Regional Transportation Council

0:00 (upbeat music)

0:30 (gavel banging) - Good afternoon. It's April 7th, 2026 and I'm gonna call this regular RTC board of directors meeting to order. Can we begin with roll call, please? - Michelle Belcott. Sue Marshall. Will Fuentes. Anne McEnerny-Ogle. Eric Paulson. Masa Eschke. Troy McCoy. - Here. - Asa Leckie. Ron Irig. Leanne Caver. - Present. - Devin Reck. - Here. - Temple Lentz. - Here. - Bill Eyal. Chris Ford.

1:30 - Here. - Juan Carlos Gonzalez. And House and Senate members of the 14th, 17th, 18th, John Lee. - Present. - 20th and 49th districts. - Thank you, that gives us a quorum. With that, we move on to the board agenda. I know there was late addition. If anybody has any questions, our executive director can answer, otherwise I'd entertain a motion. - Chair, I move the approval of the revised board agenda. - Second. - Second, Lentz. - Thank you, motioned and seconded. Seeing as no discussion, all in favor? - Aye. - Aye. - Any opposed? Carries unanimously.

2:28 - Directors, I'd like to just make sure the audio is working for remote participants. - I didn't see them unmute. - Audio check for our remote participants. Audio check remote participants. Okay, right, thank you. Do we need to update roll call as you capture there? Okay, thank you. That'll bring us to public comments. First up, we have Bruce Barnes. - Good afternoon, board.

3:27 Thank you for the opportunity to speak. My name is Bruce Barnes for the record. I got a few things today that I'd like to talk about. One is the article in the Columbia newspaper that's titled Local Highways Trashed. And I don't know if you've driven around Clark County, but it is trashed. And I talked to the city council last night and I asked basically for a partnership between the Department of Transportation and the city to help clean this mess up, right? A lot of it is caused by homelessness and the tents and things that they leave. You've got SR 500 where half of it is Clark County, half of it is the city of Vancouver. And I would hope that you'd put some money in your budget here to clean up the highways because no business wants to move their business into a garbage dump and it is not looking good. And I'm thinking about doing it myself with the volunteer group. And I noticed that they did a little bit of cleanup

4:27 on SR 500, but we've got a whole prison full of people that could work their sentence off early and get them out of there and not cost the taxpayers $170 a day for them to be in there. And I also know that you've got a whole office that used to be full of State Department of Transportation employees, but only 50 come in a day now. There's about 3,200 of them in Olympia. So I think maybe we could incorporate some of them into coming back to work and being out, cleaning up our state highways because to attract business, you need that. The other thing I wanted to talk today about was the Interstate Bridge Project and about 4.2 or four and a half billion dollars going to incidentals like a tornado or a, who knows, the river flooding or whatever. And I'm trying to figure out why we need that insurance, when we've never really had a hurricane here.

5:27 We've only had a couple of tornadoes. I was involved in one at Peter S. Dogden. And I'm just thinking that four and a half billion dollars is a lot of money to the taxpayers. I'm wondering, does that money go back to the taxpayer if that money's not used? Nobody's really explained that portion of it. So those are my two biggest concerns. And obviously the price tag of the Interstate Bridge and nobody's really telling how much the toll is gonna be, but simple numbers tell me it's gonna be 12 to 14 bucks based on having to collect 1.3 to $1.6 billion in tolls a year to help pay for this. So anyways, that's what I've got to say today. And I appreciate having the opportunity to speak. I know you guys all have a tough job. Thanks very much. - Thank you, Bruce. Mellow. - How would you guess?

6:25 - Hey there. My name is Carmen De Leon. I go by Mellow. And I just wanted to inform you that when I came here for the first time in 1980, because my dad was sick of California, we drove up by five, past Sacramento, past Eugene, past Salem, didn't want to deal with it. He liked Portland. He saw Portland, kept going, said, "Nah." And my mom told us, "We're coming up on Portland. "It's known as the Bridge City. "As you know, you can go into the Powell's books "and get Bridge City T-shirt. "You got the Fremont Bridge. "You got the St. Helens Bridge. "You got all these damn bridges, Bridge City." And my mom said, "No, there's a special bridge "'cause it goes across state lines." And it was the I-5 bridge. And we came over that bridge for the first time in the summer of 1980, looking at that beautiful red lion hotel. It looked so welcoming. So we moved over here in 1980.

7:24 Yeah, we went back and forth across continent. And then in 1983, I believe construction started in 1977 for 205. I remember the big hoopla, oh, 205. Great to have another bridge. So we got the 205 bridge, which took a lot of the headache away from I-5, which, by the way, in Clark County Council, the engineers have stated it does not need to be replaced because of earthquakes. It is sound. And it's a waste of money to do that because for the price tag of billions, you could make at least four other bridges. And St. Helens and Camas have both expressed interests. Their people are wanting bridges. I can't imagine how much would be diverted both sides of the city. And not to mention how many times have I gone to Seattle, and there is a certain little lane that it goes right through the city bypassing every exit,

8:24 and you go straight through. That would be choice. Because to think about putting a tri-met on that I-5 bridge is a joke. And seriously, I would sit there and watch maybe three bikes a day, really. And they wanna put it up 10 stories high, give me a break. Look at my leg. How many of you have ever ridden your bikes across I-5? Yeah, yeah. And how many of you would it be a struggle if it was 10 stories high? Yeah, look at this. You see that scar? It's no joke, I'm disabled. I used to do that for my health, and now I fear it in the rain. We don't need tri-met. We don't need another bridge there. We need two other bridges on the other sides. We have plenty of extra train tracks right here on the west side of the city. You don't need to build more trains. I don't know what kind of kickbacks they're getting, but it's a joke, and it's a way of screwing over the American people by misusing tax funds. And they're willing to lie and cheat to get it. What does that tell you?

9:21 When they have a history of incompetence proven and being covered up by their staff, which is the only reason I have to come here because she lied and got me kicked out over there. - Thank you, Melo, for respecting the time. That ends the public comments. Unless we have anybody online? No, okay, thank you. That'll bring us to consent agenda. If there are any questions for the consent agenda, now would be the time. Otherwise, I'll entertain a motion. - Move to approve the consent agenda as presented. - Second. - Motion has been seconded. Any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor? - Aye. - Any opposed? Passes unanimously. That'll bring us to our presentations on action items. A call for projects, Jennifer.

10:18 - Good afternoon. I'm here to talk about the 2026 regional grant process that we have. We'll just be going over this evening, or I guess this afternoon, just some information about the call for projects for this year, giving you a little bit of background, and then also just sharing some information on some changes that we're making. I think that we shared with you at last month's meeting about a little bit of a differentiation for this year's call for projects that we have. Just with RTC's responsibilities, we've gone over this, I think, a lot of times during the different meetings, but WSDOT allocates several different funding programs

11:18 to RTC. There's the Surface Transportation Block Grant, Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality, Carbon Reduction and Transportation Alternatives. The STBG, CMAQ, and Carbon Reduction are allocated to the MPO region, Clark County. And then TA funds, the transportation alternatives are allocated to the RTPO region. So Clark, Plaquetat, and Skamania Counties. And then as you're aware, because we have so much more need than we have funding available, we have a competitive grant process in place to work with defining and deciding what projects to implement in the region. And this is outlined in the Transportation Programming Guidebook. So at last month's board meeting, the Board of Directors adopted a new policy in the Transportation Programming Guidebook to increase the STBG federal funding amounts that we're providing for past and future projects. And so that was about $9.5 million in funding that was approved with that policy increase. And that was in response again

12:16 to just escalating project costs that agencies are experiencing and just the recognition that RTC needs to participate more in agency projects. And then there's also a lot of uncertainty around federal funding with a new transportation bill. There's a lot of talk and a lot of confirmation around the carbon reduction program that most likely will go away. And then there's also a question around the CMAQ program as well that most likely where they're saying that might go away as well. So with all the uncertainties and the amount of funding that we just approved in terms of obligating for future years, we're just gonna be doing a call for transportation alternatives this year. And we did mention that during the presentation at last month's meeting. And we just received last week from WSDOT our federal allocations for the different grant funding programs. And so this is the final numbers on the transportation alternatives program, the funding that we have available.

13:12 And it's allocated based on census, urban and rural areas. And then there's also a pot of flex funds that you can use in all areas within Klickitat, Skamania and Clark County. And so we have a policy that we've had in place for the transportation alternatives program because it's about $1.4 million total that we receive in terms of the allocation that we have. And so it's not very much money. There's huge demand for the transportation alternatives program. We do supplement that with congestion mitigation and air quality funds. And we did supplement that with carbon reduction funds, but we can no longer program future carbon reduction funds because we don't know if the program will be there. So with this call, it's just the CMAQ, the congestion mitigation and air quality and the TA funds that we have available. And because it's a smaller amount in terms of the funding for the program, we put a limit on it. So agencies can apply for up to 60% of the call

14:12 that we have available in terms of the funding because we'd want to try to make sure that one agency doesn't take the whole $1.4, $1.5 million that we are able to distribute that a little bit between the three county area. So this table just shows how it's broken out. So between the urban and the rural allocations that we get and the urban small. So it's urban large Clark County has the 780, 954 and this includes the flex funds as well. There's rural Clark County. And so basically rural Clark County and rural and Clickatat and Skamania Counties is the same allocation for those three areas that are considered rural within those three counties. And then there's urban small, which includes Benjen, Ridgefield and White Salmon. And then I should mention too within rural Clark County and Clickatat and Skamania, that includes the center as well. So just a little bit of an overview on the TA program and what is eligible for the program. In most, historically with the program,

15:11 we funded bicycle and pedestrian related projects with the funds. There are quite a few other categories that are eligible under the program. And we have done some of these in the past. I think we've done like turnouts and overlooks and viewing areas. I know we've done that through the program in the past. So these are eligible. And I think like we talked about last year when we were doing that major overhaul with the TA program, the way that we have the structure for the program set up is focused on bicycle and pedestrian related projects. And so if an agency comes in with another one of these types of projects, we kind of treat that on a case by case scenario because it is really structured around the bike and ped related projects. And with all of the programs that we have, there's a 13 and a half percent match that's required. And we do limit agencies to submit two applications. So we had a conversation with Clark County yesterday. They qualify for rural funding as well as the urban funding,

16:09 but they're only eligible to submit two applications. And again, that's just because there's such a high demand and need for the program funds. And with the funding program that we have, we have a step in place for agencies and we'll continue to do that this year where they can do like a qualification review. So we'll open up the call for projects officially tonight. Starting tomorrow, agencies can submit their applications. And then we have a deadline for agencies to submit those to us. I can just move to the next slide. On July 2nd for the qualification review. And that's an opportunity for agencies to submit their applications to us. And we'll do a review of those, provide them feedback, make any comments or edits that we might have in order to try to improve their chances and opportunities to receive funding. Most agencies take advantage of that. And then applications are due July 10th. And then we have an internal staff review for the different applications.

17:08 And then we'll bring those back to RTAC and then we'll bring those back to the board at the September 1st meeting for final approval for the applications for this year. So we're just looking for your authorization to do the official 2026 call for projects this year. Any questions? Okay. Thank you. - All right, thank you for that, Jennifer. Next up we have, oops, sorry, go ahead. - Would the board like to endorse? - Oh, sorry, yeah. We'd take, you want a motion or? - Yeah, just we're consent to proceed. - So we're looking for consent to proceed on call for projects. - I'd entertain a motion to do that.

17:56 - I move for the call for 2026 call for projects seeking grant applications. - Second. - A motion and a second. Any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor? - Aye. - Aye. - Aye. - Any opposed? Passes unanimously, thank you. Next up we have Judith and it looks like maybe John from Metro as well. - Good afternoon. So before we jump into today's conversation, I'd like to introduce my co-presenter, John Mermin from Metro. I don't know, there he is.

18:55 You'll be hearing from him shortly. So today's agenda, we have three main goals. First, I'd like to introduce RTC's Resiliency Assessment Plan. Second, to request the adoption of the updated Regional Emergency Transportation Routes Map. And third, to request your endorsement for Metro's Phase 2 Regional Emergency Transportation Routes Report. So let's start with why this work matter. A reliable transportation system is the backbone of our community and economy. However, both natural and human costs hazards threaten that reliability. And we are seeing those risks increase in frequency and also in severity. So while we cannot predict every scenario,

19:54 we can plan for a system that is resilient enough to absorb shocks, to adapt and to recover. That's the purpose of RTC's Resiliency Assessment Plan, to guide the regional investments that strengthens Clark County ability to respond to, adapt to, and recover from major disruptions. This plan is building on existing emergency management and transportation planning efforts, and it considers both natural hazards such as climate-related events and earthquakes, and also human-caused disruptions such as infrastructure failures. In short, we're focusing on the system's ability to anticipate, prepare, recover, and adapt. Historically, resiliency planning in Clark County has focused on emergency response

20:50 and post-disaster recovery at the agency level. This plan takes a more proactive approach. We're focusing on strategies and investments that strengthens the entire transportation network across jurisdictional boundaries.

21:10 So our resiliency assessment work is happening in two phases. And during phase one, we focus on understanding what we already know. We review existing resiliency and emergency planning efforts and with regional planning partners, including WSDOT, CTRAN, the Clark Regional Emergency Service Agency, the Colleagues Indian Tribe, Clark County, and all six cities, we review and refine the regional emergency transportation routes. This help identify and prioritize the network we're focusing on today. During phase two, we're planning on going deeper. We're going to assess how vulnerable the transportation system is through different scenarios. We will evaluate routes across Clark County to identify priority corridors and ultimately guide future investments

22:09 that strengthens the system's resiliency. A quick refresher of the regional emergency transportation routes, also known as RETR. So Clark County's RETRs was first identified during phase one of Metro's regional project in 2021. That effort covered five counties, Clackamas, Columbia, Multnomah, Washington, and Clark. The Clark County stakeholders have worked with Metro staff during phase one and phase two of their study. And to facilitate with the Metro effort on this side of the river, RTC convened a local steering committee to review and validate these routes. Clark County stakeholders use Metro's framework that John is going to talk about in a minute, and we adapted to reflect Clark County's specific needs.

23:07 That process resulted in new routes that were added based on local knowledge, critical infrastructure, and their Clark County hazards mitigation plan. And we also adjusted some of their tiers, where some routes were elevated to tier one due to their importance for connectivity and access to critical infrastructure. These tiers will help guide future planning, maintenance, and investment decisions, ensuring our highest priority routes are the most resilient. At the end of this presentation, I'll be asking for the adoption of this updated RETR map. So now that we have covered an overview of what we're doing with RTC's assessment plan, resiliency assessment plan, I will hand things over to John, and he's gonna walk you through the broader five-county effort

24:06 and the work completed in phases one and two. John, take it away, and just let me know when you want me to move the slides. - Thank you, Judith. Again, I'm John Mermin, senior transportation planner at Metro, and I'm the co-project manager of this regional emergency transportation route work, along with Carol Chang of the Regional Disaster Preparedness Organization. My intent is to give you a high-level overview of the project results and ask for your endorsement at the final report. I last presented on this work at the RTC board meeting in June of 2024 in the very early stages of the project, so it feels really good to be back here to share the final results. Next slide, please. So start by how our project defined emergency transportation routes. There are priority surface roads targeted during an emergency for rapid damage assessment, debris clearance or repair, and life-saving and sustaining response activities. A designation may also factor into long-term maintenance

25:05 and investment decisions. We're hoping to see these routes improve to become more resilient over time. Next slide. I'll share a little bit of the history on this topic in our region, starting with the map in the far left. In the mid-1990s, emergency lifeline corridors were designated. Metro formed and facilitated a regional emergency management group made up of elected officials and emergency management planners. They focused on emergency response, preparedness and earthquake hazard mitigation, and identified the six routes on that map on the left. Moving over to the map in the middle, a couple of years later, the same group identified the first emergency transportation routes, which was a broader network than those lifelines. They used relatively simple criteria. Most routes were owned by the state, relatively flat, had a low landslide potential, and served a major population center. And then flash forward about 20 or so years, we get to the map on the far right. There was renewed interest in this topic

26:04 into intervening years. The Regional Disaster Preparedness Organization formed in 2012, and they later approached Metro about jointly leading an update, and the current project emerged. As the map on the far right shows, phase one expanded the scope to five counties to match the geography of the member jurisdictions of the Regional Disaster Preparedness Organization, adding in Clark County, Washington and Columbia County, Oregon. This effort added 89 new routes to the network. Considerations used for defining the network included connectivity and access to important regional facilities like hospitals, connectivity and access to important, to state, sorry, to state emergency routes, and the resilience of a route to multiple natural hazards. Lastly, equitable access to vulnerable and isolated communities. Next slide, please. So a little bit more about this effort. So I mentioned it's a jointly led Metro and RDPO effort.

27:03 The first phase, which completed in 2021, added new routes to the network, as I just mentioned. Phase two, what we've been focused on the past two years has been all about prioritizing and tiering the routes in the network. It's important to mention what's out of scope. We're not developing a regional evacuation or recovery plan, not establishing operational guidelines or making funding decisions with this work. The graphic on the far right is positioning this work as one piece of broader efforts going on at the local, regional and state level related to resilience. Ultimately, this project is about helping provide emergency responders with access to the people who need a medical care, fuel and equipment in the immediate aftermath of an event. Next slide, please. So this slide is showing the key steps in our tiering process. We had a consulting team helping out led by Farron Peers. They reviewed best practices from around the country first, and then we used an iterative process

28:01 to develop and refine our methodology with partners through a quarterly work group of transportation and emerging management staff, three technical workshops with the broader disciplines represented. So we brought in first responders, public works, utilities, and three community-based organization workshops as well to help us develop and refine our methodology. Then we finalized the results based on all that input and developed recommendations for future work. I wanted to mention that our project work group, technical and community workshops all included significant participation from Southwest Washington partners. The project work group included folks from WSDOT, City of Vancouver, Clark County, CRESA and C-TRAN. The technical workshop participants included City of Longview, City of Vancouver, CRESA, RTC, Washington State Department of Transportation again. And there are community-based organization workshops, eight of the organizations who participated

28:58 serve Clark County, and one of them is based in Vancouver. Next slide, please. So all this work led to the results on this slide. I'll walk you through what the map is showing. The tier one routes are the darkest lines on the map. They represent the highest priority routes for damage assessment, debris clearance, emergency response after a disaster. Tier two are the red lines and tier three are orange. Blue are the state routes. They're not tiered as part of our process, but they're important to show as they provide the backbone for the regional routes to connect to. An online version of this map was made available. There's a link in the memo in your packet, which is zoomable, which allows you to see more detail. And it's important to reiterate that the final shared map shown here in our report is consistent with all the prioritized routes in Washington included in RTC's Resilient Assessment Plan that Judith just described to you. Next slide, please. So the final section of the report

29:58 includes a table of recommendations for future work. I'm not gonna walk through all this, but I will provide examples of the first recommendation, which is to integrate these routes into other planning and investment decision-making processes. Next slide. So some examples of this. At the state level, adding references to these regional routes in state plans. For example, in Oregon, the Oregon Highway Plan has a definition of state seismic lifeline routes, which are the blue routes from the previous map. So expanding that definition to include the ramps that connect those state routes to the regional routes, those really important facilities that are prone to collapse in an earthquake. And so it's important that those get upgraded over time. At the regional level and the regional transportation plans, identifying projects along these emergency routes that include elements that increase resilience. For the first time, we'll try to identify the projects that are actually trying to improve the resilience on these routes. And at the local level, elevating resilience and local planning

30:58 through designating local emergency transportation routes that feed into the regional network. With that, I'll hand it back over to Judith. - Thank you, John. So you might be wondering how this work element or connects with your local comprehensive plans that you're working on right now. So in 2023, the Washington State Growth Management Act was amended through House Bill 1181, requiring many jurisdictions to plan for climate resiliency and greenhouse reduction. This includes updates to the transportation and land use elements and the addition to a new climate element. A key objective of this effort is improving the resiliency of transportation infrastructure. RTC's resiliency work directly supports the comprehensive plan update efforts, as well as the long range sustainability and resiliency goal of our regional transportation plan.

31:56 The final product will be a report that prior prioritize transportation routes and also scores them based on vulnerability and importance to system connectivity during and after hazards events. I will return in January or in September, I should say, to share key findings. And we anticipate that this work will be completed in the fall of 2026. So at the March RTAC meeting, RTAC heard this presentation and unanimously agreed to recommend the adoption of the updated regional emergency transportation routes network for Clark County, and also to endorse Metro's regional emergency transportation routes final report. I'm gonna pause here and ask if you have any questions regarding RTC's resiliency assessment plan,

32:54 the regional emergency transportation routes network map, or any of the amazing facts that John covered regarding the report that Metro and the RTPO worked on. - I have no questions, but I have a comment. This is Temple Lens from Port of Vancouver. I'm really happy to see this. I think it looks fantastic and it's really important work. When I was on the county council, I served for a little while with the mayor and others on RTPO. And it was a terrifying experience to be on that board. But this is incredibly important work. And a big question that I had, so I appreciated seeing a glimpse of it in the presentation was what the integration is. I think that's really important. We could do a lot of work to create this plan, but then where does it go from there?

33:54 So there's still a lot of work ahead for figuring out what that needs to be and then how to fund and do all of the work necessary. But I'm pleased to see the snapshot that you had in the presentation. And I'd love to be able to say, I kind of wish that it had been in some of the presentation in the preparation materials so we could have taken a look at it earlier. Would love to get a closer look at that to see what the plans are to bring all the pieces together. But really happy this is going forward.

34:27 - And I would make a motion if there's no, okay. - We didn't share that motion, Director. As the chair of the Regional Disaster Preparedness Organization for Policy, we have seen this. It's been a long time coming. So we are absolutely delighted that this final report is ready to go out and to start working on it. And Temple, you can come back at any time. - But I would move adoption of resolution 04/26/12, the Regional Emergency Transportation Routes map for Clark County and Endorse Metro's Regional Emergency Transportation Routes final report. - I'll second that. - A motion and a second, any further discussion? I think the thing that stuck out to me is it makes no sense if one city clears 502 and the next city doesn't. So the inter-agency work on there obviously

35:27 is a lot of work and it's very obvious how much went into that. So thank you for that. Seeing no discussion, all in favor of the motion on the floor, please say aye. - Aye. - Any opposed? Passes unanimously, thank you. Next, we have their Federal Grant Obligation Strategy. Jennifer. You wanna introduce? - Okay, directors, I'd like to just make an introductory comment. This was added to the agenda after publication last week. It was posted yesterday and it's somewhat of an emergency matter under our grant policies that you'll hear described here shortly. The director has the prerogative to present to the board emergency grant award proposals, in this case, a one-time grant award to three specific projects. The reason for that is twofold.

36:24 One, within the last week, we received our final target number from the state. Up until then, it was only estimated what our target would be. So now we have the final target numbers for obligation. And then earlier on the agenda, an amendment to the tip that the board approved withdrew a grant award from our obligation list. It was a Clark County project, roughly 1.25 million withdrawn, so removed from the tip. So we need to balance these two things. We have a target set and we need to essentially backfill. That's why I've brought this forward as an emergency action so that we can stay on course. - Thank you. I'll just provide a little bit more information and background on this proposed strategy that we have in front of you tonight. Yep, sorry. I don't want, I'm like afraid of the feedback. So I'll try to kind of balance the closeness

37:24 with the feedback. So as we kind of talked about earlier, RTC has responsibilities in terms of the allocation of federal funding that we receive. We are also responsible for making sure that the region meets our obligation target for the federal amount of funding that we do receive. And we have all of these kind of policies outlined in the transportation program and guidebooks. So we'll be talking about policy 4.10 tonight related to that. So this is the list of the program projects that we have again for 2026. And as Matt mentioned on the consent agenda for tonight, unfortunately, Clark County is not able to move that Salmon Creek alignment project forward. And we appreciate that they let us know by the deadline of March. So we were able to kind of pivot a little bit, but it wasn't until we found out our final allocation last week that we could kind of do our full analysis to see where we were at in terms of whether we would meet that obligation target. So these are just the projects that we have programmed.

38:22 Yikes, where'd I go? I'm in the resiliency plan. Oh, there we go. Sorry about that.

38:45 So as we looked at the allocation that we got from WSDOT last week and in consideration of the Clark County project that wasn't moving forward, we looked at the potential or the projects that we have programmed for this year. And if any of these projects potentially were delayed, so we asked the agency to either let us know by the end of the year or March 31st is like the ultimate deadline, March 1st, to let us know if they're gonna have a project delay. And so looking at these projects, although we don't have a lot of higher funding amount projects this year, we actually have a lot of kind of smaller funding amounts, which is a good thing in that sense. But if there's a couple projects that are delayed this year that we're not aware of, if an agency runs into a problem, then looking at the obligation target that we're at, we could potentially find ourselves not meeting the target for this year.

39:44 And then with that, if we don't meet our obligation target, as we discussed, I think at last month's meeting, there's the opportunity to receive additional funding kind of at the statewide level in terms of if other MPO regions aren't able to meet their obligation target, then they could be sanctioned and they could lose funds. Those are redistributed to other MPOs in the state. And then there's also the federal funding that we have the opportunity to receive kind of at a federal level that WSDOT can receive and the additional obligation authority. So we have the City of Vancouver 18th Street project that we're really focused on trying to get additional obligation authority for for this year. So we just really wanna try to make sure that we meet that target, that we can ask for additional obligation authority through WSDOT, through that additional funding that they're allocated. So as I mentioned, the policy in the transportation programming guidebook is policy 4.10. And it outlines different options that we have to consider when we're running into this issue

40:43 of just kind of an immediate need of trying to make some changes and make some adjustments to address a deficit or potential deficit in meeting the obligation target. So there's a couple elements to 4.10. The first one is 4.10.01, and that's looking at the next grant cycle. So that's looking ahead to the coming year and seeing if there's an opportunity to allocate funds to that year. But we unfortunately don't have the ability because this is something that we need to address this year. We don't have the ability. So that would be like if we saw a problem in like two years or something like that, we could work on making some changes to address that. But because we need to get this taken care of by June of this year, that's not an option for us. The next one was 4.10.02, and that's the next priority project. So looking at the list of projects that we had submitted for last year's grant application program, we had two projects that were not fully funded,

41:40 but one was in Click Attack County, and so unfortunately, because it's the surface transportation block grant, the SDBG funding that we have available, Click Attack County isn't eligible for that. And then there's another project that WSDOT has for ramp meters on I-5, but they most likely won't be able to obligate that by June of this year. They're looking at possibly September or October of this year. So that wasn't really an option for us. And then there was the one-time grant award, which we have done. We did that in 2024 to address a potential obligation issue. And we just don't have time to do that because it's already April. If we did a call for projects, and then we would still have to amend the tip and the step, and so that just doesn't give us time for an agency to submit an application and go through that process that we would need to by June. So we come to the one-time bonus option in that policy, where it gives the executive director the ability to identify potential projects that we could have funding directed towards

42:38 to address the shortfall that we're seeing potentially with the obligation authority. So what we identified, there's three projects, and with this policy, it's directed towards either projects that are in right-of-way or construction, so not for preliminary engineering, not for PE. So we looked at that project list that we showed, and there's three projects that are in the construction phase that are programmed for the construction phase in 2026. And we just were looking at projects that were programmed this year, not next year, obviously, because we need to get the funds obligated this year. And so we were just focused on projects that were already programmed in the tip for 2026 in terms of looking at different options. And so there's the C-TRAN/Highway 99 Bus Rapid Transit project. There's the Vancouver Northeast 18th Street project and the WSDOT/SR500/39th Street Corridor Connection project. So we did some quick conversations,

43:36 reached out to agencies last week to see, hey, if we were able to give you some additional funding for this, would you be able to obligate these funds by June? And all the agencies committed that they would be able to obligate an additional amount of funding. So what we designated, or kind of what we defined, was $250,000 for each project. And that would be in SDBG funds, 'cause that's really the program where we got the higher allocation from and where we saw the loss of the Salmon Creek alignment projects. So it'd be for SDBG funds. And so it'd be 250 for each of those projects, and that would give us $750,000 in additional obligation that we would have this year. And so that puts us about in a million or so dollars that we have a cushion for, 'cause when we did the analysis, we were just like $400,000 over our obligation target. And if there was a project delay with any of those projects, really, that could put us basically not being able

44:35 to meet our obligation target. So we typically give ourselves a cushion, about a million to $1.7 to $1.8 million, we give ourselves a cushion 'cause we can obligate extra funds. And so with the 750 and that additional $400,000 that we're already over, that would put us over that 1 million kind of cushion spot that we need to try to make sure that if there's any other project delays, we'll still be okay. So we're just asking tonight for your adoption of the resolution of 426.13, approving the one-time SDBG grant award. We unfortunately, because of the timing, we didn't have the ability to go to RTAC to share this with them. We sent out an email to the agencies on RTAC this morning and let them know we didn't hear any negative feedback, just one Clark County trying to put their name on the list for funding for one of their projects, which is great. So that, unfortunately, we didn't get to go through the formal process of RTAC,

45:35 but we will take that to the April 17th meeting this month, just to go over that with them and make sure that they understand what the change is. Any questions at all? - Quick question, oh, two actually. Jennifer, what is the 39th Street corridor connection? So that's, if you're going westbound on 39th Street, so if you get off, it's that connection between SR 500, if you wanna go north on I-5. So if you're going west on 500, you get off and you gotta do that jog on 39th. It's putting in a right-hand turn lane to try to improve, 'cause it backs up really far from people trying to make that right-hand turn movement to go north on I-5. So it's putting in a right-hand turn lane. - So coming, the right-hand turn lane would come off of SR 500? - No, it would, it'd be on 39th, going north on I-5. So it's that jog, yeah, that you do. Like 500 to 15th, the 39th, yeah. - Got it, okay.

46:34 FMSIB has a bunch of different projects that we are evaluating. And the city of Washougal, with their 32nd Street, it used to be an underpass, now it's an overpass, has asked that their project get bumped up to 2729 instead of 2931. Do we know if they need any additional funding because they are coming to FMSIB for 7 1/2 million? And we can move some things around, but have you heard anything from Washougal about this new change in project? Do they need additional funding there? - Yeah, they do need additional funding, and they are eligible, I think they're still eligible for at least a million dollars within the program that, you know, with the structure that we have,

47:32 'cause we put a cap on the amount of funding that they can request. So they could come in next year when we have a call, assuming we have a call for SDBG funds next year, they could come in for that. But with this, we couldn't provide them any additional funding because they're programmed out into 2027. - Well, the City of Vancouver appreciates the quarter of a million, but we didn't wanna take it away from Washougal, they have been in need for quite some time, so thank you very much. - Yeah. - Any further discussion or questions? Seeing none, I'm gonna entertain a motion for resolution 426.13. - Move to approve resolution 426.13, approving a one-time SDBG grant award bonus of 250,000 for three regionally significant projects currently programmed in the 2026-2029

48:31 Transportation Improvement Program. - I have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all in favor? - Aye. - Any opposed? Passes unanimously. That ends our action items for the evening. We'll move on to discussion information items. Jude is up on Unified Planning Work Program.

49:11 - So the Unified Planning Work Program, or UPWP, is a federally required document developed annually, and it outlines transportation planning activities and tasks for state fiscal year 2027, which goes between July 1st of 2026 and ends June 30th of 2027. So the tasks identified in the UPWP are consistent with the goals and objectives of the regional transportation plan. The UPWP is developed in cooperation with regional planning agency partners and address key transportation priorities and is required to receive federal and state planning funds. The state fiscal year 2027 UPWP builds upon RTC's calendar year 2026 work program, which was adopted by the RTC board of directors at the end of 2025.

50:10 The state fiscal year 2027 UPWP organizes RTC major planning activities into three work elements, the regional transportation planning program, data management and travel forecasting, and the transportation program coordination and management. The regional transportation planning program focuses on plans, programs, and studies led by RTC staff, including the regional transportation plan, the transportation improvement program, and the congestion management program, just to name a few. This work element includes 13 tasks. And this year we added three new tasks, the human service transportation plan update, the regional freight plan, and also the transportation futures visioning effort. Our second work element, the data management and travel forecasting, includes two tasks covering GIS, the regional travel demand model,

51:09 and also related technical services and data support. The last work element, the transportation program coordination and management includes one comprehensive task that covers bi-state coordination, federal compliance, such as development of this UPWP, the public and stakeholder outreach, and internal program management and support. In addition to the main sections that we have in the UPWP, we have four appendixes. Appendix A holds the financial tables. There you can find how much we are budgeting for each work element, which activities utilize consultant services. We also let you know about what type of funding agreements we hold with state and federal agencies. Appendix B is a list of unfunded planning activities. And although these planning activities

52:07 are not currently funded, we maintain the list as a reference for future funding opportunities. Appendix C includes planning studies submitted by state, regional, and local agencies. And the last appendix is a high level summary of Metro's UPWP. And a quick note that a link to Metro's most current UPWP will be included in the final version of this report that I bring to you next month. So this slide shows the UPWP approval process. Last month, we conducted a consultation with federal, state, and regional partners. Their feedback will be incorporated into the next version of the UPWP. RTAC got a preview of the draft UPWP at their March meeting. And the final draft will be presented next week at their April meeting, where we will request

53:06 their recommendation for adopting the state fiscal year 2027 UPWP. I'm happy to answer any questions you might have regarding the UPWP or its process. - Any questions or comments? Not seeing any. Thank you, Judith, for the presentation. That'll bring us to our executive director and RTC procurement policy. - Okay, directors, I'd like to present some proposed amendments to the procurement policy. To set the context, I will now put on the hat of procurement manager, finance director, which is something that a small agency director gets to do a lot of different jobs. And so, large agencies would typically have a whole procurement office managing the affairs of purchasing and so forth. At RTC, it's me in conjunction with a support team,

54:05 as well as our external accounting firm. And we all contribute to the procurement processes and complying with regulations, so on and so forth. The proposed amendments, you'll see, are broken down into two categories. I'm presenting them here as sort of policy and then administrative. If you go into the document that I published, there's a lot of red. And so, let me just orient you to the red, which is the proposed changes. On the policy side, really, there are two primary policy pieces for the board to consider. The first is to address some changes to the purchasing authority, the authority granted to the director, and then the authority that the board retains. And the way that's manifest is, how much can the director approve in terms of purchasing up to a certain dollar amount, and then above that dollar amount, what does the board have to approve as a legislative act? The current policy provides the director's

55:05 purchasing authority is up to 35,000. It's proposed that that be amended to increase that authority up to 50,000. Board members might ask, why, what's the justification for that? I think you can, I think, argue any point of view. My determination and looking at other agencies, for example, some agencies, a large entity, like perhaps the county or a large city, could have authorities vested to a county executive or city executive upwards of several hundred thousand dollars, but given the scope of RTC's budget, I don't think that's appropriate. I think we don't do procurement so often that it would just inundate the board with approval after approval. So I think a 50,000, whether that's the right number, I think it's appropriate given just the cost of goods and materials, for example, I purchased on behalf of the agency, some computers the other day,

56:03 I think the total bill of sale for four computers was about $10,000. So that's just up to 50,000, I think is an appropriate threshold. Looking at other agencies, I think it keeps us accountable and gives the director authority to purchase up to that amount. Of course, the director has to comply with the procedures, but that's one of the key provisions that's being proposed for amendment. The other listed there is a section 12.2, which is to create just a framework whereby the director would be given authority to establish amendments to the procurement policy that are addressing matters such as a scrivener error. There may be a recommended best practice that's published that really doesn't fall into the category of policy. It doesn't deal with spending money. It's more how you administer the spending of money. So the proposal is that the director maintain

57:02 an administrative guidebook and have the ability to amend the policy without board approval for those matters that really relate to just administrative in nature. So hopefully that makes sense. Okay, so those are really, I think, the substantive policy issues. Then there's a whole lot of just administrative and housekeeping. And let me just rattle off a few of those. Again, they're highlighted in red in the published report. They're a series of just moving things around within the document. When I look at it, like anything that's editorial, oh, that should be over here, that should be over there. So there's some moving backwards and forwards just to make it easier, 'cause I'll open it up occasionally and I'll go, well, what should I do? And so just thinking about how this might be used, both whether it's myself or a future director, just stylistically creating the document in a way that just flows

58:02 and reads and sections relate to each other. So there are some movement that way. There are other areas where I've added administrative procedures where they weren't currently documented. For example, what happens when we do a solicitation and we only receive one response or one proposal as part of a formal solicitation? Should we reject those or should the director have the ability to review the single proposal using the basic procedures? Does it qualify? Can they do the work? And so this gives me guidance 'cause frankly that's happened before. And I think it's important to have guidance. If you only receive a single proposal to a solicitation, what should the director do? So we described that. What happens if somebody submits a proposal with mistakes? How do we referee that? If it's like a scrivener error, that's one thing. If it's like a price proposal mistake, that's out of bounds. That should be rejected. So that gives me some guidance in that respect.

59:01 What do I do with confidential information? Is anybody ever delivering to me something where we receive requests from vendors quite often to, for example, give me a copy of all the proposals that you received two years ago? And what they're doing from a marketing standpoint is they're trying to assess what did other people do and how are they presenting their proposals so that then they as a firm, if they pursue work with RTC, can present a better proposal. So is that information confidential? Is it not confidential? I think documenting some guidance that way. You know, what should I do with the disposition of property? Just documenting a policy. I think that's best practice. There are some things in section 11 dealing with what are the contract forms that we use. We use a couple of different contract forms and I think it's just beneficial for the director to have guidance to say, use this form, use that form. And that way, if a contractor rejects our form,

59:59 I look at the procurement manual and I say, sorry, that's the form that we use. That's the guidance that I've been given. All to say, many of these additions are just giving the director better rules of engagement and better instructions for how to administer procurement, how to make it fair and competitive and certainly not be biased in any way. So that's the proposal in front of you. Certainly welcome any questions or thoughts, feedback, probably the most important being the procurement threshold. Does that seem reasonable and subject to the board's input? Return in May for adoption.

1:00:43 - Thank you. - On the procurement thresholds, I think it makes a lot of sense and yes, as everything is going up, that limit should probably go up. But I was curious, do you have examples of any contracts or purchases that you've made that have gotten really close to say that 30,000? Like how close are you to that threshold at this time? - I don't think really close. Like we don't have many that are bumping up to that. And so, because we do so few, I don't have a good series of case studies that I could throw your way. - Thank you. - Okay, so no further questions. This is due to come back to the board in May. That'll bring us back to the RTC personnel policy manual update.

1:01:43 Mr. Ransom. - Okay, directors, I'd like to present now. I'll don my human resources director hat and present some proposed amendments to the personnel policy manual. The personnel policy manual outlines for the director and employees, what the benefits to the agency are, what the rules and engagement in terms of hiring and promotion, payroll schedules, class and compensation, other policies such as ethics. If there would ever be a complaint to be filed against an employee or the agency, how those are administered and then who judges the complaint, so on and so forth. So, it runs the gamut of what you would expect in a policy manual. Each year I review the manual for first and foremost, things where it's out of compliance

1:02:41 or if there's been a new statute adopted where we should pull that into the personnel policy manual. There's an example of that this evening that I'll present. Occasionally we'll get feedback or our accountant will identify best practice. There's an example of that where an employee recognition program is proposed to be documented. And then lastly, one of the commitments that RTC has made is to buy and track consistent with Clark County, their benefit program. And that benefit program includes health benefits, which we purchased directly from Clark County as part of our cooperative purchasing agreement, life insurance policy, so on and so forth. And I'm gonna present a couple of recommendations to modify the benefit program. Okay. So first I'll go there. The employee benefit program, again, when the agency was formed, I describe in the memo,

1:03:40 it entered into a memorandum of understanding with Clark County, that Clark County would be the host for RTC's benefit program, that the payroll and classification and compensation systems would closely match and align. In 2023, I brought to the board some adjustments to the compensation program and classification scheme. The board then adopted those, and those have been pulled into our class and comp system at RTC. There was a phase two to that work that the county didn't complete in 2023, which I'm reporting on this evening. And that phase two was a benefit program adjustment, or excuse me, benefit program study, which then has resulted in some recommended adjustments. The county council has approved those adjustments for their employees in 26. I've looked at that benefit program and the proposed adjustments, and I think they're applicable to RTC, which is why I'm bringing them forward this evening. Next slide.

1:04:37 So rather than me explain all the details of what the Clark County benefit program study did, I'm using slides presented to the county council by the county HR director in January. So that's what these materials are. But I think they most adequately and simply describe what the benefit program adjustments are. Just as a point of context, the benefit program includes all of the employee benefits, life insurance, long-term disability, short-term disability, leave benefits, holidays, longevity, et cetera. So that's what they looked at. They looked at a peer group of, I think, 38 cities, several counties across the Northwest, and made their findings based on the employee groups that they have, which we have many of the similar employee groups, because again, we track their program. Next slide. Okay, let me go to the key takeaways. And this is important for you to understand,

1:05:36 because I believe this to be true, and these are relevant to RTC. The overall benefit offerings, they align with the peers. I think that was one of their findings since we purchased our program. I would have to make that same finding. We don't have any represented employees. We don't have any bargaining units. So any comments to that effect don't apply to RTC. They did identify some gaps where there were some distinctions between, in this example, they say represented and nonrepresented. Really, where the gaps are for RTC is we have several class of employee, and we have employees in different categories. It's almost like building a house and remodeling it. The benefit program over time has been revised, and this was an opportunity for the county to look at it holistically, as opposed to the different pieces. And there are some mismatches that have been created over the year, which we're attempting to rectify. Okay, let's go to the next slide. So anyway, I think these are applicable to RTC.

1:06:34 So one of them is we have a certain classification employee that has a completely different leave schedule. And this is for paid leave, both vacation sick. We have a vacation sick program, and then we have a PTO program. And the proposal is to bring those classification of employee into use the same leave schedule as the other classification. These M1, two, and three is basically an employee group. There's a recommended change on floating holidays. One distinction for RTC is there are certain employee groups now that have three floating holidays and a certain employee group that has two. The proposal is to bring everybody up to three, which is sort of what the county's referring to, but it's set a little bit differently. So then all of our employees would align under three floating holidays. Why it exists right now in a different way is just, again, things were created over time and things weren't synchronized. So this is an attempt to synchronize. Next slide.

1:07:32 One group of employees is not eligible for life insurance benefit. This is life insurance equal to the annual salary up to 150. So that's RTC paid. And why that employee group is not eligible, I don't know, but currently they're not. So it's to bring them into eligibility. And the last is to create an exempt leave program for certain class of employees, use or lose each year. And those are, and that's the proposal. Next slide. So in summary for the benefit side of the proposed amendments, I would agree with this conclusion benefit confirmed strong and competitive benefit package. And I'll say this sort of stereotypically, you know, RTC is not the highest paid employer. I mean, you can go out and find employers that pay a higher wages, but I think a compensatory factor that we offer

1:08:31 is we have a pretty good benefit package. And so I think that's the strong and competitive. And the proposed adjustments are limited, targeted, bring employees more unified as opposed to have all these different categories. The county adopted their benefit changes effective January 1 retroactively. The proposal for the board is that these benefit changes would be effective January 1, 27. So that's on the benefit side. Let me go to the others then and take any questions. There's a gap in our personal policy handbook related to Washington paid family medical leave program. Again, by architecture, Clark County, if I have a claim under this program, Clark County acts as our administrator. So I would send an employee to Clark County confidentially, the Clark County employee would then review the case and send it to the state for disposition.

1:09:27 And the director pretty much is out of the loop because it's a confidential benefit based on somebody's need. And what we need to have in our policy is a statement, which is what this was proposed is to say, we follow the county's policy because what the paid family medical leave act allows is that each agency can determine, well, if you're on paid leave for the state, do you also get paid leave from your employer? Or if you're on the paid leave for the employer, are you then in unpaid status at the, does that make sense? So what we need to do is we need to synchronize RTC's policy in writing to say, we follow the county policy for how they referee, if you're in paid status, unpaid status, and how the director would then officiate. And if there would be a disagreement, how we would work through that. And that's the proposed on paid family medical leave.

1:10:27 Next slide, please. Okay, the last is something that RTC does not have. And I'll say as director, we have employees retire, we have recognitions, but we usually just do that ourselves. Many organizations, and this is allowed in law, Washington law and SAO has some guidance to this effect, which is it is appropriate for an agency to have an employee recognition program. And for example, if somebody were to retire, it would be permissible to purchase some cake and a punch and trying to think like a picture frame, yeah, plaque.

1:11:14 You know, we usually bring like a resolution to the board. The board adopts a resolution recognizing somebody's retirement, but it might be nice to put it in a picture frame and a plaque, something of that nature. The employee recognition policy is to document how de minimis expenses could be paid for by RTC and give the director some guidance in terms of how to administer when those events occur. And candidly, seeing where some employers, you know, offer lavish retreats and part, we're never gonna do that. I mean, we're a government agency, that's just not within the framework that we do employee recognition. But I think something where I have, or somebody in the future has guidance to administer a program is appropriate. And SAO would like to see that as a best practice in the event they look at our expenses and say, what's this for? Well, we say, hell, it's an employee recognition expense. They look at it, they do their measurement of,

1:12:12 you know, de minimis and then all is good. So those are the three categories or proposed amendments to the personnel policy. Take any questions this evening and bring it back to the board for approval in May.

1:12:35 - Matt, I'm curious about the exempt leave, the additional exempt leave policy. So that's on top of and separate from, but regular PTO. How much PTO is available each year for staff without that? - Well, it's broken down into several tranches based on years of experience. So you have a ladder one to five years, you get X number and it's different because we have two groups of employees. We have certain employees based on their tenure that are on the Vacation Sick Program. And so the rates of accrual, it's based on days worked. Well, I can't think of the term. If you're on the Vacation Sick Program, your accrual rate of collecting or being rewarded time off

1:13:33 is lower than if you're on the PTO program because the PTO program can be used for vacation or sick. And so the accrual rates are higher and you can cash out a hundred percent versus the Vacation Sick. I know this is very wonky and maybe not get into the answer to your question. I can send you a table that would give you the specifics. - I think just being able to see the comparison. Yeah, it wasn't a pop quiz. - I understand. - Categorically, there are a lot of different ways to look. - See what is being added. - My understanding having consulted with County HR and had a more full report on their study, the reason for that, the reason for the exempt leave was another employee benefit to account for one compensation scales, typically less than, maybe a pure market scale. When I say pure, if you were to go out

1:14:33 and work for XYZ forum or maybe another government that is a larger government, their wage scales are typically higher. The County and I think RTC are in the middle of the scales. And so the exempt leave was another benefit where an employee could be granted that to be lost if they don't use it each year, which presumptively each employee would use it so that it's not lost, but that that accounts for just, I guess, just another benefit. - No, yeah, it would be helpful to see that. And does RTC have non-exempt employees? - So exempt or professional salary, non-exempt would be hourly. - And so, and I presume that all the salaried folks are making above the state salary threshold of double the minimum wage numbers and just that.

1:15:32 So salaried employees generally already receive a higher. - Than an hourly employee? Yes, in our class and comp scale. If I were to add up, because we don't have a lot of non-exempt classifications and they're typically on the lower end, just the position class is a lower position class, not a professional employee. - Thank you. - I have a question, if I may. How many employees do we have at RTC, exempt and non-exempt? - Right now we have, well, some part-time, but I'm just gonna round up. We have 10 employees, nine exempt, one non-exempt. Four, we had to, we let, phased out a position

1:16:30 at the end of the year, which was a non-exempt position. I think a lot of the tenure staff at RTC have longer career tenure. And what has often happened is they may start at a lower grade, it could be a non-exempt grade, and then just through their tenure, they graduate with experience and then become classified the way our class and comp system works above a certain level of skill they typically convert into a professional or exempt employee. - Thank you. - Any further discussion? As Mr. Ramsey said, let's be coming back to the board in May. That concludes our discussion items and move on to other business. Anything from the board tonight? (coughing)

1:17:26 - Thank you, Mr. Chair. Was delighted to see the Clark County Transportation Alliance updated document. Looks good, and it's the first time I've seen where they're talking about the population will add 500,000 more residents by 2045, and that hits a magic number of ultimately a million people in Clark County. So I would like to suggest that at a future meeting, we begin a dialogue on the 2008 visioning study that said what we would need when we hit a million in population and to see how far along we've progressed with those recommendations and what we should perhaps focus on between now and 2045 for meeting those goals and if they should be adjusted.

1:18:24 - Okay, thank you. Anybody else? Seeing none, Executive Director? - Okay, two updates. One is to report just a quick high-level review of the legislative session which wrapped up in early March, mid-March. I published the Clark County Transportation Alliance 2026 policy statement. Each year, I like to just run through it and recognize areas of legislative activity which coincide or align with either statements made in the CCTA or actual requests for projects and so forth. At a high level, the 2026 legislative session transportation work was focused on the state addressing what is known to be a pretty significant backlog in maintenance for state highway pavement and state highway bridges. And so the work of the legislature provided

1:19:23 just a one-time bump to be spent over the course of three biennium but it was a bump in resources for the state's bridges and pavement program and that aligns with action two of the statement which is a region we support work on the state system and local system but just focusing on the state system for pavements and bridges. We're aware that the department has a pretty significant pavement restoration project on I-5. I think it's to go to work this summer or shortly which is to replace pavements sections on southbound I-5 which anybody that drives that knows in pretty serious condition of disrepair. So I think these resources at the state level just go to whether it's supplements more work or allows emergency projects like the Kamas Slough Bridge paving which is gonna go forward this summer. I think it just provides more capacity at the state level. So I think it was really important work on behalf of the legislature.

1:20:21 If I could just make an observation about action three, there was a lot of work by the legislature to just try and to propose new safety activities. And within the category of traffic safety is just such a pressing public policy issue within the state and also nationally in terms of trying to bend the curve in fatal and serious injuries along the state and local transportation system. So I list here just a couple of examples of work. There were resources committed. There were policies proposed. One that we've discussed with the board in prior meetings which is Senate Bill 6066 which enacts the authority to create a crash prevention zone. And this would be a geographic area on a high risk corridor or a high collision corridor where extra enforcement and monitoring programs, I think even speed

1:21:20 or safety camera systems could be deployed. And what's interesting about this is that then let's say if there were to be fines assessed and paid, those resources then a portion of them would be tied to improvements on that specific designated corridor. So I think it links the nexus between the enforcement activity and then if there were to be fines paid to then go back into a piece of it, the improvements that would try to improve safety. It just seems like good policy. That's a new idea. So we'll see how that might be implemented in the future. And I think the authority to implement runs across all the system types, state system, I think city, county, roadways may all be eligible for that type of a designation. So a lot of work on safety. Of note to us within this region, given that we have a significant interest in the Columbia River, and we have,

1:22:18 the board really hasn't heard a lot of detail about this, but I know our ports within the area, and that would be all along the Columbia River are working with the Corps of Engineers on a dredge deepwater maintenance program and what they do with aquatic structures and some things that I actually don't even know what they are, but there's an agreement that the Corps of Engineers, US Corps of Engineers and the states and the ports need to put together in terms of who pays for what and a significant estimated cost that would have to be borne by Washington State ports. And so there was a commitment on behalf of the legislature in two tranches, $10 million, I think, from the transportation budget and $5 million for the capital budget to be an initial deposit for maintaining that shipping channel, which again, economically and for the vibrancy of our ports is just such an important issue. And the costs that I think we're seeing are just expected to be so large that there's a state interest. And so I think it's just great that the legislature,

1:23:17 in my opinion, put money forward to move the state forward to try to reach some outcome that can be paid for, quite frankly. So those are my points of recap. Certainly welcome any other impressions. I would just summarize by saying, we are going to reprise this statement for 2027. Our partnership with Identity Clark County and all the partners that helped create this statement will begin again this fall. We'll take a look at all the projects. We'll call out for project estimate updates. We'll ask members for their input on other legislative issues that are important that we need to focus on. For example, that dredge maintenance plan was a new idea for this year. It was something that just is so emergent and developing. And I think this was the first year that it showed up on the statement. And again, this statement being a way to galvanize and to work as a group around collective priorities. So that's my report on this session.

1:24:16 Certainly welcome other people's input or takeaways. Okay. And then lastly, I'd like to just make a few comments about activity on the Interstate Bridge Replacement Program. Since our last meeting, I attended a meeting of the Executive Steering Group. That's the regional leaders group RTC sits on. We heard a report from the project about their updated cost estimate and phasing plan. That meeting was pretty high level. There really wasn't a lot of opportunity for input or introspection on that because it was within, I think a week after the department's releasing their updated estimate. I attended a press conference that the governor convened just to participate and to listen to the governor's report and others, Mayor McEnerny-Ogle made comments at that meeting just about the importance

1:25:14 of trying to move that project forward. I've since signed the final environmental impact statement. I believe it's been submitted to the federal agencies, will be published in the federal register sometime this month, I believe. And so that would be the official kickoff of the federal review process. And then I have invited the interim administrator, Carly Francis, to report to the board of directors at the May meeting. It's expected that she would report in greater detail about the cost assessment and phasing plan. Unfortunately, scheduling prevented her from being here this evening, but I think that that would be a timely report at the May meeting and certainly entertain any questions or comments about that. I've attached to the memo a folio that the project has published, which is a high level, two page summary describing the updated cost estimate and what the program is proposing. When I say program, primarily WSDOT and ODOT at this point is the lead proponents.

1:26:14 What they're proposing is the initial phasing plan. I suspect, like we've discussed at the board in prior meetings, that the phasing plan will evolve and morph, the by-state legislative committee has not yet met. I suspect that they would have input as it relates to phasing a cost. And so I think those conversations, I believe they'll just mature over the course of the next couple of months to give the program a focus. What are the first activities that they should get going on based on funding available? - Thank you, Chair. The Vancouver City Council is going to recommend that the core elements extend the LRT beyond the waterfront 70 foot elevator and connect it to C-TRAN's current and planned bus system at Library Square. And we would like to bring that conversation back to this body.

1:27:13 We feel that it is absolutely essential that instead of light rail coming to a stop, that it comes to a station where C-TRAN buses can help individuals transition from a bus to the light rail and not at an elevator. So we would like to bring that back in May. - Matt, you said that you had signed the final environmental impact statement. Can you provide at least me and anybody else on the board a copy of that document? - Yeah, I don't have a public release copy. So the mechanism is the program provided signatory agencies a non-public copy of the final document. I reviewed it, the RTC team reviewed it.

1:28:13 I gave my signature saying that I thought it qualified as a worthy EIS, you know, documented all the things that I think needed to be documented. So the public release should be forthcoming. So I'm not able to provide a public release version of that document at this point. 'Cause I don't, I actually don't have one. I was able to look at it. I was not able to download it. - Anybody else? Okay, seeing no more, thank you for all the participation this afternoon, especially our citizen commenters. Our next board of directors meeting is Tuesday, May 5th at 2026 at 4 PM. This meeting is adjourned. Thank you. (upbeat music)

1:29:22 (upbeat music continues)