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Council weighs Safe Streets for All grant versus state partnership for High Street safety study
Summary
Staff described follow‑up stakeholder meetings to Santech's High Street safety study and presented two next steps: seek a federal Safe Streets for All planning grant (20% match, planning deliverable) or pursue the state planning partnership initiative with MDOT. Council and staff discussed tradeoffs, MDOT's role and timing constraints for SS4A.
Planning staff summarized outreach on the High Street corridor and the Santech safety study, saying more than 60 people attended a recent stakeholder meeting and that the study will be revised to reflect community feedback. Staff outlined three possible next steps: ask Santech to prepare a revised report that incorporates local concerns; apply for the federal Safe Streets for All (SS4A) planning grant (application deadline cited in the workshop); or pursue a state planning partnership initiative with MDOT that could take longer but align with state implementation processes.
The presenter emphasized that MDOT (repeated in the transcript as "Main DOT") controls improvements on state roads and must be a project partner for any on‑High Street engineering. The SS4A grant was described as a federal planning grant focused on multimodal safety that can include more in‑depth traffic and engineering study and demonstration projects; staff noted the city's required match can be partly in‑kind and that the city would need to identify a source for a 20% match depending on grant ask size.
Councilors and staff discussed timing, scope and staffing needs; one staff member advised that SS4A is time‑intensive for staff and suggested a hybrid approach of pursuing targeted demonstration projects and strong stakeholder engagement with MDOT. Staff recommended returning with a clear budget and match plan for any SS4A application and said the item could be placed on the May council agenda as a placeholder for a future council decision about match commitment.
No final decision was made at the workshop; staff planned further meetings with MDOT and to continue stakeholder outreach and to consider using remaining consultant time to deepen MDOT engagement and public outreach.
