This is a quick summary of the last two meetings of the Community Assembly‘s Pedestrian, Traffic and Transportation (PeTT) Committee from Carlie Hoffman, our neighborhood’s PeTT representative. It provides some context to the discussion about Photo Red funding that took place during the June meeting of the Emerson-Garfield Neighborhood Council.

John Snyder spoke at the May 26 PeTT Committee meeting. He noted that there have been unused funds each year since the program began in 2010, about $200,000 per year.  Each district now gets $150,000 per year (up from $100,000) with a $50,000 limit per project (up from $40,000).

Snyder proposed that the neighborhood councils and the Community Assembly discuss the option of using some of the surplus unallocated funds to help fund a larger project through a loan.

• The loan would be paid back using funds from the unallocated photo-red funds over a set number of years.
• The loan would be created to enable a grant-matching amount so that the total price of a large project (e.g., Mission Gap) would be supplemented.

This concept presupposes that the Photo Red camera project would continue to have an excess of funds each year to cover the loan repayment.

At the June 23 PeTT Committee meeting, this issue was discussed further, and all agreed that the neighborhood councils had concerns about the following three areas of the proposal:

• Sustainability of the Photo Red money
• The larger project’s fit to the purpose and goals of the Photo Red traffic-calming focus
• Involvement of the neighborhood councils in the choice of the projects that would involve unallocated funds.

Two additional documents offer additional information on the Mission Gap project that prompted Councilman Snyder’s proposal and PeTT Committee chair Paul Kropp’s summary of the situation to the neighborhood councils.

If you have questions about this proposal as it relates to Emerson-Garfield, please contact Carlie via e-mail.