What is Public Involvement?

PennDOT’s mission is to provide excellent transportation systems, products, and services for its customers, the public, in an environmentally responsible manner promoting economic vitality and enhancing quality of life.

PennDOT believes that involving the public enables it to better fulfill the promise of its mission. To that end, PennDOT is committed to a public involvement program for this project that involves effective communication between all stakeholders. The community will be involved throughout all phases of the project through effective information and knowledge exchange, open dialogue, and thoughtful decision-making and input consideration leading to acceptable consensus. PennDOT's goal is a project in which all stakeholders can take pride and ownership.

Community Advisory Committee (CAC) Introduction

Individuals want to have a voice in decisions and outcomes in projects that affect them and their communities. Thus, those making the decisions must effectively involve these individuals by meaningfully incorporating them into the process to insure successful and mutually acceptable completion of a project. One method of accomplishing this goal is the creation of a CAC.

A CAC is a representative and core group of individuals that establish both a working relationship with and a link between the decision makers and the community. A CAC takes an active role in project development through participation, information dissemination, issue identification, consultation, and communication resulting in consensus and/or creation of mutually acceptable solutions. Essentially, the CAC is formed to provide an organized and effective means of involving local community interests and concerns into a project. This is done to avoid, minimize, and/or mitigate impacts early and continually to prevent later misunderstanding and/or opposition. It is also completed to help eliminate alternatives that are not feasible and/or prudent and focus on alternatives that achieve the purpose(s) and need(s) of the project.

To realize the full potential of the CAC, its members must represent a wide variety of interests throughout the project area and must be empowered in democratic processes where open communication and listening are the norm and not the exception. This forum is also productive for encouraging an understanding of the trade-offs and/or constraints behind the process along with the reasoning behind decisions that need to be made.

S.R. 68: I-80 to Main Street Project CAC

The S.R. 68 project has developed a CAC and its current membership is 17. The representative membership for the CAC consists of the following key stakeholder organizations:

CAC membership does not require detailed knowledge of the project, the transportation process, or sophisticated communication skills. It does require a commitment to: comment on project developments from the perspective of the community interest or affiliation represented, provide input on various alternatives as they are developed, and relay to the constituency the information presented by PennDOT and its consultants.

CAC Meetings

CAC meetings for the S.R. 68: I-80 to Main Street Project will be held throughout the project’s progress. Meetings will not be scheduled unless there is reason to call the committee together.

The third CAC meeting for this project was held on Thursday, August 23, 2007 from 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM at the Clarion Holiday Inn which is located in the project area on S.R. 68 just north of I-80.

This CAC meeting focused primarily on updating the CAC members on all of the progress that has been made since the last public meeting held during November 2005.

The meeting summary from the Thursday, August 23, 2007 CAC meeting is accessible to everyone for viewing via the following download:

The first CAC meeting was held on Thursday, April 21, 2005 from 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM at the Clarion Holiday Inn.

The meeting summary from the Thursday, April 21, 2005 CAC meeting is accessible to everyone for viewing via the following download:

The second CAC meeting was held on Tuesday, October 18, 2005 from 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM at the Clarion Holiday Inn.

The meeting summary from the Tuesday, October 18, 2005 CAC meeting is accessible to everyone for viewing via the following download:

During the CAC meetings, PennDOT and its consultants provided up-to-date project information and members were asked to provide comments on this information. The meetings also featured open and honest dialogue where questions were answered and all present had the opportunity to share pertinent feedback from their constituency. In order to maintain the described structure and purpose of the CAC throughout the length of the project, a series of ground rules for the CAC were generated. All CAC members were supplied a copy of these ground rules which describes the framework, roles, and responsibilities of the CAC at the first meeting.

The ground rules provided to all CAC members are accessible to everyone for viewing via the following download:

Public Officials and General Public Meetings

Both a Public Officials Meeting and a general Public Meeting were held for this project on Thursday, October 11, 2007 at the Clarion Area High School Auditorium. The Public Officials Meeting was conducted from 4:00 PM to 5:00 PM and was attended by 7 local community officials. The general Public Meeting which was open to everyone was held from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM and was attended by 43 people. The schedule for that meeting was the following:
  • 6:00 PM to 6:30 PM - Open House (plans display, discussions, and questions)
  • 6:30 pm to 7:00 PM - Welcome and Presentation
  • 7:00 PM to 8:00 PM - Open House (plans display, discussions, and questions)

The purpose of the meetings was to bring the public up-to-date on progress made and to present the preliminary alternative options for public comment. Specifically, the meetings covered topics such as reviews of the approved purpose and needs study, the preliminary alternative options developed to date, and the CAC activity.

Input on all of the topics discussed during the meetings as well as any other issues or concerns were welcomed and encouraged. The PowerPoint presentation given at the October 11, 2007 public officials and public meetings is accessible for viewing via the following download: October 11, 2007 PowerPoint Presentation [this file is very large: 11.5 Megabytes (11,585 KB)].

The graphics displayed at the October 11, 2007 meetings are accessible for viewing via the following downloads:

Preliminary Options for the South and North Sections
Vertical Alignment

As a stakeholder in this project, your input and participation are vital to its success, therefore, we thank you for your participation at the meetings.