 We're recording. Good afternoon, everyone. This is the February 16th, one o'clock meeting of the Joint Capital Planning Committee. In my role of chair, I have to first make sure that everyone can seen here and be heard because we're conducting this meeting by Zoom and we are recording the meeting. So I will just call out names as I see them on my screen. Farah. Here. Mandy. Present. Pam. Present. Alex. Present. Irv. Present. Thank you. We are missing one member who, Jennifer, who notified us in advance that this is a long standing this time slot once a month that was in conflict. So I think Sean will move right through. Just before we started, officially started the meeting. I told everyone we posted the minutes from last week and Pam took them. So I do need someone to volunteer. And we just posted them yesterday, Alex. They went into the, but they're online. So if anyone sees anything that I read and it made a few minor edits, but if anyone sees anything, we can always correct them later. But I need someone to volunteer for minutes for this week. And Pam's were done in word and we can send you that word document because it's kind of a constant format that we're using and it's easy than just to set it up. So is there a volunteer for minutes for this week? Thank you, Alex. Alex raised her hand. Okay, Alex, we have a volunteer. You know, we have, however many meetings we have, we're gonna have to have minutes for each. And it's hard for me to take minutes. Otherwise I would volunteer. So Sean, we're doing first the large capital improvement plan, the whole document, and you're planning about an hour on that. And then we're switching to the resident proposals. Is that correct? Yeah, so I think we should, I've let resident requesters know that they have the opportunity to begin at two o'clock to present their projects. So I think we should, I anticipate it'll probably take 20 minutes or so to go through the capital improvement program, maybe a little bit longer then we'll have time for questions. And then I think we should try to stop at two and do the resident capital requests. And then if there's time after and there's still questions to be addressed, we can come back to the capital, the full program after. Okay, and you had said some but not all might participate. And I see at least one in the audience now. So I'll try to, we can both keep an eye on that. Okay, then I believe you're on. All right, so I'll share my screen in a second. So just against some context, this is the preliminary FY24 capital improvement program and I stress preliminary, meaning it's still very early in the process that Tom Andrew has told me first to submit a final version. And then there's still lots of meetings that will go on with department heads around their requests and so on. So what we hope to get from you is feedback on the plan, things you think make sense, don't make sense, priorities. And you'll, when we go through the plan, I think today is really a good opportunity for general questions on sort of the whole document or sort of the high level questions on funding for capital and how it's divvied up. If you have specific project questions, you can ask them if you want to, we will have department heads come the next three weeks and present their specific projects and they're probably the best to answer questions that are specifically related to those projects that they've submitted. But with that, I will share my screen and start going through it. Well, Sean's bringing up the other practice, Pam, this is for you as well, is if there are specific project questions, if you send it to Sean in advance of them discussing, they will come prepared to answer. You don't have to do that, but that's a way of also expediting. Yep. Okay, so I won't go through a lot of sort of the preliminary information that we talked about last time. And this is all sort of process to help the community understand sort of what's in the capital plan and how the process works, but you are all experts at this point for the most part. So here's the pie chart, updated pie chart that sort of divvies up or shows how the allocation of funds are assigned to each department. Public works is usually on the larger side because of the money that goes into roads each year between the chapter 90 money and then the whatever additional amount we put into roads and sidewalks tends to make deep public works highway the larger section, one of the larger sections. So going to the process for this year, we looked at this a little bit at our last meeting. There has been one change that I'll update this document and I've updated the meeting postings of the fire department and the rec department are gonna swap places just for availability issues for the department heads that are coming to speak to those projects. So recreation will go on March 2nd and the fire department will go on March 9th. But other than that, the schedule is in pretty good shape. All right, so that brings us to our summary. So again, we went through last year's version of this at the last meeting. So this has been updated. What you'll see is that we are proposing 10 and a half percent of the levy for capital. So we've achieved our goal of 10% but we did have discussions during planning for the four building projects about going above 10% as part of the plan to how we can accomplish all four. So we are proposing 10 and a half percent for FY24 at this point and that equals 6.2 million. Other revenue sources outside of cash capital that are included in the plan as of right now, 443,460 from the Community Preservation Act, specifically for debt related to CPA projects. Again, that's a number that comes in as a revenue source then goes out. So it's really a wash with some expenses down below. Comcast funding, we have a contract with Comcast where we get so much money every year of that contract. And it's $75,000 and specifically targeted for the municipal fiber project that is almost complete. I would say it's 90% of the way done. Hopefully in the next few months it'll be completely wrapped up but the debt for that project will continue and that's what this revenue source is for. Other primarily includes funds from the ambulance, our ambulance fund, which when our EMTs go out on a call, we bill insurance or we bill the individual utilizing the service and possibly insurance. And so those funds go into an ambulance fund that we can then appropriate for costs associated with that service. And so it's usually used for staffing in the department but it's also used for some of the equipment and capital that they use. And then lastly, state aid. This is just chapter 90 money at this point from the state that's earmarked for roadway improvements. We are proposing $725,000 of borrowing related to one project and I'll show you which one that is. So that's all on the resource side and then you can see in the out years what it looks like as we go forward. And then down below where the expenditures are so we start with our debts, the debt associated with projects that have already been approved. So for FY24 we're estimating that at 1.3 million, that 1,288 number. We include projected debt below that. Right now the only projected debt we have for FY24 that would actually kick in and FY24 is interest related to our bond anticipation notes. So every year any projects that are in progress where we have to borrow on a short-term basis, we have to make interest payments on those short-term notes. So we sort of have a recurring amount that we budget for that. If it's not spent it just closes out so it can be used again the following year. And then new projects would be funds that would come from cash capital. So it would be paid for in cash in that particular year. And this would all come from the general fund resources that we have down below. You get into the other resources. So we have a line for debt exclusion that we'll talk about in a little bit. Other is again that ambulance receipt fund. So it comes in as a revenue and that goes out as an expense. And then state aid, same thing. It comes in as a revenue source and then there's an expenditure assigned to that revenue source. So it's in and out. So at this point the plan is about $260,000 which is not unusual for us to start out with a plan that has more wants than what we have resources for and part of this process is to try to get our resources and our needs and alignment for the upcoming year. Kathy? Yeah, I just, it's sort of a question comment because I'm pretty sure I know the answer but the actual debt line below, there's this $1.7 million jump. And this is approved. So this, since we don't have the new CPA yet, is that largely the Jones Library coming online? Yeah, we'll see in the debt schedule at the end but I believe that's the projection of the Jones Library debt coming online. Okay, so I just, and that was number one. Then the projected debt, there's a second really big jump in FY26 going from 50 to 2.9. That is the DPW starting to be show up. Is that correct? That's correct. So I just wanted to be interactive. And then the other thing I noticed is because these come in in terms of what we have to look at the amount left for everything else by 2026 drops to 2.8 and ish. And we've been spending almost that much on roads and sidewalks. So this is the everything else, right? This is any new vehicles, any capital repairs, roads and sidewalks, that last line called new projects, correct? And I mean that line, you'll see in that year there's a deficit. So there's a lot of work that needs to be done. So not only is it not very much but we don't even have that much. Right, so I think that the general, there's a good segue into one thing I wanted to say, which is the way the four building projects influence with this plan is obviously something that's continuing to evolve, especially for projects like the DPW where there is no definitive site at this point. The fire department, the fire station as well in terms of how that will be financed. There's, I would say the pieces relate to the four building projects is something that will probably evolve the way it's incorporated into this plan. But your right to on those two observations, the reason those jumps are there is because of the Jones library. That portion is already approved, which is why it's up in the actual debt section and then projected that it's the DPW because that the cost for the, other than some engineering fees, the cost for the DPW has not been approved yet by the council. The only way is that because it's not affecting what we're focused on this year at all, but it's looking outward, which affects everyone in the committee in terms of their, the schools, what's gonna be left for schools, what's gonna be left for, yes, okay. Yep, absolutely. All right, so we went through sort of the current year. Again, the current year has a reasonable amount of, but not overwhelming deficit at this point of 260,000. So keep that in mind as you hear presentations from departments and as you look at the individual projects that we do have to carve something out or reduce something, push it out in the future or just the recommendation could be just to not do it. So keep that in mind as you go through the presentations from departments. And then as you see in the out years, I think the only other thing I'll mention, Cathy, since you raised the issues about the DPW in the library, the debt exclusion line. So again, that's an estimate for the debt exclusion impacts of the school project right now. Again, it's all based on assumptions around interest rates and project costs. But again, we wanted to include something so it's incorporated in this plan, but that has been updated for, if you look at the previous version that was based on some old assumptions, this, the previous plan, but this plan has the updated assumptions as of what we project, presented to the finance committee last week and to the council previously. Any other questions on this summary? We'll keep going and we can always come back to this at future point if there's any other questions. All right, so in terms of the projects that are being proposed for FY24, so first section is facilities, the item of interior, exterior maintenance, ADA improvements, that's a recurring item that gets adjusted year to year, but essentially it's the bucket of capital funding that's for projects that pop up throughout the year. And so there's always things that are sort of emergency replacements or sort of deferred maintenance type things that our facilities manager uses this bucket of funding for and when he comes, he can give you the sort of expectations of how he would allocate these funds for FY24. Again, it also includes ADA improvements and exterior maintenance improvements. The energy sustainability improvements, that's another recurring line on that is managed by our sustainability director, Stephanie Ciccarello. We started out at 100,000, decision made last year to up it up to 200,000. This can be used for helping convert vehicles to electric or hybrid options. It can be used for things like the solar studies or solar feasibility analysis. We did something like that recently with municipal buildings. So again, Stephanie will speak to what her intentions are for this, what it seems to have been recently using these funds to help implement strategies that are in the Climate Action and Resiliency Plan. Now that we have that plan, there's a number of strategies that are specifically identified. And so I imagine it'll be closely tied to that. The Bangs Center. So the second floor of the Bangs Center was recently renovated, part of it was recently renovated for Cress, but there's sort of a hard cut off where the renovation ended. And so, and that was paid for with some of the grant funds that we have received for Cress. So about half of the second floor, if you've been up there to see the new Cress department has been completely renovated. The other half is still old and not really usable in its current format. And so these funds would be to basically bring that section of the second floor at the Bangs Center in alignment with the Cress section. We have money for paving at the child care facility, which has been on the plan for a little while, money for the Munson Memorial building to do some work around the fire alarm system. The police station roof has been on there for a little bit. There's been some preliminary money for design, I believe already approved. And this would be for any remaining design costs and the actual repair and replacement of the roof that's currently there. And as part of that, they would do an analysis of whether the current roof could support solar in the future, if that's the direction they want to move in. 65,000, a new project that's popped up is replacement of the HVAC system at the server and communications room. So you may remember, it was the last year, the year before there was a replacement for the police station HVAC system. And so the police station has sort of a number of HVAC systems. There's one system for the entire building that does the majority of the building, but then the server communications room had their own systems and those systems have begun to fail and that server room is really sort of the heart of town operations. And so it's on here, it might come off because quite frankly, it might be something that has to be done sooner. So if you see it come off in the future, it'll mean that it was done and we found another way to pay for it because it is sort of a really high, it's an urgent need. Kitchen renovation at the central fire station, 30,000. So we've been trying to chip away at some improvements to the older facilities that we have, especially the facilities that are housing people 24-7. And so this is one that our facility managers talked about with the fire chief for making some improvements to the central fire station. And then the boiler replacement at town hall. And there is a new sort of blurb that we're including in all of our replacements of heating systems where we are looking to replace those heating systems with options that don't rely on fossil fuels. So the procurement we're doing for the HVAC system at the police station have that type of language. And I imagine if this is approved, the procurement for whoever will do the boiler replacement will also have that type of language. Kathy. I just a quick question. I sent this into you in advance, but the new federal law that was passed on inflation IRA, inflation reduction act has for the first time direct payment credits to municipalities when they move from fossil fuel to electric. So my question, and I don't need an answer now is which of the things we're looking at might qualify. And if we pay in cash, it's a 30% direct credit. So it's real money if it looks like they might be eligible. And so I know this has come up for the elementary school, but when you read it, it's for renovation repair. It's not just if you're building a new building and it's not tied to how efficient the actual building is. It's tied to the fact that you're moving from one source of HVAC to another. So I just, it's worth checking with Stephanie because it has a specific line for geothermal. So I don't know how much for air source pumps. Okay, that's it. No, that's a good point. I imagine that's a process we'll become pretty comfortable with because there are so many expenditures that we make that at least at this point seem to fit within the eligibility criteria for that new program. So everything that's in that energy sustainability bucket depending potentially could fall within that area. And you'll see there's some of the things we're doing with vehicles and so on. So I think that's something we'll get really comfortable with as more information comes out about how we actually submit for it on an annual basis. And then there will have to be a discussion about how we use those, assuming it goes as planned and we do get money back. We'll have to have a conversation about how we use the money that comes back. All right, so the next section is information technology. So there's a couple of sort of recurring requests here for just general improvements and replacements of technology equipment that the IT director can speak to what the plans are for the upcoming year. In FHIR, there are a number, again, they have a pretty good handle on their replacement schedules for the equipment they use. So there's some things here that are planted to come out of capital funds like the portable radios. And then there's other things that are proposed to come out of the ambulance fund. So if it says other, that means that the plan right now is for it to come out of the ambulance fund because it's core to that ambulance operation. So the sort of that general equipment request and then the power loaders and stretchers and the EMS defibrillators. And that EMS defibrillators is the final year of a three-year lease to own that we started a couple of years ago. And then protective gear will come out of the general fund budget. In the police department, there's a couple of new projects in there that are on the larger side. One is the upgrade of the console that the dispatch unit uses up at the third floor of the police station. It has to do with how they connect to their radios and the equipment they use. Again, the microton will be able to speak in much more detail to the specific need, but it's critical to the emergency operation up there that we get that console upgraded. And then body cameras is a new request that came on from the police department. This request would purchase all the body cameras that would be needed. It would also replace the in-car video system that currently exists and it would replace it with a system that works in conjunction with the body camera. So it would be sort of a complete replacement of all the sort of camera systems that the police department uses when they go out and calls. And one thing, again, just to keep in mind as part of this is that there would likely be a significant ongoing operational cost associated with this from the software and storage that goes along with it. It's a little blurry waiting for it to fix itself here. Come on. Is it still blurry on your screen? The PDF, okay. Yeah. Let me see. There it goes, okay. So next is the schools. So because of the process that Fort River and Wildwood are going through, we've really focused capital at Cracker Farm and then most of the things that are being used at Wildwood and Fort River, sort of what we call district ongoing capital needs. So things that fall into a bucket that can be used at any of the schools because they're really just trying to maintain those buildings until we hopefully have a new facility. So for Cracker Farm, there's no request for this upcoming year. There were a few requests last year, like replacing the gym and the underlying HVAC system there. But you can see going out, there's some large projects on the horizon. So that also factors into those debt numbers we were looking at. And then for FY24, they have mostly recurring items like furniture replacement, school security, asbestos management. They have a similar capital item like we have for interior or exterior upgrades and ADA improvements, which allows them to take care of projects as they pop up or something breaks. They have a general bucket for HVAC replacements and improvements. And then they have a few that are, the other general one is the technology equipment. That's something that Jerry Champagne, the IT director will come and speak to the specific equipment that's planned to be replaced there. The new ones this year that jump out are the electric bus upgrade slash battery replacement and the non-school bus charging infrastructure. So right now the electric school bus, my understanding the one we currently have, the E-Lion has had some software interface issues. They need to fix those issues. And then there's also the batteries at the point where it's starting to degrade and might need, they think needs replacement but they need to fix the first issue first to determine whether it needs a battery replacement. So that'll be a good one to get an update from Rupert, the facility and transportation director on the status of that bus. The other one, the non-school bus charging infrastructure, this is to put in a charging station in anticipation of shifting the other vehicles that the schools use to electric. So the schools in addition to school buses operate a number of vans for preschool transportation and special education transportation. They also operate a number of maintenance vehicles. And so it would be getting some charging infrastructure in anticipation of that. And again, I'm sure Rupert will be able to expand on that. Public works is the next section. So one thing we changed this year is just a used to be called transportation plan. I think there was some confusion around what exactly that was. So we've clarified that this transportation engineering, we put a recurring amount in there because every year there's projects that the public works department has asked to, come up with an engineering study about how to add a sidewalk or turn a road that has no bike lanes into a road that has sort of all the things that you want in a new road. So that's what that money is for is a recurring amount. Some of that's done in conjunction with the Transportation Advisory Council and the work that they do. Next is the stormwater management program. That's a recurring amount as the DPW continues to implement some of the state and federal regulations related to managing our stormwater. For sidewalks, we beefed that up to 200,000 a few years ago and this proposal keeps it at that 200,000. But the plan always wasn't the future that it would have to come back down. And that's what you see in the future was we take on some of the costs of the building projects that that comes back down to a level where it was historically. Same thing with roads. The next one, it's kept at a million which is sort of the highest level we've brought it up to. But you can see in the future, it drops back down. The other thing we've tried to do with roads is when we do have end of year surpluses within our operating budget, the last couple of years we've tried to make, not recurring but targeted investments to do more road work and more sidewalk work. And I think that's something that will continue. Asphalt hot box, this is a system that they use to do a lot of the patching. They have a current system that has, it's like a asphalt recycler that's been breaking down and so this would be a new system to help them do the patching that they do throughout town. The road repair resurfacing from state aid, same thing as the one above, but this is the piece that comes from chapter 90 money. A new one that is this year, I'm sure we'll have a lot of discussion is the field maintenance equipment. So in response to all the conversations that happened around the track and field at the high school, we had identified some equipment needs that would enhance the ability of the DPW to do more with the fields there. So there's a couple of different pieces of equipment that are included in this bucket. That's for 315,000 that Guilford will go into more detail on but this is specifically in response to that conversation. And then tree planting and removal support. This one was expanded to include planting. And typically it's always been tree removal support in the past. We wanted the ability for this one to include the planting of new shade trees in the future. We haven't done a large purchase of shade trees in a long time. The last time they did it was before I came to the town and I think they actually did a borrowing of some sort to do a bunch all at once that they sort of spent down over time. That's been fully expended. So there is, as far as I know, there's no money right now for the purchase of new shade trees. So we wanted to expand the scope of what this one could be used for. Conservation, nothing requested for FY24. Planning, we started putting in a $50,000 recurring item for consultants or outside experts to come in and work on different projects that the planning department is working on, usually aligned with what the council is doing. So last year, this amount was used for doing an engineering of the Bultwood garage and also supporting the solar siting by-law or the work of the solar siting by-law. And so going forward, there's some village center planning and some other projects that are on the, that Chris Brestrup will come and speak to or the planning director as to what they would use this for. Nothing for Amherst Recreation in terms of playgrounds for FY24. And we have done a couple major playground projects in the last few years. Cherry Hill, there's a two request, one to improve that parking lot, which is in pretty rough shape. That's one that's probably a good idea, regardless of what Cherry Hill is used for in the future, is to get that parking lot into a better shape when they have events like some of the winter fest things over there. There's some issues with potholes and bobbing out and things like that when you go in and out of there. And then the irrigation system, the irrigation system that waters and supplies water to different parts of the golf course, need some improvements. Again, that Ray Harp will come and speak to you about. And then last but not least, the vehicles. So I won't go through all these, but you can see Amherst Rec has requested a new vehicle to use a van to transport equipment and materials from site to site, especially as they do different community engagement events or they do summer school and things like that. They need a way of transporting their equipment. DPW has a number of vehicles in there. Again, I think one of the newer ones that's large that I'm sure you'll want to ask Ilford about is the sidewalk plow for $200,000. My understanding is we have one currently and we have another piece of equipment that sort of acts as a sidewalk plow, but really isn't intended for it. And so you can weigh in on that. When we get down to schools, you'll see a large number for electric school bus and charging infrastructure. So this is a, I think this is a big discussion for this committee to have that we, the schools receive the grants that they applied for. I believe it's from the DARA program. I don't have the acronym definition right at the second, but the grant is capped at $200,000. And the schools in the town would have to come up with the remaining share of that cost. And so they estimated that between the school bus and the new fast charging infrastructure that would have to be put in, that that cost would be somewhere over $500,000. So the number that you see here is the cost with the roughly 100, it's a little bit less than 200,000, I think subtracted out. And again, so the question we have time if this project can go through the regular process for approval, we don't have to rush the approval of this school bus, but the, I guess the question is, is this the best way to use $373,000 towards sustainability improvements? It's one of those sort of questions I always have and I'm always talking with Stephanie about is, we know our resources are very limited. How do we make sure we're using the funds in a way that has the greatest impact? And so that's just, I think it's something that this committee should weigh in on is, you know, is that the project we should be moving forward. I see Farah has her hand up, Sean. Sean, just a quick question about the school bus. Are we talking about all the elementary schools or the middle, or all the schools, or how will that be affected by the school project? So this would be for one bus. Okay. Yeah, so this would be to buy one, replace one of our diesel buses with an electric bus. Okay. So if we, with the school configuration, I'm not sure how that, you know, will that result in any changes in the way the transportation system works for the schools? But in this particular case, this is just to replace one single diesel bus with an electric bus. We already have one electric bus that's offline currently, but this would give us a second one. Thank you. Mandy? Yeah, I think that I'd like to follow up on that, but I have that question with a number of the school charging infrastructures and all that. I think we need to have them prepared to come answer, which is how much of this infrastructure is, and where is the infrastructure going to go? And for the buses and the vehicles, is it, are they solely used by the elementary schools or are they shared by the region? And if they're shared, and if the infrastructure is going to be on region property, not elementary school property, and also with this field equipment stuff, the maintenance equipment, what portion of these costs are the region picking up versus handing it all to just Amherst? I know you probably can't answer that now, but that's something that you don't compare to answer. It's a good question, and it, you know, again, it kind of relates to the system that we currently have for maintaining the fields. If that request was to come from the region and they did all their own field maintenance, like you said, it would go through the regional capital process, which the other towns would contribute to, because it came through the DPW, who ultimately handles the field maintenance sort of at the larger scale, like we're talking about, it doesn't go through that process, but it is a good thing for us to think about more and just how it would work. Kathy? And just for the same thing I said, up above electric school buses and charging stations are specifically on the list of possible federal credits. And to add to Mandy's, I've actually been wanting, when you have a charging station, the electrical costs that you're using goes back on the bill of, I think, the sponsoring entity. So it's either going back onto an elementary school budget or onto a regional school budget. So trying to sort that out and if they're available to the public at all are these just for school vehicles. So when people come in, those are gonna be clusters of questions. And the biggie is if there's help in buying these from the federal government as well as it changes the equation a little bit of what these look like. Yeah, so I don't know, it doesn't necessarily change the amount we have to ask for, but it could change, it could create a future revenue source for the money we get back. And again, if the decision is made that that money would go into capital, it could create a potential new funding source in the future. And then just in generally, most of the school transportation vehicles are housed at the middle school, just because that's where the transportation and central offices are housed. So I believe they're all connected to the middle school electrical system. And they do already have, I believe a charging station that is there that is open to the public. So I'm not sure this one that they're proposing would be, but they do have one currently. But again, I'm sure Rupert will be able to expand on all that. And when Guilford comes in, when DPW comes in with their vehicles, can you make sure he tells us which of these is replacing what on the current inventory list? And so the names are general enough. I don't know whether I'm matching it with the 10-year-old vehicle or hope. And okay, I'll wait until we get to your next table because I think in the summary table that Mandy asked for, I think you have an undercount of DPW vehicles based on the longer list of all of them. Yeah, it's not an undercount. It is only the general fund ones because the costs above are only general fund costs. So I was gonna note that when we get there that it doesn't include the ones that are owned by the enterprise funds. So again, it might be a further enhancement we make in the future, but that's why it doesn't include all of them is because the maintenance costs above are only for the general fund. Okay, or Sam's up. All right. In relationship to the electric bus, what I'm not clear on is whether this grant has already been accepted by schools. I'm not sure of that. If it has already been accepted by the schools and that bus is there, then the infrastructure, if the charging infrastructure isn't put there, but in place, then that is something that would be problematic because the bus would not be to operate without the infrastructure. All right. So the grant, I believe, is for both. I think both have to be part of the project is to put the infrastructure and the bus in at around the same time. We have accepted the grant because we did not wanna lose the opportunity, but I did check with the grant authority that if we don't appropriate the funds and the grant would just go away, but we didn't wanna lose the potential or the option to move forward with the grant. So we have accepted it. And I think, did that answer your question, sir? Yes, I did. The other thing is I'm gonna look out at 25 and 26 is rather disturbing in transition numbers. Yeah, especially again because of the bringing in the DPW and the Jones Library, it really, as we expected, it puts a crunch on what we have available for other capital. And then you add in the other thing that is not as visible, but lots of these things have increased in cost, especially on the vehicle side. We've done sort of initial update of these to reflect the rising costs for vehicles. So you'll see the cost for cruisers went from 60,000 per vehicle up to 75,000 vehicles reflect partially the hybrid technology, but also just the fact that cruisers are more expensive, same thing with the DPW vehicles, same thing with the fire station vehicles, everything really in the school vehicles. So really all the vehicles have been updated to what their current prices are, which went up substantially. And that also took away some of the resources we had available. So just finishing up, the police department has four cruisers proposed, again, $75,000 apiece, that would be hybrid cruisers. And then in the fire station, the first one that's proposed there is a new ambulance that's proposed to come out of the ambulance receipt fund. So again, that wouldn't come out of our general fund revenues that come out of this other funding source. The pumper truck is the one project that's being proposed for borrowing. So for whatever reason, we've bought all our fire vehicles about 20 to 25 years ago. So they're all sort of coming due for replacement, starting with the ladder truck. I think we recently approved the pumper truck and then there's a few more that were all sort of bought a couple of years apart that are coming due. And so that's, and they've gotten substantially more expensive. That's the other problem. So that one's proposed for borrowing because of the cost. And then the all-terrain vehicle is the vehicle that they would use for rescues on a trail or something that's off-road that they would use to transport somebody back from that location. All right, I'm not gonna go through all the descriptions because I kind of did a brief overview. Any questions on the individual projects that have been submitted so far? So again, all these projects came from department heads generally. I'll be adding the form, the project forms to the packets probably tomorrow morning. And so you can see a little bit more about what the department had said about the project and the need for it. Right. So our pending list, it's mostly the same as last year with a few adjustments. So we have Puffer's Pond is a big one that was on there that we continue to seek alternative funding. Finishing the Kendrick Park design is a big one on there. North Amherst intersection. A new one that's been added is building demolition. So we have a number of facilities that we eventually need to demolish buildings that we will need money to do so. Starting with Hickory Ridge and the clubhouse, the VFW site that was recently acquired and then also the gas station that is behind the North Amherst library is on town land and we've been, the tank, the oil tank has already been removed at the tank that holds all the fuel has been removed but the sort of the shell of the gas station still remains. Kathy? Sean, I know this is the future list but on building demolition, if there's any useful wood and either Hickory Ridge or the golf thing or the, there probably isn't anything in the gas station. One of our neighbors found a person that if they let them take the wood away, they did most of the demolition for free and then left the trash part, the stone in the cement part so substantially lowered it because the wood was decent but he had a barn, so it may be. And I told this to Dave, Zomac and I, but just as a reminder, so it lowered the cost a bit. I see Pam's hand is up. Yeah, quick question on the Kendrick Park design and construction. Is this to complete the intersection at McClellan and North Pleasant Street or is it actual park? The park looks fairly completed. Yeah, so there was a concept for the other side of Kendrick Park that included sort of a performance area. I think some additional sidewalks around, you know, there's always been talk about a downtown bathroom and things like that. So there was another piece to that concept and that's what this would be for. I'm not sure if it would do any intersection work. That's something that Guilford would know for sure when he comes in. Good, thank you. Just related, Sean, I just want to have a follow-up. I don't know to what extent our committee wants to do this but in terms of priority for the things that's on if grants come through and what to apply for grants for. The one that I mentioned last week is intersection grant near the Fort River School. And we're not, I'd like to put that on the list and then I want to question whether that wouldn't have a higher priority to seek money for that than the Kendrick Park design because I'm worried that sometimes we go out for grant money because it's there and then we have to spend half of it and maybe it wasn't our highest priority and no one likes to turn grant money down. So if we really say that the intersections are critical and they're critical for getting around safely or for the new developments that are coming in. So this is long-term capital planning but that's partly what we're supposed to be weighing in on I think so I would just try to find some point where we, if we put something in this report we could have a longer discussion or 10 minute discussion about it, not long. Kathy, just to clarify, are you talking about the existing intersections or possibly a new something at the entrance to Fort River? Well, at the entrance, at the two traffic lights Guilford raised that roundabouts would work at them and then closing out the way the road slices through where that little bank is, so not stopping that. And we don't have the money to do that but two new developments are coming in there and there is a grant we got for sidewalks but it didn't do the intersections. So those are a problem with or without the school the way the traffic closed. So I just, North Amherst is a different kind of problem. So it's just, this seems to dictate what grants people are applying for. So it is a priority list for staff time. Right, yeah. And just this listen itself is not, it's not in order or anything like that. But I know what you're saying and if it's on the list, it's something that we're, so yeah, I'll make a note of that. The one Sam asked about Kendrick Park I would rank it so much slower that I might take it off the list altogether in terms of we've got a terrific playground right there and let's move elsewhere, but okay. The other thing that might again help with something like what you described or just help generally in the future is hopefully we will start seeing some increased transportation from the surcharge. Again, we don't, as of today, heard anything new about how that money will flow through to cities and towns but I anticipate that it will impact this capital plan at some point, one of it in some way. All right, so the next section are projects that require more development and analysis work and funding but are a little bit more in the planning phase. Most of these again have been on there since last year. I'm trying to see if there's anything, I think the only new one that was added is the homeless shelter because we now own the VFW site. I think everything else was there from last year. So here's the asset table. We added something about the number of vehicles which just comes directly from the inventory sheet in the back. Again, Kathy, you noted that the public works number was low compared to the inventory sheet and again, it's because I wanted the number to align with the numbers above. So you could kind of get some scale when you look at them but I'll take a look, I'll rethink about it if there's a way we can incorporate the enterprise fund one so it ties out better. So people know when I counted, I got nearer to 60 vehicles. So it just, I did a rough count. So Mandy, you were the one who asked to have this line added and to me, I think it matters because some of the vehicles are used interactively regardless of where they were, they're all parked in the same place. The schools, we added the schools, they can't really do it by school because obviously it's sort of a district transportation so it sort of lumped all together but you have the number for the schools and the big number here is their contracts, the transportation budget for that service. Alex. Alex has her hand up. I'm sure you'll be shocked at my forever, every single year and you're gonna add the North Evers Library to the list of town assets that belongs to the town. I think we will. I know there's obviously there's the runup, the addition project going on and there's gonna be some discussion after that project about sort of maintaining that building especially since it will include some community space going forward. You're doubling the size of it and the cost of it, yeah. I worry every year that, I mean, it was sort of lost at some point that the town owned that building and I just worry, I don't want it to get lost again so I feel like if we are clear that it is on the list, nobody forgets that the town owns it and then people don't get confused about it. Well, since the list had to go to a second page, I need to add at least three or four more columns so that it's, I like balance, I don't like the sort of half table here so we need to add three or four more buildings just to get it to balance out, right? But yeah, but seriously, I think in the next year or two, we'll see that go on because some decisions gonna be made how that building is maintained. Mandy? Similarly, is there a reason why North Fire Station and Central Fire Station are listed on the same column? Yeah, because we don't break out the accounts for those two facilities. We don't separate like the heating fuel account, it's all within the fire department's budget so we don't have a good way as of right now to break them out. So could I ask then how the square footage, is it like, is 26,668 the square footage of both buildings combined? Yeah, yeah, we could do something similar in the future, like when we look at the schools in the second, schools have some building based accounts but then they have some accounts that are district and for those district ones, we parsed it out by square footage. We theoretically could do something like that with the North and Central Fire Station but that's why they're one because there's not separate accounts right now. Okay, thanks. And does that answer my question? Why DPW seems to have such a small square footage that you're not counting the square footage? I think there's more than this and then my second question is, at least when we're doing the school building, we've been told the square of Fort River and Wildwood is 82,000 and then you've got 108. So I'm just talking about the size. Yeah, so these square footage just come from the assessors card and so sometimes there's a difference between sort of effective space versus total square footage of a building so that's probably why the difference is there. With public works, yeah, this is of again, some of the assessors card for the headquarters which I try to note there, it doesn't include all the space that they have like tree and grounds and some of the other offsite facilities that they have. Okay, thank you. So we did add the schools, you know, hours of operation per week, something I sort of ballparked. It's probably, I'll check in with Mike and Doug that number might need to get tweaked up because they'd certainly use it a lot. It's just not consistent every week from week to week, how much that it's been used for their numbers. So again, they have custodians that are charged directly to their buildings but then they have district maintenance staff that are not. So for anything that was sort of a district maintenance shared costs, I just prurated it by square footage at the building but there's a lot of stuff they have that is charged directly to schools like they're heating fuel and electricity and things like that. So I'd say it's a pretty good representation of the way the costs are allocated but again, because we're doing that allocation by square footage, it's not exact. Kathy. Oh, sorry, I meant to take it down. Mandy Jo. Yeah, I just wanted, you kind of just explained this, the personnel services exactly what personnel goes into that number. Yeah, so it's... Cross all the lines. So each school has three or four custodians which are in that line. And then, and that's the same thing with the other buildings that there's custodial support assigned directly to the building that's included there. And then there's a number of specialists at each school or in the district such as electrician plumber, HVAC, when they can find people to fill those positions are really hard to fill right now. Those costs are in there. And then the drivers, one of the benefits of our transportation system is that we employ a lot of our drivers. And so in the morning and the afternoon they drive and during the middle of the day, they do a lot of maintenance and repair work and grounds work throughout our school properties. And so we break out what is transportation versus what is maintenance with those employees. So the maintenance portion is what you see here. All right, keep going on. So, status of approved projects. Again, these updates, we've got some updates. I think this is again a section when department heads come and speak, they can provide the most recent update on how these projects are going. You can see the department and then what the specific project is that they're working on. And these are all things that are three years or older. So FY20 and before. This is sort of the summary of what is capital. I'm going to wrap up in four minutes because I know went way longer than I was expecting, but I think we've got through a lot of questions as we went, which is good. So inventory, facility inventory, we try to highlight the buildings that our work is being done to or their schedule for replacement or so on. We added a couple of the new facilities like the V, I think we added the VFW sites. Not yet actually, so that was too new. We added the Hickory Ridge site and the Belcher Town Road parcels that were purchased recently. So those are on there now. And then I'm sure the VFW site will be added on before it's finalized. And then as we go to vehicles, so we tried to organize this a little better than in previous years. Again, we removed the non-vehicle equipment that was on here, like all the trailers, which we thought made it look easier to kind of understand how many actual vehicles the department has. We also tried to standardize some of the language so you could, you know, how many ambulance does the fire department have or how many dump truck plows does the DPW have? So that's been updated. The dark orange are the vehicles that are slated for replacement with the requests that have been submitted for FY24. The light orange are vehicles that already have funding approved and will be replaced. We're just waiting for the vehicles to come in or for the procurement process to complete and for the vehicles to come in. And then the highlighted green are the vehicles that have some sort of hybrid or sustainable technology already incorporated. And so the goal there is hopefully this list will become more and more green as we continue to swap out older vehicles with the newer vehicles that are generally we've been able to find, being able to incorporate some sort of hybrid technology into our newer vehicles. Pam. I'm looking at the ladder truck that I think we just spent a whole lot of money for. Oh, that's replacement value. Excuse me, not, not, but we just replaced that. This Simon ladder. Yeah. Yeah, so another change we made is the replacement values in the past were all over the place. So I've worked with department heads a little bit to try to standardize the replacement values and update them to the true, like, not if it get, what if we had to go out and buy a new one? And so these replacement values are supposed to better reflect the real cost of these vehicles going forward. So that's why that one, so that's why that's at 1.6 million because that's roughly what it costs now for a new ladder truck. Sorry, it's, I'm not sure why it's taking so long to see. I can get this to not be so blurry. There's just a lag, I think, because the file is so big until I downloaded it to my. Yeah. All right, so, so I'll go through and I'll just try to wrap up with the debt schedule. See if I can get that to pop in. All right, so the, here's the updated debt schedule. So again, the shaded gray are the approved projects and are for ones that have already been financed. That's the exact debt schedule for ones that are, we haven't actually purchased that. We have a projected debt schedule there. Some of these debt schedules for things that we haven't acquired yet, we've had to push out farther than we expected. So for example, the pumper truck, we were probably gonna have to push this out another year. It's not done here, but I think we're gonna have to push this out to FY 25 because we don't start paying the debt until we receive the vehicle and everything's taken longer to receive. So the facility trailer we pushed out another year and some of these other ones are gonna get pushed out as it takes longer to get them. The shaded yellow area is the projected debt. So projects that have not been approved yet but are on the plan is a borrowing. Bond anticipation, no interest. You'll see that's high, or that's sort of a recurring amount. You'll see these two high years in FY 26 and 27. That's related to the Jones Library Project and our debt schedule and just sort of the financing costs of that project and how we anticipate it'll having some higher short term financing costs for that. And the light blue are the CPA projects so you can get a better sense of the amounts that are in that debt number on the summary sheet. It's for these projects that were approved for debt. So these are only the debt funded CPA projects. We have the regional debt assessment, which I've updated based on the presentation from the regional school committee at the four town meeting through FY 26. Amanda, you asked a question last time and whether we would go all the way up to what they've, what they're showing or we would cap it. For now we're keeping it at 800,000 not to say that it would never go above that but I think for this committee to know the regional school committee has submitted has put together a regional capital plan that goes far above 800,000 in the future between if they were to do every project that's on their plan. We put in the debt for the enterprise funds just so you have a sense of what's there, building projects that would be funded by debt. The reason you don't see the fire station on here is because the current plan of the fire station is to not finance it, is to try to build up our reserve so we can not have to borrow for that project but that's still a decision that will be still has to be finalized and then just some total information. And so with that, I will stop. So, Kathy, we do have a number of resident requesters in the audience. Is it okay if we transition to that? Yes. I should ask the rest of the committee, are we okay to move to the next section? Yes. So I'll just ask if you are here to speak to a resident capital request, can you raise your hand? Perfect. All right, so we are gonna start, Kathy, I was gonna just go in the order in which the resident capital requests were submitted. Yep. Okay, so Ira Brick is here and I'm gonna bring them in. So, Ira, I'm gonna promote you to a panelist that's gonna pop up something that you have to accept in order to be brought in. Thank you. So, Ira, go ahead and I think we talked about three to five minutes to kind of talk about your request. I believe yours was for charging, chargeable or bike station, bike charging stations. And Ira, you need to unmute. Good. Yeah, we can hear you now. Okay, so I'm Ira Brick from 255 Strong Street and this is my resident capital request for consideration by the town's Joint Capital Planning Committee. I propose that part of the funding be used to create a locked and guarded bicycle parking area in the town lot of North Prospect Street with places to charge e-bikes. There could be a cost to park a bicycle and also to charge an e-bike or e-motorcycle. This small facility could be solar powered and I'm told that if it's self-contained, it would not be nearly as noisy as our solar arrays that transfer and store electrons. There might also be some parking spaces to charge electric cars. This location would create easy access to the central business district and be a much less intense use than the proposed three to five level parking garage for that location. That garage could be located elsewhere of past and current studies show that downtown Amherst doesn't need another parking garage. Plus my proposed use is less disruptive to the historic neighborhood there as well as to the CVS customers who often park behind the store. I'm told that during construction of a large garage there, we would need the CVS lot to be used for staging and that might result in the loss of CVS downtown as they are very attached to their own parking behind the store. Informal studies by neighbors in that area have reported that the North Prospect lot is usually underutilized, often largely empty even during peak times for Amherst Cinema and the Drake and downtown restaurants. I believe this use would be a higher and better one even if it is lower and simpler. And it would be great marketing for Amherst, a town that supports reduced use of cars and increased use of electric vehicles, including e-bikes becoming greatly more popular, especially by older people who have a hard time riding traditional bicycles in our hilly region. I don't think this would be especially costly to construct and would have an income stream to offset those initial costs. Thank you. So, Kathy, do you wanna do questions after each presentation or do you wanna do questions at the end and I can send them out to requesters if you can. I guess I'll ask the committee. I mean, if we can ask them right now if they're not answerable right now then we can get written requests. So how would people like to do it, Pam? I wouldn't mind being able to ask a quick question or two after everyone just because I won't be able to remember. Okay, so I think why don't we do that? And then we'll say, we're not expecting we'll get them all answered right now and we could get answers back unless they are easy to ask. So, Pam. I have my hand up. I don't, if I, Robert could describe what he means by guarded, I understand lockable but what do you mean by guarded station? Well, I think the result of it being guarded could come from not being manned or womanned. If there were places to lock it securely but rather than just have a bike lock, a bike rack where anybody can snip it with a bolt cutter it would be more secure since my E-bike costs $3,500. That's a big trust issue to just leave it in an insecure place. So I'm just looking, my question is you put a rough estimate of $20,000. Did you have anything to base that on? No. Okay, okay. Thank you. But I imagine this could even be a temporary, if there was a higher and better use than that it is a residential and historic district. So even if this lot was there for 10 years and then somebody came up with another idea it wouldn't be like taking down a five-story parking garage. Okay, Mandy. Yeah, a couple of them. What's the size you're thinking about? So how many bikes would it hold? Things like that, how tall would it be? Is it gonna be covered? Things like that, what are your thoughts on that? And why a spot that doesn't already, this lot doesn't have charging infrastructure at it already. Whereas we have two town lots that already do have charging infrastructures, Prey Street and behind the town hall. So why not those lots? Why this one that doesn't already have the infrastructure? Are there lots you're talking about good for charging bicycles? No, they already have electric vehicle charging infrastructure, which presumably means they have electric infrastructure that you could hook into for bikes too. Well, it can be like- Easier than a lot that has no charging infrastructure. Well, so I mean, first of all, that is a little remote. My personal habit and other people I know they don't park their e-bike out of sight. And this is just a little closer and a little bit more secure. I wouldn't wanna park my e-bike and walk away from it. And then also what I imagine is the structure is similar to the UMass one near the visitor center where the solar collector would also be a roof. And then there would be some kind of fencing with locks, maybe bring your own lock or something like that. But I also think that this location is good for people that are using downtown closer than Prey Street or behind town hall. Thank you. I'm not being scientifically knowledgeable about how this would work. So I write just to follow up on Mandy's and you don't have to respond to this. But if the issue of where it was mattered but the idea is attractive, would you wanna keep the idea on the table? Well, I think it's a good idea. I have a lot of people who live in Amherst or Northampton. I have a friend in Northampton that e-bikes to Amherst every day. I think it would be good for the downtown. I do prefer this location because it's two birds with one stone where there's a lot of people that live in that neighborhood on North Prospect that are saying, we don't want this gigantic garage in our backyard of a local historic district. Okay. Mandy, is yours to hand up again or just go do? It's Alex. I don't know if anybody knows. I assume there would have to be a study done. So I'm assuming that the 20,000 in theory, I don't know if that's study, like your estimate on study plus construction costs or if that's, so I guess you didn't, I know you said to Kat, you didn't have a basis for it, but I'm just trying to understand. I totally guessed on the $20,000. I don't know what it would cost. It could be much less, but yes, I agree it would need to be a study. There would need to be some grading of the lot, which now seems like it's just the Baja there. And there's already been some studies about a garage there, I think. Maybe that's not true, but maybe some of that information would help here too. And Alex just, and Kathy asked us before the meeting, we do anticipate getting some input from department staff that we can share with the committee as well. So that's a question I can relate to them. So like Stephanie Chickarello will probably want to weigh in on this and I'm sure Guilford will have some thoughts on that. I also think it's good marketing for the town. You know, I think this would make national news actually. So I think that's, it's a good set of questions. Sean, I took notes too, so we can keep them. All right, I'm gonna bring in our next requester. Thank you. Thank you so much, Ira, for sending the request. Robert is our next requester. Bob, you're with us if you, I think you're with us if you unmute. Yep, but you're not unmuted. Excuse me. I toggled it. Good to see you guys. Most of you I know for a long time, Alex, nice to meet you in person, sort of. Sean, I've no, anyway, just I realized that I'm following on a request that I hadn't been aware of it. That sounds very interesting. And I don't wanna put my impromptu or on something cause sometimes my fingerprints are not appreciated but I think Ira's idea wherever it goes is a good one. And my mind is related to cycling, although it has to do with present day infrastructure. It's simply a matter of signs or perhaps pavement markings. And it's very low cost. The idea was simply to have the DPW acquire some signs that indicate that cycling in the opposite direction and a designated counterflow bike lane, for example, on the west side of Kendrick Park, which I think will soon be done by DPW. But the thing is to acquire some signage which could be reutilized wherever such new facilities go in just to give a heads up to motorists that they're not allowed but the cyclists, I assume even e-cyclists could use that. I don't think the cost would be very high and it would be something that would be reusable wherever such facilities came in. I know there have been suggestions to have other street systems made one way in part but it's very common, especially in progressive European cities and even progressive American cities to have bicycling allowed both ways, even on a street that's one way. And I think this would be it. I think I forget what the amounts that I suggested were but it was single digit thousand. And the first place I thought we could try it would be on the west side of Kendrick Park on the southbound side. So it's actually the west side of the North Pleasant Street there as well. And I'm imagining at most a few dozen signs, maybe less than a dozen would be needed and they'd be simple signs that could be affixed to a simple signpost. And there might also be some funding for paint on the road which isn't quite as durable but which may also be appreciated by the DPW. And if you allow me to say that part of the reason for the request, even if it's somewhere in the DPW's budget as just error bars, this is a tiny amount of money, it's to make sure the project actually happens. Something that I know a lot. Various other town council committees has considered, attack has considered it. I think it's gonna happen. I was told through the grapevine that it's supposed to happen this summer, some of the work there on the west side but I think getting the signs as an extra project will remind everybody that this is something that we could be doing and perhaps should be doing. Thank you. Questions? Mandy. This is more for Sean to pass on to DPW. I can't easily find the plan that the council passed for that when we turned it one way and all the parking but I feel like I remember we included a plan for a counterflow bike lane on that. So I think we would want some information on that as it relates to this and in terms of then the potential temporary nature of Rob's request here because I know there's some delays in the finalizing of the eventual plan for that street but if we could get some answers to that. So Mandy has a question just whether that plan already included. Did it already include it? And then, and if it did, is it possible to do that part now too? You know, I think we might still have parking on both sides of the street right now which might make it a little more problematic. I don't know, but it's been. Can I offer, it's no, the parking has been removed from the west side along the one way stretch. Yeah. So just the idea, if I may, if I was just, I don't know if I was to answer your question but maybe it's for others. But I think the idea is that paint won't go down until the road is repainted. I mean, repaved, prepared and curbs or reset, whatever. Signs could go in at any time and they could be taken away once there's something on the road that may be more attractive and then used elsewhere. And I can imagine other places in town, quite a few, I won't make a list of them where a one way and a counter for a bike lane the other way might actually be very appropriate especially near the streets near the university that I think have that feature that I could name a couple of them. Thanks. Sean, I'll call on myself. That's okay. I'm sorry, I don't know what I was calling on. No, that's okay. Just the other thing to be asking DPW but up by puffers when we made the road one way. It is clearly, there's some clearness and what I don't remember, you may know, Rob, that bikes are allowed to go in both directions and pedestrians are allowed to go in both directions, cars are not. So this is a place where foot traffic, it gets a little less traffic, well, it only gets traffic in the summertime, but I think it's as a general question, I think it's a good one. Should we have clear signs that are permissive of the bike? And that warns the cars that the bikes are gonna go in two directions. It's something everyone got used to pretty quickly, which was amazing. If I can come, there are two places near Puffer's Pond, one is the, I don't know whether it's Sandhill Road or whatever the next road is, but it's parallel to the Puffer's Pond dam where bikes are asked to share the space with pedestrians. You don't wanna hear me give an opinion about that. It's not safe, but so it goes. People should slow down. The other part which is State Street along the south side of Puffer's Pond, I don't remember what it does now for Counterflow bike lane there, but that would be another place that I hadn't mined, actually, but it's obviously a remote place where signs like this might be deployed as appropriate. Because there it's just paved roadways. These signs would be for on street, on the pavement, used by bicycles in the opposite direction. And presumably there'll be some kind of demarcation with a painted yellow line at some point, but it'd be very narrow on the bicycle side, five or six feet wide. Anyway, the request is basically to put something in so they can create such signs. And if there's money left over from the signs to put some paint down once the new pavement is on the ground there. And some of the signs could then go away as people are habituated to the practice. And the signs can be deployed elsewhere as needed. Okay, I don't see any other questions. So since we have others waiting in the queue, thank you very much. Thank you too, bye-bye. All right, so I think our next requester is Jessica. Well, Jessica's coming in. I just want to let people know that something bad internet-wise happened as far as a house. So she's off and unable to get back on and send her a follow-up. Okay, okay. Hi, may I share my screen, please? Kathy, I don't have any issues. I just want to make sure you have the ability to. I think I can do it. One participant. Can you see my screen? Yes. Okay. I made visuals. I'm a visual person. I am proposing a crosswalk to go across Pine Street at the corner of Harris Street in North Amherst Village Center. To give you a view of the area, as you know, here's the traffic light and all of these roads go off to different parts of town and different towns. The area that I really want to talk about is right in the center of North Amherst Village. North Amherst Village has quite a few residents in it. In this view, you can see that all of these apartment buildings and places on North Pleasant Street are full of people who walk places. And when they walk and when they want to walk to say the Mill River Conservation Area or Puffer's Pond or down Pine Street to Cushman, they mostly go up North Pleasant, North Amherst and North Pleasant Street, turn right on Fisher Street and then follow Harris Street along and come to the end of Harris Street. And then what happens is there's no more pavement for them to walk on without crossing Harris Street. You can see here, there's a sidewalk and then the yellow line is the sidewalk on the north side of Pine Street. And I circle number 39 here because that's my house. This is where I live. So I've got eyes on the ground here for this problem. There are 10 to 15 people a day in the winter, walk down Harris Street or cross from Pine Street onto Harris and in the summer, it can get up to 100 people a day. Runners, dog walkers, baby pushers, people out just to have a nice walk and they prefer to use Fisher and Harris Streets because it's much more pleasant than walking up North Pleasant to Pine. So that's the situation as it is right now. Safety is a really important issue. The red mark that put across Pine is where I suggest across Walk B. I also, you can see that cars are going pretty fast when they go past this corner. From the traffic light, they're accelerating through a 35 mile an hour zone to a 40 mile an hour zone right after Harris Street. So people are going faster and faster if they're going towards Cushman. If they're coming from Cushman, they're going 40 miles an hour or more until they get to Harris Street when they're supposed to slow down to 35. But, you know, if that light is green, the slowing down doesn't happen. So it's not really safe for people to cross the street here, even though people do choose this unsafe for a way to go, then the safer pedestrian crossing at the traffic light. The other, this is the third time somebody's asked for this crosswalk. And the first two times, I believe my neighbor, Nikola Usher was the requester. And I haven't, I don't know the details of her request, I don't know why it was turned down, but I've heard that it's because one of the reasons is that there's not a sidewalk on the Harris Street side of Pine for a crosswalk to meet up with. But just as an offering of perhaps a way to solve this problem is in the TAC guide for Bicycle and Pedestrian Network for Amherst, they do put in a suggestion of painted pedestrian lanes on neighborhood streets so that there's a demarcated pedestrian place for to guide walkers. And it could, the pedestrian lane could start at the end of the crosswalk and go all the way around on Harris to Fisher and terminate there. And that would solve the problem of no sidewalk. No one wants to walk on the south side of Pine Street. They want to walk on Harris Street once they cross Pine or they want to walk on Pine having come from Harris Street. This, you can see I've drawn in the pedestrian lane here just to be more graphical. Putting a crosswalk on Pine Street here would fulfill some of the objectives of the master plan. In the transportation section of the master plan, there's an objective in T2 which is to actively promote alternative modes of transportation which includes improve the safety and comfort of pedestrian spaces and paths which this would certainly do. I mean, I like to think of Harris and Fisher as multi-use paths rather than as streets because there are as many pedestrians and bicyclists on it as there are cars on some days. Another one of the subcategories of the T2 objective is to make village centers bicycle-friendly and pedestrian-friendly which includes incorporating bike lanes, sidewalks or multi-use paths, create and maintain well-marked pedestrian crossings and pedestrian-activated traffic signals. Well, a well-marked pedestrian crossing right in this center of a North Amherst village would meet that objective. So I do encourage the town to reward the walkers in North Amherst to acknowledge that they should get the same safety and safety acknowledgement and consideration that automobiles get who come bombing sometimes through North Amherst village. So I will stop now. Jessica, could you send me this, if you have enough format, can you send me this, I'll distribute to the committee and also it'll be helpful for the DPW superintendent to look at. Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Jessica and questions from the committee. Mandy. Yeah, thank you for it. I just wanna clarify, I believe your request initially said crosswalk but you've got on the part we're actually looking at right now sort of a pedestrian way that would also require some painting and all that could connect to the crosswalk. So is the request just the crosswalk or would it include the potential for adding this pedestrian way that you mentioned on both Harris and Fisher that might then connect to, I don't know, another cross, I don't know which side of the street the sidewalk is on at North Pleasant when Fisher hits it. But yeah, so could you clarify whether you're expanding it or not? When I put in the request, the resident request, I was thinking only crosswalk but then as I learned about the previous requests and why they were denied, I realized that we would probably need this pedestrian lane as well to act as a terminus for the south side of the crosswalk. And that's why I've included it in this plan. I don't know if you wanna include it as a part of the plan or not. The crosswalk itself is $30,000, which is what Sean told me. A couple of cans of paint, I think we'll take care of the pedestrian lane. And it very nicely, Fisher Street has a crosswalk and sidewalk, North Pleasant Street crosses Fisher Street at that corner. So there's a sidewalk right there. With a crosswalk painted on the street. So that would be a good terminus for the pedestrian lane. Pam. Thanks. I think this is a wonderful proposal. It occurs to me that given, I drive that section quite a bit and given the attention on the upcoming intersection, it occurs to me that a more complete project would be to have something that allows a pedestrian to push a flashing light just for the safety of, the real safety, because I think people are pretty inattentive as they start to speed up off to the gate or speed to the light. That was my intent. That's why I said, I have a pedestrian activated light at crosswalk. Is my... That's the goal. Yeah. So I think it'd be helpful if the town staff does take a look at this particular one. What does it add to the cost to add the pedestrian activated light? I think that's part of the $30,000. Okay, good. Yeah. Good. That's what I was told. Okay. And I have also gotten the same answer about you can't have a crosswalk to a street that doesn't have a sidewalk. So I really like your idea of designating a pedestrian zone on Harris Street, even if it's actually not the entire length of the street, but perhaps the last 50 feet or something that gives you a landing point for the crosswalk. I've been told that in order to be ADA compliant, there has to be a clearly marked sidewalk-ish kind of thing at either end of a crosswalk. And so I thought, well, if somebody who needs some guidance comes across Pine Street onto Harris, they'd probably want to go around the corner. So, but I agree. If it can be a shorter pathway, that's fine too. There's a, you know, there's a verge here along Harris Street, there's like a six foot verge, but I don't think we're gonna get a sidewalk anytime soon. Kathy? So this is a little bit, it's not directly related to the sidewalk, but you showed 35 miles an hour coming off the traffic light going right away to 40. One of the issues in all directions here in my mind is shouldn't we have 25 miles an hour extended further? Because the description that she just gave of behavior is absolutely accurate. And it's not safe because you also get fender benders as well as, so Sean, I just would wanna add a question on why is it 25, why is it not 25 miles coming off the light? Cause it is 25 miles going north. So that's a good question for the tack, I think. Well, here I'll tell you because I had a question too when they repaved the road in 2014, there had been a 25 mile an hour sign at the corner of North, you know, on Pine Street for people going to Cushman, right at the corner. And when after the painting was done and the signs went back up, there's a 35 mile an hour sign, I said, well, this doesn't make sense. And I was told by the director of the department of public utilities that that was the right one. And that if we wanted to get that change we would have to call the state and they would have to do a traffic survey and they would probably come up with a faster speed limit. So that's along Pine and Mark. Those are state roads, Pine? Oh, no, no, but they're doing well. Sean, we could throw that into the mix cause if they're not state roads, it's not accurate. And I actually succeeded in getting the speed limit on Montague roads lower. The state agreed with me. So they didn't, so, but if it was not a state road it's under town control. So I just want to put that into the mix. Yeah, again, Guilford can weigh in on that. Again, I don't think it correctly relates to this. Yeah, it doesn't. That part doesn't, but we can certainly get that answered. Okay. All right, thank you, Jessica. Thanks, Jessica. All right, our next is Kathleen Carroll. I'm going to promote you. Kathleen, I think you're with us if you unmute. Hi there, I'm Kathleen Carroll. I live at 11 Fisher Street and I have submitted on behalf of my neighbors on Fisher Street the proposal for speed humps. So I have lived here for 13 years and the reason for the request is totally related to safety of the residents who live here and also as you can see from Jessica's map the residents who live on Harris Street. So the L of Harris and Fisher is used as a shortcut for commuters who are trying to avoid the light. So the way the North Pleasant and Pine are situated they can see whether the light is green or red by the time they hit Harris or the time they hit Fisher. So they will quickly take a left or a right onto Harris and Fisher and go quickly down either street to avoid hitting a yellow or red light. So as I said, I have been here for 13 years and when I first moved in I had my grandchildren, my young grandchildren here quite a bit and I took it upon myself to put bird seed into the road during commuter hours to deter motorists going down the street. The squirrels and the birds would go into the street and it would slow them down. So time went on and bird seed got expensive so then I have turned and I still do the little orange cones that you can buy at Walmart. So I usually do all that during the academic year when the traffic is the worst. So I think I have no basis for the price I think for Fisher Street maybe one hump might be enough. And I've also noticed over the years that it's the same cars that will eventually that do use it as a shortcut. And once they find out that they can't go through our two streets as quickly as they think they can I think it would be an excellent deterrent. So I do wanna mention that there is a concern by myself and some other neighbors about the engineering of a hump or humps as it relates to drainage of the water, of the rain water. When they redid Harris and Fisher maybe seven or eight years ago they did a wonderful job. We do not have sidewalks as Jessica mentioned but the slope of the street what happens is when we have an extreme rain which seems to be more and more often the water will go into the yards on the south side of Fisher and drain down into the yards and it is a problem. So I would hope the engineers could take a look at the drainage issue if this proposal is considered. And thank you very much. Thank you, Kathleen. Questions? Sean, when I was looking forward are we talking about potential speed hump on Fisher and then one also on Harris? And then when you look at the two and are they separate? Do you want me to bring in Jeremy and have maybe it makes sense to do those two together? Yeah, I just, you know, we saw the way the map does one on each of them. They were two separate requests but I could, are you okay if I bring in Jeremy and have him speak to- Sure, I just thought so people would know what's coming but maybe Pam wants to start off on the idea of the speed hump, yeah. Pam, is your question one that you would ask of both? Yeah, I actually it's more of a statement that I totally get the need for speed bumps on cut-through streets. Cottage Street was also a cut-through street and our two humps have been very successful in managing that traffic. So I would strongly support a safety measure like that. I think Jeremy, it is a different issue, Sean. I'm just looking. Yeah, it's traffic science, yeah. Yeah, so Kathleen, were you talking, I'm just asking, so I know, are we talking about a hump on Fisher and then a hump on Harris or do you think one is enough? There's two separate proposals submitted and I do not think, I think, well, I think one is enough on Fisher. I don't know what the engineers would say about Harris because it is a longer street. Okay. But I think there's somebody on here to talk about the proposal for the speed humps on Harris. Okay, thank you. Okay. Alex. Thanks. So myself living on a cut-through North Prospect Street, I'm very familiar with the speed one can get to between the bend on Halleck and Kohl's, shocking actually. He's there, I don't know from a cost-wise perspective, but I know it's something we talk about on our street is if you were to change the street to a one-way street, we also have the nonsense that is Kohl's, but I wonder if changing it to a one-way street is any more cost-effective and would it solve it or does it only solve one direction? And I'm just throwing it out there because I have no idea if one's equally effective with different terms of cost. I can write that down for... The fire department doesn't love humps. That's all I have in my mind is the fire department hates humps, so. I can write that down for Guilford as a one-way help with traffic or speed. Mandy. Yeah, this one's not for Kathleen. It's more for when we get these reports from Guilford. I think a report that includes all of the requests for these two streets, the crosswalk, the humps on both Harris and Fisher, to talk about sort of that and how it relates to any plan that might happen at the five-way intersection, however you want to call it. So that we can look at it all holistically, almost. And also then how it could relate to the planned improvements to North Pleasant Street that I believe TSO at one point was looking at or still has on its... Kathy, you remember, there's that massive... Some massive proposal for new sidewalks and changes of sidewalks and all that we had last term that I think is still sitting in TSO right now. How any of this would relate to that? Yeah, and I can tell you, because I know that one, is somehow it came out of DPW and ignored the fact that where there aren't sidewalks and there weren't crosswalks, they rearranged the existing ones. But yes, it didn't get all the way up to this intersection. I mean, it did, but it didn't. So that would be great. It would include them as a cluster. Good. Any other questions? Kathleen, thank you very much. All right, so next is Jeremy. Hi, can you hear me okay? We can. Great. Thank you so much. Jeremy Anderson, I live at 34 High Point Drive in Amherst and I have two sons, Eric who's five and just started at Fort River and Wesley who is three and is at Cushman Scott. And both boys, well, Eric was at Cushman until he started at Fort River and Wesley is currently at Cushman. And since, you know, since we were able to get Eric at Cushman in 20, probably 2019, I've been in communications with the police department and with the department of public works about a similar topic addressing speed and addressing traffic concerns. You know, here it's right in front of the Cushman school. It's, you know, it's a very tight area as people are driving through. They're coming from Northeast Street and they kind of just zip right through the intersection on their way northbound or even coming southbound. It's, as the other requests have said, it's amazing the speed that people can get in a very short period of time. So, you know, I've been working with Chief of Police Scott Livington who's been really fantastic and very, very accommodating with Guilford Mooring at the Department of Public Works to try to find some alternatives and part of, again, trying to find some holistic options. And one request that the request that I have is for those signs that say your speed is. This is something that Scott provided quotes for for $8,500 per sign. These would be solar paneled. It'd be positioned on the telephone poles in front of the school in both the north and southbound direction. Just to remind people, it's so easy in the mornings, especially during the drop-off for kids, people are trying to get to work. And the police department has been incredibly helpful providing officers occasionally to look at the traffic. And so my hope is that these signs are just another tool to help remind people to slow down. And hopefully protect our little ones who are our most vulnerable members of our community. Thank you, Scott, Jeremy. Any questions? And Mandy. This one's actually for Guilford, because he's going to know what these signs are, but you said solar powered and solar powered is awesome. I'm curious. Is there any, are they completely, for Guilford, are they completely contained electrical signs, meaning you don't need to hook into some other electrical system. You can just take the sign, pour your concrete pad, bolt it down or whatever you do, you know, or do you have to have an electric supply outside of the sign and solar panel? Because I assume the work required is a lot different depending on whether you have to hook into an external electrical supply or whether the entire post sign type system is fully contained and operational on its own. And I would just ask to also ask Chief Livingston as well, because he's the one who provided the quotes for the installation. Alex. Yeah, and I guess just along that just sort of again, sort of more holistically, I mean, I know at one point there was a request on our street. So we had that sign for a bit and it does work, but then we stopped working. So I don't know how long they worked for, but they, you know, I don't know whether we have a supply that we, you know, use for when there are traffic studies that are being done or... Oh, go ahead. Sorry. Oh, I'm sorry. I was thinking the permanent ones, not the temporary trailer ones. But yes, I completely agree. When they're there, you're like, oh, I got to slow down. When they're not there. Oh, okay. But yeah, so this would be a permanent fixture. Yeah. And I guess I'm just curious how many of the temporary ones we have and do we only deploy those for... Are you talking about the temporary ones, like the ones that have wheels at police stations? Yeah. I think they have six of them. Yeah. And I don't think, I mean, maybe they're... The ones I'm thinking about, they're not often used for speed. I mean, they could be used for speed, but I think they're often used for messages and communicating other information. I think they do speed as well, but I've seen them most often for, like, as you enter downtown to communicate health and safety information. Yeah. I mean, I guess I'm thinking just more from the holistic view, right? Again, you know, Pam, you're new to this committee, but my resounding theme is always around equity and right? Who knows that this exists? Who has the time and the ability to come to the table and make these requests? And I will heartily feel your signage need. But what other, like, is this something we need to study? And do we need to prioritize where these signs should go? Like, you know, near Cushman, where there's a school, like that seems like a priority. So we put one there. But, you know, maybe, I don't know, but I just wonder whether this is, as other capital requests that have come is more of a, this is an issue we have throughout town. And should we study it holistically and not just for the people who have the privilege to be able to bring it to our attention? Which I appreciate, by the way. I agree with what you said, Alex, because it's, it is an issue throughout town on a number of different streets and a number of different areas. And it would be good if we could collect the information and put it together into one capital proposal that Guilford could bring forward to us. But somehow other people have to be, let know that we are going to go through this process. Because, believe me, the streets that I've heard of now, there are more that have the same kinds of issues. And, and that could use speed bumps or signage. No, in the past, speed bumps have been frowned upon, especially by the fire department. So it's an issue of if, if speed bumps are an issue for the fire department, how severe of an issue is it versus a safety issue for the community that is involved? Yeah, so I will, the theme I'm hearing is general feedback from Guilford about safety improvements town-wide and how, you know, is our process to kind of come back with a plan for everything, while also considering the specific requests that have been submitted. And if I may follow up on both of those points from, from Irv and from Alex, I have had, and this has been incredibly helpful for me to hear everyone's thoughts for my proposal and, and for the previous ones. I think speeding in Amherst is a problem, but it's not just an Amherst problem. It's a problem everywhere. And I, you know, from the conversations I've had, it sounded like changing speed limits wasn't an option because I was told the same thing as the previous request that this was state owned, or these were state mandated speed limits. So I think there might be more, you know, just more information that could be provided about what are options for residents, you know, can we get lower speed limits across the town? Or can we, you know, when are, when are crosswalks available? Because the residents along Henry Street and Pine Street, you know, you know, I was, we were given a folder of about 15 years of communications where they were advocating for, for something and you know, and so definitely, you know, it's a problem in our town and I appreciate anything you can do to help. Thank you, Jeremy. All right. So the next request is for the Valley Bike Station. And I believe it's Arthur and McGage who are going to speak to that. Hey, Arthur. Hello. Hi. I'm going to start my video. There I am. Hi everyone. Should we start? Yes. Thank you for your time. My name is Arthur Haskins. I worked in Amherst in North Amherst for many years. I've handled the development in North Square at the mill district from the inception to the lease up. I handled personally and managed the buildings until very recently. But I am here to advocate for the Valley Bikes Initiative in regard to adding the continuation of the Valley Bikes to the North Amherst, to the mill district Coles Road area. Today we have a void. I handled the affordable housing lease up at North Square, for example, and I personally had many residents that were relocating to the area and had a very strong need for, to reduce reliance on automobiles. And this coincides of course as well with the sentiments of some of the folks who've spoken earlier in regard to the environmental impact of lessening reliance on fossil fuels and lessening emissions. We have a strong proposal right now. We're seeing a couple of paths for the continuation of the Valley Bikes. And one of the two potential paths forward is a station that is not with bikes, which would be one option, but more ideally a six dedicated bike station would be ideal to help enhance the community. So we have some located somewhere central to the entire North Amherst mill district community where it would allow for folks to be able to have another option for commuting and would create a natural path in joining the other Valley bike stations already in place for the proprietary e-bikes through the Amherst corridor. Today we have an increase in our population in North Amherst. One example of course is North Square, which is one of our other projects in the pipeline, Puppet Hill, and just in general the populations increasing. And then also an increase for reliance on potentially on automobiles, which we'd like to counter. The North Square comprehensive permit, one of the conditions was for traffic studies and for understanding studies related to, for example, Zipcar, which today I feel is out of date. I think this is a much more impactful approach to help lessen the reliance on fossil fuels to increase that ability to access, for example, the North Amherst library project is underway. And once that's complete, this would help with the access for folks between the North Amherst area proper and downtown. And in addition to we've been able to obtain private investment to match the potential capital investment dollar for dollar in order to place a valley bike station. I will defer to Meg for some of the details. I'm rather new. My colleague had put together a very comprehensive application narrative and I fully support this, this initiative. I'm just seeing we're running up near to three o'clock. I don't want to make it super sustained. There's one more person after you. Yeah. Okay. And I don't know if you have a speaker for the Harris Street speed hump, but Lisa Boniface is available. Okay. I'll be, thank you everyone. I'll be as quick as I can. I want to say first of all that this project and the Harris Street, Fisher Street projects in the crosswalk were created with through a collaboration of the district one neighborhood association and the mill district in our efforts to make sure that all of the projects that have been proposed in the context of the three massive planning documents that we have created and approved at great effort. The master plan, the sustainability plan, and the transportation plan that involved dozens and dozens of staff, hundreds and hundreds of hours and many volunteers to create and approve. And if these three plans are not going to be advanced by any single big Yuhumanga thing like a new school, they're going to take policies, regulation changes. I'm speeding through this as fast as I can. Changes in behavior by everyone in the town. And I feel we need to focus on those things more than we tend to all of these projects advance those three plans. And I won't, because of the time go into the details of each one, but the valley bikes project. Is a. Important way of connecting. Our part of town with the rest of the town and the. Ball lane projects that I think Arthur may have referred to at Pulpahill. Is a new affordable housing. This is going to be built very soon. We have nine apartment complexes in North Amherst nine. And all of these projects are designed in order to advance safety. Conservation. Pedestrians and bicycles. And I was going to say a little more, but I won't. I'll just say cars go by. We live a Magu road. It's 35 miles an hour, but they go by a 60 miles an hour. Very often because they're zooming into town or zooming out. And I'll say on one little anecdote, I don't know if Derek Shea is going to be able to speak, but he's driven home. He lives on Harris street. And while driving home once was passed by a speeding car on Harris street. I mean, it's crazy how fast the cars go. On those streets. And I think that this particular project say one last thing, the particular project. I don't see how you can turn down the valley bike scene when we have $20,000 pledge to match. What the town would come up with. It's kind of a no brainer in my opinion. Thank you all. I really appreciate this program. Thank you. Thank you. If I may add just one quick note that the maintenance and the overall electric costs are also something that we've had pledged as well. So that this would be a very, I think a very strong and easy lift for potentially improving the community. And Arthur, didn't you say that you sometimes have to pick up belly bikes and that you find strewn around the mill district and return them. I am still in the middle district. I'm no longer formally with beacon communities. I handle all the real estate and development for WD Coles. But in my time at beacon working for beacon at the handling the North square project. There was many times where my maintenance staff would be finding valley bikes and sometimes having to return them in our, in our vehicles. But essentially if we can have a station that is increasing the inventory, that would allow the option for commuters to be able to have some reliability to know that there would be potentially available units for them to use and take to commute in and out of the other sections of the embers corridor. Thank you. Thank you both. I want to make we, if there are questions, Mandy's got them. And then we have one more proposal. Yeah, I'll be quick and I don't expect answers today. I'm curious about how the funding works for all the stations we currently have. Has it been a joint town valley bikes initiative? So just the next time we talk about that, the ongoing operating costs, I think Arthur covered a little bit, but I'd like more information as to who would cover those. Cause I imagine there might be ongoing operating costs. And is this something that a transportation fund instead of the capital program is could, could fund, you know, could fund in the future? I don't know. I don't know. Irrespective of whether there's money in the transportation fund right now, because I know we've got some issues with that, but is this a type of project and a type of capital spending that transportation funds funds could be used for now or in the future, depending on the size of the fund. Yeah. I think I responded real quickly because there was one thing I wanted to add. So the original plan for the valley bikes, there's two additional locations that are part of that original plan. That haven't don't have stations currently one is the one that is being proposed here. And then the other one is down near Atkins. And that would kind of complete the original network. So the initial reaction from Stephanie was positive towards this request. The way they're so we have to pay to put the station in place and valley bikes is something that's done as sort of a community collaboration with North Hampton. And I think one of the some other communities on North Hampton actually manages it. So there is an operational impact. It's not huge, but there is an operational impact that we have to we pay basically per station or per, you know, the based on usage. So adding the station or another station would have some ongoing cost impact, but it is again something. I think we're looking for ways to kind of complete that plan, both the one at Atkins and the one here. And we do have a little bit of talking with Stephanie, a little bit of grant funding left as well, which might be able to take care of the one down near Atkins. So again, Stephanie, I hope we'll be at one of the upcoming meetings. She can speak to it more, but it was viewed positively from her part. Thank you. And then I just want to check that everyone can stay for a few more minutes. Lerv said he had to leave yet. Because we have one more resident proposal. Does that work for everyone? So we don't have quorum anymore. Which might be one, two, three. Do we have quorum still? Maybe as we do. No, we have seven. I think we're right on the edge of. I've got CPA nine in my head. No, I think we're right on the edge. So I think we have just enough if we can say just for a few more minutes. Does that work? Okay. I have a meeting at three. I've already told him I'm running late, but I, it says the meeting minute take her. I feel like. Okay. So Sean, let's bring in. Alyssa and. Yeah. Alyssa, you are here if you unmute. Hi, I'm wondering if I could share my screen. You can. But we do have limited time and I'm sorry. If you need more time, we could schedule for our future meeting. Yeah. Well, it's just a picture would give a thousand. Sure. You have access to share it. It's, it's the setting is a little. Okay. And I'll do it right now. Okay. Do you see it? Yeah. See, like, it says, do not enter except the bicycles. Yeah. Great. My name is Alyssa Pierce. I live on Harris street. I was the composer, I guess, of the proposal that you all are having your hands as a, I wish that we could have recorded the, the discussion we had with the transportation committee because we had probably nine members of our community speak out in favor of the speed humps. Since we have written that proposal, I think we did that in December. We've had a lot of discussions, really helpful discussions with a lot of people in town, especially in the transportation committee. Eve Vogel sent me this picture actually, if I pronounced your name right. And I thought this looked like a very interesting solution to our speed hump problems. So I'm actually here to say that I might even have a better idea than the speed humps, which is to create a one way on Harris and Fisher with a, as you can see in that picture, there is a pedestrian lane where the. Bicycles can go the opposite way. Maybe one low bump at one side would, would make it and make it clear that bicycles can go in the counterflow direction might be our solution to a lot of these problems. The crosswalk could then have a pedestrian lane. A one way traffic would be half as much of the traffic coming down our streets. It may slow people down as well if it's only one lane. So I'm just putting that in there as a new idea for you all to consider. We do not have the solution. We're just coming up with all sorts of ideas. I know you all are the engineers, you know, how to make this happen. I just want to say to finalize that this is a critical issue. This is a life and death issue. I'm telling you, we, in the last call, a little girl on our street almost lost her life. Derek Shea had to throw his body in front of the car to get her out of the car. I was in a hurry. I was in a hurry when I was hitting her. Last night I was with my dog on that L shape, that little L corner. I heard a car revving on Fisher street coming on to Harris. I couldn't get my dog fast enough across the road. So we were in the middle of the road when he zoomed around us. I screamed like I've never screamed before. And I just want you all to hear that. I want you to hear that. I want you to hear that. I want you to hear that. Who's liable. And we've come to you many times now around these issues. And it has not been addressed. And it's getting worse. And you've heard it many times. And I want to make sure that you really take it seriously. It's a serious life and death issue. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Lisa. So shown we have. As I understand that we have. As I understand that we have a lot of issues. We have a lot of issues on the other issue too, about one way. So I think we need to. To get a discussion on that when we come back. Yeah. Do you want to do a really quick public comment? Just to see if there's any. Okay. Is there any member of the public? I see. Meg's hand is up. Two people are up. Meg and Mary. Okay. I'm going to bring in Mary just because she hasn't spoken yet. Mary, I'm going to promote you to the panel issues have to hit the except. On it and it'll bring you in. There you go. And now you just have to unmute and you can go ahead. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. I just want to say I've lived on pine streets since 1988. And it's got progressively worse. And I just want to. Really want this committee to look carefully at all these proposals. And I would hope that it isn't put off until the. Five way intersection is dealt with because. That intersection has been being dealt with for. 35 years and the district one neighborhood association really pushed to get the lights changed and that has helped. But for us to wait until. We're going to be able to get the lights changed. So that's what we're going to do. And that's what we're going to do. The grant is done. And we figure out what we're going to do there before we do other safety measures. I think it would be a really problematic. So. That whole area is very unsafe. And I really hope the town will look at it. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mary. I'm bringing Megan one more time. In case she has public comment. Super quickly. Thank you. The, the speed bump proposal was developed by a group of neighbors in a series of conversations. So that proposal. It's still the proposal that we're also considering. I think this is ideas a creative one. That I hadn't heard before, but I think I want you to not discard the proposal for the speed hump. Although a comprehensive solution to that whole area would be wonderful. But I think we can do that. We can do that. And so that's why we're doing it. And we're going to have meetings and meetings with neighbors and. A process. It's possible. We didn't come up with the best plan, but we think we did. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for your. Thank you. Sorry. I cut Meg off there a little bit. I think Meg was saying, thank you. Sorry. So I want to thank the committee. I see Mary's hand is still up, but I'm right now. I think we just went over. I think we just went over. I think we just went over. I think we just went over. I think we just went over. I think we're just staying extra. And Sean, I'll, I'll talk with you afterwards that whether we want to. On one of the future agendas come back to this set, or you figure out how so that we don't have. Right. Just a circular pattern on it. It would be great. Okay. So if everyone is fine on the committee, I'm going to say that we are adjourned at. 311. So thank you very much for staying over.