After six years of inflation, the Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission changed its rules on updating road and transit project prices.
The Federal Highway Administration and Federal Transit Administration recommended NIRPC update its policies to align with the Indiana Department of Transportation.
On Thursday, the agency’s executive board voted unanimously to follow those recommendations for local road projects.
Under changes to the new transportation improvement plan, referred to as the Invest Northwest Indiana plan, the definition of a major change is now 75% or more of the cost of a project less than $2 million, 50% or more between $2 million and $14.9 million, and 40% or more between $15 million and $75 million.
The rule also specifies 30% or more of the cost of a project costing more than $75 million, but there aren’t any local projects not involving INDOT money for anywhere near $75 million.
A major change, amending the transportation improvement plan, now requires a 21-day public comment period. Lesser amounts are considered administrative modifications done quickly to keep the project on schedule.
“It seems like a big amount to adjust,” Lake County Surveyor Bill Emerson Jr. said. “25% of $2 million, that’s still a lot of money.”
“What I’m looking for is guardrails,” Beverly Shores Town Council President David Phelps said.
NIRPC Transportation Director Tom Vander Woude said the agency is still constrained by total budget dollars, and a project can’t be removed from the list to come up with the extra money for another project, so there are plenty of guardrails.
Removing a project is a major change, so it’s considered an amendment that requires public comment.
Chesterton Town Council member Jim Ton sought reassurance that the rules could change in the future. Vander Woude said they can be revisited when the transportation improvement plan is updated, which happens every two years at a minimum.
A related change adopted Thursday was to shift the definitions from the public participation plan, Engage Indiana, to the transportation improvement plan. That shortens the public comment period to 21 days instead of 45, meaning changes to project costs can be done faster, at the same speed as INDOT.
At the same meeting, Executive Director Ty Warner stressed the importance of attendance at the quarterly full commission meetings. New board chair Austin Bonta, Portage’s mayor, hasn’t been able to take office yet due to a lack of a quorum at the last meeting.
Exacerbating the problem is that four town councils – Hebron, Lowell, Kingsbury and Pines – have yet to appoint a representative. That makes it even harder to get the requisite number of appointees at a meeting.
Warner said when he tried to reach the Kingsbury council president, he was told to try stopping by the fire station. Warner did that when he was already in LaPorte one day, and the council president wasn’t at the station. LaPorte County Commissioner Joe Haney, a new appointee, offered to call Kingsbury’s president himself.
Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
