Question and Answers to Issues Courthouse Square

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' ". EXHIBIT 9 ' SAMTD Board of Directors '~ ^ ~ October 23,1997 / Page 3 , ~ -- . ~ high priority need only by relocating them from lower priority or unnecessary sites. This year's Section 5309 grant included $100,000 toward the purchase of new shelters, which wiil go a long way toward revitalizing our shelter ~ program. where adjacent private property owners are willing to ailow us the use of thei~ land for their installatian. Bid speafications have been prepared by staff expects to have the contract award recommendation on your November t or December agenda. The specifications include a full-senrice shelter~ similar to the ones we currently use, as well as a scaled down weather protecction style as per the Board's indicated ooncems for some smaller type shelters. ' 10. Staff Commendations...We so often read of the things we do wrong, with little attention to the outstanding job our employees do, that I thought you would be ' interested in seeing oommendations which were received by our operators just during the past six weeks. 1 have attached them for your review. ' 11. Measure 50 Tax Determination Process.. 4s Board members may know, cuRent fiscal year tax collections will be delayed due to the cumbersome process necessary to establish assessed values and tax rates unde~ Measure 50. Where we normally know what our tax oollections will be at about this time ~ of year, that deteRnination will probably not be forthooming unt~ mid- December, now. For your information I have attached a copy of the process, tabbed "The Black Box Process° as excerpted from the Oregonian, by which ', j individual property taxes and District tax collections will be determined. Although we expect that collections under Measure 50 will be somewhat ' greater than unde~ Measure 47, we still have no way of accurately predicting what they may be. 12. Courthouse Square Update...Despite the misleading and incorrect headline ' on fhe front page of the October 14~' Statesman-Joumal, the transit mall, and all of transiYs space for that matter, is within budget. The project estimates as a whole, Courthouse Square, we~e ove~ budget. The media fails to ' understand, or accept, that this is not a"transit mall° project. Transit is only one small portion (28%) of the total project. In addition, they do not understand that there are many more elements to the project budget than just the design ' issues; such as peRnits and fees, SDCs, the County's financing costs, environmental issues, architectural and engineering fees, and project management fees, just to name a few (many of which are outside our oo~trol ' and add substantially to the costs of the p~oject). In the private sector, the client tums all those issues over to a staff person or the contractor and sits back to watch the project come out of the ground. In the public sector, each t component must have an RFP or bid, each contract award must be reviewed and approved in a public forum, plans and financing must have public hearings (and numerous consultants because we don't carry those kinds of expertise on ' our staffs), and the agenaes are continually being second-guessed by the media and the public. In the private sector. when a contractor is removed or a ~ redesign is necessary to meet budget requirements, iYs "just good business , sense." When the same thing occurs in the public sector, iYs "a public scandal and another sign of govemment inefficiency." WhaYs wrong with that picture? ' 97