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| Executive Director Cynthia Copeland presenting at the SRPC Commisison Meeting |
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Planning
Strafford Regional Planning Commission (SRPC) held its third quarter meeting on Thursday, Feb. 22. This meeting was especially important because it was Executive Director Cynthia Copeland's last meeting before her retirement. Cynthia, among Commissioners, staff, colleagues, and friends, gave a presentation titled " Looking Back to Move Forward: A Retrospective."
The presentation included a summary of projects and planning processes over the past two decades, such as changes in housing, conservation, water resources, climate change, transportation, economic development, region master planning, and communications and the digital world. Cynthia also shared insights and made recommendations for the future executive director.
Following the presentation, colleagues and staff members were invited to the podium to share stories and lessons learned from working with Cynthia. Former staffers and partners, including Tom Fargo, Lisa Henderson and Steve Burns, shared their fond memories of Cynthia's work, mentorship, and advice. SRPC principal planner Kyle Pimental spoke on behalf of the current staff, thanking Cynthia for her leadership and presenting her with flowers.
It was a great event celebrating Cynthia's dedication to SRPC and allowing guests to wish her the best as she enters a new chapter when she retires in March.
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Transportation
Last month SRPC, as the designated metropolitan planning organization (MPO) for the Strafford region, adopted its first safety targets for the coming year. You may remember the SHRP2 project, which SRPC was part of during the last couple of years, managing the shift in transportation planning to performance based planning. In performance based planning, targets are set for particular measures to work towards a goal. Safety targets will be set each year for the region to make sure we are making progress towards that goal. Federal regulations require targets to be set for five measures:
- Number of fatalities.
- Rate of fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled (VMT).
- Number of serious injuries.
- Rate of serious injuries per 100 million VMT.
- Number of non-motorized fatalities and non-motorized serious injuries.
Since this is the first year New Hampshire MPOs are setting safety targets, the Federal Highways Administration recommends that MPOs support the statewide targets set by NHDOT. To do this, we calculated the region's share of fatalities, serious injuries, and non-motorized fatalities and serious injuries that could be used as a benchmark. This benchmark can be used to guide efforts in the region to improve highway safety. We also calculated a supplemental target for motorcycle fatalities in the region.
New safety targets will be set each year. It is exciting to get the ball rolling! Performance based planning will enable us to target projects and make sure that money is spent on our infrastructure in the most efficient way possible!
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Economic Development
Communications and outreach specialist Shayna Sylvia, joined by Dover Assistant City Manager Chris Parker, will be representing the government and public policy sector for the Dover Chamber of Commerce's Bridge to our Future event on Wednesday, March 21. This annual event, established in 2014, provides high school students an opportunity to explore potential career paths and engage with prospective future employers. The following sectors will be represented at the event: military, government and public policy, public safety, science and engineering, trades, healthcare, hospitality, arts and culture, communications and marketing, media, human services, IT/programming, and law.
The event will be held at the Garrison Wing Conference Center of Wentworth Douglass Hospital in Dover from 3-5:30 p.m. Students can register online at
www.dovernh.org/bridge
or by calling 603-742-2218.
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