ready to go and there is the the lady in that I was waiting for Ms. Moss thank you so much all right so we're going to call this meeting the MTPO board all right November the third Monday at three o'clock p.m and we are ready to call this meeting to order and see who is here I noticed that they the call to order they have chairs announcements here I think probably I should wait on my announcements for later I will say that I was a part of the the the state meeting that was in Orlando I didn't go but I was on zoom and the board chair is a is a friend of mine so I was really sorry I'm going to go to the next one for sure it looks like they have a good time down there and they get a lot of work done but that's pretty much the only announcement I have is that I participated with that and learned took notes and have notes to share for anyone who might want to do the national meetings that they're going to be having in Lexington Kentucky next time so in any case I did I did attend by uh zoom and we'll try to get there in person next time to to have more notes to share with you so we have a roll call that goes to me so uh Mayor Ward here and Commissioner Book here Cynthia Chestnut um Desmond Duncan Walker Brian here James you all forgive my informality here here Casey here right and Mary here Anna I know she's here I saw her she may be in a meeting coming later and Ken here Chuck oh he had to leave I think early and Tina and Adrian here and Commissioner Taylor here and Linda here all right it looks like we've got everybody here that's that's necessary for us to continue this meeting so move approval of the agenda all right all right thank you have a motion say your name so that we can can um as move who is seconded and Adrian thank you all right any questions or concerns about the agenda in favor say aye aye like sign opposed all right that motion passes unanimously unanimously all right then the approval of the minutes they're quantius uh madam chair um i move a um adoption of approval of the minutes with one uh correction to commissioners chestnut and chestnut there's only one t at the end of their name if we can get that okay hopefully permanently changed on the roll call okay all right well thank you second all right thank you have a motion and a second to approve the uh minutes from the last meeting with the changes to the chestnut family name all right thank you for noticing you're really good at this you're really good all in favor say aye all right i'm sorry yes thank you all right all right yes i knew i saw you we're busy today it's a busy monday it's a busy day all right so moving quite right along we've had the approval of the minutes action items there are none that i see on our agenda and so now i can turn this over to miss moss and mr bowl hopefully things are in order more this time um our internet cooperates um so the first two things um the district two tentative work program and the sort of abbreviated alachua county version um not going to go through them they're very very long documents they've been included in your packets um but just to show you that there is um one completed for all of district two and then zooming in to alachua district two staff were very kind and produced a comparison chart for us this year which i have printed in your sort of abbreviated packets um and i use this when meeting with the technical advisory committee and the citizens advisory committee to just sort of look at the highlights so what has changed from the previous five-year tentative work program versus this iteration it's 12 pages still and in general there is a lot of rolling forward and advancing existing projects i'll just describe kind of the overall structure of the document so we've got projects broken down into interstate state highways which a lot of which are local roads to us within these we have categories like resurfacing landscaping pedestrian complete streets we've got local roads state highway system and then off system and interstate projects we have maintenance of facilities aviation and so a whole lot of different categories a whole lot of different projects we reviewed this um with tac to look at projects we've been familiar with and tracking there was a pretty robust discussion of projects that the city and the county have been shepherding and one thing that popped up for us and probably you all have noticed as well as there's in the right hand column there's a comment project dropped so that looks uh very prevalent and concerning and so what that typically correlates to is that the project is in construction or will have been constructed in the year 2026 so they're not rolling it forward because it's anticipated that it'll be complete if there are rare instances where that is not the case it could be that there's not money for additional phases so for instance the widening of archer road that has been in the work program we don't have funding at this time to construct that project and so um that's one sort of example um but then in general the rest of them you're seeing rollover into the next phases um particular project that um i'd say really a lot of them we were able to resolve questions with fdot project on the third page of this table let's see fifth from the bottom is four three five five five eight two and that is uh west university avenue from gail gail lamorand to waldo road the city through its pd and e process has developed several sort of crossing projects intersection improvements safety improvements and um they'd like to make sure that those are incorporated in that scope of work if possible so at this time um that's the primary sort of project and recommendation that i have in mind um as we're going to be writing a letter from the mtpo to the district secretary um and so uh debbie leisner transportation planning manager from the city is here she could list all of the different um crossings but i would say in general it's a really nice sort of cadence of pedestrian crossings um where there aren't any now and where we actually see in the crash data those are some areas where people are trying to cross where there aren't any um opportunities presently so that'll be in the sort of letter from from the mtpo and we also have comments that'll be forthcoming from rts director jesus gomez regarding transit um and so this is not a action item for the board um but i'll be kind of the the center point the funnel for all comments um and you know any that we can sort of dispense with because there's a misunderstanding of how the information is portrayed we won't pass those on but if there are any that are hey we'd really like to see this in this project um or if there are any projects that truly have dropped off um i'll be including those in my letter so um this page to bold from fdot is here today to provide a presentation that is i'd say much more accessible than looking at a 12 page table um she's got several maps that show projects that are slated to be in construction in the year 2027 is it fy 27 fy 27 um by category um and it was primarily resurfacing and then i said you know this board's going to want to hear about yes we care about resurfacing but also our safety um pedestrian and those types of projects so she um kindly added those and i'm just going to ask her to take my seat up here i would say to this this group too you all look through it carefully so if you have any questions you can ask them while we got them both here with the caveat that some things we'll take notes on and follow up exactly i don't know if i can make this thank you good afternoon so this is the tentative work program for fiscal years 27 through 31 for the gainesville mtpo the mission statement for the florida department of transportation it's to provide a safe statewide transportation system that promotes efficient movement of people and goods supports the state's economic development or competitiveness prioritizes florida's environment and natural resources and preserves the quality of life and connectedness of the state's communities at this five-year work program where safety resurfacing slash preservation bridges capacity traffic operations enhancement public transportation programs and off-system roads this is a map of district 2 but this presentation is going to focus on projects in alachua county that have construction taking place in 2027 our first project is a railroad project taking place on state road 235 just south of peggy road and it will be a rebuild of the crossing there our next one is going to be a traffic signal project on state road 200 at southeast 57th avenue we will be installing signals there um we are planning on installing two dual arm traffic signals and that's the love's truck stop oh thank you say that again big and loud the love's truck stop thank you that's what i was trying wonderful oh wonderful we have another traffic signal prop project it's on state road 24 at state road 121 it's going to be an upgrade of the signals there for safety enhancements and it will include ada improvements is that where they're taking away the slip lanes is that no that's 34 that's 34 that's good thinking oh yeah we will be adding lanes and reconstructing on the state road 26 corridor from the gilchrist county line to county road 26a just east of newberry and this road will be going from two to four lanes and the project the project will include lighting this is uh locally known as the one-way pairs of newberry the one-way one the one-way pair project yeah so this the city of newberry with fdot has um planned to one-way um 26 through their downtown and that would be eastbound i'm saying this correctly and then um the next local street to the north i believe it's first avenue they'll have as their westbound pair two lanes one median modification this is at northwest 43rd street uh north of northwest 16th boulevard and northwest 23rd avenue we will be constructing a concrete traffic separator this is a directional median so that um say folks from the shopping plaza plaza cannot make a left um leave anyway it won't be a through a full access median on 43rd street that's north of 16th that's going to cause a lot of problems uh yeah that's going to cause a lot of problems it's a hsip hsip safety project that the county applied for with fdot it's counting i know it's just going to be people are going to be doing new terms like crazy we're trying to all right go ahead our first resurfacing project is on state road 24 in waldo from northeast 148th avenue to northeast 144th avenue we're still working out the details for the project but the existing guard rail that is there will be upgraded i believe it's right by the courthouse and was it a library um i believe there was a police station okay i believe the police station is just east of the police station and our old city hall were together so it would be on the other side that you guys are coming back and doing that uh going back into gamesville i would assume and that's where i was talking about um alice and i need to add it some more on there with resurfacing sorry can you speak into the mic now it's going to say again because i want i want to hear what you have to say commissioner because you you we try to get a lot of attention in waldo for you all yeah um yes ma'am i was trying to make sure exactly where that what's that and you said it's where the old um police station is and that would be on the other side uh as you're going back into to gainesville so i'm assuming it'll run maybe up towards around where the church is as you're going back into on the south side that is correct so it would take care of all of that um lumpy pavement with the concrete that's going sideways it's tearing up all the cars and i see that the new uh memorandum that you sent out would be able to add more things to it that we need to have um please clarify the question the email that you sent out where we can add more things to it by december 5th i believe it is the comments for this work program were due november 20th last november 20th or this november 20th yeah if there are if there are projects within the existing tentative work program existing tentative sounds like an oxymoron anyway if they're in this tentative work program and you feel there are certain features that should be added to enhance them that's something that we could include in the letter commissioner may i ask you a question while we're talking about this one right here did have they installed a crosswalk yet a flashing clip for yes ma'am the stop the uh crosswalks are installed but they're not operable okay for them to finish and i guess they'll pull the plastic down and be ready to go okay great okay we don't have them on the other side where the stories or the railroad track is crossing they haven't put them up yet but they have the concrete and the barriers and everything there okay excellent all right thank you another on state row 24a state road 226 from state row 24 to state road 331 and it has been proposed to widen the sidewalk on the eastbound side of state road 226 from shealy drive to state road 25. reef will also potentially be replacing the damaged sidewalks to ensure ada compliance upgrade the pedestrian signals and replace the signs and pavement markings adrian um on the portion west of 441 to archer road there's pretty large buffered areas there for the bike lanes is there any ability to to add in protected either pylons or other i mean you know that protected by planes for that section if there's a pretty substantial room there to i think that's something we could talk with the project manager about and make a note of that there's quite a bit of traffic in that area so you said sidewalk on the on the western portion of this to the eastbound so the south side because right now it's a it's a it's real narrow it's not a bit sort of going to eight or like six foot wide it did not i did not specify um all it said was on the eastbound side but i can reach out to the project manager okay because i think it's a pretty narrow sidewalk as is right now but a lot of people some people who are on bikes and particularly little scooters will opt for that south side people going to the um the veterinary hospital or people who are headed all the way out the archer to two apartments on old archer road they opt for that south side and kind of what i i drive it daily so well they come from the bike trailers yeah and then they get that and they're just on the sidewalk yeah this it seems to be that's what they prefer so they avoid the um archer and 16th weird intersection they already they offer this out and they just take the sidewalk all the way out it's in my experience my anecdotal experience yeah i'll look i'll look into that and i'll get back with you thank you all for adding landmarks because i don't i'm not familiar with all of these roads enough to know where they are you know so a landmark helps me yeah south west 16th from 14th so 13th no i can read that part up there but in terms of really knowing where all those places are i don't always know where they are right you give me a landmark i can i can get there are you okay y'all need to say so then it makes me feel like i'm the only one who doesn't know stuff so y'all okay we have another resurfacing project on state road 45 from state road 25 to south of state road 26 and it will potentially 27 you said 25 i apologize state road 45 from state road 24 to south of state road 26 or us we call it us 27 it's the road between third area and archery it's bad it's going to have to do that and the existing guard rail will potentially be upgraded and our final resurfacing project is on west university from southwest 38th street to gale and lemerand we're still in the beginning of the design phase so we don't have many plans currently um but it will we will potentially be upgrading the pedestrian signals and we are expecting to construct mid-block crossings we do not know exactly where they will be yet our first landscaping project is on 39th avenue from west of i-75 to northwest 34th street this is another one we're still in the in the beginning of the design phase but we are expecting to remove a lot of the existing plant material and we'll be adding new ones so that it's a more cohesive look it should mainly consist of median planting so okay anna um i guess in that regard are are we able to have requests with regards to the types of plants that are utilized that we have a list of like trees and shrubs and plants that we try to utilize in landscaping for our rights of way and for development projects it would be great if they mirrored those if that's possible i know we have a a contact someone a coordinator um we could contact with that question okay that would be fantastic yeah i just said we try to focus as much as we can on things that are native to florida and that are zero escaped and don't need a lot of excess water and things like that so it'd be great to mirror that and we always love wildflowers wherever we could do those they're pollinators yeah they don't always work on roadsides no they don't they run into but um just interject briefly so some discussion at the tac was had regarding landscaping as a type of project we noticed there was you know quite a bit of scope and budget devoted to landscaping and wondered if there was any flexibility to say reallocate towards safety projects as that would be of most need in alachua county in gainesville it seems like probably the color of money will not allow flexibility in that regard it was also added that land the term landscape may be semi-liberally applied it may also include lighting projects um so in some cases the district was creative in how they could use funds based on what they had available um so if there's if there's a particular project that there's a strong sentiment about then we can you know share our opinion about that but um those are just two sort of high level pieces of information regarding landscaping jacy are we done planting palm trees because of bronzing or at least some forms of palms that are susceptible to bronzing it's to be the way fdot is going um they have a i know commissioner presia she brought up at the last board meeting the um wildflower the roadside wildflowers program with them focusing on native plants so i think we are trying to be more intentional about what we're putting there thank you this is thank you this is our final landscaping project this is on us 441 from us 27 to just north of northwest 242nd street this is one of those projects where it is classified as a landscaping project but we will be adding street lights i do not have the i'll say concept just yet i have been looking for it um but i do know that there are related projects on state roads 26 25 24 and 20. our first bike pet project is on north mlk memorial highway from northwest 125th street to west of northwest 129th terrace this is one of this is a safe route it's in the town of alachua progress okay this you can't see it but this is a safe routes to school project for alachua elementary we'll be adding a sidewalk the school is dressed outside the maps picture i had to unfortunately cut it so that we could somewhat see the streets we have another safe routes to school project this is on northwest 141st street and northwest 166th place this is for mabay middle school we'll be adding a shared use path a sidewalk and sign our final project is on us 41 from southwest 15th avenue to south of state road 26 this is not specifically a safe routes to school project but there are three different schools on often nearby roads we have oakview middle school newberry junior senior high school and newberry elementary school so we'll be adding a sidewalk to connect the already existing ones so was there any any um focus at all on santa fe high school that intersection there is pretty treacherous you know i do i do believe i've seen a project for that um but that does not have construction taking place in 27 it would be at a later date okay it's you know wait because of the increased activity right there too and uh 235 you know and with the fire station and the wawa station there and the high school there and you know the trucks coming out from the distribution centers and new drivers high school drivers you know and so this is you know i think there's been some concern and there's i don't think there are any sidewalks anywhere around there that that the kids can walk or bike called looking it up on a google map on google maps because it was so you saw what we see okay maybe top than 27 then but because it really is kind of a dangerous place and it's just growing it's just getting more and more even even the speed zone you know maybe to slow that down something would be a way to start um i'll just take a moment to add so the there's sort of a relationship between the list of priority projects then what comes after that is what are we going to try to fund with our su funding plans and then what goes into the next work program um so if there's a project that doesn't exist at all within the work program it may be the next best step for us to look at um you know conceiving of that project defining it in the list of priority projects which is going to be coming up pretty soon in 2026. yes sir did you see that thank you as far as the lighting on where that project we have lighting across from university university avenue from like 13th street to president's house very one of the darkest i feel like state roads we have in our cities but most of the busiest um do you know where that is or if that's i mean i i'd rather like the landscaping project from on 39th avenue from i-7-5-34 street i would rather take those dollars and include it to here inside the lighting of landscaping and landscaping for the university of florida as well and because it's mtpo for a very long time between the president's house and 13th street that whole very bad lighting yeah that's one i was going to bring up i think we've brought that up consistently for maybe the last five years both this board and the university have included that in our um work program reviews it at one time i believe this was funded in 2020 and then cost escalation caused them to push it back um but it but it keeps getting pushed further out so 2030 is where we're redoing the surfacing from 38th to that which is essentially that same stretch i wonder if there's lighting included in that yeah i'm not sure on that portion at least yeah i was wanting to get like the 39th avenue funds that have landscaping that could be reappropriated to university avenue it cannot um but i will look into the resurfacing project that intersects intersects a little bit um to see if there's if there are any specific lighting plans for that and i will very east of where the current project is it has the worst or the most pedestrian activity bicycle activity and most of the deaths that happen and there's been a lot of deaths in that area as well it's a really important safety project yeah that would be one to consider including in the lopp then it's been in your work program since 2020. i'd have to look into that um to see where it currently is yeah it's the 207-658-3-3 towards the bottom yeah we commented on that both the university and the mtpl have commented on that for at least the last four years yeah it started to open my personal on mtpl yeah i thought before the comment um that the calling for does not extend west far enough that it's too far out in the work program 2030. could it be moved up faster because it like it had been in the work program as early as 2020 and it got keeps getting pushed back and back and then you're funding landscape projects instead of moving that one up yeah i'd rather save up for a couple of years on that one for how important that is commissioner chestnut then commissioner book did you mention southeast 15th street that's ours that's yours yeah we're doing that one soon yeah 28 oh good questions thank you okay commissioner book in there thank you ma'am yeah i would support that that's the that's the nine block straps 13th street to 22nd street we're all familiar with it's a super high priority done a lot of work on both state uh county and local funding and that would be one that as soon as it could be done it would take priority just based on the congestion the traffic the crash data and everything would support that there's a couple projects like that but that one in particular so i support the comments i've heard thank you madam chair thank you thank you um the first project that you started with the loves one loves on 301 and hawthorne is that near that with overpass we brought up the hawthorne city manager and myself we've talked about where students are crossing there and getting some lighting or markings or something in that area madam chair it's north of the uh overpass by quite a bit um i don't know exactly how many blocks um but it's a separate sort of full access median today there's been a fatality there recently um there's really heavy truck traffic because of the land use um and so fdot is putting a brand new signal there and and county staff work to get a pedestrian crossing there as well yeah this is a lot of safe um so um 69th av and 301 is also an fdot project that they have added through a push button contract um and that's a pedestrian hybrid beacon and that's already um well along in design and so i'm not sure where that is in this um list but that is absolutely in the works yeah that's the area that's considered to directly serve the students um because that's where a lot of them cross before we get too far past that university project and it really is important for pedestrian partially because we just city disapproved um the pd for a very large amount of rooms with very little parking very very little parking on that stretch um and so like the doubling down of pedestrianism there is uh of course it probably won't happen until 2030 you know by by the time it gets built and so maybe it's at the same time but just wanted to add that back there because not just the current level of pedestrians it's we're expecting like six or seven hundred extra pedestrian like like daily pedestrians there on that stretch um when if that partial gets developed just off the bat thank you yes ma'am um yes ma'am thank you chair before we go too far i want to backtrack to waldo as well uh with the new school that's starting january the 6th 2026 it's coming up um when they come back through well i'm pretty sure it won't start the resurfacing won't start before uh school starts but are we able to include in or have it included in the letter to maybe go back a little further to resurface with the kids that are going to be coming across because we have the majority of the waldo students signed back up now to go to school in waldo so they're going to be coming from across the railroad track and it's going to be coming from all over waldo madam chair are you asking to advance the construction schedule for that project okay projects with construction in fiscal year 26 the work program focuses on 27 through 31 but we wanted to show you projects that have had construction in this previous year i was not able to look up the all of these scopes for the projects or nearby landmarks but i was able to make a map just showing where they are is it the red lines or the blue line what do we look which so the blue lines are the project numbers and the streets they're on and then the red lines are them on a map i have a question can can we request that the dot contractors when they're doing a new pavement to existing road connection that they grind the edge like in on 39th avenue they've already done that a lot of that repaving project and at least on the north side wherever it meets an intersection they paved into the intersection of it which is great because you don't like turn into a but as soon as it gets to the original road the original road is about i don't know you know probably four inches higher than the road that's been paved and you just kind of bump every time you know on all going in and out on all those intersections so i don't know if they can grind that down or if we can at least make that request in future repaving projects that those intersections be smoothed madam chair um i'm wondering if maybe the project is not completed fully if maybe it's the base course and it's not been completed but we can inquire that's why there's the striping is weird as well i guess yeah gotcha okay that makes a lot more sense then five sidewalk projects that had construction in fiscal year 26 and two pedestrian safety projects i was unable to make maps for these projects as the database was down but one of the pedestrian safety projects is by norton elementary school we need that one really bad that's great we'll walk in the road lots of them just because i know about some of these um southwest 20th avenue um from southwest 43rd to southwest 34th street so that's um a lab project that the county's working on to complete segments of sidewalk on the north side of southwest 20th ave um and then i believe at least one of the top sort of generic city of gainesville pedestrian projects is um ada ramps for the city of gainesville i believe they bundled them and bit them out that way casey so and then jenis uh so um so that's the county is doing the north side and the is the then the state is doing the the south side of it on 20th or there's it there's just is this just joint somehow it's state funding managed through a lap agreement is my understanding okay and is it a single project is it is it just on one is it north or on the north or south side of southwest 20th or the north side if i misspoke no i just couldn't sorry i didn't hear so it's it's replacement and some connections that are missing there's a couple yeah there are presently gaps thank you so much thank y'all dina so in continuum along southwest 20th west towards that 75 overpass any consideration to the sidewalk or something along there because there's so much foot traffic that it's from that kangaroo from 67th so alachua county applied madam chair for a raise grant for planning planning and design because the bridge would need to be completely overhauled and so this would be a part of that we're working through the grant agreement with fhwa and it's taking longer than we would like but that would be the first step for that project one bicycle project with construction in fiscal year 26 and they had eight intersection improvement projects i could speak to some of these just with some local knowledge um so the first one the bicycle project was just adding striped bike lanes on a segment of archer road where they were i believe already repaving um the or was that the path that may have been the the continuation of the path um 97th boulevard and 39th avenue is a new um directional median so there's a big safety issue at the bottom of the hill of 39th avenue um and 97th boulevard so there'll be a median to prohibit um through movements there um let's see newberry lane at county road 235 is a sort of intersection conflict warning system um so the county would ultimately like to build a roundabout at that location um but right-of-way would need to be acquired and a lot more funding um the seventh project northeast third ave and 39th ave sorry waldo road from third ave to 39th i'm not sure why that's an intersection improvements to be honest um i think that's just mislabeled but the intersection improvement would be the city of gainesville's um sort of bicycle boulevard crossing of northeast third avenue and waldo road to create a safer crossing at that location so i think the description is just off um and then i believe the 13th and archer road um intersection improvements you'll have seen that um extensively at the last meeting of your comments and questions and have her send them my way however that being said the deadline for submitting official comments on the work program up to fdot district 2 is november 20th you can submit comments at nflroads.com forward slash vph or through mail comments should be addressed to greg evans the district 2 secretary and miss moss sent an email in email in october containing this information i believe could you go through that information one more time please yeah so the website is n as in nancy fl rhodes.com slash v as in voice p h vph and greg evans is the one that you need to be in touch with for comments yes he is the district 2 secretary so i'd say any um any questions sort of requesting clarification on the work program um could come to me i could field them and work through the district liaison um you know sort of higher level comments on behalf of the mtpo i'll be compiling a letter um what about anybody from the community who has concerns about they can use the um the fdot website okay linda yes i just have a question on two of the projects there's the southwest 13th street pedestrian improvements that's a new project from 16th avenue to north of 11th avenue i was curious to know more about the scope and then maybe relatedly uh there's a project for south with 13th street described as a as a bike path slash trail but i believe it's actually a sidewalk widening to accomplish that it was from 11th avenue to museum road and that one is um appears to be dropped out it's toward the bottom of page five um it had design work this year and there's no construction phase so i was curious if that piece that was designed is that part of this new project or what is in the scope of the new project i would have to look into that but it is possible that it is continuing on as the new project can you madam chair can you please provide the number within the table for the first one you inquired about the first one is the new project 4322407 it's toward the bottom of page seven and it just says you know pedestrian improvements but it's not quite the same project limits it doesn't go all the way up to museum road but it says north of southwest 11th avenue so maybe it does it's just hard to tell other questions from this board yeah casey so i in the same vein as that but the the bigger project that's further north there's a there's a decrease in the funding for that for that trail yes and that's so i was just kind of wondering what's going on with that because i know that's a priority for uf and we've been talking about it for a long time did it just did it move one way or the other or i could probably respond to that so that's one that the university is doing in sort of a similar lap agreement kind of model that the the city and the county have done with dot and the cost estimate was reduced and we asked about that and they said it was just because their their cost estimating has has revised that and refined it based on kind of current uh the unit costs that they use for cost estimating so they were pretty comfortable and we we've looked at it and i think we're still pretty comfortable we can just design to that um to that amount all right for the trail projects and then additionally there's going to be the um median project basically right pretty close and an intersection project that's coming just a little further north than with the bike that's not part of that trail project yeah that's a different project i'm just saying yes i'm trying to piece it all together because by the time we're done we're talking about you know like six different projects yes you're right there's the fourth avenue and 13th street intersection project which is wonderful that's in here and then i just had a quick question about the interstate median barrier project it didn't say how many miles is that they're just going to see how many miles they can get with that funding and i assume this is basically a wire the kind of what tensioned wire uh barriers look into um the scope of that project and get back to you okay because it's a new project i assume it's i know a lot of we've had a lot of accidents where people cross the the median so that's what i assume it is but would be good to hear a little more thank you thank you are there any other comments from the board i i if this now would be a good time we have citizens there's a couple of citizens i know who've come here to offer thoughts and ideas if we could do that now rather than wait for a citizen comment that would be great okay y'all ready okay is anyone from the from the audience who would like to come talk about a road system that you'd like to have attention to i know i know of one sure go right to the plate right yeah there you go you got it set up thank you miss wheeler for inviting me and um mr um cornell on the commission okay my name is bert weatherington i am a resident of southeast hawthorne road and it is the intersection between earl powers boat park and kate fish camp where prairie creek is at within the last six months between there and 234 rochelle road and windsor road there have been over six fatalities and i can't tell you how many accidents and how many calls from the lodge county sheriff's department because i didn't have that record in front of me uh just two weeks ago there was an overturned car in my front driveway and i have literally lost my fence because of it past accident in the past now the reasoning why i am asking this is because it is very dark at night and just two weeks ago three weeks ago they put the curve signs in finally when it's foggy you can't even see the fog the curve signs at night and when it's rainy can't see them at all so you know you stop the the the street lights at lake shore drive if we take the street lights and take them from lake shore drive and go all the way down to 234 we can prevent lives from happening of fatality and if you go to the windsor road you see all you see is a caution light well if it's a foggy night at night you're not even seeing the caution light you're not even seeing the stop sign and people fly down that highway going 80 miles an hour well they reduced that highway down to 55 miles an hour going both directions i was sitting out there friday morning on a cold morning watching people fly at 80 miles an hour around that curb at 6 30 in the morning going to work so therefore something has to happen you got to put these lights up and i've had a dead body found in my front yard and you know they didn't even know where he came from but it was a foggy night that night and they you know and the homeless people are starting to come this way too because they don't want to stay at grace marketplace so they're starting to come down state road 20 towards rochelle and there's been plenty of fatalities i've already spoken to families that from windsor rochelle area that stated look you're coming out of that intersection it needs to be a traffic light there it's a very dangerous intersection and you're crossing over two lanes then you're crossing over another two lanes so please put this the lights up to prevent fatalities i have grandkids out there too i have family to drive there every day over 50 000 people or more drive that road all the way to palacta so you're welcome thank you all right is that have you encountered that lightning i have not heard of that intersection or road however i would encourage you to send your comments and your concerns to the district 2 secretary i did write down the intersection and i will be taking it up with me definitely from earl powers boat park all the way to cape fish camp and around that curve that's where you need your life because you cannot even see the curve you cannot even see the new um you know curve signs if it's boggy iranian done thank you thank you thank you right anybody else anyone else you have a suggestion for a road improvement motion now i have an overall general comment that i think a lot of people have noticed the current mo is that the pedestrians walk light says go when you're crossing a main road and then the turn line also says go for the vehicle so the person the biker or the walker is going and then the car is coming and the pedestrian then has to defend themselves just to walk or bike to cross the road where a vehicle is turning even just to cross this road right here it's like you know darth vader and like luke skywalker because you literally have to be like sometimes i have to pull my umbrella out just to be like can you please stop you know so is that so i've seen this actually all over the united states except for minneapolis which has the absolute best um is there something that is just overall that seems to be that some planners did this like in the archaic long time ago or something and that that could be improved because it's really archaic thank you so timing i don't know are there timing issues that who do who deals with the timing issues i'd say um the main issues that um that the community member is speaking to madam chair are probably permitted left turns um and then permitted right turns and so we can do um leading pedestrian intervals so then somebody pushes the button they get a head start crossing and we can also do a protected left turn um which is one of the techniques we're looking at in the safe streets action plan yep anyone else church um good afternoon madam chair uh and before this is in front of me um to our dear friend you know commissioner book former police chief at santa fe college my name is zachary galloway i'm currently a student at santa fe college and i've come on this wonderful monday afternoon yes one great monday afternoon uh to talk to you a little bit briefly about northwest 83rd street the one that runs in front of santa fe college which i know you all are aware of yes some alumnus of santa fe college in this very room yeah they did they did uh it is our understanding at the student government association of santa fe college that it is on the table for 2028 we've looked at your tcp the tcip and we do understand that's great and all but the question that i would have to propose and this is not to is a rhetorical question is can you really put a time frame you can put a time frame on money now but you can't really put a time frame on safety and the fatalities of people and only say that because although we have the university of florida here which is phenomenal but people also come there a lot of students from other countries come here just simply for santa fe college and for their safety purposes they have a lot of questions and i can't answer those questions because i'm a citizen too and i have the same questions so my thing would be uh if there's any way possible to push it up on the plan the tcip or you find some way to get some funding for it to push it up we would definitely want to work with you guys also your next meeting i believe is december 1st at five o'clock that's another monday uh we would be we will be back so this will not be the first and last time you see me and it definitely won't be first and last time you see some kids sending you guys emails and uh some resolutions thank you for your time anyone else it's helpful to hear from you all it's helpful for us to to know all right now if there are no further questions and thank you all very much for the report it's it's really well laid out and it's it's much easier to see this way landmarks help though you know get yes sir right and we are going to include i mean we didn't touch on the university avenue crossings um i think i know some of those crossings but i know that's that's something staff has looked into uh quite a bit things like i'm guessing the sweetwater trail crossing there on university avenue and some other place where people are and allison you're planning on putting that into the letter as well right and then i'm not entirely sure what rts was looking at but um i mean we can have them come up and speak or are you just going to include some of their feedback as well i think i'll be getting written comment from rts regarding transit comments on the work program all right perfect all right thank you guys i appreciate it thank you all thank you i've written your comments and questions down um the more project specific ones so i'll look on addressing those and yeah i look forward to your comments thank you thank you we're glad to have you working with us thank you all right then miss moss update this is hopefully this is an exciting one so we meant we meant to have commissioner eastman's name next to this one as well um but i'll provide a brief update um i am looking for some input from the board on this one as well um and welcome commissioners but and eastman and anyone else's comments and input um so we have the job post is live still um it's set to close on november 14th for the new director i've been in touch with mr jim denneen who is heading up the search um for a search firm called mg mgt um he is not going to wait until the job post closes he's going to be doing some preliminary screening calling applicants um whose resumes and applications seem to meet the minimum qualifications to find out a little bit more and tell them about the position um the idea is he would um develop a sort of initial slate of candidates and then we would have a staff committee um so county city and mtpo staff um and county's hr director um meet together to go through that list and try to whittle it down to no more than five applicants um to be interviewed and so we are looking to do that uh staff committee on the 20th of november so it'd be a very quick turnaround for mr denneen from the position closing on the 14th to then um looking at these packets for applicants but we would like to do that because this has taken quite a long time and we know that you know not all of the applicants probably have the luxury of waiting for a process like this um so the sort of next step would be you know are we going to hold the interviews with the entire board which was my presumption um and our nearest date to be able to do that considering holidays and this staff screening committee would be um the standing meeting we have for january 5th and so we have a meeting scheduled for the 5th at 3 p.m same room and we'd be looking to expand that as needed based on how many people we have to interview um there is an option um if you all would want to delegate the interview process to a smaller committee which may be able to meet um sometime in december um that is a possibility and then the board could formally approve the offer at the meeting in january okay i choose b yeah i i i think having the full board as a confirmation of the decision of the smaller board who i can completely trust would be my would be my um preference wondering if we could have a meeting in second week of december for the full board and try to get from november 20th to january that is seven weeks i mean it's that's a long time for people to wait and i'm just wondering if we if there's a possibility of trying to prior i know everyone's very busy but being able to get two or three hours in like the second week of december that gives enough time with that being the only thing on the agenda only thing agenda we just do that and get it done because i that i think that's they're not waiting too long but waiting until january 5th that's a long that's a possibility that second week in december that's enough time from november 20th they would be able to um put it down to five and send out hey here's a date buy your tickets that's three weeks for them to yeah i like either i support the idea of going to a smaller committee particularly maybe if if ms dixon can be on i know there's a lot of stuff that work with through the state the university i would want to volunteer you for that just that's my thought um or or in december i like that idea i don't know what everyone else's schedules i know that december 11th that thursday morning we typically the city do our um compliance training for whatever but i can do that online and i could be available for that um that would be a i'm just throwing out different things i like the idea of trying to squeeze it in but i'm i'm open to either one of those b or c i guess you could say so my question was for adrian are you saying delegate to a smaller board and we have a meeting in december i was saying full board or you're saying the full board do interviews in december a full board doing an interview in december whoever can make it to that meeting i mean if we it just it's i think having a full board i mean i'm however we want to do it having a full board gives kind of legitimacy to the person coming in too i mean why don't we just have a meeting of the subcommittee and any members who can attend yeah so the subcommittee is like that's fine too it's love that mr mayor that way we make sure those people can attend and that they're there and then if there's other members obviously everyone is invited and then they can come and give their input and obviously that any members that are doing it if the subcommittee is doing it then they would take that into consideration well i guess it's an input or is it a vote to move forward well we still technically go back to the whole board right yeah yeah bring forward a recommendation in january or sooner or sooner he's trying to get it all done right then yeah but just that we just do our interview and make a decision on that second week of december i think they were just issue i mean i think the main reason for any time pushing it to january so we have and you have the calendar up right here but it's uh december uh 12th i think the city commission is or december 13th starting that we have our recess during that time and then we have a bunch of meetings stacked up right and right in that time period i think the main thing that you analysis is trying to figure out a time that would actually work to schedule something right yeah i mean that week of december 8th works for a lot of us but i don't know basically or even the first week in december i mean consider an evening meeting yeah okay we never do this in the evening but it's important that there's a bunch of city commission stuff scheduled the week of december nearly every day but evenings are mostly open i mean i agree that if i were the executive director i'd want to get the stamp of approval from everyone it's something i some i was always taught growing up it's like you know you you want whoever your boss is you want them to sign off on you being hired then they have buy-in to you being there um you know there's and so you're a part of that process going forward if we can't absolutely can't do it and everyone's fine with it being a subcommittee so that it can just move the process forward that makes sense we don't want us for it to extend out like it did last time we start losing people that signed up back in october november and now it's starting to be january and so you know we're left with so i have a feeling that a lot of times our staff trying to figure out our calendars ends up being more difficult than it is because our calendars don't look like that to us like they look to them so i would just say that perhaps you we all need to give our availability for that week or those two weeks like maximum availability to either allison or your org or your scheduling person so they know all your availability because i mean i know for me like i don't always have all my availability showing because i have uf stuff and i but there's things in between and places i can carve out that anyway i'm just saying i think some of this ends up being one of those like our staff are trying to fit a square peg in a round hole that we could probably solve right now if we just don't pull out our help us allison help us out here madam chair i appreciate the input and i do believe that is probably true however we are looking for a block of up to five hours because of the number of candidates we would want to interview consecutively how many candidates are we interviewing so five or fewer is our five why wouldn't we review the packets and get it down to three i can yeah i can take board direction and i mean five so then we get it down to three we'd still be looking start with a few and they start dropping like flies like they did the last time you end up with nothing so you have five you might give yourself a chance of having a real solid one yeah thank you madam so i i we do need to have a small subcommittee to do the interviews and whoever can show up as commissioner prissy has said i think that that's that's that's just speed and effectiveness and we've been waiting a year so we've been in the process for about a year and uh to have candidates wait for example another month two months is probably not good for our candidates who so i support that i support the small select uh subcommittee and whoever can show up and i do support us meeting uh the week of december 15th the the week of the 8th would not work i can see it already on all the counters there's graduations their city county i just looked at that um and we come together and we ratify something hopefully with whatever the candidates are that we have for first we had a meeting yeah you have a meeting december 1st of this board yeah that would be uh that would be assuming they could get the interviews done before december 1st but if not um the week of december 15th would work but i i support basically let's get the interviews done and let's ratify before the holidays allison is there go ahead um regarding the holding the interviews on december 1st i think the idea was um making a selection of who we would like to interview and getting them to make travel arrangements if needed um that december 1st would potentially be too tight of a timeline what about later in that week so holiday travel is going to be an issue there wouldn't it be it's only november 3rd if you're talking about december is is tactically is it better for us to have somebody hired before the holiday before the new year is that what we're trying to do or does does that matter we're trying not to drag people out because we lose people because they apply for a bunch of jobs and then they get another one and we lose them because we didn't do our hiring process yes i was so and my thought was it's really less important what their hiring date is as long as we know that for the candidate who then can figure out what their life exists and get them on board so we lock them in so the application period doesn't close until the 14th of november so even though we're only on the third we can't even you know really move forward until it closes we're planning on having the staff screening committee happen on the 20th of november um and then from there we'd be looking at i mean there's the week of thanksgiving um and then um so basically a little more than a week for somebody to um make travel arrangements to attend a meeting on the first travel arrangements during that time it's going to be tight especially with the concerns that we have at these airports if we're talking about you know trying to get people here too it's it's really an awkward time that's all i'm thinking is the county in session the week of the 15th december 15th we're not we're not in the session but it's the first it's the first week of our break i'm willing like commissioner book the week of the 15th yeah because i kind of don't have a bunch of other stuff that's right so i'm willing yeah okay the two weeks prior are crazy but the team could start to get clear what about we move our meeting from different first to december 15th should be an operator or institute all are we still working on the idea of the full board well if we move our december 1st to the 15th or 16th or 16th full board all right all right okay i ask uh fdot liaison is there um we have the meeting currently scheduled for december 1st i know we have um remind me was it performance measures and is that required to be at that time could it happen mid-month does that matter 16th or 17th it doesn't matter okay so we have a motion on the floor and it was which is can you clarify yes yes just schedule the week of the 16th from december 1st to december 16th i'm hearing is the preferred date 15th i can't do the 17th but if you guys go without me work so the 16th works if we're trying to get everybody there 16 make it work all right i have a motion for december 16th is there and there was a second second will it thank you is this the date one it was scheduled for 5 p.m on the first so we need to do it earlier than is that go ahead we're talking we need to be one o'clock in the afternoon if we're going to talk about upwards of five hours yeah we might want to do it like one right okay yeah all right and i guess if we can is it possible to make that the first item or i don't know how the only item the only one only plus plus the measure or no we're going to get pictures start january okay performance measures for later okay yes okay miss akeya brown can we push can we push the performance measures january 5th okay then we did it okay we're doing five right yes um we can we can uh pair it down to three but we were saying no more than five so no more i think we think it would be less than five all right no more than five sounds good all right we have a motion and a second to meet on december 16th at one o'clock to not meet on the first and not and and cancel that meeting on the first all right thank you all right any further discussion all in favor say aye all right like side of votes that motion passes unanimously we're ready to go all right look you just got all these people to agree with calendar amazing job people all right allison is there anything anything else that you want to add the you've got not related to the director um next item sort of housekeeping um so we're looking to hire additional staff that um you know their resumes their candidacy could be reviewed by the new incoming director um so we have some job descriptions and i'm just working on getting those um through county hr we have um several contracts from large to very small um that we're also working on getting through procurement so a general planning consultant contract which would help support the person in the director role if there's not staff um in place um and also they can help with things like uh corridor studies um for instance for 13th street and southwest archer road um we've got a small contract to improve do a new and improved website and also uh transportation improvement program um software so those things are all in the works and we're just figuring out how to put federal stuff in all of the county contracts so moving along we're not actually putting out any of the mtpo positions until the new person is hired um we are um the plan is that we are advertising them as soon as possible the hope is that they would not be hired before the new director is in place so that he or she can weigh in and be a part of the evaluation committee i personally don't think we should put out positions we don't know what are the skill sets of the the new new director and we want to make sure that they have well we know we have certain needs though i mean i i think yeah we sort of vacillated between should we wait and let this person create their whole looking at five to six positions and she's talking about one or two i think a planning and a safety yeah which we know we're going to need yeah but they want to make sure that they're get along with whoever is the we're not hiring them we're just writing the job descriptions and getting them posted they were hoping that they they don't hire beforehand oh yeah i definitely don't think we should hire them that that i think that's a bad idea yeah so madam chair okay i'm being realistic about what the county's hiring process looks like so that if we get the job descriptions finalized um and we get sort of all the moving pieces of the bureaucracy in place um that they are not going to be you know hired before the executive director is on board um we could stop at finalizing the job descriptions and allow a new executive director um to come in and put his or her mark on the positions um however there are certain routine aspects of the jobs and things we know this person needs to do based on what an mtpo does um we also could scale back and have them hire say more the entry level planner to help with nuts and bolts and then maybe put off this more senior position so my only concern is that the executive director have input to the person that the details of everything behind that i think is okay to proceed i would not want to slow that down because they're going to need to have staffing some staff support yeah i'll give you an example i'm trying to hire just a minute yeah i mean it's taking me two and a half well because i think that was the point is that i mean it's a trade-off and i think uh is the you don't want someone coming in and then they say okay great let's start the hiring process now they have to they're doing all this work and they have six or seven months where they got no one except for them and whoever happens to be on the uh but then at the same time you want people to be able to decide if they want to hire so this was sort of a if you can make this work the best of all worlds where uh you'd be able to kind of pick your people because you've already gone through that six or seven month lead time to and then you can come in and do interviews or put you know and then you only have one or two maybe three months before you can hire someone and so it's really trying we're just in a funny place with the mtpo where there is no staff here someone has to pick it up and go with it right and so um i think that's what staff was trying to do and i think fdot also thought this was a that this was a positive way forward um just trying to make sure that people have support but that they still put their fingers up and i mean i was just saying it took me it's taken me like three months just to hire an intern who's like working like very part time i mean like it took a month to hire the person like we hired we picked the person and then it's just a month just that everything takes forever so i think this is a really good idea and at least even just to have a pool of people like by the time they get it advertised we could even keep it open if we know they're coming you know like once we get the date we could just like reopen it if we don't get enough qualified people or we know they're going to be coming and we want to make sure we don't get to a point where we're just dragging people along yes ma'am if you hire entry level people to come in um before the executive director is there any way that it would be for the executive director of course we know we want them to hire the people to interview them as well if they like the entry level people that they have their employees on staff are they able to you know go ahead on and offer them extend the full-time contract to them or let the entry level people know that okay this may phase out once the executive director gets here and they may choose someone else is there any way to do that good question but provisionally hiring people and then having um i think that's difficult i mean like they they're gonna know i think if we have a pool of people for the executive director to choose from that'd be just to start based on my yeah based on my limited bandwidth um it's not going as quickly as i would have liked so hopefully the two will align all right um the last there's a single bullet on the following page subcommittee meeting scheduling as needed um so this is my my plea i don't think we need them um at this time i'm happy that we have the subcommittee and if there is need but i think the primary purpose was to get things together with some of these sort of foundational agreements and then figuring out what the process was to hire a new permanent executive director um so to your scheduling staff who've reached out for me and they're busy trying to get your calendars in order they've asked when are the subcommittee meetings happening and i i told them i think um not unless we reach out to you um because we need them for scheduling so i think with the director interviews scheduled for the 16th of december i think we're looking good at this time okay but open to input good any any questions or concerns about okay all right we're good all right well moving on paratransit discussion i think we have people here for that discussion as well um mr hayes and mr gomez welcome tell us what you know well madam chair we don't have i won't speak for jesus uh but i would like him to come sit down um we don't have a lot to share we have been in discussions with mv transportation and i know and we've spoken with rts who's been um in conversation with the state transportation disadvantaged organization and and has a better handle on time frames in terms of of moving towards a different ctc organization um so i don't know if jesus you want to just give a thumbnail sketch of your conversations with with the state yeah um madam chair members of the board our conversation with the td commission is uh basically if uh asking if mb decided to not be the ctc anymore what happened they said they will be asking rts if they want to be the emergency ctc so that that'll be sub to the commission if they want to do that uh but in order to do that of course uh mv transportation needs to tell the state commission that they no longer want to be the ctc and that's what we heard that's not the case yet because we haven't heard anything from mv transportation so in the meantime we're getting ready to the take over the ada services we we're in the uh on scared on on track to to do that for you for the city of bansville for the city of bansville ada part of transit service okay right so we have to so just on timelines here if i remember um what we heard from last time who says that they are having a meeting in december they meet quarterly they're meeting in december am i remembering this right yes so that means that we well this board i guess could take i guess the city commission would really have to take but we have a couple of meetings and i think we have two meetings that we go into thanksgiving and then it's december so i mean as mr coon said i think pretty clearly like these are people getting their to their dialysis treatments so like we do have to find a solution here and i guess the solution and and we are and we're going up against a clock and i'm happy to make motion any time for rts to take over the ctc but i want to make sure that you guys are comfortable taking that over at that time or that we can logistically do it i mean what realistically what are our timelines to make sure that this really important service continues forward in some capacity well we're on target for march uh of next year uh of next year like we you know being planned yeah and then it depends on what the envy wants to do they may want to stay to the whole you know to the whole year or until so we don't know so we have to wait for them to to get action before we do but we'll be we were planning to work on taking over the tv if we need to it just uh we're just getting ready but we don't know until of course the city commission decide what we want us to do but we'll be getting ready for it just in case at least to be the emergency ctc either if that that's the case uh thank you madam chair so what i remember was that at our next meeting i don't know when that is mb was going to have a cost of what it was going to cost additional tomorrow tomorrow i know the same for for the folks here and then the city was going to provide an estimate of what it would cost for them to take over that service as of october 1st that that is that still your plans correct yeah so so that's i'm waiting on that discussion at our board level whenever we have that that's still happening tomorrow and mr chair it's not on the agenda but it could come up at managers comments i'm sure um we're discussing the city have uh anyone come up with the solutions of what we're going to do about the rural uh passengers that are out in hawthorne and waldor around that's it that's the county that's the county's discussion tomorrow hopefully if mv uh leaves it could we take into consideration we have the small municipalities like waldo we have um archer we have hawthorne would it be possible if mv phases out and the county has to take over the city whomever um to like put within that municipality which would create jobs within the municipality as well they have a van or a bus like mv figure out how many people we have in that municipality that has to move back and forth to the dialysis their treatments and such and have them on a schedule um and kind of sort of let them call in and schedule if they know that they're not going to make that appointment or something's come up they have 24 hours to cancel you know kind of figure it out how you're gonna um let them know with planning and i'm thinking again that's creating jobs in each municipality you don't have to worry about trying to find someone out and around to move the citizens there they know where these people live at there's not a i wouldn't say a rush but they know to get them back and forth you know the person you know the town um and you can move the citizens back and forth without any problems i think that would be very good and again that creates jobs and again with our school opening in waldo i'm pretty sure we would have a few parents that would drive and say for instance their last pickup is 4 30 they're back in waldo by six o'clock you're dropping your bus off you're picking your kid up from the new school that we have after school activity from so everything's done you've dotted every i you cross every t and we provided jobs for people in the community as well so that's just one idea i like the idea a lot that's something that i've talked about yeah absolutely i mean that sounds great but that's a password for private providers which is going to be very very difficult to pull together that quickly so i love the idea but i think the reality is we have 15 000 trips so we have to figure out how to reliably and safely transport while we're figuring out maybe some private provider options but that's we're in an emergency that's pulling something like that together is going to take a while but if the city if the city takes over the county takes over would that be through a private provider is just still the city providing the county i hear what you're saying i think that that what envy does right now is much more complicated than what we understand i mean the city of gainesville can't even staff up to do it by march 1st there's no way an individual small city could staff up in my opinion reliably that quickly if you go through their city commission though and you you take a yeah you know present the idea to your community these smaller communities can probably do it better than the big city could you know because because of what you're saying a lot of your drivers come from your your smaller right municipalities as well because i'm getting up at one making it over to mv to clock in by 3 15 to look at it but i just don't see it happen i think if there is a requirement is there not for us to name the provider so we'd probably have to have like one coordinating entity that would oversee all those small municipalities correct and their individual drivers so i mean even if even if it was that each city or each each region or area of the county had its own like van and its own driver they would still have to report to one entity that would be named the ctc rather that's rts or some other provider but i like your idea of the drivers coming from those localities so they just go home to that neighborhood and they're not like having to then drive back to get drop off their bus wherever and that there's sort of this regional approach to where the vehicles kind of live and where the drivers live i think that makes a lot of sense would rts be able to advise on something like that i mean to help well whoever the ctc have that option to they can do it all all together they can contract services out okay right because as as it is mv had been considering at least the ambulatory to do a model that was much more uber-like that's i'm just going to use it as an example they had been considering if they were going to be able to reduce the price to the city of gainesville that the way they would achieve that reduced price was you no longer have permanent employees you had just reduces people's benefits and right i just so i'm just saying like the it's not that it's 100 impossible to have a mortgage for lack of better term distributed you know workforce model um but that i don't think i don't i don't i don't think rts is ready to do it right now but it's not that it doesn't exist anywhere no one's ever done it um because it is a great idea but you have to have your ctc to be to really be in charge of it and that's the big question of we don't even technically know whether it'll who's going to be the ctc in four months you know five months six months so thank you well and that brings up a question too about funding you know are we going to see funding continue the way it has you know do you all see any inkling of any any change in the way these programs are funded no well i guess as the ctc you have you you have options and and being either the county and city they can apply for grants that that some private companies are not being able to do so yes you can you have options all right so we really don't can i just ask one more question so are you saying that you have not heard from mv transport with the pricing no madam chair we have spoken with mv transportation i just need to have a conversation with the manager about the conversations we've had okay yep great just making sure something from somebody um so i just lastly wanted to mention that miss aka brown um kindly set up a meeting between myself um ctd staff and fdot staff where they could just kind of walk through the process if you know mv did decide to not be so they have to formally declare that they do no longer want to be the ctc at that point um my understanding is the ctd would provide a declaration of a state of emergency and they would provide assistance in procuring a new service um you know in this state of emergency now i don't think that that road is easy i don't think there are a lot of you know private party you know operators that are interested and able to do this kind of work um but it's not um quite like they just leave there's sort of a process and i believe there is a timeline um after they declare that they no longer want to be the ctc where they are obligated to continue to provide the services um so they have advised us to continue to monitor um you know we rightfully want to prepare and not be having any gap in service um but they're monitoring the situation very closely as well at the state questions from this board because i think there are probably some people who would like to speak to it from the audience anyone on this issue i'm talking history as usual a couple decades ago i was on the rts board back when paratransit reported directly to that board at every meeting and the complaints i heard back then about timeliness about the culture of how people were treated were the things that i hear and see today with rts and mv over those decades fixed those things they created a culture that does serve people with some dignity and efficiency and i'm concerned whether rts having those kind of issues now is going to keep paratransit on the highest high level it has attained or if it's just going to be another income stream to fill some potholes in the budget of rts now again so again this is a thing that the city really did not even need to do because once again we keep talking about what mv needs to provide as far as their stats but mayor ward still never provided nor did any of the city even though when i spoke with willits and eastman they said they wanted to see the same stat the stat and ed book also said it of where you're going to save money because you're not going to save money because it is not as easy as that i'm sorry mayor from waldo i don't know your name but it is not as easy as that and thank you commissioner cornell for once again always being a voice of reason it is not just like call up and then see where the person is going mv has a specialty they know how to map this they've been doing this for over 25 years the city has no experience with paratransit and again eastman spoke a minute and then left okay so again this one ed book said a while back in the city commission meeting which there was no response to him he said this needs to be up and running on day one so as somebody that uses paratransit when i am in my worst and need to get to medical procedures and can barely walk those of you that know me know i have health issues that i became disabled in alachua county and there's days where i can walk and there's days where i can barely function so like this needs to be up and running and we still do not have here we're talking about mv and the ctc mv why are we wasting time speaking of that because mv i know still wants to be the ctc they never wanted to be cut we need to be working on solutions and again there's no money but there's money to like revitalize the little ponds over there which makes no sense mayor ward and there is no money but there was a talk about repaving tom petty park which eastman had to speak up which he dunce once in a blue moon people bike and walk to tom petty park we don't need the parking lot repaved or what have you so and again the big belly trash cans i am still furious about as many constituents are 675 000 of which half of them had to be sent back so again it seems no money for paratransit no money for the indigenous uh education no money for anything that's essential but again money for like all this other ridiculousness and we are going to be the ones that suffer the paratransit community again as somebody that is able to come here and speak out there are people that are autistic there are people that are kidney patients there are people that are stroke survivors i actually survived a stroke here um and they cannot come and speak out so again we need to be having more meetings and again you may say whatever you do well it's an inward about this wasn't about what have you but this is about those 10 union jobs well the mv families are also very important we have a relationship with them they have children they have kids to feed they have payments and what have you and we need to be considered like important and i personally do not feel that the city some members i won't speak for all care i will again always speak ed book cynthia chestnut and desmond duncan walker who at least give us civility and decorum and listen to us and the county always listens to us and we just i do not see how you're going to have this up and running originally was january now it's march and i don't see how you're going to have this up and running you know and then there's little things like some of us buy tickets so we have the little tickets is that is rts going to honor our little tickets you know are we going to have to you know there's things like that there's just so many questions and concerns and we just don't feel heard we don't feel understood and we feel erased and well it's you're from a marginalized community as well so please have some compassion for those of us that are from a marginalized community thank you thank you thank you anyone else all right seeing none um we don't have to take action on any of this but we just send you forward with good wishes that we can get this resolved okay agency reports partner updates dot nothing oh well we're glad to see you allotra county school board is certain what you got um nothing to report oh my you all getting ready for a big break though getting ready for a big break yes got you thanksgiving i just want to say madam chair a nice job on both of those two reports okay um what you know adrian i do september was our busiest airport in the history of the airport for passenger traffic so thank you all for flying out of the airport um and we're continuing to tomorrow we haven't had any significant um disruptions from the with the um government shutdown yet it probably will it may interfere with some of our grants that we were going after because a lot of those have review times they have a strict deadline we don't know if they'll extend the review period so there was a few grants we may not be able to get but at least for um no travel we haven't had any significant issues yet commissioner did you do any any special marketing in november or anything different in september um i mean uh uh november or first when we had when we had the bc at september uh not anything special to my knowledge i know we're trying to push the miami route um which has been doing better um that one was moved around and we're continuing to look at another i have our air traffic controllers are they still there i mean to my knowledge we haven't had any significant uh disruptions yeah but if they need food banks let us know we can try to get that happening i've known like five people that i've talked to in the past couple weeks that have done the direct to dallas and i just did it in october but i and that made me talk about it and then other people were like i love that play it makes it so easy to get west so anyway that was doing very well good good all right um linda what you got university of florida nothing nothing to report thank you have we is the new chair going to be uh ratified over there i mean the new president do you know if this is he is he a go or well we met we met the gentleman and so i didn't know what the status was if he was if he was you know had been still still interim he's still interim okay all right then well i liked him i liked him i liked him but okay um meetings mtpo meetings well those dates are going to change madam chair okay so um we'll change the first to the 16th um the time as well and then the tacc cac always sort of you know proceed the board meeting by a week and a half and so we'll back that up or push that one out as well okay okay any comments from the group mayor so i would just say if you live in the city of gainesville and you haven't voted yet please make sure to vote tomorrow oh that's right it's a big day tomorrow yes ma'am yes ma'am thank you madam chair excuse me um i went down to the mpoac i say it backwards the conference that they had down there and it was very educational i enjoyed myself i have my sheet here i say them i have put them on um a recording so i play them when i go to bed and i try and learn all things i had a girl i had a girl i think that's the glossary those are the the the every acronyms good for you no good for you it's a good bunch of people down there i'm glad you went thank you i'll i'll join you next time thank you so i i really enjoyed myself and i learned a lot i mean i learned a lot so now this doesn't sound like charlie brown willie to me i mean it sounds like you're campaigning for the next chair seat here so just just saying but thank you i really enjoyed myself and i learned a lot good for you anybody else yeah just a quick thing i got a chance to meet she's here so it made me reminded me i got a chance to meet with trust republic land a chat about the trail the rail trail and it sounds like there is movement and opportunity for the high springs to newberry well from the river to high springs to newberry almost to newberry rail trail again in collaboration with the state but they are still in search of funding for that project so i just bring that up because i don't i don't know where we sit with the ability to have funding that we have for bikes and trip bikes and trails headed in that direction or if um sun trails money would be available for that project or if our tourism dollars given that that is a major tourism attractor would be possible but i just want to bring that up and kind of put it as a bug in people's ears and i don't know if she wanted you're going to share with us in a minute right yeah yeah please yeah i knew that you would i just wanted to kind of just put it as a bug in people's ears to be thinking about and for staff to be thinking about it sounds like we're getting closer again to being able to actually make that yeah a real project when you call the road you didn't mention our citizen there's a citizen here miss norman oh i i beg your pardon i just thought everyone is she an actual member yay you should be on our table you need to be you need to be up here with us oh for heaven's sake you guys i'm so sorry come no come on up here and join us that's exciting and then you need to tell us who you are introduce yourself to the group please oh i'm so excited me too tina i was please we do not have an official x of we do not have an ex officio citizen member of the board but maybe perhaps you're referring to something else i'm not familiar with oh i thought um in the last meeting that um we called her name and she wasn't here like it was an amp for some folks we will discuss it you tell us who you are anywhere while you're here where do i press oh oh oh okay okay now i know you now i know you okay all right so this is our new member to the citizen advisory committee that's in it it's already on well i'm kathy norman um i'm the coordinator of the east side alumni band richie parker alumni band i'm also owner of intuitive design and um i just wanted to be involved in the community um i really try to sit back a lot and not really be involved because i just do a lot of things outside of just being busy but um i yeah i was sitting back there the whole time i was just like well let me just sort of sit back here that's well so that's that's normal however welcome to the table so you are yeah you are a member of the citizen advisory committee first meeting was the last round um and yeah we will have smoother versions of those as well very nice very nice well i'm glad you joined us today thank you nice to meet you kathy thank you for being here anything from the table i i have a quick thing i got an email from someone who is concerned about flock cameras do you all know anything about flock cameras you do i have i know nothing this there's one on 39th street just before 98th avenue and this gentleman was concerned about using flock cameras in our community and the possibility of having well from what i understand he was trying to educate me that a private collector a private company collects the information from a block camera camera and then sells it to license plate license plate numbers and sells to another company is it called flock f-l-o-c-k so this is what i guess i've been i've brought up several times when we've talked about surveillance or we've for law enforcement or we've talked about license plate cameras for is that i and i've brought it up at our board meetings primarily not so much at mtpo but i i and i've asked our attorneys to look into it and make sure that contracts that we have with cameras that are taking pictures of or videos of people and or license plates and or traffic what happens with that data and making sure that those third-party companies cannot sell that data for private gain and that if they're storing it that we are the repository of that data so that we're protecting that data and it's not data that they get to collect and then make a bunch of money on as like that's something that is matters to me as well because it it basically turns into a big for-profit business in surveillance or somebody for who commissioner book commissioner book you're you're the go-to guy here there's a lot of different your hand is up you you know this stuff tell us well so i'll just be very brief flock is one of the largest proprietary vendors of surveillance and cameras and traffic signalized systems and all of the data most of the time that the contracts that public safety involve themselves with with flock and some of the other vendors the data is actually owned by the by the institution that contracts with the vendor so i can't speak for an individual contract but if if the city or the county or the school board contracts with flock cameras for any type of system the owner of the data and what is done with that data is listed in the contract and typically that data is owned by the institution it's just important to look at your so that would be important to make sure that the contract is tight in a way that doesn't allow misuse of the data there are flock cameras all over alachua county they're used extensively by the university of florida that has a multi-million dollar contract with them from a few years ago and um they've been used with very good success in general for public safety a lot of private companies also pay them to create surveillance in their parking lots of other plaza so butler plaza yeah there's many many like a lot of the gas stations and i see there's no one person and then it's the state the state highway patrol has their own in a bunch of places and that's how they're that's how they catch people it's not because because there was a patrol car everywhere they they catch it because they read a license plate and they know where someone's headed the data amongst the proprietary vendors is shared with all the users of that data so for example if the university of florida has a camera that data can be shared with other public safety in the city of gainesville or alachua county that's actually a real positive to having an integrated system okay sir yes sir mayor ward so there's a lot of gray area and it's very much a double-edged sword when bad people do bad things we want those bad people to be caught this is one of the really useful ways that that bad people get caught now it also opens everybody up to lots of surveillance all the time and these are discussions we've had at the at the city commission going back to 2018 and it is a double-edged sword but it was lots of gray area but it is something to absolutely be aware of but but that's how for instance the the young lady who was killed in front of the foundation building on university avenue back in 21 22 that in a hit and run that hit and run driver was was found using access to these cameras there are a whole lot of examples that several of us could probably name but those that data has been used and in the eventually bringing the personnel but it opens everybody up to constant surveillance okay i think that was his concern that we had opened ourselves to that concern cameras cameras everywhere yeah we had the same discussion about the school district all right all right well if there's nothing more from this board we'll go to public comments and you want to start since you were giving a bit of an introduction it's good to see you so much madam chair yeah um so nice to see you all and get to hear these important issues i'm erica hernandez i work for the trust for public land and i work statewide but i also live in gainesville so it's really nice to be able to talk about a project that's here in our own community and um as i'm sure most of you know that there was an effort several years ago to work with the railroad to do a rail corridor a rail to trail project to connect high springs and newberry and for many different reasons that wasn't a success but we've had renewed opportunity to work with csx under new leadership and with the state of florida who is interested in being the underlying owner of the property of the corridor in cooperation with the local government to to be a manager i think it'll be really nice for the west side of the county and for these two communities as trail towns really having an invigoration of economic opportunity getting folks to linger in those communities instead of just passing through those gateways to springs country to agricultural areas to the wild west kind of gulf gulf coast region of florida and so i hope to be able to share with you in more detail um maybe in a in a presentation or sometime soon where i can speak in more detail about the actual project um but i'm just happy to be here and and hope that uh we can work together as this comes to fruition thank you thank you i met with erica in tristan grunder and high springs and also jordan marlowe and newberry and they're all on everybody's anxious and trying to find that pot of money that we needs to make that happen i had a comment i was going to make at your thursday city commission meeting about our mass transit but i was struggling to figure out how to fit it in three minutes so since most of you are here i can get some of it done now uh on the 22nd i got on one of the buses and my own fault i didn't have my uh over 65 card where i could grab it real quickly and the driver told me you're supposed to have that ready when you get on which she was right and i was wrong but i i thought i noted a little bit of uh anger in the tone uh but i just went on and i sat down and i noticed somebody kind of of my age cohort getting on behind me i got to my seat but the bus started rolling as this person was still standing and they had to lunge and grab a pole something possessed me to say out loud you should wait till people are sitting in the road and the driver said well they're behind the yellow line if they need extra time they need to tell me and i said yeah that scoring is confirmed and that's what i was talking about the culture of treatment treating people as supplicants instead of customers um and i i wonder about customer service i was going to a program late at santa fe last week and i was looking how how will i get home from there and there the last of the many buses that serve santa fe the 23 has a 10 o'clock run it is scheduled to arrive at butler plaza at 10 27. the late number one bus is scheduled to leave butler plaza for one for downtown at 10 23. who planned that deliberately miss um so i want that's why i say i want to see a lot more attention to customer uh customer uh service to to many things uh i've been in a bus where a bus was at a red light it was at the curb stopped because was waiting for the red light and a woman ran up can i get on can i get on and the driver said driver's telling her that way that way pointing her toward the stop which was a block and a half up and she didn't have a chance of getting there before the bus turned and passed the stop now drivers tell me that they are told only let people on and off at stops as a safety issue and i understand that safety should always be priority one should continue to be priority one but if a driver is competent to drive a bus then they're competent to tell that standing still at a curb at a red light it's safe to let somebody on they ought to give them that the respect for the drivers that they can judge that and so i think priority two for the buses should be get as many people on board as possible and priority three maybe could be fares because that's you know that's like 10 percent of their support anyway it's not like fares is a make or break thank you anyone else come right on thank you uh tomadega rts the last bus that leaves both the plaza is 10 38. i was a former driver i drove for four years before i got into marketing outreach and communications we do not like to stop and let people on out of light you open the door a car passes by you're responsible for that and the person if you if you pick people up in a safe location you avoid injuries on 20th avenue canopy i'm opening my door and a volkswagen is going around the bus on the right hand side in the grass you make a living looking at those mirrors it's a 26 000 pound vehicle your priority is to get those passengers to the location safe that's number one on time you try it's not a helicopter it's a bus but it's safe our drivers are safe that many hours on the road we do have accidents but they leave that location with the intention of moving people safe thank you thank you anyone else okay well if there's nothing more for this board right this meeting's adjourned thank you