REGIONAL MEETING MINUTES

Wednesday, January 15, 2002 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.  ________________ 1. Announcements: · Meeting regarding Market Street improvements in SF on Thursday, Jan. 23rd, 6-8pm at LGBT Center. · League of Women Voters Symposium: Bay Area League Day, January 25th. Topic: Crisis in Regional Transportation Funding. 9am-12:30pm at the James Irvine Foundation Conference Center, 353 Frank H. Ogawa Plaza in Oakland. Cost: $10.00. For more info see the League's website (www.lwvba-ca.org).   · Anti-war rally this Saturday, Jan 18. March begins at 11am in several locations; rally at 1pm at Civic Center Plaza. · Willie Kennedy has resigned from the BART Board; the resulting opening will be filled by an appointment by the remaining members of the BART board. · California Alliance for Transportation Choices (CATC) meeting: Wednesday Jan 22nd in Sacramento. · Contra Costa County's cities decide to change their representative to MTC. Mayor Sharon Brown of San Pablo will be replaced by Mayor Irma Anderson of Richmond. 2. Initiative Updates and Discussion a. VTA bus cuts/$6 billion deficit VTA will make a decision on their revised budget due to their $6 billion deficit. Based on current projections and spending, VTA will be completely broke by the end of June. Various scenarios are being reviewed as possible options for how to deal with the deficit. Thus far, BART to San Jose has not been taken off any of the projected scenarios. VTA has come up with a variety of scenarios: one slows down capital projects but ends up with a $130 m. deficit; another cuts bus service by 70% and still leaves a smaller deficit. VTA's only scenario that would completely eliminate the deficit is one that cuts bus service by 95% and slows down all capital programs except BART. At the meeting, we discussed possible recommendations to include in a policy paper Stuart is writing on this - get in touch with him for details. b. Bridge Toll Increase Sen. Perata is going to wait until March to introduce the bill in the state legislature, and spend the intervening time to rally support among Bay Area legislators. We discussed how to rally support for the projects we support now, and the need to defend against likely attempts to water down the proposal in the legislature. Members directed staff to start educating the broad TALC membership about the bridge toll campaign. 3. Safe Routes to Transit Robert Raburn presented an update on Safe Routes to Transit (SR2T). EBBC, other bike advocates, and TALC put together as a proposal for the bridge toll increase, and it made it into the current bridge toll list. As part of the bridge toll initiative, SR2T will only funds projects that improve access to transbay transit. The prioritized list of projects amount to a total cost of about $130 million ($55 million capital, $75 million operating). This represents about 7% of the entire bridge toll budget. In terms of cost-effectiveness, it would cost about $.50 per person to get people out of their cars and into some form of alternative transit. These programs can make great use of transportation dollars. Send letters to Senator Perata to support the Safe Routes to Transit Program! A sample letter and fact sheet on SR2T are included in this meeting's agenda packet and are posted on the EBBC website (currently at http://www.ebbc.org/resources.html) and will be posted soon on the TALC website (www.transcoalition.org) in the Bridge Toll section. 4. 6th Annual Coalition Summit This year's summit will be held on March 22nd. Senator Boxer will be the keynote speaker! This is exciting because TEA-3 is happening this year, and Senator Boxer wants to be one of the lead environmentalists on it. She intends to introduce a "Green-TEA" version of the bill. a. Breakout Sessions Breakout sessions are the time when people help set TALC's agenda for for the coming year. The meeting brainstormed several ideas and solicited volunteers for possible breakout groups: · Smart growth: train people to advocate locally OR discuss zoning and local laws that affect it. (Volunteers: John H, David S, Adam M) · Regional gas tax (Doug L) · State budget crisis as opportunity: VLF, gas tax · Bike-ped issues: pass Safe Routes to Transit (Robert R) · TEA-21 reauthorization (Michelle J, John B, Andre S) · State smart growth legislation: possibly followup to AB857 · TALC strategic direction on smart growth & housing · Regional Planning in the Bay Area: possibly followup to SB1243, ABAG/MTC merger, 15-county region, etc. (Irvin D, Ken B) · Bridge Toll Campaign: train people who aren't familiar OR have a campaign planning session (Doug L) · City Car-Share (Adam M) · Air quality, Lawsuits, the TIP process, and how it affects transportation · VTA's fiscal crisis (John C) · Transportation Justice · Transportation for a Livable Region initiative b. Awards Ceremony The group agreed that we should have an awards ceremony, as we did at last year's summit. Nominations sheets were passed around. You can also find them online at TALC's website. Send nominations ASAP! Nominations will be considered at the February Board meeting (Wed Feb 5) to give the winners enough notice about the event so that they can attend and receive their awards! 5. TEA-3 Reauthorization Kristi Kimball of STPP provided a presentation on TEA-3. Calendar overview: The Bush administration's draft bill will not be ready until early March. This would either imply that they will work extremely fast to have it done by September, or they will pass a one-year continuing resolution and hold off until next year for the full debate. If things go as expected, this Spring will be the most important time to weigh in. If they do hold off, the additional time could benefit us. Process overview: In the House, the entire TEA-3 process will take place in one committee (Transportation & Infrastructure). In the Senate, the process will occur in 3 committees (Environment and Public Works, Commerce, and Banking). With Republicans in control of both houses and all committees, it looks like the TEA-3 process will be a very defensive fight. Proposals: Some are proposing removing the transit title completely from the bill, leaving it to be passed separately. Some are proposing raising the gas tax (and indexing it to inflation), but also propose an even higher percentage to highways and a lower percentage to transit. STPP's main focus right now is rallying the Democrats to make sure they support livable communities, not just more highway spending. Specifically, during the week of February 7th many legislators will be home: please contact at least Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, and Diane Feinstein with calls, letters, and visits. Key issues include defending good programs in TEA-21, requiring more accountability before distributing funds, improving the formula programs (JARC, paratransit, rural transit), requiring MPO's to do smart growth strategies, and strengthening New Starts criteria on TODs. For more details, see the two fact sheets Kristi handed out: "Social Equity and EJ issues in TEA3" and a "TEA-3 Campaign Action Calendar". Contact her for a copy if you didn't get one in the meeting (kkimball@transact.org). 6. Smart Growth Process and "Best and Worst Developments" Report ABAG was originally going to make a decision in March as to which vision they were going to adopt-smart growth or status quo-for their 2003 projections. The smart growth vision essentially had two major components: how much growth will occur and where growth will occur. After some debate among cities, ABAG decided on a compromise. They will present only one set of projections for 2003. It will mostly incorporate the smart growth alternative's vision for where growth will occur, but it not how much. This means the region will still assume it will be importing hundreds of thousands of commuters from outside the region. We discussed the impact this could have on TALC's proposed "Best and Worst Developments" report. Since ABAG's March decision is no longer as big a deal, it doesn't make sense to do a big press conference to release it soon. By unanimous vote, members agreed to postpone "Best and Worst" and roll it into the Transportation for a Livable Region report TALC expects to publish in early summer. In addition, many suggested organizing an action at the ABAG meeting to criticize ABAG members for watering down the smart growth vision. "Chicken" suits, anyone? Joyce R & Rachel D volunteered to help coordinate the action. 7. Adjourn meeting