Draft rankings from the Houston-Galveston Area Council's Regional Transportation Plan funding call are in, and although major projects pitched by Friendswood and Pearland are falling below the funding threshold,  officials say that could change as the process continues.

The first community input meeting will be at 5:30 p.m. Jan. 24 at Friendswood City Hall, 910 South Friendswood Drive, Friendswood. Four other meetings are scheduled throughout the Houston area.

"The scoring we’ve seen so far does not indicate we are going to be in the funded top group for this round in a very competitive field," Pearland City Manager Clay Pearson wrote in a statement to Community Impact Newspaper. "We will await the final and decide from there what we want to pursue with local funding or prepare for a future TIP round when traffic counts and projections may be increased with future growth."

Friendswood officials said there is still an opportunity for projects to rise in priority as the review process continues.

“The city is understandably concerned with the initial rankings," Friendswood City Manager Morad Kabiri wrote in a statement to Community Impact Newspaper. "However, at this time, the rankings are simply that of H-GAC staff and have not been adopted by the Technical Advisory Committee and, ultimately, the Transportation Policy Council. I would encourage residents interested in the various projects put forth by Friendswood to contact H-GAC and/or attend one of the Public Outreach meetings."

H-GAC received 193 applications for funding from local government officials seeking over $2.9 billion from a pool of $920 million in grants. View the complete list of projects and their H-GAC ranking here.

Final funding decisions will be made by the H-GAC Transportation Policy Council in March.