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HomeMy WebLinkAboutTransportation Board - Minutes - 08/15/2007MEETING MINUTES of the TRANSPORTATION BOARD August 15, 2007 5:45 p.m. City of Fort Collins Municipal Building 215 N. Mason Street — Community Room FOR REFERENCE: Chair: Gary Thomas 482-7125 Vice Chair: Ed Robert 224-4864 Staff Liaison: Mark Jackson 416-2029 Administrative Support: Polly Bennett 224-6058 BOARD MEMBERS PRESENT: James Clausen Sara Frazier Neil Grigg Bill Jenkins Ed Robert Garry Steen Gary Thomas Scott VanTatenhove ABSENT: Don Edmondson Shane Miller Kevin Westhuis CITY STAFF: Mark Jackson Polly Bennett Kurt Ravenschlag Kristin Kirkpatrick Randy Hensley OTHERS IN ATTENDANCE: Nancy York 1. CALL TO ORDER The meeting was called to order by Chair Thomas at 6:02 p.m. 2. AGENDA REVIEW Sara Frazier requested that she present first, as she had another engagement to attend. Accepted with that revision. 3. PUBLIC COMMENT Nancy York gave a brief update from the Air Quality Board. 4. APPROVAL OF MINUTES (July 2007) Steen moved to approve the July 2007 Transportation Board meeting minutes as presented. There was a second by Jenkins. The motion carried unanimously. 5. COUNCIL LIAISON REPORT Wade Troxell, Council Liaison, did not attend. 6. DISCUSSION ITEMS a. UniverCity DRAFT Regular Meeting Minutes Page 2 Transportation Board August 15, 2007 Sara Frazier, Transportation Board Member Sara showed a DVD about UniverCity and the plans/desires for future development in Fort Collins. Areas include the downtown district, CSU, housing, sustainability, arts & culture. Wayf:nding is the signage that will be along various travel corridors in the city and potentially on I-25, directing people to different areas of interest. The Legacy Parkway was a "big idea" suggested by Sara at an early meeting of the UniverCity task force. If there is a Peace Corp reunion planned for 2008, it would be nice to have Wayfinding developed for the Legacy Parkway. She suggests that the Transportation Board request using one or two of the proposed Wayfinding kiosks to publicize the Legacy Parkway. Thomas: There is a grant request before the Community Foundation for UniverCity funding. The concept of the Transportation Group is moving people around. Grigg: It is a very exciting concept. Frazier: The kiosks will show past, present, and future examples of UniverCity features. Various civic groups will have the opportunity to sponsor the kiosks. It would be nice to have a uniform overall design, but have each stop be unique. Robert: Perhaps there could be terminus kiosks downtown, out south, and at CSU and we could have a ribbon cutting to dedicate them. Ravenschlag: The UniverCity video is available online at fcgov.com/video. b. Safe Routes 2 School — Update Kurt Ravenschlag/Kristin Kirkpatrick — Transportation Planning Jackson: Introduced Kurt Ravenschlag (Interim Senior Transportation Planner) and Kristin Kirkpatrick (Transportation Planning Intem) Ravenschlag and Kirkpatrick handed out an executive summary outlining program successes over the past year. Safe Routes 2 School (SR2S) was sprung out of the decrease in children walking and biking to school over the past forty years. Increased traffic congestion and childhood obesity in school age children has been a result of this decline. The SR2S mission is to develop and promote safer routes for children to get to school, through education, encouragement, engineering, enforcement, and evaluation with the hopes of increasing the number of children walking and biking to school The first project in 2007 our local group accomplished was widening the sidewalks around Dunn Elementary School. Five elementary schools are targeted for implementation of programs over the next year. Bike Fort Collins will also have people trained in the Safe Routes 2 School arena. Highlights of project completed this year: The pathway from Elizabeth to Laurel was reworked: bollards were removed, ramps were improved, and people are using it now; they also widened sidewalks in front of Lesher Junior High; and installed a new signalized pedestrian crossing at Bacon Elementary School on Timberline that allows students to cross Timberline. The cost of the signal and crossing guard was split with Poudre R-1. The entire neighborhood across the street from the school now walks or bikes to school, where previously, they were actually being driven by their parents. DRAFT Regular Meeting Minutes Transportation Board August 15, 2007 Page 3 Frazier: You have done a really good job! As a motorist, eye contact is extremely important. Is that stressed with students? Ravenschlag: Curriculum for K-8 is listed on the brochure; eye contact is one topic that is stressed. Jenkins: What is the reaction of parents? My grandson has difficulty getting to school because of heavy traffic at the crossing. Ravenschlag: That is the biggest challenge. There are perceived risks that we are working on with parents to get them comfortable. The school district cooperates by putting crossing guards at heavy traffic crossings. We can help accomplish that. Kirkpatrick: Another part of the program is generating social support. Ravenschlag: Right. "Stranger Danger" is an example of a solution to the concern of getting kids to school safely. Parents cooperate to walk a group of children to school. Because of the barrage of media, we are more aware of crimes against children. Thomas: The City has been able to give kids free bus rides. Is that counter productive to this program? Kirkpatrick: Research supports that it encourages physical activity because they have to walk to the bus stop. Jackson: All Transfort fixed -route buses have 3-bike capacity racks. Robert: Logos on the brochure — what kind of signage is there for kids to follow a safe route? Ravenschlag: Nothing at this time ... that is something we could work on. A good Wayfinding idea. Robert: I would suggest posting small, like -type signs for walkers and bikers to readily identify the safe routes to schools for each direction. Jackson: Do you still generate maps? Ravenschlag: Yes, you can generate a map online of your school area showing facilities and routes. The grants we received will allow us to keep this updated. VanTatenhove: There is a huge drop-off of students walking/biking in secondary school when they get their drivers licenses. It would be nice to encourage students to bike/walk for their health and other reasons. c. Budgeting for Outcomes - Update Mark Jackson/Randy Hensley Jackson introduced Randy Hensley, Parking Services Manager and Transportation Budget & Policy Manager who also served on the Transportation Result Team for the 2007 Budgeting for Outcomes process. Jackson explained that specifics of the drilling platform/City Manager's Recommended Budget haven't been released to the public yet, so he was unable to discuss details. He will go into more depth at next month's meeting. Result Teams presented their recommended "Drilling Platforms" to the Budget Lead Team (BLT). The BLT reviewed and revised the recommended platforms, loosening up some areas and tightening others, which lead to the City Manager formulating his recommended budget which will be presented to Council on September 4th. Positives are coming out of this year's process, with some major themes. It is not a rebuilding year, but there won't be the massive cutbacks/layoffs we saw in the last cycle. Major themes: Employee salaries & benefits. Raises were frozen, benefit costs increased, and the employee base bore the burden of the financial difficulties for four to five years. Key people were lost as a result of pay increases being frozen, pay ranges not being adjusted up. Money is included in the recommended DRAFT Regular Meeting Minutes Transportation Board August 15, 2007 Page 4 budget for pay increases in both 2008 and 2009. Over 110 positions were eliminated in the previous cycle (67 filled, the rest were vacant positions). No layoffs are in the 2008/2009 cycle. We are running lean. Increased attention to Public Health and Safety (Police & Fire). Mason Corridor - money is included to help meet the Local Match for the Corridor project. Community interest and value led to that. Capital O&M for the new Police facility and other capital projects. Spring Canyon Park — a new community park at Drake & Overland will open in October. Aztlan Center. Investment in Asset Replacement — fleet, computer, etc. Bolstering Finance and Accounting Staff. One-time use of reserves each year to offset issues that hopefully will be resolved in 2010. We knew we would be lucky to maintain status quo. We asked permission to proactively submit "reduction offers" knowing we will be facing declining revenues. Hensley: One of the themes we were given by the City Manager was that this is a "maintenance budget" and we were to try to fund existing levels. This applied primarily to the General Fund. We have a set of issues in Transportation that threaten a maintenance budget. We are funded by two major areas: Transportation Fund (consists of the General Fund and four big taxes: gas, road & bridge; vehicle registration; '/4 cent Pavement Management Sales Tax) and the Transit Fund (federal funding and the General Fund). We began the process by creating a five -line budget. Expenditures were outgrowing revenues, threatening the Transportation and Transit funds. In order to address that, each Department Manager made reduction offers during this year's BFO process that described the impacts of not receiving funding. The reduction offers actually cut into basic services. Details can't be released until the City Manager's recommended budget is released. Apparently not all of those reduction offers will be accepted by the Budget Lead Team, but there will be some cuts in basic services. Jackson: Darin's 3-prong strategy: I. Funded Recommended Budget. Fully funded, fully loaded. Not based on unsure revenues. Anything below the "drilling platform" will not be funded unless something else is dropped. Total budget +/- $450 million; Transportation +/-$50 million. II. Additional revenue enhancements: fees (electric rates, waste water rates, vendor fees, PILOTs) can potentially generate up to 1.2 million per year. III. Big ticket items that can't be fixed by strategy II. Transportation and Public Health & Safety (Police & Fire). There may be another sales tax measure proposed as early as April 2008 that could amount to % to 1-cent. Funding themes: Local Match for Mason Corridor: The project cost was raised to $72 million. Another $900,000+/- is needed to make the match and couldn't be found. Staff was instructed to go back and do value engineering to see what amenities can be scaled back to allow us to meet the local match. Private development may be tapped to provide revenue in addition to a Transportation tax. Pavement Management will take another hit in this budget cycle. The hard question is at what point are we unable to catch up. An independent auditor looked at our Pavement Management program to evaluate it. DRAFT Regular Meeting Minutes Transportation Board August 15, 2007 Page 5 Thomas: Would like Rick Richter and/or Erika Keeton to attend September's meeting to discuss the Pavement Management audit report and consider writing another letter to Council. Robert: How much is Pavement Management losing? Is strategy II enough to cover it? Jackson: I can't reveal that. Strategy II is not enough to bring it back entirely. Enhancements for Transit/Paratransit won't be funded. Levels of service will, unfortunately, decline (weekend hours at the DTC). Fortunately, apparently, not all of the reduction offers for Transfort were accepted. Positives: We were able to bring so much outside money to the table (FC Bikes, Mason Corridor, Downtown River District) that those programs/projects funded themselves. Thomas: Let's keep the September agenda clean so we can discuss the City Manager's Recommended Budget. Jackson: FCgov.com will have presentation materials for the budget. Jenkins: How do you think they did on their revenue projections? Hensley: I have a better handle on Transportation revenues than the general City revenues. We make our own projections on all revenues other than General Fund. I accept their projection for General Fund and am confident in our own projections. Robert: Can sales taxes be redirected? Hensley: Sales taxes are dedicated funds and can not be used for anything other than what the voters approved. Robert: Does anyone compare sales tax revenues now to what it was over the last five years? Jackson: Read the EPS report that Council supported. It explains a lot of what guided this budget cycle. Clausen: You were talking about personnel and freezes on raises and pay ranges. What did you say was changing ... what is the positive outlook you referred to? Jackson: Merit increases and cost -of -living increases were frozen for four years, while benefit costs increased and were passed on to staff, which affected the market relevancy of the pay plan. Money will be allocated for raises, and pay ranges will be adjusted. Clausen: How does that balance against the projected cuts in services? Are they saying they value employees enough to take money out of services? Jackson: BFO is a value judgment in itself. You can fund employee compensation or you can fund services at 100%. Anything perceived as a hit to the employee base will be devastating to the work force. DRAFT Regular Meeting Minutes Page 6 Transportation Board August 15, 2007 7. ACTION ITEMS a. Work Plan Gary Thomas/Ed Robert Thomas: The 2006 Work Plan had lots of detail. After that we decided to make general work plans rather than detailed ones. Robert: We haven't been looking at motor vehicle issues often enough at board meetings. I'd like to start looking at street needs and motor vehicle/transportation issues more often. Thomas: When I was talking to Ed about our Work Plan, the thought that came up is the Transportation Master Plan and the methodology of predicting and mitigating congestion. Would the board be interested in a training session about the Transportation Master Plan and how it came to be? Grigg: It would be a really good idea. It represents going back to the big issues. Thomas: We could have a monthly evening study session, not to take action, but to revisit the Transportation Master Plan. Jackson: The next updates of CityPlan and the Transportation Master Plan are scheduled for the 2nd quarter of 2009. I will bring any existing data to you, but my staff is stretched razor thin resource -wise and schedule -wise as far as analyzing data or other projects. Jenkins: Is our main mission the same? Thomas: Yes. We can revisit them as we put together our work plan for 2008. General consensus of the board was that a monthly study session would be good. It was agreed that we will wait until after the budget cycle ends before instituting it. 8. ACTION ITEMS a. Committee being formed by the City Manager's office to study the impact of Trains. Neil Grigg will be the T-Board representative b. Bus Committee (Garry Steen) Jackson: It had Fort Collins Transportation splashed all over it, but isn't on our work plan. Scott VanTatenhove will contact them to find out more about it. 9. BOARD MEMBER REPORTS Griggs: Parking. CSU reducing number of parking spaces and increasing the price for them. MIT is eliminating one above -ground space and adding underground spaces in their place. They are leasing private sector spaces at $235 per month to cover the gap. Clausen: 392 & I-25? Is that a band aid? Jackson: Yes. To get two lanes and minimize cueing onto the through lane of the interstate. VanTatenhove: I was stuck in the right-hand lane on I-25 at the Prospect exit last week. Robert: I took the Police Services building tour. It would be nice to have one of our meetings at their Community Room and take a tour. This would provide the opportunity for Police Services to make a presentation to the Board on transportation safety -related enforcement and outcomes for all modes. Steen: Terrific conference in St. Louis about traffic safety. Thomas: 100 years ago this month there was a fair at City Park. The idea of the streetcar began as an idea to move people to the fair. A steam engine DRAFT Regular Meeting Minutes Transportation Board August 15, 2007 Page 7 pulled the cars down Mountain Avenue. The electric streetcars arrived in December that year. Gary gifted each member a commemorative pin. b. STAFF REPORTS Jackson: Train/Car fatality at McClelland/Mason: Worked with Chief Harrison to review why it happened. It appears to be driver error. The man maneuvered around the downed gates into the path of the oncoming train. It was not design error, and the gates operated properly. The Mason Corridor is designed with safety first and foremost. Thomas: We do not know the situation in this particular case. But in general, I know from the calls we get at SAINT that when services like Dial -a -Ride are cut back, seniors may not feel they have a choice and continue driving past the point when they should. Transportation is working in conjunction with CSU Athletics to design a tra)rlc flow program for Hughes Stadium. We are trying to make it a more pleasant experience and develop an effective multi -modal plan including potential transit, parking, and short-term solutions. A consultant was hired, who has an Entertainment Transportation Division (they plan the traffic plans for the Superbowl, etc.). We are proposing to run some test signal timing changes during the first game this season. City Engineer: Position closed August 10t6. We received 17 applications and plan to interview the first week of September. Some promises candidates applied. Traffic Engineer: Eric Bracke's last day was August 9t'. I appointed Ward Stanford Interim Traffic Engineer and hope to advertise the position in September. September Agenda: • Pavement Management Report — Rick Richter, Erika Keeton • Budgeting for Outcomes — Final Drilling Platform discussion 8. OTHER BUSINESS None. 9. ADJOURN The meeting adjourned at 8:44 p.m. Respectfully submitted, ty Polly Benjett Executive Administrative Assistant