Complete Streets Advisory Board

Bradley Birge CITY OF SARATOGA SPRINGS Administrator Kate Maynard, AICP P LANNING & E CONOMIC D EVELOPMENT Principal Planner Susan Barden  Senior Planner City Hall - 474 Broadway Cindy Phillips Saratoga Springs, New York 12866 CD Coordinator Tel: 518-587-3550 fax: 518-580-9480 Deborah Wertheim www.saratoga-springs.org Secretary Shared Access Advisory Board Meeting August 2, 2012 City Council Room 7:00pm Attendees: Board Members: Mark Benacquista, Theresa Capozzola, Steve Godlewski, Ken Grey, Jackie Hakes, Charlie Samuels, Lou Schneider Staff and Others: Kate Maynard, Stephanie Seidmon, Shauna Sutton, Deputy Mayor Introductions:  Lou Schneider, planning board from 2000-2007, worked with CDTA for bus route  Mark Benaquista, City’s traffic coordinator, on committee in volunteer capacity.  Jackie Hakes, Community planner with mj engineering, used to be principal planner in Saratoga Springs.  Ken Grey, does insurance for the city, interested in accessibility and transportation.  Theresa Capozzola  Steve Godlewski, avid cyclist, transportation engineer with Creighton Manning.  Charlie Samuels, been involved in NYC with different environmental and transportation initiatives, specifically with skateboard parks and alternative transportation.  Kate Maynard, Principal City Planner, primary staff of the committee.  Stephanie Seidmon; Shared Access Intern, Skidmore student. Will be assisting group and Planning Department for Fall, and potentially Spring Semesters. Complete Streets Policy: Kate Maynard began reviewing the specifics of the Complete Streets policy and short, medium to long term activities as defined. Discussion about how the group will be consulted on different projects and how to ensure communication between all the different groups and individuals working on projects.  Our committee is advisory in nature. Private projects w/ the planning board, we receive the completed checklist and can comment on it. Public projects on city streets, we provide the advisory opinion.   Complete Streets concept and priorities in the comprehensive plan is something we’ll want to discuss and possibly amend to be more compliant with complete streets policies. Standard details with Complete Streets components a tool to be developed.  The commissioners do have the power to overlook our suggestions. We’ll have to make sure that we’re a part of every conversation—changing the mechanism of the inner workings of the city government so that complete streets thinking becomes engrained into the fabric of how a project moves from just an idea to a tangible, working piece of infrastructure.  Shauna proposes that maybe we can have sub-checklists for smaller projects that are regularly occurring.  Overall conclusion: the communication issue is not that big of a hurdle. It’s a matter of checklists, organization, education, and awareness. Opportunity for a complete streets workshop for us and for the city. Adirondack Rural Health Network has proposed putting on a Complete Streets workshop with a national Complete Streets expert. Very supportive of City’s work so far on Complete Streets, ability to tailor workshop to City’s needs. No cost to City, cost borne by organization. Group interest in the workshop, discussion regarding specific aspects of the workshop continued. More information will be provided at the next meeting. Kate Maynard informally suggests we change the name to Complete Streets Committee to avoid confusion as to what Shared Access is compared to Complete Streets; most people seem to agree. Complete Streets Checklist: Kate Maynard notes that this was established in the policy as an immediate action item. The checklist will be utilized for all public and private projects that occur on City streets. Discussion regarding the model checklists that were then distributed to group. Agreement that group will set a next meeting date of Thursday, August 23 to discuss the creation of the City’s checklist for this purpose. Theresa Capozzola proposes we have a city timeline that we can look at every meeting so we know on a yearly basis when specific projects will take place. Maybe we can have a finance timeline as well—general consensus for those. Shauna Sutton reminds us we can always amend capital budgets for each year if we need funds for a project. Public comment-Do we want to open up our meetings to public comment?  Board decides to have 5 minutes at the beginning, 5 minutes at the end.  Shauna: Will we be voting on what our advisory opinion will be? This question was never fully resolved, but there seemed to be consensus that we would be voting on what the advisory opinion is for a project. What should we do about chair/vice-chair appointments? REVISED 03/07/13   Two options: Committee self appoints its own Chair and Vice, or mayor has offered to appoint chair/vice-chair.  Consensus to discuss it further on the 23rd when people have time to decide whether or not they want to do it. Ballston Ave project- Lincoln Avenue to Hamilton Street- discussion  City project, made possible through federal/state transportation funds  We’ll need a checklist; this will be the first project we have input on.  Project should start next year—3 lanes, pavement, curbs, median—being done on a safety grant Complete streets workshop through Adirondack Rural Health Network  Opportunity for workshop funded through organization (also is source of past Shared Access grants and Stephanie Seidmon’s internship funding). We can tailor a workshop to the city’s needs.  We need to decide specifically what we’ll want to learn about. Public comment: Amy Durland commented as audience member requesting to:  record these meetings so that we can put them online (not typically done for City advisory committees)  have mics at the table REVISED 03/07/13