Capital District                                                                                               April 5, 2007

Transportation Committee      

 

 

REGIONAL TRANSPORTATION COORDINATION COMMITTEE

RECORD OF MEETING

 

DATE/TIME: March 1, 1:30 pm3:30 pm

 

ATTENDANCE: Luis Acosta—CDTA; Tammy Brooks—Catholic Charities of Schenectady County; Dennis Brunelle—Saratoga County Economic Opportunity Council, Nancy DeLissio—Schenectady County Job Training Agency; Linda Doyle—Albany County Department of Social Services; Ed Dugrenier—CDPC/Schenectady Vocational Services, Rocky Ferraro—CDRPC; Kathy FletcherClearview Center; Paul Germain--Albany County Department of Social Services; Barry Kessler—NYSDOT; Carmel Patrick—Senior Services of Albany; Ralph Scarano—Albany County Department for the Aging, Deb Stacey—CDTC Staff; Maryellen Usis—CDTA; Tom Vaughan—NYSDOT, Kristina Younger--CDTA

 

STUDY DISCUSSION SUMMARY: After introductions, the agenda items were discussed in sequence:

 

United We Ride/Albany County DSS: 

a.   Maintenance Sub-Committee—The UWR Maintenance subcommittee contacted the Schenectady County ARC to schedule a site visit with the ARC.  The ARC maintains their vehicles in-house and also has maintenance contracts with several area human service agencies.  The working group would like to learn more about the agreements and costs to use as a possible model for Albany County. The working group has also scheduled a meeting with Doug Sauer from the Council of Community Services to investigate group purchasing options for fuel, insurance and maintenance.

b.     Survey of Human Service Agencies-- Albany County distributed over 200 surveys to human service agencies located in Albany County.  Albany County received 113 completed surveys, with about 1/2 from human service agencies providing transportation.

 

Linda Doyle distributed preliminary data tables that summarize some of the data that was collected from the survey.  The data collected from Albany County respondents do not differ greatly from those collected from human service agencies located in the other three counties of the Capital District (Rensselaer, Saratoga and Schenectady).  CDTC will begin to merge the two data sets and summarize the data for display in the Coordinated Plan.  Once the Coordinated Plan is complete, CDTC staff will begin to draft a document that summarizes the survey data from a regional perspective.  The survey working group will meet to identify data crosstabs that would be desirable to portray in the survey summary document.

 

Access to Jobs:

a.     CST Funding Update—CST funds for the region last year were about $117,000; two of the counties supplemented these dollars to keep the pass program whole. $2.2 million has been proposed for 2007/08 for the state.  CDTA is preparing a request for $185,000 in CST to continue the pass program for Albany, Rensselaer and Schenectady counties.

b.     JARC Funding Update—CDTA will submit for additional JARC funds in the 2007 Federal Fiscal Year, once the “coordinated plan” (that the RTCC is working on) is in place.  A concern with regard to use of JARC funds involves the match requirement.  In the past, CDTA used CST funds as match for JARC activities.  This is specifically prohibited under the proposed rules. The proposed regulations suggest a project by project match, not program by program.  This means that a source of funds to match (20 percent) the $250,000 allocation to the area will have to be found if the existing JARC programs are to continue.

 

SARETEA-LU Coordinated Plan

a.     Plan Development—CDTC staff has completed a rough draft of the plan, up to the point of documenting the survey results.  Albany County has produced tabulations from the Albany County data that will be combined with similar tabulations from the other three counties.  These data will be combined and presented in the draft plan.  The remaining portion of the plan requires input from the RTCC on defining needs, gaps, barriers and an action plan to address these issues. 

b.     Needs, Gaps and Barriers Discussion—CDTC and CDTA staffs drafted an outline of Needs, Gaps and Barriers for discussion.  Needs were grouped into four categories—Organizational. Client services, Capital and Institutional.  Gaps were sorted into three categories—Geographic, trip purpose and training.  Barriers were classified into six categories—Cost/Budget, Travel time, Limitations of Coordination, Client Integration, Common Carrier issues, and Accounting barriers.  The RTCC discussed each in turn.  Funding was identified as a need, gap and barrier. 

 

An outline of the Action Plan was also distributed for the RTCC to review.  The Action Plan will identify strategies to address the SAFETEA-LU JARC requirements, the New Freedom program and the modified Section 5310 requirements. The Action Plan will be more fully fleshed out by the next RTCC meeting.

 

Other

The Coordinated Plan must be completed in time for CDTC’s Planning Committee to review and act upon it.  Consequently, the plan must be distributed to and reviewed by the RTCC by mid-April.  Once approved by the RTCC, the draft plan will be forwarded to CDTC’s Planning Committee for their review.  The Planning Committee will formally act upon the plan at its May 2nd meeting.

 

NEXT MEETING:

 

The next meeting of the Regional Transportation Coordination Committee is scheduled for Thursday April 12, 2007 at 1:30 pm at CDTC’s offices.