Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

With the meeting going, Ms. Linden, would you call the roll?

Christopher Alvarado?

Here.

Mayor Burke? So moved. Councilperson Conwell?

Present.

Mayor Daley-Jones? Here. Mayor Gallo? Here. Marka Fields? Here. Mayor Kurtz?

Here.

Mayor Orcutt? Here. Joseph Manning?

Here.

Mayor Weiss?

Here.

Mayor Wheelock? You have a quorum.

All right. We're good. Thank you. Do we have any comments from the public? We do not. All right. Minutes from the April 9th meeting.

No.

Is that April? Yeah, April 9th meeting. Any changes needed? Move approval. Motion approved. Thank you. All right. Very good. We have a Second. Thank you very much from Mayor Kurtz. All in favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Real good. Resolution 260611A.

I will take that. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Okay, so as you know, we have been working through revisions to our policy and procedure manual. This is our travel policy. Our travel policy was last updated in August 2014 when it was adopted by this board. It was solely based on the county's employee handbook, which was at that time June 2013. So as you can imagine, things have changed, and we did not update our travel policy. So it was originally called the travel slash driving on business policy. The references that were in there were very outdated. There was things in there such as fax this form to this number. And a lot of things were backed when there was no hands-free cell phone usage. There was a lot of different things in there that just were not up to date currently. Also, some of our pre-approval requirements and the processes being specific to our agency. And we're just getting more sensitive to the budget implications of mileage reimbursements, given now that it's 72 and a half or some cents, and when it's not project reimbursable. This really better aligns also with the revised professional development policy that we brought forth to you in December, because a lot of them are the same forms that are used. So you will see in your packets there is a bleeding red line version of the old policy, just so you're referenced so you can see how much has changed. But there is also a clean copy in your packet, and that was sent out last week. So what we are... We included an appendix A and an appendix B for those forms. Also, premium price locations when it comes to reimbursement, depending on where the travel is. We don't travel very far very often, but there are different markets that have a higher rate of reimbursement allowable dollars. So then if this becomes approved today it'll be effective immediately replacing the existing policy and we will share that with all employees and then they will sign off acknowledging that as well as all the forms and the pre-approval requirements. So part of this is also tied to fiscal requirements which was part of the professional development that they have first have to get authorization to attend something and then you have to Submit a form of anticipated expenses because again, that's like at that time is what we anticipate so you can plan forward in the budget those then get Submitted with the actual expense report. So what you estimated versus what you're submitting should be fairly similar. So If there's any questions, I know it's a lot and I don't expect you to read through all those revisions but Substantial changes, some things were more of an order. Seatbelt usage and other things were kind of in a different place and we tried to align things better where it made sense. So happy to answer any questions.

Yes, sir. Are the reimbursements in line with the county policy?

They are from the county policy, yes. Okay. And so I think this will also be subject to change given any changes. major changes and revisions. I've been here for five and a half years, and I think we've updated professional, we've introduced the professional development policy first. We've already amended it twice based on different changes that happened with fiscal office and other things, so it could be something where there's a future amendment to this as well. But much more in line in 2026 than in 2014 times.

Any other questions? Do we have a motion then to approve this resolution?

Motion.

Thank you so much, Mayor Daley-Jones. Second?

Looks good, I can introduce this one. Okay, so as we talked previously, we have today with us GCRTA representatives and AECOM consultant who is working on their RTA strategic plan. We are working and have worked very closely with RTA on a variety of our TOD initiatives, and we thought it was a good opportunity. We also shared two board members, Mayor Gallo and Mayor Weiss, are also on the RTA board, to provide an update on where things stand with RTA and their initiatives, efforts, and this strategic plan that is just getting underway. So I will turn it over to Mary Beth.

Hi, I'm Mary Beth Peek. I'm Director of Planning from RTA. This is Chris Urban, AECOM. He's our consultant. I want the RTA planning team to stand up so I can introduce. We've got Mandy Metcalf, senior planner, Nicholas Miller, planner three, and then Maria Boland, she's our newest planner, and the one you've seen in active transport most of the time. So I just want to thank you for giving us this opportunity. Mayor Weiss, Mayor Gallo, you've seen this three times. I'm sorry. Here it is again. And it's really important. We are a countywide agency. Sometimes we get, because 75% of our service area is the city of Cleveland, Sometimes we forget that it's a countywide. We've got all 59 communities within our jurisdiction, and we need to meet the needs of all of them. This plan was done originally in 219. And if you've ever seen the movie, The Ten Commandments, where the angel of death is coming through, that's what our engagement process looked like. We went to Fairview Park the next day that the senior center was closed. We went to Cleveland Heights the next day that community center was closed. So on the wings of that, things were mighty different back then. And that's when this was adopted. So this is gonna really reflect a revision. We have a strategic plan. I'm told ad nauseum by our staff, we have a strategic plan. But there's been a lot of changes and we really need to reassess our corridor corridors, our network, and what's happened in TOD especially, and get your input and what our stakeholders and our communities think about that. We also, our board has told us, and I know Mayor Weiss and Mayor Gallo will say, TOD is it. We want to see what that looks like. Right now, we just say, yeah, it's a really nice thing to do. Let's do it. But they want to see it more strategic. It looks like one ops. Looks like you're selling this, selling this, developing that. We do have a strategy. And that's what we articulate in this plan. And kudos to the Planning and Planning Commission because they really started that and engaged us in that. And then safety. Remember, safety, security is really important to our riders. So this is where we are. We are just updating the vision and goals. Chris is going to take you through that work that we've gone through with our board and our staff to 2030 plus. So I think it's like 32 because it doesn't make sense to do five years and not go all the way into the 30s. And align with traction. Traction is our internal key metrics that we measure our own success with that India also measures her success with. We really need to look at the corridors. Those priority networks that are in your TOD plan, they're there, but we need to reassess them in 2026 to see where they are. Are there any growth? And how to prioritize them and what that looks like. BRT, everything is BRT. The health line's a BRT. Clifton is a BRT. The one we're planning on the Metro Health Line on West 25th is a BRT. They look mighty different, and they serve many different markets and many goals. And we really want to dive into what does a BRT look like on Lorain, on Detroit, on Warrensville. And that's what this will help us define in and stop spacing. All that stuff that may go over your heads but is really important when you're looking at transporting people and workers to and from work. as well as appointments. Financial. You may have heard that there is this financial issue that RTA is dealing with. And this will really assess us. It's like a peer review of what agencies our own size and our own business are doing and how we can strengthen areas of weakness, just sort of a gut check on what we can do. And then we want to really dive into TOD, what that looks like. There are many different arms of that. There's the transactional real estate. There's the bigger, wider. What do we want at our stations? And what can we really aspire to in some of those stations and empty parking lots? So now I'll turn it over to Chris, who's been really spearheading the work with the board and with our staff and with our stakeholders on our current goals and reframing them.

Thank you, Mary Beth. Thank you, Board of Commissioners. Appreciate the opportunity to present to you today. And Mary Beth, thank you to you and your team and Mayor Gale and Mayor Weiss and the rest of the Board of Trustees at GCRT for serving with us and helping to lead this vision forward. I'm really excited to be here to present. The initial draft proposed goals that we have revised for this update to the strategic plan for GCRTA, looking back, like Mary Beth said, at Framework for the Future, which is the current strategic plan for RTA, included a total of 10 overarching goals that were supported by very actionable, specific strategies, a total of 49 strategies in all. And on the screen, you can see that each strategy or each goal has a subset of strategies that really apply to advancing those goals. And what we wanted to do, as Mary Beth said, continuity between this plan, this current plan, and what the update will be was really important. It was a message we heard time and again from stakeholders and from leadership from GCRTA that this plan is still relevant. This plan is still part of what GCRTA's direction and vision is. And that this update really is just refining it and taking what information and what data and feedback was generated from this planning process and advancing it forward, bringing it up to what GCRTA's issues and vision is for today. And it's also worth noting that there was obviously, like Mary Beth said, a significant amount of community and stakeholder engagement as part of this process. And so as we get into updating the strategic plan, we want to make sure we're utilizing that as the basis for this update. And so one of the things we did is we got into revising the goals for the strategic plan is start with those 10 existing goals, those 49 strategies, and we wanted to essentially reframe them, use the substance that's behind those strategies and bring them into a different lens through a different lens. And that lens we sort of chose was through the lens of the rider. How do these goals and how do these strategies directly impact the rider experience? And from that, we developed a total of eight buckets, a total of eight customer perspective areas that really aligned with the intent behind each of those 49 strategies. And these really range from very internally focused areas like transit policy, transit perception, things that RTA has a control over with transit service and network. And then there's bigger picture, broader external areas that have a much bigger tent, much bigger collaborative need and nature around them, such as transit-oriented communities, which is something that I know this board is very interested in, the county planning commission in particular is interested in. So we took those 49 strategies, reorganized them in a way that took the purpose and the intent behind those, condensed them into these eight areas. And from those eight areas, developed a more condensed, concise collection of new proposed goals, five total goals here that you see on screen. And I will share those five goals here on screen. Worth noting that, importantly, in addition to this process, we had significant and continue to have significant engagement with the board of trustees. with the planning staff, with GCRTA leadership have had a lot of influence in the development of these goals. And I will also note on the screen the five goals we have here. The three at the top in blue are really those externally focused goals that really impact the public side that are much more visible, whereas the two on the bottom in red are more internally focused. They're more policy focused, GCRTA internally focused goals. So real quick, culture of safety is at the top here. This is a very key priority that we heard very early on, that safety and the perception of safety was something that was incredibly important to RTA, to promoting that and really retaining and creating additional ridership on the system. Ease of travel is a really huge bucket when you get down to it. We want to make sure that this goal language is kind of simplified and really gets to the substance of what we're looking at, but this captures safety. the broad spread of everything involving the transit ride, from the infrastructure, the capital costs, the service, and the ease of actually buying the fare, figuring out where I want to go, understanding the system entirely, is all really kind of baked into that single goal of ease of travel, making it easy for the rider to choose RTA as a mode of transportation. And then building for catalytic community growth. This is one we really know is important as well. This gets back to that TOD focus. having a transit-oriented development goal. But understanding that that goal does not include just only development around the stations. It really also focuses on the priority corridor investments that RTA is making as part of its operations. And through the planning studies, through capital investments along priority corridors, there's a lot of investment that DCRTA is already making. And they want to facilitate that more to really regrow Cuyahoga County and the cities that lie within it to make sure that population is growing and using transit. And then in the bottom half of that, financial stewardship is obviously very critical to the operations of RTA. And empowering a resilient workforce, the people behind RTA, it's really the heart and soul and really, also importantly, the face of RTA. And making sure that they are the employees, the people that run RTA are invested in, and they have a growth trajectory and are able to provide that customer-facing value that RTA depends upon. And so I think, again, where we are today, we're getting these initial draft goals. We've already shared them with the Board of Trustees. We're going to continue engagement with external stakeholders, such as the Planning Commission. We are preparing for a big external advisory meeting later in the end of July. And then from there, we are working simultaneously on additional tasks focused on transit-oriented development strategy, as well as assessing the priority corridors and the BRT definition that Mary Beth described. And so the objective is obviously to have this wrapped up toward the end of the year and present it to the board of trustees at GCRTA in January.

And I'll just continue. This is what I really took a lot of slides from. We had a TOD workshop that Mary Patrick and the city of Cleveland were there. And I want to really emphasize TOD because it's really important to our county and to our communities and what we've heard. is through that workshop and through other workshops, the county has a steering committee. We meet quarterly on TOD and we meet also with the city of Cleveland. So we really are with the city focusing on things that RTA owns and reviewing land use and development policies around a lot of those red line, parking lots that are very, very vacant right now. And realizing that the Red Line, we'll get our new train cars in 27. What will ridership do? And potentially, what do those communities, they're all very, very different sites. They're all very different communities and neighborhoods. What do those need for development? And what can the market assess? We're also working with the county, as I said, creating strong partnerships, the TOD financing programs, Work that you've done with the grant is great. We're also working with the port to see if they can find a really comprehensive financing strategy, working with all of the people that they are, the county land bank. But we're really looking at shared goals for this and what the collaboration will mean. Because collaboration for us, that's the way we have to work. We don't have land control. We don't have financing strategies. But together, all of us do. And each community has their own. need and their own desires for their communities. So you've seen this, Patrick and Mary, I'm sorry, I just lifted this from yours. But this is what we're looking at with the TOD's port of zoning. And we don't have zoning control. Shaker Heights has it. Parma Heights has it. This is what we see. 55%, you can see what the numbers are. Look at that. We have a lot of room for opportunity and growth for TOD. and to get zoning in compliance with that. Again, you've seen this before. I just lifted it. I'm sorry. But it's really great to show you what is going on in the TOD corners. Those TOD corners are our high priority network that the county is using and that we use. Those are where our 24-7. That's where people take the bus. That's where the form, the land use, the employment density, the housing density makes the most sense for transit. And then again, the areas where you're seeing it, mostly downtown and the midtown areas, University Circle, Ohio City, and Detroit Shoreway. There's actually, if you do a pie shape from the end of the Superior Bridge down Detroit, Lorain, and 25th, that's where development is happening and it's spurring out further and further west. So basically what we are struggling as an agency to do is to figure out transit sightings and look at developments as they come roadways. ODOT, we've been really involved with trying to make their projects more transit-oriented, facilitating TOD on adjacent property. We've not done that a lot, but we're trying to enter into that realm with our real estate work. Collaborating with stationary planning, we're doing that now. We've got four stations that we've identified for additional planning work. We're doing a lot about station access. One of the wins we have is the intro development on 25th Street. We worked with the developer and the designer, instead of having a wall to create a stairway down to 25th, so you can access the bus and 25th Street rather than having to go around into a secondary entrance there. the way a lot of suburban type developments are done. And then funding, that's a really big thing. There are no funds for TOD. The county has funds, but that's very limited, I think. But to have an overall arching plan, I'm doing a TOD. I know I've listened to Joyce that Lee Road is not a priority corridor in RTA's view. But how can it be? They've got TOD sites ready to go. They just don't have the T. So let's try to create that emphasis. And just to let you know, you are our first outside of our board and internal. And some of the planning work we've done, you're our guinea pigs for this presentation. our first initial outside exterior source. We are planning, we said at the end of July, we're looking at July 28th. That may or may not change, but right now, having a big stakeholder meeting and facilitating that discussion of are these goals in alignment? What type of objectives would help your community use transit, increase our ridership, help us with revenue, and really help the built form not be, I was just in Phoenix, not look like Jiffy Lube's and Del Taco's on every corner and not knowing where to go to get to the drive. Oh, and drive-thrus are it. So you'll get more details on that as we develop the plan. But I know we only have 15 minutes. We've probably spoken that much. But if you have any other questions or comments. Yes, sir.

One question. look like and thank you safety and all those things are you using that or something like that to get feedback from the riders yes we use we call them the gamba forms but we are capturing all that data that we have um to identify my data whenever i answer that okay i was always somebody else gets it and then we get it from them okay good i'm glad it's working you get it okay

Anything else? Any questions? Anyway, you can go through MIRI. If you have any desires or anything that we can help you with transits, some idea for a bus shelter that's really cool, an art concept around a shelter, first last mile, we're working on a plan for that. And this is sort of a spoiler alert. There is something called the TOD, FTA TOD pilot planning grant. We applied for that on 25th Street, which will be going under construction next year for Broadway, which we just finished the plan. And we're starting Lorain. Our next corridor may be Warrensville Center Road. And that's going to be our first completely ex-urban corridor that meets not only one or two communities, but six. So be on the lookout. We will be asking for support letters. It's a really fascinating quarter that we may be working on, we hope. So if there's no other questions, yes.

I was just going to make a comment, Maribeth. Thank you so very much. I mean, Chris, the work that the entire team has done on this. This is really something where, as we're looking at how investments are being made, opportunity zones 2.0 right now.

I know the portal just opened.

That's exactly just opened yesterday and looking at how those investments that RTA are making coincides with community priorities as well as what is that we can advocate to the state when it comes to choosing those census tracts that are eligible but that it can also leverage transit the road and use this as an important metric towards decision making.

Well, thank you. We appreciate it. I know we're working closely with Mary and your team to make sure we all align with the city, the county, and our team. Thank you.

I just want to say thank you very much to you and the whole team. As you guys know, we've been working together for plus years and we've originally presented to the RTA board when we started our work so part of this conversation was have RTA come and present to our board and then the plan would be for us to give an update on the TOD initiative from our side later this year so I think it all lines up with the strategic plan and so and I think we're all working together it's like Sisyphus we're moving that boulder and it actually is moving and it will take all of us and I mean just the financing fund at the county that's amazing and

Building on that, now the port's looking at, well, maybe we can do something like that. So it's exciting. And we all have to work together. And I think through our cooperation, we just want to enhance and increase that cooperation from all of us, because it takes us all to move the county forward.

Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. So with all that excitement about TOD, I thought it would be very pertinent to have Patrick give you an update from our shop and our team and the work that we're doing with our partners around transit wearing development and our next steps.

Thank you, Mary. And thank you to our friends at RTA, who have been wonderful partners throughout this entire process. I'm going to kick us off, turn it over to Luke, who produced our development trends update. wanted to give some context for the work that we've been doing on TOD for the past few months with our 2526 work plan and where we're headed. So these are the items that we identified for our work plan in the past year to update our model TOD overlay, to build a joint website to highlight TOD opportunities across the county. The ones in orange are ones that we have been working on in the past few months. To continue publishing our TOD development trends document, which Luke will talk about here momentarily, to regularly update the TOD navigator, to implement the TOD loan program in partnership, of course, with the county, to align incentives for TOD with places like the port, to facilitate networking and collaboration in the public and private sector to advertise technical assistance products. We're more than willing to come out to any communities to talk about TOD locally, to create a TOD brand that can act as a joint brand amongst all the partners, to form an informational campaign, to convene quarterly with our partners like RTA Cleveland, The Port, and Cuyahoga County. To formalize a strategic plan on some level, we backed off and allowed RTA to do that. They are much better equipped to talk about that from a transit perspective and to establish a statewide TOD coalition. With that, I will turn it over to Luke Ols, planner from our office, who will talk about the TOD development trends report.

Okay, good afternoon, everyone. As Patrick mentioned, he's giving an update on our development trends report that we update every single year going back to 2019. An overview, we pull this data from county fiscal in the middle of January, and then it gets analyzed from there. And it includes all developments that added more than $1 million in added billing value from the previous year. So this year was 2025. And that added billing value is captured by looking at market value of land or structures before construction happens versus after. So we took all the corridors you've seen and then using this $1 million value we had 42 developments in 2025 in the county that were looked at and then we looked through each of these to see if they they do meet that tod criteria that you guys have seen a million times close to the street multiple stories parking to the rear side uh friendly use or mixed use and then front facing building entrance and in 2025 alone we had 26 developments that met this uh criteria So this chart updated for this year going back to 19 you can see kind of had that low point in round COVID at 140 million and then each year after up until this year 2025 at 324 million we've seen uh investment in TOD uh rising in the county. So up 26 million from from last year's report. Here's a map that shows that previous chart where those TOD developments are happening. So obviously a lot focused downtown, near west side, University Circle. But as years go on, we see some starting spreading out into nearby neighborhoods and the suburbs. And lastly, this is the 10 of those 26 developments that added the most added building value. So Shortland Looms was the biggest one that's been going on for the past couple of years. But you can see here we have quite a few in the Fairfax neighborhood, closer to the hospital, a lot downtown.

Thank you, Luke, and he's been doing a yeoman's lift trying to get all this data and put it all together, and so we had a really good quarterly meeting with our TA and our other partners at the City of Cleveland and the Port, and we talked about ways to modify this going forward to capture different data and maybe not continue the same trend because there's a lot of other information that we've been talking about, and so maybe looking at some type of annual TOD report in partnership with the TOD group. So thank you for all your work on that.

Thank you, Luke. We also presented at the quarterly meeting this draft branding and website. And we just wanted to give the board a preview of this today. You have in front of you the brand proposal. We worked on this with our partners that are shown there and presented this draft at that quarterly meeting last month. which was met enthusiastically. Special thanks to Cuyahoga County Communications team. They helped put together this logo by building a handful of brand ideas and logos. Based on the feedback from the partner organizations, our internal team, we did put together this brand. The goal was to develop something that could be shared and used by all of these groups in communicating goals, values, opportunities, and ongoing work as it relates to TOD. You can flip through it. We did have a number of ideas that helped us think about how to approach this. Link Us in Columbus was a good one there. Multi-corridor transit and transportation. TOD plan and project as well as some other projects out there. Within this document, we have a primary and secondary logo, colors and fonts, marks and icons, and various uses and case studies of how we think this may be able to be used going forward. One of those use cases is a website. We're really pleased to be working on this. We are aiming to build a single shared location where anybody can go find updates on TOD projects, find access to resources, just generally be a hub for information. We started to lay that out with our partners in what could be included in that. We are happy to say that we've been able to work, thank you to Kevin, thank you to Laura, thank you to Luke, to many others, to reconfigure our website to create a multi-site configuration. This is way beyond me. But what that means is that we can almost have a standalone component of our website for TOD specifically. That's what these two screenshots are. They showcase that website as it presently is drafted. We anticipate this is a shared platform. It can be linked out. It can link, people can link to it. We can link out to others so that it can be that hub of information. It will be housed and managed within county planning so we can make rapid updates to that. Wanted to give that brief update and happy to answer any questions or Luke as well.

I just want to thank everybody on the team internally. This has been done without external resources in terms of funding or anything else. So just the creativity and the work that's been happening internally has been fantastic. I think if you could, can we go back to the slide that shows the partners? I think what we're trying to think about is rather than having all of those logos on everything we do, we have a brand. We have a TOD brand. This is our team, and so we market all things TOD together. And so rather than having to go to RTA's website and try to find something or go to our website or the city's website, we want a landing spot for all things TOD. We've had communities reach out to us and say, hey, we're going to put out an RFP for a site. We'd love to see TOD. Who do we send it to? how do we get people to know about it and so thinking about some of those things for resources for places for developers to look for communities to utilize also showcasing sites within communities that are within those buffers that we can say these are sites that the city wants to move and they are focused on tod so i just thank all the partners involved we you know went back and forth we didn't want to make it anybody's one color but you know we want to show that this is not a campaign this is truly an initiative and we are all on the same team going forward with all things tod so Thank you to everyone. And Alex, who's on maternity leave, got a lot of this started, so we're grateful to her, too.

look like? What are you seeing for the balance of this year?

In terms of new development?

Yeah, new TOD.

So we actually, on the TOD navigator, which Luke painstakingly updates by reading all of the appropriate communities' planning agendas, once those planning projects are approved, we go ahead and put them into the navigator. On that navigator site, there is a What's it called? Up at the top, the tab, the dashboard. A dashboard that shows the number units, number of projects that are being proposed that are forthcoming. So you can filter it by that and get a better understanding. That's my long way of saying I don't know the number off the top of my head. What I will say, we are kind of anticipating that the upward trend in amount of added building value may slow down a little bit. It seems like the market has slowed down a little bit recently. So next year is maybe... Equal might go down a little bit. That's kind of what we're expecting. But we do still see a large number of projects that are happening around the county, especially when it comes to multifamily.

Thanks. Do you allocate or define what's in the queue or what's been approved by the various communities? Luke, do you want to speak to this? Can you? or what's in the queue. So the data that I showed you is all, obviously that's everything that's being built already. That's correct.

something that they're talking about so we do have sorry the dashboard that you can look at past years and we do have in progress and forthcoming projects so in progress is anything that is obviously like being built it's not done but it's under construction and then forthcoming is anything that has some sort of approval by a Planning Commission approval is

And when we send out the slides, we will definitely send a link to that navigator because I think it'd be interesting for you guys to take a look at it too and see. But this branding has really only been discussed with the TOD team, our external partners in here. So that's why we didn't want to email it out. We just wanted to share this. We have not come out with a launch yet. It'll probably be later this summer. And I think part of strategic plan that's happening there and just a lot of other things going. But we're just really excited and thought it would be worthwhile sharing that with you.

Any other questions or comments? I am excited about looking at the last page here about development science, being able to have the public see what's happening that is not just a part of this collaboration, but also where are we investing in these corridors. And I think the more that the public sees into TOD as being something that they should continue to support and support our elected officials.

Yeah, thank you. That's a great point. I mean, that was kind of an image just put here, but imagining that logo being with the ports financing or it's RTA's property and this is the logo that these are all the partners and we have ones that could have the other logos on it. But I think Mary Beth's point on the TOD loan program, which is going through the Department of Development, It's an economic development loan. It's the standard loan that they've got, but what we've been able to work with them and all our other partners is to say, you can get extra points if it is TOD. If it is close to the street, parking's in the rear, you've got an entrance, you're close to a bus stop. So if people have a choice of where they can develop, if it's five blocks away, 10 blocks away, or much closer to that transit line, that's what we want to encourage. And we want to encourage that design that makes it walkable and makes it not just car-oriented. I know there's some in the pipeline and they're still working through those, but I'm hoping this year that we'll have some announcements on some of the first TOD loans. Not our purview, but we've been a really big partnership within the county building here on working together on that. Cool, thank you. Thanks, Patrick. Thank you. I'll take it back. All right, we're coming up, we're going. OK. Just a few things to go over today. I don't want to bring the mood way down, but I do want to talk about some budget issues we've got and some other updates, as well as make an introduction while we're here today. So I will also add that originally we had planned solid waste was going to be part of this meeting after ours, and so we had pushed out one of the presentations for a future meeting, but the more we talked, we're going to have a brief update from Jim on the green waste plan update and new business. We can cover it that way, just no action, just an update. Okay, so in budget news, we have, we've talked about it before, thank you guys, talked about potential budget shortfalls by the end of this year. We're not just seeing them in salary and benefits, but also in some operating budget lines. We did make a request to repurpose over $84,000 worth of our Q1 revenue deposits, which go to the general fund. That request was denied at the time. We were looking at taking those dollars and reinvesting it back into our agency to cover some of those shortfalls and then also put it back into our people. We do have a compensation policy, which is part of our manual, which you approved previously. With that compensation policy, we do mid-year reviews and annual reviews. And so last year, we ran into some hiccups trying to get the approval to have those dollars reinvested back in, but we did, we were successful. This year, we were not. So we are still going through the annual review performance. We have told the team that there will be no merit-based performance-based merits or promotions due to the budget constraints that we're facing right now and not being able to repurpose those dollars. So I don't know if you had anything you wanted to add for that.

I can certainly add, yeah. This is a decision that has been made by and that's owned very much by the county executive, by the administration. I mean, it's something that we're doing across the board. I mean, I will say just personally having been at the Planning Commission many years ago when the county was going through furloughs. We're trying to avoid that, trying to make sure that, one, we recognize the excellent work that you and your team continue to do. And we wanted to be able to say yes to the performance-based merit raises. We weren't able to do that, but we want to get to the point where we're able to do that sooner rather than later. So that's something that we own.

I appreciate it. Chris and I have talked, and obviously Chris is in a tough position being on the board, but then also reporting to the county executive. And, you know, I think this is where I'm trying to be strategic thinking going forward. Right now we are 100% funded by the general fund, but we are a non-executive agency. So you are my board. I am beholden to you. But the county executive and the team, they control the budget. So while we have bylaws that we painstakingly updated last year that give me certain authorities and budget and promotions and those things, I'm a little bit, I can't really do much if I can't get the budget approved. So we are gonna have a discussion with some of the executive's team about potential funding commitment for the unified zoning code initiative because this is gonna be a three year just to get the code done plus ongoing maintenance. And so we know that we need to have a commitment of the funding in order to secure that consultant. And given some of the budgets in the local communities, we may not be able to get those funds up front. We may be delayed on those. And so we're going to have a conversation about that, if there's some way to have a commitment without giving us the funds now to be able to support that, which goes into a different accounting unit than our general fund operating budget. So we'll keep you posted on that. But I do think there are opportunities, and we're having conversations, and we're going to have more conversations about how can we restructure our budget so that perhaps a portion of those revenues that we bring in for work we're doing in communities can stay within a section of our budget that can be reinvested back into our people and to our agency versus all going to the general fund so we know this year we have a funding revenue commitment that we've got to deposit to the general fund We have typically brought in $200,000 a year, and so we think we'll meet what that requirement is, but it doesn't give us the flexibility we need to do some other things. So I think we're at a point where we need to be looking at what other potential outside sources of funding we can find, whether they're grants that give us more flexibility that are in a separate piece of our budget. I liken it to public works where they've got general fund and they've got road and bridge dollars that can only be spent on road and bridge. We don't know what the possibility of structuring something like that within our budget is, but that's something I'm trying to explore. So, you know, we did form a small committee of the board previously to work through the bylaws. There may be an opportunity to have a committee, you know, of some of the board members that would be interested to helping think through this, but we just know that we're in the middle of a biennial budget, so we'll be facing the same issues next year and so trying to find some long term solutions so that we don't find ourselves in this position every year so I don't think there's any questions on that but don't want to bring the mood down but I felt like it was important for you to know what's happening so and I know money is money all over the place so that is that

So you say annually it's about $200,000 of revenue, and for how many years has that been?

That's been over the last five years we've estimated we've brought in about a million dollars to the general fund. So I think, and I will add too, I think the other part of it is we don't want, our costs are rising in terms of every year people are getting paid more, the cost to do these projects cost more. We've got our community planning services program where we're trying to offer very reduced services to the community, but the communities, they're paying us to do that work and it's not something that we can keep in-house to put back in. And so part of this is I don't want to overcharge the communities so that we have more in the coffers, because that's not the structure that we want to do it. We're trying to provide a service that we can do it for communities at a much reduced fee than hiring a private consultant, as that's our duty here. So we're just trying to find some solutions. Now, in exciting news, hopefully all of you have seen that this week we officially launched the Unified Zoning Code Initiative. So thank you to Patrick's leadership, the whole Unified Zoning Code team. Kevin, thank you. It was a monumental week of posting and timing and everything out, but we've got a lot of things on social media this week. For that there was an article in Crain's mayor or cut himself was quoted. We also had mayor wheel oh quoted We've got funding commitments from so far Akron Cleveland Association of Realtors they were quoted as well We've got $25,000 commitment from them also from the Cuyahoga land bank. They've invested 25 thousand dollars for that they also provided a quote so this is something where we know this is a long game but we have got a lot of excitement we presented to the city of Park's caucus of council council caucus on Tuesday evening, so a lot of this came out in the morning so that we could get ahead of the story and get our word out there and then we presented to his council Tuesday night to explain more about it and talk through that with them. So we did not announce which communities have signed a letter of interest yet because we don't want to get in front of other people's councils. We want to be able to educate councils and commissions and boards so that they know what it is and what it is not. So we are just really excited to get to this point. We are still fundraising. And I will say, in terms of the funds received, those are now, we did get a separate accounting unit set up, so those don't get commingled with general fund. Those are getting deposited into a different accounting unit for this purpose specifically. We still have a $150,000 grant application request out there for Cleveland Foundation, and we should know by the end of this month if we get that. So that will put us in... a much better position, but this is going to be a long haul, and we're still looking at additional foundations and others for funding support to keep this moving. But really excited to get to this point. Also this week, also on Tuesday, we issued an RFP for the Safe Streets and Roads for All. If you remember, we got a $600,000 grant from the Federal Highway Administration to do a comprehensive safety action plan for the entire county, which is just fantastic. It was delayed a lot with contracting and other things, but we are now out. It is out there on the streets. Deadline to be submitted is July 20th. Megan Chaney and Jim Sunhalter are leading that effort and we've got great coordination already with the project team which are internal departments in the county and then external partners as well as the peer cohorts so that's anyone who also received funding from FHWA for SS4A but making sure that we're coordinated because our comprehensive plan has got to include the different cities and their plans and their awards too. So we've had great conversations and really excited to get this off the ground. So more to come on that. Mayor Burke's not here, but this is Garfield. This is Transportation Boulevard and seeing what it used to look like. We should have the before and after here. But again, that safety, those features, those amenities, and what we can do to make people's connections to Metro Parks and other things safer is all part of the game. So I'm excited about that. Okay, finally, not finally, but close to finally, I would like to welcome Shrusti. She is here with us for the summer. And I didn't practice your last name, I'm sorry. Would you introduce yourself?

My name is Shrusti Rahigo.

It's better than I would say it. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah, so we have been lucky enough to work with Annie Pease, who is on the eighth floor here. She's a senior advisor of transportation. She's also a Cornell grad. And Cornell and Keithley Foundation have a wonderful program where they bring students here for summer fellowships. And so Shrusti is one of those students. students and she will be a shared resource with us and with Annie so she's in our office Tuesdays and Thursdays and some Fridays this is no cost to us at the Planning Commission or the county just an extra set of eyes and a new resource for us on projects and so we're trying to get her involved wherever we can a lot of active active transportation transportation related projects so we're excited to have you here and welcome thank you yes Okay, finally, I think this is finally for me. So in terms of the CPSP program, we had a call for applications. We received 12 applications. I think we had five master plans. We had said we could only do up to two. We know we're not going to be able to do all 12 of these projects, but we are reviewing internally across a number of factors based on looking at our capacity, the capacity of project leads, who we've worked with before, who we haven't. We did lead away from the diversity equity scoring that we used to do and are using LMI, which is a federally standard program. category that we can look at in terms of poverty areas of poverty and disinvestment and so that will be part of the scoring which was part of the original request as well so we're working through that and by July 1st we will have announcements on which ones will be proceeding we will likely stagger these going forward so you won't get all of them at once that a board meeting to approve given we've got two master plans still underway in Valley View and Bedford a few other projects finishing up but just want to balance it with our capacity. So and then before I turn it back to you, I would just like to thank Wesley Crutch from the law department. Wesley is leaving us and going on to a new position outside of the county. And you have been instrumental in so many of the things that we've worked on and trying to eat the elephant of our policy and procedures manual, our bylaws and all of that. So I just want to thank you for being a great resource for us. And we've really enjoyed the time we've got to work with you. So

Ditto. Thank you.

Thank you. So we will have a new law rep at our next meeting. We've already christened him with Unified Zoning Code contract. So Alejandro Cortez is with the law department now, and he goes by Alex mainly. And so he is going to be our new law rep that you will get to meet him in the future. So baptism by fire. All right. Thank you. That's it for me. Real good.

Is there any old business?

There is not.

And then I think you do have new business with regards to the speech.

Yes. Yes. 10 minutes, Jim. I'm kidding. As we internally talked about this, and as I mentioned, it wasn't on the agenda, so I couldn't add it to the agenda that was posted a week ago. So I thought in new business, just to give you a brief update. update on where we are with this because we are going to be coming back in front of you asking the Planning Commission this time around for this plan that the Planning Commission adopt the plan. So we're just really excited. Jim, take it away.

Thank you, Mary. Mr. Chairman, members of the board, I'm happy to present this preview of the 2026 update to the Cuyahoga Greenways plan. So here we go. This is the presentation that I've been giving to the Cuyahoga Greenways partners, both at the staff level and the executives level. So this is our table of contents to today, but it's going to be very much condensed. So as you just pay attention to the numbers, basically 2019 is when we originally did this, and it's... high time that we do an update for it. So we did get this as a TLCI back when we applied in 2017, and we went into partnership with the grant, unspent grant funding that county planning had at the time. with a generous grant from NOACA through their TLCI program. And then we got support from a lot of the communities and Cleveland Metro Parks to raise nearly, I think, a $308,000 budget for the project. So we did hire Smith Group, WSP, and Guide Studio. And they really set a precedent for everything we've been doing since then. So overall, what this resulted in, 800 mile active transportation network Safe all ages and abilities connecting all 59 communities to each other and to and better connections within their communities All across the county and to the region. So we've in our update and another work that NOACA has been promoting the Regional trails plan, you know, we looked how do we get into Medina County Lorraine Lake and summit so with the main goal of getting people to parks, jobs to transit. I'm sorry they all left. I mentioned transit many times in this presentation. Getting people to trails and parks to have it had. Looking at the green space we do have and using the Greenways model as a way to expand on that and get people to it. So wherever you are in the county, we hope to make it easier to get to school, to work, to shop, to do whatever it is you want to do and get to wherever you want to go. So this was the map we came up with in 2019. We really mapped it out. It was very much equity-based. Working with Smith Group, they had their own Dan Meaney, who we charged, was saying, look, look at the demographics. We looked at it in terms of mapping out all the census tract, and we couldn't make any sense of it. So we just kind of aggregated things and found routes that would best connect people to where they want. You'll see the main green and red lines around the perimeter. Those follow the emerald necklace that's been in place since the 1920s in Cleveland Metro Parks. And then looking inward, how can we best connect people to the river, to the lake, and all these communities to each other? So we had a system of regional links, the larger on-road facilities typically, and down to critical gaps. Those purple sections that you see, they're small. I think we had maybe 13 miles total of critical gaps. But if you close one mile, in many cases, we're connecting 50. And it's just... So that's how we're prioritizing things. So why do the update? Well, it was over five years when we started. A lot of work has been going on. And all of our partners, who I'll talk about in a minute, they've come up with new ideas. It's advanced from planning to design to construction. So there are new facilities coming online. How do we best connect them in the system? And how do we adapt the system to connect to the new alignments? Work hasn't stopped. Cleveland Metro Parks has been busy. City of Cleveland has been busy with Cleveland Moves, the citywide mobility plan. So all of that has been woven into our update along with the lakefront public access plan, Garfield Boulevard that you saw earlier, and other facilities coming online. And above all, since we haven't stopped work, we're not going to stop work, how do we develop a systematic approach to updating this into the future? So these are all the partners. These are the Cuyahoga Greenways partners. Elaine Price on our team has been convening this group since the first plan, meeting quarterly, generally. And these are all groups by public agencies that all have a stake in trail and bike facilities development. So we were charged with developing new standards from FHWA, USDOT on down. The rules have changed a bit. So you've seen these facilities, types of facilities all around town. What we wanted to ensure is that if somebody is building something new, it has to meet a standard so we can say this is a Cuyahoga Greenway component. So these are a collection of on-street facilities. And probably the newest one that we didn't touch on as much in 2019 are the neighborhood greenways. These are low-volume streets, low speeds. And Parma and Parma Heights are doing the West Creek neighborhood greenway, connecting West Creek to Big Creek, which is an amazing project. So those are the streets you rode your bikes on as a kid. And off-street facilities, shared use paths, Red Line Greenway, for example, and a side path. It's close to the public right-of-way, sometimes within the public right-of-way, but vastly separated from where motorized traffic goes. So we've also brought in new terminology. What does all ages and abilities mean when you're developing a safe, active transportation network? We go back to this model that was developed to define level of traffic stress. How stressed do you feel riding in traffic? Mayor Weiss, you're probably somewhere in the 5% or 7%. Enthused and confident, maybe strong and fearless. But most of us, we land in LTS one. We're interested and concerned. We want to be out there, but we really want to feel safe and secure. And we don't necessarily want to jump into a road with traffic. If there's a bike path, that's just best for all of us. So we put the word out to all the communities in the county, we need your help in updating our inventory. Dan Meaney and Liam Levito and Paul Triolo, along with Elaine and I sat down. We figured out what kind of metrics do we need. So we put a survey, basically, out to all the communities. Talk about your five-year capital improvement plans. What are you working on? What do you want to work on? And by the way, we're sending you this great online map, our facility editor, so you can zoom in on your community, see the alignments that are within your city boundaries, and you can tell us what you've worked on. or not worked on, that's okay too. So with all that data in hand, we mapped out, let's revisit 2019, and this is what was existing. So mostly shared use path in this inventory, nearly 400 miles, but some bike lanes, some shared roadways, bikeways, sharrows, and hybrid bikeways, which are a combination of those. Since that time and what we learned from all the communities as is there nearly 77 more miles built of these types of facilities, but then what we did is. The shared roadway bike ways, those are sheroes we see them as placeholders you know they're really not doing anything to protect anybody that just says you can ride your bike here. So we took that out to get a more realistic picture. And then we looked at what's programmed, also reported on by the communities. What do you have in design? What are you contemplating? What are you funding? Not yet built, but in the pipeline. And we came up with nearly 69 more miles. And you see a big jump in separated bikeways and neighborhood greenways. Other components, we worked with Cleveland Metro Parks and Destination Cleveland to develop a signage and wayfinding system to supplement their raise grants. Celebrate Trails Day. We just had one. Great turnout and not so great weather, but we're all out there anyway. And this happens every year, and it's a great chance to celebrate what's happening in your community and get everyone out on bikes and mares. Bike with a Mayor. Here's our schedule for this season, and it's not a finalized schedule. You can always add your city to it.

So I wasn't keeping time.

How'd we do? Do we have a minute for questions?

I just want to thank the team again. I mean, this is something where Jim talked about this before. It was a $300,000 job. We had a consultant. We had everything. This update has been completely done in-house again with our partners. And so really, I just want to thank our entire team for all the work they do. I mean, they're Get stuff done team and we're just we're getting it done fast. You know, we need to do it It needs to be done. So we instead of trying to worry about how we get funding and how do we figure out a contract? We're just getting it done. And so we've had great conversations with the other partner agencies Nowaka in particular that we that was this plan was originally adopted by the Nowaka board It was adopted by Metro Parks previously and so we're gonna try this cycle again that if this is adopted and These are now, this is a plan, which then allows those communities who've got these segments to go for implementation dollars going forward. So let's continue to build it. All right. All right.

Good. Thank you. Thank you. Any other new business?

No, that is it.

We have a motion to adjourn. Thank you so much. Mr. Nani, second, I think, from Mayor Kurtz.

At this point, no July meetings. Hope that remains true.