Leon County Commissioners met at the Tallahassee City Hall Commissioner Chambers to discuss the Connections 2040 Regional Mobility plan.
This project includes road, bicycle, pedestrian and other various transportation improvements.
The commissioners voted on the criteria that will be used to evaluate which projects get funding over the next 25 years. Capital Regional Transportation Planning Agency (CRTPA) designed the plan and was in attendance to offer expert explanations and answer questions.
Jack Kostrzewa, CRTPA’s planning manager, explained how the commission’s decisions helped the agency continue the planning process.
“What the board did was they adopted a criteria to measure these projects so that we can move forward and prioritize the projects,” Kostrzewa said. “Then next month we’ll be taking a look at the revenues and applying the revenues to the projects.”
For any project to be eligible for state or federal dollars they have to be ranked in a priority list. The ranking system criterion is specifically what was voted on. The plan covers transportation projects in the Leon, Jefferson, Wakulla and Gadsden County.
Kristin Dozier, the Commission Chair, considered the importance of having a process in place to make important decisions.
“Any community that has over 50,000 people has to have a metropolitan planning organization and this is what [the meeting] is,” Dozier said. “We have to go through this process.”
Dozier described how the process has also been revamped.
“We are changing some of the criteria, I’d say modernizing it in a lot of ways,” She said. “Making sure that we’re really looking at all the different plans that the individual communities have and making sure that we’re really incorporating the priorities and the general values of the communities.”
Tallahassee Commissioner Curtis Richardson, the only commissioner that resides south of Gaines St. discussed the projects around FAMU’s campus.
“We’re looking at some improvements to the South Adams, South Monroe street corridor around the Florida A&M campus.” Richardson said. “Making the area much more pedestrian and bicycle friendly, we want to encourage people to walk and ride bicycles rather than use cars.”
The Board of Commissioners passed all motions for criteria unanimously.
Notably absent from the meeting was Commissioner Bill Proctor who decided o not attend the meeting in protest. Proctor stated in an email that he is not satisfied with the progress of the repair work being done to Orange Ave.