The Community Investment Initiative faced its most thorough review this week, as both the Metro Council and Metro Policy Advisory Committee were updated on that nascent project.
Some of the initiative's proposals, like a regional study of a road fee based on how many miles drivers travel, landed with a thud. Others, like a regional look at streamlining infrastructure funding, were met with enthusiasm.
Thursday was the first time the Metro Council met at length to discuss the Community Investment Initiative, born in 2010 as a way to address a $45 billion shortfall in infrastructure funding across the Portland region.
The initiative is a group of private-sector leaders tasked with developing plans to spark the region's economy and address infrastructure funding. They say the region has a $45 billion shortfall in infrastructure funding in the coming decades.
Metro has been providing staff support to the initiative, but its Leadership Council have been left to address problems with little input from Metro's elected officials. No Leadership Council members were at Thursday's Metro Council work session.
The initiative's proposals generated pointed discussion as Metro councilors decided how much the regional government should be involved with the efforts' studies and endeavors.
George is a winner
The initiative's biggest focus has been on streamlining infrastructure funding, a so-called Regional Infrastructure Enterprise, an entity that had been nicknamed "George" for lack of a better term during the initiative's early discussions.
George's mission is to help important infrastructure projects around the region obtain funding at the lowest long-term cost to taxpayers, whether that's through more agreeable bond rates, public-private partnerships or simply refining traditional funding methods.
"To me, this is the highest priority," said Metro Councilor Kathryn Harrington. "But it's going to take more active involvement from us. I'd like to see us moving forward with this."
Many questions remain on the enterprise – George – before it's fully cooked. Chief among them is governance, ensuring that George helps with projects in a way that's responsible to the taxpayers of the region.
"There's concern that it's going to choose the projects to invest in," said Councilor Rex Burkholder. "That gets into, 'Who has the right to do that?'"
But, he said, that's a conversation for another day.
"Let's keep going," he said. "Of course it's going to develop."
Transportation tactics
Metro councilors agreed with the initiative that the selection and construction of transportation projects was an important priority. Councilor Carl Hosticka said he thought one project in particular would pave the way for the initiative to get more involved in transportation funding.
"The Columbia River Crossing is going to provide most of the energy that gets this thing started," Hosticka said. "I think the reality of politics in Salem is that people will start tacking their things onto it.
"We'll see how much freight the CRC can carry," he said, referring to legislative pork as much as cargo trucks.
Avoiding redundancy
To varying degrees, councilors said they didn't want Metro involved in projects being handled by other entities. The notion of a regional vehicle miles traveled pilot study, taxing drivers based on how far they travel instead of how much gas they use, is best left to other bodies, councilors said.
Also landing with a thud was a comprehensive look at streamlining cities' permitting processes to encourage development. While councilors seemed to agree that it's important to get land within the urban growth boundary ready for development, there was hesitation to look at that through the lens of permitting.
The initiative's reasoning for pushing for simplifying the development processes was straightforward: The fewer hoops a developer has to jump through to build on a property, the more likely that developer is to invest in a project. But Metro Councilor Barbara Roberts said that's a responsibility that should be addressed at a local level, not at the regional level.
"I would not like to see a single hour of Metro staff time spent looking at how the permitting process works in the cities," Roberts said. Earlier, she said the initiative was free to tackle the issue itself – if it paid for its own research.
"It seems funny if we would have any of our staff involved in worrying about the permitting process," she said. She was joined by Burkholder in trepidation about the permitting issue.
Metro councilors also backed away from a recommendation to look at funding college and university education in the Portland region. That doesn't mean the initiative can't study those topics, but it does mean members of the initiative's Leadership Council will have a harder time selling the Metro Council on funding that research.
About the money
To a degree, Thursday's work session was about funding – how much money does Metro want to put into the initiative's work going forward. Metro chief operating officer Martha Bennett said the discussion would lead to the initiative coming back to the Metro Council with a proposal for funding more work.
But where money was, for the most part, on the sidelines Thursday, it was front-and-center as two CII Leadership Council members briefed the Metro Policy Advisory Committee on Wednesday night.
Some members of MPAC, a committee of regional policy leaders, repeatedly asked CII Leadership Council members Karen Williams and Tom Imeson where the money would come from for projects.
"It's not bringing by itself a pot of money. It's not solving every funding problem," Imeson said. "The hope is it can help solve some of those."
The increase in conversation about the initiative is part of a "journey of exploration," Harrington said.
"We're doing a great job of asking questions and bending your minds in different ways and trying to explore examples that we can relate to," she said. "I appreciate the work of the Leadership Council in accepting this challenge from us and bringing us new ideas – ones that we may not be comfortable with – but enabling us to go on this journey."