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FY 2021 Recommended Wake Transit Work Plan
Bret Martin, MPO Staff
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At its April 22, 2020, regular meeting, the Wake County Transit Planning Advisory Committee (TPAC) recommended a fiscal year (FY) 2021 Wake Transit Work Plan to CAMPO and the GoTriangle Board of Trustees for their consideration of approval in June. In preparation for a June consideration of approval, CAMPO staff provided as information an overview of the FY 2021 Recommended Wake Transit Work Plan to the Executive Board at its May 20th regular meeting. The Executive Board also held a public hearing on the FY 21 Work Plan at its May meeting. No public comments were received at the public hearing. A copy of the TPAC-recommended FY 2021 Wake Transit Work Plan is included as Attachment A. The FY 2021 Recommended Wake Transit Work Plan was released for a 30-day public comment period on May 15th that will run through June 14th.
Annual Wake Transit Work Plans contain a number of elements that work to authorize and institutionalize Wake County Transit Plan implementation investment decisions, including:
1) Annual operating and capital budgets and corresponding ordinances;
2) Annual updates to a 10-year multi-year operating program for future operating expenditures;
3) Annual updates to a 10-year capital improvement plan (CIP) for future capital expenditures;
4) Annual updates to the transit plan’s supporting financial plan and model assumptions; and
5) Capital and operating funding agreements that support and are supported by the annual budgets.
For the TPAC-recommended FY 2021 Wake Transit Work Plan, all of the aforementioned elements are included in Attachment A with the exception of the annual capital and operating funding agreements. The TPAC-recommended project agreement structure, including groupings of projects for each agreement and required reporting deliverables for each project type, is provided as Attachment B.
In transitioning from the FY 2021 Draft Wake Transit Work Plan released by the TPAC for public comment in January to the most recent TPAC-recommended version, an unfortunate but important reality to note is the FY 2021 Recommended Wake Transit Work Plan’s response to uncertainty regarding public transportation sales tax collections during and recovering from the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. With social distancing and ‘stay-at-home’ measures to control the spread of COVID-19, economic activity in the county has slowed immediately and in dramatic fashion. Out of an abundance of caution, the FY 2021 Recommended Wake Transit Work Plan only reflects immediate investment in a small portion of the new projects or areas of investment reflected in the FY 2021 Draft Wake Transit Work Plan. The remaining projects are assigned to an ‘unbudgeted reserve’ queue that will be revisited in the fall of 2020 when sales tax data for the period most immediately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic will have been acquired to more cautiously inform investment decisions for the remainder of FY 2021 and future years.
Subsequent to the Executive Board’s May meeting, at which CAMPO staff presented the TPAC-recommended FY 2021 Wake Transit Work Plan as information, GoTriangle finance staff recommended a reduction of $995,200 to the amount of vehicle rental tax revenue originally assumed for FY 21 as part of the TPAC recommendation. This would change the assumed rental vehicle tax revenue amount to $3,524,800. This recommendation comes with a commensurate increase ($995,200) to the FY 21 sales tax revenue assumption, which would bring the total assumed amount from sales tax to $29,786,770.
Further, a number of comments have been received in response to the May 15th - June 14th public comment period. Because the public comment period will not end until June 14th, a final summary of comments received will be provided to the Executive Board following the distribution of this staff report and associated attachments early in the week of June 15th.
Requested Action: Action Consider: 1) Approval of the FY 2021 Recommended Wake Transit Work Plan and its corresponding project agreement structure, with the revenue assumption modifications recommended by GoTriangle staff; and 2) Authorize the Executive Director to execute all FY 2021 Work Plan project-level agreements to which CAMPO is a party.