Last year in the City Budget, we FINALLY got the City Council in on the decision making about roads! The early opportunity to see what roads we’re planning on building comes up on Tuesday!
A Council briefing by City Engineering staff on the Transportation Improvement Plan (TIP) that will be presented to the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) will be held on:
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
5:15 p.m.
Room 201, City-County Building
That probably sounds like garbage to folks, so let me break it down as best I can, not being a transportation geek.
The city develops a Transportation Improvement Plan, which is our plan for which roads we want to build and more importantly, what roads we want funding for. This plan typically got presented to Long Range Transportation Planning Commission for feedback, but not approval. The TIP was largely developed by staff and not approved by the council or transportation committees. (Or if approved, it was approved by bodies after it is presented to the Metropolitan Planning Organization when we could have no real input.)
The TIP then gets submitted to the Metropolitan Planning Organization. They do the final approvals that determine what gets state and federal funding.
Then, the Mayor puts the roads in the budget and that is the first the public and council officially sees which roads will be built and gets to comment as the city. Which is why we have had debates over roads in the last few capital budgets (2008, 2009). Decisions about roads at that point are difficult because typically state and federal funding have already been secured and we don’t want to turn the money away.
Last year, in the budget, I made a motion that said:
“The TIP (Transportation Improvement Plan) shall be presented to the Common Council annually by May 15th, prior to submission to the MPO (Metropolitan Planning Organization).”
My explanation on my blog at the time was:
Ok – I’m out of my league here. I asked Larry Nelson a bunch of questions, but . . . the outcome was that Larry basically said that we approve neighborhood plans and then the only time we discuss which projects get priority is during the Capital Budget. I know that when I was on Long Range Transportation Planning Committee, Larry did an annual presentation to us that described the projects he wanted to work on, we gave him input, he went away and we never heard again until Capital Budget time. I essentially, wanted that presentation done at the Council – prior to making decisions, so that alders could have input and hear from the public, outside of the Capital Budget process and prior to the decisions being made by others. Compton said she couldn’t vote yes on it, so I presume she voted against having more information and input. But again, no roll call, so I don’t know. You might want to see the Cap Times for further discussion of this item. Alder Webber had many great comments on this issue.
The email to the council on Friday the 24th said:
“An formal notice of the briefing and the plan itself will be sent next week to alders.”
As of this morning, there are no materials in Legistar that I can find. So, I don’t know how the public could prepare informed comments for Tuesday, given that it is somewhat complicated. I’ll check in to see if the alders got anything yet. Meanwhile, if you care about roads and how we spend our money on roads, here is the opportunity to speak up!!
p.s. I agree with the Cap Times, elect the RTA! We want to have accountability and to avoid the games played with appointments!
