How a restructured Metroplan, the long-range transportation planning agency for central Arkansas, will look is coming into focus.
Under the latest proposal, out is the 40-member Regional Planning Advisory Council that has long represented the public outreach arm of the organization, as well as the under-utilized technical coordinating committee, composed of 22 city and county planners, engineers and public-works executives.
In is three 25-member committees: Economic Vitality, Transportation Systems and Community Vitality. Unlike the advisory council, some of the committee members from the broader public will have terms and risk being replaced if their meeting participation falls below 75 percent.
The committees will have a mix of community volunteers that were on the advisory council and the planning and engineering experts on the technical coordinating committee. No member of one committee would be able to serve on another. Like the advisory council, the committee's recommendations wouldn't be binding on the board.
Any recommendations the committees will develop will go to a new executive committee, which will make its recommendations to the Metroplan board of directors, largely composed of the region's mayors and judges.
The effort to restructure Metroplan, which began last fall, is aimed at making the agency more effective at managing future development in central Arkansas. A decision is expected later this year.
A restructuring task force, led by Bryant Mayor Jill Dabbs, spent almost two hours reviewing the new committee structure Wednesday morning.
"The staff has done an excellent job," she said. "They've done the heavy lifting on this. You did exactly what we asked you to do. This was the part of the original proposal that I was most hesitant about. How is it going to work?
"I feel much better about it now. It will be much more functional. What we have now I think was exactly what we needed when we put it in place. But it's certainly time for an update and a rework. I think this gets us there."
The restructuring effort was sparked, in part, by the sometimes-heated debate over 30 Crossing, the proposed $630.7 million project to remake the aging and congested 6.7-mile Interstate 30 corridor through downtown Little Rock and North Little Rock, including replacing the bridge over the Arkansas River.
The project is sponsored by the Arkansas Department of Transportation, but Metroplan, as the federally designated metropolitan planning agency for the region, had some input.
The Metroplan board and an array of outside interests, including the Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce, the Central Arkansas Library System and the Clinton Presidential Center, backed the project.
But a coalition of downtown neighborhood interests and others opposed the project, including the Regional Planning Advisory Council. The volunteer group helped shape the long-range transportation plan for the region, which didn't include a project as ambitious as 30 Crossing.
Members of the council said they felt its work on the transportation plan, called Imagine Central Arkansas, was for naught after board votes to move 30 Crossing forward despite council recommendations.
That disconnect between the board and the council led to the broader restructuring discussion.
"That's what's driving this restructure," said another member of the task force, Pulaski County Judge Barry Hyde. "This organization has decided it wants to be a part of a much broader discussion of regional planning."
In addition to the executive committee, a steering committee will help coordinate the work of the three new committees. Composed primarily of the chairman and vice chairmen of the committees, the steering committee won't have any authority to vet the committee recommendations, which will go to the executive committee.
Representatives from the Federal Highway Administration, the Arkansas Department of Transportation and Rock Region Metro will have nonvoting membership on the committees. The Metroplan board also will have liaisons to each of the committees.
Agency staff members say they believe the new structure will serve the Metroplan board better than the existing structure, which seemed to keep the technical expertise and the public outreach in silos separate from the board.
The new structure would maintain and improve the agency's public engagement, provide direct input into the agency's planning process, provide a strong link between the committees and the board and increase dialogue among the professionals and the members of the public on the committees, according to the agency staff.
The new structure will get "public input to the board as clearly and quickly and as direct as possible," said Tab Townsell, the agency's executive director.
"The fewer filters that it has to go do that, the better," said Hyde, a member of the restructuring task force. "From that point, it's less discussion and more action or inaction. It's not the big broad discussion."
Still uncertain is the precise makeup of the committees.
Hyde said he wanted to ensure not just gender and ethnic diversity among the committee members but geographic diversity as well. The advisory council was appointed by the mayors and county judges separately. Under the proposal considered Wednesday, people wanting to be on the committees would have to apply to the executive committee.
Maumelle Mayor Mike Watson also expressed concern that the committees would be composed of too many people from Little Rock, the state's most populous city and where most of the federal and state transportation dollars are spent.
Hyde wanted at least one more meeting to discuss the committee membership further.
Metro on 06/28/2018