Major road projects are failing to materialize in Oregon because of uncertainty in Congress. It’s not only contributing to traffic congestion and modernization delays, but also causing Oregon firms to look elsewhere for work.

Craig Gries, president of Oregon State Bridge Construction, recently bid for a job in Idaho. He recognizes the irony.

“Our name is Oregon State Bridge Construction,” he said, “but you got to go where the work is.”

For OSBC, the lack of funding means traveling farther for work, which cuts into the bottom line; for others, it means nothing has changed.

“We’re getting ready to kick the can down the road for the 38th time,” said Larry Gescher, president of HP Civil Inc. and president of Associated General Contractors’ Oregon-Columbia chapter for 2015.

According to the American Society of Civil Engineers’ Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, 23 percent of Oregon’s bridges are either structurally deficient or functionally obsolete, and 6 percent of the state’s major roads are in poor condition. So opportunities for projects exist, but money to pay for them remains elusive.

“Everybody agrees on what needs to get done, but no one agrees on where the money is going to come from,” Gescher said.

Federal and state transportation funds, reliant on gas tax revenues, have suffered because of vehicles’ greater fuel efficiency in the drive to lower carbon emissions. Meanwhile, legislative plans allocating money for projects have become shorter. Six-year plans have given way to two-year plans.

This has led to a focus on simpler projects from a permitting and environmental impact perspective, said Trevor Sleeman, senior federal affairs adviser for the Oregon Department of Transportation. Such projects address basic maintenance and system performance needs – repainting bridge pavement, for example.

“Going back a few decades, there was a lot of certainty for the public and the contracting community,” Sleeman said. “But because of uncertainty at the federal level, there is less focus on the big interchange projects and the projects that address congestion and freight mobility. There’s a trend to focus on the near term.”

Meanwhile, a number of lawmakers in Washington, D.C., have taken anti-tax pledges. AGC lobbyist John Rakowitz said he recently met with one such politician who said he could possibly support a “fee,” but nothing with the word “tax” in it.

All of this is hitting especially close to home for Rakowitz and AGC. Thirty-five percent of AGC members work exclusively on transportation projects.

“They are now beginning to leave the state,” he said. “They’re chasing the work. They’re heading out.”

Rakowitz said firms have departed Oregon in favor of states like Idaho, Wyoming and Washington, which have gas taxes – 8, 9 and 11 cents, respectively – that function as dedicated highway funding.

Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden thinks the answer might lie in private investment. He and North Dakota Sen. John Hoeven are sponsoring a bill that would encourage partnerships between private parties and the government by providing tax credits for transportation projects. The Move America Act would allow for more public-private partnerships and more flexible ownership and management arrangements, in part by repealing certain restrictions on tax-exempt partners.

Locally, one city commissioner wants Portland to take the lead and approve its own gas tax to pay for needed street repairs. Steve Novick, who oversees the Portland Bureau of Transportation, has a plan to ask voters in May to support a 10-cent gas tax. It would produce $58 million over four years.

Other possible solutions include a one-time tax break that would serve as a bump in funding to help states catch up on deferred projects. Gescher said he thinks the ultimate answer will involve a combination of ideas.

“The big thing is we need to act now, because it’s going to get worse exponentially,” he said. “We’re getting further and further behind.”

Oregon Building and Construction Trades Council Executive Secretary John Mohlis said he doubts that the Oregon Legislature will pass anything beneficial to the industry during the upcoming short session. And given lengthy design and permitting processes, anything passed in 2017 wouldn’t benefit workers for a long time.

“If (legislation) passes in the 2017 session, my guess is it won’t be until 2018 before the shovels hit the ground,” he said.

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The Portland City Council, in a split vote, this week approved a hike in system development charges (SDCs) on new development to support the city’s parks system.

Commissioner Amanda Fritz, in charge of the city parks department, said “development needs to pay its own way” and defended the increase.

But Commissioners Dan Saltzman and Steve Novick both objected.

“I still don’t understand why there has to be such a tremendous revenue increase, especially when we’re facing a crisis for middle-income earners in the city,” Saltzman said. “This is the wrong move at the wrong time.”

Both the Home Builders Association of Metropolitan Portland and the Portland Business Alliance criticized the plan to at least double fees for new commercial construction and increase rates for residential construction greater than 700 square feet. Low-income or affordable housing and college dormitories will be exempt under the new fee system, which will take effect July 1, 2016.

Novick said he objected to the methodology for the new fees and would have liked to have had more time for study.

“I think it makes sense to delay this decision until we take a longer look at housing affordability,” he said, indicating that higher costs would be passed on to renters and homebuyers.

But Mayor Charlie Hales said the methodology for the new fees is sound, and voted in favor of the change. Commissioner Nick Fish also voted to support the new fees.

More about SDCs for parks is available at: www.portlandoregon.gov/parks/article/520092.

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After 14 months of work group meetings with citizens and public hearings to determine how to best use taxpayers’ dollars to pay for a backlog of city street work, Portland Mayor Charlie Hales announced Thursday that he and the City Council would instead look to the state for money.

“During the passionate conversations we have had in Portland regarding transportation funding, many options were discussed, none of which were popular,” Hales said in a news release. Some options were put forward by Portlanders that we do not have the authority to enact. As your mayor, I will go to Salem to seek that authority.”

At a Jan. 8 hearing, Hales, Transportation Commissioner Steve Novick and the rest of the city council heard public testimony on funding options. They also asked at the hearing for suggestions from citizens for funding options and announced that they would seek an “advisory vote” from the offered options on the May ballot. In an advisory vote, citizens would choose their favorites among three to six options. The council said it would choose several of the more popular options for adoption.

Many citizens at the hearing suggested requiring anyone parking downtown to purchase and display a sticker on their car indicating they had paid a parking fee separate from the usual pay-to-park fees. The council explained that state laws prohibit cities from assessing a “registration fee” for cars, which is what the councilors believed the sticker system would equate to.

Hales said in the news release that Gov. John Kitzhaber and House Speaker Tina Kotek, D-Portland, both assured him that “a statewide transportation package is a top priority” for the Oregon Legislature in the session that begins in February.

“We are pleased to know that the Legislature is very interested in a transportation funding discussion this year,” Novick said. “We have said all along that the street fund we have proposed will not address all our needs and that we are counting on the state and federal governments to step up.”

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Portland voters won’t be asked how to establish a street fund in the May election after all.

Mayor Charlie Hales and Transportation Commissioner Steve Novick in a Thursday news release announced the city opted not to file paperwork with Multnomah County to seek an “advisory vote” on how to raise millions for Portland’s street fund, instead waiting to see what moves the Oregon Legislature makes when it convenes in February.

The deadline to submit paperwork for the May election was 5 p.m. on Jan. 15.

“Over the past week, I have had conversations with Speaker of the House Tina Kotek and with Gov. John Kitzhaber,” Hales said in the news release. “They have each assured me that a statewide transportation package is a top priority for them this legislative session.”

At a Jan. 8 council meeting, Hales asked for ideas from the public and outlined the city’s proposals – including a progressive income tax, a gas tax and a local-option property tax levy – saying the council would place between three and six funding options on the May ballot and choose one or more of the most popular options for adoption by the council.

The city needs to raise around $40 million annually to maintain city streets and begin to chip away at the maintenance backlog caused by the economic downturn.

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The Portland City Council at a public hearing on Thursday evening asked attendees to share their preferred plan to raise money for street maintenance. But many people who spoke instead preferred to voice their complaints with the process.

The council sought input on a series of transportation funding options – including a gas tax, a progressive income tax and a local-option property tax levy – and implored citizens to contribute other ideas about how to raise about $40 million annually for safety improvements and paving maintenance.

“We have held 14 months of hearings … The time to act is now,” Mayor Charlie Hales said. “No one funding mechanism is the consensus choice. So we will ask voters to pick the solution that is most palatable from an array of options.”

The city plans to place between three and six funding options on the May ballot for an “advisory vote” from citizens in Multnomah County. Hales explained that the option that receives the most “yes” votes will “be scheduled for adoption by the council.”

But an advisory vote is nonbinding, meaning that regardless of which option voters choose, the council can adopt whichever funding mechanism it chooses. That didn’t sit well with the 27 citizens who signed up to testify at the hearing.

“I think this whole process has been a terrible shame, and the residents of Portland have been total disrespected in this … It’s really been a farce and this advisory vote is adding more onto that,” Betty Salada said. “We deserve to have our streets in repair and you had the money and you squandered it for years. Why do we have to come up with the money now?”

Salada and many others said they don’t believe the citizens should have to pay for improvements and that the city should find ways to get the money it needs from the general fund.

“When I look at your priorities, I don’t know how much of this new revenue will be used to fix our streets,” Nishant Bhajaria said. “The other issue I have is the reason why this cannot be sent for a vote keeps on changing. Now when you actually put something to a vote, it’s nonbinding – which means people could pretty much say what they want to and you could come back and do something different. I don’t understand how you can treat citizens that way.”

Bhajaria was one of many citizen speakers who asked for accountability from the council and suggested that it look at using money from the general fund to pay street fees.

Ann Sanderson, a small business owner and head of a coalition calling itself Stop Portland Street Fee, expressed her displeasure with what she calls the council’s refusal to listen to what the citizens want.

“It’s no way to govern and it’s no way to lead,” she said. “It’s no way to treat the people, either. We’ve been in this since the very beginning with you. We’ve tried to have our say, we’ve tried to help you … and yet we’re still going back to ask in a survey, and a very expensive one at that.”

Hales said at the hearing that the cost to conduct the advisory vote in the May special election will be between $100,000 and $300,000.

“I’m going to suggest, for my part, that we want to see none of the above,” Sanderson said. “Because, when it comes down to it, that is the one choice that would make sense for a lot of us. It’s not that I’m anti-tax, as you once suggested; it’s that I’m anti-bad-tax.”

Each time a citizen expressed displeasure with the proposed solutions, Hales reminded the audience that this hearing was meant to generate ideas and not air grievances.

“So you don’t have any suggestions for something that would actually raise revenue,” he said following Sanderson’s testimony. “Because obviously ‘none of the above’ wouldn’t.”

Many attendees, including Sanderson, complained about the council limiting testimony to idea generation.

“Let me tell you something,” Sanderson said. “When you come in here and you tell us we can only speak to this one topic … You only hear what you want to hear.”

Commissioner Steve Novick said that the council will now spend the next few weeks crafting the measures for addition to the May ballot for Multnomah County voters. Each funding option will be listed separately, allowing voters to vote yes or no on each possibility.

“This method … will let us begin to repair long-ignored streets,” Hales said. “And it will let people select an option that they find most palatable, and turn down those they find least palatable.”

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Portland City Commissioner Steve Novick, looking for some community support in his effort to generate money for city street and sidewalk maintenance, is not married to the street fee proposal. He would be willing to ditch the controversial plan, he said, if another were to come along that could raise the same revenues and support.

That is why Novick and Mayor Charlie Hales this summer are spearheading three work groups to learn more. One will address the street fee’s regressive nature by looking at ways to reduce the impact on low-income residents. Another will address potential impacts on the business community. A third will examine how nonprofits and public institutions would be affected.

Novick’s “pet idea,” to adjust amounts paid by low-income residents, would be to give them rebates on their utility bills. They would actually come out ahead, he said.

The problem, in many cases, is that the landlord typically receives the utility bill. The work group will attempt to find a solution to this problem.

For businesses, Novick would like to see a study on a gross receipts tax being added to the trip generation model criticized harshly by the business community. That model would base each business’ fee on the number of customer trips it would likely generate. The type of business and square footage occupied would be factors.

What if a business is struggling? An additional fee would be unfair, Novick acknowledged. But add gross receipts to that formula and businesses would pay based on a sliding scale of average trip generation and gross receipts, he said.

Administering that idea would be difficult, however, because it would require different city computer systems to talk to each other.

The work groups are slated to start meeting in mid-July. Portland City Council is slated to vote on the street fee proposal Nov. 12.

More information about the street fee is available at .

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Portland Mayor Charlie Hales, facing increased opposition over a planned street fee, last week tabled a vote on a proposed charter amendment that would dedicate street fee revenues toward road and sidewalk maintenance.

Dana Haynes, spokesman for Hales, said the charter amendment proposal was confusing both the public and the local media. The amendment, which would have gone to a public vote on the Nov. 4 ballot if City Council had passed it, is now on hold until after the street fee gains approval, Haynes said.

“The mayor said, ‘I don’t want any confusion,’ ” he said. “Let’s pull it off and get it out of the way for now. We want to make sure that people are getting the message.”

The message, Haynes said, is essentially that the city’s roads and sidewalks need fixing. Approximately 40 percent of the city’s 5,000 lane miles are in “poor to very poor condition,” he said.

Hales wants a public vote on the charter amendment because it will help rebuild citizens’ trust in how government spending. The problem was that the amendment began to be conflated with the overall message that the streets need fixing, Haynes said.

Public opposition to the proposed street fee, which would generate approximately $127.8 million from Portland residents and businesses over three years, has grown stronger in recent weeks. Recently, close to 75 people spoke at a pair of town hall meetings, and leveled mostly harsh criticism.

“We heard over and over again about the regressive nature of the street fee,” Haynes said.

The mayor’s office and Commissioner Steve Novick are forming three work groups to address that issue. They will work with homeowners, business owners, and nonprofits and public institutions, according to the city.

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