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HomeMy WebLinkAboutTransportation Board - Minutes - 11/20/2002REGULAR MEETING MINUTES of the TRANSPORTATION BOARD November 20, 2002 5:45 p.m. City of Fort Collins - Community Room 215 N. Mason Street FOR REFERENCE: CHAIR: Christophe Ricord 472.8769 VICE CHAIR: Bruce Henderson 898.4625 STAFF LIAISON: Don Bachman 224.6049 ADMIN SUPPORT: Cynthia Cass 224.6058 BOARD MEMBERS PRESENT: Dan Gould Neil Grigg Bruce Henderson Edward Jakubauskas Tim Johnson Tom Kramer Ray Moe Christophe Ricord Brent Thordarson Heather Trentham CITY STAFF IN ATTENDANCE: Don Bachman Cynthia Cass Gary Diede Dennis Harrison Randy Hensley Mark Jackson Cam McNair Ron Phillips Ken Waido ABSENT: Brad Miller GUESTS IN ATTENDANCE: RA Plummer Gary Thomas Sally Craig Nancy York Transportation Board APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes November 20, 2002 Page 2 1. CALL TO ORDER Chair Ricord called the meeting to order at 5:55 p.m. 2. PUBLIC COMMENT Nancy York stated she was a member of the Air Quality Advisory Board, but not here representing them. She said that she recently ran for County Commission and vowed that she would reevaluation how we spend our transportation funds. Ms. York spoke of her concerns regarding how the Transportation Board looks at the Transportation Master Plan and re-evaluate how transportation dollars are spent. She stated that as a member of the AQAB, the focus is often on health issues from traffic congestion. Health impacts are a major reason she advocates alternative modes of transportation. Ms. York spoke of the community's need for better transit and voiced her idea of putting transit on every road that reaches 20,000 vehicles a day or better. The Board was urged not to spend more funds on widening roads to alleviate congestion, but rather consider alternative modes as it is healthier and much less expensive to implement than building roads. Another reason to evaluate how transportation funds are spent, is land use impacts and have tax fee breaks or credits for affordable housing, located along transit routes. She also mentioned climate change issues. Occasionally at the AQAB we talk about collaborating with the Transportation Board and doing public forums. There seems to be this dichotomy that think that transit is a waste of money and they just want wider lanes. We need to get together and address that issue so that we can bring opposite people together and find some sort of common ground. I don't think any of us are very satisfied with the direction transportation is going now. I would hope that within the AQAB, that our part of it could be researching the studies and coming up with the results of what those studies indicate as far as a public education piece. And perhaps the Transportation Board could come up with the costs so that we can tell the community just what transportation costs and also identify the subsidies because one of the things that people who don't like transit are saying is that we are subsidizing them so much, but in truth, it is the fossil fuel dependent vehicle that seem to be getting the greatest subsidies. I'm representing the AQAB on the Hydrogen Task Force and with regard to the Mason Street Corridor, the HTF saw the hope of Fort Collins becoming a high altitude, variable weather test site for hydrogen and having people bring their vehicles here and the various ways of fueling and producing hydrogen, so that was the hope of MSTC. Ms. York asked if there were any questions. Chair Ricord commented that at the recent Board Work Session, someone was appointed to be a liaison to your board. He asked Ms. York if anyone on the AQAB is interested in being a liaison back to this board — to take that message back to them. Johnson stated that what was discussed at the work session was to get on each other's email list for the minutes. We will have someone on our board read your minutes and they may choose to attend the meeting depending on the agenda. He said that if someone from the AQAB could do that for this board it would be great. The e-mail link is at least a start. Transportation Board APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes November 20, 2002 Page 3 Ms. York reiterated her suggestion for a public forum so members of the two boards could elicit the public's thoughts and educate about the costs and health issues etc. Gary Thomas. Mr. Thomas introduced himself and stated he came to observe the meeting tonight. He stated he is the Executive Director of SAINT (Senior Alternatives in Transportation), is on the Dial -A -Ride Advisory panel and is a motorman on the street car. 3. MASON STREET TRANSPORTATION CORRIDOR UPDATE — M. Jackson Jackson stated he would be filling in for Kathleen Reavis as she and Tom Frazier are presently in Lincoln, Nebraska meeting with representatives of the BNSF Railroad to go through some of their site design issues and cross section issues. The first item Reavis asked Jackson to relay to the board is that data collection efforts are going along smoothly. This includes all new aerial mapping of the corridor to support the engineering and environmental assessment work. The existing conditions report has been completed for the analysis of converting Mason Street from a one-way to a two-way couplet. There is a sub -team working on those projections right now. There was an initial meeting with BNSF Railroad which went quite well. The RR does have a lot of different specifications, but they have been very open about what the City is trying to do with the MSTC and seem willing to help work through those things. Reavis is in hopes that their design -related safety and operational concerns can be resolved by mid -December. Sub teams have been working on station and park'n ride location and design issues as well as beginning work on the bike/pedestrian trail design portion of it. Reavis has been working very closely with staff from our Stormwater department on storm drainage and flood plain issues. There has been an issue that raised it's head on one of the park 'n ride locations and she has been working with CSURF on that. Lastly, a letter will be going out to property and business owners along the corridor that will contain an update on the project next week. 4. APPROVAL OF MINUTES Johnson stated he would like to approve that the board hold the approval of the October minutes until the December meeting. There was a second. Discussion: Johnson: The reason being that we need to try to get a sense of the discussion when we talk about things like City Plan update and the Downtown Strategic Plan. I was called by a couple other board members Planning & Zoning for one. They apparently heard from Mark Jackson that we had a good meeting last month and they went to read our minutes but didn't get the sense of what we discussed as a board. If that's possible for us to capture that still from the tape, I would like to see that come back to us in December. To recap Johnson's comments, Chair Ricord said that the motion is to not approve the minutes this month. To have the minutes be revised and updated and approved at the next meeting. Johnson agreed. Trentham seconded the motion. Chair Ricord asked if there were any other questions or concerns about the minutes. Transportation Board APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes November 20, 2002 Page 4 Moe stated that he was not quite sure what was being asked. Johnson stated that if you look at the bottom of page 3 under the Downtown Strategic Plan, it says, 'A discussion period followed the presentation...' Johnson: there needs to be a sense of where the board was on this, the comments we had and since other boards are looking to us, there is nothing for them to take home. Chair Ricord: I've not only been contacted by other boards and commission members, but interested parties from the public at large who follow these things. I jotted down a couple things I wanted to share with you that 1 think provides a general direction of the concerns that we're talking about here. First, what is the purpose of posting the minutes for this meeting? The reason is to inform everyone of the board's discussion content. That should include Council, other boards and commission members, the public and certainly is a refresher for ourselves. Second, what should the minutes include? 1 think a brief capitulation of what was presented to the board by staff or consultants and I think a thorough summary of board members comments, suggestions, concerns and recommendations. This pretty much covers, in my view, what we should expect to see in the minutes. Along with Tim's suggestion, I think hopefully that gives us a little clearer notion of what we should expect to see. There are two things we can do as board members to help staff facilitate this when transcribing the minutes. One is to remember concisely what you said so if you had a salient point about anything that's discussed you remember what it is and check to make sure it made it into the minutes if you think it is important enough to be in the minutes. Secondly, when we are wrapping up our discussion, we should list what our thoughts and concerns are so that those can be transcribed more easily just as a summary. I think a lot of times when you try to transcribe a discussion, it really rambles. If you can just restate that concisely at the end of your piece of the discussion so that it's clear and be concise enough to write down that would be helpful for staff. I realize the job of scribe is a thankless and not very easy one, but hopefully we can help facilitate that just by being clear about what our thoughts are. Bachman: Very often, on discussion items, unlike action items, it is difficult to get the sense of where the board as a whole is going. There may be individual comments or contributions that are difficult to take out of the rambling of the discussion. Your second point, about giving some assistance on recapping significant comments, would indeed be very helpful. Also, I was talking to Mark and Randy earlier on the same subject and asked them to comment on what it is they do with the comments that the board is giving. Jackson: Staff/consultants always keep all the notes, charts and flipchart information from the discussion that take place. We keep very careful track of comments that we receive from all the groups we present to. Hensley: I agree with Mark's comments. The major input I got from this board was via the survey form that I asked the board to fill out last month. Staff did the right thing as far as we were concerned by including in the minutes the need for everyone to fill out those forms. I would also like to add that when we're conducting a study, we Transportation Board APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes November20, 2002 Page 5 don't take all of the comments we get and treat them as votes on a particular issue. We use those comments primarily to make sure that we haven't missed an issue, as sort of a checkpoint. When we bring updates to you that's one thing, but when an item is put on the agenda as an Action Item, then 1 consider that more as direction. Bachman: The reason I asked Jackson and Hensley to weigh was to ensure the board that even though perhaps you'd like to see certain things reported out in the minutes, those comments and the essence of your discussion are not lost. Chair Ricord: By the same token, in order to communicate out to the public, and this is something we discussed in our work plan discussion, was to have more of an outreach to the public, I think one of the very direct ways we can do that is from the minutes of the meetings as long as they specifically say "here are the salient points the board had regarding that issue. The vote was called and passed by a unanimous vote. 5. COUNCIL LIAISON REPORT None. 6. DISCUSSION ITEMS a) TRAFFIC ENFORCEMENT/SAFETY — D. Harrison Harrison stated that we all know that this issue is number one to all of us. This is definitely the biggest enforcement shortfall that this community has had over the years. In the last year, we've changed our posture in that instead of looking at it that we have a Traffic Unit that is speck and narrowly focused on specific locations at given times, it is now the responsibility of every uniformed officer in Fort Collins while they are out there. The goal in the last couple of years has been to achieve a change in how our officers see the enforcement posture and the necessity of it. It is now a part of their evaluation. Secondly, in 2004, we have already begun the discussion to supplement the Traffic Unit. I don't want to mislead anyone — I'm not talking about adding 5-6 more in their right now, but rather building it by 1 or 2 as we can so we have more people specifically to handle trouble areas and areas where we see a huge traffic enforcement issue. As I said, this is in the plan and being discussed right. I'm hopeful that this will carry through. We have also looked at all the traffic grant opportunities we could find. I appreciate the support that this board has given in the past to try and find a traffic enforcement program that would allow for grant funding. We haven't found one that we can afford yet. We also continue to meet with the Municipal judge on a regular basis and talk about photo radadenforcement. That system has changed recently by the way. We're going to a digital system, however the pictures are not clear and we can't even send them out to people. Transportation Board APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes November20, 2002 Page 6 Chair Ricord: One of the primary thoughts the board has is things like not having enough funds for enforcement programs. One of the things the board is interested in is exploring ways of possibly recommending that Council adopts a budgetary process where that's possible. Harrison stated his appreciation of that and commented that police staff has also looked at various funding/budget options, but so far nothing has panned out. Chair Ricord: What is the magnitude dollar wise for some of these programs? Harrison said that one traffic officer comes with a price tag of approximately $118,000 and 6-7 are needed to make a unit. I don't see why we couldn't include something like this as part of a measure. Harrison said that the view that has been shared so far is that the maintenance and improvement of streets is a more pressing need at this point for long term funding. My experience is that every time we stack something on a ballot measure, we lose. We have to keep it clean and the idea was to keep it towards transportation and those specific issues the better. The decision was made 18 months ago or longer not to include a police type tax in there. Chair Ricord. I understand the point made and I also understand the need for street maintenance. On the other hand, there is a pretty strong and broad based public support for that kind of thing and we should keep it on the table. Johnson: With regard to the compliance picked up by the light at Drake and College, I was astonished by the number of people running that light. This was in an article in the newspaper just before the election. Since we're putting up a new traffic signal system, perhaps we can include wiring so we can have heads put at the 10-20 worst intersections with regard to compliance. You might not have to have 10-20 cameras, you might only have to have 3 or 4 cameras and move them around to different posts. You notice that a lot of people in town are very aware of that Drake/College camera, but still the compliance is not very high. If you move this around on people, perhaps this would be a cost-effective way to get people to at least start paying attention to red lights over more of our community. Harrison agreed that it would be cost effective to do this. The cost is between $80- 100,000 per intersection for two ways (north and south) to run the new loops. The cost of that per intersection has to go in no matter what. The idea of moving them around has been discussed and is supported. It's a matter of putting in the funding to pay for the transportation staff to go out and put the loops in and to build the intersection to that level and then be able to go out and move the cameras. Again, it's a matter of coming up with $100,000 per intersection for it to sit there for an appreciable period of time without use and the continuing maintenance that goes with it. We have changed the Drake/College system to digital and it is now able to give us approximate speed, which has created a whole new legal issue for us because people think they're getting speeding tickets in the mail when it's for red light violations. Johnson: With regard to the collected revenue, how does that recycle back? Does it go back into the Enforcement program? Harrison stated that the revenue out of the entire photo enforcement program goes to pay the lease, processing costs, a court clerk, legal time from the attorney's office, and a certain percentage back to our traffic enforcement program that is used for equipment. We hired a civilian employee for far less money sitting in the camera radar van. She is being trained as we speak and starts Monday. Transportation Board APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes November 20, 2002 Page 7 This will allow one more traffic officer to be out there. The bottom line is that we support the program. After the payments are made, there have been years that we've made as little as $11,000 in profit and made as much as $60-70,000. This goes back into Traffic enforcement equipment. This is not something we have in place to make money for us. I would be happy if we were to break even. I believe in the concept of photo radar. Johnson: Is there a way to piggyback onto Traffic Operation's efforts to rewire the traffic signal system and include wiring for the red light cameras? Harrison: We've not had that conversation with Phillips, but will as it sounds like something worth looking into. Gould. Are there any knowledge or marketing kind of approaches to taking some of the most troublesome aspects i.e. dangerous behaviors or situations and a program to do something like Smarttrips' marketing? Ha►rison: We do an especially huge effort around DUI. We do it on red-light running. There is a tremendous campaign out there for that. There are seat bait campaigns going on as well. We go out to schools and educate, brochures on safety everywhere, we have our spokes person doing marketing every year, and this combined with the others I've mentioned, do have an effect, but unfortunately, the predominance is is that if there isn't an officer standing right there to write you a ticket, that memory seems to fade. Gould: School Resource Officers, do they have authority or responsibility for traffic issues around the schools? Harrison: Yes they do. They report back and they have the opportunity to not only report, but to enforce and to draw resources from the Patrol staff as best we can to be there at the peak times especially if there are problems. The high schools have always been very cooperative with PD. Johnson: Since the City is starting up the budget cycle again, if you wouldn't mind, would you write us a short note about PD's major things that need to be done for enforcement? We'd like to take a look at it as a board and make a recommendation as well. If we could work together on this it would be really helpful. Harrison: Certainly. Thordarson: Do you have a feeling for how the legislature differentiates or doesn't between photo red light and photo radar. Harrison: Like night and day. They like photo red light and will support it, but speeding is different. Thordarson: Is it possible to maybe bond the improvements to the intersections? Harrison: Bonding is one way of doing it. You can do construction or capital improvement bonding and be speck for that and I'm sure that Transportation Services staff could work on that because R would have to be speck unto intersection improvements and it would have to be earmarked for that. We'd be happy to try to work with them. There just has to be an agreement that bonding is acceptable at this point. Thordarson: Do you have a metric for average speed? Harrison: What we have is pretty much site specific information on 30 mph zones in areas where we have put cars out. I can say not only what the compliance rate is, but when we go out and hit these areas what the average speed is. We don't measure above that. The state legislature has restricted that we can't use photo enforcement on any place that is above 30 mph or on four lane roads. It's going to be interesting this coming year because most of our schools and school zones are near a four -lane arterial. Transportation Board APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes November20, 2002 Page 8 Phillips: I talked with Diede and Bracke about the same concern about if there is something we can do as the signal system is installed to piggyback pre -wiring intersections for red light cameras and as I recall, Bracke's response was that there is not that much wiring that is going on with the system. The primary thing happening is underground in communications where we're putting in fiber optic cable. Much of this work has already been done as long as a year and a half ago such as in the Harmony Road and College corridors. We are looking at doing this, but there seems to be a feeling that there can't be a lot of coexistence in that area. Harrison: One last comment is that it is our plan to wait for a kinder gentler state house sans Mr. Dean. We do monitor that. Johnson: Getting back to the red light, something obviously triggers the camera. Is there wiring that is required between that signal and that camera. Harrison: Yes, there are separate loops. Phillips: The wiring that you run over — the one you hit after the light turns red and causes the camera to activate — is totally separate and is on the surface of the street. Then there is other electrical wiring that has to take place to operate the cameras, but it's not the same kind of stuff the signal uses. Harrison: I think the actual tower hook-up that runs from the pole to the initial down the side of the street to where it runs from the traffic trip loop to the power source. No matter where we put it, we're going to have to recut the streets. That's why it's so expensive. Phillips: The place where we could probably save the most is when we do Pavement Management — when we resurface we could look into putting in what's needed for the red light camera enforcement at that point. We do that already with out signal loops. Everyone thanked Chief Harrison for his time. b) TRANSPORTATION MASTER PLAN (TMP) UPDATE — M. Jackson Jackson introduced Ken Waldo, project manager for the City Plan update and RA Plummer, consultant with PBSBJ. Jackson said that the last four weeks have been fairly eventful with a lot of public presentations and important meetings. The bike sub -committee met and had a very good meeting. Jackson and Plummer then talked about various scenarios that they've been working with the City Plan Team regarding specifically the growth management area. Waldo was asked to come up and explain the scenarios in more detail as there was a question from Chair Ricord about them. He said that the purpose of the scenarios was to highlight certain options for the community. Some of them were differentiated within certain things such as the amount of area that would be suitable for redevelopment or should be focused on redevelopment. When we began to look at some of those individual characteristics, it became not really scenario dependent, they were more policy like. The amount of infrll and redevelopment activity the community should encourage was kind of independent on where the GM Boundary should be. We began to move away from focusing in on the scenarios per se. at the meeting we had two weeks ago, we didn't even have the scenario maps there. We asked those who attended to really focus in on what were the characteristics they would like to see Fort Transportation Board APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes November 20, 2002 Page 9 Collins have as we go into the future. There is no doubt that the Growth Management boundary is a key issue in helping define the characteristics of the community. Some of the decreasing of the GMA boundary included some areas east of the Interstate that are predominately undeveloped and some existing county subdivisions like the Country Club area and areas around Terry Lake, up around the northwest part of the community, etc. would eliminate some urban level development if it were taken out of the GMA boundary but it probably wouldn't stop or prohibit development that would occur under county land use regulations. Deleting existing development like the Country Club area, to me doesn't have anything to do with the characteristics of the community. That's there whether it's inside Chair Ricord., My concern is that we had a public process that basically delineated three scenarios: grow, shrink or stay the same. The "shrink" which is scenario #2 has been watered down and changed. My recommendation is that you need to have the "shrink" scenario stand alone whether it's incorporated into any of these others or a fourth one that's separate. There was a specific discussion about decreasing the GMA and I think that needs to be a stand alone scenario that should be part of the discussion. Jackson: We hear you and got it down. Jackson: Tonight's PowerPoint slides are a "rehash" of the ones shown last month. (He went over the three GMA scenarios.) As Waido eluded to earlier, the Citizen's Advisory Committee (CAC) met on November 6 and the focus was on transportation. The meeting was very good. The group discussed system wide characteristics and regional issues. Jackson shared some of the comments from the CAC as it related to automobile, transit, bikestpeds and transportation demand management. Phillips requested that staff not title the slides as "Key' Transportation Input from CAC as it could send the wrong message. At the public meeting, participants were asked to rank characteristics in the following categories: - region and the economy - open space and the community separators - transportation - neighborhoods - special districts (i.e. College Avenue and Downtown) - Other development patterns (including GMA size) - Redevelopment and infill Plummer and Jackson said they would lead the board through the same transportation characteristics exercise that the other groups participated in. The board was given each characteristic and asked to rate them in the following categories: ♦ KEEPERS (1): essential to the transportation system ♦ MIDDLERS (2): neutral or OK ♦ LOSERS (3): disagree with and would eliminate Transportation Board APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes November 20, 2002 Page 10 Chair Ricord: Before we go through the rating exercise, in light of Ms. York's comments earlier this evening, we should keep the impacts of fossil fuels first and foremost in our minds. Gould: In looking at the 4"' bullet, there is usually a big impact on safety for other modes and transit level of service. We need to keep that in mind as well. Chair Ricord: I'm moved by Dan's comment on this. Would you consider taking input on those separately? In other words, split that last one into two separate items and then we can talk about those separately. Jackson: What we did in the public meeting, for the sake of continuity, we treated the bullet as it stood, but then we also took comments that said this table felt strongly that that 4"' bullet should be broken out. The following are the characteristics and how the board rated them: • Fort Collins promotes the development of an efficient mufti -modal transportation system (auto, transit, bicycle, and pedestrian) = 1 • Additional enhanced travel corridor opportunities (e.g. Mason Street Corridor) are identified = 1 • Bicycle facilities and sidewalks are constructed at every opportunity = 1 • Roadways are improved to address existing deficiencies = 1 and to accommodate future capacity needs = 3 • Additional interchanges and/or underpasses or overpasses provide east/west movement across 1-25 = 3 • Increased focus on transportation demand management (Smart Trips) programs (carpool, regional van pool, telecommuting, etc) = 1 • Regional bus transit is provided between Fort Collins and Northern Colorado communities = 1. Chair Johnson stated that what we really need to look to for a short term is a link to Longmont and RTD first. He said this is the "crawl" stage. • An interregional transit connection is provided between Fort Collins and Denver = 1 • A local bus transit system efficiently serves the community = 1 4 b and the 5°i bullet were the only ones with anything remarkable when rating. Plummer briefly went over the public vs. CAC input and moved on to the Next Steps slide. He talked about how population and employment and employment data will be refined and the travel demand model analysis. He outlined the various meetings scheduled in January. Jackson stated that the bike subcommittee met and this board was very well represented by Christophe, Tim, Bruce, and Dan. Ray Moe was also present as a sub - consultant with LSA to PBSBJ. It was a very good meeting and we got a lot of input. Bicycle system needs were identified as follows: • Safe railroad crossings at Drake, Horsetooth and Harmony • Shields — bike lanes north of Laurel • Laurel Street — bike lanes • Vine — east of Lemay • Prospect — Remington to Timberline • Ziegler— one lane bridge north of Horsetooth Transportation Board APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes November 20, 2002 Page 11 • Drake — bike lanes College to Stover • Connection from Spring Creek Trail to Prospect between Stover and Lemay Key points from the Bicycle subcommittee were also listed but not discussed at this time. A recent survey of employees in the Harmony/Ziegler area had good things to say about the Fort Collins bicycle system. Jackson thanked Henderson for doing the survey. Thordarson commented that there is a lack of bike facilities in the southwest area according to the map that was distributed. Jackson stated that the map doesn't accurately represent the current system — it simply reflects some of the comments. Thordarson noted that the Fossil Creek connection to the Cathy Fromme area is missing. Jackson said that it was a fair comment to add. 7. ACTION ITEMS a) 2003 WORK PLAN APPROVAL— All The board went through the draft work plan and made minor changes. There was a motion and a second to approve the 2003 Transportation Board Work Plan with the changes the board discussed tonight. The motion carried by a unanimous vote. Cass will make the changes and submit to the City Cleric's office for the record. S. REPORTS a) BOARD MEMBER REPORTS Thordarson: Education Outreach. I've initiated contact with the mall in regards to having a communication education session there. We have verbal approval that we could use the Community Booth for an entire day. It has some display space as well. We could put up some of the presentation materials. Do we want to try to do this before now and the end of the year. Several members agreed that Thordarson should go ahead and make reservations and then call or email members with the definite date. The idea of having a banner that says, "Ask Your Transportation Board" was brought up. Johnson: Downtown Strategic Plan. I was there today. What people are beginning to look at and pay a lot of attention to is basically to look at the Downtown/Old Town area and to build around that. The consultant seems to be encouraging people to pay attention to the core area and do modest expansion off of that. With regard to the transportation element, they're looking at links that would tie the neighborhoods to the downtown business core area and the other thing is that Mason Street does play a real prominent role in the way that they are thinking about how future movement will happen up and down in that corridor. That's good news for us — to have the whole downtown business community starting to look at this as being an effective tool to serve the future community up in this part of town. Transportation Board APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes November 20, 2002 Page 12 Transportation Campaign Efforts. As everyone is aware, we were short 10 votes and they do a recount tomorrow as I understand 'It. I would like to have a few folks from our finance committee and whoever else would like to work with us and have an election meeting if we don't get the 10 votes on the recount. If we could do this in the first week of December, the idea being to start coloring in a map (voter precinct). It's a way for us to begin to think about how to address future thoughts and strategies. If staff could provide a couple of the 2'x3' maps of the precincts that the County has of the City itself. Interested members agreed to meet on Wednesday, December 4 at 6 p.m. in conference room 1B at 215 N. Mason. Natural Resources Board. I got a call from Randy Fisher on the NRB who was on a field trip looking at the widening of Timberline between Trilby and Carpenter. I learned from Randy that the area between Trilby and Carpenter. There happens to be a water pipeline that will be laid in the area. That is the opportunity to tie into something else going on in the area. Right now in the Master Street Plan, we have a two-lane arterial and at some point, people are talking about going to a four -lane arterial. The problem that Natural Areas has with this is there will be 150' of fill right by the Fossil Creek area and where this comes into some negative play for us is that the Audubon Society has designated this as an important bird area statewide. It has a lot of attention. There are hawks and eagles that use the area for wintering areas. The sensitiveness of the area has drawn the concern of the Natural Resources Board so this has to be out there as we're discussing this. It ties into some strategies that we can get into and talk about on December 4 about how to draw in a little bit more of the community as we go forward and how this might impact that. If anyone has feedback, I'd like to hear what is being projected and what's going forward. Phillips and McNair. Engineering staff has just started looking at this with the Water District and their designer and we've sat down and done some preliminary plans for the coordination among staff and that's how the NRB got wind of it — in the coordination process with Natural Resources staff. As a matter of fact, Matt Baker went to their meeting tonight and showed them some very premiminary plans. Johnson: We need to be extremely sensitive about what's going on and if we project that we're going to go forward with a tax initiative and with this plan at the same time, if you think about the way this election went — one-fourth of the people who supported the Natural Areas Open Space plan did not vote for our proposal. If we're trying in the next election to get a group of those people to come with us and they see this as a challenge that we are looking at the kind of values that those people supported and yet we're going to come with a road widening program here that might go through one of the most sensitive areas in town, not only do we start risking the other three -fourths of those people who supported that program saying no we won't support that, we have to be extremely careful and aware of this the whole time and definitely not try to bulldoze what we're going to do and to minimize the kind of destruction that might happen. Transportation Board APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes November 20, 2002 Page 13 McNair. This is exactly why plans are being coordinated with Natural Resources staff. Johnson: Perhaps we can have a presentation at one of our meetings about some of the formalities. We need to stay very close to this. b) STAFF REPORTS Bachman: ITEMS FOR NEXT AGENDA: • Mason Street Transportation Corridor Update -Rea vis • Transportation Master Plan — Jackson • Cone Zone (maybe) • Timberline Rd Issue (maybe) Hensley. The Parking Program will be offering free parking on weekends during the holidays. 9. OTHER BUSINESS Downtown Strategic Plan. Chair Ricord asked K there were anyone willing to join Johnson in being a liaison/committee member for this project since Gould can't. It was agreed that Thordarson and Chair Ricord will serve as back ups for Johnson. 10. ADJOURN Chair Ricord adjourned the meeting at 9:15 p.m. Respectfully submitted, & (�� Cynthia Cass, Executive Administrative Assistant City of Fort Collins — Transportation Services