Transportation Planning Organization Meeting - Nov 09, 2026

Good afternoon. Welcome to the November 9th, 2026 meeting of the Gainesville, Alachua County Transportation Planning Organization. We're going to go ahead and get started because we do have some members who have to leave at different chunks of the afternoon. We do have a lot of stuff on the agenda, but hopefully we'll be able to get through it somewhat quickly. First off, roll call. Yes, sir. Chair Willits? Present. Vice Chair Hay-Santos? Present. Member Alford? Here. Member Book? Here. Member Curtin? Absent. Member Charles Chestnut? Absent. Member Cornell? Here. Member Duncan Walker? Absent. Member Eastman? Absent. Member Engel? Absent. Member Cynthia Chestnut? Absent. Member Prisia? Here. Member Taylor? Here. Member Ward? Here. And Member Wheeler? Here. Mr. Chair, we have a form. Wonderful. All right, next up, item three, approval of the agenda. So moved. Second. I'm sorry. Chair, I'd like to move item 7.7, the appointment of the new CAC member, to the first item, as we have Dr. Tate here and a couple of commissioners that are on the board that also have to attend the children's trust board meeting at board. So 7.7, are there any other, I know we just had a motion, but are there any other suggested changes that we're going to make to the maker of the motion? One other change is that we have item 7.9, the board approval on the proclamation, I'd like to table that until and let us put forward to give their presentation before you decide on the proclamation. Okay, so, um, uh, yes, with changes noted. With those changes, 7.7 moved up to the beginning, 7.9 postponed until a later date. Yes. I think after 8.1. Oh, no, I'm sorry, to... After 8.1. Sorry, after 8.1, got it. Yes. It was a motion made by Wheeler, seconded by... Krizia. Krizia, all right, are we good with that? All right, all those in favor? Aye. Aye. Those opposed? Motion passes unanimously. We're opposed to the minutes? Yes, let's get through minutes. Second. Uh, motion by Cornell, seconded by Alford. Do we have any discussion on the minutes from the which meeting are last one? Any discussion? Any questions about those minutes? Seeing none, all those in favor? Aye. Aye. Those opposed? Motion passes unanimously. Um, I have no chairs' announcements. Um, before we get into any of the other, let's go to... If there's any members of the public, I think I have one member of the public, if this is right, uh, Mr. Doninville, who would like to speak now. Good afternoon. Yes, lovely, sir. Good afternoon. My name is George Doninville. I'm here to speak as a squeaky wheel for a number of other people who are also squeaky wheels on two quick items. The first has to do with the Sweetwater Greenway Loop that is now being studied and proposed. It has to do with the Sweetwater Branch Park, the Thelma Pole Center, and specifically what I wanted to address was, when it goes north, it takes a left-hand turn to head west at 10th and then crosses over Main Street at a very dangerous intersection where Publix is. And what I would propose, and somebody else kind of put the bug in my ear on this, it continues further north. You can weave your way through the neighborhoods and get yourself up to Tom Petty Park. Beautifully crossed through Tom Petty Park. It's got all kinds of services there. It's got tons of parking. It's always been an issue about this new trail. Where are you going to park? Oh, can we put parking at the Thelma Pole and the whole place? But anyways, I wrote it today, just before I came here. And then you can travel down. I'll need a little work on the sidewalk on the south side to get you back over to the 6th Street corridor to head back south. And now you've got a huge loop. You've got a beautiful park at the north end. You've got Depot Park at the south end. You can stop through here and wherever you want to go. And even if you're just out for a ride or if you work here and you leave and you're going north to get home or you're going south to get home, you've got a place to go. So that's number one. So I'd ask that the present study look into that possibility. The second one has to do, and I mentioned this before, speed limits on Newberry Road. After a university crosses over at 34th, it then slowly, quickly becomes Newberry Road. And particularly, it's 35 miles an hour through that first part of that section. And then all of a sudden, just as you pass the Allman's Mobile or Marathon Oil gas station, the sign in the right hand said, hey, you can now go 45. Well, nothing's changed in the area about the demographics or what kind of businesses are there or the residents that happen to be there. Nothing to say, hey, you should go faster here because now you're going to go uphill. So if you tell them to go uphill and you can go 45, you're going to go 50, 55. You get to the top of the hill, the stoplight doesn't stop them. They're going down downhill, and now they're going 60 miles an hour. And what I would ask is a study be done, or you all request FDOT to do a study of the crashes. There was one just last night where they went through the Mill Pond Wall. A Mustang crashed through it. But I've seen and viewed a number of other crashes. That 45 should be eliminated, put back to 35 until it crosses over Tower Road, as far as I'm concerned, because I think it's 45 up to the hospital on the right-hand side, just by the Oaks Mall. So anyway, that's my other request, and thank you very much for your attention. Do we have any other members of the public who would like to speak at this time early in the meeting? I don't see any. All right, now on to the rest of our business. So we're going to – this is where we're going to do 7.7. I'm sorry. I guess my question is, how do we go about addressing public comments that happen in these meetings? Like, we don't have a – will staff address, like, if we already have a speed study or something later in the meeting or at the next meeting, like, how do we get info? We have the member comment at the public comment at the end of the meeting. Another one? Okay. Yeah. Okay. My preference. I mean, I don't know about everybody else. That's great. That's fine. We kind of piece those things together, member comment, because you may have multiple things you want to talk about. And sometimes we will have gotten through something, you know, that deals with it. So – all right, so we're going to move up 7.7 now for appointment of a CAC member. Yes, Mr. Chair. So the TPL received just one application in the last month. We did receive another one, but it was received after the agenda had already been published. So we're going to be bringing that one to the next meeting. The current application is from Dr. Lisa Tate. She's a 12-year resident of Alachua County. She's worked in the Gainesville area for 15 years in the medical industry. She currently serves on the Children's Trust Board and believes in giving back to the community. And Dr. Tate is here in case the board has any questions. But staff is recommending that the board appoints her to fill one of our 11 vacant seats. Before we have Dr. Tate come up, partially this is weak. The size is 15 for the CAC. That was affected by a recent change. It's always been 15. No, this is the one that's always been 15. Got it. Dr. Tate, if you would like to come up and introduce yourself at the microphone. If we have any questions, we'll give you a few. Hello. My name is Dr. Lisa Tate. I'm a doctor-prepared nurse anesthetist. Work at the VA. I've been there going on 11 years this year. Getting ready to retire. So I'm working on those retirement projects and things I want to get interested in and be willing to give back and get more involved, stay involved in the communities. Thank you. Does any member of this board have any questions? Commissioner Rillis. Where have you been? I haven't seen you in a while. I'm really glad to see you. I'm really glad to see you back at it, too. Grandkids. Dr. Tate and her husband both were wonderful to work with over in Newberry and always were a welcoming face there. So I'm glad to see you here. Glad to welcome you here, too. Move Dr. Tate for the appointment to the CAC. Second. All right. I have a motion by Prizzy and a second by Cornell. Are there any members of the public who have anything to say about this before we vote? Seeing none, all those in favor? Aye. Those opposed, like sign. The motion passes unanimously. Welcome, Dr. Tate. Thank you. Congratulations. All right. Director Whitfield, on to our next item, 7.1. 7.1. DOT's going to get this. Do you want to? Good afternoon. I'm Lori Santana. I'm the FDOT liaison to the TPO. At this time, I have another STIP amendment for you. We'd like your approval. The regional transit system and the city of Gainesville received a federal transit administration grant and a STIP amendment is needed to incorporate these grant projects into the adopted 26, 27, 30, 31 TIP. It's a new project, so it's not in the TIP yet, but I put it in there. And this amendment includes two grants. One is a 5310 formula for capital funds of almost $250,000. And the other is a 5310 formula operating funds for around $74,000. And we would just like to request that you vote for approval. Move approval of the, shall we call this? The STIP amendment. The STIP amendment. Second. The STIP amendment. All right. I have a motion by Allford, seconded by Hayes-Santos. Do we have any questions about this amendment for staff or FDOT? I'm sorry. Do we have any questions? I just, no, do we have any questions for FDOT or for our staff? No questions? No comments? Are there any members of the public who would like to speak to this item? Seeing none, I'm going to call the vote. All those in favor? Aye. As opposed, like signed. Motion passes. Thank you. All right, Director, with the hold on to 7.2. 7.2 is the approval of our first UPWP amendment for the 2628 UPWP. So in March of early this year, the TPL de-obligated $1.096 million. Those, the obligated funds were distributed across the two years, because at that time, because of changes from direction from central office, we weren't sure whether or not we would get all of that back. So we just burst it across the two years, but based on now that the federal government has started their fiscal cycle, October 1, we've gotten direction from DOT to move all of the funds into year one. We got that letter from DOT on June 18, where we are currently authorized for our current one-year allocation of PL funds, moving this, all of the obligated funds over from year two to year one will, would be needed to get that letter of authorization to reflect the additional 1.096 million. So this slide shows, the blue is everything that's in the currently adopted UPWP, so you'll see that it was, we had already, had always budgeted it for $2.7 million. The green text on the left shows the changes. Basically, the biggest change is moving the bulk of the funds, about $599,000, into our special projects. In the current UPWP, the two complete street studies are in year two. That's $600,000, so we're moving that over so that we can start on those two complete street studies in year one. Also adding more funding for public participation, and also adding more funds from year two into year one in systems planning, so $220,000 total in systems planning to work on some of the, anything dealing with improving efficiency in how our current infrastructure, for both existing lanes, adding turn lanes, or studies, or intersectional studies, things like that, and that can be used with the systems planning funds. So basically, the two-year total still stays at $2.7 million, which is shifting the $718,000 that we have put into year two into year one. And with that, staff is asking the board to approve the UPWP amendment. This approval is needed so that we can get the letter of authorization to get the $1.096 million in the obligated funds back. Move approval of the UPWP amendment. Second. I have a motion by Prizzi and a second by Alford. Any questions about this? Thank you, Ms. Brown. Yes, we're very excited to get those obligated funds back, and this does sound like, thank you, Director Redfield, but I think we had some interest in this board of getting to things sooner than later, so moving this to year one with the studies. It is of interest to me, at least, and I think that is. We're working on the, I'll be, I'm looking at the draft that City of Gainesville has prepared, and then in the next couple of weeks, I'll be working with the City, Debbie and Allison, and the County, Debbie and Allison, to fine-tune two separate studies, scopes, so that as soon as we get that letter of authorization, we can assign each of the studies to one of the GPCs. Do we have any members of the public who would like to speak to this item, which is our UPWP amendment? C&E, do we have any further conversation or questions from this board? Seeing none, all those in favor? Aye. Aye. Those who like sign, are opposed. Motion passes unanimously. Director Redfield, on to 7.3. Okay, 7.3. So this is the request from staff for board approval to remove uncollected accounts from an invoice from the Regional Planning Council back from 2024. That invoice was sent in September. DOT had, in 25, declined it due to insufficient documentation that the Regional Planning Council subsequently provided in January, February of 26. During the 26th time period, TPO and County staff confirmed with the Department that they would be able to reimburse. This was when the contract was still active. So we submitted the invoice. The invoice was paid by the TPO slash County Finance in July of 2026, and we sought a reimbursement in September. But unfortunately, DOT Finance wasn't able to back up that decision, and so they denied that reimbursement request because the contract, the work was done too long ago under a contract that's now closed. So Finance at the Department is unable to reimburse us for that. So at the direction and suggestion from the Clerk's Office, who serves as the TPO's accountant, we're requesting that the board remove that outstanding balance and essentially net out that amount that's due. So that staff is recommending approval of the RPC accounts receivable balance of $46,051.72. Moved staff recommendation. Second. I have a motion by Alford and a second by Hayes Santos. I'm sure there's a couple conversations or questions about this. More fallout. More fallout, yes. My question is just, we've always listed this as some sort of an accounts receivable, not as a, we didn't plan this year's budget on receiving these funds. No, not in the current, it's just on what was authorized. Essentially it came out of the county's reserves. More fallout, any conversation or discussion about this? It is what it is. To some degree it is what it is. Are there any members of the public who would like to comment on this 7.3 regarding uncollectible accounts receivable from the North Central Florida Regional Planning Council? Seeing none, all right. Any further discussion here? I don't see any. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Those opposed, like signed. Motion passes unanimously. All right. Director Redfield, next. Item 7.4 is uncollectible accounts receivable from the city of Gainesville for an invoice, their fiscal year 2425 annual dues. The city was issued an invoice for $14,400, once by the RPC and then twice by the clerk's office, again, serving as the accountant for the TPO. At that time, the city had disputed the invoice and didn't remit payment. The $14,400 remains as a accounts receivable balance on our sheet. The clerk's office said that these annual dues are the TPO's only source of general revenues, so actual cash, unlike PL funds, which is a reimbursable grant program. Removing, if the board were to approve this, a removal of this accounts receivable balance, it would drop our positive equity to $60,000, $529,000 instead of $75,000. Right now, staff is asking for board direction on whether or not to reissue the invoice, so reactivating or reanimating the invoice. Mr. Hutchison had mentioned that if we were just to resend or send again the invoice, it would not make it a collectible invoice. The board would have to issue an invoice again in order to make it a collectible, or the board can choose to direct staff to remove this accounts receivable balance as well. But there is a small negative impact to our fund. Mr. Brooks? Yeah, Mr. Chair, this is another kind of cleanup item similar to 7.3, and this came at a time in calendar year 2025 when the city was actually extricating itself from the North Central Florida Regional Planning Council, so we were not incurring membership fees, nor were we utilizing services. COO Singleton is here with us, and so when we got that payment, that payment was also made after fiscal year 2024-2025, and so you know when you get billed after a fiscal year and you attempt to figure out how you're going to tag that to previous years, that also does not work well. So for all those reasons, I think probably of the two actions provided by the Executive Director, I would certainly, we could hear from COO Singleton, but I think unless he has something additional to what I've said, it's probably not necessary, and I would, I think it would be appropriate to approve the removal of accounts receivable balance totaling $14,400 from the balance sheet and the related allowance for doubtful account. Is that a motion? That is a motion. I got a motion from Book and a second from Alford. I would like if, just to fully understand this, I've been explaining once, if Mr. Singleton could, from the City of Gainesville, give us a little reminder on this or some input. Frank Singleton, Interim Chief Operating Officer, City of Gainesville. In that prior fiscal year, the city had elected to not continue being a member of the North Central Florida Regional Planning Council and remit any membership dues. We were subsequently billed for those membership dues after the fiscal year ended. We no longer have budget for those membership dues, so we did not pay those membership dues. So that's the city's position on this particular invoice and where we stand on it. Commissioner Book was correct. We were not receiving any services from the North Regional Border Planning Council at that point in time. And the services that would have been provided through membership dues or we weren't receiving any of those services as well. My question, just so I understand, these were dues to the RPC, but why is this an accounts receivable on the TPO? Book's just transferred over. Book's just transferred over. And so it's a balance sheet transfer over for one week. So this was, no, these were dues to the TPA, TPO? The North Central Florida Regional Planning Council is my understanding. They transferred over their debt to us. That's what I want someone to say. This is a debt that was transferred over. This was a debt that was transferred over to us, which was really their debt. Yeah. It was really their debt. It's not prepared. But also unavoidable, apparently. So just so we're clear, it's my understanding that the RPC has, the cities and county has annual dues to the RPC pot A. And then there's dues that the RPC issued on behalf of the TPO, which is a separate dues pot B. So this would be pot B. So technically the nonpayment of the $14,400 for services not rendered by the RPC as the RPC wouldn't be the same thing as services not rendered by the RPC as the TPO. So I still believe that this is a TPO invoice that the city would still be accountable for. Just want to make that clear. If the board chooses to approve the removal, it is to remove the city's obligation as members of the TPO, not because of services not rendered by the RPC as the RPC. Two separate dues. This is my understanding of it. Thank you, Director Ruthville. So this is why I lean more towards this is an expense of the city that the city should have paid. Should have paid at some point. Should pay. Should pay now. In my personal opinion, the county has gone out of their way to help support the TPO financially and also just the flexibility. I know we try to account for all staff time, but I guarantee we've leaned on the county, Alachua County more. So my preference is that we actually reissue it to the city and that the city commission needs to make a decision on it. That's because in essence, I don't, in essence, the city commission, from my opinion, has not, it's not been brought forth to them and say, you need to make a decision on this as a relationship between two bodies that cannot be merely the, you know, managers, the staff. Our charters probably don't need to be making this decision, but the board of the city needs to make this decision in relationship to the TPO, but particularly in relationship to the county or other partners on the TPO. That's my opinion. That's Commissioner Cornel. Yeah, Mr. Chair, I was going to say I agree with that opinion. I certainly understand why it wasn't paid, but where we are today, two kind of entities working forward together. The county just basically paid a $46,000 in the previous agenda item. If the city could pay the $14,000, I think it would help the TPO. It's not enough to die on the vine board, but it's something that I agree with your position, and I would support that motion if this one fails. I would say that's not how that information is explained to me from my team, so I would like the opportunity to review the information on my team and make sure that I have the accurate information. I think if it gets kicked back to the city commission, then it firmly is the city, you know, it will become the business of the city commission. So I think it will. Was that a substitute motion, Ken? I don't know if we do those here. I don't know that we have that. Our interim, past interim executive director has email documentation, as well as the county accountant's clerk's office also has email documentation. That's how Todd explained it to me. Sorry, we're going to lie. Commissioner Brook. Anybody else? I've had spoken once already. I would think based on that and based on the opportunity to review more information, probably want to table the motion, allow the city staff, unless there's an exigency on this and doesn't appear to because it goes back two years, table the motion, let the city come back to the city commission with more information than we address it at the next TPO. I would move that we re-invoice the city, have the city discuss it, and bring it back at a later meeting. A motion from Cornell and a second by Wheeler. As I understood, the maker of the previous motion, in essence, pulled it. Yes, sir. Pulled that motion. So then the current motion would be to reissue the invoice. Clearly, at that point, the city, that conversation, whether the city commission has that conversation or whether it is answered back by staff, that's something that the city will have to make their decision. I'll support whatever y'all come back with, if you're seven votes on the board, so I trust you guys. Hear that, I'm sorry? We said we'll support whatever the city comes back with, whether it was their TPO membership or general membership. Okay. Do we have any members of the public who would like to speak to this item about this invoice or reissue? The current motion is to reissue the invoice from the TPO to the city of Gainesville in the amount of $14,400. Is there any other conversation from this board? All right. In that case, we will go ahead and move to a vote. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Those opposed, like sign. The motion passes unanimously. Thank y'all for a back and forth that's a little difficult to deal with, but it moves along, and we will get an answer back at some point on this board and be able to move at that point. Chair, the next item, 7.5, is the appointment of executive committee member seats. As you all will remember, the board had approved an executive committee comprised of the chair, vice chair, past chair, and two appointees. Commissioner Wheeler will no longer be a sitting commissioner, so her seat as past chair also becomes something that the board needs to vote on. So I would like to get some direction on your three selections. Mayor Warren. So I think Commissioner Eastman makes sense because he's been deeply involved. And he's not here. And he's not here. You leave the state for a couple days? That's right. When does the chair term end? December of this year. So then it'll be Casey. Yeah. So you'll automatically move into that. And it's a past chair. Oh. Yeah. He will become the past chair. He will become Percy in December. Yeah. So why would we put somebody in that seat for one month? Two more counts. Can we just leave it vacant for a month? No. Yeah. Well, I would – I'm sorry. Go ahead. Yeah. I was going to suggest, Anna, you and Mary serve with Eastman. It would be Eastman and then Casey and Adrian. Because he'll be the past chair. Adrian will be the chair. We need a couple of county people on there. Right. But I'm saying we don't need to fill the past chair seat because it will fill in a month. Right. Right. Right. Okay. I think we just need to name three people. And of those three people – I think just two. I'm saying Casey will become past chair. Right. Adrian will presumptively become chair. So it's chair, past chair, and two appointed. Right? And then we need to select a vice chair at some point. Right. Or chair and vice chair plus past chair and then two. So we just need to pick two people. Eastman and one county maybe. Can we table this the next month? I mean, everybody's here. I could. I mean, I think that – unless there's an exigency to this. I like that. It sounds like we have a motion to postpone this until our December meeting. Second. All right. We've got a motion by Ward and a second by Prizia. Any further conversations or comments from the public on postponing this? My only discussion on it would be let's do this after we elect the vice chair. Right. Put it later in the – That's right. Correct. Because the December is the elections, so we'll put it right after that. Yeah. Every good word itself up. There are lots of – Quick question. We have three members now, anyway. You said two people from the county. Would that include then someone like from our municipal – our rural municipality, say, like Monique? I mean, it could. We'll just say, yeah, it could. Right now, we're – She'll roll off December and the next – the next city will be up. So that would be a lot to us. That's right. One year. Is it a year? Okay. Gotcha. Okay. It's regional. But then never mind. So we'll get a latch on. I think – Tell us what to do. Are we – Okay. So – I have a – Real quick here. There's a motion on the floor. Are there any other questions about the motion, which is basically to postpone this, until December at a point in the meeting that is after our election reorganization. All right. Everyone – All right. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Motion passes. Thank you, Mayor. All right. Director Redfield. M7.6. Do you have staff recommendation? Second. Well, let's at least read it into the first amendment to ILA. Change MPO legal name. It's amendment to section 3.01 of the established agreement, basically striking the MPO, MTCO name to the GACTPO name, and then amending the rest of the agreement in full to effect the same. Okay. I have a motion by Cornell and a second by Hayes-Santos. So our full name will be? Your legal birth name will be the Gainesville and Atlanta County TPO. All right. Are there any members of the public who would like to speak to this item? Seeing none, any further conversation or questions? It's hard to say it, isn't it? Mm-hmm. It is. Maybe it could be GACTPO. Commissioner, you only have to say it for like another month. We just dropped the T. No. It's a silent T. It's GACTPO. I do think colloquially it's a silent T. Thank you. Okay. Thank you very much. Just a process question. Just a process question. Do all of the signatures on that agreement have to re-sign the amendment? Yes. The rest of the first amendment was prepared with Corbett and myself, and so now that the board's approved it, I will be making the rounds to get all of those signatures done. Is that the only change? Yes, it's the only change. We already approved all that. The change in the name is really important legally because there are a lot of documents that we need to update. Most notably, there are some grants out there, like we missed a $2 million grant opportunity that's fully funded by the federal agencies for some plans and processes that MPOs are eligible for. However, because of our FEIN number falling under the county, other MPOs as big as Miami Dade were not able to apply for those grants. So after this is done, I plan on pursuing steps to see how far we can go to changing the TPO's FEIN number to have the TPO have its own serving as the MPOs so that we can be eligible for those funds that are only eligible to MPOs and not counties. So the majority of the MPOs in the state of Florida that are hosted by a county or city are not eligible for those types of grants either. I think there are only two that are completely independent who can apply for those grants. That's really great information to know. Thank you, Dr. Whitfield. Is that the time where we would need to have an executive committee meeting quickly so you could apply for that? Yes. The application was October 30th, but unfortunately, you know, everybody knew about it. But when other MPOs tried to apply, they were stopped by the fact that when they entered their FEIN number, the federal agencies recognized that as Miami-Dade County, not Miami-Dade MPO, so they couldn't apply. Member Hay-Santos? Yeah, I mean, we could just submit for an EIN number right now just to form online and then change the name as another date. I mean, what if it is blocking us getting money that's relatively simple to get an EIN number from the federal? Well, from what I understand, there's a few more hurdles as an MPO. More hurdles? Yeah, because Miami-Dade tried it, and they had some challenges. Any other questions or comments? That would be one of the things I would talk with the executive committee on. All right. Seeing none, all those in favor, say aye. Aye. Those and those, like, sign. The motion passes unanimously. All right. Director Whitfield, we're on to 7.8. Approval of 2027. The only thing I'd mention is that August 2nd, I believe, falls right in the middle of the primary elections. Or 2028. No, it's just the year. Oh, cool. Doesn't it? I guess not. It would be 2028. Sorry. Yeah, I can't do math. Ignore me. We're good. Are any of those during your summer breaks for the city commission and county commission? The days were coordinated with the city commission's executive team as well as the county's executive team. No, they look good. Let's move approval of the calendar. Second. I have a motion by prison and a second by Cornell. Any other further discussion from this board or is there any members of the public who would like to speak to this item? Seeing none, all those in favor, say aye. Aye. If I'd like to sign, motion passes unanimously. I think we did this quorum. Yeah, I think we did. Yeah, they were. We're currently at 8, so we're right at quorum about commissioner Cornell. Off to the trust. Good luck. Do good work. Yes. All right. Director Roof, y'all. I'll turn it into item. Item 7.9 is the best foot forward proclamation. This is the draft proclamation. Legal has just confirmed that he has no issues with how the language is written. Well, we're going to move this. Yes. So we should actually be to 8.1. Is this correct? Yes. Uh-huh. So I'm going to introduce Vince Dyer. Yes. He's with the – I forget your title. You have to introduce yourself. No problem. So I'm going to go ahead and pull his presentation. You're just looking at what you advance the slide. You can go ahead and advance the title slide. Thank you. Perfect. All right. So thank you guys for having me here to speak. So I'm Vince Dyer. I'm the director of the Best Foot Forward Pedestrian Safety Program. And who we are is that we are a nonprofit organization called Bike Walk Central Florida. We are based in Orlando. And so we have a program, multiple programs, but the one I'm here to talk about today is our pedestrian safety program called Best Foot Forward for Pedestrian Safety. This is our largest program, and it's one that has the largest kind of reach throughout, focused on trying to improve pedestrian safety throughout the counties that we partner with. So go ahead and advance the next slide. So back in 2010, there was a report released called Dangerous by Design from Smart Growth America that ranked the Orlando metro region as the deadliest place in the United States for pedestrians. And Orlando stayed there for about a decade as the number one deadliest place. Our program, Best Foot Forward, formed in 2012 in response to that to try to work together with local governments in Orange, Osceola, and Seminole Counties, which is that Orlando metro region, to try to improve the driver yield rate at crosswalks. And as you can see on the list there, Orlando has fallen all the way down to 25th. This is ranking the 100 largest metro areas in the United States. So no city has fallen as far on this list than Orlando, going from 1 to 25th. So still not great to be the 25th deadliest in the nation. We're still working on that, but moving in the right direction. And we've partnered with a number of other counties in the region to try to replicate these results to improve pedestrian safety and reduce these deaths and serious injuries around the region. You'll notice that Gainesville and Alachua County is not on this list. That's because it's only ranking the top 100 largest metro areas. But if we're looking just at the death rate per 100,000, Gainesville would be firmly in the top 12, so just kind of for perspective on where that would be here in Gainesville if it were a comparable metro area. So that's kind of our why in terms of why we want to address this right away. And in Florida, you can see it's littered with cities on this list because Florida is a great place to walk and bike. It's warm all year long. So you can imagine that there's a lot of people out a lot of times. Go ahead and advance the next slide. So we did not invent this methodology, although it is a Florida-bred methodology. It actually started as a sanctioned study from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in 1998 in St. Petersburg, so right here in Florida. And then that study was replicated by the same group in 2013 right here in Gainesville. So again, very, very Florida-based methodology that we're working with here. I imagine that there are people in this room that might have been around that were aware of this study happening back in 2013, and the graph you're seeing on the screen there is kind of showing the driver yield rate at a sample of crosswalks over the study period. So at the beginning of the study, you can see that the driver yield rate at the crosswalks was around 30%, which we consider low. Anything below 33% we consider to be very low yielding for drivers. And by the end of the study period, those same set of crosswalks were up near 70%. Again, our methodology shows that anything 66% and above, we consider high yielding. So the idea is to take a sample of crosswalks and try to improve the driver yield rate through either low-cost engineering changes, new signage, striping, enforcement, running pedestrian safety enforcements with the local law enforcement agencies, or education, going out, doing community events. We do sign-waving events at crosswalks, bringing visibility to the crosswalk that is there, that is the law to yield. And so these methodologies can kind of tick up driver yield rate throughout the year, especially over the course of multiple years, to get it into a range that is considered much safer than where it might have originated. I see a question already. Go ahead. If you don't, yeah, do you mind? Can you expand on the driver's yielding to pedestrians, what that meant? Was that like someone taking a right turn? Was that like going over the crosswalk lines while there was a pedestrian in the crosswalk? What are those? That's a great question. I actually have a slide that does address this. Oh, okay. Great. Okay. All right. Thank you for that question. Go ahead in advance. Okay. So we work with a variety of agencies. We're in 11 counties now, 12, if we do end up expanding here into Alachua, as expected. So we started in that green area, again, orange, Orlando area, Seminole, and Osceola County. And with the help of FDOT's central office, they wanted to take what we've been doing in that Orlando metro area and see that same methodology being applied in other counties. So we've been able to expand. And this has all been since 2024. Again, we've been in those three counties since 2012, but expanding pretty rapidly over the last few years. And as of last year, we're all the way up into Jacksonville now. So today we're going to be seeking from you guys a proclamation of support. And all that's asking is to try to encourage these types of agencies to, again, work with us to identify which crosswalks are crosswalks of concern so that we can go out and evaluate it and then work with those agencies on interventions that can improve the driver appeal. Next slide. Okay. So whenever we're selecting crosswalks, we're getting together with local cities, the county, law enforcement, school districts. Again, anybody that has an interest in pedestrian safety. And we're looking for crosswalks that are near schools and trails and activity centers, any place where pedestrians are going to be active. Ideally, speeds under 45 miles an hour for the safety of our data collectors, potentially plan future road enhancements or future development, maybe being on a high injury network and then being geographically dispersed throughout. So we get a good representative sample of different types of crosswalks throughout the town. Next. And so here's how our data collection methodology works. So for a mid-block location, we are going to be setting up what's called a dilemma zone or a site stopping distance based on the speed limit. That's going to be something that we mark out with flag markers. And so as drivers approach that marker at a mid-block crosswalk, we will step into the crosswalk. Again, we're not entering the path of a moving vehicle. We are taking steps into the crosswalk, showing with our body language that we're intending to cross. And if the drivers go through the crosswalk, we mark that as not yielding. If they stop and allow us to cross, we mark that as yielding. And it works a little bit different at, like, signalized intersections. For signalized intersections, we just wait for the walk signal. There's no special measurements we have to do. Once we get the walk signal, we can continue. Same deal. It's going to be mostly turning drivers in those situations because the people going straight are stopped. And then at stop signs, same thing. Since they're coming from a stop, we don't have to mark out the distance. As they approach the stop sign, we can step in. And then the driver, again, can either continue through the crosswalk or allow us to cross. So what we do when we go out is we take photos of the crosswalk to report observations. We set out those flag markers if it's an uncontrolled crossing. We'll cross 20 times, two different times a day. So 40 total crosses throughout the day, getting a sample size two different times a day, and coming back throughout the year to see if that driver yield rate changes over time. And we can also record how many cyclists, pedestrians, et cetera, in the area. Get averages over time so you can see how active the area is with cyclists and ministry. So we work with law enforcement as well. We've had 11 counties participate in this now, each of the sheriff's offices from those counties, as well as multiple of the city police departments within it. We, since 2012, have conducted over 1,000 enforcement details with local law enforcement, and they have distributed more than 14,000 warnings and citations, each time handing them a little slip of paper that we provide them that explains what the law is regarding yielding to pedestrians in crosswalks. And so what we do on our end is we coordinate this enforcement, and then we will drive the high visibility. We reach out to local media, we create press releases, we invite elected officials out to participate. We will promote it through our social media and weekly newsletter, and we'll put the list of locations on our website so that there's no surprises. We're not trying to trick anybody. Law enforcement even oftentimes will put, like, the warnings that police enforcement is ahead. People oftentimes think that that's speeding, so they just go through the crosswalk very slowly with a pedestrian in it. So that doesn't tend to really change very much. So, again, they're not trying to trick anybody. They're just all about awareness. A couple quick examples. Last year in Longwood, there was a signalized intersection where only 41% of drivers were yielding. Typically with a signalized intersection, you would expect that to automatically be in the high-yielding range above 66%. This one was pretty low. It was a pretty big intersection, so you can imagine why. So Longwood Police Department did a couple of enforcements there last year. We also did a sign-waving event, so we'd go out to the crosswalks ourselves with some signs. It's saying state law, yield to pedestrians, $160-plus fine for failure to yield. And so these types of events bring awareness and visibility to the crosswalk. By the end of the year, it was up to 64% of drivers' yielding. That's all within one year just from, again, education enforcement. And another one in Volusia County last year. This was one of our best-improved ones just from enforcement. It actually did five enforcements over the course of two years, so pretty good sample size of enforcements. Crosswalk was only 19% of drivers' yielding at the beginning of that first year. And by the end of the second year, it was up to 50% of drivers' yielding. Again, just from enforcement. And so we also create customized crosswalk improvement plans. We'll make recommendations on low-cost signage, striping, things like that, that can improve driver yield rate. We know roughly what tends to work in certain areas, what type of yield rate improvement you might expect based on what signs and striping is going in. And we focus on low-cost improvements because those go in the fastest. Those are usually the easiest ones to get going. You don't have to require any kind of special, you know, studies for the, like, signalization or things like that. And even with flashing beacons, which do work great, our data shows, very effective when they're pressed. They're not always pressed. So if the pedestrian doesn't press that button, then you're back to what is the basic signage and striking there because that's what you're going to be falling back on if they don't activate. A couple quick examples of engineering over in Oakland, which is near Orlando. This is an FDOT signalized intersection. It was only 45% of drivers' yielding beforehand. Again, this is signalized, so we wouldn't have expected that to be higher. They put in a quick five-second leading pedestrian interval, so that just gives pedestrians a five-second head start. And the yield rate shot up to 80%, so very, very effective, super low-cost. Things like in-street flex posts, painted medians, again, basic stuff. It doesn't cost a lot of money. This one's a school crossing in Brevard County, Cocoa Beach. Went from 31% of drivers' yielding, again, at a school crossing. After these improvements, up to 80% of drivers. And then this one was in Seminole County, 26% of drivers' yielding. And this is a trail connection between a neighborhood and a very popular trail. They put in some new signage and striping and did a couple of enforcements. This went from 26% to 47%, again, within. And then outside of that, we do education. We do sign-waving campaigns, like I mentioned earlier, getting out there with a crosswalk to raise visibility. We do pop-up events, community events, tabling events, and we do program presentations, just to try to make them aware that we are doing this program, law enforcement's involved, public works is involved, and they are trying to improve crosswalk. And then we also educate on our digital channels. We have social media. We have a newsletter. So these are other ways that we can kind of get the word out about what's going on in here. So some quick stats from last year. One thing I'll bring attention to is the engineering. We tracked 21 engineering improvements last year. Again, this was across 11 counties. And on average, those crosswalks were improving 26% of the time. Sorry, 26% average increase when it improved at those 21 crosswalks. And, again, that is just the engineering side. There were over 100 crosswalk enforcement details as well last year. We had, I think, 24 crosswalks improve in response to enforcement. On average, 11% improvement. And then we had almost 100 educational events as well. The other big number I'll see on there is the stage crossings, 21,520. That's how many times we cross the street. Every time we're crossing the street, we're taking multiple data points, how many drivers are yielding, how many bicyclists and pedestrians are there, and any other type of observational behavior. This is my last slide. So, in terms of the results, we already saw that Orlando dropped from number one deadliest to 25th. What that looks like in the data, there's two graphs here overlaying each other. The line graph is our data showing the driver yield rate that we record each year. This is throughout Orange, Osceola, and Seminole County. When we started out, that number was 17% of drivers yielding at the sample of crosswalks we had that steadily improved year by year and has kind of plateaued off around 50%. So, we're seeing more and more attention to pedestrian safety and making sure that these improvements are coming in right away. The bar graph you're seeing is from Signal 4 Analytics. This is the biped deaths and serious injuries over that same time period. So, we were expanding exponentially in deaths and serious injuries up to 2015, hit a peak, and then came back down to plateau. So, a nice inverse showing that what we're seeing in our driver yield rate data, we're also seeing reflected in the actual biped deaths and serious injuries. Last one. Okay. So, today, like I mentioned, we are seeking a resolution of support. This does not cost the county any money. This is all going to be funded for three years through the FDOT central office from a federal highway administration grant. So, all you guys have to do is encourage participation over the next three years. And at the end of that period, then, you know, three years, we can come back together and decide if any cities or the county wants to fund it locally. But that's a decision for another day. So, today, we're just looking for support and collaboration. So, I'll open up to any questions or comments before we get there. Thanks for all. I have two questions. Yes. First, roundabouts. Do you all look at roundabout intersections as well? Yes. Very, very effective when they're built correctly. So, actually, more effective than stop signs in a lot of cases. Okay. Yeah. But, yeah, we have some problems around here with pedestrians being yielded to. And then, secondly, so, Gainesville, like Orlando, has a lot of visitors during certain times and periods of year from out of town. How do you work, what do you work with in order to educate visitors about the same safety things that you've talked to residents about? Right. So, we find that most of the time when there are bikepack crashes, when you look at the data, like over 80% are usually going to be locals. So, we know that the bulk of our work is going to be from the locals. In terms of reaching out to people that are traveling, we do work with local travel centers to put our little state law handouts in their brochure rack. So, that way, they can potentially pick those up. Unfortunately, if they're in the wrong place, wrong time, they might end up getting pulled over by law enforcement if they have to be driving through during that. Or, they might come to a community event or be at a crosswalk where we're doing those sign-waving events. So, you know, focusing mostly on the local residents, knowing that's where most of the crashes are going to happen. But, we also know when people get pulled over, especially at these enforcement events, more often than not, people that are getting pulled over aren't people that live in that community. They're people passing through. People in those immediate areas are very, very thankful to law enforcement. They say, thank you for being here. Nobody ever stops for me. And then, the people get pulled over like, this is ridiculous. I can't believe it's outrageous. And, they don't even live there, right? So, it kind of works both ways in terms of focusing on those local community at the crosswalk, but then the people's walk. And then, would the University of Florida be one of your partners then? Yeah. So, we partner with the University of North Florida up in Jacksonville and the University of Central Florida in Orlando. And then, we'll be looking to partner with the University of Florida here in Dayton. Perfect. Thank you. Yeah. Mayor Ward. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So, thank you for this. I'm certainly supportive of it. Anything we can do to improve crosswalks is positive. But, our biggest issue is, I want to remind everyone, are not at crosswalks. That is not where we have most of our injuries and deaths. They tend to be very specifically on about free roads. And, they're not at crosswalks. They're for a variety of different reasons. Maybe some places where we should have crosswalks. Right. Which is not to say that we won't have problems at crosswalks because, certainly, we have the same kind of lack of us paying attention to crosswalks that any community does. But, I just want to remind everyone that the real problems that we've had have not been at crosswalks. Very specifically on 34th Street, Waldo Road, and University Avenue. Yep. In places that didn't have crosswalks. Yes. And, that's a great point. I mean, across the board, the statistics show that most of those crashes do happen outside of the crosswalk. And, again, we're focused on crosswalks. So, when you see those Orlando stats, all the work we've done has been focused on crosswalks. But, there's a broader effect from it. People are constantly seeing the media coverage about law enforcement watching out for people not stopping for pedestrians. We, you know, really hammer home, especially during outreach events, that every single intersection, whether it's marked or not, is a legal crosswalk where pedestrians have the right of way. So, in a lot of these places where drivers are, you know, passing, pedestrians are going to have the right of way even if there's not a marked crosswalk if it's at an intersection. So, this is, like, kind of a broader effect type of thing. Also, working with these local governments, we're able to kind of get them to focus more on pedestrian safety as they're building new crosswalks, as they're going back and assessing crosswalks. And, kind of, keeps it top of mind for them over time. So, while I definitely agree with your point, and I definitely see how there's kind of a disconnect there, we sit down in Orlando as well, and we're still seeing that yield. Commissioner Prezio? Yeah, I was just going to move that we accept the proclamation, and also to say thank you for your focus on this. We just completed a bicycle and pedestrian safety plan. Yes. So, I would just encourage you, before you get started on work in a large county, to take a look at that. Absolutely. And, touch base with the planners of the city and the county, as well as a notch, just so that you have a full, because I think there's been a lot of work done to identify the places where we need these kinds of low-cost improvements. And, so, it's just a matter of, you know, maybe attracting some grant funding to get it there. So, anyway, thank you. Thank you. Councilwoman Taylor? Yes, when you were talking about and speaking about the crosswalks and the problems that we have, and we do have a few that are on the east side, because right by Citizens Field, where they put up the crosswalk, when it's a game going on, even when you have kids over there that are trying to cross with the lights that are flashing, people do not pay them any mind. They just keep going right on and just honk the horns and talk trash and keep going. So, there is a need for, again, you have the crosswalks that are there, but they're not paying attention to the children that are crossing when it is time for games and things that are going on. I've watched it myself. They do not pay attention to the children or just regular pedestrians that are crossing when the lights are flashing for them to cross. So, there is a need to study up there. And around Hawthorne, again, which has been stated here at the table before, the crosswalk that's there at the light when the children are trying to cross there, that is an issue there. Because, again, cars are speeding and they're coming across from the bridge. And if it's a morning like we had this morning with a lot of fog, that's an issue. And you can't see the kids or anything going across there. And down by east side, on the east side, by Lakewood Elementary School, there's an issue that's up in there. Even though you have a crossguard, she's usually on her phone and not paying attention or staring or whatever she's doing. But she's not paying attention to those children. And that is an issue because I use that back road to come up here into Gainesville. And when it's school time and the children are there, again, she's paying attention, but she's not paying attention. And it is an issue when they're crossing that street because they're flying trying to make it on that road to leave on out. And it's an issue there. Eastside High School, right in front of Eastside, they have the crosswalk that's there. But, again, when school is out and the children are crossing back and forth, no one's really paying attention to them on that side of town over there. Again, the lights are flashing, but no one's paying attention to those children. And, for instance, I know Newberry downtown, as you're crossing there, when we were going doing the rural inspection of the towns, there are times that as you have the crosswalk, but, again, you have some that are flying. They're trying to get into Trenton or wherever they're rushing to. And they really weren't paying attention to the people that were standing there in the crosswalk with the light flashing for them to pass. They looked at them kind of like, huh, and kept going. So we do need a need, but we really have a big need on the eastside for a study of crosswalks. That's great context. Commissioner Book? Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair. So I like a lot of the data-based research that you're showing and, you know, kind of indicating the successes there. Similar to what Commissioner Prizia said, we have done it. We have a lot of surveys, research, data, FDOT partnership documents already. And I would assume you start by digging into those and see what's available because that may give you a jump start if this is going to move forward. Is that correct? That would be ideal, yeah. And we have at least a few, besides the overlapping documents that we have, we also have some groups that are, you know, have a lot of advocacy and knowledge. So we have the two subcommittees, the TPO, and we have a transportation safety team that's along the law enforcement. Is that something that you go post-proclamation or is that something you've already reached out to? Yeah, so proclamation's step one, and then we start reaching out to, yeah, local groups, local governments, et cetera, to try to get their buy-in and get to those crosswalks suggested so we can get a good list of locations. Yeah, that'll be, like, next step, basically, after this. Thank you for that last question. And so best put forward, that's a for-profit, non-profit, government, whatever. Yeah, non-profit. And the funding, as you've indicated, is wholly for at least the next 36 months through the Department of Transportation, for the Department of Transportation. Yes. So no cost to, for example, all these boards and organizations that are sitting around the table. Yes, no cost, no commitment. I like that. Thank you. Councilwoman Taylor? My last question, I wanted to ask, do you do studies in the rural areas as well? Yes. So we want to geographically disperse throughout the county, get different cities, the rural areas of the county, any place where there's an interest in where pedestrians might be wanted. Okay, because we have new crosswalks that are up in Waldo in two different areas. And we have the ones that have the lights that you push and it blinks and the cars stop, but they need to pay a little bit more attention there. Great for enforcement, yeah. Yeah, because they're not used to it being there. So we do need that study there and going across on the other side as you're heading towards the new Grace Christian Prep School. Okay, I appreciate that. Thank you. A couple questions, and if anyone else has some to be ready. When you, these rates, do you measure if multiple cars don't stop? Do they all get counted as a non-yield? Yeah, so we have a cutoff of seven. So if we step into a crosswalk in one, two, it's seven. After seven, we step back and we don't continue because we don't want to give kind of a false impression of it being overly dangerous. So, yeah, we have a cutoff there. So we're not, we're getting a more general sample throughout and not necessarily having it be weighted by like a single event. Because we do tend to see that if we step out and one car doesn't yield, it's more likely that the car behind will also not yield it. So we don't want to make that seem like it's making it more dangerous than it actually is. Okay, that's just a data collection question I had. It was interesting, the Ormond Beach example, that's a beachfront tourist kind of area that you still saw a decrease. Yeah, and just from enforcement, no change in signage or striping or anything like that. Yeah, that was, that's interesting. And I think in Gainesville, we have that similar feeling of particularly people who live in Gainesville. But it's people who are trying to get in and out of the city or out to Nix County or hear from somewhere else that there are perhaps the people who are a little upset about having to stop. And our local people who are walking, going to work, going to school, just enjoying the city are like, please stop for me. This is my city. It's not just a place to drive through. So I had a question that maybe UF, Ms. Dixon, could help. Y'all do, y'all do in-street flex posts for the must-stop in crosswalk on lots of places across campus, hospitals. Did that come from a study or just, you know, because when they mentioned sometimes these in-street things, that remind people, you know, state law, must-stop. Did that come from a study or just, and it's still going on, right? You stop those across campus, right? Yeah, we've got several places where we have the flashing beacons and some have the push buttons. A couple of the newer ones are automatic. But no, they really just kind of came through UF policy. The ones that are down by the hospital, though, Archer Road, those were coordinated with DOT. No, I mean the in-street, like the little- Like in front of the dorm and you have the sign. State law says you must- Yeah, right. You put it right in the middle of the road. Right, yeah, that's what I was talking about. We have those, and we also have them in conjunction with the flashers in most places. There may be a few where we don't have the flashers with them. I bring that up because some people will say, like, oh, that surely won't change people's- I know that on campus, it sets an example and a culture of you have to stop, you know, since we have a big university, and they do. People mostly stop. I will say the Archer Road one, I go through it twice a day, four days a week. Let me tell you today, I was the first one not stopping. I'm like, okay, it's two lanes on this side. But I was in the middle of the first lane, and someone going through the second lane. This is a signalized, you know, crosswalk, and someone's still buzzing through. I think often it's not the people who work locally at the hospitals. They all know. These are their colleagues. But sometimes it's people who are just traveling through. Maybe they're patients and guests, but sometimes I just think they're not the locals. The staff at the hospitals, the staff at UF understand, and so they stop for it. But, like, the number of times I have been close enough to physically touch a car while I'm in the middle of that. So there's a clear, and this is a signalized, so I am all for this. I will support this three years from now. If UF has any interest in helping city and county budgetarily to contribute a little more to something, this will be an ask, I think, that the city of Gainesville and the county as a partnership since UF, for instance, the city of Gainesville doesn't receive fire assessment from UF. Surely this is an area where maybe UF could step in and say, knowing that, you know, even though it was not on a crosswalk, you know, since our last meeting, Hazel Crouse, a 19-year-old, was killed on University Avenue, a UF student, that maybe this is an area where UF could step in and say, you know, three years from now, we can help continue the funding. You know, who knows what funding will look like everywhere three years from now. But since I call that you off, I better go to Ms. Dixon. Yeah, I'm just going to say, the ones on Archer Road by the parking garage, that area, those were, of course, coordinated through DOT. They were implemented through a project that actually the city managed. It was a campus development agreement-funded project. And UF advocated for the crosswalk and did the data collection and a lot of work to get that approved. We tried to get them by the vet school as well, and those were denied. Oh. I didn't realize there was vet school. Because I worked at both the vet school buildings. We needed that on there. On 16th Avenue. Oh, I know exactly what you're talking about. Because I worked there for three years, and now I work in the main hospitals, but leaving from the same parking garage. So literally, those are my two. For 10 years, this is where I've had to cross either 16th or Archer. So I'm well aware. Director Whitfield. Yes. I just wanted to add what I think Vincent may not have touched on it, is that doing their best foot court program, this is also educating pedestrians and cyclists as well, because we all are accountable. So not just driver behavior, but also pedestrian and cyclist behavior. It's a good opportunity to learn on all times. Getting them to use the crosswalk. Yeah. That's the safest place for them to cross. Use the crosswalk. Yeah. Yes. Don't push the button and wait. Was there anybody else? Commissioner Booker? No. Sorry. Now that I know more, I want to second the motion made by Commissioner Putzio. All right. So yeah, I believe Commissioner Putzio made the motion that is seconded by the book. Are there any members of the public who would like to speak to this resolution? All right. Any further conversation here? Seeing none, all those in favor, say aye. Aye. Those opposed, like, sign. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you so much, guys. Looking forward to welcome you. Thank you for presenting to us. All right. So we've handled both 8.1 and 7.5. And 8.2. And then did we also do 8.2? 8.2 is just information. It's an administrative tip amendment to go and coincide with the UPWP amendment. So we, the board approved the UPWP amendment. The tip amendment, or the tip amendment, is to physically do it in the TIP itself to move those funds over. Okay. Any questions about that? Do you need a motion for that? Uh-uh. It's just administrative. Okay. Well, thank you for filling us in on that. Next step, 9.1. RTS. Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Ricky Walker, and I'm a transit planner at RTS. I'm here for Jesus today, so I'll be providing the information for the report for September. All right. So the system-wide ridership for September was 554,258 last year as well. The productivity for September was 31.9. And, again, that's also up from August and up from last year, at this time last year as well. And it's important to note that that number is the highest for the fiscal year. And our program-wide ridership total for the fiscal year is $4,365,431. And that's slightly down from, the revenue hours was $185,130. And the passengers per hour for the fiscal year is $23,630, slightly higher from the last fiscal year. Excuse me. The RTS Plus ridership for September was $5,272, another month where we continue to provide between $5,000 and $6,000 trips per month. RTS Plus service, I'm showing $39,993 months where it started. The Saturday service for September was $28,770. Route 33 was number one in ridership for Saturday service. And for Sunday service, the ridership was $9,970. And Route 1 was the highest, most productive route for Sunday. Okay. Moving on to the Fairbox information, first Santa Fe College. The Santa Fe College Fairbox ridership was $24,787. Of that, $24,267 was students, and $5,20 was Santa Fe staff. Okay. Next page is the UF Fairbox ridership. The number was $409,437. Of that number, $403,394 was UF students, and $6,043 was UF staff. And for the under-18, over-65, our Fairbox ridership totals, the number was $29,209. Under-18 was $2,243. And the over-65 ridership total was $8,943. And the last page shows the map with the ridership by bus stop. I actually have a top-10 list for the most productive stops for the month in order. Number one was Wright's Union. Number two was The Hub. Number three was Rosa Park Station. Number four was Butler Plaza Station. Number five was Rawlings Hall. Number six was Turlington Hall. And number seven and ten are both stops on Center Drive at Shands Hospital. And then rounding out, number eight is the University Police Department. And number nine was Santa Fe College. Lastly, I was told to pass along this information. RTS is preparing to assume CTC responsibilities beginning December the 1st. Can you tell us what CTC is for the members of the public so we don't speak in jargon? The paratransit service. Which is for the entire county, and this is a service that previously was taken care of by the RPC. Members of the public can know what we're talking about. This has been long in the making. Commissioner Alford. I think Hayes. Sorry. There was a request by some residents to expand the hours of service for Route 52 to Jonesville. And they were going to look into that. I guess I don't know if you knew anything about it. Yeah, I don't have any information. The only information I have is we're making a small change to the spring service. We had some issues with the first trip in the morning, leaving Jonesville, coming into town. Traffic on Newberry Road is, you know, as I'm sure we all know is. Right. Yeah. It's a, you know, population center. There's a lot of people that are using it to get to work, but it arrives too late. And, you know, the first service to that area was too late to support those folks. So I was just curious if there had been any movement on that. Allison Moss, transportation planning manager for the county. That route, the overall timetable was shifted slightly earlier. Okay. So people should be able to better make morning meetings and arrive at campus on time. I think ideally we would add more service, but my understanding is what's been done now has just shifted a little bit earlier. It's shifted service. Okay. That's what I needed to know. Thank you. Member Hayes-Santos. Thank you, Chair. A couple, few months ago, I noticed the trend changing in terms of total ridership. Do you know what, kind of trend upwards from getting lower for the whole last year versus this year? Do you know what changed in the service or what led to that trend changing? Well, what I can think of, again, would be the service cuts that took place over the last year or so. You know, we had some hours that was reduced, so I think the numbers went down primarily because of that. Why did it went up? The trend has changed. Oh, why did it go up? Yeah. Gas prices. I mean, for the three months, July, August, September, the trend has changed. Yeah. Versus the year of year. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah. So, yeah, gas prices are probably a good place to start. And, again, you know, we get into the fall service. You know, there's a lot more people, you know, here in town, so the numbers aren't. Well, it's fall over fall. So, but, yeah, the gas prices. But, yeah, I'd be curious next time if you guys are seeing that trend continue of looking at what changed to affect that, because that is a positive change for the RTS. When did school, when did UF start this, because sometimes even an extra two days have compared to last year. Big numbers in July changing, too? Yeah, but that's what I was just saying. August makes sense, because sometimes school starts a day or two earlier, and you've got that many of the students. It started early this year. It did start early this year. It did start early this year, compared to last year. But that the July didn't make sense, and I, so. Yeah, I'd be curious to see what you will. I will go back and understand about that, yeah. Sorry, we have a member Dixon. I was just curious on how you are estimating or providing the data for UF and Santa Fe ridership. Is that still estimated by the drivers? Are you scanning cards now? What's the methodology? Yeah, it's our scanning cards. Also, the fare box data, you know, the students, they get on the bus, and they show their ID, and the driver will key it into the fare box, so it take place to all the people that's riding the buses. Are you now consistently requiring them to show that ID? Yeah, that was the one I was looking at. As far as that, no, yes, ma'am. Yes. Commissioner Frizio? I just want to say thank you to the city of Gainesville for RTS Plus. I've heard good feedback about its quality and consistent service, so I know you all spend a lot of time making investments in that. Thank you for providing a good service, and we're excited to be a part of it this coming year. We just have some exciting stuff, and I hope that it will provide us with an opportunity to expand our reach, not leave some money on the table with regard, because I know there's some money that we leave on the table every year for extending that service to folks beyond just the required drivers, and I know our planner could talk about that, but the 5311 fund, what do they call it? Do you know what I'm talking about? 5310 and 5311 funds, yeah. But I also wanted to ask, I know we've asked you all to look at options for sort of those sorts of things and others for creating more opportunities for those in the rural area and our outlining areas that don't have regular bus service to get in. When is that? When are you all bringing? We're bringing that to you in December. In December, okay. I have a huge spreadsheet. It's just some of the things that we've brought to the board have been a little bit more pressing. So Kim Lee Horn has done a research based on Federal Transit Administration's data for, I want to say, at least eight other transit authorities. We're also looking at how other areas are providing service to their rural areas. So we're going to be bringing that data to the board in December. Okay. Thank you. I just had maybe an observation that the ridership is down 600,000 rides from FR 25 to 26. Because September is the end, right? We start toward our market over. And so I guess this is not a question for RTS, but a question for everybody is where did those 600,000, where did they go? Did they walk? Did they not go? Did they ride a car? Did they jump on a scooter? You know, kind of where are those 600,000? Because those people don't disappear. They're still here. Is it driving down economic input? Are students not going to class? I hope they're still going to class. But I don't know if we've... Well, I mean, you also cut routes. So I think that's a lot of those, just the routes that are no longer existing. Right. So the question is, are these people not getting to where they need to go? Or does it put more traffic on the roads? You know, that kind of thing. The July data about just that increased, Commissioner, or Member Hayes-Santos was right to point that out because that's a pretty significant increase for July. I want to, is it just the price of gas that just caused some people or, I mean, that's like a 20% increase from year over year. Is there a way to do that? Is there a way to look at the bus routes that you all cut and look at the transportation corridors within those to see what the increases in traffic numbers? Or we would have had to put out counters or something like that to be able to do that kind of data analysis, right? Yeah, definitely the counters for sure. Mayor Ward? So, yeah, it is certainly part of changes in the routes. I mean, word gets around that there aren't as many routes and people who might have been riding don't. I do also think that there's a, I don't have any data to show this, but I think that UF is doing, I know that UF is doing more Zoom classes. Online, yeah. Right, more online teaching means fewer people and getting to class on time. I, anecdotally, I just see a whole lot more people walking in the campus area, and we haven't added that many more people. We added people, but we haven't added that many more people. I think people just have, don't have enough faith in the complexities of the system as as things change with having to switch buses on campus and use a little bit different system. I think people are just like, you know what, I'll just walk, whether they get their own time or not. The easier the system is to use, the more people will ride it. Commissioner Wheeler? Just very quickly, the RTS buses plus buses that are serving some of our folks in the area. Are dogs allowed on these buses, for instance, have a blind constituent who calls me regularly about the pathway, the sidewalk over on 52nd Street that's sometimes encumbered, and I think that's, I don't know if that's Keone City or which, but I know I go and chop the limbs off so that she can get passed through there. But are dogs allowed on those buses? That's a good question. I'll have to check and see. Yeah, I would imagine that service animals would be allowed on there. Service animals are allowed. Service dogs, absolutely. Okay, thank you. And who they, so this person then would just contact RTS for any of these issues that are going on with the sidewalk or our inability to get on the bus? Yes, ma'am. Okay, all right, thank you. I just am trying to find the contacts for my folks that I will be leaving, you know, in you all's care. The drivers have been really great about helping, like sometimes they have to help people get in and out of the things because they're in wheelchairs or they have other assisted needs and the drivers have been great. I think it was a bus route, too, that was cut over, going off 39th, that 53rd second that, you know, she used to take and that, so that had caused some issues, I think, for her as well. So the RTS Plus will be great and that keeps her off the number. I will tell you, I was at a Shands ophthalmology appointment and I watched the RTS Plus bus pull up, the driver got out, helped the driver out, walked her all the way into our ophthalmology appointment and then walked back. That's wonderful. Now, I'm really excited about those little buses. I was very impressed, very respectful of the person and it was good to see. Besides that, they're huge. It's because it's good 18-year drivers. Right, sometimes. Thank you, Chair. One thing I'd be curious, I think that timing from, I don't know if it's directly related, but I think that's when they started adding the route numbers back onto the route for the route that time as well, too, so that could have helped with the trend, too. Councilman Taylor. Thank you for the question, Commissioner, regarding the dogs. That was a nice question to ask for some of the members that do ride the bus. Yes, and again, the RTS is transitioned over from MV to the RTS Plus, correct? Okay. May I ask, with your procedure with the dogs, what is exactly the procedure when you get on the bus with the dog? Are we talking about all buses or just the RTS Plus? No, no, just the disabled person and they come on with the dog. Is there a certain procedure that goes along with the dog, saying is that MV basically over, as I said, and following, are they following the same procedures as MV would have followed? Not sure. I'm training on this, actually, but I know in some cases that some drivers would, and this is just speaking generally, I know sometimes that operators will, you know, ask the passenger, you know, is it a service animal? Because, you know, most animals will have, like, a vest on or something, you know, to let everyone know that. Maybe we can just get an email from RTS to the TPO with the process and procedure for service animals. Actually, the process is when they get on the bus, because you have some that have ridden the bus for a long time, and by transferring over from MV over to RTS Plus, and it being up underneath the same umbrella with the guidelines, some of them don't understand that when you ride the bus with your dog, which is your service dog, and you're allowed to, but your dog needs to be right beside you. It cannot be in the lane, the walkway, or anything like that, and a lot of folks tend to pick up the phone and call and complain on same-said driver that stops the bus, gets out, does their job, which is part of their job, to get out, walk that patient up to the counter to where they're supposed to be, help them check in if necessary, and then go back to the bus. But a lot of the problem comes as well, as they don't want to follow the rules, and that's how we lose a lot of our good drivers, so I'm just wanting to make sure that as well, the passengers know the rules as well, so that they follow them, and we don't lose any of the good drivers that MV truly has that transfers over to RTS. So that was why I was asking the question, because when I was driving, there was an issue with that, because you could pick up and call, and the county would believe the passenger over the actual driver, and we're driving back and forth, tending to our clients every single day. So I applaud the ones that are actually doing their job correctly, getting out, as they're supposed to, getting their client, walking them up to the desk, helping them check in, and then going back out and getting back into their vehicle and leaving. But we also want to make the passengers follow the rules as well, again, so that we do not lose any of our good drivers, because it is hard to find good drivers. It is hard to find drivers that actually follow the law and do what they're supposed to do, and not put the rider in jeopardy or themselves in jeopardy. This is a more direct question. Ricky, we're going to give you all the hard questions. Thank you for being here. Has the ATU, our union at RTS on the city side, have they responded to this transition yet to RTS Plus, or are we kind of waiting until the first year, or has this been in any conversation with the union yet? If you can't answer, I'll go talk to the... How could that move on? Okay, well, this is something on the city side that city manager and commissioners can definitely inquire, just how has this worked, and hopefully hear back from the ATU, the union themselves, because they will be able to represent all of... I think every single driver, you know, represent them and say how it's going. But it's a really good point for us to key into, because we changed the nature of the scope of the work of our drivers. We're glad, because we, you know, this helped keep as many drivers on as possible. But we should probably, the city side, we should probably follow back up. I know that... I'll specifically reach out to the union to find out, you know, how it's going. That's a great point. And thank you. And thank you, Executive Whitfield, for coming up with the spreadsheet or whatever it is that you're coming up next for our rural areas, so that I won't keep bothering you guys about our rural riders, because we can't leave them out. A lot of them now are catching Ubers, so they're assigned to Ubers that come and pick them up in rural areas. So yes, ma'am, to get that ridership back up with our rural riders. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. I think that's all we got for you. Thank you. We put you through the ringer. It's always our most popular... And it's always okay to say no. Yeah, that's fine. It's always good. We know that Jesus will get back to us if we have any questions. All right. We are on to the upcoming meeting. Yes. Meetings. DOT War Program hearing is November 19th, which is very important. I wanted us to share that to make in-person comments, it will be at the public hearing on the 19th in the Lakeland, Lake City, Lake City, Jacksonville Urban Office, I'm sorry. It says right there, Jacksonville Urban Training Facility. The board can still provide comments via the website. That is a hyperactive link I can send to you and also through the mail through the 20th. We should be getting our, what did you call it, the snapshot, the early snapshot on the 20th of this month. Is there anything we should make note of to comment about? I asked that question, but I can send out another email afterwards. I sent the email to Akaya like right before this meeting, so she was probably traveling. But I did ask if there are any potential changes that we should be looking out for. So, if there's anything, then I'll share it with the board prior to the 19th. The next governor board meeting is December 7th. The TAC and CAC BPAP meets on the first. TAC and CAC meets on the second. So, there's not going to be a lot of lag time between when the advisory committee meets and when the board meets. One of the top items for the advisory committee meetings is the list of priority projects. We're going to go over all of those and prioritizing them. I will probably send out what I'm sending to the advisory committees to this board at the same time. So, because of noticing requirements, you won't get the benefit of what the advisory committee says until the meeting because of, you know, I have to post your meeting date 10 days in advance or seven days in advance. So, we will not have met by that time. So, you'll get it at the meeting. Member Hayes-Santis. You can send out what they said, though, prior to the meeting, though. So, it would be nice to be able to review that prior to the ID changes or anything. Yeah. So, I'm hoping to, in terms of the deadlines, you might get two emails in. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. Like, send out a secondary email with their, if they have any feedback or anything. Yep. The plan is to, like, they meet on the second. The plan is to have some sort of summary, but a third and fourth. All the meetings? Yep. That's, oh, sorry. The Federal Highway, Federal Transit Administration on-site certification meeting is January 11th. That is a Monday. It's going to be in this room at 6 o'clock. I had initially planned it for an hour. I've had other MPOs suggest that 30 minutes is all we need. Federal Highway also suggested that 30 minutes is all that we'll need. So, all that communications know, we'll do a press release for that community meeting for just 30 minutes. FHWA will just have a very short, there are no short spiel, and it'll just be available for the board or any public members or any cities attending to ask questions. The meeting is intended to be on how well the TPO is doing in performing its obligations from, you know, Code of Federal Regulations and, of course, statutes. Not so much on specific projects or statuses of projects, but it's all on the administration of the TPO function. Is it notified as a public meeting? Yes. So that if it's multiple, we can come and talk. Okay. Yep. We will be sending it out as a public meeting and a press release. Okay. All right. We are to public comments. If there's any members of the public who would like to speak at this point over anything they've heard or have three minutes general about anything related to transportation in the county. None? All right. We'll move back to our board. Public comments. We've got Ward, Prizia, Wheeler, and Taylor. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So, first of all, congratulations and thank you to the county on the improvements that are about to happen at Santa Fe College. Very exciting for the whole community. I'm sure you I get just as many requests about this as you don't have. 98? 98? 98? That's not good. Yeah, I do. That sounds so good. Yep. So, we should all celebrate that. That's great news. And I want to take one more victory lap on the groundbreaking for the RTS facility at the Eastside Health and Economic Development Initiative site. Because that was, we're still getting good comments about that from folks who live nearby, which is what we want to hear. That's all. Thank you. All right. Commissioner President. I just wanted to ask if we have any plans in the works for a speed study on Newberry Road. I had brought this up at previous meetings. We just had a gentleman from the public bring it up. But we have been noticing a lot of speeding on Newberry Road, particularly in the really congested areas from, I would say, it's just before 43rd to like 36th or something like that. But around the 43rd, let's just say 43rd Street intersection through the mall area, like the speed is increased to 45 miles an hour. But with the amount of bikes, cars, and pedestrians in that area, I'm not sure 45 is a warranted speed. And then post that space, once you hit 98th or at least, I think it's 98th, it might be, what road is that right there? Maybe it's 70 something. Anyway, just past the mall and past the overpass. 98th. Yeah, there's a, it goes up even more. Or at least people think it goes up even more. And we have people in excess of 65 miles an hour, like treating that like it's a highway between that spot and then Jonesville, where it kind of turns more urban again. And then they pick up again outside of Jonesville, and they start flying through to Newberry. So we have a lot of speeding issues on that road. And I don't know if we have any plans or if there's any opportunity. I just confirmed with the, Allison, it's not in the county's list of 40s. So for the LOPP that we're working on, the TPO is considering the projects that have been submitted by the different partner agencies. Maybe it's something that the county could, I don't know, that's something that the county could do, or they could add it to their list as a contributing partner to the support of projects. Okay, I'll just add for some context. So the area between, I think, 98th and 122nd, or Parker Road of Newberry, that was evaluated somewhat recently, particularly after the fatality that happened, I think, two Christmases ago. So FDOT did study it. They came up with a series of countermeasures that they felt they'd be comfortable implementing. But then they were asking for the TPO to look to fund it through its SU funding source. I personally don't think that those countermeasures are going to be sufficient to meaningfully drive the speeds down in that segment. So I can recirculate anyway the study and the countermeasures that were developed through that process. And then the segment from 38th to 43rd has not been studied that I know of recently, but perhaps FDOT through developing the shared use path on that segment may have some data. I'll just add semi-related that the countywide bicycle pedestrian master plan did develop policies in addition to projects. It was very capital project heavy, but one of the policies is to set safe target speeds. And so that's not necessarily for all roadways within the county, but we're working on developing what that looks like, specifically for Alachua County roads. And we'll be sharing that with the county commission soon, and that may be something that the TPO wants to expand upon. I know the city of Gainesville also, I think, applied for an SS4A grant for sort of safe speed, safe target speed setting, but I'm not sure about the status of that. So within the context of what you're talking about, what the county is doing regarding target speeds, you're doing that based on best practices and recommendations based on the traffic, the number of pedestrians, like what sort of is the opposition of the location? So the very rough draft that's in my head is that the county's land development code specifies speeds based on vehicle volumes for its own roadways. And the very highest speed that we set as a target or a design speed within the urban cluster would be 35 miles an hour. That's also the highest speed with which a pedestrian, if struck, is likely to survive. So we have, however, a lot of speeds within the urban cluster that are 40, 45. We may even have some 50 mile an hour roadways. So I think a first step would be comparing what our standards are to what our existing conditions are, then overlaying things like school zones, activity centers, to prioritize areas where we want to work to drive those speeds down. Would you include incidents in there? Like high-injury network data, yes. Okay, thank you. Well, I guess I do think that that area, I mean, universities is a similar situation. It's kind of like what happens sort of like it's just lots of people going back and forth to the mall and doctor's offices and 43rd Street and people trying to park now on one side of the road. And then, you know, the bike lanes now are going to be crossing over sidewalks. The way that we've redone the multi-use path there, like I just feel like there's a lot going on in that section of Newberry Road from, I guess it's 38th, thank you, to just pass the mall basically to the overpass. There's just so much going on in that area. And 45 seems really high to me for that area. So I would love for us to either be able to do a speed study or to just take the data that we already have and lower the speed limit to 35. Well, can we do that on the speed? I mean, I don't, yeah, to ask that we do that. Okay. So now I've got Commissioner Wheeler. Yes, thank you. I can't, what does High Springs look like as I leave this seat in the process of the light at Post Springs Road there and any kind of traffic redirecting we can do for the track? We're expecting to see that in UL's LOPP. So once it's in the LOPP, we can select the next feasible project. Okay. Once that's adopted, I'm not just bringing that to the board in December, the draft. And so we're going to be taking that list and seeing against the current project that's already funded to see if that Post Springs project could be the next project. Just touching the light at, yes. Not the roundabout. Not the roundabout, okay. Oh, no, there's a roundabout? That's new. There are two studies. Okay, okay. Yeah, that traffic that goes through there, it's really hard to, it's hard for the businesses to have parking in front because of the amount of traffic there and also, you know, coming off Post Springs Road, it gets backed up. And so that's why we were trying to get a light of some kind in your signal. Was it the light or the left-hand thing? The light. The light and the roundabout, the roundabout wouldn't work, so then they deferred. They did another ICE for a light. The city of High Springs did submit that as part of their project. Okay, great, great. Because I can't imagine those trucks going around around the top. Point of clarification. There's two different locations that are being discussed right now. So the first one, I think the subject that you're referring to is Main Street and 41-27, and there's a signal today. And it gets particularly backed up because of vehicles trying to turn left, and there's no dedicated left turn lane. So the TPO, several months ago, forwarded the request to FDOT to look at different phasing. And that location, for instance, doing, like, split phasing where all vehicles in one direction could go and then all in the other could go. FDOT evaluated it, and they said that basically there was not enough capacity. There would be too much delay with that change. So they're not proposing any changes at that location. Okay, now that's the one, Post Springs, and where Main Street goes into Post Springs? I don't know. Main Street and US 27, SR 41. So there's what you call Post Springs Road. Not at the Great Outdoors. Yeah. You're at the light in town. She's talking further back by the gas station and the road that goes to Post Springs. The Post Springs Road. Post Springs Road and 41-27. FDOT has done a study. They evaluated whether it met traffic signal warrant and or a roundabout. They found that a roundabout was the preferred alternative, and they have advanced designs on that. Even with those big trucks coming through there? For that, that's not that big a road to have trucks do a do-si-do around there. So the two projects that the City of High Springs submitted was where 340 intersects with Main. There's an intersection study, one for the roundabout, but it was determined that there isn't enough right-of-way for the roundabout. And then there's another one for a possible light. But then their other request is for the intersection where it's already signalized that where 27, I believe, goes up and then travels. There's some traffic coming south. And then there's a little turn left slip lane that goes into downtown. That intersection is the problem that the mayor had expressed to me. So the unsignalized intersection and the signalized intersection are other two projects. Okay, great. But the signal light that we were thinking off the Post Springs Road was going to be coming this fall, no? We're not ready? Yes, it is in the county's list. Okay. Okay. Okay. Now, I think when we were at the North Florida Regional Planning last week, we heard that there were projects that are coming. Is there a submission for projects date coming up for new projects? Yes, we did that already. Okay. So we've already submitted something for NRA. So I did the call for projects. I'm sorry. I keep talking. No, that's okay. No, no. The TPO did a call for projects back at the beginning of August with our October 1 deadline. That was for us. Okay. Okay, great. Okay. So you all are all on it. I knew that. I knew that. Okay. Okay. Crosswalk around 441 and 235 by the high school, Santa Fe High School. There's more businesses. That's all on their list. Yes. Businesses are coming in like crazy at that intersection. That's their third page. But they submitted for us. Okay. Okay. Thank you. You're easing my mind as I leave. That's all. Because these are things I've had my eyes on for a few years now. Okay. And then the other question I had was, Myra Uribe, how did she do with her election? Do you all know? Aye. Did you hear? One way or another. She was running. For mayor? No, she didn't make it. She didn't. Okay. I believe former commissioner Tiffany Moore. Okay. My husband's letting me know these things. Yeah, well, thank you. Because Myra's, you know, worked. She's gotten herself probably placed, you know, with this, the TPO stuff. Well, she's, yeah, if I can update you. So, I'm on the executive council for the MPOAC. Right. And she was president of the MPOAC. Right. Our meeting on the 28th, 29th, that was her last meeting as chair. Because she has to come off because she was not reelected. Okay. So, she has lost her seat, too, as commissioner? Yeah. To run as mayor. No, I think she ran for mayor. I believe Tiffany Moore, former county commissioner, who was another constituent body. I believe she won the mayoral election. So, she's completely out of the whole kit and caboodle. She's going into the private sector. And she's planning on running again for higher office. Okay, good. Yeah. Okay, good. Good. Because she and I came along the same time. She belongs in a higher office. Yeah, she does. Yeah, she does. Okay. And then, member Taylor is running for mayor. Yes. So, good luck. Good luck. When is that election? December 1st. Okay. Just saying, y'all. And I'm coming off the board as well. And I'll be watching from the ranks. So, speaking up, next up is Councilman Taylor. Okay, thank you. While we have FDOT here at the table, congratulations on your wedding bells. Congratulations. Thank you. Oh, my. Yeah, that's a good one. And back to Waldo. The issues with the raised crosswalks, is that what they're called? Are they on the list for us? Because they're not raised crosswalks, but the raised curves, the curves. Are those on the study for FDOT to please come and look at those? Because we've had a number of accidents involving those same raised curves. I don't know if the executive would feel passed the one. Yeah, we talked about it. I have to look at, I didn't memorize Waldo's submittal. But, so, in terms of the community that's submittal projects, Waldo, Newberry, High Springs, Archer. Everyone except for Micanope. We touched everyone except for Micanope. I feel like I'm going to get anyone. Hawthorne, did you think it's been a Hawthorne? Hawthorne, yes. So, Alachua County and then Gainesville, of course, and those five small jurisdictions submitted projects. We're going to be prioritizing, like the county gave us their priorities, the city of Gainesville has given us their priorities, and, of course, the small jurisdictions. So, at the December 2nd TAC meeting, we're going to be discussing just a one singular priority list that that's going to be what's going to be brought to the board at the December 7th as a draft. That will include Waldo and, well, of course, what our new city manager put in there. It's going to have – so, there's a to-be-considered-by-the-department list, and then there's the entire list because the board direction was to make sure that the TPO didn't omit or lose or somehow let any projects requests slip through the cracks. So, based on the population and the urbanized area, the recommendation from the department is that 50% of the projects' seats go to the city of Gainesville since the bulk of the population comes from the city. And then another 40% of the project allocations goes to the county in a corporate area and however – however, whichever – in corporate areas in the larger county area could get those projects. And then 1% or 10% goes to a municipal, a smaller community project. So, I've tried to convene the west side and the east side to try to get some – a TAC member. So far, I've met with the city of High Springs – I'm sorry, west side – High Springs, Archer, and Newberry met. Alachua wasn't able to join us, but Archer had volunteered to sit as a primary and then with High Springs and Newberry as alternates. I have been reaching out – I've sent three emails to the east side so far. No one on the east side has responded to have someone sit at the TAC. I expressed several times that we are discussing projects and that they needed to respond so I could know who's going to be sitting at the December 2nd meeting. So, all of the cities will be deciding on the small municipal project that's going to be recommended to the board. So, when I was discussing it with the county, just TPL and county, I had suggested that, you know, the county comes up with four projects that is top on their list, and then three other subsequent projects just in case some negotiations happen and there's, you know, this project number four is just an infeasible project. There's another option that the county is prepared to come to the table with. Same thing, same request was made to the city of Gainesville, so they provided their list of their top, you know, five-plus additionals that could replace one of the five that couldn't be selected because it's a decision by the TPL board, the local jurisdiction, and the DOT. So, that's what we will be discussing on the 2nd, and then that entire conversation is coming to the board on the 7th. So, all the jurisdictions, the small ones have provided their projects, but it basically, what I expressed to all the cities, the city managers, is that essentially it could just be one small jurisdiction project that's moving forward at a time because of the limited funding that we have. So, 3.5 million right now are SU funds, as you all know, it's used up until 29, so this is in anticipation of when those SU funds become available. The board will be deciding on which of those projects that SU fund goes towards, whether it's construction or some phase thereof. So, keeping in mind that the state requirements now is that from when the PD&E starts to when the construction starts, that has to be no longer than eight years. So, SU funds could be used towards smaller project construction or whatnot. Some of the projects that have been submitted by the small jurisdictions are planning studies. Those projects, the board can decide to use PL dollars on, which is why I allocated, you saw on the UBWP, an additional, like a total of $250,000 to system studies, like the intersection studies or speed studies or, you know, things like that. The bulk of the project, the $600,000, will be to those two complete street studies on 13th and Archer. So, SU funds, the board will have to decide how they want to spend that $3.5 million in 2030. Okay. And something that caught my interest, it piqued my curiosity there. You said, well, let me ask it this way. Were there any, was there anybody from Waldo that was at any of these meetings? Because I remember at the meeting when you came with us that you opened the door for folks to come in. Was there anybody that was there representing Waldo? I sent out three emails to the small, the board jurisdictions on the east side. No one's responded. And the trial and, trial, trail and bike path. Do we know, have there been any plans talking about continuing to run that through Waldo? Since we did not do the one lane, it should not have been just because we didn't want the one lane. It should not have stopped the, stopped the trail and the bike path from coming through Waldo. There should have been another alternative. So do we have, has anyone come up with that? It's on our, it's on our, it's on our trail, it's on our trail list. Yeah. Because they say, with the spacing out the, the one lane that that kind of knocked this out. So I'm. The, the trail through city of Waldo is still on the countywide bicycle pedestrian master plan. And the grant application for the sun trail program is still pending with FDOT. We didn't get notification that we were accepted or not, but FDOT does not have applicants resubmit basically the same grant. So that is with FDOT for consideration, sun trail grant. And wait, wait, wait. And with, in Bradford County with the trail that's going up over 301 to highway, like, is that really going to be raised high enough? Like, I, I know that you guys at FDOT know what you're doing, but it looks like it's going to be kind of short with those huge semis that we have that run 301. Right. Like, it, it looks kind of low. Is it? So we don't want any traffic stopping. I'm not familiar with that project. All the, every time I drive under, it says 14 feet. So. It's tight. It's really tight. Because we have really, really big loads that come up and down 301 through Waldo, through Star, Bradford County, at Robes. We just want to make sure that's high enough and we didn't have a brilliant driver that's going to come through and not really pay attention to the height distance and cause a really big accident. because we had an accident, um, right before you get to where they're doing the construction there. The semi turned over in the median. Cars were upside down on 301 and this was just Friday or Saturday, I believe it was. That's it. Thank you. Chair, I have one more question. Do. Okay. Oh, you've got it. Commissioner, by the way. Just a speed study or something to look at the speed there at that intersection. I was talking about 441 and 235 with the high schools. It goes very quickly to 45 past that light as you're coming off of that road. It's, you know, people speeding up to 45. It's hard to get into that line of traffic. So, just look at it there with all those kids there at that school. U.S. 235 and 441. It's at that light. I will submit the request. Plot filter. Fast. Okay. Member Hayes-Santos. Yeah, thank you, Chair. Two items, just one on the CAC. Even with this, we have nine vacancies. So, I think it's just something we should keep in mind. Does this board really need to be 15 and over the next few meetings we're not filling it? I'd rather have more applicants applying for it than one every time they just get on. So, just something for us to keep an eye on and watch. And if we're still having vacancy issues, I think we should look at lowering the number of seats on there. I also think, I do think there's an opportunity for us to do a better job of, like, promoting it and, like, thinking about recruitment. I mean, I don't think very many people, unless they come to one of these meetings, know it even exists, you know. So, thinking about the way in which we can get the word out. I know you've tried some. I've tried some a little bit when I'm at a thing. And I run into some when I start talking to me about bike of transportation. So, I'm like, you know. But I think we could, maybe we can leverage, at least here in the county, I can talk to Mark about the possibility of putting out some more info on it. Maybe the city could, too. Yeah, and it's an opportunity, really, for some graduate students at UF or folks like that to get some really good experience under their belt as a resume point. Yeah. The other application that I've received is for a UF student. He just submitted it after I had already published the agenda. Oh, good. Good. Yeah. I tried pushing as well, but it's hard to, we have a lot of boards in our, there's hundreds of seats, I think, for boards. Yeah. The other item is just on prioritizing projects and just doing it on population. I have, is that correct how the current, doing it that way? Is that currently how it's proposed? That's what Mr. Knight had suggested based on the Gainesville urbanized area versus the rest of the county. So, I have some concerns over that because, I mean, Waldo gets lots of traffic with 301 and kind of what they have versus like everyone comes inside the, the population of city Gainesville does not impact how much actually transportation is happening inside of the community. And I don't know if that is the, doing it just based on population actually captures what's actually happening in all these different communities and where are the higher risk ones and not, and who's actually having way more transportation than, I mean, Waldo has a lot more transportation going through or a lot more traffic going through there than the population shows too. So, what I have been sort of reiterating every time I meet with a small jurisdiction is that 3.5 million isn't going to add any lanes. There is certainly not a capacity budget. With the fact that the county has a safety action plan that identified some high risk locations, the BiPET master plan update, and the city's vision bureau, the discussion on the list of priority projects will be with that canvas in the background, and I want to try to focus on projects or construction of projects with RSU funds that would have the greatest return on investments in terms of the kinds of demographics that those projects are serving. So, it kind of runs in lines really quickly with the onset of the Best Foot Forward program in terms of, you know, we identified these improvements, here are the statistics, and they can go out and do the before and after. So, it's kind of all jiving in together at about the same time, especially with the fact that the BiPET master plan has identified some hot spot intersections for BiPET safety concerns. We could look at those priorities as well. Okay. And just from the airport side of looking at efficient ways to get to the airport, that's the priority. Thank you. I'd like to thank the county. I know that the Focus Works Utilities Director is most likely watching. Thank you for filling the potholes in Waldo, wherever you are. Thank you. We really appreciate that because they gave us a decision on 1475. It was ridiculous. And that's one of the roads. If you live in Waldo, you can take that road. We call it racetrack road, and you can actually ride that out and then get going towards the racetrack. So, it's improved, but we still need whoever the project manager is that sends them out. They actually still need to come back out and ride and look at what work was done. Because if you fill a hole here, and then you leave a hole here, really huge, and then you fill another little pothole there, that still leaves this where that car's going to go, that smooth hole, hit that really big, hard pothole, break a rim, complain to the county, issue out money, come back, run over. Because, no, they need to have the person that's actually the project manager to please come out and look at the work and then check it off and make sure that it's okay. That way, the county's not going back out having to spend money when you can just do this in one shop. Well, if they're supposed to do all the holes, if they didn't do all the holes, it's probably beyond pothole repair. No, some of these were not beyond pothole repair. It's just like maybe, as I said, another little one. It's big enough, but it's not to the extreme where you can't fill it. It's just like I saw this hole, I filled it, I passed over this one, and then I filled this one. If it doesn't show lime rock at the bottom, it's considered a scab and they won't fill it, just so you know. Well, some have, you can see the lime rock that's still sitting there. It goes really fast from that to that. And it has part of the milling that you can see, the old, and you can see the lime rock down. There's a little hole and it's coming up. So just that they take the time to come back and actually go over and make sure, as any other project manager would do, to make sure that everything is running smoothly. But thank you. Thank you all for coming out and filling those holes with us. As soon as you leave out of Waldo, Cole Street, turning onto 24, there were two really big little holes that were there. So thank you for filling them, and it's starting to make some of the citizens of Waldo happy. Thank you. All right. Commissioner Burke? Yeah, I see the time. So two brief remarks related to speeding on Newberry Road. COO, perhaps you should provide that to the Gainesville Police Department so they can do some enforcement there. I would recommend my county colleagues doing the same thing for the county portion of the Newberry Road. And they'll be able to provide good data on speeding. That is one of the very few four-lane plus with a median east-west corridors through a business district. So that's important that we have the enforcement for speeding, which has been mentioned. And then a kudos to the executive director. We have often talked about reaching out to the municipalities. Councilman Taylor and I have served on the Alachua League of Cities for the last year plus, and I invited the executive director to speak to them. They really sometimes have needs and knowledge and inquiries about transportation that we often think are very maybe rudimentary or basic because they don't have the benefit of sitting around here. And so she provided an overview of what we do and transportation needs to all the municipalities at the last meeting. I know you didn't mention that, but that's important to put in the minutes. So thank you for that. Thank you, Mr. Chip. Great. On that, Director Rookwood, the next city that rotates in is Alachua, right? Is that in January? No. I believe it's August. Is it August? It's the part of the executive agreement. It's August 25th, 2027. Okay. But Councilman Taylor, when is your term over? The election is December 1st, so we'll know what's going on. Okay. December 1st. So if you're elected mayor, you can remain, assumedly, as your city's representative. Yes, sir. If not, we would need another representative from? Waldo. From Waldo. Until the term ends. Okay. And did we tell Alachua that they're coming up when you met with them at League of Cities? It's good to let them know so that they start thinking about that and figure out, you know. It's harder for the, I just mentioned, it's harder for the municipalities to make it to these meetings, many of them, because most of them, you know, their meetings are in the evenings because they have other things going on. This isn't their primary gig. So we need to be mindful that some of them probably won't be able to serve or send a representative because it won't have anybody that can make a meeting at 3 p.m. Yeah. So then I wanted, my only last thing, or I don't know if I want to ask anything else, but I believe this is Commissioner Wheeler's last meeting. Yes, it is. After eight years of serving on this board and the previous, and so I just wanted to say thank you for serving eight years, including a stint as chair of this board, and she does deserve a round of applause. Thank you. Thank you for being an active participant and member of this board for the past eight years, right? Yes. Thank you. You can come back. Absolutely. I was going to say, I think we have a nomination for a CAC member. Yeah, that's right. Consider it, Commissioner Wheeler. Oh, oh, oh. Give me time. I just need to close your head later. We'll let you get through the holidays. That's right. That's right. All right. Thank you. Is there any other member comments before we adjourn? All right, let's call that a meeting. Thank you all. Thank you all. Thank you all. Thank you all. Thank you all. Thank you all. Thank you all. Thank you all. Thank you all. Thank you all.