City Council, September 23rd - CATC, new Code for Housing, Legislative Priorities

At Council on Monday is another appointment to boards and commissions pleasant to note.

Beth Schmidt teaching transit use
in front (via MWVCOG and FB)

Our Safe Routes to School Coordinator, Beth Schmidt, looks to join the Citizens Advisory Traffic Commission. 

After an initial focus on walking, the Safe Routes program has returned to its roots in bicycle safety education for kids, and has also piloted new transit training for kids. The bus is truly liberating, there is already the youth pass program, and it's great to see this expansion.

Hopefully with new voices CATC can continue to move away from its historic focus on parking and autoism. (And perhaps, as with some other boards and commissions there will be thought to eliminating the word "citizens," which has an unfortunate exclusionary history in some contexts.)

At last week's special meeting for appointments to the Planning Commission, the entire slate was voted in, and even Councilor Julie Hoy, who had seemed skeptical, joined the 8-0 votes.

Council will also hold the second reading for enactment of code changes to "reduce impacts of development standards, processes, and fees related to housing development." They continue to seem like technical fixes and changes on the margins, incremental improvements, and nothing that is going to prompt great, abrupt change.

A few previous notes here, but nothing very lengthy or detailed:

• "City Council, September 9th - McGilchrist Culverts"
• "Gussie Belle Brown Apartments at Former General Hospital Site in for Site Plan Review"
• "City Council, July 8th - Conservation Area at Former General Hospital Site"

via the former Twitter

As an interesting footnote, just before being appointed to the Planning Commission, Ben Fryback commented to Council in support of point access block construction, which services apartment blocks with a single stair and/or elevator, and without the need for long hallways allows for much greater flexibility and efficiency in floor plan, allows for more windows for natural light and cross-ventilation, and also makes odd-sized lots easier to develop. Last year the Legislature directed a start to planning for them, and it would be great if there was a way for Salem to get ahead of the process. The City Staff response to the Fryback testimony was "The City could explore this type of housing as part of the Housing Production Strategy project." This could be a terrific initiative for new Commissioner Fryback to lead!

• For a longer discussion from a couple years back, see at Slate, "The Single-Staircase Radicals Have a Good Point." 
  

Also on the agenda are two sets of legislative priorities for 2025.

In the City's own, there are statements asking for support and subsidy of the Mill Creek Corporate Center area, the airport, Enterprise and Opportunity Zones (and their tax abatements), property tax reform, anti-public records request sentiment, chafing at State preemtion of local land use red tape (with its frequent exclusionary function), and greenhouse gas reduction. It's a mixed bag, and not internally wholly consistent. Some of the documents, particularly on the Federal side, also did not seem to be updated with the successful awards on McGilchrist, Front Street, and Vision Zero.

The League of Oregon Cities is developing its list of legislative priorities, and the City proposes to support the LOC's statement on a transportation package:

2025 TRANSPORTATION PACKAGE RECOMMENDATION: The LOC supports a robust, long-term, multimodal transportation package focused on: stabilizing funding for operations and maintenance for local governments and ODOT; continued investment in transit and bike/ped programs, safety, congestion management, and completion of projects from HB 2017. As part of a 2025 package, the funding level must maintain the current State Highway Fund (SHF) distribution formula and increase investments in local programs such as Great Streets, Safe Routes to Schools, and the Small City Allotment Program. In addition, the package should find a long-term solution for the weight-mile tax that stabilizes the program with fees that match heavier vehicles' impact on the transportation system. The funding sources for this package should be diverse and innovative. Additionally, the package should maintain existing choices and reduce barriers for local governments to use available funding tools for transportation investments. Background: Oregon has one of the country’s most transportation-dependent economies, with 400,000 jobs (1 in 5) related directly to transportation via rail, road, and ports. The State Highway Fund (SHF) is the primary revenue source for the state’s transportation infrastructure, and comes from various sources, including gas and diesel tax, weight mile tax, vehicle registration fees, vehicle title fees, and driver’s license fees. These funds are distributed using a 50-30-20 formula, with 50% to the state, 30% to counties, and 20% to cities. Continued investment in transportation infrastructure is critical for public safety objectives such as “Safe Routes to Schools” and the “Great Streets” program. The Legislature must develop a plan to match inflationary costs and a plan to transition from a gas tax to an impact fee based on miles traveled to stabilize transportation investment.

Since the LOC is a consortium of many cities, it is pulled in different directions, but it would be nice to see faced more squarely ODOT's wild appetite for expansion over maintenance in the way it's trying to shape mega projects with expansion like the I-5 Bridge Replacement and I-5 Rose Quarter. There's a clear maintenance and improvement case for smaller versions of both of these, but ODOT is smuggling in expansion, and this is hoovering up funding that could otherwise be used on actual maintenance and on accelerating a 21st century transportation system that fully responds to our climate and safety crises.

Cities, including Salem, should push harder against ODOT and the OTC.