 I will call for order of the city council transportation, energy and utilities committee at five oh two. And I'll entertain a motion on our agenda. I would move the adoption of the agenda as posted. I would second that. Seeing none, all those in favor. So we have an agenda and the second item on our adopted agenda is to adopt the minutes from our 1026 meeting, motion on that. And I'd move the adoption of the minutes as stated. I would second that. Any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor. Aye. So we have adopted our minutes. And the third item on our agenda is public forum. So I'll open the public forum. We have no one here in the room. Is there anybody online? No. Is there no? No, we're all, we're all, we're all meeting attendees. I guess we don't have anybody that must talk to us about it. So we'll begin our deliberative agenda. And the first item on our deliberative agenda is a bird bike share update. So who is. We have Katma here and representatives from bird who will lead this presentation. I believe is that right, Julie? Yeah. So welcome. Hi, good evening everyone. Katie Martin, associate director with Katma. Thanks so much for having us tonight. I will be passing it over to Jeremy Lynch from bird who has a presentation for you all tonight. I guess I'll just start off with recognizing that we provided an update via a memo. We do have the presentation to provide the committee after, or I believe actually Maddie has that in her hands now. So please feel free to share that in your packets moving forward. And I think I'll just leave it at that right now and have Jeremy kick us off and give you all an overview of the bird system and some of the highlights of the first quarter. Some of the low lights of the first quarter. Some of the issues that we're seeing and what's happening with the system right now as we enter winter and the plans for spring 2024. And Jeremy will be kicking us off with some of the highlights as I've mentioned starting off with sort of the connections to the bike share system as the regional bike share system primarily in the Burlington area right now is serving as a TDM measure to meet some of our climate action goals in the region, in the city, in the region, in the state and in the nation. And then we'll get into some of the data and go from there. So I'll give it to Jeremy. I'm thinking maybe hold questions until the end, but Jeremy, this is your story to tell with our support. So I'll let you decide how you want to run that part of it. But thank you all so much for having us. I also will add that Emily Adams, transportation analyst with Katma is also here tonight who monitors the data on a day-to-day basis and works with Jeremy and myself for the analysis and sort of pulling together answers to questions and things like that. So thanks again for having us, Jeremy. Great, thanks, Katie. So for, I guess for, I can share my screen which would be, I can have the presentation which would be cool so everybody can see. It's only about 10 slides. I'm gonna be trying to be pretty quick. I'm sure there's a lot of questions and there will be probably questions around some of the subjects I'm gonna be covering. So I'm gonna kind of do the best I can to keep this under 15 minutes or less. And if you do have any questions that are pending if you think you may forget, just shout them out. Don't worry, it won't bother me. So, okay, let me share my screen. Get into the slide show. Everybody see that? Yeah. I'm just gonna learn how to turn the page here. It's not shift, it's not down. It's not left, it's not right. There we go. So, back in the summer as Chapin and Julia know, we, Katma put out an RFP for a bike sharing company or a bike sharing program. As you know, Bird, we had, we're mostly a scooter program but Bird had just started with bikes a little more than a couple of years ago. And so, one of the things we propose, the bike sharing program is a free-floating model. So it's not a point-to-point or dock-to-dock kind of solution. And so, we made our best pitch towards the, towards, with Katma about the program taking this could be a solution or something that we see as envisioning something taking over the point-to-point or docked solutions. Across the US, those docked solutions have kind of come under a lot of fire and really have been a hard time being self-sustaining simply because of the funding source and the really slim margins on those programs and without a major funding source it's really hard to keep those smaller programs going outside of Divi or Citi or Blue out of Boston, things like that, where they have major donors. So we just thought we'd propose it everyone on the committee or most of the community accepted it. And so, we launched June 30th, July 1st was really our first opportunity. And one of our, what we're really trying to do is helping objectives is helping support the city's TDM plan to address the global climate emergency, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, basically trying to limit the amount of traffic congestion at the amount of Uber or Lyft rides, that kind of thing in the community. It's also one of the things that I think Rob is on the line to one of our FM's revenue generator opportunities for the local entrepreneurs. So they have two FM's that manage the program. So those folks are local that are benefiting from the revenue being generated from the program and an affordable alternative to car ownership and also helping to supplement the public transit that is available, not only for the folks in town and in the community with South Brownton-Wanooski but also with UVM students and also something that doesn't have, it's self-sustaining so it doesn't need any public investment. That's one of the things that's been important is not having to rely upon the community to help the program succeed. So one of the things, we couldn't be more excited about the first four and a half months, not really that first quarter. Ridership has really been through the roof. So there were nearly 27,000 rides since more or less July 1st, 20,000 since August 23rd and about eight to almost 9,000 rides in September alone. So the program really took off and that's one of the things that I think that needs to be taken into account too when we talk about these programs that you need a little bit of a runway. It takes a little time for people to get used to the program, how it operates, how to join, how the system works and believe me, we had a rough start. I'm first one to admit it started a little rough regarding some of the technology and things like that but once we got things going and got things rolling as it was at word downhill, the program really took off. Nearly 33,400 miles were ridden on average of those rides, about 1.3 miles per ride. What does that really mean? So to me, 1.3 miles and given my experience in this industry which is going on six years now, short rides mean they're purpose-driven rides. Many people are riding those bikes to go to a particular location. They have a purpose in mind where they're going to to work, to the pharmacy, to go out to eat, wherever it may be, go to class, things like that. They are riding it for a purpose if they're only riding it for that longer, that period of time. And the minutes is also, so 10.8 minutes is really what on the average what all those rides are entailed. And now I'm gonna break this down for you a little more. So in July, the average ride was about 14 minutes per ride. In August, it was 13 and a half. In September, it was nine and a half and in October, it was 7.8 minutes per ride. Again, something that is telling me in my experience that they are being ridden for a reason. Someone's picking it up, riding it home, they forgot something, dropping it off and the ride ends. They're not touring around, they're not just tooling on the bike paths. And that's what we saw at the beginning. You saw 15 to 20 minute rides. Those rides have gone down. So what I see is encouraging is that the people in the area are using it for a reason and they're making it a part of their daily transit or weekly transit, which is really the objective and one of the things that I'm most proud of and that's one of the things that I see being one of the big successes of the program. We're averaging, when we got to the right number we were averaging about 160 bikes per day. It was a little beneath the 200, but I think it was the right number as we were moving along. So when we saw into more or less end of jail and basically in August, September and in October, we were averaging around 160, 170 bikes a day. And that was a good number. Obviously with the membership, we basically had unique riders. It means that someone joined and took a ride. There were over 5,000 riders in the course of these first really, less than four months or about four months. The average rides per member were about 5.2. And if you factor in the number of people that may have rode at once and ridden that out it's probably a little higher on average with the steady stream of riders. So we got riders, we kept them. The ones that maybe were shaken off by the first few weeks of some of the brain tech issues had come back to the system and were clearly riding. And as far as the CO2, we saved 4.72 metric tons over the course of those first four months and change. As a comparison from the last program we just compared and Emily was very vital in helping me pull these numbers out. So from September from 23 versus 21, the previous company there was a 32% increase in bikes available to the community, a 300% increase in number of rides and three times as many riders. So overall the program in comparison to what was here before was a resounding success. So one of the things that's tough to do is the further I get on on these heat maps and the pickup and ride to the further you're able to see. So I really wanted to spread really drop it back just enough. And one of the things I wanted to show was yes, there is a lot of riding in Burlington and at UVM but one of the things we are missing was I think there is an opportunities for increased ridership in Winooski and also in South Burlington. But this shows that generally what we thought was gonna be the case. And again, I wasn't expecting a lot of ridership in the outer areas of Winooski in South Burlington to get the FMs to get their feet wet as it were to get their legs under them to get them used to how the patterns work to going around and collecting the batteries when the batteries were low to addressing bad parking, things like that. They had to have a little traction so keeping them clustered together it turned out not to be a bad idea. They got a lot of rides and one of the things and you'll see as we move along here is objectively is to spread those rides out a little deeper into the community so people in South Burlington Winooski can certainly benefit. So a couple of the program improvement opportunities again the first one glaring obviously, parking. We did have some parking issues for sure. People parking in bad locations. And one of the things I know that led to this at the beginning were a couple of glitches in the brain and connectivity as far as the wireless. It was tough for our bikes to connect at some point. So we had to do some swaps. But basically parking we knew was gonna be an issue. Fleet manager to get those fleet managers to do better sweeps and to be more proactive in the community to address those. We did have those tech and product issues. We actually had to swap out all the brains for all 200 plus of the bikes, which was a chore in and of itself. The communication was the issue. They weren't communicating with us. And so we had to swap the brains and swap the tech inside of them to do that. Once we did that, as we got rolled into August it really helped improve the ridership and that's how we saw those bumping rides and how the program got increasingly better. Messaging improvement, one of those things that we really tried to push out as best we could not only through our app but with Katie and Katmas help as well. So the way that folks in the community can get in touch with us to report a bike to if it's improperly parked, if it's damaged whatever it may be, there are several ways and we need to do a better job of getting those out and how do we improve that not only working with KABMA but obviously working with Burlington as well, Southburn to Winooski, just so that everybody knows how to get in contact with us because as Valerie can attest to DPW when she sends us an email over the Vermont 311 email we are FM's respond generally within the hour or sooner if they're out in the general public. So those things are responded too quickly because it comes directly to us and that's the best way to do that. So getting those channels out a little better and improving that is important for us as we roll back out in the spring. Community pricing option, which below is, it's a discount available to government assistance programs, veteran, senior citizens, health care workers and students with Pell grants. What that basically is 50% off their rides if they basically let us know how they qualify in any one of those particular groups. I don't even think we had five people sign up for that. So really trying to find a better way to get that message out, to get more people riding and to get them the benefit they can so that those rides are halved. And that's one of the things we need to prove on as well. Increasing bike availability, it kind of touched on it with South Burlington, Winooski but we wanna get up to two to 300 bikes but the only way we can do that really without having the cluster in Burlington is to spread those out into Winooski and South Burlington and really make a considered effort with dealing with those folks trying to pick out locations and areas where we know the bikes will be popular and making sure we put them there. I know that biking availability in Winooski was popular in downtown because I found repeatedly med students or residents or employees using the bikes to go up the hill to work to the UVM Health Center and they loved it. And so getting more bikes available in there and if you don't have enough, if you can't depend on them being there every morning it's not gonna be a reliable thing for them and they're not gonna continue to ride. So making sure we have more bikes out in those areas and addressing those particular opportunities will be important. Another real quick one availability would be where those UVM Health Center parking lots are where those vans that go back and forth or those shuttles that take those folks back employees back up to the Health Center. If you miss it, you have time to wait. Now, if we were able to station bikes there and they could ride up easily park and ride back if they had to leave earlier there's 15 minutes and wait for a shuttle things like that kind of thinking getting feeling back a few more layers of the onion to find out where those places are and making sure we have bikes available there is something we wanna look at in the spring at a no Katie and Emily will be helping us on as well. Also vandalism, we did see a spike in the beginning where people thought if they were able to break the locks that they would be able to ride off. Thankfully all it resulted in was a broken lock because if you're not a member and you didn't sign in the bikes aren't able to be ridden. So that kind of eased and the first couple months of the program it really stopped and we stopped seeing them disappear. And also some of the graffiti on them we're starting to take advantage of that now meaning that bringing those in and repainting those but if all I have is a little bit of pain on the back the back wheel cover I'm not too worried about it. So those are the kind of things that we saw and I'm sure that there are others that you may have as well but the biggest one being parking and those are the things we're gonna have to address as we move forward. So a couple of the solutions that we had talked about regarding the parking situation was increasing personnel we would come back out in the spring. So instead of, so what I've talked to my FM's about was basically hiring a couple of folks hourly to do sweeps generally like Monday through Friday at different times. So they're constantly out monitoring to make sure they're rolling around on the streets. The FM's don't have that capability necessarily to always be doing that but if they can hire some folks to do that it's part-time work to go out and do sweeps that's important. One of the other things that the two universities have been fantastic at is that I've given ride credit to their eco reps to cruise around campus. I think they have five in Champlain and five at UVM to basically cruise around campus and they find a vehicle, a bicycle that's been improperly parked and not at a rack on campus to report them through community mode which is an in-app way to report an improperly parked and we have a lot of those that have come in. One of the great thing is as far as messaging and I'll jump ahead to that one is we've been able to send emails to those violators. So anybody that's reported in their community mode we started an email trail to let them know that they parked improperly and the need to improve that the next time there could be consequences that they continue to park improperly. So making sure that we let them know that we know they parked improperly and to let them know that they need to do better. So that's one of the things. As I said, the sweep frequency increasing that as well but also the University of Vermont has come up we're working with them to come up with a better solution about parking at their racks. So that's one of the things they're gonna be working through in the next few weeks to figure out a way with mapping to be able to make sure that the bikes are parked at the racks on the university campus. So technical glitches as I mentioned earlier that was one of the things that we basically overcome was that the really the reception was not particularly good in certain areas and it wasn't able to the bikes weren't able to respond very well. We changed the brains and the SIM cards we were able to overcome that. And what that led to initially was some of the and I'll call them zombie bikes that were basically you saw a bike out for like three weeks parked in one location like what in the world is going on? Why is that bike still there? It's because it's brain was stopped functioning we weren't able to communicate it with us. And so once I basically communicate with the FM's that it's not okay just to drive by those you need to grab those and take them off the street we were able to kind of go get those zombies and bring them back in, fix their brains and be able to put them back out and have them work correctly. So that was one of the things that we're my team back in I guess all over the US were able to overcome some of those product glitches. The messaging improvement again letting more people know about community mode which is the way the UVM eco reps are using it to report in improperly parked scooters or damaged or excuse me bikes or damaged bikes they use that letting trying to a better way to let people know community modes is available you don't have to ride in order to be able to use that the Vermont 311 at Bird Valerie uses that used to use that on a daily basis to report something into us. And again, that comes to us directly as do community mode messages so we're able to address problems straight away in that messaging being able to be more frequent with that regarding about parking and trying to improve upon our members being able to get the right messaging and being able to park it in the proper locations. And again, any city opportunities as well like if there are any opportunities as far as messaging goes where can we put our message on city websites or city message boards wherever that we can put these kind of opportunities so that if they call in our normal 800 number it's going to take a little longer to get to us than these other areas other opportunities of communication for instance, community mode in the Vermont 311 so making sure we do a better job of that. As far as community pricing goes again, working with Katie and her team to how can we get the word better out to allow those that have qualified for it to get that 50% discount. It's a shame that more people haven't been able to do it. We have been getting UVM students with Pell grants to be able to join we should get more community members involved that do qualify to get them that 50% discount. So, taking any information or help from you folks as well as the Katmah team to make sure we increase awareness is one of the things we want to be focused on. Increasing bike availability as we get to the spring as well. Working with South Burlington-Linuski is where we can nest better and more often more frequently where are we going to get riders condos, apartment buildings areas of confluence at different times of the year that's for spring and there's different times in the summer and there's different times in the fall. Learning where those locations are to make sure we can put bikes there which is something we did very well in Burlington. So, trying to find out where those places are to make sure that the bike program expands as it should and as we were as we promised to do in the RFP we responded to Kevin to make sure we fulfill their obligation as well. And vandalism again is one of those things I'm decreasingly worried about. It's just not going to be something that happens. Once you deter a thief realizing they can't go anywhere with it it kind of drops off the map. So I'm not too worried about it. And like I said, the graffiti is not something that I'm too worried about as well. So those are the things we're going to be focused on in the off season now and as we move forward. So our winter plan basically we're currently pulling the fleet now they're not going to be out in the winter. Couple of reasons for that. First of all, they don't do well in the snow. Those are solid tires. I wouldn't ride it in the snow. The other thing is, is that the batteries degrade below 32 degrees. And I don't mean if they can just be sitting out unwritten that they lose their life as it's below 32 degrees. So keeping them off that out of that out of that area is really what's important. So we're basically pulling them now. And what we're going to do is during that time is conduct all the repairs. And then what we do is simply put them into hibernation. You basically shut them down. The brain shut down. Everything goes quiet. And then we wait for a particular time in the spring to think about a relaunch. We've sent out messaging to the riders to let them know this is happening currently. And obviously what we want to do is in the winter plan is working with Katie and her team not only to improve operations is the thing I talked about previously but the opportunities as far as increasing that fleet. As far as the spring relaunch, we're again, any of the program adjustments we're trying to figure out, talking to Robin and Casey, I thought March would be a time and they're like, no, March is, it can be being snowstorm time of year for surprisingly for me, even being from Massachusetts for Burlington. So it may not be March. It could be sometime later in March, early April. So that's what we're kind of looking for. One of the things we want to stay clear of is obviously DPW and plows and things like that. And you just know where to hide bikes when they're plowing and things like that. So we want to avoid that altogether. So again, the number of bikes to increase, the number of nests where we place those bikes in the market messaging and the tech and also working with the FM's on the sweeps to try to get those down in the areas in which they need to concentrate on is one of the things we'll be working towards when we come back out in the spring. And that's a really quick high level over the program thus far. Thanks, Jeremy. Questions from the committee? Sure, I've just raised my hand, but surprise, surprise, I have a number of things. Both Jeremy and Katie, thank you for this. This is really quite helpful. And believe it or not, I am encouraged. And for those who don't know me and Katie knows me a little, but you don't at all. That is actually a mean feat that you pulled off. I want to encourage you and support the increase in fleet manager sweeps, the increase in personnel, that proactive effort to make sure that people aren't blocking sidewalks. Our sidewalks are only five by five. That's the standard, we don't have a double wide except down in the downtown. So when somebody parks on the sidewalk, they are blocking handicap access. We've had complaints about that when they park in the intersection. Strollers can't get to, you know, I don't need to describe that. So that is really, really important. And it would be, I think possibly helpful if your technology identifies hotspots where there are problems, then making some real clear solutions on that that are gonna be, it's more particularized to those areas. And that might even include racks or spaces, they're not really akin to docking, but places where it's really clear because for whatever reason, this is a spot that is constantly having use, but it's also having folks that are not parking correctly. So I think that, and I think that I'm encouraged by what you said, to think that there are gonna be innovations in that. I wanna encourage you to really look strongly at the plans to increase low income ridership. I have, I represent the old North End. And that's the Riverside Avenue that goes to Winooski. It's in the North Winooski Avenue corridor that we have another item on related to bike lanes. And it would be, I think particularly helpful if we can figure out a way to increase the usage in the North Winooski Avenue area in that community where if you were to go to our agenda, you will see a survey on that late, that we'll be dealing with later on, and the continued issues related to parking. And obviously if people can get around without needing their car, then all of a sudden we've got some great work there. So it's really important. I would like to actually understand numbers. I don't need to hear them now, but I think that it would be very helpful to get numbers on the usage in the old North End of Burlington, in particular and North Winooski Avenue, that corridor that we're trying to encourage bike ridership. And let me just encourage you to also be working more closely with developers. We've passed, and I was the sponsor and main pain in the ass of the zoning ordinance to get the transportation demand management requirements that we've got for developments in Burlington. And bike sharing is a feature. So the direct connection, if there's a way that you can be making those direct connections with developers in the city, that would be good. There's going to be, I think, big developments down in the South End. There are big developments that are occurring downtown in the pit. And that's a term of art that we use up here, Jeremy, for a moment. So yeah, I would just really encourage that. And, you know, I got several more, but maybe I'll just leave it with this and then I'll communicate, I can communicate. If you send a link, I can communicate these. Otherwise, the links with Winooski and South Burlington and Burlington, I think are tricky because they are really commuting. They are not the type of five minute trip or seven minute trip or even nine minute trip that you've got to deal with. And the infrastructure is particularly difficult, right? And that is especially true in the more, the non-residential areas of those, but the commercial areas there. So it's a kin in a way maybe to what you're developing in terms of the racks with the medical center and the university. And I think that looking at them as commuter options or something, it's just a different way of looking at them, almost like the TDM feature. And I think this is a longer term problem that we're gonna solve, but if that means it's a sort of an opportunity because we need to create, I don't know if you've been over the Winooski bridge, which is like hell to get across on a bicycle and it's tricky to walk. And that's gonna be redone in the next, I don't know. We don't know how long. Five years. Five years, somebody says. So, okay, in the next 10 years, we'll have that done. We're gonna double construction projects. And the Winooski and the South Burlington connection over the interstate, which they're talking about a bridge. And how long is that gonna take before we get that bridge over the interstate or under the interstate or whatever it is? Three years. Five years. 10 years. So, in the next 10 years, we may have some major connections that are gonna be with those areas. So, building this to be able to do that will be, I think this is a visionary as it relates to transportation demand management, which all around the world, we need to be doing a better job. And if you get me the what is your, some links to you, I'll flood you with a few more comments, but I know we have to leave time for other people. So, I'll shut up now. Thanks, Gene, very much. Yeah. Thanks, Gene, Hannah. Yeah, thank you for this. I think my one question is, you mentioned that you were sending emails to folks that didn't follow the rules in terms of leaving the bikes in an appropriate spot. What has the response been like to that? Like, have you seen that the same individuals are causing the same problems or are folks changing behavior after receiving emails? So, we started that pretty late in the process. So, basically, we started that in mid-October, so I wouldn't say we saw any kind of marketed improvement yet. But I would say we'll be able to get a better idea in the spring, what that looks like. It wasn't something we started right away. We just started it as a way to let those folks know that that's what's happening. And again, so when I talked about the FM sweepers, as it were, using community mode, that's the only way we can actually track those folks. So, let's find out who parked it there. Who was the last one? And only through that, by scanning that QR code, the community, by reporting it through community mode, can we identify the rider. Generally, what happens is most of the time when you send an email like that, most people respond positively to it. And that's one of the things that our system can do is check and see who are repeat violators. And that's one of the discussions I'm having with Catman and some other folks about, it's up to them what we wanna do. Another carrot, another carrot, or a stick? Ben's on how you guys wanna approach it. So, I'm open for anything. We do it differently in a lot of other communities. But so far, it's been good. I know we've gotten better at UVM. I mean, we're gonna see what happens as we move along here. But I'd rather see a lot of that same type of reporting in done by our team and anybody else in the community via community mode for the downtown area as well. So we can at least message those folks as well. Cause again, that's where a lot of the complaints had come from regarding parking on the sidewalks and ADA compliance. But we'll get a better handle as we come back out. Yeah, I wonder if like sending text messages would maybe be more well-received. Like I represent a large number of students and I know trying to reach them over email is virtually impossible. But if we send a text message to them, then we get like, I can get a response from them very quickly. And I think that's probably the case of, you know, a lot of emails gets flagged for spam and such. And so you may be more likely to respond to a text rather than an email, but obviously there's accessibility there where some folks don't, you know, have phones. But that's just a thought. Okay. Yeah, thanks for mentioning that too, Hannah. It was something Jeremy had brought to us. And I think as he's mentioned before, we'll start with something like that in the spring. I know Jeremy, you've done that at other universities, campuses where that first month, month and a half of a system back on the ground is when you really try to do as much education through some of those communications as you can try to get ahead of it. But again, it does come back to like having the resources of folks being able to make notifications to the community at. And I think that was great that we were able to build a little bit of that on campus and understand how to get people involved in that process. And so that would be like a leg up moving forward in the spring. So Hannah, thanks. I had a couple of questions. The first is just on terminologies. FM, is that like a fleet manager? Yes. And are they independent contractors that are working with Berger? They were employees. Independent contractors. And the next one was around something we started talking about when we had the brief update at our last meeting, which was that the sort of having to message in app and like a lot of people that might want to report a zombie bike or some other improperly parked bike might not be heard members. And so we had asked at the last meeting if a phone number could be used for some folks that just want to call. But the other thing that's occurred to me is we should integrate this with C-Click Fix and have a, we're trying to train a lot of people in our city to use C-Click Fix to report all manner of problems and they get brought into the right place. So this might be an opportunity to do something like if there's a zombie bird, a bird bike or improperly parked bird bike. If it was a C-Click Fix there's a lot of people using that app that may not be using the bird app that could maybe simply do any matter something, send a message to the appropriate email, the 3-1-1 email, whatever. But that might be an opportunity for integration, but what about the idea of having a telephone number that's also available that people can call? Maybe it wouldn't be on the bikes but it could be on the website or something. It is on the bikes. Okay, good. I was an 800 number on all the bikes and on the website. I think your idea of integrating C-Click Fix if that's what I just heard was that's excellent. If there's a way to integrate that so that that for month 3-1-1 email or some other way to get in contact that's a very, that's a be a great idea. Because again, that's direct, that's directly to us. And so I think that would be a wonderful idea. People think the right item, you should be able to set it up so that it would immediately forward to that address. Well, it's more clean up and all sorts of other things. Yeah, we do staff it very closely so things are usually referred quickly but we can look at an auto forward if there is a category specifically for an improperly parked bike. Or just do the manual forward but I'm just on that proficiency. Yeah. Which is what that'll happen. Yeah. Okay, cool, that's all I have. Thank you, that was really informative. I'm wondering if this presentation that you gave Jeremy doesn't match the one that's on our agenda. I'm wondering if we could also attach the latest presentation. Yeah. So Jeremy and Katie, if you can forward the PDF to our staff and we will get it online for the public to see. So I did forward that along to Maddie this morning but I'm happy to share that again. Okay. If I could just ask that if there's more granular data on usage on, you know, like where things are being used, where the low income people are coming from, they're only five apparently, but you know, just sort of who they are, where they are, things that would give us a real sense, a better sense of where the usage is and what the... Gene, I would say real quick, I would say, I know where the, I know where the, what I don't know is where those people are. You telling me where those people are and I can put bikes there. That's the, I mean, that I'd rather work the other way around. You telling me they are and I can put bikes there. That would be... So perhaps, I think perhaps maybe through Katma, Katie and Emily, we can actually have some conversations to improve that and perhaps in relationship to the ongoing work that we're doing on North Winooski Avenue, that there's an opportunity there and I would be very happy to meet. I have met with Katma's folks over the last three years a lot and I will continue to want to do that. So that sounds like an invitation that I will accept right here and now. Great, I'll just give you a little background to you on that. So from our old system and some of the planning that was done under the Regional Planning Commission around the bike share systems in the past, sort of we compiled a list of potential nesting locations for Bird. DPW was involved in that list as well. And so we're happy to sort of, so this was initiation of nest locations. Obviously the way that the system functions now, which we think is through the data is showing that it's more successful than the dock systems is that as the users use the system, they dictate where those bikes kind of end up being most effectively nested the next day. So the FMs are sort of managing that and moving those bikes to those locations where they're seeing people end trips or wanting to really end their trips and things like that. So it's a more dynamic system now, but I would be happy to share that list with Duke or just have those conversations again with DPW, bring you in sort of and see what those missing pieces are, those missing neighborhoods, those missing streets, those missing blocks and add those to the list for the fleet managers to recognize and have them in their queue as they start the system back up again. I think it'd be great to have a conversation and to think about a little bit of intentionality in terms of where we want to go. And, you know, perhaps we will fail in it, but I mean, I do think that there are places that are right, you know, and Jeremy mentioned them, the hospital and UVM are prime locations and it sounds like you're doing, you're going to be exploring that. So we've got some opportunities that I'd love to examine. Thank you very much. Well, thank you for that. And I guess we'll close the bird flight update and we'll move on to the lead and copper low religious. Eliana, I have a, is there a hand raised for Eliana from Champlain? There's a hand raised, I don't see that. Can y'all hear me? There she is. Okay. Yes. Sorry, okay, sorry to interrupt and jump on a little bit, waiter than usual. Yeah, my name's Eliana Fox. I'm the Sustainable Transportation Coordinator at Champlain College. I'm also award seven resident bird user. And so I just want to speak quickly in support of this system. I know like anything that's new, it's had a learning curve but I do feel like it's working really well. I feel like Bird and Katma have been really great partners to us on campus. You heard Jeremy mention the eco rep program with reporting badly parked birds. We lovingly call our eco rep bird students bird watchers. So sort of a nice meaningful connection there and beyond that bird also gave us like a couple hundred, I think helmets to distribute for free to students at the beginning of the school year. I'm sure they did the same at UVM. And so, you know, just a testament to them being a good partner to us as institutions. And then I also just want to speak quickly as someone who uses the system, some just quick examples of how I've used it and how I've seen other people using it. You know, my partner and I live between the old North and the new North end. It's a little bit too far to walk downtown. Most of the time we bike, but on those days we don't feel like biking will take the bus in. And if we're getting home late from like a dinner or something and the transit isn't in this frequent way. It's really nice having the option of bird to get back when those transit, you know when the buses are only running every 90 minutes, right? Between after nine o'clock. It's just been a real game changer for that sort of thing. I'm also one of those annoying people who wakes up at six a.m. to run every morning before work. And I've seen people using the birds at six a.m. because that's another time when our transit service is not sufficient, right? As Jeremy mentioned, people in scrubs biking up the hill to UVM Med Center. I've seen it firsthand. And so, yeah, just wanting the counselors to hear what that this is how the system is being used in my experience. I feel like it's working well. And yeah, that's that's it. Well, thank you. Appreciate your comments. So with no other comments, we'll move on to the. Yes, yes. Thank you all very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate the time. Yeah. Hi, everyone. Megan Moyer, I'm the division director for Water Resources and I'm here with our Water Resources GIS and field specialist Emily Pearcec, who's going to do a lot of the presentation, but to do a little bit of background first. And to just name, you know, we're talking about something that can be really scary. It's been really scary in other communities, which is lead in drinking water. So I want to make sure you are well, well-coised with information from our past and the fact that lead is not currently a problem for Burlington while Emily has found some evidence of the possibility of lead having been used in the past. And there could be some out there. We have not come across it in 35 years of digging in the streets. And so that does give me comfort that we are not looking at a huge problem with regard to lead. That being said, there is a requirement from the EPA that we be doing a thorough inventory and that's a lot of what we're going to talk about today. So national awareness about the health effects of lead exposure through drinking water kind of peaked early in the 1980s. And at that time, the State Drinking Water Act was amended to ban the future use of lead types in the water systems. But it didn't at that time retroactively require utilities to go through their systems and remove lead types, which is why you have a lot of communities. Let Michigan, I believe DC do still have a fair amount of lead pipes in their system. In 1991, they actually established a specific role of lead and copper role to protect users against exposure to lead and copper in the drinking water and they established maximum contaminant levels for both of those constituents and requires water systems to implement treatment programs if more than 10% of their samples were not compliant. So in that time period, 1980s, we started conducting sampling following the EPA procedures to assess different heavy metals in our water. At the time that we did that, we did find six sites that had elevated lead levels when immediately sampled at the tap. Lead sampling, you go through a number of different types of sampling. I can't remember all of them and we may know them, but there's the quick immediate sample. There's the first, the flush sample and then I think there's a third one from the extended one, the extended one because based on those different time frames, different amounts of lead can be sloughing off if you do in fact have lead in your pipes. Additionally, lead sampling in water, which is our water source, is naturally soft and low in dissolved minerals and has a neutral pH and so it can be corrosive to indoor plumbing. One of the things we have to keep distinguishing between is the city's water system up until the meter and then people's indoor plumbing, right? So this effort that we're gonna be talking about is focusing on inventorying the city's system, including the service line to the house. It is not necessarily focusing on the indoor plumbing that somebody may have beyond the meter. The good thing is as part of the 1980s efforts and realizing that we were seeing some elevated lead levels, we started doing corrosion control back in 1984. This first looked like adding sodium hydroxide, I believe to affect the pH to prevent the corrosion and then later on in the 1990s, we switched to what we're using now to zinc orthophosphate. Per regulations, we sample lead and copper levels every three years at 30 high priority locations that have been approved by the state and it is important for people to know that since we started doing that water treatment with the zinc orthophosphate in 1990, we've been in compliance with all the maximum levels of lead and copper. I think as people are aware with Flint, Michigan and some other communities, the EPA has taken a harder look at the rule, the lead and copper rule and has promulgated a revision to better protect children and communities from lead exposure by going after significant sources of lead in the nation of drinking water. And so what this looks like, the first step is really for all of these utilities, including us to develop and submit inventories at their service lines. So we have some records of service lines, some of them are in GIS, some of them are not. We have lots of paper records, but this process that Emily's gonna talk about is actually going through all of our records and then going through other processes to really try to nail down what the material type is with the various service lines in the city. Through the work that Emily's done, we looked at the annual reports and then the old annual reports, they were very detailed about the projects that they did, the materials they used. And interestingly, from 1929 to 37, the list of types of pipes in the system does include lead. It also includes galvanized and cast iron, which is typically what we see when we dug up the lines. Importantly from the reports from 1939 onwards, don't mention lead as a potential pipe material. So it seems like we might have used it for a brief time period. Some of this project will uncover whether or not maybe we've already identified it, replaced it, does it still exist, so on and so forth. So again, even though we have no records or anecdotal evidence of active lead service lines that we've encountered in the field, we are still required to submit this inventory in order to remain in compliance with regulations. And with that, I'm gonna hand it over to Emily. Thank you, Megan. So we have round about 11,000 service lines in the city that includes all drinking water football lines, as well as irrigation and fire services. So of those about 11,000 service lines in our GIS system and our computerized convenient to access records, we have 4,316 of those, like we actually know the material in a computer, very easy to access. The rest of those are not in our computerized system. There's almost 7,000 of those. That's not to say that we don't know the material of those line. That information is present in our paper records. It's just buried in a stack of paper that we have to sift through. So it looks like a huge, scary number of unknown, but in the work that myself and some other staff have been doing, we found that about 80% of the lines that we look at in the records, we can find a material in about 20%. We have to do some further digging. So the general process is right now is exclusively a paper reference review, a very exhaustive look through historic service line installation books, any meter appointment records, they'll go in and they'll take a picture of the meter and oftentimes you can see a service line there. So any basically touch point where we have contact information with a homeowner or a customer and we can look at the service line material or installation records, we're pulling that information. And then once we get a really solid base of information there, we're gonna go out to in-person inspections. We're gonna go to canvassing and knocking on doors and asking people if we can come in and take a peek in their basement and find their service line. And then all of that's going on. We are currently developing a survey to send out to all home owners and tenants in the city to have them self-identify their lines so that they can go down into their basement, snap a photo, fill out just a few questions and send that into us and that'll prevent us from having to go out to the home and it will help us confirm what information we have on file. And really it's gonna be a huge help for us to get as many citizens as we possibly can to do the survey. It should take them about 10 minutes. It's going to be really easy for them. I think the hardest part for them is gonna be opening the utility closet or going to their basement and actually finding the service line is often the hardest part for people. So the goal is to get customers to help us out here as much as they possibly can. And it's not a competition but I will let you that the DPW Commissioner Peggy has already done this after the presentation we gave to the DPW Commission. So I'm just saying, counselors, we expect to get your data as quickly as possible. So our general timeline for the whole project, right now we are working on outreach to citizens of Burlington. There's a quarterly mailer that we sent out with water bills, it's called Burlington On Tap. It's pretty neat, it has some information about water resources and projects we're working on and winterization tips for winter. So that will go out, I believe next week, that should go out to about two thirds of the city. And then the month after it'll be the rest of the city will receive this mailer that's going to tell them about this project. So counselors, I don't know how often you hear decisions about things like these but you may expect to hear an increased volume of calls are concerned about letting the water and the message is that we are not concerned about letting the water. So once we kind of go out with that initial outreach, we are going to then directly outreach to some priority properties. So places that we've looked through the records, we know that we don't have the information neighborhoods that were developed during a time when they could possibly have used lead, that sweet spot between 1909 and 37 where we don't have information, they haven't reinstalled the service line. So we're gonna do some targeted outreach to higher risk communities within the city. Once we're completed with that, we're gonna be compiling our responses and throughout this whole time, filling out the inventory spreadsheet that we have to send to the state of Vermont as well as the EPA. And then once we get a decent body of responses, we're gonna do follow up and continued mailers just kind of keep pushing the message that we would like as many people as possible to respond. And then in October 2024, the entire survey is due. We have to send our complete summary of responses to the state of Vermont. They'll share our responses with EPA. And then within 30 days of submitting our inventory, we're required by the revised lead and copper rule to notify the public of our findings. So should we in very unlikely cases find any lead service lines or find any service lines that are considered galvanized required replacement, meaning that they've ever been downstream of lead and we can't prove that they have never been downstream of lead, we're required to inform those owners directly of our findings and then just make available the rest of the survey so that anybody can come and look and see, hey, what's my service line I'd like to know. And just to chime in on the galvanized because there are a lot of homes that have galvanized lines. Some of the nuances around the regulations because many galvanized lines do have a short lead into connector because it needs to be bendy called a leaded gooseneck. The EPA has very clearly determined that lead lines less than two feet long are not considered, they're not going to trigger this concern about galvanized lines downstream of lead. So people who are on galvanized lines, we do wanna know where those galvanized lines are because they are very problematic, they're the most prone to tuberculation or the clogging, the slow clogging that can happen and a lot of people who have water pressure issues it's because they have a galvanized line, they're also, they more easily corrode than the copper lines and obviously the plastic lines. And so they are our most problematic and when we come through and we do paving for several years now, we've been asking people to help us identify those so that we can replace them. The other piece and I don't know if you're going into this but we are allowed to, like we're gonna hit this as hard as we can and get all the community involved and giving us this information and getting into homes. We are allowed to submit an inventory that has unknowns because there's a couple of things. We may not be able to get in everybody's houses. We have to get permission in order to do that. And then there's two sections of the line. There's the part from the curb stop to the home. That's the piece that we can easily clearly see from inside the basement. The piece from the curb stop to the main without digging things up or without paper records that say we know what that is, those are likely going to be listed as unknowns. And so that that plan that Emily mentioned that we're gonna have to submit is largely gonna be a plan assuming we don't have deadlines that we actually need to go out and replace but a plan of how we're gonna resolve those unknowns over a sometime period. But that's still, we're still able to be compliant with the regulation by going through this sort of robust process to demonstrate that we did everything. Okay. As for communications, I a little bit touched on this with the timeline but this month we're sending out that on-tap mailer to everybody who receives a water bill. That does not always include tenants. Typically water bills will go to the owner of the property. So we are also going to mail postcards to every address in Burlington. Hopefully the tenants will see it that way and be aware of the project and what's going on and be able to have a stake. We also are, like I said, developing that survey form, a little how to guide on how to find your water service line, how to identify it and then complete the form. And we are also, we have an FAQs page and you should be able to see both the how to guide and the FAQs as part of this packet that should have been made available to you as well as the draft postcard. So we're still working on tweaking some of the wording but it should be available next week so that when that on-tap mailer goes out with the links and the QR codes, everybody can access the pages. We are also partnering with other CD programs like the Burlington blood program in CEDO just to have a consistent message and we're aware of the fact that when we talk about that, they'll probably get a lot of questions for people because it's bringing it up in the forefront of their mind and they want to maybe find out about other sources of blood in their form and how to keep themselves and their families safe. We're also working with the fire marshal who they often go into place of place of business or a lot of apartment buildings and investigate the fire services and sprinkler systems. So we're gonna work with them to try and tap their wealth of knowledge and people power to get more survey responses so that they can go in and just snap a photo and send us the fire service information or the water service information. And we're also working with Code Enforcement as they also go into homes to try and ask them to snap some clothes for us as well. We also plan to partner and reach specifically out to large community organizations, Landlord's, the University of Vermont, Shandland College, the Medical Center, Burlington School District, just to get the message out to all of the places that we can. And in the unlikely event that you've heard about these regulations from another source, you may know about the requirement that we sample every faucet in schools or some faucets in schools, but the state of Vermont actually already has an incredibly robust school sampling program in place. And so the state of Vermont is applying for a waiver from the EPA to essentially use our higher quality data that we already have and have had for years and just submit that to EPA rather than expend more resources on going into schools and doing it all over again. And as always, the Water Resources Division Customer Care Team is available for your questions. I'm available for questions. The water department is here to support the city and make sure that we have safely drinking water and to support Burlington. Can we go through? I mean, has any of you all seen them? We can quickly just go through the little flyers or whatever your pleasure. I've looked at them. Do other counselors want to go through those? No, okay. No? No, I'm good. I'm impressed. I do have one comment, which is, I think that in terms of messaging, it's all laid out as if we're being reactive to the EPA and that might be the case, but I think that we do care about lead in the water and safety, and it would be better if we were not talking as if we're just reactive to them, but because it's really important to us. And also we have a responsibility to work as quickly as possible with the rule. So it's just a different framing of that that I think it would be better to say. It's because it's important for us to do. And also, we've got this deadline, but you're looking, I think, to do this much sooner than at the last minute. And that is an indication of that. And in terms of beating the Public Works Commission, are you sending us magnets? How are we getting magnets? So we're still working through that because as I brought up in the Public Works Commission, it was sticking through us mailing magnets and them ending up in a big pile in the US Postal Service and then issuing us a citation. So it is more problematic in that you have to package them and wrap them and bubble wrap and things like that. So we're still working through that. It is a very useful thing and you do have to have sort of the high powered magnet. Can't just be a lengthy refrigerator magnet, which I would love because then we can do cute things and put our phone number on it and things. So I don't know if you have any updates on that process or how much it may cost, but we are still looking into it. Yes. And another sort of option that we have discussed is making like depots of magnets available across the city. So just like having a basket here where customer service of Pine Street can end up magnets or at the NPAs, there can be magnets or city hall or wherever customers might come in and interface with City of Burlington staff. You can stick them to bird bites. And then have them just kick. I mean, it seems as if my reading of that and it was obviously just a one time through all of it, but was that the magnets are an important piece of doing it. So, and it's sort of like to go through from the beginning to the end and finish the survey and then post your photo, that's a big piece. So that sounds like it's an area of concern. For whatever that you were doing. Yeah, we're just trying to really logistically figure it out without, you know, and is there a way to target it to certain people? Like it really only becomes an issue from my standpoint if somebody doesn't know if it's galvanized or lead. If it's copper, it's usually pretty clearly copper. You don't need the magnet to do that. And so there may be a way of iterating through it so that we're not buying 10,000 magnets or 11,000 magnets. So we're figuring that, trying to figure that out. Yeah, and really you landed on the magnets because to type your service, you can scratch it and galvanized will stay dull when you scratch it and lead will turn shiny when you scratch it. But in, and again, the unlike the event that anybody has a lead service, we don't really want to be encouraging people to like scratch lead and incur and they introduce that into their life. Yeah, so we're still working on the magnet solution. Yeah. But it's not required to be able to complete the survey. It was, that's not clear from the materials to me. Yeah, we should try and make it so that if they can't tell that they can send us a picture. Like, because sending us a picture, a clear picture, we may be able to tell or we may be able to say, oh, we can't tell and we want to come to your house or we're going to drop off a magnet so that you can do that last test. Right, or thanks for the picture. We have a record of this and now it confirms the, yeah, the scale. Okay, thanks. That's all for me. Anna, that's my turn. So I guess in terms of the magnets, I was just thinking, is there another non-magnet? Like you could send some sort of like tests that you could like paint on or something. I mean, like the little stick things? Or something. I just want that for, so I just know it's for paints. But that might be a good thing to look into. There's like little swabs. And I don't know if they would work. I assume they would work on that. That would be a lot easier. I'm sure they would, but it would be at all get cross-contaminated by looking at the house. Potentially, but yeah. I think we'll look at, yeah. Just something, is it then you would use those in an old house on windowsill? Or something other than you can put on a pipe and react to sort of like, whatever. I don't know. That's a great idea. And the other thing was to get people to, I love the idea of sort of crowdsourced and the state of lunch and to incentivize the people somehow to do it. So maybe as if you do it by a certain day to get some something, some cookies, I don't know if you might get them back. No, so we, the DPW Commission seemed okay with the concept of like random drawings for gift cards to local businesses. So trying to set it up so that like certain deadlines if you respond by this day. You can win a car, but not a car. A bird bite. A bird bite. Subscription is sort of, but something. Is that something that I mean, you guys would feel okay? I mean, personally, I think to get people to act, you have to sometimes incentivize them. Otherwise, it's just, I don't even, I never look at my water bill, we just do bill pay and whatever it is, I assume you've calculated or corrected it. I don't look at that one. And other households may be like, well, that's why we are going to be doing a separate postcard that would be going out and be appropriately urgent. But it's that timeline like Jean was saying of giving people this information, but not creating a worry that we have this some problem that's out there. Again, we don't believe there's a problem, but this is an important step in confirming that 100%, there are no significant sources of lead because if there are, we're going to be taking care of those at no cost to the customer as quickly as possible. So I don't know how other counselors feel. I'm supportive of some sort of incentive. Yeah, okay. You could, I don't know if others have comments on that. I don't see a need, for the expense of it, to be quite honest, although it may be that depending on the level of response that it might, there might be a need. But I do think that this is in all of our interests and it's important for us to do the work. So... No, I love these, I mean, these projects are challenging to be doing on top of everything else, but I enjoy these from the perspective of engaging people with their own infrastructure because there's a lot of like, oh, that's to say, I'm like, well, you live in the city and you're paying for this. Getting people down in their basements actually looking at their water meter, knowing where it is, knowing where the shutoff is. I mean, have you all visited your water meter or service line? It's really important to know where your shutoff is. Yes. You have some sort of water catastrophe. Yes. You don't want to learn about it. You put it in the middle of one of these problems. So I put a blanket on mine every night and say to it before I go. Keep it for freezing. Yeah, this is all very, very important. Yeah, awesome. Well, spread the word. As you see more information coming out, if you can just be cross-posting and reminding people and bringing it up at dinner parties, quickness or other holidays. And I look forward to your emails from all of you with pictures of your services. So I do want to say that in just looking back at the materials, that the way that you structure the taking the survey, number three is like do the magnet test. So obviously you've got to redo that. And probably if you're really seriously rethinking it, should pull that. Yeah, we'll have to make a decision on the magnets and how we're going to send them out or not. Yeah, I was looking forward to my magnet. Now, that's an incentive getting magnets, Mark. Yeah. High power magnets. That would be, that'd be really helpful. I used to have one of those, like my dad, it was like literally you had to like peel it off of the refrigerator, it was so strong. So awesome. Well, thanks for the opportunity. Thanks for that. So moving on. Next is a Nordic Winooski survey update. I think that was probably in the U.S. Yeah, it's in the general screen. Okay, there we go. Thank you for the presents today. Philip Peterson, if you could help me. I'm going to try live through all this data pretty quickly so that we can get to the discussion portion. Yeah, sounds good. I know we want to depart in about 20 minutes. Yeah, 25 minutes, so I will make it quick. Great. So we kind of all know the background with North Winooski Avenue. There's refrigeration, so a lot of the out-of-the-cash and bike lanes between Union and Riverside. I have a lot of North Winooski that involve parking. And so we put together this survey in collaboration with two other city departments from the workforce development. That survey was distributed, utilizing a list of stakeholders. And also we did two rounds of flyer distribution. One round involved in-person staff that was there. Those from the Business Workforce Development Office were there as well. And we had 203 survey respondents. So we'll just kind of go through the data, some survey data graphics for even distribution as far as folks, their age respondents. Majority of respondents were female. Majority of respondents identified as Caucasian or white as far as ethnicity of the respondents. Majority of respondents were also folks that live in the neighborhood, in the old earthen. Most folks use North Winooski Avenue on a daily basis. So we do have folks that are utilizing North Winooski Avenue quite a bit. And as far as how folks ranked traveling on North Winooski Avenue, the majority of respondents around 80 identified as people that are utilized motor vehicles. Second would be people that utilize bicycle, scooter, skateboards, then pedestrians and then last was a bike bus. Important to note, some of the respondents identified their primary mode of travel involved more than just one source. Overall, for all respondents, 61% of all respondents feel the new configuration improved safety along North Winooski Avenue. And the majority of respondents feel, I think the numbers are like 54% feel like it's more functional. And that's all respondents. Chip and I discussed that we felt like it was important to break those out by category just to kind of see what the different categories of folks felt like. Bus riders, 61% feel like the new configuration is safer. Well, 10% feel like it's less safe. I do have specific numbers as far as numbers go. 14 respondents felt like it was safer while nine respondents felt like it was less safe. It's also in the board itself. 44% felt the change is more functional. This is bus riders again, about 37% felt the change is less functional. Pedestrians, 44% felt the change is safer. 23% felt the change less safe. While 44% felt the change is less functional and then 36% felt the change is more functional. There's some comments that kind of illuminate why pedestrians feel that way. One pedestrian felt the street feels much wider than before which could allow cars to speed more. There was one respondent, a woman who said, I have to park very far away to go to my job at Riverside. She also identified as a car, a motor vehicle user. Sometimes I have to stay very late like seven or eight o'clock and I feel very worried walking to my car as a woman by myself in the dark. So that may illuminate why that's the case with functionality. For bike riders, 83% felt the change is safer while 2% felt the change is less safe which is no surprise there for the new configuration. Functionality, bicycle riders felt 75% felt the change is more functional, 15% felt the change is less functional. And then the majority respondents, similar people, folks, 46% felt the change is safer while 24% felt the change is less safe. And then for functionality, 49% felt the change is less functional while 35% felt the change is more functional. This is just a reiteration of all respondents. 63% feel it's safer, 54% feel the configuration is more functional. We did collect occupancy count data and we collected the occupancy count data over three days from November 14th to November 16th. Tried to keep it in the middle of the week. And we did it at three different times on each of those days, 9 a.m., 1 p.m., 7 p.m., Julie got to get involved in it as well. North Moosky Avenue along this section has an overall occupancy rate of 80% with a maximum occupancy rate of 88% at 9 a.m. on November 15th. An 80% occupancy rate definitely suggests a significant demand for parking in the area. For traffic counts, our traffic data was collected utilizing MyoVision, MyoVision technology at the Moosky and Riverside intersection. Intersection is not an ideal location for a comprehensive look at the data. Given the unique configuration, it's almost like it's out of five corners, but it definitely is not the best location to collect data if we're looking at all the different counts. We recognize that limitation. And so DPW staff set up a traffic counting, automated traffic counting between Archibald and I think Riverside, yeah, it was a mid-block count. Unfortunately, that device was stolen, chained and all. They only left behind a couple of rubber tubes and some duct tape. Yeah, still kind of irritated about that, but that definitely results in the loss of some pretty good data that we could have used. So the majority of the traffic comprises light vehicles at the Riverside and Moosky intersection and single unit trucks and buses are relatively small part bicyclists. The presence of the bicyclist kind of suggests potential interest in that transportation mode, but again, it's not the best representation of the data. I did put a sampling of some of the respondents' comments in the presentation just kind of for the record. I also included all the respondents' comments in the actual report itself. We don't need to review all these, but they're in there just so that it's part of the public record. And that's pretty much it. I think at this stage, given to any questions, comments, that you all had a comment. We'll put it up to Halpern. Sure. So I'm struck by the occupancy numbers and the fact that we're in, I mean, there's a significant demand, as you just said, Phillip. And that combined with the not insignificant objection to functionality really speaks to the need for more TDM work in that quarter. And it sort of dovetails with what I was commenting about. Commenting about with the birdbikes and the need to to try to figure out ways to assist people in getting alternatives, getting fewer cars there, trying to get people to the services and businesses without having to drive. So that's my basic sort of takeaways. I mean, I also think that the comments about the intersection of Winooski and Riverside, that is definitely a piece of the problems with bike travel that we've got. And you just see it in terms of how people navigating and it's sort of a kamikaze approach to getting across to the shared use path or going on there. And then going on Riverside down to Oak, where the road narrows significantly. It gets, though that's not North Winooski Avenue, but it gets kind of tricky in terms of all that bus traffic. So again, I think that this speaks to the need to continue to work and to work with more than just DPW, but to work with the business development folks, to work with Katma, to see what we can do in that regard. And I stand ready and willing to continue to assist in that. And the only other question I had is when he said people used North Winooski Avenue, was that all the way to Pearl Street? It did not seem that the question was tailored to just the Union to Riverside. No, it was just Union to Riverside. I mean, the survey itself. So it was just the summation on the, I only got through the, the, the, the, the summary texts. I didn't get into the actual questions. Okay. Great. Thanks. That's it for me. Thanks, Gene. Hannah. I don't have any comments, but thank you. I had questions. I guess I'm the number of respondents. I don't recall the number of respondents we got on the earlier surveys, but it's 203 less. We get like, it was not, or is that about the same? Of course. Maybe if you don't know, that's fine. But just, I'm wondering if that's a good response or okay. I mean, it's a pretty good response, honestly. Our previous survey, if you refer to the stopping study was on a much longer corridor, right? Yeah. On the two blocks, but I believe there were more respondents when we looked at that larger corridor. And done surveys like this before. And that was a pretty healthy response. Okay. It's good response. And then are there any immediate DPW actions that are reformed by the survey? I don't know. I don't know. I think the most immediate one and, you know, counselor Bergman and I have discussed this is that continuing to work with the community health center on their off street parking. Yes, there is high occupancy on corridor. To the extent that we can get the all day parkers off the street and allow more transient users on the street. I think everybody benefits. So we've been following up in September. The council approved the $15,000 for the community health center to do more geotech and design work. We are thanks to Phillips work working with the city attorney to draft the grant agreement for CHC. And hope is to get that wrapped up soon so that they have the assurity that they can proceed with that additional design work over the winter. Will you beat me to my third question was to ask you for an update on the community health center parking. So, yeah, it's, it's, you know, one of the things that, and I mentioned when we were doing survey development, but I didn't like harp on it too much is I would like to know anecdotally from businesses like that. Is there, is there takeout business office there dining business off and maybe we just need to go. There's a lot of that happened. Right. So like, well, he's great. Right. We were together when we went out to the survey of TN branch. He just knows it. And I was able to win some of those conversations that we had. I would say in general, anecdotal. And I think that's one of the decisions he had with folks were it's not as bad as I thought it was. Good. A lot of that. Folks still have frustrations that they would share with him. But no, as bad as I thought it would be. I heard that a lot. So what that means now what that means in six months. Good. Well, that's, that's encouraging. I mean, the other thing that jumped out at me a little bit was that the people seem by and large to think it's safer, which is sort of the experience we had. We had a lot of people who were objection objecting to the bike lanes, but everybody's sort of after the fact. It's not quite as bad as I thought it might be. And it does feel a little bit safer. So that those are, those are encouraging. I think the first thing is we want to keep the lines of communication open with the local businesses to make sure that the community parking that we installed is working for them. And we can make adjustments as we go. So they need to know like, oh, we're here. We're here to help and make changes. Okay. Well, I'm interested in hearing more updates on the community health center project. Who's that sort of develops. I don't have anything else other other comments, questions from the council. Okay. Okay. Well, thank you for that. Sure. Which takes us to director's report. Great. Council member asked for a update on payments to the solid waste generation tax. So in online is a quick memo from Lee Perry. I told them you didn't have to say for the meeting to give this quick update. Okay. Okay. Okay. All solid waste generation tax payers are current at the present time. And the delinquency that we had previously had. We has nipped it in the bud and it worked with all haulers. To be routinely current these days. So that's the news in the memo. Happy to answer any questions. I have one question, any of just the, or maybe there's only one composting collection service. In the city. I know that there is at least one, but they're not on the list. And it seems to me that they are solid waste collectors. So what's going on with that. That's a good question. My assumption is that the payments are only paid by the haulers of trash. The, the surcharge is meant for one unit through their trash bill to pay the cost of recycling, which is around $5 a month. If my home, for example, paid the $5 a month fee from my trash hauler and another $5 fee from the compost hauler. We'd be collecting more from that homeowner than it costs to provide the service to them. This is based at least it has been based on taxing the collection of, of trash. I can confirm with the city attorney that that's the right read. If it's not, then we need to adjust our approach. I think that it probably is not the right read because I think that compost is solid waste under the definition. And so I would ask you to please check with the city attorney. And if we need, if we can lower the cost. Because it's getting spread around in a different way. Lower the cost of the tax. Then. Well, that's what we need to do, but everybody has got to. To not throw their compost in the garbage, but it's got to get collected and got to be disposed of in some fashion. So we should. We should look at that and not just ignore it. Please. We can certainly check on that. I think there's definitely some good policy questions and administrative efficiency questions about whether we collect a tax from two different haulers for the same address going forward, but let's, let's do the due diligence behind the scenes and we can connect. On that. Very good. Thank you. Yeah. I have one question. It was more of a curiosity. The 12,100 already use it 566 a month is 820 something thousand dollars a year. Is that just go to the general fund? Or is that like specifically your mark and a reserved fund. Restricted funds. So it's a good question. So it does go to the general fund. There is a general fund program called recycling. That is within a DPW's budget, general fund budget. It is not a standalone kind of enterprise fund or a special revenue fund like traffic. That said, we do evaluate the cost of providing that program. And the revenue it brings in and seek to make sure that the amount of tax is covering the cost of the program plus it's associated overhead of the general fund. So that 800,000 is, is it the cost of, of the program itself plus the associated overhead from the general fund. Okay. Thank you. More of a point of curiosity information. I don't have any other questions. Anyone else have anything else on this or close it and move on. Do you have other things in your director's report? I will say the champagne parkway winter season shutdown is happening December 1st, Friday so that there will be some minimal amount of work in the off season mainly related to things off street like signal work. But by and large, the site will be batten down for the winter by Friday. And I will leave it that for, oh, we're also setting up a public meeting for the main street businesses following the city council meeting regarding the great streets main street project. We're aiming for a mid December meeting for that constituency. So we'll keep you posted on that front as well. Thank you. Yeah. The next item on our general counselor items. And Jean didn't raised. An open item for us, which was trying to do some scheduling as a committee on what. What items that are sort of what I don't call discretionary, but that aren't like staff items that we raised as counselors and we would like to. Attempt to or. Items that are consequences of council resolutions that we passed and recently we passed resolutions. So I would like to talk a little bit more about. About detain and about McNeil and the district energy project that have obligations and ready to take. So. What I would like to do. Is schedule sort of a scheduling meeting, which my understanding is, is, we can do that without warning and without open meeting loss because we don't want to talk about. What we want to talk about it at one of our. Scheduled for the meeting. So I'm wondering if. You both would be open to doing sort of it. Maybe we could do it by zoom or we could be. I'm open to discussing that. And we could maybe do it. You know, next week or the following week. People had time in their schedule. So I didn't know about just put that out there for. Consideration and. Her your comments. I have time on Tuesday and Wednesday next week. Looks like I've got time on Thursday as well. For me. Next week. I can't do Wednesday. Or. I could make Tuesday work. I could make Tuesday work. I could make Tuesday work. Because Thursday could work as well. If that works better for you and I could make that work. I am not available Thursday either. And so maybe we could. Carvo. I think we could probably do it in an hour or so. And what we would. In addition to the list that. I think we could probably do it in an hour or so. And I think we could probably do it in an hour or so. Or the council or items. We'd also want to. Look at what I'll do is I'll go grab the two resolutions that. I spoke about the meeting time resolution of the. District energy. Meal resolution. And distribute those just convenience. Even though I know you can find them. I'll just send them along. And then we'll have that to talk about. To me or to zoom or. I think zoom would be easier for me. It will. Yeah. Yeah, that's fine. And then in terms of start time, what's better, better for you if we started at like. Five or can we do five? Or would you like to do later? I defer to Hannah. Five is fine. Do you have a time that is that fine? Or is there a time you prefer? Yeah. No, I can, I can make five work. That's fine. So five on Tuesday. The week is now. The fifth. It's. Well, what I just don't have the first is. Friday, so that would be. Yeah. So. December 5th at five PM. And then we'll have a virtual meeting for an hour to discuss schedule. Yeah. And I'll send some sort of invite out on that. And if we can add the, the GMT. Fair and funding issue to the list. Because I think that is just an ongoing. Issue that we need to keep monitoring. It sounds good. And I'll figure out a virtual. Yeah. Platform my, my, my free zoom account is as a 40 minute limit on it. So see if we can do something. I'll either get this a city one or we'll do a. We'll do teams or something. I'll figure something out. Thank you. Good. Any other councilor items. You have to go right. In a minute. I have to go. I have to go soon. We're still, we're right on time right now. I'll move to adjourn so you get out. We have to talk about our next official to meeting as well that isn't our scheduling meeting. Right. Tentatively it's set for 1219. Is that work for folks assuming we get a room. Julia, can you see if this room is available? This room and the, hi, this is Maddie. This room and the Sharon busher conference room are both booked. I reached out to BED. I have to see if they have a space available. And I can also reach out to GMT if they don't. Open to suggestion. Otherwise, if. If we can find the space. If it works for you. It can work. It can work. I mean, does it work for, for other counselors? The 19th. Yeah. Yeah. We'll find a spot. We can also look at Fletcher free library. They have a bunch of community rooms that are normally open. And if you guys need help most of the time, they let me reserve space for meetings. So just let me know. Thank you. With that, I would entertain a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. Yeah. Second. Any discussion seeing that we are adjourned at 641. There you go. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.