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January 2017 Amendment to the Yakima Valley 2017-2020 Metropolitan and Regional Transportation Improvement Program

Review Period for the 2017-2020 MTIP January 2017 Amendment begins Wednesday, December 28, 2016 and runs through Noon, Wednesday January 11, 2017.

Please mail your comments to:
Brian Curtin
Yakima Valley Conference of Governments311 North 4th Street, Suite 204
Yakima, WA 98901
Email: brian.curtin@yvcog.org
Fax: (509)574-1551

Good Afternoon All,

I have the following volunteers for the STBG Set-aside evaluation sub-committee:

• Alan Adolf – Yakima County
• Bill Preston – WSDOT SCR
• Gracie Sexton – People For People
• Ardele Steele – City of Zillah
• Brett Sheffield – City of Yakima
• Menglou Wang – City of Wapato
• Rocky Wallace – City of Toppenish
• Jeff Ranger – Town of Naches

Thank you all for being so willing to sit through the evaluation of the applications. All applications are due to YVCOG by 5:00pm on Monday December 12, 2016. Once I receive all the applications, I will upload the evaluation materials with the application information inserted and the complete pdfs of the projects to the Shared “O” drive.

Since we’ll be using a temporary folder, I will ask John to provide me a link specifically for the evaluators and I’ll send that out individually. I anticipate having the link available to evaluators on Tuesday.

I am asking that if you are submitting a project and not intending to be at the evaluation meeting, please make someone available (and please provide to me a phone number) to answer questions during the time of the meeting so the evaluators have all the info they need to make decisions on the proposed projects. I think it’s reasonable to get through all evaluations within 2 hours.

When we are finished with the sub-committee meeting, I should have a proposed prioritized list that a sub-committee spokesperson will bring back to the full TAC in January. We’ll decide at the meeting who that could be. The TAC recommended prioritized list resulting from January TAC action will go before the Policy Board in January for approval.

So far so good, we are on schedule for the 2017 prioritized project(s) to be ready for the February TIP amendment.

Best Regards,
Deborah LaCombe
MPO/RTPO Manager
Yakima Valley Conference of Governments
311 North 4^th Street, Suite 204
Yakima, WA 98908

In the summer of 2014, the Yakima County Commissioners asked the YVCOG membership: “Would it be better to move the Homeless Program from the County to YVCOG in order to best serve the cities facing homelessness problems?” Later that year, the YVCOG general membership (comprised of elected officials throughout the Valley), voted to accept the Homeless Program into YVCOG.

We would like to move much more quickly to address issues such as the encampment in downtown Yakima. Unfortunately, we’ve been slowed by a perfect storm that includes:

• A program transitioning from Yakima County to YVCOG. We are in the midst of a planned 18-month transition of the program from the county to YVCOG. We are still working out the bugs and resolving redundant processes.
• A technical agency takes on a human service program. Traditionally an agency focused on land use and transportation, we are learning rapidly as we take on the opportunities and challenges of this social program.
• A suddenly visible homeless problem in downtown Yakima. For whatever reason(s), a homeless population that for years has been mostly unseen became very visible this summer. This has created pressure to “do something” without a plan in place. That plan is under reivew and will be adopted later this year.

Approximately $3.5 million passes through our Valley each year to combat homelessness. The YVCOG guides the funds to service providers who, in turn, provide direct services to the homeless. Those services include temporary rental housing; mental health and chemical addiction counseling; employment training; and transportation.

Last summer we created the Homeless Planning and Policy Council. This advisory panel includes representatives from housing, law enforcement, business, local elected officials, mental health, and the Homeless Network (a separate grass-roots coalition). Their primary tasks are to:

1. Develop and update our comprehensive countywide homeless policy plan
2. Make funding recommendations to the YVCOG Executive Committee
3. Establish performance outcomes to evaluate the effectiveness of programs, review and evaluate homeless and housing data, and to determine the effectiveness of the strategies and objectives in our policy plan.

Here’s what you can expect of us in the coming months: New partnerships, working closely with local governments, the business community, and service providers to bring new energy and resources to our homeless problem. Valley-wide services, ensuring that every city in the Valley has equal access to the resources needed to help the homeless.

Improving transparency by creating visual “dashboards” and other tools to make better decisions, and posting these tools on our website. Data-driven, performance-based program evaluation, by working closely with our contracted providers to give them frequent feedback on their services. Lastly, within two years, using these evaluations to reward programs that work with stable or increased funding and defunding programs that don’t meet performance targets.

To learn more, contact YVCOG at 574-1550 to schedule a presentation with your group, or attend our Homeless Planning and Policy Council meetings. Meetings are held at 11 a.m. on the second Tuesday of the month. Visit yvcog.org for the meeting location.

• Larry Mattson is the executive director of the Yakima Valley Conference of Governments.

 

Originally published in the Saturday Soapbox on the Yakima Herald Republic on September 17, 2016.

Yakima Valley Conference of Governments has made available, in accordance with a local homeless housing plan, funding to be utilized to coordinate four Point in Time/Project Homeless Connect events for January 2017. The goal for the use of these funds is to conduct a survey of homeless and to connect people experiencing or at risk of homelessness with services tailored to end homelessness in the Yakima Valley.

Download the Request for Qualifications

Read all the latest news from YVCOG in the September Newsletter