I'm going to call to order today's meeting of the,
work session, sorry, for the Corvallis City Council and joint with
the Charter Review Task Force Phase Two.
Call to order. And I just want to start by welcoming our citizen members of the
phase two of our task force to review the charter.
I think this might be the first we've all been in the same
room.
Um, so I guess we'll dive in. We have our, our update to the rest of the
council. So let's just go ahead and get
started.
Start with presentations.
Presentations always seem to be the most
trouble.
So, just a little background on the Charter Review,
Phase Two Task Force formed in December twenty twenty-five when
the first phase of the Charter Review Task Force concluded its work.
Um, again, charged to evaluate form of government, charter provisions,
consider, additions to align with the legal organizations model charter and
other miscellaneous charter provisions.
Um, we-- So far, our work so far has been mainly focused, on the form of
government, due to the impact and effort required to
get them on the ballot, essentially.
These are the guiding principles that we adopted as for phase two of the Charter
Review Task Force. Um, to me, it's all kind of obvious things that
we should always do. Fair and effective representation, effective and efficient
legislative function, accountability to voters and democratic
responsiveness, continuity and, and institutional
stability, cost and administrative impact, long-term governance alignment, and
accessibility to elected leaders and public service.
I really felt that these things are core of
how we operate as a government and what, what the community
deserves. We-- Uh, so we've made a few-- have a few
recommendations for you. The first one is, lowering
our number of wards and councilors from nine to seven.
Uh, we actually had a really good discussion on this.
There were some, interesting suggestions of even or odd, but we
ended up with seven, to keep it odd, and that between,
councilors to be nominated and elected by ward as we currently
do.
We have the highlights there. Improved operational efficiencies, governmental
product-productivity, resources for councilors.
And I want to point out, it's interesting, I, I didn't think going from nine to
seven would make a big difference, but we've had a few meetings recently, we're
just down by one councilor, and it made a difference.
So it, it does show sometimes just
a little more focus instead of broader focus.
Um, it maintains the neighborhood identities, which is important to a lot of us,
geographic representation and accountability to wards.
As we know, Corvallis has some very unique areas, whether you live in the north
side or the south side or right in the middle, we want to maintain
that. But it pre-preserves the mayor's primary role as a facilitator and consensus
builder. We didn't want to make any changes to where I'd have a regular voter or
anything like that.
Um,
the considerations. Reduces opportunities to run for office, perception of
access to city. Um, mayor votes less frequently due to fewer tie
votes among odd number of councilors.
Even the wards only vote every four years, while odd votes--
ward votes vote every two years.
Oh.
That would be initially.
Yeah.
Something to be discussed.
Let's-
Yeah.
We can, maybe get into it a little bit more on the next slide, 'cause it has to
do when the mayor is elected.
Yeah. Um, at-large elections could allow representation
of a geographically spread interest group.
So we did discuss whether we wanted to have all councilors just be at large, like
some cities do. Um, and at-large elections of, two councilors per
ward could limit voter ability to, check and balance.
So again, we considered a lot of different models.
Um, city manager did talk a lot about, you know, you could have three
wards and still have six councilors. You can have one in one councilor per ward.
But what we ended up going with was those recommendations at the
top. Term limits. We suggested
four-year terms. Um, that way they could be staggered, so you wouldn't have
all, councilors come to ballot at once,
ideally. Um, odd wards would be elected in presidential election years and even
wards .
Uh,
again, this brings continuity, experience, focus on long-term goals,
development of positive relationships.
Um,
one of the challenges we, as we all experienced, we've been on council long
enough, is when a co-council has a big change, then we have a strategy that,
you know, hard to make-- fulfill. Uh,
it reduces the potential for significant turnover and loss of that institutional
knowledge. Again, when we're in the middle of our strategic
plan. Um, majority council, only refreshed every four
years due to odd numbers of councilors.
Even though odd wards, voter frequency, opportunities to run for mayor.
These are the things we really considered, is how do, how do these play out in
elections to where
everyone's kind of equal. And there was concerns
over the longer term may discourage community members from, from running from
office. Um, but when we looked at the data, it kind of disagreed with
that. Uh,
for, for me, there's been really no changes, so, the recommendation is to keep
the way it is where only-- the mayor only votes to break a tie.
Still has a four-year term, and elected at large during midterm election
year. Um, again, you can read through the, the key considerations we have
there. And then the, highlights of those considerations
and the concerns and what we kinda talked through every
time. Term limits. This one I thought was
more interesting. Um,
has to do with three-term limit for councilors and the three-term limit for mayor.
So essentially twelve years, assuming everything passes.
Uh, limits apply to consecutive terms, not to the lifetime of an individual.
So if someone served three full terms, you know, spent twelve years as a
city councilor and decided to run for mayor, they can do that.
It's a different position. Um, if they took a break, served two
terms, left council for whatever reason, and ran again, they can do
that as well. They're just not in a second.Um, and we're, we're trying-- we worked
out that partial terms would, less than 50% would not count to a term
limit.
And we have the main considerations there.
Balanced and competitive renewal, provides stability,
limits the incumbent advantage, which is talked
about. Um,
things to that effect.
Next steps. Um, you can see here we are today in March.
Uh, we're looking for feedback, direction, so we can continue the work.
Um, in April, we developed more of the red line language concrete with
phase one of the charter study task force.
Um, we'll come back in May, look for more final, feedback if there's
anything that's changed on the strategy.
Um, and June, we'll finalize ballot titles and summary
statement. And hopefully July, we'll refer to the November ballot,
and that's when the real fun begins.
Here are the questions we have for all of you, councilors you should
say. To move on. Do the draft recommendations align with the guiding
principles?
Two, are there any governance models from comparative cities that the task force
should be examining more closely?
Three, from a governance perspective, do the draft recommendations work well
together and independently, regardless of how they are grouped on the ballot?
You have a lighter pack as well. And do the draft recommendations address problems
the council is looking to solve?
So again, we're trying to keep it pretty high level today because we will come back
again with those more detailed, red
lines to get into the weeds, so to speak.
So really today we're just open to
give you the update of where we, where we're landing currently and get feedback on
these questions so we can move forward.
Okay, I just have a question. Can you explain what you mean by odds-- by
the comment about,
even ward voters only vote every four
years, and odd ward voters vote every
two?
I'll look to Alex or somebody else for that.
Yeah.
That confused me.
Yeah. So, each... Since, since the
model is one ward
per-- o-one counselor per ward, you're actually
only voting for a counselor every four years.
But because the mayor is on, the,
um-
Odd year
... odd year, some of those wards you'll line up where you, you
get to vote for a mayor in one, you know, at one
point, and then two years later, you're voting for your counselor.
Then two years later, you're voting for your mayor.
The other wards, you're voting for mayor and counselor every
four years, and you're not voting
in the, in between. So you're only voting, only get a vote every
four years, which-
Yeah, so I was confused by the way I think it was worded.
Yeah.
So basically, it depends on where you live in the city will be-- depend on how long
you get, how often you get to vote.
But you still get to vote every four years for your counselor.
Yes, for your counselor-
For mayor
... no matter where you live.
Or for your mayor.
But sometimes you'll get to vote, you know, like say this November, you'd get to
vote. And if this is already implemented, then in two years, you'd have a different
vote if you lived in one of the ones where you're now voting for mayor.
And then the next two years again, you'd vote for your counselor.
So it is a disadvantage, but-
I'm not really-- I'm not sure I see that as a
disadvantage. If I'm, I'm even number
ward, I get to vote for the mayor and the counselor. Okay.
So I get-- I'm voting for two elected officials.
But then in the next two-year period, I get to vote for no elected
official.
Right.
Correct.
Yeah.
Correct.
So what's... I don't get the distinction.
It, it's, you know, it... Well, the only negative we could think of
we were talking about it was around, civic
engagement.
Mm-hmm.
You know, some people like to be able to vote every two years, and this would
remove, certain wards from being able to vote every s- every two years.
Some, some of them would only vote every four years. It's not really a negative.
They're still voting for the same number of people, but just not
every two years.
Yeah.
I think it also kinda goes back to the mindset of where we went
to, vote for the whole council every two years was that idea
of accountability. As, you know, I wasn't here for
that, that charter change, but the understanding was they would wanna be able to
make a change on the council every two years,
where, I mean, the way to accomplish that with
four-year terms would be
multiple counselors per ward
or
some sort of at large type of...
Yeah. I mean, I understand, I understand the comment.
I'm really not sure I see that as a
negative or an inequity, but that doesn't matter.
To keep it back to the high level, I think the
only comment I would say is,
it is true that
you can't run for two offices at the same
time.
Um, so yes, if you're in a ward that is not up for election, you can run for
mayor. But we can solve that problem pretty simply by making somebody
resign. We can, we can make that change.
If you wanna run for mayor, you have to resign.
You have to plan to resign your city councilor
position. Does that, does that come up at all as you-
No, we didn't talk about that. You're saying we get to just plan to retire
but not-- or resign, but not actually resign until-
No, you'd have to actually-- To make it fair, you'd have to actually resign.
Because if I'm in a-- If my term is ending, and I want to run
for mayor, but I also-- I can't run for mayor and for my expiring
term.
So if I run for mayor, I'm not ever gonna be a councilor
that, the next term. So-
You would have to leave your chair until the end of the term.
You'd have to wait another two years to run again.
So-
It's a forfeit
... are you saying if you decided to run for mayor
In July, then when you made that decision to run for mayor
in July, you would not finish out your term?
No, no.
Or you would just say, "In December, I am done."
No, I'm saying it for the people that are in even-numbered
terms.
Mm.
When they... If they chose to run for mayor, and their term
is going to be expiring, at the end of that year-
Mm-hmm
... they know they won't be able to run for their council position again.
Mm-hmm.
So they're, they won't, they won't...
If they lose the mayor race, they're, they're out of council.
Right.
If we wanted to make it fair for the odd-numbered terms, and you wanna
run for mayor, then what you're...
You, we could say, you're making a decision similar to our
even-numbered cohorts, that you
wanna run for mayor. If you get elected mayor, you're mayor.
And if you're, don't get elected mayor, you, you effectively are
saying, "I'm gonna resign at the end of my, of that council
term."
December, yeah. Okay.
I mean, that would make it the same, that would make it equivalent.
And it wouldn't really-
For example-
It wouldn't really be resigning, it would just be you would not be able to run for
city council.
For...
Can I rephrase it?
You'd have to resign.
You'd have to resign, sure.
You'd have to resign.
Yeah.
Okay.
So this resignation would be submitted, but not effective until the end of the
year?
Yeah.
Okay.
And then who... Then that means that during that election cycle, you would
also have to have an election to replace that person running for mayor and city
councilor.
Because by definition, they've resigned already.
They would have, they have, they would be resigned.
If they chose to run for mayor.
So you can't... So you just can't lose the mayor election and stay on council for
two years.
Right.
Yeah, I, I, I think-
I like that.
I, I think, I think that's
slightly a discount. It's not a disadvantage.
Mm.
Yeah, I guess that would work.
No, it's not dis- it's the same disadvantage for the,
even-numbered boards. If I wanna run for mayor, and now I'm not
Mm-hmm.
going to council, I can't re-
Mm
... I can't run for re-election.
So clearly this is a feedback for the task force, they need to figure this out.
Exactly. That's what I-
I made a note.
Okay.
I have another suggestion to try to make it-
Another solution that was suggested by Brennan, that
came out today-
Yeah
... was to have a two-year term for the mayor.
Right. Mm.
And that would actually get rid of the inequities, and it would also get rid of-
That's great
... collect extra money for elections.
Yeah. But, please no comments from the audience, thank you.
Um,
that would solve the problem, although as someone who's done that campaign,
I would not wanna do that every two years.
Mm.
Yeah, I think that's the... It's a lot of money, it's a lot, it's a lot of work,
and it would be a distraction for the mayor to try to do that every other year.
And, and I, yeah, I get the... I can see where
it can be...
It solves one problem and creates another.
It just doesn't help the continuity issue.
Yeah.
So.
Well, I have to look into how the other cities do it, because most, some, you know,
there are others that have wards, like us-
Mm
... that have a four-year term mayor.
So somebody has to have figured something out, 'cause on that
chart...
You know, another thing discussed, but we didn't
put in this proposal, is having all the councilors, running at once, and then
the mayor on the separate election.
Which still has the same issue we have now with the turnover
rate.
Mm.
Yeah, no.
Mm.
We on number two yet?
Well, we haven't even really answered number one fully, so.
Well, I would-
Guiding principles, yeah. I would, I would
just like to point out that I've been uncomfortable with
the, you know, the odd/even,
switcheroos, and this, that, and the other thing.
Um, so the, the memo this morning from
Mr.,
what's his name?
Brand.
Cool.
Yeah. Um, crystallized in my
mind what I had been uncomfortable with.
Mm.
And, and
what's presented here is a little more elegant than what we've
presented in phase two task force.
So even, let's say, we went with 66 terms instead of seven,
we would not have that odd/even thing going on.
Um, or would we? I don't know. But anyway, if we look at
number two, governance models,
and we find out what's negative about those governance
models, you know, we, we're, we're putting up a lot of
negatives in what we've presented or what we've
come up with so far. And those negatives, maybe it's, what is
it? All the, the slides you had before.
Um,
those negatives
I think are enough that will dissuade people from voting
for any of them.
Mm.
Or some of them. One of them, two of them.
And the problem-
That's the other thing we have to look at, if one passes and the other one doesn't,
what do we do?
Ezra.
Could I ask... Now, I knew we were talking
about reducing the number of councilors and the number of
terms, and I don't need to weigh in on my opinion of that right now, because I
think I've been clear for the last 10 years.
Um, what is the problem we're trying to solve with the term
limits? What? There was... I mean, the only person who
succeeded that was Hal Bronner. Um, and Hal was, was
such a resource to me, as a, as a new
councilor.
I think the idea of the term limits was kind of a response to the
concern, the reason why we ended up with two-year term limits to
begin with. You know, so people would have six, not that
that's generally, but it's, and I, I think that's why it
was, brought up as a suggestion at-
So, so really what is the problem?
You know, we, we talk about addressing problems that councils looking...
So what is the problem with somebody running-
Four terms.
Four terms, nine terms. Hal was here for eight, 10 years.
Um,
what, what, where, where's the problem?
I think, I think we need fresh-
If... And, but if the, if the community, if the people who are electing him feel
like, or her, the pe-people who are electing the counselor
feel like they're doing a good job representing, and the counselor
feels comfortable and like they're still able to do the
job, what, where is the problem?
I agree.
Yes. I-
I mean, I guess we could put it out to the, the community and have them vote on it
and say, "We don't see this as a problem," then it goes down.
But it seems like-
Yeah.
I don't, I don't see the problem
... Chris, I, Chris, I agree with you. I don't see there being an actual problem.
Mm-hmm.
It's more of a perceived problem, perceiving that community members might have
concerns over four-year terms because of, you know, getting ingrained
and stuck in their seat and serving forever and not doing good work, which from our
understanding is part of the reason why two-year terms were created in the first
place, because I guess they used to be six, so.
And from a certain level too, there's, like a
level of the longer you're in your seat, the more of an incumbent advantage
you might have. And so that also-
Yeah
... also prevents the turnover. I know it's more of a problem seeing that like the
state and national level than it is-
Mm-hmm
... on the city council level. But it, we talked about it a little
bit as like an anti-corruption measure, so that was part of it.
So my feedback to the board-
Yeah
... or the task force on this would be, take a look to
see if other cities have moved in this direction and what was the basis
for their direction. I, I think there's probably a general
sense that term limits are a good thing, but I don't,
I don't know what the trend is.
Yeah.
So that might be useful. By the way, I do have some data
that came from the League of Oregon Cities that is not a
published report. It's a spreadsheet of a comm- of a survey that
they did that talks about term limits and stuff like that, so I'll send
that to you.
Good.
Yeah.
Can I just comment that I think the term limits sentiment may
be, influenced by the federal
situation-
Mm-hmm
... and people seeing this
with long, long sitting, perceived to be
ineffective people at the federal level.
Um, and
it's just a totally different animal serving at the local level, and hard
to find really good people who are willing to serve for a long time.
So I, I mean, my op- my, not really stake in the ground,
but it's let the voters decide. If they don't think they're effective anymore, they
won't be voted back in.
Mm-hmm.
And you have councilors who are losing effectiveness
who were voted out.
Right.
The history of the two-year term was
based on the fact that there had been councilors in office
forever.
Well, then we can decide to change the charter again.
So we're gonna try-
It doesn't, you know, make people happy, but-
We're trying to assuage that issue.
I know. I get it. But what problem are we-
But what problem are we trying to solve here?
Exactly. It doesn't exist now.
Yeah.
If I, I go back to the guiding principles, and the last guiding principle is
accessibility to elected leaders and public service.
The idea is giving people a chance to step up and serve as a
councilor where it's an... Running for office your
first time is, I think, can be intimidating and challenging.
When you, you have an incumbent that continuously comes back,
it could discourage people from stepping up.
Um, so I think, I think that's
part of it. I don't, I don't want to talk for the task force, but I do remember us
talking about that.
Part of it is also a diversification
of knowledge. If you have someone who's a city councilor for
20 years or something, they're, they're gonna have a tremendous amount of
knowledge.
Mm-hmm.
But we need to be considering about the city as a long-term
organism, which means, you know, cycling this knowledge
through, making people, making sure people are engaged and active.
So it's not just turnover, it's also about-
Things changing
... building the bench, so to speak.
Mm-hmm.
So I do, I, I think the,
at a high level, I think the, the four-year terms makes a lot of
sense to me, and I think staggered.
Um, I think that
I, if you look at, either actual
examples of turnover with two-year terms versus four-year terms,
or even, or even if I remember my probability, I could
probably demonstrate to you mathematically
that when you have two-year term, four-year terms staggered, you're gonna get less
turnover.
And so I think that is the benefit of,
moving away from two-year terms.
Uh, and I think that the data that Jan put together showed we have a
fairly significant turnover rate-
Mm-hmm
... that doesn't help with longer term
decision-making and, and maintaining momentum on larger terms.
So I think that aspect of it is, definitely fits with
the, rough draft recommendations.
Um, I think, I'm happy to have you guys look at a
couple other factors out there in terms of the term limits per
se. Um,
I don't resonate as much with the every four years I get to vote
as I get to vote every two years. That's, that could be my own personal
approach. Um,
and I do think the issue of, councilors running for
mayor and also having to be able to retain their seat is a, is a,
is an inequity between
the odd and even.
Mm-hmm.
So I think that should be addressed.
Um,
and
I, I just have a question. I know
that-Um, saying not to go down the path of
three wards and two councilors
per ward.
Like, was there,
is there-- is that just considered too big a change?
What was the logic behind it?
For me, it's the, the
election issue. Running in a ward
that's a third of the city is different than running in a ward that's a seventh of
the city, or a ninth of the city now.
So when I ran for city council, I knocked on every door in my ward.
If there were only three wards, there's no way I'd do that, in my
opinion.
Anyone else want to weigh in? I believe there's been some
more.
Yeah. I also wasn't a big fan of the two councilors per ward system,
because then you end up often in situations where,
you have one, one councilor canceling out the vote of
another.
Potentially, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, I'll say I, I like the concept,
a lot actually. Um, but, but when we went through the discussion and raised
some of the concerns of what that would do, is how there's also what was
talked about keeping the identity of the ward system.
Because there is, you know-
Right
...if you made it only three wards, that would really combine
areas of the city that haven't really been, that don't have the same issues.
Mm-hmm.
Not, not that that would create more, maybe some more understanding of the
different parts of the community.
But we feel that, that,
the voters in Corvallis really like our, their identities of their neighborhoods
and their wards. And although we'd be reducing to seven, I think
that would, the shift would still work and keep those different segments of
the city. I can, I can understand that.
I, I think as to, as to counseling the votes, say,
every, when you get on the council you're, both represent your ward and
the city, so-
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm
...you cancel each other out all the time. So, but it's just not within our ward.
True, but then you're also gonna run into the, the situation where
there's two councilors, even if they're on the same ward technically, like, even if
they're technically on the same ward, they'll have such dif-- you can end up with
such differing opinions that you'll split that ward down the middle.
Mm-hmm.
So it would end up being like-
Almost like-
... almost like two different wards in the first place.
Or the opposite, where you get two councilors for one ward that have the exact
same opinion on everything.
Right.
Which then you end up with a ward that gets no
representation of the population.
Right. Yeah.
Like, there's a lot of wards where simply people with a lot of
money or retirees would be able to take the seats every single time.
And while that's not, it's not as much of a problem when you have
seven or nine wards, as it is when you have, like, two
councilors.
Sure.
Yeah.
Well, two comments on that. One is, I think if, if you believe that rep- the
election is representative of, people in the ward, I think that kind of
addresses that issue. Uh, I would encourage you to look at the League of
Oregon Cities to see,
how,
kind of what other cities do. And not that we have to copy other cities, but-
Okay
...the point is, we have, the hundred and twenty-one
cities in Oregon.
Two hundred and forty-one.
Pardon me?
Two hundred and forty-one.
Two hundred and forty-two.
It keeps happening.
So we have two hundred and forty-one experiments that have happened over decades,
and sometimes centuries. Um, but it'd be good to at
least understand what other people have learned and, and learned from that.
So, I'll send you, it's kind of dated, but it's, it,
it's the last survey that they did for cities, kind of what, how they operate.
So I would encourage you to reach out to League of Oregon Cities.
If, if I could just-- In your packet, you do have comparison of 10
cities.
Yeah.
And there's, there are two cities that are
one councilor per ward, elected by wards, and
that's Corvallis and Springfield.
The rest have either two councilors per ward, or they
may, they may nominate by ward, but they elect at
large. Um, so I think there's...
We would remain an outlier for one councilor per
ward.
But actually, are those
parent councilors,
elected at the same time?
No. Generally, they're staggered.
Oh, okay. Good.
That's what I thought.
Mm-hmm.
There are certain advantages and reasons why I kind of like the concept of that
model, but...
One of the things I had noticed a few years ago, I was following, city council
elections in Albany, you know, where they have a small number of wards
and it's two per ward. And, and the thing that was,
really out of the ordinary just from my experience
in Corvallis, how much money people were spending on council elections
there.
Mm-hmm.
I, I don't remember the numbers anymore, but it was more like a mayor's
race in Corvallis, that kind of number.
Mm-hmm.
It was number of thousands, you know, and,
and I,
I like the idea that you can, you can, run an, an
effective campaign like Steve was talking about, you know, without
having to spend a lot of money.
Mm-hmm.
Um, so that helps. The, the one question that we haven't touched on that
I would just like to hear, task for- task force
members, talk about a little bit is the
number of count- council members being even or odd, and
its relationship to the mayor's role.
Mm-hmm.
I mean, I, I read the, what it said the strengths and weaknesses of it are,
um. But
I was struck by the comparator cities and how many of them had an even s- number
of council members, with still a mayor that only votes
in a tie. Um-
Yeah, I didn't see that as a particular issue
... so I was wondering.
I would've voted for six.
Ah, good.
Do you think maybe-
Maybe we, you know, to hear from the people who thought seven was a better number.
No, six. I think we said six, seven.
Oh, did we?
Um, yeah, so in this conversation I preferred that I, my opinion
stayed out of it for obvious reasons.
Sure.
Um, 'cause
not voting in the ties is not working already, but so-
So, so I'm, I'm hearing that there was no, "We need to keep
this an odd number."
We thought there would be a few times that the mayor would have to vote if there
was an odd number. That was the primary issue.
I see.
The only one that's been three in three years.
Yeah, it wasn't to heal any of us or speak
up.
Right.
It's, you know, it's-
We want to go on that hour.
Yeah. I, I do remember that the task force said six or seven, then we came back
the next meeting and had specific discussion about odd or
even. And it's the reasons that are stated in the summary, and it
really relied on the mayor's voting-
Mm-hmm.
And a decision to keep that as an infrequent voter and more of a
neutral facilitator.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
I found myself thinking, I was looking at this packet and I, I thought I'd
never had before
which is maybe I kinda like the idea that the mayor has to break ties
more often.
Yeah.
Um-
Mm-hmm.
You know, because it's a different, it's additional engagement on the part of
the mayor and someone we've elected
citywide-
Mm-hmm.
As a leader and, and, it gives, more of a
voice to the mayor, more of an active role.
And
I, I certainly understand the impulse to keep it, it primarily as
a facilitator-
Mm-hmm.
Of, of business. Um,
you know,
I would, I would encourage you to just think a little bit more deeply about that,
about whether that's, you know, a priority,
or maybe have a second thoughts about it, and then maybe it would be
good to have a mayor as break ties more.
Sure.
I know one of the things we talked about a- throughout the process is we've really
focused on how the mayor's role and the councilor's role
are different. And so when we were talking about the mayor or councilors, that was
something we focused on, was if we went to a six or a, you know, an
even number councilor system, that would make the mayor's role sim- too similar
to that of the councilor. And since we are already factoring in the
difference between being a mayor and being a councilor into a lot of our other
decisions, that's where the focus on seven councilors came from.
Yeah.
So.
Yeah.
I would say looking back at the average votes that the council
takes, it's not too often that it's even close to a
tie.
Mm-hmm.
Um, even if we were voting, had a different, an even number.
So I don't, I don't think it would increase mayor voting that much, but it
would obviously increase the side of him.
Well, could I also... I, I, I just would also chime in that I'm
trying to imagine myself facilitating the meeting and processing all of
the comments and deciding how I'm going to vote on something-
Mm-hmm.
Would complicate how I would facilitate the meeting.
I've done it. It doesn't work out.
Sure.
Um, so real quick, 'cause we're, we're, we're essentially at time, so I just really
quick wanna go through these questions that are on the screen and have kind of a
quick roundtable of councilors provide their,
their answers to them essentially.
So number one, do, do, do the recommendations meet
the guiding principles?
Mostly, but not entirely. For other things
we already said.
Yeah. I would say the things that we do.
Anyone else?
I would agree with Tony. We may be thinking about differently sides.
And number two.
The s- s- similar.
So we kinda-
Sort of the same answer.
Yeah, we kind of already covered it.
I figure, you know, looking at similar cities for other senior quorum maps,
Jim's already expressed he'd prefer not an even n- number of councilors.
And then look at other, to see if other cities have term limits, so we kind of,
kind of already answered that. Um, number three, from a governance perspective, do
the draft recommendations work well together?
Um, if you tie, pack it in front of you, that starts
on electronic package page six, you can see there's this
potential ballot that measure one, and that's putting number of council positions,
number of wards together. That one's almost just
obvious. Uh, measure two, council term lengths,
staggered/concurrent terms, and election
cycle of councilors, and term
lengths, term
limits.
And I'll just make a note here. When this group comes back to the city council for
your next work session in May, we'll dive deeper into election strategy
at that point.
Mm-hmm.
Um, this is more from a, a good governance lens.
Mm-hmm.
Like how do these things look to you?
I think the answer is yes.
Yeah.
Anyone disagree?
No.
And before we get into the draft recommendations, address problems the council is
looking to solve. We had a yes earlier from Tony.
Does anyone disagree?
No. I'm, I'm still trying to figure out the problem with the term limits and-
Yes, can I have your notes?
Yeah.
Your recommendation. So, so it's yes but
eh.
It addresses the big one.
Sure. Yes. That's good.
Um, it's the little ones that it solve.
The little
good problems.
I think that gives us enough to work on, and we'll look at refining,
where we are with that. With those
details, we'll go into a-
Sure.
Harder conversation.
Reason one, three-year terms?
Um.
Technically, no.
Well, how could you do-
Except for the cost election-
The cost of elections
In between.
Cost of election, yeah.
Yeah.
So you have to pay for the second election. That's really, it's money.
Well, the other issue-
In turn, yeah
Is it doesn't have staggered. And so, and the whole council would be elected every
three years.
Mm-hmm.
And therefore, you'd have that s- turnover issue just like you'd have it currently.
Except for the-
So it wouldn't solve that issue
What's that?
It would just be an extra year.
From a technical point, no, there's no reason why you couldn't.
So you didn't consider one-year terms?
Each.
For you-
You be quiet. Donny said-
You're not allowed.
To remove someone-
Someone's gonna write down. Yeah.
No, I think it's done.
Well, thank you all for coming. We appreciate it, and I look forward to-
Thank you very much.
Yeah. Thanks for all your work.
Transition.
Okay.
I drove.
Definitely. Definitely.
Yeah. We're gonna talk next slide on the Safe Streets and Roads for All and
Transportation Safety Action
Plan.
Hold on.
Can
she
give
all of them involved? It depends where I would...
That was when they did the watching their December.
I'm hearing it more
today.
I'll assume I'm just kicking this off to you, Dan.
Excuse me?
I assume I'm just kicking this off to you.
I'm kicking it off to Adam.
Okay. Adam.
All right. Uh, since it got kicked off to me, we'll go ahead and get
started. Thank you so much for having us here today.
I can say the project team is, very excited
to,
be able to come to you and talk about all of the work products that came out
of the SS forty project that we started, almost two years
ago. And, we're just gonna dig right into
it.
So just a quick recap. As you may recall, we got a, we got a very nice grant
from, the federal government, to-- through their Safe Streets and
Roads For All program. And
the, the real, advantage to the city of Corvallis in this is it, it
does really help us moving, moving the
goalposts toward that continuing Vision Zero goal that the
council, put in place through Resolution twenty twenty
sixteen. Priority is safety for all users.
It supports the existing TSP that we have in place that was adopted
several years ago, and it, it identifies
our highest, most severe crash locations, so we can
focus our efforts on that.
So since, since we got to drop over a thousand pages on you- ...uh, you
probably know that there was a lot of, a lot of, work effort put into
this, this project. And, and, you know,
the, the, the big, the big component was the Traffic--
Transportation Safety Action Plan that we're gonna go through with you some today.
In addition to that, we had some supplementa-supplementary planning
projects that we did. We did three road safety audits, Walnut, Circle, and Ninth
Street. We looked at Walnut for a lane reconfiguration
feasibility study. We looked at our neighborhood traffic
management program to get some recommendations on how to potentially improve
that. Same thing with speed limit investigation framework, kind
of looking at recommendations for staff to maybe use some different
tools to help organize speed limit,
looks in the, in the community. We'll go through all of this in the
presentation. And then an-another internal, supplemental
planning effort to give us some,
guidelines around, standardizing some pedestrian treatments
at, at different intersections.
So with that, I'm gonna hand it off to John Bosket with DKS.
Uh, John's helped, was the project manager on this from DKS,
and also was our project manager when we did TSP a few years ago.
Hello. Thanks for having me. Um, so I'm gonna give you
an overview, and there's a whole-- almost as many slides as pieces of paper you
got here. So I'm gonna try to move through it quickly.
Um, and I'm ending with the Transportation Safety Action Plan,
or the TSAP, as we call it. That's the only piece of this that,
staff will be coming back next month
and asking you to approve. The rest of the, supplemental planning
activities, are really more internal operational documents for
city staff, but I'm gonna give you an overview of what we, what we did and
kinda what we're hand-we're handing over to them as well.
So I'll go through those first. Um,
and of course, you-- I actually got a little bit of a process overview
first. Uh, as I go, you can ask questions at
any time, but, I'll make, I'll make a point to pause as I kinda hit the
breaks between each of those items too, just to see if there are any
questions. Um, so first is kinda the
overall SS four A project timeline.
Again, we had all these kinda one big project and
so a bunch of mini supplemental projects going kind of all at the same time.
We started in, I think it was November of, twenty
twenty-four. This is about a seventeen-month-ish
process. We went through kind of those different phases that, that are
shown at the top of the diagram, where first we spent some time just
understanding, what are the crash issues, where do people feel
unsafe, really understanding what the problems are, and
then, working with the task force and analyzing the data and listening to
the community feedback to, identify
high-priority locations, develop solutions for those, and refine
those, and ultimately develop our plan.
What you see is in the middle, we had, six meetings with our task
force and two major kinda milestones for public
outreach.
Uh, so just kind of a brief word on just the overall public
engagement process.Um, you know,
obviously a big part of this is one of the, the federal requirements of doing this
is we want to make sure we're getting community input, not only on kind of what the
challenges and issues are, but then on the types of
solutions that we're, we're
recommending. And,
we really attempted to engage the community
in a lot of different ways and kind of changing up our approach as we went to make
it more effective. Had a lot of good help from your public information
officer, from your task force members, and, you know, Benton County and else
to really, I think, reach, a lot of different groups in the
community. Uh, there was tools like, you know, there was a project
website, you know, email lists,
a number of different newsletters, press
releases, flyers were distributed over twenty
locations. Uh, we even had an ad at the Majestic Theatre, which is
shown there in the, the picture. Uh, we had ads,
inside on, on the buses on the interior monitors.
Oregon State University was really helpful in helping outreach to students,
as well, and social media, and then there were, six different
tabling events, that we used to get
input. And as I mentioned, there were two
major kind of milestones where we were really trying to engage the community, and
the first one was, again, just getting an understanding of,
what, what transportation safety issues they were
encountering. And, we had an interactive online comment map that's shown there
in the, the upper right, that got a lot of activity.
There were over sixty-five hundred, views on the comment map
and over eight hundred, submissions.
Um,
and, in addition to that, we had an in-person, open house and
an online open house. The in-person open house was at the library.
Uh, it was very well-attended. Um, and then there was a Corvallis
Town Hall, Sustainability Town Hall and Fair, you know, open
streets. We had, you know, a pop-up tent.
Um, task force meetings, and then, a public works and focus
group with, parents at Garfield
and Lincoln Elementaries.
And then the second round, this would have been fall/winter twenty
twenty-five, twenty twenty-six.
This was where we came back with, some draft solutions, and those
were kind of framed up as, some high-priority projects,
a-as well as kind of some, overarching strategies that the, the
city could pursue. Uh, and again, really had
an in-person, online open house again.
Um, more tabling events. There was a, a mayoral town hall where
this was discussed. Uh, Corvallis had more
pop-ups, the Corvallis Farmers Market, as well as their task force
meetings. Uh, and, we had an online survey as part
of the online open house to try to, you know, get more input. Yes.
Do you know why the engagement dropped so much between these two rounds?
Um, the, the, the open houses were similar.
They're still pretty good on just in the in-person open house.
They've got that online comment map where people could go and say, "Yeah, I have a
problem here, I have a problem, I have a problem here." Uh,
very popular. Yeah. Um,
yeah, I think the, the engagement I felt was pretty good.
It's just, it was-- it's really extensive, very effective the first
time. Um-
That map.
Yeah. So I don't think it was really... Yeah, I think that was the big thing.
It was the online comment map-
Yeah.
-that really got a lot of attention.
And once you put your comment on the map, you feel like you're done.
Yeah.
You've done your first level.
People like to be questioned.
I put on a positive comment just to balance it out.
That's where that one.
The one about Harrison, the really nice paving job, that was me.
Um,
another note is Benton County, received a similar
grant, so they were doing a transportation safety action plan at the same
time. And, we really made a point to coordinate the
two projects very heavily, just for efficiency of work and
resources.
Also, just to make this, easier to follow by the public, so they get confused
by two different TSAPs going on at the same time in the same area.
Um, and hopefully to, you know, we find some synergy to strengthen,
applications for grants in the future.
Um, there's some key ways. Probably the, one of the most prominent ways we did this
is the, the project managers for the city and the county projects
were, on each other's project management teams, and we, we literally met
every week, and discussed, issues, upcoming
tasks, and kind of collaborated on, on solutions.
Schedules were aligned. In fact, I was presenting to the board of commissioners,
having this discussion, just on Tuesday, so we're hopefully ending at the same
time. Shared all of our data. Analysis was done at the
same time. And again, the public engagement was heavily coordinated, so they had
the same two major milestones, and we did advertisements together and
really shared some events just to try to make it easier for people
to not have to go to two different places to provide
comments.
On our project task force, so they were definitely our,
our, our sounding board and provided, really good feedback and
guidance, especially at key decision points.
Um,
and, really kind of helped provide, the local
perspective on, on the safety plan.
Uh, so this, we had a number of kind of really pivotal ways, you know,
when we, had to create prioritization criteria, right?
To come up with our high-priority locations and figure out where, where sh-should
we invest first. Uh, they gave us a lot of good feedback
on, on that. Uh, helped us really narrow that list down,
identify the priority spots and,
strategies to pursue. Um, gave us great feedback on the projects
themselves. Um, helped us with public
engagement, and then even refining the final copy, we sent that
back to
them.On our
final meeting, the task force members, did, unanimously
support our plan with, with one note I added at the bottom.
They had one thing they wanted us to change, and we took care of that on page
thirty. And that was-- One thing I'll note when we get to the, the TSAP is it has a
big emphasis on lower cost things you could do fairly quickly because we want to
make change fast.
Um, but there was some concern that because of that, we wanted to be clear that we
weren't precluding higher cost projects that still have a lot of safety benefits,
you know, like, you're, you know, doing roundabouts at intersections or
protected bike facilities. And so we ha-- Which is not
the intent of the plan is to preclude that stuff.
So we talked more about that on page thirty, and,
which I will talk about later in the, the presentation.
So we addre-addressed that. Uh, and they also,
passed a motion, which was the top, paragraph I
have there that I'll share with you.
Uh, and that was, "The members of the SS4A Task Force request that
the City Council prioritize funding and construction of the
safety enhancements identified in the TSAP such that the
treatments are prioritized to the fullest extent
possible."
I will pause before I get into the first of the supplemental planning
activities.
I'll move forward. Uh-
I was confused by that statement that you just read, the task force
made.
I, I can probably clarify that-
Yeah
... Councilor. I-- The-- There was some pretty good
discussion around the task force definitely, definitely wanted to emphasize
support for the TSAP and to encourage the City
Council to prioritize, completion of
the projects. And I think maybe where it says, maybe the
confusing part is to the fullest extent possible.
And then I think that really refers back to the funding component-
Uh-huh
... where the-- there was,
a lot of discussion that the task force wasn't intending to
direct the City Council how to spend City Council
resources. It was just the resources that
the council deemed available for
safety improvements to look to the TSAP to
prioritize those.
Okay.
So there was, there was a, a definite...
They, they, they didn't wanna overstep, how the council s-spends the
resources, but they, the resources that were, the council would deem
appropriate to spend on transportation safety, they, they wanted to emphasize
u-using the TSAP as a resource on where to put, where to put those funds.
I understand. Code word for don't get too creative with it.
We did a lot of hard work, and these are the priorities we found.
Something like that?
Well, so I think-
Something, yeah.
Where we, we had a similar discussion with the task force-
Okay
... which is what I've had with you all, where, you know, we went
through an effort a couple years back now, to
identify priorities for funding in the transportation system.
Mm-hmm.
And as I've, as I've told you all before, we're getting a
lot of new information now, whether it be this TSAP or
signal investment plans or our bridge investment plans or some of the supplemental
planning activities. There's a whole other conversation that has to
happen around, how much money do we
have? What are we gonna prioritize for investment?
We have restrictions on different funds and those sorts of things, and what are we
gonna try to accomplish.
And that's obviously not within the task
force, purview.
I see.
Uh, that's council's, and they're just respecting that boundary.
Okay.
The council needs to go through that.
Okay.
They like what's in the plan. They see the, the need to invest in the
safety improvements,
and they are endorsing what's proposed, but they recognize that they
don't have all the information.
Okay. I see.
And council has more. And on the second part, it's, it's
just, they wanted inclusion of an acknowledgement
that,
there are other investments that can be made at a larger scale that
might have even greater safety benefits, and that's not necessarily
what's, what's identified in the plan.
So just as John said, clarifying that
the improvements that are identified in, in there
don't pro-- don't prevent or preclude the council from going above and beyond that.
I see. Okay. Thank you.
Yeah.
So they understand the work is within this greater-
Yes
... work the city's doing-
Correct
... whether it's paving local streets or bridges or signal, all of
them.
Yeah.
We would really like to put a lot of money on this.
Yeah.
As, as the task force.
All right. The first of the five supplemental planning activities,
road safety audits or RSAs. So we did
three of these. Uh, it was Ninth Street, Walnut
Boulevard, and Circle Boulevard.
And road safety audits, it's, it's, it's a very kind of defined pr-prescribed
process by, USDOT. And,
so we very much patterned our approach after that prescribed
process. And these are really gonna focus, technical
efforts where we, you know, pull together a, a multidisciplinary team.
In, in this case, we're really leaning on, public works, police,
fire department, ODOT participated, Corvallis School District.
We even invited a few Oregon State University students out of the,
civil engineering department.
They're interested in transportation to participate in these as
well. But, what they're really doing is they're just-- they're
walking the corridor pretty much all day, so they can see what's
happening at different times of day.
And they're looking at safety issues, and potential
fixes, through the lens of all the different users.
So whether you're, you're walking, biking, rolling, using transit, driving down the
corridor, you know, being there different times of day gives them the
advantage. If you have things like schools, you can see what's happening when
schools are, you know, getting in or letting out, which you might not see if you're
only there for a couple of hours.
Mm-hmm.
Um, but it's a lot of qualitative assessment.
So they're, they're not-Out there collecting data and analyzing it.
They're not, doing alternatives analysis.
It's, it's-- and they're really usually emphasizing
kind of the low-hanging fruit and lower-cost solutions that the city can get
done quickly.
Is it acting up?
Oh.
There we go. Um, and kinda one note,
these,
the, the recommendations that you may have seen in the road safety
audits, they're, they're preliminary.
So what those are, they're really recommendations from these groups back to the
city. And as I'll touch on later, this--
the city still needs to go through that l- those lists
and kind of vet those ideas, because some of them may not be feasible for different
reasons, and identify kind of which ones they think they can move
forward and hopefully incorporate into maybe, you know, CIP projects
coming up, and which ones just may not be, they might not be
able to do.
Um,
let's
see.
Where'd it go? So, quick highlights,
on some of the findings, and these, they're similar findings.
Um, I mean, they're all arterial corridors with still a lot of similar
issues. But, in Ninth Street, you'll see
recommendations in there. There's corridor-wide things like, you
know, access management, which can be, trying to eliminate conflicts between
all the driveways that are out there.
Um, no specific solutions, it's just a general recommendation to
improve it. Um, curb extensions to shorten
crossings on select side streets.
Uh, things like, doing leading pedestrian intervals at
traffic signals, which is basically when you get a walk signal, it's giving the
pedestrian a few seconds head start before the light turns green-
-hard, so they can establish their presence and be
seen. Um, and, possibly even looking at,
a lane reconfiguration, in, on part of
Ninth Street.
Um, and then more specifically in each, in each of these road safety
audits, the application-specific recommendations are
separated into low, medium, and high complexity.
And again, you know, the low complexity are things that are probably easier to get
done quickly. When you get to the, the high complexity, more
challenging, maybe more costly. Um, some of those may be things that,
might need to get referred to, a transportation system plan update or
something like that. Like a, things that go on there, like there might be,
consider doing a roundabout in an intersection at some point in the future.
Um, so low complexity stuff you'll see, like at Ninth Street, it's typically things
like it could be restriping, signing improvements.
Here's adding bicycle conflict markings at, at some
locations. Um, medium complexity
things, this o- in this one it was between Garfield and
Spruce, adding a mid-block crossing.
Um, and high complexity, this was,
like sidewalk, cur- you know, and ramp improvements which can affect
drainage, and that gets a little more complicated, might be harder to
do.
Okay.
Uh, Circle Boulevard, similar types of things.
You know, the curb extensions on side streets again.
Um, improving traffic signal hardware, so that's usually lower
cost things you can do, just to kinda make sure that maybe they're up to
standard or maybe the, the latest safety practices,
recommendations. Um, and, adding,
having hardened, hardened center line to prevent left turns.
So again, this is kinda the access management, trying to eliminate some
conflicts with maybe signals and
driveways. And again,
location-specific. Again, it's the lower cost stuff.
Signal repair, signing upgrades, some green striping in
bi-bicycle conflict zones. The medium
complexity is evaluate, removing eastbound left turns
and to add a pedestrian median refuge island to the marked
crossing at Seventeen.
Mm-hmm.
Again, like a lot of these, more investigation needs to happen
to make sure that there aren't other consequences or it's feasible.
But that's just a recommendation for the group to look into.
Uh, and again, you know, higher complexity is replacing all way stop control at
Twenty-ninth with like a signal or a roundabout.
Obviously that's a much bigger project.
Uh, in Walnut Boulevard, a-again,
corridor-wide recommendations again could be opportunities for leading
pedestrian intervals at those signals.
Uh, some opportunity to improve street lighting, curb extensions on
to short crossings on some side streets.
Uh, and then obviously this is the next topic coming up, is, further
evaluation of, trade-offs associated with lane
reconfiguration, where you'd have one vehicle lane in each direction instead
of two.
Uh, and then some of the location-specific things, down
towards the, the east end, there may be an opportunity to restripe to create
buffered bike lanes, from Circle to Jack London.
As you get more complex, there's some
reconfiguring of the north leg of Aspen Street, so it matches the, the
south side. Uh, and higher complexity, again, that's where we
get into, you know, you need to replace a signal someday, consider doing a
protected intersection or a
roundabout.
Uh, and so kinda the next steps for the road safety audits, as I mentioned before,
staff have those recommendations, so they need to go through and kinda,
kinda vet those and provide a formal response letters, kind of, you
know, indicating which of those they think they can implement and maybe
integrate into some future projects and which ones they may not be able
to.
Pausing briefly before I move on.
So I've noticed patterns in your recommendations.
Um, could we safely assume that those patterned
recommendations could then also be applied to other streets that you didn't do the
road safety audit on, just, just good practice?
They certainly could, yeah. Yeah, it's kinda, similar to some of the
necessary strategies we'll talk about later, where there's sometimes there's just,
there's safety improvements you can do that are low cost, but you can apply them to
a broad spectrum of places.
Mm-hmm. Because there were-- there's definitely streets that you didn't
do.
Mm-hmm.
And I can see some of these applying just as nicely as
that.
Um-
Yes. And one of the distinctions is you're doing a
multi-lane-
Arterials
... arterials list. So that you're seeing that one, seeing consistent
recommendations for a consistent-
Yeah
... category of street.
Mm-hmm.
Uh, one comment on the... Well, that's an
interesting street. Um,
seems like-- I, I think there's a, there's a real,
like to s- see, us address it very holistically,
the safety challenges. Because all, well, that's not
particular, right? People don't feel safe, that's for
sure. Maybe.
Um,
when we look at the, transportation safety
action plan, Walnut doesn't show up super
high. Uh, but it seems to me that in Walnut in
particular, the challenge of,
this, the further analysis that was talked
about, I think needs to happen, about
how do you, how do you address congestion,
traffic safety, road con- reconfiguration, et cetera.
I think that kind of further analysis does need
to, to happen.
There'll be an opportunity. So as far as
they were reviewing the documents, and we'll accept TSAP, it's
not an action to take on, on the supplemental planning activities, but
there, there will be a
conversation later about, you know, you only have so many
staff, and you only have
so much money to do whatever work you wanna do.
And if you decided that, you know, the benefit of a TSAP is
it's, it's a data-driven-
Yeah
... exercise, identifying safety.
If you decided that something else that,
has a, a legitimate safety
benefit, but didn't yet have, the
accidents associated with them was a higher priority to focus on than
the areas that are already experiencing accidents, you can do that.
Or you might say, "We need to invest in signals, or we need to do more
safety work." That, that'll be a future conversation, and, and you will
have that opportunity to prioritize and provide some guidance.
Yeah. Okay. So to be clear, I wasn't suggesting we prioritize.
I think the TSAP is, is a great place to
start, and I just was commenting that Walnut as a
particular... I wouldn't, I wouldn't want us to see-- to do some things that appear
to be low-hanging fruit, but were just likely we looked at a
bigger experiment throwaway investment.
Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaking of Walnut Boulevard, so the, the
next supplemental planning activity, was a
feasibility assessment of doing a lane
reconfiguration on Walnut Boulevard.
And so, a-again, I'll emphasize, it's like if you, if you read this, there are no
specific recommendations, and I'm sure there are a lot more questions that have to
be answered. This is really taking that first step and saying, you know,
kinda like, is this fatally flawed? Does this look like it could work?
Is it, you know, worth further conversation,
potentially?
Um,
and so kinda the, you know, the, the why, you know, we would consider this, and,
you know, why is it part of this SS four A project?
Uh, there are pretty significant potential safety benefits of, you know,
conversions like that, where you're going from, you know, particularly in the
section where you have four lanes, you're going down to, to three.
Uh,
and, you know, one of them is just addressing speeding.
Uh, speeds themselves don't always drop a lot.
The speeding certainly gets curved because now the slowest people in the platoon
control how fast everybody goes. You know, there's no passing.
Um, let's say the similar conversions when you go from, like a four-lane
section like is shown there, to one where you have one lane each direction with a
center turn, a center turn lane, they see a
twenty-nine percent reduction in all crashes, which is pretty significant.
Mm-hmm.
Um, there's obviously more room for doing like protected bike lanes or,
you know, other kinds of accommodations for, you know, people walking and
biking. Uh, it's easier and safer to cross the
street. Uh, not only sometimes is it shorter distance to
cross, but as illustrated in that graphic, you eliminate what's
now referred to as the multiple threat issue, where one car stops for
a pedestrian, but they create a visual obstruction when they do
that, and another oncoming car may not see the pedestrian and, you know,
still, still stop the car.
Um, and also, you know, as you-- we'll get into a little bit later, whether you do
right turn lanes or not, those can have additional, safety benefits
and give you some options on how to, eliminate conflicts
or improve, conflicts with, bikes and
cars. Um, and this also gives us opportunities
to potentially use a kind of conflict marking.
Uh, so kinda what did we evaluate when we did this?
There are a few different scenarios.
Uh, one was, obviously keeping the current four/five-lane
layouts. We, you know, leave it as it is. We looked at the no-build.
One was, what if we change it to one lane each direction with a center turn lane,
so I call the three lane. Uh, and then these other ones are saying,
okay, well, at least at the intersections, what if we add right turn lanes,
especially where we have heavier right turn volumes.
So it's not a pure three lane, at least the intersections, we're doing that to
relieve a little bit of congestion.
And then the last one mentioned there, it would have been that scenario, plus we
discoveredThrough this, you probably don't want to reduce the
lanes between 9th Street and NFW because they're so
close together, we need the lanes just to store vehicles, or they're end up
spilling back into both intersections.
This creates a huge conflict.
So what did we consider in this feasibility assessment?
Uh, one thing we did was we thought we would use the TSP
goals, to kind of s-frame up evaluation
criteria. So we, we referred to the goals in the transportation system
plan related to safety, viable automobile
alternatives, and efficient movement of people, and goods,
or maybe more simply, I would state the last two are kind of people that are
walking, biking, using transit, and the last one is, you know, people
driving. Um, and then on the
right there, I show kind of the more specific evaluation criteria that we
looked at, like potential crash reduction, you know, how much
separation can we get between, cars and people walking and
biking, potential speed reduction, comfort for people
walking and biking, what it can do for,
pedestrian crossings, obviously auto
delay, and then potential for traffic diversion.
And what I mean by that is
if we do create some congestion, more delay on Walnut,
honestly, what we don't wanna have happen is people try to bypass that and go
through neighborhoods, right? And bypass through there.
So we did some, some modeling and testing to see what the potential was for
that. Um, obviously in exercises like this, as you would
expect to see is, you know, some modes like
walking, biking are probably really gonna benefit from a lot of this stuff.
Uh, driving, they're giving something up, right? They're giving up some capacity.
So it's, it's really a big question of-- or understanding what the trade-offs
are, and then for the community to decide what the appropriate balance
is.
Uh, so from that, that first kind of major, criteria, safety, and
I really kind of touched on this already, there are
significant safety, benefits, potentially by doing this
conversion. Um,
and like, I won't touch anymore 'cause I'm probably short on time.
But yes, that one's a clear winner overall safety to do this
conversion. A lot of potential for
improvement. Uh, now when you get to the, active
transportation modes, so walking, biking,
transit. Uh, one key assumption that we, we did, I highlighted in
yellow there, is that if we're doing this, we're probably gonna leave the curbs
where they are. Um, just 'cause it makes it way more affordable, right?
We could do it much, much faster. Um, so if
you do that, obviously with that extra width, there's a lot of
options you have for what you do with the bicycles.
We did not go through different design treatments.
We assumed if you pursue this further, that stuff can be discussed
more. But it could be something, right, that's shown in that illustration, 'cause
you, you know, that's the kind of room you would have.
So it could be some kind of protected facility.
Um, for people walking,
because we're not moving the curbs, the sidewalks aren't gonna get bigger, wider,
but there is now probably more of a buffer between the cars and them, right?
If we have more space being preserved for the bikes.
Uh, also, as I mentioned before, your crossings are gonna probably get easier
and safer. So, you know, it's a, it's a win for
people walking. Transit, I got the question mark there,
kind of depends on the design choices you make going forward.
The thing about transit is access to transit, same with people walking and biking
for all the reasons I mentioned before, it's probably gonna get better and, and be
easier and safer. But, but buses also
drive right in the travel lanes, and so some of the things that, the
detractions from people that are driving, buses also have to deal with.
So if there's more congestion, that's gonna affect their travel times as
well. Or if you choose to do bus stops in lane versus
having them pull out, it's probably gonna be harder for them to get into the
new three-lane section. So there are some trade-offs for transit,
and usually it's a positive change, but could depend on the design
choices you ultimately make.
Mm.
Uh, so with that said, the last category is really kind of how does
this, this affect, you know, driving through the corridor.
Uh, and I will say just for this feasibility assessment, we only looked at the
p.m./p.m. hour. So if there's morning issues with, you know, schools or whatnot,
we didn't look at that for this. Uh, we looked at what happens in twenty
twenty-five, so if you did it right away, versus what happens in twenty years, so
year twenty forty-five. And to kind of assess
if, you know, the acceptable level of congestion, we used Corvallis's
adopted mobility standards. This, you know, same thing a developer would
use if they do a transportation, you know, impact study.
Uh, and so
from the no-build scenario, what we found was congestion
levels at all the intersections are within adopted standards today,
and all but Highland Drive intersection would be in twenty forty-five.
Um, so now if we go to the three-lane, this is with no right turn
lanes, pure three-lane, now Highland and
Twenty-Ninth, they get fairly congested today, so they wouldn't meet your mobility
standards, and they'd get, you know, fairly worse by twenty
forty-five. But really no other intersections, have that
problem. So then if we go back, and we add some right turn
lanes in at the congested locations, now Highland
Drive is congested today as well as in twenty forty-five, but
Twenty-Ninth isn't a problem anymore.
Um, and while it varies from place to place, the levels of
congestion are fairly comparable to the no-build condition.
So right turn lanes added strategically where they're needed can certainly
help with congestion at the intersections.
Uh, but again, a lot of this is gonna come down ultimately, if this were to be
pursued, is what design choices you end up making in the future.
Can I ask a question?
Yeah.
What-- How do you determine the number of cars twenty
years out? What kind of da-- How do you pull that data?
Uh, so it's, it's using, the, regional
travel demand model, that, is,
managed by the Oregon Department of Transportation.
So it's the same forecasting model that's used for your
transportation system plan and for the, the regional transportation
plan. And it, it, has coordinated
population, you know, employment, right, housing projections,
that have been coordinated with the, the cities, the counties
built into this. So it's, it's based on the long-term projection
for, the city and its surroundings.
Okay. Do you know how current it is?
Um, they updated it
a few years ago.
Okay. That'll work.
Yeah. We did a little bit of refinement based on kind of what we know now
about where development is or isn't likely gonna happen, but
it's fairly true.
Thank you.
Yes. Um,
so looking at travel time, so I don't know how many people drive the whole length,
but, you know, instead of just looking at the intersections, we said, "Well, what
if you drove the whole corridor? How much difference does it make?"
Uh, and this was, with the right turn lanes in place,
if you'd went, end to end, increased travel time by one to
two minutes, depending on if you're going with the, the peak flow of direction or
not. And that's about a fifteen to thirty percent
increase. Uh, so that's about, I think it was like seven minutes in the
no build scenario.
Um, so again, on the diversion issue, and again, this is
where we used that, that travel demand model I referenced,
and kind of tested, okay, if we have this
congestion,
where... are we gonna lose any traffic to another route?
And again, this was done kind of with the worst case
scenario, I believe. Um,
so, there is some diversion around Highland, right?
Because that's really the main congestion point.
But if, you know, you're familiar with the area, we don't really have a strong
street grid, right? So there's not a lot of other places to go.
And so Circle Boulevard, you know, is probably likely
to pick up, just as another parallel arterial, about a hundred and
fifty vehicles. That's about a twenty, twenty-five percent increase.
Uh, now again, it's just during the peak hour. That's the only time we've analyzed.
Uh, but that was in the twenty forty-five scenario with no right turn lane.
So that's our worst case scenario.
Uh, and then looking at local
streets, was really the place where you really don't want a lot of that
diversion. Thirteenth and Garriana are, you know, the likely
places where if you're gonna see some diversion like that, that's probably where it
would happen, people trying to get around, you know, Highland.
That was more on the order of, you know, less than fifty total between the
two. So it's not really bad, but again, it could
depend on the design choices that you make.
If you do the right turn lanes, alleviate some of that congestion, maybe
that demand really drops, or maybe there's some traffic calming treatment that
could be done as well as that to help curb that.
Uh, but at least from our preliminary assessment, that's what we're
seeing. Um, so my last slide
here, it's, it's kind of-- So that's kind of what we have framed up.
Um, and like I said, my kind of take on that is it doesn't seem
fatally flawed. It seems feasible to continue exploring, but a
lot of it's gonna depend on design choices that you make, and
again, community, preferences and decisions
about balancing out kind of those different modes, right?
How much you give in one area to get in another, and what's the acceptable
balance. Um,
and, and certainly, hopefully, this, you know, stimulates the conversation if this
is gonna go forward. It highlights more questions that need to be answered if
you take this to another step.
Mm-hmm.
Yes, sir.
Yes.
Just two quick things to keep in mind as we leave this
topic. Um, there's a couple things that were happening at the same
time that we were doing this evaluation that I just wanna touch on for a
moment. Uh, one was, the school district talked about
school, school closures and redistribution of, children.
One of the things that we heard from community members, in the
middle of the project was concern about what impact that might
have on the analysis that we were, we're doing here.
Uh, so we, we put our heads together and
crammed more work into an already tight schedule,
and got, got with the school district, got information from them, on
enrollment projections, did some analysis,
and, found that the numbers
as, projected didn't change the results of what we
looked at and would recommend, in the study here.
So didn't have a meaningful impact on intersection performance, for
example. Where, where we communicated with the
task force members where that still might be important to
people is when we have that funding discussion,
later about where do we want to invest and, and not invest
when, what do, what do we invest in first.
Uh, that might be something that people point to.
You already have more kids, attending the school, that might
be a reason to invest in additional safety,
improvements sooner in one location over another that might have data
that's, that's, that's showing a problem.
That'll be a conversation to have later.
Uh, the other thing that was happening at the same time, was a
conversation about,
streets SDCs, and there was concern about removal of
a recreational path, parallel
Walnut in the near term, funding, their,
all, all, for their projects as well.
That wasn't needed from a transportation perspective.
It's not like a TSP, pedestrian
path. So it is, was, was there from a recreational
perspectiveBut there again, it was another thing that, if
constructed, might have provided another alternative,
for people, and that might be another reason why,
someone might look at improvements on, on Walnut
even though the data isn't there. I'm not advocating one way or another,
and I'm not trying to argue one way or the
other. Um, but there are some real things
that are gonna come, that are gonna come up
that, warrant consideration when you do get to the point of
weighing those things. And we tried to be mindful of the ones that we
could, put numbers to, like the school district, in
this, in this analysis so we were current with the times.
That's actually gonna be very helpful with some of the
conversations, you having done that, so thanks for taking the extra time.
Yeah. Yeah.
Thanks to John. It wasn't, it wasn't easy to
accommodate.
Who ever did that?
I'll move on. Uh, I'm probably gonna have to hit the
accelerator here a little bit too.
Um,
third supplemental planning activity.
So Neighborhood Traffic Management Program Assessment.
Uh, so what we did is essentially we audited the city's
current, you know, neighborhood traffic calming program, which is very well
documented. Um, and, kind of looked at that
compared to best practices, and, and,
talked to staff about kind of their experiences with it and,
provided some recommendations to look into to, improve the
program. Uh, looking at, kind of key things like how
community requests are processed and your roles and
responsibilities between community members and staff.
You know, how satisfied, staff and the city have been with the outcomes they've
been getting. Uh, and then just, you know, kind of equitable access and,
and outcomes.
Um, so the current program, if you're not
familiar with it, it's, it's a very structured process, and it's for
reducing speeds and cut-through traffic on neighborhood streets.
So this is specifically applicable to local streets, so not arterials and
collectors. Um, and it emphasizes goals.
You know, it's trying to achieve neighborhood livability, create broad
community involvement. You know, you have efficient uses of city
resources, and involve periodic assessment
of effectiveness. Uh, and so this is where I might
l-move a little bit quickly. Um, so I'll kind of
quickly run through the process as it is.
So requests can be submitted any time right now.
Uh, when the city gets requests, first they try to do enforcement strategies
to see if that will fix the problem.
That doesn't work, then the requester must
circulate a petition to study to demonstrate they have neighborhood
support, and they have to get a majority of support through this.
I think the situation is the city provides the boundary of what they determine the
affected area is, and then the-- whoever put the request in the neighborhood
has to do the legwork.
City determines also the, you know, look at the contacts and data to see if the
location would even qualify for, you know, like a traffic calming improvement.
Then the, neighborhood has to form a neighborhood traffic committee and
organize that. They work with the city to create a plan and identify
performance measures to see what they're gonna do is effective.
The neighborhood then has to fund a test installation.
Uh, if that's found to be effective, city again
confirms neighborhood support with the confidential
ballots. Uh, if that comes out positive, they have
demonstrated support, city council then, can approve,
modify, or reject the proposal. The
neighborhood then has to fund the project, but the city will design
it and construct it. Uh, improvements are evaluated by the
city through another neighborhood survey.
Uh, city staff give the final report to city council, and then city council can
approve it, modify it, extend the evaluation further,
or even order it to be removed.
Uh, and so, kind of the recommendations, kind of looking through that
and other best practices, the main things we're focused on are things like
transparency and accountability, equitable access for
sure, and just kind of, ability to delivery-- deliver
efficiently. Although there were some
things about the program that do align with best practices that are positive, and
that's using before and after data collection, doing measured
tests, and having formal city council
involvement. So the biggest,
recommended change, it's really a fundamental one, would be to move to a
city-funded program. So right now, if you notice in my run-through, a
lot of this is all paid by the neighborhoods.
Mm-hmm.
And a lot of the work is done by them too.
Mm-hmm.
Um, obviously that, that would address the inequity where only the neighborhoods
with financial resources, and frankly time, can afford to
have any improvements made in their commu-- in their neighborhoods.
Uh, it'd make the process, I think, easier and more predictable for everyone,
staff included, because I would imagine now, not only is there a big barrier to
entry, but if the neighborhood has to keep coming up with funding at different
points, project could disappear for years and then
come back at a time when staff may not expect it or have the bandwidth to even deal
with it. Uh, so it'd be, much more efficient and predictable
if that was just, a city program.
Great.
Um, other recommendations involving simplifying the
process. Um, and that's things like using a, a
program webpage with information about the program to help people understand how to
engage with it. You can even show the eligibility of projects that are in
the-- or what's an eligible project and show what the status of projects in the
queue, are. Uh, and then
consider applications on a regular cycle.
So maybe you could still apply any time, but make it clear that
maybe once a year they'll be processed.
Um-And then creating standardized requirements for
eligibility, which is to help with screening and prioritizing.
Um, and then right now there's a very prescribed outreach process, you
noticed. I think since then, I think the, the city has discovered
a lot of more effective and creative ways to do community engagement.
And so maybe not making that so prescriptive and letting you customize that would
probably be beneficial. Uh, having city council
confirmation on the prioritized list of projects once per
cycle. Uh, making tests not mandatory but
optional, 'cause sometimes there are things the city may already have experience
with. They, they know they're gonna be effective.
Um,
creating project eligibility criteria and a prioritization
process,
which, you know, popularity in the program increases because now it's easier
to get access to. That would probably help process all the requests.
Um, and another idea is, you could do a rotating,
project cycle through geographic areas of the city to kinda
help with, equitable distribution, much like the sidewalk safety
program.
Uh, and then I think the last recommendation was centralizing all that
technical work back with city staff and not putting it on the
neighborhood.
So I thought this was very well described in the-- I
thought the recommendation was
really nice.
Yeah.
I thought it was spot on. Uh, totally like it, too.
I've always had a problem with this pro-- the old process
because it's so geared to the neighborhoods that have long-term
residents who own their homes, have money, and have those connections,
where
some of the neighborhoods that really need this work don't.
So
I was glad to spend the time looking into this.
Uh, moving on. Speed limit investigation framework.
The
next of the supplemental planning activities. Uh, so what is this?
So essentially this is an approach to reviewing and setting
contact, context-sensitive speed limits on arterials and
collectors throughout Corvallis.
So now we're not, not the neighborhood streets, now we're focused more on arterials
and collectors. Uh, key here, context-sensitive,
so and I'll touch on this a little bit more.
So that's not simply just the statutory speed.
So that is something that may align better with the actual land use and
the, the street design itself, if those are
not in sync.
Um, and then again, focus on arterials and collectors.
And, emphasize the-- what are our recommendations here?
This still works within current, regulations, so we're not changing state
law. It's pretty consistent already, with the city's current
practice. It's, really just provides more of a screening process to look at
the whole network at once, rather than being maybe more ad hoc in
identifying where the opportunities might be to then go and proactively do
this.
Um, so kind of the why is it important?
Obviously, speed is a big factor, right, in safety and, and the,
severity of outcomes in a crash. Uh, especially if you're, you know,
a vulnerable, you know, traveler, so you're walking or biking.
Um, and speeds, you know, that don't align with what people expect 'cause the
context is very different, can sometimes be
confusing. And you end up with some people that are really trying to be rule
followers and drive the posted speed, and other people that are following what
their brain is telling them because the context and those big differences
in speeds, can create safety problems of their
own.
And then my, my big warning, simply changing posted
speeds, won't be effective unless the roadway design and context
support it. Uh, in some cases, companion strategies, like
changes to the street design may be needed, otherwise you could be making the
problem worse. But this is a common thing, is people think, "Well, let's just
change the posted speed." If it's out of sync with the context, it
probably isn't going to work.
Um, so how are posted speeds set now?
So ODOT has all the responsibility for setting speed limits on all public
roadways. Um, there's two kinds of, posted
speeds. I mentioned statutory, so it's kinda like the default.
Um, those are specified by, you know, state law and by road types,
illustrated on the chart there. And then you have
designated, and so, that's where you're obviously deviating
from the default. Um, and that involves, you know, the speed
study typically. But there is the ability, as you notice on this
table, you can kinda better align it with your context.
So if you're urban core, if you can read the numbers on the table up there,
you'll notice there are allowable speeds for arterials and collectors that are
lower than if you're in a suburban fringe area.
But there are still kind of windows of allowed ranges, and they're fairly tight,
you know, five-to-ten-mile-an-hour windows.
So
I would, you know, setting expectations appropriately, if you're thinking-- looking
at opportunities to lower posted speeds, it's probably not gonna be a
twenty-mile-per-hour drop. It's probably gonna be a five-mile-per-hour drop,
something like that.
Uh, so how is it done now? So ODOT, while they do have the-- they still hold
the authority and have to make the decisions, they can delegate authority to
cities. Uh, but, the process and the
criteria are still the same. Um, and ODOT
still has to make the decisions. Really, what they're delegating to the city is,
you do the legwork, you perform the investigation, rather than requesting
ODOT to do it. But you still have to give that to
ODOT. They're gonna make sure you did it to their standards, and they're still
making the decision. So
you still have, you, you have to have the time and the resources to do it for that
to really be beneficial.
Uh, so the proposed approach, and again, still working within the same regulations.
We're not changing the laws. ODOT still has authority, but it's rather than kind of
ad hoc looking at maybe when a request comes up or if you're doing a CIP
project and you notice maybe there's an opportunityIt's kind of screening the whole
network and then seeing what pops up, where the context and the,
the current posted speed, there might be some wiggle room.
Um, so really that's, you know, doing some GIS analysis.
So right, just kind of coding in there in GIS what your land use
contact zones are, what the current posted speeds are,
and then kind of knowing where there's flexibility, seeing where the
candidate locations are.
Um,
and then a note on residential streets, while we said
we were focused on arterials and collectors.
Uh, Oregon cities are permitted to designate twenty mile per hour speed
limits on residential streets without any investigation.
Um, however, right now, I believe in Corvallis, this is pretty
common. It's-- a lot of your residential streets, they're not posted twenty-five
miles per hour because that's the statutory speed already.
And so if you're gonna make a change like that, people aren't gonna know you did
it. Probably unless you do a pretty extensive outreach campaign, and then probably
also need to post all those streets twenty miles per hour,
which comes with a lot of extra costs.
Um, especially, you got to maintain all those things now that you've put them in.
So an alternative to that is y-you could think about
doing it on select streets, like maybe, you know, neighborhood bikeways that are
local streets, if you wanted to drop those to twenty miles an hour.
So it's like kind of that, that cost barrier may be more feasible, but
still something to look into and consider.
So that is what we've provided for the Speed Limit Investigation
Framework.
The last supplemental planning activity, and this will be the shortest and sweetest
one of all, Pedestrian Crossing Treatments
Matrix. I, I don't think you had a hand up for this one 'cause we're still tweaking
some stuff with, with city staff on this.
But really what this is, is, providing some criteria
so the city can, I think, more consistently a-and
objectively evaluate, requests or opportunities to do
marked or enhanced pedestrian crossings at what are currently
unmarked locations. And so obviously we're drawing
again from a lot of kind of, you know, standardized or best practices, what other
communities have done. There's good, you know, state and federal guidelines for
kind of when to not mark a crossing or when it would, would be an eligible
candidate. And then once you've deserm-- determined something's an
eligible candidate, considering things like, you know, traffic volume,
speeds, crossing distances, visibility,
you know, route continuity, lighting, you know, crossing demand, and the
context is, then helping you figure out,
okay, well, what types of treatments would be appropriate?
You know, from the most basic to striping it, to putting
in, you know, refuge islands or flashing beacons or
full traffic signals right as you go up in progression.
So that's what we're ironing out some of the details with staff now, but that's
what we're providing. It's just a tool to help them when they get those
opportunities or requests, they can run it through then and kind of have more
consistency and objectivity to that.
And now, now the big one, right? The
Transportation Safety Action Plan.
So I'm gonna give you an overview of that.
Um, again, that was-- that's the major effort.
That's the one where staff will be coming back next month and, and asking you to,
to approve this document, not the other ones.
So just kind of off the bat, s-so there are requirements and
specific requirements from the, SS4A program on what TSAPs
have to do or include. So obviously, that guided our
approach to this, and we made sure that we incorporated these elements.
One of those is they want to see a leadership commitment, to a zero
goals. That's, reaching zero pe-- crashes resulting in
fatalities and serious injuries.
Uh, we need to use a committee or task force, and that's, that's both in the
development of the plan and later when it comes to implementing the
plan. To monitoring, I should say.
Um, they want data-driven safety analysis.
Uh, they want to see public engagement being a part of the process.
Um, equity considerations. That was, that was, that was a requirement when we,
when we got the grant. Uh, we kept it in there.
But-- So we, we-- I'll talk about that later.
We kind of use that as part of our prioritization process.
Um, in addition to-- The second to last bullet is
not only hotspot projects and then kind of more broad reaching strategies
you could apply, but also looking to see if there's any
changes the city can make to like, you know, policies, design standards,
operating procedures, just to keep safety kind of always in the
conversation when you're, you're doing things.
Uh, and then progress and transparency.
That's, that's all at the end, you need to do annual monitoring
reporting, and that has to be made publicly
available. Um, and so kind
of, the safe system approach was what we used, and that's
kinda again one of the really the requirements and emphasis of doing these
TSAPs. And really the, the, in maybe simple terms, is
that's taking a holistic approach and not just relying on maybe
traditionally doing engineering improvements to fix safety problems, but
considering kind of the full spectrum of things that can affect
safety and safety outcomes. And that's, you know, the people, you know,
vulnerability of people, their, the, their behavior and choices they make,
you know, vehicle capabilities, speeds, as well
as even post-crash care. So, you know, emergen-- helping emergency services not
only respond faster, but, you know, get people to
get people care more quickly, so we can reduce the severity outcomes
potentially.
So those are kind of lenses that we, we're kind of continuously looking at when
we're looking through solutions.
Um, so the executive summary is, is as most executive
summaries are. Uh, it summarizes the document, the key points of
that. One thing I'm highlighting here that, shows up, I think in, in the
intro section as well-Is, the, the
statement again, and I think this is where, you know, when, FHWA is
looking through now looking for that leadership commitment, that first thing I
mentioned is, is this states that clearly.
And we-- the, statement we have in here is that City of Corvallis aims to
make our transportation system as safe as possible and move towards
zero traffic-related fatalities and serious injuries in the next twenty
years, or next ten years, not twenty.
Um,
and that's different than some other long-range planning studies we do, is which
often have twenty-year horizons.
There's really an emphasis in this plan to do things we can get done a lot more
quickly because we want to make safety improvements fast, not wait ten years to
fund them and get them.
Uh, so the first few chapters are-- it's a lot of introductory stuff.
It kind of introduces, you know, about the project, the process we went
through, the safe-- what's the safe system approach,
talks about the coordination we did with Benton County, and,
kind of summarizes our public engagement approach.
It also splits up,
does some intro of some of the crash data and trends that we saw to kind of support
the, the problem, right? Or the where are we starting from, why do we need to do
this. Especially 'cause if, if that goal is to
get to zero fatalities and serious injuries, you need to know where you're starting
from.
Um, so as we get to chapter four, that's gonna kind of pick up that conversation
again. There's more in-depth conversation about kind of what are the issues,
right? So it's, what's analyzing that crash data.
Um, and so from twenty eighteen to twenty twenty-two was the
span of crash data we got, simply 'cause that was the most recent data we could
get when we started. Um, there was an average of fifteen crashes per
year resulting in fatalities and serious injuries.
And the proportion of fatal and serious injury crashes,
nearly doubled from twenty nineteen to twenty twenty-two.
So you can kind of see that on that graph. It's been, it's been climbing.
Uh, obviously in twenty twenty, where the pandemic hit, all the crashes went
way down 'cause people weren't driving as much.
Well, in a lot of places, Corvallis included, they've been climbing right back up.
And in fact, the proportion of the fatal and serious injury crashes has been
getting worse. Um, so again, if our goal is to get to
zero, it's like that's, that's telling us what our baseline is and what we're, what
we're starting from. Um, chapter
four also identifies the high-priority network.
And so again, this was an exercise we went through, with the task
force to help identify this. And those are intersections and road
segments where, based on crash history and trends, we believe have the
most, for improvements, have the greatest potential to
eliminate high-severity crashes.
Um, and a note here, we kept the focus on city facilities with a
lot of this. So we did identify state highway corridors because
there's a lot of crashes on those, but we separated those out and listed
them. So you can still have conversations with ODOT about
making improvements there. But as far as investing city resources, we wanted to
keep it on the city facilities, so we split the two
apart.
Uh, so kinda a little bit on how we got to that high-priority network.
Uh, considered a lot of inputs. So it was, you know, the data analysis, you know,
what's the crash data telling us? Um, not only
specifically where the crashes and most severe crashes are happening, but what are
kind of the overall, overall trends that are most prevalent in the most,
serious crashes, and how-- per
location. Uh, but then we also considered,
community feedback. Uh, we used like Oregon Social
Equity Index to identify where there's,
census tracts within the city with, higher disparities in people that may
be,
you know, more traditionally underserved and kind of, looked at
that to see where those high-priority locations were, in
alignment with those to, to make sure we're getting good coverage.
And we kind of pulled all that together with our task force, and,
they helped us make the decisions.
Uh, fir-first of all, they supported our prioritization process and criteria, but
then they also helped us kind of make the decisions on which projects
they thought were rising to the top and were the high-priority ones.
Um,
and again, that's at this moment in time.
It's not to say, you know, that there aren't other locations that could benefit
from safety improvements. It's just these were the highest in priority at this
time. Uh, also sets up what we call
emphasis areas. So these are not specific locations, but
it's factors that are most frequently involved in fatal and serious injury crashes.
Uh, again, the task force helped us kind of look through that data and identify
which we thought were the ones we wanted to focus on for this.
And we chose five of those for Corvallis, those being
intersections, so that's a place where we were having the most of those
more serious crashes. Uh, people walking, people biking.
We, risky behaviors, we lumped in things like drug and
alcohol impairment, distracted driving, and speeding.
And then younger drivers, so twenty-one and under.
That-- those were where we were seeing, more
linkages to those serious crashes.
So as soon as we get to chapter five, we get into the, solutions
themselves. Um, and so we have the systemic emphasis area
strategies, and those are things we can apply broadly.
They're not spot, you know, location-specific.
Uh, if the city has a CIP project, they can look at tools in this
toolkit we've given them to potentially apply in that.
They could apply for a grant to apply some of these things, you know, in,
in multiple corridors or areas in comparison to high-priority
projects which are obviously very specific to a location.
And then here, this is the page thirty.
This is where we-Wanted to more specifically address the input from
the task force where they didn't want to preclude,
larger scale projects from this. And so we've
included, this consideration for really kind of all, you
know, projects to kind of continuously keep the kind of
the, the safe system approach embedded in, the thought
process. Since it's tiered system where you start, you're looking for
the types of solutions that remove conflicts, right?
So you're separating people in space. If you, if you...
That's not feasible to do, right? Because there's always constraints, whether it's
funding, environmental, whatever.
Then you kind of go down the list and say, "Well, what can we do to reduce
speeds?" If you can't do that, you move down the list.
How can we manage conflicts and time, right? So think traffic signals, right?
They're separating conflicts and time.
And if we can't do that, then it's just increasing awareness of the location
or the situation. And so, that process
and recommendations provided in there, we also acknowledged,
or explains how you could use that process for intersection or bicycle
facility improvements. So if you're kind of like, one of the RSAs, it says,
"If you ever need to replace this traffic signal, consider doing protected
intersections and roundabouts." That should be part of the conversation.
Similarly, bike facilities, right?
There, there should be a preference for something like protected facility, because
that would be tier one. But, you know, if you can't do that for whatever reason,
you move kinda down the tiers. So we do have some guidance
for, you know, other capital projects.
And then the necessary strategies.
Again, we have infrastructure-based and non-infrastructure based things.
Uh, the infrastructure based things, again, we're looking for kind of lower cost
things you can do a lot of quickly. Intersection hardware
improvements, street lighting improvements, pedestrian crossing
enhancements, green bike lane painting in conflict
areas, buffered bike lanes, radar speed feedback signs are just some of
the examples. On the non-infrastructure based
examples, you'll see things are-- start to get into more of the, the
education enforcement realms. Um, pedestrian safety
zones is one that was, popular with the task force.
That's where you can designate an area, maybe it's, you know, around a school or a
downtown or something. But then you're, you're focusing
education, engineering, and enforcement strategies specifically on pedestrian
safety in that, in that zone.
Um, educational campaigns, not only for, for safe biking behavior, but
also for drivers around bikes. Um, high visibility saturation
patrols, again, on the enforcement side.
Um, and then more kinda educational campaigns and assistance for some of those
risky behaviors and parents that have young drivers.
The nice thing about a lot of, a lot of these educational things is you don't have
to reinvent the wheel, 'cause a lot of great resources are already out there.
ODOT's-- you get access through a lot of these through
ODOT.
And then the high priority projects, just listed
there. These were the locations that, rose to our-- got on
the high priority list. Um, Ninth Street had a lot.
It's five, five different projects just on Ninth Street.
Uh, we've got Harrison Boulevard at Twenty-Ninth, Kings Circle, Thirty-Fifth and
Western, Garfield Highland, a segment of Circle Boulevard
from Highland to Porter Place, segment of Circle between
Ninth Street and Nine-Nines W. Uh, Circle at,
Kings, Eleventh and Grant, Tenth and Buchanan, Thirty-Fifth and
Jackson, and then Conifer, there's a segment from Nine-Nine to
Cambridge, where there's kind of a, a sight distance issue in the
corner.
Um, and so if you kinda look through those, kind of the, the general pattern of the
information we're providing for each of those, there's a location
description, a discussion of the crash patterns and trends that were
in that data, project recommendations that also include
what, you know, crash reduction potential, where there's research to, to back that
up. Um, project costs, potential funding sources to
consider, benefit-cost ratios. Um, and then we
noted any other related planning projects, 'cause sometimes there's a, a
CIP or a transportation system plan project,
that's related to that location that'd be good to
know. Uh, and the last
chapter, chapter six, has three kind of sections to it.
Again, the first one is what I mentioned before.
It's some opportunities where the city can change operating procedures,
design standards, to kind of
continue, discussing safety improvements
and keeping those in mind in kind of, you know, day-to-day operations.
And that covers, also things like, you know, some maintenance,
funding, discussions, you know, capital projects, and obviously the
monitoring evaluation process, which is the last section of the
three. Uh, there's a discussion on funding
sources. So it's just identifying federal, state,
local, potential sources for funding safety
projects. Obviously, those change over time, so this is a
snapshot of today and what's available.
Um, and then this table, which is included, and you can hopefully
actually read it in the plan, not on the slide.
But re- It's just taking kind of an exercise and saying, "Okay, given all these
funding sources and kind of the nature of what they are typically geared for,
then as you look at high priority projects across the, the columns, which
ones might they be decent candidates for?" So it's kinda helping to start that
process of looking for funding sources.
And then the last section, performance measures and monitoring.
So again, one of the requirements of the program is do the plan, then
annually, you need to have some performance measures set, and you need to go and
see how did we do every year? Are we making progress on that goal to get
to zero? Um, and so, and
again, that has to-- the results need to be made publicly available, so most
likely just posting them on your website once you've kind of made that report.
And so the performance measures that we've identified for Corvallis...
Again, this is on city roadways. So it's looking at the number of
all the crashes, the number of serious injury crashes,
number of fatal crashes, number of pedestrians involved
crashes, number of bicycle involved crashes, and the number of
fatal and serious injury crashes involving pedestrians and bicycles.
So those would be the key performance measures they'd be looking at, comparing that
year over year to see how that trend is
changing.
And then another part of the reporting is,
just accounting
for, okay, well, what did we do like last year? What were the actions?
Maybe we did two of the high priority projects, or we did two
educational campaigns. So it's just so you can see what did we
do kind of compared to, outcomes.
But I will acknowledge there's a lag in getting crash data.
So you do something next year, maybe two years before you get the crash
data to actually align with that. So that is one trick to
this.
Um, so again, I've said this a couple of times now, but the next steps for the
TSAP is, requesting city council acceptance
of the Transportation Safety Action Plan through resolution
at the April twentieth city council
meeting. I believe that is the end of
my very long presentation. On
to you.
Before we go any further and, and maybe take some, some, some
questions here, I did want to acknowledge someone else that's joined us today,
which is Nick from Federal Highways.
He's been our grant administrator from the federal side, and I can't
emphasize-- And he's attended many task force meetings, for
us and put us in touch with other federal resources,
when we had questions, and has really,
demonstrated, above
and beyond commitment to our project.
And I just wanted to acknowledge Nick being here,
and, a-as the grant
administrator on our side, I've leaned on him, many times.
Mm-hmm.
And, and he's come through every time for us.
And, it's just-- it's been a very, I have to say, it's been a very
positive experience from our side working, working with Federal
Highways on this. And, I'm not sure every community gets to say that, but,
but we certainly can, and, and just wanted to,
give our appreciation for him. Thanks, Nick.
You're welcome.
Just real, real quick, adding on to that, you know, this is, this
was a pretty rewarding project to be part of.
We had really strong task force participation and
support. We had very strong consultant support,
both from a technical standpoint and a public
engagement standpoint. Uh, and we had really good
buy-in and engagement from, from staff that this
represented extra work for, was
painful to incorporate at times. Uh,
but the neat thing about it is that it fills, fills a real
gap that I don't know that we knew that we had.
Mm-hmm.
And, when you think about what's in a traditional
transportation system plan, or a TSP, you don't have
this type of safety analysis incorporated in
that study. You don't do a separate action like this.
And so, it's filling a gap, a real gap that we have
with meaningful, data-driven
projects that we can consider implementing to make a real
difference in our community. So we look forward to continuing the
conversation about how to move projects
forward. But also one, one of the recommendations is, and the plan
is, you know, when you, when you haven't done one of these for a
while, like, we have a t-- minor TSP update that we have to do soon, so you
wouldn't redo this again in, like, two years.
But in the future, when we do TSP updates, to coordinate updates
to the Transportation Safety Action Plan at the same time.
So when you're identifying all your improvements, you're considering, these
more detailed safety elements, at the same time.
Uh, in addition to a recommendation to continue to do the road safety audits,
in conjunction with our, our larger, street projects
that, that we take on. So the intention is to
continue to build on, on what we learned and incorporate this in future
planning activities as, as well.
And we should thank Jeff for writing the, the original grant,
and he went above and beyond to, to do that.
Yeah.
So it's given us some really good information.
Yeah. Thanks for that. A little, an au-acknowledgment that some of
you would appreciate was, some of you had
personal working relationships with Marge Stevens, and
I didn't know her as well as many of, as you did, but,
she
had made me aware of, of this grant that led to
the, conversations, led to us
applying.
Yeah.
So I've always kind of thought of this as, as Marge's project.
That's so cool.
So I'm glad to
bring it forward.
Thank you for sharing that.
Yeah. Great, great presentation.
Awesome.
Great work, and, if you have any questions, there'll
also be an opportunity to have some time.
So I just think it's-- I think it does fill a gap.
It's amazing, the, the qu- quality of the information.
It's gonna be very helpful in decision-making for
sure. Thank you very much.
I just want to--
Given all the work that happened to do
this, you mentioning future planning cycles and
aligning
updates for--
to the TSP unit, which makes sense.
The, the scale of this work
Okay.
Is, is something happening through all this that makes it replicable at less
expense in the future? Um,
in other words, if you- every time we do this, we would be
dependent on a six, seven hundred thousand dollar grant?
Well, I, you know, I think we, we did a lot...
As you saw, we did a lot of supplemental planning activities.
Yeah.
And there was a lot of cost, associated with those.
So I think, you know, going back to,
going back to just, the transportation safety action plan component of it will
in itself limit the, the level of
investment. Um, but there's a lot of work that goes,
goes into that. So I, I still think it'll be a
significant dollar amount.
Yeah.
You know, the formats of master plans or TSPs don't necessarily change
dramatically, cycle to cycle.
But you still spend a heck of a lot of money-
Yeah
... to, to refresh them and bring in new regulations, and in this case, new
traffic data and things like that.
I, I can, I can add on just a little bit to that.
I think also if you do this concurrently with a T-TSP-
Mm-hmm
... you have, there's, there's efficiencies there if you have, like, the same,
like, the same consulting team perhaps is doing both.
Also, if you're doing your public outreach at the same time.
Like, there's considerable costs to...
The public engagement in this was a considerable effort-
Mm-hmm
... and required considerable resources.
And when, when you do a TSP, it's, it's even more as far
as, the cost component to engage the community in that.
So if you can engage the community with multiple things-
At the same-
... multiple
co-concurrent efforts that are, you know, married together-
Mm-hmm
... I think there is a lot of efficiencies there, where if we look at
just what it cost us to do this TSAP versus what it would cost to incorporate
as part of a TSP project, you're gonna gain some on it.
The same way we gained by working with Benton County on our
collective efforts on our outreach and sharing data and everything.
That, that provided a, a great s- resource savings to both
of us by sharing. So.
I'll add quickly if, if I can. I'll say even if all you want to do within a few
years, let's say you've finished some of your high priority projects, and you just
want to refresh that list, 'cause that's gonna change over time
too. Um, we're giving the city as part of this a tool now that
we've set up the analysis framework for identifying that, right?
Remember the prioritization criteria I talked about that?
Yeah.
We're doing a training session with them next month and handing over this tool so
they can update that periodically.
So that's, a lot of the work to set that piece up is done.
So with fairly low effort, they can at the very
least refresh that prioritization list every so often.
Great. Anyone
else?
Yeah.
Well, thank you very much. And again, all the work's really appreciated, and-
Sure
... we'll see you on the twentieth.
Great.
Okay. Move on. Um, I'm sure you also did see, received
some written comments, so wanna be sure to get
to those. Um, I'm just gonna kinda skip them and hand it off to Tony
for his questions, and going after we'll get-
Right. So I did say that as the update regarding
the, use the RFP process for,
city manager evaluation. Um, I
think that
we got some feedback from, Counselor Schaefer, who felt
that it was a,
consistent with what we had previously discussed and saw it as a valuable
exercise.
I think the way I would frame the question for all of you is, there's,
there's no doubt we will get something from using a consultant.
Um, to put it in stark relief, perhaps
if, if this
cost of this was a thousand dollars, we would, it would be a no-brainer to do
it. If the cost, if the cost of it were twelve
thousand, which is kind of a little gateway,
we would probably do it. The costs are probably gonna be about twenty-five
K. So, and it's really a manner, it's really a practical matter
of, um-
It's a-
It's a pain in the extreme. If this costs a hundred K, is it still worth the
effort? So I, I just... Really the question is, and I, like I
said, I'm happy to proceed and manage whatever,
process the council would decide.
Um, but I do invite your comments as to how you'd like, how you'd like to
proceed.
Um,
I'm gonna say that I would like to proceed, but we're also down
three counselors, two of whom argued strongly in favor of the
evaluation last time. So I feel like, we're missing
some voices at the table.
Well, let's start with you.
You... Go ahead. You said you felt like
for sure we would gain something. Uh, when I
read through it, I was not
especially convinced that we would gain, that the process would
be measurably all that different than what we did
ourselves.
I did-
So-
I didn't, I didn't quantify how much we would gain.
Mm-hmm.
I s- I... Obviously, seeing how someone else does
this, who does this in different settings, there's something
to be learned.
Right.
I don't know that I can speak to the magnitude.
Okay.
So I'm not saying it's small or large.
Okay.
Different.
No, I just didn't know if you had a particular,
segment of what we did that you thought might
be better or, you know, what gain
might be gained.
I agree.
You know, I just, that's all. I, i-if you don't have a particular thing, that's
fine. Okay.
You, um-
Yeah, I was gonna say I think that I still think that this is a
good idea. I mean, if we were looking at this for every year,
twenty years into the future, I would have a lot more questions.
But considering the amount of discussion that has gone into
having an outside person doing this over the past
many, many years, since probably before both of us were
on the council, I think that having...
I, I think that having someone come in and kind of
streamline and optimize our process would be
ideal because it allows us to use as an investment for years in the
future. So...
Jim.
Um,
I don't want to go through what we did
last year again. So,
priority mine is that we establish
a framework protocol, content
that's replicable and that, that successive
city councils can look at and go, "That, that's, that's good.
We don't have to reinvent the wheel.
We got something that, that is, based on best practices and
works." Um,
if we can do it, we can accomplish that without a consultant, then why
spend the money? I'm not sure that we would, though,
because we-- it was such a struggle, trying to figure out what we
wanted. If, if it's a, you know, one-time
expenditure of twenty-five thousand dollars and we get an excellent
product out of it that's going to remove, you
know, conflicts in the future about, you know, reinventing
it every time and, and, then I think it's money well
spent.
Rita.
Um, yeah, no, I, I agree. I,
I... The, the, the, the price tag
is getting to me a little bit, but because it is a one-- it
feels like it will be a one-time expenditure, I think we should go for
it. Um, I just,
I think it's just like for the future, I just hope we don't have to do it again
because then it's like, then why did we spend twenty-five K in the first place-
Yeah
... if we're just gonna keep doing it?
So I, I say
we go with it and, and just see how it goes.
Uh, okay, let me say we'll have...
Uh,
did you?
Well, I think that when I hear about one-time expense versus
ongoing, what I recall one
of the driving factors was having an outside person rather than our
HR director run this process. So that would mean this would be an ongoing
process.
For groups.
But, but I, I don't want to
presuppose the outcome. I think likely the
questions
generally that you saw last time aren't gonna be wildly
different with a consultant, but what you'll have is just an outside person
running the process. Um,
which maybe that's good confirmation for the council.
Again, is that worth the money? That's for you to determine.
Right. So a couple comments. Uh, because we did get six proposals and we did rank
them,
I know that Councilor Ellis, you said we have voices we haven't heard from.
I, I must point out that one of the voices
was-- should have been part of the ranking process and was not.
Um, so I think that,
the, the ones that were ranked high did tend to converge with the
ICMA,
framework.
Mm-hmm.
Um, the highest rated one right now, definitely-
Which one we would wanna be a little careful about.
I'm not, I'm not gonna say anything more other than to say
that, I think there's-- we-- a lot of our questions that
we, we used in the last evaluation do align with the ICMA
framework. There could be some refinement there.
The answer to, what Council-- what Jim said was that,
I, I feel this-- I-I am like, like I said, I'm willing to support whatever process
the council wants. I feel confident that we could
improve the process that we had last year, incorporate three hundred and sixty
degree feedback with a similar but slightly different set of
questions, is still lush. Uh, and
there's-- I think that I have no, doubt that I could
drive a process with council input that would get us there.
So-
I guess I wanna-
That's, that's my, that's my own observation
of, what I think, could be delivered, but I'm happy.
We will, we will get another shot at this because we have a council
meeting, the day before
we award the contract, according to the timeline we have.
I will bring this up again, for a
discussion. But I
also-- I'm also a little, um...
That being said, I don't like the idea of spending a lot of
energy on something and, and asking folks
to... I, I mean, frankly, they're consultants, they're used to
s-getting nos as well. It doesn't bother me so much.
But our own time, we've, we've spent a lot of time
on this and, so I,
I, I realize that's all in the past, but I would
like us to not-- like us to be more effective, more
clear in our decision-making. Yes.
It just occurs to me that maybe, I mean, one thing we
don't ever look at very carefully is trending on
how much council is spending over time.
Mm-hmm.
And I just thought that might be useful information in this decision because I'm
pretty sure we're spending more this year than we spent the year before already,
before we even think about the twenty-five thousand dollars.
But I could be wrong. Does that-
Resonate with anyone as a matter of importance, given our budget
constraints that we're facing and all of that business or-
Well, I think that's partially what weighs into, I was even asking this
question.
Yeah.
If we were
not having a budget strain, we're sitting just fine. I don't think...
I mean, in the grand scheme of things, twenty-five thousand dollars isn't a lot of
money from a, a, a city budget. But considering where
we are, is why like when, when I was looking at the proposals like that, I had
some sticker shock.
Mm-hmm.
I was like, "Whoa, that's not what I was expecting to see." Um, but it is what it
is.
Yeah.
So that's why we want to-
I think the short... My recollection is that we, we have adjusted county
mayor council budget up. We've done things for add- additional training.
We've done things like the Mayor's Innovation Conference, that Charles just
spoke to.
The office-
Potentially, joining, that as, as an
activity. I can't speak to fifteen years
of- ... or twenty years of trend.
Mm-hmm.
Um, but certainly in my time on the council, I would bet-
Right now we have the office now too, so I would think-
Yeah
... the first line is fairly high.
Twenty-five, 25K is a, is a very big increment though-
Yeah
... to whatever that growth has been.
We, we can pull together where the council is right
now, in the, our biennium versus what your
budget is, so you have an idea of are you ahead or behind.
Um, you know, there's multiple things that play into that.
As you said, training. Um, city attorney
cost is one of the highest,
variables for the council. So we can, I can work
to provide that before the next council meeting.
All right.
Thank you.
Well, at this point, we're-
Yeah
... go through the process of, uh-
Pardon?
Well, continuing to move forward.
We'll continue moving forward. Uh, I'm probably gonna
be, uh... We're gonna continue moving
forward.
Okay.
We'll talk about it again at the next
meeting.
Uh, we adjourned?
Oh, sorry. Distracted. Yes, I thought we're adjourned.
Did you care?