Memorandum

Lawrence-Douglas County Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO)

TO:	David L. Corliss, City Manager
FROM:	MPO Staff
CC:	Cynthia Boecker, Assistant City Manager Diane Stoddard, Assistant City Manager Scott McCullough, Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Director Charles Soules, Lawrence Public Works Director
Date:	January 28, 2009
RE:	Federal Economic Stimulus Package – Projects in the Lawrence

The Lawrence, Douglas County, and MPO staffs have been discussing the proposed Federal Economic Stimulus Package (ESP) with officials from the Kansas Department of Transportation (KDOT) for the last few months. This proposed funding package is now moving its way through Congress and is likely to be approved soon. However, many important details about how this funding will flow to states and local governments are still unknown.

The ESP will include funds for a myriad of infrastructure and other types of projects, including roads, airport, energy, CDBG, transit, and other types of governmental public facility projects.  While KDOT is providing good information on eligibility and process for the road issues, the processes for the other public facility projects are less clear at this time.  Other federal, or their complementary state, agencies we will need to be speaking with include the FAA, HUD, FTA, FHWA, EPA, Homeland Security, FEMA, etc. This memo focuses mainly on the road/highway portion of the ESP potential funds.

The current assumption is that jurisdictions should identify “shovel ready” projects able to be started within 90 days of congressional approval.  KDOT staff has advised local governments to be ready for quick action to capture these dollars once they are made available and to have our MPO documents and local budgets quickly updated as needed to program these funds. We have also been told that this money will be distributed through the regular federal aid process which includes the inclusion of these projects in both the Transportation Improvement Program (TIP) and the Metropolitan Transportation Plan (MTP).

For projects not included in the TIP or MTP, the MPO staff is prepared to make quick updates to the TIP with a 15-day public review period and changes to the MTP with a 30-day public comment period. Since this will be new funding not anticipated when we last approved our MTP in March 2008, we can maintain the required fiscal constraint of both the MTP and the TIP by simply adding this funding and related projects to these documents. In short, we have discussed these MPO planning and programming matters with KDOT and are prepared to move as quickly as the current process will allow to make changes to the MPO documents and program this money for projects in our region.

Another part of this proposed Economic Stimulus Package which could be more problematic is the extremely tight timelines for getting these ESP projects to bid coupled with the need to follow regular federal rules for road, bridge and transit projects. On the one hand, the federal agencies want jurisdictions to follow rules that usually add months or even years to the process. On the other hand, the federal agencies want us to have the projects “shovel ready” in three months. The City, County, KDOT and MPO staffs are still trying to figure out the eligibility for federal aid of the projects proposed to be let within 90 days if we are awarded this ESP funding.  If we follow regular federal processes, an environmental review must be completed and right-of-way must be obtained through a federally approved process. That takes more than 90 days to complete and this may affect projects that could be ready after 180 days. At this point, there may only be a few projects that can meet this 90-day bidding deadline and follow federal rules. If we are allowed to take longer to get a second round of projects ready then we will have many more options. Both the local staffs and KDOT have drafted lists of projects that may qualify for this funding. Those projects in the city are included on the list attached to this memo.

The attached list of projects includes a comprehensive list of infrastructure and other public facility projects that the city believes should be included if the ESP funds become available. Douglas County and other cities are also reviewing whether they have road projects to forward to the MPO to consider including in the necessary transportation documents to be eligible for using the funds.  There is also an attachment from KDOT that outlines their recent review of the Economic Stimulus Package draft and a link to the ESP draft now being discussed by Congress.

In summary, the local staffs and KDOT have been working together on getting our region ready to use these funds if a portion is distributed to the region. With our MPO and local governments working together with KDOT we should be able to use ESP funds for needed road projects in our region.

ACTION: Review the project list and direct staff on its appropriateness and prioritization.

Attachments:

• Economic Stimulus Package - Projects for the Lawrence-Douglas County MPO Area (1-27-09)
• Email from Christy Lane-KDOT MPO Planner with link to draft ESP (1-27-09)
• KDOT Analysis of the House American Recovery and Re-Investment Act of 2009 (1-23-09)
• Email from Davonna Moore-KDOT Urban Planning Manager with brief summary of ESP and link to ESP draft (1-16-09)