Stormwater - Your assistance is requested!

ESSHB 1614, more commonly known as the Barrel Fee bill, continues to be put forward as the best choice for helping cities meet their stormwater requirements. In support of ESSHB 1614, we will need your assistance in quantifying how much your city is currently spending, or is projected to spend on, stormwater in the next six years. This information is vital - it illustrates to legislators the magnitude of our costs to meet state permit requirements. AWC will be contacting your city’s public works department with a survey next week to ensure we have consistent information from our cities.

Street utility authority

Since the September Bulletin, AWC staff has continued its outreach to legislators and representatives of the business community to better inform them on how a local option street utility that is targeting street maintenance and preservation would be implemented. Our key messages are:

Fairness - as a utility, those who use, and benefit from, and impact the transportation system are the ones who pay for the maintenance and upkeep of that system.
A utility requires the funding to be used exclusively for transportation purposes (and not subject to reallocation for other city purposes).
With city revenues depleted, combined with the initiative process, traditional revenue transfers to the transportation budget simply don’t exist. In addition, traditional state assistance programs have either been defunded (i.e. the public works trust fund) or reduced due to declining revenues (i.e. the Transportation Improvement Board).

Our objective is to have a street utility bill draft available by the end of November.

Joint Transportation Committee

On the legislative front, the Joint Transportation Committee is continuing its work on the Alternative Transportation Funding Methods study. The objective is to conduct a comprehensive analysis of mid-term and long term transportation funding mechanisms and methods. To be clear, this is a revenue study and not a needs study. There are four key objectives that are further evaluated:

Revenue stream: Does the revenue stream provide revenue commensurate with transportation system funding needs?
Public benefit-reflects use: Provide a clear purpose and policy rationale linked to transportation system use, economic development, and other state policies and goals.
Equitable: Funding burden is geographically equitable and equitably allocates the cost to those who benefit.
Local: Allows for viable local transportation funding options that recognize the distinct needs of different local systems.

AWC staff is continuing to participate as part of the technical team that is developing this report.

SR 520 Legislative Workgroup

ESHB 5211 created the SR 520 Legislative Workgroup, which is charged with developing a finance strategy for the $4.65 billion, SR 520 corridor by January 1, 2010. This includes working with "eastside" and "westside" subgroups, and proposing design options. On October 20, the SR 520 Legislative Workgroup requested AWC staff to present on the local option Transportation Benefit Districts (TBDs) in terms of how one is created and how much revenue could be generated. As the Bulletin goes to print, the SR 520 Legislative Workgroup meeting is underway, and they are requesting follow up information on how a TBD could be implemented.

Public Works Board new grant programs receive overwhelming requests

As noted in previous Bulletins, the Legislature provided partial replacement of the Public Works Assistance Account with a $9.5M Urban Vitality Grant Program and a $9.5M Small Community in Rural Counties Grant Program. Over 270 applications were received for these programs with a total city request of over $100 million. Ten cities received funding through the Urban Vitality Grant Program and another ten cities received funding through the Small Community grant program. A complete list of grant recipients can be found at www.pwb.wa.gov/.

Department of Commerce submits recommendations for restructuring

On November 2, the Washington State Department of Commerce submitted its official recommendation to Governor Chris Gregoire and the Washington State Legislature for restructuring the department to lead in the state’s economic development efforts. Formerly the Department of Community, Trade and Economic Development, Commerce’s report titled, "Defining Commerce: Next Steps in Our Mission to Grow and Improve Jobs," outlines two options for creating a more focused and efficient organization dedicated to growing and improving jobs in Washington.

The two potential organizing options for Commerce include moving some programs out of the agency, and moving some programs into the agency from other parts of state government. One option would result in a smaller department with programs focused around the new mission; the second option would include a broader set of programs that includes more community capacity building to support economic growth.

We encourage you to review the report and provide your comments directly to the Department at comment@commerce.wa.gov. In addition, we would appreciate you forwarding your comments to AWC staff Ashley Probart at ashleyp@awcnet.org.

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