On Thursday, the Central Oregon Commission on Transportation (COACT) met in Redmond to discuss the issue of transportation impacts of destination resorts. I have to say, this sounded like a pretty dry meeting even for a wonk like me, but this is getting to be really big issue and the dialogue proved to be pretty entertaining.

To sum up, cities really don't care much for destination resorts. They don't collect any property taxes from them and bear many of their impacts. Counties, on the other hand, collect far more in property taxes than they have to shell out for impacts, so they generally have been very accommodating.

So I expected that the city reps would express concern but because they have to do regular business with counties would tone down their distaste. And because counties have been so unabashedly supportive of resorts, I expected the usual rhetoric about how wonderful resorts are and how lucky cities should be to get to house their workers, sell them their groceries, and so on.

But a funny thing happened on the way to meeting and not only did the city officials come out firing, but the county officials did little to shut them up or in many cases even refute them.

Bill Friedman, Bend City Councilor, opened up by saying, "I'll be brief... I've got no use for destination resorts." Friedman wasn't the only one in the room who wondered why cities have to go through tremendous difficulty in planning their future growth, maintaining a comprehensive plan, and periodically expanding their UGB, while resort developments must address startlingly few planning requirements.

These concerns were echoed by Redmond's Mayor Alan Unger and Public Works Director Chris Doty, who has been doing some really interesting analysis of the costs of traffic impacts. With all the resorts being approved in Crook County and no way of exacting impacts fees, they're not at all pleased with what they're finding.

Sisters Mayor Brad Boyd laid out his concern for traffic impacts and competition for water (another common concern among city reps) as a result of the proposed Colson resort in Jefferson County which would be four times the size of his own city, use as much water as all of Redmond, and dump all its traffic into Sisters. Who will fund the needed road improvements?

Perhaps most surprisingly, (to me at least) Madras City Manager Mike Morgan - who showed up in Salem earlier this year to express his city's strong support for the two resorts planned near the Metolius River during hearings on Senate Bill 30 - had the harshest words of all. "Cities don't like these things," said Morgan, who also pointed out that the impacts of these developments may be far worse than anticipated as they evolve into full-time communities. "And they will evolve" he told the group.

Absent were any resort advocates or Jefferson County Commissioners, neither of which would have like what they heard. Resort advocates have been fond of saying how wonderful these resorts are for nearby cities, but that certainly wasn't the tone in the room yesterday at all.

Although the county reps were markedly more supportive of resorts, even they seemed to acknowledge that there is a big problem here, that existing policies are deficient and unable to deal with the costs of traffic impacts, and that a true intergovernmental/regional solution - possibly requiring new state law - is needed.

But it's the cities that seem to be driving this, something that really wasn't happening, a year, or even six months ago. And now everyone knows there's a problem, that the cities are getting screwed, that the impacts are significant - perhaps more so than previously thought - and that something has to be done.

But when, I wonder, will something get done? The 2008 legislative session will be a month long, and this is far to complex an issue to get resolved in that amount of time. How many resorts are going to get approved before the 2009 session even gets underway? How much will those resorts be required to pay? Will county governments look out for their cities and their neighbors? Or will tempers flare? And what sort of permanent and unmitigated impact will be felt by a regional transportation system already facing a $750 million funding shortfall over the next twenty years?

The traffic impacts of destination resorts is a multi-million dollar issue. But unless a solution is brokered soon, it won't be the resort industry who will shoulder this burden, it will be the rest of us.