: Chris Eaton, Mary Gibson, Martha Johnston, Ed MacMullan

Metro Staff Present: Kim Bardes, Chris Deffebach, Natasha Ernst, Paul Garrahan, Paul Ketcham, Gina Whitehill-Baziuk

Acting Chair, Chris Deffebach, called the meeting to order at 2:06 p.m.

1.  MEMBER SELF-INTRODUCTIONS

Those present introduced themselves.

Martha Johnston, East Columbia Neighborhood Association, said that she and her group would liked to have been informed of more meetings. She said that they felt that the public component of the process hadn’t been sufficient. She said that the valuation of residential properties was rather low and that should be changed.

2.  APPROVAL OF MINUTES: June 16, July 28, and September 22, 2003.

There were not enough members to form a quorum and therefore the approval of minutes was deferred to the next meeting.

3.  RESOLUTION NO. 03-3376

Acting Chair Chris Deffebach gave a status report on the outreach efforts for the ESEE process. She said that there would be a more intense outreach effort in the spring when Council got closer to selecting a program option for further development. She said that MTAC had recommended comments/issues to be forwarded to MPAC, and that Goal 5 TAC had issued recommendations that would go back to Council. ETAC comments would also get included in the staff report and forwarded to Council. Exhibit A included the ESEE Executive Summary, the full ESEE Report, and the addendum. She said that the type of comments that had come up so far were whether there was adequate consideration of ESEE consequences of allowing, limiting, or prohibiting development on transportation facilities or other infrastructure and security. Whether Metro’s method of ranking economic priority left out the public and private institutions such as colleges, institutions, and hospitals. What had Metro staff done with values of vested property rights, were those accounted for properly? Had they adequately addressed the consequences affecting redevelopment? She asked the members if there were any comments or concerns pertaining to the ESEE Analysis report or the Executive Summary.

Jim Labbe was concerned that important ecosystems services were fully captured and properly accounted for. He offered to provide his concerns and ideas in writing.

4.  IEAB COMMENTS

Noelwah Netusil reviewed the IEAB comments and memorandum, which were included in the meeting packet and form part of the record.

Chris Deffebach thanked Noelwah Netusil for taking all the comments from IEAB and summarizing them for ETAC.

Terry Morlan asked if Chris Deffebach was going to use the individual comments or the summary.

Chris Deffebach said it would probably depend on what the Metro Attorney’s office recommended for the record. She asked Terry Morlan if when the IEAB commented that Metro overemphasized the positive values of ecological services relative to other potential effects did they mean those relative to open space amenity intrinsic or did they mean to urban development traditional value?

Terry Morlan said they meant the latter. He said he had tried to pull out all the areas that show how he formed that opinion in the comments.

Chris Deffebach said that the comments would be included in a revision of the report. She said that when it went before Council it would include the original report, the comments that had been submitted, and how staff intended to address those comments.

Cindy Catto asked if on October 30^th, when Council made its final decision on the resolution, they would also give direction on what input they think would be germane and the modifications that they thought should be made.

Patty McCoy asked if they would actually be taking public comment on October 30^th and integrating it into the record.

Chris Deffebach said that they would take the record and add that public comment.

Patty McCoy said that two things she said that still wasn’t in the report which she knows was mentioned at meetings and in the minutes 1) public investment and infrastructure, specifically in the corridor didn’t get properly weighted because of the absence of property tax values, and 2) industrial areas/regionally significant industrial areas were dealing with different densities in employment which didn’t get weighted in as important a way. She did not feel that they had adequately covered the multiplier effect.

Chris Deffebach said that both of those points would come up again when they were talking about taking the urban development values and applying them to policies.

Patty McCoy said that some of the work was happening simultaneously. The River Economic and Industrial Advisory Group had an incredibly impressive document on the Portland Harbor and industrial land, which was created almost simultaneous to the work on the ESEE. It needed to be considered in the literature review.

Chris Deffebach asked Patty McCoy if when she said how Metro rated the public infrastructure did she mean how they accommodated the value of roads.

Patty McCoy said it was not just roads but public lands such as port properties, drainage district properties, including transportation infrastructure. She said that the corridor was unique and had impact on the rest of the region. Those special qualities need to get proper weight in the maps.

Terry Morlan said that had been mentioned before and that the whole concept of using the 2040 Design Concepts was to correct these values.

Patty McCoy said that the 2040 Design Concept made an attempt but fell short in assessing the proper economic weighting for the contribution of that property to the economics of the region.

Cindy Catto said it was further muddied as you get into Exhibit B programs because now the 2040 Design Types were muddied by distinguishing between regionally significant industrial land and industrial land.

Patty McCoy said it seemed to be going in that direction, but it also seemed that many members did not want to support that direction.

Al Burns said it was important to explain how and why they set the markers for low, medium and high both for the economic side and the environmental side because that could be the key decision in the entire Goal 5 process. He said it was very important to qualify how the markers were set. Was the process an analytical method that had yet to be applied or an applied analysis?

Chris Deffebach said a lot of it was analytical method, but the allow, limit, prohibit, was an application of the key points.

Al Burns asked applied to what geography: the jurisdictional boundary?

Chris Deffebach said it applied to the whole region inside Metro’s jurisdictional boundary and 1-mile beyond.

Al Burns said he did not feel that that was an analysis within the meaning of Statewide Goal 5 because analyses were supposed to be applied to resource sites or adjoining resource site or resource sites that shared zoning characteristics.

Chris Deffebach said that they had broken it out by zoning characteristics in the tables. It was broken out by environmental quality in the tables and it made reference to the economic priorities on the tables.

Al Burns asked if it was an attempt to apply the same methodology to smaller geographies.

Chris Deffebach said that they anticipated evaluating some elements of the analysis at the resource site level next time.

Al Burns said that ETAC was more generous on how they applied analytical method to resource sites. Originally it was one analysis-one site, now they could be combined functionally or by geography. It was still clear that they would have to define sites before they applied the analysis and he said he thought they might be out of sequence on that part of the process. An analytical method that did not include the identity of the resource sites was not a complete methodology.

Paul Garrahan said that they had defined the sites and analyzed them in terms of zoning characteristics. The more recent Goal 5 rule gave more flexibility for similarly situated sites. This analysis both set out a methodology to do further work, and also did the macro level analysis based on the zoning types and the effect of the ecological values.

Al Burns said it might be useful, but also might be completely gratuitous.

Paul Garrahan said that they were talking about going into a watershed.

Al Burns said there were 27 watersheds, all or parts thereof, in the jurisdictional boundary.

Paul Garrahan said that they would take a more detailed look at that and he said he felt they had done was consistent with the Goal 5 rule. He said he thought that in the end they would have a product that was more detailed than required by the rule.

Al Burns said that what the analysis itself would be applied to at a future date was also an important element of the methodology.

Paul Ketchum said that they had identified resource sites in the inventory process. There were 27 resource sites defined by watershed boundaries. He said that the question was when would they bring back that geographical aggregation into the ESEE analysis? He said that the next phase was an opportunity to bring those resource sites and define data and the analysis at the resource site level.

Jim Labbe said he was concerned about the question of changing the component summary development categories. He said it would significantly affect how each of the program 2 options affected resource land on the landscape. One of the major concerns of the Goal 5 TAC was whether there were enough program options to adequately address the overall role and continuity of ecological functions. If there were more changes in terms of ranking development value of the program options then they needed to have an open forum discussion with all members.

Chris Deffebach introduced discussion on Exhibit B and program options.

Al Burns said that their charge had been to produce an analytical method. He said that he felt they had created a good one.

Chris Deffebach agreed that that was the charge. She said that Metro staff had thought that the committee might want to see how the analytical method was supposed to be applied.

5.  NEXT STEPS

Al Burns said that they should talk about whether or not they were done or whether the charge had changed for ETAC.

Chris Deffebach said that this was the last scheduled meeting for ETAC and she thought that the committee might like to comment on how it was applied to the program options. She said that there would be two meeting where the Goal 5 group, ETAC, and the social committee to update the progress evaluation of the options in December and the results in February. They did need to rethink the whole advisory committee structure as they moved into program development.

Al Burns suggested that Metro might want a different mix of advisors.

Chris Deffebach said that they were working on that.

Jim Labbe said that it was a little thin as to why that method was chosen to combine the various economic measures for development value. He said that it would be good to flush that out.

Chris Deffebach said that it tied back to the method of having three different measures to catch different definitions of economic value.

Paul Ketcham said it tied back to the National Resource Center. A habitat of concern could be a low scoring riparian area, but habitat of concern would get elevated to high category of protection. The rationale applied to the inventory was applied to the economic side.

Al Burns said that they would have to carefully document why they set the markers.

Patty McCoy said that after considerable discussion, and even with how abstract it was, they had reached the best possible conclusion.

Al Burns said that they had used three lenses: property value, employment, and ability to achieve preferred future urban form. He said that they agreed that just looking at one or two of those instances wouldn’t be enough. There were also some problems with doing a composite index.

Jim Labbe said that it didn’t seem like those concepts came through in the report.

Noelwah Netusil said that there should be a discussion on the sensitivity analysis. They could look at how drawing different breakpoints might change their conclusions.

Chris Deffebach said that the more people to review the report the more exceptions to the general methodology seemed to appear. She said ETAC support for the overall methodology was a good thing. Any standard regional methodology that they came up with would have to deal with exceptions.

Cindy Catto said that what may not score highly at regional level, might do well on a jurisdictional level.

Chris Deffebach reviewed the options as outlined in the materials included in the packet. Those materials are attached and form part of the record.

Patty McCoy asked what comments Chris Deffebach had heard pertaining to perceptions of inadvertent discrimination with regard to very high value residential properties versus very low value residential properties.

Chris Deffebach said that the application of land value measure results in regulating single family residential differently because of land value. Economic value was really important to the economy for purposes of jobs, but residential land did not fit into that category. It had economic value but a lot of issues for single family residential were tied to the social effects of property rights and individual economic value and not as much for employment value. It was a good way to measure land value, but when it came to applying it to a policy or program, it might not translate as neatly.

Patty McCoy asked if the example was based on Dunthorpe area.

Chris Deffebach said yes, it was a good example.

Cindy Catto said that there were four regulatory options laid out in the report. The only one that seemed to truly answer why they were doing this was option 2. She wanted to know why they would pursue any of the other three program options and go to all the trouble to evaluate those program options when they didn’t seem to be based on the intended outcome. That intent was to create a fish and wildlife habitat program that balanced the value of saving habit versus the value of using that land for other purposes.

Al Burns said he agreed with Cindy Catto. He said that they began it to do a regional fish and wildlife protection program and while doing so they wanted to consider the effects on other values. The options seemed to be looking at the wrong things. It should be object driven, and then it could be run through the analytical method.

Cindy Catto said that the report appeared to be a typical political solution.

Paul Garrahan said that Goal 5 directed that they cast a broad net in making a decision about what to do. The work was to try to narrow the concepts for a program approach and then take a more intensive ESEE look at those. He said that they did not know how much land fell into each category. It was too early to say that none of those approaches would be useful. He said that he thought the best course was to go out and do a study of all the options and then have the data prove that option 2 might have the best balance.

Patty McCoy asked if they expected that program option would include a blend when most appropriately applied.

Al Burns said that regardless of the method, it made no particular sense unless it was mapped to a particular geography that had a particular kind of resource and outcome.

Cindy Catto said that the other three options really didn’t make sense.

Patty McCoy said it was more litigation protection rather than a policy option. If the ESEE analysis did not get done thoroughly, meaningfully, and accurately then it opened Metro to litigation. She said she hoped that they wouldn’t put too much time on the comparative of the no-build scenario, but it was valuable to look at it. She suggested that the report state outright that the committee believed that they would end up with option 2 and that they would like to see Metro put the most effort into the analysis for that.

Paul Garrahan said that they would be collecting more specific information and still doing the balancing of all the ESEE factors. They needed to look at different approaches to be sure that when they made a decision it was based on the same level of specificity. They wanted to provide Council with options from which different pieces might be taken and conglomerated into a program.

Chris Deffebach said that Goal 5 TAC recommended a stronger version of option 2A.

Jim Labbe said that the concern with options 2a and 2b was that they could potentially fall short of the criteria and the overall goal of continuity and ecological function. They needed a stronger option that had a chance of reaching the goals of the vision statement.

Al Burns said that the next decision was to allow, limit, or prohibit conflicting uses. That was a decision that would be mapped, and after that Metro would devise programs to carry out those positions to limit or prohibit. There were multiple ways of carrying out those positions. He said that Metro was trying to blend the Goal 5 process and the NEPA process.

Patty McCoy asked if he felt if he was being asked to give input before having the knowledge of the other.

Al Burns said that Goal 5 would have them make the decision and then look at programs whereas NEPA would have you look at more realistic options before they made the decision. They do not blend well.

Terry Morlan said that when he reviewed the report he struggled with the relevance of options 1 and 3. It didn’t seem as though they took account of the ESEE analysis. He said that what he thought it came down to in the end was that option 2 made the role of ESEE explicit in the policy. He said it was a question of how clear was it that ESEE was part of the policy formulation.

Chris Deffebach asked the members what they would like her to carry forward as the ETAC recommendation?

Cindy Catto said that Terry Morlan’s explanation was the best.

Chris Deffebach repeated what she thought they wanted carried forward as: option 1 & 3 were not relevant; option 2 made explicit the result of ESEE analysis so far.

Patty McCoy said it made explicit that the ESEE analysis would occur. It also meant that it had to be positioned in the front room and not behind the scenes. She expressed concern that it would be made a “backroom” activity.

Terry Morlan said he thought that there was room for more options under #2. He said that option 2A was a good way to lay it out, but they should look at different levels within that.

Al Burns said it would be a good blending of the Goal 5 and the NEPA approach.

Patty McCoy said that the on the higher-level, property owners wanted to know what they would get for protection of their property. Depending on what value was placed on the allow, limit, or prohibit, they were losing the ability to decide the intended use of their property. It was an issue of compensating people for what they were losing. She expressed concern about ending up with a regulation that assumed that everyone was a poor steward of his or her property.

Chris Deffebach said that staff was working on the non-regulatory part of the report. She said that Metro had a couple of interns working on the non-regulatory program options over the summer and that staff had revised that page and wanted to offer it as a staff revised recommendation. She said that they wanted to take out the low, medium, and high references and identify non-regulatory and existing programs. The report also discussed the role of non-regulatory programs in restoration.

Jim Labbe said that there was concern for public trust values in those lands. He said that if they approached anyone with the attitude that they would take away property they would object.

Chris Deffebach said that they did hear from property owners who did want more regulation so that their neighbors would take better environmental care of their property. She asked if a stronger option 2a would address Jim Labbe’s concerns.

Jim Labbe said that option 1a had the best chance of achieving the minimum requirements outlined in table 7.

Cindy Catto said that that option was in violation for the whole premise of an ESEE analysis.

Noelwah Netusil said that each option would add more environmental protection.

Jim Labbe said that option 2a seemed to be skewed away from the vision statement. He said that they could do away with the prohibit option and still make the Goal 5 rule.

Paul Garrahan said that there was enough information in the first level of the ESEE analysis to draw the conclusion that balancing the economic effect would be too great if you applied the prohibit option everywhere. The economic, social, and energy considerations together outweigh the environmental benefits.

Noelwah Netusil asked about what “other” meant in the option 2 table.

Chris Deffebach said that it meant “and other areas outside of the UGB that don’t have 2040 designations.” Some of the areas that were brought in did have 2040 designations so staff would have to look more closely at that consideration.

Noelwah Netusil suggested a 5^th column for that chart to illustrate the difference between “other” and “parks.” She also said that for table 7 economic equity wasn’t listed whereas intergenerational equity was listed under social factors. She said that these two items were different and they should be distinguished.

Terry Morlan asked if higher market value areas were protected or developable. He said the language in that section was a little confusing. He said that the measure was okay; it was the direction they needed to consider.

Patty McCoy said that she was wondering on option 2 when they talk about key employment areas being served, was it the current number of jobs or capacity of future jobs, or was it both?

Al Burns said that before they make a decision they were supposed to look at the individual geography and not at the general scope.

Terry Morlan asked if geography would include land that got a high ranking on employment category.

Al Burns said it would be an outcome rather than an input. How much to be protected would be an input, the output would be what affects that amount of protection would have on assessed value, employment density, and ability to meet the desired 2040 form.

Patty McCoy said that they were talking about a regional level ESEE analysis, though.

Al Burns said that a regional ESEE analysis would not inform either a good decision or any decision, because they were supposed to be making decisions about specific places.

Patty McCoy said that if a certain 2040 area had a current spec for job creation capacity of 135, 000 and right now due to where it was in the current growth curve, plus economic impact, do they look at the economic impact from a Goal 5 protection standpoint from a full 135,000 job potential or only at 88,000 jobs that were there now.

Al Burns said they look at the 88,000 for sure and then at the potential for polluting that tied in best with the build out value.

Chris Deffebach said she would like to make sure they were able to report back comments to Council. She reviewed some of the major points that would be included and reported back.

Cindy Catto said that pertaining to option 2, in ETAC’s work creating the component map for the economic analysis was based on a different hierarchy than the primary, secondary, and tertiary that was indicated in the current report. Council had made that decision but it had not been vetted by ETAC. She said that violated the recommendation that ETAC was making of the overlay of regionally significant industrial areas. She said it set that primary area and moved other industrial areas down to a secondary area, and that created complications for intermodal facilities that don’t show up anywhere because they were half and half. Which resulted in the same kind of confusion that was raised over the facilities that don’t show any value.

Al Burns said that her point had been brought up at a previous meeting but that they had run out of time to discuss it in-depth.

Cindy Catto said that it might not make any difference on the mapping, but it hadn’t been mapped in that particular way. Until she saw a map of that iteration, she has some concern.

Paul Ketcham said that one potential response to that was that they could divide a high priority category, create a special subcategory for regionally significant industrial areas, and other industrial areas would still remain in the high priority, but they leave the option available for different treatments.

Cindy Catto said that she had no problem, during the program phase, of designating a regionally significant industrial area would get two stars and an industrial area would only gets one, but they are both high priority from an economic standpoint.

Chris Deffebach asked if she wanted to carry that forward.

Cindy Catto said that everything in the report put industrial land in the high priority.

Patty McCoy said it set up a conflict to have the definition get changed in another environment.

Paul Ketcham asked if they were making a recommendation.

Al Burns said he was uncomfortable with applying the transportation hierarchy of design types to weigh economic value. He suggested that maybe it should be the regionally significant in the top category and industrial in the middle and that employment areas and corridors ought to get promoted up to the middle.

Cindy Catto said that the problem was that they did not know how the other options mapped out. She said that the component map intuitively mad a lot of sense. It might not, however, make sense when they got down to more jurisdictional distinctions. She said that she did not want Council to introduce a different analysis just because they wanted to accommodate the people who did not like the Title 4 changes.

Terry Morlan said that they needed to expand the range on the environmental side.

Al Burns said they had discussed having more sub-options under option 2.

Chris Deffebach asked about employment centers and corridors option.

Terry Morlan said his impression was that the reason they had put the 2040 concept in was specifically because of concern about undervalue in industrial lands.

Patty McCoy said there had been recent discussion about further breaking down values of industrial land within the industrial categories in 2040.

Chris Deffebach asked if it was fair to say that ETAC’s work looked at trying to map the different hierarchy and that the decision was made that it wasn’t vetted through ETAC to overlay the RSIA and create complications for intermodal facilities that which were half and half. That they did not know how the RSIA would map and that there could be other economic values that they did not know about.

Al Burns said it was about where they set the markers and being careful why they say they set them as they did.

Patty McCoy said that Portland was very thorough in its assessment of land values, it was the other jurisdictions that were in a quandary about what RSIA meant to them.

Chris Deffebach said that she would bring the comment forward: to be careful where they set the markers and why they were set.

Al Burns said that if the Metro Council were to set the markers differently from what ETAC recommended then it was their job to explain why.

Chris Deffebach thanked the committee for all their hard work.

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 OCTOBER 20, 2003

There were no attachments for this meeting.