YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – An event next week will kick off an effort by Eastgate Regional Council of Governments to inform communities about the services the agency offers.
“The intended audience is mostly going to be our local communities – people who are involved in planning or other governmental-type work,” said Grant Taylor, safety program manager at Eastgate.
The first in what’s envisioned as monthly webinars is set for 10 a.m. Monday. It and the first several sessions will focus on safety. They’re dubbed “Transportation Safety: Conversations at the Hearth.”
Eastgate representatives present information about programs and funding available during agency meetings and at community events. But the webinars, which will include a question and answer portion, will enable presenters to cover more.
“I really want to be able to get this information out,” Taylor said.
He plans to discuss Federal Highway Administration-approved safety countermeasures such as crosswalks and roundabouts that communities can implement to address concerns.
“I want to go through some of those and talk about, this is the stuff they recommend for this type of situation or how much they can help,” Taylor said.
In the question and answer portion, he’ll be able to learn about community concerns too.
“Because we can help with data, we do safety analysis, we’ve got a lot of different data and GIS information we work with here that we can help these communities,” he said.
Hearing from them will enable Eastgate to learn about issues that may not be on Eastgate’s radar. Taylor also plans to talk about available funding.
Stephen Zubyk, Eastgate director of transportation and infrastructure, said the types of projects eligible for funding changes based on legislative changes. And communities may not know that a project that wasn’t eligible in one round of federal funding is in another round.
If Eastgate representatives know that a community has a particular project on its agenda, they can notify community officials when that project may meet funding criteria, Taylor added.
He plans to tailor what’s discussed in the webinars on participants’ feedback.
But safety is just the topic that will be addressed in the first several webinars. Plans call for sessions covering other services provided by Eastgate too.
“Going back a couple months ago, we started to realize that a lot of our member communities weren’t aware of what we were doing in general,” Zubyk said, pointing to turnover among elected officials as one reason.
Housing and zoning are among topics for future webinars.
“I think we want to get back to, again, the grounds of what a [metropolitan planning organization] is, what we can offer and kind of running down our checklist,” Zubyk said.
And the organization wants to know from communities it serves what they need and what problems they have, he added.
That will also help Eastgate inform those communities when funding becomes available to address those problems or concerns, Taylor said.
“But if we don’t know about it, we won’t be able to point it out to them,” he added.
And Zubyk said there have been several incidents recently where Eastgate alerted a community to newly available funding for a project. He referred to funding Warren is pursuing to replace traffic signal lights with lower-emission LED lights throughout the city.
Another example is Trumbull MetroParks fixing a covered bridge along one of its trails. The bridge had been closed for more than two years, but newly available funding is helping pay for its repair.
Register for the first webinar HERE.
Pictured at top: Grant Taylor, safety program manager at Eastgate Regional Council of Governments.