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HomeMy WebLinkAbout05/16/2005 Work Session .t! . City of Springfield Work Session Meeting MINUTES OF THE WORK SESSION MEETING OF THE SPRINGFIELD CITY COUNCIL HELD MONDAY, MAY 16,2005. The City of Springfield council met in a work session in the Jesse Maine Room, 225 Fifth Street, Springfield, Oregon, on Monday, May 16, 2005 at 6:22 p.m., with Mayor Leiken presiding. ATTENDANCE Present were Mayor Leiken and Councilors Ballew, Ralston, Lundberg, Woodrow and Pishioneri. Also present were City Manager Mike Kelly, Assistant City Manager Cynthia Pappas, City Attorney Joe Leahy, City Recorder Amy Sowa and members of the staff. Councilor Fitch was absent (excused). 1. 1-5 Franklin Boulevard Interchange. Transportation Manager Nick Amis presented the staff report on this item. ODOT has begun a transportation systems planning project for a future interchange at I-5 at Franklin Boulevard and seeks input from the metro cities and Lane County Board of Commissioners about how this work will proceed. The ODOT project manager will make the presentation at the work session. . ODOT has started a systems planning project to develop and evaluate interchange forms and locations for a possible I-5/Franklin interchange. At the same time, ODOT will begin an environmental study for the permanent I-5/Willamette River Bridge which must be completed by Fall of 2008 in order for construction of the bridge to occur by 2012. During the study and design of this permanent bridge, ODOT will also assess how different interchange forms can fit into the future bridge. Tbe purpose of the systems planning project is to develop different long range interchange forms 'and concepts that include cost estimates and implementation phasing. The preferred intercha.nge concept must be ultimately accepted by the Cities of Springfield and Eugene, Lane County, ODOT and Federal Highway Administration (FHW A). Acceptance from the metro jurisdictions and state and federal agencies includes the decision to begin amending TransPlan and the Regional Transportation Plan (RTP) to include an I-5/Franklin interchange. After the plan amendments, ODOT is committed to providing $2.75 million to fund an Environmental Impact Statement (ElS) for an interchange at I-5/Franklin. ODOT's consultants, CH2M Hill, conducted stakeholder interviews two months ago to gauge the level of community interest for an I-5/Franklin interchange. The interview format, questions, results, and participants are in Attachment B, included in the agenda packet. The systems planning project for the interchange will cost approximately $500,000 and take about a year. A technical and management committee has been created to work with ODOT and their consultants. Mr. Arnis introduced Tom Boyatt, Senior Region Planner from ODOT and their consultant Sam Seskin from CH2M Hill. . Mr. Boyatt said they were looking for council's support for Phase II. He said the Eugene Council met on Wednesday, May 11 and with one or two exceptions gave their approval to move ahead with this process. He referred to Mr. Seskin and his role in this project. He discussed other people working on this project. He said Mr. Seskin was the National Planning Manager for CH2M Hill. City of Springfield Council Work Session Minutes May 16, 2005 Page 2 . Mr. Boyatt said ODOT was proceeding with the OTIA bridge project. Mr. Boyatt gave a power point presentation regarding this project (a paper copy was included in the Agenda Packet). Phase I of the process was the ground check and the interviews done by the team. Results from those interviews were included in the Agenda Packet. That process was used to establish what the issues and support for the project were from members in the community. Mr. Boyatt described each phase: Phase I was scoping; Phase II was the decision process with approval by the jurisdictions leading to; Phase III was planning and analysis leading to TSPIRTP amendments; and Phase IV was the environmental document leading to a record of decision. He discussed meetings with the Springfield, Eugene and Lane County (SEL) group, the planning departments regarding pipeline projects and land use project, the FHW A to learn more about their standards for interstates and ODOT management. Mr. Boyatt said the technical analysis included the environmental scan, conceptual design, preliminary engineering, preliminary traffic analysis, and finance options. He described each step in this analysis as outlined in the agenda packet. Mr. Boyatt said five open houses were set with the Stakeholders. The Stakeholders included East Alton Baker Park CPC, Laurel Hill neighbors, Fairmont/University neighbors, Glenwood community and at council's request, Harlow neighbors. He explained the locations for each open house and said they were each open to anyone in the public. Mayor Leiken asked why Harlow Road was included. . Mr. Boyatt said the Harlow neighbors continued all the way to Alton Baker Park and some of those neighbors may be impacted. He said they had met with the Project Management Team three times over the course of the project. He said they would be meeting with the Planning Commissions at one joint meeting after the open houses. He said there would be two individual briefings with the city and county elected officials, other than tonight's meeting. He said they are just planning on one for now, but may need to meet twice. They will conduct two joint meetings with the represented elected officials and ODOT, the oversight committee. Mr. Boyatt described the proposed outcomes which would include approval or not from the three governments, a draft problem statement, documentation, and a build phase III work plan. Councilor Ralston asked when the replacement bridge would be built. Mr. Boyatt said it would be built in 2009. Councilor Ralston asked if that would give time for the Environmental Assessment (EA) if all jurisdictions approved. Mr. Boyatt said there should be time. He discussed the timing regarding the local plan amendment phase. He said the question would be whether or not there was one construction project or two and what it would mean if they were separated in time by a year or more. Both projects were being kept in close communication. The key would be to allow the span of the bridge to allow an offramp onto Franklin Boulevard. He said it would be better to put the ramp on the freeway rather than on the bridge in case changes were needed in the future to add capacity. . Councilor Ralston asked about the spacing distances between exits. City of Springfield Council Work Session Minutes May 16, 2005 Page 3 . Mr. Boyatt said the federal spacing distance was three miles. Mr. Arnis said urban areas were a little closer. There were ways to work around getting exceptions. Councilor Lundberg said she would opt to shorten the time frames. She said Joint Elected Officials (JEO) meetings were not that beneficial because each jurisdiction would make its own decision independently. She said having a joint meeting would not impact each jurisdiction's decision. She would prefer not having JEO meetings, but rather spending the time in the EA process. Mr. Boyatt said there would be no JEO meetings and only one Joint Planning Commission. The idea would be to come back to the councils. The joint meetings of elected officials would be a smaller group of representatives from each government entity meeting with ODOT. Councilor Ballew asked if an amendment could be made to the transportation plan and regional plan to put the project on the constrained list. Mr. Boyatt said that may not work regionally. He said Eugene was interested in the open public process and it made sense to ODOT as the project team to do the groundwork within the community at the front end to keep it moving better on the back end. . Councilor Lundberg said there would be issues at the beginning that would be there until the end. She agreed that the Beltline/I-5 was a good example. Mr. Boyatt said there were opponents and concerns. He said the best way for the team to deal with that was to walk them through the process and try to address some concerns at the beginning. Mayor Leiken said Springfield staff including Nick Arnis, Mike Kelly and Greg Mott had been the leader in working with ODOT on this issue. Councilor Lundberg said a stakeholder group was extremely important. She said it was important to include people with different perspectives and opinions. Mr. Seskin said that was the approach they planned to take. Mr. Boyatt said if the councilors had suggestions of people to include on the stakeholders group, to let him know. . Mr. Kelly said ODOT had done a great job of reaching out early. The two projects have had to be divided. It would be important not to have too much separation of time between the two projects. He discussed the meetings with the local stakeholders group and how those meetings could help with dispute resolution. There could be several ramp options and different people would have different opinions about each option. He talked about the final decision makers on the design option. He said it would be important to get input from the elected officials to monitor that so there was not a lack of consensus at the end when a decision was needed. He discussed the possibility of rule making by the Oregon Transportation Commission (OTC) regarding local match in the future and the possibility of the city having to fund a portion of the City of Springfield Council Work Session Minutes May 16,2005 Page 4 . project. He said the project needed to move as quickly as possible to shorten the break between the two projects. Mayor Leiken said the city was currently in a good position with our current representatives in Congress and the Senate. 2. Annexation of 0.33 Acres ofIndustrialProperty to the City of Springfield. Planning File LRP2005-00005 (Tumck Tonsh Investment Company. Applicant). Planner Jim Donovan presented the staff report on this item. The applicant/property owners are re-developing a 1.5 acre site in Glenwood for use as offices and warehouse space for Chambers Construction Company. A 0.33 acre portion of the larger site is not yet annexed to the City of Springfield. Pending annexation and concurrent site plan approval for the larger development area, the subject area will be used as a parking lot. The subject site abuts city limits and the remainder of the development site along its east boundary. Expedited processing by the Boundary Commission is requested to allow issuance of land use decisions and approval during this summer's construction season. . The City Council is authorized by ORS 1 99.490(2)(a)(B) to initiate annexation upon receiving consent in writing from more than halfthe owners and a majority of the registered electors residing in the territory proposed to be annexed (Le. double majority). Written consent from the owners' group has been obtained; there are no registered electors residing at the site. The city is authorized to request a 25 day processing time in accordance with ORS 199.466. The expedited Boundary Commission procedure includes notice to affected properties and agencies, a hearing and remonstrance period is provided upon request of an affected party. Availability of key urban services required by Section 6.030 of the Springfield Development Code and Metro Plan Policy 8.a., page II-B-4, including but not limited to fIre, police, sewer, water, streets and storm drainage, has been reviewed by staff. All services can be provided to the site in accordance with city codes during a concurrent application for Site Plan Review. Mr. Donovan said staff was currently finalizing the staff report for this item which would be brought to council for possible approval during tonight's Regular Session. Councilor Ballew said it seemed there were a lot of expedited processes coming forward. She said it seemed unnecessary if it was an added burden to our staff. Mr. Kelly acknowledged the number of expedited processes. Fees charged for the expedited process for staff time was doubled. Mr. Donovan said he had suggested the expedited Boundary Commission procedures for this property. Staff had performed a standard procedure. He said the expedited procedure at the Boundary Commission allowed them to go with a twenty-five day notice period and no hearing. It was a sixty day turnover on the Boundary Commission hearing so they did not have to wait for the next Regular Hearing. If a hearing was requested, they would be bumped onto that next calendar. This was done to assist the property owners to get final approval and construction as rapidly as possible. . City of Springfield Council Work Session Minutes May 16, 2005 Page 5 . ADJOURNMENT The meeting was adjourned at 6:53 pm. Minutes Recorder - Amy Sowa Attest: ~~" .Am.y SOvva City Recorder . .