Citizens Transportation Advisory Committee (2013-2026) Meeting   1/28/2026

Yeah.

So then I think, yeah, we should call to order.

Begin the meeting.

Hello, all.

Good to see you.

I think I said in my email, we were really wise to make this one all virtual already.

So good job, CTAC.

Yes, I was just letting Jose Gomez in here.

Perfect.

Yeah.

Ms. Medley?

Present.

Ms. Chen?

Present.

Mr. Gomez?

Present.

Mr. Ethan Heil said he couldn't make it.

Mr. Lee Kondor Present.

Mr. Marty Meth Present.

Mr. Nathan Moore He's not here yet.

Danny Yoder should not be here.

He's transferred to MPO Tech.

Mr. Thompson Present.

Thank you.

I always forget how Zoom works.

Thank you so much.

I think, I believe that

We should all keep our videos on for the whole meeting, right, in order to maintain quorum.

Yes.

Yes.

Yeah, sure.

Yeah.

So this meeting of the Charlottesville Albemarle Metropolitan Planning Organization,

CA-MPO Citizens Transportation Advisory Committee is being held pursuant to the Code of Virginia subsection C2-3708.3 which allows a public body to hold all virtual public meetings.

This meeting is being held via electronic video and audio means through Zoom online meetings

and is accessible to the public.

The method for holding this meeting shall not change unless a new meeting notice is provided.

Should the electronic transmission fail, you may reach out to the TJPDC at jenkins.org

Notice has been provided to the public through notice at the TJPDC offices, to the media, website posting and agenda.

The meeting is held pursuant to the remote electronic participation and all virtual meeting policy is adopted by the CA-MPO.

Policy Board on August 27th, 2025.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

And I see Nathan is here also.

Hello.

So, yeah.

Let me just pull up my agenda again.

I just lost it.

I have too many tabs open.

Okay.

Is there anybody here who would like to speak as a member of the public?

I don't think we have anybody outside of our normal group here, but if anybody wants to speak as a member of the public, then they can have their allotted time.

All right.

It seems like that's a no.

Has everybody had time to review the agenda?

Okay, and a second?

I'll second.

All right, all in favor of approving the agenda?

Aye.

Just raise hands, I guess, or say aye.

Any opposed?

No opposition, so that passes.

Thank you very much.

And then the minutes from the last meeting.

All right.

Sarah, I'm so sorry to interrupt you as chair.

The electronic meetings policy does say that for any action taken by

During an electronic meeting, you have to have audio on and all members have to be heard.

Okay.

Thank you so much for that clarification.

If everybody could unmute themselves and we can go back and approve the agenda.

Any opposed?

Thank you, that is approved.

And then the minute meetings from last meeting, all those who approved those, say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

All right, and so those are also approved.

Thank you so much.

We can move on towards elections.

And so this is the first meeting of the calendar year.

And so we will hold elections for the chair and the vice chair.

Anybody?

I'm not going to be able to hold this position again.

This is my last term.

I'll be up in a couple months.

And I will just make a pitch that working with Taylor and Sarah, like I said in my email, has been wonderful.

I've gotten to learn so much.

And I really appreciate the effort that they put into this work.

So it's really a great experience to learn more about the inner workings of the TJPDC.

Well, I guess I should comment.

I'm a little stacked up right now.

I just got on our property owners association.

because it is a lively time now over in Willoughby and that's really where I want to put my effort.

I also think that I'm maybe coming down to the end of my, I've got a year to go so theoretically I could do it but I'm really not interested in doing that if there was somebody else.

I was kind of thinking of Tom on the theory that if you want something done you give it to a busy man

And I know that Tom is very interested in these types of activities.

So I don't know how you feel about that, Tom.

I was thinking that this happened last time.

And

I got nominated and I took the job.

What about Donna?

I'm actually in the same position as Sarah.

My term is also coming to an end.

Paul Stewart, you've been at before, haven't you?

Yeah, I think I was vice chair, but I think my term's coming to an end as well.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's sort of what I was thinking, too.

If nobody was interested in this, then maybe we know what the future of CTAC looks like.

Some of the newer people, I think Jose, this has been your first year, Nathan or Wai Wai.

Are you all interested in any leadership roles here?

Yeah, I'm not.

Winding down in many aspects, and so I'm focusing on being a decent teacher in my undergraduate and graduate courses, and that's enough right now.

I've got four grandchildren, and that's really where I wanna, so I apologize, but it is not a priority enough to, I wouldn't do a very good job with it.

I know I wouldn't, and I don't wanna,

Madam Chair, I would say based on what we're hearing, it might be prudent to perhaps defer an election of officers

Yes, I think that is a great option.

Thank you.

And I think this might help to influence people's thoughts along this matter as well.

Thank you, Christine.

Okay, so we will defer the election of new members pursuant to what the future discussion holds.

Thank you.

So then we can move on to this new business, the structure of the Citizens Transportation Advisory Committee.

Thanks, everyone.

Could I get a verbal confirmation that you all can see the screen?

Yes.

Okay.

Yes.

Awesome.

All right.

Well, good evening, everyone.

Thanks for joining us for our virtual meeting this evening.

Staff thought it might be helpful for us to just have a couple slides for you, just recapping some of the information that we previously shared about the roles and responsibilities and the decision points of the MPO.

And so I will give us that recap for those items.

And then I'll pass it over to Sarah, who's gonna walk us through a little bit of research that she did on other citizen transportation related bodies in the state at other MPOs.

And we'll give a refresher again on the scenarios that you all saw last time.

And then we will pass it over to the committee for you all to go ahead and have your facilitated discussion.

So as a reminder, MPOs are federally established organizations in areas with 50,000 or more population.

And so most of our responsibilities are actually laid out in federal regulations.

And I will go through those on the next few slides just as a reminder.

So the first and the largest deliverable that we have is a long range transportation plan.

So that's updated every five years.

That is our transportation plan that really sets the regional vision for the multimodal transportation system over the next 20 years.

So that's the largest sort of work item that we have under our control that we are tasked with completing.

Next is the transportation improvement program that's updated every four years.

And that's really a financial document.

So that's a list of projects that are meant to spend federal transportation funds.

They have to be in that document to be able to expend those funds.

The Unified Planning Work Program, or UPWP, is something that we do every year.

That is the MPO's work plan that identifies what activities staff are going to be working on with federal funds every single fiscal year.

Next, we have our performance safety targets.

Those are adopted yearly.

And then we have other performance targets that are on varied schedules.

Those are like bridge condition, pavement condition, asset condition.

Next we have our 3C agreement that is done every five to seven years following a major federal transportation reauthorization, so the big transportation federal bill.

That happens every five to seven years.

That is an agreement that we sign the MPO, its member jurisdictions, the state and transit providers, where we all identify what we are gonna do, what our role is for the transportation planning process in the region.

That's also the document that gives us our MPO structure.

So that's what tells us that we have to have a policy board and a technical committee and which committee is supposed to be doing what activities.

Next, we have our annual obligation report.

That is another financial document that we complete every single year.

That one doesn't require any action.

That's just an accounting of how many federal transportation funds were obligated in the previous federal fiscal year.

Then we're responsible for our MPO boundaries.

That's updated after every decennial census.

So every time we look back at that population to see if there's anything that we need to do to either grow or shrink the MPO's boundaries based on how the populations have changed.

Then we have our public participation plan, which describes how we involve the public in the transportation planning process.

Federal regulations don't identify how often we have to update that.

It just says periodically updated or updated as needed.

And the Title VI plan describes our process for how we comply with the Title VI Act, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, and that has to be updated every three years.

Then we have our travel demand model.

We are currently undergoing an update of that right now.

That gets updated every five years.

That is an analytical tool that's used to support the transportation planning process.

We use that when we update our LRTP.

That's also used for any STAR studies, any project pipeline studies that are related to transportation to help forecast what the traffic network looks like.

Then we have functional classification.

That is a process for how we classify our streets and highways.

So is something a highway?

Is something a local street?

Is something a major arterial?

And that either happens minimally every 10 years or that can actually be updated by request by one of our member jurisdictions.

Next we have SMART SCALE and SMART SCALE happens every two years.

We have a couple of different roles in that one.

So we are an eligible applicant, so we can apply for projects through SMART SCALE, through the state for construction funding.

And then we also support our member jurisdictions by providing resolutions of support for any projects that are within the MPO area.

And then we have various state led plans and studies that we participate on that VDOT leads that we participate as a stakeholder in.

and we have other discretionary grants that we can apply for that we're an eligible applicant for.

So that's the RAISE projects, the BUILD, the Safe Streets and Roads for All, VDOT's transportation alternatives, discretionary grant programs like those.

So as a reminder, out of the 15 MPOs in the state, six of them have a transportation specific citizens advisory committee.

Other than ours, four others in the largest urban areas are active.

And there's a star next to Winchester Frederick County because that one has a citizen committee identified in their bylaws, but there's no evidence of meetings that are currently being held.

It's not active.

There are no minutes, agendas, or anything like that posted.

So out of those citizen-related committees that are actually active, here is just a map, a spatially represented visualization of where those are located.

So just one note for this map is that MPOs, you notice that behind our name, so that's 50,000 people or more, where you see TPO, that is a transportation planning organization, those are in populations of 200,000 or more.

So they are much bigger, they cover

A larger geographic area and they do get some different funding sources that we don't get internally.

And so Sarah can speak to a little bit of that and the research that she saw.

So I will go ahead and pass it over to her to talk a little bit about the research that she's done and what she's seen.

Sarah?

Thank you, Taylor.

Good evening, everyone.

Thank you again for meeting today's CTAC and that was a wonderful refresher from Taylor.

And as we move forward in this discussion, it's just important for us to remember and to not really and to be mindful of the fact that

The MPOs and TPO and TPB that we looked at, Councils of Government, they are all located, like Taylor said, in larger areas, geographically, than our Charlottesville, Albemarle MPO.

As such, their roles and responsibilities are way different than what we would see or what we could see in our region.

And you will see this reflected on each slide

as we provide summaries of our findings in this presentation.

The first one we looked at is the Fredericksburg Area Metropolitan Planning Organization or the FEMPO.

FEMPO does have a CTAC that meets monthly.

For this MPO, CTAC advises their policy committee, which is the equivalent of our MPO policy board here.

They do advise their policy board on citizens' perspectives on transportation planning programs and projects.

They also serve as a platform for public opinion on transportation issues.

In this way, their CTAC serves to encourage citizens' participation

during the planning process.

Example for FEMPO,

for activities that were included in the last meeting, which happened on January 7th, can be found in the hyperlink that were included in the materials.

And these include their complete street survey results, which is a program that we are not currently addressing here at the PDC.

This type of plan addresses safety, accessibility,

Accessibility Needs, and this kind of plan support funding for complete streets in the Fredericksburg area.

They also covered an update on their congestion mitigation and air quality improvement plan, which is a federal aid program that

provides funding for transportation projects or programs that contributes to meeting the requirements that are included in the Clean Air Act.

Again, this is not a program that's required for us here in this region at this moment.

Another example is the Surface Transportation Block Grant, which is the STBG.

One of the most flexible type of federal transportation funding that can be used for a wide range of transportation projects, planning and programs.

So we didn't go in depth into this, but if there are any questions or resources that you would like to dive deep into, we could provide a link to shed more lights on that.

If we can move on the next slide, please.

So the next MPO we looked at is the Hampton Roads Transportation Planning Organization, HRTPO.

The HRTPO has a community advisory committee, which is a CAC that meets six times a year.

And they do advise to their TPO, the equivalent of our MPO, and to their PDC, HR TPO and HR PDC.

Their mission is to provide community viewpoints on regional issues, any issues including strategies, funding, priorities, and really just to be part of their decision-making process at their TPA level or MPO level.

and their PDC level.

Their CAC listens to community members' point of view.

They help to allow the voice of the community to be heard at the board and their commission level.

And similar to us, their chair is responsible to communicate their work back to their policy board and their commission.

Examples of programs and plans they provide

can also be found on that agenda but they include congestion mitigation, congestion management process for example at their last December meeting they also went through an overview of their membership approval for their committee they received similar to what we discussed last meeting updates on just an informational basis on the LRTP prioritization process

They received a public survey, updates for their Hampton Roads strategic plan.

They also received an informational update on their fiscal year 27 and 2030 TIP draft project list.

Next slide, please.

The third MPO we looked at is the National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board, National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board, which is a TPB.

This is a council of government that covers multiple states from the District of Columbia, Virginia, and Maryland.

And they do have a community advisory committee.

They meet once a month, and they provide advice to their TPB on all the activities reflecting their diverse point of view.

Yeah, so they provide advice to their board and they offer comments on all the activities of the TPB.

Their mission is focused on transportation matters for their region to

heavily promote public involvement to advance equitable representation and to provide independent region-oriented advice.

This is the largest region of all of what we saw.

And at their last meeting, they received, for instance, a briefing on their general TPB agenda.

This TPB agenda is similar to what we have started offering to CTAC

era MPO level just describing the activities that the policy board is considering or the activities and decisions that the policy board is discussing and things like that.

They also received an update on their UPWP, which is the Unified Work Planning Work Program.

They covered a DMV move projects, which is a transit legislative efforts that is being pursued by the region.

They had the opportunity similar to us to discuss their CAC work plan.

And they also have a round table for their committee members

And the final MPO we looked at is the Richmond Regional Transportation Planning Organization or RRTPO.

The RRTPO also does have a CTAC,

The CTAC meets bimonthly, just like us, and advises to the Poor Sea Board.

The mission of the CTAC is to advise the Poor Sea Board on issues as well, plans, studies, and anything that is necessary and appropriate for viable and reasonable citizen's input.

If you have time, if you haven't already, you can click on the link that is attached in the agenda to see examples of activities that

They received at the last meeting in January 15th, 2026.

And these examples include the LRTP engagement updates.

They had a member share where they received a general assembly transportation update.

Their CTAC also does provide assistance in developing community events for promotional activities.

They also play a direct role in representing their TPO with staff

At different public events in the communities.

So with that, if we roll back to the three scenarios that we discussed at the November 19th meeting

The first scenario we looked at, which is in the memo that we shared last time, nothing changed.

It's just the same memo.

And for the first scenario, CTAC would remain the advisory committee for the MPO, just for the LRTP.

Like Taylor said, this is our largest deliverable.

This scenario would allow CTAC to advise the board on this main plan we have most control over.

In this scenario, staff is suggesting that CTAC would continue to meet every month as an advisory committee to the policy board.

And this simply means that during the development and the updating process of the LRTP, CTAC would be meeting every month and CTAC would meet the rhythm of the other MPO committees, which are MPO Tech and MPO Policy Board.

And during the non-LRTP years, which we are calling here off years, CTAC would have to meet once a year and would receive updates on the LRTP amendments or implementation progress when applicable.

That's the second scenario.

Scenario two would

Allow CTAC to meet bi-monthly, just like as we are doing now.

And in this scenario, CTAC would have the opportunity to provide a recommendation to the policy board on the plans that we have listed on this slide, which are the public participation plan, Title VI plan,

annual unified planning work plan, the LRTP and SMART SCALE.

In addition, CTAC would also still receive informational updates on the transportation improvement programs when there are amendments or adjustments

on the STARS and pipeline projects.

The STARS are the strategically targeted affordable roadway solutions.

CTAC will receive an update on the regional travel demand model on the federal functional classification and CTAC would continue to be welcomed to attend the MPO tech and the policy board meeting for informational matters.

Also CTAC would really play a role to support the MPO

Regional Transportation, Education and Outreach.

This would mean that for all matters being considered by the policy board, CTAC would support the board to disseminate that information with community members in their own networks.

And for the third scenario, the third scenario would consist of concluding CTAC as a formal committee.

However, if this were the case, the MPO would continue to engage in public engagement on a project specific basis.

And the MPO would continue to lean on activities that are included in our current MPO engagement plan in Title VI and examples that

would be considered include but not limited to project surveys, pop-up events, tabling, and so on and so forth.

Thanks, Sarah.

I appreciate it.

So the last slide that we have here, this is another one that was included in that previous presentation that we brought before you.

And this was just a listing of what we found for other local citizen advisory committees in the community.

So that includes, I'm sure a lot of you are already familiar with the CACs in Albemarle County, all of those that have a staff rep and a board liaison that attend those.

Charlottesville Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee, or BPAC.

Charlottesville previously had a place design task force, and then Charlottesville Area Transit previously had a transit advisory board that was requested, but that one is not currently active.

And so with that, next steps, of course, is for you all to have your discussion and talk through.

We're happy to answer any questions about what we've presented, any of the research that we've done.

Why, why?

Yeah, thank you for the presentation.

It was very informative.

And I think the main question for me is like, like, beside this long range planning activities in during the off years, like we still can provide like citizen input, collect those input and provide that

Yeah, like any policy decisions made at policy board, right?

MPO policy board.

And in the policy board, there are also kind of major decisions made regardless of long range plan documents, right?

So my- Waiwai, I don't mean to cut you off, but if I could clarify for a sec, because I've been listening to your past conversation and then how I heard you phrase that, I think it's important to remember that the SMART SCALE applications

The Policy Board is really deciding if the MPO is going to move forward with putting the application in versus dictating or reacting or

driving the design of the smart scale project.

So sometimes we ask, especially when it's across jurisdictions at the policy board, like, you know, I might ask the city for a project that's based in the city, some questions about the design or vice versa, but we walk in with direction from our boards on the applications.

It's just a matter of what, and of course the state changed what the MPO can even apply for this in the past round.

So the decision ultimately comes, yes, are we going to submit and commit MPO staff time to the submission of these applications?

Yeah, thanks for the clarification.

So I think if we're thinking about that first scenario where CTAC would be a committee of the long range transportation plan, outside of those plan updates, there would really just be one meeting per year just for an update.

Like, have there been any changes to the LRTP?

Where have we gone with implementation?

Have projects received funding?

Have they moved forward?

That level of updating, if we're speaking about the first scenario.

So I think the policy decisions for CTAC would be in helping to define that

Yeah, my question was not about the particular scenario, but like the main role of this committee to me is I collect and accumulate like citizen input and provide that to policy board for whenever they make decisions.

So my question is like, what are the

And I think the distinction is to, is it something that needs to come from a committee for feedback purposes?

Or is it something that if people are interested, can they just show up to an MPO meeting and give public comment?

And what is the value of having it be committee based and all these

Thank you for the comment.

That's really a good point.

Yeah, and I can flip back.

Oh, sorry.

Oh, it was me.

And I just, I see Stuart has his hand raised.

Yeah, thanks, Stuart Gardner.

Just a question generally, do we have any sense if the policy board feels like public comment outside of CTAC has been adequate?

because I kind of see CTAC's role is filling a gap if there isn't public comment but if the policy board feels like there's an effective model outside of CTAC and they're getting feedback that they need to make decisions then that certainly reduces the role or need of CTAC.

Any sense if public comment is adequate outside of CTAC currently?

I mean, adequate is an interesting word.

A lot of the public comment we feel that the policy board or a majority is probably more in line with how our roundtables go at the end.

We have groups that are

Like Peter Krebs is a frequent flyer, public comment.

And Peter's informed.

He will comment on things that we're discussing to add commentary because it's his only way to, right?

He's not sitting at the table.

And he'll give public announcements to things that are transit related or related to the topics that he knows people in the room will be grateful for.

You know, I'm trying to think of times when we've received public comment on the things we're voting on.

You know, when we're just voting on adjustments to TIP, we're not getting public comment on that.

I mean, these are perfunctory.

Let's move money from one category to another.

They don't even get a lot of discussion from the policy holders.

We do have some folks that are engaged with this who will chime in on designs, but they use all their venues to do that as well.

And I'll use Lee as an example there.

Lee, like outside of this committee, I know Mr. Kondor is going to get his point across to somebody, and he's probably going to do it in multiple places and points.

So he doesn't lose that but that's more you know and I think those the rest of you in the room are probably like that that you're going to get to the places where you know you can have the impact.

In thinking in the history of things that were decisive votes the policy board doesn't really take a lot of votes that are that are real controversial I guess would be the maybe the best word and I can think of one

It was up to the policy board to decide on the bike ped bridge that we're considering from Pan Tops over to across the river.

The placement of where the bridge was going to land on the Willam Mills side, the policy board made that decision.

And one option was in the city and one option was in the county.

So, you know, the city folks I think had a lot more constituent reaction because of course it was impacting homes and streets that it could land on, etc.

So there was actual, I do remember there being public comment and emails sent to us to help inform the policyholders on that.

We also received it at our normal

And our day jobs, if you would.

Well, and rightfully so, right?

Because one of the options was going to put it right between two houses.

And if I could add something about the kind of feedback is if there are like STARS projects and larger VDOT projects that are being decided on different like version A, version B, version C, that has its own public comment separate from our vote

or discussion at MPO where they do outreach, they do surveys, they'll do a meeting where people can go and give feedback to that and then that feedback is presented to us with the presentation of the project.

So there's hardly ever additional in-person feedback on those items.

I will just chime in a little bit about that last comment before we went into this discussion about what is the value of having a committee perhaps outside of these public engagement meetings.

And one of the things is that for the public engagement meetings, of course, the stakeholders who show up usually have something to win or lose in the particular project that is being decided.

So I think the difference between this committee, which is appointed before any of these public engagement things come up, is that it's probably a more representative voice of

I don't want to say your average citizen because it is citizens who definitely care about transportation, regional transportation, but also that there is some stability in the knowledge that if they are meeting regularly and being updated regularly about these activities, there is a flow of knowledge from meeting to meeting that is consistent rather than the folks who show up at public comment meetings where they're only reacting to the information they've been presented at that one particular

It is different being able to see all the way from the long range transportation plan down to specific tip lists, down to what are we applying for in terms of VDOT Smart Scale projects.

Right, it's more like your at-large representation instead of, it's my neighborhood, I need to react, represent you.

I'm not here because it's touching my property, right?

Yeah, I think that's a really good point.

And to just add to that, I think also the representation of the public is skewed in terms of income level and disabilities and so on and so forth.

If you're working on multiple jobs, it's not easy to participate in these public meetings.

And sometimes public meetings are during the hours that's really not accessible for those who work long hours.

So a potential option for this committee's role is maybe playing a little bit more active, proactive role, collecting those voices.

Thank you.

Hey, I, um,

Just wanted to kind of be a little realistic about where we've been as a committee.

I've been on this for about two years, and I have learned a lot from the VDOT reports.

I've learned a lot from what we're applying for in terms of SMART SCALE and otherwise, and some of the other studies that are going on.

I also don't feel like there's a lot of actual citizen input happening right now.

And I don't mean that in a bad way.

I just mean that like, you know, the long range transportation planning process kind of like set the watch and now it's going.

I don't know how much we need to, I don't know how much we need to meet.

And I know I said this last meeting and I do see that there could be a potential use for this committee in terms of

I think if nobody has any specific questions, this might be a great opportunity to move towards everybody voicing their opinion.

I would go around and call on each member so that everybody could say that.

I have my timer here, so I'm gonna just try this, you know, be a little bit authoritative in my role.

Let's see, I'm putting you all on gallery.

And so I'm going to call on all of the members of CTAC to state your opinion, voice your comments.

We'll just go through.

I would like for everybody to say something, depending on if you don't have anything to say, you can just say no comment.

Okay, well, Supervisor Callaway mentioned I tend to be an advocate for transportation designs, so I like to get involved, get my hands dirty,

And yeah, not just for something that's in my backyard, but anything that is in the planning district and even beyond.

But, you know, as Supervisor Galloway pointed out, I can do that anyway.

And, you know, my term is ending on this committee, so I guess I don't, yeah.

I can't say that I've ever seen the committee take a vote on anything that had any particular influence.

So at the end of the day, we don't accomplish a lot.

I'm sorry to say.

So I guess I'm content when I want to voice my opinion, I'll just go to the meeting and do so to the MPO meeting, policy board meeting.

Okay, thank you, Mr. Kondor.

Sure, why not?

I came to this committee with some high hopes about getting involved in public transportation, not so much in automobiles, and we never really did that.

I find meeting once every two months, I think this is a reframe

Very hard to keep track of what's going on.

I would vote to disband the committee.

There are other avenues to gather public information.

In fact, the committee tried to do outreach.

I remember before you came on as Sarah and nothing ever came of it.

So I'm a little bit in this camp of we haven't done anything.

There are other ways of doing it.

Albemarle County has, as noted, six CACs.

It would be nice if in the interim period between each update for the LRTP, for the long range plan that the staff came on once or twice to each of those committees, they'd get good feedback.

Thank you, Mr. Meth.

Thank you very much.

I guess my sense of it is just reading the committee is a lot of frustration, which I myself feel as well.

It seems to be that

You know, within the mass of this committee, there's a great deal of energy, which exists in two states.

There's about, I'm holding my fingers, let's see, about that much kinetic energy, and then about, you know, that much potential energy.

And I think the people here would like to have a little more input and have

I've heard a couple people say we really aren't doing anything, and we'd like to get over that hump if we can.

In terms of, and if we are so restricted, then probably just banding is the thing to do, because otherwise you just have a bunch of frustrated people.

However, the first

It was many years ago and it was because I was walking down the street with a little time to kill and there was a meeting going on and I always wondered what they do in there so I stuck my head in the door and I was invited in and then as now the citizens sat in the outer circle of chairs so I was staring at the back of some guy's head and he was

How do we reach them?

What do they think?

And I was glancing out the door as a bunch of the citizenry were going to and fro on the sidewalk.

My first thought was, this guy's a moron.

They're right there.

But as he warmed to his subject, I understood what he was saying.

It is very difficult, unless there really is something.

But- Mr. Healy, your two minutes are up.

Anyway, the point is that we are the public until something better comes along.

Thank you very much.

In my mind, the role of CTAC is to write a forum for citizens and public feedback, plain and simple.

And I think the examples that were presented of other CTAC

you know type things I really appreciate that and I thanks for the work that was put in to do that but if there's no true advisory impact if feedback from the citizens that participate in CTAC if that's not considered then this model is is ineffective

And I think we're seeing that kind of in the morale of the organization.

If we were all jazzed and felt like our opinions mattered, you'd have people volunteering to be chair and vice chair, and there'd be a lineup of people saying, oh, I want to do it next time.

So I think, as other people have stated, there's a sense that the feedback that's provided by CTAC is not actually considered or doesn't actually have impact.

So I think that's one challenge.

And I think going back to the most important issue is, you know, is there a forum for everyday people to voice their concerns outside of hot button issues?

So that for me is the value of keeping CTAC to have a voice.

But if there's no real impact, then it's hard to defend it long term.

Thank you very much.

I agree with the sentiment that CTAC and its current structure is pretty ineffective in that we're being asked to basically be the point of information dispersion amongst our own networks and I think we do that to some extent, but we are not as effective as professional outreach PR folks or communications avenues.

It actually doesn't make much sense.

Same thing with what Stuart said.

I think people were excited to join here because they wanted to provide feedback.

I was under the impression when I first joined that perhaps this role described as advisory meant that we would be advising on MPO activities, but it seems like it's mostly a one-way avenue where something is being presented to us, but there's not a lot of

There's no room to actually provide input.

So I think in its current format, it's very ineffective and I would almost support disbanding it as it is currently.

However, I do think that if people wanted to consider the restructuring of CTAC as a way to have informed citizen input, a knowledge base that is continuous, whether it's monthly or bimonthly meetings or whatever it is, I think it can be really valuable.

Thank you, Donna.

Thank you, Ms. Chen.

Yeah, I don't want to restate what all so eloquently has been said by Stuart and Donna and others.

And I will honor my commitment to the organization as best I can.

But I was in an organization where we had advisory committees, and my expectations on what the role was and what it is are way different.

Thank you very much, Mr. Gomez.

Yeah, as Jose mentioned, advisory groups, I think generally struggle.

I've been a part of them in different levels.

And that's just been my common experience.

And I do think there's a big need for more citizen input into

A broad sense of transit and transportation issues.

And as noted earlier, I used to be on the CAT advisory board and it hasn't functioned in six or seven or eight years.

I don't know that this is the right model in pondering it, partially because the MPO is so geographically small in the scheme of things, and that we really aren't talking at very broad macro levels.

It tends to be more a lot on an intersection project.

And that's not, I don't think that's working very well.

You know, the last meeting, the key to CTAC, and there's I think at least one voice missing today, there was more energy around continuing, but I'm certainly clearly hearing a lot less now.

I think if anything, you know, maybe the Model 1 works, Model 2 is kind of trying to carry on, and I hear this is not really working for anybody.

And I'm still not really clear on what the MPO Policy Board really would want or need out of us.

That's what I thought we were going to get last year that we were waiting for and waiting for.

And instead we got a memo of three models and I still really haven't heard what that could be.

And maybe if we can't hear that, maybe there's nothing there.

I would say if we do end up disbanding, which I would be okay with, I really would ask the city and county to try to find better ways to getting the word out about how citizens can

communicate where they go, how to do it.

I know in some levels, a lot is done.

And I know county staff particularly gets frustrated that they do a lot and people don't show up.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Thompson.

I already shared some comments I would echo probably Donna and Peter a lot that we do definitely need ways for citizens to be able to you know engage but I think we kind of have them in a lot of these decisions a lot of these processes are well publicized and I think

You know, it's funny, before I got on this board, I had no idea that CTAC MPO existed.

And I'm here as a representative from the Planning Commission.

But I think that might speak a little bit to how, you know, we just don't have a lot of that idea of us being a conduit between like the public

and the decision makers is not really working out.

I do think there's a really good role for this committee to play when we're doing long range transportation planning.

So I guess I would kind of lean toward a number one.

But yeah, I think in the meantime, I'm not sure quite what we're doing except for like

I'll give my feedback too.

I appreciate all the work that the TJPDC puts into this committee, but it does feel ineffective.

I felt that way since before I was chair and then when I was chair sort of realizing that even more I think it would be exciting to have a bigger voice and more responsibilities and I think otherwise it feels like

Yeah, just ineffective.

And our voices aren't actually being considered in decision making.

And a lot of the decisions being made aren't really necessary for citizen input, you know, about the TIP planning and everything.

And so I would actually recommend for option one for having more input meeting monthly during the long-range transportation meeting and having a larger role in that process, maybe even a larger CTAC that would have more community engagement and then otherwise meeting annually just for a review of what's gone on over the year.

So that is

is my thought.

Thank you all for sharing your opinions.

This has been really interesting to hear.

If anybody else has any other comments to make, we can do, maybe try to raise hands or we can just go towards sort of question and answer.

I'd also love to hear from Mr. Galloway and Ms. Ochon about their feelings about CTAC.

Yeah, just one thought while listening to your comments.

I think one of the big challenge that we felt kind of ineffective is that it's so kind of focused on like VDOT project, I feel.

It's all like highways and lots of those project rather than like transit or bike networks that many of us feel strongly about.

And I'm wondering where that comes from, where that structural problem comes from, and why we cannot really have a kind of MPO level strategies.

regarding those type of alternative modes.

So that's one thought.

And I agree with Sarah that if the main thing that this body can provide is long range planning input, then it may make sense to have more frequent meetings and more kind of sessions during that one cycle and less during the off cycle.

Thank you.

Sarah, I'd like to just go back.

I'd like to go back again, just re-emphasize one thing I said, which I think sort of slipped through.

Doing the one year period is an interesting way of going forward, but you have the other four years.

And again, I want to say that at least in Albemarle County,

We have a way of reaching out to the communities through our CACs and it would be good if the staff went out as they're preparing the long-range plan to go into each of the CACs.

You would really get a lot of interesting input

without having to try to get people together.

It's almost a captured audience.

I don't know what you do about Charlottesville because all the committees don't seem to be, there doesn't seem to be a real conduit.

But I think the county could provide, if you want to provide that model, a way of getting input before you put together the final plan.

I also recognize that I'm on some other committees

We are not a legislative committee.

We provide advice.

And so you have to recognize that as well.

We provide some advice, some of it's taken, some of it isn't, and that's the way it goes.

But I want to go back to that model of going through at least Albemarle County to the various CACs and using staff.

And I want to say one other thing.

I really appreciate the staff work.

It's been really high quality in all the time I've been there.

And I think we should acknowledge that.

Thank you.

The city does have the neighborhood committees, but it's really variable how active those are.

Thanks.

I mean, when you're ready, I'm happy to engage.

I'm sure Councilor Ashwin is as well.

All right.

Thank you, everybody, for serving on this, for our line of people have been on this for various lengths of time.

So thank you for that engagement.

It is interesting that, okay, let me back up to when I first joined NPO, YY, your comment is spot on.

I too was confused about why are we just talking about massive road projects?

This is not what I'm interested in.

This is not what I campaigned on.

This is not what I want to see.

Don't widen a road.

Like, stop it.

We know that car dependency is bad.

We know that it's fundamentally unscalable.

Why do we keep doing this?

So I'm in that same boat with you and probably some other people in this Zoom as well, which is, this is not what I wanted to work on.

So I had to shift that kind of, that energy

We got a really great presentation late last year about the history of MPO and what its deal is basically, which I thought was super useful.

I know I met with staff before I joined, which was really great, but having it all laid out like that kind of filled in some of those gaps for me.

I talked to

Councilor Fleischer before she joined and I was like go watch that presentation that's gonna help you a lot because it is different than that you know we you know we in the city we have our bike ped advisory

I forget if it's advocacy or advisory, but the BPAC group there is where I focus my energy and that's where we can communicate really well about the bike-ped stuff.

It is good to have channels with VDOT though for these larger projects when we can incorporate shared use paths and that sort of thing, but I do feel like a lot of that stuff comes out of the technical committee conversations, not

By the time it gets to policy board again, we're kind of, it's been cooked.

So I, we don't get a lot of public opinion day of or during the discussion.

Design stuff goes through technical committee.

So that doesn't even really make it to us either.

I'm having trouble recalling, and this is not on,

any of you because I joined post the recent long-range transportation plan, I believe.

So I don't have a strong memory of ever really getting input from CTAC on things, probably because there hasn't been much to comment on.

So if the energy is going towards disband, I think that does make sense because

It's not something we're really relying on at this time.

But again, I haven't been through the long range part and gotten feedback during those times.

So it might be different.

Ned has a different view of that maybe.

But also, both scenarios, one, especially scenario two, is like asking a lot more of you than the committee currently is right now.

And if that's something that

I mean, given the morale and the energy that we've gotten so far, especially during the conversation for officers, I don't know if that's the kind of thing that people, it doesn't seem like people are super interested in that, in actually having like assignments, here, go talk to 10 people and report back what you think, or that kind of aggressive, active outreach.

That would be kind of the only thing that

That would be useful for a committee like this.

But then where does that feedback go?

Does it filter in through technical committee first and not actually to us?

Because that's where the kind of sausage is getting made.

But again, there are those public outreach options already.

So I am comfortable with either scenario.

Knowing that that scenarios one and two are a lot more work and would you all be interested in doing that?

I'm not super getting up that vibe.

I have heard actually that a lot of us would be interested in doing more work if it was asked for us and useful.

And also I know that the TJPDC does a lot of its own outreach.

And so during all of these processes, they are engaging with the communities through different avenues.

And so like that's already sort of baked into their workflow in a way that's outside of what's been described so far.

But that's just me.

I know it's a lot to ask to show up to more stuff and to do more things for you all, but if it was changed to be like, okay, here's a task, call up the same 10 people every time, that shifts CTAC to more of like an active focus group scenario.

I mean, however scenario two ends up getting designed for, let me pull that back up,

for more outreach.

I will again re-emphasize that I don't think it's the same thing, right?

We have the body here that discusses amongst ourselves.

We kind of have some sense of how, like what each other's position is that it's very different than us going off to these meetings on our own on

something and to be honest I won't be going to those unless they have some immediate impact on my neighborhood and just like someone was talking about the CACs I mean we have the neighborhood committees but really we only hear about the projects that are right here in my neighborhood right like I've really not a whole lot going on with other areas in the region so I think I somebody used the word here

Focus Panel.

Yeah.

And I would also say that like a lot of the times when we find out about something that's about to be voted on because we only meet bimonthly and sometimes things come up on short terms, like by the time we hear about it, you've already had the presentation and the MPO and the policy board.

And so there is no mechanism for citizen feedback through that.

And that's just

That's just how it is.

I mean, there's nothing to change unless we are making much more frequently, which nobody wants to do in its current iteration.

Right.

So, and Donna, I totally, absolutely understand what you're saying about having, it's like why there's

Yeah, I'm wondering what happened between your November meeting and this meeting, the winter blues or the ice and the snow.

But I mean, I appreciate everyone's input.

And just to put it into perspective, about a year ago, I started hearing from some of the Albemarle County folks what I've heard from other committees.

This is not abnormal, as you heard, as some had said in your comments, for an advisory committee to go through.

So it's a good point to do a check-in and a recheck and what's purpose, et cetera.

and then we had conversations with the chair vice chair over the summer and then that then we brought it to the policy board to go hey this is on the radar we've got some

We got some issues that we got to iron out and work out.

So that's what kind of brought us to this particular point.

Before I kind of break down what I've heard in two different evenings, the November meeting y'all had and tonight, I want to say that from a standpoint of if this moves forward in some fashion, I think there are great models out there on which

to compare it against given the modern time.

I don't mean, this isn't a brag on our Albemarle County CACs.

Some of them are less functional than others.

And they struggle because some of the CACs find themselves more as advocates versus advisors.

And the advocacy versus advisory is a critical, critical point.

Our CACs can take votes, but they don't.

But they're basically, I think when I've seen my CAC, which is a highly functional CAC, take a vote, it's because there were like 10, 4, 11 against.

And the only way to decipher

Meaning from it was to take the vote so you could count it.

But most of the time, you know, it's function for us as a county, as an elected.

I'm there as a liaison, so I don't vote, I don't do anything but show up, report on the county stuff, hear questions and concerns, and then we kind of operate the way we do.

But it's definitely a two-directional type of thing.

So the function for the county is for rezoning applications, for example,

The developers must do a community meeting.

Well, it used to be that they would just schedule those and be on their own.

Well, now they come to the CAC meeting in the right geographic area.

And at the very least, they know they're going to get highly informed people, the CAC members, to respond to the application.

That's a minimum, which if they go off and they do their own and there's no additional public folks, nobody shows up.

So there's just no feedback.

Then you get the other extreme, which happened in my CAC this past Thursday, where we had too many people to fit in the room and they were all in the hallway trying to get in, standing room only, people sitting on the floors.

I mean, it was a 60 plus people attendee type of meeting.

And it's the first stop along the way of many points where citizens can engage and provide comment and feedback.

And then the CAC grapples with that.

So when I was hearing the November meeting and then this meeting, there's a lot of advocacy interest in this group.

It's just unfortunate that the MPO is not an advocacy body.

So advocacy has to be left to other means.

And that's not just an MPO piece.

That's almost everything under the TJPDC umbrella.

because different jurisdictions are involved.

And this is where the TJPDC is the nexus of regional collaboration, but it's not one jurisdiction telling the other what to do or advocating, it's sharing what you're doing and then we work through any regional issues that come up.

But advocacy is really about you take a stance and you push that stance.

And advisory is really about we need all opinions and we need your help to bring those to us.

So the one person that maybe votes no on something if there was a vote versus the 20 that vote yes is as important in an advisory capacity than advocacy.

So as a policy board member, I would not be supportive of continuing the body and having staff resources spent on advocacy.

That has to be, there's different roles and different functions for that.

And there's a lot of organizations outside of government organizations to fulfill that advocacy need.

At advisory, however, I think there's a use and an important use for that.

And I think that all of the responsible points for this particular group have had some breakdown and a lack of focus since the transportation plan.

And I'll break it into three pieces.

I think the policy board really has to step back and take responsibility for what the clear purpose and direction of this committee is.

So we've just not had to grapple with that discussion for a while.

And whether that's a long range transportation plan at a minimum, we don't need it.

It's extra stuff.

It can be all of those, but we have to have that discussion and go, do we want them?

If we do, what for?

And then define that in a very clear way.

I think the staff then needs to define along with the policy board what the clear process is because if the direction's clear but the process doesn't happen at the right points then you like somebody said well we get the information but then we found out the policy board already got it.

Well, if it's informational, the reason we gave it to you is we hope you would disseminate that out to the community as an informed citizen and talk about it.

But if it's at the beginning of something we want your feedback on, then you have to be the start.

You have to be stop one in the path to the policy board.

I think that process becomes clear based on the direction.

For our functionality in Albemarle CAC, it is the first stop in citizen engagement for a rezoning.

If it's budget though, it's usually an informational point to say to these citizens, here's where we're at, here's what we know, take this out to your community.

And by the way, tell them these are the public hearings where they can come talk about it.

And then the responsibilities on those members to go push that information out into their neighborhoods.

I think the third point then, and this I think is on the committee members, is clear engagement expectations.

If the purpose is clear and we've got a great process to support it, then you all as members have to go, how are we holding each other accountable for engagement where it's not just showing up and listening at the meeting?

Are we doing the work to push out to the community the information that's vital, but then gather information so that when we go in and nobody shows up, we're not just asking the questions because of my background and my own interest.

But I'm here representing 10 people, 30 people because I've had some discussion.

Hey, this is coming up and where do we go with that?

Now, again, I'm spoiled just because I have an advisory committee that works that way.

So I know it can work.

So you know if we continue forward and I'm happy I mean the policy board is expecting to have this conversation so we'll have to structure it for them.

I don't know if it'll be presenting the options like you all have done.

I think that as the current chair and you know I mean obviously Natalie can weigh in but I'll be saying to others I think we need to really decide

what the purpose is.

At a minimum in my own brain, I think it has to exist for the long range transportation plan.

I don't think it just disbands and we don't use it.

But even then we have to get better at what's the clear direction now because frankly it's just different than it was 20 years ago.

Public engagement has changed tremendously in that timeframe.

There are some constraints that we'll have to work in no matter what happens.

Current budget of staff time can't grow.

So whatever exists moving forward has to at a minimum stay within the current budget.

So if anything gets pushed beyond that, committee members would likely have to take on some responsibilities to make that work.

Now, I don't think that's the answer.

I think you work within your constraints.

But the MPO, they are budgeted very specific from Charlottesville and Albemarle and what they pay into the PDC.

So we have to stay underneath that.

And then we have to stay in the umbrella of the charge of the MPO.

So I know that bike ped and transit are big issues, but a lot of times bike ped and transit are updates we receive from other things, not actual votes or actions that we're taking.

They're involved in a smart sale application because it's multimodal and there's pieces that are within it.

But a lot of times, like in our roundtables, we'll get updates from CAT and Jaunt.

You know, the advocacy groups will come out.

Like I'd mentioned, Peter Krebs will come out and give us updates in public comment.

and then transportation planning staff all give their roundtable pieces.

But to have a pressure point on or an advisory or advocacy position on like a bike ped plan or a transit plan, then we have to direct you to CARTA for transit and frankly to the city and the county for projects or how bike ped gets moved into their transportation priorities.

Because the things you would be missing in this group

Outside of SMART SCALE are all the other transportation priorities both jurisdictions handle.

Because remember MPO only touches a portion of Albemarle.

It's not the whole county.

So for folks that are interested in bike ped outside of whatever the MPO's jurisdiction or boundaries, rural transit as an issue, those type of things we'll get reports on and updates on if we're involved with grants or if any studies have been done, but we won't take actually take any action on it other than maybe say, yeah, then we'll sign off on the grant and the PDC being the grant holder.

So that's just me kind of reacting and responding to what I heard from the November meeting and tonight.

We'll have to figure out a path forward just because we're the policy board.

And I don't take any inference at this point about your

Nobody wanting to be chair or vice chair or any of that because if I were in your seat, then I would feel very similar to the way you do right now.

In fact, I have because I'm appointed to different committees and boards and there are times where I'm like, what the hell is this committee doing?

And when you have so many to sit on, and I know several of you on the county ones do sit on multiple boards, that your time matters to you and you want it to be productive and useful and feel like you're actually accomplishing something even if it is just advisory.

Natalie and I will, I'm sure she recommended we do a debrief, don't mean to give away the sausage making, but I know that's part of this that we will be talking about.

I know that Supervisor Malek will be interested, and I'm sure Jen, who's getting up to speed as a new counselor, will be interested in hearing how we can move this forward.

We'll do it in a public conversation, so at the very least, I would imagine Sarah may continue in that role, but you're all welcome to

to join in virtually or in person.

And we'll discuss what we think we need as a policy board from this group.

My hope would be we would make a recommendation to come back for your feedback to see where you're at and go from there.

And I'm happy to field, I'm sure Natalie is as well based on our comments, any questions that are there if needed, but that's where I'm at right now.

And go ahead, yeah, somebody else, I didn't see the hand.

Yeah, I just want to say, Ned, that's a very thoughtful response.

And I, for one, totally support your logic and path forward.

So thanks for that.

Yeah, I want to echo that.

The one request I would have of staff is I would just like to remain on the mailing list for the policy board agendas.

That way at least I know what's going on.

So even if I'm off the committee or the committee goes away or whatever, I'd like to remain on that emailing list because that's very little effort and shouldn't cost anything.

And if y'all want to learn more, I've got, what do I got?

I've got two current CAC members in Lee and Marty.

I've got Nathan who's a liaison to the board as I am.

And Peter is an immediate past member when he was up to his point where he was running the center.

So they have some good input or insight, I guess is the better word into how our CAC worked.

All right.

Thank you so much for all of your input in this discussion.

I think maybe we need to revisit the election for the chair and the vice chair.

And chair, can I ask a question before you all decide that?

Please do.

I knew that you were going to ask me that and until 10 minutes ago, I didn't have access to our network.

I mean, realistically, the pragmatist in me

If Sarah and Donna would be willing to continue for a meeting or two, maybe you defer your officers until this is ironed out.

Because then once you have, I mean, at some point we're going to have very clear direction for the committee.

And then at that point, I think then you could have folks that go, I'm ready to make that work on the committee's behalf, et cetera.

Thank you.

I've got them pulled up.

It says, I can read the two bullet points on my end.

It says the officers of the committee shall be elected annually at the first regular meeting held during the calendar year or as needed to fill vacancies.

Nominations will be taken from before.

And what you could do is just, there's nothing to say that if you voted in a leadership and then that had to change in two months, that you could just make the change at that point, because it says as needed.

So if you all wanted to take the official vote just to continue for a couple of months with the understanding that you'll revisit it,

Well, with that in mind, then I nominate Sarah as chair and Donna as vice chair.

All right, so that motion is brought to the floor.

Yes.

Aye.

Any opposed?

And I'm going to abstain from voting, so I'll put that on record.

OK, well, there you go.

The motion passes.

Thank you for your votes of confidence.

No, not yet.

But do you think there will be, I mean, looking into the crystal ballroom for this?

I'm assuming so.

All right.

Okay, then let's move on to staff updates.

Thank you, Sarah.

So we provided, just to make sure you all had enough time and space to be able to have this discussion today, we provided all of our staff updates as a written update.

So I can hit a couple of the highlights right now for everyone.

So we are in grant application season for a couple of the key TJPDC programs, including

Our Rancher program which is a partnership between us and the Central Shenandoah Planning District Commission and also our PATH program which is a mobility management program.

Both of those are funded through significant staff support from DRPT so we're working on those and those will go in by Friday.

We're also working on an application

for the federal USDOT BUILD program and that's for that Rivanna River Bicycle and Pedestrian Bridge that Supervisor Galloway mentioned a little bit earlier.

That one is due February 24th.

We also received notification that we did not receive the Safe Streets and Roads for All application that we submitted last June.

And we did have a debrief meeting on that yesterday and we're working on typing up some notes to be able to provide to everyone just so that folks have it.

But that meeting we were not able to record.

They don't provide you any written feedback.

It's always just a verbal debrief meeting and our overall application rated as medium for that one.

So we got some feedback on what we could potentially do better next time if we pursue another Safe Streets and Roads for All grant application.

And then we're also working on our fiscal year 27 unified planning work program.

So as I mentioned a little bit earlier, that's our work plan.

And so a draft of that has been prepared.

We have our fiscal year 27 through 30 tip document.

We're doing a comprehensive update of our tip right now, and that should be completed in the spring, the first draft of that.

And then the other things that I included in there were just opportunities for public engagement if anyone was interested.

So the Three Notch Trail, there's a survey open right now for that.

And there was also a statewide BPAC meeting that was held yesterday.

So we included the link if anyone was able to crack open their packet a little bit early and see that that was yesterday.

So the newsletter is also included in there.

Those are our major things.

No, thank you.

Oh yes, this is the memo that we talked about to just inform CTAC members

of items that are being considered by the MPO Policy Board and this include activities that happened at the Policy Board December meeting which was after the November meeting so CTAC was not able to get this agenda and the items that will be on their February meeting.

So in December the Policy Board

received a statewide transportation planning funding presentation from VDOT and also the policy board received a SMART SCALE round 7 list of project locations that would be considered for

For the February meeting, the Policy Board will be taking action on the performance safety targets that Taylor mentioned in the presentation earlier.

There will be room for the CTAC discussion.

They will be taking action on that one.

They will receive an informational presentation on the UPWP fiscal year 27 as well as the fiscal year 27 and 2030 TIP presentation.

They will also take action on the travel demand model updates.

They will be voting on

The 2050 forecast year data on that one and the build application letter of support or resolution of support for that application.

And just one note about the February meeting.

So whenever we draft these for the packet, we draft them as accurately as we know what's gonna be on the next agenda, if that makes sense.

So since this was placed in the packet, the fiscal year 27 to 2030 HIP document draft, that will no longer be on their agenda because we haven't received our project list from VDOT yet.

Thank you.

Yeah, just a few.

First of all, we have developed a final concept for the STARS project.

That is currently being conducted in the city of Charlottesville for the Ridge, McIntire, West Main, Water Street intersection.

That information is all on the project website from VDOT and we are accepting comments through February 5th.

So we had a public meeting last week.

We didn't have a lot of attendance at the meeting, but I have been receiving quite a few comments so far.

As far as there are two projects for SMART SCALE that are in a project pipeline study, one of them is the Fifth Street DDI with a connection at the I-64 interchange 120.

So we're planning to submit, to work with the MPO to submit an application to convert that to a diverging diamond interchange and then

fill in some of the multimodal connectivity across the bridge currently to make sure that their sidewalks and shared use paths are connected through that project area.

So we're working on those.

And the other pipeline project that we're working on right now is at the 29 southbound left turn.

onto I-64 eastbound at exit 118.

We are currently in the process of going through the public feedback and determining if there's a preferred alternative out of the options that have been presented.

So we'll need to hold tight.

We don't have an identified concept on that one right now.

So otherwise, the SMART SCALE pre-applications open on March 1st.

They'll be open through April 1st.

So any project that's going to be submitted for SMART SCALE will need to have a pre-application submitted.

A pre-application will not necessarily commit applicants to submit a full application, but will keep those projects eligible to submit for full applications once the full application period opens.

And then otherwise, we're just still working through the two STARR studies on the US 29 corridor and at the US 29 interchange at Emmett Street.

Those are not going to be ready for SMART SCALE applications, so we'll develop.

We're going to keep working through identifying alternatives and doing some advanced analysis to determine if some of the concepts we've been reviewing will work operationally before we start thinking about the next round of public engagement.

That's it.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

Next on the agenda was roundtable updates.

If anybody had any updates about their personal interests, the communities that they represent, or anything that they wanted to share with the larger group, this is the opportunity to do that.

Because we're virtual, if you have something to share, you should raise your hand.

Give it one minute.

I had to work to find my little raise hand item.

I just want to call out that if you did not have a chance, you may have been aware of it.

At the last MPO Policy Board meeting, VDOT gave a very good presentation on how transportation funding works in the state of Virginia.

And if you haven't listened to that, I would go back and listen to that.

It's one of those informational items where you really can see how it goes from the budget and how it goes down and where the buckets are.

And after eight years of service, I still don't know if I can explain it, so I have to re-listen to it myself sometimes.

How things are funded and how much are funded really impacts everything that we're doing.

So especially this group, it may be worth your while to go back and check that out.

If I can make Christine make that face in a meeting, I feel like I've succeeded.

All right, there you go.

Thank you very much.

Anyone else?

And again, I don't think that there's anybody here from the public.

If anybody has any personal things they want to share as a member of the public, they can share that now.

Maybe I'll share some frustration with sidewalk clearing in the city, but that's just how it goes.

If there's nothing else, then we can adjourn.

Our next meeting will be on March 25th at 7 p.m. in person.

And I will be at the policy board meeting.

They're always very interesting, and I encourage anybody else to attend that February meeting.

And, you know, gavel.

We can be adjourned.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Bye bye.