 I'm Darcy Dumont, Chair of the Town Services and Outreach Committee. Seeing that there's a quorum and attendance, I'm calling the March 25th, 2021 meeting of the Town Service and Outreach Committee to order at 5.03. Governor Baker's March 12th, 2020 order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law allows us to hold this virtual meeting of the Town Services and Outreach Committee. I'm going to call on each committee member by name to confirm that you can hear me and we can hear you. Alyssa Brewer. Present. You can hear me. Evan Ross. Present. Ward Ryan. Present. Andy Steinberg. Present. And Paul is here. And Guilford. So those assisting the meeting will be monitoring committee members' connections. And if necessary, we'll pause the meeting until we're reconnected. We request that everyone be patient with the process. This new meeting will be posted on the Town of Amherst YouTube channel. Looks like there is no public president at the moment. So we will skip over this. I'm going to turn off my camera and mute myself, but I'm here because I'm interested. Okay. So Dorothy, if you are an attendee, did you want to make public comment? No, no, I'm just really interested in the public comment. So I'm going to turn off my camera and mute myself, but I'm here because I'm interested. Okay. So Dorothy, if you are an attendee, no, no, I'm just really interested in what you're talking about. Oh, okay. All right, fine. Garcy, do you want me to have Dorothy become an attendee instead of a panelist? I know, no, yes, no, I just was a little confused there. Okay. Okay, so action items moving on. I'm hoping that we can, because we have a public forum at six o'clock tonight, I'm hoping that we can get through the agenda items by five minutes before the hour, so that we'll have five minutes to switch over to the other meeting, which is a different zoom link. So let's keep that in mind. The town manager doesn't have any appointments tonight. Item four is the town manager report updates and councilor questions. Do we have any questions from the counselors for the town manager? Looks like not. And Paul, do you have any updates for us? No, not since Monday, no. Okay. All right, so we have one item on our presentation and discussion item number five, the townwide residential parking issue, which George has taken the lead on, George Ryan and Guilford's gonna provide a presentation. Do you wanna say anything now, George? Well, just quickly that this has been ongoing for quite some time. It started with the Lincoln Avenue issue and Dorothy and I eventually made presentations to TSO. There were two of them. And at the second one, it was pretty much agreed that we would reach out to Guilford and pursue the question of parking policy in town. And we spoke to Guilford on a number of occasions and he took it as a chance and he can speak for himself and he will in a moment. But my sense was he took it as an opportunity to sort of review the, sort of do it kind of townwide review of parking policy and see if he could make it more consistent. And so he then produced a memo, which I think he's going to show you and talk about. And then the thought was that would eventually come back to TSO, which is today. And I guess we'll decide maybe later this afternoon what, if anything, we wanna do. But so I'm gonna turn it over to Guilford. Do you want me to show the memo on the screen? If you wish, I think everyone has it in their packet. I don't think many members could speak up if they wish to see it. I think that would be a good idea so the public could see it. Okay. Okay. So this is, so when we're talking about this, we've always in the DPW, we've always trying to convince people to look at a couple of things when we talk about parking, the three things we talk about are what type of road is it? And what's the road's purpose? Which we call road classification. How much pavement there's actually available? How much space we can put things on? And then basically how much traffic flows up and down the road. We do want roads to be complete streets, but, and we realize in complete streets that some roads are not gonna be set up the same way as other roads because they do have less traffic and they're in smaller neighborhoods and they shouldn't be big blown, full blown roadways with everything on it because you want complete streets in a small neighborhood. So the way I wanted to approach parking is kind of the same way is that, you know, we want to accommodate everything but we also want to look at what the road's being used for to make a decision. So like I said, we do have a road classification system in town. You have two other attachments when it shows the classifications for all the roads we have right now. We do use, we use this for the payment management system because it actually helps us in aging a road. We only do a pavement inventory once every five to six years. And between doing physical visual inventories, we have a algorithm that actually ages the roads and tells us how they deteriorate so we can put them in the right order for repairs. And the algorithm is based on what type of roadway it is. A principal arterial will deteriorate faster than a local road just because the traffic's heavier. So what we propose is we look at the type of road it is. If it's an arterial or collector, we only have parking on those roads. Actually, if it's an arterial, we only have parking on those roads if the road has designated parking spaces for it. And then if it's a collector, we have some leeway in saying it's a collector or if it has parking or not. And then local roads can pretty much have parking except when the road widths don't allow it. So then the second thing we look at after classification is the pavement widths. And here we kind of said, well, these are the type of pavement widths we wanna have. So for an arterial, we want lanes that are either 10 to 12 feet, a collector 10 to 11, and a local road, we don't wanna have a lane with any narrower than eight feet, eight to 10 feet. We chose eight, it's in the memo because Massachusetts, the maximum width of a vehicle can be eight and a half feet. So we didn't want to go much smaller because then you really legally couldn't have an eight and a half foot vehicle on the road if it's a one-way road. And then we talked about, if it's two-way traffic, these are your total widths in this third column of this page here. And then we also added in the bike lanes. When we're talking about these types of roads and the pavement widths, we're gonna shoot for this type of width for a bike lane. So if it's an arterial, we're gonna shoot for five to six feet, collector four to six, and then on a local road, we're gonna use the existing pavement where the traffic volume lets us use the existing pavement or we'll go up to a four-foot bike lane if the traffic increases a lot more. And then we wanna keep our parking spaces around seven to eight feet wide just to make it easy for parking and make it accommodate most cars and trucks. So based on those two, the third thing we're gonna look at is traffic flow. There's some minor streets in town, local streets in town that there's really, the traffic flow is very light and there's no reason not to restrict parking on it. So if you have enough pavement width, letting people park on the side of the street is fine. If you look at roads like South Pleasant Street, traffic flow is very high on South Pleasant Street and it's a main arterial. It has a lot of bicycle traffic, it has a lot of pedestrian traffic and it has a lot of bus traffic and then vehicles. So those are the roads where you don't really wanna have people just pulling off on the side of the road and parking in the shoulder and using the shoulder all the time for a parking area. You wanna have designated parking spaces for them. So my our proposal is that we take these three things and we kinda mush them all together and then we can come up with a way of saying these roads we will allow parking on and these roads we won't allow parking parking on. And that's kind of the basis behind it. I have a couple more things to talk about later but I'll stop here to see if anybody has any questions. Questions? I don't see any. Am I missing them? Okay, why don't you go on then, Guilford? Okay, so if we wanna use this methodology, there's a couple of things we should do before and a couple of things we think we should do immediately and there's a couple of things we need to do to verify the data. Like I said, this classification system and also if you look at the two pages of road widths, the road widths we use are from the payment management system and we tend to overestimate road widths when we're paving because we overestimate the cost and that way we don't go over budget. We're pretty much on budget all the time. So some of the road widths need to be adjusted to make this system work. And when you look at the two pages, I'll show you the local streets. Very small, isn't it? Yeah, can you make it bigger? There we go. This is the list you have in your packet that shows all the local streets. And when you go to widths, even though it says 25 feet, Allen Street may only be 24 feet and it only may be 24 feet in a couple of places and maybe 25 and one, we just chose this number here. So if we want to use this method, what we're proposing as the next steps, I'll go back to the memo. One is we need to verify the classifications we're using. Some people may disagree with us calling Lincoln Avenue a collector street. Some people may disagree with us calling Allen Street a local street. We need to re-verify those classifications. We also need to verify the road segments we have. And then we also need to start doing some traffic data collection on some typical roads. So once we determine what we agree to the classifications for the roads, we can kind of go to different roads, classifications, collect some traffic data and get some baselines to use for determining what's a low volume road, a medium volume and a high volume for Amherst. We could use standard numbers from the ITE, which is international transportation engineers, or we can make our own data and that's something we need to look at too right there. So those three things need to be done. As we do those three things, we do think there's some things that should be done right away. Four, five and six are things we would recommend. We kind of pursue, they have done more quickly. There shouldn't be any parking, I talked about on arterials. If there's no space, no space is made for parking on arterials, then there should be no parking on it. And those are roads like South Pleasant and Main Street, North Pleasant, East Pleasant. We want those shoulders opened up for the bicyclist and for transit to be able to use transit for bus stops. We don't want people just parking on the, pulling off and parking on the side of the road. And now that we don't have the snow band in the winter, we're seeing a lot of people who just park constantly on the side of the road because there's no band to get them off the road in the winter. Can you make that larger, Guilford? I can. There we go. The other thing we would recommend is that we restrict parking in cul-de-sacs. This also kind of comes out of the snow band parking demise. We have a lot of rental properties in cul-de-sacs and what it's causing is there's no way for buses, school buses mostly, to go around the cul-de-sac and pick up kids. And they sometimes have to back up down the road when they have to pick up a kid. There really shouldn't be any parking in a cul-de-sac. Our big trucks have problems. The garbage trucks have problems. Even some of the delivery trucks have problems going around cul-de-sacs when people are parked on cul-de-sacs. And then if we don't agree with that then that too could be looked at by widths. Some cul-de-sacs may be wide enough but most of them aren't wide enough because they have islands in the middle. The deal with people with intersection problems which has come up a lot is we should just automatically restrict no parking within 30 feet of any roadway intersection. And that will help take care of that little issue. We may have to go and on case-by-case basis look at the site distance for an individual road and make that 30 feet bigger. But if we just say 30 feet is the blanket that gives the police department a number that they can enforce and they can work with as well. And then the only thing this really doesn't address is how to do with driveways. And driveways are a problem. Unless we go out and paint parking spots in front of every driveway or near every driveway we're gonna have to come up with a methodology to communicate to people not to block driveways and a methodology that's easy for the police and the parking enforcement to see that, yes, the driveway's blocked and yes, we should write a ticket for that person or get that person moved. So these are the next steps I foresee if we wanna move forward with this. And I guess I'm kind of at the end now so any other questions or any questions that popped up at all? Yes, Andy. Thank you, Gilford. That was helpful. There's one additional piece that I was thinking about is criteria I was gonna ask about and then there was one factual just make sure I understand the width measurements. But the first piece is not all collector streets are the same in that Redgate lane, for example has a lot of curves and sideline problems and Lincoln is straight. How's that factored in? So we can take, we can actually if we wanted to add a fourth criteria we can look at geometry and sight distances as well or we can just look at the amount of speed or traffic volume on the street and just assume well if it's a straight street we can use or control with this much traffic if it's a curved road and there's so many curves within a half mile or a quarter mile we'll use this criteria for too much traffic. So we can look at both ways if we wanted to. Okay, I just seen this I looked at the list of collector streets that that was one. The other thing is that I think that I have the other answer but I just wanna confirm it. I think you said for that kind of street seven to eight feet for parking lane width and wait a minute, going back collector. Yeah, that's per side. So if you allow parking on both sides of the street you'd have to be adding 14 to 16 feet in addition to what you need for other purposes like the 20 to 24 street for two-way traffic. Is that correct? That's correct. Okay. Thank you. George. Again, go for thank you for this. I guess the question is maybe for later for us but it's for the committee in a sense what we think our role is here. Certainly we're not gonna get into the specifics. Are we gonna get into what's a collector and what's an arterial or my sense originally and still sort of is that we look to Guilford and DPW to sort of establish a policy and then we employ that policy when we're trying to deal with public ways requests that involve parking in particular residential parking. So do we really have or want a role in shaping this policy or really just looking to Guilford and his folks to shape it and then they present it to us and then we then employ it when necessary when we have to make a decision or recommendation. So I guess it's a question to my colleagues how they see this. Thank you, George. Clessa. Well, now I have another thing to talk about George. So what I was originally gonna mention and they aren't answers I need tonight because I know we're time limited and this is a great package of information for us to think more about. But one is the issue of driveway sight lines and you talked about the painting and we've talked about painting at select board numerous times. We've talked about a couple of times at town council and these kinds of meetings. Amherst just doesn't do that. And so getting a better sense of why Amherst doesn't do that, how much more it would cost. We talked about it for both the driveways in certain areas, certainly not all over town but like Lincoln for example and also around fire hydrants. And so just so we can tell other people because people always come here from somewhere else and are like, well, where I come from, blah, blah, blah. So getting a better understanding of why we just don't do that. That's one that we can put aside. Another is the cul-de-sacs issue in terms of parking I totally get in terms of how things were designed and trucks and buses and et cetera. And that really is concerning. The other thing I will point out though is like for example, I'm sure Darcy would say in Orchard Valley, there are some cul-de-sacs where whenever that you have people over to your house, after you get past two or three people you got to park on the street. And a lot of the street is that cul-de-sac that's around that island. So just trying to get a better understanding of what it means to say no parking like ever on a cul-de-sac or like certain times or is it very site specific? Because obviously you guys have to wrestle with this sort of thing all the time. And then as to George's question, I don't ever think it's DPW's job to create policy that we then use. I think it's DPW's job to advise us how what policy to create because they do have the engineering expertise but it's not a DPW policy in my mind. It's a public way policy that belongs to the town council. It would be a mistake to not have that public way policy be really well-informed by the professionals but there aren't in my world DPW policies on the public way there's town policies which are town council policies on the public way. And yes, then we use them for when people have requests. So while we are gonna make Guilford do all the work we're not gonna call it a DPW policy. It's gonna be part of the town public way policy. George. Oh, that's helpful. Alyssa, I guess the question then is do we then, I guess we do eventually vote on this or give somehow put our stamp of approval on it. And obviously we ask questions and we have these kinds of engagements but your point is that eventually it's in our name it's our policy. So at some point then does the council vote on this? Is that what you envision or? Yeah, that's what I envision. Yes. Thank you. Yeah, so I agree with that formulation that it's the council that sets the policy and then the DPW applies the policy to any particular request that comes in and says how it meets or doesn't meet the policy if there's a particular issue before the town council. But ultimately it's the council who should set the overall policy and then we are the interpreter we are the implementers of that policy. Alyssa. Yes, Paul, thank you. You said it a lot better than I did. And, and reflecting back to what George mentioned about people coming to us with requests. I know we don't have this magic box place where people put in their requests yet but as that gets developed people should be going to DPW for them to say this is the town council's policy. This is what we can do for you within the confines of that policy. And if people don't like that then they come to the town council and say you should have a different policy because now I can never park there on cul-de-sac or whatever. But we shouldn't need to be in the middle of it until after they've already worked with DPW after we've given DPW clear enough guidance that we're not like second guessing DPW it's just if something new comes up that we hadn't thought of the way that the person's bringing it up. Thank you, Andy. So I have to note that we were actually being encouraged to think about another criteria that isn't listed by residents of Lincoln Avenue. And that was the nature of the parking on the street. And when I go back and cause I used this these two streets previously so I'm gonna go back to them again. And that's Redgate and Lincoln which were both listed as collector on that list. Redgate, you might get parking on both sides of the street if somebody is having a party and there's a huge attendance that is causing a particular parking demand but it's not a daily enterprise that you're gonna see on a street like that. Whereas Lincoln, we heard complaints from neighbors of the very different nature because while it's listed as the same type of street on the list, the assertion was that at least when the university is in full session that people are using it for daytime parking on a regular basis. And that's not included in the criteria that we've seen so far. I'm not sure it should be but I just can't help but note that it's not. Other thoughts? Guilford and Paul, I'm interested in knowing what kind of outreach or who, I mean, I'm assuming you've already made a presentation of this attack and they I'm sure have some ideas about it but have you thought about what the process would be of finishing this up, polishing it off and finalizing it either Paul or Guilford? I did. My thought is if it survives through and we want to move it forward that we take some things and tidy up a little bit it'll probably, I mean, we're actually restricting parking. So it's sort of like some things do restrict parking if you approve it. So we might have to go through the same type of hearing we do for when we set parking regulations on streets that this is going to be accepted as the guidelines and have some of a formal type of public hearing about it before we accept it. This is kind of what I was figuring. Evan? Yeah, so I might be getting ahead. So I like the idea. First of all, let me back up actually. I'm glad that we chose to hold off on making a decision on Lincoln and to engage in this conversation instead. I think this is a really useful and interesting conversation to have. And I appreciate the work Guilford did putting this together. I found it really like nerdy interesting to read through this but then it also caused me to have sort of a lot of, I started opening your sheet and like doing the math and looking at like, oh, this street shouldn't have any parking on it based on some of these numbers. And especially I think it informed some of my thinking about some of the complaints we've got about parking on Kendrick Place. For the, from the council's perspective, I guess the question becomes how do we use this to inform our decision-making about public ways request? And this is why I'm saying maybe I'm getting ahead of myself. Does anyone know if to top of your head how, how wide Lincoln is? Lincoln's about 24, 25. So 24, 25 feet, if we're calling it a collector road, you really can only have two-way traffic on it according to this table, right? Yes. But if we say that we are a complete street's community and we wanna make sure that we have safe bike lanes and we need at least four feet of bike lanes and it's a 25 foot road and we're putting four foot of minimum of bike lanes in, then it's 21 feet. So it's just barely, so I guess I'm wondering, is that how we're thinking of using this of saying, well, if we want a bike lane here, then maybe we can't have any parking or I guess that's why I'm asking more of the committee than of Guilford by me curious to know too, is how does this intersect with complete streets? Does this mean that if a street is just big enough for two cars and we wanna always have like a bike lane on an arterial or a collector road, then we can pretty much never have parking on a road because the parking takes up quite a bit of space. Guilford. My answer to that would be as you look at it for now, you would say, yes, if we wanna do parking and we wanna have bike lanes, then as we redevelop the road and rebuild the road, we should look at adding on, because what we're talking about here is actually pavement width, but then the actual right away of the road is usually much wider. And that's where the sidewalk car is and the trees and the verge and all that. So there is more space that the town owns on most roads other than the pavement. So that just means as we talk about redeveloping and moving forward, these would be the roads that would get more attention and get a little widening to them to meet that complete street criteria. Okay, thank you. That's how I see it. I'm wondering if some of this is taken from just looking at best practices in some other towns and how they do it. I'm assuming you didn't just start completely from scratch, right? Just not looking at other towns or did we? I didn't really look at other towns. What I'd looked at was national guidance on what people use for setting roadways. So I looked at the National Association of Transportation, National Association of City Transportation Officials, Mass DOT, I looked at the AASHTO standards, which is the American Association of State and Highway Transportation Officials. There are other documents too we can look at. There's planning documents, the national planners have us some guidance on this. They're all about basically the same numbers and so forth. And I kind of stuck with the national overall view right now. George? So I just want to draw our attention back to what was given to you many months ago now, back in December when Dorothy and I made our second Lincoln parking proposal. And it's what led to this business with Guilford and this memo that he's produced. And in that document, Dorothy and I under item six, basically used, we established a set of criteria that would be applied when dealing with resident requests involving parking. And so for instance, type of street, as Guilford has shown us here, road width and traffic volume are three of the criteria. But there are other criteria that are listed and this is obviously our work now, not Guilford's, but and we, so we turned to Guilford and he's given us some very specific information on type of street, road width and traffic volume as we've learned today is still something that's in the works and something maybe we should hear some more about before we're done today briefly. But then you've got accident history, public safety in terms of sufficient access for school buses, fire trucks, what's the parking demand, resident input and complete streets and a couple of others that were added later by someone on tech. So, and the final statement under six is that, at least what Dorothy and I were envisioning is a set of agreed upon criteria, at least by this committee, that we would use in evaluating residential parking proposals. That was kind of the very specific goal and the committee would examine all relevant factors and weigh them in evaluating any given request. And it would be the totality of factors and not one single factor that would be decisive. Again, this is the committee and just our attempt to begin to form our own policy. Any recommendation that we would make as a committee would be guided by a common set of criteria that we agreed upon and that we would employ town-wide. But again, we're talking only about residential parking requests. So, it's 5.36, where do you see us getting to today, George? Excellent question. One option is at some future date at your discretion in terms of the agenda, I could return with that policy somewhat fancied up with Guilford's contributions, but there are still some things that are missing. So I think the committee perhaps needs to weigh in or at some point we need to discuss whether we need to wait for more specific volume information, for instance, traffic volume, that's certainly gonna take some time. That's not something that's gonna happen overnight. Or does the committee feel we've got enough basic information now to create a set of criteria that we can use and then start applying to specific cases. I'd be willing to bring something back. It would be fairly similar to what you've seen before. And we could have a discussion about whether we're ready to proceed with that, but it would be specifically related to residential parking, that's it. Whether we want to expand it beyond that would also be a possible topic for discussion. But right now our focus, at least as I understand it, has been just on this committee dealing with referrals that involve residents asking questions or wanting to change the parking in their residential area. So I could do that. I could present something. I read any guidance from you and from the committee. How is your, so are you saying that you would like to have us look at the proposal that you and Dorothy put together as the policy that we're looking at instead of this? Not instead of, but in terms of using this as part of the criteria that we would use. So basically what happens is, I mean, we have something that has been presented to us that currently is in limbo. And what we're trying to do is come up as a committee with some kind of decision about how we want to deal with it. And there were three kinds of basic options. And at the moment we're exploring the option which is TSO examines it and makes a decision or excuse me, makes a recommendation. And so the question was, what process would be used and what criteria would be used? Another option would be, we don't have anything to do with it at all. It's not TSO's job. I'm not sure how that would work, but that could be. So it wouldn't look that much different from what you saw back in December, but it would have obviously more information to have the information that Guilford's given us, but it would not have traffic volumes. And obviously that would be valuable if you're looking at say Lincoln or any other street, if you're dealing with Kendrick Place, there I don't think traffic volume would be an issue, but Lincoln would be. And we're not gonna have that information. And I don't think Guilford can provide that that quickly. So the committee could decide, look, until we get that information with Guilford, we don't wanna go forward. I would resist that, but I'm just one person on the committee, but that is information to be nice to have. Okay, a few final comments, Guilford. I was just gonna say that, I think if George and I can get together and talk through some of, if George and I can get together, we can probably talk through some of what he had in his proposal as well. And a couple of those things actually do show up and can be accommodated in the three I have. And then there's a couple of things that maybe if we wanna add another criteria to it would accommodate a group of those as well. So I do think that's possible to kind of blend these two together and come up with something that would meet your, those needs. So that sounds good, George. I think we should hear from, we have two hands up, so I'm gonna, I'd be happy to do it, but let's hear what the others have to say. Alyssa? Yeah, I think we're talking about the same thing in that I'm looking for something from George that's an update of what he'd worked on before with Dorothy that's well-integrated with this material. And I mean, integrated meaning it could just be like, like each of these lists is an appendix and then is referenced in a decision tree. Like somebody wants XYZ, this already exists. And then if that's, if it just doesn't meet this criteria, because there could be people who come to us and it's like, they just didn't go to DPW first. And we can say, did you look at this thing? Did you talk to DPW? And then after that, all those other criteria that you talked about, George, that we've talked about in the past, including volume information that we don't have, but accident history, specific fire truck problems at specific corners, that kind of thing. I mean, it sounds like we could pretty, sounds like pretty easily, George and Guilford could put what we had before together with what we have now and we can leave a space for volume, you know, traffic volume information and see if looking at that then and trying to apply it to the things we still have, I believe you said in limbo, if it's enough to help us figure out our next step, but try and look at that together, but it looks like we're getting pretty close. Paul, do you have a comment? So I think one question for the committee is whether you're looking at making a change to parking and then have that be a global change across the town and saying now all these roads are changing your parking or if you're gonna do when a question comes to us, this is a criteria where we're applying. Another way to think of this might be to say, do what sort of what Andy did, which is here's six streets. Tell us how this policy would apply when if you put these onto these six streets, tell us, let's walk through with some of these sample things before you start talking about real streets because it might be instructive to the committee to say, wow, I didn't realize we need 60 feet of pavement to accommodate all the things we want to accommodate. So that's just another way to think about it. Okay, Andy? Yeah, actually it's following up on what Paul just said was what I was thinking about too. We have a lot of streets in town where we have allowed parking by our parking permit system. And I don't know if any criteria was applied in making the decision as to where to place them other than proximity to the business center. And but we do know that a lot of employees of various businesses, including employees of the town use those permitted parking areas for their daytime parking. And if it was not available, that there would be no parking available for them at all. And at least under what we have for current infrastructure. So I do think we need to be very cautious about jumping into something that has uniform applicability across town as opposed to criteria in which to handle something. And I think that there's one other element to that that bothers me then as I say this. And that is that some of those streets create big problems, but they either don't have any residents on them or they're entirely renters. And do we wanna have a policy or practice that essentially is saying that if there are a bunch of homeowners on the street who are able to organize and express their concerns that they are not treated in the same fashion as far as sensitivity towards their concerns about parking on the streets as opposed to a street that has a number of renters and it's kind of that old political chest nut that comes up in lots of different areas. Okay, thank you. I think we should hear from Dorsey and we have 10 minutes before the end of this meeting. So let's see if we can wrap up Dorsey. Okay, well, I just wanted to support George and his statement that you can take the criteria that were developed which are very similar but not as specific as Guilford's. Working together with Guilford come up with a unified thing, but perhaps add accident history and perhaps one other thing. I do agree that although it sounds like really great to say this is how it's gonna be across the town, probably we should go the slower, more cautious rate and say we now know if somebody comes to us with a request, in other words, if they feel there's a problem, some people may not feel there's a problem with whatever is happening on the streets right now. If there's a request, this is how we can deal with it and this is what TSO speaking for the town or it's gonna bring forward to the whole town council things would work and then we could get a chance to see how it goes. And as Guilford said, there's a future aspect in this which is some roads may get widened. Okay, so we can see how that goes. I do know that in terms of Lincoln, in terms of a bikeway, that's something which I gather, a number of residents who've been here longer than I said that it was supposed to be a bikeway, that they wanted to be a bikeway and that they would like very much to have the parking situation clarified and to allow it to be safer passage of cars and to have a good bikeway straight to the university. So I just wanna say let George and Guilford work it out and bring it back to you and see what you do. Thank you. How would you like to summarize and wrap up, George? Well, unless I hear from the rest of you, otherwise Guilford and I could at some point arrange to meet and kind of work through a set of criteria and to bring back to you to review. But it also sounds like listening to Paul and to Andy that it might be nice to provide some examples like pick six streets or whatever and show you what this policy, what impact it would have. So if we brought you some specific examples and a set of criteria, would that be sufficient for you to begin to think about moving forward into opting a policy? And then just very briefly, we live in a complaint-driven system or a complaint-driven world. We wouldn't be doing this if some people hadn't come and complained to us. I wouldn't be doing it. Maybe the rest of you would, but I wouldn't. So there's a limit to what you can do here. I mean, you set up a policy, that doesn't mean we're gonna go and redo every street and Amherst on the basis of this policy. First of all, I couldn't afford it. But so there's just the issue of, a lot of this is complaint-driven and so we need to keep that in mind. But I'd be happy to meet with Guilford if he's willing and Paul's okay with it and we just hammer out a common set of criteria, but we also provide you with some examples. That sounds good to me. Do we get a general nod from people that, yes, we wanna do that? Okay. All right, so we're gonna move on. I am going to suggest that we look at our minutes at the next meeting, because I didn't have a chance to look at them. So I cannot tell you that they are okay, but I'm sure they are. But I never looked at them. So I think I'm just gonna put them on our agenda for our April 8th meeting, unless people are upset about that. Okay, any announcements? The next meeting agenda items, we know that on March 27th on Saturday, we're going to have another public forum. We're having a public forum at six o'clock today. We're gonna have one at 2 p.m. on March 27th on the Pomeroy Village Intersection proposal. And then our following two meetings are on April 8th and April 22nd. And at present, we have nothing planned other than our discussions of the Pomeroy Village Intersection. So there may be something coming, but we don't know at the moment what it would be. And if some people on this committee have ideas about what they wanna put forward that's been on our back burner, just let me know, please. So do we have, we do have, we might have some public here. Does anybody have any comments about our upcoming agendas? No, okay. And I am assuming that we have a, we're gonna have to adjourn this and come back to another meeting. Is that correct? No. We don't need to adjourn anything. We can just transition to the other. That's fine. There's only one link and this is it is my understanding. Yeah, we only have one link. That just cause problems for people who might already be connecting. All right, let's see. We have some attendees. Okay, so we're at the part of the first meeting where we can have public comment. We have three people here. If you are here to make public comment in the meeting with regard to Pomeroy Village intersection proposal, then this is not the time to make that public comment. That will be after six o'clock. But if anyone who is on is here for public comment with regard to anything other than that, you could make that now by simply raising your hand. And I don't see any raised hands. So could we just have a recess for about five, six minutes? Yes, yes, that's fine. So I'm sorry, Evan. Evan. I was muted. I'm not sure if we've talked about this. I know we had switched to the five to seven meeting time to accommodate JTBC, which I believe has either zero more meetings or one more meeting, I think. And so one more meeting. And so which I believe is before our next meeting. So I didn't know, are we planning on sticking to five to seven? Do we wanna go back to what we are six to eight thirty? Good question. Yeah, currently we're scheduled to go back for the April 22nd meeting, but do people have a preference? Would you rather keep it the way it is or go back to the seven PM? I'm assuming that we wanted to go back to seven PM, but six PM, seven PM. We were doing six thirty to eight thirty before. Oh, that's true. I will say I've actually preferred the five to seven, but I'm open, but we can also. Yeah, I kind of would like to go back to six thirty because it conflicts with another meeting that I have, which I just haven't gone to. But other other people, I have a preference for what we've been doing, but again, I'm flexible, but the five to seven, I don't know how it impacts on staff, but I could go either way, but. Melissa, my problem is I like five to seven, but I'm not sure it's very appropriate for the community. But quite honestly, I don't think most town council meetings are at appropriate times for the community. And since we're doing them by zoom, I think that's different than when we were doing them in person and expecting people to drive to Town Hall at what I consider to be odd times of day for town various town council committee meetings. So I appreciate Darcy that it's a conflict for you. It's also a conflict for me a couple of times a month to do five o'clock, but it works well in my schedule to do five to seven. So I don't know or if six would somehow be some sort of compromise that would help people. I definitely don't want to start as late as seven, even though that is a more traditional town time. But, you know, it's a different time period. It's twenty twenty one and we've had a pandemic. Is there any way we can stick with five for a few more months and see if that's still working for people? Yeah, it's tight for me because I actually provide daycare for my grandson on Tuesdays and Thursdays. He, you know, like it's kind of he he leaves at five. And so that's extremely tight. Not impossible. Obviously, I've done it, you know, but it means, you know, anyway, it's it's harder. But and I would like to be able to go to that other meeting. So I would prefer six thirty, but it looks like we got Andy. You might be the the deciding vote here. Or no, I think we already have three in favor of five o'clock. I'm willing to accommodate either. I appreciated that people adjusted so that I could serve on JCPC and attend those meetings. And so I thank all of you for that. And I understand Darcy's desire to be at her other meeting, whatever it is. So I kind of leave it aside and not vote and just accommodate whatever the group decides. Well, I think traditionally, we try to accommodate everyone if we can. And it seems like we, you know, the rest of us can accommodate you Darcy. So I'm willing to go back to the six thirty. That allows you to take care of your child care and allows you to attend a meeting that you commonly attend. So unless a colleague has a conflict between six thirty and eight thirty, sounds like we should go back to it. OK, thank you. All right, so we have you want to take three minutes and come back. OK, so you can turn off your videos or whatever, come back at six o'clock sharp. Darcy, I love your story about the missing four. Yeah, I know it would be a great subject of a novel. Yeah, it's it's been a challenge for me for months now. And the fact you spell out four. Now, I did finally realize that I could copy and paste it pretty easily. There's certain things that you can't copy and paste it into, though, which I will not go into now. But OK, I think we're are we all back? Just open up your videos, your back. And I forgot to adjourn the last meeting, if I I declare it adjourned now. I got five fifty seven, I think. OK, good. Popped. Good. We it was a de facto adjourned. Attending, I was saying, Darcy, I enjoyed attending as an intended the TSO meeting. I think you had a very effective meeting. Thank you. Thank you. You could have shown your face. Well, I think it was confusing because I was really just an attendee. I think maybe Athena thought I was still on the committee. So I just didn't I didn't want to, you know, do anything I shouldn't do. But I think we're we're on air now, right? So I think that we can get started. Um, I'm going to start the meeting now. Is everybody all set? Good evening, I'm Darcy Dumont, chair of the Town Services and Outreach Committee. Seeing that there's a quorum in attendance, I'm calling the March 25th, 2021. Meeting of the Town Service and Outreach Committee to order at six o two. Governor Baker's March 12th, 2020, order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law allow us to hold this virtual meeting of the Town Services and Outreach Committee. I'm going to call on each committee member by name to confirm that you can hear me and we can hear you. And I did not mention that's also a meeting of the whole council. Alyssa Brewer, not back yet. Darcy Dumont here, Evan Ross. Here. Rog Ryan. Here. Andy Steinberg. Here. Now the council president, Lynn Griezmer is going to check on the remaining members of the council. Seeing that we have a quorum of the council, I'm going to call the council meeting to order as well at six o two. And I'm going to check for those people who are counselors, but not members of TSO. Steve Schreiber. Here. Sarah Schwartz. Here. Pat DeAngelis. Here. Shalini Balmille. Yes. Dorothy Pam. Here. And did I get everybody? I think so. Thank you. And Alyssa, are you here? Not yet. Those assisting the meeting will be monitoring committee members' connections. And if necessary, we'll pause the meeting until we're reconnected. This meeting will be posted on the town of Amherst YouTube channel. So the agenda for this meeting is simply the public forum on Pomeroy Village Intersection. We have a separate agenda format that we are going to follow that's in the packet. And the first 15 minutes will be a couple of short presentations. Chris Breastrop, the director of planning, is going to be providing a side presentation and we're going to have a couple of little openers with me and Paul. But then the remaining part of the meeting is 45 minutes of public comment. So that's when the public comment will come in. I am, like I said, the chair of the town services and outreach committee. We were referred the issue of the Pomeroy Village Intersection, mainly just the issue of roundabout versus whether it's going to be a signalized intersection. We are hoping to hear from residents tonight. Basically, your highest priorities from the users of the village center. Since the town council is responsible for making the decision about the work to be done, we need to hear from people what they are thinking. So I am just going to pass this on to the town manager, who's going to tell us a little bit about the purpose and outline of this meeting. Thank you, Darcy. So I'm Paul Backelman, I'm town manager. I'm joined here by the assistant town manager, Dave Zomek, our planning director, Chris Brestrup and our superintendent of Public Works, Guilford Warring. So this is an exciting day for us because we are taking on a beginning the process of a very important project that's been on the drawing boards or on the to-do list for a very long time. And we will get very briefly the history of this project in the presentation. We are this is the first one of the first steps in our outreach efforts to the community. We have other outreach efforts. We had a call-in show this afternoon at noon with the town engineer and with the superintendent of Public Works, where people were able to just have informal questions and answers. We will have another forum, but twice as long on Saturday at two o'clock. So if you have questions that don't get answered or you think of questions and be overnight, you can come back at two o'clock on Saturday and engage again with this same type of presentation. We will be having other opportunities for people to engage. We will have a pop-up tent. We haven't chosen it'll be a Saturday, April 3rd or April 17th, I think are the two Saturdays where we'll just be out in the field welcoming people and informally, socially distanced and talking, answering your questions one on one in person. We also have will be reaching out individually to all the property owners. Every property owner that will be affected. You'll have a one-on-one meeting with the planning director and the assistant town manager will reach out to you individually so we can hear your concerns that you might not want to express in public, but might want to convey to us individually. And lastly, we have a very interesting new platform called Engage Amherst, which you can get to by either through our website, the main website, the AmherstMA.gov website or at EngageAmherst.org. And that website has received a lot of interaction already. About 80 people have already interacted, 80 different interactions with it, where you can pose questions, you can and our staff will answer them in live and it keeps that information out there. So tonight it's about listening to you, not to me. And we'll do about a 10 or 12 minute presentation to you, which is a smaller presentation than we did to the council initially. And then the bulk of the time will be spent answering questions, listening to feedback. We're trying to have this be a structured conversation. So we have some prompts for you. We're not interested, we're not that interested in saying, do you want this or that? We want to know how you use the village center and what it means to you and how what considerations the council should take when it is making its decision. So a couple of weeks ago, we had the Secretary of Housing and Economic Development walking through the area because they were the ones that gave the town a $1.5 million grant to take on this project. And while $1.5 million sounds like a lot of money and it is, when you're in public construction, it actually is really probably focused just on the intersection. So that's really where we're we're focusing our efforts. But we see this as a catalyst for additional growth and connection for people and to solve some of the problems that many of you have had over the years. We'd like to hear more about what those issues are that you would like to see addressed. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Chris Breastrop and I'm going to share my screen if I'm able to do that. Chris. Good evening. My name is Chris Breastrop and I'm the Amherst Planning Director. Welcome to our meeting at which we hope to hear from you about what you would like to see in the Pomeroy Village intersection. Slide. This is a meeting of the town services and outreach committee. Of the town council and town council members will also be listening to your ideas, questions, comments and concerns. Town services and outreach committee members are here to listen with Darcy Dumont as their chair. Town council members are here to listen with Lynn Griezmer as their chair, as their president, excuse me. Town staff is also here, including the Department of Public Works, the planning department, the town manager and the assistant town manager. Next slide, please. So what are we going to do today tonight? We're going to explain why this project is coming up now, provide a brief background on the Pomeroy Village intersection and then ask you for your comments. And we want to hear from you about your questions, concerns and comments on how we can make this intersection a better place to be. We have someone taking notes tonight. Next slide, please. So Pomeroy Village intersection lies in South Amherst. It's at the intersection of Pomeroy Lane, West Pomeroy Lane and Route 116 or West Street. It has a mix of single family home neighborhoods and apartments and condos, businesses, offices and schools. It's a high traffic intersection, especially during rush hours. Next slide, please. So what are the types of challenges that this intersection has? It's very car oriented. It lacks safe pedestrian access. It lacks proper sidewalks and curb ramps and crosswalks. It lacks bike lanes and the existing traffic signals don't have pedestrian operated signals to allow pedestrians to cross. There's also a problem of cars queuing in the afternoon, particularly southbound, as people come to pick up children at the Montessori school and all about learning. And as people leave Amherst to drive home to their homes in South Hadley and Granby and Point South. Next slide, please. So as Paul said, the town applied for and received a grant of $1.5 million from the Mass Works program of the state. The improvements that we hope to accomplish will focus on traffic safety and efficiency, pedestrian and bicycle safety, and will provide well designed bus stops for transit riders. The project is a collaboration between the Department of Public Works and the Planning Department with review and approval by the town council, which has jurisdiction over the public ways. Next slide, please. So the history of this project goes back to the 1990s when the state wanted to widen the roads and improve the intersection. But they wanted to do it in a way that the residents of Amherst did not feel was appropriate. So the town asked the state to take over the road so we could make our own decisions about the roadway and the intersection. In the early 2000s, the town installed traffic signals, but these were meant as placeholders until the intersection improvements could be designed. Then the DPW and the planning department with the assistance of the design review board developed a design for the intersection with lots of public input including meetings and surveys, but there wasn't any money to build the improvements. In 2013, we applied for a Mass Works grant, but at that time we were not successful. But last year in 2020, we applied again and we were successful this time. Next slide, please. So why are we here today? The TSO or town services and outreach committee of the town council is seeking input from the public to help them decide what type of intersection to develop. The town council needs to make a decision by June as to whether to develop an enhanced signalized intersection or to develop a roundabout. So we'd like to tell you a bit about these two types of intersections. Here you have an image of the typical signalized intersection. A signalized intersection is controlled or regulated by traffic signals or road signs. And this is a type of intersection that we're most familiar with. Next slide, please. A roundabout is a circular intersection where drivers travel counterclockwise around a center island. Generally, there are no traffic signals or stop signs in a roundabout. Drivers yield as they approach the roundabout. Then they enter the roundabout intersection and they exit at their desired street. This type of intersection is becoming more popular and more common here in the United States and elsewhere. Next slide, please. So what kinds of things do we want to hear from you? We'd like to know what role you play in this intersection. Are you a business owner? Do you live nearby? Do you shop here? Or do you mainly travel through the intersection? And if you do travel through the intersection, how do you do that? Do you travel on a bike? Do you drive, walk, or ride the bus? What improvements would you like to see in Palmyri Village? What features are most important to you in the redesigned Palmyri Village intersection? And how can we make this area more welcoming? How can we help to support the businesses in the Village Center? Next slide, please. There are many opportunities for public input. Town staff will be contacting abutting property owners and meeting with business operators. We'll be contacting people who live in the area. There's also an interactive website, as Paul said, at www.engageammers.org. The Town Council will be holding committee meetings. Tonight, they're hosting the first of two open public meetings and they'll be soliciting written comments as well. So now we'd like to hear from you about your ideas, questions, and concerns about this project. Thank you. Thank you, Christine. Okay, so we are going to move on to the part of the meeting that's public comment. And we're going to limit people's public comment. Well, we're going to take a look and see how many people would like to give public comment. To do so, you need to raise your hand. So if we can get an idea how many people want to give a public comment, that would be great. And so in view of the fact that your time is going to be limited, we do want you to try to answer the questions that Chris just mentioned. If you could share them first, depending on what your other questions and comments were that you came with, just keep in mind that the time is limited. So if you came with a special question or comment, just make sure you have enough time to ask it. So the first, I'm just going to run through those questions again that Chris mentioned, that we'd like you to introduce yourself with. How do you primarily relate to Pramora Village Center as a resident business owner, commercial property owner, business customer, church, or school patron? Here are our questions. Maybe we should just leave them up there so that people can look at them. I think that's a good idea. So rather than me reading through them, we'll leave them up here. So we'd like you to answer them, but just make sure you leave enough time to be able to ask the question that you came to ask. It looks like there aren't a huge number of five people so far. So why don't we limit people to three minutes? If you have a question, it probably won't end up being three minutes anyway. So, Adrienne, and we're going to show people's faces, right? I don't know if you can hear me. Yes. TSO and town counselors and town staff. My name is Adrienne Turizzi and I am a resident of Orchard Valley, one of the original owners of the homes here on a 200 household area that we have a pride and joy of being very racially and ethnically diverse. Now, I would like to answer some of the questions as quickly as possible. South Amherst, Pomeroy Village, I am the biggest cheerleader for it. I've been waiting for a long time for us to get to this point. So hats off to David Zomek and everyone who got the grant going for us. Oops, the questions just disappeared. So let me just say that with the Graf Park rehabilitation and my joy down here in Orchard Valley is the reawakened and the refurbished Markets Pond Recreation Area, the new paths that take our ishadley people to Graf Park and all of the exciting new developments I see Pomeroy Village as a crown jewel. I can't see the questions Doris sees so if you could put those up, I'd be happy to answer them. Could we put them back up? So what would I like to see as everyone else and I've already gone into the engaged Amherst. We are a diverse neighborhood in South Amherst. Precincts seven and eight bring together a whole host of diversity both in income level, social, ethnic and cultural values. I do think and I think Shalini and Darcy would agree we are a vibrant group of residents that want to see Pomeroy Village work for everyone. So what would how I primarily traveled by bike, by walking, mostly by car, the improvements I'd like to see, I would like walkways and more bikeways and benches to sit and places to congregate for everyone who goes up there. The questions just left me again. Sorry. I need I need the help so I can scoot by these. My computer's funky. So I'm sorry. So I lost track of the questions. I don't want to go over my time, but regardless, whether it we're talking about a rotary or an intersection, I can't weigh in there yet because I haven't really studied plans that I assume will be forthcoming. So I'd like to hold my opinion on that. Other than to say thrilled that this is we've got that 2020 grant and I'll be listening to more developments as they come along. Thank you so much. I appreciate your time. I'll mute myself now. Thank you, Adrian. Could we can we get that back up, Paul? I'm working on it. My computer is very slow right now. I'm sorry. Oh, I just think that's so important for people to be able to see it. Yeah, it'll take a second. Okay, we'll just wait. And Lynn, I forgot to ask you if you're being the timer. I'm trying to do, I'm trying to be both the IT person and the timer. And I've already messed up once. Adrian's little box, but at least we got to speak. So just have patience and I'll do my very best. Which Paul and I, I think we would not be the exemplars of IT tonight. I'm getting there. Great. Catherine Bell. Thank you so much for taking my questions and comments. I am a business owner. I own Thistle Bloom Farm and I live in South Amherst, obviously, and I have lived in this area of South Amherst and East Hedley Road for most of my life. But I grew up in England, so I have comments about roundabouts. And I would like to be able to use more of the businesses in Pomeroy Village more easily than I currently can. Most of the time I travel by car because it is very difficult to walk there from where I live, which is on Southeast Street. So sidewalks to that area would be from there somehow. Somebody made a comment about this on the Engage Amherst site. And I think it's a brilliant idea. Those would be extremely helpful if those sidewalks didn't cut off because I don't feel safe walking on Pomeroy after a certain point. I do think that we have the opportunity here to make a really lovely village center, a true village center, as several people have mentioned on that site. And right now there is an issue, of course, with many people just driving through and trying to do so very fast. I think a roundabout would probably exacerbate rather than solve that problem. And my comments specifically about roundabout, my concerns about it, would be that it would tend to speed up traffic. And it might be too small. The smaller a roundabout is after a certain point, the more dangerous it is. And if we want to encourage foot traffic and people stopping in at businesses and patronizing them more, which I think is a real thing that a lot of us would like to do, I think personally that a controlled intersection, as you showed at the beginning, would serve those purposes better. Frankly. And I think that it would also help to make the place more welcoming because I think it would have a more of a traffic calming effect than a roundabout does, which I think is a traffic on calming effect. If people are just sort of using the road simply to get home. So I think that would serve the businesses better and would certainly be a much nicer place to do things like put up shade trees and benches and we need more bike lanes and sidewalks and all that sort of stuff that would help, I think, to improve the overall function. And I've probably gapped over my time and I apologize for doing so. Thank you very much, Catherine. And so now we'll hear from Claire. Hi, thank you Darcy. This is Claire Bertrand. I live in South Amherst. I have lived at that intersection for about 10 years. I now live out on Bay Road, where we raised our family. So I have a business concern because I manage the office part, the Amherst office, seven office buildings, where people use the intersection both to get to work. Of course, the post pandemic. And they also like to go get coffee and lunch and amenities in the area. And so my number one concern would be safety, not just at the what is the light, but also hundreds of feet before and after so that people can cross the road comfortably. And so back in, I think it was the 2008 design, it was an excellent design. It was previous to the idea of roundabouts, but there was some excellent traffic calming built into that. And I would value if there is the possibility of bringing this whole street, not just this cross section, but area that fills that village center, if that all could be addressed, traffic calming would slow people down, which I think we know would be valuable for people crossing the roads, but also allow folks to see what we have in South Amherst. We have lots going on. We have lots of schools from the Montessori and we have Hampshire Gymnastics School. We have yoga. We have all kinds of cool things. But people go through often so fast that they don't ever see. I'm often told, oh, I didn't know you were here. I want to thank the obviously Dave and Christine and all that help get this grant. I want to thank you. I know how hard these are to get. And it's a huge boon if this can be done and be done well. I'd love it to be done sooner than you have in your timeline, but it's going to be a huge enhancement both in safety and in a sense of community in our area. The one question I would appreciate help with, again, I don't care, frankly, if it's a lighted intersection or roundabout, unless there's a lot of land that would be taken, one versus the other. I guess that would be my only question is, does the land use change if we do a roundabout instead of just a lighted intersection? Thank you. Could we, could maybe Christine or Dave? Thank you, Gilford. Or Gilford? Let's go. At this time, it's hard to tell which is going to take the most land. If the traffic analysis says we need turn lanes on Pomeroy or West Pomeroy, we would actually probably need more land than a roundabout. If we just need turn lanes on West Street, we may be, it may be that we can stay within the footprint of the roadway. We probably will take some pieces of the corners on all four corners for sidewalks. But that's, we know we're going to definitely do that. So that's where we are right now. We don't have any more detailed information. Thank you. Noah Loving. Hello. I'm Noah Loving. I'm a seven coach. So it's the intersection that I go through a lot going on walks, driving. I would like to be shopping more in that area in terms of, you know, it's great access to a lot of great restaurants and stuff. The lack of general ability to control traffic in terms of having signs or anything or side flashers or anything pedestrian friendly kind of hurts that. So any improvements in that sphere in terms of having the kind of side flashers that exist on university campuses or something like that, those are great or just a general pedestrian controlled signal. I've definitely experienced the backup that can happen at certain points in the day and certain times during the week when it comes to taking a few cycles to get through the light. Generally, I know that's not a big issue. Most of the times that I'm driving, but I've definitely experienced it. So I imagine anything we do roundabout or enhanced signaling, as it was called before, will enter traffic flow. I guess my inclination would be towards roundabout, but it really is going to depend on what the actual proposals are and how much of a difference it would be expected to make. And how easy it is to implement the walkability, as I would kind of put that as a higher priority over improving flow at this point. There was a submission of bike lanes. I would love to have bike lanes there, but given that the project is not currently talking about expanding too much outside of the intersection in any direction, and there is not a lot of bike lanes in that area, I'm wondering how that would connect or whether it would just be protection for bikes coming into that intersection. Let's see. The idea of having areas to congregate sounds really nice. I hadn't thought about that before, but if that's in the cards without, again, encroaching too much on the surrounding businesses, that would be great, but a lot of this stuff kind of makes me wonder exactly what we're going to see in terms of specific proposals. So I think that's all I have to offer, but any improvement would be great. I've been hearing about this since I was a little kid, the idea that we might have some improvement here. So we will see exactly what happens. I'm very appreciative of everyone for making it happen last year and allowing as much public comment as there's been to think about how we can make it work best. Thank you very much. Ginny. Hello. Good evening. This is Ginny Hamilton. I'm sitting here at dinner with my spouse and child who are all excited to be hearing about this. We live on Middle Street, so just a mile from this intersection. And back when we drove places, we regularly drove through this intersection at least once a day. And in good weather, we bike through it at least once a week. So highest priority on our end is around safety, improving the intersection for walkable, spikeable safety. I've got a kid who's at Crocker for only a couple more months. So biking to school won't be the option for him through this intersection. But we have not been willing to do that on his own because of the problems with this intersection. So I love the ideas that people are sharing about the enhanced and signaled intersection. I think that's key. I do hope that there'll be more space for biking and for pedestrian access and connecting to whatever we end up doing at the Hickory Ridge property. I mean, that's an opportunity that having that connection with the bikeway or a multi-use path would be fabulous. I am strongly favor, at least at this point, strongly favor the enhanced signaled intersection over a rotary. And that's based on our interaction going down to the rotaries by Atkins. And yes, the traffic pattern is very different there. But biking with a child through those rotaries is not comfortable, and it's not something that I'm willing to let my child do on their own yet. Whereas a traffic light where there's clear signals and people are expecting to stop feels far more safe. So in that way, from the safety standpoint, the signaled intersection feels far safer. As a previous commenter said, people are supposed to slow down and yield. I don't see that they necessarily do, and signals tend to help that, at least in my experience as a parent. So I echo the thanks for the people who've been working on this for a long time. Hopefully my child will see this while it's during his childhood, unlike the previous speaker. And in terms of welcoming, the one other thing that I would say is yes, I love the ideas of places to congregate and hopefully the welcoming atmosphere that would allow daytime businesses. I mean, we go in the evenings for dinner or drinks, but a cafe, a place to hang out and congregate. I know you all are in charge of the businesses, but having that sort of walkable place where we could walk up to get a cup of coffee and meet a friend would be lovely to have a mile from home. So I will finish my comments there, and thank you all for this process, and particularly to Dave and others who've been working on this for a long, long time. Thank you. Thank you. Erica. Hi, thanks. My name is Erica Zekis, and I'm a South Amherst resident. I would say that I moved through this intersection primarily by car and occasionally by bike. And I come here to eat, shout-out to El Comalito, so mostly as a retail participant. And the improvements that I'd like to see are, I guess I echo my neighbors in saying that I'd like to see increased safety. I am leaning towards a roundabout because I think that it's irrefutable, that it's safer for cars. What I'd like to see is data and information about whether it is, in fact, safer for pedestrians and cyclists, because I feel like I can't find reliable information about that and suspect that somebody's done a study that could be shared with the community on that. I also have to say that I'm very concerned with the environment, and I know that in South Amherst we have two counselors who really champion the environment, and I know that roundabouts will be better for the environment because it reduces the amount of idling that happens there. I think that this area has kind of a motley aesthetic, and that's largely because there's just so much parking at the street and the buildings are pushed back quite far, and I think that that could be unified with some bands or zones of tree plantings. I'd love also to see sheltered bus stops on both sides of the street for our neighbors who use the bus to get around. I think that that would be a real gift. And like everyone else, I think improved sidewalks that extend beyond the limits of the intersection, but down Pomeroy Lane would be fantastic. I hope that the design is anticipating future development at Hickory Ridge. And I think beyond that, I don't need to restate what everybody else has said. It's a great project and I'm glad for so many opportunities for the public to weigh in. Thank you. Thank you, Erica. Mary Hoyer. Hello. Hey, Mary. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. I live up in Amherst Woods and mostly we drive through the intersection rather than biking or walking, but we do use the businesses there. We do use the Mexican restaurant and the Guatemalan restaurant and of course the gas station, you know, before the pandemic virtually shut down all driving. I would, I have a preference for around about, for environmental reasons and would like, but I do understand that safety is paramount. I'd like to observe that if you look at the two diagrams, the one with the rectangular crosswalks and the one with the roundabout crosswalks, the crosswalks for the roundabout are actually shorter. The time that pedestrians would spend in the crosswalk would be less time than it would be on the rectangular signaled area. And this is something that came up down in Hartford, Connecticut when I was working on a similar project and roundabouts were introduced down there that in fact for disabled people, and they certainly should be consulted on this, you can get from one side of the exit ramp to a central area and stop and then go to the other side and it is a shorter distance. So I'd like to observe that. I would like to say one other person mentioned and I'd like to emphasize the fact that landscaping can almost correct any horrific design problem. Although if you took land that's currently devoted to parking in front of the buildings like over where the dry cleaner is and turned it into a plaza with landscaping and some benches or chairs and if there were a cafe there and put more of the parking in back where it's not an eyesore, that that could improve things considerably. So I think landscape design would make a huge difference. And I think that's about it. Thank you. Elizabeth Davis. I need to unmute. Can you unmute Elizabeth? Yes, thank you, I'm sorry. Elizabeth Davis, I live on Bay Road. Thank you for having these public meetings by virtually so the people who can't get out easily can attend and find out what's going on. I generally support the roundabout concept because I know how well it works for the Atkins traffic situation. Like other speakers, I have concern about the crosswalks. There is only one crosswalk at the Atkins turn and I had a very near escape trying to cross there with a traffic car that was going southbound on 116 and going on to west. So how the crosswalks at Pomeray Center could work, I don't know, but that would be my main concern. And thank you for having us hearing virtually. Thank you. Are there any other members of the public that want to make a comment? Doesn't look like we'd have any other commenters. We'll wait another couple of seconds and see if anybody raises his or her hand. There is one. I think Richard Koffler. He's not. He hasn't arisen to the top of the list. Oh, there we go. Richard. Richard. Yes, I'm a Rosemary Koffler and I live in South Amherst. Are you able to hear me? Yes. Yes, okay. Near Atkins and I primarily go through the intersection by car pre-COVID. I would take the bus frequently, but I do feel the biggest issue is safety for pedestrians. I'd like to see the opportunity for people from the neighborhood to be able to walk more in that area. I am concerned about the fact that Roundabout is less safe for pedestrians, perhaps. I don't know that for sure by studies, but if we were to have the regular intersection, I would like to see an intersection where a pedestrian can push a walk button and get the traffic to stop and maybe lights come on as they do on Bay Road in front of Applewood. I also would really like to see more, I thought Mary Hoyer's idea for parking behind some of those shops and having landscaping and sitting areas in front of the shops is very appealing, and people would like to stop at those areas if it were more eye appealing. I also feel for safety that there should be a bike lane or a good sidewalk between the Village Center and Crocker Farm School, and there should be bus stops with shelters and benches for people to sit at. Thank you and thank you very much for having this opportunity to speak and for presenting this information. Thank you, Rosemary. Is there anyone else on the list who would like to make a comment? I just want to point out that there's 38 participants tonight and a total of 21 attendees and 17 on the panelists. That's a good turnout. I think that if there are no more public comments, Paul, Dave, would you like to comment? Yeah, if I could just for one moment, I know you want to, I believe you're going to open this up for TSO members and council members, but I just wanted to acknowledge the shoutouts earlier. You can see me smiling on the Zoom, but you see Guilford, Chris and I on many of these calls and I think we make a great collaborative team representing planning and working with Paul and the DPW, but truthfully, when we're really excited about this grant, it's not every day you get a $1.5 million grant and it's been a while since we got the last one and I remember that, but truthfully, the three of us have very talented creative teams behind us and they do a lot of great work and we're only as good as they are. People like Jason Skeels and Paul Dethier in the engineering department, Nate Malloy and Ben Breger in the planning department, they make the three of us, I think, look good every day. So I just wanted to acknowledge that it's more than just the three of us. There is great staff and they work for us to support Paul and the council, but they also work for everybody, of course, in the town of Amher. So thank you for the acknowledgments, but we're a team and we think we're on a roll. We've gotten a lot of grants lately and we want that momentum to continue. So just wanted to put that out there. Thanks so much, Dave. Paul had a few comments that he wanted to make about next steps also. Yeah, so again, we wanted to hear... This is really great. People had really terrific comments. I've got multiple pages of notes here and I know Chris was taking those as well. So we would like to hear from more people and ask you to share this link out for Saturday at 2 p.m. in the meeting. We will have then. This is another opportunity. It will look sort of the same, but there will be more time to listen to people and to have comments about it. So that's a really good thing. And also the Engage Amherst. Several people commented on that, which I was really thrilled by and we put a lot of work into it. This is one of our first really engagement through that process and this one really has generated a lot of support. So take a minute, look at it. It's where we will capture and put all the information. So it's an easy place to find information for you as well. And then this we'll keep running through. Ultimately, the process is the TSO Committee, which is the committee that's meeting here. It's a subcommittee basically of the Town Council. We'll make a recommendation to the Full Town Council. The Town Council, we're hoping that they will be able to make a decision by the end of June, which lets us go through the procurement, the design, schematic design process. I know we'd like to do this faster, but doing the design carefully and then also going out to bid and aligning our work with construction seasons. Billion said it won't happen in 2021, but it will happen in 2022. Thank you. I'd just like to mention also that TSO is going to be looking at this at their April 8th and 22nd meetings. And if for some reason you don't, if you know someone who wants to make a public comment, that it can always be done at our meetings also in addition to the public forum on Saturday. Alyssa. Thank you so much. Ironically, what I want to bring up is that I, in contrast to something that was said earlier, I don't believe this is a time for town counselors to speak. And I don't think that Saturday is either, I think we all came here with the intention of listening. My question is simply based on the next steps. It's my understanding and I agree with this list, but I just want to double check that we don't need to have a public hearing on the intersection design. We just will have, we have these various public forums, lots of individual outreach, lots of TSO meetings, recommendations to council, public town council meetings, but we don't have an actual quote hearing with a capital H, correct? I, Paul, we would only have to have a hearing if we were amending some kind of bylaw that would be setting parking regulations or we have to have a public forum when we're spending money. Right. Okay. I would agree with Alyssa that I don't think there was an intention to have a discussion with the council tonight. So I think that we're actually done until tomorrow or until Saturday at 2pm. And I would agree with Paul that to the extent that people can tell the other networks, all your networks, your neighbors and friends, to come out to the hearing on Saturday to give opinions. One thing that I don't see here tonight is business owners. So to the extent that we can get the word out to them, I'm sure that some of the business owners would like to weigh in. So unless we have any further comments, I believe that I'm going to declare us adjourned. And would you like to do the same, Lynn? All right, thank you. The meeting of the council is adjourned at 6.50pm. Okay, see you all on Saturday. Thank you, staff.