Workshop Item Dan Schluender, City Engineer
Title
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Traffic Commission Discussion and Review - Joint Workshop With The Traffic Commission and the City Council
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Executive Summary
Staff is seeking input from both the City Council and Traffic Commission on potential modifications to the purpose, objectives, and schedule of the Traffic Commission. Specifically, staff is looking for direction from the City Council and Traffic Commission on what the schedule for Traffic Commission meetings should be and what, if any, expanded role(s) Traffic Commission should have beyond the current role of reviewing neighborhood traffic concerns on local streets, define issues, review alternatives, look at costs, hold public hearings and make recommendations to the City Council.
Background
The City Council had previously asked for a review of roles and schedule of the Traffic Commission. At the February 23, 2022 City Council workshop staff presented:
• Summary of the last two years of Traffic Commission meetings
• Directives and role of the Traffic Commission
• The traffic complaint response process that the Police and Engineering Departments currently utilize for resident complaints and issues.
Council discussed there being value in having a Traffic Commission, the current commission was underutilized and that perhaps the role of the commission could be expanded in some way. Staff recommended that a future workshop discussion between the City Council and Traffic Commission be scheduled to discuss the role of the Traffic Commission.
On May 3, 2022 staff held a meeting with the Traffic Commission to discuss what the members felt the commission’s role should be and what a reasonable meeting schedule frequency could look like. Four of the five currently appointed commissioners were present for this meeting and staff received good feedback from the commissioners.
In both 2020 and 2021 there were three Traffic Commission meetings held each year, all the other meetings were canceled due to lack of items. All commissioners agreed that the current process of a standing scheduled monthly meeting which routinely gets canceled was not the way forward. Staff presented two ideas for meeting schedules; going to a quarterly meeting schedule or an ad-hoc schedule that would meet as necessary.
Quarterly meetings would be on a regular schedule and would result in less meetings being canceled due to lack of items. The downside could be that depending on when an item for the Traffic Commission was received, it could be up to three months before the commission would meet on the item unless a special meeting was called for and held.
With an ad-hoc Traffic Commission meeting schedule, a meeting would be scheduled for the first Tuesday of the following month as soon as an item needing commission review came forward. This method would eliminate the need to cancel any meetings and ensure items were addressed within a month of coming forward.
In addition to the above schedule discussion, a discussion was held on the potential of creating an ad-hoc informal committee consisting of less than a quorum of traffic commission members and staff liaisons from the police and engineering departments where staff would work with the resident to schedule a time to meet with the informal committee and discuss their traffic issue. The publicly televised regular Traffic Commission meeting can be an intimidating forum for some residents, and this would be another avenue for residents to be heard in an informal setting. This would be a useful process for times when a resident wants to talk to someone besides staff and isn’t willing to go before a formal public commission meeting on camera. The informal committee could then direct their recommendation to the full Traffic Commission or even directly to the City Council. This informal committee could be utilized no matter what is decided on for the meeting schedule of the full Traffic Commission. The commissioners indicated that they would be willing to participate in this type of informal committee.
Staff also asked the commission members for their thoughts on the role of the Traffic Commission and any suggestions for expanding the role. The commissioners agreed that if traffic issues could be successfully handled at a staff level, there was no need to bring the issues to the Traffic Commission. There was no consensus from the commissioners on what specific additional roles the traffic commission could take on beyond the already covered neighborhood traffic concerns on local streets, the vast majority of which get solved at a staff level.
Discussion Questions for the City Council/Traffic Commission
• Most traffic issues that residents report to the city are being handled at a staff level and thus do not need to go before Traffic Commission. As such staff is recommending that if the Council wishes to continue forward with having a Traffic Commission, meetings should be reduced from the current every month schedule. What is a reasonable meeting schedule?
• Does the Council and Traffic Commission support instituting an ad-hoc informal committee of a few commissioners and a representative from both PD and engineering to allow residents to bring forth issues in an informal setting as needed?
• What areas of traffic review are being under served by the commission and what traffic commission expansion would the Council and Traffic Commission want to see for the Traffic Commission?
Attachment List
1. Ordinance establishing Traffic Commission
2. Commission Directives (Do’s and Don’ts)
3. Traffic Commission Meeting History 2020-2021
4. Police & Engineering resident complaint resolution process