Airport Commission - Noise Abatement Subcommittee - Regular Meeting

why everything in the past was even thousands, and now you don't see it that way anymore. So it's not that Nathaniel went from having totally round, perfect numbers in every budget line. It's just that the way that we recorded them was rounded to the nearest thousand, and that's no longer the case. So just in case anyone's wondering about that.

So you round it off to the tens? Then you round it to the tens, or...

I think Dane County amounts to the tens. That's fine.

But it could be more specific. That's fine. So these different years we're seeing, that's just historical, obviously. But 159 is all we're applying for, or is that just as part of it? That's what we'll apply for.

that for 2026, we applied for 158. 2025 was a little bit more because we are estimating on what a halftime position would cost. We included health insurance in there and different things that didn't end up being in there as much. So that gets us to the end of this tab. These other tabs all have things that the MPO is going to do, the attachments. There's attachments that I need to add, but I'm going to show you the main one of those. Not through that, I think it would be easier just through Excel. So the main one to look at is the project questions. So our project type is mobility management. We're a local public body, a government agency. And then people that are applying have to say how they're meeting the strategies that are in the coordinated plan for Dane County. the 2024 Coordinated Public Transit Human Services Transportation Plan. So we are directly mentioned in there. We are in the Strategies to Address Coordination, Education, and Outreach Needs Mobility Management. And it says continue to support the Dane County One Call Center. And then there's also the Strategies to Address Coordination, Education, Outreach, Rider Education. continues to support travel training, travel and mobility training programs. So both of the things that we do are named right in there. It's on page 31. Just additional information that will serve people. We'll talk to people from around the state if they're calling about issues trying to get into or out of Dade County. Eligibility requirements, the call servers available to anyone who's seeking information about transportation and big county and that bus buddies available to anyone. interested in learning how to write the metro transit buses and you have something else right now.

Yeah, I do. And it's on number six, actually. I did review the entire application. It looks good. I don't have any other comments on it. But number six, I don't believe that any of the services that are organized out of the call center are actually exclusive ride. Everything for efficiency's sake, if they can be sharing a ride between two passengers, they will be. I don't think that you answered that question correctly. That should be a yes. Otherwise, the application looks good. I have no other comments, and I will be abstaining from voting because I'm the one who has to evaluate and score the application once it gets submitted.

What does this actually do?

Later in August, is it the 30th or 31st, Ben?

I'm sorry. Once again, it's incredibly quiet on your end. You mentioned this in the past. There need to be more microphones in that room. It's so hard to hear you guys. But sorry, what was it again?

I just asked, when is it due?

The 30th? That sounds right. Let me pull up.

We'll be in August. Is that why we're... The application was usually due with like the second week of August.

So yeah. So yeah. August 31st this year.

Yeah. So in the future, we probably wouldn't need to move up, but just planning from the beginning of the year that we would. And then I plan to be on vacation next week because I'm not going to be done with this. So that's why we kept with the schedule.

Okay, well, that needs to be changed to yes. Change that.

Yeah, so service is open to the general public. Yeah, I debated on whether to say yes or no to the shared ride, and I thought, well, I erred on not saying that we weren't, not saying we were better than we were, I guess I was staring outside that. So other state and federal funding for transportation, We do get the 8521 funding. We'll use some of that for match. We get 8520 funding from the city of Madison. In exchange, we give them some 8521. So we do get that other funding. And then the Bus Buddy program is teaching people to ride buses that are funded through the 8520 program.

Do you have a question or comment?

Yeah, a comment. What is helping me since I also have trouble hearing is I turn on the closed captioning that might help people who have trouble hearing.

Mike, you said it last meeting too, so I remember that. Well, thanks for reminding me of that. I don't know if it's just these mics. Just a suggestion.

Ah, okay. That EDRC meeting was earlier in the week, but they had to move to the other room because something else was messed up. That's fine. What was it? All right. Project location. So we're in the capital area, RBC, the Greater Madison MPO and the second congressional district. And then local match certification. We've got the spot for our director will sign here when we get ready to submit our statement on the, The audit, so Dane County Human Services definitely spends more than $750,000 in federal funds each year. So we have an audit every year. The date of the most recent submission was June 25th, 2025. At least when I got that information, maybe they submitted the next one though.

So what you're gonna show us on the spreadsheet is specific programs.

Yeah, some of the information that was always on the spreadsheet is still on the spreadsheet. And then some of the stuff is.

I just want to make sure everybody understands what we're applying for. Just get their heads around it.

Yeah, I think this next section will sort of explain that a little bit. But I'll summarize these because they are. are fairly long. So a demonstration of need and the project benefits. So we're applying for funding to fund the mobility program specialist positions that staff the transportation call center. So we've got one full-time person and one half-time person that their primary job is to answer the phones and emails help people figure out how to get from here to there and then help book some of those rides directly. So that's one of the things we're applying for. And then the second thing we're applying for is funding for the bus buddy program that we contract with RSVP of Dane County to run. And that program uses volunteers to teach people how to ride the Metro buses. So they work with them. They'll work one-on-one with them and meet them at their home, help them walk to the bus stop, get on the bus, do everything through the whole ride, the ride to one of the common locations they would go to, and then they'll help them ride back home. So they get the whole process of how, you know, getting on the bus, paying, getting off the bus, All of that, knowing where you need to transfer for that trip and everything like that. Do you know how many people they use for that specifically? What we're actually funding. With Bus Buddy, we apply for $25,000 every year. They generally don't spend that whole amount. And they... Their one lead volunteer is Chuck Camp, but they do have one or two others. And then they've got their person on staff that coordinates the program and also helps with training too. And they do group trips also where they work with people, people sign up, they work with them over the phone, figure out where they're going to get the bus, which route they're going to take and everything. They get everybody that information ahead of time, then that day they get on the bus, they get to the meeting location, which is a museum over at Gardens or some outing where they then all do that and then they check in and make sure everything went okay on the way getting there and then help them with getting the way back home too, so that everything goes smooth. But some people like that because it's not so one-on-one, but they still get the help and they do something fun during the day too. So looking in here, anyone's able to call the Transportation Call Center for information. And we go through the different options, travel training options, Metro Transit, the shared ride taxi in Stoughton, and all the human services programs that we have. And Bus Buddy had pretty much just summarized that. Then we provide information on the you know, the population in Dane County, how many people are 60 and older, how many people are an individual with a disability. We talk about that the call center has been operating since 2009. In 2025, we fielded over 11,000 calls, authorized 41,000 rides. We're projecting to do sort of similar in 26 and 27. BusBuddy served 56 people in 2025. We're projecting 60 in 2026 and 2027. A lot of these numbers are flat. Yeah. Some... Some of the changes we've made over the last year lead to a flatter projection where if we wouldn't change that, you know, changing the bus pass eligibility for the CBRFs, then, you know, if we add those back in there, our numbers look like they would go or slightly below. And those are what? CBRFs? They're halfway houses. Oh, right. I thought we got rid of those. Yeah. So we're not doing those. So our numbers, our projections look like we're going to do less than we did for 2025. Oh, because we got rid of that. Because we got rid of that. Yeah. But other things are still increasing. I think it's 4.5. so for funding need um without the 5310 funding um we would have a big budget hole for um for the staff funding staff and for bus buddy um so because none of this is on gpr is that correct or just some of it is no none of um What we apply for with 5310 is funded by 5310 and the 8521 match. So if you go back a step, we did have to put in GPR to match to get 8521 funding, but it's a step removed from that.

It's a small amount of money.

Yeah.

And that's for Supervisor Baruch at most of these programs are funded through grants. and not on GPR.

So we talk about that we're the only transportation call center resource in Dane County, really in the region. There's not another one in neighboring counties. They sort of do more Most of them, their only transportation is human services type transportation, and they just run that through their aging or aging and disability resource center offices. Medical appointments for the most part. Yeah, they might have some shopping, but not, they don't have a place where people can call and talk about other resources than what they provide, really. So then we talk about how we're consistent with coordination principles of independence, accessibility, efficiency, resourcefulness. We talk about how we work together with Metro. Their paratransit department will identify people that could learn to ride the Metro buses and they'll refer them to the Bus Buddy program and we'll make that connection for them. We complement existing transportation services by helping people find the most cost-effective way to get places. So we connect people with RSVP volunteer driver program. We connect people with Metro, with Paratransit, with the county's programs. We connect them with all the resources and help them figure out what's gonna be the most cost-effective. BusBuddy helps out the transit fixed routes by getting more riders on fixed routes, helping people move from paratransit to fixed routes. The Transportation Call Center, because we're talking to people all day about transportation, we tend to hear about needs needs and gaps in the transportation services so that we can keep track of that and try to adjust to help fill those.

Were you able to do that? I mean, what's the result of that, where people are asking?

Yeah, so the biggest change was shifting for our our bus services that we do for the senior centers, for the focal points, to include food pantry stops with those so that people could get to food pantries. You know, a more recent one would be when Metro moved into Sun Prairie and the shared ride taxi stop, then we adjusted our schedule to get them more, you know, in-town grocery shopping versus a trip to Madison. We work with the Aging and Disability Resource Center, the senior focal points to get the word out on what's available and they may refer us to us. For financial management and capacity, you know, we talk about that Dane County's been providing transportation for a long time for older adults and individuals with a disability. And that there is a lot of, there's a lot of the background of Dane County Human Services that can support our program. There's, you know, there's a whole accounting division that helps take care of the, financial claim that we do to get reimbursed for the 5310 grant and everything. We don't charge any administrative costs for the programs in this application. So the accounting part of it doesn't get charged. My position as the supervisor for the The call center doesn't get charged with this. It's just the actual staff that are doing the work and the bus buddy. And we say that the county is capable of managing this amount of funds. Transportation programs are usually around 3 billion total. And we work together with Metro to stretch funds and make each other's programs work. We use the 8521 funding for the local VASH so that we don't have to use levy. So the project budget, and there's more detail in the Excel sheet we'll look at. Is the cash match

put funds to 85?

Yeah, it's the 8521 funds that we will use for the match for the 5310.

That's still not even GPR. No, no.

So we got our cash match almost 40,000 there again. And then the request is almost 160,000. We just note that we're gonna use the 8521 as the match. We talk about how we're able to keep track of the calls and who we talk to and the rides we schedule using our software and keep track of referrals and actually be trading with that. These are the deliverables. These are in the Excel sheet and you'll be able to see past deliverables with us. I'm just going to go through these. And the notes explain what we've got in the other and unknown columns. And then it's required materials. I'm going to stop sharing this and show you the cell.

Really clear.

All right, so this might look familiar to some of you who've gone through these before, but there's a lot less on here. It's just a checklist at the start. That's all that's on the general one this year. Written questions just has the questions that we answered on the form. Budget. They'll list the same money here and the formulas aren't working quite right. But Ben said, don't worry about that.

Yeah, I will attest to that. This workbook is a monster. I tried and I could not fix it so that it wouldn't give those errors. I just told all the applicants, we'll fix it next year. Adam, can you mute?

When you're not on? Yeah, yeah, sorry. It's all right. Thank you.

Go ahead, Ben.

Just have to, man, it's bad. Or the formulas are bad, the math is fine.

Yeah, I was just noting that I'm attesting to what Nathaniel said. I did what I could. This workbook is a monster. In trying to clean it up and simplify it, I broke it. So I know that there are these things that say totals do not match and that say error. I told the applicants to ignore them this year. It's not worth any of our time to try and figure out the workings of this monster of a workbook. So I acknowledge that there are those errors there and they will not count against the applicants.

But the numbers themselves are correct. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So we're applying for the right amount of money and no issues with that. That's what I want. Yeah. Yeah. The amounts are the most in there.

These are the people. Yeah. So this is this is the deliverables. the people served. So the first four lines here are actual rides provided, either rides that we scheduled directly or rides from a person that received a bus pass. And we count a bus pass as 62 rides. So most of our bus passes are in this column, And since we stopped giving those bus passes to the halfway houses, we're projecting it'll be lower than what we did last year. But, you know, rides for people 60 and older are still going up. So that's going to fill that gap, right? It won't entirely fill the gap because when we give a person a bus pass and count it as 62 rides, you have to schedule a lot of rides to make up for that. And also the, you know, when we give a person a bus pass, it costs $62 as well is the cost. And those, so those rides are costing like a dollar a ride where the rides that we actually scheduled costs, you know, on the low end like 15 and on the high end like 100 or more depending on where they're going from it too. So just the economics you know we wouldn't be able to make up all of those. The last two categories here so Listed on the other line is the number of people that received bus or complete bus buddy training in a year. So we've been right around 60 every year. We had 56 last year. We're ahead of pace right now for, we might actually hit the actual 60 this year. They are, getting out and doing RSVPs, getting out and doing some more presentations at senior centers where Metro has moved into the towns in the last couple of years.

Expansion of Metro.

Yep. And also they've had calls from just senior housing apartments or places like that that have asked for them to do a group presentation. So they have talked to, way more people this year so far. They haven't had as many people do the actual training, but they're talking to significantly more people than they have past years. And then the unknown line here is the numbers of calls for the call center. And so this is incoming, we've always reported on incoming and outgoing the emails and everything for, you know, people calling in and asking for the ride schedule and the rides and all that. We are, we're looking like our volumes are projecting to be slightly lower than what we did last year, but we've sort of changed up our internal process to try to, as we're talking with a person, get them their ride, who's going to pick them up and who's going to, what time it's going to be, and all of that in one call versus calling them back and having it be multiple calls. So the reduction there is because of efficiency, not because we're necessarily doing less. And that box below there just explains what I just said. So then on the staffing, we just list the two staff, one full-time, one half-time, and Costa's there. How's Katie doing? Half-time version. Katie is doing amazing. Yeah, we got so much from the TPS program. And they are extremely jealous that we did. She's chosen. Yeah, she did. She wanted a half-time position, and we had one. Yeah, we were really, really lucky to have her.

And that's enough to handle all calls plus you on occasion back up.

Yeah, I fill in when both of them are off and lunches and stuff. But generally... Katie is scheduled, her halftime is split into the busiest parts of each day. Other than Wednesday, by the time you split up 20 hours over five days, it's not a lot of time. So we skipped Wednesday to put more time on Monday and Tuesday, which are significantly busier than the rest of the week. Current vehicle inventory, we don't have any, so that's blank. And we're not requesting vehicles, so this one's blank. And then there's a certification of public body eligibility. So the form doesn't make sense for us necessarily, but we will attach the resolution 151 that says the county board has designated us to do this work. Until the MPO tells us we need to update it, I think we're fine.

I would say that until the FTA tells us that we need to tell you that you need to update it, you're good to go.

All right, good with that. Any questions? So that will be the federal money that will...

Chair, I think Adam and Rob Bender has a question.

I just wanted to, I think this is very great, informative, but I But I'm still, it's still a little bit disappointing. I think I know the reason why you guys can't, why Irish participants can't utilize transportation from the county, but it's still a little bit disappointing. So, but. Totally understand. Out of this.

Well, we've moved it out of the state, but they wanted to take it from us. Anything else, Adam? You're muted. Put your hand down there. Anyone have anything? And then anybody else? If not, so this is basically done. Yeah. So I'm saying if we vote on this, you're happy. Everything is done. If something happened, we could still build up this.

Yeah, but it's done. The things that we need basically now is getting the signature from our director. And that process has started probably.

okay um with that all those in favor say hi say no i'm staying one extension just noted make sure that started in that minutes and We've got two updates. Do you need a breath?

You want to go first? Ben. I don't really have anything to update. The big thing is the Section 5310 applications and just heard plenty about those. We are continuing to work on our Public outreach, the beginning of the long-range transportation plan update process. So that's our kind of county, but especially the planning area-wide long-range plan out to 2050 that we have to update every five years. So it'll be adopted next spring. We do have public survey and public comment map out right now collecting input. We're out at a lot of different community events and libraries trying to get folks engaged and taking the survey, having pretty good responses so far. Do encourage you all to do that if you haven't done it yet. And I think that's about it. Go to the website to do that? Yeah, I'll put a link in the chat. If you just go to the Greater Madison MPO page, there's a link right there. Yeah, so I'm just gonna give the main page and on the left hand side. And again, if you go to greater Madison mpo.org. I'm Or the address, that's like a cheater email or cheater address that will redirect to what's in the chat. Oh, and I didn't even do it right. Come on. There we go. Ignore that first one. CityofMadison.com forward slash MPO. Either one, they get the same spot. And then on the left-hand side... As of the page, there's a pathways to 2050 get involved panel. And there's a link for the survey. There's a link for the Spanish survey. And then there's an online comment map where you can drop a pin and say there's missing sidewalk here or this is a really dangerous intersection or people always speed or I want a bus stop here, whatever you want to do. we then take all of that information and not only consider it in our own long-range plan, but we then provide it to any relevant agencies. So if you put in a comment saying, I wish there was a B-cycle station here, those comments go to B-cycle. If you say, I wish that Metro served this area, those comments will go both to Metro and to whatever community they're in who would ultimately have to foot the bill for Metro service there. So I encourage you to drop pins, leave comments, and then we will get them to whoever needs to see them.

Any questions?

I guess I will also just note on MPO news that Commissioner Bioshock is also a new MPO policy board member. So he's going to be hearing way too much from me in the future. Sorry about that.

Oh, I'm happy to. I heard good things about you. I was contacted by an organization recently and so I, they like you. And so I look forward to spending more time.

Hopefully it wasn't, you know, liars of America or something like that.

Go ahead Nathaniel. So again, the main thing for me has been the 5310 application. The other update would be that we, earlier, beginning of the summer, we had put up an RFP for the services that RSVP of Dane County provides, the volunteer drivers. And that has closed, RSVP was the only respondent to that RFP. There's not really another place that really fits the bill for that, but they put together a very good proposal regardless of if they thought they would be the only ones to apply or not. And so we will be continuing to work with them in 2027 and four years beyond that before we have to do anything to decide if we do another RFP.

That's fine. Okay. Questions? Future meeting dates?

Yeah, it would be August 26th would be the fourth Wednesday.

We have a late August for county members. If anybody has any ideas for, I was thinking maybe have a couple of possible, maybe RSVP, and then again, is it from the west or from the east? If Professor Brandmeier can join us, maybe some prairie and see how these focal points are adapting, growing with the new schedules, and it's a bus buddy, so we might have public comment, we don't have any public comment. Oh, I was gonna say for the recording, such a business, recording started late, all members were present except for separator. Oh, Ron was absent. Minutes were passed without changes. And I think that's for the recording that we had. of our regular business as well uh recordings just for that let's take a motion to make sure who'd like to do it