McMinnville city councilors directed staff on Tuesday to move forward with an update to the city's Transportation System Plan (TSP), after Community Development Director Heather Richards said the project is now required following the city's recent urban growth boundary amendment and a lapse of the 10-year update cycle. "We have $500,000 budgeted in this year's budget to support the work," Richards told the council.

The move comes as the planning department balances multiple state mandates and a backlog of master-planning work. Richards said the city's long-range work program was developed from a 2017 assessment and updated through an internal prioritization process designed to match available FTEs and consultant support. "This is a 3 and 5 year strategic plan," she said, adding that the document has been used to guide budget priorities but "has not been adopted by city council."

Richards told the council the state holds the regional transportation model needed for a TSP and that ODOT required the city to update that model after the 2021 UGB amendment; updating the model required staff coordination and roughly a year of work with ODOT. Staff prepared a qualifications-based solicitation (QBS RFP) and said consultants were already aware of the project. Richards said the city manager had briefly asked staff to stand down on the RFP process, but that planning and engineering are "confident that we can support the work" and recommended the council direct staff to proceed.

City Manager Adam Garvin said any structural decisions about who manages the project and how funds are administered would come from his office, and council members debated whether engineering or planning should lead the effort. Council discussion also covered the timing trade-offs of pursuing a state TGM grant, which Richards said can add up to two years to the schedule because ODOT administers the consultant procurement under that program.

The council also heard staff recommend beginning a downtown master plan update after the TSP, with the city's urban renewal agency budgeting $350,000 this fiscal year for financial and urban renewal analysis tied to the downtown work. Richards recommended a roughly six-month lag between the TSP and the downtown master plan to avoid duplicative work and to ensure staff capacity.

What happens next: councilors agreed to provide direction to the city manager about structure and funding and asked staff to return with quarterly red/yellow/green status reports showing disruptions and capacity impacts. The planning team plans to issue the RFP for the TSP and to start consultant selection, recognizing public engagement and engineering/project-development phases will follow.