Introduction
Highway 2 Safety Coalition Chairman Fred Walser asked each attendee to introduce themselves and their affiliation/interest, beginning with the Coalition's panel, which included Evan Schatz, King Cushman, Fred Walser, Jim Flower, C. H. Rowe and John Seehuus.

Presentation by King Cushman, PSRC's Regional Strategy Advisor
Mr. Cushman gave an overview of the Puget Sound Regional Council's general function ("a strategic master planning agency"), and specifically the purpose and goals of that agency's new planning coordination tool, its Regional Rural Town Centers and Corridors Program. The objective of this program is to assist the smaller rural cities in gaining a "piece of the funding pie," by coordinating and combining their individual efforts within a major highway corridor to help resolve safety and congestion challenges.

As an example of the results that could be achieved using this program, Mr. Cushman gave the example of Route 203 south of Monroe, stretching to Carnation. Recent growth in Duvall, Monroe, Sultan and other areas has exacerbated congestion and concerns for safety along that corridor. Several cities joined forces with PSRC and WSDOT to analyze and alleviate problems in specific areas. Resolutions such as adding bike lanes to no-shoulder, two-lane roadways and a round-about south of Duvall, which eliminated the daily 5:00 PM back-up, have greatly increased roadway efficiencies and safety.

Coalition Chairman Fred Walser then gave a brief background on the Coalition's creation and success in achieving safety improvements, following several deaths. He also explained the purpose and results of a personally-expensed trip that he and Monroe Mayor Donnetta Walser (his wife) had made in 2003 to Washington, D.C., when they met with Washington State's congressional legislative representatives, during which they requested $8 million for a study to improve Highway 2 by presenting the delegation with a resolution urging funding and action, signed by all Hwy. 2 Corridor city mayors.

Chief Walser underscored the Coalition's support throughout the Hwy. 2 corridor, listing organizations supporting the Coalition's efforts, including SCCIT (Snohomish County Committee for Improved Transportation), SCT (Snohomish County Tomorrow) and many others. Walser added that the "Stuck in Traffic?" signs are working; legislators receive calls from constituents, especially after highly-congested holiday or weekend periods.

Walser explained that the purpose of that night's meeting was to set up a process through which an analysis and study of the needs for the Hwy. 2 Corridor could be addressed by submitting a report and proposal to PSRC to include in their annual legislative funding request.

Evan Schatz, Rick Larson's Transportation Director, said that Highway 2 is a "serious issue" that needs to be added to the federal TEA-21 funding list. He stated that the first issue is one of safety, caused by the increase in population and growth on insufficient roadways. The second major issue/focus is congestion. [See transcription of Mr. Schatz's full comments, which follows these minutes.]

Monroe Mayor Donnetta Walser then asked Mr. Schatz whether Hwy. 2 qualified as a "Highway of National Significance," a designation which she understands carries its source/pool of funding. [See Mr. Schtaz's transcription following these minutes.]

King Cushman offered helpful advice on the best way to craft an effective multi-city proposal for PSRC's Regional Rural Corridor program. Such an effort should include a long-term strategic plan and agreement by all corridor cities which would identify the worst congestion or safety problems within the corridor, then selective choose priorities for each. [See transcription for complete comments.]

Sultan Councilman Jim Flower raised the issue of recent challenges concerning Sultan signage for local businesses struggling to recover economically which are being negatively effected by WSDOT's recent changes in interpretation and enforcement of the Scenic Vistas Act regarding signs placed within Hwy. 2's right-of-way. [See transcription for full comments]

Loreena Eng, P.E. (WSDOT's Regional Administrator for the Northwest Region), when asked whether she would like to comment, declined, as she was not prepared to address the issue that night. A revised agenda had been distributed which included the Scenic Vistas Act item, but she was among certain individuals who had not received it.

Denise Ingalls, Sultan business owner (Honeymead Wine) offered some explanations as to why the Act might not be as appropriate in 2004 as it was approximately 50 years ago when it was created, as well as the ill effect its literal enforcement was having on local business.

Robert Amenn (City of Gold Bar's Council representative to PSRC and H2SC delegate to SCCIT) gave a short presentation on the need for, and importance of a multi-city organization that could address Hwy. 2 capacity and safety issues and work with PSRC to achieve unanimity of purpose. The consensus of the group was that that was the precise role that the Highway 2 Safety Coalition had been playing over the last eight years. Mr. Amenn could not give his report on SCCIT's meeting(s) and effort(s) as he had received a non-working phone number for Rick White, SCCIT's member.

Fred Walser agreed to organize an all-corridor mayors' meeting to brainstorm the multi-city proposal to PSRC, to which all agreed. [Subsequent to the meeting, Walser set this meeting for 2:00 PM Friday, November 12^th at the Monroe City Hall. Spectators are welcome to attend, but no public comment or participation is appropriate or will be allowed.]

The next regular H2SC meeting will be Monday, November 29^th at 7:00 PM, 319 Main Street in Sultan.

The meeting was adjourned at 8:30.

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Evan Schatz (Larsen's Washington, D.C. Legislative Director): I'm Congressman Rick Larsen's Legislative Director. I work primarily on transportation issues, as my boss sites on the Transportation Committee in D.C. And we've been working on the ratification of the federal road bill, which is a six-year bill which provides all the formula funds that feed through WSDOT, or go directly to cities and counties or directly to NPOs that funds projects such as those we're discussing. And I think first and foremost if my boss were here, he would thank Mayor [Donnetta] Walser, Chief Walser and C. H. Rowe for all of their work, and others, on the U. S. 2 Safety issue. This is a serious issue. This is a road that, that, that has some major issues that need to be addressed, and certainly what you're doing here and what all of you are doing certainly helps Rick to push job[s] and try to bring funds back. And I also appreciate PSRC joining in in today's discussion. It's good to have the NPOs actively involved in some of these safety issues.

As I mentioned earlier, we're authorizing TEA-21. Doesn't mean a whole lot to everybody, but for those in the transportation world that's kind of the biggest legislative bill out there. It provides upwards between, right now, about $32 billion a year in federal highway funding. That is split -- you know, it doesn't just all go to Seattle. It's actually, by mandate, a lot of it goes to smaller towns and cities and to formula funds. It also is earmarked so a lot of those funds go directly to projects. What some folks might call "pork" is what we in the business call Important Projects Back Home [laughter]. It's all involved within the bill. And one major aspect of the bill that my boss has been focusing on is the safety issues.

We have a lot of roads throughout the United States and because of development and growth, can't handle the traffic that's on it. We see that in Snohomish County every day. When I first started working for Rick we had a fall where I think there were five or six accidents where high school-age [kids] in Snohomish County had died. And a lot of it's because of the capacity issues and we have too much traffic on roads that shouldn't be going to (sic), what used to be a forestland are now huge developments, which Mayor Walser, as you know. One issue we're trying to deal with in TEA-21 is get some teeth in the safety programs, to actually fund some rural road safety to get communities some real safety funds to help them with their actual needs for their riding or protective rails or road-widening.

Some other issues that we're obviously keeping within TEA-21 is the congestion issue, with Chief Walser [unintelligible]. We're seeing, I think, for the first time along U. S. 2 some major congestion issues. With a two-lane highway, there are a lot of traffic going both ways. And there used to be, at least in this town, you'd have to pull the police out to get the buses out when school let out, because congestion's an issue. And certainly within this bill, we're trying to focus a lot of money on congestion mitigation, and hopefully it will help.

There are a lot of issues in this bill. Now, this bill, obviously the election is a week away and we haven't completed this bill, which means, as King mentioned, we have extended it until Memorial Day [2005], the current law. So [sounds like he says either, "we'll be" or "we are"] reauthorizing what my boss hopes to be a very, very, very large highway bill that will hopefully, drastically increase the funding federally that we can give this state. We have pushed for a package of about $375 billion over six years. That was up from our current law, $218 billion. So we're trying to take what all the studies say is the need out there in the United States, and create a bill that could cover that. It is estimated by 2009 that mostly just to maintain, to vest in some degree in our roads, the United States needs a federal shot in the arm of about $60 to $65 billion a year, federally, for our highways. And we are, certainly in the committee, trying to get up there with funding so we can fund a lot of these projects like this. So that's kind of where we are. We delayed the bill for awhile, and when we come back next session in January, we hope to take it up with vigor and hopefully pass a bill in pretty short order.

I appreciate you guys letting us come here.

Right. Well, Highway 2 is part of the national highway system, as it stands, so it has its own pool of funds that the National Highway System basically pulls from. So it is, it does benefit by being on a select list of interstate, as it stands. And so the [unintelligible] bill will continue to fund that. There's a program -- I think you may be talking about -- of projects of national regional significance, which is very…which is quite a bit different than the way folks are thinking about it. They want to fund much larger projects that A city or an NPO can't fund on their own, such as the [sounds like, "die left"] or something called "CREATE" in Chicago which is where they're going to take this five [unintelligible] railroads and rebuild it. And so that would be a very different pot of money to go towards giant projects, but right now it can't be funded because no one has enough money. That's how they get funded. That's slightly different. But certainly with the National Highway System, you have federal funds coming to U. S. 2 that do help.

Monroe Mayor Donnetta Walser: Are there any tips you could give us to tap into some of this, with our application to PSRC?

Evan Schatz: Well…uh… sure. [laughter] There are two routes. One is directly formula funds, where all these -- Let me back up. I'm going to try and explain this in hopefully a simple way. When we pay tax, you pay a federal gas tax of about 18.4 cents. And for every dollar all of us give at the pump in Washington, we get, unfortunately, about 92.5 cents back, plus -- and that's just based in formula funds -- plus another 10 cents in projects in what I called earlier, "Projects of Importance Back Home" which you might call Pork. So for formula funds, most of those are coming through either the DOT or your NPO and [unintelligible] projects. And that's the bulk of the money Washington State gets.

What our advantage is as a state, what I think is an advantage, is that our Congressional delegation is able to, led by Senator Murray, fight for a slew of federal projects on top of that. Senator Murray alone brings about $350 million in projects back to the state. She's the ranking member of the subcommittee that sets that up in the Senate. So essentially, every, of every dollar we get from the federal government transportation with Senator Murray's and the congressional delegation, is about 10 cents of that dollar. So going to them and asking them for help, is one huge way. Second, is often tell folks talk to your NPOs. They -- I sat down with Dan Pike, who runs the NPO up in Skagit County when the NPO was just started and my message to folks then who were very [unintelligible] is these folks largely work for you: They're there as a resource to try and help coordinate your problem. They're not there to try to [unintelligible] basically a resource for the community itself. And so we've gone to them and working with them, such as what's being mentioned today, is we're looking at some real rural projects.

King Cushman (PSRC Strategic Policy; advice in how to craft the proposal) One of the things that can help in this particular corridor, and I think it's going to be strategically planning and organizing how and what and where you go after. Because the one thing that, at least -- and for those of you who have been around enough years and have seen it with the state legislature -- people go out and call for lists. And they end up with just lists. And then they look at it and they're overwhelmed and almost nothing happens. As opposed to, I think, what you'll be more effective [with] is to -- and it doesn't take an enormous amount of money -- but you look at selectively strategically along the corridor, what would do you the most good that you could get done in the next five to ten years. [It's] probably not, you know, to have a freeway or things like that, but look at where are the worst safety problems that you could take no; what would help the most. And think of how to, then, begin to develop an array of those so you have your, basically a political coalition of the whole corridor, which assuming you want the same things then, a nice little brochure and a nice piece of work that shows everything from Stevens Pass all the way down. And it looks at what they are, and you get it down to whether it's round-abouts or safety or whatever it is -- channelization kinds of issues. And some of the things that can be done to improve it aren't even necessarily on the corridor, as we found in some of the cities along 203. It was happening from lack of streets that were next to the corridor that caused more traffic to be on the corridor in the towns, because there was no way to get from one end of town to the other except to go onto the state highway. So in some cases it was actually just completing little missing links in the towns that are off the corridor as well, that can help the citizens of the area get around without needing to get onto the corridor and add traffic to it.

But it's looking at strategically a set of things and then kind of getting them in an array, and then everybody can go along and recognize. And I think the success of that last corridor was impressive. They took this whole host of projects, which now has been funded to over $300 million, a series of grade separations, the bridges and overpasses and underpasses and all kinds of things done there because they had a strategic plan for how to go about that included the railroads and others. But they all agreed that they all weren't going to go in and kill each other. They weren't going to all go to Rick Larsen for all of their projects simultaneously. They came in and they had an array. They were ready to go and they knew what would go first and second and third and they all agreed they were going to get their turn, as long as everybody was agreed to work together, and they all lobbied for each other. And that made a big difference, to create that sense of coalition.

And that's one of the things I think you can do out here to help yourselves, is to have that vision of where you're going and what are the components of it, and in what order do you want to take them on? And then one-by-one, year-by-year, you can pick them off and make these kind of improvements to really get someplace.

Sultan Business Owner Pearson (Paoli's Subs) I'm here this evening regarding the support or lack of as far as business-related signs on the highway. (Fred Walser says, "The Scenic Vista Act.") I was told that Sultan city limits was excluded from that, then told the opposite. Can anyone speak to what's allowed, what's not? The signs do bring in revenue for my business and my neighbor[ing] businesses. I'm just curious.

Jim Flower (City of Sultan Councilman) I might have some information for you, and it's my reason for coming tonight, is the Scenic Vista Act. Because this is a city that's trying to revitalize itself economically, yet now all of a sudden we've been told by members of the DOT that the Scenic Vista Act is being enforced and according to them, the Scenic Vista Act goes statewide, in that there shall be no signs visible from the highway within 660 feet. Well, that is our entire Highway Oriented zone. I've got a copy of [the] Scenic Vista Act in front to me. And in "definitions" it says, "Primary system in any state highway which is, or does become part of, the federal A-Primary system, as described in Section 103B of Title 23, United States Code," which I also have right here, which doesn't use the same language. It never says the phrase, "Primary system." "Scenic System" means: (A), any state highway within any public park, federal forest area, public beach, public recreation area or national monument; or (B) Any state highway or portion thereof outside the boundaries of any incorporated city or town designated by the legislature as a part of the Scenic System; or (C) Any state highway or a portion therefore, outside the boundaries of any incorporated city or town designated by the legislature as a part of the Scenic or recreational highway system. Now, that's just in definitions. Two pages farther, where it says, "signs visible from any state perimeter or scenic systems restricted. Except as permitted under the chapter, no person shall erect or maintain a sign which is visible from the main traveled way of an interstate system, the primary system or the scenic system. In case the highway or a section of highway is both a part of a highway -- the primary system and the scenic system -- " as this would be, "all those signs permitted along the scenic system shall be erected or maintained." So if we go back to that definition it says that stops right at the city limits. Now, uh, we have taken this to Olympia so far and got shot down. Doesn't mean we're done. A lot of our elected officials are having a very busy week right now, and so we have a meeting set up with Kirk Pearson as soon as the election's over, to try to get resolution on this issue, because what I see is selective enforcement. If they're saying that, "Oh, no, all of this applies, this is all Scenic Vista [unintelligible]," then explain Leavenworth. If you can have a basic Disneyland of signs over there, along the same highway, then why are we denied our right to economic development? Now the state highway, or U. S. Highway right-of-way is quite wide, and comes almost to your front door at your sandwich shop, which means they have the right to tell you you can't put a sandwich sign on the sidewalk. Sad, but true. However, if they force the Scenic Vista Act, that means keep on going; 660 feet is an eighth of a mile. Now, I'm not seeing this right. This is not park. This is a city. And we're trying to make this city survive economically. If we don't, we're really in trouble. Now whether this has been selectively enforced in the past or misinterpreted in the past, my goal is to get this straightened out and get the teeth out of it so that we can, so that those in charge can read this the same way I'm reading it, that says right here it stops at the city limits. But I can see the intent of it. If you're going way out in the country, the last thing you want to see is a bunch of billboards, I Understand that. But when we're here in an industrial area, a highway-oriented economic development zone, that's what it's there for: To get the people to stop and spend some money [and] build up our tax base before they move on. And this is a crippling economic issue that I believe we can overlook. So I'm glad to have some folks here from, with Larsen's office because part of this being under the jurisdiction of the federal government, being a U. S. highway, it's also under the jurisdiction of the Department of Transportation for Washington State [they] both have a say in this. But it's been my experience that the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and I'm not going to stop squeaking no this issue. If you have something to add, Evan?

Evan Schatz Sure, I mean, I think as far as WSDOT, whether you want to…say…?

Loreena Eng, WSDOT I'm not prepared to -- I mean, this was not on the agenda that was sent to me [unintelligible]. Nor did they [unintelligible] with the mayor with our attorney general's office and such, so I'm not going to comment.