Courthouse Square Internal Staff Team Minutes

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Courthouse Square Internal Staff Team Meeting Minutes Summary for February 26, 1998 Present: Marion County: Randy Curtis, Sheryl Derting, Randy Franke, Michael Hansen, David Hartwig, Sue McCracken, Larry Oglesby, Ken Roudybush, Billy Wasson; Transit: R.G. Andersen-Wyckoff, Ben Fetherston, Marcia Kelly, Tom Wolfgram, John Whittington; Melvin Mark Companies: Craig Lewis, Dan Petrusich. Agenda: 1. Review SPOC/Email from 7ustice Petersen 2. Next steps a. Design/Construction Schedule b. Remediation Strategies 3. Transit Draft of Operating Proforma 1. Review SPOC/Emait from Ju tice Petersen Billy Wasson handed out a copy of an Email received from Justice Petersen regarding the meeting of SPOC on Tuesday, February 24~`. He also had the opportunity to speak with Justice Petersen briefly. Any additional information requests from SPOC will be forthcoming. The Justice said the paper chose to highlight all the negatives. In response to his quote that one public official should lose his job, he regrets he said it and this issue will go no further than this one statement. He also expressed his frustration with the county organizational structure and the lack of accountability. Ben Fetherston, transit legal counsel, sat in on the work session and provided his perspective on topics of discussion. First of a11, no one on the committee believed someone should be terminated. Second, they felt the project may not be the highest, best use of the site, but they will not second- guess the site or the transit mall's location on the site. Most of the discussions centered around the financial information and they felt they did not receive full and complete financial information. There is still some confusion as to what the $1.30 did or did not include. Other concerns were financial feasibility of the project and did it make economic sense. They want to see total cost of the project and operating and maintenance expense of project and become comfortable with those numbers. The financial impact on programs was determined to be a political decision that they don't want to get into. Negative impacts on operating expenses that would be determined by either transit and/or county, was of no concern to them, but if there are negative impacts on the budget, then that is different. The committee discussed whether or not the project should terminate or proceed. Some felt that perhaps some of the information needed would require going to the next step of architectural drawings, etc. They also looked at coming back at the different decision points, evaluating the information again and then making recommendations based upon a higher level of information. Some members didn't feel that transit made a good case to relocate their administrative offices and Page 1 of 4