Kate Morley 0:00 I'm really excited to talk to you today I'm going to speak to you really from the perspective of a transit agency representative who wants to do better in this arena of inclusion and not as an inclusion expert. And so I'm going to be very candid with you about some of my experiences that I had on the first transit planning for all grant that mountain lion was able to receive for which I was the project manager, and lessons learned in that process. So that hopefully you don't repeat some of the mistakes that I made originally. So, um, our project and the first transit planning for all Grant was what we called move me flag. And it was very much related to planning processes and getting people with disabilities and older adults more deeply involved in planning. So I'm here. Our overarching goal for the project was really to reach out to seniors and people with disabilities and ensure their voices were active in our transportation planning processes. And we did that as our overarching goal because we really believed that if we could provide quality and timely transit service for seniors and people with disabilities, that everyone in the community would be highly served by the transit that we were providing. And the timing for this project was really great, because we had a bunch of different planning projects going on. So we had our five year and long range transit plan, the regional transportation plan, which is not a mountain lion project, but that were heavily involved in the coordinated plan, we run those efforts for the 5310 coordination. The fnpo, the for our region was doing an active transportation master plan, and we're doing a bus rapid transit study. And so we wanted to make sure voices were brought in to all these different planning processes that were occurring at the same time. And when we kicked this project off, we started with the pathways of inclusion framework, and we asked people how we were doing in the community in terms of bringing them in. And so really, were we just telling people what was going to go on or what programs we were going to bring forward? Are we truly engaging them in a meaningful way to be part of the decision making process. And in our initial goal setting, we did, okay, people really felt like we were mostly just informing them rather than including them in the decision making process. And so that was a goal for us was to move our position along this pathway of inclusion. And so we did quite a few things to bring an outreach on to all these planning efforts, we held planning workshops, where we really let people basically like play with budgets and bus route lines on maps and decide what they would do if they were us with funding and then documented all the input that they gave us. And we did a lot of surveys, um, you know, What were people's trade offs, or preferences and a world of limited resources. So not just pie in the sky where everybody wants everything. But we really tried to say, there, there's budget constraints or other constraints. And so if you had to prioritize, what would that look like. And I think that giving people the ability to be the deciders and those theoretical terms of if I had this much money, this is how I would spend it was really key. We also did get on the bus, which we would take a bus around town, put our displays up on the bus and have people on board to provide feedback. And then we had our coordinated mobility council meetings, which have many representatives, with seniors, people with disabilities on them to provide direct feedback into the planning process that really acted more like a stakeholders, committee for us. And that group still exists today. And so what was the result of all this effort to get people engaged, and I have to say, I think it did pay off. We have 15 new unique mobility ideas generated through this process. So not repetitive ideas, but distinct things that we could do. 54% of the input on our five year plan was all from older adults, and or people with disabilities. So we felt like we had really good representation. And the Planning Department actually added two staff people at this time so that we could do a better job on inclusion work and linking people to the programs that we were creating. And then we also were able to generate additional funding for our taxi voucher program through this. So really tangible outcomes of doing this inclusion work. Sounds where I'm going to get really candid about what I did well and didn't do well. So meeting management, I was the program manager, I was really the only staff person assigned in a significant way to this project. And so I would host these meetings with the CMC, not sure who would show up or other community meetings, not sure who would show up and I was would tend to get people with a variety of different disabilities and older adults that I was managing, trying to figure out how to get them to be able to actively engage all by myself, and really came to find out that that is not a good solution for actively engaging people with a variety of disabilities. At one point in time, the room we had was too small for maneuvering wheelchairs around and I was trying to do exercises around the room, which proved difficult. And I had one person who really couldn't see what I had up on the screen very well, and someone else who couldn't hear what I was saying, and so there was just a lot going on. And a big lesson was really having more staff there to facilitate a good meeting. A good lesson learned. The other thing was we wanted to do a lot of surveying, we wanted good feedback from people. So we developed a great survey, and we tested it, and then we took it out to the field, and it took people 15 minutes to fill it out. And it's just too, it was too long to get many people to engage. And so there were good lessons there too, about really honing in on what it is you want people to know, finding a quick way for them to be able to answer so that you can reach a lot of people. And because it felt like long lines, or we'd have staff go out for several hours and only be able to get a couple people to take a survey because it took so long. Um, and then just generally it was harder and took more time than initially anticipated. So I think building that into your schedule and planning process from the get go is really key. But ultimately, in the end, where did we end up on this pathway? It's kind of hard to say I would I mean, we definitely I will say we definitely moved up. But we couldn't, we wanted to bring everybody up to this really engaged, you know, level six, where they were really providing decision making. But the truth is, it was hard for us to get that many people to engage deeply, we could get a few to engage deeply, but many engage that you know, level three instead of a level six. And so I think it's good to recognize there's a balance between reaching many people and getting really into deep conversations with you. And having that set as a priority from the get go and understanding your strategy related to that, that you want to reach lots of people that's hard to do at a deep level and so having strategies for both figured out. Um, the other big lesson I learned was in trying to get people to dive deep, they need a base level education about how budgets works, how transit work, what's the trade office. And so a big lesson learned this goes back to that many versus fuse scenario is that we needed to create trap transit advocates who understood the process and could engage with us continually over time, because there just wasn't enough time in these outreach events to bring people up to the level that I wanted to bring them up to, to engage. So again, both strategies are needed. Um, and I again, I do think we had other lasting impacts. So our coordinated mobility Council continues to meet and provide feedback on our planning processes, as well as some of the city and fnpo planning processes. Our five year plan was unanimously adopted on time, which was a big goal of our project originally. And then we actually use this input for the basis of a tax increase that we put on the ballot in 2018, which just getting something on the ballot, I think is a big step and having a plan for that. It will say we lost this ballot measure, but it was only by about 150 bucks. So we don't think it was shot down by the voters will probably try again in the near future. But I think really important all that work we did leading up to it to even get close enough to, you know, to lose by that small margin. And so value of inclusion, I think it helps you as an agency really understand where the barriers are, and how to design your programs specifically to fit those needs. Also, what are just the small tweaks you can make to be better rather than major overhauls there, we've revamped our taxi voucher program. People love it now and it didn't take much to do it just some small things. Um, there's also never enough money. So we need to figure out how to prioritize and that's a key decision I think to have people be included and on. And then ultimately, you know, if it works for older adults and people with disabilities, we think it really serves everyone in this community well, so that is the end of my slideshow, and I'll turn it over to Lindsay to present some parts Transcribed by https://otter.ai