Hello, everybody. This is my first time as chair as well, so prepare for some hiccups, but I've got
Nate next to me and Pat and Katie as well. So I believe we're gonna start with the call to order and
introductions. Well, this is the Bloomington Metropolitan Planning Office Technical Advisory Committee.
Hello, Hunter. So yeah, call to order and introductions. I'll start to my left just after Neil
Copper proxy for the Bloomington City engineer David Hittle Bloomington director of planning
and transportation Nate Nichols City of Bloomington Public Works Department John Baton GIS coordinator
Monroe County Jackie Jelen director Monroe County planning Jane Fleague City Bloomington utilities And
city deputy controller proxy for jeff mckim controller proxy for the mineral county auditor megan blair
city of bloomington gis manager lanaya wellings in dot proxy for rebecca packer monroe county operations
and asset manager for the highway department
Ben Ayers, project manager Monroe County Highway Department. John Connell, Bloomington Transit.
Lisa Salyers, Erie 10 Rural Transit Proxy for Chris Myers. And I'm not sure, I didn't see anybody online.
Is there anybody online? No members online. No members online, okay. Well, thanks everybody. I guess
next on the agenda is the approval of the meeting agenda. Do I have a motion for an approval?
Move approval second. Thanks Neil and thanks Jane You may do all in favor if you would like yes all
in favor say aye All opposed say nay Seems like we have it
Next up is the approval of minutes from January 20th 2026 Do I have a motion to approve? Move approval
of the minutes Thanks, Neil I'll second. Thanks Nate What was what was the thing I could say again was
that all approve Oh, yes, can I get an all in favor everybody say aye aye
One thing before we go for that these are public comment items. So if there is any oh, yeah Thanks Nate
if there's any public comment, this is your opportunity of the meeting minutes I'm not seeing any here
anybody virtually. Just please raise your hand on zoom I'm not really seeing that I guess I can see
zoom there as well. So it does say that there's a couple chats in the in the zoom
The zoom chats are okay. It's okay. All right. So I guess we'll do that again. All in favor say aye.
Aye. Aye. Aye. All opposed say nay. Looks like we have it and I'll apologize again for me flumping flubbing
around but we'll get better as we move on. So next up is communications from the chair and vice chair.
Jane any communications. Nothing for me. Thank you.
Cool I don't have anything personally I do know that Lynette will have some stuff and Ben as we get
to the highway progress as well. I guess the one thing I do have is we all suffered a storm past this
past week on Thursday. We in Monroe County GIS we have updated our storm extreme storm weather events app.
And so that has the path of the tornado that came across Monroe County, as well as pictures of different
damage points. And those are available on our website. The data we pull from the National Weather Service,
and so it is pretty cool. It's dynamic, and it changes as the data changes. The one interesting thing
is that that was the earliest tornado we've experienced in Monroe County, dating back to the NWS data
I'm pulling, at least.
Typically we were seeing tornadoes in March, but this is a kind of an early mid February one So climate
change is affecting us and things of that nature So I guess reports from MPO staff is next Okay, the
first item is just a resource to share that that I learned about recently I had it up here. Hold on a second
Give me a minute. Okay. This is just a map that INDOT has made of their, they call it their innovative
intersection and interchange map. And this is what it looks like on the website. And they also show
some of the treatments that are mentioned in the map. And that is just a resource I wanted to share
with you all. We'll not go into detail, but I've provided the link in the agenda.
The second item is that in dot is currently redoing revamping their public their planning public involvement
plan which they last touched in two thousand twenty three. So they are taking comments. Feedback is
accepted by them on the plan by Friday March 13th. And this is what their page looks like.
There is a link to their draft plan and then you can submit comments about it So if anyone cares to
look into that I encourage you to do so And I'll stop after each item just in case there's any questions
that anyone has Item C on page 10 of the packet
So we have not yet reached the end of the federal fiscal year that doesn't happen until June 30th, but
every federal fiscal year the NPO receives federal funds and that Those get those must be used by the
end of the year by transportation projects and anything that's left over will get traded for other years
or flexed to Bloomington or rural transit and
And so we wanted to go ahead and give you guys a summary of this federal fiscal year, even though we
still have a few months left. We have reached zero. So all of our federal fund allocations have been
spent for this year. Sorry, transit. We don't get any this year. So this chart in the packet simply shows
kind of where we started here. The first line are the numbers that we had from NDOT when you guys approved
the TIP last March. So that was a total of $4.64 million coming to our urbanized area. Then they updated
the numbers in May of last year after you guys approved the TIP.
The amount was updated to 4.5. That was kind of balancing out amounts from the year before. And then
we did a trade last spring with another MPO which added another million dollars
to our total for this year. And so when you guys initially approved of the TIP last year, $4.6 million
was programmed. And then that amount increased to 5.6 later. And so this kind of shows the projects
that were awarded in the TIP to receive funding as of last March, and then what the actual spending
turned out to be this year. So that extra million dollars from the exchange that was added in spring
of last year, that ended up going towards West Second Street. And then every project except one received
the funds that were originally allocated to them. Except two, I should say.
High Street was originally programmed to receive funds, but was not able to use them, so those funds
were transferred elsewhere. West Second Street was programmed originally to receive funds, and they
have submitted their funding letters to INDOT and have to the total of five million. So those have been
used this year. And then Old SR 37 South and Dillman Road
were also planned to receive funds and they submitted their funding letter in November to NDOT. The
only project that was not able to receive funds as planned was downtown curb ramps phase five. And that
was essentially at the error of MPO staff because when we received updated numbers from NDOT,
Last June, we didn't update the allocations in the TIP to reflect that because it was a lower amount.
And so that's why, since Downtown Curb Ramps is the last one to request their funds from INDOT, because
we're now at zero balance, 100% obligated for this year, there's none left for the Downtown Curb Ramps project.
So that is noted in the footnotes below and we've talked to the city about that. Can I, can I comment
on that once you're, are you done with that piece of it? So first I want to say thank you Katie for
all the communication on this and for meeting with me and helping me understand and
I know there's some additional complications in there from the way that NDOT has been moving funding
around and understand that. It was a pretty unfortunate surprise to learn that your project isn't getting
the money that was allocated to it. And it's unfortunate to learn that the reason you're not getting
the money is simply because you came after another project within the fiscal year. So I just want to
emphasize that
I hope in future years we can have those conversations in advance and avoid the situation. Just to break
that down a little bit, was it because you said that the South Old State Road 37 Dillman intersection,
basically with the change in the funding allocated, that project ate up all the funds that
then the downtown project couldn't proceed? Okay, and then we didn't talk about it to reallocate, okay.
That's helpful. Would that be a matter for this advisory committee or is there like a side committee
to talk about some of the like reallocations and like, so I feel like sometimes we get projects or like
reports back that's like,
Basically this won't finish on time and then we're in a time crunch. Is there like another committee
or discussion that we could have between the different partners to say hey here's our progress update.
We're forecasting we might not meet this deadline and then like do some switching in that regard. Would
that be helpful. We have quarterly meetings every quarter to check on
the status of each project and whether or not it will be able to use the funding for that year. And
when we realize that it can't, then we take steps. And to fix that, whether it's doing a trade
or reallocating funding, we typically talk to Lisa and Neil about those, changing the funds around between
projects, and then we
Those always get brought to the committees in the form of proposed amendments and that's how you guys
see them. So if an outcome of that quarterly meeting is that there's not an agreement then we would
never see anything because it wouldn't be an amendment. Say that again like if if the conversation was
between the city and the county but
for the old state road 37 south and Dillman road and the downtown curb ramps. If there was not agreement
in those quarterly meetings to allocate money from the Dillman and 37 project to the curb ramps, we
would never be notified of that here because there wouldn't be an amendment to the tip basically. I
think that that's accurate. If I can jump in, I think that the bigger, I think what you're describing
does and should happen but the bigger issue here was the during those quarterly meetings we all thought
the same amount of money was still there. We thought this money existed and so we were just proceeding
as usual and then it turned out the money wasn't actually programmed to the MPO as a whole anymore and
so then the Dillman project, you know, used its money as it was expecting to and then the city project
came forward and the money was already gone and so
The surprise was just that the funding allocation was reduced to the MPO and we as a body never addressed
that. Yes, I think just communication is key moving forward. Thanks for comments, Neil and Jackie and
Katie for going over that.
Okay. Item D in pages 11 through 21 of the packet, there is some historical documentation for kind of
regarding the establishment or what we would say actually is designation of the MPO. And so the first
item is actually an MOU. And then the rest of them are the formal letters
sent to the governor and to Federal Highway, which essentially established the creation of the MPO.
And this is kind of mostly just FYI for you guys, but this is provided because of some discussion that
took place at the policy committee meeting last month. Some folks are wanting some information about
kind of the origin of the MPO and how it came to be situated in the city of Bloomington Planning Department.
And so you're welcome to read through that. I mean roughly the city is because their population was
approaching that federal population level that would then enable them to
become an MPO and get federal funds, the city initiated transportation studies a few years prior to
the MPO establishing. And there's a variety of other reasons why the MPO is situated where it is. But
this original MOU also clearly creates the grounds for an intergovernmental
multi-jurisdictional represented policy committee, technical advisory committee, and citizens advisory
committee. So nothing has really changed with regard to representation of folks from different jurisdictions
since the creation of the MPO. But feel free to let us know if you have any questions or comments about that.
Yeah, I thought these were just really interesting to look through and see, you know, the heavy hitters
in the past that were part of this and just kind of the creation. So yeah, thanks for including this
in the packet. One thing I might note too is we would welcome any documents the county may have. I mean,
this is the extent of what we have and we're lucky to have it for that matter. So anything the county
has in its archives, either the county plan commission or the commissioner's office, anywhere.
Anything that survived the paper to electronic. I will just say from my standpoint I did see this maybe
a few days ago and I did go looking and we talked to our legal department to our knowledge. This is
the only document that was created. I don't think that subsequent inter cooperatives as it's called
were made. We do have inner locals but those were subject for
planning and zoning jurisdiction only. They were very narrow in scope. They weren't associated to the
MPO. So our legal department and myself, we tried to rack our brains and look at different places, but
I don't think that there was anything beyond this. I'll keep looking. Okay. And we also went back to
2008 work program, looked through it too. Nothing had changed.
at that time from 2008 up until now. So, okay. Okay, item E, some project updates regarding TIP projects
or projects receiving federal funds through the MPO. There's nothing really too much to add except for
One project, the project 2200619, that is some of these bridge deck overlay projects on I-69. One of
them is up there on the map. The project manager reached out to us and shared that construction is possible
during the fall of 2026 or spring of 27.
It's also anticipated that the construction at these locations will occur separately. So there's seven,
I think there's seven locations where they're doing bridge deck overlay on I-69. Five of the locations
will have shoulder and lane closures, but those will be less than seven days. And two of the locations,
West Arlington and Kinzer Pike will use temporary traffic signals.
The roads will remain open, but there may be some weight because of the temporary traffic signals. Other
than that, that's all the updates I have. If Neil or the county have any updates they want to share,
feel free to. I'll do a couple quick, just basic project updates. So first, the downtown curb around
space five project that we were mentioning earlier, it is still moving forward.
starting design. We're negotiating a design contract right now with an engineering firm. And then I
wanted to give a brief update on our High Street project. So we are wrapping up right away acquisition
on that. We are looking to do some tree clearing before the environmental bat window closes on April
1st of this year. And then that
needs to happen in advance of utility relocations, which would occur generally throughout 2026. And
then looking at project construction, uh, during 2027, I think our, our letting date for the project
is actually in, uh, I want to say October of this year, September, October, somewhere in there. Um,
but getting ahead of it so that we can get the utilities out of the way so that the project can successfully
go to construction. Um, and be happy to update on any other projects if anyone has questions.
Can I ask a question about the high street one, just because it's a road I travel. Is that street going
to be detoured off then during that process? So during construction itself, we'll probably break into
phases, segments of the road, and it will most likely become a one-way street during those phases. So
there will still be access to everywhere along it, but not from both directions. And then in 2026, during
utility relocations, you'll probably see
Similar but shorter duration maybe flagging or maybe short one ways cool. Thanks mill Lynette I have
a number of project updates and hopefully just to establish a baseline of what you know and what we
know since paul saturday Retire between last meeting in this meeting So bear with me as I go through
this list The curry pike phase one project between state road 45 and state road 48
Letting was in February and was awarded to DC Construction. We're working with Indiana Railroad for
right of entry along the tracks and have a pre-construction meeting set for March 11th.
The Eagleson Bridge letting was in January and was awarded to Beatty Construction. We're working with
NDOT to set up a pre-construction meeting later in March or April. The inspector for the project is
Bob Rob Burkhart with BFS and construction is scheduled to start after move-in and open before move-in
in 2027. Rockport Ridge
Brockport Road Bridge 308, letting was in February and was awarded to CLR contractors. The inspector
will be Chris Stoner with EGS BLN. We'll be working with them to set up a pre-construction meeting for
this project in March and April also. Fairfax Road Safety Project, the high friction pavement installation
at various locations between mostly Shaq Road and Cleve Butcher Road. The pavement cores were completed
around January 30th.
Stage three plans will be completed after these core reports are completed and we should expect to see
those reports in June. That road bridge number 79 replacement, we're working on last parcel negotiations.
Letting is not until fiscal year 2029. The design is 100% completed. Old State Road 37 South and Dillman
Road intersection, early coordination letters for the phase of the section 106 review process went out
February 20th, 2026. Roar Road Bridge 75 replacement. Expect construction to begin in the spring. The
contractor is CLR and this is a locally funded project. The closure and detour will be established at
that pre-construction meeting. The Vernal Pike Connector on profile parkway between Loesch Road to Curry Pike.
There's a meeting scheduled this Friday with Simtra to bring up what was supposed to be completed by
the Cook Group as part of the approval of the old GE site. Not sure who the design consultant will be
at this time.
And then just one announcement, we will be having an on-site engineer starting in March until we find
a full-time replacement for Paul. The engineer is Brent Wenholt with BFS. He was a county engineer for
12 years in Dubois County, so he has a lot of knowledge on federal aid projects, local rural projects,
plan reviews. He'll be in our office one day a week and attend meetings as needed.
If you have any questions or would like updates on other projects, I'm happy to answer those. Thanks,
Lynette. And just to clarify, not all the projects she mentioned are receiving federal funds. But I'll
talk to her about that later. Thank you. OK.
Okay, thanks Lynette and Neil. So are we moving on now to old business? Okay, moving on to old business.
Okay, the first item we have under old business is the Unified Planning Work Program. This is for fiscal
year 2027-2028. Copy that we have included in the packet is what we call the final draft. As of February
20th, 2026, we received
Adjustments were made to the document itself after comments, review comments from Federal Highway
Administration, Federal Transit Administration, and the Indiana Department of Transportation. Federal
Highway comments, and I can send these to you afterwards. I apologize for not having these in the packet.
They're actually fairly simple.
Comments include remove all references to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act and rename those the IIJA.
It's no longer the bill, the BIL. It's the IIJA. So all of that has been replaced. All rescinded executive
orders were removed from the document. Any references to
planning emphasis areas under prior national administration were removed. Also, under active transportation,
page 40 of the document says remove any reference to the bipartisan infrastructure law, replace that
with the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which was done. Page 41, excuse me.
on active transportation, remove, again, the reference to the bipartisan infrastructure law, replace
that with the Infrastructure and Investment and Jobs Act. Federal Transit Administration's comments
were, please remove the FTA Region 5 from the reference planning emphasis areas, which we did, replace
the bipartisan infrastructure law with the Infrastructure and Investment and Jobs Act.
Remove references to rescinded executive orders which were done and that's in oh and then under discretionary
programs federal transit administration for planning. Please note that they may be awarded as a requirement
as selected planning projects must be included in the work program upon award and prior to being eligible
for pre award authority.
such as areas of poverty, transitory development, planning projects, et cetera. The Indiana Department
of Transportation's comments are recommended in addition to indirect endorsement letter. This is the
indirect cost endorsement letter, which is in the appendices. Please list that in the dialog box in
the introduction. It lists the approval of the indirect rate that will be used for the work program.
that we did the estimated unexpended work program balance on page 13. Please also include purchase orders
under that table. We added the purchase order numbers and then we're showing the carryover balance at
the end of this current fiscal year as being zero. The individual planning element budget table that
follows each planning element should be structured in a way and manner showing
federal matching funds and estimated carryover funds. We redid that table to show that there are no
carryover funds, period. Summary budget and planning sources, highly recommended the MPO restructure
the summary budget table, which we did, and that's included in the document. Furthermore, fiscal year
27 MPO Consolidated Planning Grant Mark is $298,149. We've adjusted that according to that number.
On page 25, the fifth bullet, please reword the word equity considerations. We took out the word equity
and can't remember the word that we put in instead. Page 26, element 300,
Please include activities beginning for the next step tip update, which will be in 2029 fiscal year,
2029 and 2033. We did element 306 performance measures. The eighth bullet suggested rewording the word
sustainability. So we reworded the word sustainability. Page 40, 501, health plan 501 on active transportation.
Fifth paragraph, please remove the word equity from ADA equity considerations. Now that's in the law,
but we did it anyway. Third bullet on page 40, please remove equity from ADA equity, which we did,
and again, that was in the law. Page 41, active transportation.
No, no, no. That's a duplication. That's a duplication there. Okay. And then on page 47, under the Title
VI and ADA compliance plans, identify the LPAs where the MPO will monitor the Title VI status going
forward and move toward limited funding to those entities not meeting the requirements as Federal-aid
recipients. We therefore reworded it to identify
That we would not only review or monitor the city of Bloomington but also Monroe County and also the
town of Ellisville. That's it. Well thanks for that overview Pat and I hope you guys got a lot of use
out of a thesaurus during this process of changing the words equity and sustainability. Yeah those are
bad words. Do we have to have a motion to approve this.
Yes, there's a request requested action to recommend approval by the by the TSE and the Policy Committee.
So I guess do we have a motion to approve? I just have maybe two questions really quick and I think
you addressed them last time, Pat. But I just want to make sure I'm on the right track. The overall
budget reduced due to the 2020 census and you went over that last time. But just for my own reminder. Sure.
Did you equally kind of reduce each itemized line item by that percent or was it more of a cooperative
discussion between because I know like I remember you saying asset management went down to zero or something
like that. Is it was there like a framework for which you decided on those reductions basically.
The current budget that we operate under is 325,000 or so in federal funds. This new one will be $298,000.
It's been a steady cut for three consecutive years, and that is a result of the 2020 census. The funding
we receive for planning is based on a per capita allocation.
And since Bloomington went down in the 2020 census, our students went home. They weren't counted vis-a-vis
other communities. Lafayette went down too, but vis-a-vis the other group two smaller communities, everybody
went down. In terms of the budget, what I had shown in the draft was I had shown a deficit and they
did not want us to show a deficit. So we,
took the deficit out, rebalanced hours, and what we did was reduced my hours, reduced Katie's hours,
and put those in what I would call the rank order of what we do. And the rank order of what we do is
element 100, meetings, meetings, minutes, discussions with outside groups and all of that. What is it?
go to that real quick. Yeah, the inter administration and public public participation. That's that's
our biggest expenditure in terms of hours. Historically, we balanced everything based on what our time
had been spent in previous years. After that, we go to the transportation improvement program. That's
the second largest user of our hour time.
After that, we went to task 500, which is the active transportation. There's a requirement there that
we spend a minimum of 2.5% of our federal funding in active transportation. And then the city of Bloomington
also received a $1.44 million grant from the US Department of Transportation. We will assist in that
in a modest way.
I'm not saying that we'll spend a lot of our time on that but because they have the forces to do that
but we will assist in a modest way task and then going from there the crash report crash report and
traffic counts what I'd call the traffic count data and the crash report data the crash reports consume
a considerable amount of time right now because we how do we how do I say it clean up the data
We received the data in a raw format from the database, the area's database. We cleaned that up. Usually
that's cleaned up somewhere around April, May, June. And then we posted on the crash dashboard. And
the crash dashboard was brand new as of this year, too, for that, well, this fiscal year, I should say.
Then after that, the task 600,
which is the Title VI, that's the one where we're spending the least. We took money out of that one.
That one has in it, I think, only nine hours of time, nine hours of billable time in the whole task.
And then going to your other question about contract service agreements, we zeroed out all the contract
service agreements. Previously we had two of those, $13,000 for the City of Bloomington asset management, $13,000.
county asset management given the cut we had to reduce those also. And then previously in pre prior
years we had also shared resources with Bloomington Transit. There's no resources with Bloomington Transit
either this year or the next year. Does that answer all of your questions. That so I could compare like
last month's
work program draft this program work draft. Okay. And then there just the discussion we just had about
the you know internal quarterly meetings between staff just to kind of do we don't have to put everything
in this work program that we do coordination wise like we do have some flexibility. Oh you do have to
over everything. Okay. So is that in there. I didn't. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
We'll conduct a minimum of four quarterly meetings. That's a requirement also. Preparation of that takes
an extensive amount of time too because the county and the city all are required to submit their quarterly
reports. Quarterly reports come to us first. We go through the quarterly reports, review those, look
for changes, look for key issues that may be evolving, and then we approve those.
Those go to the Department of Transportation, the Department of Transportation, and then we meet usually
a few weeks after that to discuss it. Uh, one project that came up recently was old state road 37 in
Dilman road. That project had originally been scheduled, I think for an October, October letting or
something like that in 20, 27. And then, uh, it was moved to March.
of 2027 and it's still only in the early coordination phase. We expressed concern to the county highway
director over the issue of a March letting is risky. I'll say that. And so as a result of that, we're
working behind the scenes to move that one to fiscal year 28 and to meet that obligation. We're in the
process of looking at
trades or loans. I shouldn't say trades trades. Yeah loans. I shouldn't say loans trades with other
MPOs so that way we can balance it out and we can have that project go to a contract letting it the
proper time. So yeah there's everything that's in here. It says responsible agency and end product.
That's what we do. Yeah. And I know we were starting the process maybe to I don't remember if it was
last year the year before.
regarding the complete streets which probably isn't allowed anymore under this current administration
but there was some discussion I thought was helpful about how do we like score or have a fair rubric
between all the different parties. I'd still like to see something like that in the future just to be
completely transparent amongst everyone to say this is how we evaluated that project.
And I also know Katie invited me to a training of you know there are other jurisdictions have a lot
more staff that they're able to incorporate other components of MPOs like prioritizing housing
and transportation or prioritizing other things with transportation. That could be something in the
rubric or just a discussion amongst us.
complete streets policy that we developed and adopted three, four years ago, something like that. I
think it was four years ago now. That was based on best practice at that time. And we adopted it, I
would call it holistically. And then after the adoption, we didn't realize that the scoring process
was biased against safety projects. It was actually prioritizing capacity expansion
or new facilities or things like that instead of safety. So we've talked internally extensively about
we wanna go through a new scoring process and that may come out of the cake in April of this year, this
calendar year or May or so. Yeah, Complete Streets is not fully supported on the national level.
What was the other question? Just the rubric and how we score things and if we can include other components.
Yeah, it'll be a complete rewrite is what we want to do. And that would come to this committee for review?
Oh, yes, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. We would hope to bring that to you in April or May. That depends on
our workload because they're just the two of us and we're being bombarded right now. I understand.
Thank you. All right, sure. Well, Jackie, to your point, I know it's something
John brought up at prior meetings too but we never really quite got it off the ground but I believe
we talked about even having a working group that very reason just helping. So it might be something
we could still include in the mix to be interested. Yeah the technical advisory committee be heavily
involved in whatever we do. It won't be just us giving you a presentation and then asking for support.
You know it'll be a working process.
Great. Thanks for the comments everybody. Any other comments. I guess this is a motion to approve the
old business the twenty twenty seven twenty twenty eight unified planning work program. So move each
a second. And I guess I should have said if there's a I forgot that the phrasing and unanimous approval.
Public comment yes, sorry if there's any public comment time is now I'm not seeing any Sorry Can you
hear oh yeah, I see we see you now Eric sorry about that That's okay. Yeah, I raised my hand during
presentation. My name is Eric Ost and I want to say thank you for all of your work on this this important
matter. During the Mr. Martin's presentation he mentioned the crash dashboard and I wasn't sure if that
was something that was going to be scaled back or continued and if it is being continued
I'm wondering if you could, I appreciate the efforts to clean up the data that's downloaded from the
ARIES system, but I'm wondering if you could publish the complete ARIES data set for Monroe County as
a separate file that could be accessed by the public as point of information
that used to be published by the state, as well as in a slightly modified form by the city of Bloomington
until 2023, I believe. But it would be very helpful for the analysis of traffic patterns, crashes, in
a fairly fine retail grain manner, if that complete data set could be.
published on a hopefully on a monthly basis that would be great. And just that I can send you documentation
on what that data set includes if that would be helpful. So I guess I'm asking to clarify that the crash
dashboard will still be maintained by staff despite the funding constraints and also that the complete
data set be
published just as a separate file. Thank you. In regard to the crash dashboard, absolutely. That was
the purpose of establishing the crash dashboard in the first place. And then we'll be refining that
further as we proceed. In terms of access to the area's database, there's a legal requirement that we have that
We, the staff, don't see the area's database. That's loaded, downloaded through the engineering department.
Do you know that? Okay. There's a legal requirement on that and confidentiality. And that's- I'm sorry
to interrupt. Could I ask for that contract to be provided? That actually, that restriction has been
mentioned before, but Indiana code declares that accident reports are public data and not classified.
So I'd like to follow up with someone about that so I can better understand what those restrictions
are. If they are a contract with a private provider, then that does not obviate the fact that Indiana
Code declares it as public record. And my understanding. Okay, yeah. Yeah, they are through a private
contractor, but I'm unfamiliar with exactly what the requirements are. I can research that and we can
send you an email.
Eric we discussed this last year and the answer is is the same as it was last year, which is that We
are not authorized to publish the in dot crash data Only in dot is authorized to publish it and then
they decide who they give access to the system internally and then the public is also welcome to purchase
the crash data through the in dot website and
All of the answers are still the same about that. With regards to your comment about the data being
published in the past, as I mentioned last year, that data publishing was a mistake and it was not legally
permitted. And when it was realized that that was not permitted, that data was taken down off the website.
Okay, I appreciate that. I'd like to follow up with someone
possibly in a conversation in regards to this, because I think what you're talking about is a restriction
of a contract with a private provider. You referenced NDOT, but prior, yeah, without getting into too
many details, I think there's some nuance here and MPOs can access the data. It's possible that the state has
moved this process to a private contractor. But that doesn't obviate the fact that Indiana code declares
it is public record and not classified. We recommend you reach out to in dot about that by submitting
a comment through in dot for you. I will. Sorry to interrupt. I will do that. But I need some
more information from perhaps engineering or the city in order to formulate that that request.
because it doesn't, and first thing I'd like to see is a copy of the contract that has this non-disclosure
language in it. Thank you, that's all I really have at this time. Thanks for your comment, Eric. I guess,
I'm not sure, MPO staff or engineering or city legal could maybe get in touch with Eric to kind of clarify
these things
Online I guess online but off off meeting. Yeah I mean two of us don't don't access don't download the
data that's actually through the engineering department we can we can research and get an answer back
to him in terms of an email. Yes. Awesome. Thanks Pat. Yeah. Any other public comment online. I'm not
seeing hands. It's hard to see on zoom here if there are hands but I don't see any.
So I wasn't able to expand it but he's all that's there yeah So it does not look like any so I guess
This is the motion for anonymous or not a total approval All in favor of Moving the old business FY
2027 2028 unified planning work program
Say aye aye Any opposed say nay abstain Seems like we have it. Thank you page 91 to 92 is a proposed
amendment I
Indot and Federal Transit Administration requires that transit proposed budgets be placed in the local
TIP and voted on by the local committees. And so before you today is a request to add a new project
to the TIP entitled Purchase of Replacement Buses.
Uh, there, there is a project in the tip currently, but it's specific to electric buses. So this one
is more general, uh, just for buses in general. And the funding that you see added here is actually
a flex funding that came from previous NPO years, uh, where the, the annual allocations, the NPO wasn't
able to be used.
by the end of the year, and so these amounts, in fiscal year 22 is 69,000, in 23, 3 million, and 24,
168,000. Those amounts were flexed to Bloomington Transit. And unlike the MPO, the Transit's able to
kind of bank that money and use it when they wish. However, they are, I believe, a bit worried.
Federal Transit Administration is advising everyone to use their funds that they have stored up prior
to the expiration of the IIJA in September of this year. And so this is a request for your approval to adopt
project called Purchase Replacement Buses to the Tip so that Bloomington Transit can use the funds that
were flexed to them in previous three years. And so we're just asking for your recommendation for approval.
I guess if there's any comments.
look like it. So I guess we'll seek a motion to approve new business BMC MPO FY 20 26 20 30 tip amendments
resolution FY 20 26 0 5 Bloomington Transit purchase new buses. All in favor say aye. I said there's
gonna be hiccups. Do we have a motion to to approve this.
So moved. I'll second. Thanks Neil and Nate. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any abstentions abstain abstain.
All opposed say nay. Seems like we have it. Thank you. John you can go to public comment now.
Sure. Yes. So now we're at the moment for public comment on matters not included on the agenda. These
will be limited to five minutes per speaker. So if anybody has any public comments I'd like to make.
Now's your time. Not seeing anybody. I have a public comment. This is as my role as a citizen not as
a city of Bloomington staff member and I'm
here as a university elementary school parent. There's been a lot of discussion about potentially adding
a crosswalk for that school. It is within it's between the schools in the city, the church parking lot
is in the county. And I just wanted to bring it up to this group. If anyone is interested in working
on this project, I am organizing parents to get together. And I'd love to just wanted to bring that
discussion. Thanks. Awesome. Thanks Megan. Any other public comments. I guess we move on. Go for it.
So communications from committee members on matters not included on the agenda. If anybody has any thing
they want to bring up. I do have
One thing here. Oh, actually, sorry. Those are for a different committee. I'm OK. Cool. Or topics for
future agendas, I guess, as well.
Seems like none. So we'll move on to our upcoming meetings. We have a policy committee meeting on Friday,
February 27th. That's at 10 30. It's a hybrid meeting. The next technical advisory committee will be
Wednesday, March 25th at 10. I'm assuming these are going to be back in this this room kind of for for
the near future. And then we also have the citizens advisory committee meeting that same day, March
25th at 5 30 p.m. And I believe with that.
Do we need a motion to adjourn or do we just we just adjourn? Okay. Well, yeah, thanks for being here
today Thanks for sticking with me as we kind of had some little Roadblocks along the way, but uh, yeah,
we'll adjourn till next meeting. So, thank you