CALIFORNIA CITY – During the May 12th Calif. City Council meeting, a short presentation was done by the Kern Council of Governors concerning the Regional Transportation Plan or RTP 4-Year Update. Each council member was given a packet which included the plan.
Kern COG Planning Director Rob started out by saying that the Kern Council of Governors consists of a board of directors, including one representative, elected representative from each of the 11 incorporated cities and two of the county supervisors from this area (Mayor Hawkins and 2nd District Supervisor Chris Parlier).
“So, the COG board that I work for decide how to spend our gas tax and other revenues and the other gas transportation related revenues in the region. The first step in identifying transportation project is to get included in a 20 plus year long range transportation plan. The projects that have been advanced are funded identified are then included in a short-term improvement program; first it gives you a long-range plan then in the short-range plan projects must be in the long-term plan before they can be added to the short-term plan.”
He went on to say that the council of governors is concluding the federally required four-year public outreach process that has garnered input from over 10,500 residents in Kern County on how we should expand the $14 billion in gas tax and other related revenues for the long-term plan. “Half of the input from this outreach process came from 50 public workshops over the past four years including both online surveys and City Council board presentations of which California City is the first one in the series” he said.
Rob also said that there are projects in Southeast Kern County (but never mentioned what the projects are) that include the communities of Rosamond, Mojave and Calif. City and they have to be ready to go projects and the next in line projects.
“Those don’t have funding yet identified but we can begin working with you guys trying to find funding go after grants and that type of thing. What we’ve heard in our outreach process is that we should be maintaining, fixing and finishing what we have in terms of a transportation system, but we’re still required to do the public outreach” Rob said.
Rob also said that the southeast Kern County area is about 5% of the county population and of the earlier expenditure subtotals, the southeast area is benefitting from about 13% from expenditure totals. “We’re scheduled to be back here again in four years with the update to the plan as I was here four years ago and note that any forecaster planned greater than five years is not likely to be very accurate. That concludes my presentation, thank you for having me”.