Capital Project Sales Tax Commission - Regular Meeting

WE'LL START THE CAPITOL PROJECT SALES TAX MEETING NOW FOR JULY THE 20th. AND BEFORE WE BEGIN THE MEETING, I WANT TO INFORM EVERYBODY THAT WE ARE BEING BROADCAST LIVE ON LEXINGTON COUNTY SPECTRUM CHANNEL 1302 AND LEXINGTON COUNTY WEBSITE. THIS COMMISSION MEETING WILL BE AVAILABLE FOR VIEWING ANY TIME ON DEMAND ON OUR COUNTY WEBSITE. Start by doing an invocation and a pledge of allegiance. And Mr. Dennis is going to lead us.

Please stand. Dear Lord, thank you for bringing us together today as we discuss the important needs of this county. And Lord, please give us the wisdom to make good, righteous decisions for you to help keep this county safe as we travel amongst these roads. We do all these things in your precious son, Jesus Christ's name. Amen.

ALL RIGHT. WE WERE GIVEN THE MINUTES FROM OUR LAST MEETING ON MAY THE 18TH.

DOES ANYBODY HAVE ANY DISCUSSION ABOUT MINUTES?

SECOND.

IT WILL BE APPROVED THEN.

ALL IN FAVOR?

And then next on the agenda, we have Mr. Abatey back with Stantec to go over kind of where we are with the traffic improvement plan for the county. I'll turn it over to you.

Thank you and good afternoon, everyone. I'll just jump right into updating where we are with the Lexington Countywide Transportation Improvement Plan. typically open and remind ourselves the plan purpose, a data-driven countywide plan identifying existing conditions that merit the greatest attention, and then a list of projects and phasing options, as well as strategies that the county council and other policymakers can implement. Today's agenda is we're going to spend most of our time talking about the work that's been completed to date and then what work is ongoing and planned. And we'll wrap with an overview of the schedule and we'll move right into discussion and input. So each of you should have a hard copy in front of you as well as the presentation is on the screen. So the work completed to date, you've seen this before, we've gathered data, we've reviewed existing plans and policies, we've identified existing and committed projects from multiple organizations, and we've identified the existing traffic and planning conditions, traffic volume, crash data, land use, ped and bike inventory, and we've done a capacity analysis. other work completed to date we have completed the first set of open houses back in march and april we had 102 attendees we've completed three types of surveys we've recently completed the second set of open houses the last part of june in the first part of july where we had 70 attendees And then we've completed identifying the future level of service of the two-lane corridors, congestion and safety. And then we've done most of the cost estimating to date where we've prepared estimates for various types of intersections and then a per mile cost for widening roads. We've also done cost estimates for dirt road paving and county road resurfacing. So you've seen these before, the displays showing the existing traffic, the existing congestion, a summary of the open house set one, the six different locations where we had the public meetings. All of the data is available on our website. So I've abbreviated some of the data for this presentation, but all of the data, the complete set is on the project website. So we've had a good level of public outreach at both open houses. The interactive map, we had 670 unique points gathering data. We had the informal money matters survey that we had at each of the first set of open houses. It's relevant to note that the most popular categories were road widening, county road resurfacing, and intersection improvements. And then the online survey, we never quite broke 2,000 respondents, but we got close to 1,500. So we're happy with that turnout. It was available between February 26 and April 17. We had just under the 1,500 respondents. And the main points that we gathered there were the public was interested in resurfacing, widening, signal improvements, and intersection improvements. With some folks talking about new roads and even access control. At the second set of open houses, we had about 70 participants. We had a handout that provided everyone where the other open houses were going to be, links to the website, and we received comments at those open houses. Now, some of the work that we presented is the future level of service of today's two-lane roads that carry 10,000 cars or more a day. So this is a very important starting point for you to be aware of. We looked at two-lane roads across the county that are carrying 10,000 cars a day today. And what is their level of service going to be like in year 2050? And so we identified those roads and we've marked them on the attachment. We looked at corridor safety. The county had previously done a high-injury network study, and they identified the corridors with the greatest safety issues. And in this, the darker brown-red has more safety. safety concerns and then the red so you can see highway six and red bank pieces of us-1 302 even 76 in shapen then we looked at the intersections with congestion and we identified congestion at intersections with how many of the legs of each intersection were approaching their capacity is how we evaluated it. And so we broke it down really into about 104 different intersections with various levels of congestion. And as expected, the greater levels of congestion are in your urbanized town limits across the county. We looked at intersection safety, which does not necessarily tie to congestion. So we looked at that component and we identified the crashes throughout the county and where they were occurring at the intersections. I talked a little bit about the cost on what it would take to do projects. To go from a two-lane road to a three-lane road is $18 million a mile. And then to go to a five-lane is $20 million a mile. Roundabouts are $3.7 million. then various costs for intersections and then dirt road paving is about 2.1 million a mile and resurfacing existing county roads is about 1.1 these costs are all inclusive of hard and soft costs so it's the actual cost of construction plus design right away utilities and construction inspection so that's what these total numbers represent Now then, after we identified all of the corridors carrying greater than 10,000 vehicles today, 105 intersections, then we started... putting those together into three different groups. So you can see here our methodology and how we went into that. So when we looked at all of the corridors today carrying greater than 10,000, that came up to be about 27 different corridors. And then the intersections, about 105. And we applied... a cost estimate to those, and then we also applied about 15% of potential future funding to county road resurfacing and 5% to dirt road paving. So we came up with scenario A in a cost of about $3.2 billion, and it would address the 27 corridors, 104 intersections, and then 440 miles of resurfacing and 80 miles of dirt road paving. So for comparison, we took that number and we cut it in half. So basically the corridors, the intersections, and then the amount of repaving and dirt road paving that you could do for 1.6 billion. And we further took it down again, we took it in half again, and we got more restrictive with our criteria for identifying those corridors and identifying those intersections. So to come down to scenario C and the corridors, we took the 27 corridors that we identified. Then we identified which ones had public input, congestion and safety, and we scored that. And then to cut it down further to scenario C, we looked at which ones had the greatest feasibility of actual being constructed and could be implemented the most likely. and then carried that through with the intersections and ranking them according to congestion safety and public slash stakeholder input so that's how we came up with the lists and the criteria and i'll touch on that more right here so scenario a had the 27 corridors and 105 intersections and to help you see it a little bit better got a hard copy of an 11 by 17 in front of you and i've listed scenario a with the 27 corridors and the 104 intersections and then the next page is scenario b and the next page is scenario c just to help out as we go through it so scenario a with the 27 corridors and 104 intersections. And these slides are identified projects. They are not ranked yet on this slide. So this is what was presented to the public. Scenarios A, B, and C. And then again, B cutting in half and C cutting in half again. So this is what was presented to the public. Then what we did is we came back and based on What we heard through the surveys, what we heard in person talking with county staff, the Stantec staff took the 27 corridors and applied five ranking criteria. Congestion, safety, crash rate, public comment, stakeholder input, and then feasibility. And we had those with different percentages. And we went ahead and ranked all 27 corridors. And you can see how they fell out. And since we're doing our corridors with a cost per mile, I went ahead and included the total projected cost next to each of those. Then we went to the intersections. And instead of doing 104 intersections, we just did category C, scenario C, which is 35 intersections. And we changed a little bit of the ranking criteria and the percentage there, such that, again, since they're isolated to an intersection, not a multi-mile corridor, we put more emphasis on congestion and safety. And then less input on public input. And then we also had a stakeholder input category as well. So this does show the ranking of the 35 intersections. And again, this is an initial ranking. So the county staff just received it a few days ago. So it's under review. And it would be for... input and consideration how we came up and ranked them to this point now then where are we going to go from here into the future so we need to finalize the ranking prioritization methodology and then once we finalize the methodology then we can re-rank the intersections and the corridors and then we could finalize the 2050 build scenario likely scenario C being around 800 million. So if any projects were added, deleted, re-ranked, then we could redo the scenario C build condition. And then I need to finalize the cost estimates. The corridors is very straightforward being a per mile basis. Most of the intersections are going to fall into the category of roundabouts, four-legged or three-legged. But some intersections I might need to tweak the cost estimate. For instance, there's one intersection that rose to the group of 35, Highway St. Andrews Road. turning left onto Bush River Road like you're headed towards the dam. So the fix there is probably making a double left off of St. Andrews onto Bush River Road, and then Bush River Road has the two lanes receiving. So I would need to modify the cost estimate. for that specific likely improvement. So I'm close to having all the intersections cost estimated, but there's a few that still need to be changed or developed. So that's why I just didn't include them in today's presentation. Then really come up with a final cost estimate combining the intersections and the corridors and probably stay with 15% of any projected money going to county road resurfacing and 5% to dirt road paving just to give us a baseline. And once we do that, we'll identify funding strategies and then we'll talk about regulation and policy strategies and then we'll move right into developing the report. So our overall schedule, we identified existing conditions in March. We've gone through the public engagement. I will note that we have scheduled a stakeholder meeting for August 4th right here in this room at 2 o'clock, and it will be virtual as well as in person. And so this invitee list was well over 100. School district, multiple county agencies, DOT, municipalities. So that stakeholder meeting will be August 4th, and a lot of that meeting will be presenting tonight's presentation to make sure that they're all aware of where we're at as far as the open houses and the cost estimates and the path forward. So, of course, you're invited and welcome to that August 4th meeting, both in person and virtually. Future conditions have been completed in June. We're going to move into the cost estimating, ranking and prioritization changes. really over the next few weeks and then in the final report we'll make a recommendation on potential project phasing if a project is so long that it doesn't make sense to build it all in one phase it could be phased we could phase projects around the county so we'll address that in the final report my goal is to turn in a draft plan the month of august and then depending on comments, have a final report in September. So at this point, that concludes my presentation, and we can open it up to discussion and questions. Madam Chair, I'll follow your lead.

I don't know that I have any questions.

Okay.

Do you all have any?

Yeah. First question I have is... The project ranking on the page, it has lanes, length, miles, corridor, and it has a rank number. Correct? Yeah. Yeah, just like that. Corridor rankings, yes, sir. This map, they each have been numbered as well. Yes, those are just identification numbers. Is there any way we could add that in there so we're not maybe hunting and pecking? Can we add a column for the corridor identifier, just a column to label them? We can, yes. That way you're not, because there's four or five for North Lake, South Lake, might make it just easier to identify them faster.

And really what happened here is this scenario is what we showed to the public. So I want to make sure what we showed to the public is what we're providing you tonight. Then additionally, we have taken those corridors and ranked them. So that's why there's really two versions of the list. At the time we went to the public, we had not ranked them. Yeah, just more of an identifier. I got you. Okay.

I had a question. one. I think you were alluding to it a minute ago. Number four, Bush River Road. Does it coincide with this intersection improvement? Maybe it's number six, Bush River and St. Andrews Road. Are those costs...

Yes. And you'll notice that in other potential corridors and intersections, where if an intersection was identified, such as Highway 6 and Platte Springs, that's been very much identified, then so has the corridor of Leiden and Highway 6. So each has its own cost estimate. And if they were... If that corridor were to be implemented, it would, of course, subsume the intersection improvements.

Okay, that was what my question was. So when we look at the scenario C, where let's just say Bush River Road is in the corridor widening, it's not replicated in the intersection improvement calls.

It is built in to the corridor. It's duplicated. It's duplicated. And the reason it's duplicated is it's not certain. Will the Platte Springs Highway 6 intersection be constructed first and then the rest of the corridor be constructed later? So that allows the decision makers the opportunity to schedule the intersection to go first. or the corridor and the corridor later. However, if the decision were made for the corridor to go first, then you wouldn't spend the same money on the intersection.

Real quick, I know we talked about before what we identified or used the word shovel-ready and matching. Is that weight criteria something that we're... It makes sense to add into this at this time, or I know that's a big deal.

At this point, we didn't identify very many, if any, projects that were truly shovel-ready, so we did not include it in this ranking criteria.

What about ones that at least have studies?

We put that more so in the stakeholder input column. Because a stakeholder obviously supported it if they have had a study. So that's where it would have fallen in the ranking, in the stakeholder input, if there had been a study done or been identified.

I was going to say your shovel-ready projects are going to be more so on the resurfacing and maybe some of the dirt road paving stuff.

I'm just thinking, like, if a municipality had already started some kind of

kick that can down the corridor where they've identified their costs it's easier to jump in there than it is starting all over you are correct but in our coordination with the municipalities no projects were identified that were shovel ready or the municipalities had started the design process i wish it were the case so i was going to ask about so none of these identified

projects are on any of the municipality traffic plans?

I do know for a fact that some of the intersections are also identified in the town of Lexington plan, but I don't, I need to verify, but I don't think they are funded in the town's plan.

Could we get a list of where they overlap? I don't know if you So say the town of Lexington has one of these intersections in there, Delta. Can we get a list of where those overlap so that we can kind of, I don't know, take that into consideration when we're looking at projects?

And off the top of my head, I think only the town of Lexington overlaps. as projects that they have planned and have a document. I'll verify that, but yes, I will identify which projects that have been ranked overlap with those that are in another plan somewhere else. We can do that.

I feel like Batesburg might have talked about a traffic plan recently. I mean, there was an intersection in here, but...

They had a Safe Streets and Roads for All grant application similar to what the county did. Okay. We can check and see if that intersection was listed on there. Okay.

I'm assuming you spoke with COG as well to see what projects they've got. Yes, that's correct. Yes. Can we get a

any of this overlap with that with the cog i do not believe it does but we can provide all those together so cog town of lexington and i'll see if there's any others i'm pretty sure none of these are listed on the dots projects okay we did reach out to the dot and asked them to vet our list and if they had anything that was

InDesign or program. So we did reach out to them in this process.

Okay.

On that $3.2 billion number, does that get the county from a, call it a D minus to a C plus, or does that get it a B or like just generically speaking?

Generically speaking, it would get Lexington County to a acceptable level of service countywide. That would be C or better.

So 800 gets us up to a D?

800 will move the needle, and it will take seven corridors up to the level of service C, and it would take 35 intersections and greatly improve them. If you want to fix Lexington County, you need $3.2 billion in today's value. IS TO SEE SOMEWHAT OF A DIFFERENCE. IT WOULD BE A MAJOR DIFFERENCE. THE 3.2 BILLION WOULD MAKE A MAJOR DIFFERENCE. THE 800 MILLION WOULD MAKE A MAJOR DIFFERENCE ON SEVEN CORRIDORS AND 35 INTERSECTIONS.

AND THE WORST OF THE WORST.

YES. AND EVEN THE CORRIDORS, YOU COULD USE THE SAME LANGUAGE THE WORST OF THE WORST BASED ON CONGESTION, SAFETY AND PUBLIC INPUT.

So is there an estimated inflation rate, or is that taken into account here?

No. There is no future cost of escalation included in these cost estimates.

Is there a number that we can kind of think about for that?

Yes. And what I'll do is I'll look at published data before I give you a specific percentage, and I'll base it on national standards.

WOULD THAT BE IN THE REPORT?

IT WOULD BE, YES. BUT I CAN GO PULL THAT AND SEND BACK OUT.

THAT'S OKAY.

IT DEFINITELY WOULD BE IN THE REPORT. OKAY. I'M JUST TAKING NOTES ON WHAT I NEED TO DO.

Questions?

Comments? Good information. It's highly discouraging to see the percentages of open house and survey based on our elected accounting population.

Another thing that we're going to be doing with the plan, and I haven't shown these to you yet because we're developing them, we're going to have project sheets, something real simple that shows, and I'll just pick the first corridor, Highway 6 from Platte Springs to Edmond Highway. One piece of paper. We're going to have an aerial map view identifying the termini. We're going to say how long it is, what's the traffic, how much would it cost. And then we're also going to show what would the cross-section potentially look like. which is two lanes in each direction and a middle turn lane, curb and gutter. And then we're showing options where you could have sidewalk on both sides, or you can have sidewalk on one side and a shared use path on the other. So just high level, what could the road look like? It's not locking anything in. And then we're also gonna prepare these project sheets for the intersections. that you'll know oh the concept here is a roundabout the concept here is a four-legged signalized intersection we'll prepare those project sheets and include in the plan so i'll conservatively say that i'll have a draft plan turned in the end of august that helps scheduling any next meetings. So this is July 20. By the end of August, I'll have a draft plan submitted to the county.

Then the county would review that plan first and provide feedback, I would assume? Yes.

When you say county, county staff or county council? We're talking about staff.

Staff, okay. Just for clarity. My guess is it would probably go to council probably October. We'd probably go through the draft plan, get a final version that we would then present to council and committee and let them provide any feedback prior to being approved at the 430.

Any questions about the the top seven corridors that have been ranked or any of the intersections that I can, you know, I'll just point out Highway 6 in Red Bank, 76 in Chapin, 302, Edmond Highway, and then Pisgah Church, Longs Pond, between US 1 and I-20, the piece of Highway 6 leaving the dam headed towards Ballantyne, And then another section of what we call a longs pond corridor, St. Peter's, Charter Oak from Old Cherokee down to one. And then the other piece of 76 kind of on the northwest side of Chapin are the top seven. And then in the chart, you can see where we projected whether they would be five or three lane widenings and the associated costs.

Help me with my geography. And when we get into that Chapin question, closer we get into the Richland County line.

Sure.

I don't want to do a whole bunch of work and it just bogs down right in when it hits the line.

The Lexington-Richland line is along Highway 76 right at Wessinger. And so this project would go from essentially Wessinger into the town of Chapin. And so that would be a five-lane section. And then coincidentally, Richland County has identified 76 to be a five-lane section from Wessinger back down to Shadowwood and Ballantyne.

I'd like to say I appreciate your correct pronunciation of Wessinger.

I GOT LUCKY, BUT I TRIED. THANK YOU.

HAS RICHLAND COUNTY ALREADY APPROVED THAT PROJECT OR SOME PROCESS?

RICHLAND COUNTY HAS APPROVED THAT PROJECT FOR FUNDING, AND RICHLAND COUNTY HAS RANKED IT IN THE TOP FIVE, AND THEY EXPECT TO START DESIGN NEXT CALENDAR YEAR. If it's being funded through their penny tax? I do know that it is being funded through their penny tax. Good nugget.

Do you know how many lanes that they are planning?

Five lanes, curb and gutter, and they've not identified yet if it will be sidewalks on both sides or a sidewalk on one side and a path on the other. That will come through the design process.

Yes. Highway 76.

Yes. Yes.

Highway 76. Richland County. What are they going to do with the cemetery and the railroad track?

That will be a challenge for the designer to figure out. I know exactly what you're talking about.

That is a higher pay grade than mine.

That would almost fall under that stakeholder input. Yes. I wait. Yes. Since we know that the other piece of the pie is done.

And then, again, just I'm familiar with Richland County's plan. They're Highway 6 in Ballantyne. They've got two intersections identified in that corridor. And then Richland County has already talked about adding that section of Highway 6 from the county line up to the CVS at Highway 76. That's a potential that Richland County could add into their plan.

Since you're a font of knowledge.

about the number seven that says going into newberry county yes so that section would be about one mile long and we identified that would also be a five lane section anything about newberry if they're to my knowledge newberry does not have any major roadway improvements on their capital penny plan is there's just a capital penny not a road penny yes my knowledge of newberry county is they've had a capital penny more than one round, and they've done some road improvements, but they've spent a lot of their capital penny on vertical projects. But yes.

Between these projects and the projects Richland County has, it would essentially take in five lanes NEWBERRY COUNTY LINE ALL THE WAY TO DOWNTOWN COLUMBIA.

NEW SPEAKER YES, THAT'S CORRECT.

NEW SPEAKER THAT WOULD HELP A LOT. So because the 76 and Columbia Avenue is in the intersection list, but you're already talking about the have that in the corridor improvement. If that did get recommended, that would all connect together.

Yes. So if where an intersection is within a corridor widening, If the corridor widening were to go first, then you would not spend the designated money on the intersection. It would be subsumed into the corridor. And that allows the decision makers the flexibility of letting the intersection go to construction first if the corridor were to lag a number of years. Flexibility. And then again, please remember in the future, these cost estimates are good estimates as of 2026. And no detailed design has been done. But they're good estimates, and I'll stick by them. But in a year, two, and three years, prices will change, and design will be a whole lot better than the concept where we're at today. So these are good planning-level estimates that I'm confident you can use moving forward.

THE NEXT PIECE ON THE AGENDA IS STAFF UPDATES, AND WE HAD ASKED LAST TIME ABOUT GETTING UPDATED NUMBERS FROM DEPARTMENT OF REVENUE. HAVE THOSE. I DON'T KNOW IF Y'ALL WANT TO SPEAK TO THAT OR HAVE THOSE NUMBERS.

OBVIOUSLY WE REACHED OUT TO JEFF AND HE PROVIDED IT TO THE GROUP.

GOOD INFORMATION.

I'VE GOT A COUPLE QUESTIONS. WHAT HAPPENS IF THERE'S ANY SURPLUS WITH THE LOCAL Penny tax. We identified the seven corridors and all these other things. Some of that money gets blended in and not spent. Jeff, maybe you know this. What happens, because it's my understanding on the referendum, we're saying we're using these dollars for these projects. We have a surplus. What happens?

We've had it passed a contingency list. Get all these done.

So is that something you're going to do, David, is have a contingency list in your cost estimating?

I would say that that list has already been prepared in that we've ranked the 27 corridors and the 35 intersections. Actually, we went ahead and ranked all 105 intersections. So my thought would be, if a referendum were to go down through intersection 40, I'll just make up a number, then you could consider putting on the referendum, well, the next five could be done if we have enough money. So I would tell you all 105 intersections have been ranked. So that gives you the flexibility to recommend the referendum.

I just want to make sure we portray a clean message to the voters when they vote for this thing that we plan on getting at least this done. We don't want to bog them down with, well, if we had more money, we could do all these other things. If we have more money, we have maybe a few more. We need to be able to explain that to them.

In our recommendation to counsel, IS IT THAT SO WE WOULD NAME THESE PROJECTS SPECIFICALLY LIKE WAS IN THE LAST BOND ATTEMPTS OR NOT BOND ATTEMPTS BUT REFERENDUM QUESTIONS AND THEN THAT ADDITIONAL LANGUAGE WILL WE NEED TO NAME THOSE ADDITIONAL PROJECTS IF WE HAVE EXTRA MONEY THEN THEY WILL GO TOWARDS THESE PROJECTS OR THE NEXT HIGHEST ranked projects pursuant to the county transportation plan offered or adopted.

But am I right? If we hit the number, we do them all, the tax stops. Am I correct? That's what I was under the impression, that if we hit, we do all 50, whatever they are, And now they're all funded that the tax would sunset. Am I right? I remember that.

No?

That's after eight years. You can do it shorter than eight years. You can do a maximum of eight years and then everything which you're not going to do. That just says county council can find other projects.

Yeah, because we're going off 2026 numbers. The 2029 numbers are going to be...

I mean, it's probably not going to have a surplus, but I just want to make sure we have some sort of plan. If it does, because of some of the blending that's happening in some of these projects, if we ask council to take it to the voters that these are the seven corridors that are going to be widened, we're able to do it under budget because some of the cost estimates... do with that extra. If it's allocated straight to resurfacing, I mean, I'm sure there's a road somewhere that could use a resurfacing now and end in 2050. Yes. That's a smart idea. We want to make sure that that's worded well enough in the referendum.

Y'all can have a big say so in what the wording says. Try to be as clear as you can. I think one year we drew a line and said everything below here.

Jeff, as the BEA meets and gives their revenue projections, I can't remember how often they meet and do that, but throughout the year, how much would these projections potentially fluctuate up or down? Board of Economic Advisors, because these are based off of their revenue, their estimates they provide, right? So if they, I mean, these numbers are subject to change based off of what the BEA is saying on a quarterly basis, potentially.

It changed a little bit when y'all put it off a year. We can ask them to update it.

Okay.

I've normally just done it once, but CAN DO IT.

NEW SPEAKER, DAVID WESTANTEK SAID HE WOULD OFFER IN THE FINAL REPORT SOME ESTIMATES ON WHAT YOUR COSTS, WHAT THE INFLATION MIGHT LOOK LIKE. AND SO WE PROBABLY CAN GET SOME ESTIMATES, YOU KNOW, LATER ON FOR HOW THE PENNY MIGHT CHANGE WITH INFLATION.

SO IN THE PLAN I WILL DISCUSS HISTORIC CONSTRUCTION COST INDEXES.

NEW SPEAKER ONE THING I WAS GOING TO ASK dirt road paving list.

Can we get a copy of that? Sure. We can send it out to the group. It's publicly available on the website, but I can send it to the group.

Just so we can start digesting a little bit of that. The dirt road paving list. And so none of the roads that we're talking about here Or anything to do with state roads or overlapping state roads?

In regards to dirt road and resurfacing?

In any of this?

No. Most, if not all, of the corridors and intersections are state-maintained roads. So likely, all of them, corridors and intersections, are state-maintained roads. Okay.

The stakeholder meeting on the 4th, August 4th, I guess soliciting feedback in that meeting from any of the stakeholders, is there anything that they would provide that would be subject to be included in your draft report that would change anything that you've presented to us today?

Likely not. Potentially, we may learn of a... project that has been planned or committed that we've not learned to date, but I don't expect to learn anything new that's going to change the plan.

Going back to the question about state being involved, I assume the state would have to sign off on all those projects as far as doing work on their roads.

That is my understanding that, yes, eventually Lexington County would enter into an intergovernmental agreement with the DOT, and all of the projects would be identified in that IGA. And that intergovernmental agreement would state, since it's a DOT-maintained road, Lexington County must follow their standards for design, etc.

then we might get some money from the state to help with any of the construction costs. It wouldn't be any additional over our roughly $7 million that the county gets right now.

As of right now, that's a correct statement. Yes. So there's the opportunity to always apply for state and federal grants. Yes. Yes.

If they get a budget done.

David, just one more question on that. Would the state sign off on the projects before it goes on the ballot? What if we say we want to do it and they say we don't like that afterwards?

To my knowledge and experience, they've not done that. In any other county going back 30 years, what would happen is once and if the referendum were to pass with these projects identified, then county staff would start negotiating the intergovernmental agreement. And the projects on the referendum that are DOT would be part of the IGA. And then the DOT would say, great, you're welcome to improve our road, but you have to follow our standards. is how the process would work.

They're not necessarily approving them, but like I said earlier, we've already engaged them over this list of projects to see if they had anything that they were already funding or that was already on any list of theirs.

Do you have anything further? About Stantec, do we have anything further? No.

No, I had asked that, and that would be good. um so um next steps then um it's the next agenda item and i just wanted to kind of talk through what what our plan is going to be going forward as far as meetings and starting to kind of digest some of these lists and projects um i don't know If we should wait until council approves the traffic plan or if we should go ahead and start using this information and think it through. Well, I kind of feel that way, but I just wanted to pose that question.

I don't.

So he's going to bring it back. I'm thinking out loud the steps. So you're going to bring it back to county for them to look at it. This plus a couple tweaks.

Yes. So I'm going to put together a draft plan, which will summarize everything that I've been sharing with you for six months and the rankings and the projects. I'll also talk about funding opportunities. and maybe some policies and recommendations and put all that into a draft plan. But as of today, we've got the corridors and intersections identified. We've got them ranked according to this criteria and percentages, which could change based on staff's direction to meet. Or your input to staff could influence their direction to me on these rankings and criteria. So I just gave these to the county a few days ago, so they're still reviewing them. But the next time you see me, a percentage could change or something like that. There's always an opportunity for something to change. But the draft plan that I submit by the end of August is going to be similar to all the information that you've seen to date.

But your plan is to bring the draft back to the county council in August.

The county staff by the end of August.

Yes. I don't think we could probably meet in September.

Yeah, from what I heard, you hope to have a final draft that council could vote on by September.

Correct. So by the end of September. Not sure that we'll have it on the September council meeting, depending on, there's only one in September, correct?

So again, I've got to get the draft plan in by the end of August. Then an undetermined amount of time for staff to review and comment. Then I've got to address those comments. So I can't guarantee anything, but I can tell you that's the plan, is have a draft plan the end of August. Hopefully it's complete enough that we don't get a lot of comments. BUT WE MAY, AND THEN WE'LL JUST HAVE TO ADDRESS THOSE AND SEE WHAT THE SCHEDULE IS.

NEW SPEAKER I GUESS THE QUESTION IS, AS A COMMISSION, DO WE FEEL COMFORTABLE GOING AHEAD AND STARTING TO LOOK AT SOME OF THIS BEFORE COUNCIL APPROVES THE PLAN, OR DO WE NEED TO WAIT FOR THEM TO APPROVE THE PLAN?

NEW SPEAKER I THINK WE COULD DISCUSS IT LATER.

NEW SPEAKER I DO. waiting until there's an approved plan that county councils want to adopt.

So do we feel comfortable then waiting until October to meet again? I just don't know if we meet in August or September. We're going to have the same information basically.

Brett, but I do think we need to start thinking about the language for the referendum.

The ballot itself, yeah.

Because once if things go well and council adopts the traffic improvement plan, we're only left with a few months to formulate the question for the ballot because it's got to get to county council. What did we say, Jeff, like before April in order for them to vote Have to approve it by ordinance. And it'll take a couple months to do that. Take a couple readings and approvals to get the ordinance passed so it can go on the ballot.

Can we get some old verbiage just to get an idea of what was on there?

2014, we had a bunch of projects. Right. 2022, we simplified it. I can send you both of them.

And that one came closer to passing. I think the language was a little bit easier. THAT'S WHY I WANT TO MAKE SURE WE CAN TRY TO MAKE IT SIMPLISTIC. YOU'VE GIVEN US SOME GOOD INFORMATION TO WORK WITH, DAVID, THAT SOME OF THESE PROJECTS WOULD BLEND IN WITH ONGOING KNOWN PROJECTS THAT ARE SLATED IN THE SURROUNDING AREAS. UNDERSTAND, LIKE I PHRASED IT, FROM DOWNTOWN COLUMBIA TO NEWBERRY, ALL THE PROJECTS THAT ARE ONGOING AND WHAT THE PENNY TAX FOR LEXINGTON COUNTY COULD BRING, A LARGE-SCALE PROJECT.

ALL RIGHT. SO WE'LL MEET BACK IN AUGUST AND SEPTEMBER, WORK ON THE VERBAGE, AND THEN WE'LL MEET WITH BRAVELESS. KIND OF AS A GENERAL GAME PLAN. DOES THAT SOUND GOOD TO EVERYBODY? MOVING FORWARD. SO IF WE MEET IN AUGUST AND SEPTEMBER, WE'LL KIND OF MOVE TO NOT FOCUSING SO MUCH ON THE TRAFFIC IMPROVEMENT PLAN, BUT ON THE VERBAGE FOR THE BALLOT. AND THEN IN OCTOBER, HOPEFULLY, WE'LL HAVE AN APPROVED ROAD LIST FROM COUNCIL FOR THE TRAFFIC IMPROVEMENT PLAN, AND WE CAN

start kind of digesting some of that and adding that to our question can i ask a real quick question this more might be a jeff question or just a question but um for the many months i've been talking to different people about this project and figuring out believe it or not there's a lot of informed and uneducated community people because they don't understand what's going on. Not that they're uneducated. They just don't know the process of what we're doing. I strongly believe we've got a duty to try to give more resources than, you know, reaching more than 1,000 people of the 3,000. And I know that state statute says we can't, the county can't actively market and promote the tax, right? But my question is, can the county demonstrate just the traffic improvement plan? This is a plan. We've spent money. We've heard the citizens say we need something fixed. We hear you. Here's our plan. Not saying what we're going to do, but this is a plan, almost a PR-type push to to get awareness to the citizens that they, we hear you, we want to do something. It's a little easier to sell in November if they're aware of it in a greater masses. I just think there's got to be a way to do that. And we're not talking about penny. We're just talking about what David has done. Say, this is what David's done on steroids to get it out to the mass people and, you know, put some money behind it and push it out there that we hear you. We want to make a difference. We want to change. from Columbia to Newberry. We want to get you there. I just think we need to explore that if possible. This is my personal opinion.

But am I right in saying that this is Lexington County's first traffic improvement plan to this scale? To my knowledge, yes. So, I mean, I think that's plenty right there to tout to the general public that Lexington County's taking an approach to improve the road system by having a plan or stretch from it being funded, but there is a plan.

I just think you need to push it out there a little, you know, put some gunpower behind it because I just look at the numbers of open house and There's a lot of people that still don't know, and they're still... Yeah, you need more than 70 people to vote for it.

Yeah. Mathematically, yes.

Yes. So I just think that that would keep us in the constraints of being legal. If we're just promoting what Stantec did or...

Passing along this information.

ride and you know and i think you could put a little money behind it and promote it really well to say hey we heard you heard you we're going to get you from columbia to newberry i like that but um i just think that more people hear about it they're going to ask questions and when they say how we're going to get there say we're exploring funding you know we're we're looking at hiring a traffic engineer we got steps we are moving his report's going to have those kind of strategies in there as well right funding and and

Yes. I will identify that there are various types of funding to include a penny sales tax, to include grants, other areas. So the funding strategies is not going to be a long list of funding opportunities, just because there's not a long list of funding opportunities out there.

But it will be in the plan?

Yes.

The plan that will be adopted, hopefully, by county council?

Yes.

not as far as paying for promoting it, but putting it on the promotions that you have available, like social media, to say, hey, we've got a plan. The bare bones plan would cost $850 million, which translates to this many mills on the average house in Lexington County. What are some other options we could do? You can say that. That's not advertising anything. So, I mean, that's just me reading social media. But anyway, not my circus, not my monkeys.

Well, I think once council approves it, they'll talk through it. That can be used to hopefully... different groups will pick that up and put it out too, and that will help show that the plan is ready. These are the things in the plan. Maybe that will start people talking. Does anybody have anything else?

Do we have a date for August? Not yet.

No, I'm not sure.

I mean, I just didn't know if I missed it. Jessica is pretty good at that.

Dennis, you made a good point, I think. This is the first time we've had a plan. That's huge. Before, we've had just municipalities and everybody just submitting stuff. Yeah. But this is a plan. You've never had that before.

Those types of plans help you get funding from DOT and the feds. We've already done all the stakeholder meetings, community surveys, outreach, and used professionals like Stantec to really look at the data.

That's a tremendous advantage to have this plan. I'm assuming council had to vote to enter into the agreement with Stantec and to move forward with the plan, right?

Do you want to look at dates now, or do you want me to get with Jessica and we email you out? Is that good?

Yeah.

That's it. I'd like to make a motion to adjourn.

Motion to be adjourned. All right.

All in favor?

Aye.

I'm done. I don't know. If you're waiting for Beta Broth tomorrow, I would continue to wait. You don't think it's tomorrow? It's tomorrow.