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HomeMy WebLinkAboutTCSP Oversight Committee Minutes (5)TCSP Oversight Committee Laurel, Montana MEETING MINUTES OF APRIL 13, 2000 The Laurel TCSP Oversight Committee met on Thursday, April 13, 2000 at the City Council Chambers from 7:00 to 8:30 p.m. Those in attendance were Chairman Bud Johnson, Mayor Charles Rodgers, and Committee Members: Cal Cumin, Debbie Ricci, Anne Cossitt, Diana Walker, Kathleen Baumgartner, Dr. John H. Smith, Stan Jonutis, and Jennifer Dalrymple. Bud Johnson called the meeting to order. The minutes from the March 9 h meeting were approved as read Cal Cronin asked if there were any comments on the first phase or the evaluation of the existing study of the transportation study. Cal reported that the diagonal parking of the streetscape program issue was accepted by the Public Works Department and was pushed ahead to go before the City Council for approval soon. The proposal will consist of changing to diagonal parking on Montana Avenue and Colorado Avenue from Main to First Street. These two areas will become a learning experience. Before the Oversight Committee considers changing diagonal parking on First Avenue, Cal would like to do more studying and an engineering analysis to include the potential of placing roundabouts in this area. This issue will take a lot of study before it can be presented to the City and to the Department of Transportation. Debbie Ricci added that changes to the area would need to be taken into consideration during the study. One example of a change to the area is the town square. Bud Johnson stated that the traffic volumes also need to be taken into consideration. He pointed out that the traffic volumes are very different on Colorado Avenue and Montana Avenue as opposed to First Avenue. Debbie was asked if anymore studies were done with the Visual Preference Screening. Debbie said that the last group shown the slides was the Rotary Club and stated that she has not been able to get anything set up with schools yet. She will get this scheduled. She also stated that she would try to show this screening at Wood's Pow'r Grip and the Senior Citizen's Center. Debbie explained that, when she is showing the slides, all present are given a survey questionnaire. The slides are set up to show positive and negative streetscapes. After the slide show, the presentation is open for discussion. All of this takes anywhere from 25 minutes to 1 '/2 hours. Discussion was held on the Public Opinion Survey Project. Four sites in Laurel were set up to receive the survey with the graphics. This survey was also mailed out with questionnaires. The reports are coming in with a lot of feedback. Diana Walker asked for additional surveys. Cal said that he would get them to her. Diana and Kathleen volunteered to look at these surveys and get them in some sort of order for the Oversight Committee to review. Bills to be paid included invoices for $4,000.00 to Fischer and Associates for the graphic and display work, (only $2,400.00 billed at this time); Cossitt Consulting for $3,500.00 and Cumins Associates for $1,155.00. Dr. John Smith made a motion to pay these bills, seconded by Debbie Ricci; all present voted in favor of the motion. At the behest of the Public Works Committee, Cal asked Carter-Burgess to provide a cost estimate to do the required transportation engineering for design of a round-about at First Avenue and First Street and the diagonal parking between Main and First Street on North First Avenue. Just for the engineering, this came to over $35,000.00. In the meantime, Cal has sent the traffic volumes, turning movements, and street dimensions to Alternative Street Design, a firm associated with Dan Burden. That firm had sketched out round-abouts on First and First and First and Main; Cal handed this over to the Oversight Committee. There is a wide disparity between the two firms' approach to the issue. Cal is sending Alternative Street Design's sketch to Carter-Burgess to specifically critique. There is much more work to be done with these concepts. Cal reported that in Missoula on June 8 and 9 there is a two-day intensive conference on street design and roundabouts. After discussion, the Oversight Committee felt it would benefit this project and the City of Laurel to send Larry McCann to the conference. Jennifer stated that on June 10 & 11 there will also be a follow-up field workshop in Missoula, which includes hands-on training. Engineer, David Engwich, from Australia will conduct this training. It was stated that the conference and workshop both would be extremely useful for the City of Laurel if Larry is able to attend. Lamy stated that he would check to see if he would be available to attend. Jennifer brought a guide for all to look at that deals with development of bicycle trails and designs. Included in this guide is innovative projects taken from around the United States. This guide was passed around the room. Cal stated that he has completed a project status report at Kathleen Baumgartner's request, and copies were handed out. The objectives, part of Cal's report, were taken right out of the grant application in our folders. So far, we are working on visioning and consensus. The land use mapping for Laurel is ongoing. There is a need to get Laurel's overall planning program into a GIS format. This is 90% done and is being fine-tuned before it will be available for viewing. This land use map will be used in the future for land use planning and can be accessed through the County GIS website. Cal said that he will continue to define the GIS and more information will be available in November. Once this is done, the mapping of the graphics will be able to be completed for the transportation base line study. This will be a very useful system once complete. Community feedback efforts have been done through the newsletter and the public opinion survey, but there is a need for more community input. Laurel has a large transportation problem that is not yet seen by the residents. The committee is trying to create an awareness of the problem by the newsletters and the vision preference studies. Anne suggested setting up focus groups also since the end result will depend on how people feel about the project A large segment of the report includes the alternatives to motorized vehicle traffic. Cal stated that Tracy Williams Consulting in Missoula is supposed to do this alternative transportation study which includes a telephone survey in order to get responses. Preparation of alternative scenarios will be completed for Laurel with a lot dependent on how the community feels about the issues. He would like to see an attitude study about the residents' feelings on growth also to come out of the telephone survey. These results could be compared with the Billings, state, and national studies. Another item to consider is the feelings on the cost of new housing with a cost/benefit analysis on construction since people pay a lot of attention to costs. There are eight months left in the project time phase. Dan Burden and Paul Zykowski are scheduled to come back to Laurel. Since this is a pilot project, the guidelines are not rigid. The federal agency is looking at how the small community of Laurel handles the project. The evaluation record is Anne's role in the project. The main goal of the project is to create something useful for the community and to improve its livability. Anne stated that she would like to know from Laurel residents feel about walking. Another item to deal with is the issue of relating to Billings since someday the two towns will end up growing together. Jennifer said that long range projection of transportation between the two towns should be dealt with in order to allow for a mass transit. Debbie said that she likes the concept of a bus system between Laurel and Billings since this will attract a new type of people to the area. There will be an easier access to the colleges. Kathleen said that two or three major employers should be identified in the area like hospitals, universities, etc. The starting point will be to create a system that will take shift people to work and bring them back. Anne stated that the University of Montana has a map of the geographical district of major employers that can be used for this. Cal added that asking where a person works should be included into the telephone survey. Larry suggested having bike racks on each end of the bus lines and asked if Laurel residents would go for this if it were all tied into the Billings Transit. Jennifer stated that all transits now have bike racks already included so bikes can stay with the riders. Cal stated that he liked the idea of a mass transit system and added there may be finding available for projects like this. Anne asked what the next steps would include and when would the group see the alternatives and identify the trigger point. Cal stated that this would not be ready until the alternative transportation study is done on non-motorized vehicle use. He stated that they will combine the information from the feedback and will get an idea of what can be drafted. Anne stated that people are comfortable with seeing proposals with the alternatives so that they can pick and choose. Larry McCann said that this information would come out of the surveys. The choices will fall back onto the City Council and the citizens of Laurel to decide what is best for them. Cal said that options with two choices could be drafted up in order to get more feedback. Anne said that it has been her experience that if a project does not involve the people, it will fail and asked when it is expected that the options will be presented to the people. Cal said in about five months and is open to ideas of how to do this. A suggestion of going with the City's newsletter was made. Lang said that it was their intention to send out three newsletters per year but found that it is very expensive to do this. He stated that it costs about $1,600.00 for the folding, copying, postage, etc of mailing out 2,780 newsletters. Debbie suggested holding a town meeting. Larry cautioned about town meetings since the last town meeting was well advertised and yielded only one person. Larry said that he liked the idea of holding a focus meeting but asked how to go about getting participants to these meetings. Jennifer suggested targeting people by invitation. Anne suggested targeting people from different age groups and call these people and invited them to participate. Larry said that tins could be turned around to the different groups like the Chamber, Rotary, etc. Lary asked how to select these people. Bud stated that each person on this committee knows a different group. He also stated that he is a little troubled with this since it will need to be well done to be successful. Someone needs to step forward in order to get it all put together. Anne said that she would be willing to do that Bud said that information needs to be available when questions are asked in order to dispel more information. Bud stated that the next meeting of this group is set for May 11th but he has a conflict with that date. It was decided to hold the meeting on Monday, May 15`s at the City Council Chambers. Debbie made a motion for adjournment. The meeting was adjourned.