Citizens Transportation Advisory Committee (2013-2026) Meeting   5/21/2025

Okay, thank you.

Do we have any matters from the public?

I do.

Thank you, Lee.

Yes.

cost-effective, I forwarded it to me, Don, but I can't share it with you.

Thank you.

People over a shoulder might be done with this one too.

There any other matters from the public?

Oh, yeah.

You're welcome to come for the Google Online or that's closed sales.

Thank you.

So we can move on to the next agenda item.

Oh, that's true.

Yeah, Nathan, are you able to join the call this way?

I could be there in person in about 10 minutes, but I'd be glad to be voted in for being present.

But you have to leave your camera and your microphone on.

Just the camera?

Just the camera, not the microphone.

Yes, you'll see inside of my car.

Okay, so does anybody want to bring this to a vote to call the motion to vote for him?

I move that we accept Nathan.

Thank you for that.

Use police force to arrest somebody to try to answer the call for safety.

I think, are you bringing that up as a matter from the public?

No, I think that's great.

I would suggest that we have like a more robust discussion about like what our options are during the bylaws discussions.

We could ask for that first so that we have A, information for us to review so we would then have to respond if we wanted to respond with a letter.

That's a great idea.

Thank you.

Is that something that would be possible for us to like get in plenty of time in the next meeting and then maybe like have something drafted like in between time?

I think that we can form a subcommittee to draft something and then we could bring that and we can put that on the agenda for the next meeting to vote on.

They just don't have a single cross.

That sounds, yeah.

What's going on?

What's next?

Yeah, if we could, yeah, request that information for how they made that decision, and then we could be able to communicate that out better.

And so that's why the state interest is to say we don't want them, we want them.

So trying to prevent that.

Yeah.

I don't know if that's a thing to vote on.

I was going to say the next meeting is in July.

CTAC meeting.

So yeah, I think we wouldn't be requesting not getting into a meeting schedule on discussion, but just finding out.

Does that?

You can do that right now, I think, then continue.

Did you?

Did you raise your hand or just?

Okay.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

Um, okay.

I'm still learning the depths of my power.

OK, great.

All you're doing is requesting information.

So we might have a couple more weeks that we need to work through a little bit with it before we might want to bring that to a vote.

But you're talking about like the actual letter to the city, not the request for information, or do they have to sign up for request for information as well?

Okay.

Yeah, we could draft a letter, bring it to the policy board, get approval from the policy board to submit it to the city.

This body, because it's gonna come from this body, will we have a chance, we're not on the subcommittee, to have input in the letter?

So if you want to be able to review it, you can join the subcommittee.

I mean, and the, yeah.

Okay, that's what the letter's doing.

We're not explicitly saying these are supporting or against this motion.

We need you to say something.

And I also think that our advisory to- Oh yeah, subcommittees are advisory to the committees.

VDOT does have guidelines for certain criteria that need to be met in order for a crosswalk to go in and some of that stuff is up to interpretation and I think that's where there's disagreement so it's just and I was at the city council meeting where people were you know asking about it and it's just it's a very murky issue and so I'm verbally okay with asking for more information especially with the engineering analysis.

I'll follow up with the subcommittee members afterwards.

OK.

The minutes?

Second.

and then go through and do sort of a round table where everybody can bring up their thoughts on them.

Thank you.

I think we can maybe stop at each section if anyone has any comments.

We're going to go back.

Oh, did anyone have any comments on the name?

It's Mel.

I don't have any comments on it.

That's matching.

Planning and proposing highway and road design.

Yeah.

Anyone have any thoughts or comments on that?

Because Lee's had some great ideas on highways, but oftentimes we're not discussing that.

Yeah.

But just whatever.

Part of our mission could be, you know, attending neighborhood meetings or trying to like solicit information more broadly to bring to these meetings.

I think maybe just doing it more, setting up a script to do it more.

I don't know that it requires an amendment, but yeah, to like discuss how the policy board could enact that better, or not the policy board, CTAC can enact that better.

It's a virtual option.

Yeah, a virtual theme deck.

I had no idea.

I actually don't even know if the planning district has its own.

That's also housing and wired planning.

Yeah.

Yeah, I like that.

I think we do have more options.

But if it's not, we should have them remind the public that this is the avenue to that.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

They're here.

They're during the workday still.

So perhaps they could be included in that discussion between, the discussions could be between CTAC and NPO tech and then maybe jointly in from the NPO policy board.

Like what's their, what did they advise on?

They are the experts on transportation.

VDOT engineers.

So we can answer.

I'm sorry, what?

Instead of submitting a request or information to the city, we could just submit this question to the tech committee.

I mean, that would be an option.

Yeah, that would be an option.

Oh, yeah.

So that makes sense.

Yeah.

This is a tangent, but I'm going to put it in the parking lot somewhere that on maybe like once a year or something, we just had like a little 10 minute presentation about how all the parts fit together.

That's something that staff can definitely support.

Be good.

Any other comments about section two?

And they're in the rest of the harm.

engagement, but then we could be like the deep engagement.

When something comes up about Fifth Street, I'm about it, because that's what I believe.

So earlier in the planning process or the drafting process for these?

The thing we suggested is just, you know, we'd be able to offer things rather than look at what's offered and say whether we like it or not.

VDOT typically does, and they say, here's the design and then they say, well, you know, here are comments, but you know, it's already a done deal.

So.

And that's such a like a broad, you're just living on it so broadly that it's hard to get like the very specific feedback of like a specific location.

But that's, we should be doing that for the very specific ones.

Yeah.

For the Veteran Bridge over the Ravana, that kind of thing.

Members shall represent themselves, their areas of interest, and or groups in the MPO area, and should try to represent a diverse range of interests.

That sounds good.

It is fully.

We have three members.

Yeah.

The term is expiring by the end of this month, so we need to review it and come back to your members' applications.

And then, yeah.

OK. Just curious.

Do they have their own application process?

We can follow up on that.

There's a CTAC application there that they can click and submit if they want.

All right.

A question about is it, or one of the five, instead of each team being sort of dying to assume we're after matches.

Non-voting members of CTAC shall include a representative of the Virginia Department of Transportation.

So you've never been going?

We're informed of it.

Not that I'm a Founders originalist with the Constitution or anything else, but I'm wondering kind of where CTAC came from and sort of what was the impetus

No, I think you said it correctly.

Bylaws.

Also, I don't know if people who are curious want that.

And I would also wonder, because the MPO Policy Board, their bylaws also specifies who are the voting members and who are the non-voting members.

So we would have to amend their bylaws, which their bylaws.

That's OK. Yeah.

I'm not power hungry, but.

All right.

That's good.

But we can make suggestions.

Appointed members whose term has expired can continue to fill their seat until a new representative is appointed.

What if they can't?

I don't think that's, that's not in the bylaws.

It's better to pull it back.

Right.

I mean, it is the brainstorm.

Yeah.

Having had an issue with people playing around too long?

Yeah, do we want to recommend term limits?

Yeah, it's just not.

It's kind of good to do like, you know, maybe nine years max and just to get in the way.

And I don't know if there have been issues with people staying on for a very long time without taking a break, but I think it is smart to have something like that.

So we could maybe put in two terms and then you would have to cycle off.

Yeah.

Any other comments on this one?

Maybe Donna, I don't know how long you've been on it.

Yeah, we did then, yeah.

All right, section six, election of officers.

Yeah, well then Section 7 is on subcommittee.

Officers elected in a special meeting shall serve until the first scheduled meeting of the following calendar year.

That sounds fine to me.

I would be sort of democratic in my approach that if individuals want to form a subcommittee, they can.

I mean that's an issue with some institutions.

You'd have to do all the same things.

But it's helpful for kind of the stickiness of, you know, between working meetings.

Is that compliant with FOIA?

It's the same thing if it's more than two people and you're discussing them on the committee.

Okay.

But nothing's going to come of it until the committee reads it and it isn't.

So the panty attorneys of being on this planning commission meeting was that if the emails are going so hard and fast that they could reasonably be considered

Well, interestingly, I serve on SWAC, which is the Solid Waste Alternatives Advisory Committee, and they have subcommittees that only ever have two people.

Oh, funny.

Yes, because there is freedom of association, freedom of speech, and there's all those different things.

Also, we can connect with David Blount, who's our legislative services director, and get his feedback.

I would like advice on that.

So it looks like we need to have two subcommittees.

Yeah, let's have a subcommittee on FOIA regulations, more than I can advise.

Well, I'm trying to remove the, says it isn't necessary to carry out, are you trying to establish something now or?

And then, yeah.

Yes, let's do that.

Right.

Okay.

So that could be the subcommittee meetings, would be the special meetings.

You'd call a special meeting.

Oh, yeah.

That's funny.

Is quorum, is the requirement for us to be all present here for quorum

And so you have to have a quorum present in order to vote for somebody virtually to participate and vote.

But all of the ideas still need the quorum.

And then once there's a physical quorum in this building, then we can allow others to vote.

Just the video, not the audio.

For them to be voted in they have to state a reason and location and if they're more than 60 miles I think.

Yeah.

I'm a prospective guy who graduated

I think it came from the policy board.

Okay.

And so generally, I think all of our committees for the TJPDC follow TJPDC's virtual meeting policy.

Okay.

And we can circulate that around too, if that's helpful for everyone to read.

So I just pulled that up, and I was going to recommend that we add that information to the bylaws, just so that it's in one place that we can review.

So would that be OK?

Yeah, there's a lot more about meetings and voting that we can get through.

So if you need five people, there are only four people here, but there are people online.

Yeah.

Yeah.

One other thing I should say too is that we are allowed to have up to two virtual meetings per year.

No, so it said there was something in this memo too.

It's a week one because we have a January meeting.

Did it mean two or did it mean we could have three virtual meetings a year?

all the county committees all have that, the private committees have that same rule.

We have two meetings per calendar year with 25% of the meetings held per calendar year routed up to the next whole number, whichever is greater.

or two, but it was like kind of unclear to me if it meant two is the max or 50% is the max.

Either way we could do two.

Yeah.

But yeah, that probably should get added here.

That was my, I had one meeting.

Yeah.

December.

Just cause, well, winter isn't that time.

Do you have to give notice that the meeting is going to be virtual?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's good.

I guess we'll add a link to that.

Thank you.

I'm not putting that in there.

Thank you.

So I think if we were a little bit more liberal with that, then yeah, we wouldn't be able to approve the minutes, but we could still make recommendations.

Yeah, we don't often do it and I don't know that it carries any weight anyway.

What do you believe today?

I'm going to ask that everybody write their reasons for voting for them.

making it a burden, you know.

And especially if you only have a meeting once a year, by the time the next year comes around, he's going to remember what happened a year ago.

I don't know what the logistical burden of sending draft minutes out after the meeting would be.

Okay.

Any other comments on the meeting and voting parts?

Alright, we're almost at the end.

A, the planning staff of the TJPDC shall assist the chair and vice chair in the preparation and distribution of the agenda for each meeting, conducting the meeting and preparing the minutes of each meeting.

What about snacks for each meeting?

A dismissed member may apply to be reappointed by the MPO policy board, the city council, or the county board of supervisors, or the member submits his or her resignation.

It seems reasonable.

You should be able to make so many meaningful, so many potential meetings over the years.

And it could be, you know, participating in discussions, soliciting community feedback, like have sort of ideas about that in addition to attending meetings.

We would form a subcommittee to write it.

And B, recommended amendments shall be submitted to the MPO Policy Board for adoption.

That's reasonable.

And you already read that one earlier.

And this is what the policy board said.

Yeah.

So shall I skip it?

So then next steps, I took a lot of notes.

I know I got into a lot of notes.

I'm here.

Yeah.

to vote on these items and then make them the polls that go to the meeting.

Yeah.

Thank you.

But we can speak with citizens if you prefer.

I like that.

You know, I think with the changes to that we've seen in the last 12 years back in section 10, what you just do there might be easier.

Thank you.

Do you just continue until they can no longer continue or weren't?

Yeah.

Anything on that scope?

The speaker fell.

I gotcha.

Sorry.

And back in the day, you went into the depth into this map and you can see more in the final plan.

Was it the same criteria across jurisdictions or at least jurisdiction kind of

the reason why I asked was just that it was a couple spots where like it's purple in the city bonus which is the camera now it's yellow now um what's the time like what years were used to to draw that map uh I didn't know which question um that's a great question the years for the crash data that we used for 2018 to 2022 okay thanks

And with that, we thank you for everything you've done so far in this plan and can move on to the next step.

Yeah, let's move on to the informational section five, the CA-MPO Safe Streets and Roads for All grant application.

Well, she's setting that up.

Oh, yeah, of course.

Also from an industry side, the biggest challenge, and Mike Fontaine would agree if he were here, is risk-based safety design due to minimal VRU crash data and limited understanding of VRU behaviors based on infrastructure characteristics and

What is VRU?

I didn't want to extend it, but any questions?

Is that the chainsaw in Borsheim?

So everyone is expecting that to be available in the next cycle or just like the last.

The notice of funding opportunity is currently out.

I'm curious, what kind of data, what do you expect would be available to the city and county that they'd be able to use in their plans and their projects?

It could look like these are areas between that as thought about, but we can actually get a lot of that.

But if there is a high stress box where someone didn't actually die, you don't see that on the map, but we could produce that kind of thing.

It seems like there is like in the data collection scene, at least like looking at that extra data that's being generated there could be really useful.

There's a slightly different focus in that project, but if they're generating data that we can use, it certainly lasts.

So just wondering, do they have any influence in the process, or do they just get the data at the end, aside from the money?

So does that help?

Okay.

But the deliverable will be to help CA-MPO with their safety plan.

Thanks.

And I think that kind of bolsters that this isn't a big investment for them.

Any other questions?

Thank you.

We have the fiscal year 26 unified planning work program.

Any questions?

Thanks.

There's a staff memo.

We received those updated numbers around the last minute, so there wasn't time to update those, but it just gives you a more detailed overview.

Nothing?

Yeah, that's great.

I think we have lots and lots of things that we've already shared, but if anybody did have anything,

And I know it's really confusing that we do all our surveys at the same time, but we appreciate everybody trying to encourage participation with these very important locations.

Thank you.

Sorry, I know that was very fast.

Would you be able to send those links out to everybody so that we can share them?

I can send these notes to the NPR and they can distribute these, especially since the public hearings tomorrow evening.

I know it's available on the public calendar, but I'd like to know the direction.

The MPO might be on the mailing list, but are you asking if CTAC could be added specifically?

Because I think that also helps address that comment of like, how do we get input earlier on the process, and that is part of

The answer is I don't know, but I am willing to ask somebody how one gets that into the list.

Yeah, there was like the meeting about the Avon, like the pedestrian walkway on Avon and I wasn't, I already had plans when I heard about it.

I think, well, I don't know, we need to double check.

Thank you.

All right.

But no, I think the county is taking seriously its development areas and rural areas to try to be better and do more.

If that's it, then I will adjourn the meeting.

Thank you.