 Cool. Is that like a year round? Yeah. A little bit. The whole point of getting the job done. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I'm going to start with somebody else. So we're going to do what? Whenever you are ready we are going to say. The week and everything is going to be here. At. Rich. You're. Artists ready. Sure. I'm more. Yeah, I'm ready. All right. We'll. Call the. We're not 26. Twenty twenty three city council meeting. To order. Sorry. One second. Recording in progress. Okay. recording in progress. Okay. Here we go. We call the city of extension Wednesday July 26 2023 city council meeting to order. Are there any agenda additions or changes from staff or council? Not from staff. Nothing from council. Great. All right. No need to change that and move on to public to be heard. It's a portion of the city council meeting where members of the public can address the city council regarding items that are not on the agenda to be discussed tonight. Is there anyone in the room hopes that want to one person? Great. Well, I can't see the room so if Steve wants to come on up. If you'd like to come up to the table and see where the microphone is and give us your name. Thank you, Raj. And I guess you can't see the paper I'm going to hand out. I got a copy for you. Great. And this topic is on front porch forum. And if you may recall. It's in the mic. I'm sorry this is for the video. This is Steve Eustace. Yeah, I'm sorry Steve Eustace. So my topic tonight is front porch forum. And if you may recall a number of years ago the the quote neighborhoods in front porch forum were very small and they've done some consolidations over the years and some communities more than others. And what I've noticed and I have the privilege as being an elected official since I'm the moderator of seeing all of the forum all the neighborhoods within the community. And there's frequently conversations going on that really the whole community cares about but is like stuck over here like for example last weekend the Champlain Valley Exposition had a post on the concerts going on when traffic impacts were going to be and only people in one of the four neighborhoods got that information. And I look at places like I the couple that look blue on here Milton has the same number of households Williston, Winooski all very again similar as S Extruction. They only have a single neighborhood for their entire community. And and just given how S Extruction works I feel like we could really work as one community. And I've mentioned it to the front porch forum people many a time. I think if the council made a recommendation that would carry a lot more weight. And you can see the size of the forums there's in S Extruction one of them is 299 houses another's 113 and the other two are 1896 and 1,944. So they're completely skewed as to how big they even are. And anyway so my proposal for you to think about is you know at a future meeting whatever look it up we get information that I think it would do it would help the citizenry of community if we were all in the entire S Extruction was on one neighborhood like some of these other communities that I highlighted that are similar sized in questions. Great, thank you Steve. Steve. And at some point we'll get we'll hear back to the front porch forum officially it was I think due every year and we can certainly bring this recommendation to them If I may Raj make a comment. Yeah sure. So I recently had the pleasure of being at a meeting with the front porch forum folks and my understanding is that what you're proposing is under consideration. Okay. And so perhaps a nudge from the city council could make it happen sooner. That would that would be great. I agree we're a small community geographically so yeah I look at Williston and how large it is area-wise and diverse it is like farming areas very rural areas as well as like maple tree place or Williston like they're very different across the community they can support it why can't we. Right. All right anything else. All right thank you very much. Thanks for coming Steve good to see you. Thanks Steve. Andrew is anybody else in the room? There are other people in the room but no one else raised their hand. Well yes I shouldn't have been more clear. It doesn't appear that there's anyone online so we'll move on to the first business item which is the interview against their appointments to the community advisory board. I think we have we had two people for tonight one has since let us know that they're no longer interested so we are set to interview Christina Hogstad. I hope we're saying that correctly. If not please correct me. Close, good. Thank you. So welcome. Thank you for applying. Thank you. Maybe you could start by letting us know why you're interested and maybe you know let us know too if you have any questions about about the role or the role of the community advisory board and I guess I know I just asked her a question but I'm going to keep talking for a second and say I just want to want to be clear a little bit as to what this is. This is a commission working in conjunction but separately from the police department. It is not an oversight commission it's an advisory board to facilitate communication between the community and the six police department. I just want to stress the stress the fact that it's not as people think of an oversight board it's so I just want to make that clear but so now I would be very interested of your interest in this in your room. Thank you. So my wife and I moved to Vermont four years ago and I had previous public school teaching experience and when we moved to Vermont I happened to drop the teaching job at the Howard Center and I have to say that that has been life-shaving for me and it has really opened my eyes to a lot of aspects of just society and education that I definitely miss from teaching in other states before we looked here and I learned firsthand from our students how negatively students can experience the police department and other emergency services and I have also seen the major growth in some of our students in their willingness to work through some of that with some outside organizations that come in and I really just want to keep going with that in all the ways that I can. I was on the city manager committee and that was my first case for any type of political committee involved in I'm from New York City so there wasn't really any local anything to get involved in so I took the first step and joined the city manager Howard committee and that was really enjoyable fun scary all of the things and so I kept an eye out other committees to see if there were any but I really felt like I could provide something for not just you know sit and just be somebody on the committee and so this one really called out to me because working at the Howard Center I've really been pushing myself to learn more about TPI, restorative justice, restorative practices that's a lot of what our school does and so they've provided trainings for us I found some of my own but if my best friend is now a restorative practice coordinator so I've definitely just immersed myself in that world so I feeling I could apply a lot of what I've learned to this committee and so that's what I applied. Well thank you can you something with each group generally you're working with? So these are probably I think late 12 year old to 13 year old and it goes up till 18 plus so maybe 20 depending on what they need it's just like the middle school high school turn in a public school but through the Howard Center. Okay great. Any council members that have any questions? I have one question so hi Christina thank you for applying. Before I start with the question I'm just going to briefly read the mission statement for the Community Advisory Board. Their mission is to represent the diverse community of the town of Essex and the city of Essex Junction and facilitating a positive trusting and effective relationship with the Essex Police Department. The Police Community Advisory Board representatives will advocate for the systemically marginalized disenfranchised and oppressed members of the community. The Community Advisory Board will provide honest and open feedback and serve as a conduit between law enforcement and the community to support the Essex Police Department and continuously meeting the highest standards of engagement professional service and protection. So that's the end of the mission statement for this Community Advisory Board. Can you describe how you either have in the past or would like to have given the opportunity help to fulfill that mission? Sure thank you. So I think that one of the reasons I enjoy working at the school that I work at is because when I talk about the school in New York there were 30 kids in class who almost didn't have any relationship with anybody and there were always these one or two students in every class who were chronically out so chronically late going through a bunch of home never doing any work and I just could never figure out how to reach them and we would send them to the guidance counselor and that was kind of it and moving to Vermont finding this job I feel like this is a school for all of those kids that I was never able to reach and they they come from all of the marginalized groups they come from the groups of people who are you know working multiple jobs who are living in poverty who are in and out and foster care who are having all types of mental health crises basically all of the kids who get overlooked who get pushed to the end because they're just not able to be served and so in and out every day I hear stories from students about how they're living their life or how their families are living or how you know they're struggling with their own gender identity and and how they're viewed in society and how they're struggling to get a job so I feel like as much as I'm not necessarily a part of those oppressed communities I work with students every day and have those relationships with them to have learned so much that I then can't it's like bubbling over where I need to keep it like keep it going not just keep it for in the classroom or in the school but to do that work anywhere that I see it um and I I chuckled in my head when you read that only because there was a line about communication and open dialogue and I'm not going to shy away from giving constructive feedback in respectful ways for speaking up for speaking to strangers for being in front of groups so I kind of chuckled in my head when that one came up um but yeah my experience at the school that I work at has really given me insight to the people who are not necessarily enjoying you know police activity and who are viewing police negatively and not yeah so I'm gonna stop there but I think that I'm working with the people who would benefit from having that type of dialogue thank you thank you um Christina can I ask a quick question um yeah I've asked this of all the other applicants um are there aspects of policing in s6 junction and s6 town that are of concern to you are there things that you think need to be changed and and if there are what might they be um I can't think of any right now I've recently two of two people have recently become police officers and with ethics and so I'm wondering if that relationship will show me anything um but nothing off the top of my off the top of my head the interactions that I've seen I think I've been pretty positive but I know that I'm not the one who's necessarily receiving or seeing all the negative sides or what might be considered negative um so and like I don't necessarily have trauma related to police and I know that a lot of my students for example do and so I think that like just because I don't see it doesn't mean that others don't see it so I personally can say no as of right now um but that also doesn't mean that it doesn't exist thank you Christina I'll I'm sorry no thanks um if if you might uh I'd like to hear a little bit from your experience in in talking with youth who have this sense negative sense concerning the police is it usually wrapped around an incident that you're seeing is this a general authority fear what do you what do you see as the big disconnect between police and youth I think it's a little bit of both I think for some it's definitely just authority and there's no wiggle room if there's a rule this is you can't be somewhere after 10 and you think you have a good reason to be there and then you're told not to you might feel like well my reason's good enough I should want I should be able to stay there and then anyone who pushes against that is negative to you um I also think that there is a gender aspect a lot of people that I work with have trauma with uh male figures especially male authority and so I think that even if they know that this person has done them no harm this person is here to help them there's still like like an internal negativity just because this person's a male um I also think that some have had incidents where you know they might have been taken into that say you see a property and so they might see all people in that role as negative um some have had police come to their house for various reasons um some have been involved with other people than their incidents that involve police so I think it it's everything and it's more it you know when people of color are in experiences with police in the news and somebody of color is watching the news and sees that it their brain says oh like I should feel this thing and even if they have positive experiences with people in their community it's that it's something that's it's hard to fight that like in the feeling of I need to keep myself safe so I think it's everything you said um and it's more and it's all on an individual basis have you seen examples where those kinds of fears have been overcome yes so I'm not giving much info only because my school is in the center so I'm not really going to share I'm going to be a little vague but we have had a police officer coming into our school consistently we're trying to bring them to events we're trying to include them in our community as best we're trying we brought them to graduation we actually get them an award at graduation um and over time over the course of the school year there have been some students who might not like all police officers but have grown to like this one and so when there have been incidents where we need to get police involved we've tried to have this officer come in because we know that some of our more fearful or traumatized students have had this time to build a relationship with this officer and that has been very positive um at graduation this officer got a standing ovation everybody was super impressed to see them that they showed up I mean I don't know how their schedules work so we're very sad they showed up um they got standing ovations people were very excited you know we're seeing afterwards and it's not everybody it's definitely not everybody some students are still not able to interact with this officer at all but they can be in the same cafeteria which is progress they you know some students might have had to leave the entire building now they can at least be in the same group which I think is progress too um so it was a situation like that which really got me saying oh wow like if more students could experience police officers like we've had this officer come in consistently even just the slightest positive change is better than no change and so that has been really rewarding to see this year thank you thank you right yeah sorry it's a lot of space I'm in right now and I forgot to do that because you know we're curious um some of the uh you were talking about some of the traumas or students experience and some of their the effects of that um is that can you tie any of that back into Essex or are you you're the Essex connection for this not so much your students right so this is necessarily this is these are the issues that necessarily having with Essex or as much as you can divulge I guess you probably can't say much so I can say that our school I can say that our school serves um most of the districts in Chippin County which include ethics junctions so I have people in mind who I know um have gone through some of the experiences that I've shared but it's also people living in other towns and cities throughout the county too okay and you you mentioned a couple people in your life now being a sex police officers can you elaborate on that a little bit and in terms of yeah so yeah so um I mean one is a very good friend and one is a regular size friend um I mean no we know I didn't I didn't mean to put you on the side and now have to answer questions in about four minutes when you're done here yeah I mean we we definitely have so me and the regular regular size friends um we definitely have a lot of a lot of um what's the word I'm looking for a lot of like philosophical debate and we know that we both agree at the end result like we're both like out for the same result we just kind of go about it in an interesting way and so we we love to like argue but like argue ish about the situation or um things on the news or things like that and then blow it at the end we'll just say but you know like we're we're we're in this for the same thing and we end up being in it for the same thing we just have different ways to go about it so like we've talked about situations you've seen on the news we talked about you know ways to have things in general be more inclusive ways to have you know things that were both involved did be more inclusive and we're both not afraid to just say what we want to say to each other and so we definitely have a lot of good debates um and they all end positively so I like that we can we can talk about things that because I know that we're yeah we're both looking for the mistakes sounds good I appreciate that yeah and I don't want to have to answer them later so that's why I need to clarify I think no matter what you're gonna probably have some answering to do probably to the regular size friend I think we all wish you luck um and I unless there's any further questions for Kristina thank you very much for for taking time tonight to talk with us um and for being willing to do this um I believe we're going to meet tonight and try to make some decisions so I expect you'll be hearing very shortly from from the cities um about about this time okay thank you very much thank you all right um so we'll have an executive session at the end of the meeting or the city council level debate and discuss um tonight's interview and interviews from um onto business item 5b discussion consideration of the housing commission charter I'm hoping we have uh Katie Ballard here as well tonight I'm sure I don't see I don't know if she's in the room she is not in the room um and not on zoom either so okay all right um so I can talk through this agenda item um so as part of the town city separation we have had a joint housing commission um and now intend to have two housing commissions on both sides um the uh first memo in your packet is from the joint housing commission members and oh sorry I'm just going to check this chat okay I just wanted to make sure somebody wasn't saying they couldn't hear us um the first memo in the packet is from the joint housing commission and they really wanted to sort of hand off all the work and content and stuff that they have been able to do and uh move that forward to both individual councils um and really grateful that they've offered to be a resource to going forward down down the road on the two different topics that they focused up on which was inclusionary zoning and the housing trust fund um what you also have in your packet uh is a new draft charter for the housing commission just on the individual on the city side um as well as a job description that we're bringing forward because both boards approved this job description before whether you necessarily need to be approving job descriptions going forward I think is a good question um uh but um essentially the charter doesn't change a whole lot because the um basis of those sort of mission statements are really from the joint um housing needs assessment that was done a number of years ago and so those uh from a policy perspective I think are still accurate um the joint housing commission in the job description there is a change um from uh meeting twice a month to meeting once a month unless they need to meet more often than that um at this current point we've got our drb meeting once a month we have our planning commission meeting once a month um and uh we recommend housing commission once a month as well because that's what we can manage from a staffing perspective um as a super side note we are interviewing for city planner right now so some of that may change also as a side note we're doing the strategic planning and we'll be working on overall prioritization in terms of what we're going to focus on going forward um so also um on the city side we currently now have three housing commission members so the three folks that were on the joint housing commission on the city side are staying on one of those folks Gabrielle is going to be stepping off in September uh and Katie chose not to renew so um come September we're going to have two housing commission members Tatanisha and Ned who do have some continuity continuity from the old commission to the new one um and you do at this point have two um applicants uh they are actually two applicants that are also on your cab list that you'll be talking about tonight but it's great that some of those folks heard that there are other things to get involved in too so um so what you've got here on the memo is just a recommended schedule as well in terms of getting the charter adopted tonight um going forward and continuing to recruitment to get recruitment for some other folks um and then also to kind of really get this kicked off is a joint meeting between yourselves the planning commission um and the housing commission to really try to sort of bring some prioritization um to the efforts and some coordination in terms of who's doing what um planning commission has been focusing on the rental registry um effort at this point and really probably could use some good some better coordination in terms of who's doing what kind going forward um so that's um about it any questions should the DRB also attend that joint meeting yeah that's a good idea um you know they're they're more in a um enforcement's not the right role they're they're less in a policy setting role at this point but certainly in terms of coordination no reason not to yeah I mean I think over and above the housing commission conversation I think it would be great if we were to up the uh coordination a little better meeting um among various communities with us and together um I don't know necessarily a schedule in mind but at least once or twice a year um check-ins and um job and brought that up too um and it's going to be good to to understand where everybody's coming from and priorities um among the larger group are there any questions specifically about the housing commission charter tonight from the board yes I I have a couple um I saw the mention concerning seven members I know that the charter has been written for five I must say in thinking about it myself it feels like seven is the right number in order to cover the aspects in which again looking at the goals for the housing commission um if we're gonna try to have a representative member kind of coming from all these different angles it feels like we're gonna need seven in order to make that happen um recognizing there was an acknowledgement of potential challenge trying to find people but I feel like recently we've actually done pretty well so I'm wondering if if that fear is not fully founded um so I kind of feel like we we should talk about seven versus five um the other thing is I do have a specific question in regards to how the housing commission would interact like I get the scope of their work um but specifically like in in the regards to projects before the drp because this is the point where those projects in you know that in that first conceptual phase you know we're kind of being shown here's the project here's the type of housing this and that would the housing commission get involved least from the aspect of consulting on those particular projects consulting with the drb or does their work happen before that because obviously I know that there's reference to them getting involved with developers but I don't know if they're going to be calling say Gabe Handy on the phone or would they be working with the drb in order to say hey this is the kind of things we would recommend you put before that particular developer when those projects come up um so I'll leave it at that for um so I'll go backwards um so the way that I have seen so um big picture housing commission is essentially a commission of yours uh they work on your behalf um they uh how I could see it working from the drb perspective and how it does work in some of the other municipalities is there's uh communication to at least let the housing commission know what projects are coming up and the housing commission um can play a advocacy role if they feel it's appropriate to um uh help a project get through the development review phase and really what I just mean is that they're in the room saying this is really a need from the city perspective it's great that more housing is coming to the table um when uh sometimes for development application you can have uh because the note neighbors are notified that changes hard and folks are don't want to see any change in their neighborhood so it can a little bit help bring a bigger a bigger picture perspective to a particular drb application um uh and then I think you're right in terms of the the housing commission working with the development community I think that's intended to be um an upstream policy-based conversation and communication about how can we um set up um either policies or non-regulatory program to help the development community produce more housing and produce more affordable housing um so I think within um and we also just as an example for the tree advisory committee um as Nick Meyer talked about when he was here for his interview um there could and should be better coordination where the tree advisory committee is aware of um development applications and they can help look at the landscaping plans and give some sense of um advice as to what that looks like so um really truly uh advisory to the development review board and essentially um drb has the ultimate authority and responsibility to follow their land development code and seeing those things out um in terms of going to seven members um I think that's a great point considering uh it could make sense to have a developer on this committee it could make sense to have um folks who work in housing on this committee um the tricky thing is just it gets harder to meet a quorum for each meeting so with that being said because I know that the language in there if it were five for instance as it is in the language right now it says that a quorum is three members can that be defined more generally as a majority of the current membership so that it will cover the basis depending on what the size of it is but like we can I think for me I'm feeling like seven is our would be my goal five would be the minimum but the the other thing on this that was one that's like a new no that's it so yeah I don't know if the legalese has to be specifically this way or it can be more generalized yeah and I think it would be can it be written as a majority of the filled seats you know while we're while we're struggling to come up with what you know how that would work how that would look one comment I was going to have was um and Marcus I wasn't going to bring it up but Marcus's question about seven is making me want to do it again you know I'm wondering about the possibility of having a planning commission member as a who's will I as a member of this um and part of it goes back to the earlier part six minutes ago we were talking about coordination and communication between committees you know if we had some of that cross-pollination between our committees to help flush them out now you're asking again you're asking the same people who are essentially volunteering to do to do more so I guess it would take some consultation with before we volunteer them up to see if folks in that committee are interested but it is something I've been thinking about is how and maybe this stays at five but there are ad hoc members that participate you know maybe there's one from PC and one from DRV and that frees this up to maybe try to reserve two of the seats that are in that five for members that are developing or housing community and district and so there's just something I've been taking around in my head how do we foster better communication when the committee's in general and us and make sure that there's communication and coordination there so I don't know what people think about that in order in a way to get the numbers up oh and I I just found the note on what I was thinking about too along these same lines in order to find this membership and choose this membership is the is in this charter dimension concerning residency so I'm wondering if we should at least discuss that how we feel about it is this language I this language comes from the joint commission and I assume that this language is in there because of the fact that there was a point in which we were two different municipalities so it allowed for that commission to continue forward or was the intention to allow for people outside the residence I can pull Regina and do an answer both of those are diverse just so the the joint portion about not having residencies because there was a person from Champlain Housing Trust who was going to be a part of the joint commission who did not live in either the town or the city village of time but worked for a developer a non-profit affordable housing developer that had a development within the community so it allowed for that as well as that any other potentials say if there were an employee of the HFA who may not live in the community at that time who could then be a point of the member so that was a desire to have it similarly Raj mentioned the developer or other people who might not live here those it could be a way to allow them as far as the the five or seven frankly I think that with the amount of interest we've been having in committees I'd say put it at seven in a worst case we'll have four as of September so they can still me and we'll have to do more advertising I think it's a very solvable problem that we can resolve and we've adjusted committee membership before to address long-term issues of vacancies you know let's do that if that's a problem yeah right okay so I'm hearing go to seven members um do we want to specify that one should be a PC member and a DRB member I think that's kind of tough doing without actually asking the committees if someone would like to do that I want to do it I know in the amber correct me if I'm wrong but in our capital review committee do we still say that one member must be a planning commission member we do and if I remember right that was kind of hard to to fill for a period of time yeah it was maybe and that's how you got me I remember that I mean we may be able to accomplish the same thing in other ways people would resort to that by just asking them to participate if they're interested they don't necessarily have to be a member and we can also facilitate coordination in other ways so it was just a we have to do it right no you're you're spot on about your nation and there's there's I think ways that we can accomplish that for not just the housing commission and the planning commission but more broadly broader better coordination among our committees um I guess the question I have if we're going to go to seven is do we want to leave the residency preference I don't necessarily think we have to adjust the residency preference if we go to seven I think we can decide for ourselves as for the ones that populate this community you should we want to put on it and I think it would benefit the committee to have a good variety of you know either folks with lived experience in other places housing professionals non-profit representatives developers so I don't know if people agree with that I think there's related to three Shelby residents we can still appoint more residents I would agree yeah okay okay okay so I am hearing that I'm we're editing to five members and then switching the quorum to four and tweaking wherever else we need to for the five to seven but otherwise we're leaving this essentially the same yes sorry I think you said tweaking it to five originally so we're going to make it seven to four quorum sorry it's okay okay there is an overarching question about quorum though that might be good to have answered at some point in time about whether that is truly something that we can define differently than what Robert's rules of order says yeah or that is something that is just defined by the rules of the the entity right and and help me on this they can still get together and do work they just can't make binding decisions um and since they're not necessarily going to be making a lot of binding decisions that's going to have to come back to us although I suppose not always um they could still I mean if they only you know am I wrong they could still meet the staff may decide we can't do that it's not efficacious for them to do that depending on what the agenda was who's who's missing but is that wrong or my recommendation would be no they should not meet unless they have a quorum it's it's way too gray okay sounds good so let me go back up to the motion I guess the motion would be instead of as drafted as drafted and modified yeah almost I want to make that motion almost city council adopt the city housing commission charter and job description as drafted and modified at tonight's meeting by second uh is there any public comment on this I'd like to ask and since we've got a motion on the table would anybody like to Andrew would you uh entertain a friendly um rescission of your motion yes for the purpose of taking public comment yeah thank you is there any public comment from anyone in the room on this topic tonight no hi anyone online or participants that wants to address this topic okay we've talked about related to it not seeing anyone so Andrew um if you'd like to let's move this uh I move that the city council adopt the city housing commission charter and job description as drafted and modified at tonight's meeting great second more because you're still second and great all right um and then any discussion all those who've ever said hi hi hi all right close approach tonight motion passes five zero thank you very much thank you thank you all right um I've seen discussion and consideration of the fyi-24 text do you yep uh I'll make this short because it's pretty sweet um so we have a final line screen list appeals and revents of their complete so we have a 0.79 percent increase in the red list values over last year um based on the city budget that was approved uh earlier this spring um we are looking at really a zero percent increase in the tax rate over the previous combined town and city rates uh but it is due to rounding um property assessed at about $280,000 we'll see a $1 increase on their tax bill this year um I'll also add that we do have uh just one property in the city that has a tax stabilization agreement and that was agreed upon or renewed I should say um just last month of the month before uh with the would confirm property on south street so that is the only adjustment that we have to our grand list values at this point great thanks guess um okay sorry we did I didn't have anything okay I'm going to interrupt you somebody sorry okay Jess were you still talking no I was just going to mention that we still have the for one more year we have the economic development fund which is the penny on the tax rate in addition to the general tax that we excess I think this is pretty exciting um so thank you for all the work on this I don't know if the councillors have anything they want to add or ask a wanting dollar that's all I want to say one dollar on the average assessed home of 280,000 I'm thrilled pretty excited um yep just a little bit there um again thanks for the work thanks for all the the time you and your crew have put into this Jess Virginia um yeah it's pretty exciting all right um do you want to have a want to make this motion? I'll move the city council approve the FY24 tax rate as presented second great they made the motion like the second date any further discussion seeing none all those papers say aye hi hi all those post names that passes the unistake great thank you very much thank you thank you Jess have a great night Jess might have might have been your shortest visit ever yeah I love it um moving on to 5d discussion considering the 2023 resurfacing project all right and uh Raj so you know we've got Ricky here in the room so um what you have in front of you is the resurfacing project for Cascade, Poplar Court, Densmore Drive, Sugar Tree Lane and uh we put West Street sidewalk in there to see uh what that would look like and whether we could get a somewhat quick fix to that sidewalk um the all collectively that bid the lowest bid comes back from Pike Industries for 320,825 the general fund budget for this is $300,000 so if we want to do the full project within that bid we need additional funding and I suggest that we pull that from the local option tax if that's what you would like to do um uh Mark has asked a great question about redoing this as an asphalt sidewalk um as opposed to switching it up to a concrete sidewalk um we got some input from Jeff Kirschner that doing this stretch of West Street with concrete would be uh $200,000 without a lot of things associated with what it would actually need um so we could probably say roughly two to three hundred thousand um and um this is on the Capital Program Review Committee's agenda next week their meeting next week um they uh will more than likely have the recommendations for the council in terms of what capital projects we can fit into the FY25 budget by like October November more than likely um and then you folks have your budget day to kick off the FY25 budget um work in December um so at this point in time it's not we can't say a hundred percent that that project switching that over to a concrete sidewalk for that amount of money can definitely be done in FY25 um few other things to think about um is that if we did it as asphalt um it does buy us some time to potentially work in the concrete fix in a phased approach um as opposed to all at once so it somewhat gives some flexibility in terms of accommodating that $300,000 um Ricky anything else you're doing great um it's a lot of public input on this sidewalk this year all of a sudden came up and that's out there in a section before the pavement went out we were trying to figure out what we could do how we can do this and that's I thought you asked for Janice I mean put on the pavement and let's see what we get for a number and see what we can do with it just a quick question side sidebar for a second is is he being picked up all right I just want to make sure that people can hear him okay because I know Ricky you don't want to be in the spotlight but I want to make sure people are hearing this you know me very well I'm picking it up you already know um can I ask a question in regard to the sidewalk specifically because when we're talking about asphalt and I get this could be a temporary leading into later on or permanent but are we talking like asphalt covers us for five years whereas concrete gives us 25 years I mean looking at that cost differential in the long term trying to figure out what would be the benefit I guess to the residents financially yeah the asphalt will last a lot longer than five years yes if we were to put this asphalt sidewalk in this year yeah you're looking at 10 to 15 I would say okay my opinion the soils are good over there it's not it's a sandy soil so you're not having to play movement you know the freeze saw cycles and I think it would be in good shape okay concrete would last longer yes yes 20 25 years how about twice as much okay over that all right that I'm holding in the public has something to do with Steve yeah Ross so you're aware Steve Eustis also would like to speak on this topic okay any number of lane enter thoughts on this bit I do have other questions it's okay okay I don't have any um can I get can it be explained I it was said that pike industries is the lowest bit at 320 can but what about this bid for 313 so the distinction between the two are um poplar court so poplar court's a little piece that comes right off of cascade um and um I forget what Jeff said but there was something that wasn't 100 clear at the beginning that poplar court was included in there so that's the distinction between those two pieces um it's the whatever the poplar court number is uh should be the difference between those two okay the the other question I have in regards to the the bids is this is it possible to to award the bid to the lowest bidder for each project versus the whole thing and I asked this because when I tabulated the lowest totals I come to $272,000 which is $28,000 less than what we budgeted for versus going in the other direction for 320 and I I don't know if that's because of the way we wrote this up because of the way our process works I'm curious kind of like you're thinking yeah we've never got the cap by as far as piece down on it on each on each road no it's so it's a lump sum for the whole thing that's why the lump sum so yeah some uh say for instance the sidewalk will be more expensive on some people because they don't have the equipment for you know the certain machine to run at so you're gonna see a higher number for that and other people do have the machine for that but no we have never broken up the broken up the bid like that say okay you guys get that road you guys get this road is there an opportunity for negotiation in this and I asked that because you know as I looked at some of the figures when you're looking at some of them and let's just say the unit price for the low for pike is in one case I'm looking at $225 for the unit price but I'm looking at another one at 120 is there room to negotiate these things in order to ask pike to get this to our budget at least we haven't done in the past I'm not sure if that's if I've never done we could give it a crack that's what they say but my gut said that's my gut I'm wondering if that would go against the whole bid press because then everybody else would want the opportunity to renegotiate it and then we'd be in a situation where we would actually potentially never get to an answer because and I understand that right we probably have to be right in front says that's just my big understanding yeah it works yeah but I'm coming I keep coming back to the fact that looking at the lowest bid for each project that like the difference between each one is such that again 28,000 under our budget nearly 50,000 under what we're being asked if we include west streetness in this bid it seems like a pretty decent chunk of money that we could save one or any other if we did this differently I think it's definitely worth a shot of having a conversation I wonder though if these vendors would look at the smaller job and their bids and prices would change appropriately as someone who's bid not for this kind of work but for other work if I'm doing six jobs for you I'm going to give you a better rate than if I'm doing one smaller and I'm not going to predict which way this would go I absolutely think we should see if that's something we could do my assumption would be however that a lot of these numbers would change accordingly if they were doing a small scale or maybe not even bid if it's not worth them deploying even for a smaller stretch of room so I don't know Ricky I mean if I definitely think it's worth a conversation on the back end see how feasible that might be it's an interesting suggestion yeah we can have Jack from Hamlin's he's been doing he put the bid out for us the first time if you wanted we could try to talk but my gut is telling me you know these these companies are filled up and they're looking to see they actually want us to extend it a little bit longer because their their schedules right now are full we're a little late getting this out just paid a bid out this year I wonder if this may be a good question for my phone to ring at this exact moment it's the public town hall for the everybody's phone is probably ringing Bernie Sanders is hosting a town hall for the flood stuff I wonder if it might be a better question for Jeff for a future bid where is there a way for future bids to be worded in such a way where that could be a possibility of awarding different components to different people yeah I'm also curious from a management point of view if somebody has to project manage this in the city on what does that mean for for city on staff for public work staff in this case to manage more than one vendor on our streets at a time and what that consideration would be as well as we're evaluating it yeah not to be cynical and negative I'm just thinking you know that does pretty different complexities to the table right well and I think too for each of these vendors there's certain mobilization costs for starting a project getting here such getting themselves situated and if that's happens if those mobilization costs we see four times over as opposed to just one vendor then well likely I think without a doubt if we were to assume that would work with the lowest bid from each vendor for each project I can't imagine we wouldn't see increased costs by breaking it out that way as opposed to just sticking with one vendor and but I think it's an excellent question that I don't feel comfortable saying it couldn't be done that way in the future if we were to set it up in a different way to acknowledge that that might be the case I think it would be unfair to switch it at this stage of the game with not being clear up front in the bid process that that's what we would potentially do I understand I I think if we were talking about five ten thousand dollars I probably think I think differently for fifty thousand I start I'd like to explore the question as to whether or not we can or cannot and I agree look I can negotiate for a living so I get how this kind of plays out but at the same time it's fifty thousand to the whole budget it's not a big deal you know yep I think for this particular project it is so I don't know did anybody agree with me or am I it's it makes a whole bunch of logical sense the that side of me is saying absolutely let's go for it try to figure it out the other side of me is let's just get the let's get this awarded and try to see if there's a way to do that in the bidding document so we can be transparent about this potential upfront with vendors instead of possibly coming at it from the back end and then harming any potential relationship with these vendors for future projects yeah so that's let's ask that to take that question back and give it some good consideration and come back to us at some point and they feel like they have a good answer I'm not at a pursuit of that anyone have any more questions not to cut your own purpose does anybody have any more questions on this slide okay if there aren't any I'm gonna invite public comment I don't think anyone wants to talk about it in the room yes thank you Raj so you know I've talked I've got I guess I'll get the easy one out of the way first for Cascade Street I know the uphill in particular right when you get easterly of the pump station there are little ways it almost that we read we last repaved Cascade Street not that long ago if you look at the cycle of how frequently we repave roads and that hill is a disaster and is this uh is the plan just to repave it again and do we expect you know like at some point are we getting it in a long-term plan it it appears from a layman's point of view that we need to do some subsurface work or something on that hill so that we can get you know 20 25 years out of it I mean it's not that busier road if we look at you know all the roads in the city in total um that road does have oh yeah so it does have some heavy vehicles not weight down from wastewater down fields okay we're gonna see a little difference so but if we put more rock or something underneath it would that help that last longer not that we can do that now I'm again I'm thinking ahead yet and suddenly he continues to haul that route okay you know that's I don't know down the down the road I don't want to speak Chelsea or wastewater yeah sure okay but that does eat it up it and and maybe the answers we just repave it at a higher frequency or that section of road or whatever anyway living at the bottom of that street I can say that in addition to the hauling it's a very busy street people use it to cut through from park street or yeah from park street over to south street or to um avoid five quarters it's quite busy but everyone that drives on that road cutting through drives on your street and my street oh yeah and our street in your street don't look anything like that hill good point yeah so and my road was last paved uh 26 years ago so and cascade was paved 15 I have to look at my record somewhere in that range but your your road your roads were under good village or yeah village back back then correct cascade I don't believe paved over a dirt road uh and is also the fact that there's no curbs on that road or there's no curb on the there's there is no curb that shouldn't affect it okay in I would guess um anyway so that was one question the second one was on west street um and I brought up the sidewalk and um I apologize if there's been a public meeting on this because I've been wanting to come to a public meeting and give input on the west street sidewalk for over a year um so it seems slightly awkward to be talking about it in the paving contract um number one um I would advise um if you're doing an asphalt sidewalk please please please do it with a contractor that's going to use the machine um it makes a huge difference when you have a sidewalk that was done with the machine it's it's it's smoother it it wears better and so I think that is a huge thing like you can tell us if someone isn't so there's one advice there the second thing if we take a step back at west street after the class one roads it is a class two road but it's probably the the busiest street in in the city um along with a short section of south street that's also class two and the spec for class two roads is a sidewalk on both sides five foot wide and um concrete ideally uh but there's geographic reasons why we can't have a sidewalk on two sides there because of the sharp drop on the one side um but we've at least got to get in my opinion the other side because it's such a busy street up to the right width I mean I had a pass a kid was riding his bike against traffic in the street next to the sidewalk and I felt uncomfortable I actually came to a complete stop to let the kid go by me because I didn't feel comfortable passing you know an eight-year-old in the opposite direction in a four foot spot and and some people are not riding on the sidewalk because it's so bad um I went out today just to confirm it was four feet and the first measurement I took was three and a half feet and it's very uneven um if I look at other cases um when I was on the board we worked hard to get the second side of the sidewalk street covered on south street down close to park street that used to only have one side it was capable we made the decision to add the second side in that case and get it up to the five foot spec another case we did not uh was on pearl street here I was on the board and it was less than five feet and I was in favor of bringing it up to the spec and people were some members were against it we ultimately did not and then when we uh ended up doing so we redid the sidewalk and then when we did the uh put the street lamps on a number of years ago maybe 10 years ago we at that point we did so again that was a case where we did the sidewalk and we did it again um the sidewalks last a long time I'm a really heavy user I run and walk all over I've been on like every sidewalk in the village a lot and I look uh my neighborhood's 25 years our sidewalks look great west street wasn't great when I moved in the concrete portion it's barely changed the asphalt section is was bad when I moved in and now it's a disaster and the other thing to point out is a lot of the sections on this are sunken we need to bring them up because they flood especially in the winter you get a thaw it all fills with water and then it's a skating rink and it's completely unsafe and I know uh public works has been uh in recent years putting down some sand and things to help um but that that can cause a safety thing if we can get it up to the same great as people's yards or peel the yard back I know Rick has said sometimes they've peeled the the uh between the sidewalk and the road back if you look at the house that was torn down on west street hasn't yet to be rebuilt that landowner did it himself and it solved all the flooding problems that were uh near his house and you look sometimes it's uh four or five six inches above the sidewalk so it creates a canyon um anyway so one of my talked about a lot of things here I I applaud the council for trying to at least do something short term I want to make sure we're not throwing good money at it and then have to buy 10 years whatever the right when we can fit it in the budget then have to redo it again and I'd also really advocate for making it five feet it's such a busy street people need to be able to pass each other in opposite directions if there's someone uh kid riding a bike there's the seniors there you need to be able to easily get by um especially if you only have it on one side of the street and I know that could increase the the paving because the bids probably as if it was four feet or should be four feet it's bid out for five it is thank you very much for that fact I did not have that fact so I feel good about that um uh anyway I I think concrete is the way to go if you look at south summit sidewalk was put in um in the mid 90s you go on that there's not a thing wrong with it um concrete lasts forever um you know that's a great example too the way they pitch the grades yep to the driveways that's an excellent example and I but there's like no issues it's probably easier to plow you know the whole thing and uh I'll try the ground for the next presentation I I plan to so anyway so there's there's a lot of uh a lot of input there sounds like you're at least bringing it to five feet that's great I hope you at the same time raise it up uh to the places where it's sunken and I'd really strongly strongly advocate to get that to a concrete sidewalk because it's better in the end because the asphalt side ones if you look and we'll hear on the next presentation if you were to rank all the sidewalks in the in the city the asphalt ones tend to be the worst shape because they end up rounding and stuff so you don't know where the problems are going to be on a concrete sidewalk you know what's at the seams so when you're walking running stroller whatever the case may be it's not everywhere so you can concentrate like even if you're an elderly person you don't have to be every step be worried about where you're going to lose your balance anyway any any questions I apologize for being passionate thank you I don't have any questions Steve I just want you to be rest assured that this is absolutely not the last time we're going to talk about sidewalks nor with the next agenda either it is going to come up quite a bit and we we will be doing a lot of work and a lot of discussing about sidewalks in the city I really appreciate your very detailed knowledgeable input so thank you okay Amber would you end up Steve I just wanted to make a comment that did not been discussed so I know you had mentioned that you emailed me about this in regards to the catholic committee it is I think Regina mentioned this at the beginning of the meeting it is on the agenda for the meeting next Tuesday at six o'clock okay great I'll try to attend that right is there anyone on zoom layer wants to speak to this tonight looking at Annie Cooper hi thanks for having me the president of the city is the same but I would very much welcome find her full of notes and his presence at every single meeting in the city and I agree with the in the case that I think should be taken and I wanted to say Andrew I'm completely intrigued by your concept of finding a way to plausibly parse out some flex layers of the bid I think that's a really healthy idea I think it's also plausibly messy because they're asking possible competitive businesses to work together on that might be hard but I also really like it because I think it brings a level of transparency and also a level of communion harmony and the ability to really find the people who are really good at the particular pieces of what a bid is seeking to do so I really applaud the idea and I don't know what the legalities are we all find out thank you very much thanks Annie all right so back to the agenda item any more any further council comment or discussion no all right so if we're ready to move on this if anybody wants to make the motion sorry to approve this bid I'll go ahead and move the city council award the bid for the 2023 roadway resurfacing project to the lowest qualified bidder pike industries incorporated for 320,825 dollars and 18 cents and use the local option tax to make up the difference between the general fund budget of 300,000 and this contract amount I'll second thanks Andrew thanks Elaine any further discussion all right hearing none all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed nay yeah motion varies five zero thank you and you're kind of learners by the ccrpc presentation and sidewalk inventory data um so Raj so you know we've got Chris Dubin here from ccrpc in the room as well as Jacob Burcroft awesome who is an intern for ccrpc I am going to share their presentation and you guys can come up to that mic if you want to just pull another chair over you can totally side by side let me sit there um you want to advance this all thrive and progress tag team here um thanks everyone my name is Chris Dubin as Regina introduced me we used how to cease to work together at the regional planning commission I've known and worked with Rick since I believed my start at the rpc which was 2012 um and you know one of the things that we do at the rpc is there's a lot of data collection and inventory work traffic counts all that stuff um you all pay municipal dues to the regional planning commission and this is some of the examples of the work that we do for our member municipalities um I'm going to have Jacob kind of give the first half this presentation and I'll give the second half and show off our little web mapping tool that we built for for to kind of showcase this data um so I guess with that Jacob go ahead um so yeah Jacob uh I'm a rising senior UVM right now um I also have a little bit of a surveying background so I'm really happy to be put on this project um yeah uh yeah so as Chris mentioned uh we'll go over uh the data model um which is how we collected the data um and this model actually was created back in 2014 um for work in Colchester um and it was also used last summer for Williston sidewalk uh inventory so uh there is precedent for it um we have some general results that we could get um just from our data um and then Chris will go over some more data analysis that we did and of course the web mapping tool uh yeah so this project is mainly to help with your capital infrastructure planning and how you allocate different resources as far as repairing or replacing um different sidewalk sections um this data was collected by interns like me and a couple others um we collected data on a slab by slab basis meaning that we looked at each and every slab um in extra junction um or various distresses um and we also used ArcGIS field maps because it was very easy for us to use and um we could just use our phones out in the field so it was great can just interject one oops for quick so slab by slab means the inventory is just of concrete sidewalks not correct just so thank you yeah that's good clarification tie in from our previous yeah yes perfect um so this is just a screenshot of what our web map looks like um there's different uh segments with their own unique IDs associated with them and then those white dots you see also have a unique ID associated with them uh to the associated with the uh segment um and those dots represent a slab with a distress of any uh sort um so as we were walking down the road or down the sidewalk we would see a distress slab drop a point there say what's wrong with it and you know keep walking uh so these are the different types of distresses that we looked for uh when we were walking the sidewalks um there's definitely a lot of them um they don't all occur at the same frequency but they can exist um at the same time on a singular slab um yeah uh this is a screenshot from our uh distress uh sidewalk manual um or slab distress manual um which outlines different sets of criteria that needed to be needed to be met um in order to say oh this slab has high cracking versus medium um and so we have a page or pages like this for each of those distresses that you just seen on the previous slide um and that was just to make sure that we had a consistent uh score of each slab uh so this is the uh scoring matrix that we used for um scoring the slabs um as you can see there's a lot of different uh numbers there of different uh levels and that's really to make sure that the problems that are really severe can stick out to us um and they can be fixed and easily identifiable um uh but another thing to note here is that as I had mentioned before these distresses can exist at the same time on a singular slab um so there could be a slab that is ledging so that would be a score of a four and if it's also has a low slab cracking that would be a score of a two and then we added those two together to get an overall score of a six um so we found that there were 53.4 miles of sidewalk in sx junction um we broke those into 290 segments um using a five-foot standard length of a sidewalk slab we were able to find that um there's 56,447 about slabs in sx junction and of those uh 4026 were distressed at some level which is about seven percent um the data collection by the interns averaged about five miles per day so it took us about two weeks um the average overall slab score so individual slab or average overall slab distress score of all the slabs uh was 4.71 and the highest overall slab distress score was 41 out of 95 and chris can talk about those last two points a little bit more here thank you jacob um uh this graph we make every time we do this we've done this now three times in colchester wilson now sx junction it is making sure that our the way we score and aggregate all the distresses and their severity levels makes sense the way we want to kind of like tease out really bad areas so basically the take home is that we have a bunch of points or locations that score very low and very few locations that score very high and it just is sort of like a check to make sure that the way our scoring matrix that we just basically built and designed and decided on those values kind of makes sense and the really bad stuff can stand out and you know you have just sort of a good distribution of severity levels um we've done some initial analysis and made a lot of cool charts and graphs and i won't get into all of them um at a super detailed level but we aggregated all these points up to that segment level right so we can kind of score and look at larger segments at the same time while also retaining that detailed level of information at a point base level um we have created some tools within our web map to allow users to look at categorical distresses right so you can just look at hey where are we seeing maybe an obstruction or vertical or horizontal issues with pitching um so those tools are available to to you all and we also looked at some cooler ways to look at sort of a hot zone area right so we just buffered like a really really bad location the worst location and we looked at like a hundred foot radius around that grabbed all those points and ran some sort of data metrics on on that as well um so again this is the segment based aggregation of data it's pretty simple you take all the values of the distress points you add them together that's your distress score total your second value of 182 your length of the segment is 1400 feet that's about 296 slabs equivalent slab length and then we just have our average distress score overall 0.61 now now they may not mean much right now but like when you look at the data set as a whole it's like a relative number right and then you can begin to look at you know where's the worst and where's the best so on and so forth um again like i said we can quickly just query the database where is horizontal pitch equal to that level of critical there were actually seven locations in sx junction that had that score sx junction right there right now that that is that is that is we got a fresh picture yeah okay all right there we go good to go you know what do you know what street that is i wasn't claiming that street exactly the same one i know where it's yeah um well hopefully we we we acquired that one this is a screenshot of the the hot zone buffer analysis right our category b or buffer zone b which is likely our second highest scoring or worst sidewalk slab we just grabbed all those points and kind of ran some metrics on them um and then lastly this is what our web mac looks like which hopefully i can just click this link and it'll take us to the live version right which hopefully um it might have opened you might just have to leave the yeah can you help me make sure this web map works out well you're getting that up i'm just happy to see that the sidewalk i thought would have been bad isn't bright red so okay good yeah um yeah i think um you know it's good to have a team of interns college students go out they have no skin in the game it's an objective point of view we developed this manual to really retain um like an objective sort of like scientific approach to doing this um and it's it's a ton of data um like jacob said it's over 4 000 data points and we've done we've kind of created mechanisms to aggregate that up at a you know higher level um getting an unsupported browser oh okay um can we let's do this okay try for a minute oh oh wait is that that's it is it are we seeing there we go okay cool so same symbology same colors um this is the interactive web map that you know we can send the link around to you you can zoom in you can click on a segment and you can see that segment information uh hello are we seeing it here well the pop-ups may be somehow disabled based on this web browser see on the left there oh you can see it on the left on the left yeah oh on the left there thank you sorry we have our zoom window uh uh kind of in the way here um but uh it's we're not gonna go too deep into it but here are some different layers your your buffered your hot zones and then we have access to the raw data down here at the bottom you can turn all these layers on and off there's also this filter tool so you can just we built some custom filters just to kind of show you how this can be used um and then oh we may have turned off the charts we've been working on the charts unfortunately didn't make it into the app uh version but we'll work on that in the future work in progress but um yeah but essentially this first map that we started with that's basically the level of good to that yeah totally um okay um and we can provide you obviously there is go ahead no i'm sorry is there an indication in here where is there some kind of color coding for i know you didn't grade ashful but did did do we have as part of this where that exists yes we have in our date left we uh it is i believe it's like queried out of this web map but we can kind of put it back in if you like the legend up top left there um oh right here you should yeah zero or asphalt it might be kind of hard to see with this background but anything that's gray yeah so where's an asphalt segment area uh if you do west street area yeah do the do the upper part of west street it has a bit of both yeah that's all yeah so there you go that other one there too is also yeah um we we're not seeing the data field that says whether it's concrete or asphalt but ultimately yes it it looks like it is in this data set we didn't queried it out so it's there yeah is it um can you distinguish between asphalt or no sidewalk at all or are both those collectively together as one no we don't have the absence of sidewalks mapped what's that lack of a color yes there's nothing there like if you look at on the map now where it says villa drive or william street or a warner ad towards the top there none of those have sidewalks and there is no color right exactly yeah so we hope this tool will you know drive decision-making we're not here to tell you all what to do but just give you better information so that you can you know be strategic and in prioritizing resources and there's so much more analysis that that can be done we didn't want to go too far in the weeds but just show you a nice tool that hopefully you know you can use and we always pop this out to excel just to simplify things if needed so thank you very much it's very cool rash just so you know uh steve is raising his hand in the room whenever you're ready for that we're still letting steve talk today he's the public he has to i'm kidding steve i got i got to go for the fan club counselors are you need to ask questions comments i think this is great i'm ready thank you i look forward to getting into it and clicking around yeah yeah yeah cool and i'm happy to go after steve oh um well i'm not ready uh first personally question how are your shoes after the 50-some-mile walk that i don't know really do it really do appreciate this uh i hope that we're going to have a link on our website or have some way to get this on to our website sooner rather than later so we can all play around and see that not just for us on the council but the the public more broadly um and uh just thinking about that that map i just truly do appreciate as i know we're going to have future conversations about how to use our local option tax and the capital review committee looking to amber and the others to help us talk about how to possibly use a sidewalk or a portion of that for a sidewalk replacement program so we can start to identify where are those slabs or other stretches to to replace so appreciate having a data informed approach as compared to our anecdotes for those of us who walk around on the map like so thank you i think the other exciting a lot of exciting because i'm going to um part of this is it really helps us also identify gaps and um gaps and and pedestrian area you know where where it's going to be harder for people to walk and connect neighborhoods and connect um to other parts of the city i mean this is yes it's great it's a great tool but a side effect of this is going to be showing us where we still have work to do for connectivity uh and all of that um so i think that's kind of interesting to hear about um and then the other thing is if someone could email bike walk after the meeting to just make sure that they get an advanced copy if you will yeah we're you know maybe some time with mr i'm sorry chris he works too he nailed it i mean you could go too i don't know if there's currently an opening right chris enough it's all good what do you got see i think you're up i think at this point it's pretty much cold yeah no no that sounds good i think this is great to have the data and i know freak you know we don't very often do sidewalk repair i mean the public works will do you know hey there's these three slabs that are bad and and and attack that but we don't often do like us like a larger segment together usually things have to get pretty bad you know for things to happen my question for the team here is you mentioned this is the third time you've done it do you have an overlay of the data again because my anecdotal information is that the concrete sidewalks don't decay very quickly and i don't know what other years you've done it i used to do um i did this exact same work for roads and in the past and then we could plow and so you could see like we were talking about that one segment on cascade we could see how quickly it decayed and things like that like that would be interesting if you already have the data collected that you could kind of show that hey does the map look about the same as it did the last time or the time before that and so like hey if we invest money in these few red areas on the chart will actually be good for a while you know that that type of information might be helpful and i know your the the key with something like that is to make sure the people doing the measurements are using the same you know trained the same way and the same scales and all that um so that's always a wild card if you can't do it apples to apples but anyway that was one thing i was wondering if you if you had that ability yeah unfortunately we don't we've never done a sidewalk inventory using this methodology before so this is kind of our fresh start but i know what you're talking about with like the pavement condition index right we have such good historic information um especially in sx junction um this is the first step i guess i'd say and and hopefully go down the road we can always come back and do this you know in five ten years who knows and then we have two data points right so when you said it's the third time you've done it you met by community yes it's the third community of okay i thought you met the third time in sx junction yeah this first okay that's what i was mishearing i was like more data this is great so anyway that's that's all i'd say then other than that question for you um i think it would be great as andrew was saying to help um uh put together where can we focus because it's really easy to do a scatter shot or get distracted because there's these different hotspots but if we can kind of look at the data make data driven decisions on you know what are the five or six worst areas and maybe we only have to redo hundred instead of like looking at oh well we have to redo the sidewalk on this entire road we say oh well we only have to do 100 feet here and if we put it out to bid just like we did where we're bidding on five roads getting done at once and there's that level of um you know you can do it all when the same guy can come and they're already here and the startup costs whereas we can say like hey we have these six 150 foot sections that need to get done and we don't have to look at it as like oh we're going to do all of pearl street you know and that's like overwhelming um so anyway i'd advise the board to you know take that type of approach on this going going forward because typically you look at a street even west street where that's concrete you know um a lot a lot of that isn't bad at all we a couple developments went in and they fixed a couple sections of it when um i think it was uh Adams cork got put in and different places but yeah there's a couple spots where it's like pitched and you know you know where they are it's like five slabs long and then and then you're fine but so you don't really have to do the whole street but you make target just those couple here yes so thank you all thank you Steve anyone in zooland uh have any comments on this topic any further comments from the board chris and jacob thank you very very much for bringing this to us and thank you to jacob and his team of interns for spending all that quality time in the city for us very much appreciated uh i think of what number of ways we're going to use this data to think about how we approach these things differently um in the future great thanks so much thanks so much it's a great tool yeah and jacob's not that bad i told you did did rick rickie you just wouldn't get up to the table tell jacob it wasn't that bad i told him i'm just sure i'm just sure you practice on jacob he's the only one we haven't knew i didn't know what i heard look you heard first you could have heard it better oh sing it get laid thank you thank you i'll be on that much sleep right right here maybe do you need anything more to you i think we are but i mean i'd like to even go take a walk thank you all for that a new name nick name steve thank you steve that is it for our business studies to see the um oh consent agenda moving on the consent agenda have a motion to the north right i'll move we approve the consent agenda i'll second right that's business discussion hearing none all those of you who approve the consent agenda say hi hi uh let's close hearing none test fire to zero and now the reading file manager council minister of council comments anyone have anything you want to share only question i had everything i wanted to bring up um just on the topic of the housing commission i was going to think that there is nothing on our website currently about the housing commission and i know that there's good information from the the joint housing commission would be great to bring over and that also i wonder if that might help to tice other people to sign up yep great idea i have a question um what is the protocol around deciding whether or not to put a speed bump on a road i'm asking because my neighbors on dunbar drive are really unhappy with the speeding that's happening on dunbar drive i know west street is also an issue it comes up on front porch form all the time just curious i know that the plows are definitely a factor but um there are speed bumps in some places particularly near parks just wondering what the story is with how how we decide to put one in so we have a traffic calming policy it is on the website um it starts with a request of a speed study and if uh within that uh information that's gathered from the speed study if uh the 85th percentile is uh five miles per hour or more than the posted speed limit um the residents can then petition to request a speed um i want to say table but that's not the speed oh whichever um uh and the then that request would go to the capital plan review committee uh they would look at it in relation to all of the other requests in the capital plan process um and prioritize it in the list with everybody else for potential work in the future okay i i get why the capital committee would see that obviously but i would think that this is very different criteria because it's not a repair it's it's a speed and safety adjustment so would there be a different criteria for the capital committee to weigh the necessity and i'm guessing a smaller cost as well there was also an effort uh shortly after the pandemic started um roge amber it i might look at two of you to help fill in some holes in my memory on this one where we had uh either waived that policy where we're looking at updating that policy in relation to pleasant street and the repaving and rebuilding of pleasant street and how to do traffic calming where uh some people from that street and that neighborhood got together with uh rick hamlin and they there was a speed study that was done but they then talked about other ways to do traffic uh traffic reduce traffic speeding and blanket first um yeah i think andrew i think you're absolutely right um that did occur the end result of that was a double yellow line down pleasant um my understanding is there was mixed feelings about how that's working both from residents and pp i mean this has come up almost every day in the past two weeks for me even on my little street of where i've been edgewood and i've already talked about um so i think they're great questions and i think you know we're i think we're generating we're about to do speed study on grove grove and cascading cascading um you know i personally from pipe walkdays would really love to see some structure where a group of people really looked at what's working and one of their communities have done and really put some serious time and attention into figuring out what we can bring back here besides speed bumps and you know see if we need to adjust the policy it's interesting in the village we have some really wide rows that are sort of modern maybe eight nineties era or very early 2000s era developments with these usually wide rows that people speed on but it doesn't even seem to matter and you know we talked about this in this the impact book you know whether it's a giant road that's like the ones down in your area at the lane or Warner which is incredibly narrow with no sidewalks it just doesn't seem to matter so finding other solutions besides the speed bumps i think we need to put some time into it at some point i have talked to the chief about this before maybe a subcommittee or no no no it's fine i've had lengthy conversations with Regina and the chief about this i just forwarded you actually an email that Regina sent me about west street specifically there's also a link in there about the speed study process okay um but again hearing what we're hearing on a regular basis i think we're all hearing it um you know it comes down to two things the initial reaction is we need a speed bump but along with that is the concern that the police department isn't patrolling enough or not doing it in the right way because what i heard especially with the experience on west street was the fact that as in talking with residents while the initial gut feel is oh my god it's speeding and they talk about it as though it's speeding all the time it really seems to happen in a window a particular window i saw that in the comments around grove street recently as the start was grove streets turned into a racetrack racetrack racetrack racetrack and then as people started talk about it it sounded like it actually happens potentially when school gets out so with this particular piece of information i i hope that this is being communicated with the chief i know i spoke specifically with the chief about the west street concerns um and i will say that shortly thereafter i started to sense that the police were there during these particular times so i don't know if we need to just make them aware of it what conversation we need to have with the chief in order to make sure that these patrols are happening during the appropriate time frame um you know on grove street maybe the police need to be on that street then right after the school gets up things like that you know what would really impact the sense of how what's happening i i don't know if the chief would agree with this but i don't think we can enforce our way people speeding in this extension um i think we've got structural issues that need to be addressed physical structural issues that i think need to be addressed to make it less likely and i think there are likely solutions out there that other communities have used in some places and maybe some of them are space solutions that have worked and i think sometimes what what boils out of these is that it's one or two particular people and some of our university for that's the case um police are usually aware i'm not saying you're i'm not saying enforcement is not the right idea i think at 6pd is one of the only departments around that that's a officer dedicated to enforcing traffic violations um when i think i was reminded today they're also still looking for officers in a little short step but i think people will slow down when the officers present and speed up when when the officers not and if it's if it's a physical environment where they're able to speed and not feel like they're going too fast they're going to do it i agree with you i think i'm just saying i we're saying the same thing i'm just from from my standpoint it's a matter of approaching it as to whether or not it's a consistent issue or is it happening in a win in a small window because i think enforcement helps with those single window opportunity you know those single window moments whereas yes if we're seeing speeding on a consistent basis then i would agree that infrastructure should change in order to help remedy that and um you know whether it's a speed bump a speed table or what other curb designs happen you know those kinds of things but i think those speed studies are essential to to help us understand the scope of of the problem you know and it's interesting Marcus because those speed studies will identify the 80th percent on which is an arbitrary decision as far as i understand it so you know we can as a board and as a community decide that our secondary streets and i don't know what class that would be maybe class two like steven was talking about or steve was talking about you know we can decide that it's important to us that we want 20 mile an hour speed limits on some of our streets and and we want a different atmosphere on some of our streets and i'm not talking about the main thoroughfares and yardways but communities have done this they've said no we want 20 we're going to make a decision that we're going to really dissuade people from making this man's field downfield say or even parts of the bridge or portions of south street you know like we can all think it's something where for a zone it's going to be 20 and that the idea there is to send a really big message because then they end up doing 25 so not 40 if it's a 25 they're doing 35 if it's 20 they're doing 25 or 28 i mean that's sort of what some communities have done in found success that's the kind of thing i'm talking about like what can we find that works and i think i i've heard for so many years that we do the speed study the 80th percentile wasn't that bad so we're not going to change it that's an arbitrary decision and it's up to i think us student and a community to decide whether that's what we want to keep or you know how drastic do we want to do we want to try do we want to pick a quadrant in the city and say we're going to try this for a year in ceo to go through six months or spring and summer um you know and we don't have to keep going but i i think yeah like you said the bottom line is this is a big deal for people and the people don't feel safe because the sidewalks are cracked and they have to walk in the street for a little bit on a bike in the road but people are driving too fast where there are no sidewalks like my neighborhood so we're walking in the street for people who was in lias 35 five feet away from us that's just no way that people want to live well we have burlington as a perfect example who went city-wide with a 25 mile per hour speed limit you know and i think it as a person who drives through burlington often i would say i think it has made a difference i don't you know i haven't talked to counselors there as to whether or not they feel that way but and then i think about the example from us good road if you remember correctly a few years back when you know the speed study identified the one person who was driving 80 miles per hour and i i believe that problem's been remedied now but no i totally recognize i'm with you and total agreement with what you're saying regina can you remind us when is the cascade speed test so in grove street uh so one if i can i just want to clarify so i uh added in the capital plan review committee process in my mind but that's not written on the speed paper so um the uh speed study happens and then uh residents can request a uh speed table if 70 percent of the households how we define that i'm not quite sure but 70 percent of the household sign a petition and submit it to the city manager so i just want to clarify that the speed studies for cascade and grove street uh will be happening as soon as we can get the equipment back from it being repaired it's currently being repaired right now and just so folks know this is an equipment that doesn't actually visually show you the speeds as you're going by so that people don't it's the cable that goes across the street and it's in there's a box yeah that's collecting the data um so um hopefully in a few weeks we don't have an exact time frame for when that um equipment is going to get uh brought back um so yeah i think lots of different pieces of the puzzle i think without a doubt road design is basically the number one way to um slow speeding even if you lower speeds um if you can't enforce or keep up those tickets it's not gonna really be that effective um and there are a whole slew of ways to do that that's not necessarily just a speed table um so i think a lot more conversation on the future list of all of how we can kind of think about this in a more collective um concept because there's you know we can think about rain garden bump outs with rain gardens that also help with the stormwater protection um and on-street parking can be a very huge help in slowing things down but then there's lots of pros and cons and feelings around on-street parking um and what that looks like in the winter um um and how we manage that perspective so um um but yes uh when i get requests which i have gotten many requests on a lot of these different road issues um really at this stage handing those off to the police department and public work so they are aware of them and they're getting all of them um we are doing enforcement as as best as possible knowing that that's not the be all and all solution um but i hear what you're saying in terms of those windows of time um so yeah thank you yep um i don't want to jump in unless there's uh i could do a manager's update unless there's anything else um let's you go ahead and it looks like annie wants to say something on the topic is underway with the virgin if you go after that fine thank you i would appreciate that i didn't wait for regina's response fine by me thank you regina um i just wanted to be with raj and say that the most effective use of time the meetings that we had was very fun we're so valuable to learn so much about what we did not know and residents coming with solutions is not as helpful as residents coming with the problems and then having a solution is determined by those who know that and i think a subcommittee would be very useful and i really think that if the entire community knew that they could be heard and there were meetings that could be attended you would really slow down a lot of the time that retina and the police and rake jones are spending on the individual conversations but individual streets and we would have overall solutions like ours to suggesting thank you very much for your time thanks any all right so i already have you teaching you okay uh national night out is next tuesday august 1st from five to seven p.m at the high school would be great for everybody could come out i think i'm serving hot dogs um uh as folks may have seen or heard we did have a unhoused individual at the library for a week or so a couple weeks ago um and my understanding is most interactions with him showed him to be polite kind and scared um he uh did not break any rules and so brown out he was allowed to be up brown now just like anybody else is allowed to be up brown now with the open door policy um and my understanding at this point is that individual took the amtrak train home a few days ago or may have been last week so um again another topic with lots of things to think about from a policy perspective in terms of trying to be a supportive community trying to be prepared for these situations uh in in the future connected to this is some of those conversations that i let you folks know about in terms of um the uh hotel program ending and what different um municipalities were doing in preparation of that um and south furlington as an example has a policy for just how to address um folks sleeping outside and not crimp not criminalizing that and just lots of different things to sort of think about that and um so um on the future list of um how to address that stuff going forward um the storm um very grateful that we did not have any issues here in the city um i understand it was a very long storm and a lot of time to be nervous and concerned uh that something may have happened so i think um the plan going forward is to uh have an agenda item in front of the council about what the roles are and who is doing what during events like that um and uh getting into what our local emergency management plan really means and how that works and how that operates um and how things work from at the state level down to the local level and i think we do that do have some room for improvement in terms of communication out from the manager's office to just as best we can if we have any information we can uh try to get that out um what's happening in event like that is a just a lot everybody is doing a lot of things and so communication can't always happen very quickly um but uh also what's happening is we're doing a tabletop exercise in august um the police department is spearheading this so it's both town and and uh city um and so that's going to happen in the middle of august and so i think it'd be great if we do this agenda item at the end of august to sort of kind of debrief this particular storm incident kind of debrief what we do at the tabletop exercise um and um then yeah i think that will probably be helpful uh what we've done so far is just you see the local emergency management plan on the consent agenda and it's got some confidential contact information so it doesn't go to the public so we can sort of bring the public facing information much more to the table that way and um learn from this experience and uh also just super grateful sx junction was built on railroads not necessarily along the river and uh we sit up pretty high from the river so grateful for that and um really thinking about all those communities that are not in the same position as we are um talked about speeding issues uh construction update so main street is happening there was no pause in that project um since it started um press and connector is still on hold as best we know until next monday things can change certainly um and then brickyard was on hold um again for the contractor to step in and do some emergency work but they got started again this week um we have uh provided an offer for an admin assistant which is very exciting and we are interviewing for city planner at this point so yeah that's i think there's probably lots more but that's what i have on my piece of paper great thank you jenna you're welcome any further comments from anyone we have executive session to discuss um assistant advisory board motion to try to find the you know i have the motion in front of me i moved that the city council entered into executive session to discuss the appointment of public officials pursuant to one vsa 313 a three to include the city manager second okay motion is second um discussion all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed nay motion passes um are we coming about it and asking us an advance regime are we coming back to the next season this evening or will you release something as far off um i gather you will have a decision to report out after okay we can come back in and report out in a journal not sure how long this will take and not sure if channel if time eating tv wants to stay probably 20 or 30 minutes i don't know if there's a need to