 How are we doing on the technology commissioners appreciate working with a couple of us remote, but we've planned to develop the systems for this so I think we're ready to go whenever you are Peggy. Hi, commissioner Sears. Do you approve the agenda? Yes. Yes. Hi. All right. Motion to approve the agenda passes. Second item on the agenda. I'm really not used to this format here is public forum. I don't see anyone in this audience. Rob, is there anyone online? We do have Sharon Buescher online who's up in queue. Okay. Councillor Buescher. Yes. Hi. Good evening. So I am representing myself and then I'm going to wear multiple hats and represent my neighbors. I'll start with my neighbors. And I'm included in that. So I live on East Avenue. And as you know, we had sidewalk repair done. And first of all, Chapin knows that the team from Ireland that did the sidewalk worked really well with the residents and did a great job. As far as I have to report that there's some pitting in the concrete, which just have I just noticed. So I'm a little concerned about that. So I'm just letting you all know and I'll, I'll talk to Chapin or I'll text email Chapin further with that. But what the neighbors and I were concerned about was the crew that came in a different crew came in to do the cleanup and raking and picking up the concrete. They really did a lousy job. They are part of Ireland also, but a different team. They left concrete, they rake concrete into the tree belt and into people's yards and stones. Then they spray with this with this seed with this paper shredded that it's blue so it's shredded paper as I was told compostable with with grass seed in it. But what's happened it is like it itself is like concrete, you can't go over it with a lawnmower you can't rake. They did it they they did a terrible job, and I think it really needs someone needs to look at it and address it. I'm speaking for Todd Spellman, Josie Bove, Matthew Bertrand and myself and I didn't have time to go up and down the street but I know there are others that are unhappy too but I didn't get their permission to add their names. So I wanted you all as a commission to know this. I'm just making you aware I don't expect the commission to do anything but I expect the department to address it with with Ireland. So now I'm going to switch to Sharon Bushers issue. Okay, I'm in my mid 70s and I knew that the sidewalk had some problems I had identified some of those problems. So the new sidewalk that was put in is a little is higher than the original sidewalk. They had to take a piece of my walkway out in order to accommodate the sidewalk work. They had to do that, like 30 years ago when they put in the old sidewalk so there's no doubt about that. But the replacement piece is sloped and slanted it is a challenge so it's ironic that the new that the new sidewalk was created to deal with pooling and unevenness so that people wouldn't fall and slip and yet what you've created for a person in my 70s is that same scenario and I am one dissatisfied resident. If I was a person of means, I would address this myself, but I'm in my mid 70s and I'm still working because I need the added income. And I'm really concerned that this is not I'm not being heard. And I don't feel that I don't feel that anyone has really seriously looked at this, Chapin knows about it the director knows about it, but it is unsatisfactory and somebody needs to address this. So I know I've gone more than three minutes but I feel like this is a serious issue and you're leaving an older resident in a situation that is going to create her and visitors, the potential to fall and slip. Thank you so much. Anyone else online for comments. That's all for public comment. Okay. We'll close public comments. Next item on the agenda is the consent agenda. Motion to approve the consent agenda. Second. Second. Motion to approve and seconded. All in. Oh, great. Thank you. Any discussion around that motion to two things, two brief things. One was the blodgett street item on the consent agenda had two different addresses listed on that. There was an 80 blodgett and a 90 blodgett. Just wanted to clarify that 80 blodgett was going to be the one getting the ADA parking space. Oh, 80 blodgett. Yep. And I think in the draft ordinance it said 90. Do we have a clarification? When I looked on Google street it all matched 80, but the draft language just had 90. So I just wanted to point that out. Okay. This one says 80. Yeah. And then in the draft. Yeah. Okay. Make sure that's updated. And then the other thing I just wanted to mention was the, for the Elmwood Ave motorcycle parking. I'm glad this is part of the consent agenda. I've seen, I don't know if it's this particular resident, but a resident at the house that I believe provided public comment. And I've seen a lot of confrontation between that house and members of the public trying to park there. So hopefully this works as a solution for that particular address. Okay. So staff will clarify and make the change to the ordinance language to reflect the accurate address of 80 blodgett street. So with that change all in favor of approving the consent agenda say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. We'll have even more to chew on. We've had some staff transition in our transportation planning team, unfortunately. So thanks to tech services team stepping up with truly or sake. Tonight. I'm really pleased that we'll be able to still present to you tonight on. Uh, traffic safety, which I think we all take near and dear to our hearts. The commission has the authority to do. A fair bit through regulation with city ordinance. And so we. Need to, as leaders, figure out how best to put our thumbs on the scale to enhance safety in our city. And so I'm excited to get this information out tonight. It is just. A baseline information. We're not coming with any policy recommendations tonight. But thought it would be helpful to at least set the table for baseline data to inform subsequent conversations. And with that, I'll turn it over to Julia. Great. Thanks, Chapin. My name's Julia or sake. I think I am acquainted with most of you, except maybe commissioner. Sears. So hello, I'm a public works engineer here at DPW. I'm going to go ahead and share my screen. All right, so we are here. Tonight to talk to kind of unveil our crash data dashboard. Which is basically a conglomeration of all of the state crash data for Burlington that we've made publicly accessible on our website. And this is, as Chapin said, just kind of the baseline data that we're going to use moving forward to evaluate how different things that we're doing in public works are working. So this is our kind of overview of what this tool is. So the presentation tonight, we'll talk about the tool itself and what it is and the different features of it. We'll talk about the data sources and where it came from and also the limitations of it and what we're trying to do to make it better. And then we have a couple different trends to look at throughout the city over time and also taking a closer look at the more vulnerable users of our roads, bicycles and pedestrians. We have one kind of case study in this presentation about North Ave. And then we can talk about the next steps and kind of policy things that are coming up in the future. So the dashboard, here it is. This is just a screenshot of it, but it's a website that you can access through the DPW transportation, you know, city website. This is the 10,000 foot view of crashes in Burlington. The map itself, when you're, you know, in the browser, you can kind of zoom in and out and check out different areas. It's symbolized based on the crash severity, so it certainly looks a bit, you know, muddled from here. I'm going to go ahead and open it in the browser so we can look at how the zooming works. So here it is over all. And as you zoom in and out on different streets, the data that you're looking at in the charts will kind of auto adjust. So if you're, you know, just zooming into one block of union, you can kind of see when different crashes happen. You can hover over the bars to see the exact numbers. And this is a super useful way to look at the data that we have available through the state, but not as kind of user friendly. Up in the top right, you have options to pick the years and if it's involving a bicycle, pedestrian or vehicles. And then if you're looking at fatalities, injuries, or just property damage only crashes. And you kind of saw this a little bit before, but the different graphs in the website show you kind of just some key information about what we're looking at with our crashes, mainly the severity who is involved. And there's also a whole chart about what kind of intersection the crash was at. So it's very interesting to see that many crashes are not at intersections versus signalized and stop. And we also have RFB crashes up here. So for kind of the back end of all of the different data sources, which is the main part that I helped work on, when a crash happens, typically people will call and report. If it is not severe at all and no one reports it, then we really have no way of knowing about it, which is too bad. Then the next branch is that if there is an injury or if it's serious, BPD will send an officer. They'll assign an officer to the incident. And this changed in 2020, but before 2020, they, BPD pretty much responded to all crashes, no matter the severity, every call they got. But since 2020, they've only been responding to ones that are either more serious involving more serious property damage or any kind of injury or fatality. So there is a bit of a skew in our data right now, because since 2020, BPD has been assigning officers to actually fewer crashes. And then if an officer is not assigned to the crash, they don't create a crash report and then it doesn't get reported to the state. So we're working with BPD to get an MOU together to actually get access to those crashes that are called in but don't have an officer assigned to. So that's kind of the next step for our crash data and using this in a more holistic way and accurate way. So with all that in mind, there definitely are still some big picture trends that we can look at. I'm sorry. Let me connect to the VPN super quick. And so why, while Julie is doing that, I think from the data integrity standpoint, the piece that we feel very comfortable about are the more severe crashes. And whether those be fatalities or crashes with injuries where we have less comfort with the data is the more minor crashes not resulting in injuries. So you'll see that moving forward and we will work on that MOU and get that signed so that all levels of crashes can have a year over year comparison. Yes. Thank you, Chapin. So this chart has pulled out just the fatal injury and serious injury crashes since 2010. So this will include any of those category crashes. The property damage only are the ones that we're not super confident about having them all reported. So even with that, we have some interesting patterns here. Definitely an interesting peak around 2012. And I would imagine a decline in 2020 just from fewer people being on the road with COVID happening and then 2023 is incomplete. But it's really nice to be able to get this kind of quick, big picture look at trends over the years in the city. And we can kind of, with this data more available to us, we can kind of look and try to pinpoint, you know, what projects happen in certain years, what's happening on specific streets and see what is actually making a difference in crashes on our streets. So this is a little bit of a snapshot and number form instead of chart form. So the all crashes line, looking at 2011 compared to 2019, there even was a reduction, you know, before the potential fewer crashes being reported in 2020. So we thought that was an interesting data point. It's nice to see a reduction in injuries between 2011 and 2019. But crashes are up in Burlington from 2019 to 2020, which is definitely concerning injury crashes. Now we're going to take a closer look specifically at bicycles and pedestrians. So we can ignore 2023 because it's not complete data. This is since we pulled the data, which was maybe in May or June. But it is heartening to see that our bicycle and pedestrian crashes have been going down over time. This is kind of opposite the national trend, which is showing more pedestrian crashes over the same time period. So I think that's a really heartening sign and we can hopefully take a closer look and pinpoint what have we actually been doing that may have influenced these crashes going down. So similar data in chart form, but despite overall injuries increasing from 2019 to 2022, bicycle and pedestrian went down, which is a very good thing. So as a little kind of snippet of a case study and example of how this data can be used, you probably are all familiar with the road diet that happened on North Ave in 2016. It went from a four-lane road, two lanes in each direction to three lanes. So one lane in each direction, a center, left turn lane, and bike lanes on both sides. And a big purpose and driver of this change was the safety impacts of changing the road configuration for a more safe layout. And I think often when we're doing those initial studies, we're pulling the data and we're taking a close look, and we don't always get the follow-up of how did it actually work. So I think this tool will be really helpful for doing post-evaluation for all kinds of projects like this. So there has been a decrease, especially in injury crashes. I think we have to take the 2017 to 2022 data with a grain of salt, knowing less property damage crashes have been reported, but it's really heartening to see if you were injury crashes. Sadly, there was a fatality on North Ave of a pedestrian. This happened obviously after the road diet was installed, but it was not at a crosswalk, or it was at an intersection that didn't have a crosswalk at the time that now has a crosswalk and RFB. So we do hope we've been able to help alleviate that scenario. But even with that one fatality story, it's not necessarily the whole picture of how safety has changed along the corridor. So I think overall we're pretty happy to see the reduction in injury crashes, and even thinking about some of those missing crashes from 2020 to 2022, a drop in total crashes. So this is kind of the unveiling of the crash data dashboard, which is, like I said, publicly available on our website for folks to look at and reach out to us with any questions and concerns. What we kind of built this for and what we hope to do with this data is feed it into this Vision Zero plan that Burlington is doing with the CCRPC to look at the entire city and kind of create more of a policy for our Vision Zero of zero fatalities and serious injury crashes in Burlington. So it is kind of just the first step of gathering all the data and making it available, but we think it'll be really useful in, you know, a useful tool in making our streets safer. So, Chapin, I don't know if you have anything else to add or if anybody has any questions or... Welcome questions. Commissioners, Commissioner Hogan, do you want to take a start? Sure. Thank you so much for putting this on. I'm excited to see this come together. I guess one question on the MOU, the police department, do you expect to be able to get back historical data? Yeah, so we have access to their full database, yeah. It's not just from, like, signing it, moving forward. Right. Very good. Thanks. Also, about a few months since I looked at it, but unless I checked from the public B-trans site, the B-trans site didn't have crash severity in there. It was just like injury or not, basically. Yes. Is that something that is now in the B-trans data or that you get through some non-public version of that? We request it directly from B-trans. They have it, but it's for whatever reason not on that tool, which is another big reason that we decided to build our own instead of, I guess, just always using that one. Yeah. So they have property damage only injury or fatal, but they don't have the serious injury category, which we're also really interested in, because injuries can be anything from, like, a cut or whiplash to an incapacitating injury, which there is a bit of a difference of, so we want to kind of fine tune that. Yeah. Okay. And because that sounds like a one-off request from B-trans, do you have a process in place to keep that updated? We do. So our plan is that every, like, January, we're going to have to pull all of the previous years. Oh, that's okay. Did I hit something? We're going to have to pull all of the crashes from the previous year and then also get the serious injury data from them, so we can do it just in one swoop and they just give us the data in Excel format. It's pretty straightforward to get it from them. But that's a year lag, right? To get the full complete year prior. Yeah. Okay. I think we could consider, like, six months or even, like, quarterly pulling it. Yeah. All right. Well, I mean, I'll just offer it that, of course, we can get more recent data, but with, like, through yesterday or whatever, straight from V-trans, but without the injury classification in there. Right. So maybe the bigger point is to keep pressing on V-trans and just make that information available in their thing that you guys could be just grabbing automatically. Yeah, that's true. And I'm not sure why they don't. I'm not actually asked. Okay. Billy, do you want to stop sharing so the folks on the line can see? Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. Did you get any support from the, like, the city data analysts team in this or was it just a public works effort? This was primarily a public works effort that we have talked about collaborating with them, at least to make the data available to download from the city's Open GIS website. But this was a DPW effort. Sure. Yeah. Okay. Well, it's a great start. Got some minor, like, comments on aesthetics and things that might provide an offline. Yeah. And I got into a weird situation clicking around bars to subset things where the range on the axis, on the vertical axis jumped and was no longer pinned to zero. So it was showing me a range from, like, 31 to 32 based on what I clicked. I'll send you that screenshot, maybe a couple little quirks. Looking at this, obviously, like having larger print on the numbers and things. Yes, totally. It's definitely meant to be more of an interactive thing than a screen-shotted thing in a presentation. So I appreciate you taking the time to look through. Okay. Obviously, as Dr. Spencer said in the table for more interesting analyses to come, we'll look forward to that. I have this question to jump to mind about where, if there are places that are still like bucking the trend and stubbornly high risk for people on foot and on bike. Yeah. And I think that's... Where the real success story is where it's really dropped. Yep. And we want to do that kind of corridor level look in our Vision Zero plan when we have some more consultant support. Great. And I think, to my knowledge, I don't think we have, I don't know, readily available data to tell us how many people are biking or walking. But anecdotally, it seems like it's increased over the past 12 years that this range is here. And that could be a good story as well if you're speaking in terms of like the risk rate for things. Because even if there's the same number of crashes but tons more people on foot or on bike, then that crash rate has gotten down. Absolutely. Yeah, the per capita. There's a lot of potential good stuff in here. I like it. Thank you. Appreciate Commissioner Hogan, your comment about data. And it just would share that one of the things I'm really excited to bring forward to you is that we're using new detection software and cameras at intersections that are actually able to automatically count vehicles, bikes, and pads and disaggregate them. So we're going to be able to show approaches and volumes of all different modes of traffic, which is something we never could have afforded to do before. So we'll bring that at a subsequent meeting. Thanks for the presentation, Julia. It's awesome. There are a lot of data nerds, I think, in this room. But I can only speak for myself when I say, yeah, it was great to poke around in it. And the only comment I had definitely echoes, Chair Hogan, was whenever I look at crash data, I always want to know, OK, what is the context of that? How did the crash numbers compare to the overall number of users, especially when we're talking about vulnerable users? So just like pulling an example, there were 869 bike-ped crashes in 2022, out of how many vulnerable roadway users was it 1,000? Because that's a really bad benchmark. Or was it 10,000? That relativity and that context, I feel like, is super important. So it's really good to hear that those count systems, the cameras are being implemented. So yeah, Chair Hogan kind of stole my thunder. That was my only sort of question, comment type thing, was just like that context. So yeah, it's great. That's all I had. Let's clarify. It's a poem former Chair. Oh, sorry. Commissioner Hogan. No disrespect to our current Chair. Sorry. Sorry, Chair O'Neill-Felonco. Don't worry. I could still think of it as a Chair Hogan. This guy in the end. Commissioner Barr. Thanks. I mean, both Chair Hogan and Chair Fox stole my thunder too. So we should start with me next time. No, I'm just kidding. I really appreciate the presentation. And especially the crash, the camera that measures all that, I think that's going to be a huge boon. But that's really a lot. Commissioner Barr. I'm the Chair now. Does that mean you're going to start with me? Maybe. Commissioner Depp, Vice Chair Damiani. I had one clarifying question first is the under the crash type category where it's vehicle, bike and pedestrian. Is that so if like under the pedestrian category is that that's just car sort of to pedestrian. Is that how I'd interpret that or like. So that is one thing in the state database. If it was involving a pedestrian at all. It's just pedestrian. It goes to pedestrian, right? Yeah. I think like other commissioners said, I think there's a lot of great stuff in here. And I think once we have some of that other data, overlaying that with particularly the construction portal that DPW has with all the completed projects and sort of meshing all of us together, I think that would be really great to see. So folks can sort of make their own conclusions with all the great data that DPW has for some of the stuff that you were talking about. And then lastly for the division zero plan, could you just elaborate a little bit more what that project is with DPW and CCRPC. I can and once we kick it off with Arkansas and I'm sure we'll be back to get you guys involved. But this project is it's it's evolved a little bit and it's been around as a CCRPC project actually since before I started, but it's intended to be kind of an update to our plan BTV walk bike in the context of safety. So kind of reprioritizing some of the projects that haven't been done yet based on where the need is most and also identifying safety issues throughout the city that were not addressed in the walk bike plan. So I assume it'll be a very data driven process and we certainly hope to integrate all of the things we've been talking about in terms of, you know, looking at volumes versus crashes and roadway type and also even looking at like what kind of facility are bike crashes occurring on streets of bike lanes or you know, Sharrows or no bike facility. So to kind of like, you know, dig much deeper into the details of where our crashes are happening and why and then what we can do, especially for the more vulnerable road users. Excellent, thank you. Commissioner Sears, any comments? I just got the link to it. So I hadn't, I haven't really looked at the tool in too much detail, but it seems like really rich data. Yeah. No, I think it's great and and you're absolutely right that nationally the trend is absolutely astounding and the increase in a decreasing BMT and an increase in pedestrian. So I think it's really remarkable that we're bucking that trend. So who knows. But I'll spend some more time with the tools. That sounds good. And we are absolutely open to the kind of like symbology and feedback that commissioner Hogan was referencing. Julia, thank you. Thank you for this. I really like this idea of drilling down to see how this can support in the pre and post assessment of any of our infrastructure changes. I'd also like to see as commissioner Fox mentioned and chair Brendan Hogan chair. I can't call you anything but chair Hogan commented on the layers of of users because I think looking at well, VMT is down, but as vehicle miles traveled is down. Does that mean that there are more bike pets? So recognizing that, you know, data is all I'm a qualitative person just for the record. So data can be imperfect. And if we're missing pieces of it, let's figure out what are the pieces that we need to add to have a more complete picture. And I guess another one minor, I guess point is how, how to define injury. I just see this injury selection and you mentioned like it could be a cut or, you know, you broke your leg or lost a limb. Right. That severity, how, how is that pinpointed and how do we find that information out? So we can get crash reports from the police department and they will typically in the narrative mention the like what kind of injury it was, but that's coming through like thousands of reports, which is hard, which is why we are so happy to be able to get the severe injury category from VTrans, which they have to report. It's like a federal requirement. So that's, that's the best we're at right now. We're hoping if we bring a consultant on board with some more like crash data expertise, they may have some ideas for diving a little deeper into those. Okay. And when do we hope the MOU to be in place with the Burlington police? I don't know the timeline on that myself. We are fairly close. I am looking at it. I would hope that within the next month or two that we will have that MOU sign. Okay. Thank you. And now we'll go to public comments. Anyone on the line? We don't have, oh, we do have one public comment. Sharon Buscher, you're in queue. Hi, good evening. This was very important and interesting data. Thank you so much. DBW department for collecting all of this. I wanted to ask how, how this was being addressed. We know that you had two periods of time, one from up to 2015 or something, and then one from 2017 to 2022. And we know that during COVID, people didn't move around as much. And so how, how is that being factored into this all? I don't know. I don't know. Because the chance for accidents was greatly reduced. If you didn't have as much traffic on the roads and opportunities, unfortunately for mishaps. And so I wasn't quite sure. Had that be a, had that been addressed or how was it addressed or will it be addressed? I don't know the answer. Thank you. Wanting to look at these crashes in the context of how many cars are on the road and how many, how many people are walking. So that is not in the current tool, but it is something we hope to integrate with the work that's happening on the vision zero plan. So am I still, can you still hear me? Yep. Okay. My, my biggest concern is that I, I feel like we, we, the city of Burlington has done, has taken great strides in trying to make pedestrian and bicycles at movements safer. We've got a long ways to go, but I'm concerned that we, I don't want to make ourselves feel too self satisfied because I'm not sure that because of this unknown entity that I addressed and you acknowledged, I'm not sure that the improvement is as significant as the data suggests right now. And I was concerned about that. I think we've made improvements and I can't believe I, I believe that those have reduced the incidents of accidents. I truly believe that, but I'm not sure to the power that the data suggests. So that was the rationale for why I was asking this. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Councilor. Any other online participants for public comment? No, that's all. Sir, which are you here for public comment? All right. So there's no action required. We'll go ahead and close this item. There's no, there's no action warrants. No action needed. Right. Okay. That is correct. Okay. Great. Great. We'll close item number five. Thank you, Julia for that presentation. And we'll go on to item number six, the GMT fair policy. Great. I'll start kick this off. And we have with us Clayton Clark, who is the general manager of GMT. Thank you so much Clayton for taking time this evening. Clayton is definitely proving his, his commitment to public transit by getting out every night this week at public meetings was in Berry city last night in Burlington tonight. I serve on the GMT board, probably the longest serving member right now, which is a little frightening. And after a unique obviously, and a momentous time during COVID, we were able through state support to operate fair free for a number of years, but I serve on the finance committee of GMT. And we are hitting a much more financially constrained period. And the realization and the reality, I think, has fully set in with the board and the understanding that the resumption of fares is necessary to continue a robust transit system. And the question is then how do we do that in a way that's fair, that innovates and provides new services and. You know, provides a level of customer service that we didn't have previously when we had fairs. And, you know, I'm pleased that what staff has put forward is a significant step forward. Despite it charging fares, fares are what unlocks our ability to draw down state and federal dollars and continue GMT's robust transit service. So without any further ado, I'll turn it over to Clayton. And, you know, the board has slowed down the process a little bit as you're you'll hear tonight. So there is additional time for your meaningful feedback here as the board considers whether to approve this at its next meeting. Clayton. Thank you so much, Chapin. And I spent a good part of my day to day. Working on a process that required me to reference a policy document from 2008 that Chapin signed. And so, you know, that, so 15 years ago, you signed a document and it's still being used. And so thank you, Chapin, for your long service. And so what I want to kind of walk through is some of the things that we talked during our public. Meetings where we told people about what we were thinking of so that we can get their response. And as Chapin alluded, there have been a few changes that have happened since then that I'll let you know about because this is still very much a work in progress. And but before we get into what's coming, I kind of want to talk a little bit more about what has happened. And so very briefly, we started offering fair free service in 2020 in April because we needed to reduce the contact between drivers and the public because of COVID. And so we wanted to have our riders be able to enter through the back of the bus to be physically distant from the driver. And then so that they would be able to come on board and then find a spot, hopefully also distant from others. We really liked operating the zero fair service. We like the fact that it's giving to our community without a financial barrier. And it was an experiment that the state thought was a good investment too. And so between federal funds and then state funds, we were able to continue the service to the present. And we presently have state funds that will cover the revenue loss for fairs through January. I can let you know that we are we projected to return to fairs in January. It's probably going to be more like March. And the reason why is because even though the procurement and the rollout is going very well, there's a component to it that is going to be not available to us until the end of January. And so we're now saying that January is probably not going to be happening. And it's likely going to be the sort of target date that we're setting would be the day after town meeting day. So March, March 6. But because it's still fluid, you know, we're not, you know, setting an official start date or anything along those lines. So I also want to talk a little bit about what routes we're returning to fair service. And so GMT is somewhat special in the world of transit and that there's very few transit agencies across the country that operate both rural public transit and urban. And so this is only going to apply to the urban, the network, the rural, the rural network that we operate has different funding mechanisms, different federal rules that we follow. And the state and VTrans has made a commitment to keeping rural transit fair free. One of the reasons why they can do that is that the cost of keeping rural transit fair free statewide is about a $500,000 cost. We're keeping urban transit fair free is about a $2 million cost. And so there's a big difference there. So what we're talking about is our urban local routes. These are the one, the two, the five that you see moving around in the area. We're talking about our commuter routes. So coming in from Milton and Jeffersonville and the 116 commuter and our link express routes coming in from St. Albans and Montpelier. And so when we came up with the fair policy, we wanted to do something different than we've done in the past, which was basically a cash-based system that people would pay when they would get on board. And if they wanted to do something different, they would be able to get a monthly pass. They would have to pay up front for that. Or they could get, say, a 10-ride pass that, again, they would have to pay up front for. And so we wanted to provide more modern features like being able to pay with a credit card right on the bus so that there would be simplicity. We realized that things were sort of complicated with our fair structure because there was a different rate for link routes, a different rate for commuter routes, and a different rate for urban routes. They all had different monthly pass costs, so it was, you know, not clear. And if you used the link and then the public or the local routes, then it just made it even more complicated. So we wanted to simplify things. And so what we are moving towards is a system that is offered by the company called Gen Fair. And their system is called Gen Fair Link. And what it will be able to provide is that people will be able to come on board. They'll be able to use a credit card. They'll be able to use a debit card. They'll be able to pay in cash still. They'll be able to pay with their smartphone. And we suspect most people will use a smartphone to pay, or they'll be able to use a smart card. And it's actually those smart cards that are the thing that is going to hold us up that are expected for delivery later in January. And you'll hear their importance in just a moment. One of the things that we really like about the Gen Fair Link system is it lets us sort of flip the script when it comes to cost containment. So previously we would have a, that monthly pass, that was going to be your most cost effective way to use the service. But that required people as I mentioned to outlay $40, previously it was $50 for the monthly pass. What the Gen Fair Link system is going to allow us to do is the opposite of that, which is set a cap. And so with the fair structure, what will happen is that people will use whatever way that they pay with their phone, with their smart card. And that will, I know who they are. So it's no longer sort of a dumb system where somebody pays the $50, but we have no idea who that person is. It will know who that person is when they pay so that when they reach a certain amount of cost we can say, you know what, the rides after this are going to be free. And so instead of people having to pay up front for a pass, they'll get to a cap and the rides will be free afterwards. So what we are looking to do is to have all of our routes that are returning to fair service go to a standard flat fair rate of $2. And so previously our urban routes were $1.50, our commuter routes were $2, and our link routes were $4. And so this will make all of them $2. And the price cap, instead of having separate passes for each of these, the price cap will apply to all three of those. We had hoped to be able to have the price cap set at $40, which was the previous cost of the monthly pass. We did have, the state legislature did set a revenue goal for us, and so that revenue goal was that we had to come up with 10% of our revenue for urban operations to come from fares. And one, we just last week got some cost projections. We had a consultant to do the cost projections for us because this was a very more complicated figuring out than we could really do with our data internally. And what we found out is that we're going to be under that 10% if we go with the $40 cap. Fortunately, we will be right on target with a $50 cap. And so our expectation is that we will probably go with the $50 cap instead of the $40. Since we've already done public meetings where we've told people that we're going to try to do this for $40, we're going to do public meetings again, letting them know that, eh, we tried $40, but it's not going to work. So we'll give people the opportunity to provide input for that. One of the things that I want to mention is that we do have discounted rides for people who are 18 and under, people who are 60 and older, and people who self-identify as disabled. Those folks get their rides for 50% off. Our belief is from our past data that about half of our riders end up qualifying for that discount. And so their cap wouldn't be $50, it would be $25 a month. And their cost per ride wouldn't be $2, it would be $1. The, and, oh, I'm sorry, I forgot to mention, there will also be a daily cap so that if somebody needs to make multiple trips during the same day, that once they get to a certain amount, it will also, their rides after will be free. I think that we're going to stick with $4 as the daily cap, even though the cost estimate shows that that's going to be tight. And so that means that if somebody, you know, needs to take four trips in a day, it's not going to be $8, it'll just be the $4. And so that is just a very quick overview of, oh, I forgot the important thing, which I wanted to talk about the smart cards. And so we know that a lot of our, a lot of the people that use the bus are cash-based riders. They don't have the ability or choose not to have a credit card or a debit card. And so these folks will be able to have all of the same price protections of the cap by using a smart card. They'll just come to the transit center, they'll come to GMT headquarters, and they'll, we'll issue them a smart card, they'll give us cash, and then we'll put that value on the smart card. And so it was very important to us from an equity perspective that we, that we stay, that have those protections available to our cash-based riders. And one of the things that we'll make, we'll be even more convenient is that the Gen Fairlink system is part of a national retailer system called INCOM. And it does take 18 to 24 months for us to become active in INCOM. But sometime in 2025, what we expect is, is that somebody would be able to take their smart card and go into any CVS, any Walmart, any Walgreens, and hand over their card and $20, and you know, have that money, or whatever dollar amount that they provide, and have that added to their smart card. So even though right now, they'll have to go to the transit center to add funds to their smart card. In the future, they'll have greater. And so, I'm going to turn it over to you all to have a discussion, instead of just me talking with you. But in closing, you know, we're sad to see Fair Free Service go, but we think that this is definitely better than the Fair Collection system that we had before. And it's something that I think is going to be, you know, really bringing us into a much more modern, you know, public transit. So what's on folks' minds? I do want to say that usually when I'm in this room, I'm talking to our friends with the Duke. And Gene always asks me hard questions. And so I expect you all will do the same, and I look forward to that. Thank you for your presentation. We'll ask hard questions, but we'll be nice too. Excellent. Well, he's nice. Sometimes. Let's start with Commissioner Fox. Hi, Clayton. Hello, it's nice to see you. Thanks for the presentation. I feel like I've heard a lot about you know, the Fair Resumption, so it's nice to just listen to it all laid out in one way, one place rather. I had one clarification question, and so I don't know if I misheard you or what, but for the discounted passes, I think you said 18 or younger, but the Fair documents said 17 or younger, so I'm just wondering if you can clarify what that is. I'm sorry, it's under 18. So yes, yes. It could be that I misheard you. No, I'm sure I mispoke. Under 18. Commissioner Fox. Jump in with one comment there. The document says under 17. Which document are you looking at? I'm looking at this like a word document kind of thing that was attached after the briefing. Okay. Love to know between those three what we're looking at. Chapin, I think you told me that you added this was our fair document that we sent around. Draft pair proposal for public comment. Then I apologize for that. I think that's a typo. I think it is, as you can clearly hear, I used to mix it up. So it's 17 and younger or 18 and under? Under 18. It's under 18, yeah. 17 and under 18. Under 16 to 17, you'd pay the discounted fare. Under six would be free. Free anyway. Yes. Okay. It would just be easier if we banned children. Apparently that's not allowed. Darn. Thanks. I'm sorry for jumping in. No, that's okay. It's good to get it out there. And then on the smart cards, I don't know if this is just like totally like out there and like down the road. But I guess I'm concerned because they sound smart and useful and you'll be able to reload them and stuff. You know, to what extent, is there a cost per card? Like are people going to have to pay if they lose them to be replaced? Like, because that sounds like a big investment that GMT is making. Yes. So I'm just sort of curious about that side of it. So the plans to start is that the cards themselves are somewhat expensive. I think they're about $4 apiece. And we're going to provide people that $4 card and that would be like a credit card. It's a nice piece of plastic. It's going to have like the GMT logo on it and you look fancy. And one of the things I do want to make sure that people know is that we're insisting that there's nothing on the card that would distinguish between a discounted ride and a full price ride because we wanted to make sure that it would not be obvious to people getting on the bus. There is also like a $1 Tyvek card. And so our expectation is that if we have a rider that sort of continuously loses their card, then at some point in time we will start, you know, hey, we're still going to give you the smart card, but it's going to be this cheaper Tyvek card. It probably won't have our logo on it. It will still have all of the same functionality. I really want us to avoid having to get into a situation where we're charging for those smart cards. So I think that we're going to try to see how it goes and not create a payment expectation unless we see that we need to. And for the people that do lose their cards, one of the things that I really like about this is that in the past you paid your $40 for your monthly pass and if you lost that piece of paper because it was just like card stock, your $40 is gone. Here if you, if I lose my card and I show up at the transit center and say, hey, I lost my card, then we'll deactivate the other one and reactivate the new one and the person doesn't lose anything. And that's also going to help with some of our organizational work that we're doing so that like when we work with the schools and the Howard Center and the stuff, people aren't going to just be able to, you know, give their card to somebody else. So we'll make sure that the people getting the rides paid for are, you know, who they need to be. Clarification question. So for the commuter monthly cap and then the regular monthly cap, are those separate or can you, is it just like 140 or 50 say, dollar fare and you can use that for the commuter routes and that same chunk of 40 can be applied then to like the local routes as well? You can use it throughout our entire system of fares. And that is a huge improvement from before because the link monthly pass used to be $150. And people will now be able to use the link for $50. And so that part's going to be really helpful. Okay, so they're the same thing. I'm just wondering why they're called out. There's a little chart in our packet that has like a monthly cap that's 40 and then the commuter monthly cap that's also 40. So they're the same thing. Yeah, yes. I think that we just wanted to make the, so that people can see the comparison between what an old monthly pass used to be. That makes sense. Yeah. Okay. That's all I have. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Fox. Commissioner Sears, you want to go next with any comments? I don't have any comments. I guess I'm thinking about the cards, the card transferable, where it's linked to one individual. It's linked to one individual, but you know, I'm sure that like families will probably share them. And you know, we're not going to police that, you know, heavily. Okay. Yeah. And we're still going to, one of the things that I know that we have to figure out that we haven't done yet, is all right, what happens if you have a person, you know, a mom or dad who comes on with three kids, you know, how are we going to handle those? Go on. How are we going to handle those? And, oh. She is. Was that a lucky guess? Was that a lucky guess? Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I suspect that we are going to, because what we don't want to do is have them run the card three times, because of the fair capping. So that's something we haven't figured out yet, but we know that we need to address. I can tell you, I'm probably leaning towards, you know, kids traveling with a parent, you know, I would want to support that, but I don't want to say more than that until the board blesses my crazy ideas. Because we, I used to have, I used to use the 10 card and we would all just, you know, just swipe it three times. Yeah. Yeah. I could see you would, you would max out right away. You did that. One of the, this came up to us. I'm sure you're not surprised during the public, the meetings and, because we heard from a family member who was like, well, now suddenly for me to take my family, you know, to somewhere in town, it's far cheaper for me to do the car. And that's the opposite of what we're trying to promote. So, I'm going to myself. Thank you. Commissioner Sears. Commissioner Barr. Thank you. And thanks. Another great presentation and really excited about the new systems that you've got coming in. I just wanted to, I promise I won't harp on the card system, because I've traveled to DCs many times and they have a metro card. Yes. I love the idea of a metro card and being able to, because what, for me at least having the metro card with money on it, I got to use it. So then I'll be forced into public transportation rather than trying to find another way to get around. Do you see us ever coming to that? And it sounds like the card is really for maybe the unbanked or those that might not have a smartphone, or are we switching to smartphones now? You know, I think that people are going to find that the convenience of the smartphone is really going to be what they are going to choose, because they'll be able to download a GMT branded app that Gen Fair will create for us. And so they'll be able to create their own account and set, and if they've already got like payment set up on their card, I mean, it'd be probably two minutes for them to do this on their own. And then it would be the same sort of, because it's a contact free, you know, when you go to pay now that there's the places that have the little dots where you just bring it close by. So they'll just have to bring their phone by it. They don't have to have like the app specifically open or, and I think they're going to find that that's like going to be the easiest way. And it's also why I'm not too worried about, you know, like the cost of the smart cards, because I think that most of our writing population is going to choose not to have them. And it shows how long it's been since I've been to DC. They probably are using smartphones now instead of payments to cards. I'll tell you, you know, the thing that I love about the DC thing is that they have those, but I also know like when you're a first time user, it's scary. And so, and really one of the things that I didn't really touch up about in my presentation because I wanted there to be more discussion is that we're building in at least six weeks of account creation time. So that we'll be able to provide that training to folks because we know that anxiety about how is this going to work is a real disincentive for people to use it. And so we're going to have events, not just at the transit center, but we're going to have events at like the U mall and other community locations where it's come on down. We'll help you set it up on your phone if you have a phone. If you don't have a phone, we'll get you hooked up with a smart card and we'll tell you this is how it works. So maybe QR codes at all the bus stops. I'm sure you will see that. That would be a quick way to do it. Yes. That's how I use the bike share. Yes. That's it for me. Commissioner Jamie, do you have anything to ask about GMT? Oh man, this is scary. I have them to be nice to me today. I have no comment as a GMT employee working intimately on this project. You dream about this. All right, Chair Hogan, anything from you? It's not my name. Sorry. Great. Thank you. Better to meet you. Mr. Clayton. And you know, I will have to say there's another Brendan Hogan that I previously worked with. And so when I used to work in state government and when I showed up, I was like, oh, that's a different Brendan Hogan. All right. So here we are. Could you clarify our buses then cash free? They will not be cash free because we think some people will just, you know, want to give you $2. Exactly. Yeah. And you know, I think that the reality is, is that if you're a non-discounted rider and you're an only occasional user, you know, you may not, the incentive to create an account may not be that big a deal because you'll just put in your two bucks. You don't even have to find change. You know, and actually that was one of the factors of why we, you know, went with $2. It was not just the dollar amount, but the change was always an issue. And so they'll be able to do that. And yeah. So there still will be cash. I will tell you that it cost us probably double the money of the new fare system by making sure that we could still do cash. But we just know that that's a equity consideration that we wanted to keep providing that. Yeah. Just guessing that like that complicates your fare box setup. I think it makes sense. Yeah. I think the cap makes sense as well, like the idea of that rather than sort of having to guess how the month is going to go in advance. Just start paying up until you get that monthly maximum. I like the sound of that. You know, I agree with the sentiment that the fare free would be nice, but I think research has shown it's more important that the bus service be usable than it be free. And I know, I guess let me ask you this. My sense is it seems grossly unfair for our representatives to request that we cover 10% of our urban operating costs while covering none of our rural operating costs. I can't disagree with you there. Do you have off-hands, aside another topic for another meeting, but do you know off-hands are the general subsidy for rider on the rural system versus the urban system? I don't want to hazard a guess because it will just be a wag, but I'll be happy to get back to you on that. And so just to clarify, and actually, Chris, do you mind if I call upon your GMT expertise to answer his question, what data do you think would that? Because we could look at the transit rate, but that's going to just cost, that'll look at the cost per ride. I believe in Steve's analysis that he did for the legislature, I believe that's in that report. I just don't have that in front of me. Okay. Thank you for the direct. That was the part that came out last year. The report to the legislature. Yeah, I believe that's in there. I'll give that a read. Thanks. You know, it's a sort of caution sort of the language around that. There's a slide in there and you spoke to it that because pre-pandemic, there's only 500,000 on the rural routes. That's cost less to cover that amount of fares. Yeah, but it does not cost less to provide service to those riders. I agree. And I think that's something we should be shouting from the top of the Capitol in Montpelier. And I, you know, we have elected officials that don't get this. And we need to help them get this. I can tell you that definitely there was like Senator Chitenden, former GMT chair, you know, he definitely brought up this concern and was speaking pretty loudly of the perceived inequity. I can tell you that one of the things that, you know, going into the legislative session, I thought that there was a good chance that the legislature would extend zero fare. And so the cynic of me says that we're going to get our fare service up and running perfectly just at the time that the legislature decides that we really should be fare free, you know, across the state. You know, but that's the cynic of me because what I'll notice is that the house transportation, there's a good contingency of folks there that think that fare free should be, you know, the way of the future for all of Vermont. So I think that there's, it's not, I don't see this as a settled issue, you know, going into future legislative sessions. Yeah. Okay. Thank you for that. And I think we should also be honest that fare free would be nice, that's not getting people out of private vehicles. Right. I think research has shown that largely replaces trips that are not in vehicles in the first place. I'm frugal. I'm not going to pay if I don't need to, but if I'm walking somewhere and there's a bus coming and it's free, I'll hop on. Yes. If there's a bus coming and I'm like, I'm not freezing to death. You know, it's two bucks. I'll save my two bucks maybe. We definitely know that we're going to lose ridership and that those people are going to be making exactly those calculations that I used it before because it costs nothing now. I'm going to think about it. Yeah. But we've got to like make it an awesome service. Yes. And I think that, you know, I arrived, I started in January and, and so the board was just sort of wrapping up some of the discussions about their budget and about whether, whether there would be the need to return to fares. And one of the things that, that I noticed was that there was, the board was essentially selecting the preservation of service over fare free. Like we could continue to operate fare free, but we would have to give up service. And the thinking was that then that goes against, you know, climate goals that goes against all, you know, sorts of other, you know, issues that were important to us. Yeah. And, and so that was why, you know, this path was, was chosen. Yeah. Yeah, I totally agree. Yeah. I'll also say one of the things that, being new to public transit, my background is in human services. I feel like I've never left human services because I think public transit is, it's a human service industry. As far as I'm concerned. That, oh, I kind of got lost in the direction that I was going. Oh, is one of the things that has surprised me is that the cascading effects that happen in public transit. And so one of the things that going to zero fare has impacted us negatively is that Medicaid will pay folks, will pay providers for transporting people through the non-emergency medical transport service. But if there's fare free service, that, that, they don't. And so when we went to fare free service, it ended up having there be a cost hit to the organizations that, that provide that transportation. And so, and so it's sometimes, there's, there's more than just the, the fare that the people, you know, pay the impacts of the costs throughout the system. Yeah, for sure. It's absolutely public transit, absolutely public service. It needs to be a well funded public service. I think it does. The point that I would hammer is that everyone benefits from having awesome reliable public service, whether they're physically on that service. Yes. Or not. If a person's in there, if they see a vehicle. Yes. Behind a bus that has 20 people on it. And that person should be very, very thankful that there's 20 people on a bus in front of them and not 20 other single occupancy vehicles. And so the people in the single occupancy vehicles should be the biggest fan, the biggest supporter here as well of making this an awesome service that can attract more riders. And that's, I'm sure they're not thinking of that when they're in their little bubble. But I think that's a point that's important to emphasize here as well. Absolutely. Well, one of the things that the GMT needs to figure out and Chapin alluded to this, is that GMT, like a lot of municipalities, has a financial cliff that we're looking at. COVID funds are going to run out. We're going to need to find additional sources of revenue. We look at the state and they're like, hey, our COVID funds are running out too. We're not going to be able to provide you anymore for public transit. So how are we going to bridge that gap? And I think that the way that you bridge that gap is that you make the connection that this is, you know, a human service. I was very happy to hear, I used to work for Dale, the Department of Disabilities, Aging and Independent Living. And they came and spoke at the Public Transit Advisory Council last week because they're making a transportation a bigger emphasis of the state aging plan. And so the state has a 10-year aging plan and they realize that, you know, older folks, transportation is a huge challenge for them. And with public transit these days being not just fixed route, but microtransit in some places and we have elderly disabled or they just change that to older and disabled. And, you know, so that my whole, and the reason why I bring this up is, is that as a former Dale employee, I know that they've distributed about half a billion dollars a year to service providers in the state to provide services. You know, if we could just get a little bit of that to provide these essential transportation services, then I think the GMT, you know, would really be able to blossom and grow because of that. Because the thing that's nice is, is that even though we need a couple million dollars a year, that's actually not a lot of money. You know, it is, and I think that if we can get people out of the mindset of just, you know, old buses, you know, going through town and that's what they're funding, I think that, I think that we'll be successful there. Just a couple, thank you for that. Appreciate it. Just a couple comments on the fare itself. Is there any sense making having a lower cap for just local routes? You know, it's in the per rider cost here. There's obviously winners and losers, and I appreciate your point about the simplicity of it, but maybe in the administration, that sounds simpler now. If I just stay in my zone, can I get capped out at 20 versus, the person's making out real well if they're going back and forth on the link every day for the same price as I am going two stops downtown. You know, I'm not sure that the gender fare system allows route specific caps like that, but I'd be happy to look into it. And I will say that at least a start, this is going to be complex enough, but that would be something I would definitely want to look into in the future, because one of the things that, you know, Chapin and I are going to be working on is that, you know, Burlington has traditionally provided support so that certain routes would be fare free even when we operated fares. And perhaps that would be a sort of a different approach with the new system. So I like that idea. I'll put this in my brain, because if I don't put it in my notes here, I will forget about it. Great. How does it work for, like, UVM students or staff? Do they need a new card, or do their student IDs magically get plugged in here? So what happens is that we have what's called our unlimited access program, and what they do is that they show their ID, they're able to ride for free, and then we just hit a little button on the fare box that counts them. And so they pay a flat rate that we negotiate with them each year. And one of the attractions to that for them is that if you did it based on specific rides, then those costs, you know, can go up pretty dramatically from year to year. And from a budgetary perspective, it's easier for them to know that, hey, it was $400,000 this year. It'll probably be about 4% to 5% more, you know, next year. And so they pay out that flat rate. Okay. And that is also critical for us to achieve our fare goals. Yeah, that's great. So that button still works. Oh, yeah, yes, yes. Okay. What if I'm like dealer.com or any company in town or the city of Brillington or something like that, and I want my people to, I want to help subsidize their trips or something. How does that work? I'm so glad you asked this because I skipped over it for the time's sake. The Gen Fair Link system allows us to create a portal for other organizations so that we would be able to, essentially they tell us who their employees are. We then select those accounts, would be visible on the dealer.com portal, and then dealer.com would be able to add money to those accounts directly if they so chose. Or we could send them an invoice, you know, if they would prefer to do that. But this will actually and really improve the options for organizations to be able to support employees or people they're providing services for or students. Yeah, so that would be nice because one of the concerns that we've had in the past is that, again, we would have this physical pass that we would give to them. They would give to their employees. They then get distributed to the employee's friends. Plus, also, with the system of somebody leaves, they can just go in and remove them from their payment structure. So they'll be much more in control over who they're supporting. Oh, great. I like it. So if I'm chugging along a pain with my smartphone, then I get a job at the city. I go to HR, have them tell you, I now work for them. Exactly. And those details we're still figuring out because there's obviously some privacy components there. But I'm sure that we'll be able to get that to work pretty well. Yeah, okay, great. I think that's all for now. I appreciate it. So your name wrong before is Mr. Clark. Oh, I didn't even notice. I think I said Mr. Clayton previously. Mr. Clark, it's a pleasure. It's a pleasure. When I'm usually called, compared to what I'm usually called, I accept that it's a good thing. One of the things that I've loved about the new job is that I had no idea how opinionated people were about public transit until I came into this job. I was like, wow. You should try parking. Talk about parking. Talk about parking. We'll talk about parking a lot here. I can't imagine. People don't have a strong emotional feelings about parking today. Thanks again for your presentation. I have a couple of questions here. For the smart card, will there be a kiosk or does it have to be like a human transaction? To start it will be a human transaction. Okay. Yeah. Eventually, hopefully moving towards a kiosk. We're going to see what the demand is. Okay. Yeah. Right. Okay. Family fare. So I thought about this as well when my kids were little. We lived too close to Burlington schools for them to get a bus pass, but far enough for kids to lose their cool, sometimes coming home. And then it was like 60 cents times three kids who has the freaking coins and then getting on the bus and so forth. I would just love it if there could be a consideration, some research into like what a family card could look like. Okay. You know, I only have three kids. I know some of my new American friends have more than three kids. And these are folks who are truly transit dependent. Yes. But who may, may not necessarily qualify for some assistance or get some assistance, but not others. So just thinking about that kind of family piece, because the burden does generally fall on mothers. So that would be great to kind of look into and see what possibilities there are for a family card. Absolutely. And then clarification on the ages. I appreciate that. And then back to kind of rural versus urban. I don't want this to sound like a zero sum game because it shouldn't be, right? We're trying to, like the vehicle ownership costs in rural areas is much higher than it is in urban areas. Their energy burdens are often greater, et cetera. But when we think about what Chittenden County, what Burlington in particular, what Burlington taxpayers are investing in this service, any investments in GMT, where will they be targeted? What are the criteria kind of looking forward four years, five years, whatever? Well, one of the things that is important to think about with GMT is that I started off by talking about how we were kind of special because we have an urban and rural component. And in some ways, GMT really is two transit companies with a shared management team because urban transit and rural transit are covered by different sections of federal statute and have different guidelines. And so we actually have to keep our monies separate from the two services. So all of the revenue that we get from fares will stick within the urban system. And so what will happen is that the unlimited access payments that we talked about before, those can act as a direct federal match for things like a new bus. It's a little more complicated with fares because it's treated differently than local matches. But we will then use that to enhance the service here within the urban zone. And so it's not going to be like we can't. In fact, I was actually talking about this in reverse in Berry City last night because they were like, why is Chittin County always the priority? And I'm like, just so you know, we cannot take rural funds and give to Chittin County and vice versa. And so yeah, to stay here. Does that answer your question? Yes, it did. And I think it's helpful, not only for Berry, but also for us. So I think I was on a call with, maybe it was a public forum call when I was on my way to Tacoma last month. And my kids are all GMT riders. Oh, were you at the one of the public meetings during the airport? Yeah, I was at the airport. Yes, that was me. So my youngest is 14. She's a freshman at BHS. We landed at SeaTag Airport. We took the link, the light rail into town, traveled around, and then she was with a friend and they traveled fare free. Then I went to Tacoma for a conference and my youngest said, I think it's going to be better for us if we can take the bus to the airport instead of taking a cab. And we did. And it was like on the app, sound transit, you get your Tacoma to Seattle ticket online. I could download the app. They also have the transit app where you can get, depending on what system you are, what county, you can get your ticket on the transit app. And she was kind of making fun of me because I was watching to see the bus arrive. She's like, it's coming. You don't need to keep watching. That's her job to make fun of us. I know, I know. But a lot of these kids, she just got a phone. So we'll talk about the high school and middle school in a second. I think this, the ability to have these multiple platforms are going to make it easy and accessible to folks. It's integrated. We can see where it is. And it's all good. And one of the things that the Gen Fair app will offer some of the similar information is the transit app. And so what that will do is it will give our, we're going to keep the transit app as well. And so our riders will be able to kind of figure out, you know, actually, I like this app better or I like, you know, one app over the other. And so we're happy that, that, because, you know, I don't want to speak bad of the transit app, but I don't always love it when I use it for my own, you know, transportation around. And so I'm really curious to see how Gen Fair's version of it is, it's going to be using the same data. But, you know, of course, how that data is packaged is, you know, can be super important. Make sure the bus drivers put their whatever notification they need on them. Yes. So my little segue into schools. So a lot of our middle schoolers and our high schoolers use the bus. There are also a lot of elementary school kids who use the bus. But let's talk about the folks who move around a lot more independently. And I spoke about this in that forum, like the outreach to the schools and the users. You talked about doing outreach to the community. I want to underscore that these transit riders are also your community. Dealing with teenagers is its own challenge. I get it. But I think it's also a really important, really important audience to use. Some of these folks will still be transit dependent. I mean, my son right now does not have access to a vehicle. I mean, he could have access to our vehicle, but we don't let him. But this idea that here we have real users of this system and making sure that this change that's going to happen partway through the school year is communicated to after school, to King Street, to Sarah Holbrook, to Boys and Girls Club, to the YMCA, to all the schools and all those partners as well as these kids. I think that outreach is pretty important. And Chris, I'm going to call upon you again. Burlington High School is still going to be getting the free rides, right? The school district pays through the city's assessment. So those folks are similar to the Katma folks. They'll still be able to use their ID? Yeah. Okay. But then, so this is what happened when my oldest, she graduated in 2020, there was like a time limit on when they could use the bus. And so if you're at a sports practice out on Institute Road and it finishes at whatever time. Yeah. Right. Then all of a sudden like, you can't, so. I know that in the past that the school district has wanted us to have that limit because of their concerns about liability. I don't, I think that we're going to be moving away from that because it doesn't make sense for some of the reasons that you are describing. And so I think that this is one of the areas that's still working out, but I'm not interested in, I want the job for the driver to be as simple as possible because I want them focused on driving. Mm-hmm. And to have to figure out whether to charge after seven or before, you know, those are things that I'm not really interested in. And so I think that we're going to be moving in that direction. Okay. And then one final question on like the institutions then. So if you have BSD, the Burlington School District, Champlain, UVM, I don't know who else has cards in you. There's like the button that the driver pushes. How do you differentiate between institutions on who's getting on the bus? It's because they show their ID. They show their ID and there's like a different button to push? Yes. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. That was great. See, this is a very easy crowd. Well, just because you asked questions, I just luckily happened to know. Although I did have to realize. There's a little matrix that shows which school. That's great. Okay. All right. I think that's it. Yay. Yay. Anyone on the hotline there who has public comment? There is no one left on the line, so no public comment right now. Okay. And no one in the room. And there's no action on this. So thank you very much for your time. Excellent. Yes. I'm going to go play Zelda. Yes. And Chape and I hope you feel better. Me too. I do feel better. I'm just trying to, you know, keep everybody else better. I appreciate that. Thank you. Have a good day everybody. Thanks. All right. We will close item number six onto the next, item number six, the GPW commission annual report to city council. Great. Chair, do you want to kick this off? Do you want me to? Why don't you, why don't you start because I realized I didn't pull that up. Or actually, I guess I could, maybe I'll start and you jump in. Oh, do you have it up? Okay. Rob was ready because Rob's amazing. Because he is. The city council previous to COVID had every year, every year, every year, there was a lot of pressure and pressure. And we were very close to the city council to make the recommendation that the commissions would provide a written annual report to the, to the city council as the city council. Allows commissions or directs commissions to take care of work. That in the charter is assigned to the city council. And so the council appreciates these annual reports. restart them and they want to start with the end of FY 23. We have now ended FY 23. Thanks to Rob and Chair O'Neill Vivonco and Vice Chair Damiani. We were able to put together this summary for folks and you know I'll let Peggy lead the the next phase here but ultimately what the clerk treasurer's office would like is us to vote on a memo that the commission all supports and then have the commissioners all sign it at the bottom to attest to their support and then that gets submitted into the city clerk and will be put on an agenda at a future future council meeting. Thanks. So this was sent to us was it Monday as a draft letter which is up there on the screen. It's really just a kind of brief overview of I'm going to borrow one of Director Spencer's favorite sayings hitting the wavetops on the the items and issues over the past year that the staff has brought forward to the commission and we have voted on and supported so just kind of list by topic everything from Great Streets to North Manuski Avenue to the Rail Yard Enterprise so not not incredible detail again just a broad overview and then one one big thing that Commissioner Damiani and I felt important to include was youth engagement the city council recommended oh made a resolution thank you of expanding youth representation on city boards before the pandemic I think we had a couple of students show up a couple of times but certainly as a parent I feel like it really privileges the privileged it's a student has to get here and not have any other work commitments or any other time commitments or homework and then be able to get home and even even with the advantages of zoom they're not always accessible to all students what we have started to do is we've built a relationship with the Burlington City and Lake program I'm not talking to you either sorry which is part of it's a semester long program run each semester through the Burlington High School and these 20 students are really a microcosm of of BHS and we've had these consultancies with you know a small number of commissioners and we can kind of move move through the commission keeping the numbers so that we don't don't reach a quorum and they work with city staff and present their own findings one was on Main Street Great Streets presentation with the design the design team and the engineering staff and GMT and another one was a mobility audit in the Old North End and DPW staff was there as well to receive some of this information and it's I think an innovative way to get youth participation in a much deeper way it's not in a meeting format but it's still rich engagement so this is just what what has been what we did a couple of times this past year so those are my wavetops of Chapin's wavetops well said any any discussion about this this this memo or the youth engagement Commissioner Fox do you want to start I guess I don't know if this is more of like a personal sort of like taste option but the memo reads like all of a sudden you know so it's very cut and dry this is the commission this is what it does and then it's all of a sudden youth engagement like it felt a little bit of rub to me so I don't know like there's a way to sort of nicely segue that or maybe something I've written here like is it worth adding one or two sentences at the end of the overview of the commission section um that explains like the purpose of the document maybe or like just something to make it a little more cohesive when you're reading it I'm not sure if that's too nitpicky but yeah the question I put there is like what's the goal or the objective and I think it's great to include the youth engagement in there but um yeah like so what I guess is the question you always ask yourself right when you're reading something and you get you address that with the youth engagement but yeah just the sort of like cohesiveness of it is something that caught me off guard I think a tiny bit okay um and then then beyond that I think I just had a clarification question I think that was mostly answered but this is specifically on the work that we as the commission have has done and is not reflective of how the our actions have you know led to outcomes on specific infrastructure projects I'm just thinking right like there are now bike lanes on North Winooski Avenue right is it worth saying that that it was like the final outcome but I don't know if that's beyond the scope or and goal of this document um sounds like that's like sort of outside of it right what do you think shape in yeah my understanding is that the uh that the council is looking for what the commission did and what the work was at the commission level is you all the appointees of the council so that is my understanding but I could get confirmation we can act on this tonight or we can you know create some suggestions for revisions and bring it back next month as well so either option is fine those are the only two big things I had commissioner Hogan thanks for putting that job together I think it reads fine it's accurate this does need to be in there for director Spencer's comment that you know this document is looking for a summary of um commission activities but I think it's important to emphasize to council the importance of traffic calming to go hand in hand with are you reduced emphasis on law enforcement calming of our streets and that you know it needs to go hand in hand with continued support for self-correcting on our on our streets that's sort of my recurring point that I think we should emphasize to council when we get the chance to it doesn't need to be now but certainly to our to our two colleagues to counsel this spring approaching approaching budget season everything that's sort of a corollary and certainly much of our commission work does have to do with sliding around the right of way a bit to calm things and make things safer so anyway so all this to say I have no edits to this I think it's great but generally in communicating with council you know if you get the chance to like add a voice track to it it when you're up there okay you know sort of hammering around the point of our improvements in their street safety okay um commissioner sears so I don't think I see your version pecky I feel like a shorter it's two pages doesn't mention engagement um it was sent on monday it was sent separately sent separately um I think it was another attachment that I might have shared oh did you send I'm sorry Jim um I ended up getting something from DPW so I I didn't actually open up mine yeah so I think you sent it to my work email okay okay justine you want me to um you want to just read quietly and I'll go on to Jim and then you can jump in okay okay commissioner bar yes almost last um brandon kind of commissioner hogan kind of stole some of mine I think safety definitely needs to be one of the emphasized things that we as a commission appointed by the council take a very high priority on but again I love the doc document I think it's great as is I only question two and I know this is from today past what we've done but commissioner sears is now a commissioner and I wonder if she should just be included in this or is this a calendar year or a fiscal year document I think the way I envision it is that um it would be sent by the current commission uh but listing who served in FY 23 the document is meant to be a record of what occurred in the fiscal year and yeah so fiscal so FY 23 ended in july july or june yeah and we didn't mean okay okay that's it that's good for me back to um well chris do you want to I mean do you want to I think the only thing I was going to add is that uh my understanding and you can correct me shape in that city council um would potentially ask some of the various city commissions to come speak at council so I think that's our opportunity to address some of these other comments um and I think we'll have about a month you said maybe in october is when they would um ask commissions to to speak yes if we approved it tonight I think it's based on when we submit it to the city clerk so if we approved it tonight I think we'd be in october if we didn't then we'd be likely going to the council and it's ultimately president paul's call but given the visibility and the uh the impact that our commission has uh very frequently we're asked to present in front of the council okay I think I think in the year in review perhaps we can just have a line about um you know improvements in um street safety and traffic calming um that take a high priority in our work just a statement about that safety and all mobility modes safety and all mobility modes and I think if we just honestly if we move the youth engagement piece into the year in review that might just help I think it's together in the timeline for simplicity sake and hopefully you know I think also to to the commission's point of if we can get this in front of city council after if it's adopted tonight um getting to them in october I think would be more valuable than potentially november december is there victory in budget season yeah commissioner sears director spencer could you share your screen um so that justine could at least glance at actually you know what let me let me see if I can send it resend it yeah rob is sharing it okay and I'm trying to type up some edits that can be responsive while you all uh continue justine I just resend it I don't know if you are on your public works email no well I um no I haven't um so for youth engagement um do we want to put that right after the year in review um or do we want to incorporate it within kind of each like the two months that it was in like the fall time period yeah like one was october and one was the next one was like february I guess I feel like I feel like it's important to have like this statement about youth engagement because it's um a different take than just having just kind of clicking a box than having youth on board eliana did you have thoughts well I think it makes sense to have it in the year in review section and is it possible to just have I mean you have the the two dates of the two different events in there I think that's fine so just list just list youth engagement uh um as like the the first part of the first part of the year in review yeah okay there could be a short transition ahead of the commission provides guidance on blah blah blah that could be like in addition to youth engagement blah blah blah are you getting this justine juneis did you need rob to scroll oh um sorry I was trying to open the the email account um yes I read this thank you and I did send it again okay it's time to the burlington one okay that's the um I haven't accessed that account yet like I could need to read this or else I could try to access that account so I think I'll just try to read this here so Chapin and Rob I mean at least just for right now um we have the mission statement the commissioners overview of the commission more information the year in review the year in the review adding a sentence about um timely public works matters considered regulatory changes and considered regulatory changes to advanced municipal projects maybe then including a sentence about um our work includes or adds improvements in street safety and traffic calming improvements in street safety and traffic calming take a high priority on our work something like that next in addition the dpw commission has discussed how we can meaningfully engage the younger generation so that youth section goes right in the year review before going into um each of the major subheadings does that does that those two edits make sense yes that makes sense I'm uh trying to make those changes right now any comments justine are you um no I don't I probably I don't really feel like I should vote on this I don't write it or approve or just for I don't have a good sense of I mean it's a really impressive list of activities but I can't speak to how complete or it is for characterization am I supposed to do I have a role here what what I trust that I trust that you wrote a great letter I don't doubt that but oh I can't speak to the content of it with any authority so Chapin how does that work um because justine wasn't on the commission but then would she sign off on it as part of the commission for this year or not you know I think it's fine if she wants to uh to abstain and the members sign on who were actually members of the commission back in a quiet 23 I think that's fine okay I can let me see if I can share my screen I've just jumped over to another computer we'll see if it's crap it crashes but I've made the edits that I think might be responsive so let me see if I can pull this off you moved can I share my screen you should be able to if you're having there you go I can folks see what I have displayed yep do hold on a sec are people able able to see this yep yep great so what I did here is I moved the youth engagement down to underneath year review and in the year in review I added the DPW commission is focused on ways we can support increased traffic safety for all mobility modes with less traffic enforcement capacity in our community robust traffic calming and roadway safety improvements will be critical to making our roads even safer then uh I put youth engagement as the first bullet under year in review and I haven't changed any language yet about it and the transition to it but I think I'm getting closer I think that's I think that's good yeah okay so we need to we need to vote on we need to approve this draft letter to present to city council can I make a motion to accept this edited draft letter we're gonna physically sign it can we do it to can we sign or do it to physically sign I think easiest is since you all are there what I'm gonna do is email it over to Rob and Holly and I bet we can have a print before you leave the door okay motion to approve this version that director Spencer just shared with us I'll second that with this okay we have a motion and a second any discussion all in favor aye aye and then justine you are going to abstain yeah convincingly I mean if you you don't need you know we need you but we need you but we don't need you right yeah yeah I for myself so five approval and one abstentia okay and we will sign this on our way out the door this evening okay makes it easier so that commissioner Sears doesn't yeah good thank you abstain okay great we'll close that out and now go on to the director's report as he edits and directs all right so thank you why don't we go to commissioner updates just so I can pull out my director's report as I just got it off to the document to Rob and Holly so commissioner communications yeah okay thank you I'd love to the lines stripes looks good glad to see some striping work getting done that's that I really kind of unrelated heard some concerns amongst neighbors about driver's speeds on locus street I know it was re-upped with some bump outs a couple years ago but the drivers are still hauling down the hill there I pulled up the I think it's a v-chance dashboard with like the traffic counts and things just like looking for recent speed data here and I'll try to connect with you offline about that I swear I remember seeing tubes over there you know in the last year or two but the v-chance website doesn't have anything past 2020 on locus street but we can connect up that and maybe I just sort of put it out there it's been count maybe not come sufficiently and we are you I can give you a quick response if you want please we are doing traffic speed study there tubes have been put out we are reviewing the data and cleaning the data and we'll have that for the residents who have asked for it and happy to share it with you Commissioner Hogan and then we can determine whether any additional interventions are necessary or whether or not you know people are complying the 25 mile an hour speed or if not then we can look at additional interventions you know we are learning on sloped hills and you know how our design speed humps work and also work with emergency services we've continually worked with the Burlington fire department on these types of interventions and I think as people have seen what we've added recently on Birchcliffe Parkway as part of the paving project is kind of where we've gotten comfortable to get to a five inch or so raised crosswalk or speed hump and that neighbor response there has been quite positive about the design of of those speed humps there so I I think you know we're in a learning process and constantly evolving and the fire department's getting more comfortable with these types of tools as they understand the tapers allow the trucks to clear the the speed humps so we're going to take a look at the data and see whether any additional interventions need thanks so can you clarify this was uh did you all do your own accounts then this was not part of the state or the planning commissions program um I believe I'm not I don't know exactly I think we were doing it in coordination with the CCRPC but I would need to double check all I know is that tubes were down this year I know residents had asked for we wanted to see the post construction data results once the installation had been in long enough that traffic had kind of found its normal cadence with that design okay thanks for the sanity check that confirms I had seen tubes out there more recent than 2020 uh all right nothing further here thank you commissioner bar thank you so the comments I have are are all positive I like to think as usual um today several members of my of the old east end got a chance to meet with some of your staff Julia and Maddie and then a couple of other folks um and and very positive engagement uh very uh good to have that kind of engagement where we've got some neighborhood I won't call them activists um that might sound too harsh uh interested people who are coming here to find out what's the right thing to do for traffic calming and safety to improve our neighborhood and I just wanted to say it was you know kudos to your staff director Spencer we're really really happy with that great well thanks Jim we uh are fortunate to have a great team we are short staffed with a couple of nations in the planning team so the fact the engineers uh are stepping up uh even more is just a testament to them thank you all pass it on commissioner Sears yes I just wanted to comment on the I think in the consent agenda there was a parking change on all that street that was brought to the project EPW's attention by IAA um I just want that issue is much much larger than those parking spaces um and I know someone was planning to come to public comment tonight she didn't um but she's been talking to residents about turning Walnut one way um to and just to help with flow and drop off at the school there's renovations that are planned um and there's a a number of things that I think need to happen around IAA um and I just wanted to it's much much larger than and I think that um there's some pretty basic changes that could be made to archibald in terms of infrastructure in terms of crossing guards that could relieve some of the congestion and yes the parking spaces that's fine and they're needed because during their renovations the school will be losing 10 spaces etc etc but that I mean they're much much larger than the line problems that really need to be dealt with so I just um wanted to keep that issue open and I think it's it's going to come back before you do great uh yes understood that this is one small action uh I know uh engineer Peterson had been in touch with the schools and with the community and and we don't consider one isolated action as the entirety of the actions that need to be discussed and pursued yes and it's much appreciated I think they'll be so excited to have those parking spaces back but um there's a much larger ingestion issue I think that needs to be dealt with and can be dealt with I think if so about 30 it's a magnet school it wasn't clearly the parking lot wasn't designed to be a magnet school but um I think the vast majority of children do come from the neighborhood so they can be walking they can be biking and they simply don't feel safe doing so right now I think that could be addressed pretty not easily but I don't think it's a too heavy a lift great commissioner box I think I'll echo what commissioner Sear said about the sort of IAA um I will say this reminded me like I think in the spring I had a friend of mine who is the crossing guard there sort of reach out to me about it and say you know the teachers are concerned about parking so I think my general comment is just that I'm glad to hear that the department is in touch with you know administrators and teachers from the school and is going to continue to work with them um so just to sort of echo that continued work and relationship building that's good that's important um and the thing um totally separate from this but I was excited to see and I think someone you know a neighbor mentioned this on front porch form as well but the new curb ramps on North Street they're awesome I think that was a huge improvement you know for ADA that sidewalk was messed up so that was great to see and great to see that DPW got sort of a little bit of recognition from the community on that um the other cool thing I noticed on North Street were the I don't know what you call them but the thing the bike signal triggers in the ground so they're now at every intersection up and down North Street or almost every intersection you know where you sit on them and they change the light they were only at North Street and North Ave for a while and now did anyone else notice that but now they're no they're like the things that you stop on it and change the light yeah and they're like if you're heading down North Street it just make you know so the lights turn when you get there or when you stop on it anyway I noticed I like them let's do more of that awesome yeah um so I think that's like a minor you know sort of I don't know how minor it is actually from the installation perspective but I thought it was a good improvement um and then yeah I won't harp on this the staffing and stuff but I think it would be great to hear sort of at the next meeting what if there are any updates on that because I don't know I'm pretty pretty bummed um in terms of the planters so yeah I think that's all but just an update on staffing generally would be good I think to hear from y'all okay that's it okay Vice Chair Gemini a couple things I think uh great to see what is it North North Union and Grand Street with the the bump outs out there I'm really good to see that the other day um I also I brought this up I think a few meetings ago but over at Edmonds just the having a sign further south uh as folks on the road are approaching the South Union and Main Street entrance of having the straight and left turn lane sign with the right turn lane sign having another one just further south so cars uh have a know where the what lane needs to be in a lot sooner I was biking on it recently and had a near miss over there that that is one that's on my list as well and I'll make sure it gets done before winter because that is a confusing intersection for people if they're not seeing the markings clearly excellent thank you um and then finally uh it's it's TDM week and I was thinking about uh seven months from now on April 8th 2024 is uh the total solar eclipse that is a that we are right in the path of totality so I was curious to know what the city is doing in terms of planning for potentially mass amounts of people coming to the Burlington area for this big event it's on the back burner yeah I know it's on the back burner but there's a lot of people potentially coming so I'm just curious if there's been any conversation it's uh it's got our attention and it's actually being organized uh by others in the city other than DPW they're coordinating with us and talking about how the Main Street project will interact with uh that it's April 8th or something 2024 uh I'm not going to snub my family who's decided to go to Texas because they think it's less cloudy in Texas and that they're more likely to see it than they will in Burlington I'm offended but I'll get over it um but yes we are coordinated on that and uh you know it is going to be a large event and I think an opportunity for us to do some remote park and rides uh given the intensity of uh that day in particular excellent thank you that's it yeah as soon as you sort out south union in front of Edmunds middle because I I don't have any more kids there anymore like maybe there could just be like an icon of me in the street anyway I like that um so uh I'm going to talk about cross department coordination not just parking um and um over lake and being towed and construction and I'll fill the rest of the commission on that later um you know but but that that's one example another example um I had someone reach out to me because there's there's some tree branches that were obstructing a sign on Mansfield Avenue and they contacted DPW DPW said contact the city arborist the city arborist said well we already did the trimming contact DPW so at the end of the day the you know there there isn't clear communication about who does what and a tree trimmer sees like trees that need to be trimmed in a certain way but not necessarily how that um interacts with infrastructure um and it's harder to see that sign in from farther away until you get close to it it's by Loomis and Mansfield so again if there are ways and I know it's not just public works it's us working with other departments um but just finding ways for clear communication on some of these pieces and we'll we'll talk more about parking and construction another time I yeah I would just say definitely when uh sometimes BED parks ourselves we have construction the right of way we're not often coordinating across departments but in terms of the experience that your uh uh colleague your friend had I I think ultimately when somebody calls any city department there should be a much smoother handoff such that the person leaves that thinking that uh we tried to resolve it for them uh people don't see departments they see the city so I think you know there's clearly we get thousands of calls and thousands of seek like fixes these are hard to deal with uh some of them are easy but the volume of this is hard and I'd like to probably better understand that specific situation to make sure we can resolve how these calls get handled we have the I think most effective customer service team in the city um so with that said we are often juggling many other departments work and that can also bear down on us but we need to find a way to resolve that internally as I think your point is and not show that to the public the public needs to leave these calls feeling like the city has taken care of their concern or at least giving them the information so I think it's a it's good insight for us to take back and I will say you know the comment was everyone was very nice about it um yeah so kudos on that um but but resolution would be great thank you um the homeless encampment on south union street by the ymca and that um that little nook by the stairs on south union street uh at that at that entrance it's um it's come it's gone it's growing and it's growing um their clothes hanging over the railing um their tents there's a lot of um there's a lot of youth traffic that goes um to and from edmunds middle edmunds l into the library as well as to um to city market um that corner just doesn't feel safe anymore so I don't know if that's a billboard category um or how we lean on the it's complicated I know but how we lean on the building owner um right we are having a conversation internally about some uh encampments that are within the public rights of way and I can add this one to the list okay um so the staffing across departments in preparation for for snow season you know this is separate from um like the traffic engineers but just wondering I know I know we're still like you know not all the leaves have even turned yet but just thinking about um um streets and water and making sure that um you know the the staff that we have there are all able to deal with snow removal when the time comes and what are um gaps in our staffing are I will give a quick update and then Rob if you want the quick update is that we are well staffed in street maintenance we weren't a couple months ago but there's been a lot of shuffling within the city uh that has fully uh staffed up our street maintenance team which is great the number of folks that we're hiring don't come with CDLs so that's the challenge we're needing to do a lot more training to get people up and running for the cloud trucks you don't need a CDL to be in the sidewalk tractors um and we do have a very large number of vacancies in water distribution which is the work crew who maintains the water distribution lines from the water plant to your homes and businesses so we are likely starting pretty significant hiring bonuses uh at least so that's our intent we're working with the union to try to work that through uh so that we can fill those positions by before the dead of winter so that's where our greatest burn is right now in our water distribution team okay and um do do water distribution need to um be able to drive plows during snow situations yes the the collective bargaining agreement for AFSCME has that up to six water resources staffers need to help out with plowing operations that can come from wastewater it can come from the water plant it can come from water distribution so uh but having six people coming from water at a time where water is struggling and staffing you know is an area that you know we're recognizing is tight and that's why we're gonna hopefully bring forward some very generous uh hiring bonuses and some referral bonuses uh to try to fill those okay great thank you yeah and then I I heard on front porch forum that there's traffic calming going on uh south prospect street uh Karen Paul wrote in that's correct the very small uh speed the old speed humps that are really tiny and small are being replaced by uh speed humps that are compliant with our current uh design standard okay that sounds great as long as they're uh maintained like the ones on summit street to my to my main routes um towards the end towards maple street it's chunked up where kind of I ride my bike heading north I know it's not all about me but uh but just making sure that there's there's adequate maintenance on the on you know any of those um traffic calming so that when they get chunked up um there's still enough space for you know cyclists to kind of move around safely yeah uh the speed humps have less aggressive uh rises and so hopefully shouldn't be destroyed by the clouds the same way that the more abrupt humps in the past have been that's it for me um all right we will close commissioner communications and then go back to the director's report great I'll be very quick because it's late and uh my daughter is going to bed tonight so one way or another um north plant siphon repair uh I wanted to give an update to the commission uh that uh we have been moving very boldly ahead as you know we went from the pump and haul approach to get wastewater off of the broken siphon back to north plant then after 10 days we were able to get the bypass uh force main completed and now that is operating we are moving uh quickly on the next repair which is repairing the actual uh sewer main or siphon underneath the winooski river because we don't want to be trying to maintain and operate a above ground wastewater line in the depths of winter so uh we do have that rfp out and um I think responses just came back yesterday I need to get briefed on them but we are gunning for a construction this fall so that the repair under the winooski river albeit it's still a temporary repair uh can be made and that siphon can be put back in service we really see kind of a three-step process one was the force main bypass the second is repairing the siphon under the river and the third is determining what the permanent fix uh that will last decades will be and we'll certainly keep folks informed we've been talking to fema about this three-step process they understand it fema has indicated that they are going to support and participate in each step of the way which has been great we'll let you know if that changes but we're very confident to have fema support for that and um we'll keep you posted and I think you know the champlain parkway as everybody is seen right outside the the door of where you're meeting is uh fully under construction the shared use path uh first code of asphalt uh is going to go down in the next day or two and uh the contractors ahead of schedule uh they're doing a great job if there are specific issues we need to attend to please let us know we're working hard to minimize the impact through adjacent property owners and travelers but uh the goal is to be substantially completed for this initial construction contract from home avenue to kilburn by the end of this construction season happy to answer any questions any questions great um thank you um thank you for that report um now we'll go to um adjournment motion to adjourn is there a second seconded seconded by commissioner box um all in um any discussion around that don't forget to sign the document don't forget to sign the document thank you uh commissioner bar all right all in favor of adjourning say hi any um any opposed no all right we will see you all october 18th same bat time same bat channel