I think we'll go ahead and start. Anybody that's here today on a frigid January, you get your service merit badge today for TAC service. So thank you for being here and raving the cold, coming out. I know we're in some tight quarters and some different arrangements here. So we've got people scattered around. We'll do our best here to try to speak up. any roll call vote or anything, just make sure we know you're back in the audience. We'll start with call to order introductions. And I know we have Rebecca Swift online. So Rebecca, we'll get to you last. We'll start off here in the room. And let's go around and just please introduce yourself and the agency you're with. And if you're a proxy, just please let us know who you're pinch hitting for today. I'll start off. I'm Nate Nego with the City of Bloomington Public Works Department, and I'm the TAC Chair. Paul Satterly, Monroe County Highway Engineer. Jackie Dillon, Monroe County Planning Director. John Baten, GIS Coordinator, Monroe County Vice Chair. Hunter Jackson, proxy for the Monroe County Auditor. Linnea Wellings, NDOT, proxy for Rebecca Packer. Jane Fleague, Bloomington Utilities. Neil copper proxy for the Bloomington city engineer. Cheryl Gilliland city deputy controller proxy for city controller. Um, Jeff McKim, Ryan Roebling city Bloomington planning and transportation proxy, David Hiddle. Yep. Go ahead. Kelly Whitmer Monroe County parks and recreation. Thank you. Lynette Tavernier Monroe County highway department operations asset manager. Ben Ayers, Monroe County Highway Project Manager. Thank you. Anybody else? OK. OK, thank you. That looks like Megan Blair just entered the room. OK. The virtual room. Rebecca and Megan, we can virtually. Rebecca Swift, Operations Development Division Director for City of Wellington Parks and Recreation. Thank you. Megan? Sorry, I grabbed her a little late. Thank you, Blair. GIS managers, if you would like to. Great. Thank you. OK. Next item on our agenda is approval of today's meeting agenda for January 28, 2026. Do I have a motion for approval? Motion to approve. Second. Thanks, John. Thanks, Ryan. Any public comment on this? Hearing none, I'll go back to staff for roll call vote. Jackson? Yes. Yes. Nickel? Yes. Wellings? Yes. Satterlian team? Yes. Roebling? Yes. Copper? Yes. Whitmer? Yes. Baten? Yes. Swift? Yes. Jelen? Yes. Gilliland? Yes. Flieg? Yes. Blair? Passes. Yes. Oh, sorry. Sorry, Megan. She was going to say yes anyway. Thank you all. OK, next item is election of calendar year 2026 TAC committee officers. And we have both chair and vice chair. You've been stuck with me for about five years now, so I will certainly entertain anyone who's interested in jumping into the chair's seat. And we certainly have vice chair, who's John's ably handled this last year, but we can throw both of those open. Do I have any interest in the chair position for next year or this year? I can volunteer for a chair day. Awesome. Thank you, John. Anyone interested in vice chair? I can be vice chair. Great. Thank you both. Much appreciated. We have to do an election here. So what we'll do is to have a motion to approve John as chair and Jane as vice chair for 2026 TAC officers. So moved. Second. Excellent. Thank you. Any public comment on this item? OK. Hearing none, go to staff for vote. Copper. Yes. Whitmer. Yes. Baten. Abstain. Swift? Yes. Blair? Yes. Flea? Abstain. Gilliland? Abstain. Jelen? Yes. And thank you, Nate, for your service. Thank you. Grubling? Yes. Satterly? Yes. Wellings? Yes. Nichol? Yes. Jackson? Yes. Motion passes. Great. Thank you both for stepping into those roles. And John, I won't put you on the spot, but if you want to take over the reins for the rest of this meeting, I will certainly allow it. But if not, I can carry on because I guess, secondly, you are chair at this point. I will let you go out in glory so you can finish this. Thank you. OK. Our next item is approval of minutes from our last meeting, November 19, 2025. I have a motion to approve the minutes from November of last year. Motion to approve. Second. Thanks, John. Thank you, Ryan. Any public comment on the minutes? I think since those minutes were put out, the policy committee meeting has changed time. So they were accurate at the time, though. Just as a note. Yeah, good point. Any other? public comment or otherwise on the minutes from November. Okay, hearing done. Okay, we had motion and second, so we're good. Katie? For the minutes, approval of minutes, Blair? Yes. Swift? Yes. Jelen? Yes. Gilliland? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Great. OK. Communications from chair and vice chair. John, do you have anything to pass along? Yeah. I got two things that might be of interest for folks in planning things of that nature. The state has released their 2025 aerial imagery. There's a rest service available for that. This has flown in this past year. It's taken some time. This is provided by the Indiana State Geographic Information Office. It's three inch resolution. It does, in my opinion, from looking at it, it doesn't look as crisp as some of the prior years, and this could have been the time it flew over or different technical issues. Yeah, so that's available if anybody's interested in that rest service for mapping. Just let myself or Megan from the city know and we can get that to you guys. Yeah, that's kind of it from my end. Oh, that's great. Yeah. It's always good to have new aerials. I know we all use that for any number of projects and just good to have. So thank you. I'll just pass along. You may have noticed we got a little snow over the last few days. So huge thank you to Indad, Monroe County Highway, Town of Ellisville, City of Bloomington, everybody who's been out there at Plow Cruise day and night, it's been a lot. And they've had an awful lot of snow to move, a lot of long hours. And they've all been telling me it's been one of the worst ones they've had in a long time. So thank you to everybody who's been out there keeping the roadways clear for all. That's much appreciated. With that, I will move it over to reports from MPO staff. Okay on page eight of the packet is an early coordination letter from NDOT's consultant. This is for the Monroe County's project at old SR 37 at Dillman Road. This letter was sent to all the stakeholders that are listed in this in the packet that's in the packet in the letter that's in the packet and The letter was received in December requesting comments regarding possible environmental concerns or effects associated with the project. And so I encourage you to read that. This is a project that will receive federal funds through the MPO in fiscal year 26, 27, and 28. The letter describes that the preferred alternative for the intersection is a single lane roundabout with a curb and gutter. The drainage will be going to a new storm system or detention basin. Construction will be between March 28 and August 29. And Empire Road will be the detour. So if you have any other questions or comments about this letter or the effects of the project, feel free to let us know. Also, INDOT's contact information is in the letter as well. Just one question on that, maybe Paul knows the answer to this. Do they send anything to those owners of those properties at this stage, or do they wait until the project is? I don't know for sure. They've received survey notices and things like that, so they know about the project. And just a clarification too, Empire Road will not be used as the detour route, so. Oh, OK. That's what it states in the letter, but it sounds like you're right. Yeah, I just got the stage one plan, so if anybody's interested in seeing those, I can get those to you. But just review those plans, and I'm going to be recommending that State Road 37, I-69, and Fullerton Pike be used as the official detour, because Empire Road is not very wide. And then Dillman will not have a detour. You know, it's mostly local traffic, but it will be closed at Empire, Empire Road, so. OK. Thanks. Any more questions? OK. On page Page 16, there's a press release. I think I might have emailed this out, but it is an in-dot press release stating that they have reduced the speed limit on SR 4546 between Kinzer Pike and 10th Street from 45 miles per hour to 40 miles per hour. Next item, page 19 of the packet, is some federal modification that staff processed. It did not require a committee review. This modification is to add some federal MPO funds to the West Second Street project and reduce the local funding allocation to it. These funds were originally allocated to the High Street project, which was not able to go to letting this year as hoped. And so those funds have been reallocated to the West Second Street project. It's about 490,000. Is this the project that went to another NPO and then we traded years? Is that this project? Oh, definitely. Okay. It didn't put anything in the packet about this, but Just for your FYI, the ITS has been sending out some updates regarding Open Door and Zoom and public meetings. And so the state's Open Door law allows public meeting attendees to now record meetings and to try to transcribe them. And so ITS has already enabled, starting December 1st, ITS enabled the attendee recording feature in Zoom meetings. for public meetings, which will allow public meeting attendees to record the meeting they attend through the Zoom application. And this capability is available to all attendees without any action by the person hosting the meeting. Also, the meeting hosts are now being told to allow transcription agents and AI bots into all public non-executive meetings as participants. And again, that's only for public meetings, not for any staff or non-public meetings. Also, staff has to work in the next few months. All city buildings staff will have to work to make our public meeting documents accessible to those with disabilities. So that's just something that's happening on a city-wide level. Any thoughts or questions? Okay, next I'll just share a couple updates for some of the local projects that are receiving MPO funding and then some of the INDOT projects. So the INDOT project on SR 45 10th Street between the Bypass and Pete Ellis Drive, that project letting date has been changed from February 11th, 2026 to April 8th, 2026. The road work is expected to start in spring of 27. Just a week or so ago, the trees along 10th Street, SR 45, within indots right of way were marked, and many of those are going to have to be removed as part of the project. They, of course, are working to use best practices to avoid impacts on the Indiana bat and Northern Longyear bat. There is one property within the project limits that has a replanting agreement for removing for the trees that will be removed. But since this question has already come up from somebody else, INDOT doesn't have any plans beyond that to replant any of those trees. High Street project, as I mentioned, was supposed to let this year, but has been moved to September 2nd, 2026 loan date, so into the new federal fiscal year of funding. The old SR 37 and Dillman Road intersection improvement project, which you just saw an early coordination letter for, That project is moving from October 14th, 27 letting date to a March 8th, 28 letting date. However, that change in construction letting date is in the same federal fiscal year, so funding won't have to change from that. And if the city and county engineers have any other updates about projects they want to share, feel free. Not much from the city. I think, you know, we're ongoing with design on quite a few projects. There's, of course, not construction ongoing at the moment for much of anything. I'd be happy to answer any questions if there are any. And our Eagleson Avenue Bridge over the Indiana Railroad and Beatty Construction was the little bidder. So this year will start with utility relocation then after move-in week, probably 1st of September. So after Labor Day, they'll be starting with construction. And Eagle's going to be closed from September through just before move-in 2027. So things will be ramping up shortly in that. Then our Rockport. Bridge number 38 is February 11, so that's coming up. OK, now, Nick. Any other questions for staff on that? OK, and if you do have any later, feel free to reach out. Moving ahead, old business, and 2026 safety targets. OK, I wasn't here last month. I apologize for that. Last month? Yeah, that's right. You were at this meeting last week. I was? Mm-hmm. Safety targets. This is additional information, just an added memo. The policy committee had questions about the safety targets Policy Committee wanted to know why it was only 2%. They wanted more than that. They also had questions about Vision Zero. So this additional information addresses those in that the 2% targets were set by the Department of Transportation in 2022. It's been approved by the governor and part of their state highway safety plan. And then also the fact that Indot NDOT subscribes to the AASHTO towards zero deaths, as do 32 other states. The committee approved this, I think, last time. We did, so I don't know if there's any action we need to take. No, there isn't. This is really aimed for the policy committee more than anybody else. And I'll just add, too, I go to the policy committee meetings, and they had the exact same concerns we had when we reviewed this information. kind of disclaimer note that we always try to include was included for the policy committee and obviously it's a lot to stomach and I think that's their concerns weren't anything with the TAC or anyone here with our comments it was mostly they echoed pretty much exactly our conversation and you know basically nobody really wants to approve that but we're kind of So I think that's just the root of that. So I just wanted to pass it along from the policy committee. Since no action's required on that, I think there's just a typo there with the whole business and the public comment. If there is any public comment, we can certainly entertain that. But I'm thinking that's already been approved. So moving ahead to new business, looks like we have some new TIP amendments being proposed. Yeah, on page 24. of the packet. Our three amendments that require your vote of approval are high streets. Their funding table in our TIP is changing to reflect the fact that the project will need to move to fiscal year 27. The project is not does not have any federal funds through the NPO assigned to it in fiscal year 27. But because the project is moving, shifting dates, that requires your review. The Second Amendment is a new NDOT project. It is called sign installation and repair in various locations in the Seymour District. So this is one of those projects that they want to notify, they notify all of the MPO areas that might be affected by this project. This is a sum of money that's not specific to our geographic area, but to the larger area where this project will take place. The Third Amendment is a new project for NDOT as well. It's called SR-45 Small Structure Replacement. This is 5.94 miles east of SR-45-46 East Junction. There's a map in the packet. This project replaces the existing small metal culvert with a precast reinforced concrete box and does some erosion control work replacing riprap. The project would go to construction in fiscal year 28. And again, this is a project that's not currently in the TIP, but it is just barely within our urbanized metropolitan planning area. So it needs to be added to our TIP. Any questions? Is there any specific signage that INDOT's putting in? I know we talked about maybe enhancing entry ways, like do not enter signage, just to reduce any wrong way driving at ramps. But is there any particular signage that INDOT's replacing or enhancing, or is it just kind of like a routine maintenance project? I think it's just a routine maintenance project. There is a lifetime of those signs, and we try to keep on that just to make sure that they're reflective and easily visible. Sure. Thanks. Just to add on for the city's high street project, I think you said all this earlier, but within the same fiscal year, we had both second street and high street. It's advantageous to us to push high street out to the next fiscal year. So between second and high, we've shifted federal funding from High Street to Second Street and local funding from Second Street to High Street. So there's no change in funding levels there, and it does allow us to push High Street out to the next fiscal year. Like you said, currently there's no federal funding for construction, but we probably will look for other things we can shift further in the future or trade or something like that. So we may discuss High Street again, but at this point we're just pushing the fiscal year. Thanks, Neil. Any other questions on the proposed TIP amendments? Do you know where the detour route is proposed for State Road 45, the local detour route? Lene, do you have any insights on that one? I do not. I can find out, but I'm not familiar. And where is that located exactly, as you'll see on the map, approximately? Which project, the? State Road 45, small structure. Uh, it's here. Is it south of Bethel? I can't tell. It's south of Russell. Pardon? It's south of Russell. South of Russell. Here the railroad, just north of Mount Gilead. Oh, OK. Any other questions on the proposed tip amendments? If not, is anyone interested in proposing a motion to approve the three tip amendments that are proposed today? Yeah, I'd like to make that amendment. Thanks, John. Or motion. Motion for the amendment. Second. Thank you, Ryan. Any public comment on the proposed tip amendments? I'm hearing that. Turn it back to staff. Fleet. Yes. Gilliland. Abstain. Jelen. Yes. Aton. Yes. Whitmer. Yes. Copper. Yes. Rubling. Yes. Satterly. Yes. Nickel. Yes. Jackson. Yes. Wellings. Yes. Swift. Yes. Blair? Yes. Passes. Great. Thank you. OK. Next item for new business is fiscal year 27-28 unified planning work program. We have a document and 30-day public comment. And I'll just turn back over to Pat and Katie on this one. OK. The fiscal year 27-28 unified planning work program is required. Federal Highway Administration, Federal Transit Administration to maintain our urban area eligibility for federal funding. The urban area encompasses all of the city of Bloomington, parts of Monroe County, and the town of Ellitsville. On page 32 of your packet, under the overview, the 10 national transportation planning factors remain unchanged this year. And then on page 38 of the packet, the fiscal year 27 unified planning work program focus remains the same. We received no guidance from Federal Highway Administration on that whatsoever. The biggest change, though, is in terms of the budget. Our budget of federal funding this year for fiscal year 27 and 28 is only at $198,149. That's $207,000 less than in 2024. So we've taken a 50% hit here in just a few years. Compared to the current fiscal year of 2026, we've taken a 16.5% cut. With that, we've trimmed a lot out of the budget. The main thing we trimmed out of the budget, or the proposed budget, I should say, is eliminating all the contract service agreements. Contract service agreements usually involve asset management for the City of Bloomington Public Works Department and also for the Monroe County Highway Department Asset Management. Town of Aletsville has not received any asset management for a number of years. It also eliminates our contract service agreement with Bloomington Transit. Anything outside of the MPO staff itself no funding whatsoever the focus areas of shifting the budget around this year Remained largely the same with the exception of task 501 which is on page 69 of packet this is our We're required to spend two and a half percent of our budget for complete streets and transit oriented development. The city of Bloomington received a federal grant, SS4A safe roads and streets for all grant of $1.4 million on December 23rd of 2025. We will support that through our planning efforts. This will involve the award of multiple corridor studies, public engagement, begin concept designs for the corridor studies. Demonstration activities will include a project using hardened center lanes to reduce speeds and temporary conversions up to five traffic signals to always stop control. Also include temporary single lane roundabouts or both options. There's not much more I can say other than the fact that it's a very grim budget. It's not only ourselves that took the hit in terms of federal funding. It's also all of the group two cities of Anderson, Columbus, Kokomo, Lafayette, Louisville area, Muncie, and Terre Haute. The only ones who gained funding over the course of the next two years, fiscal year 27, 28, is the Indianapolis Metropolitan Planning Organization because their population grew. And the same with Northwest Indiana Regional Plan Commission, their population grew. Now, some people are going to ask why the drastic cut and the reason comes down to population. Funds are allocated to us on a per capita basis when we did the census in April of 2020, all students went home, therefore we lost 45,000, 47,000 in terms of the population. That put us back at the level of what we were in 2010. So as a consequence, everybody suffered, we suffered proportionately more than most. Lafayette also suffered too for that. that matter because of Purdue University, the students going home. So the budget that we're given here is the one that we're looking at for 27-28. The Federal Highway Transportation and Federal Transit Administration reauthorization is up by September 30th of this year. There's a glimmer of hope there might be added funding for local planning and in that process. However, it's a congressional election year, so the likelihood is that we'll go to a continuing resolution. And if there's a continuing resolution by Congress, that means our budget levels will remain the same over the course of the next year or so. Questions? Anybody? Yeah, I think the census was Just a combination of a lot of bad luck and bad timing as far as COVID and students were sent home. And certainly not something that is unique for Bloomington. I think any college community suffered that, too. So not a whole lot we can do at this point. We've got on the draft fiscal year 27-28, unified planning work program. We have a legal requirement. 30-day public notice, legal notice, was published last week, last Friday, and also on Sunday of this week. There was an error in the legal notice in that it said adoption was gonna be on Wednesday, Wednesday, February 27th, and actually it's, I'm sorry, it was 25th is what it said. Actually, the adoption will be on the 27th by the policy committee. Currently, we've received no public comments. The public comment period is open until February 21st. So if you, your friends, your neighbors, anyone you know wants to make comments on the work program, please do so prior to the date. We're required also to receive those comments in written form So that way, we can document precisely what the comments were for the Federal Highway Administration, Federal Transit Administration, and also NDOT. I don't know that we need to do any formal action with it at this point. I think Pat summed it up pretty nicely. If anyone has comments. I have a comment. Joe Vandeventer is no longer the director of Street Operations, page 80, in your list of MPO. Didn't know that. Thanks, Jane. That just happened. I forget his name. Who is that? Dan Bittner. Any other changes? Usually the technical advisory committee is static. Policy committee is the one that changes all the time. And, uh, I have Jackie, I have no idea who's going to represent the plan commission yet. We're doing elections next week. Next week. Okay. So it'll be the same then. Okay. And that, yeah, the same with Bloomington then. Okay. All right. Thanks so much. I'll just echo Jane's comment too. We'll have to update the city controller. Jess McClellan is no longer with the city. It's Jeff. have that in here. I'm surprised they didn't catch Joe. Yeah, it does list Jeff. Yeah, his announcement was just prior to the publication. OK. Thank you. So it looks like we'll have some time with that, and then it'll go to the policy committee on February 27 for a vote. Yeah. Presentation and draft form to the policy committee. this Friday. Yeah, for the dates of change on that. Friday morning. In this room, too. Yeah, that's a change for 26 for forever, I think, is the technical term we've always had on the TAC and policy committee. But we've never had both meetings in the same week. So that's a new change this year, where there won't be any staggering of the meetings. All the policy committee meetings will be two days following our meetings here on TAC, so staff will be busy. OK. With that, public comments on matters not included on the agenda. If there's any public comment for anything we didn't cover today, we can certainly entertain that now. Hearing none. Oh, OK. Eric for public comment. Thanks, John. I didn't see that. Good morning. Can everyone hear me? Yes. I appreciate all your work. I did want to let you know that the links that were published in the main city calendar and the boards of commissions calendar in the meeting packet and the meeting agenda have an invalid password field. that requires entering the passcode manually. When I gained entrance to the meeting, I then went to the section of the Zoom app that allows accessing the link from inside the meeting. That does contain a valid password field because I was able to join the meeting using that link directly from a different app, I mean, from a different device. I also wanted to let you know that the The ability to attend, observe, and record this meeting is not working. I attempted to use that valid link to join the meeting with a note taker, and it was denied admittance four times. So I will follow up with you and likely IT in regards to these matters. But if I can provide any additional assistance, please let me know. And again, thanks for all your Last name? We know him. Yes. My last name is, my full name is Eric Ost. OK. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for making us aware of that. Any other public comment? Rebecca, I see you there. We'll wait for the next section here for committee members. Any other public comment? OK, hearing none, communication from committee members on matters we didn't include on today's agenda. That can be updates, communications, or topic suggestions for future agendas. Rebecca, did you have something? Yeah, I was kind of on the cusp of which one of this is public or not, because we are hearing from the public in relation, and I'm sure some of you in the room have already been tatted by Hassell Smith, on the State Road 45 and Pete Ellis and all the oak trees along that that are now being flag for removal due to an end up project that predates myself. I know Andrew and Neil have been reached out with Haskell and it sounds like we can't really do anything. But from the takeaway, there's no plan for replacement of those trees, especially not up to our requirement where these are all 14 mature oaks. And Haskell estimates we would need to replace 105 in order to meet our media requirements, and the reproduction costs is around eight to nine thousand each. So this is blowing up a little bit on Reddit, on our Facebook, we're getting calls and messages. Obviously you put a big X on a mature oak tree, we're gonna hear about it. So if anybody has anything else to add to this discussion, I would appreciate it. Again, it sounds like this has all been decided before we could do anything about it, but now the work is actually coming. So if anyone has content, Um, might be reaching out to you directly after this meeting or just something to discuss next time. And then I just wanted to mention because it will trigger and also close down Roger street. I am planning to put out the power line trail project out to bid on February 11th, which has been 30 years in the making to get this multi-use trail underneath the Duke easement right next to switch our park on Rogers and it will require. temporary closure of Roger Street just north of the Switchart Park entrance in order to install a raised crosswalk. So I bring that up just to the group because it relates to road closures and trying to coordinate all of our projects. We never had the schedule perfectly right, but hoping to hold off closing that until school's out for summer so we don't impact bus schedules. That's all for me. Thank you. Thanks, Rebecca. And I won't put Lene on the spot, but she can certainly be a good NDOT resource if you want to reach out to her. And she can probably direct you to somebody at NDOT that could maybe resolve the work on the tree issue. Yeah. Another coworker, Rebecca, has already contacted NDOT about that. I have contacted NDOT about it. The project was started many years ago. And because of all of the road expansions, there's very little that they see they can do about those trees. But the INDOT4U, they always encourage everyone to reach out, submit comments. And they have to respond to the INDOT4U, to any comments that are submitted through INDOT4U. Wonderful. Thank you. Just to tack onto that, so engineering has been in contact with the NDOT project manager as well. One piece of information that we're still following up with them about is they are describing the trees as within NDOT right of way. But we would have described many of those trees as within city right of way because the north and south legs are actually city streets and city jurisdiction. So it may actually be true that it's NDOT right of way. They haven't provided any evidence of why it would, in fact, be in that right away. But our current thought is it's actually city right away. That may not actually change anything that happens, but there are certain approvals and permits that are required in order to work within the city right away. So that's still a bit ongoing. Paul, is this officially your last TAC meeting? That's correct. Well, congratulations to Paul on his upcoming retirement. Welcome to come back to all future TAC meetings. I'll call when I get to. Jackie? No, I was just going to announce Paul's retirement. Cool, yeah. Yeah, congratulations. Any other communications or topics to pass along to the group? I think you've already touched on this, Nate, but just the response from the city and the county and INDOT in terms of the snow has been great. I went for a run on Tuesday, or I guess yesterday morning, and Sherwood Oaks Park was totally plowed from city. So yeah, just really nice to see that happening. And I would encourage everybody in Bloomington to shovel their sidewalks. I drove down 10th Street today, and there's kids walking, or not kids, college students. Walking down 10th street, there's no place for them to walk because landlords aren't shoveling their sidewalks. And so enforcement for that is great. I would point people to utilize the city's report to identify those hazardous areas. Thank you. With that, I can let everybody have their Wednesday back, but thank you to John and thank you for Jane for taking over leadership the rest of this year and we'll be in good hands. Everybody stay warm out there. See ya.