Report on Brewster's "Independent" Freeway toll road review July 19, By Mark Kilgard

I attended the nearly 3 hour Mobility Alternative Finance Study (MAFS) meeting today (July 19) at Austin city hall.

Committee Attendees (sitting left to right): man perhaps proxy for who?, CTRMA Board Member Dr. Johanna Zmud, CTRMA Executive Director Mike Heiligenstein as proxy for Bob Bennet, man perhaps proxy for who?, a woman proxy for Representative Mike Krusee, Austin Council Member Brewster McCracken, Mark Strama, Hays Commissioner, and Travis Commissioner Gerald Daugherty. There were no formal introductions or name cards so I'm not sure who everyone was that were proxies. Michael Aulick (CAMPO Executive Director) facilitated the meeting.

Also attending in the audience: Ben Wear (Austin Statesman), Richard Reeves (citizen), Bruce Byron (transportation consultant), Rich (Brewster's aide), Daugherty's aid (Bob?), and others. The total audience was less than 20 total.

Before the presentation got started, Michael Aulick discussed the future schedule for meetings. Michael proposed cancelling all the next 3 meetings from August to October. As proposed, on Nov 15, the MAFS board would meet to hear the "Draft Final Report presentation" from CRA and take public comment on the draft report. (This is two days after the Nov 13 CAMPO meeting.) Then proposed the Dec 6 MAFS meeting would "take comment from citizen appointees" and (presumably vote to) "Accept Final Report". Then Dec 11, CAMPO would meet and hear the "MAFS Final Report Presentation".

Gerald Daugherty wondered if that was reasonable time get public comment, particularly from citizen appointees. The discussion was left that the 3 canceled meetings would be made tentative in case more work comes up.

Most of the meeting consisted of Jon Bottom, the CRA lead consultant from Boston, reviewing a slide deck titled "Mobility Alternative Finance Study: Background to the Analysis of the Phase 2 Tool Plan". Brewster says the slides will appear on the city web site. Rich (Brewster's aide) provided hard copies of the slides to the audience.

The long presentation was simply informative background. Very little of the material was specific to Austin. The introductory material was boiler-plate "fewer gas tax dollars after inflation when road costs are exceeding inflation" at a national level. The material about Austin was comparing Austin to other peer cities on the basis of population, toll rates, percent tolled freeway lanes, and travel time index. Then a tolling-oriented discussion of "possible responses to funding and congestion issues". The slides ended with a glossary (at Dr. Zmud's prior request) and a list of references to peer city toll projects.

Brewster used a good deal of the second half of the presentation for questions to the CRA consultant who was unable to be specific with his answers. Reasonable questions Brewster asked never had direct answers.. The meeting started a little after 10:00 and broke up about 12:40 after many of the board members had already silently left.

Also on the schedule for the meeting was "Consider: a) Public outreach and input opportunities and b) Appointment of citizens for the purpose of public comment". Given how long the meeting happened this never happened. This means there is still no formally appointed group of citizens for the process. This is a personal disappointment to me as I've attended every meeting and every meeting has deferred any formal citizen's involvement.

"New business" was listed on the agenda but obviously that didn't happen either.

After the meeting, there was a "post meeting" with the CRA consultants. I had to go to work so I skipped this (not even sure if I would have been welcome).

What disappointed me most about the CRA presentation was that nothing CRA was providing seemed at all specific to the Phase 2 Toll Plan. It was all very, very high-level stuff. CRA is being paid approximately $300,000 for their insights and after many months, I didn't observe much insight being gained from the process so far.

- Mark Kilgard