 Hi I'm Cindy Cook. I'm a resident of East Avenue. I'm here today with a couple of neighbors who share concerns about safety both of the sidewalks and the street. Serral flash also off of East Avenue, East Village Drive. Major concerns about safety again as Cindy said for both the sidewalk and the roadway. I'm Dave Colley. I live around the corner on Nash Place but part of this neighborhood. I've worked out a few of the traffic studies that have been done in the neighborhood. I'm also an avid bicyclist so I use this area quite often and like Cindy and Serral I've been concerned about the level of traffic, safety and access for pedestrians. So the residents of East Avenue have a few significant concerns about safety here. It's a very tight knit community, a lot of traffic both through cars, bicycles and pedestrians and we see people tripping and falling on the sidewalk because of heaving of the sidewalk on a daily basis. There's significant bonding and then the ponds freeze over so that it's just not safe to walk on the sidewalks. Take a look at where you're standing. Yeah so I don't know if you can zoom in on that. That's a minor compared to a lot of the tripping fall. This goes for Dave and I counted several sections of roughly 20 squares in each that needed to be replaced between here and Carrigan Drive. And of course we need good sidewalks just to keep people safe and to encourage a bike path traffic. So turning to the roadway this roadway is a major arterial as is the sidewalk and we very much want the traffic to be calmed and to slow down but we also want to make sure the work that's done now doesn't include future work. We'd also like to see some consideration for what happens at the cross between University Road across East Avenue where all the medical students or medical employees go to get up to the Medical Center. Lots and lots of evil park down there by the Centennial Field and they have to cross that crossing area and it's inadequate for that level of traffic. The city and sidewalks, the city over the last few years have been trying to get out more with their sidewalk improvement programs and they've done a lot around the city. In fact they've done some on this street as well. But they also came up with the methodology by which they evaluate streets and you know on this street and all streets they take a look at all these different characteristics of the sidewalk. Are they bowing? Do they have gaps? Are they broken? Is ponding taking place? And they take a look at that and also the amount of traffic that goes on the street, pedestrians using those sidewalks. And from that they come up with a score and so those scores, the highest scores, are where they focus their activities. One of the things we did, we found out that this street got a lower score in this most recent ranking. We're not quite sure why that is because we did our own survey of the street and we found over 18 areas that meet the criteria. So that's something we're trying to get through with the department is to figure out how they can get out here to make some of those improvements. So my name's Sarah Flash. I a number of years ago petitioned or took a survey to every house on East Avenue asking them their thoughts on traffic comment. And we had very close essentially 100% agreement. Everybody that I was able to talk to here, which is probably about 97% of every structure on East Avenue, they all were comfortable and interested in traffic comment. So for people that aren't aware, there is a lot of foot traffic on this street starting at the south end. There's the Centennial Court area, which is UVM staff. There's UVM library, police services on the west side of the street. UVM has housing for its nurses. On the east side, we've got Bronte Co housing, a good number of people, but the Centennial Court for UVM staff, I'm guessing at least over 100 people. You've got about 100 people at a little bit less at Co housing. As you go further north on the street, there's this major crosswalk ability that goes up to the medical center. And as Cindy referenced earlier, there's people coming up for parking down by Centennial ball field. So there's a lot of pedestrian traffic for the medical center and the university number one. So yeah, there's a lot of interest for the people that live here on getting speed for the east avenue where it needs to be. The traffic speed is supposed to be 25 miles an hour. It's closer to 35 and 40 miles an hour. The police have agreed with that. They see it as DPW sees the traffic. Most people are comfortable going 33 miles an hour. I'm also an avid bicyclist, so I bicycle on the road regularly. It happens that if somebody gets hit and the speed is over 25 miles an hour, one's going to suffer major injuries. So there's lots of reasons for keeping it to 25 miles an hour or below. So when DPW came forward with their current plan, which is based on consultants that they hired, honestly, I'm quite excited about what they came up with. Something called chicanes. It may be that Cindy and I and Dave have minor differences on strategy. I think, honestly, I'm close to 100% in agreement with everything that Cindy has said and pointed out. I have, honestly, strategy-wise, a little bit less concern about how DPW has interfaced with the community. I feel like they listen. They work hard to listen most all the time. So I'm personally ready to jump on with what they proposed months ago. And I understand that removing parking about 17 spaces would be a concern for some people. I've actually had people approach me on Villadou where they actually want parking removed because the line of sight issue that's anybody turning south when coming out of Villadou or East Village Drive, it's very hard to see with the cars are whizzing by so quickly. The advantage of the chicanes where they, it's kind of a zigzag where cars will no longer be going straight, but they get turned into the site to where they're currently is parking. It's supposed to reduce the speed by 69 miles an hour. That's the basis of my excitement because I know that from all the traffic studies and traffic experts, speed is the number one issue and we've got to reduce the speed. So I'm so grateful that DPW and their consultants recognize that and are willing to work on it. So personally, I'm very excited about the present plan. I'm honestly saddened that it's being slowed down by essentially the necessary neighborhood speaking up saying, hey, have you considered this? Have you considered that? So everything's at balance. I'm hoping that we can hop on to DPW in terms of listening to what the community wants and also moving forward with the plan that from what I can see, the consultants did a great job in analyzing the situation and coming up with a remedy to deal with a major traffic issue here, which is the speed on the street. I want to come across as too critical of DPW because I know they have a very difficult job to do and there are a lot of limited resources and there's a lot to do. They did want to work and want to be addressed with the experience and the understanding of the area that we residents have to bring to them and want to express appreciation for DPW for installing a rapid flashing signal there at the top of the board. It's very, very heavily used. It's a major crossing for people going up to the university in about the center and I'm out here in my front yard on the lawn. It's very important to see the flashing light going and to my mind it's more efficient than a stop sign because traffic doesn't have to stop. There's not enough pedestrian there and pedestrians can basically have the right over. They can get across the street rapidly rather than have to wait for the light. So DPW is doing, I know they're doing a lot with limited resources.