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HomeMy WebLinkAbout10/18/2010 Work SessionCity of Springfield Work Session Meeting MINUTES OF THE WORK SESSION MEETING OF THE SPRINGFIELD CITY COUNCIL HELD MONDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2010 The City of Springfield Council met in a work session in the Jesse Maine Meeting Room, 225 Fifth Street, Springfield, Oregon, on Monday, October 18, 2010 at 6:00 p.m., with Mayor Leiken presiding: ATTENDANCE Present were Mayor Leiken and Councilors Ralston, Lundberg, Wylie, Simmons, and Pishioneri. Also present were City Manager Gino Grimaldi, Assistant City Attorney Mary Bridget Smith, City Recorder Amy Sowa, and members of the staff. . 1. Historic Commission Interview. City Planner and Historic Commission staff liaison Molly Markarian presented the staff report on this item. There was one vacancy on the seven-member Historic Commission. The recruitment'for this vacancy opened on September 1, 2010 and closed on October 6, 2010. One candidate applied: Kip Amend. Appointments to the Historic Commission must be confirmed during a Regular Session. Municipal Code Section 2.502 stated that the qualifications for membership on the Historic Commission include being appointees of Willamalane Park & Recreation District or Springfield School District #19; or specialists with expertise in the fields of architecture, history, architectural history, planning, or archeology who live within the Metropolitan Area General Plan boundaries; or residents, electors, or property owners within Springfield. The School District and Willamalane declined to appoint representatives to fill this vacancy. State and Federal funding of the City's historic preservation activities stipulated that a majority of the Commissioners have professional qualifications in a field related. to historic preservation. Four existing members possessed these qualifications. Mr. Amend also met the qualifications and standards set forth by the National Park Service regarding commissions. The vacancy on the Commission was the result of Commissioner Ted Corbin's second term expiring. Springfield City Council Operating Procedures Section IX, Subsection 3.7, stated that vacancies on commissions shall be filled as needed throughout the year as vacancies occurred. Springfield Municipal Code Section 2.504 stated that appointed members shall hold office for four years with the terms staggered to provide overlapping and continuity. The Mayor. and Council chose the questions they would ask of the applicant. Mayor Leiken welcomed Mr. Amend. . The Mayor and Council introduced. themselves to Mr. Amend, and then interviewed him. 1. Why are you interested in serving on the Historic Commission? (Mayor Leiken) 2. Being. a citizen of Eugene, why did you decide to come to Springf eld? (Joe Pishioneri) . 3. What initiatives are you interested in working on if you are appointed as a Commissioner? (Hillary Wylie) City of Springfield Council Work Session Minutes October 18, 2010 Page 2 4. Describe your familiarity with the City's historic resources. (Fred Simmons) . 5. What is it about Springfield's history that interests you most? (Dave Ralston) 6. Have you attended a Historic Commission meeting, and if so, what were your impressions from the meeting? (Christine Lundberg) Mayor Leiken asked if Mr. Amend had any questions of them. Mr. Amend said when he was working with the business people on the Main Street program 20+ years ago, there was a core group of downtown business people interested and involved. He hoped there was support for the Historic Commission and a working relationship with the downtown business owners. Ms. Markarian said Planning Supervisor Lirida Pauly had attended the last Historic Commission and talked about the commission's involvement with the Downtown District Plan. Mayor Leiken said the Council was very supportive of those efforts, especially in the last couple of years. 2. Springfield Transportation System. Plan (TSP) Update -Vision and Community Values and Interests. City Planner David Reesor and Transportation Manager Tom Boyatt presented the staff report on this item. The TSP update was intended to serve as a blueprint to guide future multi-modal transportation system improvements and investment decisions for the City of Springfield. Development of the TSP would be coordinated with and would support the City's recent residential and employment buildable lands analysis and adoption of a new urban growth boundary. On September 21St, 2010 the Planning Commission reviewed and discussed existing TransPlan goals, objectives and policies and considered their relevance to the new TSP update. The results of this Planning Commission exercise were presented to the Council for consideration during a work session on October 4th, 2010. Staff also presented an overview of the goal and~policy context for the Council at that time. In order to develop the larger policy framework for future Council and Planning Commission work sessions, staff proposed to have a .conversation with Council about those issues that would be most important to the community in terms of the multi-modal future transportation system. For example, the community value of preserving existing road surfaces to avoid high system replacement costs while constructing new streets to serve growth. Another example could be the value that the community places on a safe and integrated bicycle network in the context of green house gas scenario planning, access to affordable transportation, and the number of driveways (i.e. conflicts points) on a particular roadway. In many cases these may seem like simple questions on the surface, but often the more an issue was discussed the more the difficult trade-offs became apparent. . The October 4th PowerPoint presentation and existing TransPlan goals, objectives and policies were provided as attachments for Council reference. The resulting Council input would provide a beginning framework for the TSP Technical Advisory Committee during future policy development discussions. Additional opportunity for Council input would be provided at later stages in the process. Mr. Reesor said this was an opportunity for Council to focus on local values and interests. Their comments. would be relayed to the technical advisory committee and stakeholder advisory groups. City of Springfield - Council Work Session Minutes -- October 18, 2010 Page 3 . ~ . This was Springfield's first opportunity to delve into transportation issues locally for Springfield. He referred to charts on the -wall he would use' to track the Council's comments. Mr. Boyatt said when talking about local values, they were looking at community interests; problem areas, and Council thoughts on those things. Their input would help staff generate a policy set for discussion and modification as needed. That was why they started with the draft vision statement. The planning process would'map out what the City wanted to take care of over the 20-year planning period. He referred to examples listed that were ideas to get the conversation started. Mayor Leiken referred to the greenhouse gas emissions legislation which stated that Metropolitan Policy Organization's (MPO) "must" consider scenario planning, yet there was no funding from the State. He asked Mr. Boyatt for his interpretation of that bill. He would imagine the MPO's in Bend, Portland and Medford would all have different answers. He also asked Mr. Boyatt to comment on the integration of land use and transportation. The Department of Land Conservation and Development (DECD) was closing its Springfield office. He asked how that would affect Springfield. Springfield was trying to reach the goals of our city, yet was losing the support of DECD. Mr. Boyatt asked Assistant Public Works Director Len Goodwin for his thoughts on those questions. Mr. Goodwin said there was no certainty as to what scenario planning was in Oregon. Scenario planning in California may be a more robust planning regime, but could have no relevance in Oregon. Until the 2011 legislative session had an opportunity to try to understand what they meant when SB 1059 was put through, it was all. a very soft concept. Many of the issues were very ill-defined, such as the reality of the commute shed, which was not in line with the MPO boundaries. There was really no answer to the Mayor's question. Mayor Leiken said that was fine. He hoped to get better answers when the legislature met in the upcoming session. He felt this bill was written as a reaction. Mr. Boyatt said on the practical level, there was no choice unless there was funding for this work. There were higher priorities for our decreasing resources. There was a certain amount of good in this . effort. The Central Lane MPO had taken the scenario planning task seriously, and was working through a planning effort. Our ability to participate as staff., was extremely limited. The Federal Highway Administration (FHA), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Council of . Governments (COG) had put together a climate.change and scenario planning workshop. The city was getting pressure to begin working on this and had responded that we could begin when resources were ° available. They also questioned the true meaning of the bill before moving too far forward. There was a huge nexus on the land use.side of the equation. He noted the correlation between transportation and land use planning. Planning Manager Greg Mott was engaged in those discussions. Councilor Wylie said they had petitioned. and testified to the Oregon Transportation Commission (OTC) about the Lane MPO's readiness and uniqueness to go forward with this planning if funding was provided. The Chair of the OTC had agreed with them and was anxious to work with them. The Lane MPO was in good~standing to get support from the State and OTC to move into this type of planning. Councilor Lundberg responded to the comments on greenhouse emissions. She felt this was similar to an initiative they had tried with the schools in the 1980's and 1990's. That initiative came and went. She felt that the best way to have an impact was to control a little bit of the participation. If the State City of Springfield Council ~'Vork Session Minutes October 18, 2010 Page 4 provided funding, that. would be great, but she encouraged staff to be careful and conservative in their participation. There was so little we could do in terms of our footprint. People would change their ways out of necessity. This was transportation, but much o~ it was based on where we needed to go and why. Then they could look at how to get there. There were neighborhoods that used walking, bicycles, etc. because things were close to their homes. She suggested looking at how people used things, and then planning accordingly. If they built more on what people wanted to do, more progress could be made in this direction. Mr. Boyatt said the draft 2030 Refinement Plan was not adding any acreage to residential lands, so we were already doing some scenario planning. He asked what would be important to help a neighborhood have access. in the. way she described: a bike path, better street crossings, sidewalks, slower traffic speeds, or~more land use packages in neighborhoods for stores, parks, transit, etc. Councilor Lundberg said it was all of those things. They could all have an effect on people .getting around. She noted some of the issues with some larger intersections, and felt that enhancements could be made to make them safer for bicyclists and pedestrians. We already had some of the scenario planning in what we already had. Mr. Boyatt asked about the size of aneighborhood. - Councilor Lundberg said it was about 5,000-10,000 people with churches, schools, stores, and other neighborhood things, all within walking distance. She had worked on a community project in the past and had- some information regarding neighborhoods. Mr. Boyatt would like to see that information when available. Mr. Reesor said as they were looking at the examples of values, there may be some that complemented each other and others that may conflict with each other. He asked if they could think of any that overlapped and complemented each other. He provided examples of things that complemented each other and asked Mr. Boyatt if he could provide examples of things that contradicted each other. Mr. Boyatt discussed the vision, goals and policies. Some policies could appear contradictory to the goals. They needed to look at the values of the community to pursue priorities. Springfield took, advantage of opportunities as they presented themselves, but needed policies to do that. It could be o.k. to have multiple policies. They hoped to gather, with the Council's input and the community's input, a sense of priorities. - Councilor, Simmons said Lane Transit District (LTD) was doing an excellent job on the corridors, but the problem was the large areas with no cross connect at all. He named some of those. In order to shift people's modality of travel that had been established since 1900, they had to provide alternatives. He referred to a comment by Councilor Lundberg during the October 4 meeting that one of the more important components of LTD was frequency of service to allow people to get where they needed to go when they needed. LTD had budget problems that would cut that frequency and not enhance the cross connect component. He discussed nodal development and the issues with that concept. He noted the transportation works in Europe. Our system had been built dysfunctionally. It was nice to create a vision, but they needed to make some fundamental changes. He hoped they would reach that. A strategy needed to be developed to pre-plan for land. use, such as in Jasper Natron. City of Springfield Council Work Session Minutes October 1 S, 2010 Page 5 Mr. Reesor said interconnectivity was a key. He discussed LTD service along Main Street. He asked for other ideas regarding multi-modal. Councilor Pishioneri said in neighborhoods such as 66~' and E; little things could be done to encourage pedestrian traffic. One idea would be public access paths to parks, and other access paths that could increase access throughout the neighborhood. Another idea would be to increase the safety on streets to encourage walkers. Little things could make a big difference. Mr. Reesor said the TSP would have project lists, which could include both small and large projects. Councilor Ralston said he didn't see any fundamental changes happening right now. He would prefer supporting the TransPlan concept, including nodal development. From his attendance at the Highway 126 meetings, he had learned that transportation management policies would be coming from ODOT that would prohibit the City from building certain developments. The City needed to be proactive and work cooperatively with ODOT on projects. He thought the vision statement was great and was a good thing to set a goal towards. They needed to stay with the basics. Councilor Lundberg said a narrower. street width in residential areas slowed traffic down. It saved money to make the streets narrower, with good sidewalks set back a little, which made them more pedestrian friendly. She noted that some streets were barricaded, which was not a good thing. She would like to look at our grids when building neighborhoods. Alleys were also a great way to get through the neighborhood... Mr. Boyatt asked about the bamcade and Councilor Lundberg described it. Mr. Reesor spoke regarding access and said Springfield would be facing this issue a lot. ODOT was holding an open house tomorrow on the Main Street Safety Corridor. This .was an example of potentially competing values of wanting to provide access for businesses and also safety for pedestrians. Mayor Leiken said the biggest challenge with Main Street was that it was a state system that went through our .city. The City had talked with ODOT staff about how the. City could get jurisdiction of Main Street in a phased. manner. He spoke regarding the high cost of building a community within a community. The only areas that had been able to do this had large amounts of funding through the Federal government. Springfield did not have that assistance. Springfield needed to take the small steps to get there and to plan it with flexibility. We needed to be prepared as new things came along. Councilor Wylie said Kansas also had some planned communities. The economy caused things to stop, and when it started up again we could be going in a different direction. Attitude was important. She discussed electric cars and some of the issues around that idea. There were times when people would drive their car to a Park-n-Ride to take the bus. This was an attitudinal change to mix transportation. There was, also a willingness of the people to make those changes. She agreed that the plan had to be flexible. Councilor Simmons said access needed to be planned. When we tried to prohibit access from Main Street to properties that had access to Main Street only, we would put them out of business.- With planned access, things could be workable. Councilor Lundberg said that was also true with river access. City of Springfield Council Work Session Minutes .October 18, 2010 . Page 6 Councilor Ralston said he would like to add a goal that in general the City would not be affecting access to existing business owners along Main Street. He didn't want to affect and limit access for those businesses currently existing. New development could be planned to provide alternative access. Mr. Boyatt said they may revisit this with Council at' a later date. If Council had other comments, they could email Mr. Reesor. AhJOURNMENT . The meeting was adjourned at approximately 7:04 p.m. - Minutes Recorder -Amy Sowa ~- Attest: ~. Amy Sow City Recor er