 Commissioner Gilman, not going to make it. Everyone except commissioner Gilman. Three, four, five, six. All right, I'm ready. Right. If you are. All right. Let's go for it. Good evening all. Brennan Hogan calling to order the March meeting of the public works commission. 634. PN. Good evening. It's all I have for chair comments. I'm going to go through the agenda. I'm going to go through the agenda. I'm going to go through the agenda. The first item on the agenda is the agenda itself. Discussion. There we go. Thanks for bringing that up. Any comments or. Suggested. Commissioner over B. I just wanted to make a suggestion that we pull. Consent agenda item A off. Because I had some questions that I pre sent to. Getting answered. And it might be helpful to other people to also hear the discussion. So I'll make a motion to accept the agenda with consent item. A removed. And made 4.1. Great. Is there any discussion around that motion? All right. So we'll go to a vote to them. Mr. Archambault. Hi. Mr. Barr. Hi. Mr. Boats. Hi. Vice chair, O'Neill. Hi. And commissioner over B. I. Hi for myself. The agenda has passed. Thank you. With that one modification. Making spaces is now 4.1. Moving forward. Item three is the public forum. Mr. Goulding, could you let us know if we have any. Interested members of the public here. Well, do chair Hogan. We do have a couple of members of the public on the line. So I just want to remind members of the public who wish to speak during public comment. There will be a few opportunities, including right now. If you want to speak during that. That moment's public comment, please use the raise your hand feature on your zoom toolbar. Typically on the lower. Section of your zoom screen. For those that have called in, and we do have at least one or two callers today. Use star nine if you want to speak during public comment, and that will put you in the queue. And we'll call on your phone number when it's your turn to speak. Thank you to channel 17 for live streaming this as they usually do on. We do not monitor those comments in real time. If you're watching on YouTube welcome, but if you wish to speak, please join us on zoom. Or via the phone, which you can find on the agenda at that URL at the top of the screen. And you have any difficulties. If you want to speak during public comment, please join us on zoom. And we'll be monitoring for anybody who wishes to speak, but is having any kinds of technical trouble. During this program. All right. Thank you. And at this time, there doesn't appear to be anybody signed up. And I'll just remind folks to hit raise your hand or star nine. If you do wish to speak during public comment. But there is nobody signed up at this time. All right. Thank you. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Thank you. And I'll just move to the chief public forum then and move forward to the consent agenda, which now contains just item B ADA space removal, 124 North Union street. Motion to accept the consent agenda. Second for me. Was that a second from. Yeah, from me. I'm sorry, I was a little fast on that. Okay. We got a motion from bar second. All right, let's go to a vote then. Commissioner. Archibald. Hi. Mr. Barr. Hi. Commissioner Bose. Hi. Vice chair, O'Neill. Hi. Thank you. Commissioner Overby. Hi. And I for myself, the consent agenda has passed. Thank you. Commissioner Gilman has joined us too. I think. Yeah. Sorry. I was going to jump in. Thanks, Jeff. Oh, welcome. Yes. Sorry. Sorry for being late. I accept it. Yeah, I for me as well. Okay. Thank you. We got to. We're not entering. 637. It's not going to welcome. All right. Agenda 4.1. Making space. Staff care to introduce this. Sure. So the, what we're seeking for this particular memo. Is to have the date for the grab and go parking spaces. Be extended to summer, summer date, July 31st. I think that's pretty much all that we are seeking. This evening. Okay. To commissioner discussion, then. Commissioner Overby. Is there anything in particular you would. Yes. The reason I pulled it off was I had read it sort of closely and. And it refers to the fact of the Parklet and street streets. The street seats program that we sort of have in a pilot version. And that it, and in fact, there was also, it was continued last summer because of the. The COVID emergency. And so we never ever re actually voted on trying to turn it into a permanent program. But we just wanted to share the information that was given to me. Or earlier. And maybe I don't know if. Director Spencer wants to reference it because he communicated back to me, but we, we haven't actually finalized that. What the program is for the Parklets and street seats that we started. And it's been going forward under the administration of the city of the public works department. Based on the emergency, the COVID emergency. And so what we're going to do is we're going to, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to turn is that I wanted to make sure that we ultimately at some point go forward with that. And I, and at this point it's still going forward with that. And the policies and the way that it's supposed to work. I guess have been drafted and they're posted. And maybe director Spencer, you can refer to that. And people might just so people know. That this is what's going to happen this summer for the Parklets and the streets, you know, the street seats and the use of the sidewalks under the public works department. And so that's what we're going to do. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you too. Thanks for commissioner Overby's careful reading of our documents. Sorry that the memo wasn't as explicitly clear as it probably should have been that we're just seeking your approval tonight on the grab and go spaces. The partner program that we stood up in the early days of the pandemic. Under the making space for restaurant and retail recovery. Was this expanded sidewalk program. I think it's a great way for the department to approve encumbrances in the right of way for adjacent businesses. To do their retail outside or their table service outside as part of the recovery from the pandemic. And given that the state emergency is still in effect. The council action last year to allow this expanded sidewalk program. To be a public health action under the state of emergency. The state of emergency still continues. And so we don't need action on that from the commission tonight. But once the state of emergency ends six months after that, our authority. To run this expanded sidewalk program would terminate. And we'd need to come back to the commission for, for further authorization. And you posted the, the terms of that, which you sent to me in a, in an email for people that, you know, you know, You know, You know, you know, you know, you know, you know, people that want to businesses that want to apply for that it's posted on. You may want to give that website. I guess it's, I could read it too, but. Yes. Thank you commissioner. Overby. That's on DPW's website. And if you search. In your search bar for making space for restaurant and retail recovery. It'll come right up. And our staff point person is Caleb. So thank you for the commemoration and the presentation. And I'm glad to have this update on this. The commission. I'm glad to have this update. Have an update on the staff. I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you very much. Yeah. That clarification. That was the, that was my reason for pulling it off. So thank you for that, that clarification. Yeah. Thank you. Any other commissioners. Discussion to add here. All right. See now. We'll invite any interested members of the public to comment on this item as well. We have it. There's nobody signed up for public comment, but as a reminder for now in the future, Star nine, if you've called in or hit raise your hand on Zoom to alert us that you do wish to speak, none at this time. Thank you for that, Mr. Billing. Star nine, we will get that ingrained in our memories. Okay, with that, we'll bring it to a vote here. All right, I'll hold off in a way so if anyone has a motion to make. Motion to accept consent agenda item 4.1. Thank you for that. I second the motion to accept consent agenda 4.1. Thank you. Is there any discussion around that motion? All right, seeing none, we will go to a vote. Up to the top is Commissioner Archambault. Aye. Thank you, Commissioner Barr. Aye. Right, Commissioner Bows. Aye. Commissioner Gilman. Aye. Thank you, Vice Chair O'Neill-Bavanco. Aye. Commissioner Overby. Aye. Aye for myself, the motion passes. Thank you. All right, moving forward, we are on item 5, parking program for restaurant and retail workers, inviting a communication from Mr. Padgett. I can't see you. You can hear me? I can't hear you. I just heard you just fine until I got promoted. Can't hear us now? No, maybe just turn it off here. Hold on a second. Can you hear us, Jeff? Now we can't hear you. It's like a one-way walkie-talkie here. What the heck happened? Now we can hear you. You can hear me now? Yeah. That was weird. I did not successfully navigate the portal from attendee to presenter. Welcome. Anyway, I'm here now. Good. So thank you for having me. I'm sorry I have you all up on my other screen, so I may look like I'm staring off into space, but I'm looking at you. So first of all, I'd like to preface this with I owe you a report, which I have to admit I just plain forgot. I owe you an annual parking report from back in January. I've been busy on a few things, the tonight's number being the least of what I've been working on. But anyway, so rest assured, I know I owe you a parking performance report and I will bring that to you as people. So apologies. So what we're here tonight to talk about is the creation of an employee free parking rate for the downtown restaurant and retail service workers. This is a condition of the removal of the two-hour free parking rate from the marketplace garage that was approved last July and then delayed until January and then delayed until April for a variety of reasons, but to support downtown businesses mostly. And so this is the final piece that we need before we can roll out that rate. And what this is, is effectively what the motion is tonight is to accept the addition of a single sentence to the ordinance, which says that we can create a $0 rate for downtown retail restaurant service workers that meet the eligibility requirements laid out in the policy that's attached to this memo. So I think that's the gist of the background. So I will, I'm gonna share my screen if I can do that, see if I lose my, oh, no, that one, hopefully I don't lose my audio. Okay, so here's, this is the sentence that we've added this yellow sentence, $0 for restaurant retail workers for a seven day monthly permit based on eligibility to run by the policy. And mostly what I wanna talk about this evening is make sure that you understand the policy. Fundamentally, we worked with BBA, Berlin Business Association, and we worked with Terks Street Marketplace on this eligibility document to make sure that we were adequately defining the class of employees that we want this to benefit. And it's really intended for quote unquote frontline style workers. So customer facing, retail, restaurant, and service workers. So we basically, we define these goals. We said that we want this policy to support the restaurant retail and service businesses in downtown because they're key to the city's economy at large. We wanna increase the appeal and retention of retail and restaurant service jobs in downtown. I go to the Friday meeting, every other Friday meetings with the merchants downtown and I hear every week about how folks are trying to hire people, but they just, they can't, or they can't keep them. And providing this parking subsidy will help them with that retention. And it's a widely held opinion. One of the things this will also do is increase parking availability for customers downtown because it will further incentivize working the workers downtown to park in the Lakeview College Street garage as opposed to the marketplace garage, which by relieving the stress on marketplace will also increase the utility of the Lakeview College Street garage. And we want this to be a financially sustainable model. So I'll just, there's not a good linear way to do this. Let me jump right to that because I think that's what a lot of people wonder is how are we gonna pay for this? So I'll go, I'll talk about the money for a minute and then I'll jump back to eligibility. So basically we're estimating conservatively that the removal of a two-hour free program from the marketplace garage will generate an additional $400,000 in revenue. So I said for the sake of budgeting this program, let's say it's 300,000. And I also estimated at a high cost on the employee free parking at about $15,000 a month. We have had a pilot program running for the past year and at its peak in November, December, we were burning about $8,000 to $10,000 a month in that program. Other months, it was more like six to seven to eight. So 15 is high. We have about 65 companies right now that are on the program. So I don't imagine we'll have a massive increase in participation, but I assume we will have some and certainly over time. So that's, and that will leave us conservatively still benefiting by $120,000 from the removal of these dollars. So let me get back, let me talk about eligibility then. So this is where some of the sort of sticky wickets are. What we wanna be sure is that this program is really helping the people who need it the most. So first we wanna make sure that the business is an eligible business. So we wanna make sure it's within the downtown improvement district and that they conduct their primary business and the transactions in that business within the boundaries downtown. So we don't want to support internet business. We want to support the downtown business. So retailers, restaurants, personal service, hard goods, soft goods, dining, takeouts, salons, massage, fitness, that type of stuff. So within those businesses now we have who are the eligible employees. So we want this to really be helping those frontline workers. So the service staff, reception, sales associates, is not intended for the business owners or non-consumer facing management or independent contractors. Sorry, I'm kind of blowing through this. I know you probably read it, but I wanna hit the wave tops here. So here's where my foreshadowing of my apology for January comes in. Part of this program has to be an audit. We have to understand how many permits we're giving out. We have to understand how much that's impacting our other monthly parkers, both on an occupancy basis and a revenue basis. And we wanna be sure we're not cannibalizing our regular business. And so that needs, that has to come to you. It has to come to me every year. I need to understand that. I need to understand it more than annually, but I at least need to report that out to you. And then section seven is sort of some of the logistics of how the program is executed. So I apologize for blowing through that a little bit, but it's pretty well laid out in this document. So I just wanted to make sure that I talk through most of it. So happy to answer questions or Chapin if you think I missed, overshot something. Yes. All right. Yeah, thank you for that. Mr. Padgett, bring it to the commissioner discussion on this item. Start at the other direction here. How about the commissioner overbie? I have some concern. I know we got an email from a gentleman and I can't remember right here off his name here. And I think you all got it, Patrick Mulligan. So we'll deal with that separately. But my concern was that I would like to find a way to add something that encourages people to not bring them, you know, bring them their car. It seems like counter, you know, counterproductive to encouraging more car, you know, single occupancy car use. And I know a lot of people that work out of town might work at a restaurant that's open late and they can't ride the bus. But I feel like we need to add some alternative. If we're gonna do a free parking thing, that's pretty much saying we really want you to park, bring your car and park. And I'd like to have somehow this, and I don't know how you're gonna do it if it's in a section of the ordinance that relates to just fees for parking. But I feel like I have a concern to be just adding a free parking thing when we're really struggling to say this is gonna be a walkable city, bicycle whole city. And yet this just seems to be the opposite of that. So I don't know the language to add, but I wanted to bring, and I know I tried to ask our expert resident, a couple resident experts on the commission, commissioner Barr and commissioner O'Neill, if they had some suggestions for language, and maybe they do, I don't know, but that's a concern for me. I really, you know, I think you're gonna be on the money trying to track the money and finances of it. But I feel like it's sending the wrong message about, you know, we want all of our downtown employees to be commuters in their car. And what can we do about that? Right, so there's a couple of challenges in there. One is revenue that is generated by the parking garages can only go to parking garages. So if we're going to do alternative transportation and incentivizing that type of stuff, it has to come out of a different funding source. However, as part of the reorg that we're working on, one of the things that we want to do, I don't wanna get into the whole reorg discussion, but the reorg has two steps to it. The first step is sort of mechanical and reorganizing some people. And then step two is a major change to charter because the problem is charter says that the money that's in the parking garages has to stay in the parking garages. I can't use money from the parking garages to pay for bus passes or anything like that. It's against charter. So what I wanna do is actually change charter to allow for more flexibility within the garages to do things exactly like what you're saying. But in the state of the world right now, our downtown businesses have a real problem with employment. They can't employ people. And I don't think the message that they're telling, the message they're sending me is not that they wanna encourage more people to drive to work. The message that they're saying to me is they have people that are driving to work and then are quitting because they can't afford to pay for it. So that's the way that, you know, it's expressed to me. So I don't know if that addresses your concerns, but so it's very on the forefront of our minds, absolutely, and we're trying to figure ways. Well, my thought is that's anecdotal information about we can't get employees because they can't afford, if they paid $15 an hour or they paid something livable wage, there's a different scenario here. So we can't go there either. But I mean, and free to me, I would say there should be some fee. Maybe like we're charging the students $10 a month now to park in the garage back there and then $40 a month. I mean, maybe it has to have something. So there's actually some commitment to it financially. So, you know, I'm not so supportive of the free. I don't yet have, I don't feel like I'm convinced that the parking is the problem for people getting employees. I really don't think that's the reason. I don't think that's the reason. I haven't been persuaded. There's no evidence on our materials to persuade me of that. So that's my take. I'm not in favor of the way this is worded and is free parking. I would like to have, I get it that you can't use that money for a bus pass. However, this doesn't feel right to me to just do it the way it's proposed. So I'll let other people speak for their concerns. Thank you for that, Commissioner Overby. Vice-chair Nio Blavanco. Thank you. Thanks, Commissioner Overby for that lead in. And so, Jeff, I get it that we need a charter change. And, but if you look at like, this is a transportation managed parking and transportation management plan. It's that the transportation management plan piece of this document that I feel like the parking only addresses the kind of single occupancy vehicle. So I wonder what can we do to encourage the businesses to promote all transportation options? And what purview do you have to incentivize a car share pod in one of the car parks? Because that would benefit the parking garage as money has been there. EVSE charging infrastructure and bike parking. Because I know now that the high schoolers can park in the parking lot. So are there any of these other modes that the parking garage that you could support within this framework for parking that would support just not the single occupancy vehicle? And there's free transit right now that will probably go through probably until the end of 2021. So that may help. And then the bike share, I'll let Jim talk about the bike share. But I do feel like, you know, BBA is always going to complain about the parking. That's how they see the world. And I do understand that's how they see the world. And I wanna kind of, you know, settle in with that. But I also want to support the city's walk bike master plans and net zero energy and how we as a commission can help move towards that. Yeah, for sure. So you know that there's, I think two or three new EV charging stations are going into the Lakeview garage right now. That's not actually our project. That's BED initiative. And I was on the phone with Tom Weil yesterday. He's pushing to put more all over the city. And I work with him where I can to support what they're doing. They're looking at possibly a new replacement charger for marketplace. I have asked him to, if he wants to do a lot of EV charging, we should do it at the Lakeview garage because marketplace garage is overwhelmed right now. And as far as bike parking goes, yes, there is lots more bike parking at the Lakeview garage now thanks to the high school coming in. They're installing a bunch of parking because of their zoning permit. So that's coming. We do have money from DPTM. We have, we bought $5,000 with the bike racks. I think we have money for another five. Our problem is we're having a hard time finding places where to put them, frankly. But that's sort of a different challenge we have. It's amazing the number of places where you look and say that'd be a great place for a bike rack but it's private property or some piece of infrastructure needs to be installed before you can actually bolt the racks to the ground. You know, there's an unbelievable amount of hurdles come up when you start poking. So, you know, this is that we're not doing this in isolation. There are a variety of initiatives going on in parallel. And having two hours free go away create at the marketplace garage creates an opportunity for significant solvency for us because we have some major budgetary problems because we're retail business and we don't take any tax dollars. So, you know, being able to have the two hours free goes away creates a sustainable future. It doesn't solve our problem of today. We have other things we're doing for the problems of today but the problems of the future financially having two hours free go away makes a big difference and the cost of this to support the downtown businesses and support our future viability. You know, this is the bigger context that I'm working in and maybe I didn't articulate clearly enough. So, I don't know if that answers your question. Yeah, no, thank you for addressing the other modes. I still don't know the language that I think would be able to capture all of this and a way for the businesses to recognize that not everyone who goes down to Burlington is going in a single occupancy vehicle. Not all their workers actually own vehicles. We arrive in many modes and that if we can prioritize those modes as well it would be important. Thanks, Jeff. Yeah, thank you. Commissioner Gellman. And nothing else for me. All right, Commissioner Bose. Nothing from me. Commissioner Barr. Thanks. I will add to what Commissioner Overby and Commissioner O'Neill-Vavonco, or Vice-Chair O'Neill-Vavonco brought up about many different opportunities and I know that there's not money in your budget or in that budget, the garage budget to do these kinds of things. But Katma, I think Burlington is an associate member of Katma and they have a host of programs that they run that don't necessarily take money. It's more like the Walk Bike Week, Park Your Car. I think Car Share Vermont has that. By having these different kind of incentivized programs out there with maybe a gift card, maybe a restaurant gift certificate, maybe recognition of employees for contributing to the greening of the downtown area or something. I know that those are a bunch of little teeny things, but they don't cost a lot of money. And whether you use Katma, I know that in my organization, we have many programs that are tied to Katma, but then we've invented our own. We've got many programs that we do in-house that really don't cost us that much money and it's just a little time. It's advertising, marketing, doing those kind of things. But the other thing too, and Commissioner Vice-Chair O'Neill-Vavonco mentioned it and I know Chapin is well-versed on the bike share and the future of bike share for us. But I think that we're on the cusp of having a really great bike share improvements and updates coming to the city of Burlington. I don't know how many people on this call, including you, Jeff, have much information about it, but, and I don't know how much I can leak, Chapin, out about it, but I'm feeling excited about the idea that there's gonna be electric bikes in the city and there's gonna be more hubs around, so that's gonna increase the use of bikes. And going to work, that was one of the big things, is if you have bike share, but it's not electric or e-ped-assist, you get to work, you're sweaty. Hopefully you have shower facilities with e-bikes. You don't need to worry about that. You're gonna be able to show up and do a shift. But like Commissioner Overby pointed out, there's some overnight shifts or later shifts that are not gonna be able to partake in some of these things. Buses stop at what time? 11 30, I think, 11 30 or 12. So there's gonna be some disconnects there. And I do believe that I'm not sure if the fare free is gonna continue through the end of 2021. I'm not sure if you probably know way more than I do, Chapin, but I've heard that there might be some changes to that. And we do have money from the Downtown Improvement District to for that's earmarked for subsidizing bus passes. That's in a parallel budget that I have, but buses are free. So right now, right, right. But we've been sitting on that money for over a year. So it's not for lack of interest in supporting multimodal stuff. Is that money just for a bus passes or can it be used for other modes? Like, could you give them either a bike share membership or with the way the bikes are coming in, it might be a gift card for a monthly. Right, I'm actually engaged in a conversation right now with the BBA where we're reviewing our work plan for the DID money is spent based on a work plan. And right now that work plan aligns that money with the bus passes and we're trying to figure out, well, obviously we can't get away free bus passes right now, that makes no sense. So where do we push that money? So yeah, so I guess that's what I was trying to say as earlier is for me, this situation with the employee free parking is not about encouraging car parking or discouraging multimodal. It's not really a programmatic thing in that sense. It's really a direct support for the downtown merchants in a time when they're struggling significantly and it'll provide a sustainable support for them in the long term. And it's a critical part of the removal of the two hour free from marketplace, which then that sort of, if you think about, in one case we're giving one group free parking on the other hand, in the same scale, we're taking free parking away from another group. So this is the balance we're trying to strike. And make no mistake, I support this. I think that this is a move that needs to happen to help ease the parking burden of some of the parking areas there, but I think it's a missed opportunity if we don't couple it with some TDM incentives and TDM programs. And I think that's one of the challenges that we've had over the past many years is that we move ahead without thinking of the peripheral things that we can put in place by having these different TDM programs, it's gonna just increase the empty spaces that for other people to come, for customers for those kind of things. I'm on way too many BBA committees to and so I've heard this from both sides and I understand their approach and I understand the retailer's approach, but I also think that what we're talking about here, there's an opportunity, I support this, but I think that we really do need to look at some of these TDM things in the near future to make sure that we don't miss them. And that's it for me, thanks. All right, thank you. Commissioner Archibald. I do have a few questions left. I think a lot of them have been answered, such as where something, this is just the Lakeview garage, Jeff, is that right? That's where they'd be parking, yes. Yeah, okay. And then I had a question of when, if these passes were issued, is it the folks receiving these can park for free at any time in that garage or is it only during certain times? Or could you tell me about it? It's a permit, it's a permit just like you would get if you paid for a seven day a week permit. The thinking being is these are a lot of folks that are expected to be possibly shift workers, so they might work an afternoon shift one week, a night shift the next week, and to constrain the time on it would make life challenging for all of us. Yeah, sure. And it sounds like eligibility is employer driven if I read your material right. The first check is the employer operating in a business that's eligible, then within that business, which employees are in the eligibility? Sure, okay, okay. I had a question about if we had any data to show what percentage of this type of eligible worker is actually driving in that really relies on driving as their primary means of transportation. Do you even have a sense like a back of a napkin guess on that? And I imagine it changes all the time given the turnover with our downtown businesses. Right, no, I don't have a sense of percentages. I mean, I could certainly work it out. I'm sure it's some sort of census of total employees downtown, but what I basically know is we've got 65 businesses that value this and have participated. And we've seen a steady growth in adoption. So the Parker's employees are using it. The growth grew up until the beginning of the year and then January things settled down. But I imagine that it will pick up again. Yeah, well, it sounds like you're aware of not wanting to cannibalize our own revenue efforts, which I can really appreciate because that would speak to that of like, are we just giving this thing out to anybody and they're allowed to just kind of park downtown, but you do have that awareness. So I appreciate that your cognizance of that. Yeah, yeah. And I'm fully aware that there are probably scenarios and businesses that we have not fully considered and we're gonna have to come back to you guys at some point with some policy updates to further clarify and make sure that it's as fair as it can possibly be to meet the goals. Sure, sure. My last question, and I'll just make a few comments after is by rededicating the funds from the garage by taking away the two hours free up in the marketplace garage. Does that take away from the repairs that are always needed in a garage? You know, they're inherently come along with being the landlord of a garage. Now, we'll still come out net ahead. That was what my little budget table tried to show is even with conservative estimates, we're at $120,000 in the good. And I expect it will be more than that. Okay, great. So as long as it doesn't dig us a hole like we had previously and we're trying to find money to scrape together to fix up our garages. But it sounds like you're comfortable that we're in a good place with revenues to continue to maintain our garages and keep that going as you see it. Well, we're in a bad place right now because we just got beat up for a year, but I'm confident that this is a positive move to create financial sustainability of the garage. Yeah, okay. Great. And just some brief comments. So I'm really supportive of this. I think our business friends in the community really need this, not to mention the workers of our community need this. And if I'm putting myself in the shoes of someone, either a minimum wage or a livable wage, either way it's a struggle, right? To make this work out. So I'm driving in for a shift. And if I got to hoof it across town for a second job or to get the childcare or to balance all these other responsibilities, driving's where it's at, right? There's a few other potential options. One could argue bicycle, but even then if I get to get from downtown to say Shaw's down in the South Potter town, that it could make me late for that other job if that's what I had going on. So I think if I'm in the shoes of the working class here, I'm really relying on that vehicle and the options that come across. So I'm very supportive of what you have here. I think it's really smart how you've worked this out. And I appreciate that there are stop gaps that will revisit this over periods of time. And as hopefully we dig our way out of this pandemic that maybe we'll find a time when we come to a place where we no longer need this. And it'd be great because someone could hop a bus that's readily available or plug in an electric car or whatever it is, but that's not where we are today. And that's where I really appreciate these efforts to reach out to a very hard hit socioeconomic class of folks who are working and on the front lines at that. And making do for them and the businesses in relation. So I think it's a win-win all the way around. So I appreciate your efforts here, Jeff. Thank you. All right, thank you. Just to use myself here, a couple of questions. Are these permits tied to an individual and a license plate? I think you're on mute. What's that? All right. Yeah, every permit that's issued to the garage is assigned to a person. So we have the name, email address, license plate number, all kinds of other whatever metadata that identifies the person. So we know if it's being abused. And some of the issues we have in that section seven logistics are around the turnover issue. And how do we make sure that the business owners are communicating to us clearly that, you know, John Doe worked for this month, but then he left and now he doesn't work there anymore. And they have to tell us that he's left. Otherwise he continues to get free parking until we're told. So we have some real business challenges here to make sure that we're hearing from, we need to somehow make the businesses financially exposed to the cost if it gets abused. Yeah, that's what I was getting at, I was curious if you have sort of data checks in mind that you, the things you want to be seeing to be checking for abuse. Yeah. Yeah. Do you have a sense, and I just touched on this earlier, do you have a sense of like the rough breakdown of our, you know, so the downtown, the DID just general population and proportion that is employees versus customers? Employees. And maybe we'll know more about this once this program is in place. And we have sort of better accounting of who's using garages and so forth. Yeah, so yeah, we'll have a really good idea of how many downtown workers need to park. Right now we don't have a good handle. I mean, I have validation transactions, but the way we've been running the program until now has been a validation. So somebody took a ticket and then they swiped a poop on and it was anonymous. That's just how validation systems work. I mean, whatever, anyway. The point is here, this is going to be a permit based system. So we know exactly who they are and what company they work for. And we can actually start to dig into that data and we can start understanding how many downtown workers need this support. Yeah, thank you for that. There's a couple of questions. I was curious of like, if you have expectations among these 65 participating businesses of their demand here and, you know, is some of them, you know, I don't know if they have 100 employees each or some probably have five employees or whatever, but like, is it worth considering things like, you know, your first 50 passes are free and then they're 10 bucks a month or something like that? Or like, what is sort of the balance of our? Yeah, these are the challenges. You've got businesses downtown, like, you know, like farmhouses got 50 or 60 employees and then you've got, you know, the comic book store might have what two or something, you know, and so it's really hard to make those sort of constraints. The one common thing is that there are a lot of folks that aren't getting paid a lot of money jobs and that's common across. So it doesn't matter if you've got 49 co-workers or you've got two co-workers, you still got the same problem. That's what we're trying to address. And is this a, is this a yearly thing? So one person per car and email address and license plate, what's the duration on? Month of the month. A month a month. Yeah, they expire all, all permits period expire on the month. And if you don't, and if you don't pay or you're not part of this program and get eligibility criteria, your permit will expire. Is that a little overhead on your part to be circling with these employers monthly on this? It will be, it will be some work. It will have to be a process that we just nail down and get to go. And this is again, going back to the reorg that is coming is part of what we're doing is we're making a single parking services organization that will have more resources focused towards customer service for parking. Right now, there really is no customer service for parking. We have customer service, if you've got a ticket or you've got customer service, if you go to Pine Street, otherwise you've got Leonard Dusharm trying to help everybody. And he's trying to manage the garage operations and do permits and and and. So yes, there are, there are challenges ahead. Sure. That's all I had. This might open up to public comment on this item. If we have any interested members of the public. At this time, nobody is signed up for public comment. All right. Thank you for that. Anything else from my fellow commissioners here? Yes, Commissioner Overby. I want to just follow up on after having listened to everybody. I want to, I want to just acknowledge that what we're trying to do, it sounds like is in effect subsidize the wages of the people that work downtown. And so if we acknowledge that, then maybe we could include as part of your criteria sort of the pay level that we're assuming that if people are below that we would like to subsidize their wages by giving them parking it, you know, free or or and I really feel like we need to have something like the $10 a month rate just to have a sense because that will also help you to get some statistics of who really does need it and want it. When it's free, people will take it and they'll go, well, you know, maybe I'll use it. Maybe I won't, but if somebody pays $10, that's there's a commitment. There's a little bit of a commitment. So my thought is, can we, could we add a criteria to your criteria that says that, you know, this is the people that are eligible are those that are paid, you know, less than whatever number, you don't want to say $15 an hour or paid effectively less than X dollars an hour for a tipped worker. Because what you're doing then is you're, we're making it very, we're acknowledging why we're doing this. And it's just like Walmart doesn't pay their employees very well when we provide food stamps, but we really don't acknowledge what we're doing is we're subsidizing Walmart because they're not paying enough. And obviously the economics of that is something we don't have control over and any more than we have control over what people pay in the businesses that they're trying to, you know, struggle along with on church street and downtown. So my proposal would be to add some pay criteria to the criteria of those who would be receiving this because then we're actually acknowledging what we're doing. We're boosting their pay by the value of $80 parking pass for the month. And we're charging them $10 for it or okay, if you want to do it for free, but I still think it would be better to have a home entry fee because it will then give you better statistics on what the real need is for the parking for keeping employees working downtown. Those are my two proposals. Am I clear what I'm suggesting? Yep, and we had similar discussions with the schools, you know, we discounted their parking and they're free to charge whatever they want because they have an interest in incentivizing students to not drive, right? You know, some sort of education component around that, right? So we said, well, we'll do it for the 10 and then you guys can work a program like that. So that's almost how I think of it is maybe there's a way we can work with the businesses to say, yeah, we'll give this to you for free, but you should charge your employees or something along those lines that might be something creative. Well, that's another thing. Yeah, acknowledging the business by what value. And so we actually acknowledge that we are financially subsidizing the people running their businesses and in a tangible way, not just generally, we're being nice and you get free parking. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, well, it's clear we're trying to support downtown business. I mean, I've been very clear about that and they've been actually very clear about needing the support. I mean, as I go to meetings multiple times a month and we have this conversation that they need the support of the city to maintain the vibrancy of what is downtown Burlington and that's the workers, the people working there. Yeah, I think I got a consensus that we all agree to try to help subsidize the downtown workers, but I'm just trying to make it so that it's very clear what we're doing and how much we're doing it for and that we're actually doing it in a way that we can make it easier for you to track it as well and not just giving away parking passes and some of the concerns that were addressed in the email that we all got about some of the people that might be already paying for parking passes and they'll just now switch over to getting the free one. So which is fine too, as long as we know what we're doing and the public knows that's how we're using our $400,000 money from there and it ties into the, you haven't mentioned that at all much about the merchant voucher plan. So that there is gonna be some recovery of, I would assume the merchants are contributing to the vouchers that are gonna be used instead of the free two-hour parking. So there's other factors going on here too. Yes, exactly. Yes, I'm glad you brought that up actually. The merchant validation program is full retail. So the merchants have basically said, look, if you guys can help us pay for our employees to park we will pay for our customers to park. And they didn't mince words. I tried to give them some sort of a discounted program and they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, that's too complicated. We'll pay. So that's why they see the give and take that's happening here. And they appreciate that. Dr. Spencer. Yeah, thank you. I understand and appreciate Jeff is on the front lines working with the businesses, but let's pause for a moment. This is not about subsidizing businesses. There is a policy move here that is in the interest of the city. A lot of restaurant and retail workers are second shift workers. Our on street parking is free in most of the downtown after six PM. We want to direct the workers who are coming downtown every day, not to be parking on street or filling up marketplace or other high traffic locations. We want them to be in an underutilized and nearly vacant garage in the evening. So it's like an asset. You own an asset, you need to move the people who you know you can move to the undervalued assets. So the people who don't know that undervalued asset get the prime asset next to where they're going. And I appreciate that Jeff's working with the businesses directly and hears their needs. But fundamentally, there's a value proposition just for the city's vitality overall. Yeah, that's absolutely right. And so while we're currently giving free parking in marketplace garage to everybody, we're now proposing to take a small slice of that and relocate them to an underutilized facility to benefit everybody downtown. So certainly agree, we're trying to help businesses, but there's a big net win for everybody now. Thank you for that, Director Spencer. Commissioner Beaus, is it you? Everything to add? Yeah, I mean, Director Spencer kind of answered part of my question. I just wanted to say while I understood, I understand where Commissioner Overby is coming from. I did have some hesitation about putting too much emphasis on the tracking or even putting the onus to determine who is eligible for programs like this on Jeff's shoulders or on the department's shoulders. Because I think that's a tricky thing to get into. It's a lot of work to try and figure out who is more or less deserving in a context like this. And so I would be wary of kind of getting into that. And I actually think that Jeff, as you described the way in which a version of this is working with the school, that kind of makes more sense to me. I think putting the onus on the user groups more generally, rather than micromanaging that aspect of it to me makes more sense because I just think it's getting into kind of a world of pain in that sense. And I think what Director Spencer just described in terms of a broader strategy makes more sense to me as well. Like this is again, is not just about meeting the needs of the businesses themselves, but in terms of a larger strategy for the city. I definitely think that this makes a lot of sense. Anyway, thanks. Thank you. And I thank Director Spencer for articulating that so nicely because it is one of, I think it's goal number four in our plan is clearly to relocate Parkers from to make space available for customers. Absolutely. All right. We've been around the virtual room a couple of times here, but certainly we are seeking a vote and entertain a motion if anyone has one. Make a motion to accept as presented by Assistant Director Padgett. I'll second that. We're in there. Second for. You're welcome to have it. It's a commissioner Archambault, I heard you first there. All right. It's a motion from our commissioner. Second from Commissioner Archambault. Is there any discussion around that motion? Yes, Commissioner Overby. I'm gonna, I'm probably gonna not support it unless we make a modification to have an amount to it, but I just wanted to make that point so that my reason for avoiding against it is not because I like the idea, but I feel like it's not been fleshed out enough and hasn't been some of these issues that I address, I've not been addressed. So thank you. Thank you. Any other discussion around the motion? All right. Sinan will go to a vote. Commissioner Archambault. Aye. Commissioner Barr. Aye. Commissioner Bose. Aye. Commissioner Gilman. Aye. Vice Chair O'Neill-Vanco. Aye. Commissioner Overby. No. And I for myself, motion carries six to one. Thank you very much. All right, thanks everybody. And again, I promise I will be back to see you again next month. We'll see you soon. Thanks for all your support. For sure. All right, moving forward. Item six, slope stability site adjustments staff communication here, Mr. Peterson. Hello, I need to share my screen. Hopefully that's set up properly. Okay. So we'll just jump right into it. I'm Phillip Peterson, Public Works Associate Engineer. And we're going to discuss the slope stability report, some inspections that have been conducted over the past couple of years. So throughout the city of Burlington, there are, there exists several steep slopes which are a concern due to their location within the cities right away on city owned parcels or adjacent to city property or city owned infrastructure due to the consequence of failure of these slopes and potential disruption to the city property or infrastructure. DPW technical services began a process in 2019, which really began before that, but officially began in 2019 to inspect, monitor and identify prioritized project as well as proactive maintenance plans to address slope stability issues within the city. So DPW worked with Hoyle and Tanner, Hoyle Tanner and Associates and their subcontractor Terracon to perform inspections of four slope locations in 2019 and in 2020. The purpose of this scope of work was to perform visual inspections of the slopes, document existing conditions and make recommendations for future inspections and future repairs. The initial analysis did not include soil warnings, soil testing or design for any necessary repairs. This is effort is just a visual inspection more than anything else. And so in 2019, we focused on the North Shore and Natural Area, Manhattan Drive on the East side and the West side, which is the Route 127 Beltline and near Manhattan Drive. And then in 2020, our focus was along Riverside Avenue. So I'm sure most of you have been on the bike path and you know, this giant wall near Star Farm Road. What we call the North Shore Natural Area. So the assessment of our consultant is that it's, it is stable and future inspections would be on a five year cycle. Our next inspection wouldn't be until 2024. That doesn't mean that we as a city staff aren't going to do anything. We will be monitoring the armored slopes for any creep of the flank slopes. There is a crack in the middle of the retaining wall. Well, we will also monitor that. It was deemed to be not significant. We will also be taking vertical measurements using a grade rod once a year. But a more official inspection would be every five years. And then Manhattan Drive at Route 127. So this is more the West side of the Beltline off Manhattan Drive. This is also considered to be stable. The future inspection frequency is a little bit more, it's less, so it's every three years. So the next inspection wouldn't be until fall of 2022 or 2023. We will also monitor this work. Now there is some overlap with our stormwater team. We're working, coordinating with the city stormwater department for inspection of their drainage structures and any general maintenance needs. They do have a construction effort that will be taking place this year along this particular stormwater outfall. We'll talk a little bit more about that. And this is Manhattan Drive at Champlain Street. So if you read the inspection report, it does say that there's some urgent repair or urgent inspections that were needed. We did those inspections. We dropped a camera down into this very structure in December of 2019, I believe I was there and everything was fine, everything looked good. So there was no urgent repair needed. So the inspection was good. So at this point, we would like to keep this area of our slope stability kind of on the same cycle as the other part of Manhattan Drive, the west side of, we're on the west side of Route 127. So fall of 2023 is when a more formal inspection would take place. So as I said, the DPW stormwater team has an outfall stabilization construction effort plan for the 2021 construction season. And this should address several issues in the area. Okay, so the Riverside Avenue Slope Inspection Effort, it's broken into three different segments. And this work, it required some permission from individual property owners. So inspections could be done. And the slopes that were inspected are marked on the map in front of you as 4A, which is on the western end of Riverside near Intervale, 4B, which is on Riverside just west of Hillside Terrace and 4C, which is to the east of Hillside Terrace, kind of close to the wastewater treatment plant over there. The inspection work done, it may inform future city projects as well as projects done on private property. I think it's important to note, and city engineer, Norm Baldwin can talk about this a little bit more. We're limited, city staff are limited on what we can do on private property. It is private, so our authority only goes so far. I don't know, engineer Baldwin, if you'd like to comment on that now, or maybe we just wait until I'm done with my... Philip, why don't you continue and I'll talk at the end. Okay, I'll just keep going. Okay, so take a little bit more of a deep dive on 4A. And we did do some more extensive work on these slope inspections given the nature and the likelihood of failure. So each one of these slopes, there's some urgent repairs that are necessary. There's active slope movement and surface erosion. There's issues with close proximity to building structures. So there is recommendations of future field investigations for 4A. And as I already said, there's only so much that city staff can do. Okay, so 4B, similar situation, similar recommendations. There are some immediate attention that's necessary. And 4C, this 4C is more stable than 4A and 4B. There is some further assessment that's necessary. At this point, it's considered more stable and that this particular slope should be on a one-year cycle of visual monitoring. So the next official inspection would be in August, September of this year. And then each of these slopes, one of the recommendations that our consultants had was establishment of maybe some instruments that would monitor inclinometers and possibly measuring groundwater and other issues like that. So after this meeting, we will be sharing this report with all the adjacent property owners and this should help them on their slope stabilization efforts. As I already said, an outfall stabilization construction effort is planned for construction this year. And we are working directly with the stormwater team. They are, the stormwater team is currently vetting consultants for outfall inspections for this year. And there is obvious overlap with the stormwater outfall work and our slope stability inspection work. We're also working with the asset management team within technical services and water resources to track these resources and map them in the city's overall GIS mapping system. This will help keep track of past, present and future inspection efforts. And these inspections will inform future construction projects. And that is it. And at this point, I think I'll turn it over to Norm, so he can discuss the riverside slopes a little bit more. So, Philip, I think, has pointed out that we have certain limitations. And I would start by saying that we, you know, previously when I was managing the trade inspection team, there was authorities at the building inspector carry that I, in support of the team, could assist in the inspections of what we call dangerous buildings. And it was presumed at the time, probably three years ago, that under those authorities, we could look at these sites where people have potentially done infill and created unstable condition and order them to remediate. It turns out that a closer read through the city attorney's office, our authority only ends at buildings and structures. So there are limitations to what we could do or I could do as a city engineer at that time managing the trade inspection team. And going further, now that the trade inspection team is not part of my team, it's now permitting inspections, I have probably less authority beyond that I can certainly support when they ask or request support. So in light of those three properties that happened in that May, was it October rainfall, like a, I guess it was a Halloween storm, there was some material stored on three properties on Riverside Avenue where that rainstorm mobilized some of that loose material on the top of the slope and made a serious mess, which got me digging deeper into again, again, how can we require the property to remediate and what to boil down to is since the trade inspection team had very limited authority, the only authority left was through some sort of zoning violation and those three properties are dealing with that zoning violations themselves and have hired a consultant to support them to do an analysis as asked and to come to some conclusions in terms of remediation. That there is strangely in that process, we have identified that there is a city parcel that potentially we could help and assist the property owners in remediating some of those issues by potentially using city property, but it's yet to be determined the future of that. Regardless of that fact, we think that we're areas where we have influence, areas where we own property, areas where we have outfalls and we have easements, we are doing more work to try to identify situations that we can act on. If we don't get to cooperation of property owners, then we have to rely exclusively on visual inspections and visual inspections only go so far. So, you know, when you have a slope that is unknown soil condition and unknown geometries and there's various layers of soils and you don't know what groundwater conditions there are, you really can't make any real determination as to whether it's stable or not. So, we unfortunately are left under the current structure relying on the good judgment of property orders to make good judgments about the property with the exception of when they go to develop their property, which triggers a development review process where we can, if we believe there's some instability on the property and what they're proposing to build, we could require that they hire a geotechnical engineer and demand that they provide a report that suggests whatever they're building is not going to further put people at risk, either their adjacent properties themselves or their property. So, there's more work to be done. I think we did have some early conversation with the attorney's office about how we can explore expanding authority, but it's yet to be determined what we can do beyond what we're currently doing now. But as a baseline, this information that Phillips gathered with the consultant gives us kind of a history. What is going on with these properties in these locations? And is it concerning or not? And do we need to do more work? So, that's kind of the sum total where it's at. Both Phillip, Susan and I have been working on this. We are certainly willing to answer any questions you might have, but we are happy to do what we can do to make it better. Great, thank you for that. My fellow commissioners, we are not in need of a vote here. An informational item, but that said, we appreciate the chance to engage on this. I'll bring it to commissioner discussion now. Start with Commissioner Archambault. Yeah, thank you for this. Wait, this is one of those issues that hardly gets attention. So, I was really glad to see this on the agenda, to be honest. Question for you, is there an imminent danger to any people's safety? Namely people who work or live along that stretch of where these banks are identified? You know, I don't believe that's the case, but it's a lot of unknown conditions and unfortunately those are hidden conditions. So, if you don't know what the ground law regime is, you don't know what the soil condition is and it looks fine, it looks normal, then suddenly you get a heavy rainstorm, conditions change, things could change. So, you know, the problem with these areas is they're typically loamy sandy soil, so they're easily erodible, so they can scour at the top of the slope. You have steep slopes where people continue to put material and overburden. Anything that people do to keep loading that system is gonna put itself into an unstable condition and potentially fail. So, we've tried to be very clear with people not to just willy-nilly decide they're gonna put material on their high bank and think it's gonna be okay. You can't be doing that. And so, we've been talking to those property owners that we think are potentially at risk if they continue to do that. And we're trying to kind of stem that tide, so to speak. The other piece of the puzzle is we have a river system at the base of the slope. Rivers tend to chew the bottom of the slope. When they're chewing the bottom of the slope, it's like pulling material like a conveyor belt and it's pulling it down. So, it depends how close the river is and whether it has any influence or not. Many areas along the river side haven't probably influenced by the river, but some areas are. So, all those things have to be closely watched and monitored and it's kind of, some of it's glacial kind of change that you can't see unless you're documenting on a kind of a frequency that's meaningful. I think it's important to note that property owners are taking actions. They do have consultants and the information that we've collected, they will be using to carry on. Yeah, that's great. I don't know, Phillip, if maybe for the moment, you can just take off screen share for a moment. Oh yeah, sure. Nice to see a face. There we go. Thank you. Let's say I asked you about personal safety. If we have, let's say, a supersoaker of a season, right? Summertime hits and we get all these, we've seen an increase in strong storm events, namely rain. Is that fair to say that that poses more of a potential hazard for these slopes than the opposite where we have kind of a dry season? Anytime you introduce water to these things, either top of slopes scour or potentially there's additional groundwater migration because the ground is saturated is changing the condition and making it more less stable. But for the most part, I think if you have undisturbed soils and it's fairly compacted and it's not fluffed up like someone bringing material, it generally will stay unless it's a high slope and an unstable condition to begin with. Yeah, okay. Just sometimes in my work, I try to think through worst case scenarios of course and seeing the slope go down. Do we have contingencies in place to handle the situation where a significant piece of riverside could maybe be washed away in such a situation and how that might look? I don't think you can prepare for wholesale loss of that section of earth or land. If you go back to 1955 slope failure where it was near River Watch itself, that was a massive loss of land and material. And I think part of the problem on Riverside Avenue is I understand it from the consultant who's done some borings that people had mixed bag of things thrown over the bank whether it be cars, garbage, waste materials, maybe waste soil from somewhere else, bricks, all sorts of stuff that you cannot put a math equation to and determine is that fully stable or not? And I think that's part of the challenge. Yeah, yeah, okay. Worrying if the same rules apply to the embankment if we work our way uphill. So we cross Riverside and then now we're looking at some of those steep embankments there where there are homes such as Colchester Ave, for example. Would the same situation apply there or have we not looked at that or what are your general thoughts on that? I think that there's probably some areas that are steep slopes that could have potential of localized failure but I don't think wholesale failure. Not on this scale, no. Well, it's nice to not have a river at the bottom of those embankments at least. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Okay. And you have good vegetation and the problem is vegetation works for you to some level. And then when it gets to be too large a tree and high bank, it creates overburden, it creates instability. The root system does help but if you've got a heavy tree on a high bank, not so good. That's a real good point. Yeah, because we all have this image of any vegetation is good for those steep banks but it sounds like not necessarily. Yeah. Okay. That's it for me. Again, I cannot express my thankfulness for you coming in front of us and at least having the discussion is good to have that awareness. And thank you so much for everything you're doing on this. You're welcome. All right, thank you. Commissioner Barr. Thanks. I share Commissioner Archambault's gratitude to bring this up. And I want to point out too that I mean, this situation here along this portion of the Winooski River, is it that much different than the situation? I want to say maybe six or more years ago down by 127 where there was a house that erode like you said, the conveyor belt kind of pulling everything away. And how do we mitigate that? Yeah, so Riverside Avenue is much more removed than that circumstance. That was like a direct point of contact and it bought base of a steep slope. And so that just was an inevitable thing, unfortunately. I think we have a lot more time and space from that ever happening at Riverside, but never say never. Yeah, yeah, no, that's all I had. Thanks. Thank you. Mr. Bose. Jim, I would just say one more thing about that is, we don't want to be in a position to have something happen to someone's, someone's in a home. Unwittingly, something happens like that. We're trying to gather as much information as we can within our authority to prevent against that. So we personally want anyone to get injured or hurt or killed. And secondly, we don't want to have loss of property and have to be the people to tell them this building is gotta be removed. Thanks. Thank you. Mr. Bose. Yeah, so I echo the comments, the thanks for bringing this back to our attention. I remember Dr. Bierman coming and presenting to the committee, I don't know, but two years ago now, I know last year's a loss, but whenever it was coming and presenting a number of things here, and there were a couple of things that stayed with me from that. One was, I think he directed our attention to some of the historical images from kind of historical floods and the loss of some of that landscape. And then the rebuilding of it, some of which was with materials I would not think you would rebuild a slope with. So I mean, I guess that's another part of this story in terms of what was considered safe for slope stabilization earlier, clearly might not be today. But one thing that really struck me in this report and especially as you were talking about this was the sense that I got from you that there was perhaps more willingness by some of the business owners to talk to you about it, because my sense from the earlier discussion had been there had been some unwillingness or something like that. But am I right there that there was a little bit more openness to that? Well, I think it cuts both ways. And when I say that, I mean, obviously property owners don't wanna see that there's a red flag on their property and there's concerns. And so when we go on their properties, they're documenting these things, then suddenly it becomes something that's disclosed when if they go to seek to sell the property. But they also, if they're under an order and it's costing them significant dollars to have a geotechnical engineer come up with solutions and then fix the problem, then they really want our assistance. So it depends on where they're at in that kind of thinking. I mean, because I remember, as often happens in this case, when this was brought to us before, there was this sort of suggestion that the city force the property owners to engage in. Either, I can't remember, it was either corrective action or just not doing something. I think it was just dumping a bunch of stuff. Yeah, we basically told them stop bringing material onto their property until you get a geotechnical engineer to determine what the exact condition is and what you can and can't add to this property or if that you have to remove what you place because it's already presenting a problem or hazard. Right, okay. Yeah, I mean, that was one of the things that I really, I wasn't sure where that was going and it seems like you've got kind of a good approach to that or at least some buy-in from that. I'm curious in terms of the monitoring that you described. And so it seemed to be a range of different forms of monitoring, different kinds of things. How real time is that? And I mean, are reports sort of set to you by the consultants or how? We could potentially do our consultants or a consultant could place these monitors, but we can measure groundwater monthly and also the inclinometers would be measuring data, I don't know, not continuously necessarily, but it's data that we can collect pretty real time. But as we've already discussed, this is on private property. So we're gonna have to get more buy-in from these private property owners to do this level of inspection. So just following up on that, we can do more intense analysis on properties that we have control over. We can't go having boring machines going on someone's property unless they're really kind of willing and willing to allow us to do that. And normally we wouldn't do that unless we felt that there was strong considerations that there's a risk or a problem that we can readily apparently see. So it depends on how deep an insurance policy you wanna have with the condition. Obviously, yeah, as Norm pointed out, we can put these monitors on the city parcel and that will inform other, probably other private properties as well. All right, that's it for me. Again, I really appreciate you bringing this back to us. It has been something that's been on my mind. So thank you. Yep. All right, thank you. Commissioner Gilman. Awesome. Else for me, thank you very much for bringing this to us to share. Obviously a concern if you're worried about losing a whole road, obviously a key corridor for our community. So thanks for bringing it and continuing to keep this in the forefront for us. Thank you. Vice chair, O'Neill Blivanco. Yeah, great. This is maybe not super exciting for you guys because it sounds stressful, but it's really exciting because it's this, you know, natural world intersecting with the infrastructure that this commission oversees and the private property and city property, like it's all sort of, you know, like a juicy novel. But what I wonder is... The way you're putting it. So thanks for like the report was good. But is this information shared across city departments? Like I wonder, you know, because we're so, because you're limited in what private property. So if there's a business permit, like, I don't know, there was a new restaurant that opened where the old junk and donuts was. And I thought, yikes. So how was that information communicated? Is there, you know, just like a little like red mark on the file or something that says like warning or... We've shared the inspection report directly with all city departments. And we met just last week with the stormwater team to get a sense on what they're going to be doing. They have a consultant. So just get off Riverside Avenue a little bit. They have consultants that are vetting right now to do inspections on all their stormwater outfalls over the summer. And there's obvious overlap between the work they're doing and the stormwater outfall inspections. So yes, we were working with all departments and we are informing everyone. So I think our biggest reach out to the world is really the developer view process. Yeah. Both the permitting inspection team, but also, you know, sometimes these issues go to the DRB in terms of a development project. So it depends on the scale of what's going on. There are some businesses that probably move into buildings and properties that aren't aware of the existing addition because there's no trigger for us to get involved. But it really is worth noting that we need to invest in our outfalls because they have a significant contribution to some of these instabilities if we don't maintain and take care of those facilities. All that stormwater runoff has significant erosion capabilities and you'd be surprised how much it can erode the tail of slope. And so stormwater as an infancy of a utility, in my opinion, in the last 10, 15 years has done a lot to kind of address those things that were neglected for so many years, but there's so much to do. And so when we talk about giving support to our water resource people, you really need to support them in helping them get funds to fix and repair so many outfalls within the city because it does tie into this issue. Right, yeah. This is part of your novel. No, this is really great stuff. Thank you so much for this information. Yep. You're welcome. All right, thank you. Commissioner Overby. I think a lot of my comments were already stated, but I would second that I know when we first heard about these problems on Riverside, there was a sense of like, what can we do? And I really appreciate that engineer Baldwin taking responsibility to figure out how to do everything you can possibly do and come up with some suggestions of things that they can do so that it isn't a matter of, oh, when the house falls off the hillside that we didn't do enough. So the one cute question I had is I know I remember the presentation too by the UVM person that was presented and were the consultants able to find the photographs that they apparently, I think the guy said that the whole river, the side of Riverside toward the river actually was pretty much mostly filled. There was no houses and things on that. Do you know if they use that as part of their analysis or, I mean, that was to me a very unnerving thing to hear. And I'm just, that relates to what you're saying about the unknown, what's underneath the house. Yeah, I think the, well, Phillip worked more directly and Susan worked more directly with the consultants, but I think it's universally understood and known about that slope failure. And we talked about it in our coordination meetings quite a bit and it's pretty easy to go find some pictures of it online of that circumstance. So everyone knows about it. A lot of people know about the fact that it was a crazy junk that was used to kind of so-called stabilize the banks. Vehicles and cars and household items and then just whatever random soil material that could fill in the space, but... Yeah, yeah, no, it sounds like you're doing what needs to get done to document it, sort of get the monitoring equipment in there. And I think that will work well with giving the information to the people that are property owners there or future property owners there. So everything everybody else said, answered a lot of my questions. So that's all I have. All right, thank you. On my part, can you clarify for me why you're looking at a scope of work here for the Riverside parcels A and C while B was also labeled urgent? Could you, and I'm sorry if I missed that earlier, could you clarify why nothing's spanned at the moment on Riverside parcel B? So, I'm sorry, what are you asking? There was a scope of work presented as part of this, right? And it mentions the Riverside A and C, but not anything on B, you know, it was... I can only speculate, but I suspect that there's been some work done by the private property owner. Oh, I believe in access issues. Okay. Maybe Philip, you can answer that better than me, but I know that there has been some of those property owners have signed on to having a consultant, and I've been in conversations with that consultant, and not all property owners have signed on to working with a consultant directly and getting on a remediation plan, but we are still working through that. In the other, I was curious, with all the mention of the stormwater outfalls, is that also, I mean, of course it's related because it can contribute to the destabilization, but is that also an emphasis here because it's an access method, a mechanism that it's like, it's something that DPW can sort of have authority to go and probe? Yeah, when we, well, most of these outfalls have an easement that's within the deed. So that gives us authority to go do maintenance where we can and part of that could be just observing the existing condition. Okay. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, nothing further on my end. I will check in with Mr. Golding to see if there's anyone interested in public comment at this time. Moving, there's nobody signed up at this time. Actually, I'm sorry, I did see a hand just go up, and that will be for phone number 802-658-3604. You'll be allowed to speak in one second. Is it okay for me to speak? Yes, please. Yes, hi. Good evening, this is Sharon Busher. And I wanted to, first of all, say, I was really excited to see this on your agenda. And I did leave a message for Chapin, but I know that this is Riverside Avenue that I'm focused on. The stability of the slopes, banks, either on either the Riverside or the other side of the road have been an issue for a long time. You have, you mentioned a number of things which you knew when Paul Bierman, the professor from the Geology Professor from UVM came and spoke to you. But on the side, not abutting the river, near Riverwatch, there was an old landfill. So there's leachate and there's, so the stability of the whole area is in question. No one really knows a lot. And Norm said, a lot of borings haven't been done. I can tell you that I've lived in Burlington a long time and the roadway, Riverside Avenue was supposed to be done in the early 90s. And at that time, they were going to deal with the runoff that came from Colchester Avenue across the roadway to the river and tried to deal with all of that as that further eroded the banks and the stability, not only the river eroding it, but the runoff that came across. I had hoped, and I listened carefully tonight, I had hoped that the whole area from Prospect to potentially Salmon Hole Park would be looked at carefully and you've explained why private property owners have to buy in and the city has really no right to go on their property. But for me, it really is a safety and I think a liability issue. As people develop on Colchester Avenue and we have no slope ordinance, so they can develop right to the edge of the bank. And you know that a lot of this is infill and there's a lot of water that comes, there's Reeves, Racine, they ravine there, there's an awful lot of instability and runoff. And so as people develop on Colchester Avenue and take down some of the trees, I understand the size of trees, but some of the trees that destabilizes the top of the bank. And then you put people at risk at the top of the bank and you put people at risk that live below. And as Norm appropriately said, the only way that actually a section of Riverside gets carefully looked at right up until this point was when a development came through. And you could mention some of the things that I just mentioned tonight and you could get a more careful evaluation of this. To me, I would hope that as time went on, there would be further expansion of understanding the stability of all of the properties along Riverside Avenue so that we could protect ourselves and future development and existing development. And so I'm disappointed that the city attorney feels that we really can't weigh in on private property because I think the liability risk is such that it should be reevaluated. I am working with planning and zoning trying to get a slope ordinance and to have some other way of evaluating this section of the city so that when a developer comes in, they would know as one of your commissioners said, if you come in and try to occupy an existing space, do you know the relative risks? I think those are real. I think we should be helping ourselves and helping anybody who occupies space along that Riverside Avenue to know how vulnerable they are, what they can do to protect themselves, what they can do to stabilize, not further destabilize that section. But Norm and Chapin and everyone else involved, thank you so much for taking this on and I hope that we can expand and continue it. And thanks for listening to my comments. All right, thank you. So I would just caution you about, I guess, how do I say this? So if we only suspect and don't know that there is an existing condition, we have no place as a city agency to raise suspicion about something we don't have fact-based knowledge. And so we have to be very careful about that and that's the challenge because that has a commercial consequence. Thank you. I believe commissioner will be hand or hand up. I'm gonna check with the Mr. Golding, see if we have a public comment here. Mr. Golding, is there anyone else from the public who wishes to speak? Not at this time, Chair Hogan. All right, thank you. Minor one, we're not seeking an action on this item but we'll circle around for parting thoughts on the commissions on here, Commissioner Overby. I just wanted to ask, and I think I asked this the last time, what's the Winooski Valley Park Districts land with that then abuts to the private ownership? I can't remember, you explained that before, but. I don't remember exactly, but my sense is that the Winooski Valley Park District has easements. Oh, okay, okay. So the property owner goes to the river and the easement is for the trail, okay. Yes, most of our private property, there's some exceptions with city land. Thank you. Yeah. All right, thank you. Any further from commission ends? All right, let's close out item six here. Move forward to item seven, passenger rail project and Beverly Lane. Chip, and you wanna introduce this? Yeah, great. Given the time, we're gonna do a really quick piece. I am incredibly proud at the cross-departmental effort that the city has brought to work with the railroad and V-Trans to bring passenger rail to the city of Burlington with great access to New York City and Point South. This is a Herculean effort involving multiple property owners on the waterfront, multiple legal agreements, cooperative agreements, multiple construction phases. Norm's gonna give a very quick overview. Fundamentally, the reason why we're bringing this to you is there will be some actions that we'll need from the commission. And in the coming months, and we know you like a two-stage process to enable us to shift over La Valley Lane to accommodate the Amtrak train storage. We also have with us tonight, Martin Lee, who's one of our public works engineers with water resources. Thanks, Martin, for joining us and can answer any wastewater treatment plant questions. Norm, hit it. So I'd also like to take the time to introduce Susan Molzan, who's gonna be working with me to support the project, particularly the last segment of the contract, which is La Valley Lane. So much has already been done, but Susan is coming back into the conversation helping with La Valley Lane. So I want to acknowledge that and appreciate her help because it's a lot. Thank you, Norm, for bringing that up. I apologize, Susan didn't see you. No, it's okay. So I'll share my presentation here in just a second. Can you see my presentation? Got it, thank you. Okay, so as she'd been noted, there is many partners in this process, particularly we've had a great relationship with Parks, who have partnered with us. Parks is leading the process with their Greenway realignment and we are assisting in the respects of the general interest of trying to advance passenger rail and be that liaison with V-Trans and VRS. So it's been great working with Parks. So I'll move on to the next slide. Again, teamwork as I discussed, these are all the points of contact that have been involved. Lots of hands to make this work and work fast. One thing worth noting is the state of Vermont is advancing passenger rail in Burlington. They have federal dollars in this process. That product needs to be complete by no later than December 31st of this year and all project work needs to be complete and build. What's monumental in this project is we are now moving the bike path from the east side to the west side between college and King. And this is just an image of the bike path being closed for construction. So as I said, there's a number of things that are happening with this project, Greenway realignment, the bike path realignment. La Valley Lane having to be relocated because we are storing or propose to store passenger rail in the rail yard, which is adjacent to the rail yard. There's a number of rail crossing improvements. Oops. There's a passenger platform in the overnight as I discussed in the rail yard. This is just a plan view of the bike path. As you can see, it's, here's the railroad tracks, College Street, King Street, sorry, King Street, Main Street, where Main Street landing and then Maple Street and La Valley Lane is down here. So this is the bike path realignment, Greenway realignment. Forgive me, Parks for calling it the bike path. Here's the cross sections of the bike path getting moved over to the west side. This is the driveway to Echo. This is the bike path and this is the passenger rail alignment. So here's another image, College Street. This is the west side of the rail tracks near the College Street Echo driveway intersection. Strangely, the Vermont rail, sorry, V-Trans right of way a rail easement bulbs out onto the city parcel. So the bike path is following the outer limits of the V-Trans parcel. Part of our process is getting a transformer, proposing to have a transformer installed at this point in the drawings. And that transformer is gonna provide power, short power to the trains that's stationed within that space so that they don't have Eiling diesel trains making significant noise, which is a huge improvement for Echo and other stakeholders in that area. This is the revised realignment along the west side as well. There has been property rights that have been secured so LCT, both to get easements for the city to advance this project, but also an exchange of property to make that work. This is just another cross-section following it between King and Maple. So this is where the exchange of property occurs here. So there's a property rights that have been transferred to LCT to make them whole and lost at their parking in the development of our bike path. This is the termination of the bike path as it enters Maple Street and then LaValley Lane. So one thing I neglected to explain is the state has broken out its work in contracts. So contract one was a pre-release work in the fall of this year where they had done stormwater work in College Street. Contract two was this more recent work that we're putting out the bid, a design that we're putting out the bid that came back in and bids were favorable and is under review for potential award. And that was for between College and King. Contract three is between King and Maple and that is yet to be out to bid but actually they were trying to schedule to have it released today. Unfortunately, I had some property rights challenges that got in the way of that happening so next week they'll be putting that out to bid as well. So we should see in short order, contract two beginning, contract three quickly ready to be released in fall right behind contract two and then contract four which is currently under design is the relocation of LaValley Lane in the development of passenger rail overnight in the rail yard. Since the passenger rail overnight is adjacent to LaValley Lane which is by the way on V-Trans property and we have easements to act for access to the wastewater treatment plant, it will need to be relocated further west and encroach on the city parcel that is the main wastewater treatment plant. And you can see here this is a drawing of a proposed design and it has I guess the utilities that need to be relocated and we need to secure all property rights both to issue easement rights to V-Trans but also to maybe reduce the easement rights that we have in the rail yard parcel itself. And to get you a little bit of bearing here's Maple Street, here's the wastewater treatment plant driveway, here's the box culvert for high flow. This is a dry flow system here and in this area outside the drawing is the rail yard building itself. There is a gate, I don't know exactly where it lands in here I think it's probably really here that is not of city interest but is VRS interest for their operations. So one of the things that we identified that's relevant to the commission is the fact that we on the valley lane strangely have a tour bus parking on the valley lane. In discussions with the city attorney's office which we thought was kind of strange how this got approved but is we don't have the authority to actually adopt any sort of parking restrictions on a private parcel. So it effectively shouldn't have ever been adopted but we also are trying to limit the cross section of this street because of high cost of construction and sorrow remediation. And so we are proposing that that has to be displaced to somewhere else that's yet to be identified but we are seeking to find solutions to that issue for tour bus operators. The second piece is again, obviously this proposed impacts on the main waste farm treatment plant and that's certainly why Martin is here to answer any specific technical questions related to the treatment plant. Part of we're looking at on this encroachment on the treatment plan is what consequence does it have with zoning? Is there proximity to these pole relocations that could potentially be a issue or a problem with the treatment plant and proximity to tanks? The structural stability of all these important high-risk structures of failure? And I don't know, Chairman, is there anything else I've missed that we discussed in the past that? No, this is good. The future, the two actions commissionally to take is to remove the tour bus parking and to help support future expansion of the wastewater treatment plant and tertiary treatment and that will be a tight fit and we're making things a little tighter here but we're working with our friends at parks to look at expanding to the north into Perkins Pier for our future tertiary treatment needs. Yeah, and the bike path itself will be relocated through Perkins Pier and not through this segment that's being redeveloped. There'll be a longer term solution to the bike path in this area that parks is doing a master planning for Perkins itself. And so this is the slide that upcoming commissioners need to consider for future determinations. Happy to answer any questions. And then there's the product timeline. This is where we land within the product timeline. So you can see this is a, we're in the process of bidding college and King which is contract three. We are in the process of designing the valley lane early stages of that. And then once the design is complete, we'll bid it but you can see the endpoint to this is we need to get this done by December of this year. It's a lot, it's aggressive but if we really want pass and rail we gotta make it work. And so we're trying to make it work. Great, thank you. And welcome to director white from the parks department as well. Thank you for joining us. That I will open up to commissioner discussion. Let's start with commissioner Archambault. We pass on commissioner Archambault for now, commissioner Barr. It's great presentation. It's good information. I've tried to follow it up to this point anyway. And I think it's high time that we have RIP. So it's exciting. Thanks. D, thank you. Commissioner Bose. I echo that. I don't have any questions. I'm just excited to see it moving. The timeline certainly does look aggressive but that's great. Indeed. Commissioner Gilman. And nothing for me. Thank you for the heads up in terms of the decisions we've got to make. And, you know, I think it all makes sense. So appreciate it. Very clear. Thank you. Vice chair on the other side. Yeah, no, this looks great. And with that aggressive timeline. Do you foresee any obstacles to make it to that timeline? What other support are you looking for, you know, throughout the city to kind of help make this a real reality? I think we've had tremendous support from the city attorney's office and the administration. So I think we're, we're good. I think that obviously there's, we're trying to figure out what the end balance costs will be and how we're going to make that work within the limits of what we have for funding. And we're working very closely with the V-trans to get to a resolution on that. So I think we're making good progress. I think it's worth noting and important to understand is that this LaValle lane needs to be relocated first before they can do their work in the rail yard itself because we need to maintain access to the wastewater treatment plan. Obviously VRS needs to have access to their building. So we're going to work hard to make that happen. Sorry, when will that come in front of us for a decision? Is that, you know, in the next couple of months you're thinking? I'd say probably in the next month. Okay, great. Agreed. All right, thanks folks, this is great. Thank you. Commissioner Overby. I think I've sort of still, you know, sort of, wow, this is incredible. We're really finally seeing it happen after all the discussion about where is the train going to overnight? It sounds like things are happening. And my only, two questions would be with regard to the water treatment plant and to the Perkins Pier future development things. The water treatment plant, are there any issues about, I don't know what kind of, do you have any large vehicles that are going to have challenges getting in and out? I don't know if there's any of that that has to happen. Is this seems like it's going to work for you? So we did ask or demand the consultant to take a look at our class of vehicles that normally enter the facility and putting turning templates on it determines that whatever design we have needs to fit that. So we're very careful about that. One of the things that we dropped out of the design was to remove some curb on the east side to make sure there was space and also to save some cost. Yeah, good question. Yeah, we do get a lot, you know, daily truck traffic and so turning radiuses are important thing that are being considered. Are there like semis, like 55 foot things? Yes. Chemicals and things, yeah, yeah. Well, as long as you're good with that, you know, that was my first thought. And I know there was a meeting last night, I think on future expansion of the Perkins Pier boat facilities. And I just heard the mention of some maybe use of in the future wastewater treatment using a portion of that Perkins Pier. How are you? I don't know, I don't want you to do the whole summary of what you did last night, but how's this feeling for you, for Parks Department and use of Perkins Pier public space? Yeah, so it all works together. There's actually, I'm not exactly sure what the year on it, but the land, there's an agreement when the city took over that land that it would be basically shared with wastewater and that if there was ever a, you know, if the balances were the same, wastewater had the priority. So that's something we're taking into consideration as we look at Perkins Pier and the future of it. I wouldn't say it's an expansion of Perkins Pier, but more kind of a renovation, sort of that needs to be polished up a bit, shall we say. But one of the things when it's very clear in our meetings so far is how much the community loves and appreciates Perkins Pier. So that green area that floods all the time, is that what we're talking about, what might be used for the wastewater treatment expansion? We've seen, we were shown, I think about four or five different potentials, future expansions of the wastewater plant. I think many are, you know, years down the line. And so we're, you know, kind of looking at all of them for determining, you know, where do we put our building? You know, if we redo the linemen building someday, we would wanna make sure something like that goes in a place that wouldn't inhibit the need for the expansion of the wastewater treatment plant down the line. And maybe some of the wastewater treatment facility could be sort of undergrounded and you still could have an over, you know, some sort of park structure that people could, you know, picnic on top of or something. I mean, I think the design, yeah, I mean, just so that we don't lose that, obviously it's lost in the spring when it's flooded, but you know, but it does get a lot of use. So I think that was, those are my questions about this. Thanks. I'm excited to see it happening. It sounds like it won't be till January 1st or afterwards when we start seeing trains showing up, is that correct? That is correct. All right, thank you. All right, thank you. Question, this is not new, but while we're on the topic, is it unique or how unique is it to have rail in such close proximity to critical water infrastructure in the sort of corollary related piece of that? I'm wondering if there are sort of best practices from safety and security perspectives from other communities that may have unique situations like this? Yeah, I mean, so it's not water treatment. So we know security is not as high in our minds as our drinking water plant, but we do have design considerations where as the road that's closer to tanks and as it goes over large pipes, it currently does, the road already does over large pipes, but as it moves, we're looking at ensuring the structural integrity of the existing infrastructure will be okay. And if we're close within a certain distance of tanks, we're gonna have protective barrier or something like fencing that's designed to withhold crashes. And so that sort of review is already taking place. Glad to hear it, thank you. Oh yeah, that's all I have at the moment. Thank you all for the update here. We're looking forward to the anticipated great progress. I will see if I can catch Commissioner Archambault and then we'll circle it to Director Spencer. Anything on your end, Commissioner Archambault? No, I'm all set. I apologize for that, it's time for the kiddo. No worries, Director Spencer. Thanks, I do just wanna wrap up by saying the partnership's been incredible. The fact that Parks and DPW have been working together on this in good fashion and that Parks is factoring in our wastewater treatment plan expansion needs in their Perkins Pier master planning process. It's a really good partnership. And I just need to thank Susan Molzen who I originally forgot to introduce who has agreed to take this project on as our project lead. And given the timeline that you've heard about today, that's a significant commitment that she's made in the Technical Services Division. And I can't be more appreciative given that the state is pushing us every day to be a partner in getting them to getting this train able to run in early 2020. Okay, thank you for that. With that, I'll look to public comment if we have anyone interested. Mr. Golding, could you check in for us on any public participants? Okay, at this time there's nobody signed up for public comment. All right, thank you. With that, I will close out item seven. Thank you so much for the presentation and discussion here. Thank you. Moving forward, item eight, Rail Yard Enterprise Projects. Thank you. You'll see a lot of team tech services tonight. Clearly they have been working through a myriad of complicated issues and this is yet another. This is a project that we've successfully brought through scoping and are about to start the preliminary engineering phase. Given that the preliminary engineering phase really starts getting at developing alignments and entering permitting process and starting the preliminary engineering phase, we wanted the commission to at least be aware of that work as this project's gonna enter a much more public phase as we try to navigate a host of resource, environmental, historic, financial resource challenges to snake through a connection from pine to battery for all modes. So we've invited city engineer, Norm Baldwin, senior engineer, Susan Mulsen to give a very quick overview and then to answer any questions for you all as we seek to start preliminary engineering in July of this year. Thank you. Hi, thank you. So I can give you our quick project update. As Chapin said, we are advancing into preliminary engineering for the Rail Yard Enterprise Project. This is building off of years of scoping studies conducted by CCRPC in collaboration with the city and ETRANS as well as a steering committee of various stakeholders. So our next steps in this project, hopefully this spring will be bringing forward to city council a cooperative agreement which will set out the financial arrangements between the city and the state for accepting the federal and state grant funds for this project will receive 80% of the funds from federal grants, 10% from state and 10% match from local which is a very favorable grant arrangement for us. We then hope to this summer have a consultant on board to begin the preliminary engineering and permitting process. Part of this will be the Federal National Environmental Policy Act or NEPA permitting process which involves looking at a range of environmental factors as well as alternatives to address a comment we received from commissioner Overby. We do anticipate moving forward with three alternatives that were the preferred alternatives coming out of the scoping study conducted by CCRPC. So those include some grid connections from Pine Street to Battery through partially the 339 Pine Street property as well as a more direct connection near Kilburn but this is a federal process really orchestrated by federal highway. So there may be additional alternatives that will be considered as we work through this process we'll get more guidance from federal highway on advancing through that but through that process will be a lot of public engagement and I'm sure we will return back for your support or seeking some input as we look at various alternatives for this project. We're expecting this permitting and preliminary engineering process to take about three to five years and then hopefully construction after that. Okay, thank you. Anything else? Is it in an air ball when you jump in? Yeah, so I would just add that the state has been very helpful and cooperative to really support us in this project and understand the importance of this to the community in providing funds to advance this project. And they're also open to early conversations prior to a cooperative agreement to be able to get certain pieces in place so that when July one arrives where the funding is there that we could kick this off and make it happen sooner than later. So there's an urgency both from the city and the state to get this project going we wanna get this underway as soon as possible. So. Thank you. Bringing it to commissioner discussion at this point. Let's start the middle there. Commissioner Gilman, check us out there. Yeah, thanks for, obviously this is a big project. Obviously, it's very exciting to be thinking about a better way to connect battery to Pine Street not through neighborhoods in a residential neighborhoods. So thanks for the preview of the process and sort of the timeline. Helpful to have that context as we start to hear about projects that are in topics and subjects that are linked to it. So thank you. Thank you. Vice chair on your welcome. No, nothing for me. This is a great multimodal project. Thanks for the update. Thank you. Commissioner Overby. I had as a courtesy communicated earlier as Susan Wilson pointed out on the which of the alternatives for making those connections are being evaluated. And it looked like there were three, the one B, the two and the five B and I sort of pulled those out from the phase two document, a scoping document. Are you saying that maybe they will go back and look at the other ones that were not those three potentially as well? Yes, we do anticipate they may bring back other alternatives as well as there's always a no-build alternative is also considered. Yeah, I'm assuming that as well. But I know people have asked me and particularly some of the people that are watching the Champlain Parkway and trying to get the traffic out of that part of the South End neighborhood. So I wanted to have the diagrams that show them the potential options that people have been looking at. So right now, would those three be good ones to say or possibilities? Or should they go back and look at the first scoping document because those were variations of all of that as well. I mean, I'm just asking you so that it's helpful to me to be able to communicate with people that ask me about this. Because I keep saying it's a very important part of the process of getting traffic off that backup when it butts up at Pine Street hitting Maple. So I would just share that federal highways they actually the one that's gonna determine the process we are following their process. So we can't dictate or know what they would predictably know what they would demand or require of the process completely. So I do actually have those images that alternatives pulled up if you want me to share them. Okay, well, and I had sent, I think I didn't include you, but I sent the three that were the ones that were the recommended ones from last fall. So those may be other ones. Yes, that would be great. And then if they can, yeah, just so that I can share whatever it is that seems to be the possible way. So people can start visualizing what we're talking about here. Sure. That would be handy. Here we go. You wanna see that? Yes. Unfortunately, it's really kind of a, in the document, it's very condensed to fit the sheet. So I don't know if people can see it and see it well, but... Are those the ones that I sent the document of? They don't quite look the same. Oh yeah, they do, they do. There's actually larger versions of that in the second scoping document, which I sent an email to, I think, Chape, and did I include you in that? I can try to zoom it. Yes, yes, you did. And as you point out... There's a whole page of those exact same things. So that might be better to be using that as a document, but... Great, we're happy to get this out. And part of the reason we wanted to meet with you today is just really to reconnect. It's been several months, many months, since we've talked about this project. It's now entering a new phase, as Norm, City Engineer Baldwin pointed out, because of V-Trans as in federal highway support to move to preliminary engineering, this really is a much different and more serious phase of the project where we'll sign a cooperative agreement and move into NEPA. And these alternatives can shift and change. New alternatives can get brought in. It is federal's, the Fed's process. We will be advocating for alternatives that really minimize impacts to properties and resources and also stay within the city's fiscal constraints. The state has said they'll contribute about up to $18 million for this project. Frost estimates for the 1B, which is the most minimal option, are coming in at 18 to 22 million. So some of the other alternatives with the grid streets in light blue are options that will be a financial stretch for the city. Yep. All right, I think it sounds like the documents that I've sent are probably a good place to start, even though they don't look exactly like these. I know I couldn't make these big enough to be really helpful. So that was my question about what we're looking at, and the timeline's five years, and we just, so people can visualize where things are going. And it sounds like what you're saying is it's now more open than it was. It wasn't like those first two scoping processes really actually narrowed it down. It got opened back up again after that, has become now that we're dealing with more federal money. Is that correct? Yes, if we were to build this with local money or local and state money only, we could decide what is best for the local community and proceed accordingly with the 80% federal dollars we need to participate in there. Got it. Thank you. And that explains why it's wide open again and the work that was done is useful, but maybe not controlling. Precisely. It is very useful in expediting the NEPA process, but it is not controlling. Okay, great. Thank you. That answers my questions. Thank you. Commissioner Archambault. Yeah, and I want to say, I think Commissioner Gilman said it well earlier. I think this is all great. I appreciate Susan and your taking this up and charging ahead with this. And to me, I think this is a game changer, especially that funding that just occurred. It's huge. So it makes this Champlain Parkway fiasco a lot more palatable for many, many reasons. And I applaud your efforts with this rail yard enterprise project. It's a long time coming. It's nice to see it coming along. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Barr. I agree with all the comments and a multimodal project like this as complex as it is. I'm surprised that I see everybody not breaking down here. This is great. I really appreciate all the work that you guys are putting into this. All right. Thank you. I think that's our one. I don't have anything further on my end. I appreciate the update. Let's do our diligence here and see if there's anyone from the public who wishes to speak on this item. We do have one member of the public signed up. Jonathan, I'll be promoting you over in just a minute. All right. Can you hear me? Yes. Should I start? Please. Okay. My name's Jonathan Eddy. I've been co-owner of Waterfront Diving Center for 32 years. And as many of you may know, we're on the corner of Battery and Maple Street, which is directly impacted by this project. I know this is probably way premature given where things stand at the moment, but I never want to give up an opportunity to express my desires for the project. To a certain degree, wearing two hats here. One is that as owner of Waterfront Diving Center, I'm greatly concerned about losing all of my parking and my loading dock. And virtually my ability to do business in the 214 Battery Street location, if the road comes directly adjacent to our building, which I don't own by the way, Jacob Albee owns 214 and 216 Battery Next Door. And he may have other comments as this process moves forward. But in any event, that's my major concern. One of the stated reasons for this project is enhanced economic development. Unfortunately for me, this project, if I do lose all of my parking and the ability to utilize our loading dock will be a great detriment to the economics of my business. The other hat I'm kind of wearing here also is that for a number of years, I've been a board member of the King Street Neighborhood Revitalization Corporation. For those of you that aren't familiar with it, it's an organization which has been very active in supporting affordable housing in the King Street neighborhood. So my two positions here kind of diametrically oppose, but I do wanna say that I think this project is correct. I think that's right. I think all that traffic should come off of the King Street neighborhood and come down to Battery Street. I do believe that. And again, just from a selfish point of view, as a business owner, I would love to see some accommodation or discussion about ways that we are able to keep our businesses economically viable when this road comes to fruition. Thanks very much for your time. I know it's late. Thank you, Mr. Eddie. Chair Hogan, there's nobody else signed up at this time. All right, thank you for that. Thanks for building. Hold on, am I on? Yes, I am. I've been texting with Jacob Albee, who is a property owner, who said he had trouble getting on the phone. So I'm trying to give him some time. So maybe after you've gone through the director's report and the approval of the minutes, we could check in to see if he's been able to jump on and provide the commission some comment. Chapin, it looks like Jacob is on now. So if it's all right with the chair, I'll promote Jacob over. If you're listening, Jacob, you should have the opportunity to talk. Can everyone hear me? Yes, we can, welcome. Oh, wonderful. Thank you so much. Thanks for sorting that out. And I know Jonathan was able to get through and I was calling to voice the same concerns, but I've been in touch with Chapin and Norm through this and I'm looking forward to seeing how it goes that I have the same concern, which is as we get into the beginning of this alignment, especially conversation as the summer progresses. I know this is premature, as Jonathan said, but having the sidewalk be on the west side of the street, there's never gonna be a building or at least not for the foreseeable future anywhere along the west side of the street there. It's just gonna be a railroad yard, an offense against the railroad yard. So having the pedestrian and bike traffic go in between the cars and the trains, I think will be a pretty unpleasant experience for the users of that path, but it also not have, there isn't room for anything extra in this, as everyone knows who's looked at it, having the sidewalk on the east side on the side where my buildings are means that the experience of whatever tenants are in those buildings and the use of those buildings and certainly accommodating things like parking and the loading dock operations that are essential for Jonathan's business, it would give us a whole lot more space and a lot more, it'd be a far more functional piece of property and a far more valuable piece of property about a sidewalk in front of it and some space and not cars going 40 miles an hour, three feet away. So that I just wanna keep that conversation on the forefront because it really is as somebody intimately affected by this project that I do see as something moving the city forward and I'm excited to be a part of it, but that's a real major sticking point for me, but thank you all very much. Thank you for the input, Mr. Howard. Director Spencer. Yes, I do wanna acknowledge that the property owners have been great and engaged through this process. I think Jonathan and Jacob have raised those issues that they've raised tonight and will continue to do so and we have been documenting those and making sure that they're part of the upcoming process. Make no mistake, there is no public right of way between pine and battery. So creating space for a roadway is trying to create space where there is none currently. So there will be impacts. If we move to the west, there will be impacts to the rail yard. If we move to the east, there will be impacts to private property. And so that is why as they've referred that we're trying to sneak in and skinny this road through because every foot is a foot onto an existing parcel. So thank you for the private property owners who've been here tonight and we will continue to communicate as we move forward. Thank you for that. All right, any other parting thoughts from my fellow commissioners here? All right, again, we are not seeking any action on this item tonight. We do very much appreciate the discussion and the preview of the very interesting, challenging issues to come. Thank you all. All right, we'll close out item eight and move forward to item nine, approval of draft minutes from our February meeting. A motion to accept the minutes. And the motion for Commissioner Barr. Second. Seconded from Commissioner Archambault. Is there any discussion around that motion? So you have Commissioner Overby with your hand. There are just two sentences that I think I need to remove that were attributed to me that don't compare, that really shouldn't be in there. They don't add anything and they're not really accurate. So on the second page, and I tried to do this, but we're just deleting them. On the second page, about in the middle, it says, Commissioner Overby stated that there is a person present at the site. That paragraph can be just deleted because that's not accurate about the way the conning works. And it's wasn't worth trying to reword it. Does that make sense? You got that marked down, somebody who ever has taken notes? Yeah, I've got it done. Okay, and then the other, there's another sentence that wasn't accurate either and there's no point in trying to correct it either. I crossed it out here and now I'm trying to find it. It is on the very last page, the top. It says, it has to do with the two-hour parking on Elmwood. It says, remove the sentence. She stated that lower income should not have to pay so much for the ticket. That wasn't what I said. So that one sentence can be removed. The person who talked to me about it had that concern, but I wasn't making that recommendation. So just that sentence would be removed. Last page, the second sentence on that page. Got that? We've got that down. That's all it is. Yeah, then everything else is fine for me, thanks. And I accept that friendly amendment. I'll call it friendly. Thank you. Is that friendly to the seconder as well, Commissioner Archambault? Go ahead there. Okay, thank you. So we have a motion on the table that's been seconded. Is there any other discussion around the motion? A friendly revised motion. All right, so that will go to a vote. Start at the top, Commissioner Archambault. Aye. All right, Commissioner Barr. Aye. Commissioner Bose. Aye. Commissioner Gilman. Aye. Vice-Chair O'Neill-Valaco. Aye. Commissioner Overby. Aye. Aye for myself, the minutes passed. Thank you. Item 10, Director's Report. All right, thank you. Just to touch on a couple of the really big points that we haven't discussed tonight in the Director's Report, the Shelvern Street Roundabout is out to bid. Construction will start this summer. So thanks for all of your help along the way. We're excited for that. And appreciative of everybody's patience as we start putting shovels in the ground. It is a state project, but we are active participants in that. I wish Engineer Martin Lee was still here as he is starting an upgrade to all three wastewater treatment plants out of the 2018 process challenges that we had at the plants. And the voter approval of the Clean Water Resiliency Plan, we're doing computer and disinfection system upgrades at all three plants. And it is going smoothly. Kudos to the team for working through that. I do want to say on a bit of a bittersweet note that Norm and team was successful in working with Parks, again, another cross-departmental partnership, to really create a home for municipal buildings. The responsibility for them has always been split and fractured within the city. Parks has taken on the role of managing central facilities as of a reorg pass through city council last week. And with that, unfortunately, Martha Keenan of our shop has moved to the Clerk Treasurer's Office and Kim Bleakley is moving over into Parks as a facility manager. So we're sad to lose two amazing folks at DPW, but glad they're staying within the city. And just lastly, that the Burlington High School seems to be going well. It's, as folks know, who have kids. Half the student population showing up each day. But traffic and parking seem to be going well. And we're monitoring it and we'll make any adjustments needed. Thanks to the commission's help in changing the parking config on street. Norm, senior, city engineer Baldwin, anything to add? I just would add that Martha is being assigned to as a special projects coordinator working with the CAO, but she is very appreciative in the fact that she's going to remain in that those duties supporting the position until such time as we have the position filled. And we'll help that person, whoever that person is in filling the position in that transition that position has been posted. I think it closes like early April. So we are aggressively working to recruit that position and I've been working with HR to do that. So it's an important position. Today we actually had a kickoff for asset management and Martha has played a significant role in that. And I would want to make sure, and I think she shares in this that there's continuity and knowledge that she's applied to that work. That's it. Great, thank you for that. All right, with that we'll move forward to commissioner communications. Let's start with commissioner Archambault. I have none, thank you. Thank you, all right, commissioner Barr. I also have none, thank you. Commissioner Bose. And from me. All right, commissioner Gilman. Nothing here. Right, Vice Chair O'Neill-Vavaco. I almost have nothing. I just want to say thanks to the public work staff really for staying healthy all winter and helping us kind of get hopefully to the other side of this. And I love, loved seeing the new sidewalk plows this winter. That's all. So did we. Commissioner Overby. I just have one question. I was watching a meeting and I heard one of the city counselors say that there was no appeal process with decisions now with the new inspections in permitting department. And I separately offline tried to ask about that and there wasn't clarity. And so I wanted to know whether or not in the reorganization, I explained how we had done all these appeals for permitting concerns and code enforcement. So I just wanted to get some clarification. Did anything get changed with the appeal process and that we're used to for inspections and trade permits and inspections and code enforcement with the reorganization for inspections and planning? I can answer if you'd like. Yeah, noise. So as far as I'm concerned, nothing has changed. I'm not aware of any change occurring. Certainly bills running that operation. And I think I would know generally if that's true. So any appeal that comes forward, I think it's coming to this commission. I think it was somebody who was having some challenges with some sort of permit and they somehow communicated with this city counselor that they were frustrated. There was no appeal and that was it. And this counselor, so I was trying to nip it in the bud and I didn't read the new. So you've answered the question and I will reply back that this is clarified. There is a timeframe for people to appeal things and the question is, did that person provide a timely appeal to the department? Yeah, and I think that they just need to be, my thought is that there just needs to be, again, reminder of people. And if the city counselor had this question because of somebody approaching them, I wanna make sure that that information gets back and then it gets out to, it doesn't get perpetuated if there was no appeal, that's inaccurate information. I can share with you that in previous communications documents that we provide to the public, applications, permits, so on and so forth, it's spelled out on the permit that they have a process of appeal and where to find that appeal within the Burlington Code of Ordinances. So I don't think permitting inspection has changed those forms and I don't believe that the ordinance has changed. So I doubt what is being said. I doubted it as well. So I will get back to them. Thank you. Yep. That's my only question. Thank you. Commissioner Archambault, anything? Intimately about it. Yeah, I wanted to echo, no, I'm on the permit reform committee and have them for some time. And although it's been inactive, at least from a committee standpoint and also overseeing, we've not seen or heard of any change to that process. So kind of like Norm has just said, there's no changes. In fact, I think if I'm not mistaken, charter mandates that there would be some sort of appeal process. So if someone is saying that there's no appeal process, it's simply not true. And I can't speak to the specifics of this case, but I still believe this commission would overhear some appeals depending on what they might be, kind of like we did previously. We haven't seen one in a while, which is nice, but we still would have what domain over that. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. So as he leaves me, I will mention, briefly a couple of people have alerted me that they received a suspicious looking email with a sender by my name. And I did not send said email. And thankfully our burdens and email system flagged those messages as coming from external addresses, which was a warning flag right there. And I don't think there's been any like real security breach or cause for alarm, but I mentioned this as a reminder to all of us to be diligent about our electronic communications. And if something looks suspicious or in error, treat it as such and verify with phone call or some other method if the message is indeed a true thing, there's no need to be clicking on things that look suspicious. Please be alert to all that. Aside from that, I'll thank Team DPW again for all of the work and exciting updates and discussion today. We covered the gamut as well. Right, if the facets of the work that you all are pursuing. So thank you for the hard work and we're looking forward to continued progress and all of it. All right, close out commissioner communications and move forward to item 12, adjournment and next meeting date, April 21. I'll move to adjourn. All right. Thank you. The motion commissioner Archambault, seconded commissioner Barr, very good. Is there any discussion around that motion? We will go to a vote then. All in favor, if you say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye for myself. Any opposed? All right, thank you very much. We are adjourned at 9-11. We'll see you all April 21. Thanks everybody. Happy Spring. Yeah, amazing.