Highlights: April 13, 2022
- Chair’s Report: Approval of January minutes.
- COO Report: Review of 2019 strategic plan that is driving current initiatives. Slow start to the summer but activity increasing with April 11th as the first 4,000+ ticket day. Meet ticket initiative is receiving positive feedback and suggestions for future improvements. Education and public awareness efforts will be targeting landscapers this year with a goal of increasing use of and compliance with MN216D requirements. A timeline of improvements made since 2016 is now available to board members and OCC staff. The data visualization project is ongoing and in Phase II of development. Continued progress is being made on the UUMPT project and it has become apparent that data sharing agreements will be an important issue in the future. Barb and Adam participated in a CGA Next Practices panel about electronic whitelining and will be looking for input from board subject matter experts.
- PR/Awareness Report: Olivia is at Spring DP meetings, but will give a full report at the next meeting.
- MNOPS Report: Review of 2021 damage information. Damage rates seem to be plateauing so now what can we do to reduce damages? Discussion of continued need for education regarding the requirements for meet tickets and whitemarking and MnOps would like to be invoolved in the electronic whitelining discussions. Discussion of HF 3138 transportation omnibus bill as well as civil penalties for violations to 49 CFR.
- OCC Report: Work from home model will continue. Change to direct hiring by OCC has been successful and there are now 99 total employees as of March 31, 2022. Ticket volumes are down 30% for the first quarer as compared to 2021 with weather probably playing a major role. Online ticket submission remains at a high 86.6.%. Review of technological immprovements since 2016. Continued updates to maps with over 4,000 updates made so far this year. Phase I of the data visualization project indicates that there have been more tha 1400 seperate users interacting with the system and the notification center is looking forward to stakeholder feedback.
- Finance Committee Update: Not concerned about the reduction in tickets. Lower ticket volumes means lower contract expenses. The first quarter committee meeting has been deferred, but the annual meeting with a financial advisor is still planned to discuss potential changes to the invesment strategy due to capital market changes. Chris Fry announced his resignation from the board effective with the april meeting.