April 16, 2026 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM
The help for screen readers, for anybody who has visual impairments that need a screen reader. This makes it a little bit easier for the screen reader to be able to tell them everything that is on the agenda. 'cause we used to use a lot of verbiage and other things. What does this mean? So we're making improvements on our agenda, our memos, and our webpage as well. So be on the lookout for those changes. Thank you.
There is one item. I did get noticed that the informational item six B for the HSIP Minnesota Lighting update presentation, the staff who is gonna present on that is just recovering from a bad case of the being sick. That nasty sickness going around, they will be unable to make it today. So they ask that it be delayed until the May meeting. At this time, staff doesn't have any concerns with that and recommends that be moved.
All right, excellent. One more addition, perhaps a recommendation to add is an, is maybe an action item to up discuss the time change that may be needed next month and moving forward the information or action. But we could give some direction to staff on that. Okay. So how about action five V? Is that something we are, we are prepared to act on today or we just wanna discuss that action would be helpful so that we could update the public and website, but if we don't have consensus, then we can continue cancel. Okay. Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm good with the action item stand. Okay. Okay. All right. Any other changes to the agenda?
Okay, so we're looking at action item five D for discussion and an action on changing the time. And then six item six B is removed. Given that, any objections to approving the agenda? Okay, hearing none. We'll go to item four is approval of previous meeting minutes. Right. Do you have a motion? I moved second. All right. Any changes for discussion? Okay, any objection to approving the minutes? Hearing none. The March 19th minutes are approved. So our first action item is five A, which is the Alaska Railroad Transit and Set Management on the 2026 target. Aaron, you will be present
On this. I'll be given a quick presentation on this. I'll keep it nice and brief for you all. But as a reminder, we do have performance measures that we have to set targets for. Some of them are yearly, some of them are on a a four year basis or other term basis like that. The ones before you today are the transit asset management targets for the Alaska Railroad. And these are a yearly requirement for us. So we as the MPO, either set our own targets or support transit in their or the Libre Road in their targets.
And so this is for making sure that their equipment is not exceeding or me, you know, is, is meeting or not exceeding their least useful life benchmark. Really it's for making sure that equipment isn't around too long and becomes a, a problem or a safety hazard. There's rolling stock equipment, facilities and infrastructure. And so the railroad set their targets already, as you can see on the memo here, or 2026. And my understanding, and please correct me if I'm wrong, somebody from the road, the lower the percentage the better because that means you don't have anything, you don't have as much that is over that useful life benchmark. So you can see doing really well in the rolling stock equipment. I think that's a challenge for a lot of people. And then facilities and infrastructure as well, doing really well on it. So this came before the technical advisory committee.
The technical advisory committee recommended supporting the railroad in their targets. So adopting their targets for 2026. How does a not support the railroad in meeting these targets? Will we do that by helping to program projects into the tip based on requests from the Alaska Railroad Corporation? I will remind you every year so far we have supported the railroad in their targets and not set our own. The big thing is we don't actually manage any of these assets, so it would be challenging for us to set our own targets. So staff is also recommending that we adopt the 26 targets for the Alaska Railroad. Tam, I can help answer any questions. Thank you.
We typically do report on 'em as part of our MTP because we're in a transition period of updating our MTP. I don't, sorry, I'm just opening the memo from the Alaska Railroad to see if they had the old years targets on there to see how they did is meeting them. It doesn't appear to me. Yeah, so I can reach out to the railroad and see if we can work on bringing you guys something that shows you how they've done it, meeting their targets in previous years.
Hello everyone. I'm Emily Weiser. I am the non-motorized coordinator for a e as well as staff to the Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee or the BPAC. So you all saw a first draft of this letter last October and requested that the Vpac revisit it and provide some revisions and then bring it back. They didn't have quo that their next meeting, but they now have a full committee and were able to approve the revised letter at their February meeting last month. We didn't have room on our committee agendas and so is here in front of you today. And just a quick overview of the changes. So the first request was to provide more clear prioritization of the actions. So the revised letter clarifies that the actions identified are considered by the committee to be higher priorities than other things in Division zero action plan. But they don't, they don't say that they want those other actions not to be implemented. It's just what is higher priorities as well as comparing to other types of projects. The previous version included a lot of, please do this immediately, which was maybe not very useful. So they've revised to provide specific timelines and compare those to the timelines that were initially in the section plans.
Municipal charter, the way that was phrased was a little bit maybe not quite appropriate for how things work in terms of what the traffic department could do do with that high level of a policy change. So that has been rephrased to just specify the meaning of working on that. So this revised letter is before you today, the TAC reviewed it. We figured since there have been changes, that would be a good thing to let them have another look at it. And just for the record chair, coy did recuse himself from that vote since he is one of the recipients of the letter or intended recipients. And the TAC recommended that the policy committee approve it and adopt the letter as coming from a s as a whole and send it to the recipients. So that action is before you today, you, Emily, any questions or comments from the committee? I appreciate the consideration taken of the suggestions that were made by, by this body back in October and the responsiveness of the bicycle and pedestrian advisory committee to address with more specificity some of the things that were primary concerns. So yeah, thank you for your work.
I guess I will ask a question if that's okay. So there I don't see on this one. Oh, okay. So the recommendation, the action is requested that we approve the letter to be sent to the recipients. I think this is interesting. I I'm glad that these come before us, these types of items so that we can review them and give our feedback. And I think also it creates an opportunity for us to sort of co-sign them sometimes. However, I also, I I think it would be interesting to think about, you know, we have in municipality our various boards and commissions that are advisory to the assembly or to the mayor or, or both. And they can provide recommendations for, for instance, the planning and zoning commission can advise us on land use rezones changes to zoning code and they, they give us their findings.
I think I want to see some autonomy for these committees, these volunteer committees to be able to send letters on their own behalf to the recipients. I, I don't necessarily feel like it all needs to be filtered through the policy committee for them to send a letter to the central region director or the MOA traffic engineer. This is just kind of their way of forwarding on their advice to us. So I like it coming before us. I, I think these are great to keep as action items, but I think we maybe as a policy committee could think about what type of freedom we wanna lend these volunteer committees to also speak on their own behalf. I, I think that's a really good point. Completely agree with Member Volland. And I wonder is that the status quo or do we need to make a change to make that possible, Aaron?
It's really just kind of the status quo because that's how it's been done. I know in the past the policy committees expressed some concerns with subcommittees sending out letters that hasn't haven't been reviewed by the policy committee in case they say something inflammatory or that's not in the same viewpoint as the policy committee. You know, from our perspective as staff, it would make it a lot easier to have that kind of autonomy for the subcommittees, including the technical advisory committee to have them be able to send stuff without having to bring everything to you guys. You see how full our agendas are every month. And if we often go over, if you would like to make a change, I don't think there's a problem with that. It would probably need to be a vote of the policy committee to just carefully outline what you expect of the committees, how you want the process to work and what kind of items are you talking about?
Is it everything or is it only, you know, right now it's just comments that go to project teams. Those typically we just send and then provide you guys a copy if it's anything that's a little more sensitive or political in nature. We've been bringing those through the TAC and policy committee to get your guys' review and approval to send it out. So we would need those kind of guidelines of what you guys find acceptable to send out or have the, the subcommittee send out on their own. Yeah. Sorry Aaron, were you saying that we would need to make a change in order to empower the subcommittees to send letters or is it currently the case that the subcommittees can send letters?
There's nothing in our operating agreement that states they can't send the letters on their own. However, our public participation plan outlines that everything comes through the technical advisory committee and policy committee for Okay. The process. So if you would like to change it to where the subcommittees can send things on their own differ from the current status quo, I would recommend a vote and or something written in policy that provides that guidance. Because if you know, sorry I'm speaking a little here, but if you haven't noticed, not everything at a MS is written down and it has caused a little bit of some concerns about how we do our process. And I would like to start seeing things written down in the formal process from the call policy committee. So there's no question that this isn't staff making the decision. This is you guys telling us what you, what your expectations are and then future policy committees can then take that and be like, that's okay or no, we wanna make a change.
Thanks for that clarification. Could I have add a nuance to that? So the action requested that we approve it to be sent. Right. And so I guess my question would be what happens if we don't approve it to be sent? Does, does the IED advisory committee, do they not get to send a letter? That's kind of where, what I'm thinking about, if we don't approve it then they can't of their own accord. They can or cannot send their own accord a letter to the central region director and MLA traffic engineer. And so maybe that's what we need to parse out a little bit.
Yeah, as it stands right now, if you don't approve it to be sent, it won't be sent out because this is at, because as of right now, the only thing we've been empowered by the policy committee to allow to go out from these subcommittees is comments on projects. This is a little bit different. This is on like a policy level comment and going to, you know, you should take these actions, you should move forward on these. And that's a little above and beyond I think what we have been historically sending out directly from the subcommittees
Recommend a motion so we could take further discussion and perhaps make a recommendation. I just say as a recipient of one of these letters, often it is great to get them as soon as possible and the, the manner in which the documents are received is it would be slightly different from the technical advisory committee versus the policy committee. So it would just have different, it'd just be taken with a different approach and perspective. But getting it directly from the committee is, is great as well as soon as possible. But yeah.
I wonder given Aaron's desire for like a clear written policy, I make sense for this be an action item in our next meeting and for now ask staff to come up with a proposal for how this might work. Yeah, that seems Do we need a motion to do that except tell staff to please No, I'm looking at Lori because she'll tell me later that I'm wrong, but in my mind, if you're asking staff to do something and get it ready for the next agenda, we have historically not needed you guys to make a motion on that. Okay. As long as there's an agreement, which it seems like there is, I guess if anybody is super objective to it, we would have to ask for some kind of motion formally.
Yeah, our plan would be put it on the agenda as an action item for the TAC and policy committee next meeting, you know, and just so people are aware, you can still then delay it to a further meeting if you want more. It's not a one and done has to be at that meeting. We have time, so we can work on that and get it ready. Thank
All right, thank you. My name is Alexa Dobson. I'm the executive director of Anchorage and I strongly encourage the committee to approve and adopt this letter as written. It has been incredibly frustrating listening to the discussion surrounding this letter as it was initially introduced and then bounced back to the committee really for, you know, reasons having to do with procedure and that sort of thing. So I do just want to pull out and remind you of the reason why this letter is being considered in the first place. Pulling out a quote from the letter itself since October 16th, 2025 when the AMS policy committee asked for more consideration and analysis on the BPAC initial draft letter instead of sending it to the traffic department and DOT four more people have been killed on our roads. And I believe since then it's actually higher. I think it's five now. So I really wanna remind you that this is about people living and dying on our streets and the the procedures are important, I understand that. But the reason that you have this letter before you, and what I want you to really be thinking about when you're considering what you're going to do here is how we're going to make our streets safer. This should not be a stumbling block. That's all I have to say. Thank you.
Yes, I have a question. So there's the action requested and then there's the technical advisory committee. Their action taken, their recommendation sounds slightly different. They recommended the policy committee approve and adopt the letter and send it to the recipients. So is that to be understood as a request to sort of co-sign that we also support the subject matter in the letter?
Then we can discuss the amendment on its own. Yeah. So I'll just do, I guess out of respect for our technical advisory committee, I, I will make the amendment to the motion to also adopt the letter as I I suppose endorse the letter as the policy committee so endorse the letter.
Well I, I think you know, for my part, if it's okay, thank you. I, I certainly don't have an issue with any of the, the recommendations here from the vpac and I support them. So I, for my part, I wouldn't have an issue with co-signing this or endorsing it myself. I, I just say I, I appreciate the responsiveness to the feedback. I understand the frustration about the, maybe the timeliness and getting hung up on some procedure, but I think the letter is, has has been improved from my perspective to the point where I would be fine having the, the policy committee effectively sort of sign on to this. But if others feel okay or feel differently, that's okay with me too.
Yes. Yeah, I think we broadly agree and really appreciate the edits and thought and time. The bicycle advisory can be put into the original letter and the edits and yeah, just very much appreciate that. I think the only one caution I have about potentially endorsing it as the policy committee is creating an expectation as the sort of decision makers on many of these items that we'd be creating an expectation that the, or the assembly or the mayor would be implementing the recommended actions. And I'm not sure that we yet have a clear implementation plan for these actions. Like we don't kind of for all of them. And so I wouldn't wanna necessarily create a perception of the public that we were at this moment committing the DOT and the mayor and the assembly to taking action on these specific items. I mean, I think they are really good ideas and we should absolutely consider them, but I wouldn't wanna create that additional perception.
And then speaking for DOT, and I won't object this coming from the policy committee, but I, I do think it would be helpful for us to have a policy analysis on these items. 'cause I, you know, when I look at some of these, I know the department has our own internal policies, procedures, and then there's regulations and statutes in their municipality courts has your own code. I'm not sure how these impact that or what changes may be required. I think that would be very helpful to have period when we recommend the policy on policy items. And I don't know who the right body is to do that. Is it technical? Maybe, but
Yeah, like for, if I could just, sorry to repeat myself, but for example, like I know, you know, I feel pretty confident that the traffic engineering department is moving forward with the restaurant Red signalization. And I have a list, you know, we have a list of leading pedestrian over locations. So, you know, two, I actually feel very comfortable, you know, endorsing as a policy committee. 'cause I know that our staff have the capacity to complete that on the timelines we're working on it. You know, for number four, I think there are some a PD concerns there in terms of how we release trap crash data and how we're talking with these pedestrian fatalities when there's a criminal investigation involved that can cause delays. So just what I think there would be things to work out there in thinking about how those crash. Anyway, just to say there's some unknown unknowns on some of these items. And with the speed limit productions anyway, I could see myself supporting the general idea of that. I know that's the direction we're moving in, but again, wouldn't want to create the expectation that all of those streets identified in that plan are gonna get speed limit reductions by a year, within a year or by October of this year.
Yeah, I suppose I see it that, you know, by, by endorsing or by approving this letter, we are, we aren't necessarily making commitments. We're simply saying that yes, we affirm these recommendations as you know, perhaps aspirational, but also as, as valid follow ups to the multi-agency report. I, I think I'm recalling correctly, all of these recommendations are already in the multi-agency report, which we are all already a party to. And so I, I don't think I have nearly as much heartburn about saying, yes, these were recommended actions and we should be taking them. And the bpac is simply bringing them forward yet again and saying, Hey, this is, we would still like to see this happen. And that doesn't feel to me like we're, you know, like agreeing in advance that all of these things are going to happen on, on these specific timelines, but that we appreciate the recommendation in the sense of urgency that Vpac is bringing to the process. And we affirm that and that this, this letter is a valuable, a, a valuable tool to say, hey, the, these members of the community represented on this, on the vpac are still very, very concerned about the, the lack of progress that was even anticipated in the multi c report itself. So I, I would feel very comfortable saying that we, we adopt or endorse this letter.
Okay, so then the motion on the floor then is to forward this letter both from Deepak as well as the policy committee. So any further discussions on the motion. Okay. Are there objections to approving this motion? Okay, so hearing none the motion is approved. So please have the letter from Bpac sent to those recipients as well as perhaps a separate letter endorsing it from the policy committee.
I'll be giving a brief overview and then it'll be over to you guys. So as you may recall, back in May or March, sorry I'm forgetting what month it is already. March, there was a presentation from the 32nd Avenue project team. They talked about where the project was at and in there they had a slide on the one-way alternative or one-way option to be looked at as part of the project, whether it showed or not or just general discussion on it. Staff was asked by a technical advisory committee member to include this on the agenda for the April meeting to have a discussion on what to do about this one-way option. The technical advisory committee reviewed it and they had a lot of really good information at that meeting, provided some information about a previous project that was for lowest in 30 seconds that the municipality of Anchorage had been doing with bond funding, where they had A DSR that talked about this one way option as part of the project.
There were also some additional considerations. All this is on the memo that we posted, so I'm just reading off of that some additional operational considerations such as concerns from the fire department and from the street maintenance. After that discussion, the technical advisory committee recommended that the policy committee direct the project team to revise and clarify the draft DSR for the AMAs funded project. To more thoroughly explain why a one-way alternative was not included in the analysis. Currently there is no one way analysis or one way alternative as part of the project. So this is asking to put in some information in the DSR why it wasn't. I do wanna remind you, you were sent some additional information, some background information from PM and E that I provided to you last Friday that had some additional background as well as an overview of the DSR, so it could provide you some more information. I think the idea here is to maybe take what the TAC talked about, any of the information from the additional background and get that over to the project team so they can provide an update into the draft PSR. So this item is before you and I can help answer any questions. Thank you.
Yeah, thank you. My name's Lindsay Hauk, I serve on the bpac. So unrelated, thank you for adopting and moving the vision zero letter forward. I, at last month's meeting, I spoke to this 32nd Avenue project and reviewed the TAC meeting. So just I think my comment is more about the process. I, as a Spenard resident, I've been involved in advocating for these projects for over 10 years and attended the open house for this project in February. And one of my first questions for the project team was to explain how the 32nd Avenue project relates to the previous configuration of Lois Drive on 32nd Avenue and the like. And I didn't hear at all about how the design study report was adopted or let us hear five years ago. So not having that information, even though I was part of the council, I actually was the president at the time.
A lot happens in five years. And so explaining and showing a good analysis of the alternatives is I think essential, especially with new funding from new federal funding through AM maps. But the design study report from 21 has a very, what I think is poor analysis of the one way option. So I don't think the the project team is going to budge or change, but just as a, a community member and somebody who tries to be involved get my neighbors informed and engaged, it's really confusing when a project kicks off what seems like it kicks off, you know, after five years of an action. And then there's, we're already like years down the line, I'm not trying to delay any projects. These projects take so long and it's so hard. But having a really cohesive and coherent process that can be defended is really important.
So I don't know, a lot of the information in this memo I don't believe had been public. I don't think it was part of the previous design study report. And I think it just breaks with transparency and the, the engagement and commitment that myself or my neighbors have in this process. So I've been trying to follow along. We've invited the project team to come to the community council to come to our committees, but I don't believe there has been much engagement at public engagement yet in this new AAPS version, aside from all of these CAC or policy committee meetings. So just urge the full picture and just what I'm trying to share as an honest experience of trying to positively and meaningfully engage in these projects in my neighborhood. Thanks.
Okay. Thank you. All right. So back to the committee. There are motion action item, the TAC recommended action as a reminder is to draft, to revise and clarify in the draft design study report a more thorough explanation of a one-way alternative and why that was not included in the analysis which was not originally included.
I'll say I know I was confused a little bit about this last meeting as well. I think there's, to the commenter's point there, I think there need to be some lessons learned from this in terms of public process for sure. Hopefully we can learn from that. I know trajectory is coming up and it's in a similar procedural posture, so I think that'll be a good opportunity for us to learn from 30 seconds. I'll also say, I think what I heard at the last meeting was in some ways like the project team saying if you listen to public feedback, then we have to delay the project and I just, we have to, we can't put those in opposition to each other. We can't put public feedback in opposition to delivering projects. Those, that's a critical part of the process. I think that was just a miscommunication. I don't think that's what the project team intended to communicate, but I do think that's what was communicated to the public and I think that's just something we have to be really careful about avoiding. 'cause we all wanna deliver projects, we all wanna get projects delivered. We also wanna make sure the projects we're delivering are aligned with the needs of the neighborhoods and community. So hopefully some lessons learned from this one.
Yeah, I I had a, I had a similar takeaway and, and even similar feedback that came to me from constituents, you know, that that, you know, when we do with, you know, the, the lowest and 32nd project, what we did, which was sort of bifurcate into two projects that public engagement is, is still equally important in that bifurcation. And that, you know, what, what was done in the initial, in that initial study maybe is not sufficient to inform the, the second project which, you know, has now been raised to the level of emaps. I did do a look through because I, especially after the TC meeting, I was really interested there, there seemed to be a, a lot of, like a lot of tension around this question. And so I went back and I did, I did a read through of the Lois and 32nd DSR and, and I didn't, I didn't find in that document that there was an analysis done of a, a one-way option.
I, there was a, a paragraph that stated that there were some, there was some concern around the feasibility of studying a one-way option given the realities of pandemic and such. But the, ultimately that analysis was not undertaken by the direction of MOA staff. And, and so, so I I I think we need to be really careful about what we refer to as an analysis or what is, or what is an evaluation or what is a, what is a a, a policy call that's made when we have these kinds of situations before us. And as a result of the fact that that analysis was not done, that it was, it was sort of dismissed as that would be really difficult. So we're not going to evaluate a one-way option that meant that as the process unfolded, PVC didn't actually opine on a one-way option either because there was nothing for them to opine on.
And I think that's pretty clear in the comments that were part of the PVC case. And so I, I just, I think it's important that we represent our work fairly to the community and I think it's important that the community understands what has and has not been done when we're talking about these technical analyses. And, and I, I think this is a really, I think this is a really reasonable request to go back to the project team and, and say, Hey, would you please clarify so that the public understands what were the conditions that really prevented the one way alternative from being analyzed in its entirety. And yeah, that, that seems like as policymaker something that oughts be our due diligence. So that's my, I'm very much in, in support of this request to the project team.
Yeah. Yeah. So I think I, I would echo a lot of what member Baldwin Dave said when I read that the current explanation here, it it, it, it just, and makes it sound, and maybe this is just the language of how this is drafted, but it makes it sound like there was an alternative that was sort of like dismissed out of hand before going through a a, a full analysis and in in, you know, specifically MOA traffic engineering expressed concern with compliance for one-way streets in this neighborhood, which has adjacent major one-way streets, that's in Minnesota, the, the MOA traffic engineering at the time 2021 directed the teams to not further pursue the option. And I, I guess I, I would like to, if I can ask a question of our traffic engineer in the room, Mr. Coy, is that something that we're, we're seeing issues still with compliance for one way streets, maybe not only in this neighborhood but others or is that something you can kind of shed a little bit of light into?
Yeah, Brad, co field traffic engineer, I'm not aware of any situation. It's not something that has been raised in the four and a half years that I've been in this position shortly after the 3 21. So I, in this location because it's a housing complex that I would expect more consistent users of, I would not be concerned. So that is in the comment that I would've made if it would've come before. So that answer your question?
I appreciate member Baldwin date looking at that initial report the lowest than 32nd one way option because it's, the analysis that is being referenced is not in there. I it's certainly known how it's easy to take assumptions and then make decisions on assumptions when they haven't been verified. And I, I also would like to see that analysis and because the recommendation from TAC was not to do the analysis or to summarize the analysis, it was to explain why it wasn't included. So we may want to just make an amendment on that perhaps if, or I'm understanding the concerns that not only that they update the DSR to explain the why the one way alternative doesn't work, but then to summarize that analysis if it was complete then it would be good to know if it was not, because then it might change a decision.
I guess I would say, I think my understanding from the technical advisory committee is I think we're pretty much unanimity at that level and we're able to, the motion has suggested as a pretty good compromise between folks and, and given the additional data we've gotten, I think I feel comfortable with language and the motion of thoroughly explained why a one-way alternative was not included. I, I hope that the project team will use that as an opportunity to actually explain, hey, we've got fire concerns, we've got snow removal concerns to bring that into the DSR. So I mean I guess we could do amendment if it's important, but I hope thoroughly explain, I think the TAC C did a really good recommendation here. So I feel comfortable supporting it.
I I think to that point, if I recall the conversation correctly at the TAC, which I was sort of out of because I was also feeling very unwell that day. I think that I recall there being a concern that if we were to request an actual analysis of a one-way option, that that would in fact delay the project beyond the current construction season and what's planned. Right. And I think there was some real concern about, you know, delaying the project for this analysis. And to be clear, I, I don't, I don't have a, I have no dog in this site as to, you know, what alternative is or is not selected. But I think, I think my concern would be that if we did request a true analysis of a one-way option at this juncture, at this moment in time, that we would actually be adding additional months to the project scope and that I'm has, I'm, I'm hesitant to to, to do that. So anyway, that's my 2 cents.
Okay. Any further discussion? Okay, so the motion is currently to direct the project team to revise and clarify the draft DSR to more thoroughly explain why one way alternative was not included in the analysis there any objections to proving the motion? Okay, hearing none the project team is so directed.
Yeah, there's a meeting in this room at 3:00 PM right after our meeting I think almost every month at the same time. It kind of varies but it is the pre agenda meeting where the muni staff get together and talk about I believe the upcoming assembly agenda. So it's pretty important. I did ask and they're not able to move that meeting to another location. So I think, you know, and we need to really be out before 3:00 PM because they need set up time to get everything organized. As you have seen, we have had members come in and hang out in the room while we're in our meeting so they arrive early as well. So we really wanted to have this opportunity to have this discussion of what do you guys wanna do? A couple of options are we can change the meeting time to meet a little bit earlier.
I'll let you know I'm a little reluctant in that, no offense. But staff has a lot of work to do on a regular basis and I really want to keep their lunchtime 1130 to 1230 so they have the time to eat lunch, be prepared and then come and help set up the meeting. So moving into like a 1230 start is gonna be really rough for us because we'll have to make some adjustments from that end. And I really don't want staffs lunchtime short change for these meetings. No offense. I also need lunch before the meeting as well so, but I'm not being selfish promise we would like for you to eat, don't want hanger I you all eat as well. Nobody like hangry. That is a bad assumption.
Another option is we can move to a different location if you guys would like there. I know that there may be meetings before this that assembly members attend. So if there are meetings that we have to worry about before this and we move to another location, we may have to make a meeting time start a little bit later to allow travel time. So I really just from my end of step, I just really need to hear from you guys what your concerns are, what you think is best for you all. 'cause we're really trying to make it good for you but we wanna make it good for the public as well. So if you do change the start time, I would ask that the TAC change their start time as well. 'cause it helps keeping the T TT M PC at the same start time very consistent for the public.
So they know every first and third Thursday this is the start of the meeting. So thank you. Okay. Discussion question on, yeah, I guess the person who raised the conflict, I think two options that come to mind for me in terms of it does, it seems like location is better than time change. Potentially Rm 155. I mean we are a sort of a committee of the assembly so it seems not inappropriate and I don't know, it sounded like when we talked informally that there might not, the conflict was there before is maybe not there anymore. And then the other option potentially we could find a room at the permit center, which maybe I'm just saying because my office have recently moved over there, it'd be convenient for me personally, but I think there's plenty of space in that building as well. There are also other conference rooms in this building, but I'm not sure that any of the AV capacity of and space of this room.
Okay. So I think a couple things I would be fine with the earlier time but I, I definitely would not want to put staff at that tougher situation. So sym sympathetic to that for sure. I think there is an assembly committee that meets the Rm 155 at our current start time. Oh, okay. However, some of that may be subject to change after reorganization, which will be on the 28th. And then I anticipate shortly following that will be some assembly conversations around committee scheduling. And so we may know more. And so if there is a desire to meet in conference room 1 55 and that replaces a, a assembly committee of three people and maybe there is things that we can do to accommodate that, but I think we'll know more probably in, in a few weeks.
Yeah, I think my, my concern with Rm 155 is we do not have the capacity to run teams out of 1 55. So I think that would really truncate the ability of the public to participate as they do now. And I would be really hesitant to, to do that. I think that the, the committee is most likely to be in flux. I I come to this meeting directly after the IEOC meeting, which is like pretty, that's been the consistent pattern and I do think moving this committee to earlier, I would probably be late pretty frequently. So I think my, of of the options we floated, I think my, my preference would be to move to the permit center because the, the team's capacity remains the same. We have the space for it and I would just need to beg some grace if the IEOC meeting stays at its current time and I am sprinting from here to there. But I think, I think that that could be worked through and maybe would be at least while we're getting assembly reorg done the least invasive approach
We can move to later start time too, like one 30 if you want to give time to get over to the, my recommendation would be the permits or the, the main training room in the permits building where we have the TAC meeting. It already has pretty good av, it's a big enough capacity. One slight correction. We are not a subcommittee or even close to a subcommittee of the assembly in any, any shape or form. So I'd like to make sure that it's clear
Yeah, I, I would just probably echo what Dan said. You know, I mean I think we're gonna have some reorganization here and there's gonna be some moving pieces. So I, I would say I just hold off on doing anything for at least another month and see, see how all the other pieces shake out first just seems little premature so we're not exactly sure if, you know, we have probably an idea but we're only gonna be sure now it's all been shake out on end.
Although I mean looking around the room I do see a lot of faces that normally reside in the private center so it might be kind to a lot of the folks who trek over here to just make it our practice that we meet in the permit center anyway and that would allow us to keep a reasonably similar time and maybe accommodate some other folks a little nicer. So I I I would not be opposed at all to moving to the department center and and keeping, keeping one o'clock for sake of consistency and yeah, figuring out logistics if I need to. Okay.
Yeah, maybe I'll move that we change the meeting room for the, in that policy committee to Aaron Help me fill in to this to some room in the permits. I was just looking as, I was reminded by Christine that the training room in the permits building is often full with large scale trainings. Okay. And looking at the calendar for next month, there is actually a large scale ABATE training in there that takes up the entire day. So it is not available for us in that location. So we would have to find another room in the permits building and it has a much more limited capacity outside of the main training. So maybe my recommendation to kind of match with member ker said is we hold off for another month. I know that's a challenge. Okay. But it may give us an opportunity to look at other locations besides the permits building that we can utilize on a regular basis and staff can bring back next month some options if you would like. Yeah,
Yeah, it may be easier to start it like we might be able to find a temporary home until the new year starts and then we can get something more permanent in like the big training room but the training room in the permits building. So Okay. I will change my move to postpone to our next meeting. Sounds good. And would you like staff to bring forward recommendations for you all on locations and stuff like that? Okay. Yep.
Yes. Okay. So we have before us the tribal DOT&PF tribal consultation policy. So we got noticed by DOT that they are updating their tribal consultation policy. The link is on the agenda and you see it on the screen before you of the webpage where the information is provided. It is currently out for public comment. And so as DOT asks that we put this on our agenda for informational items so we can let everybody know it is out. Please get your comments in. This is very important to review and get your comments in. Additionally, next month the plan is to have an action item on the agenda in case the staff has any comments they'd like to provide in case the TAC and policy committee would like to provide any comments. So it is before you today just to give everybody a heads up and encourage participation and comment. Thank you.
Yes. And thank you for that. So really what I wanna share is, you know, today we wanna talk about how we're going from a 2002 tribal consultation policy. So we've been using the same one for quite some time now and we've seen a lot of success across the department in little pockets and projects and, and where we see a new way of working improvements. And really what this draft does is it, it's formalizing some of those success moments, but the the exciting part is this draft is really grounded in feedback. So what we did from about June 25 to January, 2026 is we went out, we did presentations and we received about 250 comments from different tribal entities on what they like and what they don't like. And so through that we were able to create this first iteration of a draft, updating that 2002 policy into what we have as a draft today.
And, and this first iteration is now open for a 45 day we're, we're highly focused on, on tribal engagement. So we're, we're working with, with our different teams to get the word out there from March is when we launched that. And it's open through May 11th and whoever's sharing the screen, if you just wanted to scroll down briefly, I can just show you real quick. Oh, this is the public input site. There's also a, you can find it here too. There's also a website that really tells the story of this team. But on this public input site, you know, to the right, there's, there's documents you can download. So there's a letter from Commissioner Anderson, there's the 2002, and then now there's this new iteration that we have out for draft. So that's a good place to go if you wanna just kind of get information on what is it that we're even commenting on today.
And then here is just the portal that we launched for folks to be able to provide input through the portal. But we do welcome emailed letters. We've already received a few and we know that that's how a lot of our tribes like to work is they have a formalized letter and they like to submit that. And so there's a DOT tribal email on, on this website, but there is a.dot alaska.gov/tribal relations website. I just wanna share briefly that really does have training resources. We have new modules out that are open to the public. We have a new resource library and all of this is open to the public on this site because this team approach, so no longer having just one tribal liaison, but rather building a team that that can work across the department across sections is also focused on, on that internal effort.
And so what you'll find are videos and modules and training resources because the vision is is that all of DOT will become that educated in tribal relations. They'll know where the materials are so you don't just have to go to that one person to do tribal relations, but rather all of DOT will be informed in working under that same process. So it's open now through May 11th and, and that'll be that first iteration. And from there, you know, we go through a policy and procedure DOT internal review with our staff too. So a couple iterations to go, lots of edits to make I'm sure and open for feedback as always. So I could talk forever, but I know we're on a time crunch, so if you have questions you can reach out to myself, all my information is on the tribal team or our team is big and you can talk to someone else that maybe is in a section that you're more interested in. And with that, I'll pass it back.
Can we scroll down just a little bit and maybe keep going to the block that says first and last name. Okay, I'll shut there. I'm, I'm curious the, the comments that are actually showing up underneath each one of these blocks, is that an intentional feature? If so, that's pretty cool.
Yeah, I can speak to that. So we've had success and there's sometimes where we do that and there's sometimes where we don't open it up to the public to see what's, what people are saying. But I saw you guys are using public input as I signed in through that portal as a virtual attendee and there's so many amazing features on, on this that, that we're using. But yeah, there's a lot of great things you can toggle on and off through this portal for sure.
I'll just comment on this that it was, as I was going through some documentation on this as it pertains to the MPO, I did notice at the native village of that we have a formal agreement with them for consultation. So I was hoping as part of the tack that also we could kind of include that in the discussion. Perhaps there's some, it didn't look like we had a pop a procedure necessarily on that, but at what point we do have that more formal engagement, so we have that in our, for our records, and then we'll be sure to, to reach out to them as part of this process.
We do through the Municipality of Anchorage. So the municipality Anchorage has it in with the native village of cuna. That outlines kind of how the two parties are involved in the process. It is one of the things on our bucket list to update. There have been a lot of other things before that we've been working on as well. So there is gonna be an informational item next month on the agenda, and we'll get to this on the next pc. Thanks. But there'll be an informational item where we talk about how we as staff engage with the native village of on projects and process.
Good afternoon. Ryan Harris, department of Transportation Acting Project Manager for the Seward Highway. O'Malley Road at M Project. Thanks for having me. Bear with me. I know that I'm tethered to 10 minutes. I'm with this, I, we have a bit of information to go through and so I'm gonna kind of quickly go through it, hopefully that we have time for q and a afterwards. Ryan, I would just clarify, we must have time for q We'll have, I'll go quickly through next presentation so we can adequately address all the questions. Hopefully get through the presentation online. Joining me with the project team is Mike Robinson with Jacobs. He's the lead civil engineer. We also have Andrew s with Kitson, our lead traffic engineer, and I believe Jana, Jenna Lowry with Dow Communications assistant. And, sorry, go back one slide and we'll get right into, okay. So in May of last year, the DOT, along with the project team determined best to, to wake up this project, we should create a working stakeholder group along with an advisory committee to get things moving.
Again, we wanted a fresh start with community representation in a transparent and trustworthy manner. We wanted to separate ourselves from the previous design. We know that needs and priorities have changed over the years, and so we really wanted to listen and identify with key stakeholders. The stakeholder list is sort of listed in that graph. We have a lot of government and planning agencies, community councils and advocacy groups, education, business and transportation. I think our stakeholder contact list is over 30 individuals long. We really want to construct a project with community support and we want stakeholder input to help drive that direction. So the next slide is what we've done and where we're going. So we met for the first time last September. We had big role plots out. We set reset expectations, let the stakeholder working group know that we are sort of on tying ourselves from the design that we had at 95% a few years ago. Went over the project history and background and we had the stakeholders identify areas in the corridor that they saw needed improvements or what, what the needs and priorities among, amongst the corridor was.
We met again in December. We had a two part meeting on December 4th and December 11th where we, with the stakeholder group driving the discussion, drafted purpose and needs statements. And we also identified potential solutions, which led to some potential design concepts, not alternatives, but high level design concepts that we could potentially move forward through a stakeholder vetting process. We met again in February of this year to evaluate those concepts and identify needs, discuss the pros and cons, and we actually had the stakeholders vote on those concepts so we could bring forth the ideas and the concepts that were being prioritized by the stakeholders. That's what we've done. We have the transportation fair, obviously next week we'll have a table hosted there by project staff and I. We're also planning on engaging in some design charettes with some particular members of the stakeholder working group to work out some particular details and some of the design concepts.
'cause what we were looking at was super high level, and so the stakeholders want us to, to get into some of the specifics of those design concepts and we'll move forward from there. Next slide. This is just a long list of all the data that we have shared with our stakeholders. To date, a lot of this was existing. The project team has been, has done an incredible job being responsive to some of the data requests. This is on the project website under the advisory committee tab. Some, some of the new data that we have received is A DOT crash data, a lot of origin and destination data. The Britain Drive, origin, origin, and destination data is new and has been really helpful and some new and updated speeding data. Next slide. There's a lot of text on this slide, so I'm just gonna read the, the emboldened text at the top. The stakeholders help us draft these purpose and needs statements. So need one was the pedestrian pedestrian bicycle safety concerns. Need two is insufficient non-motorized connectivity need three being misalignment between freight and drive operations and its desire to use and need. Four operational non-motorized and motorized user combination gaps at interchanges. Again, that was derived by the stakeholders.
These next few slides are mishmash of a lot of graphics that the team had quickly put together to bring forward to the stakeholder working groups. So they had something to look at and they had them design concepts put on paper, minimal engineering, but something that, that they could look at so we could discuss the pros and cons of each of the concepts. So this is Brighton Drive. I do wanna note here on Brighton Drive, this is sort of priority raising to the top, amongst the stakeholder working group. There have been three pedestrian fatalities on Brighton Drive between 2014 and 2024. We know risk factors persist such as night and winter conditions, but mostly there is no dedicated space for pedestrians or pivoting as as a team. And addressing these concerns. As these concerns raise to the top of the priority list is, is B zero status quo or is that a proposal?
I can, I'll get to that. What B zero stands for. Yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah. So again, this is another, that's a lot to look at. This is the Scooter Academy under crossing that we were asked to drive these concepts by the stakeholder working group. We did acknowledge that with the existing budget that we're showing for this project. These concepts are a bit out of range for us, but it was a worthwhile discussion to have if this was priority for the advisory committee and for the stakeholders and funding for the, for these concepts do calculated. The next slide is some draft concepts at minor intersection improvements at O'Malley. I guess the one that I'll highlight is the, you can kind of see in the middle of the screen to the right there, the northbound on ramp, left turn packet from O'Malley Road onto the Seward Highway.
Next slide is some draft diamond and project wide improvements. There's a lot of improvements that we can make at these intersections. We don't need to make all of these improvements. We can't if these rise to the priority some, one of the images that I'll point to on this slide is that slip lane, right? Turn off the southbound off ramp from the Seward highway turning westbound onto Diamond Boulevard. There's an opportunity to make an improvement for pedestrian crossings, pedestrian refuge. There the, there's an image of an existing right slipped lane on the bottom there where it's operation. We had some discussion about its operation say, and how we can make some improvements to something similar to that concept down in Boulevard. Next slide. So these are just the SUR survey results from the stakeholders. We basically said, funding is limited. We can't make all of the improvements being brought forth by the stakeholder working group.
And so knowing that funding is limited, how would you want to spend your funds on, on these improvements? And so the stakeholders sort of voted on the improvements that they found more, most favorable or valuable to them. And so as we can see, the B zero plus B two, so B stands for Brayton, so this B zero plus B two. This is a converting Brayton drive, which is currently a one way road frontage road into a two-way roadway with separated pathway. The O'Malley northbound left turn lane on O'Malley was also a priority to stakeholders and also the non-motorized improvements to the diamond and really the O'Malley intersection. And so the following slide, this is just a quick figure that we put together to show what the two lane roadway on Brenton Drive could potentially look look like below it in the typical section, showing two lanes each direction with a separated bike path and a shared, or, sorry, separated.
Separated shared use path and a conjoined bike lane. Again, these are just some very preliminary concepts. We're not married to any of these concepts. And we're really listening to the staple of feedback to help us refin these designs. On the next page is that left turn pocket that we, I discussed earlier as we are turning northbound onto the Seward Highway, extending that turn pocket prior to the under crossing to avoid some potential conflicts that we're seeing out there today. And then on the next slide is that slip lane that I discussed previously. And then, so the next slide after that, this, we also asked them after we had surveyed them on what was priority with funding constraints. Okay, what would be priority if we could fund absolutely everything possible and there wasn't any difference. But I do want to point out that the Scooter Academy under crossing was favored if there was no funding constraints.
And so I think there's a worthwhile discussion to have with our stakeholders about that. And I do on the same slide, wanna point out, I don't think we could see on the screen at the very bottom, there was a northbound auxiliary lane concept that again, was proposed by the stakeholders. We were really wanting to gather all feedback and all input from the stakeholders and we were kind of the, we were listening to all of the requests coming to us. And so that was a concept that came up during our work group sessions. It was not prioritized. It deprioritized that week. See with this survey, and this is our contact information. Again, I'm Ryan Harris, acting project manager working with Jacobs style and Kiton on this project.
Yeah. Thank you Ryan. That was good work. Going through a lot of content and slides. Okay. Questions or comments from the committee? Just a question. So these survey, the survey results, these are, this was a survey of the stakeholder group? Yes. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. And do you have cost estimates? Like when we talk about the constraints, what the all in?
It's in the TIP. We added it into the tip as part of amendment before. So that's final, which I believe went forward to FHWA further this week or so. It was very quick. So, so there is nothing, I think there might be a little bit in there for design and funding now. Let me check. Okay.
Yeah, really appreciate the slide with all the data link. I mean, that's just really cool transparency and really, we know the public wants to dig in on that data now, so really good to be transparent about it. I think we got a couple emails from sort of some concerned stakeholder members. I think it was particularly by anchor who was sort of like, have those been resolved or those still outstanding? I don't know.
Oh, thank you. Alexa Dotson with bike Anchorage. Yeah, so just because, you know, we came up, you did notice on one of the first slides here that the stakeholder group did not say bike anchorage was included. It said cyclist advocacy group. And that is because we withdrew from the stakeholder group because we did not believe that we were being listened to. And we did not believe that this project was going to move in a direction that made sense. So just a couple things to make sure that y'all are aware of. You all read our letter earlier, so you've seen these things before, but the list of data sources provided is really great, except that those were provided after the designs had already been made and only upon request specifically by individual stakeholders. We did not have crash data handy when we were looking at these designs and trying to decide what made sense.
As an example, I would also like to address the auxiliary lane. As I mentioned from the very beginning, I suspected that this project was in fact trying to find a way to still widen the highway and do so by simply calling the widening something else. And that's what the auxiliary lane is. I do want to clarify, I think we heard earlier that it was an idea that came up in the stakeholder group and it was an idea that was presented by the project team. The stakeholder group did not ask for an extra lane. It was given to us and kept in the list of concepts that we had to consider by the project team. So we just wanna make that clear. The final thing that I want to draw attention to is the slip lane design on diamond. This is really the breaking point for me and the reason why I decided to withdraw from this stakeholder group, the miscellaneous, you know, under the miscellaneous items there you can see that slip lane that they want to add at diamond, this project team knows perfectly well that slip lanes are not safe for bicyclists or pedestrians.
I said so many other people in the room said, so we were absolutely stonewalled. Our feedback was not listened to at all. And that was when I realized that this was not going to be a good use of my time because I don't want by Gingrich's name to be on a project that's going to add slip lanes. So just some context to help the policy committee understand where we're at right now. And I continue to encourage you to look with extreme suspicion on this project because it looks like, you know, things are settling out in a way that's better. But this whole process from start to finish has been the absolute opposite of the transparent and trustworthy process that was spoken of at the beginning. So we really do need to keep an eye on it. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you Alexa. Another public comment. Okay, well thank you Ryan. Thank you. And thanks for, yeah, I'll just say, Alex, we do hope that you continue to participate in the project. You know, we do need you to continue to hold us accountable to transparency. And if we're not doing a good job, we also need to know that. And, you know, we always develop as an organization and just continue providing us with feedback from your stakeholders. And that'll continue to be incorporated into the project design. So just any public organization individual, we, we do need that. So thanks for your comments. Okay. Moving on to information item six D. This is the letters on MPO authority and letter from Federal Highways and from Alaska Department of Law. Aaron? Yes. This is just a quick informational item.
Yeah, I, I was, I was the committee member who asked for these to be on the agenda just as a way of sort of keeping everyone apprised of what the, what the communication has looked like on this particular issue, wanting to be sure that we continue to keep that in the public record. So yeah, that was it. Purely informational. Just making sure we're tracking that, that question.
Yeah. Thank you. There was an additional letter that we just received like within the last couple days from Federal Highways back to the Alaska Department of Transportation. So we'll be sure that that also gets added to perhaps the next agenda topic. Say maybe in the same way, that way you can include it in the, in the packet. Thank you. Have you received that yet? Yep. Okay. Would
Yeah. Okay. All right. Any questions or comments from the public? I'm sorry. Any comments from the public? Okay, so information item six E. This is Metropolitan Planning area boundary discussion. We have Lauren Little online to speak to this. And Aaron, do you have any memo or anything to open it up with?
Oh, great. So today's gonna just be purely informational, similar to what we provided for technical committee a few weeks ago. So we've been hard at work reviewing the MPO boundary revision proposals, having quite a bit of back and forth dialogue with our department of law, our GIS groups. And so the AAPS boundary, there's a few maps that were put in your, in your packet. And I see Aaron also has the GIS, which is probably a little easier to to track. But in the packet we just put kind of three key maps. So the first map is the proposed 2024 boundary with the small urban area, the urbanized area, as well as some landmarks and then a blue line. That is what at the time our legal department was, was comfortable with in terms of, of what could be approved. We have had some subsequent conversations, in fact, I think it was just earlier this week that we met with DNR and a municipality and DOT to kind of talk about some of the incursions into the, the state park. So there's still some conversations ongoing there with DOT law, DNR and, and the muni in terms of understanding some of, of those aspects. So I wouldn't take the blue line too seriously today.
Okay, so I'm not sure if you guys heard the part about the gray that is the census defined urbanized area that is the minimum federally required boundary per 23 CFR four 50.312. There's another boundary of sort of lighter gray color up around the Eagle River Tubac area. That's a small urban area. That population group does not require a metropolitan planning organization. It's, it's below that. There's other ones in the state. Juno is census designated as a small urbanized area, small urban area. Sorry, there's one around Kenai, I can't remember all of them off the top of my head. But the dark gray is the federally required minimum boundary.
And so as we, as we come down, we see, we start seeing some of these various state parks and Coastal wildlife refuge, just kind of showing some of those, some of the Census Foundry does encroach into those areas. Other places Ammas chose to expand into those areas beyond what was federally required. I, I'm not sure if you're scrolling or if it's just not showing up on my end, but I'm down. I've kind of scrolled through those maps and maybe we jump over to the GIS now. There we go. Great. So here just a little different color scheme. So the green is the Atch State Park, that light pink purple color, that's the small urban area. The blue is the federally required urbanized area minimum for the MPA boundary. The red line is the 2024 boundary that aaps proposed.
Largely the changes appeared to be incorporating any new areas of the urbanized area, which largely was around the coastal wildlife refuge refuge as well as cleaning up some edges it looked like, and including additional areas of the state park. So I'll pause there again, just, just sort of presenting the data that we've been looking at and, and one of the things that, that we've been trying to understand that we haven't really gotten a good understanding of is what's driving the expansion north and including the, beyond the federally required minimum areas. And then also, you know, just as we look at the CFR, you know, so there's the minimum area of the blue. Obviously the other, the other thing that is an option to MPOs is that MPA boundaries can be expanded to encompass the entire metropolitan statistical area. And for, for this region, that would actually be the, the municipality and the Matsu borough. So functionally sort of emerging of the, the MVP and, and the aaps is what using the full metropolitan statistical area would look like. So now I'll pause for real. Okay. Yeah. Thank you Lauren,
Well, it was all the information we had already provided to you that went through. So the only expansion were some small pieces throughout the rest of the boundary was the same as the 2014 boundary. So we had provided that backup information to you all previously. I haven't sent it out again at this point. That kind of went through each component that we did expand and provide a little bit more information. I will say this southern portion along the highway that went from one 14 to one 13. So, you know, oh actually before it was like a little before one 13, about a mile that was done to help clean up the boundary a little bit. And to make it a little bit easier, it is hard to see on this version you have here, but if you see this white box right here, this tip right here, this is part of our boundary currently and it's just kind of sitting here on its own. And so what we did is we cleaned it up a little by extending the boundary over here to make it really easy for people to see where our boundary actually ends because it currently ends, you know, up, up here. And people were always getting confused that our boundary stopped here on the highway but then continued down further into the mountains over here. So it was just a cleanup that we did. It was it, we didn't think it was a, a challenge in that regard. Now let me freeze the computer at this point. I don't wanna touch it. The rest of it, all the rest of it. If you go to the Chuga people river area.
So the thing is, is that it is, while that blue is the urbanized area, we also have to include any area that we expect to urbanize in the next 20 years that is part of the minimum requirement for the NPOs. And so that pinkish area right there is the small urban area, but we expect it to urbanize in the next 20 years. So it's part of our boundary. And our assumption was that, well, the entire thing would urbanize so we needed to include the entire thing including the portion that's within the park area. If you zoom into that park that we expanded it into right there.
Yeah, this area right here. Additionally, we've received a lot of requests from the community to fund some kind of project in that area for trail, for trail access. It has been a reoccurring request on a regular basis. So we felt it appropriate to put it into our boundaries. So something we can think about in the long term future and have that coordination and discussion about if something should happen in that area or not. I'll be honest, the rest of it, Ingi River was a lot of cleanup work because Highland Road, for example, almost all of Highland Road is in our boundary except for that one small chunk there. So if we were to do a project in that area, that kind of piece couldn't utilize our planning funds to take a look at it or any other funds that we had available that are eligible in that location.
So for us, it made sense to put the whole thing in because it was a small piece that was out. There was some cleanup we did on the Glen Highway. The Glen Highway had half of the half of it. It was right down the center line. I think it was more an error with the GIS stuff, but it was half of it was in, half of it was out. So we said let's have all of it in because it is the only route between Anchorage and AK Eagle River, which is another component of our boundary. So, and then there were some other small cleanups that we did throughout as well. A lot of it was as best as we could come up with that at time. But it is open for discussion of course. So thank you. Would you be willing to remind us by sharing that information again? Yes, I can send that back to you all. Thank you.
Yeah, so one of the, a couple commitments from the last meeting was to provide the visual maps and the GIS sites that we could explore in more detail, more granular level the boundaries over the years and try to understand to, to Aaron's point, just the justification behind where there's expansions or changes. But it, so in the meantime we've had some follow up conversations. One of them was with the municipality Anchorage and DNR. One of the concerns with Alaska Department of Law is with the expansions into State park and as it is not an area that we'll see urbanized expansion in the next 20 years, but just the justification for that. And then better understanding with DNR as another state agency, what their concerns, if any, would be with DNR. And of course there's always turnover with individuals, but they hadn't been con consulted on this up until now.
So we just wanted to have a formal opportunity to talk with them on the record about the potential benefit of this and any concerns that they have with their own requirements. So we, we had a, a one hour meeting and we spoke, try to understand and then give the DNR deputy commissioner that opportunity to go back to his team and review this. So for follow up meetings, any concerns that they may have, I'd recommend after they have that chance to, to review this, that they perhaps participate in a work session or a technical, a detect meeting. So we can break down any, any issues that there are any. But it was good,
Correct me if I'm wrong on this, my, my takeaway from that meeting was primarily DNR'S concern was that this would then allow AM MAPS or municipality or Department of Transportation to do a project within the park boundary without consulting the park. And that was, I mean of course we'd be concerned about that. I think from our perspective, if MATCH does the same for you, we would never do that. Yeah. So one solution could be to have an agreement or a policy for AMATS to just clarify, yes, we will never do a road project in the state park without consulting with the park. So that could be one potential backboard for some of the park concerns. So in promising, and my understanding is the DNR and the department of law at the state level are gonna go based on that conversation, kind of review the map in more detail review Aaron's data and kind of put together kind a request of what their needs are and how we can mitigate negative impacts. Does that sound right?
Yeah, that's, that's exactly it. And then it was called out where there are segmented roads like Highland as an example, some of the roads and incursions into the park area had roads. Part part of the reasoning was for roads that were extending into the park, but also then wouldn't benefit from part of the NPA funds. But I see Lauren, yeah, back, back to you further comments.
Yeah, just a couple things from that discussion. So one real quick, there is a layer now under aaps in the 2014 boundary. We did have our JIS folks turn, turn the roads yellow, that, that were at the boundary edge. So you can kind of see where those roads are, are partway in, partway out and where that boundary may have been adjusted. So if you expand the ammas, the arrow next to Ammas and layer selection
And you go to the Ammas 2014 and expand that, they turn it on, it should turn everything on. Then there you can see the, the roads in yellow. So just visually, if you guys, you know, is going and playing around with all those, those things later, it's a great JIS tool that was built by our DMIO group. And then back to Aaron's point about the reasonably expected to urbanize, that was something absolutely part of the CFR. We, we didn't see where any analysis or data was provided to that. This, the Eagle River area has not, for the last several censuses, has not changed designation. So just any analysis that's been done for that, you know, helps us ensure that, that that boundary, you know, meet those federal requirements. You mentioned that at technical as well.
I'll point out there's a error with the boundary you have in there, Lauren, because you're showing that a portion of the potter right there on the dislocation right here is not included in our 2014 boundary. And that was included in our 2014 boundary. So we'll need to make sure we have that corrected if we're gonna be using that as part of it. It was actually one of the things that was pointed out to us by FHWA, that it must be included in our boundary. And that was why we had to make an adjustment between 2010 and 2014. So I wanna make sure that we have that corrected of what the 2014 was.
Oh yeah. It's in the wildlife refuge area that's off to the left of Anchorage. It's that area that kind of sticks out into the mud flats. It is part of the urbanized area and is required to be in our boundary. It was part of the urbanized area during the previous boundary update. And it was one of the things that the policy committee had said, we don't want that in our boundary because it's never gonna develop. And the Fed said you have to have it in there. It is part of your requirements. So, and right now looking at the 2014 boundary, it looks like it's showing that it wasn't part of it. So I wanna make sure that we just have that clear so people aren't thinking that was added as part of this update. 'cause it was not.
And I think regardless if it's blue, it it is the, we can't approve less than the blue in the 2020 census update. So just to be clear there, there is, my understanding is we don't actually have any approval documentation of the 2014 boundary. So that may be part of why the data is a little different between the department and aaps as well.
I I wanna be sure I I I'm understanding this correctly. It, it's my impression that the inclusion of the, of any, any area that we expect to urbanize in the next 20 years is, is federally required for inclusion, but it's not precluded. Correct. Just because it's, it hasn't urbanized in the last two or three censuses there, there's nothing that prevents that from inclusion. Right?
Okay. Perfect. I, I think I, I'm curious, I if I read the minutes correctly from our last meeting, we were expecting perhaps something in writing that was outlining in an, in an official letter what the areas, the boundary areas of concern might be. Is that something that we have available at this point?
Yeah, it's just, maybe I can comment on that because last month at this meeting Yes. I wanted to have a letter in writing back so that we could have this conversation. Mm. But we have had so much back and forth, including conversations with d and r and the municipality as well, just to try to get our documentation clear. But we have that, we'll get it sent out. So it can be, I think, can I distribute that to you again, Aaron?
Yeah. So, so we have that, but what we're trying to break down was when we're, when we're disagreeing about application of the law and regs and then where's a policy decision that perhaps we're not fully understanding. Sure, sure, sure. And I think to your point, a lot of these areas, yes, we, we can include them by agreement and endorsement of the policy committee, but some of them certainly do create perhaps further complications to planning and project development with other agencies. And there might be some factors that might just be, we need that justification again to be documented. So it is officially in a record and I think that process is solid. So we'll get that letter in writing. The three things, there's three things that it's outlining from my understanding of the concerns. The first is the expansion into lands that are not able to be populated, like the Atch State Park.
And that also has doubles up with that lack of consultation with DNR. So, and that's, I think, a straightforward one to tackle, to be able to break down, you know, the reasoning for it. And then the second one is about the national highway system expansion, particularly as we go south along Seward Highway and even north along the glen. Again, not that that isn't something that we should do, but the justification for that, having that documented so it's clear would be very helpful. And then the third is expansion into the Port of Alaska in the railroad area. And there is no, no concern about that one. Just, you know, getting eager to have the, the rail like there, if the railroad had any concerns with that as a specific to the farms, but our understanding was wasn't so we'll commit to getting that to you. We would hope to get it today, but didn't quite work out.
Yeah. I, I think, I think to my colleague's point, who was kind enough to stand in for me last meeting, thank you. I, I think it would be helpful to have some of those concerns in writing and to understand are those concerns that are being expressed or what agency or what entity is expressing those concerns, which I think makes, it, makes the, the response potentially, you know, different or the, the solution more nuanced. And, and I, I think I, I would personally really like to see that communication and, and I think the, what you said a moment ago, you know, the, the difference between what is a regulation versus what is a policy decision. I think having those distinctions clear would also be helpful in, in resolving, resolving the question. And I, I think my final question is, I'm, I'm curious about the, the chosen language here that's being used. The, a lot of these maps say in the legend and at the top draft legally acceptable AMATS boundary. And I'm, I'm curious about that choice of language. It, it seems like it's making some presuppositions that we haven't exactly unpacked
Yet. Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Member Baldwin Day. Yeah, I, I concur with you. Legally acceptable boundaries, perhaps not accurate description because as we were working through these, there's certainly by agreement nothing that precludes us from expansion in, in nearly all or most of these areas. So perhaps that's where I think breaking differentiating between policy and concern over future oversight Sure. Requirements versus, yeah. Law would be cover.
Yeah, I think our goal is for not having our organizations and the, to use law as a pretext for disagreements. Mm. So if there is legal disagreements, we want to be clear about that. But then if it is a policy call, it's certainly all have our own policies and things we do need to follow, but then it's a little bit easier to talk about it and to find ways to, to move forward. Yes.
Just from staff, it would be awesome if as part of this process we kind of maybe sat down and developed some kind of procedure that you guys would like us to see for future boundary updates. MPOs are given a lot of flexibility on how they do their boundary updates, what that looks like. But it provides us a lot of problems with staff. 'cause we do what we, you know, have seen previously inversions that may not meet everybody's expectations. So it might be good as we're having discussions, you need to consult with these groups because that's not a clearly outlined in federal regs on what our kind of process is for it. So I think, you know, I hear these things. That's great. I would love it if I'll try and start documenting it. But I would love at some point for us to have something put into place to like, this is what you guys as the policy committee or group agree future updates need to go through so we can make sure that we do everything that we're required and bring you all the information at the beginning instead of, you know, almost two years later.
Further discussion committee, any comment from the public? Okay. So we'll go on to item agenda. Item eight. Yeah, sorry, six Six. Yeah. And that's roadmap for boundary operating agreement Tip tip alignment and NHS projects. So this item was on the agenda at my request. And being mindful that we have 10 minutes left, the object of this information item was for us to inform, be able to talk through these outstanding items such as we just did with the MPA and identify ways to move them forward. Like for example, providing, being able to work on a way for staff to document boundary just changes justifications. And perhaps that documentation record, administrative record for these things would be really helpful. But then I, I think there'll be subsequent meetings, perhaps one specifically working with DNR on the parks, probably one specifically on NHS and some other areas. But I would be more eager to hear feedback from the committee members on topics that you think are of note. And I'll say in addition to the boundary, being able to look again at that first component of the operating agreement, which has to do with, it's in statute, our policy committee structure. We are short a couple members and some advisory members as well. So that's one item that would be great to get the policy committee in compliance with statute. So we can work through anything procedurally on that. I think as a scheduling, that would be another item from a roadmap. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, comments please.
Totally. Yeah, we'd love to have a roadmap. I feel like it's a really good idea on the, I think probably start on a positive, I think one thing I'd be really excited for us to talk about, and this is probably part of the m TP conversations, is the solution for Fairview and how that gets that in NHS with the Pell and the alternative five. And particularly looking at ways we can access statewide funding for that. I think that would be a top priority for, for the mayor for me on the operating agreement. I, my, I think again, that would be somewhere where it's again, really good to have specifics in writing and as you said, to distinguish the legal from the policy concerns there. My understanding from the department of law is that that section of state statute is, was held to be, it does not apply.
There's a 2007 or in that era 2008 court ruling from the state court that says that the, that statute does not require a MS to change its policy committee. Okay. So if that, I mean, if the department of law has a different understanding of that or there's been subsequent judicial rulings or that would be, would be good to get that in writing as well. Great. So I, I don't think that we are obliged my, under my current understanding is that we are not obliged to operate, adjust the operating agreement if there are good practical or legal reasons to do so. I think having a memo that outlines like, hey, we wanna improve this process or we have this remaining legal concern. Again, something I think in writing would be helpful for that. And then on the, sorry I'm talking too much, but on tip and step I think sort of would look to your timeline and maybe if there's a chance for an upcoming work session on that to make sure we're getting alignment, I would sort of defer to you I think chair.
Okay. So we might not be able to address that before then, but I think that that is a, a priority just to ensure projects that are of mutual interest to all parties here in the committee so that we can find a way to navigate some of the challenges there. Okay. So that we have the NHS and maybe Fairview the good opportunity to talk through that.
It submitted for approval. The fa it is submitted for the air quality conformity demonstration to be approved for then to be incorporated into the stip after it's approved. Okay. And we have the new 2027 and 2030 TIP. I haven't sent it over yet 'cause there were a few things I had to do. There's a lot that goes with it, narrative and things. So I'll be sending it over all tomorrow at this point for approval.
That issue and, and various interpretations. And I think that was the letters that we saw earlier. And I, it sounds like we are gonna be seeing another one here soon. I think it would be tough for us as a policy committee to kind kind of move forward on that. Because I think that there are sort of differences of opinions between your agency and some of the policy committee members, but also Federal Highway Authority. So I, I don't know how much progress I feel like we can make on that. Tell some of those questions or settle and maybe get back to your earlier point about policy versus versus legal interpretation.
Yeah, that's an excellent point. And maybe we need to be more precise on this because yes, the information that continues to come back from Federal Highways is that NPO authority for NHS projects does override the department's oversight requirements for those routes. So until, and understanding, I think everyone is aware that the state of Alaska does not agree with that interpretation of the regulations, but that is how Federal Highways is currently interpreting it. So we do need to find a way for projects that we are concerned about for, for routes that we are concerned about to move forward and how we can better work with in the municipality and am a s to communicate better on that. So I would say that's more specific. Like we could call out NHS routes that we're struggling with, which is no secret, the safer sewer highway corridor, where we're at risk for having that project be non-participating.
So the state will have to pay that back once we have a federal project initiated. So we're just navigating that. And so it's probably a process challenge, but, but yes, the federal highway determinations come back pretty clear and while we continue to navigate that, I think we have to move forward with that expectation of how we plan and program our steps and tips and nps. So perhaps, I'm not sure if you have any ideas, but it could be a project at a time that we talk through, or perhaps how Yeah, how, how we navigate that. I'm, I'm not sure at this point.
So I think for my part, what would be helpful? 'cause I, you know, I think we do, I think there is a shared desire on the body to be as collaborative as possible, but I think where what is sort of felt missing is sort of like a foundational shared understanding about the antigen projects and what, what current understanding we're working on under. So if, if, if it is that we are currently working under Federal Highway Authority, you know, their interpretation or administration, their interpretation, okay, then I think we can, you know, reach consensus or at least have conversations about certain projects and, and, and maybe not have consensus. But it's just, yeah, I think getting on that same page of like, okay, what understanding are we working under as we look to have the three seats.
Okay. So we will extend to 3:05 pm and I think, and just closing remarks about that roadmap. I can, as one who initiated this item, I can take the feedback from this meeting and provide a draft again kind of for, for Aaron for distribution. And then perhaps I would love to get some items to the TAC for discussion. And then back to the policy. I think the first one that we started is, would be like Chugach & MPA and perhaps something on the NHS if we could sum up with that, but
When do you need to know? Well, we typically don't do those kind of discussions by email. They typically do it as a committee like this. So maybe, maybe next month is a discussion item to kind of lay out some of that and be like, here are the next action items, here are the next informational items. Make sure you're all on board. Like, have that info from the chair and be like, these are gonna be the action, these are gonna be the informational and give staff that kind of roadmap so we can put 'em on the agenda for you.
Right. Because I think the takeaway from my is that DNR is gonna bring back a proposal of sort of what their needs are. So there could be an action item for the policy committee if there was a policy and procedure about consultation with DNR. Sure. Then that could be an item for the policy committee to approve we're
Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah. So that could be, I think another interesting thing to ask the TAC to potentially weigh in on if we get that intent for public notice. Yeah. But yeah, that, that feels, that feels like something that hasn't perhaps a, a a, a longer either longer runway Yeah. Than just responding to DNRs particular concern. So maybe that's an informational item. Maybe the, the letter itself becomes an informational item at our next set of meetings. Okay. If we receive it
(Chair Keith puts on a highly visible sticking cap) So for everyone, safety first anymore mean it's easy to see you. So be obnoxious. Make sure you're visible. Safety moment. That's it. Thanks. Thanks everyone for working out Some more, more effects. Hard to define topics. Appreciate the patience.
We just, sorry, real quick, I just wanna remind everybody. Next week is the transportation fair that DOT puts together. It is a well attended event. It is always a really good event, so highly for everybody to attend. It's 3:00 PM at the Alaska Airline Center. Ammas will be there. We're gonna have a couple of tables. We have our 50 year anniversary swag and other swag and other information. So please come. There's a lot of really good information on the projects that are happening. Thanks.
So the next TAC and PC meeting, the next TAC meeting is May 7th, and the next PC meeting is May 21st. Okay. And they'll be at both at 1:00 PM in their respective rooms. So in the same rooms that we've been doing, we haven't changed any rooms at this time. Good clarification.
This is hidden text that lets us know when google translate runs.