 Design plans, the design plans are necessary to identify what property rights, both temporary and permanent, are required to construct the project. In identifying these rights, the Vermont Agency of Transportation has agreed to take the lead in attempting to secure these property rights by option agreement with affected property owners. At previous necessity hearings, many years back, the city and the state of Vermont acquired property rights from 58 parcels. At the start of this recent process, we had 50 parcels. As of last week, the Vermont Agency of Transportation reported that there were 12 of the 50 requiring a formalized necessity process, which is great progress. The Vermont Agency of Transportation has made progress requiring these rights and a number of property owners have executed agreements. But given the rate of progress in acquiring these rights has slowed and for the project to remain on schedule, the city must secure the remaining balance of rights through the process of necessity. As a city engineer, I am providing you written comments in support of the finding that the taking of these remaining rights for the construction of the parkway is necessary for the greater public good. In addition, I want to add some, I guess, verbal comments to support the written document you received. The purpose of the project is to improve access from the vicinity of the interchange of 189 and US 7 to the Burlington City Center and the downtown waterfront itself. To improve circulation, to alleviate capacity over burdens, to improve safety on local streets and project area, and provide traffic relief in the southwestern quadrant of the city. The history of this project shows that the city, V-Trans, and Federal Highway have been carefully studying placement impacts for many years and concluded that the current right-of-way is the best. It describes them south to north, basically the plan, the written documentation provided you described the project from south to north by contract, contract one, two, and six. The map that you see is around you and also introduced is all the right-of-way interest needed. The major components of the project include signalized control at major intersections, exclusive pedestrian phasing, emergency services, vehicle preemption, and transit priority, improved street lighting, improved rail crossings, and the resurfacing of Pine Street. The construction of a new shared use path along the project corridor from Shelburne Road to the intersection of Pine and Kilburn were transitions to a shared road facility. In addition, there are new stormwater infrastructure to improve drainage and reduce sediment loading to Lake Champlain. This concludes my verbal comments and the Champlain Parkway team is prepared to answer any questions you may have and encourage you to read more of my written comments. I will open it for questions. Thank you, Mr. Baldwin. It turns out that while the number two item on our agenda is the Champlain Parkway site visit, that the necessity hearing actually comes later. The city attorney was just going through that with me and so we're thinking that we should wait on that city attorney until... I think you could go ahead and have questions for Mr. Baldwin at this point and then come back to the, open the formal hearing where you're taking comments from the public. Okay, thank you. So questions from the council for Mr. Baldwin? Councillor Bushard. So one question I asked on the bus, but just for the record, I did ask if any of the property owners at the sites that we visited, whether they were temporary or permanent, takings, if any of the property owners had reached out and either offered a counter proposal or an explanation of why they were opposed in a formal way, not in just a dialogue. And could you just respond to that? So Public Works, the city of Burlington is not in direct communications with property owners unless they reach out to us directly. They're working with agents of the state of Vermont right away division. They are probably more intimate, familiar with those individual conversations, but I can't speak to that. I have actually a list, but I don't have a handy of a summary of what V-Trans has provided me. Right, so if V-Trans could then, when we take it up at the end, when it's on our agenda, if anyone could just speak to that, my understanding was that there wasn't really a clear understanding of, there might have been other reasons why these 12 properties haven't actually been resolved, and that's all I'd really want for the record. You know, there's a mixed array of why people have not signed, some of it because they simply are not local. Some of it because it may be they're hoping that they could get further consideration from a compensation, but compensation hearing is later. I'm not sure all the details of what motivates people to sign or not sign. Okay, thank you. Other councillors, other questions for Mr. Baldwin from the council? Councillor Jane. Thank you, President. So my question is mainly around the design, the design of the project, not the properties or anything. If you look at the design basically, I mean, from the 89, we're leaving only six blocks on Pine Street, if you count them. And then you come back again on Pine Street again through Flynn Lakeside, you know, and again six or the block or seven other blocks will be affected. And also we know that people in the city of Burlington who live in the New North end, it will take us at least 20 to 15 to 25 minutes to get to 89. In terms of the design, I was wondering why this could not be considered to have an attachment to Battery Park instead of again on Pine Street. How can this design can just be connected directly to Battery Park at least? Point of order. Councillor Shannon, what is your point of order? My understanding was that you just stated that this discussion was limited to the properties that are being acquired, not to the rest of the project. I was talking specifically about the necessity hearing and people speaking on that that the public would wait. Is there any reason City Attorney YA counselor cannot ask about the project or should we stick to the condemnation taking a property right now? That's up to you, Mr. President. Okay, I will go ahead and continue with your question, Councillor Jane. Thank you, President, and thank you, City Attorney. Yeah, so basically how do we want to make sure that this project will also help people who live in the New North end to be able to access 189 faster? I guess so what I would say is the project is designed with specific purpose and need in mind, and I'm not sure that was one of those purposes and needs tied to this project. It was intended to deal with a north-south circulator for the south end. There may be a residual effect of having this improved connection that could make it actually an improved level of service for travelers from New North end to the south end, but this is the corridor that's been picked and selected as the preferred alternative for various reasons that we can, I guess, later go into, but it is where we're at in this design. All set, Councillor Jane? Yes, thank you. Any other questions from the Councillor, Mr. Baldwin, in regard to this process taking a property to condemnate or anything to do with the site visit that we just had? Hearing none. Oh, Councillor Tracy, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Baldwin. So is your, is the majority of the square footage that's being sought for permanent to be taken permanently in order to facilitate the shared use path? There is permanent takings, but much of what we're requesting this evening is seven of them are, seven of the 12 properties are temporary easements alone. Purposes for construction, temporary for construction. There are permanent easements that, that tie to a shared use path. Correct. Development of a shared use path. Okay. Thank you. All right. Any seeing no other Councillor? We will conclude that presentation. Thank you, Mr. Baldwin. Appreciate that. And I think we will go ahead with the public forum. We are a little bit early on the public forum, but we will open that up now at 723. Then we'll come back to the consent agenda and then come back to the necessity agenda as is on the agenda. So open up the public forum and start with, and you have a, you'll have a time system in front of you. When the red light goes off, you are need to conclude your remarks. You have three minutes. There's a light that comes on before that tells you you're getting close. So we'll start off with Barbara Wagner to be followed by Kelly divine. Is Barbara Wagner here? Yes. That's what I said. I'm blaming that on Councilor Mason. He helped me with that one. My apologies. Welcome. I'll speak with about necessity for those who feel that it is not a necessity for their property to be intruded upon. So my only comment is that I feel the whole thing is unnecessary. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And anyone again, anyone that is speaking specifically to the necessity issue, we have a necessity hearing coming up. You should probably speak in general. If you want to speak in general about the Champlain Parkway. That would be fine or any other issue here in public form. But if you're speaking specifically about the necessity hearing, I would wait until that that's coming up in a few minutes. Kelly divine. Welcome. Thank you president right. I want to say generally about the Champlain Parkway project that on behalf of the 250 businesses that we represent very strong support for the project. There's been many opportunities both through larger public formats as well as direct meetings with DPW for feedback from that constituency. So we appreciate that. In addition, my organization along with AARP and local motion held an informational hearing for the public at Champlain Elementary about a year and a half ago to gather additional feedback there. So very supportive of the project. I won't speak to necessity. I mainly came to speak to the bank and Cherry Street redesign conceptual redesign project. We have submitted officially in writing commentary. That's part of the public record. Just a couple of concerns I'd like to bring to the council's attention. One is related to the inclusion of Parklets. Well, we aren't necessarily opposed to the idea of Parklets. We'd like to see them brought forward in a way where they are actively managed either by an abutting business or a larger public or private organization like the Cherry Street marketplace or potentially the future downtown improvement district. Think of Parklets will be a lot more successful if they have a specific entity that's responsible for their programming use and general cleaning and maintenance. The second thing is I've been in conversation with the folks from Hotel Vermont and the Marriott who have been actively involved in trying to come up with designs for that final block of Cherry Street like the council to consider their comments which have been submitted. I think that we have a really good operator there in town that's very interested in activating those sidewalks. The making them much more pedestrian friendly and adding more vitality to that end of the street. And I think that they could really make that kind of use successful and the more successful those uses are. I think it'll set a good example for the city and folks in general will want to do more of that kind of work. The final thing I'll add is that I think the Kerblis application on Bank Street was a really innovative approach and it allows for future flexibility. And then I would just be mindful that when we are near Church Street at those intersections we do have a lot of public seating and public amenity. And so I have spoken with Director Spencer about gauging some of those public amenities further away from Church Street because that's where we really need to bring the vitality to. So thank you. Thank you Ms. Divine. Bruce Huff is up next to be followed by Matthew Vaughan. Mr. Huff come on up. Welcome. I'm here tonight to Mr. Huff make sure you pull the microphone right in. Oh sorry. About the increase for the security alarm the home security alarm from thirty six dollars to sixty. And the police department says that their charges are due to time consuming paperwork. I haven't used it. I have an alarm system with the police department for six years and I've never used it. I'm going from thirty six dollars to sixty on a fixed income. And I'm wondering if maybe we can't they can't consider if I do make a call initiate the program. But if I don't maybe I won't have to pay sixty dollars when I can dial nine one one for free. All right. Thank you for your thank you for their input on that Mr. Huff. Thank you. Appreciate it. Matthew Vaughan to be followed by Sally Grossnickel. Good evening Mr. Vaughan. Welcome. Good evening. Thank you. So I am a resident of the old North End. I'm also representative for awards two and three on the plan BTV walk bike implementation committee. I'm here to talk about the bank and Cherry Street redesigns you'll be reviewing today. I'm here to urge you to not approve these plans and instead request that DPW develop plans that include protected or separate bike lanes. Currently they only allow for on-street parking and no protected or separate bike lanes. One of the primary goals of this design stated by DPW was to have walkable and bikeable streets for bank and Cherry Streets. This design does not achieve that goal. Anyone who's biked with a Shero that's what's in the design and that's when they paint on arrows on the street. Anyone who's biked on a street with that design knows that it does not feel safe. It feels like you're sitting in a car with sharks out there with cars. DPW has mentioned that it's in line with plan BTV walk bike as approved by city council. This is sort of a half truth. I was involved with the development of plan BTV walk bike and the way when it was developed the redevelopment of city center was not on the table. It was in its infancy. So we did not discuss the redevelopment of these streets. If it had been on the table I think we would have designed them differently and included these in the dense protected bike lane network. So I want you to ask yourself what is the purpose of a street? Is it to store cars that are not in use and parked on the street or is it to move people safely on bicycles and on cars throughout the city? I think it's the latter. Is that my time? I have a minute. Okay, great. So 15 feet is, I brought my tape measure but to save time. I think it's about from this end of the horseshoe to that end. Okay, and that is the amount of space that DPW has allowed for on street parking. 15 feet. That's for cars that are not in use, not moving people safely or efficiently. That is a huge amount of space that we could use for protected bike lanes. The public comments for this design were overwhelmingly in support of protected bike lanes instead of on street parking. I do not know why these comments were not taken into account for a redesign. Hotel Vermont, which is I think definitely one of the largest businesses on Cherry Street, submitted a very strong letter in support of protected bike lanes rather than on street parking. I urge you to take this advice and not approve the design as presented, but rather move to on street protected bike lanes. Councillor Tracy has some great ideas for compromises to move to protected bike lanes instead of on street parking. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Vaughn. Sally Grossnickel is up next to be followed by Diane Neary or Leary. Good evening, Miss Grossnickel. Welcome. Good evening. I'm here to speak about the community center, the Heineberg community and senior center. And if you would pull your, pull the microphone right in so we can all hear you. I'm here to speak about the Heineberg community senior center. I am an aging senior and I moved here five years ago to be close to my family. And I purchased a condo in the new north end and the Heineberg senior center has been instrumental in making new friendships and engaging in new and various activities. Burlington, the town of Burlington and the state supports aging in place for seniors, but that's only one of the components for aging in place and staying at home. At the time of our lives, friendships and social interactions keep us from being lonely and depressed. And at this time of our lives, many of the families are single parent families, so you don't have a spouse to talk to and to interact with. At the Heineberg community senior center, we can find new friends, renew old friendships, go to exercise classes geared to us, enjoy a meal, get a book from the library, attend numerous informational gatherings or join one of the many game groups that go on. And the one thing about this is that most of these activities are free or for a very nominal cost. Our special event meals gather as many as 100 of the seniors where they interact and can renew friendships. They enjoy each other's company and reminisce over events that are only important to us. We support each other during our lows and rejoice during our highs. We are a valuable asset to Burlington. We are out, we're on the go and we're active. We want to stay this way. We are not affiliated with senior housing or park and recreation. We are an independent nonprofit center. The Heineberg community senior center is a vital part of our senior community. And we greatly appreciate all of the support you have given us in the past. And we greatly urge you to continue that to support our efforts in making this a better place for Burlington seniors to live. My colleague has just given you one of the bulletins that we put out every month that goes to all the seniors who walk in. We also have this program on the internet and it goes to over 500 seniors. And anyone can sign up to get this. If you look on the back, you'll see many of our activities. You'll see the monthly things that are going on. We are an active and vital part of your community. And again, I urge you to support us again this year. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Grossnickel. Diane M. Leary. Welcome, Ms. Leary. Good evening. Thank you. I'd like to tell you just a little story about how the senior center has helped me. Several years ago, while walking my dog, I slipped and fell on the ice and broke a hip. Once they healed, my doctor recommended going to Tai Chi classes, which they have at the Heineberg Club. So I started going there and they not only have Tai Chi, they have strength and exercises. They have nutrition classes. And so I've found it to be a very social, very helpful, healthy living style. So I recommend that you keep funding that so that the seniors can keep walking around town and not fall on the ice. Great. Thank you. Altaira Bullard. Good evening. I'm Altaina Bullard. Good evening. I've been on Henry Street and I moved here about 14 years ago, leaving friends behind and knowing nobody except my family when I got here. I discovered the Heineberg Senior Center. I found that I could take the North Avenue bus and get there, but of course I do still drive. And I found I could play margeon and I have learned in a brand new game. Boy, it's not a pretty good game. It's challenging. I play bridge. I also go to the senior center tomorrow to have foot care and blood pressure taken. I find that the people there and the ladies and gentlemen there are beautiful. The lady that Beth that runs the place is doing a great job. It's just a wonderful place for me as a stranger coming into Burlington to meet people because I am a people person and I am very active and I wanted to keep active. And the senior center has been a big help. Thank you. Thank you. Jean call to be followed by Linda M air. Good evening and welcome. Hello, my name is Joan call. I'm here as part of the Heineberg Community Center Senior Center. And my story is that I came here last year. I moved from Pennsylvania, not knowing a soul up here except for my daughter that I live with. The first few months here were rather lonely. It was a summertime that seemed like everybody was on vacation around the lake or not around. So I finally discovered the Heineberg Community Center by doing volunteer work. And as I was doing volunteer work, I realized all the programs they had. And at the time I was having trouble with my balance. So I joined the boom builders program. And I now have much better balance. So that's one of the benefits of being part of that program. But I'm really impressed with the programs they offer. And there are so many programs that are free and open to anyone. Doesn't matter what your social status is what ratio are your financial status. It's open to anyone that wants to come over age 50. So I just think it's a great community effort for everyone. And if you could support it, we'd really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Call. Linda M. Eyre is up next. Good evening and welcome is there. Linda M. Eyre because there are three other Linda Ayres in the area. And I'm this one. I'm also greetings to all of you. I'm also the president of the board of directors at the Heineberg community and senior center. And this organization has been in the in the New North end for almost 80 years in some form. About 40 years ago it became designated as a senior center. And as you've heard from the previous speakers, it's a very vital part of seniors lives. They are the largest, the fastest growing demographic in this county and in this city, people who are seniors. And as you can see, it's a very valuable resource for all of us. I'm here tonight because we just received news. We are funding is mostly grant funding and contribution from the city of Burlington. I'm here to thank the city council and the city for their support, financial support to the center over the last probably 15 years. A significant portion of our budget is from funds from the city. We received news today that our significant grant, other grant from the United Way was denied to us. So we have a shortfall. What we've done over the last two years in particular is we have a 32 hour, we have two part time positions. We have a 32 hour executive director and we have a 25 hour support staff. And with Burlington's livable wage, which we pay, plus Medicare and Social Security, payroll alone is over $60,000. We have our $125 budget. We would be very grateful to the city council and the city as you're doing the going through the budget process. If you would consider again supporting us with the funds to continue the work that reaches out to the seniors in the Burlington community. I thank you very much for your time and please come and visit us. We have the newsletter. As you can see, we have over 25 different programs. We have between 40 and 50 attendees a day and close to 800 that come to our center over a period of a month. So we are a significant organization in this community. Thank you very much. Thank you, Ms. Air. Tony Reddington is up next to be followed by Frank Kochman. Good evening, Mr. Reddington. Good to see you again. Yes. Welcome. Tony Reddington, I live in Ward 2 on North Avenue. And first, I want to second all the comments that were made by Matt Vaughn regarding the lack of any modern accommodation of bicycles on Bank and Cherry Streets and add that the same sort of 50 year old design is also on the reconnects of Pine and St. Paul. And that does relate very directly to some comments I made to you earlier this evening on the Parkway because the city was and I can't cover all the issues of Parkway. I'm representing myself in the Pine Street Coalition. Earlier we put out a news release saying that there's really been no change in the design of the Parkway since the dive was cast for the last public hearing in December 2006, the year before the iPhone was invented. And the city response, as we understand it, is that, well, there's been some changes. Well, I would like to suggest that those changes are much like changing your lipstick or in my case changing my hairstyle. But the basic Parkway has not designed a wit since the completion of the Environmental Impact Statement in 2009. Now, I'd like to add an example of why that's the case because you're hearing a lot about walking and bicycling and making the city walkable bikeable. It's not really today. We know that those of us who live in downtown and try to move around on busy streets. But we do know this that the Walk Byte Council after six months of examination of the base design of the Parkway in 2014 issued a six to seven page critique. It pointed out that there were no adequate, safe, separate walking bike facilities in that project. And after the changing of lipstick or maybe a slightly different hairstyle, I support the Walk Byte Council submitted to this to this council and to the mayor, the fact that they endorse the redesigned guidelines of the Pine Street Coalition, which include separate, safe, walk and bike facilities. Councilor, as I said to you, the new North End has a wonderful, it's up to date, world-class design for separate walking bike facilities and converting roundabouts at ARP supports. But what have we got in the South End? When you get the nice design, Councilor Wright and the South End gets the shaft because there's no separate walk and bike facilities. You've got six new unsafe, signalized intersections that are sure going to increase injuries and specifically in the low-income area of, which is the second highest low-income area in the city, which is Maple Street, King Street neighborhood. We're going to take four-way stops, which are fairly safe and change them into high-speed signals. Leave it there. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Reddington. Mr. Cotchman, do you want to speak on the necessity hearing? That's going to be coming up right after this public hearing and we do the consent agenda. So it'll be coming up shortly. So I'll hold you for the next one. Cindy Hill is up next. Also for the necessity hearing. Okay. Judith Dillon, I think, is also for the necessity hearing. Tiki Arshambo. Good evening, Mr. Arshambo. Good evening. Not in the necessity meeting. Thank you. Thank you for your time. Just coming here tonight to shed a little insight to the recent hearings that we had on the Public Works Commission about the bank and Cherry Street design. We just heard that in the last week. So just so you know, I serve as chair in that commission. I'm not here to speak for the commission in that manner. I'm just here on my own regard. And just felt it important to give a little insight to our own deliberations to that design, which was rather interesting because it's clear the staff put in a lot of work to the design. And in a lot of it, I would say 90% is going to make this area a lot better. This most striking part I think was the vision of the city and the community in terms of the biking and the walkable nature did not seem to be reflected in that design. And so by the end of our deliberations, one commissioner made a motion to accept staff's recommendation and there was no second on that. So basically meaning there was not consensus at all on the design that was there. I think everybody, just my gut again, I think everyone felt it was only half baked, not ready to come out of the oven. Through some further deliberation, trying to find consensus, we agreed to throw in a recommendation for a, it's a partial bike lane on Cherry Street. And this is where we started tinkering with design and I, you know, I guess it comes down to opinion of that matter of how much we should contribute to design. I don't think that was the forum for that. But nonetheless, you could see how it was very divisive issue as far as the designs that came to us. And again, it's not a knock on staff because they clearly did a lot of work to it. But I think the plan in front of you is not ready for prime time. It is not. It's a five lane highway. If you look at the picture, both on bank and cherry. And a few of us felt the need for a bike lane. I felt this should go further. But nonetheless, two concerns mainly before my time is up. One is we have an underutilized parking garage down here that we've already just threw some capital money at to try to improve. We need more traffic essentially going into that garage is just not used as much right now. I don't know what the exact capacity is, but the more we can get traffic into there, the more we can get the revenue to help pay for that garage. Number two, you figure we have what $20 million or so we're throwing into these local streets and we don't have bike lanes on either cherry or bank, at least as far as the designs are concerned. So you'd think that with a community such as ours and even looking at the comments, you're pretty striking to see those not reflected in the design. So I just put that out there for your consideration and to give a little insight to what we faced. So thank you for your time. Thank you, Mr. Archibald. And thank you for your service on the commission. Karen Long is the final speaker tonight in the public forum. Good evening, Ms. Long. Welcome. I also went to the DPW meeting and I'm really happy that people looked at it that way. I was disappointed that there hasn't been time to even collate all the comments on the Great Streets proposal. The people that were presenting it from DPW just said they hadn't had a chance to really finalize the opinions of the public. So I think that's something we should look at. But I just feel like, and I rode today on Cherry Street on my bicycle and it is not a very wide street. There is parking on both sides right now and half of the parking places were empty. This was at four o'clock today. And the parking garage for city places down. So I mean, nobody's in there. And then the other parking lot that we have, we have been told is half used. So we don't need to designate 15 feet of our roadway to cars, parking cars. I think streets are for moving people, not storing vehicles. So I really am sorry that so much money was spent in this design and I'm not sure who's driving the need for parking on both sides of the street. But it isn't something we should do now in 2018. This is a really big opportunity. You folks voted for the 14 story mall or not. It's housing development and you said it's going to be live, work, play downtown. People aren't going to have cars. They're not going to need cars. So let's leave those streets open for bicycles and pedestrians. Please. Thank you. Thank you. One other thing I would like to mention, I am disappointed to hear that the committee that was formed for saving a few. Well, I thought that save quite a few trees on City Hall Park, that they are proposing one or two trees to be saved. And in good faith, I don't think that's a very fair, you know, promise to the people that did want to save some of the trees on City Hall Park. So I don't know who is on the committee for that. But I've heard that the recommendations are coming all from the designer that other people aren't allowed to recommend trees to be saved. Somebody who's on that committee can look at that, please. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Long. With that, that was the last speaker from public forum. I will close the public forum for tonight and move on to item number four, the consent agenda. Recognize Councillor Nodell. President Rodin, I move to adopt the consent agenda as amended and to take the actions indicated. Councillor Nodell moves adoption of the consent agenda as amended. Mr. Bush, your seconds. Any discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor of adopting the consent agenda, taking the actions indicated and as amended. Please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Passes unanimously and we have passed the consent agenda. Item number five moving on to the deliberative agenda now is the necessity hearing. So I will open up the necessity hearing. And what I'm going to do is we have three people that were held over that have filled out slips to speak in the necessity hearing. First, I think city attorney Blackwood, we agree that I would first read each property here that's on the summary of properties for Champlain Parkway necessity hearing and see if anyone wants to speak from this list, then we'll go to the others. So first, is there anyone here from Vermont Railway Inc. to speak tonight? Okay. Anyone from Howard Center Inc. Okay. Mr. Coakman. And you have a sign up sheet there. Good evening Mr. Coakman. Welcome. Thank you very much. My name is Frank Coakman. I'm an attorney here representing Howard Center Inc. This is a technical appearance to make a record and preserve my client's rights. We've been negotiating with representatives of the state. I think it's the state that's been a little confused. And I suppose the city, we haven't quite closed the zipper on an agreement in lieu of condemnation. I think we're pretty close within a couple of strokes, but we're not there yet. So I'm here to object to the taking proposed as it bears on Howard Center on the grounds that it's unreasonable and unnecessary. And that's all I have to say. All right. Thank you, Mr. Coakman. The next one is Donald Lee and Julie LaFountain. Anyone here? That name? Okay. Next is Riley Properties LLC. Anyone from Riley Properties? Okay. No. Cumberland Farms. Yes, sir. Come on up. Okay. Thank you. Group five investments, LLC. Anyone here from Group five investments? Close that one. The Maltex partnership. 44 Pine Street Commercial Condominium Owners Association, DDC Holdings, LLC, Lesor, dealer.com. Just a few more. Derek H. Davis, charitable remainder. Trust, too. Another Maltex partnership. I assume there's no one here. Christopher H. Mason and Overlake Park, LLC. All right. That finishes the list of properties. So we'll go back now to the... We have two more people to speak in the necessity hearing. Cindy Hill. Just sign in, please, too. Thank you. Thank you. Ready? Good evening, Ms. Dillon. Welcome. My name is Judith Dillon and I represent 40th Burlington LLC for purposes of objecting to the notice for necessity of this hearing. To be clear, necessity, condemnation involves two steps. One is necessity for this body to determine whether the public good requires this project. It's not for the body to determine whether the taking of these particular properties is required to build the Champlain project. The first question this body must decide is whether the public good, necessity, and convenience of the inhabitants of the municipality require the highway to be laid out as claimed in the right-of-way plans and in the request for necessity. Because of that, the statute clearly outlines those persons or those persons who are entitled to notice of this necessity hearing. The persons entitled to notice of the necessity hearing are not limited to those property owners that whose property will actually be taken either through temporary or permanent rights. As I read before, the statute clearly provides that persons interested should be given 30 days notice to petitioners and to persons owning or interested in lands through which the highway may pass or abut. 40th Burlington's property abuts the highway. 40th Burlington did not receive notice of the necessity hearing or of the site visit. Absent adequate notice, this proceeding and any result or decision coming out of this proceeding will be void. The purpose of this proceeding is not to determine whether or not particular properties are entitled to compensation. The purpose of this proceeding is to determine whether this project, this Champlain Parkway, should, is necessary and by necessary the standard that the city must demonstrate is whether the public good necessity and convenience of the inhabitants of the municipality require it. There's been no testimony and there's nothing on the website that supports that showing. So because, as outlined before, because there has been no notice to 40th Burlington, which is in a butter of this project, this hearing will be void. Thank you. And just to be clear, there's been reference to the previous project. This is the only necessity hearing for this project. The project that's being proposed as outlined in the right-of-way plans of April 18th, 2018, this is the only necessity hearing for that project. And the notice is deficient and did not properly notify all of the landowners which the highway may pass or abut, including 40th Burlington. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Dillon. Cindy Hill. Welcome, Ms. Hill. Thank you. Thank you. Once again, Cindy Hill, Hill Attorney PLLC, representing the Pine Street Coalition, which is a citizen's organization of persons interested in living in, working in, walking and biking in the south end, particularly along Pine Street and other areas of this quarter. We adopt and reiterate everything that my sister council, Ms. Dillon, just stated on the record regarding objecting to the notice for both the site visit and this necessity hearing that both interested persons and abutters to the project needed to be notified and that the public notice of the site visit and this necessity hearing needed to clearly state the necessity for this project, the Champlain Parkway, as presently iterated under the plans that were in fact posted after the initial notice went out to a limited number of persons. In the absence of that, due process has not been served and as members of the public who are affected by this project, we have not received the due process of an appropriate hearing or the appropriate opportunity to comment because there is not a statement of the necessity to which we are responding. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Hill. Did I miss anybody on the necessity hearing? All right. Thank you. With that, I am going to turn to Councillor Mason for a motion. Councillor Mason. Thank you, President Wright. Excuse me. I'd like to make a motion to close the necessity hearing and direct staff to prepare findings of fact for City Council consideration at our June 4, 2018 meeting. Motion has been made by Councillor Mason. Is there a second? Second by Councillor Dean. Any discussion on the motion? Councillor Tracy. Point of information. So what exactly is this motion doing for us? Like what is it? City Attorney Blackwood. Can you respond to that or Councillor Mason? I mean, the motion is that you've held the necessity hearing, so you're moving to end it. And then what you are saying is that you're asking the staff to go ahead and prepare findings based on the information that staff has provided. If there are other comments that you want to make, now would be the time to make them. And otherwise you're going to do that motion. And then what will happen is that the next meeting, staff will bring you back a draft of findings for your review and further discussion. And at that point we would make decisions? Correct. And at that time when you would decide either to modify, adopt or the findings as written or reject them. Thank you. And those findings would include a finding of necessity and looking through the statutory definition that I read to you. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Tracy. Other questions, comments? All right. Hearing none, all those in favor of the motion made by Councillor Mason, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That passes unanimously. And that will conclude that item. Item 5.02 on the agenda is an ordinance, offenses and miscellaneous provisions, regulation of security alarm systems from the Ordinance Committee, and we'll go to Councillor Nodal for this. Thank you, President Wright. I'd like to move adoption of these changes to the Chapter 21 of our ordinances and request the floor after the second. Seconded by Councillor Mason. Councillor Nodal, you have the floor back. Thank you very much, President Wright. As the new member of the Ordinance Committee, I was, I guess I was allowed to move this to see how I would do. But this is, we have, Lise Verano is here from the police department. She's the business administrator for both the police and fire departments. If any Councillor has questions, she will, I'm sure, have the answers for us. This, it was endorsed, comes to us unanimously from the Ordinance Committee. It makes one change to this section of our ordinances, and it's a, it's section 2142, which regulates security alarm systems. And just so the public is aware, if you have a security alarm system, you are required to get a permit for it. It is important that the police department know everyone who has these security alarm systems. And what this, these change, changes do is one thing, which is it changes the monthly fee from $3 to $5. And the fee has not been changed since 2004. So there are costs of administering all the security alarms in the system. And that is basically the purpose of this, I think, very modest change. And so the Ordinance Committee felt it was well, well grounded. I'll give up the mic and see what kind of questions there might be from the council, Mr. President. Thank you, Councillor Nodal. Questions or comments from the council? Councillor Hartnett. Thanks. Sure. So what drives, what drives the expense here? What are the expenses to the city and police department fire to, to the residents? So, so to be clear, the rate increases for the annual permit fee. Okay. And the annual permit fee is to register your alarm company and information. What is involved is the administration of that information through dispatch, the annual billing, the information that's provided to the officers when there is an alarm and so that the information is on file and current. So there's a lot of mostly administrative work that we're talking about and between the dispatch center, the billing office and in between communicating to all the people that are responding or otherwise handling a call. Is it expense, is it an expense to the city if there are false alarms? Yes. Yes. And. Well, we're not just, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you, but we're not really changing the false alarm fee structure that's in the ordinance. And I thought it might be important to make sure everyone understood that this was about the annual fee being increased just for the permit itself. We are actually not looking to make a change to the false alarm charges. That's staying the same. However, we are proposing in concert is the suspending of those false alarm fees charges that you get because you had a false alarm. We're thinking there's a nice balance there for the people that are experiencing more false alarm. We're hoping they'll work with the police officers when they respond to try to understand why they weren't handled properly from the alarm companies. So we're going to have more interactions that way, but we're not proposing any changes to the billing structure for false alarms. So that's not what this is about. Right. But did you say that you're suspending? Right. We're looking to do two things. First of all, the annual fee is due for review. Every five to 10 years we're supposed to be looking at our annual fees. What we haven't done is raise it at $5 every year. It's just very time consuming to just come back every year just to raise it $5 just to stay current. So we did not do a change since 2004. And so we're really overdue to do our annual fee assessments. So that's why one of the reasons we're doing the change now. Okay. No further questions at this time. All right. Thank you. Thank you. I'm on the ordinance committee also, and that was one of my questions. President Wright, I wanted to know if this fee actually covered the administrative costs because there had been such a hiatus between the original fee and this one. And because much to the chagrin of the member of the public who spoke about the impact of the fee and how that would hit someone on fixed income, and I'm sympathetic to that comment, I thought that this was a very modest increase and wondered if it needed to be more, but was reassured that this really was adequate to cover actually the administrative costs of registering and providing this, making sure that people did register and overseeing this program. So I did support it and will continue to support it. But I think that I am always sensitive to how the cumulative impact of all fees going up just a little bit impact all of us who may not have the revenue coming in to actually pay all of these increases. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Bushard. Councillor Mason. Thank you. And Councillor Jang. Thank you, President Wright. Thank you, Councillor Nodal. I did not. That was not in 10 trial by fire. I just saw your name on there separately, so I thought there was some reason. Ms. Farron, the other thing I think that came out in our hearing was I want to talk about the suspension. We're not making that determination as a council. If the commission or the department choose not to make that, that's not a decision that's before this council tonight. That's correct. It would be a pilot if it is at all. And in part this is, you know, this was also precipitated because of difficulty that the department has had in collecting, you know, those improper fees and the administrative time that is taking to send an officer back time and time again to collect the, I don't know what the fee is, but a fee that basically has gone as being uncollected. The other thing that came out, you know, in our hearing that I think is important for the public to know is this is, you know, we've seen with technology, you know, it's not the same alarm system that it always was where, you know, it's tied in directly and the, you know, the police get the phone call. If the alarm is triggered, it goes to a third party who then calls the police, you know, as this is drafted, this is every alarm. So state of the art or more current alarm systems, you know, might only ring to my, you know, the homeowner's phone or to five people that the homeowner has identified. And as the statute's written and the expectation is even those alarm systems are all supposed to be registered and the fee paid. So again, that was something I know we probed or sort of tried to get clarity on at the ordinance committee and I just want to make sure that's clear to the public going forward. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Mason. Councillor Chang. Thank you for being here. Quick question. What are the benefits for people to register their alarm systems? Are there, yeah. The first question, yes. So first of all, the ordinance requires that you do. Number two, the benefits is that the information that your property has that system in place is beneficial to the dispatchers to know what you have in your home, in your business so that when the police officers are dispatched, they know what they're coming into for information and services that might be available for them to be able to help with the response of the incident. So it helps them with the proper response. So basically it is illegal to install a system without registering it. I don't know the word by legal, but the ordinance requires that you do so that we have the information. Maybe a member of the ordinance. Councillor Chang, you wanted to ask, you wanted to respond to that from someone on the ordinance committee? Yes. Councillor Nodal, would you like to respond to that? President Wright, I happen to have a permit application because I did a little research on, well, exactly how would someone register? So you go to the website, it's very simple. You download the permit application and it does say that you can be fined if you fail to obtain a permit. Right. Whether this makes it illegal, I don't know, but people need to understand that we all work in partnership with the police department and if it is useful to the police department for those of us who have these security alarms to register them, let's register them. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Nodal. Councillor Hartnett. Do we know how many registered alarm systems that we have in the city? How many do we have? We have 781 right now. 781. I'm listening to Councillor Mason and other councillors. So it seems like we're not collecting really any penalty fees at all. Is that safe to say? We are not aggressively going after penalty fees. We're trying to encourage people to just do the right thing. Right. We learn oftentimes that someone has a security alarm system when an alarm comes in and we realize we didn't have the information and we're kind of caught behind. So we'll contact that property owner to say, were you aware of this ordinance, send them the packet of how to do it and why and then most people comply. Like Councillor Bursher, I'm concerned about seniors here especially and we always say that it's a little impact, it's a little impact, but all these little impacts add up for seniors and not too long ago we had a resolution here at the council to kind of address the affordability for seniors here in the city. So I wish there was something that we could do to address that and I also wish that we would make an effort to go after the fees. If there's offenders that are often with false alarms, seems like if we went after those fees and stuff maybe we wouldn't have to raise the registration fee. But you're saying one doesn't make a difference to the other. The reasoning for one is not the reasoning for the other. In other words, I guess the counter-question is do you want us to stay current with the fees by coming back every year to just, how do you want to do it? We thought it was easier on people to just... I appreciate the work. I appreciate it. Thank you, Councillor Hartnett. Are most of the false alarms that come in, are they from businesses? Most false alarms are from businesses, which is a little frustrating because that seems unnecessary. And most of the time it's because the alarm company isn't notifying the police department that, hey, we know what's going on, this is the deal, you don't need to come to this. And so it's usually a conversation between the property owner and their alarm company that's needed. It's not usually something the police department can force or make to happen. It's not what we're trying to do. We're just saying we're coming here, we're using a resource, we could be somewhere else where we're really needed instead of here because somebody didn't follow the procedures. Thank you. Other questions from the council? Hearing none, all those in favour of waiving the second reading and adopting the ordinance here, please say aye. Aye. And those opposed? No. No. There are two nos, that's myself and Councillor Hartnett. Thank you very much. And with that one, we'll move on to item number 5.03 and that is a presentation by the library director, Mary Denko. Good evening. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to update you on the library's strategic plan. By way of a little background, I wanted to tell you that the last strategic plan was in 1994. This strategic plan in front of you started back in August 2014. It started with a leadership meeting with staff, with the steering committee and they all got together and decided we need to figure out what the library's strategy was going forward and that was started by my predecessor. And in the fall of 2014, there were community forums, surveys, early learning and literacy forums, library profile was done. Mary, can you pull the microphone a little closer, sorry. Very close. I guess I'm supposed to feel that way. And then in the winter of 2015, worked at getting all that information assembled, collated. And again, this was all done by my predecessor and the group that worked on it. The library commission was an important part of that as well and it was done very thoughtfully. There was a lot of great data that was brought together. This is obviously a very intellectually curious community which is great. Everybody's voracious readers and there was a lot of great input about the library direction for the future. Unfortunately, the library director left for a little bit and the plan languished kind of in a draft form and then I was hired in February of 2017 and I was able to look at the plan and see all the good work that went into it and saw it really as a blueprint to move forward while also looking at it while I was getting my used to the library and managing the library. But it was important to stay with that strategic plan and just move forward and tweak it. So as I've been leading the library along with the library commission and support from the mayor's office and the staff, we've really been thinking about this in two paths. We have some short-term goals that the strategic plan has been helping us to stay on task with and we've had some long-term goals and then we always look to see if there's opportunities that arise and when those opportunities arise, how do they fit into the strategic plan? So far, as we've been moving forward, we have done a lot of changes with the staff and that's support from you folks as well when we've come to you, we've added staff and that's helped with more computer classes, increased youth programming, increased outreach, tween and teen services. We've had new branding that's been continuing to roll out. We have a brand new website that's just been going for a couple months. We've been doing new things with collection development and expanding our online services. We have down more downloadable audio books and eBooks. We have movie streaming now. And we're expanding our volunteers and the kinds of things that we do for the library. And another piece of the plan that we continue to do is measure. Measure how we're doing with the plan and we're doing that internally. We're doing impact surveys and we're also doing that as part of the BTV STAD initiative that was started. And we're continuing to grow capacity with our friends of the Fletcher Free Library which is our 501c3 nonprofit and that's helping us to do a lot as we grow particularly in programming support so I'm very grateful to the staff as they have helped me move the plan along. I'm grateful to all your support as the little things that we've been doing have been moving forward and I'm looking forward to keep it moving. This plan hopefully will get us through to 2020 and we're really excited. Thank you very much for that presentation. Questions for director Denko. Councillor Buscher. I read the small version that I printed off so this larger version oops sorry. I read the smaller version that I printed off so I'm not sure I got all of it correct but I was interested in trying to orient myself with this version but I was interested in your exploration of sort of becoming like a barns and noble with having a cafe. Is that in the near future or is that that is? Well no I would say it's more a long term plan so I think one of the big things that we'd like to do is look at the interior library redesign and we're actually working with the friends of the Fletcher Free Library to see if we can do a feasibility study to see what that would involve but yes cafes are definitely one of the things that you'll see in many newly remodeled libraries. Yes and so the challenge is keeping food and books separate if you're not electronic well even with electronic people spill coffee on computers so or whatever. So that was interesting the other thing was can you speak a little more to so before you came when Ruby took over there had been an acknowledgement by the community that the teens of our community had been floundering and we were trying to figure out how to engage them and so that was you know the teen librarian and just focus on teens. Can you just speak a little more to that age group and how the strategic plan tries to augment what you currently already do? That's a good question we have our second teen library and so our first one was going and then she took another job I think one of the things we've learned is that there are a lot of great teen services and one of the things that we're trying to do now especially with the new person who's in the position is to do more outreach and by doing outreach into some of the organizations that are serving those teens already and building relationships with them and then having them come back into the library that way. Okay okay and my last question is the activities that are going to contribute to community cultural and educational networks can you just kind of touch upon those activities as you see them? Right now I would say Barbara Shaterra who's our programming and partnerships librarian she would probably be a better person to ask that. Right now I would say we have I think about seven different language conversation groups that are going on and she reaches out into the community at different times to try and get people involved in that that's the one that comes to mind and then I would say a recent set of programming she did last fall was called Burlington Rising and it was all about bread and the different continents and she focused on different countries and what bread meant in that culture and so we had lectures and we actually had hands on cooking as well. So I'm going to say something because but I'm not as well informed when city market downtown first started there was a second story and there was supposed to be the concept was that there would be community kitchens where people could come together together and learn about foods etc you know I think that language and bringing people together is wonderful and I don't know whether the library through cookbooks which I love anyways it would be I think food brings people together I'm a community gardener I think that really does it breaks down barriers we all like to eat and it's fun to explore so I don't know if the library can take advantage of that to bring different cultures together to through the media or through the written word so anyways thank you very much you know I've already told you we really value our library and thanks for this plan thank you and we do have an awesome cookbook collection so those are great ideas may have to have my wife check on that Councillor Naudel thank you President Wright Mary love the events that you've been having at the Fletcher Free and some of us went to the event with it was hosted I think by the friends at the Fletcher Free and we got mugs and we got nice bags and I think this kind of thing is like bringing people into the library making people aware of the wonderful library that we have where are we with usage do you track number of people or brollingtonians who have library cards who are actively use the library we sure do and that's actually one of our metrics that we look at in the past nine months we've had an increase we've had an increase in library visits our circulation is about even but what most notably is that we're noticing that there's been an increase in our access to online services which is why we've been expanding them but the library the Fletcher Free library is by far the biggest library in the state we're 48,000 square feet the next library down from us is the Rutland library and as far as circulation and patron visits we're easily 70 to 80% more than some of the bigger other libraries in the state thank you councillor no doubt councillor Hartnett thanks interesting question and I know we don't track it by location but it'd be interesting to see the new north end and we're connecting to that population out here in the new north end and it feels like it's a stretch maybe to some families to get down there and have the library for their use and we've always talked about councillor Dang has talked about numerous times about bringing a hub to the new north end or library on wheels or however you might want to think outside the box but be curious do you is there a tracking system by addresses or anything that we could do in the future to kind of see if we are reaching the population in the new north end? We actually looked at some of the GIS data and we could input some things and it got a little bit messy and we didn't find to it but it actually surprised me the population is pretty spread out and we like to think of the library as a destination place I mean there is free parking for two hours and that's really enough time to come in and get a book and maybe grab lunch or something but we're always interested in doing more outreach there's definitely some geographic issues so we try and get out to the north end and to the south end and it's a focus on the strategic plan as well Sure, thanks Thank you councillor Hartnett, any other councillor with questions? Councillor Jang Thank you and you know I was glad that I was part of the team during the hiring process and we could not find a better person than you because for the first time I'm hearing today the importance of data collection and I think it is important and you emphasise it very well I think that's good and in terms of the numbers that a couple of councillors ask it sounds like over 4,000 people who reside in zip code 05408 using library but we did not break it down into who is senior or who is young but 4,000 and also we know that there are four of your staff who reside in zip code 05408 and I think the online presence you're talking about is incredible but at the same time the community presence you are talking about here because I saw you at the barbecue community barbecue so the presence is everywhere and rebranding your new website all of that are innovations that are incredible. Thank you thank you for doing that because now we need to think about that we are in the 21st century we no longer in the 80s and your mindset, your vision it's all bringing Burlington the learners there thank you for doing that but the question that I'm going to ask you I ask you again is in your budget moving forward are there any funds that you will be allocating in terms of maybe having an annex library in the new north end because if you think about it everything we're talking about in Burlington it is about encouraging people to walk to bike to run it's just a plan around that and it would be just incredible for people to walk, bike to go get their books and go home and also for those places to not be only where you can come in get a book and go but where you can come in like you're talking about to have coffee to socialize I think the new north end need that and in this strategic planning if that can include such a thing it would be imperative that we work and I'm pretty sure soon we will be able to get together to just talk about the next step but if we can think about allocating at least some funds to just when we ready we'll definitely sit down but I want to say thank you for all you do and for your leadership thank you thank you thank you councillor jane any other councillors questions or comments I'll echo those sentiments by councillor jane thank you for the work with that conclude that presentation and go to item number 5.04 which is a presentation on bank and cherry street improvement conceptual design and a resolution we'll get the resolution on the table first and then hear the presentation go to councillor busher for the resolution which is approving the conceptual design I'm going to move to waive the reading and adopt the resolution seconded by councillor hartnett councillor busher did you want the floor back I do want to make comments but I think I'd like to hear the presentation first and I think that would be most appropriate thank you councillor hartnett do you want to speak now or after the presentation real quick second it's important that we mention this before the presentation it would be noted that at our last two meeting before we voted councillor busher was really pushing benchmarks that would come back to us at check-in points and I think that's important we have two check-in points on this as we're listening to the presentation just remember that I think it's at the 30% and 75 and I think that's kind of important to keep in mind when they're presenting to us here on that I think that was important so just wanted to FYI all right thank you for that councillor hartnett with that we will go to the presentation fingers crossed everything is going to work with our technology and just for the record both can you both identify yourself for the record and then I'm Kirsten Mayorman Shapiro I work for the community and economic development office for the city of Burlington Laura Wheelock works engineer okay and make sure that you pull the microphones in close we will do our best and if we get too quiet just say so and if I get too loud say so too thank you for having us this evening this is a very important project for the city of Burlington and we are going to be walking you through some of you have seen bits and pieces of these presentations before at the Duke meeting or if you came to some of the public meetings you might have seen some of the information here but we wanted to walk the council as a whole through sort of our process to get here today so we started back in the council may recall that you all put something on the ballot relating to the redevelopment of the Burlington town center and that was November of 2016 it was approved by the voters of the city of Burlington and we have been working to advance coming forward with some designs to this point who we are again Laura and myself are acting as project managers for the city on this and we have hired Stan Tech as the consultant and Greg Goyette and Greg Edwards are the two primary designers although they have a huge company behind them that's helping us to do this work we're here tonight to present the base design this is to you and this is what we've done we presented that base design it was based on the new street design and construction standards adopted by the council recently we've gathered focused community feedback we've considered the public comments and updated the concept and we're now seeking your endorsement tonight sorry I've never used one of these so that's a beautiful street moisture issue there so one of the things that I thought that folks would be interested here is the different ways that we did try to reach out and engage with the community around the development of the plans that we're showing you this evening so we developed a web page there was a comment function so you could go and anybody can leave a comment and we've shared all the comments we've received whether it was through the comment function on the web page or the notes that we took in our community meetings so we had some community meetings as well we have email lists that we had gathered from people who participated in the great streets process so we figured they were interested in streets we emailed them about the particular design meetings we put stuff on front porch forums we did social media we did specific outreach to property owners and businesses in the project area we did little quarter page handouts and we went to most of the NPAs and handed those out so that people had a website they knew they could find out information about the projects and we discussed it at the all world steering committee meeting and it went out in the neighborhood buzz you can see the list of meetings that we had we went to the public works commission on two occasions the transportation energies utilities committee on three occasions we held a general public meeting in the evening on April 10th and we did a sort of an over the lunch hour time specifically with downtown businesses and property owners but it was open to the public so if you couldn't make an evening meeting and vice versa so we tried to have those two available and then again we're here tonight at the last meeting on there so the process today we started with development of a base design again utilizing those street design and construction standards we've gathered community input we have refined that design and we are here now on May 21st for city council approval it's important to know that that is not where the process stops we will after we receive if we receive your approval tonight we still have to complete and take those from the conceptual designs to documents that can be used to construct our roads and so we're looking at final engineering and design and permitting in 2019 and construction in 2019-2020 and below it just reiterates that what have we done today well we reviewed this construction standards and design guidelines we developed a base plan we coordinated we've been coordinating with City Place Burlington we did an existing parking and inventory and we've solicited public input and updated the base design so I think it's always helpful to have a map to orient yourself as to where the improvements are so the project that Laura and I are representing tonight takes place in the red area so that's Cherry Street from Church Street to Battery Street to Pine Street as you may recall from the public vote and the work that you all did with the developer of the town center City Place Burlington getting it straight they are going to be constructing the new two segments of our downtown grid on Pine Street and St. Paul Street and so we have been coordinating with them these are where those designs stand at the moment we do have some modifications we want them to make as it relates to how those streets connect with Cherry and Bank Street and they're waiting until we have an approved conceptual design before making those modifications but you can see they've used the standards the street design and construction standards you can see the standard width for the walk for the pedestrian zones the street zones you see street trees paver belts the lighting elements all of those things will be coordinated I want to talk a little bit about the base design so when we went out to the first public meetings that we had we developed this base design which basically comes from the standards and what we looked at is were dimensionally what was happening so you can see let me see if I can make my little pointer work over here this is Cherry Street so there's a 15 foot pedestrian zone and that's broken into sub zones but again then there's a parking lane at 7.5 feet 10.5 feet travel lanes on Cherry because we have buses so they're a little wider parking again on the other side and then again you have a 15 foot pedestrian zone the roadway zone in its entirety is 36 feet so you have 30 feet for pedestrian zone and 36 so this is part of that balancing all the competing uses we have within our public right of way Bank Street is very similar except that we don't have the level of transit use that we have on Cherry and the difference there is we've taken the extra 5 feet of roadway and given that over to the pedestrian zone so from the curb essentially to the face of building you have 15.5 feet of area and so again the parking lane each parking lane is 7.5 feet the travel lanes are 10 feet on Bank Street and so when we went out to those meetings we said here's the base design really looking for from the public is here's your base design what are the amenities what are the types of improvements kinds of improvements that you want to see do you like more naturalistic benches do you want it to be more contemporary and so where are some locations we should be thinking about the placement of bicycle facilities like bike racks and things like that so we did get pretty good response I do think the business community of many people if you participated in those meetings took as a given that the base design included parking on both sides of both streets so we haven't incorporated or we haven't shown you every comment we received but you can go to the website and you can peruse those they're all up there in their raw form we didn't want to edit them because people have complained before this is my edit of those so if you want to see them in their entirety but these were the general themes that we heard whether it was through comments whether it was through people speaking at public forums at city meetings or in the general community meetings we had as well as some of the individual meetings we had with property owners it was important to slow the speeds, reinforce the streets or for pedestrians trying to create that balance again you can see our competing users over here on the right how do you use the limited space to make sure all of those users still can access that public right of way we heard that people wanted to provide a bike friendly street and wanted us to consider a dedicated bike facility there was about one thing that everybody there were two things really that most people agreed on first was the line of the intersection of Bank Street and St. Paul and I'll have a slide of that so that you can see how that looks a little later in the presentation and the second thing people seemed really excited about was this idea of dual use of loading zones now they couldn't exactly decide so dual use of a loading zone is for a certain period of time maybe it's 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. maybe it's 8 a.m. to noon we couldn't quite get the times people have a lot of different times so it's about midday people felt like they should transition into regular parking spaces on the street so that seemed to be something that was pretty consistent and then we did hear from businesses and property owners that on-street parking is still important to many of them and the last item is the DPW commission at their meeting last week suggested that you the city council consider a street on-street bike lane from Cherry Street battery to Pi we wanted to make sure that all of these things that you kind of got a sense of the flavor of items and what we heard and now I want to kind of take you with what we heard what did we try and accomplish on the streets so what we did is on Bank Street we and a lot of this if I go too slow I'm sorry I'll try and speed it up we went with a curbless street we thought we could improve some of the grades we suggested textured crosswalks here the parking lane has a paver belt much like the amenity belt there's no curb the sidewalks on this street and others also have a pattern it's called a scoring pattern in the concrete to give it extra extra aesthetic or feel so it doesn't look like the 5x5 square of concrete in front of my house it's all still concrete it just has a little bit more of a finished higher finish of look so we also wanted to make sure how we define those spaces and so we use a mix of those textures pavers ballards planters lighting etc this is a perspective from pine street looking or church street from church street looking west on bank street so we want to reinforce the pedestrian as priority we believe the curbless street gives a lot of flexibility for the future one of the things that we heard from the businesses they were very interested in being able to do more street closures on a temporary basis for sidewalk sales for parties and other kinds of events so here you can see in the perspective that you have the two travel lanes we have the area for the bikes clearly denoted the parking lane is here amenities and then your sidewalks here and then there's some real world examples that don't exactly match ours but give you the sense of how curbless streets work around the country and the world we are not cutting edge on this one other people have tried it before we have here in Burlington one of the things with bank street that we heard from counselor Tracy and others and people in the community was really improving the linkages from battery street to church on bank and particularly with the path that exists today that goes from the Hilton here at battery street comes up between the parking structures and the Macy's project to where it connects here with pine street and bank and then continues on to church street and so the inset here shows how we are trying to more intentionally connect it address some of the erosion at the top of the path here and make that a more intentional connection so you can use the path when you hit bank street as a curbless street it has very low volumes and slow speeds I mentioned the biggest intersection alignment happens at St. Paul and Bank currently St. Paul and Bank doesn't really line up it goes more straight like this NBT Bank has a driveway here and it created a very weird 5-way intersection where you ended up with crosswalks in the middle we have been in discussion with the property owner they are amenable and we are in the process of of dealing with an easement with them which will allow us to get this 4-way intersection as a configuration this also allows the transit to use this street in a more effective way with doing a a jog or a dog leg was really going to be a tough movement for them so we feel like this is overall has just good benefits to the project including improved access to the NBT Bank from the fire department and also their new exit will come out here they still enter off a bank street but they will circulate around and exit there we did get some questions from counselors at the TUC who wanted to have a little bit more information about how storm water treatment on a curbless street would work just because it doesn't have your typical curb right where the car is doesn't mean that the street still has grating and things that direct the water to where it needs to be and so here you can see there are trench drains there are places where we will be sloping you barely will notice the slope it won't seem steep but the water knows which way to go and it will come into these into our rain gardens into our tree belt area where we have soils there that can help to filter and it also helps to water our trees so it's a little bit more how that is this is the bank street you also have these I believe Laura put them all at your desk but we also will leave them up on the back wall in larger format so if you want to look at that when you're done with your meeting tonight you can but going from the west going east here is the intersection with pine street again we're looking to narrow these crossings we'll be working out trying to improve the grades working with peoples bank to acquire the rights necessary to make these improvements to the path as well as how their steps right here interface with this sort of new intersection here coming down the curblest street you'll see there's trees on either side there are places where sometimes under the trees it's paving perviable pavers we might also use tree grates in some locations and some places will have low plantings you can get a better view again of that intersection at saint paul and then as you leave saint paul heading to church street again you can see these locations I did want to point out here and I will point them out later potential location for a bulletin board here and potential locations here and again the textured crosswalks so going on to cherry street and we can come back to any of this when you have sorry so we have done a tabled intersection where pine street enters into the street so that will be raised up about three to three and a half inches in height we have we have narrowed the crossings we've added a raised crosswalk here we've maintained the lane configuration as we discussed there's the mid block crossing this is the perspective again from church street looking west you can see the potential for all of these items including ADA spaces people wanted to see them we feel there's a generous pedestrian and buffer area what we did for bicycles so I want to make sure people understand this we are the charos because they are shared facilities with bikes and cars so we did not add a dedicated bike lane or cycle tracks but we added super charos which has the dash line which pushes the bicycles to the center of the travel lane so they're out of the door zone so when you go by somebody opens their door they don't clip you and it's more clarity to the drivers that it is intended to be a shared space with our friends who are on bicycles and this treatment is both used on both bank and cherry streets cherry street concept again here you starting at battery coming up hotel vermont is here their drop off area stays the same henna the woods is here there's this crosswalk this connects to the path that's between macy's and the parking structure this is the pine street here just to reference so you can follow and then coming up to the intersection of st paul with the new transit center is here this is not a tabled intersection because it's difficult for the buses to make the movements they need on the tabled intersection and then continuing up to church street in that location by the numbers so the total spaces are 33 these are going to be what is existing post the completion of city place burlington city place burlington has already modified the parking as it would exist sort of today or as they've begun their process so that's all through their drb approval and all that's already been settled so we thought it made sense to count the existing parking as if it is completed because we can't modify that so that number also includes the high turnover spaces and loading zone spaces so under existing on bank from pine to church is 33 in our proposed scenario it's 40 there's one accessible space and one accessible space but you'll see there's two little stars there when you have a curbless street basically every space becomes accessible so that's also a plus in terms of those with accessibility impairments there's no bus parking spaces here because it's not our transit street then on cherry street there are 70 and proposed are 66 there are four accessible spaces and four accessible spaces and there are three bus spaces which will be reduced to two as they told us that's what they need now this is our goal but as we get into designs I can't promise you that this might not change by a space or two that's why we've talked about coming back and keeping you apprised of any changes the same is going to be true for the next slide which are your trees okay so again currently on cherry street there are 25 trees parks has looked at them and said that they would like to relocate to the small healthy parks to an alternative site I don't know what that site is so I can't answer that bank street has 19 streets and they would look locate parks again would look to relocate one those trees do go during the reconstruction but we will be planting 34 new trees on cherry street approximately 32 new trees approximately on bank street there are places in the plans for planting trees we're using low planters other places particularly where we have not maybe enough sun we're trying to achieve different design goals in some places but the overall intent is really to make sure we can get healthy mature trees to go so we're using silva cells or soil cells we'll use appropriate soil volumes we're looking at tree species that are cold hardy salt tolerant and can thrive in an urban environment at the bottom the number for the trees is a goal and it may need to be modified as the plans are developed from concept to construction documents so one of the things we don't know today is where all the underground duck banks are going to be so there are things underground that make conflicts so we may have to move them we may have to move them a few inches a few feet and it may be possible that some of them don't and that's again why we've proposed to at least and it was Councillor Bush's request and Councillor Hart agreed coming out of the tube to come back and provide updates as we are making that level of decision so that people understand if there's changes why there have been changes Councillor Tracy you had asked specifically for numbers about the bike parking so the number of bike parking spaces in the in just the amenity and tree belt zones is 47 bike hitches on Cherry Street currently and 23 on Bank Street we think because of the curbless street and in other places there's a potential to add additional bike parking using corrals that might need the changing needs in terms of locations or volume of need as our city continues to evolve and grow and as City Place Burlington comes to mind and you know sometimes businesses change over the years so we want to have that flexibility again I want to just say the number and final locations for bike parking are our goal and they may need to be modified as we move from concept to construction documents I know several Councillors had inquired specifically about bulletin boards so I wanted to show those in more detail so here on Cherry Street we are committed to having on Cherry Street a total of two uncurated bulletin boards and on Bank Street two uncurated bulletin boards the final locations are not quite set yet for the same reasons as the trees and everything else we just got to make sure it works so however on the south side of Cherry near where this raised the raised mid-block crossing by the courthouse and between the path that goes between that's the location we're not sure if it'll be on the right or the left but we're going to work through that the other location was near the transit center we sort of show three potential locations we're going to have to dig in a little deeper before we know the final out of those three and that's on the north side of Cherry on Bank Street right here near the intersection of Bank Street near the entrance to 100 Bank Street is the location we're showing there on the north side of the street and then further down as you come closer to Church Street we have a location near the farmhouse sort of mid-block farmhouse Captain Tom's Tiki Bar and again those might shift a little but we are committed to a total of four on both streets poor total yes and then this gives you a flavor this is intended to give you a sense of what some of the furnishings and the finishes will look like so we will have some more contemporary chairs table seating as well as naturalistic stone benches and boulders for sitting on plantings again people seem to like much more sort of the naturalistic but with a lot of interest in variety sometimes these will be more like a rain garden sometimes they'll be more like a traditional planting and these are some storm water management practices you can see the trench drain again there's some curbing around them and weirs that hold water back over time again the bicycle amenities a variety of options of hitching your bike putting in even a bike repair station and how the various ways that sharrows can be used here's some examples of the street shared curbless streets we have a lot of those a variety of public art we will be working with Burlington City Arts and their public art process to identify that these are the types of things people wanted to know what might the benches look like, our detectable warning strips tree grates, trash cans, bike corrals we're using parking payment kiosks, permeable pavers, those are planters bus shelters, our own wayfinding system tree guards, bollards tables and chairs and again here's the process we have a lot of questions sorry thank you we're going to Councillor Buscher and then Nodell thank you I do have one question and then I just wanted to make comments because I had moved the resolution about this process but my question is based on the comments from the DPW commission and their request for a lane on I think the south side of the area did you bring forward a proposal that you were going to show or not we did do some basic analysis like we had earlier to the two Dave you weren't at that I'm sorry Councillor Hart that you weren't at that meeting and so we do have some basic analysis of the pros and cons of that and the impact of parking spaces and I do want me to talk about that so well I think maybe others will but I just wanted to know if you were prepared tonight because we did get a statement from the DPW commission about looking at this and I think it's important that we consider their comments so having said that I do want to speak to the resolution and the process that I've been involved and as you know I haven't been on this committee very long but so I see the two streets that are before us as very different if you look at Bank Street there are a lot of our local little businesses on the street and because I went through that planning process through the DRB the businesses are very concerned about the access to the businesses and so when I looked at that street and so I also asked the question I said how many parking spaces do we have today and how many will there exist after we revise these streets I just wanted to have some kind of idea of numbers and so after looking at that street and realizing those businesses I had heard wanted to be able to get to them easily I felt that it's a shorter it's a short street and especially now with the proposed curb less well with the curb less proposal I am not a bicyclist I will disclaim that I will state that but I felt that it was a compromise that I thought was acceptable understanding that in the walk bike proposal we would in the great streets proposal we would have dedicated bike lanes both north south and east and west and so anyways having said that I was satisfied with Bank Street not having dedicated bike lanes I'm speaking for myself on Cherry Street I saw that as different there are larger businesses mainly hotels and they have off street parking and so for me it was an opportunity to potentially look at that differently and I had asked after my first meeting if we could entertain having a bike path one way one bike path on that street that didn't come forward other options came forward so I am still interested in understanding that and I understand there could be a loss of on street parking but I was trying to figure out if that street seemed different it is different it also has the transit center on it so you have the buses that you have to accommodate and I'm not sure how all of that interfaces and how safe that is for everybody but I was interested you know Councillor Tracy chairs that committee he's an avid biker and has some very good insights and I was trying to find a way to bring those of us who don't bike but those of us and I walk but those of us who drive and walk together to have something that meets everyone's needs and I see the two streets very differently so I just wanted to say that I'm still interested in understanding what it means to try to accommodate a dedicated bike lane on Cherry I also understand the timeline where we have to have the 30% of conceptual design by June 30th or something like that so I'm not trying to delay the process but I really feel like we need to really respond to all of the comments that we've had from the various public the public and the commission the last thing I wanted to say was that I didn't really appreciate what shadows were and I think that and what that meant for me as a driver and a bicyclist I really I mean I feel like we need to educate the public on that too if we're saying that the bicyclist really is right there and can be can be first in that lane of traffic and have that dedicated space when there isn't a dedicated bike lane and I feel like we as a community need to do a better job of educating all of the drivers and bicyclists in our community Councillor Hartnett spoke to my request to have the 30 to have updates after the 30% conceptual plan is accepted and after 75% because I didn't having gone through City Hall Park I really didn't want that same kind of kind of surprise element I wanted us all to move forward together and understand where we were and how we had fine-tuned all of these designs and that's my intent so not to redesign it at 30% or 75% but to keep us informed so thank you thank you thank you Councillor Bushard Councillor Nodell I had just a couple comments on the presentation I am supporting the motion to adopt this resolution I will I have some thoughts about Sherry Street I will wait in anticipation of the amendment to debate that a little bit later and I will get into the process thank you for the uncurated bulletin boards I did speak to Kirsten last week about that and also for the great improved connection from the end of Bank Street down to Battery Street that's great I brought my walk plan BTV walk bike master plan tonight because I think we did that plan for a reason and I am going to use it as a reference point and I am going to do it tonight and I noted that there is a talk the whole downtown interior downtown is designated as a slow zone correct so that is that we are designing those streets to be less than 20 miles per hour and that was in your presentation you call that out for Sherry Street but it is also true for Bank Street is it not my last question on GMT did we expect that they would still need all that space on Sherry Street I was kind of hoping with the transit center we could get those buses off of Sherry Street and so I would like to push back on that if I can or get more information thank you thank you council do you want Mr. Mayor do you want me to speak to that briefly I mean we when we leased the easement that gave GMT the rights to the bus bays included the bus bays on Sherry Street and Pearl Street as well we do have some provisions in there whereby if they are not using them the city has some rights to try to claw over time claw backspace but it was a fairly heavily negotiated point at the time thank you Mr. Mayor I think that that was a good question I will be supporting this tonight I just have a couple of specific questions concerns that have come to me have been as I think others of the councilors have been around dedicated bike facilities on Sherry Street and you mentioned specifically that these are designed to be slow streets what speed are we talking about and how is it that those streets are designed to make people go slow So slow streets are 20 miles an hour or less They are designed to so I can speak to this so so the the slow streets are 20 mile an hour design This is laid out in both the great street standards the bike walk and other planning documents that we have They are designed with narrow travel lanes Amenities that will come closer to the road to enclose the features we've also added vertical elements to be able to provide prioritization to pedestrians and better visual cues to drivers about the Level and volume of pedestrians that are anticipated on these streets as cues to be able to slow their vehicle down and You know kind of creep and crawl through these areas Okay, and then just a follow-on question about Supersharrows, which is something a term that I had not heard until attending the two meeting Is this an accepted way an understood way among the bicycling community and experts in Bicycle facilities of sharing a street. Is this something that's done elsewhere and has proved successful where it's been used So this is definitely something that has been done elsewhere And it's something that we are rolling out this year elsewhere in town as well Inclusion of the Supershara where we find That bike lanes cannot be utilized or where we need to have bicycle facilities merge back into the travel lane So we are they are newish to Burlington, but they are going to be starting to be marked this year And done elsewhere. Thank you president. Thank you councillor Dean. Are we ready for vote? I guess we're not ready for vote councillor Tracy Thank You president right and thank you to the members of the the public works department in CEDO for the presentation I think feel like I need to preface my comments by saying that I really appreciate all the work that the staff went into this especially the work of Laura Wheelock and Kirsten Merriman Shapiro both of the more consummate professionals who have worked incredibly hard on this project When I feel the inadequacies of the project have nothing to do with the inadequacies of work that you've done on this project and I very much thank Thank you for the presentations and the work that you did in the in the Both in the context of Duke and then following up with me following up with community members I know that both of you spent significant time on the phone talking with people about very Specific and particular details and that that meant a lot to me as we went through that process So I just want to recognize that work that you did Going back to the project the the project itself sort of aside from the great work that the staff did on this I think it's important to go back to how this project was Initially pitched or how this came to came to be in what the conversation looked like when we were talking about and bringing this project to the Voters and so I went back through some of the documents that we looked at when we were approving that That documents many of which are still on the city website Some of which are in the form of information in the form of text some of our some of which are in the form of graphics That try to meld a variety of conceptual elements at least in the form of graphics But I found that the statements at least that were included in some of these images to be a little bit incongruous with what the design that We're ultimately seeing today namely under one slide that's named view number two There's a small bit of text in it that says quote the intent is to create complete streets that accommodate the needs of all users of all Abilities streets for vehicles Pedestrians and ADA accessibility end quote the other piece that on that same project website is that on the FAQ is asking whether or not We're going to be having complete streets for all modes of transportation We have the question was number six on that FAQ site Will the reconnections of st. Paul and pine streets provide us with true public streets open to pedestrians bicycles and vehicles? and Within that again, it says the intent is to create complete streets that are ADA accessible and accommodate the needs of all users motorists bicycles and pedestrians Within that within another presentation. There were several elements that were identified as quote typical of use within those within as typical streetscape Treat streetscape features that were used in that used in the presentation one of which was Bicycle lanes Sherrows were not noted as a typical feature in that in that selling and then that same slide was then used by The pack that was used that was selling this project to the public in a Facebook post. They shared that far and wide on October 9th 2016 Basically showing us that we had that this was something that was you know a typical thing for for a new or completely redesigned street That that that element didn't that that vote did end up getting passed And I think that a lot of that passage and the support that it gained from the bike pedestrian community came from the idea that they felt They were getting a complete streets when he's mentioned that the term a complete street you think of you know streets that really create that that That safe ease of use by creating dedicated facilities for each user whether it's a sidewalk for pedestrians a dedicated bike lane for Bicyclists or that the normal travel lane for cars and so I think we entered into that conversation Or entered into the design phase Looking at those things But we didn't necessarily see that in the design and I think that that's why the public when they weighed in on this This project weighed in pretty heavily in favor of adding bike lanes And so I do appreciate the the look back at bike at adding bike lanes in response to that public feedback I however do feel that it's unfortunate that we do not have bike lanes added to this design in response to that I do think that the The addition of a curbless street is is a positive and that's a win on Bank Street for accessibility and for that pedestrian experience And I would almost be and I would be willing to go with the design If it included the bi-directional bike lanes on Cherry Street with a curbless street on Bank Street as a sort of compromise position That didn't carry weight at the at the took level. I don't think that that's going to carry weight tonight So contrary to the idea that I would introduce an amendment I don't see a point in introducing an amendment because I simply don't have the votes for that I think that this is pretty pretty baked. So why waste our time? I need to just say what I'm going to say now and that's that I think that that that the lack of bike lanes is a Real miss on this project. I think that if we're we have a generational opportunity We're investing 20 million dollars in streets We're rebuilding them from the ground up and when we're rebuilding streets from the ground up I think we should fundamentally redesign them to the best possible most modern construction of street design and that street design is is including is inclusive of protected bike lanes and facilities, you know Nationwide or internationally these days and so I think that we absolutely should include them in this particular design I don't think that the Sherrows are enough for a couple of reasons first They combine fast moving or faster moving traffic than a potentially moving bicycle Centering them in front of the this is a new design for us in Burlington So I could see a faster moving car getting behind a bike not knowing what that Sherrow is regardless of whatever education We do honking at that user. I'm making it very uncomfortable for a seasoned rider Let alone someone who may be a shakier rider Maybe a family with kids maybe a senior because Cathedral Square is right there Maybe a tourist who's not used to Burlington because Hotel Vermont's right there getting right behind that person and and and and honking at them that assumes that the Sherrow is there of course because one of the things that we have a Paranial problem within Burlington is making sure that our bike lanes are painted are repainted every year And so I could see a situation where because it's just paint it gets washed off in the con You know in the process of winter and we have absolutely no dedicated bike facility there Meaning that there's nothing no facility. That's actually supporting the bike act the bike use there other than people Being able to park which certainly is a benefit, but if people can't get to that facility safely Then what's you know? What's the point of having bike parking if they can't get there get to that particular facility safely and all of this in favor of Warehousing people's private vehicles on the street On a public street a street where as I agree with Commissioner Jimbo We do have a number of parking facilities. We have an added We're gonna have a net gain in parking in the mall project with with additional garage space there We have a recent UVM study that says that our garages are continued to be underutilized so until we can show that our garages are being fully utilized and That that the investment that we're making in those garages is being well used that I really don't think that we that that we should continue to prioritize on street parking to the detriment of of bike parking or of bike facilities on on on a street And especially a street that we are gonna be spending so much money to redo when we have these opportunities We need to take them and create streets that are truly safe for all users Thank You councillor Tracy. I've got councillor Paul Jane and Hartnett and No doubt Thank you. Thank you very much So I just had a quick question but before I get to the question I just wanted to echo much of what councillor Tracy and others have said You have spent a great deal of time on this. I believe that the plan is well well thought out and well conceived and a great job job well done My question is It was pointed out by mr. Arshambo earlier during the public forum that there were comments that were that came from the public that were not Were not considered in in the plan And that there was there was and I'm not really sure what exactly he's referring to But I'm wondering if you could speak to that were there comments that came from the public that were not Given consideration when you were in the final stages of the plan I think we Considered all the comments we heard. I think there's a difference between where they considered or were they Executed in the plan So to me that's sort of the difference One of the things I shared at a previous TUC meeting is some of the comments we received I'm going to use an example We want uncurated bulletin boards Because they're awesome and accessible to the public Low bar We don't want here uncurated bulletin boards. They are messy We don't know what goes on there. We don't think that they are Appreciated and don't put one near my business So sometimes we get literally like polar opposite ends of comments so Sometimes we can we on balance are able to accommodate that sometimes We listen to all of that I Would say I wouldn't say it wasn't that we considered everything we heard But sometimes when you're balancing everything you hear you cannot always accommodate everything within our rights of way we They are our set already how much space we have available and so sometimes we cannot fit everything We might want to fit if we had wide open green fields to You know design a brand new road. We didn't have the accompanying private property. I Don't know or maybe I mean maybe he's talking about Thank you, my apologies. I should have asked you first Okay, that's okay. You're fine. Thank you. Councilor Paul. Councilor Jane and then Hartnett and Odell Thank you. I Think I had a chance to look at this presentation before not today but I do believe that you know It all ties to Great Street of Burlington, you know bike lands. Yes We need to have them everywhere But my comment is really targeted toward the bulletin boards and I echo the sentiment of those who are saying that they are messy. That's true They are messy and most of the time people don't look at them and also they Have some time and not appropriate things You know, which I think we need to move away Especially in downtown it is time for us to now think about bulletin board that are digital that are managed by an Entity or a department where you bring whatever you want to be put there It's a monitored and it's beautiful and attract people's vision They don't need to be Has so much light like in New York City No, but this should be digital to remind people to pay attention to what is going on in our town But having those that are outside out here. I don't think that's a good idea I don't think it responds to the aesthetic needs It also responds to the 21st century to the modernism that we live in here That was the only thing that I wanted to add into it. Thank you All right. Thank you. Councillor Jane. Councillor Hartnett. Thanks When you look at all the work and everything that's gone Into this project, I do think it strikes balance and that's something certainly I've been asking for But what I don't see is that you might disagree some people might disagree with some of the things on there But the one thing I wouldn't say is that it's half baked Like this has been this projects have been cooked for a long time, right? And you might not agree with some of the things but to say it's half baked I think that's really kind of unfair to say that to the staff. I think you put a lot of time and effort into it When I think of Cherry Street, there's a couple things that I'm glad that we've designed the way it is I think a cathedral square and They don't have enough parking now even for their own residents So people that are moving into Cathedral Square are being waitlisted on their cars saying you can come but your cars can't And seniors still drive. Also, there's a problem with visitors at Cathedral Square. There really isn't any parking I'm glad we're keeping it on Cherry Street We also have the Chittenden County Courthouse on Cherry Street Which offers a lot of services other than just the court itself and people are running in there to get paperwork Signed and and maybe going to this class and I think it's important that we offer that parking on Cherry Street So I really do think this strikes a balance and I appreciate the work you did and I certainly will be supporting this. Thanks. Thank you. Councilor Hartnett. Councilor Nodell Thank You President right. I'll be very brief Just to remind people that that the master plan the walk bike master plan for downtown Consumplated no bike lane at all on Cherry Street. So this is actually a step up from what is playing is in this It's just an empty street with no Nothing on it whatsoever in the plan. So we're kind of moving beyond What we said in the plan and the bike and the the the Bank Street plan in this plan corresponds to this master plan Thank you, thank you. Councilor Nodell Councillor Tracy I don't actually believe that that's true I think that this was contemplated as a slow street and Cheryl's are consistent with a slow street design so this is consistent with slow street design, but to say that this is you know a Step up is inaccurate now to say that it's that that's what plan BTV can Was was in plan BTV? Yes, it was a slow street design in plan to be TV But what we did say in plan BTV is that that's an iterative process a process that would continue to evolve And there's nothing in plan BTV Walk bike that says that we can't go further or do more to provide better pedestrian and bike safety Just as was provided to as an assurance to people who were not totally fully You know aware of or fully excited about plan BTV walk bike that it wasn't an iterative process and that not Everything that was in plan BTV walk bike wasn't so if we get to other conversations I don't think that a strict construction will of plan BTV walk bike will necessarily Favored those who are in favor of it in this particular case Thank You councillor Tracy mr. Mayor Thank You president right I Was hoping to weigh in as well on this last debate, which I think is an important one Which is what is the purpose of this plan? Why do we pass it? What does it mean when we get to decisions like this? I? Think the main value of the plan BTV walk bike plan is that gives us a road map and a vision of a protected bike network that when it is built will Represent essentially a new transportation system for this city one that doesn't exist today and that We've made only very modest progress towards for decades because We have not had that vision and we have up until now to my understanding Largely made decisions about bike lanes protected or not from kind of an opportunistic Process where where there was a chance to do something we stuck a bike lane in where it wouldn't create too much problems or wouldn't create to You know where where it could be done sort of easily one way or another and I think the Value of the of the plan is to get away from that and to have a clear vision of what we're working towards and When on the nights when we're here debating Streets that have those dedicated bike facilities on them I will be advocating forcefully for following the plan and and building it but on nights where we are dealing with streets that Are not envisioned to be that one to be the heart of that network I think it would we also have to bind ourselves to to the plan or I don't think this experiment is gonna work And that I don't think anyone is really argued that we need dedicated bike facilities on every street I think the way these streets are being designed will be good biking streets And You know tonight we should stick to the plan even though that means No, no protected bike lanes. I look forward to nights. Hopefully not too far from now When we'll have other streets before us where we can make great progress in that direction because it's one I truly believe in Thank You. Mr. Mayor other comments by city councillors Council Hartnett. Thanks. I'll be brief. Just want to remind everybody and Here's the white the walk bike plan, which I voted against I think council right voted against it as well I remember that night. We really got into a good discussion, right? And this wasn't this was only gonna be a guide Right, this wasn't gonna be something that we was set in stone that this was a guide You're just voting for the concept. I heard it over and over and over again. I didn't believe it That's why I voted no and it sounds like it's gonna come back to harness for sure at some point and I get that but I Just want to go on record is saying that right? This wasn't this was just conception. Don't don't worry about it guys It's not you know, we're not gonna follow this to the tee, right? We're just gonna use it For a little bit of a guide and I think I will remind people as this conversation continues about that. Thanks Thank You councillor Hartnett one question. I have just to make be clear is in the resolution It's it talks about Main Street and Pearl Street. It's mentioned in there But nothing that we bypass this resolution tonight does not lock us into any plan on those streets yet, right? We have to come we have to come back to those Correct those are in the wear as closet. Thank you Anything else from the city council? Hearing none All those in favor of passage of this resolution, please say aye. Hi. Hi any opposed That is councillors Tracy and councillor Jang So it passes by a nine to two vote. Thank you very much And thank you for the present that very thorough presentation and hard work on this. Thanks I remember 5.05 is a resolution on residential parking issues and That is sponsored by councillors Hartnett and Jang councillor Hartnett. Thank you I'd like to wave the reading ask for a second and then briefly the floor back second and by councillor Jang Second by councillor Jang councillor Hartnett you have the floor back She's a little surprised that we have more sponsors on this No, I didn't see everybody jumping all over that that's okay Really, this is as you see from the resolution. It's really Continuing a plan that we started a couple years ago, right and that we started looking at and making suggestions But we really haven't really done the work that needs to be done And I was talking with the director public works this morning Chapin and you know He'd be the first to tell you that you know, they they did start looking in and making some recommendations But they really it's kind of stalled and this resolution will really kind of hopefully get this going again and so I would hope that we would support it and I did talk to counselors over the weekend quite a few counselors and I know there's some amendments coming which I'm okay, and I don't know if councillor dang knows about the amendments But I'm hope hopefully he'll be okay with it. And so I would hope that we support this look into this and And and gets report back in the fall. Thanks Thank You councillor Hartnett Others who wish to speak on this resolution councillor Dean Thank You president right So I did have an opportunity to speak with councillor Hartnett over the the weekend I am in general support of Doing the work that's required to implement the recommendations that have already come before us But I have two very specific concerns related to both capacity and schedule specifically and and a couple of specific questions for city staff Which depending on the answers to those questions, I would be offering two amendments to the current resolution So I'd like to ask see Director Spencer for All right, come on up. Mr. Spencer Go ahead councillor Dean. Thank you president right so Director Spencer, I know that DPW is currently managing an incredible amount of work through these summer months And I note that August 13th is identified and the resolution as a delivery date for Moving forward or or advancing the the whereas clause or the resolution clause can you give me an idea whether that's Possible or would additional time be useful to you in meeting the objectives of the resolution? Okay, thank you the councillor Hartnett was talking about our conversation and it is true that The guts of this resolution makes sense and we look forward to presenting to you all our progress We have been underway. However with Proposed ordinance language working with the city attorney and working with the police department that would update our Residential parking program Consistent with the plan that you all reviewed a couple years ago That said we're hoping to bring the revised ordinance language to the commission Which is the entity that approves? Appendix C of city ordinance where the residential parking program ordinance would be adjusted and We're hoping to bring that to them in June or August I would find it friendly given the construction season everything else going on to report back to you after the commission's reviewed that and Then be able to talk about the next steps So it would be friendly if it's amenable to the council that We have until the fall though I did want to make sure that the council was aware that we're planning to go to the commission with some tentative language this summer Thank you, director Spencer. So if I could ask Leaving that as an answer that will I'll be offering an amendment on after this question Specifically to do with the second resolved clause which asks that the city assess a report to the city council again by August 13th whether or not property values are increased in neighborhoods and streets With restricted residential parking. So this is a question that I'm not sure who I should direct to but is the city assessor's office capable of and have the capacity to take on that task and can they deliver by the August suggested date Who anybody that can respond to that mr. Mayor I did talk to the assessor earlier today after seeing this Language and he was concerned that and that it wasn't really a matter of timing that the expertise to really do a meaningful study that would Definitively determine whether or not There had been some impact on property values as a result of these policies would not be something his office really could do in-house So I think it would require Probably finding some kind of professional that would be able to do that study and appropriating some money for it and So I think both the timing And perhaps the cost is an issue and getting that done as the as it is currently written Thank You mr. Mayor, and I think that Councillor Hartnett is amenable. It's very amenable to changing the date So if if you do have a amendment And so that regard why don't why don't I offer an amendment on the second resolved clause Which is lines 27 28 and 29 that we strike that language From the resolution Request a second. Okay, so you have requested to delete lines 27 through 29 Correct and replace it with anything or just delete that delete that from the language of the resolution, okay? So that's been moved by Councillor Dean is your second second by Councillor Shannon You went to floor back Councillor Dean. I do not Okay, Councillor Hartnett although When we originally got together and talked about that resolution this was kind of a an important issue At that time after talking with staff and administration today. I mean I I don't know at this point If it's worth spending extra resources on and and so I'm willing to go along with the amendment I'm not saying that I wouldn't revisit this depending on what the report is back from Public Works In the fall, but I think I would rather see work done and get things done and have not this hold us up So I'm I'm agreeable to the amendment Thank You councillor Hartnett councillor no doubt President right. I also support the amendment But I think that it also is just intuitive that if you want on a street that has residential parking It's helping your property values if you're on a street where there's a lot of excess demand for parking That's hard to park near your house Then that's going to hurt your property values, but I don't think we really need to know Precisely the effect and I would take I think a fairly sophisticated econometric analysis to answer the question Thank You councillor no Dell and so again this amendment deals strictly with the city assessor correct That's the intention. Okay. All right. Thank you So all those in favor unless there's other comments all those councillor jane Yes, this is more of a point of information and asking why Would you want to take this? 27 to 29 out of this resolution Knowing that we don't know if that's accurate whether or not Additional parking will increase property tree value But what we asking here is very simple for the city assessor to come here and then do a Presentation to the council He or he can say yes or no or I don't know that's what we want We want to hear from him, but now taking this away from it meaning that you just Asking for another consulate to bring another resolution that will actually gonna ask Something very specific. What are all the elements that add to the increase of a property value? So to me, this is very simple We just ask him if he can to come here on the 13 to us so we can ask couple questions We're not taking any actions about this Thank you Councillor Dean would you like to respond sure? I think that we've we've heard Pretty clearly from the discussion that the mayor offered that the city assessor's office is not really does not have the expertise To make this assessment. So requesting that they do that really does not fit with the you know appropriately within the Context of the resolution we can certainly ask that and and and work together to find a resolution You know find offer other resolution language under separate resolution to address this issue But it doesn't seem to be appropriate to have it here since the city assessor does not have the capability to address this All right. Thank you. Councillor Dean councillor Hartnett, and I think we should be ready to move short I just want to make a comment Councillor dang makes up a good makes a good point and even though we're striking the amendment. It doesn't mean that Mr. Vickery can't come and explain to us I mean it doesn't have to be part of this resolution and I understand that but he could come and explain to us really what? What tasks that he his office would be taking on or the expense of what it might cost? And so I think it would be fair Maybe we could work with the council president to see if we could have mr. Vickery come and just speak to on this Issue alone separately, and I think that would probably be probably work. So I do support the amendment Thank You councillor Hartnett anything else from the council Hearing none all those in favor of the amendment proposed by councillor Dean, which again is to strike lines 27 through 29 dealing with the report from the city assessor all those in favor of the amendment, please say aye. I any opposed That passes unanimously. Thank You councillor Dean We've eliminated that section of the amendment now. We're back to the Original motion to pass the resolution is there further discussion councillor Dean. Yes, so Following on and on the discussion that we had and observations from From the director I would suggest that we look for an alternate date in the fall months either October or November Where would be an appropriate time for him to deliver back his his report? councillor Dean would you I would like to make that amendment, but I'd like to seek a time Can we look at the city council schedule and and seek a time in October November that would make sense Well director shape director Spencer said sometime in the fall if we said Second meeting in October with that that is friendly All right, so I propose that we make an amendment the resolution that Directs that the DBW come back to us with the results At the second meeting in October all right that's seconded by councillor Shannon discussion on the amendment councillor Hartnett I do find this friendly and For a councillor who sat here two weeks ago and said everything should be put aside We should only be not concentrating on paving streets, and we should be doing nothing else this summer I would agree with this amendment, and I support it And and I do appreciate the effort on pine Street and as quick as it went so just put that in there So I do agree with the amendment. Thank you councillor Hartnett for the consistency there appreciate councillor Bursary so President right can I ask the director a question? Yes, you may proceed so you spoke to As in regards to this residential parking program and the Proposed changes you spoke to an ordinance that you were in the process of drafting that was going to go to the Commission Well would it come to the council for I want to know if we will get a report on this before the Ordinance get goes to the Commission because to me it's really important I don't I although I was very active in this process and Made a lot of comments, so I didn't agree with everything that was put forward. I certainly agreed with a number of items I would really like to Make sure that the council has a chance to understand What you are proposing before the ordinance gets adopted so Your ordinance would go to the Commission and not go to the ordinance committee, right? Does it stay just with my understanding of where the ordinance lies? Is that this would go just to the Commission that said we are open to notifying the council of the The changes and give you an opportunity to either have it on a Duke agenda or just to notify the council in general To to me it's really important I mean to get this report after action was taken by the Commission regarding Implementing changes. I would think would be I think what I'm trying to say is I think the council as a whole Would like to give you feedback about What you're proposing before you? Finalize or make permanent an ordinance change and so that's really what I'm speaking to so I Very I will be supporting this, but I must admit I don't I can't recall All eight new and modified strategies that that came forward and it would have been good for me to have those Attached I didn't do my homework. I didn't go and look them up, but I would really like to know those I don't know how many people around the table know them Maybe they all did that, but I don't have them at the tip of my tongue So I'm cautious when I sign my name to something that I'm really supportive of this I'm willing to let this come forward But I would like to be able to weigh in on some of them if I don't agree with them and Especially before an ordinance so what I would like to do and I don't know if I really need to make this as part of the Resolution, but I would like to request that That this report be made Councillor Buscher, we are right now. We're strictly on the amendment to change the date So if you're talking about going in a different direction, I think we need to stick strictly to this amendment right now Which is changing the date of the report from August 13th to the second meeting in October That's what we're that's what we're doing right now My point is that if indeed the ordinance gets adopted before that date, I'm not gonna support that that's my point present right so So I don't know I don't know the answer do you May I just ask one last question would this do you believe that the ordinance would get adopted before the second meeting in October? Our plan the police department has expressed a desire to implement Soon and so we had talked about we had shared a memo with the Commission and Chair Arshambo that said we had planned to bring the ordinance in front of the Commission within the next two to three months So the plan would be to bring it before that if it is important to the council to receive a presentation prior to Bringing that to the Commission then maybe we keep the date that's listed in the resolution Thank you Thank You councillor busher other counselors Hearing none, we are ready to vote on this amendment which just which changes the date from August 13th to the second meeting in October All those in favor of this amendment, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? That passes unanimously We and we have now changed that date. We are now back to the original Resolution as amended twice now. Are there is a further discussion on the resolution? Hearing none all in favor of passage of the resolution now as amended, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? No That passes by a vote of 10 to 1 with councillor busher voting. No, thank you. And that concludes that item and we are now on to Committee reports item number six any committee chair who would like to report to the council on committee activity Councilor Mason, thank you president right the ordinance committee will meeting May 29th for a continued discussion on the Suspension and revocation of certificate. We did have a first hearing it appeared there was a possibility of Some language being reached between the ACLU and the city attorney So we instructed them to sort of try to work together and report back We have not yet received that language, but my expectation is we'll have it in advance of our hearing. Thank you Thank You councillor Mason councillor Dean. So the Local control and licensing committee will be meeting at 445 on Tuesday June 5th Thank you for that update councillor Dean Other councillors other chairs All right hearing none moved on to item number Seven that is city councillors on general city affairs Anyone on general city affairs? All right hearing none. We will move to item number eight and that's city council president update One update that I want to just give to make sure that's out there is reminder to anybody listening that Commission appointments are coming up and the deadline for applications is This Wednesday There's the 23rd At 4 30 they have to be in by 4 30 in order to not be late So anybody out there who wants to get an application for commission or board and we welcome that please Get those in by Wednesday to the clerk's office by Wednesday at 4 30 And councillor Mason is chairing that committee and we'll be we'll be moving forward on that soon the City Hall Park ad hoc committee on the trees did meet last week. I think it was a productive meeting and We will be we are hoping to have a meeting for next week a doodle poll will be going out on that soon and Lastly, I just want to thank a couple of councillors did alert us that there was a couple things up on the agenda this week That did not have a motion with them originally did not have any action that was needed just Just to make it The easiest process and I appreciate those updates But as we go forward anybody finding anything just contact me and then I'll go through it to Lori Just Lori Elberg just to make it easier So that's that's my update. Thank you and we'll go to mr. Mayor for Update from the mayor to take us home Great. Thank you president right I want to start by just talking again about the FY 19 budget. There were two Budget presentations last week. Thank you channel 17 for taping both of those there will be two more this week That I believe will be taped as well So any member of the public that would like to see the presentations from the departments are Invited to either attend they are public meetings, of course or look at these online resources The At the bagel cafe this week at my regular Wednesday morning coffee, I'm going to be joined this week by planning and zoning staff, which is One of many community events there having around the city to talk about the update to the The plan BTV Comprehensive development plan for a municipal development plan for the city this Process we are required to go through every five years and if you can't join us this Wednesday at 8 o'clock at the bagel cafe Encourage people to check out the planning and zoning website and they can see more of these events coming up in the weeks and months ahead We are entering one of the best periods of the year for the city We will have the marathon the Vermont city marathon once again this Sunday kicking off in battery park next to battery park early on Sunday morning and before the council meets again, we will also be have jazz fest begin at the beginning of June for I believe the 35th year in a row and Hope everyone will get out and enjoy or participate in some way in these great Burlington events and another event that would like to know and invite the public to attend is next Monday the On Memorial Day itself at 11 a.m. there will be the traditional ceremony in battery park and That event again starts a brief ceremony, but it's always moving and Well tended by our veterans and hope you'll be able to join us there at 11 a.m. President right that's what I've got for tonight Thank You mr. Mayor That takes us home Move to adjourn by Councillor Hartnett Seconded by councillor Shannon all those in favor please say aye We opposed we are adjourned. Thank you very much