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HomeMy WebLinkAbout02/19/2008 Work Session City of Springfield Work Session Meeting MINUTES OF THE WORK SESSION MEETING OF THE SPRINGFIELD CITY COUNCIL HELD TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 19,2008 The City of Springfield Council met in a work session in the Jesse Maine Room, 225 Fifth Street, Springfield, Oregon, on Tuesday, February 19,2008 at 5:31 p.m., with Mayor Leiken presiding. ATTENDANCE Present were Mayor Leiken and Councilors Lundberg, Wylie, Ballew, Ralston, Woodrow and Pishioneri. Also present were City Manager Gino Grimaldi, Assistant City Manager Jeff Towery, City Attorney Joe Leahy, City Attorney Matt Cox, City Recorder Amy Sowa and members of the staff. 1. Classification and Compensation Study. Human Resources Director Bill Spiry thanked the Council for their discussion at the Goal Setting Session on February 11. He was excited to be part of a City that was going places and accomplishing great things. He noted the quality of employees at the City. The ability to recruit and keep the high quality employees was getting more difficult. He discussed the number of retirements the City would be experiencing and the current market of workers. Competition to recruit and retain those workers would be tough, as all organizations were facing the same challenges. Mr. Spiry presented the staff report on this item. Council has authorized funding for consultant services in the 2008 fiscal year to conduct a compensation & classification study for the City. During the budget process Council requested that additional information be presented prior to commencement of the study to ensure that the objectives and focus of this project will align with City strategic objectives. I This presentation is intended to identify the objectives ofthe study, to describe the systems and issues to be addressed through the study, and to describe what the study will entail. The goals of this study are to update and redesign the position classification system, to redesign the compensation plan to most effectively support the strategic objectives of the City, and to establish salary ranges that are appropriately competitive with our comparable and relevant labor markets. The City has budgeted $100,000 in this fiscal year to cover the projected cost of contracting with a professional consultant to conduct the phases of the study. The last evaluation ofthe City's classification and compensation system was conducted over 25 years ago. This has resulted in a system that is inflexible, unresponsive to rapidly changing business need, and increasingly difficult and costly to administer. City of Springfield Council Work Session Minutes February 19,2008 Page 2 The last comprehensive review of salaries for non-union positions took place in 1995. Review of pay rates for unionized positions has been limited to collective bargaining and reactive job specific adjustments. The City has attempted to maintain total compensation rates (base pay plus the value of city paid fringe benefits) that are approximately equivalent to the average of comparable governmental agencies in the region. An adequate position classification system and competitive salary ranges are critical to attracting and retaining qualified employees. Attracting and retaining qualified employees is essential to providing quality services to the citizens of Springfield in the most cost effective manner. Depending upon the negotiated implementation approach, the possible cost of implementation beginning in FY 2010 could range from 2 percent to 4 percent of annual salary in addition to COLA based adjustments that may be necessary at the time of implementation. Mr. Spiry said staff was proposing a comprehensive evaluation of the systems, development of new or modified systems to meet those needs in classification and compensation, and implementation of those systems relevant to our labor markets. The project target date of implementation of the process was July of2009. Collective bargaining would be involved. He noted that both AFSCME and OPEU contracts expired in the Spring of2009. Council needed to make decisions regarding the system and the cost of implementing the system. He explained the decision points for the Council. Mayor Leiken said he appreciated the work staff had put forth on this topic. The City had put forth an aggressive agenda over the past decade and had accomplished many of the Council goals. The City had about 430 employees that had helped facilitate private investments of over $IB over the last decade. He noted that the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) had said there were only about seven certified surveyors under thirty years of age in Oregon. They were having to import surveyors from Canada and other areas because of the shortage. Council needed to ask what they wanted the community to continue to look like. The changes and growth happened because of Council's vision and the fact that the staff carried out those visions. They were complicated issues. As our City continued to grow, there would be a lot of big issues, and technical staff were needed to understand those issues. It was important to look at how the City could attract and keep employees here. People wouldn't get rich working in the public sector, but it needed to be fulfilling. He felt that most employees understood that and he appreciated that fact. He felt this report on this process was well done, and he appreciated that staff was looking into this. The City had some great accomplishments in economic development and was now looking at a lot of staff retiring that were involved in many of those accomplishments. Councilor Ballew asked if the cost raise shown on the chart for one year would be accumulative as people went into new payscales. Mr. Spiry said that was correct. Councilor Ballew said when going through the job descriptions, it would be good to have someone in the City looking at those descriptions to make sure they reflected the actual job done. City of Springfield Council Work Session Minutes February 19, 2008 Page 3 Mr. Spiry said that was true. In the second phase of the project when they did the job analysis, they would include that type of study for efficiencies. Councilor Pishioneri said he thought this was long overdue. He asked how many job descriptions were currently in place. Mr. Spiry said there were about 115 classifications for 430 positions. Councilor Pishioneri supported this, but understood there was anxiety about this for the employees. Councilor Wylie said she thought it was a good idea. She felt it was something that needed to be done. As an employer of 140 people, she understood the need for equity between positions. Meeting those needs was difficult. An overall study would benefit everyone, would be more fair, and would put the City in a better position to recruit. She was appreciative of this work. Mayor Leiken noted the mobile generation and said it was a reality. He hoped employees would stay here for a long time, but it was hard to guarantee that. Councilor Ballew said classification and compensation was key to employee recruitment and retention, but was not the whole package. Job satisfaction and corporate culture were also factors. Mayor Leiken asked Mr. Spiry to address the potential for outsourcing. He said a good example was with the engineers. Taxpayers' money would have a challenging time attracting certain engineers that could make a lot more in the private sector. Mr. Spiry said the first focus of the study was what the City was doing now and what needed to be done. After those were laid out, they would look at resources and determine how to align resources up to accomplish what needed to be done. Some outsourcing was being done currently out of necessity because positions weren't getting filled. Councilor Lundberg said she knew staff was looking for direction from Council regarding the four options in the agenda packet. She was looking to the rest of the Council for their thoughts. Councilor Ralston said he had worked at FarWest Steel for 23 years and had not received more than a one and a half percent raise in any year. Going forward with the Classification and Compensation study was important, but he wanted it heavily compared to the private sector. The benefits and pay raises for City employees were exceeding revenues coming in. The City also needed to maintain roads and buildings. At some point, they needed to be fiscally responsible because the Council was elected to represent the constituents rather than City employees. He hoped that part of the study indicated there were many jobs at the City that were over paid, that could be reduced over a phased approach. This was all in an effort to be fiscally responsible. The City employees needed to be part ofthe solution, or positions or services would be cut. He suggested going forward with the full study in Option 1, but he wanted to see the numbers and comparisons before moving forward. City of Springfield Council Work Session Minutes February 19,2008 Page 4 Councilor Woodrow thanked Mr. Spiry for the work done on this already. There were a lot of things to look at, and he was sure staff would look at those things and bring back additional information to the Council. He was fme with Option 1. Councilor Lundberg said the Council wanted to go forward with the entire study (Option 1), look at those results and make decisions based on those results. Councilor Ballew said she was most interested in knowing what the City would be committing to financially based on the results of the study. Mr. Grimaldi said award of the contract with the consultant would be the next action on this item. Councilor Pishioneri said this project would be difficult. The message they needed to send out to the citizens was that we were looking at taking care of the City as well as the employees. It would be bittersweet on many levels, but something needed to be done. 2. Continuation of Pioneer Parkway EmX 30 % Design Corridor Review. Transportation Manager Tom Boyatt presented the staff report on this item. On February 4, 2008 the Council was presented with the EmX 30% Plans corridor review to highlight the proposed treatment of issues including but not limited to impacts to private properties, loss of on-street parking, and changes to the Pioneer Parkway and International Way corridors. Due to time constraints a number of issues were not reviewed with Council and will be addressed at this meeting, and possibly at one or more additional meetings as necessary. The issues not yet covered include project betterments to mitigate corridor wide operational impacts, signal operations and intersection designs, sight distance concerns at International Way/ Sports Way, mid-block station locations and treatment for pedestrians at these locations, and construction phasing. ODOT project issues to be addressed include the IGA between ODOT and LID, access management, lane geometries and widths, and bike lane connectivity. Please see Attachment A in the agenda packet for a list of the issues indicating what was covered on 2/4/08, and what remains to be covered. Please also refer to the AIS packet from 2/4/2008 for description of the issues, maps, and other graphics. Staff will pick up the discussion by quickly summarizing the issues addressed at the meeting on 2/4/08 and addressing any questions, before moving on to discuss project betterments, the balance of engineering issues and ODOT issues. Next steps will be for LID to submit 70 percent plans to staff, iron out any final details, and then prepare a 100 percent plan set for City PIP approval. Following PIP approval by the City Engineer, the project would begin construction. Construction is anticipated to occur in 2009 and 2010. Mr. Boyatt said during the February 4 meeting Council asked for more information from LTD on the property outreach and bus station locations on Gateway and Harlow Roads. Council could discuss that information first or wait until the other issues were addressed. A document addressing those issues was distributed by LTD. City of Springfield Council Work Session Minutes February 19,2008 Page 5 Councilor Pishioneri said he was not satisfied that all options had been considered regarding the crosswalk in the Pioneer Parkway section. He would like to see all options. The need for one of the lanes to go into the greenway had not been articulated to him and he didn't believe there was a need to use it. He wanted an option that did not cross the bike path. Stef Viggiano, Assistant General Manager from L TD, said the option not to cross the bike path was difficult. At some point, it would need to cross if Pioneer Parkway West was used. Councilor Pishioneri referred to the intersection at Pioneer Parkway and Q Street and could see that interchange occurring in that location. Mr. Viggiano said in the section north of where it crossed now, there were some very large trees on the west side. They wanted to stay away from the west side of the median so that made it a logical place to cross over to avoid those large trees and instead move over to the east side where the trees were smaller. Councilor Pishioneri asked why they couldn't have the busses travel in mixed traffic in that area. Mr. Viggiano said the goal was to have as many exclusive lanes as possible. Councilor Pishioneri said he would like to see additional alternatives. Councilor Wylie said there was a lot of discussion and concern about this during the February 4 meeting. Mr. Grimaldi asked if Council would like to see an option that took out larger trees, but avoided the crossing. No. Councilor Pishioneri said he would like them to explore other options. If they found nothing else worked, they would know they had done their due diligence. Mr. Boyatt clarified that it was an option to the southbound busway being west of the path. Council wanted to fmd a way to avoid the conflict if possible. Councilor Ralston said he missed the meeting on February 4. He noted that one of the first things he had opposed was the ErnX having as many exclusive lanes as possible. The primary transportation routes were for cars. They needed to share as many lanes as possible. He was not supportive of crossing the bikepath. Councilor Wylie said she felt very differently than Councilor Ralston on that issue. She believed it best to try to move the busses quickly and freely. She said the safety issues were the main concern at the last meeting. She hadn't heard anything that would guarantee safety at that crossing. She could support an alternative of either not going across the bikepath or the safety issue addressed. Councilor Lundberg confirmed this was a review of issues previously discussed. Yes. City of Springfield Council Work Session Minutes February 19,2008 Page 6 Councilor Ralston said most of the route was not exclusive lanes. There needed to be another way to address this issue. Councilor Lundberg restated that this issue needed further work to address the safety concerns at the crossing. Mr. Boyatt asked if Council had further discussion on the first four key issues. There was none. Mr. Boyatt referred to the Council Briefing Memorandum from the February 4 agenda packet, page 2 of 4, which included discussion of project betterments. They were looking at a corridor impact mitigation approach that balanced the operational impact of having the EmX system on the streets and going thorough traffic lights, taking up green time with improvements to the roadway network. Staff had focused on the most congested point of the corridor going north/south, near the Q Street interchange with Pioneer Parkway. Mr. Boyatt said that Brian Barnett, Traffic Engineer, had some ideas and former Councilor Fitch had also relayed some ideas at the Pioneer Parkway sub-committee meeting. There were some changes that L TD could implement as part of this project that could add value to the system. The City's focus now was on the north side of Highway 126, where the Q Street dogleg exit came in at the intersection. Staff was looking into adding a dedicated right turn lane there so the right turners would be pulled out of the through bound north traffic. Some other adjustments on the north side of the intersection could be made to allow left turns going south to east and left turns going north to west could run at the same time. Now they each had to take turns because of the configuration of the intersection. He asked Council if staff was on the right track in terms of betterments and if Council was comfortable letting staff negotiate those betterments with LTD. Councilor Pishioneri said traffic going westbound on Q Street approaching Pioneer Parkway East was narrowed down to a single lane at the Hwy. 126 offramp. There was a safety area painted there that was ballooned out to the west of that intersection that prevented cars from queuing in to the southbound turn from Q Street. There was an island to the east of that which took a lot of property that could potentially include a second lane towards 5th Street. He noted the backed up traffic in that area. Brian Barnett, Traffic Engineer, addressed Councilor Pishioneri's question. He said that was complimentary to one of the ideas included in the packet of making a curbside lane a through and right shared lane on Pioneer Parkway. That would alleviate some of that congestion. Mr. Boyatt said part ofthe challenge was that there wasn't enough green (traffic light) time to queue up in that area. Councilor Pishioneri said that was true, but if they had double the capacity in that area, they - could get twice the traffic through the light in the same amount of time. Councilor Ballew asked about pedestrian traffic there. Mr. Barnett said there were signalized pedestrian crossings at the offramp and intersection. Councilor Ralston agreed that the betterment would help with traffic flow. City of Springfield Council Work Session Minutes February 19,2008 Page 7 Councilor Lundberg said anything that could improve that intersection would be appreciated. Coupcilor Pishioneri said he would like to see updates as options were formed. Councilor Lundberg noted the property in that area that was unused. Mr. Boyatt said he believed that anything in the four corners around that interchange was State owned. Jeff Lange from ODOT said that would be his assumption as well. Councilor Lundberg asked what ODOT was planning to do with that land. Mr. Lange said if it was used for highway betterment, ODOT would be supportive. Mayor Leiken asked about money dedicated to Q Street through the PeaceHealth agreement. Mr. Boyatt said they had already made improvements to the eastbound offramp second lane. He explained those improvements. Mr. Boyatt said the last issue was the pedestrian activated signal crossing south ofthe roundabout. He said it had not been fully investigated, but staff recognized it was not something Council wanted to see in the initial roll out of the project. He had included that if there was some type of problem that developed in that area, it could be revisited regar:ding safety concerns. It was proposed to be about 200 feet south of the roundabout. He explained the reasoning for originally putting the signal in that location. Councilor Woodrow asked ifthere was currently a stop at Pioneer Parkway at that location. Mr. Viggiano said they used the stop on 5th Street for that area. There was limited service on Pioneer Parkway. Councilor Woodrow asked what evidence prompted putting a station there. Mr. Viggiano said the idea was to serve the residential areas to the east and west of Pioneer Parkway. Councilor Woodrow asked if there was no place on the north side of Harlow to accommodate those residents. Mr. Boyatt said that area was blocked in by the soundwall and the approach to the roundabout. Councilor Woodrow would like more information on why that site was chosen for a station. He had concerns about pedestrian crossing, especially those that were handicapped. Mr. Boyatt said that 200 feet to the south represented the peak hour queuing that could be caused by the pedestrian activation of that signal. City of Springfield Council Work Session Minutes February 19,2008 Page 8 Councilor Woodrow said that it seemed like a signalized pedestrian stop would be the same as a signalized stop at that intersection. Mr. Barnett said the pedestrian crossing time was shorter than a crossing to service vehicles in a full intersection. The crossing of Pioneer Parkway would be approximately 30 feet, rather than the width of the full intersection, which would be 70-90 feet. The pedestrian crossing would be much shorter in this mid-block section. The pedestrian crossing would remain green until a pedestrian activated it. Councilor Ralston asked where the signal would be located. Mr. Boyatt said it would be back where the crosswalks were located by station. There could be one on one or both sides. Councilor Ralston questioned the need for stations in that location. He said he hated to see traffic get stopped there when people were used to moving. He asked if it would be a short signal. Mr. Barnett said the technology on how they would signalize that was yet to be determined. He explained the options and noted that staff was still researching the options. He noted that the location ofthe signal being about"200 feet from the roundabout crosswalk would be an unexpected location for a signal. Councilor Ralston asked if there was a proposal for both north and south sides. Mr. Boyatt said both sides were no longer proposed. If they experienced trouble at that location, they could come back to study it further. Mayor Leiken asked how long the signalized crosswalk had been in use in Tucson, Arizona. Mr. Barnett said about ten years and it was being proposed for inclusion as a standard. Portland had a couple, but no other cities in Oregon. Mayor Leiken noted the difference in populations between those cities and Springfield. He said it was challenging to educate people on something new, but it was fine to look at it. Mr. Viggiano said there was an existing pedestrian crossing there, so they were amenable to trying it to see if it worked. Councilor Lundberg said she was glad to hear that because it was a difficult task to educate people about the roundabout. The roundabout did naturally slow traffic down and was safer for pedestrians. People would need to go to the roundabout to get to and from the station anyway, and traffic would be slower at the roundabout than 200 feet prior. She preferred not having an additional signal, but to work with the signal already there or add an additional mechanism for pedestrians. Councilor Woodrow reiterated his concerns about a crosswalk on the south side of Harlow Road. He explained. Putting a stop in that location didn't make sense to him. City of Springfield Council Work Session Minutes February 19,2008 Page 9 Mr. Viggiano said there was an existing multi-use path at that point and pedestrians were being encouraged to access that path. The only two crossings to access that multi-use path were at the roundabout and at Q Street. Councilor Woodrow said traffic going south on Pioneer Parkway West were accelerating along that stretch of road. Mr. Viggiano said that crossing would not be on the next set of drawings. Mr. Boyatt referred to the engineering issues (1, 2, 3,5 and 6) listed on Attachment A. Signal operations and intersection designs would be something that staff would deal with in the normal process. The turning movements at International Way/Sports Way related to the station in that location and was a decision site distance issue, and staff felt they could come up with a form of traffic control to address that issue. Utility plans would need to be shown, and would be LTD's decision when and how to locate utilities as long as relocation didn't adversely affect the City. He referred to the path and lighting issues. The mid-block pedestrian crossings at International Way had been resolved. He asked if Council wanted to discuss the station locations now or after the ODOT issues were discussed. Mayor Leiken asked to work on the ODOT issue first. Mr. Boyatt asked if Council had looked at the ODOT issues and if they had comments about those issues. He referred to the access management strategy and how that related to combining driveways downtown. Jeff Lange, Project Leader from ODOT, said access management was problematic on all projects. An access subteam had been put together which included L TD representatives, ODOT representatives, Springfield representatives and a Lane County representative. This subcommittee was tasked with coming up with an access management strategy for safety purposes. That was not complete yet, but the team met and conceptually agreed on a direction. They would be focusing only on things where they could make a difference, such as curbs moving on Pioneer Parkway East and West, adjacent to Main Street. McKenzie Mist and Willamette Valley Awards were the businesses they could need access changes. L TD had been out to discuss these possibilities with the property owners. Mayor Leiken asked what was meant by modified. Mr. Lange said they were looking at combining the two accesses on Pioneer Parkway East into McKenzie Mist to make a decent sized approach. ODOT felt it could be beneficial for both the business and the project. Lisa VanWinkle, Assistant to the Project and Public Outreach (LID); said she had spoken with the son of the owner of the Willamette Valley Award property. The proposal from ODOT to close the access from Pioneer Parkway West, would leave them with only access on Main Street. The owner was opposed to that change. They were continuing to discuss. The owner of the McKenzie Mist property, was currently not happy with a consolidated access from two points to one point from Pioneer Parkway. Further discussions were underway. City of Springfield Council Work Session Minutes February 19,2008 Page 10 Councilor Pishioneri said if the access was closed into Willamette V alley Awards from Pioneer Parkway, that would affect where the customer would need to go when exiting the property. Ms. VanWinkle said the property owner felt the entrance on Main Street was relatively narrow. The business owner also noted how difficult it was for a vehicle to enter that access if another vehicle was trying to exit that same access. The McKenzie Mist owners and business tenant were initially willing to consider a consolidated access and had asked to see a diagram, which was prepared. She didn't know how the business owner felt, but the property owner had said he had changed his mind and no longer wanted to consider that. The L TD position was to help the property owners and business owners talk with ODOT about their concerns. It would be an ODOT decision. Mr. Lange said they had proposals and were doing some fact finding to determine which issues to address. Their goal was to come out with something that was reasonable for the properties. Councilor Ralston asked if those were the only access conflicts on the whole route. Mr. Lange said ODOT was only working on those along Main Street. Councilor Lundberg said that included the route from the station down to the northern right-of- way edge of the Q Street intersection at Pioneer Parkway. She asked if there were other access issues at the Gateway/Beltline point. Mr. Boyatt said the current drawings didn't conflict with any driveways on the International Way segment, the Harlow Road segment or the Gateway segment. There was the station location issue at EICharro Restaurant. He said Mr. Barnett would discuss station locations. He discussed a particular issue near Pheasant and Laura Streets. He said the only other warning was whether or not ODOT would be asking for bike lanes along Pioneer Parkway. He said it seemed redundant to staff because we already had a multi-use pathway along that entire corridor. That could be a location where flexing in the standards made sense. Mr. Lange said he would be meeting with some of the decision makers from ODOT, LTD and would talk with folks at Springfield, to discuss design issues now rather than waiting until they were at seventy percent plans. Part of that would include what they could do within their (ODOT's) standards and what would require design exceptions. That discussion would include bike connectivity. There was a wide footprint now, and ODOT was concerned about using every inch of that without allowing bike routes. Mayor Leiken said he wanted Springfield staff to be involved in that discussion as we moved forward on urban renewal for downtown. This was part of a larger strategy for the downtown corridor. Mr. Boyatt said Kristi Krueger, as the project manager, would be there as a manner of course, but he could also attend. Councilor Lundberg recapped the ODOT issues. She said there were owners that were not happy with the current access scenarios, so resolution was needed on those issues. Council would need City of Springfield Council Work Session Minutes February 19,2008 Page 11 to know ongoing progress on those. The City currently had a multi-use path, so there was no need for a new bike path. She noted that ingress and egress were key to many businesses. To revitalize downtown, successful businesses needed to be encouraged and they didn't want to destroy businesses in the process. It was important to solve those issues and she said it was important for staff to participate and keep Council informed of the progress. Owners and tenants were not always on the same page. Mr. Grimaldi noted that Council was almost out of time. Councilor Ralston suggested continuing the discussion to another time. Councilor Lundberg agreed and said there were still a lot of concerns about pedestrian safety and a lot of issues out on International Way. Mr. Grimaldi went over some options fortheir continued discussion. They could either continue this discussion during their joint meeting with LTD on February 25, although he would not recommend it for a joint meeting. March 10 could be the next available time to bring it back to Council during a work session. Councilor Lundberg said they needed enough time to get some of these issues resolved as discussion was ongoing now. Council wanted the EmX to be a complimentary service to the downtown and Gateway. To make the project what everyone wanted was the ultimate goal. They needed time for Council and L TD to talk to everyone. Councilor Woodrow thanked Mr. Viggiano and the L TD staff for being patient. The magnitude of what they were doing was not lost on the Council nor the benefit to the community. They wanted to make sure everything was right the first time. Mayor Leiken noted that tentatively March 10 would be the continuation of this discussion. ADJOURNMENT The meeting was adjourned at 6:57 pm. Minutes Recorder - Amy Sowa <' Attest: