Montgomery News

City of Gaithersburg Transportation Committee met May 15.

Here is the minutes provided by the Committee:

1. Call To Order

The Regular Meeting of the Transportation Committee was called to order at 7:00 pm with Member Carol Berger presiding.

Attendee Name Title Status Arrived

Joseph Allen Chair Absent

Richard Arkin Member Present

Carol Berger Member Present

James McNulty Member Absent

Larry Seeger Member Present

Staff present: Engineering Services Division Chief Mumpower, Planner Roff, and Program Coordinator Archer.

2. Approval Of Minutes

A. Regular Meeting held April 17, 2018

Motion was made to approve the above minutes, with minor amendments.

Result: Approved As Amended [Unanimous]

Mover: Carol Berger, Member

Seconder: Larry Seeger, Member

For: Richard Arkin, Carol Berger, Larry Seeger

Absent: Joseph Allen, James Mcnulty

3. Discussion Topics

A. Updates

BRT-

• City staff met with Montgomery County staff to go over our comments regarding the BRT reports.

Vision Zero-

• County data is online.

Gap Study-

• Contracts being finalized in preparation for releasing work to the consultants to begin the various feasibility studies.

Road Code Presentation-

• To be sent out to the development community for their comments

MD 119 Pedestrian Bridge-

• City staff met with representatives from MedImmune to present a concept design for this project.

GIS-

• Planning staff is adding a layer to show the location of bicycle racks in the City.

Montgomery County has expanded its use of colored bike lanes in intersections.

Meeting with other committees-

• It was suggested as part of our outreach to other committees we come up with agenda topics we would like to discuss.

Autonomous Vehicles-

• A brief discussion was held on this subject. The committee indicated they were interested in following discussions on this subject and its possible impact to the City.

B. Bike to Work Day Final Preparations

Final preparations were made for the event.

C. Budget Development Presentation

Staff Liaison Mumpower presented the following:

The City of Gaithersburg owns and maintains a number of assets and prides itself on keeping these in a state of good repair. In addition, periodically it is necessary to expand or reconstruct existing assets to address strategic or operational needs of the City.

The method used to achieve this is through the development of a multi-year Capital Improvement Program (CIP). A CIP is a road map used to:

a. Identify capital projects

b. Schedule their execution

c. Identify needed funding (to be budgeted)

d. Align expenditures with the City’s Strategic Direction

As many requests to fund possible projects are received, it is important that they all be presented for consideration in a format that is consistent. The benefit of this is twofold:

I. Project initiating departments will have a template that can be followed to adequately make the case for capital projects of importance to them.

II. The reviewers of these requests will be able to clearly understand what is being requested and why.

New project requests can be presented at any time during the year but will ultimately be reviewed at part of the next budget cycle during the 4th quarter of each calendar year.

It is important to note that while the multi-year Capital Improvement Program is shown for five years, once the budget is adopted there is limited flexibility in adding projects during the first two years of that five year program.

For example, we are currently moving toward adopting the FY19 budget. Once this has been done, we are generally locked in to the projects shown for FY19 and FY20. New project requests presented between now and the end of the year will be considered for the FY21 budget.

New project requests need to include sufficient information and budget detail to support the request. Project requests will be routed to the Division Chief, then the Department Head for approval, then routed to the Deputy City Manager and City Manager for final approval. If a project is approved the assigned Project Manager will add this to the work plan.

4. Adjournment

There being no further business, the session was adjourned at 8:15 pm

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