No public input was offered Wednesday when the Southeast Metropolitan Planning Organization hosted a public hearing on its 2016 unified planning work program.

But people still have a chance to voice their thoughts at southeastmpo.org during a public comment period that ends Friday. Once the window closes for public comment, SEMPO members will make revisions, said Ryan Shrimplin, who serves as a transportation planner for SEMPO and city planner for the city of Cape Girardeau.

"It then goes to the Technical Planning Committee, the body responsible for making recommendations, which makes the recommendation to [the board of directors] to adopt the program," he said.

SEMPO covers the Cape Girardeau/Jackson urbanized area that includes portions of Cape Girardeau and Scott counties, as well as portions of East Cape Girardeau and Alexander County in Illinois.

It's a federally mandated and funded organization that oversees transportation planning. As part of the planning, each metropolitan planning organization must adopt a unified planning work program that provides for consideration and implementation of projects, strategies and services.

Essentially, the program outlines transportation planning activities to be conducted during the fiscal year, which begins in July for SEMPO, and identifies funding sources and allocation.

"With [the unified planning work program] we lay out proposed actions for the upcoming year and then there's a budget that goes with it," Shrimplin said.

It also serves as the basis for grants and other funding agreements with the Missouri Department of Transportation and the Illinois Department of Transportation, he explained.

This year's program has three work elements: program administration and support, data acquisition and maintenance and transportation planning.

The program support element focuses on the timely preparation of meeting schedules and project and maintenance lists, as well as public outreach activities and coordination with other planning organizations.

Objectives for data acquisition and maintenance include coordination with state transportation departments and other planning agencies to collect and share transportation-related data. The compiled information serves as a resource for SEMPO members, and can be shared with outside agencies and the public.

For transportation planning, SEMPO compiles a metropolitan transportation plan that looks at long- and short-range strategies to be implemented over the next 20 years. It includes highway, rail, water and air transportation systems.

There's also the transportation improvement program, which is a "snapshot of local transportation projects," Shrimplin said.

The full unified planning work program also may be reviewed at southeastmpo.org.

The board will adopt the program by June 17 and must turn it over to MoDOT by the end of that month, which is the end of the department and SEMPO's fiscal year.

srinehart@semissourian.com

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