Wednesday, November 8, 2017

Just Growth #7 Work Group Recap

At Monday’s #JustGrowth work meeting, we were joined with 15 other partners – CBOs, government agency staff, elected offices  to discuss what is happening with the Metro Policy Advisory Council, Long Range Transportation Plan and more.

As the December deadline to adopt the Multiyear Subregional Programs (MSPs) administrative processes/guidelines, approaches – critical discussions are happening surrounding performance measures and public participation requirements.  The MSP’s are a brand new regional program that represents over 25% of Measure M,  this was the focus of our meeting.

See our presentation and comment letter we drafted for the group discussion.  

At the time of this work group meeting, the Metro Policy Advisory Council (PAC) had yet to decide on MSPs guidelines regarding performance measures and public participation. 

Using Metro’s baseline performance measures the group discussed which measures were necessary in moving towards a shared regional goal. Investing in Place led with the following framework recommendations:

Performance Measures

  • At least one shared regional quantitative measure
  • Subregional flexibility for additional measures
  • Metro provide technical assistance

Public Participation

  • Minimum of two public in-person hearings for all projects
  • Require a non-governmental seat in a decision-making role
  • Encourage partnerships with local community based organizations

In small groups we discussed which performance measures were necessary and for the exercise, ranked from most necessary with pink post-its, to more necessary with green post-its, and necessary with blue post-its.

From the post-its alone, it was clear our groups could not say one measure was more important than another, and that transportation equity was missing.  Key areas of agreement that surfaced, were the need to use VMT, vehicle miles traveled, to address how we are measuring our impact that touches issues like GHGs and safety – Sheila from Trust South LA suggested using performance measures that combined evaluating a projects impact on reducing VMT and if it served Disadvantaged Communities – which all agreed was an idea to pursue further.

Identifying regional performance measures – where there are meaningful data sets, policymaker support and PAC agreement is turning out to be a heavier lift than many would of thought. Investing in Place is grateful to our partners who joined us this week to be a sounding board and provide their ideas on these issues in advance of the November PAC mtg.

Stay tuned for our next meeting – we hope you will join us!

 



How do we know how far we've come, if we don't measure where we're starting?

by Investing in Place

Shared Goals, Different Strategies - November Metro Policy Advisory Council (PAC) Meeting Recap

by Investing in Place