MEMORANDUM

 

DATE:   November 20, 2025

TO:       Brian Kane, Chair of Administration and Finance Committee

FROM:  Tegin Teich, Executive Director of Central Transportation Planning Staff to the Boston Region Metropolitan Planning Organization

RE:       State Fiscal Year 2025 Goals and Fourth Quarter Updates

 

This memorandum contains the final, fourth quarter updates on progress towards goals that I set for state fiscal year (SFY) 2025. These goals were set in my annual review, which occurred in June 2024. While previous memos have summarized progress made each quarter, this memo compiles progress made throughout the entire year (July 1, 2024, through June 30, 2025). I discussed the progress made and challenges in accomplishing my goals in my evaluation held in May 2025. At that time, new goals were set for SFY 2026, which are the subject of a separate memo.

 

1         State Fiscal Year 2025 Goals

My SFY 2025 goals are organized by the categories in the agency’s Strategic Plan. These categories have been abbreviated compared to the description in the evaluation.

 

Identity and Awareness (Sector Leadership/Marketing and Public Presentation)

·       Expand forums to speak about the MPO.

·       Identify funding and implement an identity and branding exercise.

 

Programs and Services

·       Implement the first stage of multi-year planning at the agency.

·       Continue to develop and engage staff in the agency’s overall focus areas to inform the individual multi-year plans.

·       Align the Unified Planning Work Program (UPWP) development process to be complimentary to multi-year work planning.

 

Governance

·       Embed the Operations Plan into ongoing agency work.

·       Hold new learning opportunities for board members.

 

Organizational Structure and Staffing

·       Refresh the Compensation Plan with improved employee engagement.

·       Move or renovate the existing office.

 

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)

·       Fund a significant DEI initiative identified by the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) Committee.

 

Funding and Operations

·       Complete and sign a fiduciary agent agreement.

·       Operate neither with a significant deficit nor a surplus (0-5 percent).

·       Identify and bring in one new revenue source (i.e., discretionary grant).

·       Continue to build relationships with potential additional partners.

 

2         Quarter 4 Updates

With support from many staff at the agency, we were collectively able to make progress towards most of my goals in SFY 2025. The latter half of SFY 2025 presented unique challenges in navigating the introduction of executive orders and changing guidance from a new federal administration. In particular, a significant amount of time was spent in the third quarter developing the annual budget and completing the federally required documents in the context of this uncertainty. Therefore, much of my time was allocated towards planning for and navigating uncertainty in federal funding and guidance.

 

2.1      Identity and Awareness

SFY 2025 was an exciting year for opportunities to attend new forums to speak about the MPO and its work. I participated in several of those events:

 

·       July 2024: I served as a panelist at a City of Boston Council hearing on congestion alongside representatives from the Brookings Institute, University of California (UCLA), and Transit Matters.

·       September 2024: I facilitated a session about the role of MPOs in stewarding the investment of federal transportation dollars to transportation improvements in the region at a Barr Foundation development opportunity for its grantees.

·       August 2024: I served as a panelist speaking about transportation challenges in the region and the role of MPOs in addressing them at LeadBoston, a year-long equity training for Boston area professional leaders held by YW Boston.

·       May 2025: I served as a panelist with Undersecretary Hayes Morrison and State Representative Steven Owens at the 128 Business Council’s annual meeting.

 

One of my goals that I was not able to realize was the implementation of a branding exercise, which was to be funded by $100,000 of de-obligated PL funds inclusive of a 20 percent match from MassDOT. In the context of fiscal uncertainty and leadership team capacity, I made a decision early in 2025 to delay the release of the Request for Proposal (RFP) for branding services until further notice. In collaboration with MassDOT, the FFY 2025 de-obligated funds intended for this effort were reallocated to build on the regional safety action plan funded by a federal Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) grant after the federal contract was expected to expire on June 30, 2025.

 

In the meantime, we were able to kick off the process to overhaul the MPO’s website, bostonmpo.org, to bring the web design up to date, build dynamic functionality for data display, and enable better mobile-device viewing. This effort is also funded by $100,000 of de-obligated PL funds inclusive of a 20 percent match from MassDOT.

 

2.2      Programs and Services

Based on idea generation from the 2024 retreat, the leadership team advanced a new structure for developing multi-year plans for the core programmatic work done at the agency. Based on an initial review of 13 multi-year plans in the latter part of calendar year 2024, in 2025 leadership team members provided multi-year plan authors with near term priorities to guide write-ups of work plans for the FFY 2026 Unified Planning Work Program (UPWP). This work planning process will continue to evolve in SFY 2026.

 

2.3      Governance

Many important elements of the Boston Region MPO’s Operations Plan have been successfully implemented throughout SFY 2025. One of the notable successes of implementing the Operations Plan has been the incorporation of quarterly project readiness updates into board meetings; the first one was delivered in December, the second was covered at the MassDOT Readiness Days in February, and the third was in May. The work to improve collaboration and coordination with MassDOT continues, with a shared goal to improve project delivery overall.

 

The Boston Region MPO held its second Annual Meeting with successful feedback from board members.

 

We better utilized a few existing conduits to expand board member engagement and learning opportunities:

 

·       Executive Director Reports at each board meeting: Content was developed with the goal of raising awareness of and providing context for topics being discussed at board meetings.

·       Committees: The Congestion Management Process Committee has relaunched and engaged the members in a discussion about goals. The Transportation Improvement Program (TIP) Process, Engagement, and Readiness Committee has provided a robust forum for discussing TIP development challenges. The UPWP Committee is being engaged more broadly in the work at the agency, beyond the discrete studies which represent a small amount of the total PL spending.

 

While I had hoped to utilize de-obligated PL funding to pilot sending board members to the annual AMPO conference, this use of funds was not authorized. Also, due to limited capacity, it has taken us longer to complete a comprehensive overhaul of new board member training materials. That training material is expected to be finalized and launched in SFY 2026.

 

2.4      Organizational Structure and Staffing

In SFY 2025, I prioritized stability at the agency, emphasizing filling vacant manager positions and minimizing changes in the organizational structure. Due to fiscal uncertainty and limited resources, we delayed hiring a new director position related to communications and public affairs. While five full-time employees resigned, we hired nine, resulting in the highest staff count at the end of SFY 2025 since before the pandemic.

 

We also kicked off a full refresh of the Compensation Plan in August 2024. During this process we gathered and discussed new market data, and realized that we had significant additional questions to explore about our compensation and structure. Again, due to limited resources and amidst changing market conditions, we delayed our completion of this update, which we will further explore in SFY 2026. In SFY 2025, we released updated salary ranges for the existing structure.

 

The RFP to request lease options was delayed to the beginning of SFY 2026. Options to relocate will be considered in the context of planning for fiscal uncertainty in SFY 2026.

 

2.5      Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

YW Boston was engaged in Quarter 1 and Quarter 2 of SFY 2025 to carry out an initial diagnostic to understand the current state of DEI at the agency and recommend a path forward in terms of DEI work. In Quarter 3, the diagnostic was shared with the agency’s DEIA Working Group (now known as the Ideas Group) and then with all staff. Leadership collaborated with the Ideas Group to develop a Request for Quotes for a full organization-wide assessment to identify, define, and develop an action plan to overcome barriers and help achieve goals related to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. This effort was funded by an initial $35,000 of de-obligated PL funds to be completed by September 30, 2025.

 

2.6      Funding and Operations

SFY 2025 was a success in terms of operating with neither a significant surplus nor deficit overall, despite fiscal uncertainty introduced in the latter half of the SFY, primarily related to federal discretionary (also known as competitive) grants. We were also able to develop a SFY 2026 budget that maintained consistent progress towards investment in staff and the agency while maintaining existing staffing levels, enabling the onboarding of many new staff members, and consistently offering professional development opportunities.

 

Despite the uncertainty concerning grants, the Boston Region MPO sought and was awarded several new grants which, with the exception of the second SS4A grant, were under contract and mostly completed by June 30, 2025 (with the exception of the SS4A grant, which was eventually extended to June 2026). The MPO was awarded the following grants:

 

·       A $150,000 Mobility, Access, and Transportation Insecurity (MATI) grant to design a pilot, partnering with an electric vehicle (EV) carshare company, to use affordable, community EV carsharing to enhance access to a transit-centric, multimodal transportation system for transport-insecure residents.

·       More than $1 million through a Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness (MVP) Action Grant. With this grant, the MPO is using high-resolution data sources to identify the heat risk that people walking and biking are exposed to as they travel throughout our region.

·       A $7.5 million Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) discretionary grant to conduct supplemental planning and demonstration activities to inform the regional Vision Zero Action Plan that is currently in development. With the 20 percent state match, the total amount is $9.3 million, with about $2 million of that total directly supporting MPO staff time.

 

The process to develop an up-to-date fiduciary agent agreement has been ongoing since the prior SFY and has been a significant effort for both MPO and Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC) staff engaged in legal, human resource, financial, and procurement activities. In SFY 2025, we completed a full draft of the administrative appendix, which is being reviewed by interim executive leadership at MAPC. Next steps will likely include bringing a draft agreement to the Administration and Finance Committee and the full MPO board.

 

We continue to build relationships and partnerships with agencies and others in our region. Some notable examples are as follows:

 

·       Launching a new structure for the Community Advisory Council

·       Participating in the Barr Foundation’s professional development series

·       Establishing new working groups, such as for Vision Zero and the Bicycle and Pedestrian Program

 

Finally, SFY 2025 was a productive year in implanting nationwide best practices in public engagement, including compensating community-based and advocacy organizations for their time spent engaging in our planning processes.