{"id":529,"date":"2013-11-17T16:55:06","date_gmt":"2013-11-17T21:55:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.granitestatefutures.org\/?p=529"},"modified":"2016-08-14T13:20:11","modified_gmt":"2016-08-14T17:20:11","slug":"public-participation-at-rpc-meetings-weak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/granitestatefutures.org\/news\/2013\/11\/17\/public-participation-at-rpc-meetings-weak\/","title":{"rendered":"Public Participation at RPC Meetings Weak"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Linked below is a PDF of two action items brought before the Strafford Regional Planning Commission (SRPC). <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.granitestatefutures.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/SRPC-public-comment17112013.pdf\">SRPC Public Comments 2013<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Here is a list of acronyms to help you understand the content:<\/p>\n<p><strong>SMPO:<\/strong> Strafford Metropolitan planning organization: the SMPO is an area designated as a transportation planning region. It&#8217;s boundaries are set by population and are required by the Federal Highway Act. <\/p>\n<p><strong>GIS:<\/strong> Geographic Information System: This is the nomenclature given to a layered computer database of area infrastructure.<\/p>\n<p><strong>CMAQ:<\/strong> Congestion Mitigation Air Quality: this is a funding source from the federal government that is appropriated for transportation projects that reduce pollution.<br \/>\n<strong><br \/>\nTIP:<\/strong> Transportation Improvement Plan; Amendments are triggered when there is a change to an existing transportation project. Each must go through a public comment period of 30 days and be voted on by the Commissions policy committee. <\/p>\n<p><strong>NHDES:<\/strong> New Hampshire Environmental Services<\/p>\n<p><strong>Federal Highway Act:<\/strong> The congressional act that supports transportation infrastructure.<br \/>\n<strong><br \/>\nTitle VI. Civil Rights Act:<\/strong> Added to the transportation act to incorporate <strong>social and environmental justice<\/strong> to aid in a fair and equitable inclusion of underserved populations regarding transportation project.<\/p>\n<p>The public comments section on page 3 lists the comments received by the public. There were only two  respondents. <strong>One is the NHDES representative on the SMPO and the other is a SRPC member town commissioner.<\/strong> We don&#8217;t consider this adequate public comment as required by the Federal Requirement  for fairness and equity under the Federal Highway Act and Title 6.<\/p>\n<p>This is not a &#8216;consensus&#8217; of the people by any stretch.<\/p>\n<p>And so it goes&#8230; same for the listening sessions and charettes, more often they are attended by the very members of the boards and commissions themselves or, their paid facilitators.   <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Linked below is a PDF of two action items brought before the Strafford Regional Planning Commission (SRPC). SRPC Public Comments 2013 Here is a list of acronyms to help you understand the content: SMPO: Strafford Metropolitan planning organization: the SMPO is an area designated as a transportation planning region. It&#8217;s boundaries are set by population [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/granitestatefutures.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/granitestatefutures.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/granitestatefutures.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/granitestatefutures.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/granitestatefutures.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=529"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/granitestatefutures.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2009,"href":"https:\/\/granitestatefutures.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529\/revisions\/2009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/granitestatefutures.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/granitestatefutures.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/granitestatefutures.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}