Dec. 2005 - Letter to RTA Board of Trustees proposing the need for a Community Circulator bus route in E. Cleve and parts of Cle. Hts.

January 2006 - Community meeting St. James Lutheran (now New Covenant Lutheran Church) to announce NOAH's plans for Circulator.

Early March 2006 - Second community meeting at Huron Hospital.

Late March 2006 - Second ltr to RTA Bd of Trustees and response from Board.

April 2006 - Pastor Hunter, Robyn Hales, and Scott Lafferty make initial presentation of Community Circulator plan to RTA Service Planning Dept. staff.

May 2006 - First community surveys distributed at E. Cleve. Memorial Day parade.

June/July 2006 - Gather survey responses; Meet with community allies, including EC Mayor Eric Brewer and CH Mayor Ed Kelley.

August 2006 - Attend RTA Citizens Advisory Board mtg and present Circulator project to Mayor Brewer's weekly citizens' meeting at Helen S. Brown Center.

September 2006 - Meeting with community ally, McGregor Home; Community Circulator team presentation to Councilwoman Brewer's monthly community meeting.

October 2006 - NOAH Public Meeting - public presentation of East Cleveland Community Circulator project, recognition of community allies, and commitment from RTA Service Planning Director to work with NOAH.

November 2006 - Second meeting with RTA Service Planning staff, including Director Joel Freilich; presented proposed circulator route, summary of survey data, and summary of data from Huron Hospital on patient use of private transportation. Agreement from RTA staff to gather additional data and analyze NOAH Community Circulator/public transportation needs of East Cleveland.

December 2006 - NOAH Circulator Team presentation to monthly RTA Board of Trustees public meeting.

Minutes: NOAH-Bright Star MBC/Forest Hill Church Circulator Core Groups,
meeting at Bright Star Kiddie Tot Day Care Center on November 20, 2006

The meeting was opened at 7:10 P.M. with prayer. In attendance were Tim Cannon, Mary Hunter, Barbara Ward, Scott Lafferty, Jason Lehrer, Daniel Carder, Jerry Parker, and Ron Register.
Scott Lafferty with help from Tim Cannon, Jerry Parker and Jason Lehrer, summarized the meeting with the RTA Service Planning staff (Joel Freilich, John Palagyi, and Heather Bates) on Thursday, November 2nd. RTA was generally impressed with the work we have done to this point to assess the need and identify potential areas within East Cleveland that lack adequate public transportation. Joel Freilich indicated that the survey data was helpful to the extent that it identified needs and bus usage tendencies. RTA would rather address our efforts to seek additional service by adjusting or modifying existing bus routes rather than adding a new Circulator route, but we were clear to indicate that we are still seeking a Circulator and Joel acknowledged that nothing was off the table at this point. In addition, Joel Freilich announced that due to NOAH's efforts, the Service Planning Department has requested RTA employees to ride existing routes in East Cleveland in order to log actual ridership at different times during the day. In addition to RTA's efforts to gather additional data, they asked for our Core teams to provide a list any locations within the proposed route area that they should be aware of in looking at proposed routing. We agreed to set a next meeting date sometime in late January 2007.
In response to the RTA meeting, we discussed destinations and locations that we thought should be communicated to RTA. We have a list of some addresses. Scott passed the remaining list of locations to Tim Cannon and he and Barbara Ward agreed to obtain addresses to be sent to RTA.
We discussed obtaining the surveys that were distributed to local churches through the EC Concerned Pastors Assn. Mary Hunter will verify with Pastor Hunter whether any of the pastors received the survey responses. If not, we discussed the need to attempt it again with each pastor designating a congregation member to be responsible for circulating and collecting the surveys. In addition, Tim Cannon will contact Mr. Muhammad at the EC Parks and Recreation Dept. about the possibility of distributing surveys to parents and other users of the MLK Community Center. Scott Lafferty will contact Zaid Alardah to determine the best contact at the Hospital for circulating surveys to Huron Hospital employees.
We concluded with a discussion of making a presentation about our Circulator project to the RTA Board of Trustees meeting in December. Jason Lehrer urged us that this effort should be made now to bring our Circulator proposal to the Board's attention before the Service Planning Dept. has completed their review of our proposal and the additional data that they collect. We hope to get on the Board's agenda although we have to be present to be recognized at the end of the meeting as part of the public gallery. Scott Lafferty agreed to contact Mayor Kelley and Ron Register will contact Julian Rogers, both RTA Board members to verify the time of the meeting and determine if it will be feasible to be put on the Board's agenda. After verifying the meeting date, Ron and Scott will talk to Mark Chupp about inviting Dr. Gus Kious of Huron Hospital to appear on behalf of the Circulator as an ally. We will also need to inform Ken Adams and Mayor Brewer when we firm up our plans. The tentative Board meeting date is December 19th.
We did not set definite date for our next Circulator planning meeting, depending on the date of the RTA Board meeting. Details will follow.
The meeting closed with prayer at 8:35 PM.
Respectfully submitted, Scott Lafferty