Metropolitan Planning Organization - Regular Meeting

We'll go ahead and call to order our Metropolitan Planning Organization Transportation Policy Board meeting. Today is June 11th, 2025. And uh thank you guys for joining us today. Uh first thing we'll do is our invocation and pledge and that will be led by Mr. Dwayne Archer. Please rise in prayer. Father God, we we thank you and praise you for this day. We thank you for every drop of rain that we receive. We thank you for the in incredible opportunity we have to serve this community. Just be with us. Continue to guide the discussions and the decisions. We just praise you in Jesus holy name. Amen. Amen. Please join me in prayer. Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Next on our agenda is citizen comment. I do not have any speaker cards. Are there any citizens here that would like to speak? Seeing none, we will move on to our consent agenda. Uh consider approval of the April 9th, 2025 meeting minutes. He did a motion that we approve. I have a motion. Do I have a second? Second. I have a motion and a second. All in favor, please say I. Any opposed? Consent agenda is approved. Next up, consider approval of the unified planning work pro program fiscal year 26 and 27. Mr. McBride. Thank you, Mayor. Uh so today, uh I'm here to present our unified planning work program. It's a mouthful, I know. Uh it's our EPWP. We love our acronyms. Um so this is our two-year budget for fiscal year 2026 and 2027. Uh the purpose of this document is to define our transportation planning efforts uh over the next uh two years. Uh the core tasks that we look at are your typical administration type documents, public involvement stuff, uh data development and maintenance. That's

our travel demand model, our GIS files and just our travel uh network ensure that we have up-to-date um information to ensure that we can forecast and our projects accordingly. Additionally, we do some short- range planning. This is where we work closely with the with both the districts in coordinating our project efforts in regarding um programming future pro or current our projects within the next four years like our transportation improvement program does. Additionally, we do some long long range planning efforts. That's our metropolitan transportation plan that we recently updated in November of 24. And lastly, the one that gets a lot of attention is our special studies. uh in previous UPWP we did a long view no MPE study um so I'll talk about what a couple studies that we're doing uh here in this work program our timeline for this document I've presented the tasks to our technical advisory committee uh they reviewed and as I presented last time I told you the update on that of what we were the two projects that we're leaning towards um this program went to the state for their review to ensure compliance with federal regulations And that was just their first preliminary draft of actually looking at the document to ensure that we're not uh doing anything that would get us into trouble. Sorry. Additionally, uh last week we had our TAC meeting just to kind of finalize that draft to them, ensure that we were going the direction that our region wants and uh they did recommend approval of this document to y'all. Uh last Friday we met with our fiscal agent uh the city of Long View to ensure that they have the appropriate funds to meet our need for the next couple years. Uh everything went well. I'm glad to say everything's looking green light on their end. And so um now I'm here today to get the final blessing from y'all. And then we'll turn around and send that to the Federal Highway Administration to get their uh blessing as well.

The task, y'all seen this before. This is more of just an updated slide. Uh the bottom two are special studies uh that y'all would be interested in. We're going to do a a guideline document for complete streets in our area to kind of or to satisfy or federal requirement to utilize a 2 and a half% which I'll talk about in the next slide. And uh lastly in task uh 5.3 we're going to do the four street area study. Uh this was a final decision by our TAC committee saying this is the direction we should go. we'd see a lot more um impactful improvements that we could do a lot quicker than a more regional study. And so with the direction of this time, we're um going to move forward with this. We do have the interest of doing a freight plan eventually to support the regional efforts because we do believe that is a necess a plan that is necessary for our region. However, we wanted to focus in on Fourth Street to kind of ensure that u we can solve an issue that's happening right now. um as well as future of that the development happening occurring in that area. Are there any questions on this task before I move into the actual numbers of the budget themselves? Okay. The dollar amounts associated for fiscal year 26 um you can see on the screen I won't read it. Um the planning dollars are on the first column. That's my NO funding that I used to allocate to um as our our as our organization works. Um, the next two columns that have numbers in them are federal transit information. That's Long Beach Transit dollars that we have to capture in this document to satisfy Federal Transit Administration's guidance. Um, as you can see for fiscal year 26, the total combined uh for both Long Beach Transit and the NO is about uh half a million dollars. Um, that's just the planning efforts within our area. That's that amount. uh the 2 and a half% on the far right what I was mentioning um is the amount that was uh through the infrastructure bill uh the

current one that expires in fiscal year 26 this 2 and a half% of the total allocation that was given to each of the NPOS's had to um provide assistance in uh implementing some sort of complete street um assessment within your areas like providing recommendations of what streets should become complete streets. Um we've did a bike and bicycle and pedestrian plan back in 2018 that uh partially satisfied this requirement. Um however it I mean it identified like mobly complete street. That was one of them as well as a handful of others. However, they wanted to see a little bit more extensive list and more a document that was solely concentrated on complete streets. And so we're going to satisfy that requirement because the infrastructure bill does expire. Uh we have to ensure that we do capture for meeting that requirement. so we won't get in trouble. Next is fiscal year 27. Um, similar to fiscal year 26. Um, this you'll see it's about half a million dollars that we're going to be spending in planning funds uh in both the fiscal years. So with that, that's all I have for the unified planning work program. I'd be happy to answer any questions at this time. Any questions for Mr. McBride? Any discussion? If not, I think I need a motion. It's moved to approve. I have a motion. Do I have a second? Second. A motion and second. All in favor, please say I. Any opposed? Item is approved. Next is no staff updates. Awesome. Um, so in y'all's packet, I supplied a summary of each of these items. Um, but I'll briefly touch on each of what's going on. Uh so as the as needed consultant um we're currently uh that document that agreement to on board them onto our staff is under review with the fiscal agent to ensure that we're meeting compliance of everything. Um so this contract will expire in fiscal year 27. Um we do have the appropriate funds as I yall just approved the budget for the next couple

years and so that does include that amount. Um additionally what's important is the next one is the 2025 planning agreement. I brought this to y'all's attention the last meeting. Um, this is the update on this. We met with the fiscal agent to let them know as well is that uh the TPP or the trans the planning division of Texot who's leading the charge of this agreement of between the three of us, the NPO, the fiscal agent and Tex realized there was a lot of uh clarification and stuff that we need to kind of sort through. And so, um, it was originally scheduled to get this adopted prior to this September, um, because that's when the 2018 agreement expires. Uh, we have now decided they're going to do an extended one more year. Take the existing 2018 contract and extend it out to, uh, 2026 to give us a little more time as well as to ensure that the fiscal agent uh, and the policy board feels comfortable with the changes that they're recommending. So, I'll provide a much, excuse me, greater detail of what this agreement entails. Um the fiscal agent has seen um what this preliminary agreement has looked like. We've talked some internal discussion of how we want to proceed changing the agreement a little bit not significant. Um we've basically wanted to model um the same as the original 2018 versus the 2025 uh where the fiscal agent has the responsibility of in hiring and and firing of this position myself um to ensure that this position it it makes it stresses that the fiscal agent does the due diligence of getting that person ready to be in this role um versus making the policy board be more of the push and charge of that. Um, so I'll spend a little bit more time the next time uh when we get clarification if that's how we want to proceed. Uh, additionally, the safety planning document that TTI is working on, um, we'll start to, uh, see a draft version of that here in July. The last two, I'll spend a little high level on functional

classification review. It's just a data. It's our travel demand model. Um, we're working with the Atlanta district. I met with them last week to go over our our current classifications of our network and how we u want to move forward in changing some of it um and how that will impact our region. It's it's a statewide le effort. They're doing a pilot program with three districts. Uh Rebecca Mike could speak to this more Vernon as well. Um but they've chosen Atlanta district to be more rural uh as well as far district and I believe the lic district as well. So you kind of give an urban somewhat rural and somewhat or mid middle of the ground. Um and so they've chosen the Atlanta district which is Tex Arcana NO as well as the Long View NPO. And so we that's Harrison County up county uh just for reference. Um that's where our boundary kind of goes into as well. And so we're on that team to ensure that uh we're leading the efforts of of making sure that our functional classifications work. I don't know if Rebecca if you wanted to say anything else or so functional classification can affect funding federal funding. So that it is important. So there there's recommendations but there's room for the MO text to have a say in in whether or not we agree and it and there 321 segments that are proposed changes. So it's a lot to go through. Yeah. So we'll take our time. I think we have another meeting coming up later on this. do have another meeting come up to go over that and we'll meet internally with the Atlanta district and um her staff to ensure that see what the impacts are. We have about 10. She mentioned 320. We have 10. So, it's a little bit less work on those, but it's still um we're still going through those. And I I know like 271 is uh is one of the ones that we're looking at. And there's a lot of local streaks. Um I'm looking at the Helle area. Lancing switch is another that we're looking at. Uh Mono Drive is another one looking at the city. Uh that's another roadway that and Page Road. Those are just I'm naming like five or six cuz I looked at the list

last week. Um, so I'm missing quite a few, but we are looking at all different types of roadways. It's not solely concentrated on texttop, but we're also looking at local road. It's every every roadway. And and this something they do about every 10 years, correct? So you can imagine traffic volumes change, landscape changes in 10 years, what's changed. Okay, this is no longer a local road, now it's a collector, so on and so forth, and it's what the condition is right now. Um, so it's a little bit different than our regional thoroughfare plan where our regional thorough affair plan talks about the future of what that road needs to be. Uh this is more of just the current conditions of what it serves today. Um so that's kind of what we're looking at. Great. Thank you. Um and then travel demand model development. That's just uh in in conjunction with functional classifications. Uh we do need to update a portion of our model to encompass the newly adopted hosle area. There's a small portion of our demographics that we're missing. Uh so we're going to research that and update our model accordingly. I have some some heavy hitters with the staff updates, but I'd be happy to answer any questions if y'all have any. None for me? Nope. Good. I think that's it. Yeah, that's it. That's all. And with that, we are adjourned. Good job, guys. You're welcome. I know. Look at that.