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HomeMy WebLinkAboutTransportation Board - Minutes - 09/17/2003REGULAR MEETING MINUTES of the TRANSPORTATION BOARD September 17, 2003 5:45 p.m. City of Fort Collins 215 N. Mason Street Community Room FOR REFERENCE: CHAIR: Bruce Henderson VICE CHAIR: Heather Trantham STAFF LIAISON: Don Bachman ADMIN SUPPORT: Cynthia Cass BOARD MEMBERS PRESENT: Joe Dumais Dan Gould Neil Grigg Bruce Henderson Edward Jakubauskas Tim Johnson Brad Miller Ray Moe Christophe Ricord Brent Thordarson Heather Trantham CITY STAFF IN ATTENDANCE: Don Bachman Matt Baker Cynthia Cass Randy Hensley Mark Jackson Cam McNair Ron Phillips ABSENT: 898-4625 206-4255 224-6049 224-6058 GUESTS IN ATTENDANCE: Cindy Leinweber R.A. Plummer Mike Rose Gary Thomas Nancy York APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes Transportation Board September 17, 2003 Page 2 of 13 1 CALL TO ORDER Chair Henderson called the meeting to order at 5:50 p.m. 2 AGENDA REVIEW No changes to the agenda were requested, although it was mentioned that the Downtown Strategic Plan might not have to be an action item tonight. Hensley will explain more when that item is up. 13. PUBLIC COMMENT 4. APPROVAL OF MINUTES There was a motion and a second to approve the minutes ofAugust 20, 2003 as presented Johnson requested the following change: - Page 3, middle of paragraph, where it talks about how people have died from the West Nile virus, the next sentence can be struck out. - Then add "But statewide, far more people are killed in traffic accidents." That's the point that I was trying to make. - Start the next sentence with "We" instead of "Likewise. " - In the next to the last line it should read as follows: "This is one element of our transportation system that we need to greatly improve, that is our safety, our traffic enforcement. We need to ask, do we address this in tandem with the Police Department?" The question was called and the motion carried by a unanimous vote, 11-0. 5. COUNCIL LIAISON REPORT None. 6. DISCUSSION a. STREET OVERSIZING FEES UPDATE — Baker Baker stated that the purpose of tonight's presentation is to show a couple of ideas for some fee changes that staff has been considering. Some background history of the fee was given. A Power Point presentation followed. Highlights were: • Overview of SO program in general • Graph showing SO cost splits for a four -lane arterial street • Completed Projects 1998-2003 APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes Transportation Board September 17, 2003 Page 3 of 13 • Completed Improvements • Current Master Street Plan Changes Due to East Mulberry Sub -Area Plan and South College Access Plan • Intersection Standards Improvements • Prospect and Lemay Intersection • Taft Hill Road and Elizabeth Street Intersection • Laporte and Shields Intersection • CIP/SOS Responsibility Assignment • Intersection Improvements — Proposed Fee Rates • Proposed Revisions to SOS Fee • City General Fund Contribution • Comparison of Front Range Transportation Impact Fees • Single -Family Dwelling Fees • Fee Examples • Public Input Board Comments/Questions: Grigg: Is the SO Fee the only transportation fee the City has? Baker: The SO Fee is the only Transportation impact fee the City of Fort Collins has. We also collect a capital expansion fee for regional roads in Latimer county which is a small amount. We do collect that for Latimer county. Grigg: Do other entities call it a "transportation impact fee"? Baker: Yes, and I tried to change the name several times, but the city attorney said that since it says, "the Street Oversizing portion" in the actual code language, they won't let us change it. Believe me; I'd like to get it changed because every time I would say "Street Oversizing" people ask why would you want to build the street oversized? It's confusing. Johnson: About the 5a' slide in, you have a comment saying that you can justifiably charge development to the extent that development benefits from what you are proposing. But can't you also say that if development impacts capacity on the system that we all use, that if we all have to pay for those impacts — is that another way of saying the same thing? It seems slightly different to me. Baker: There is quite a divergent faction in impact fee methodology. One faction which Fort Collins has followed from the early years when the fee was first instituted in 1979, was kind of like the water/sewer plant investment fee. It was an improvements based type of fee. There is another methodology that does use capacity to calculate Street Oversizing fees or TIFs. We've looked at methodology several times. Our impact fee consultant and our staff feel that the improvements based methodology gets us past the existing deficiency question and allows us to collect money for existing intersection improvements. Miller: Is this the same model that they used in Loveland? Baker: Yes, it is a very similar program. APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes Transportation Board September 17, 2003 Page 4 of 13 Johnson: It's interesting to note that the extent of the increase is a little less than half of the increase that development would have seen had we passed the 1% construction tax. Dumais: The fee example, the numbers at the bottom look very high to me. I was wondering if there was any way to put those in perspective with the typical day gross for something like Albertson's or Wal-Mart. I don't know if that would help on the table or not. It might be something that could be worked into the fee structure. Johnson: I'm not sure that a day's gross, but maybe a I0-year cycle at least or something that approximates the lifetime of the road. Dumais: Yeah, a day was a bad example, but even a year of income. I understand Wal-Mart is doing really well. The other issue I was wondering about is in terms of state intersection improvements and some of the other examples... and if there's a way to give a ratio of how many improvements are completed under this versus how many the City has to do on their own. Would that help at all in the presentation -- just something to think about? Also, I thought there was an issue about Nexus. I thought that impacts could only be considered when they were adjacent to the property? Baker: Well, that's the good thing about using a standards improvement methodology to calculate this, is the standards improvement to intersections benefits everybody to the extent that those improvements benefit new development we can't reflect a charge for it. It's not based on correcting existing deficiencies; it's based on improving intersections to meet new standards which benefits everybody as a whole. So, by using a ratio of new trips to total trips in the city, we can compute that ratio of what the standards improvements would be. Dumais: I thought the presentation was very well laid out and it was clear. Miller: How does this percentage increase compare to previous percentage increases? Baker: In 1985, it was 90%. Grigg: How are SO funds budgeted along side of other funds, when you build a project using SO, would the entire project be funded out of that pot or do you mix it together? Baker: It used to be simple, but now a lot of projects are assemblages of financial and other responsibilities. For instance, the Lemay Avenue project was a four -lane arterial roadway constructed by SO, including a trail underpass constructed by Parks, plus a Storm Water box culvert upgrade funded by Storm Water. Dumais: I noticed there are a lot of blue dots on the west side of town, but SO would be equally used to develop intersections in developed areas of town... Baker: Whatever percent of SO funds collected, would go towards improving those intersections from the old standards to the current standards after the existing deficiencies are upgraded. APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes Transportation Board September 17, 2003 Page 5 of 13 Ricord: In looking at the list of public input groups, I'm concerned that there's no public forum that allows the average tax payer to step up to the plate to speak to the issue. All tax payers are going to be affected by this. Baker: Thank you for bringing that to my attention. We usually have two open houses for that purpose. I don't have dates for those yet, however. This is my first meeting to get direction. Johnson: If we have a situation in the future along College Avenue, with these APF problems, when people build or redevelop on College and they add trips to the system, and yet you couldn't add lanes to College, would these folks still be paying into the SO fund or an "in lieu of fund so you'd be able to use that in the system to be able to maintain mobility. Dan brings that up a lot, this idea of somehow maintaining mobility. Johnson: In your calculations with regard to intersections like Vine and Lemay that would have a lot higher cost because of the grade separations, is that factored into something that we do overall and spread over all development in the way you're looking at it now? Baker: Yes it is. We've been collecting for the grade separations. Johnson: So you don't put it down on one developer who happens to be sitting at that one peculiar geography? Baker: No. It is spread over so there is a fairness element to it. Chair Henderson: I thought it was a great presentation. In trying to sell this to some of the other groups you're going to be giving this presentation to, you might pick some areas say in Denver, Colorado Springs, Boulder, etc and do some comparisons, particularly where development is flourishing, assuming that there's some high impact fee rates, it might be a nice argument. The other thing was, you mentioned before that 1985 there was a 90% increase, it would be great to show a graph that shows the 90% increase and the amount of growth that continued after that to make a point that the growth is there regardless. Phillips: We also have a graph that shows how the City's impact fees total are still the same percentage of the total cost of building a structure as they were 10 years ago. The fees have not increased percentage wise. Chair Henderson: You mentioned before that there is no set schedule yet. Baker: Right. We'll go back and use your comments and final our presentation and try and set a schedule. b. TRANSPORTATION MASTER PLAN UPDATE — Jackson Jackson reported that the schedule for the TMP has been moved once again. It's going to City Council on December 2, due to City Plan and the desire to have both plans on the same agenda for Council. November will now be the month for this board's action on this item. APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes Transportation Board September 17, 2003 Page 6 of 13 The major work since last month has been focused on the Fiscally Constrained Capital Improvement Plan (CIP). He presented an update via Power Point. Highlights of the presentation were: Updated Schedule Prioritization Criteria Update - Roadway - Level of service/capacity - Safety -increased weight - Construction feasibility - Adequate public facilities - Multi -agency cooperation — moved to Tier 2 - Roadway classification • Roadway High Priority Projects — Revised • Funding Analysis - Existing sources - Future Forecasts - What -if Analysis • Next Steps: - Finalize funding analysis - Develop fiscally constrained CIP - Develop fiscally constrained CIP with What it analysis - Documentation - Outreach and approvals Board Comments/Ouestions: Grigg: How many years out is your financial forecast going? Jackson: 2025. Grigg: That's a long way out in the future. I was just wondering, given that we ran up against these two failed ballot initiatives, if the plan ought not to include a section that would be almost like future research section where you discuss what trends in funding are out there in the country. There are a lot different things happening in every sector of public finance, things are changing a lot and where you can get money from and intergovernmental revenues and so on. Plummer: There is a matrix mentioned in the presentation that identifies a lot of that. Johnson: After having gone through the last two election exercises, I think a lot of folks feel like we have a lot of money in transportation to do everything and the surprise is if we look at our Master Street Plan, we see that it is a great big wish list given our funding sources at the present time. If we're willing to step forward as a community to do some things by way of increasing these Street Oversizing Fees; we'll be able to show voters in 2005, when asking for an extension of the Building Community Choices, that the development community and the City are contributing significantly to transportation capital and that capital from the sales tax is needed and necessary. Otherwise, the MSP is way out there in the future even though its need is in the present. APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes Transportation Board September 17, 2003 Page 7 of 13 Jackson: This iteration, this update to the TMP has a real different feel to it message wise and I think you're exactly right. I think there will be some fairly blunt messages. We'll be lucky to maintain status quo at this stage. Plummer then distributed chapters 1, 2, 4 and 6 of what the document will be and stressed that this is strictly an internal working draft. He would like the board to look at this from the standpoint of content. This is the only group that will get this exercise (homework). Chair Henderson asked what the deadline is for feedback. Jackson said that the earlier the better. Wordsmithing is not necessary. Staff is looking for general impressions or if something is missing, overstated, understated, etc. Email is fine or marking up a hard copy. Cass can let everyone know the contact info for Jackson and Plummer via email. Johnson: A question I raised last time with regard to enforcement of traffic safety laws, would that fall into the TMP or to City Plan? Are there cracks that it falls into that nobody deals with it? Jackson: We talked about it and struggled with it. We didn't see where enforcement fit neatly in the TMP. We had a hard time with it. Plummer: It is one of those public safety type issues. Grigg: I don't know where we could actually go with this suggestion, but if you look at that issue in terms of an organization, there is a whole series of issues that are cross cutting and have to do with safety and security, but they're not programmatic issues and you guys deal with programmatic issues in transportation and you have other programmatic issues in the city. It's not only traffic safety that the city is concerned about, but risk management, health, crime and many different things that are cross cutting. They relate to everything and unless somebody coordinate all of that and shows where it's going to go in the different plans, they're all going to fall through the cracks somewhere. Jackson: I know that enforcement has been a strong issue with this group and I think it's entirely appropriate that at the point when you send your message to Council, that you pick that as another opportunity to add that and say "one thing that we would like to add and stress and where we're at with our philosophy is the issue of enforcement" or something along those lines. Johnson: I was wondering if there might be another way to deal with it that we might note somewhere in this plan that there are some of these cross cutting issues that we have to deal with, with this being one of them. We could have a list of those things so maybe those won't get buried and it's out there for people to look at if we're not going to include it in City Plan or... Plummer: The City Plan CAC has a list of what they call "Parking Lot Issues." These are the ideas that really didn't fit into any of the niches of the categories, but they were still issues that people had. That information is going in their advice to Council. APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes Transportation Board September 17, 2003 Page 8 of 13 Johnson: Maybe it really wouldn't hurt to have something that needs to be addressed in the future something ... transportation interface with traffic law enforcement. That's an issue that remains to be dealt with in a substantial way. Johnson: I would suggest that the bike part of the Mason project be kept as one project and not split into 15 projects all at different geographical sites. c. DOWNTOWN STRATEGIC PLAN -PARKING — Henley Hensley stated that in July, our presentation focused on the high-level principles which were guiding the analysis and some of the recommendations. Hensley stated that he would like to focus on the Transportation Section of the DSP. Hensley explained that originally, he was going to ask the board to make a recommendation on the plan tonight, but that is no longer necessary unless the board wants to because the item has been moved to a December Council meeting date. This can come before the board in October for action now and there will be a better document for the board to review that way. Chair Henderson agreed. Hensley then went over the order of the document and explained how the Transportation Section will fit into the overall document when in its final form. Hensley informed the board that Daggett has left the City to work for the MPO so Hensley has taken over the project management for the Transportation part of the DSP. He asked that if there are any questions or comments, to please direct them to him at rhensley(.i fc og v.com He said he welcomes any comments that the board may have at any time. The presentation included information on: - Future Traffic Congestion - Adequate Public Facilities and the Multimodal Transportation Level of Service Manual - Downtown Pedestrian Facility Standards - Enhanced Pedestrian Porosity - Integrated Pedestrian Network - Transit Service Standards - Capturing the CSU Market with Transit - Redesigned Downtown Centerline Parking Board Comments/Questions: Ricord: In talking about the redesigned downtown centerline parking concept, I think it's a great idea — shows some thinking outside of the box. One question that I ask probably once a meeting is given that that is a State facility, do you know off hand if there will be any objections for the Colorado Department of Transportation to implement those kinds of changes? APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes Transportation Board September 17, 2003 Page 9 of 13 Hensley: No, I don't know the answer to that. We haven't asked them this question directly yet, but obviously they are a major player in the decision making process. Dumais: Considering the number of head -to -head stand offs and the number of times you see people cross two lanes, the current safety is pretty bad. This is very appealing to me. Moe: I kind of like it the way it is. What about the time it takes people to parallel park versus diagonal park? It's such a high volume corridor, that that would concern me. One nice thing about the diagonal parking is that you can drive through it. Hensley: Traffic congestion on College is only going to increase and traffic will be slower. Thordarson: Perhaps the thing to do is to make parallel spaces bigger so it's easier to pull in. Jakubauskas: Also there is a safety problem when opening your car door. Hensley: As an aside, we have that situation on Jefferson right now. We have a very narrow parking lane on Jefferson and this has been a very controversial topic in the DSP because our access management plan calls for the ultimate removal of parking off of Jefferson. Our DSP team feels very strongly that parking needs to remain on Jefferson, but there's that safety issue. Dumais: If this double sided parking works out to be roughly equivalent to a single lane of diagonal parking then it would seem like this would work out on Jefferson if we took away the double sided parallel parking and converted it to one sided diagonal parking, you should have roughly the same number of parking spaces and it might be a safer way to park. Hensley: We just don't have the ROW there. Would it be possible on College to make the north side of the block to be a west entry and the south side would be an east entry so you have the block divided — so you didn't get this cross motion of people trying to get to the spot from both sides? Some kind of a barrier. Johnson: Downtown people aren't very happy about barriers, I don't think that would go over very well. Aztlan area needs an underpass under College. On the two graphs of traffic, the numbers appear in slightly different spots and it looks odd when you are comparing them. I believe they need to be moved around. Also, you're missing a number for the East Mountain traffic on the existing daily volume. On the bicycle part I had a note, because one of the things I really hate is when park your bike in one of these racks where the domino effect occurs. I'd like to see a strong effort to find bike racks that will support the bike and avoid that problem. Maybe hanging ones might work? Phillips: There is an underpass under College Avenue near the Aztlan Center. APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes Transportation Board September 17, 2003 Page 10 of 13 Dumais: Maybe there needs to be some signage — I didn't know it was there. Johnson: For pedestrians who are going to be using the Aztlan Center and any other things that are happening in that part, we have the transit center dropping people right at that site and if you walk a block north and you go under College, I think that in the long term, given the kind of increases in people and activities in the future, that is something that should be put on the plan and kept under consideration. There is a lot of exciting things happening for alternate modes and necessarily so because of the inability to expand College in any realistic way. The idea of redevelopment of the downtown core and Mason Street is something to be added to the downtown core is a theme that works well and is a very logical one that the consultants have come up with and I support it strongly and urge the board to support it as well. One of the things, Randy, with regard to the money for "in lieu of when we come across these APF situations, you did give a few options on page 29. I would like to throw out there are so many good ideas dealing with pedestrian porosity in these mid -block crossings that we aim at first at those kinds of things rather than showers which are nice, but are secondary rather than primary. So, the friendly crossing treatments is another element that would deal with pedestrians, bike lanes, alleyways, the Magnolia bike facility are really important. So getting money again, for this "in lieu of fees," to be going first to the kinds of things that drive the working alternative modes is what I would aim at. And finally, the transit connection and any way we can get to build that Mason Street corridor in the north down to the campus area. All those things will need capital. I have to say that the idea to implement Park Once, will need a lot of ingenuity and capital and you've shown some of the ingenuity here today and it's really nice to see that. Chair Henderson: Quick question about the APF, at the bottom of the page 29, it sounded like there is implication that there needed to be further action. Are you just going to leave it where it is right now? Or are there other actions? Hensley: Yes there is. That section attracted a lot of attention and is something that we will be reviewing. We don't think it's worded appropriately the way it's stated in here right now an we want to discuss that and make it work from a Transportation perspective as well as a City Plan perspective. The final document will have different wording and won't be so open ended. Johnson: The concept of parking and coupling that to a fee that is shared with transit - is the idea that that is integrated — you pay for your parking space and you pay for your downtown rides. Hensley: Yes. Johnson: The last item is the shuttle and I know that it's going downhill fast. Mason might be a good connection. APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes Transportation Board September 17, 2003 Page 11 of 13 17. ACTION ITEMS I a. COUNCIL LEGISLATIVE AGENDA — Bachman Bachman explained that the Council legislative agenda is a document that summarizes the principles on all city governance topics that council members and staff should use as a guideline in communicating with our legislative delegation regarding legislation at both the Federal and State levels. The City Manager's office has asked the board and staff to review the current Transportation portion and make any recommendations for changes or updates. After much discussion, the board added the following: #4: add the words "or greater" between 10% and from. Add a #9: In the interest of promoting highway safety, support adequate funding for the Colorado State Patrol from the State General Fund or other non-HUTF sources. Add a #10: Support legislation that increases highway maintenance funding, including shareback with cities and counties. Bachman will email the final document to the board. 8. REPORTS a. BOARD MEMBER REPORTS Johnson: Power Trail. It's open now and I encourage everyone to ride it. It will give you a sense of what the Mason trail will do for the community. Bike Mans. I asked that more bike maps be brought over. Please take some and hand them out. Stormwater Outfalls. A bad example of how not to do it is one that comes off of Riverside by Spring Creek. It discharges water that is substantially up in the air and just flows into the creek very quickly with whatever it carries with it. I was going to ask about new standards for new development and is there any kind of remedial program that we have in place that will deal with situation like that? Do we have standards for new development? McNair will check into it. Trantham: Pedestrian Sienal Request. Is there anyway we can have a ped signal across Drake or Horsetooth — either one, on that trail because they're telling you that you can cross there now. Dumais: Thank you. Thanks to Rick Richter, I believe. I talked to someone - as you go northbound on Timberline right as you hit Prospect, the pavement was badly dished from truck traffic and in between the left turn lane and the straight through lane there was a bump there that was a good 5" or so and they got right out there and scraped it down. It was dangerous, especially on a bike. APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes Transportation Board September 17, 2003 Page 12 of 13 Ricord: Article. I brought an article, but it looks like Tim already beat me to it and it's included in your packets. Next Month. I won't be here as I will be in France. Miller: Data Gathering Opportunity. It relates to the construction that's going on on the truck route. It seems like we have a lot fewer trucks, maybe because we have this signage up and such on I-25. The assumption would be that the through traffic is paying attention to that. It would be nice to find out and compare to pre or post construction. Thordarson: S. Shields, south of Harmony. The county did some work out there and it seems they used a different seal coating process involving sand and oil. Bachman: The county chip sealed out there. Henderson: Dial -A -Ride Committee. I've been talking with a couple people from the DAR committee. They've been interested in expanding their focus beyond just some of the operational issues and bringing issues to the attention of the Transportation Board that they thought impacted DAR system users. They do have monthly meetings so there is an opportunity here. The disadvantage is that they meet on the first Thursday of the month from 9 — 10:30 a.m. But if anyone has time and is interested, they would love to get someone from our board involved and we may get someone from their board attending our meetings. b. STAFF REPORTS Frazier: Dial -A -Ride. As part of our budget adjustments, we're trying to reduce our expenses of Dial -A -Ride roughly by $88,000 and we're looking to do that by putting some contractual service out in certain areas of the community. We'll have a Request for Proposals go out to private contractors next month. If everything works out and we get qualified contractors that know how to do the work, we'll try to implement it in January or February. We did a presentation to the DAR Advisory Board and one of the major feedbacks we got from people who have experienced contractual service a few years ago, is that we need to tighten up the performance levels. The provider has to provide a much higher level of service than what they've done in the past. That was the main reason we shifted from contractual service in 1996 back to doing service in house because the provider at that time had some real performance issues. So, just a heads up, this is coming up. The objective is that it will reduce our expenses. I will come to an upcoming board meeting and give you more information. McNair: Construction Project Information. McNair gave an update on various construction projects. All this information can also be found on the web. APPROVED Regular Meeting Minutes Transportation Board September 17, 2003 Page 13 of 13 Bachman: Next Agenda: o Transportation Master Plan o Mason Transportation Corridor Update o Downtown Strategic Plan — Parking o Natural Areas Policy Plan Review o City Plan 2004 Work Plan. We need to be thinking about the Work Plan for next year. It's about time to plan our work day in November to get together and work on it. Please bring your calendars next time. 1 9. OTHER BUSINESS I Gary Thomas reported that the City of Loveland has to drop one of the bus routes due to budget cuts. He stated that the other big issue is the RTA. There is a retreat next Monday of the Loveland's Transportation Board and they are to come up with a recommendation to the City Council on how the IGA should be constructed. 10. ADJOURN Chair Henderson adjourned the meeting at 9:15 p.m. Respectfully submitted, Cynthia Cass Executive Administrative Assistant City of Fort Collins — Transportation Services