National LTAP Association Executive Committee Meeting Minutes
April 17-19, 2007, Baton Rouge, LA
Tuesday, April 17, 2007Attendees: Lisa Harris, Kansas LTAP, Marie Walsh, Louisiana LTAP, Patsy Anderson, Kentucky LTAP, Stuart Thompson, Utah LTAP Mike Burk, FHWA, Jim Grothaus, Minnesota LTAP, Lisa McCluskey, ARTBA, Cameron Ishaq, FHWA, George Huntington, Wyoming LTAP, Ed Stellfox, Maryland LTAP and Bernie Alkire, Michigan TTAP. Lisa Harris called the meeting to order at 9:03 AM. Consent Agenda
Partnership Work GroupMarie Walsh (with hand outs) The APWA Educational Summit was in early April with 75 people in attendance. Based on feedback from a survey done by APWA, the LTAP Centers need to strengthen relationships with their local APWA chapters and look for cooperative programs that will enhance both groups. Several suggestions were made at the summit to achieve better cooperation, including asking that an article be published in the APWA magazine and asking APWA to put a link from its website to the LTAP/TTAP program website. Action: Marie and Dan Cady will take the lead in developing a summit summary and suggestions on best practices for working with local chapters. Target date for completion is the end of May. NACE and ATSSA collaboration: Marie Walsh provided an overview including handouts on the Work Zone Safety grant that ATSSA has obtained to provide low cost work zone safety training to 16 opportunity states. ATSSA's Donna Clark is the contact person for this grant. Suggestions on working with ATSSA included asking Donna Clark and an FHWA representative to make a presentation to LTAP at the national meeting and creating liaisons to get more information. Action: Ed Stellfox to contact Juan Morales of ATSSA to inquire about the grant. Mike Burk from OPCD will follow up with FHWA Safety office on the behalf of the LTAP community. Time frame: follow up within the next two weeks. EC to ask FHWA to act as a liaison to this group to communicate common goals and interests. Mike will look into Center relationships with ATSSA. AASHTO—Marie Walsh reviewed written report and recommendations from Doyt Bolling to give more direction on communications with AASHTO. The EC suggested working on a national level with AASHTO (meeting with their key staff in Washington). Salt Institute—Lisa Harris made a motion to change NLTAPA's relationship with the Salt Institute to a new role under training and resources, to better recognize the intent and value of the relationship and to address longstanding concern about NLTAPA being in an official partnership with a vendor. George Huntington seconded the motion. Suggestions included revisiting the partnership agreement and creating a community of practice. Discussion was tabled and will continue on the next EC conference call and it will eventually go to the membership for a vote. Marie will work on drafting language to change level of relationship. Comments from Louisiana LTAP stakeholders and partners.
League of Cities—Tom Ed McHugh remarked that the LTAP program is valuable but few of his association's districts and members know of it. He suggested that the LTAP community establish relationships by making contact with their local League of Cities directors. He also suggested creating a strong message to clarify what LTAP is doing. Lisa-M noted that the LTAP/TTAP Clearinghouse will exhibit at the National League of Cities National Conference, November 13 in New Orleans. Lisa and Marie will develop a follow up letter to Tom Ed and will look into setting up a meeting in DC. Marie will try to attend their National Conference. State Safety Offices—Dan Magri from the DOTD Safety Division and James Champagne from the LA Governors Highway Safety Commission were introduced. Each gave their suggestions on building better relationships with partners such as state safety reps. Suggestions included: reaching out to create a relationship from common needs. Top concerns are with alcohol deaths, safety restraints, and speeding. Highway safety offices have availability of federal funding and are looking for relationships that can help them meet their core missions. They work closely with law enforcement officials. Data drives their programs and funding opportunities. Mr. Champagne recommended that LTAP Centers let state safety officers know of your mission and how that affects highway safety. Mr. Champagne offered to help with inroads to these safety officials and encouraged LTAP to share data to support their training. He advises face to face meetings are better for establishing relationships. Next steps to building relationships with safety officers: Develop a way of following up and sharing results of your work. George and Marie will develop bullet items for a draft of information on building relationships with safety offices, and Lisa-H will approve send to EC reps to forward to their regions. Lisa will discuss this relationship with Clark. Stuart Thompson presented an overview of a local crash and signage improvement analysis system for collisions developed to link into mapping system to link data. It uses the FARS database. Contact Stuart to download for free. This is an example of a program that you can use to show effectiveness of LTAP programs. NACE—Jim Grothaus reported that he sent a survey to some of his regional local engineer contacts about using NACE action guides. Some are out of date, and the question is: Should they be revised? NLTAPA will pose this question at the NACE board of directors meeting on April 22 to discuss. FHWA-OPCD updateStrategic Planning. Cameron Ishaq provided an update on the Strategic Planning Committee (SPC) meeting held in Austin and the RnR meeting in Ft. Collins. These meetings took a look at RnR and a broader look at the strategic plan to ensure that they complemented each other. Next steps: once changes are approved by their respective committees, they will be presented at LTAP Regional meetings. The RnR committee suggested changes to the CAR, and the SPC will consider them. The revised PAR forms will be leaner overall, and will have a few new additions. NLTAPA has been asked, on behalf of the SPC, to ask Centers to poll their advisory boards or customer groups to provide feedback on services LTAP should be providing in the future. This to take place before the annual meeting. LTAP Roles & Responsibilities Update. Cameron reported that the RnR group met to identify changes and need for revisions to the RnR document. Review period changes made after the meetings still going on. Mary Stringfellow suggested asking FHWA division offices for input on RnR and PAR formats. AASHTO follow-up. The EC suggested to: start an LTAP working group on AASHTO, participate on their safety committee, identify a person to facilitate an introduction. Marie will investigate the best way to approach this. A letter that was supposed to be sent in January is being worked on. EC reviewed Doyt's summary and recommendations about relationship. A joint letter will be sent from NLTAPA and OPCD, ASAP. Marie will coordinate with Col. Champagne on the best way to obtain an invitation to participate on the committee. NLTAPA to solicit feedback from how centers are currently working with AASHTO. Mike Burk suggested setting up a face-to-face meeting with Lisa H. and AASHTO representatives in DC. LTAP business plan (hand outs). Mike Burk led a brief discussion about FHWA's draft business plan for LTAP. Comments: the draft lists major efforts but does not read like a business plan. It needs more detail, along with milestones for completion and who will do what. Further comments from the EC to Burk are due by end of April or the first of May. Burk asked for comments on ranking the items by order of importance. International tech transfer. FHWA-OPCD is clarifying the role LTAP will play in the program. Harris asked that this task be completed ASAP. LTAP Clearinghouse report. The new website is the major project right now; details on the site will be provided at the regional meetings. Centers will be asked to comment on the changes through email, as well. Other activities: Lisa McCluskey reported that she participated in the recent Region 6 and RnR meetings. Sarah Crane sent out 400 publications to centers in March, and Sarah is preparing mailing of new resources for the next quarterly materials distribution. The new monthly LTAP e-newsletter will go out this week and will include Center news, a Washington update, event listings, new resources and more. A database of articles that the centers can use will also be accessible on the website later this summer after the first round of revisions.
The EC recessed at 4:25 PM. Wednesday AM, April 18Convened at 8:48 am Mary Stringfellow led a discussion on FHWA divisions and how LTAP fits into a division's plans and obligations. She gave an overview of the management of the federal funds that divisions administer. LTAP 2007 conferencePatsy Anderson asked for clarification about registration fees required (or not) for partners and speakers. The EC decided that speakers other than center employees will receive free registration for the day of their presentation including the meals for that day. Those employed by FHWA and not speaking will pay the normal registration fee. LTAP employees even if speaking will pay for each day that they are there. These rules will be carried over for future events. Patsy will finalize the language about registration fees and will communicate with Steve Pudloski and the board will vote on it. Lisa will prepare a letter to partners about opportunities for them at the conference; this will be mailed before the end of April. Patsy reported on the new sponsorship program. Current sponsors are APA, Arbormaster and ACI. Patsy will send the sponsor letter and fee information to EC members. The Clearinghouse will post it on the NLTAPA website. Patsy reported that the conference program/agenda was at the final editing stage. Some editing was done at the EC meeting. Agenda items for the two business meetings Training Products and Resources Work GroupGeorge Huntington reported on a recent conference call about information for the NLTAPA web page on products and information from external entities. A motion was made that links shall be established on the LTAP Program website to the FHWA Office of Safety STRD and the TCCC training resource matrixes. Other links may be established by submitting them to the workgroup so that they can determine whether the additional links will be added, based on their relevance to LTAP/TTAP Centers. Unanimously approved. Center training and resource needs assessments to be carried out at regional meetings—(handout). Each center will be asked to fill out the needs assessment form before attending its regional meeting, in preparation for group discussions. The goal is to have a list of needs to consider for national development of materials and requests for funding. The EC asked for clear directions for filling out the form, so information provided would be consistent among the regions. George will revise the letter and send it via email to EC and to Regional Representatives by Friday. Next step is for EC to distribute this to the Centers in their regions. TCCC—Ed Stellfox. Patsy, Sandy Greenwood and Doyt will be going to the next TCCC meeting, in Maine. A small presentation about LTAP will be made. They will look for long-term connections between TCCC and LTAP. External communications work groupBernie Alkire has agreed serve as the interim chair until the summer meeting. The EC will be reviewing the role of this group and decide next steps through July. Next step, discuss this at the next conference call. Reauthorization Strategy Professional Development work groupPlans for awards at the 2007 LTAP conference–Jim reported that the nomination forms had been prepared. (hand out) The call for nominations will go out this week and will be due by May 18. Clearinghouse will send out and post online. Internal Communications work groupPatsy reported on the topics to be covered at regional meetings, including the needs assessment, NLTAPA update and PAR/CAR. She will develop a list for each rep to cover at his or her regional meeting. FHWA will lead the PAR CAR portion. Patsy asked for a poll to be taken at the regional meetings to find out who will be attending the national meeting. LTAP Listservs—Lisa Harris asked the EC to discuss current and planned listserves and/or forums in the LTAP community and how they serve the Centers. Brief discussion about LTAP exchange- what is it and how it affects the community. The group echoed member concerns about the use of the LTAP name by a private company. The EC agreed it makes sense to create a listserv for the community that would be out of the Clearinghouse. Jim Grothaus will talk to Charlie Goodspeed to get more information about LTAPexchange, prior to the next EC conference call. Content of the Association's planned Annual Report—Patsy Anderson reported that she would like to collect information from regional meetings for this and send a draft report for EC review. Target release is for the LTAP Conference in Chicago. She asked the EC to endorse this effort. Jim Grothaus made a motion to approve the development of a 2006-2007 NLTAPA annual report with NLTAPA paying for the printing and distribution per the direction of the EC. Contents are due to Patsy by June 1, from most regions. Stuart seconded the motion. Vote was 7 in favor, 1 opposed. Program Strategies work groupChanges to the NLTAPA by-laws Survey to evaluate the Association SAFETEA-LU Nominating Committee Bookkeeping Short term and long term goals Short term goals
Long Term Goals
In Oct. the EC identified key objectives for interacting with outside entities:
In October, Lisa appointed an ad hoc committee to work on a plan for working with external entities and to have it ready by TRB. Serving on the committee are Bruce Drewes, Patsy Anderson, Lisa Harris, Marie Walsh, and Ed Stellfox. The group recommended having a special EC meeting at TRB on this topic. This was held. The above objectives have not yet been met, but work is well under way with the partnership work group. The above goals will be revisited and delegated as needed at the May and June Conference calls. Board Processes/ Board self evaluationThere was no time for an in-depth board evaluation. Overall, the EC felt that the meeting was productive and worthwhile. The group noted that the meeting had an unusually full agenda, and it was difficult to keep some items within the estimated timeframes. Some suggestions from the EC to save time: some activities could be delegated to work groups or ad hoc groups that would submit brief recommendation to be approved. Some administrative tasks could likewise move away off the agenda to make room for other business. LTAP-OPCD could also take on addressing more needs of the community to ease workload for the association, i.e. needs assessment, listserv. Clearinghouse is taking minutes at this meeting, but it has not been worked into their contract yet. The EC recessed at 6:00 PM. Thursday, April 19 (8:00-9:30 a.m.)Convened at 8:00. The EC recapped the meeting and clarified action items. Meeting adjourned 10:00 am Minutes taken by Lisa Kelley McCluskey |
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