 OK. We're ready to call the meeting to order at 631. So a motion to amend or adopt the agenda? Second. OK. Now we have the consent agenda. Excuse me. I'd like to, with the consent agenda, I would like to pull off item 4.5. No. I'm sorry. 4.2, the North William Street RPP request. And if we could make that before the GMT fair resumption. That agenda is removing 4.2. When clarification is agreed, we've warned the public forum before that agenda. We need to do public forum first. Oh, sorry. Thank you. All right. Former Chair Hogan to the rest. Thank you. Thank you. Exactly. I'm too busy with my choking cough drops. All right. Public forum. We have three minutes per person. So if you haven't already, go ahead and please sign in. Anyone wishing to speak? Anyone signed up? Yeah, I signed in. About the topic you came about, or is this just in general? Just in general. I mean, I'm just waiting for a specific topic. You can also speak. You can wait and speak during the specific topic that we're speaking. OK, so you'll wait. Mr. Goulding, is anyone online? Yeah, we're going to have Andrea Todd up next in queue. OK. Andrea, you're ready to? I am. Thank you so much. I just wanted to. I'm really glad that the agenda item includes the EV vehicles tonight. And I've been corresponding with members of the Commission and DPW. And I'm really hoping that part of the presentation tonight includes the evaluation of this pilot project. I haven't seen any conversation of that. I've seen the rationale, some more rationale for it. But I'm really hoping that there's more evaluation progress presentation tonight. I think that this is a disappointing way to be doing carbon reduction in the city. And I wish that it was better tied to mass public transportation. OK, thank you. Mr. Goulding, anyone else online? No one else is online. Close public comment. Any discussion? And now we'll move to the consent agenda. So I'll make a motion. Excuse me. I'm sorry. Approve the consent agenda with a removal of 4.2 North Williams Street RPP request. Is there a second? Second. Thank you. All in favor? Hi. Nays? No. Did you aye? Commissioner Sears? Yep. OK, thank you. OK. So now we are ready to move to item 4.8, which is the North Williams RPP request. All the on-street parking updates. Yeah. That's fine. We can note that it's 4.9. 4.9. Yeah. And a deliberative item. OK. OK, so can I go? Go ahead. Come on up. Yeah. There you go. Hello. My name is Dora Bean. I'm an associate public works transportation engineer with the city of Burlington. I'm the one who placed the North Williams RPP recommendation on the agenda tonight. To give you some background, this was an initiative that originally came on our radar in 2013 when the residents of North Williams requested resident-only parking. At that time, it was before we had standardized practices for resident-only parking. And DPW staff recommended resident-only parking for that street at the time, but that recommendation wasn't approved at the 2013 commission. Residents reached out to us this summer requesting that we reevaluate the street again to see if it qualifies for resident-only parking. I've submitted a lot of public correspondence about different parking issues that they've been experiencing, like difficulties getting out of driveways, an ability to find parking in the evenings, or parking close to their homes. We did a three-day study evaluating the parking occupancy on North Williams Street different times of the day, so early in the morning, mid-afternoon, and in the evenings. And we found that the street qualifies for resident-only parking outlined in our standards based on total parking occupancy. We require that out of all available spaces on the street, 85% of those are occupied at any given time on average. We found that North Williams had 87% occupancy. And we also hosted, I should have mentioned, we hosted a community meeting, too, where we got to speak to residents and give them information about resident-only parking and also sort of figure out where confusion lies around resident-only parking as well. We made sure to flyer and outreach to all of the houses on the street, and we received a petition with 51% of property owners standing in support of the measure, which is another one of our benchmarks for a street qualifying. And so, yeah, we didn't receive any public comment in opposition to installing resident parking on the street, but we have received a lot of commentary and support of the measure. Thank you. I wanna say I am in support of North Williams Street moving to resident-only. My reason for pulling it off the consent agenda as I communicated to Director Spencer is that this doesn't seem like a great strategic policy for the city, excuse me, to look at a resident-only parking street by street instead of by zone or area. And having lived on Lower Brooks Avenue right around the corner, Lower Brooks is not resident-only, Upper Brooks is. What is street by street or block by half a block by half a block policy does is it's then gonna push some of that parking onto Brooks, onto Atzit, as it is no parking in the winter, and we're not dealing with some of the root causes of the parking, which may be UVM and some of the multi-unit dwellings. So it's really just to kind of put this on the public record. I know we had a parking study back in 2016 that looked at maybe zone parking. I know that that was shelved for myriad reasons, but it would be, I think it would be important for the city to look more strategically at how we're going to manage parking and if we are trying to discourage people to use parking on residential streets, then how are we actually discouraging? Are we increasing transit, increasing TDM, and then addressing the overflow from UVM and the multi-unit dwellings? Yeah, I mean, I think that makes a lot of sense. That's definitely a conversation that we have had internally about resident-only parking, just because as we see with North Williams Street too, sometimes it becomes very segmented where it'll be the entirety of a neighborhood that has resident-only parking with one or two streets kind of lingering. When I've discussed this with other staff members, I think that we have long-term plans to sort of update the resident parking management plan as a whole, and we're certainly gonna consider that as an option when we make those updates. The last update happened in 2019 and that incorporated some changes to try to accommodate more public parking on resident-only streets. So I think that's something that we could certainly evaluate as we make those updates. I would still recommend standing in support of giving resident-only parking to North Williams Street at this time just to try to meet their parking needs until we do implement changes. We would wanna evaluate creating zones, I think, a little bit more directly before we would be able to bring that forward. Is that what you would say as well? Okay. Thank you. Thank you for that. Any comments? Yeah, it might also be worth noting that this is a certain class of resident-only parking. It's where there's a four-hour limit during the day and it appears that there is only one other example of that and I think that's Bradley Street right by the YMCA. So certainly, if we are getting to the point where we're having this larger study or analysis of what's going on in those UVM neighborhoods, actually determining what statuses are probably best for the different streets. Yeah, I think that would be great. You can see with resident-only parking sort of the different eras of resident-only parking that have started to be lined out in the ordinances and I think that a good long-term goal for us as an organization would be to try to harmonize all of those different resident-only parking standards so that they're just more uniform and maybe we could reevaluate some other resident-only streets so that they, like as you're saying, accommodate more public parking or just so that it's, I can imagine as a resident it would get confusing if it's different between streets as well. So it's not something that we're ready to change today but it's definitely conversations that we're having internally so that we can create a more kind of harmonious process with resident-only parking. Thank you. Any other comments from commissioners on this? No? Motion to? Yes. Make a motion to accept. Second. I'll second that. Okay. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any nays? Nope. Aye. Okay. Thank you. All right, that passes unanimously. Awesome, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Bean. Okay, next up we have item five, the GMT fair resumption. I know I messed up with the numbers on my GMT fair. Oh, I should have looked up. Okay. Hi, everybody. Hi there. Hi. Sorry, there was a gap where I lost audio for a second when I converted to a panelist so I missed if you said anything. Should I get started? Yes, you may get started. Thank you. Excellent. So hi, everybody. My name's Clayton Clark. I'm the general manager for Green Mountain Transit and I'm gonna talk a little bit about our return to fares. And so the first thing that I wanna mention is that if you haven't heard the news already that March 6th is no longer our return to fair state. We delayed it to April 1st. It's not an April Fool's Day joke, although I'm sure that some people will think so on that Monday morning. The reason why we did this is that there were some delays in getting our apps that would be through the Google Store and through the Apple iOS app store available to folks. They're not presently available now. And we really didn't like the idea of having people have a very short window of time to get ready, especially folks who are gonna need assistance. Especially folks that are gonna be using our smart cards instead of their phones to pay for the fares. And so that's why we're giving ourselves three and a half extra weeks so that that will have more time for outreach with the system live and ready to go. But I'm getting sort of ahead of myself. What I wanna do is do a very quick, high-level overview of the return to fares. Not much has changed since the last time I came to talk to you all and so I'll just do that overview and then open it up for a conversation. So I'm not talking at you, but talking with you. And so the decision to return to fares was something that was made in last year's transportation bill that was enacted by the governor and the legislature. And that set a requirement for us to return to fares at the time we had hoped to return to fares by January 2nd. But getting the fare system deployed has taken a bit longer than expected. And the transportation bill also set a target for us, a revenue target of 10% of our urban revenue coming from fares. So with that guidance, we set about bringing fares back. We wanted them to be easier for riders than it's been in the past, more convenient. And so our new system is gonna be, I think a big improvement with the options that our riders are gonna have. We anticipate most of our riders will be paying with their smartphones. We know about 90% of our riders use smartphones. And so they'll be able to download an app just as simply as they would download the Duncan app to pre-order their coffee, they would be able to have an app that would be custom to GMT that will help them manage their fares. For folks who don't have a smartphone, for folks who don't wanna use their smartphone, we have smart cards. And the smart cards are basically gonna look like a credit card and will give pretty much all of the functionality that one would have by using their smartphone. And so the thing that's really key about the new system is it's much more financially equitable because with our old system, it was primarily cash-based. And to get the best pricing, you would need to purchase a monthly pass in advance. And so that would be, depending on the time, that was either 40 or $50. And for somebody to have to pay up front, $40 or $50, certainly can be difficult for a lot of our riders. Also, there's a risk because if you pay for that $40 or $50 and then you find that you don't need to use the bus that much, you've already paid that $40 or $50. And so there's a gamble involved. And if you lose that little piece of paper, well, then there was no mechanism for you to retain what you've already paid. With the new system, it is account-based. So if somebody loses their smart card or if they lose their phone, as soon as they redownload the app or get their new smartphone, they'll have all of their cash value that they previously had on it. And since it is account-based, instead of selling monthly passes to people which requires them to pay up front, we are setting caps. And the caps basically say that when you get to a certain spending amount for the day or for the month, your additional rides after that, there won't be a charge. And so that way folks don't have to spend money up front in order to get our best pricing. And so the daily caps are gonna be set to the equivalent of two rides. And so for a discounted rider that's paying a dollar per ride, that once they pay for two rides at $2, then the rest of the rides are free for the rest of the day. And for a non-discounted rider that's paying a $2 fare, as soon as they pay $4 for the day, then the rest of their rides are free. We also have monthly caps. And so the monthly cap for a discounted rider would be $25. And for a full price rider, it would be $50. And to give you all some historical context, the price of a monthly pass in 2005 was $50. So this is something that has been somewhat inflation-proof and we know that $50 is still a lot more than zero, what people have been paying for the last four years. But historically, this is still a good price, especially because they're gonna be able to use their, use their passes on a lot more service. And so we simplified our fare structure so that instead of having separate fares for local urban routes, for commuter routes, and for the Link Express, it's all a standard fare price and those fare caps apply to those routes. And so to give you an idea, it used to be that the Link Express routes were $4 a ride and now to be $2 for full price and $1 for the discounted price. And the same fare caps will apply. And previously we sold a monthly pass on the Link, it was $150 a month. And so now people will be able to have unlimited Link ridership for $25 or $50 depending on whether they're paying full or half price. So certainly returning to fare service is something that we did not do eagerly because we really appreciated the benefits that not having a financial barrier provided, but we think that the new system is gonna be vastly improved from an equity perspective from the old one. And the last thing that I wanna let folks know about that is new since the last time I was here before turning things over to you all is that we are working with Diva, the state organization that manages Medicaid. And one of the things that's been really positive is that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services which manages Medicaid has had what's called a bus pass program. And that's for individuals who are on Medicaid and who do not have a vehicle in their household. And in the past, the folks would be able to have just their trips to Medicaid appointments. They would get free bus fare for those trips. And then Medicaid would actually verify that the person used the trip to go to a medical appointment. And one of the things that they realized is that they were spending far more money on verifying trips than if they just bought unlimited transportation for people. And so really happy to see that the federal government has changed its rules about the bus pass program. So now when folks are eligible, they're gonna get essentially unlimited free use of public transit. And so Diva thinks that there could be as many as 500 folks in our urban system that would be eligible for that. And that's really gonna be a big improvement over the previous system that we had. And so happy to talk to you all about fares. If you wanna know more about some of the tech issues that we're working with, I'm happy to dive into those. And really whatever the people in the commission and in the room are interested in talking about, I'd be happy to answer as best I can. Great, thank you. Thank you very much. And commissioners, any comments or questions latent about the fare resumption? We've had this similar presentation in the past. This is just the update on the launch date. Commissioner Mutano. No, not chomping, but I do have a few questions. The first is regarding college students. Will they be required to have this smart pass or anything loaded verifying their identity or will a college ID suffice to ride the bus for free? The college ID suffices. And so we have agreements through CATMA that pays for unlimited access for those students. And so they will not need to do that. Right, my next question concerns changes to the bus schedule to accommodate the extra time required to check ID or check, you know. Yes. Tap onto the bus and everything. And the reason I'm asking about that is the ride I take most often is between say downtown area and the university heights stop on campus. And at some times of the day, it's a very long ride. It's comparable to actually hiking up the hill. So how much will the schedule be changing? Are we talking like extra minutes or like? Yeah, could you talk about the nature of the changes themselves? Sure. And so one of the things that, and this was actually one of the other reasons why we decided to delay is that we will have a new bus schedule active on March, I think 18th. And we were, we have a very sort of long and protracted process for building our routes and then having the driver set up for them that's set in our contracts with our urban drivers. And so we were not able to get that process done in time to have it match with our return to fares. And so we didn't like the fact that on March, if we had started on March 6th, we would still have all of our routes timed for a fare free service, which would mean that they would be later. And by waiting until April 1st, that gives us the opportunity to pad those routes. And yeah, definitely we're finding, even without the return to fares that we've had to make adjustments to some of our routes, especially with changing patterns on Williston Road. And so we needed to add time there. And then with the new bid, there'll be additional minutes for each of the routes with expectation that obviously won't be as fast as with people just getting on that they'll have to have this interaction. Well, I'll certainly be paying attention to that part. And this is gonna be my last question. You mentioned that the state house resolution or whatever mandated this 10% of revenue coming from fares. Did I understand that correctly? Yes, correct. In your projections, what does that translate to in terms of fare box recovery? What percent of the total expenses are gonna be covered by fares? Do you estimate? Yep. And so we built the fare system to meet that 10%. So we are estimating that we'll get 10%. And now fortunately we will have our agreements with Katmase for the university students also counts towards that 10%. And so we have an approximately $20 million urban budget and we expect to get about 1.6 million from fares off the buses and then the remaining 400,000 comes from payment and lieu of fares through like Katmase with this university students. To be like 10% right, like recovery. All right. Yeah. So let's say someone just doesn't have this card. They're not ready to ride the bus. Is there gonna be any leeway in the beginning term for that? And is it in the policy mind? We have trained all of our drivers on the return to fares and we have what's basically called a let them ride policy. And so we have no interest in conflict. We have no interest in embarrassing folks. We have no interest in, if somebody comes in and they just say, oh, I didn't know that fares were coming back, we're gonna let them ride. And I can tell you that this is always tricky because if suddenly everybody decides that they want to take advantage of the let it ride program that would be a problem for us. But we do not anticipating and the first few months of the program denying rides for people who are unable to navigate the new system. Thank you. You got Mr. Clark. I spoke last time, I asked about sort of the difference in the unit costs for providing our local service versus the longer routes. And I appreciate that the simplicity of a single fare is upstream mind things on your ends, but the per unit costs are sort of more favorable in town and it's proportionally people in town subsidizing people outside of town as a result. So a related question I asked last time was if there's any way of like setting a monthly cap lower if you stay in like, you know, if I'm clearly taking 10 minute rides in the city versus going down the road. I don't think that we would, you know, that's something we haven't talked about. We have talked about if our estimates are wrong and we're bringing in, you know, say $2 million from fare revenue then it's more than the 10% that maybe we'll, you know, make those adjustments. You know, one of the things that we had originally hoped to be able to do is have the fare cap set at $20 and $40 instead of $25 and $50. So I think that there would more likely be an adjustment that way. One of the things that is also important for GMT is that when it comes to our federal funding there's a thing called a stick factor which is a small transit intensive city factor. And those are essentially bonuses that the feds provide to transit organizations who reach certain milestones. And so those link routes because they are transporting people a high mileage per ride actually really help us with those stick factors. And so that's, as you mentioned, the sort of the subsidization of the short rides as opposed to the long rides, that's where that balances out some because we definitely, I'm pretty sure that in for each stick factor we get about $600,000. And one of those stick factors is because of the miles per trip where that link really helps us. Local folks in town, but I appreciate that it helps you all unlock more grant money from feds and elsewhere. And one of the things that I'll say just that I've noticed from like my riding on the bus is that like the other day I was taking the number five and somebody hopped on and they literally went one stop and the hopped back off. And I was thinking to myself, well, did that make sense right now? And after fairs return and there's a maybe a $2 charge for that, probably no. So I do think that you're right that the folks that have been using the service for the shorter trips, the fairs are probably gonna change their sort of internal economics and deciding whether to walk or ride. But let's open that category as well. Nothing further, thank you. Thank you. Commissioners, anyone else have comments? I have one thing. Hi, Clayton, nice to see you. Hello, I see you. No question, but I do feel like it's worth highlighting launch the ride together travel training program. I feel like this is super important to mention. We're talking about an entirely new fair system. So just for the benefit of the public, basically GMT has a group of volunteers and it sounds like they're armed and ready to teach people how to ride the bus. It's great that this program is staffed with volunteers up at this time, ready to teach the people, not just individuals, but thinking you're a employer who wants travel training for your employees. It's something that GMT has now. And so just wanna flag that because this is gonna be new for our community and there are resources to help us learn. So yeah, that's the only thing I wanted to flag. Thank you so much for raising that. I think that's gonna be great. And one of the things also that I've just been really impressed with our riding community is that we put out a request for people that want to test the system. And so our system will be live March 6. And we have a whole bunch of folks who have signed up and essentially they're gonna be from March 6 forward. Just testing it, trying to break things so that we can fix them before April 1st just to make that a smoother transition. And so it's wonderful to see the community helping community. Thank you. Any final comments, commissioners? I would say I encourage you to get the high school students to test it. They'll figure out how to break it. Yes, I trust that they will do that. And I meant to mention starting off but I apologize, I prefer to be there in person. I started off the night in another meeting that Eliana was actually at with the CCRPC's board meeting tonight. And then now that I'm done here, I have to go pick up a middle schooler who just finished her high school game or not her high school, her basketball game. And so sorry not to be able to be there in person. Very much for your time. Oh, yeah. If I may, Chip and Spencer, in my day job, in my other day job as commissioner of GMT, I did want to let folks know that Clayton will be coming to the two meeting, the transportation and energy utilities committee meeting next week, the 27th, to discuss the city's policy around the city's fair free routes. We used to, when fairs were, where when we charged fairs, both the College Street Shuttle, well, the College Street Shuttle was fair free in Burlington, which is part of Route 11 now. In addition, the council had acted two or three years ago as part of the North Winooski Lane realignment project to have the city loop be fair free. Now with this new fair policy in place, and I am a very big proponent of what staff has put together and supported it on the commission, the GMT commission, I believe that a simple straightforward fair policy for the entire city is more intelligible and easier for the public and that we should reconsider whether or not the College Street Shuttle is free in Burlington. It's a challenge because half the route's in Burlington, half is in South Burlington. So people have to learn, they can ride part of it without paying and part of it with paying. So we'll be discussing that next week, Tuesday at the two meeting, just want to let the public and the commission know that you're able to join that conversation. Thank you. Thank you very much. And thank you so much, Chapin. Chapin has been providing a super valuable leadership on the GMT Board of Commissioners for several decades now. Thank you. Thank you. That was a cheap shot. No, I'm highlighting all of your contributions to GMT, not your age. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. Okay, take care. Okay, there's no action on this one. This was just information. So let's close item five and move to item six, the BED EV charging space. I'm Maddie Sender, an associate of this transfer. So this is just informational this month and we'll be coming back next month after another round of outreach to have a vote on these locations. So DPW worked with BED to site five charging locations to support a grant effort that BED was awarded. And we did a first round of initial outreach and received input on three of the locations, support for Murray and Front Street, and then some input concerning the location on Rose Street. So we are pivoting for that location and working to site a alternative space and we will be doing outreach for that new space once it's confirmed, along with all of the others in bringing that back. BED can speak to the specifics about the grant criteria and we can, Caleb and I can talk to the public process that has been done so far, as well as how these spaces fit in the right way. And if you can cover anything I missed. Hi, I've got most of that and I'm Caleb Mann, I'm the excavation inspector. Usually attended tonight. Any, I think Maddie covered most of it. The only other thing I would add is that it's our general practice. Anytime a facility such as an EV charger is located within the public right away, we wanna make sure that's available to everybody and give folks an opportunity to use that. So kind of our role in this was identifying viable parking spaces that would work for the specific charger that needs to be mounted to a utility pole. So we tried to find, just spots that work, they're easy to pull into. You wouldn't have to parallel park into them or anything. And there would be ample space to physically plug the cord in. The way we understand it is several different makes and models of these cars have the plug on various spots. So we wanted to find a good spot that would work for the various makes and models of these electric vehicles. And yeah, I think the main questions are more centered around how these specific locations were chosen. And that in part is based on the grant criteria that BED was able to secure. So I think with that, we would pick it over to BED and kind of let them further explain that process and how these areas were determined. It's your pleasure, okay. James Gibbons, I am Director of Policy and Planning for the Burlington Electric Department. I'm joined by Jen Green, Director of Sustainability and Workforce Development behind me on my right rear. And Tom Lyle, Policy and Planning Analyst from Burlington Electric Department. They are here in case you stump me. And I simply cannot answer the question without assistance. So they are my subject matter experts on sustainability and the grant. But I'm gonna cover it at a high level and see if that's sufficient for your purposes. So first of all, this all started with a perceived need, okay. So Burlington Electric was aware that there were no chargers in the Old North End and some parts of the South End. If you look at the map on the screen, I think it's the best way to see that. The orange locations are charging locations at this point in time or at the time the grant was prepared. And you can see that there's very little, if any, in the Old North End. There's very little in the Northern part of the South End. There are some locations at BED now, which are down off the South End of this map. But also around the same time, at the end of 2021, City Council President Max Tracey reached out to us on behalf of his ward and said he was concerned that there was no street level or street location EV charging in the Old North End. He was at least communicating at the time on behalf of one constituent. So we had a couple of inputs that said to us, these may be places that need charging. That's late 2021, early 2022, a grant comes out. Lo and behold, let me refresh my screen because it just shut down on me, knowing that I was gonna have to say something and needed to look up something. You know, that there was a grant available from the department, wait, I'm blanking on this. Department of Vermont Housing and Community Development. Okay, it was a 90% paid grant. So again, it only required 10% match of funds, but it had a bunch of criteria. So the criteria in particular for the grant were that it was eligible for single or dual port charging locations. So we chose five single port locations that only essentially occupy five parking places. It was targeted in areas with multifamily, low to moderate income. So over this map was overlaid the income levels, median income levels, housing densities and things like that, which you can just barely see in the right legend, if you will, lower right legend. It had to have little or no access to current charging infrastructure. That was a criteria of the grant. It had to be available on the same, they had to be lit in the area where the charging was going to be. BED needed it to be on a pole that we owned, not a jointly owned pole or a pole owned by the phone companies. We don't own, despite most people's thought, we don't own all the poles in the city of Burlington, we own about half of them. It needed to be feasible from an electrical interconnection and we didn't want the spaces to be limited parking spaces. In other words, not 30 minute parking because level two charging for 30 minutes really won't give you a full charge. So we had all of those criteria. And in addition to your criteria for the space accessibility and things like that, we laid them over this map and we identified those five areas, ABC, D&E, and we tried to locate one charger in each of those areas. Now, we also had done some work with the Old North End and Car Share Vermont to get a charger there and a part-time publicly available charger at the Old North End Community Center, but that's really just one charger up in that area. We looked at this, it's a pilot program, it is five devices we've never used before, so we tested them at VED and now we're prepared to roll them out for the five locations. We went out with DPW to make sure it met all of the technical requirements as well as the grant requirements and that it was feasible from your point of view as a parking space and we identified five final locations targeting one in each of these zones. Then obviously we went to the DPW outreach system, we did have the feedback on Rose Street, we accepted that feedback, we've canceled the Rose Street proposal in light of the public concern in that area and we will look for another one that will be communicated as well as you mentioned. Probably in the next week or so we'll have a location there. In the interest of transparency, we're thinking about something maybe around, is it Archibald, not Archibald and Interveal Tom, it's Spring Street and Interveal and Spring. So we're still trying to stay close to these identified areas if we can but looking for another space that will meet all the criteria. So again, our outreach was basically predicated on its five parking places across the city of Burlington as a pilot. We do not know if these will be deployed en masse. The whole purpose of the pilot is to prove their viability and their usability and their longevity. So again, we did not do extensive outreach for these five street side parking locations. We relied on the DPW outreach for that and we've accepted those comments. So I think that's really sort of where we are. How we selected the specific areas, how we then within those areas selected the specific sites and what was governing our thinking on this. I would just add that BED would be the owner of the charging stations as well. So they would be responsible for maintenance repair. Correct. These would be like any other BED owned public charging. And to be fair, we've also taken into consideration these comments in terms of broader deployments. So again, if there were any broader deployment of these devices past the first five pilot units, we would try to improve on the outreach structure. And we'll consider improving outreach structure whenever we do other public charging. We did hear that and we do consider it important message. So. Okay, great. Thank you. Sorry, just saw the screen. Commissioners, any comments? And can you walk me through that map? There's some blue pins. There's some orange pins. Yep. Can you really pull that map up for me, please? So blue pins are multifamily housing that meet the LMI or the subsidized multifamily housing. So we were looking at those under the grant criteria. It didn't actually need to be at one of these housing sites. If there were enough housing that qualified in the area and it was street side and publicly available, that was acceptable from a grant proposal too. So again, in the interest of trying to get it available to everybody and not just a particular housing unit, we went with the street side option for these five. So the orange were, again, at the time, existing BED owned charging stations. So again, going to the grant criteria that did not have ready access to public charging, that's what those dots are marking for us is, was there any public charging already located in those five areas? And there was not. You know, we have also worked with a company called EV Match to try to get charging at multifamily dwellings that can be made available by those landlords on a part-time basis for public use. And we give them a better incentive for that type of installation rather than one dedicated solely to their residents. So again, we're looking at a lot of different options and I did note the initial comment about working with the mass transit too. Certainly, BED has offered significant incentives for electric buses, continues to do so. The first two electric buses in Burlington or in Vermont were deployed with BED incentives and we're working to help GMT with the charging infrastructure issues they're having with permitting and charging of indoor charging. So again, we consider this part of many things, but it is a pilot of five spaces. So again, we relied on DPW outreach for this one. We were doing a hundred of these things that would have to be a much broader outreach for sure. We may have erred a little bit on simply assuming that it wasn't that big a deal. And in that case, we apologize, certainly. Okay. Anything else, commissioners Sears? I think parking is pretty tight around archibald as well. Just gonna put that out there. It was Spring Street and Intervale? Sorry, I misspoke. The Archibald, it's Spring Street and Intervale was where we were looking at not archibald. I misspoke. Anything else? Yeah. I'm gonna show a box, go ahead. Yeah, sorry. Sorry to harp on the map, but I mentioned the event patch. I think that there is one on purpose, is sort of one of those circles that you mentioned, but it wasn't on purpose. Well again, the map is as of the grant application. This was the map that we used with the grant application in 2022 to select. I don't know whether that one went in after that. But this was the selection criteria that was used in the applying for the grant, so that's why I've used this map here. Okay, okay. Well, yeah, just to flag that there is one in, I think that C, I feel like it's been probably. I'm not sure. Yeah. Peru Street, you think? Yeah. Peru. Peru, yeah. Yeah, we'll check on that. 73 Peru Street. I use EV Match. Anyway, it's like on the other side of the street. Is that one of the EV Match Chargers? These are only the BED owned public chargers. Okay, got it. Okay. Okay. Because again, those are controlled by the landlord, not BED. Sorry, I feel like I feel like a little bit mixed on this whole thing and I really project here about the background and that range and stuff like that. Could you speak to, I don't know, maybe this is too gritty. When we're talking about E-charging on the street itself, we're talking about the way also, and I understand that you're not gonna like the installation. Not these, these literally mount up on the poles. And when you activate the app, they drop the cable down to you. So they're all above ground on the poles. So again, that's what we liked about this technology, but we never used it. We have also found that being on the bleeding edge of technology can be interesting too if the company evaporates or things like that. So again, this is a pilot of five of these units. The very first one was installed at BED. We tried a guinea pig with ourselves. So all of our guys were out front scratching their heads and trying to figure out how to make the cord come down, but they did figure it out and they did make it work. And it does look viable and it does essentially not require any of the greenway, which is what we did like about it. Yeah, okay, that's great. That was honestly one of my... And also the retractable cord may also protect the cord from incidental damage. Again, it can only come down if somebody with the app is ready to use the charger. So it's not just sitting there on the ground or anything like that, it's actually up, boiled up inside the device up on the pole. Yeah, thank you for that. Feel better. Yes, once the commissioner's finished. I feel like I had another like nitty gritty about charge time and how that'll be enforced. That'll be something that... Under our public charging rate, correct. Yeah, so we have a public charging rate that's used for all the EV charging that's being owned in the city. This will be served under that tariff. There are times... I think not on the public chargers on some of the garage. Yeah, we'll... I think to answer your question, there's not a specific time limit necessarily associated with the parking spot. We were gonna add some additional signage that said, I'm gonna forget the exact verbiage, but it's something along the lines of electric vehicle charging only when plugged in. We don't want people to commandeer these spaces for days on end and leave their one singular vehicle plugged in, which is a problem in the town I live in. So a soft request. Yeah, so we do have some more flexibility too to add specific time limit parking. I believe we're doing three hours on Main Street, but it's a slightly different charger. So, reflective of how long it takes to actually charge a vehicle, we do have some flexibility. There is gonna be... That's the intent, yes. Great. On their chargers with the intent of not having it commandeered. A lot of times, you might understand that a professor won't be teaching all day and they'll leave it plugged in all day. No, the intent is definitely to create turnover and make them available to anyone of these. Right. So the tariff language, as we says, just I pulled it up real quick, $1 per hour or part through of a session length, over four hours, except in those designated by BD for overnight parking. So again, if it's designated a certain way, then it's waived. But generally speaking, we try to have them move out after four hours. That language you just quoted didn't say anything about what happens after four hours. Yeah. No, it's $1 per hour over four. Is it free for the first four? Yes. There's just an energy charge. So again, we're governed entirely by our tariffs. We have to comply with our tariffs. So our EV charging tariff is available publicly. It's been in use for, I don't remember how long, at all of our other charging stations. It's the same exact tariff that would be used there. These are just BED-owned level two charging stations. Okay, so paying separately for the over four. Electric, the charge. Yes. For the first four hours, that's all you pay. Okay. These won't be metered spaces, though. So they'll be free to park a satellite that you're paying for charging. Right, gotcha. Right, under the tariff. So the first four hours, it's just the energy you draw. If you charge fully in two hours, you wouldn't pay anything for the next two. But at four hours, a fee kicks in unless we designate it for overnight parking. And that's to prevent things like the parking garages where the hotels and things like that are people who park their cars and go into their room not getting tagged overnight. And right now, as these ordinances are written, we don't have anything that specifically time limits them. But as Caleb said, we had some signage that says parking while charging. And that's something that we thought we could just monitor. And if we see these spaces are just being parked long term and we're not getting turnover and people aren't charging while they're parking there, our thought was that we could then kind of beef up the language. But if that's something that the commissioners all feel strongly about, including at the start, we can look into that. I'm sorry to interrupt you, Commissioner Hogan. Can I ask you? Please. So parking enforcement is not going to add because of the restriction. They are written that in the ordinance it says special parking only for EVs. Okay. So they do have some authority. I'm just thinking I live in a building where you park ice cream, right? And how do you do it? Yes. Okay. So just so I can get, like, not to make you find a point, if an ice vehicle is parked in this EV charging spot, will that vehicle be ticketed? It can be. It can be. The ordinance specifically says special parking, no parking shall occur by the following locations unless by electric vehicles. So if anyone wants to. Yes. Okay. And if we see that it's starting, if people are just parking electric vehicles there and not charging, we had thought we could then take this a step further and kind of beef up that language and say only parking for a certain amount of hours or only parking while charging or some sort of stipulation in there. And we will easily be able to give them that data. So we have, you know, we know when a unique new person starts charging, stops charging, session length, energy drawn. So we can provide all the data when we start seeing how these chargers are being used to support those kinds of decisions that would do so. Because that's BED, they're BED chargers, so they're not private customer data. We, the usage of the charging station, we can make public the customer information we wouldn't, but the usage and how it's being used, yet we can absolutely give you that information. I mean, we consider that part of the pilot really is learning how these might be used. Which has been, this has all been part of the conversation that worked through this that we kind of kept this as we'll see how it goes. If we need to take it a step further, we have that option. But if, and if that's something that's strongly about doing on this project. Okay. Sorry, Commissioner Hogan. Yeah, because one other thing, you'll have the data on the charging session. You won't have the data on the abuse of the parking spot in the absence of a charging session. Well, we would know that the charger stopped drawing and we wouldn't know that that session had stopped. So I think we could tell you when a charger was occupied but not charging. That's our tariff itself would charge them the dollar per hour. So I'm saying they haven't disconnected. They stopped drawing the sessions over four hours, right? I guess my point is if I don't plug in at all. Oh yeah, no, we won't have any information on that. That is true. And I might just toss out to our public works colleagues here, like, do we have the technology with a smart meter or something to get a little more intel on the usage of the space? And again, in a small scale pilot, I don't think it's crucial here. Biospaces get abused, fine. But just taking bigger picture about policies around this, our language and our signage is sort of vague nowadays. It'd be like parking for evenings, like, sweet, I get pole position on made in church. I don't need to charge. I'm not gonna pay to charge, but like, there's a spot. Bigger picture, like, incentive structures. Yeah, unfortunately, not something BED, you're right, doesn't have visibility into that. But in partnership with TPW, if we start seeing that again, like I said, this is like you said, I think a five unit pilot, we're gonna learn stuff. And that's where our goal is. Yeah. All right. I think that leaves just me, I have a ton of questions, tons of things that came to mind. You mentioned a level two charger. Is that, I looked it up, it's like 240 single phase. This is the kind of- I thought I brought Tom with me. Yeah, this is the kind of charger you'd find in your home, right? If someone had a garage, this would be the type of charger. 40, 40. Yeah. So, there's level one, which would be literally a 120 volt outlet, right, which is challenging. Plugging into the wall. Yeah, right, challenging the meter easy to bypass, right? This is a little bit more gutsy charger. It's not a fast charger. It's a level two, like most, if not all, there's a few fast chargers now in Burlington, but there's not many. So this is like a common level two charger, like you would see on Main Street or at BED's offices, that kind of thing. Right, the special sauce is that, you know, it's attached to the pole. The special sauce is that it's low profile from a ground use view, you know, low risk of damage we hope, you know, things like that. So it's not a new charging technology. Yeah. With the 90% coverage by the state and grantor, what's the cost of the city for this pilot looking about? Well, to BED. To BED, yes, right, yeah, to the BED, the fund. Yeah, it's about a 90,000, 10,000 split. All right. I mean, I think it's interesting, but relating to Ms. Todd's comments earlier, right? It is, in the end is only gonna benefit just a small fraction of people. And, you know, as we're looking forward, right? Like what are we doing as a city to meet the net zero actions and just in general looking forward? You know, I look forward to more collaboration in between the city divisions, right? This public utility and DPW in really bringing forward changes that can stand to benefit far more. I don't know if having these, you know, public chargers at every corner is really the changes that we need to make in order to meet those goals that were already set. But I am looking forward to seeing the technology and it just kind of entering people's minds that really entering. I think prevalence of charging infrastructure is the ultimate goal in. So we have intensives for workplace charging, electric buses, electric bikes, you know, the EV match. I'm saying, you know, we're looking at this in every way we can, but this is one of them. You know, if we can come up with a low profile street side charging that works, that's an interesting tool too. Hey, I'm all for it. I'm going to check it out if there's one in my neighborhood, for sure. Just to see the drop. Just to see the core come down. Yeah, if nothing else. I don't drive, but. There's one on our. Yeah, I was going to say, we're happy to invite you to DPW and then do the work. All right, I'll do it. Before we, because we're going to take the one out of BED and put it out of the field. That was a test deployment of one of the five units. All right, so you've got to hurry. If you approve it. All right, thank you so very much. Okay, so I've actually not said much tonight, but just a couple, a couple questions. So I do, I do appreciate the support that BED has provided our transit company here in Burlington with tier three funds. And this is another opportunity to leverage some of these funds for other options that work towards decarbonizing. And I also think it's really important looking at the, at least the pieces of this grant. And I knew of this grant just from my other, like my day job. And the overlay of on the maps that you indicated that you're looking at low and moderate income housing. You're looking multi-unit dwelling, lighting, et cetera, because we don't want those investments into high population areas with lower incomes to be an afterthought. It's really important that we're moving forward with this technology across our city. So I appreciate that. I also do outreach and education. And I think that maybe this didn't fall, all the notes as we attest by pulling Rose Street. And just even this conversation right now. And as a pilot, I think communicating clearly to the public what the pilot is, what the goals are, what the evaluation metrics and timeline. Those pieces are helpful when we look to, when we look to a pilot that we're gonna be learning things as you mentioned. And I think that's really important to try to communicate to the public that this isn't just some little experiment and we're gonna pull it, but how do we get buy-in from the community around that? What are the pieces that we're looking for? What is the clarity that we need in the parking signage so that we don't have internal combustion vehicles parking there displacing someone, maybe in the neighborhood who actually has an EV? What data does BED have on how many EVs within those circles, any registration data to then is there, has there been specific or targeted outreach to those EV owners to kind of help build the momentum? So those are just my kind of general comments on the outreach piece. First the gratitude towards BED and tier three investments in our community, but that our reach piece kind of on both parts. This is really important as we bring our whole community along with us on the path towards decarbonizing. Okay, super quick. We did check the number of EV registrations and I don't wanna say it was 20 or 30 in early 22 at the time we did it. You know, we do also, BED is learning things about stuff we never thought we'd learn about. Parking places were nothing that we talked about at any level 10 years ago. We had no awareness of parking anything. So we're wandering into new areas for us too. So we will learn as well and we'll get better with it, I'm sure. Thank you. And we also try to avoid the creep factor of calling people too much too and saying, we know you have an EV. So again, like I say, we also tried to sort of not over outreach too. Because you're the utility. Correct, we're the utility. We know. No one wants to pick up the call when BED's gone. No, no, it's the only time I've ever been called. I'm sorry. You know, it's the only job I've ever had where I was called to shill the military industrial complex once. So, you know, but again, all points are well taken and we appreciate them and like I say, we're learning as we do more of these. Okay, thank you. And now, oh, go ahead. Can I just make a few more? So I understand that this is a state grant program and that those funds are available and I appreciate that the city was going for that. I'm familiar with that program. But the staff time isn't necessarily free, right? And we are still putting city resources towards this. And I guess I would just, just because money's available, it doesn't mean we have to go for it. And I would just ask that we take a step back and think about whether the residents of the Old North End is at this time, they really need more on-street EV charging. And maybe they do, maybe the answer is yes, but I Burlington is certainly not the only city or state public entity struggling with how to provide EV charging to multi-family dwellers, right? People who live in multi-family housing, maybe they don't have dedicated parking or orphans. And when I hear conversations around equity, I just, I have not seen a good solution. I've seen really extensive solutions that help a few people, but ultimately, I don't wanna go, I would just caution this city of going too far down the whole, but equity means the same for every household or every neighborhood in the city. And I think Andrea made some great points that maybe equity in the Old North End means more frequent bus service or do you know, I think it can look different. Maybe it means EV charging. Maybe it means a higher EV incentive that's tiered by income. I think it can look a lot in different ways. I don't think it has to be blanketing the city with EV chargers, does that make sense? I understand your point. This is a five parking spot pilot. I actually really appreciate how careful you've been going into it and how responsive you are to the response on road streets, I think. A lot of this lands in my team to be clear at BED. And certainly I'm aware of the don't always apply for every federal funds you can get. I mean, apparently when you apply and get a grant, the check is not immediately sent in the mail. I was horrified to find that out. I just remained stunned that there was process after the award. But we do try to watch these things. Just to give you a sense of the thing, one of the biggest things we were trying to deal with is some way to offer a good EV charging rate with level one charging. And those are the things that plug into a wall outlet. And so we've actually tried to get grant money to figure that out. So again, we are looking at a lot of different things, but this one seemed to be a reasonable thing to try for five spaces for the funding match of 90% without. So again, it falls into a spectrum of things we're looking at. We have been really trying to solve that level one charging because we think that would break open a lot of and being able to then offer the eight cent, nine cent charging energy to those customers who had level one charging. I'd love to break that barrier we haven't yet. I actually, I totally agree. And I think there's an enormous opportunity with level one charging. The downfall being networking, right? Like that expense becomes so high that it's prohibitive. That's another, I have not found a good solution there. We would love one. So again, I mean, I don't mean that cynically, if we may find one. No, truly, someone will develop it at some point. Someone will develop a level one charger with some form of measurement that isn't readily bypassable that you can't just plug your bandsaw into. So again, that's our challenge, but we would love to fix it. So again, we do look at this as part of things, not an only thing. Yeah, absolutely. And, and, and, and, and, this will be the solution. Thank you, Commissioner Sears. Good points. Public, any public comments? Can you go to the microphone, please? Hi, my name is Taylor Evans. Just sitting here, this isn't what I came to speak at, just sitting here thinking about this. And given the fact that you said your, this grant is directed towards lower income areas, loaded moderate income. Yes, there were a whole bunch of criteria. I have to ask what the, what the actual need would be in a lower income area, given that the average cost is $50,000 plus for an EV. So how many people in those areas actually can afford an EV and is this really useful? So my answer to that was among our things, 28 had them at the time we did the grant. Let me, let me finish. And also that EV used EVs are now becoming a lot more accessible and BED offers incentives, higher incentives both for lower and moderate income and offers incentives for used EVs. So we're hoping it becomes more accessible. That it's not always a $50,000 new EV is the only way to get an EV. I get that. I think we're years away from that. Excuse me. Yeah, so public comment is actually just the comment not to engage, yes. I appreciate, yes, yeah. Thank you, we do it differently. Yeah, I mean, that was my major question was what actually is the need in those areas, given the fact that they're a higher cost vehicle. The other opportunity I see is for fire suppression at these places because with older EVs, as you just mentioned, coming around, there's more chance of fire or failure at an EV station. And it becomes a safety concern. So my background prior to doing what I'm doing now, I was a firefighter paramedic for Fairfax County, Virginia for a good number of years. So I have somewhat of a background in that and can understand that there's a risk involved there. And I'm wondering if that has been thought of. Thank you. Thank you. Any other public comments? Anything? Great, thank you. Hi again, thank you so much for really explaining the context and the kind of origin of the project. I just have some just comments and another question, but I think if we're talking about the low socioeconomic status location kind of as the destination of these things, if we're talking about equity, I would rather that the city was not using the poor communities as experimental communities. I would rather that the poor communities and the wealthy communities were all being experimented on together. I think that if you're gonna look at what outcomes you wanna get from this study, I don't think it's appropriate to be generalizing from what you're finding out in the old North End or the poor communities to apply to the rest of the city. There may be some things that can be applied, but I just don't think that if you wanna be equitable about this experiment on all the communities, not just giving up parking on one of the five sisters neighborhoods, you might find a similar response to some of the things that you found on Rose Street. On Rose Street, there was violence threatened against them, so I maybe don't think you'll get necessarily that in a different neighborhood, but that was the sort of response in our neighborhood. Again, I mentioned this in an email. I really wish that this process of outreach was much better. Our multi-unit building only received one door sticker. And so if you're thinking about trying to outreach and to inform the people that's happening, like a four-unit building with one pamphlet, it is not enough to give that information, and nor was there any context in that pamphlet about a link to the more information or a website about the presentation that was just very helpful because it explained so much of the context. And in terms of outreach, I wish that the city would flip the switch, no pun intended, and ask, instead of saying, we've got a grant, we're going to voice this into neighborhoods, why not asking which neighborhoods want this and building a consensus from communities and they feel responded to, they feel, oh, we requested this and now we're getting it. So I think before you continue this process, you invite other communities or you invite the communities who wants to be a part of this pilot project, give them the opportunity to feel like this is an exciting thing that we can be a part of instead of, hey, we decided you have to be in this. And if you don't want to be in it, you have to fight back. I just think that that's, you're going to have a lot, a lot more positive impact. And again, I asked this in the public comment and I really didn't hear it in the presentation, but there's no discussion about how this is going to be evaluated, what the, like the commissioner president mentioned, no timeline for this, no, I'd really like to know I've asked this in emails and I'm not getting any responses about this, but where is, how is this being evaluated? For how long, where are the points of feedback and how is that going to be processed? So those are my comments. Oh, one other thing too is, if you're asking, if you're looking at these as being four hour turnover spots, I also don't think a residential neighborhood is the appropriate place for that. People are going to park their cars overnight. They're going to, and when you're removing to a parking spot on the street or two parking spots, even though it's five, you're saying one person on that street can now no longer park overnight in their original parking spot, which I would really invite the BED people who are part of this project, I would invite you to come and look at these streets from where these things are going to be located and see what cars are on this street, who's living here, and the kind of ways that they're parking their cars because very few people are parking, if they don't have parking off street parking, they're not parking their cars on their residential neighborhood for four hours. They're parking on those residential streets for overnight or for hours on end or sometimes and days on end, especially in the old North End if their car is broken. So I just thank you for the opportunity for the, to hear the presentation. It's a lot more than was in the pamphlets and I'm very grateful that you're able to present this tonight. And I really hope you take some of these points into consideration. Thank you. Anyone else for public comment? Okay. Great there. This was information, no action. So we'll close this item and move on to number seven, the annual downtown parking report. Got a triple header. Jackie. My cough drops here, like my voice is trying to go. Thank you very much, division director, Jackie Spearities, for your team. Thank you so much, team BD. This is our annual presentation to the commission that you had asked for in return for DPW staff to have monthly permit discretion to issue those at our own affords instead of having to go to the commission. So this is the annual occupancy report delegated to DPW in 2018, it's occupancy. So occupancy remains pretty much the same as it has been the last couple of years between 40 and 50% for last year on average. This is just downtown garage. Just downtown garage, sorry, just for the downtown garage, not marketplace. Transient revenue, which does not include the hotels on the next slide, slightly above 2022, but still low. The unfortunately, because we switched over to Ames in November of 22, we don't have good data for monthly permits for the hotels. Hilton has remained the same, about $12,000 a month, but the other ones do fluctuate because they are not available. So this is just the average and then for next year, we'll have better data. This is kind of the big one here. This is the monthly permit revenues that we see. So we have two options right now as the five days, six days. Obviously you can see from before pre-pandemic 2019, the numbers were much higher than they are in 2020. Why we're seeing such a huge gap in the five budget. Free employee program being widely used. We have about 800 active permits as of today. 52 downtown businesses are using it. One thing that we are going to start implementing as of March 1st, owes money to the city. They are no longer going to offer this. So this passes worth $100 a month. This came about, we had an issue with someone who was in scoff and then drove off. So they owed a lot of money. So basically, we are now telling the companies this person doesn't qualify because they owe money as of March 1st. Currently outstanding is 14,227. That was as of a couple of days ago. So obviously things do change from time to time but we will be letting people know and obviously we're very open to helping people. We've already had, as of today we just started emailing people, we've already had tickets paid. So it is working. Some people don't know about the tickets or they want this free service so they're going to pay their meter violation a few years ago. Some things that we're working on. So the occupancy is low, public use is similar. As of for next steps, Chip and I met with Jamie, the lobbyist this week and last week and we are working to implement LPR which is licensed date recognition which will help a lot with both enforcement and offering other options. So we're hoping to do sort of a punch card so you can repay for 30 days and if you wanna go to work in office two days per week, then you can do that. The way that the LPR works is just a camera on the car and if the camera sees your license plate you'll go from 30 permits to 29 and the vehicle can go by your license plate six times in one day and it just counts as one day. It's a midnight to midnight and so we'll offer those punch cards at a discounted daily rate but it's a lot more flexible. We have a lot of people that are switching to hybrid and asking for another option or they work Tuesday through Saturday and they would rather pay the five day rate than something like that. So we're just looking at other options and this LPR is definitely gonna be something that works well for us. UVM uses it, they're private and other things. So we're working on it and this is just the Hunter Bank Street agreement that we have. They currently are only using 53 permits but we speak with them daily. They have people moving in and out. Yeah, you mentioned the license plate recognition. What about it requires the city lobbyists to be involved and what concerns are there about using that on unquestionably public property? Yeah, so we are not officers, parking service agents are not police officers so that's part of it. There's nothing in the statute that says that it can be used by other than the police. The only town that's using it right now is St. Albans and their parking enforcement is it. So trying to use that that there's coming, there's changes coming in July with rent statute. The other piece is privacy. So we're working through these things with not sure if it's correct. We're aware of these important considerations so part of any program we would develop would have firewalls and make sure that people's private information was appropriately protected. Our take is that the difference between a meter public parking service agent typing in a license plate number and a camera detecting a license plate number and then trading the data the same way is, the end result is the same and so we need to figure out how the data would be stored, who has access to it, how quickly is it deleted in all of those pieces that we believe we can develop a responsibly operated system that can improve products that we can't offer now because we don't have efficient enough ability to monitor that could improve, frankly, the public's access to parking in the city. So like what state statutes in particular is limiting in this case? Do you like any off the top of your head? Like what are the main barriers to implementing this right now? The state statute basically limits how LPR can be used and by our legal teams read does not allow the city at this point utilize it based on state statute. We can certainly get you this specific statute to review. There are bills that would adjust that statute that are in play at the legislature and we're exploring whether or not we could get some amended language. Yeah, perhaps we could communicate this some other time, but I'm curious about that. Yeah, thank you. That's a further here. I can just clarify some things because I was at UVM when we were able to get license plate recognition approved. Just for knowledge, the rest of the nation doesn't look at LPR the same way that Vermont does. Vermont, when they implemented it, looked at it as a law enforcement tool only. And as I understand it, since the city is also on aims as UVM was it's something tied totally to a database. So therefore it's not gathering information on people. It doesn't alert that this is a car that's wanted. It doesn't do any of that stuff. It just basically says you're allowed to park. You're not allowed to park. If you're not allowed to park, you get a ticket. And that's really all it's intended to do. I'm not sure the state statute either, but our legal team worked with at UVM, not ours. I'm no longer there. The legal team at UVM worked with the state to get approval on a very limited basis at UVM. Thank you, Commissioner Barr. Commissioner Sears, are you still there? Any comments? I am still here, no comments. Thank you. Great. This says motion to approve, but this is just an action. Okay, yes. Okay, great. I feel like I should apply to be on your commission. I love the topics that you're talking about. I tried once, I wasn't able to get in. I would just like to say what a great way to get a lot more public funding for public infrastructure transit if you doubled, tripled, quadrupled the cost of parking in Burlington. That would be an amazing revenue source for the things that we don't have. It would push people to not drive. It would push people to ask themselves, do I really want to pay that much money to go park in Burlington? Please make parking really expensive. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Togg. Anyone else? Okay, anyone else in the room for public comment? Okay, so we'll just close that. And on to the next one. So the next is the marketplace garage permit changes. So just as a background, we currently have approximately 35 permits available in the garage. You're pulling in on College Street. You can either enter on the right, which is public parking, or enter on the left, which is the section for permits. Thanks, Street. Thanks, Street. Sorry, thank you. Wrong garage. So those rates moved a couple of months ago. As of February 1, those rates went to $100 per month. So this is looking to add 40 more permits to the upper portion of the garage. They are free to park wherever. These are not guaranteed spaces, like the other permits in the garage. They're similar to downtown garage permits that are not guaranteed. The other, so that's one thing that we're looking to add. And the other is the seven permits for city employees that work directly out of the garage. These are DPW or BWD employees that have offices in the garage. We'll be parking there. The city will be paying for their parking at the garage. And we're only adding seven of those max. Right now, I think we have three, four people that are utilizing those. Just acronyms, business and workforce, develop the DPW of a managed church street marketplace, street marketplace, have home base for many of their main staff in the basement marketplace garage. So that's the answer to the questions. Okay, we'll start online. Commissioner Sears, any comments, questions? Great, anyone, any comments? Hi, sorry. Okay. Sorry, I don't have any comments. I'm listening, I'm putting someone to bed. Okay, I'm listening. We'll whisper. We'll whisper. Anyone here at the table who's ready to go to bed can have any comments about the marketplace garage? I'm ready to go to bed, but I also have one question about the ordinance language. I'm sorry. I noticed that these permits in contrast to the college street downtown garage are written in as seven day permits as opposed to, well, six or five day permits in the case of the other garage, parking still free on Sundays. Is this just older language that made its way into the ordinance? Or I don't know why the difference in between the two garages? It's a very astute question. One of the pieces that you'll see later in the agenda is us evaluating on street occupancy on Sundays. And as Burlington has shifted to more of a weekend destination with the office market being weaker and the lifestyle uses of downtown being more vibrant. We are taking a look at whether or not charging on Sundays is an appropriate strategy. And therefore we're seeking to add language here that if we advance that action, it would not require a further change to this section of work. Yeah, I assume that the marketplace, you know, this ordinance, right? So it's not new language where that seven days is going in. This was made in either September or October of last year, I'm assuming, while I was teaching during this time. All right, cool. I don't know if it's worthwhile amending it to be in line with the College Street garage. But I just think that, yeah, it's just a note, right? We've got two public garages. One is on a five to six day schedule everywhere in ordinance. And this one here is on this mysterious seven day schedule. I think the thought of doing that was not to differentiate. There is technically two different permits, right? There's the lower permits that are seven days, but we didn't differentiate. We also were thinking with these because we hoped that this garage used to be utilized 100% every weekend. You could never get in. Your hope that that would go back to that in which case that we stop using it. Not allowed. If occupancy grows and people go downtown, we would put that not in the ordinance, but we would put that in the agreement when we offer these permits to the public. So every single person that's signed on or gets one of these permits has to sign an agreement. We would put in the agreement that we as DBW are able to stop the permit. All right, I understand. And I guess going along with that might be actually making that necessary amendment such that now there's just no monthly parking in the Marketplace garage anymore. Not just a transactional thing. It's just, it doesn't exist. The city doesn't do that anymore. So I think, like I'm okay with that, right? If it's coupled with the matching change in our policy actually in the language itself. Yeah, that's all. I'm here in favor of the 40 spots being added. I don't know if you're all aware, but there's currently a wait list for spots in the garage. It's been several years long. And I'd like to point out that, first of all, I'm the general manager for the Heli Hansen store. I work for Heli Hansen's corporate. I'd like to point out that I've been made aware that there are several individuals that are currently in the garage with monthly permits at the Marketplace garage that utilize it a few times a year because they're absentee landlords. And I don't really, I know that they pay for their spot, but I don't think that that's in the spirit of why we have monthly parking, that's taking up monthly parking from people that actually live in the area or work on Church Street. So my employees and myself can park for free at the garage through the employee parking program that's done on the Church Street garage. That's a great asset. But recently with the retail crime, there's been also threats made against our business. We've had vandalism, a $1,400 window just got replaced. Tapping to other stores as well. I've had anti-trans comments made to me in the store. I've had, we have the same usual suspects that generate all of the retail theft in the area. And some of them are becoming more aggressive and more violent. My concern is walking down to the Cherry Street garage, either past a construction site on the Cherry Street side or past the construction site on the Bank Street side. Neither one is a great option. I feel pretty sure about myself in terms of protecting myself, but I've actually had threats made by an individual that's had several encounters with the previous store manager. I really don't want to deal with an altercation. I'd like to have a spot and my corporate office is willing to pay for it. So I think that there's other people as well. The business owner that just moved in above us does metered parking. And I'm sure he would be a person that would be involved, along with all of the people that are on the wait list. So I think that's a great thing. I do want to also mention, when we talk about whether or not parking should be free on Sundays or whether or not it shouldn't be free on Sundays, it's great to think about your revenue stream for the city. But your decisions here also impact other revenue streams. One of the things that I'm going to be working on in the next month or so is a proposal that parking be free downtown after five o'clock in the evening and continue to be free on Sunday for the simple reason that restaurants and businesses need people to come downtown. Right now there's a public image that Burlington is suffering that has created a lack of traffic. Traffic is down in our store about 22% in the first quarter. Also about 18% in the fourth quarter of last year. Those numbers aren't sustainable. I've talked with other business owners, outdoor gear exchange, home port, everyone's feeling the pinch. I know that one of our major restaurants downtown showed a 15% decline in revenue in their fourth quarter. You need to start doing things that attract people to come downtown and overcome the public perception. When we start charging for parking on Sunday, yes, they're all coming down to visit Church Street. They're all coming down to shop. But if you take away some of those shoppers, if you take away 10 or 15 or 20% of those shoppers, that's a direct impact on the revenue that businesses. And remember that it's the businesses that are the reasons people are coming down. They're not coming down because City Hall looks great. They're not coming down because of other things people are doing of City Hall Park, okay, the money that was spent there, that now sees more drug traffic and homeless people, housing insecure people. So my point is, is that I think that the city really needs to think about the nuances involved when they make decisions about whether or not parking should be free. And I am definitely in favor of the 40 spots. Thank you. Great, thank you very much. I appreciate those comments. Mr. Goldie, anyone online? Okay, we have a motion to approve language for the month. Can I say so moved? Can you just say, how many to get more? Yes. Motion to accept, that's right. Is there a second? I'll second that. All in favor? Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Mr. Mutano, hi for myself that passes unanimously, okay. On to number nine, the courthouse Plaza Public Parking. Thank you. I'll make this very brief. As part of our efforts to mitigate parking or construction related to impact on the Great Streets Main Street project, we're looking at several strategies, one of which is providing lower cost public parking off street in the Courtyard Plaza Garage 190, excuse me, Courthouse Plaza Garage at 199 Main Street. And we are advancing the proposed agreement with the private garage operator through the city council because the council is the entity that approves public private agreements. That said, the commission oversees and regulates what garages are available for city parking and what rates and how they are enforced. So we are here to seek your approval on the rates and enforcement side of things and going to the council on the 26th this coming Monday for approval of the agreement overall. It was reviewed by the Board of Finance last Monday, which recommended unanimously to the council to approve the agreement with a lot of positive feedback about trying to mitigate the construction related to the work. This would make 85 spaces available in a garage that currently is $5 an hour that would then be available at $1.50 an hour and on the city's payment platforms with city enforcement so that the more kind of lower fines, city payment systems with Park Mobile will provide a more customer friendly opportunity for the public over the next two years. Happy to answer any questions. Is everyone, is this, I don't, I'm not gonna say in response to started talking about green screens of parking, received loss of parking. Reallocation. Reallocation of parking, thank you. This is something in addition that it now come lights of basically 85 more that section of parking. Yes, this is a construction phase only effort to really minimize the impact during the construction phase. It, the agreement allows for two years with a potential eight month extension of construction that extends for eight months. Parking has been public, but at a premium price and we felt that that hearing from the previous speaker that helping our business community during this, this reinvestment is important. Yeah, my question was gonna concern exactly what the timeframe is and in the ordinance language, there's no end date. So after the contractual agreement with the city and the owner of that lot terminates, I would presume parking would go up to $5 or more an hour in spite of the fact that in the city ordinance itself, it says, I don't know what the title is, but city metered lot locations. So is it possible to include that timeframe in our ordinance language here or like what is the interplay between a contract, between the corporation of the city of Burlington and the owner of this lot and the actual ordinances of the city that we all live in. I would assume the contract probably trumps the other given that it's being considered at the city council level and not our little commission of ours. A great comment. I would be supportive that if your motion would clarify that this language would be in effect through 2026, so that the two years plus eight months with us enacting in April, 2024 would mean that your motion would then make clear that this ordinance language would be in effect during that time and it would work with the city attorneys to make it clear that this is a time limit approval from your standpoint. So two years and eight months would put, starting April 1st would be when this could conceivably come into effect, right? When it would end. It would end April. It would sunset in December 31st, 2026 because this is for the construction phase of the Great Streets Main Street. Got it. That would be two years and nine months. So it would be putting us at November 30th, December 1st, 2026. Depending on when it is signed. Right, exactly. So there's all that kind of negotiation, but I think if the intent is to make sure that it doesn't become a long-term fragment of irrelevant policy that may be setting an end date at the end of the calendar year, 2026, makes sense. All right. Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you. I have a question. How many spaces are in the corner lot? Approximately 15. So we're gaining like 35 publicly available parking spaces, sort of. Yes, for this phase, as soon as the ravine sewer work happens up Main Street, there will be additional parking lots as well. So it's going to shift and change. There'll be a time when there will be a deficit of parking. There may be a time where there's additional parking in what exists. But it's one of those things that will shift based on where the work is happening. Thanks, yeah. I just wanted to flag, because I know that was that number, right? The number of parking spaces where even more available. And we can always point folks to the downtown garage, which has some open spaces. Yeah. You're my walking block. Correct. Commissioner Barr, any comments? Great. Commissioner Sears, she fell asleep. Did you fall asleep reading the story? No, it's done, it's done. No, it sounds like a very thoughtful approach. Right, so any comments from the public? Yeah, we'll be going to the end of your talk. All right, and then Ms. Todd's going to join us next month in person. Yeah. I'm fans of all of you. Thank you. Right back at you. My question is in terms of mitigating the pressures and helping the businesses and bringing people more easily downtown, I'm just going to ask it, has busing, has like temporary busing been a consideration that DPW is going to maybe use and work with the Staples Plaza to up at the top of Main Street be a place where bus, where people can be driving, parking, and then having a quick bus take you up and down to drop you right at the bottom. I mean, I'd love to know if busing is part of this. And I know that's just a short way of asking it, but I think I know the answer and I really love that to be, I wish it was yes that you have done it, but I'm likely guessing that the answer is no. And I would like to put a request that creative busing systems are solutions for bringing more people downtown without having to worry about parking. So I guess I'll ask the question directly, Chapin, have you investigated busing in a way to alleviate the Great Streets traffic parking dilemma? The short answer is no, we have not looked at developing that. We have, as you know, Main Street, Great Streets is going to, for the first time, put bus shelters on the corridor. It's going to create a dedicated cycle track. It's going to widen sidewalks. Clearly there's a multifaceted approach here, but for this disruption downtown, for this time limited period, we have not looked at a special bus service. I would love it if you did. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Golding, anyone else? All right, folks. So we need a motion to approve with the clarification that the language included in this ordinance runs from April 1st through the end of the calendar year 2026. Yes, I think maybe just that the ordinance would sunset at the end of 2026 and leave the start date flexible because if we can move fast to get this executed, we'd like to provide the service as soon as we can, but given attorneys review and council process, we may not, this start date would like to be flexible. Okay, all right. So then that it would motion clarifies that this ordinance would sunset the end of the calendar year of 2026. Point of clarification, that will apply to both section 18, listing all of the metered lots and section 19 that sets the rate for the lot. Is that the intention of the chair making that amended motion? That was my understanding that that was it. Okay, I'm just clarifying, but yeah, it's all clarified on all ends. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for the double, triple clarification. I appreciate that now. Fantastic, thank you. So moved. So moved. All right. Y'all are easy. All right, second. Okay, great. A vote, all in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Okay, great passes unanimously. And we close that. Now we're on to director's report. Great, thank you. Director Spencer is gonna do his favorite. Hit the wave tops. Hit the wave tops. All right. So South End construction coordination schedule is described in your packet. We have discussed this with the city council. There are many large generational projects either underway or about to be underway in the South End and downtown. And one key piece to be aware of is that the Raylard enterprise project has reached a milestone moment of getting its federal NEPA permit, the environmental assessment. And so we have a preferred alternative for that project, which is alternative 1B, which is the alternative we've showed you in the past, simply connecting Pine Street to Battery Street. That is exciting. In addition to the Champlain Parkway, final construction phase is likely to be out to bid later this spring. And while the initial phase of the Parkway would finish up in this July this year, we'd be looking to start the final phase of the Parkway in August. So to put a finer point on it, some members of the community have sought to have the Champlain Parkway and the Raylard enterprise project be constructed at the same time that phasing is not playing out in that the Parkway would likely be completed a year before the Raylard enterprise project construction part with our current schedule. The other key, well, actually I'll hit two more items. One, the regional bike share update. As you see in the report here, staff is recommending continuing with the same vendor that we had last year. It's organized by CAPMA with many partners regionally at the table, their performance. The vendor bird we felt was solid enough and responsive enough to concerns about improperly parked bikes to recommend continuing the program for 2024. We are saying the same thing to the council's to committee this next week in hopes that we have clear direction to proceed ahead accordingly. And then lastly, Battery Street scoping study is underway and we will have the opportunity to have another public meeting coming up soon. March 13th, that's to weigh in on a couple alternatives for the design, future design of Battery Street. It would encourage the public to go on our website for a link and participate at the March 13th meeting at six p.m. in Contoy's Auditorium. Probably anything that I missed? While public works is not the prime organizer, I think it's important that folks know that the Burlington or that the eclipse is a big day for the city as we are half of the reality. Expecting a ton of influx of tourists. I'm sure a lot of residents have been as well. And so the organizers in the city are planning on, this is in conjunction with our department and planning on a variety of road closures and potentially the belt line who will allow for parking and kind of keep that congestion as far out of this as possible. So I would encourage folks, here's to the media, the organizers are planning people who live here will know exactly what effect of Burlington, we'll be working with them on VTL and some other information, have a vested interest. Thank you. Anything else? Oh, that's it. Right, that's great. Commissioner of Communications, Commissioner of Boxing. Okay, you want to just keep writing your notes and. Okay. I just want to, and I also want to give accolades in progress. Great, pass it on. Commissioner Hogan, any comments? Yeah, I want to share, in case you missed the news, the latest manual of Uniform Trafficking Control Devices dropped in late December. Oh my God. It's gonna come in copies. Well, I'm still digesting all of it. One tidbit is that I believe it formalizes, I'm reading correctly, formalizes asphalt art as an allowed treatment. And I wanted to plug that, that's a thing. We can get our partners at the state level on board and dust off our honeycomb and rainbow prints. Get back out there and start decorating. There we go. I bet. Make a thing, get Burlington State Parks, Burlington Public Works, let's do it. Can we do an eclipse on Main Street? Ooh. Maybe not on Main Street. Well, let's pick another shit. Yeah, sounds dark. It's all the news. That's all your news. It's good news. All right, Commissioner Mutano, can you top that news? I welcome that news. There's a Facebook group, this is not MUTCD compliance. And I want to be the first to let everyone on there know that Burlington's street art is in fact compliant. So that is quite exciting news that I am not gonna top. I have more questions than comments. I wanna start with the Sunday parking, kind of scoping you guys have been doing. I understand city employees are working on taking counts, garages and on street. And I wanna hear how that's going and when we could get a report, perhaps more formally actually including some of that data. Great. There was some information in your packet in the consent agenda. We are continuing counts and we will be back. My guess is two to three months with more data. We will wanna talk to key stakeholders before we come back with any sort of recommendation and the general public. If we're going to consider a significant change to enforcement, appreciated the divergent public comment. We heard tonight about making parking more expensive on one hand and rolling back parking. On the other hand, I think it's important for us to explain to the public that enforcement is not all for raising revenue, is also for looking at increasing turnover, creating equal access to curb space. And so because Sundays are one of our more busy days downtown, and if we find that occupancy is above the 85% threshold that we seek to manage to, then enforcement is a way of managing over of that high demand to create available spaces. So we're taking that all into consideration and thanks to Jackie and her team for doing the counts. We're saving money doing it ourselves with some of our parking enforcement agents while they're roaming the streets. And happy to bring that information to you all soon. Fantastic. And yeah, I'm looking forward to maybe just a longer term discussion as we have heard such divergent opinions about what should be done, really what kind of place are we making with admittedly all of these exciting projects going on. So even with the more limited scope of the Main Street, Great Street project, and to get Pine Street now, did I read that correctly? That'll be the bottom most end of the improvements given the setback in scope, right? First phase, yes, but we are actively applying for a grant due next week for phase two. And the end of phase two of the Champlain Parkway improvements will end at that Pine Street and Main Street connection. Is that correct? I mean, that's like wicked exciting. These are big changes that are happening in the city and including the department like our commission in how we're looking forward to that time and what changes we'll be making on our end to best serve everyone with these new public rights of way that will change how our city is perceived. I mean, it's exciting in my opinion and relating to the bus. You're in the company. I know, yeah, I'm excited to be excited by it and be working on all of these things. Yeah, on the bus side, I actually do really support the idea that Ms. Todd had regarding more frequent service on that Main Street corridor, either before the end of construction, but almost certainly once it truly is implemented. This is, you use the word generational change and it really is a big change in our city and we definitely need more frequent service, especially on that Main Street corridor and especially between downtown University Heights and possibly also the University Mall in South Burlington. At the University Heights station, you'll sometimes find basically a whole bus full of students getting off from the trip downtown and it's replaced by another dozen or so students looking to get to the mall and points further out and it takes time. I think I mentioned before that the ride is quite long and one thing that will mitigate that time is including more frequent buses. The ability for people to use it for park and ride is also awesome too. Now I would say like it's not necessary that such a service go all the way to Woston but like within our city, within our core, I think we can be making changes to better serve the residents of the city and everyone that's using these public resources that move us around to their fullest potential. So all around just looking forward to the future and thank you so much for all of the DPW employees and management and everyone's work in making these things happen. So thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Fox. So I feel like I'm stealing commissioner's question but do you have any staffing updates for us? Thank you, thank you. That's about data. Listen, in all seriousness, I think I read a front porch forum from the Councillor Carpenter that the city is going a hiring freeze now and sort of wanting to understand what that means for a department that doesn't have locations. Yes, we still have two open planner positions and our financial project accountant for tech services is still vacant. I did report last month that we've filled all of the water distribution positions which that department has gone through a pretty remarkable change over recycling. We're still down to positions. We have, when positions have come up, we have advocated in front of the administration to allow us to post them despite the hiring freeze. We've had significant success with a couple key positions that are important to our work. I will say we are looking at what the future projects are that we have on our plates and to my knowledge, there has been no time in recent history where we have been trying to deliver on as many large generational projects as are on our plates now. We are exploring, shifting our capacity from planning to more project management and engineering to deliver what's already in the pipeline. There'll be more information forthcoming about potential shift to give us more capacity to deliver, but our team is running pretty fast and hard right now to keep up with Main Street and the Champlain Parkway and knowing that Bank and Cherry are coming and knowing that Raleigh Art Enterprise is coming where Winnieski Bridge is coming, we're a little concerned. This is a small one and I don't have any personal experience but some neighbors tell me that they know, this is a little like cycling drivers, driving fast and recklessly at three hours of the morning. I can't speak to it but some people like that. Please have those reported and we do have GPS systems in our trucks and if they can't proactively monitor but if there's a complaint, our contracts with our union staff allows us to review data if there has been a complaint. Okay, thank you for that. Like I said, it's not something that I've personally experienced but no, and the last thing I wanted to say is make sure you get your Eclipse glasses. I haven't done it yet, so minor problem list. And look at it without glasses. Don't stare at it for long periods of time is what we were told. No. There's nothing to stare at. This could be all dark. Yeah, it's all gone. I'm gonna be on my roof. I got a nice big flat roof. Commissioner Sears, any comments? I do not have any comments. Okay, a couple of quick things for me. The College Street bike lane because of the construct, bike lane, but I actually haven't ridden up it in a couple of weeks, so unless someone's been out there filling the potholes, there are a lot of potholes. And because of the increased traffic on College Street because of Main Street, when you're riding up and you're about ready to do a face plant in a pothole or bend your rim, you move out into traffic and you have a car that's just breathing up your tail. Not fun. So as the weather improves, the more focus we could have on filling those potholes along College Street, just would be great. It's an easier street to ride up. Yeah. Which, again, would push the squeeze on the wheels. Yeah. I appreciate that. And then something I mentioned in an email with these generational projects, like the Champlain Parkway and Main Street Great Streets, recognizing the importance of the green infrastructure, some concerns that I have heard from folks who live along that area by South End City Market, the plantings that species were planted. And I know that the ship has sailed, right, to get the project moving forward. But if we could have some information or collaboration between parks, salute, salute, and public works on what the planting and green infrastructure will look like, especially along the Champlain Parkway. I think it would help residents, put them at ease. Also, it does a better job at supporting the built environment. Burlington is one of the cities that has heat islands to create more. Our city is getting increasingly hot. So the structures. We can do a better job educating the 24 trees, the pair of trees that are on a watch list for being invasive are all being replaced. And we have coordinated with Parks. Parks has reviewed the plans to make sure that there are no other kind of problems in the planting plan. The planting plan on part of the parkway is very limited to nonexistent because the city and the state fought in the 2000s around the road to affordability. And so all the kind of landscaping on the section that was designed at that time was removed. But in the areas that still have landscaping, we have worked with Parks to review it. Doesn't mean that we can't add more landscaping in when the project's done. Great. I think communication on that and what that could look like is going to be important. We can't have Main Street, Great Street, and this idea of a parkway, I have a vision of a parkway that includes a lot of green space. And it is an important sponge. So whatever that could look like, moving forward. Happy to do some neighborhood communications on. Great. I'm sorry, can I add one really quick thing? Chair O'Neill-Vavonko reminded me with the, sorry that your experience with the Potholes on College Street, I will say my new bike commute is along Oak Street Riverside like Boys and Girls Club and the Potholes there recently got filled. They were horrible and I was like, oh crap, like this is not gonna get fixed till the end of winter or whatever, there's something to talk about it. But they got patched like a week or two ago. So that's awesome. Now I'm done. Just keep us all happy. Try it. No, thank you. Thank you all for your work. And that's it. All right, is there a second? Second. All right, all in favor? Aye. Aye. All right. Nighty night, commissioner Sears. Aye. Aye. Aye.