FAIRHOPE, Alabama—If you’re interested in having input on how the newly formed Eastern Shore Metropolitan Planning Organization will operate, make transportation plans and receive federal funding, you have until 5 p.m. today to deliver your comments to the Baldwin County Highway office in Fairhope.

That is, unless the MPO governing body and staff grant an extension to the comment period, which at least one local group has sought.

“Smart Coast is glad to see the steps being taken by the Eastern Shore MPO to develop a draft Transportation Work Plan,” Charlene Lee, the group’s program director, said Sunday. “However, a very important element of any successful plan is getting input from the many citizens who know the area in which they live and care about effective transportation planning.

“Adequate time needs to be spent in developing effective public outreach policies. Citizens need adequate notice of comment period deadlines and the comment process needs to be easy and straightforward.

“If there is a rush to get a draft work plan finalized, and it does not have effective public comments, we are shortchanging ourselves,” she said. “We hope the MP0 will recognize this and allot an extension to the comment period and simplify the comment process.”

The public comment period on the draft plan began Aug. 28, and notice of the two-week deadline was published in the legals section of Gulf Coast Newspapers, but many people first learned about the comment opportunity and deadline in Sunday’s Press-Register newspaper. The information there stated the comment period ended yesterday, but it actually ends today, according to MPO staff documents.

Fairhope is represented on the new MPO, which was established this year when the contiguous Eastern Shore area reached a threshold population of 50,000 people, by Mayor Tim Kant and City Council President Lonnie Mixon.

The ESMPO meets tomorrow at 10 a.m. at Daphne City Hall to adopt the “Unified Planning Work Program, which details the federally funded transportation planning activities to be undertaken in the Eastern Shore Urbanized Area in FY 2013,” according to the notice published in local newspapers.

That notice was not apparently sent through the county’s email system as notice of most open meetings is typically done.

The notice in the Sunday Press-Register was submitted by the Eastern Shore Chamber of Commerce and indicated that copies of the draft plan were available for review at each of its offices, and that comment forms were available there.

Copies of the draft plan can also be found at easternshoremop.org,  and a comment form can also be found at the website of the Slow Bicycle Society on the Eastern Shore, a group which is encouraging its members and the public to attend tomorrow’s ESMPO meeting in Daphne.

“There are many great features of the Work Program that support transportation options for all users,” said Molly Peterson, Fairhope resident and representative of the SBSES group. “Some of those include the adoption of Complete Streets concepts, the promotion of bike-pedestrian programs and projects, and support for Safe Routes to Schools programs. There is, however, concern that the Bicycle-Pedestrian Advisory Committee for the MPO, under the presented Work Program draft, will not be created until ‘late 2013 or 2014’ while the Long Range Transportation Plan will begin to be drafted ‘beginning in late Spring 2013.’

“Bicycle and pedestrian needs should be fully integrated into the Plan, and development of the Plan should include, from the beginning, a committee charged with advising on these important issues.”