MEMORANDUM
DATE: September 4, 2024
TO: Pikes Peak Rural Transportation Authority Citizen Advisory Committee
FROM: Rick Sonnenburg, Program/Contracts Manager
SUBJECT: Board Policy #34: State and Federal Discretionary Grant Match Fund Program
ACTION REQUESTED: Recommendation
As the CAC will recall, in the lead-up to the November 2022 ballot measure for the PPRTA-3 Capital projects renewal, the member governments’ staff members, the CAC, and the Board prepared an extensive list of issues (at the time it was called a matrix) to be discussed and decided by the Board. This matrix was approved by the Board at its January 2022 meeting.
One of the issues on the matrix that the Board decided was to place on the November 2022 ballot a new program fund in the “Regional Collaborative Projects” section called “State and Federal Discretionary Grant Match Fund—Phase 1.” Since the voter-approved PPRTA-3 Capital list starts in January 2025, it is timely to review and approve a Board Policy regarding how member governments might use this new fund, especially since member governments might want to place a request to use this fund in the FY 2025 budget, which gets underway in September (as of this writing, neither the City of Colorado Springs nor El Paso County have any projects for use of this new fund). Attached is an excerpt from the Board-approved ‘matrix’ describing this new fund. Also attached is the draft Board Policy #34 establishing guidelines for the use of this new fund which was presented to the CAC at the August 7 meeting.
As the CAC will recall, CAC 1st Vice-Chair Larry Tobias requested that Board attorney Jennifer Ivey review the draft policy. It was referred to her and she responded to PPRTA staff on August 13, the day before the August 14 Board meeting that there was a problem with the last paragraph of the policy, specifically where it states that “B” list projects and non-listed projects may be approved by the Board for a member government to access this new PPRTA-3 fund via a 2/3 supermajority vote. The problem is that the PPRTA Establishing IGA (excerpt attached) only allows for simple majority votes of those Board members who are present. PPRTA staff failed to catch this conflict in 2021 when the matrix was being prepared over a several month period.
Consequently, the Board decided to postpone this policy and send it to the CAC for further review of options for how to proceed.
The following is a set of options prepared by PPRTA staff and PPRTA attorney Jennifer Ivey:
- Amend the Establishing IGA to specifically allow for super-majority votes for these projects and/or to broadly allow for voting to be altered by Board policy.
- Allow the use of this Phase 1 A-list project for any “B” list or non-listed capital project and for this Phase 2 “B” list project for any non-listed capital project by a simple majority vote of those Board members present.
- Not allow “B” list or non-listed capital projects access to either the Phase 1 or Phase 2 State and Federal Discretionary Grant Match Fund.
- Require member governments to “flag” any use of this fund, either in Phase 1 or Phase 2, so that the Board can consider the request as a stand-alone simple majority vote.
- Revise draft Board Policy #34 to qualify it “to the extent allowed by the Establishing IGA” which would require that for any supermajority vote to become effective the Establishing IGA would need to be amended in Section 6.15 by all six member governments when such a project request is made by a member government.
The process to remedy this conflict is anticipated to take two months. In this first month, the goal is for the CAC and Board to determine the option in the ‘concept’ stage. In the second month, the CAC and Board would review the final draft of the revised Board Policy #34.
RECOMMENDATION TO THE COMMITTEE:
The PPRTA staff recommends that the CAC review the list of options regarding how to proceed, add any additional options, and prepare a recommendation to the Board regarding draft Policy #34.