 So I'm Kim Cook, District 5 City Councilor and I guess I will ask everyone else up here to introduce themselves and then we have a number of staff members who are here and who will be presenting. And if you're presenting or are here to answer questions, if you would announce yourselves as well. Good evening. I'm Councilor Doosan. I'm an at-large councilor and I live here in District 5. Nick Mavadonis. I'm an at-large councilor. I'm Kate Snyder and I'm the mayor. John Jennings, City Manager. I'm Marnie Morione. I'm your District 5 Board of Education Representative. I'm Mary Davis. I'm the Housing and Community Development Division Director. Hi, I'm Greg Jordan. I'm with Metro. Hi, I'm John Peverata, Parking Division Director. Hi, I'm Matthew Grimm, Senior Planner with the Office of Planning and Urban Development. Alex Marshall, Parks Rec and Facilities. Hi, I'm Sally DeLuca. I'm the Director of Parks, Recreation and Facilities. Good evening. I'm Heather Brown. I'm the Assistant City Manager. Greg Mitchell, City Economic Development Director. Kristen Dow, Director of Health and Human Services. Hi, I'm Jessica Grondin. I'm the Director of Communications. Chris Branch, Director of Public Works. Hi, I'm Heath Gorm. I'm a major with the Police Department. Julia Trujillo with Office of Economic Opportunity, Economic Development, Managing, Interpreting and Services. Okay. Hi, folks. Chris Huff, City Tax Assessor, and District 5 Meeting Doerholder. Thank you, Chris. And in the back, I think I just saw another elected official come in. Would you like to rep? Go ahead, Representative. Yes, I am. District 43, State Rep. Great. Any other representatives? Others? Okay, I also wanted to let you all know that tonight we have Community Television here. We asked them to come in particular for folks who weren't able to make it tonight so that that way this will be able to, they'll be able to watch it after the fact. I tried to figure out a way to live stream the meeting as well as record it. But the live streaming was beyond, I guess, our current capabilities. But Community Television is here and by tomorrow I think we should have a link that we can post on the city's website and on social media for others who couldn't come to be able to see what we had to say here tonight. We're wonderful. I think I saw, I'll let you come. Thank you, Councillor. My name is Pires Ali. I'm a large Councillor. Hi, I'm Taichung, District 3. With that, I think we've got all the introductions coming, finished. More people coming in. But we are going to launch into our first agenda item and let me just give you an overview of the agenda and sort of how the flow of the meeting hopefully goes. And we have a lot of information that we'd like to put out there because I've heard from many people about various topics that they're interested in. So we've tried to arrange the agenda to provide that information but also allow time for just questions and answers later tonight. So we're going to hear from the City Tax Assessor about the revaluation process and the timeline and all of that. Then we'll have an update on the homeless shelter planning process, an update on the recode, which is the rewriting of our zoning ordinances, an update on Morals Corner Transportation planning and hopefully improvements in the future. Then we'll have some time on capital improvement projects in District 5. And that's one of the reasons that our school board representative, Morni Morione, agreed to come tonight. So thank you. And then there'll be some additional updates on staying connected with the city and around our community development block grants. And then we'll go into open questions and answers. I'll allow a few questions after each of these first few topics. But we're not, we could get hung up all night on any one of these topics because there's such an interest around them. And so what I'm going to do is try to just take one or two questions at the time and then move on to the next topic. And then remaining questions we will just save for the end. So hopefully that works for everybody. So with that, I'd like to turn it over to Chris Huff, who is going to update all of us on the revaluation process. Thank you so much, Councilor Cook. Hi, folks, I'm Chris Huff, your city tax assessor. Although in a revaluation year, the title can change to Public Enemy Number One. So we are a little past the halfway mark of our current revaluation project. And we still, one of the more frequently common questions that we receive is why. Why are we doing this project that so much stress and uncertainty to everyone involved? Does anyone know when the last revaluation was in the city of Portland? 2000, 2004. So last revaluation set values as of April 1st of 2004. And this revaluation will set values as of April 1st of 2020. So it's been 16 years. And state law has some guidelines and some standards for a municipal revaluation. And the first one is the state constitution that says that this process shall be done every 10 years. So we're six years past that mandate. State law also has two standards that they judge every municipalities the health of their assessment system on. And the first one talks about what's called an assessment ratio. Your assessment should reflect 100% of market value. And currently, very few assessments in the city of Portland do that. As a matter of fact, our assessed values reflect currently on average, citywide average, about 70% of market value. And the state minimum standard is 70%. So if we weren't doing this revaluation process next year, we'd fall below that standard. The other standard that the state has in law that judges a municipal assessment system is what's called a quality rating. And quality rating is an easier simplified way to say coefficient of dispersion. And what that really does is it measures the equality or how equal how uniform assessments are between similar properties. The state standard is 20%, and then what that represents is there should be no more deviation between two properties than 20%. And currently our standard for heading into 2020, we're at 18. So again, without a revaluation next year, we'd fall below that standard. Assessments in Portland currently are not uniform. There's a lot of inequity built into the system, as we would expect being 16 years from the last revaluation process. And the data shows that higher priced properties are currently assessed at a lower ratio than lower priced properties. And the revaluation will solve two things. We'll bring everybody up to 100% of market value and we'll make that uniform and equalize so that everybody's paying their fair share. Everybody's assessed to the same standard. So as I said, we are a little more than halfway through the process. We started the process with data collection, our vendor Tyler technologies, CLT, appraisal services. We started by analyzing sketches of all structures in the city. So in your assessment record, in your property record card, there's a sketch of your property. We analyzed close to 18,000 sketches for accuracy. And about 13% of those, or almost 2,300 of them, were out of whack. We had to go out and do field reviews and re-measure and get new measurements on properties that weren't correct in our record. How many folks in here got a data mailer a couple months ago? So thank you, hopefully you've sent that back. We had over 11,000 of those sent back to our office, almost a 60% return rate. So we can't thank you guys enough. Currently in the process, we're going through one by one all of those return mailers and we're making those changes in our database. We're verifying what folks have said and we're making those changes. So this will all culminate in next April, April of 2020. Every property owner will receive a new value notice that will show what your prior assessed value was and what your new assessed value will be. And then we'll do our best because we won't have a milligrate from the budget process at that time. We'll do our best to estimate, based on value increase, what the milligrate will be because keep in mind as the value goes up, milligrate does come down. So again, April 2020 is the next mailing that you'll get from our office for that new value notice and then that starts the process of informal appeals. Every property owner has the full opportunity and right to appeal that new value. You come in, you have a face-to-face meeting, a very informal process and we can discuss how your value was derived. We'll take any information or any data that you may have to contest your value or maybe we need to make a data correction or a data change. And instructions will be provided with that letter that you'll get in April of 2020. And finally, as I have like 30 seconds left, if there's one thing that I can leave you folks with tonight in regards to the reevaluation, it's to make sure that you are in the Homestead Exemption Program. How many folks here know that they're in that they're in and they're receiving the Homestead Exemption? Great. So the Homestead Exemption is property tax relief. The legislature has this year voted for an increase to $25,000, not for this year, for 2020, an increase in $25,000 of assessment exemption. And if you're in that program, you'll see the full value of that $25,000. If you filled out an application, you're in, you only have to fill out the application once. It has to be your primary residence for at least 12 months, not enrolled. Or if you don't know if you're enrolled, three different ways that you can check. First one, give our office a call. We'd be more than happy to make sure that you're enrolled. A lot of folks enrolled 10 years ago and they just simply forget if they're enrolled. So we can definitely confirm for you if you're in or not. The second way would be to go to the Property Assessor's website. If you pull up your property on the website, you'll see it says Homestead Exemption and you'll see the number there. And that'll show that you're getting it. And then finally, your most recent tax bill. If you look at your tax bill, there's a line item for exemptions. And if you see an amount there, you're receiving the Homestead Exemption. So that's really crucial. We have over 8,900 properties that qualify for that. And if you're not hidden and you qualify, you want to be in that program. Because again, that's going to be $25,000 of assessment exemption for next year. And with that, I will questions, five minutes of questions. Thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. Just to go really high level, our tax bills for each of your property will have two components. It has the assessed value, which is what's changing. And then the mill rate applied to that. And that's how you get to your actual property tax bill. So there's the two components. So I just want to reiterate what Chris was saying about the mill rate, which is when the revaluation happens, you'll see that your property value went up. But that does not necessarily mean that your tax bill will go up. It will depend on essentially whether your property has gone up at the same rate as the average rate of property increase in the city. In which case, you're going to have a similar property tax bill. If your property went up at a faster rate, at a higher rate than the average, you're going to have an increase. And if your property went up at a lower rate than the average, you will have a lower tax bill. And so we're expecting about a third of properties to have a lower tax bill after the revaluation, about a third to have the same, roughly the same tax bill, and a third to have a higher tax bill. So revaluation is what we call a revenue neutral proposition. It does not raise more money into the general fund in and of itself. Because you have to take both the value of the property and the mill rate. Our mill rate currently is very high from a statewide percent perspective. It's above 23, I think. 23.31. Thank you. And so we expect that hopefully to come back down below 20. I don't know where it will. I haven't heard the projections of where it will be. And the last two revaluations, the mill rate dropped by over $10. So in other words, so we'll have some significant adjustments. So I just wanted to add a little of that context as well. And then with that, we'll have a couple minutes for questions for Chris, if you have any. Thank you so much. And Mary has, or I guess Chris now has, okay, so that's all right. The mic should pick it up. If anybody has questions, I'm happy to take those. And we'll have Chris answer them. Please, and if you would say your name and your address, that would be great. I don't have a question, but a comment. And could you just give us your name? Because I'm among the neighborhood that we're watching. I'm sorry, your ma'am, could you give us your name and address? Dalton, 78 Continental Drive. Thank you. Here in Portland. When you are heading towards out of Washington Avenue, turning off the side screen, you take a right. And within the last three months, you can count within a quarter of a mile heading down towards Northgate is between seven and eight homes that have gone up from sale. It's coincidental that it's come at the time after the taxes, this year's taxes, went up. I'm curious and among my neighbors and friends in this area, they're really saying, wait until they start comparing, this is their thought, comparing our neighborhood, where we live so close to Monroe Hill and other developments. How will we be evaluated against these price ranges of the newer homes? Most of the homes out of Washington Avenue are good 30 to 40 years old. I'd say more on the 40 years. And to see such a change in up for sale, it's a little bit saddling right now because you wonder if it's an old man. Can we afford to keep living in Portland? Or do we give it away to the newcomers? So let me see if I can. It's only a comment. It's a concern. It's only a comment about consideration. We're all segmented. And right now, this end of the city, we've been long time residents. And I would say, if you did a survey, you would find that most of the homeowners in this area have been near 30 to 40 years. Thank you. And now all of that can change. Thank you. All right, so that we stay on schedule, I think we will. Is this a question about the reval? Joe McNeil, I live on Wall Street. And the question is, with the appraisals going up, are we going to see less school funding? Because as our appraisals go up, isn't the school funding by the state, by how property rich we are? So now they're going to look at our houses in Portland. And my house is worth $300,000. And in Turner, it's worth $150,000. And I make the same money in Turner as I do in Portland. But the state says I'm rich. So thank you. The state looks at the city-wide valuation. And they do it every single year. There's actually a state-equalized valuation that is used for school funding as well as municipal revenue sharing. And so the revaluation in and of itself will not impact, I guess, how the state looks at Portland, because they're doing an equalized valuation every single year. Because otherwise, essentially those of us who have not done the revaluation for well more than the constitutionally required 10 years, we would be getting more money than we would do under their system, their formula. So just to answer that, that already happens on a yearly basis with the state looking. So thank you for that question. We are going to move on at this point to the next topic and other questions on the revaluation and such. We can come back to at the end of the meeting after we've gone through each of the topics. The next topic is on the homeless shelter planning. And I will try to provide an overview of that. And Kristen Dao, who is the director of Health and Human Services for the city and other certainly others up here may have some additional information I'd like to share. So as many of you know, the city has been in a years-long process to replace the Oxford Street shelter. And the Oxford Street shelter is a city-owned shelter, which is a low barrier single adult shelter. In fact, it is the largest low barrier shelter in the state. And it's the only low barrier shelter with unlimited overflow in the state. We've been in a years-long process of looking for a new location. We do not own the facility on Oxford Street. It's rented. That would provide better services all in one place. Currently, as many of you know, Oxford Street does not provide, for instance, any food. We don't have a kitchen in that building. So folks go over to the Preble Street Resource Center to access meals and food. So that process at this point is at a place where the council voted in June, narrowly, to select a site on Riverside Street and Riverton for that. And since then, the Health and Human Services Committee has been looking at a range of policies for the new homeless shelter, and potentially for the existing shelter. Some of the policies that have been examined could go into effect before we have a new facility built. That resulted the Health and Human Services Committee decided to put that policy recommendation in the form of a resolution, which essentially means it's just guidance to staff, and made a recommendation to the full council as to the size of the shelter, which they recommended being 210-plus adequate overflow for as many people as present. And largely a continuation of many of the same policies regarding being a low barrier shelter and not having any residency requirements or any other curfews or day program requirements. So it's the same similar policies to what exists currently. That resolution went to the city council on November 18th, and the council postponed that until December 16th so that we could have a workshop as a full council. I understand that on the 16th, we will again postpone consideration of that resolution out until probably early February. And we will be having a workshop at the council on January 13th, which is a Monday night in January, where I expect we will get quite a bit of information from staff. I believe we will also hear from a national expert who our staff has been working with, who works with. And if I get the name of this wrong, let me know, John, the US Agency on Homelessness, something close to that, who has been up consulting with staff, taking a look at the Oxford Street Shelter, also assisting with staff has been developing a diversion program, which helps people before they even check into the shelter, access housing, or other places to stay, whether it's family, friends, maybe work with the landlord. There's a number of range of opportunities there. So they're looking at a number of those as well. So we will hear from them. I don't know who else we will hear from. And certainly ask a lot of questions, I'm sure, as a council about and have a discussion about that. That at a workshop, we don't take action. And so it would be at a future meeting, I think, in early February before the council decides whether or not to adopt that resolution, to take a different approach, to make an amendment, and all of that. And certainly, there will be a public hearing at any meeting where we would be having a potential for our decision being made. So that is sort of a very high-level overview. I would ask if I've omitted any major details, or I'm looking around. And I guess I'll ask Kristin if there was anything she would like to add to what I just put out there. And if not, we'll go to questions. No, I think that was a very good summary of everything. And we are currently looking into the triage model, which is the diversion model. We're looking into that as staff to maybe even start implementing here before we move forward with a new shelter. Great. Could you say your name? And also remember, we're going to try to put this out for everybody to hear. So if you could speak up. Small on Mayfield Street. What does low barrier mean? Low barrier means that you don't have to be, oh, sorry. Low barrier means that there are certain requirements that have to be met. It's not a no-barrier shelter, so you have to fall within certain policies and guidelines that are set forth by the shelter. But it's a low-barrier shelter, but not a no-barrier shelter. And the Oxford Street shelter is currently a low-barrier shelter. It's one of only four in the state, low-barrier shelters, three of which are in Portland. The other is in Bangor. If she needs to clarify, I don't know what it means still. It just means that there are very, anybody is welcome. There are certain standards, certainly if you were threatening staff or other shelter stayers. If your conduct is such that it makes others unsafe, not safe, you would be asked to leave. That's a barrier, right? Otherwise, there are not many barriers. The current Oxford Street model says, if you come and you say you need shelter, we will assist you with shelter and we'll also assist you in the model that we have with finding housing, with accessing other social services, and those kinds of things. So that's really what low barrier means. The other options are, to put it in context, there are many, many shelters across the state that are sober-only shelters. If you're a sober-only shelter, that's not considered low barrier. So to put some context, if you are a family shelter, that's not necessarily low barrier because you're not taking all comers. If you are a shelter who only serves victims of domestic violence, you're not a low barrier shelter because there's a barrier there. So a low barrier shelter is really the type of shelter where anyone, of course, if we had a family show up at the low barrier shelter, we would direct them to our family shelter, which the city also runs a family shelter, but, so does that help to sort of elucidate? Okay. Shop, shop, another one, hello, sorry. It came to me recently, and I know this might be really late in the process, but I noticed that the building where Wright Express is in South Portland appears to be empty. We gave Wright Express, my understanding, a pretty big incentive to move into Portland. I don't know if there's any way of seeing them, being able to take their building and utilize that as a homeless shelter for what you are or look at. It's a large building, it's a public transportation, it's got all the things that I got carried when needed, and it just came to me recently, and I know it's kind of late in the process, but I don't know if it's an idea that could be utilized. Or ideas like that in the future, that when we give something for an organization, maybe that's something that we could use that would help us, et cetera, having to just give them the whole wow, maybe we can get something out. I'm gonna ask the city manager to just clarify a couple of things with that. Thank you. Thank you, counselor. And as far as the WACS company moving into the city of Portland, the city did not provide any economic benefit. We sold a piece of property at market value. It was 3.2 million that the city derived from a relatively small piece of property on the waterfront, but we did sell that at market value to a developer who then developed the building for WACS. So there were no economic incentives, there were no TIFFs, there were no credit enhancement agreements to lure WACS into the city. Thank you, that was certain. I wanted to just, I know a lot of times when a large employer moves into a city, people assume the city has provided some tax benefit or something. We have not in that case. I also think that WACS is still using their South Portland building. However, I will just say that your idea of reusing existing buildings and buildings that are not just in Portland, I think is absolutely part of what not only we in Portland should be looking at, but other municipalities and hopefully this state as we look toward a new model that better serves those experiencing homelessness, but also better serves the community here in Portland. I will, I know there's gonna be a lot of questions. We will be way off track. So we're just gonna save the rest of the questions on the shelter until the end to the question and answer period. And we will move on so that we don't, we don't get too far off track. So the next is regarding the recode Portland. And I will give some update on that. And Matt Grooms who is with the planning department is also here to help with questions and provide additional information. So the recode is an ambitious project that really stems out of the fact that over two years ago now, two and a half years ago, we in the city of Portland adopted a new comprehensive plan. So that, and that took a couple of years in the making, probably more than that. But by the time it got adopted in the council, it's been about two and a half years. And the comprehensive plan is really the basis for zoning, which is the regulations that implement a comprehensive plan, at least in land use law theory. So our zoning ordinance, as many of you may know, is antiquated at best. It's over 50 years old. It's cumbersome. It's nearly a thousand pages. And it really doesn't work in many ways. It's overly restrictive in some ways when people go to try to put an addition on or a deck on their house. I often hear frustrations about these things. And then, and yet in other ways, it doesn't quite get the job done and fit with the community's plan for itself. Whether that be sustainability, housing, parking and transportation. And so the city has been in a process to rewrite, fully rewrite, the zoning code. And to simplify it, make it more user friendly, make it more readable. The staff's even adding pictures, which I cannot wait to see how the courts interpret as part of a code, as the lawyer and me. So, but that's the process we're in. And it's in at least two phases that we're doing that. Phase one is really a reorganization and simplification, plus dealing with a couple of policy issues that kind of stretch across the code. And one of those is accessory dwelling units, which many of you in the room know has been a priority as one policy to address housing. In our city, and that is in phase one. And the phase, and then another is parking standards, residential and commercial parking standards. So the process that has gone forward so far is the council set up a recode committee. I chair that committee. And we provide guidance, high level guidance to the staff as they are putting together a preliminary draft of phase one that is going and has gone now to the planning board. Not all of the sections are there at the planning board yet, but it's being rolled out over the course of months. And so the way that the process works per state law, but just generally, is that the planning board will now take the recommendation of staff and the recode committee. And that's sort of their first draft, if you will. And it's really on their plate at that point to do a full public process because they're the body in the city that reviews in detail and recommends to the council zoning changes. And those are simple zoning changes like a map amendment where one property goes from a B1 zone to a B2, for instance, or text amendments where you really change a lot of the words in the ordinance. The planning board has a full public process in that they are gonna be engaged in as well. And so they have workshops and hearings. And the difference, a key difference that everyone should keep in mind if you wanna participate in this, is that workshops at the planning board have public comment because they typically will do one or two workshops on a project before they get to their public hearing and their vote. And so they often have public comment, I think almost always at each of their meetings along the way. So recode phase one went to the planning board in November. And there is another meeting coming up December 17th at the planning board. The planning board, and there'll be a rollout of additional articles at that time. And there's a city website that you all should check out and it's recodeportland.me, is that right? Yep, so it can be. I found it was difficult to find on the city's website. I'm hoping we're fixing that because if you search, because it has its own website, it was difficult to find the webpage. And so hopefully we're fixing that glitch. So that's an overview. Phase two will be many more policy issues involved. It will be looking at, do we really need seven residential zones or do four residential zones kind of do the trick, for instance? Are the lot sizes right, et cetera? So the real details. And that will be really being developed as a first draft in 2020 and moving forward to there. I suspect you'll see phase one come back to, get through planning board and come back to the council, maybe spring, I'll give it, we all know we don't really have a spring, but if you just work with a march through June, then hopefully it will be back before the council and mud season, baseball season, we'll see that. So it really has a lot of implications for how we manage growth and how we maintain livability and sustainability in our city. And so I encourage you all to become zoning gigs like me and decide that it's really interesting stuff. Can I hand it over and see what else you might have, Matt? No, thank you, Councillor Cook. I think you pretty much covered it. I think the only thing I would add is if you do go to our website, we do have the document up and it's in an interactive format. So it's really intuitive, easy to use, I would encourage you to take a look at it. It allows you to click through it, comment on specific sections, wherever you have a specific question or concern, it allows us to respond in that same document. So it's really, I think it's gonna allow for a much more collaborative and public review of the document as opposed to ways that we've previously had text amendments be reviewed. So I think that's all I would add. Great. And you're gonna pick the website? Yep, so it's recodeportland, R-E-C-O-D-E, portland.me. Yep. Great, and is there a way on that website to put your email address in and get all information from planning board to recode committee to everything else that's focused on this? Yes, so you can subscribe through that website. It's very simple. You'll get updates that we post to the website and it'll also add it, it'll add you to our user list. So we just sent out an email blast a couple of weeks ago with some updates on where we're at and how to get involved. And so you'll be on that email thread moving forward. And this counselor apparently needs to do that. All right. All right, any other questions about the recode? All right. Next topic is something none of you will be interested in, I'm sure, and that's Morals Corner. So Morals Corner I think probably deserves an entire meeting dedicated to itself along a number of these could. So I've asked Chris Branch, who's the director of Public Works, to give us the transportation update. And later, if folks have questions about development and other things, we can do that during question and answer. So I'll hand it over to Chris. Thank you. Thank you. In regards to Morals Corner, the previous MDOT commissioner referred to it as the worst intersection in the state of Maine. I think all of you drive through it on a regular basis would agree with that. The process to attempt to mitigate the problems at Morals has already begun. Last summer we installed what we call ETS for adaptive traffic signals in Morals Corner, basically the three intersections at Allen, Warren, and Stevens. Those operate on artificial intelligence. They gather data from the cars going through the intersection for about a month or so, and then they start to actively change the signal settings off and on throughout the day as needed based on what they're seeing to be able to try to predict what the traffic flows are gonna be and then operate the signals accordingly. That process has resulted in about a 20% reduction in congestion through the intersection. One of the problems we have at Morals Corner is this area is fed by a bunch of very old copper wires which communicate with the system that is doing the monitoring and the decision-making process. We have had continual problems with this old copper wire, and whenever for a while you'll see it's going pretty good and then all of a sudden it doesn't work very well. When it doesn't work very well, that means they've lost communication and we gotta get a crew in there to fix it. So that's been an ongoing process. For example, Councilor Cook alerted to me last week about a problem at Stevens Avenue. The cycles were very short, so we contacted the company. They took a look at it, agreed with the findings, and have adjusted it last week, I believe on Wednesday or Thursday. Hopefully that's seen some level of improvement. They increased the minimum cycle time in the intersection from about seven seconds up to about 25 seconds. It's almost a 300% increase. So we're hopeful that works. Please feel free to let us know if you're having problems there again. We'd be more than happy to hear from you through C-Click Fix or a call to PWDispatch and we can get it into our complaint log system and get it taken to look at. Another thing that we're gonna be moving forward with shortly is what we call a preliminary design process with the main Department of Transportation. That process involves developing preliminary design for that project included in that will be a look at different options. We will be beginning with what was called the smart corridor project, which is basically was a study of Route 77 in Portland, which is basically Forest Avenue. Part of that, they looked at Morrill's Corner. Some of you may have attended some of the public meetings related to that. That report is up on the website, I believe in planning as a study, a traffic study. So you can go there and take a look at it. Also, the DOT will be having and the city will be having a number of public meetings during the process to get input as we move through the design process. We'll be having some during the PDR process and then more as we move into final design. This is not a quick process. The PDR will take at least a year to develop. The process will then go into final design and right away acquisition is needed and I'm sure there will be some level of right away. Right away can take up to eight to 10 months to get done through DOT after they're far enough along with the design to know what they need to take. So that process of final design and right away is probably gonna take two years. It might be a little quicker, but I just assumed to say two years. And that puts us into about 2023 for the earliest time where we can see any construction going on up there. And that's gonna be subject to funding. Now this project, depending on the option we choose, will be in excess of $5 million, if not closer to 10, where the construction costs are the way they're going. This money can come to us in a number of ways. The city will most likely be a participant at at least a 25% level of the cost. And depending if we go through one of the processes, it would be 75% federal money, no state money and 25% city money. There are some other ways we can do it, but in those cases, the amount of local share goes up. So it's not gonna be a cheap, easy proposition. We'll need support from the elected officials. And that's it on Morrill's Corner. Thank you, Chris. Okay. And so the city manager said it's essentially a similar process to what we saw happen at Woodford's Corner. Takes a number of years to plan. I would like to ask a couple of questions and maybe get some response from all of you because I know we have Greg Jordan here who is the general manager of Metro as well. Chris, it occurs to me that the primary congestion and problem at Morrill's Corner is during rush hour. Is that- That's correct. That's my experience. I think that's probably a lot of our experience. And so that means it's commuters and not just commuters from Portland trying to get in and out of Portland. It's commuters from Westbrook and Wyndham. And those two, as you all probably know are two of the fastest growing communities if not the fastest on some years in our state. And so given the fact that we have Greg here with Metro and we've got Chris here and others, it occurs to me that with a lot less new infrastructure, we could if some parking rides were built in Westbrook and Wyndham and other places, maybe even in Portland to out at the edge to be able to get people onto a bus, especially if there were, during rush hour, a dedicated lane for the bus. Maybe it's a bus, bike, shared lane to come through that intersection. And I don't know if that's part of what the DOT is one of the alternatives if they do. Alternatives of they study it is what would this look like if we invested the money and transit rather than just building bigger roads? And if I could get the two of you potentially to comment or inform us as to if that's going to be part of what we look at here. What I'll do is I'll answer the second part first, which is, is this an option we can take a look at during the PDR process, yes. And PDR again? Preliminary design report. When we look at the different options. And that's gonna be led by DOT with city input? That's correct. Thank you. Well, I would just agree, Greg Jordan, general manager of Metro, I would just agree with Chris that during the PDR process, and we're happy to participate in that process to see how we can prioritize, speed up public transit through this intersection, through the city as a whole, really. But Chris is right, through the PDR process, we can look at alternatives to speed transit through that corridor. And I think the original study did have some elements in it that was going to make improvements to overall traffic congestion through the intersection, certainly, but would also help transit get through there as well. But you're right, councilor Cook, that anything we can do to speed transit up, make it more competitive with automobile driving is going to create greater incentive for people to choose transit over driving. That's infrastructure, like dedicated lanes, queue jumpers, transit signal priority, but it's also things like frequency, improving frequency on our corridors and making the hours more convenient. I'll go toward making the system more attractive and more competitive with other forms of mobility. Yes, thank you. And Chris, again, you probably said this, but I was munching on some nuts and chocolate. Is it beginning in 2020, we expect this process, the planning process to begin? Yes. Do we have a sense at this point of what, at what point and when we might see a public meeting for people to come out to? No. Okay, sometimes- Not yet, but we'll, as we do, we will get plenty of notice out through Jessica Grondin's office, so it's up on the websites and there'll be email blasts and so on and so forth that go out to all the folks on our email list. Okay, thank you. We're almost getting off topic, but yes, there are lots of roads in there and they will all be looked at, as I understand it, during this planning process. I've had a conversation with Chris about can new streets be put in that somebody had suggested to me would be able to go from Forest Ave over to Allen and it would have to get across the train tracks and Chris has talked to me about that, but let's just trust, there will be a thorough process for planning and I understand that all options are going to be on the table, allowing a turn on to Bishop Street to get to Warren and potentially some others, so we will, that's that process. Small on Mayfield Street, I have to get down Bishop to get into my home. Right now there's a problem with the gas station across the street, green lights, both at the same time. You're trying to come out of Bishop and they're coming out of the gas station. You're crashing into each other and Bishop Street's just forgotten. It's impossible to get home. We'll take a look at that issue with the conflict with the signals. Okay. Believe it. Great. All right. Thank you all. Oh, you have to say your name, Stephanie. Stephanie, do it's Riverton, Saugus for you. Can you borrow the record for me? Oh, sorry. This is a stupid question. I don't want to go ahead and get rid of you guys. And then when they did the Woodford's redo, they did treat the swimmers and we had a lot of rats up behind Darren High School and in Riverton. We had the people even come out to check them. So if you will just treat for the rats, I'll put up with any questions. I know that's tacky, I know the truth. All right. Thanks everyone. So we will move into, we are, Oh, I am so sorry. Something about apparently rats. Treat when they did the Woodford's construction and all the rats moved into Riverton and behind Darren High School. At least that's what Chuck Bogoni told us. So I'm hoping that we could just treat for rats. If that, and it seems like if I don't have a construction guide, we can find out all the rats. Yeah. Okay. Oh man. All right. So we're going to, we will, on that note, she's a great cook. I don't believe she could do anything. So we're going to move into some capital improvement projects. And with that, the first update, so there's sort of three categories of updates at schools, parks and rec and roads on capital improvement projects in district five. And I would love to turn it over to our school board representative, Marni Morione, to give us an update on the school renovations at Lyseth and Longfellow. Good evening, everyone. For those, I'm sure have not seen my face before. This is my 11th year on the school board. I'm your district representative and I'm here specifically to talk about the renovations. I have lots more information about schools anytime you want to contact me. So if you're interested in that, I just want to say, please come and see me afterwards. I'm going to keep a list of your emails and we can stay in touch. So tonight, since I only have five minutes on this very, very long topic, first of all, we very much appreciate your willingness to pass the four school bond that was passed fall of 2018. And since that time, it's been lots of hard work because again, there's four schools just to remind you are Lyseth, Longfellow, Persum, Scott and Reiki. And all of those, it's a heavy lift, of course, for our district staff and we are working with Harriman Construction Group. They'll be working on all four of the projects, went out for bid, it was all formally decided. Began in April 2019, April of this year and there's a five phase process. So right now Lyseth is in the first phase, the five phases and have quite a bit of information but just to let you know, so far foundations have already been begun for the library and gem. The addition also is beginning a foundation and structural steel. With these construction processes, there has been a district level advisory committee which thanks to Councillor Dueson and our board representative, Sarah Thompson. They're co-chairing the district level advisory committee and thank you to community members that have put in applications to be part of these advisory committees. So there's a district wide advisory committee and each of these school buildings has their own advisory committees. Again, this went out as a request for community members if they wanted to participate in these advisory committees to apply and we're finishing up the application. The application process has now closed for all four schools and so we have again, these advisory committees. These committees are the ones that will help essentially do recommendations to the school board for everything from, and I just pulled out the charter about this. It's advisory committee is to advise on school specific construction issues such as traffic flow around the buildings, location of critical features in the building, color selection, art features and including anything related to parking all the way to classroom features. So it's very helpful to have the community and part of these advisory committees. So again, I thank you. So as going back to Lyseth just a minute in terms of the phases and the five phases I mentioned, these will go on from this year all the way until the school will be fully completed and it won't be until fall of 2021 that Lyseth will be completed. However, on the other three schools we already have, I'm gonna pull up my other notes here. We already have, looking forward, the completed concepts. We had public forums at each of the elementary schools. Those public forums were held this past November and they've been completed. If you weren't able to attend those and you wanted to attend, don't worry. We will always have complete new ones coming up in January. We're going to have another one for Longfellow. So please stay tuned. It will always be on the Portland Public Schools website which is portlandpublicschools.org in case you wanna dive in. It's on the front page there of the website. February of 2020, as I mentioned, will be public forums again for all of the elementary schools. In February through May of 2020, we're gonna have complete design development occurring. And then May and June of 2020 permitting for the school. And May and June, another public forum will happen. June through November of 2020, complete construction documents will occur. October of 2020, another public forum. November of 2020, we'll go out for a bid again on exactly the construction for the construction. And finally, January of 2021, construction will start. And this is again, all for Longfellow. So there's lots of balls in the air as you can imagine with all four schools trying to occur simultaneously. If not, some of the features and construction parts of the four schools will be happening simultaneously just to save costs. There's lots of, again, I can go into a lot of more detail, but just to let you know, Councilor Chung and myself will be co-chairing the Building Level Advisory Committee for Longfellow. And again, thank you to Councilor Dueson and Representative Thompson. They are co-chairing the Lyseth Building Committee. So anytime you wanna reach out to any of the representatives that are working on these schools, or if you have any questions about the other two schools that are not in our district, Prasomskot or Reiki, feel free to contact me at any time. I look forward to talking with you. Thank you. Next up is where we'll hear from Sally DeLuca, who heads up our Parks and Recreation Department regarding some improvements that have happened at the Lyman-Moor and Lyseth on the fields, and also some planned improvements at Riverton School on the playground. Thanks, Councilor. Okay, we budgeted $925,000 for the Lyseth-Lyman-Moor complex, for the Field Complex. And a lot of it is below ground because the drainage there was terrible. If you ever played over there on the fields, you know that there was a lot of flooding that took place. So when we got in there, what we realized is that the drainage needed to be redone. So that's where a lot of our money went into it. We have a new irrigation system for the field, which is certainly gonna help us enforce our pesticide ordinance. We have a new asphalt path that goes around the entire perimeter of the complex, which is great. That was something that the community had asked for, for walking. We also built a new parking lot with ADA access adjacent to the tennis courts. We reconfigured some of the baseball fields to maximize multiple field use. So we're in this process where we tend to put the diamonds now in the corners so that in the middle, you can have more multipurpose fields. And that's been really helpful to us, especially with the growth of La Crosse. We also did new fencing, new infields and pitching mounds, and of course, tree plantings. So that was where that money went for the Lysa Thlyma more complex. And we no sooner got it done and somebody drove our truck and did what we called donuts on the field complex, which was lovely. So our ball field crew went in and rolled it and did a lot of work on it to get it back. So we appreciated their work. Now we're gonna travel over to Riverton. This is probably one of my favorite projects that we're doing. We have $250,000 and it wasn't even enough, but we are building the first all access ADA inclusive playground. That's the first one in Portland out of 30 playgrounds. It'll be fully accessible, ADA. We installed the original one in 1997. So it's about 22 years old. So it is definitely in need of an upgrade. The school department is trying to help us raise the additional monies that we need. We had talked about cutting back on some of the elements, but nobody wanted to do that. So the school department is working on some fundraising and we are too. We have a new parks conservancy that is here to help us raise money for, excuse me, for park amenities. And they wrote a grant and we just got $9,500 from Bangor Savings to help with the additional monies needed. And we also wrote a grant to the Community Black Grant Fund. So we're hoping to hear from that when I think that's it. Thank you, Sally. So just for timing, the ball fields project was done during 2018 and 2019, is that right? I thought it should have been done in 2018. I know there was some additional work that needed to be done, but that had all gotten resolved and this was okay. It required more engineering. And we were also trying to coordinate with the building of the Lyseth School also to make sure that we weren't doing anything that we were gonna have to change when the school started being worked on. So that's all complete at this point, wonderful. And then for the Riverton playground, that was part of the CIP that the city council adopted last spring. And that is planned to be under construction when? Yes, that was supposed to be under construction earlier this fall. But because the budget went over, we made the decision to delay it so we could try to raise the additional funds. And right now we're hoping that if the money is raised, that we will be building it next summer so that it's ready for fall. Thank you. You're welcome. And now we will hear from Chris Branch on Outer Washington, I believe the state is leading a process that the city participates in on repaving and possible traffic calming out on Outer Washington Ave. Yeah, the DOT has a project that begins down by Sanborn and goes out quite a ways on Washington Avenue. That's what they call a millenfield or come in with a machine and grind pavement out to a depth of about an inch and a half. And then they will come back in and pave it with new asphalt. That's gonna be done next summer. We don't have a schedule from them yet. I heard the other day that the bid would most likely go out in March. So we'd probably be looking at mid-delayed summer for that work. As part of that project, the city is gonna be developing a new striping plan. That striping plan, one of the things that we're gonna look at is to narrow the distance between the center line and the edge line to 11 feet. It's about 12 feet now. Surprisingly, just doing that helps to slow the traffic down somewhat. We're also looking at trying to do some offsetting similar to what we did on Washington Avenue, where we have the cars go back and forth so it helps to keep the cars driving slower. We've also had some meetings with a neighborhood group up there that's interested in increasing the level of traffic calming on the street. There was a traffic calming petition about 10 years ago. So they need to go out. They need to get enough people on the street in that area as per the city ordinance on traffic calming. We need about 51% of the folks to ask for the city to take a look at traffic calming measures. One of the things they've asked us about is speed humps. We'll see how this goes. We're waiting for the petition to come in. We've been working with the neighborhood group on that. All set? Yep, thank you. We're Sam Boyn. It's down near Northgate. Libs. Libs? Yeah. When he said Sam Boyn, yeah. So really from where Auburn and Washington split out and up. So it's the residential part of Washington after Allen's Corner. Yeah, it's going up to, I believe it's, is it Regan? Yep. That's the portion. It would only go up as far as Regan. Okay. So the limit over there is 25 miles an hour. Oh, I'm sorry. That's okay. Give us your name. Yeah. Regan, Pranette, Alison, Maria. So the limit over there is 25 miles an hour. Guess that's not enough. There's a cone that lights up every time you go over 25 miles an hour and they still need the calming over there. That's what the traffic information that we've gathered. The average speed there is about 28 or 29 miles per hour. And we've gotten a lot of input from the residents out there that they see a lot of very fast traffic. Yes. Great. Are there, I put aside a little bit of time for additional questions on these capital improvement projects from the schools, Parks and Rec, or, or on this project. Go ahead in the back, please. You're talking about Morales Corner in all these areas? Nope, not yet. Nope. Just on these capital improvement projects, we'll get back to Morales Corner and the general question and answer. You're talking about paving on the streets in the city. No, just, it was just Outer Washington was that project. These were sort of project specific updates for folks on specific capital improvement projects. Otherwise, we'll wait till the general question and answer at the end because we do still have a little bit more to go with city staff presentations. Any about these specific projects? Yes. Brad and Hanson, Heather wrote to a comment. The speed signs are working pretty well on Summit Avenue at least. I don't have any period records backed up, I can see if, I can see the brake lights come on so that's good. On the painting lines, I'm wondering if the city will consider reflectorized paint or, I know it's expensive, or reflectors because I can tell you, we've paved a lot of streets around here, Washington Avenue, I can't see the line at night. And it's fresh paint so it's unfortunate that we put that kind of money into it. You can't see it. That's why I'm sorry, so. Kirsten. I agree with you on the reflector tonight coming out here from Canco Road. I could not see the double yellow line hardly at all coming out, Washington was actually driving over, partially into the bike lane area, so I could see. But yeah, we are looking at that. As you said, some of the alternatives are ridiculously expensive, but we are looking particularly in certain areas to go with a much better product. I thought those were reflective though, and I don't think they don't last long. Yeah, that's not cheap either because you've got to go grind the pavement out every 20 feet or whatever you want to put them in, but we're also looking at that as a possibility as well. We haven't said no yet, so we are looking at our options. Great, thank you all. I shared a question about the, sorry, cool, back to the issue. With the lead, it was talking about the reverend in the ground in the ADA. What does that all, I guess I'm not sure if this is the first time for us? Thank you, I should have been a little clearer about that. So children who are physically challenged in every playground that we have, there's always a piece of it that is ADA accessible. This playground, they will be able to do everything. So some of the things that that will mean is that there will be, instead of it just being wood chips, for instance, you can talk about, there's a special sort of flooring, rubberized, expensive flooring that is safer for some kids. Some of the swings, you can strap a child into the swing. The whole wheelchair can get on the swing. So when they're swinging, their whole wheelchair can get on there if they're wheelchair bound. Yes, so that's. And just the access into the playground is fully ADA accessible to them. All the elements are gonna be accessible to the kids. I don't know, is that true? Were there some improvements as well for the pre-K playground or no? We did do some separate improvements out front with the school department and the PTO to the preschool, the preschool area. And so that's already done? Yes. Okay, that's good. A number of the schools now have pre-K rooms, but of course the playgrounds were not built for four-year-olds. Correct. And so that is a challenge because we now have four-year-olds at our schools and it's just not safe for them. And so there's been some moved at some of these schools at least to try to provide an outdoor space that is age-appropriate and that, so. And that's why some of the natural play spaces that we're doing at the schools are wonderful for the little ones because there's no age requirement for that. But our regular playgrounds are five to 12-year-olds. Right, something we'll have to look at as we expand pre-K. Absolutely, for sure. Okay, thank you. So next up, we are going to hear from Jessica Grondin who's the communications director for the city about staying connected. And I think she's got a visual as well. And then after that, our last bit of information before we get to question and answer will be from Mary Davis with our housing program on the community development block grants. Great, thank you everyone. I just wanted to really brief two minutes, not even call your attention to our news and alert system. I'm not sure how many of you are signed up, but hopefully all of you will be. For obvious reasons, the parking van notices and emergency alerts tend to be our most subscribed to alerts, but if you join City News, we do send out a roundup of all of the news items from that week on Friday afternoon. So it's kind of on one nice news digest with all the headlines and everything from news, events, traffic alerts, updates on projects. A lot of the things that were mentioned here tonight have all been part of those. So if you could sign up, then you'll definitely be a little more in the know. And if anyone has trouble signing up, I can sign you up right over here today, so thank you. Good evening, my name is Mary Davis. I work in the Housing and Community Development Office, which is part of the city's planning department. And I wanted to talk to you today about several of the federal grants that the city receives that is administered by our office. One grant that you might be familiar with is the Community Development Block Grant. With that funding, we can do a wide variety of things from some of the public infrastructure projects that Chris Branch mentioned, or the Parks and Recreation work that Sally mentioned. Those kinds of things can be funded with our CDBG grant, as well as doing a lot of funding for social service agencies that provide services to the most vulnerable in our community. We also have a federal grant that we use to invest in affordable housing development. Houston Commons is one of those projects that you might be familiar with. We have the Lead Safe Housing Program that can assist residential property owners address lead paint hazards in their property. The only other thing I wanted to tell you is we're about to embark on our five-year planning process. The federal government requires us to provide them with a five-year plan of what our goals are and how we use this money. And we're about to embark on that new planning process in the first of the year. And we would like to invite you as part of the community to participate in that. We value your input to help us establish what our new goals and priorities will be for this funding for the upcoming five years. And just a reflection over here, this map here in the pink outlines the neighborhoods and areas in the city that are eligible for community development block grant funding. If you have any questions or you'd like to sign up to be part of that community forum, see me in the back afterwards. I have a sign up sheet for you. Thank you, Mary. And speaking of sign up sheets, I believe Dina said there is one going around, just, oh, perfect, that's great. Well, so that completes all of the information that I thought you all would really want to hear about. And now we can open it up really for comments, questions and discussion on whatever you all would like to hear more about. Yes, please. My name is Jason Lambert. I live on New B. Lane right over here. I grew up in New York. I have a mind that will help everybody here. I think she's seventh grade, so I was thinking probably that would be okay. But so I grew up in Riverton and I went to Riverton school when it opened. And I remember how difficult the Riverton Park area was when I was growing up. And that area has come a long ways in the last 40 plus years. And I think one of the things, we got the breweries there and it's a destination that's outside of the peninsula, imagine that. And I guess, I know there's two people here that did vote to, I mean, I know that it went through the department, the committee on the Health and Human Services and then it was the recommendation to the council. There are two members of the council who did vote to put the shelter in Riverton that are here. And also I know that both Mayor Snyder and Councillor Chong, at least in the articles I read in the Press Herald, said that they would be interested in taking another look at that decision. And I guess I'd like to know, number one, whether or not, first of all, why did Riverton seem logistically like a good location to put the shelter, 210 beds? And also, is that something that would be possibly able to, they'd be able to overturn that vote and choose another place? Seems like there's a lot of other options out there. So, I appreciate the applause. I think just so everybody feels comfortable speaking, I'll ask that we abide by the rules we use in the council chamber, which is no applause, no booing, no, so that everybody feels comfortable expressing their views. So, I don't know who would, if there's anybody in particular who wants to take that question, I guess what I would say is it was a 5-4 decision. And I think there, although there is not necessarily a clear process or path forward for how a decision like that would come up for reconsideration, I think we're in the process right now of planning for policies and procedures. And certainly the council has not heard back yet from staff on environmental reviews that are ongoing. Currently, there's a prohibition on that site under a VWRAP, a voluntary response action plan, if I'm getting that right under the DEP, that that needs to be lifted through some additional remediation. And certainly the council, I'm sure, through the process of the workshop, we will be getting some additional updates. We'll also get additional updates, I'm hoping at our workshop, on two additional shelters that are being planned for the city. So, we currently have six shelters in the city of Portland, two of which are run by the city, in the process of planning for a new shelter, the new Oxford Street shelter. We have been partnering with Avesta and with Opportunity Alliance to open two additional shelters that would be not low barrier shelters, but take referrals from the city. One would be for those who are medically frail seniors who are experiencing a particular medical issues that will be better served, not in the general population shelter, where we have a hard time taking care of them with their medical needs. And that would also be coupled with Housing First, on city-owned property. And the other would be Opportunity Alliance, which is planning for a small shelter, maybe 15 beds, although I understand the federal requirements may be changing. You may not be limited to 15 anymore to deal with those with severe mental illness and substance use disorder. And so, in the process of planning, we did break Oxford Street up essentially into three shelters to try to better serve those. I think we'll be getting some of those updates. And what I expect that the council will go through the process of planning for policies, procedures, and making those kinds of decisions before, or I don't know if certainly location comes up again. I think we have to hear from our staff as to where that planning process is and the V-Rap is and those kinds of things. There is not a current date or process by which the location would necessarily come back. But certainly, I can't predict the future. I don't know if any new members wanted to comment on that, but that's, I guess, what I would say is the process so far in moving forward. If anybody raises their hand and would like to comment further, I'm happy to on that. Okay. I think it's really not allowing applause or anything. I'm sorry, your name? I think my name is Ann Lear and I live on Lane Avenue. I really disagree with you saying we can't applause or anything because this is not the council. We're the public. And if we agree with somebody, we're all here for the same reason, practically. We should be allowed to express our agreement with what the person's saying. Well, I appreciate that. I, you know, I'm, would you like to? I guess in the friendliest and most loving way I can, which is how I try to conduct myself in public, what Councillor Cook was saying was that what we want to do is create an atmosphere where everyone feels that they can speak their mind, even if they maybe disagree with the majority of people speaking. So I'm not, we're not trying to enforce any kind of civility rules or anything. We're just saying as a community, if we would not clap, then that will encourage people not to boo. And folks, if I can just point out, because I've been to a lot of these meetings this year and in other years, this is the council. So we have rules that you, many of you, I recognize who have been to the council and have spoken to us. We have rules in council chambers. We have rules for our committees, rules for all of our public meetings. So we're really here to listen to what you have to say. And sometimes it gets tainted and more time gets taken up when people are clapping or booing. We understand where people are on things, but we do have a set of rules that we follow wherever we have meetings throughout the city. Thank you, I appreciate that. All right, I'm going to call it one and I'll give it one minute. And Matt, could you just hold on a second, Mary's got the, I know in the back, it's very difficult in the back to hear. So thank you. Well, I've got a call, so hopefully. Anyway, my name is Annette Hogman, I live on Lane Avenue. Now, I don't know. Louder, louder, oh my God. It is, it's on. I didn't know, like you have rules and regulations, you have laws and you have amendments. You're telling me that you have a resolution on this particular shelter, but there are no way you can amend anything or change anything ever? No, no, no, I'm sorry if it came across that way. That's not the case. All right, then my second part is, you have kind of stated that you're looking at a place to put mental issues. You're looking at a place to put, I think, elder issues. Well then, how does it become the state of the art when we take care of the sex offenders, the drug offenders, the mental issues? 24-7, you're gonna have it open and they can come at any time when they want. How are you going to actually regulate that? And don't get me wrong, I believe that we can actually help the homeless, but I don't think one place should house everything in the city. Just pick it all up, dump it in one area, and say we're gonna do all these things. I just think it's almost impossible. And the reason I say that is because sometimes having the state of the art is not always the answer. Because if you go on the computer and say, where is the state of the art? Portland comes up, Portland, Maine. And we haven't even got the state of the art yet. But it's not always conducive to have the state of the art. It's better to protect people and put them where they belong, help them as much as we can, get them as much education, get them much counseling, and those kind of things to put them back into society. And that's my way of looking at it. So I actually would like you to look at this and stop and think what you're doing is taking them every day, dumping them in one big building, and hopefully it can be taken care of. I can't say it. So I appreciate that. I guess we spend so much time talking about the new homeless shelter, and we don't spend very much time talking about all of the other programs and services that the city offers to those who are experiencing homelessness, which really is as deep or deeper than what is just offered at the emergency shelter. And so I think there is a misperception. And it's simply because of the amount of time we spend talking about the emergency shelter and not enough time talking about all of the rehousing efforts, all of the community partners who offer counseling, the Portland Community Health Clinic, Greater Portland Health, which is the federally qualified health center in Greater Portland, will have a clinic right at any new homeless center. So I think there are a suite of services that are offered and will be offered at their offered today and they'll be offered at wherever the new shelter is built. And so I would not look at a shelter as a place where we dump or just warehouse people. It is the theory is that people are coming in and moving on. And certainly we have a suite of programs designed to help that population. Now some people are there and quickly move on even without our help. There is a situation, a temporary situation that they can almost solve on their own. They just need a place to sleep for a safe place to be. Other people do, there are other issues that are going on and they do need additional supports, some of which the city can offer, some of which when we're talking substance use disorder in treatment beds is not something the city operates. And there have been some advances with Medicaid expansion, et cetera, in expanding those options. We're certainly nowhere close as a society and getting there I think. So it is a very complex issue that, and I would be happy for Kristin if she wanted to weigh in on sort of how deep the services are in Portland. I'm not sure that really gets at the question. I guess the other thing I would say is that I agree with you that I don't support a large shelter, okay? But the answer needs to be that across the state we have a network of smaller low barrier emergency shelters. And that's what we're lacking. As I said before, we have four in the state. There are many shelters around the state. Many of them are sober only. And so we really do need to engage and somehow incentivize, I think, the rest of the state to engage in this conversation so that Portland isn't the one that is picking up most of this. Right now, roughly 30% of those coming through the Oxford Street shelter, receiving services there are from Portland. About 40% are from other main communities and another 30% from outside the state. And so we really are serving as a statewide shelter, but we're doing it as a city. And that's the conversation that I think is important to have because people who are experiencing homelessness are better served, closer to their own homes and their own support networks. So it's better for them and it's better for Portland if we can sort of figure out a new approach and a new model forward. And I think we have ways to do, it's not that we haven't been trying. I think everybody tries. We've been trying. We do need, I think, some policies that will incentivize the rest of the state to really engage in this and pick up what they're responsible for and do right by their own community members. I don't know if there's anything else you wanted to add as far as suite of services or if that answers your question Annette. Okay, in the back here. My name is John Shaberg. I live on Newton Street. I think I'm a, I consider myself an informed citizen. What I've read in the paper and from the things that I've investigated, having a larger shelter is going to help the homeless better because we're concentrating the services in this one place rather than having them have to go all around the city to various other things to get the services they need. Is that correct? Is there a benefit to a large shelter in town? When you say in town, is that part of it? Anywhere in town. Okay, anywhere in town. I didn't know where you were heading. I have an urgency about this. I think we should build the damn thing. I don't care where, we need to build it. I think there are different opinions on that from what I've seen as to the size. Certainly the one we, Oxford Street is the largest low barrier shelter in the state. The one in Bangor, the city of Bangor limits at 60. And so I think certainly there are a number of models out there as long as a suite of services are offered. And then I think the folks who are experiencing homelessness are getting access to those services. So I'm not sure that there's clear research that says, building a 200 bed shelter is better than building a 100 bed shelter is better than building a 50 person shelter. At the end of the day, it's how do you take care of the folks who are experiencing homelessness? And I think there is some good research and having folks who are experiencing homelessness served in their own communities or close to their own communities. And as I said, only 30% of those coming through Oxford Street are from Portland. So I think a different model would be great, but we will see where the council gets on this over the next few months. And I think councilor Mabadon has a little to the back for the next question. I think your question was, is it better to have a larger shelter that has the variety of services and everything I have understood to this point, now whether, as Kim said, it's 200, 150, 100, whatever the number is, what I understand is, yes, it is a better model to deliver those services in that way. There may be differing opinions in the community, there may be differing opinions on the council on that. And I think we probably all know we can find research to support a lot of different things, but based on what we have currently in Portland, which does not provide that type of service all in one place, I think there's huge improvements, whether the location is the current location or location the council is voted on or some other location, I think providing those services on site is the preferred way to go. I'm not an expert in the area, but that's what I have learned during the last several years. Thank you. In the pink jacket? Yep. Hi, Nicole Marston, I'm on Farragate Street. My question, and they say way into what you were talking about, Councilor Cook, what are we doing and what's the council doing to solicit with Governor Mills? Because part of her platform was right around this, right? So I think before we take an action as a city, we need to make a big push forward to say as a state, what are we going to do? Because I think that's a big problem for, and at least in my opinion, I'm happy to help, but it needs to be community helping and it's not just Portland helping. So it doesn't matter if we say Riverton, it doesn't matter where we put this, we need help with the situation and I think we need to escalate that before we move forward. I appreciate that. And I don't know if John, if you wanted to address a number of the initiatives and conversations we've had with the administration and I can talk about some of their housing proposals. And when you're gonna do that, if there's things we should be doing as a community, I think that would be great advice to give us to be able to make that voice heard at a state level. Thank you, Councilor. Yes, in fact, we have engaged and I have personally engaged with the governor and her staff concerning the future of homelessness in the city of Portland. I could not agree more with Councilor Cook that this is indeed a statewide issue. The city of Portland unfortunately has borne the burden for many decades now of exclusively paying for and funding the homeless situation in our region and also across the country. I mean, I have met many who have come from other parts of the country who have come to Oxford Street. It doesn't mean that we're less sympathetic or less wanting to help. It just means that there has to be a regional and statewide solution to many of these issues. The city of Portland simply cannot continue to bear the burden alone. And that's why the Councilor and I have spoken, actually just recently last week, as to how we can effectively do that. So in contacting the governor's office and contacting your state representative and your state senator and other representatives at the state level to make sure that this conversation is not just one of those conversations that happens in a vacuum, but it's consistent. And that is one of the reasons why I'm consistently talking with folks in Augusta about the needs of the city to diversify the funding mechanisms. So again, it's just not on the taxpayers of the city of Portland to be able to fund all of these things. Now with that said, three weeks ago we took a trip, several staff people, we took a trip to Boston to learn about from at the Pine Street Inn, we learned about this diversion program. And they're able to actually divert 20 to 30% of the people who present for homelessness on any given night to other needs, to other agencies. In fact, they used an example that there are several people that they'll buy a bus ticket that they've separated from their family and they spend some time talking with that person and they want to go home and so they purchase a bus ticket and we're able to move them back to their family. And so that's the real one of the core things that we feel is from a staff perspective, we feel as though we need to institute sooner rather than later, because once you enter the homeless shelter system it's very detrimental for the people who are, you take a young person for instance, 20, 21 coming into a shelter, into that environment. It's very difficult and the data shows that they kind of stay in that cycle. And so one of the ideas, I think a major idea is to institute a diversion program here in the city to try to make sure people are diverted to better outcomes. Thank you, John. Can't hear you, sorry. That's great, we're talking about the city again. The mic is right there, sorry. You kind of brought it around and I think that's great. I think that's a viable solution, I'm not an expert, but what's your plan of action with the state? What are you specifically asking them to do for us beyond just funding? Like hold other areas accountable, are there places in the county that need assistance? Because as somebody mentioned it, if you Google our city, we're putting a beacon up and we aren't going to be able to continue to support this, it's not going to work. So what I'm asking you is, what is your ask of the governor and that administration? What is your plan of action? What did you tell them that we need? Because it doesn't just mean me calling, that's you saying I need X, Y, Z, how do I get it? That's what I want to hear. So I guess I'd rephrase that a little bit, which is, when I, yeah, but let me just say that I don't think that we as the city of Portland should ask for help with our problem because it's not just our problem. So what we need to do is rephrase it to me and I've heard other communities surrounding Portland say, we acknowledge we need to do more to help Portland. At the end of the day, we all need to help those experiencing homelessness in our own communities and Portland should do its share and all the other communities should do its share and you're right, trying to figure out what's that lever to get them, get everybody invested, if you will in doing their share and opening whether it's, it's very rare to have a municipally run shelter, let alone two across the country. And so how do we partner and get other communities interested in the state? I have not personally asked the governor, what are you going to do for Portland? I know that they have been focusing on housing. That's certainly a piece of what we need to address and so that's appreciated. It's not just helping Portland with housing. It's helping Maine with affordable housing. So that's moving forward and that's an important piece because after all, we want people in homes, not in shelters. So, and I don't know if there's anything else specifically that we wanted to ask of. Yeah, just to take, give you a break from. You're doing fine. I would say two things in response. One is the council has our annual goal setting session and process which starts tomorrow. The new mayor has got that kicked off really quickly. I don't know what we'll be talking about specifically. I know generally, but I suspect this will be one of the items and also a legislative agenda or a state and federal. So we have a legislative committee. This is a brand new council year and I think over the next several weeks, we will be talking about things that we want to raise. Depends which year it is in the legislature for those that follow that but those are some things that I think you could watch for over the next several weeks and starting tomorrow. And I guess I would say you, one part of the question was what should you all be doing? And after all, we're talking about what, you know, involving the state and also other communities. So you all have state representatives and state senators, one of them's here tonight. Thank you for being here, Representative Crockett. But we have a pretty large delegation from Portland and so you all are communicating with your elected officials at the state level, including the governor to explain that it's time that we have a statewide approach to both shelter and housing and other services. That will help, I think, raise this issue up to that next level of government. So that I think is an important piece for you all to talk with your elected folks outside of just within the city but also at the state level. I've seen a hand way back here at Gray Vest. And then we'll come back up front again. Spencer Garrett from Eastman Avenue. I've got a few questions slash points. First of all, I don't wanna let police fire off the hook, they've been looking a little bored. So I wanted to ask you guys what the plan is, should the shelter end up where it's proposed to be? What's the plan for policing? What's the plan for emergency response? I know that our fire station, Riverton, does not have emergency medical services. I don't know what percentage of your daily efforts are spent downtown right now dealing with the shelter there. I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest that that same amount of attention is gonna be needed at the new location, probably even more because there's more area for people to be. And then likewise with emergency medical response, I mean, we don't have any, I mean, I think the closest, not sure, but I would imagine the closest ambulance is either off on Allen or somewhere further. So I'm curious about that. The other question I had was regarding Interstate 95, it looks like they're widening to the three lanes up to exit 48 and I was wondering if that's gonna continue past Riverton at some point as if anybody knows anything about that, thank you. Sure, I'll start for you. Again, a teeth gorm, I'm a major with a PD. So yeah, as you said, resources for us are pretty fluid if the shelter were to move out to Riverton. We would obviously adjust resources. We have the city broken down into 11 beats and then right now the Bayside area, Oldport during the holiday season, Congress Recorder, we dedicate extra resources to that. And that's just all based on needs. So we would do the very same thing if the shelter moved out there. One of the models that we have talked about is having one of our community policing offices inside of that shelter. So on top of having the shelter and all the resources, you would have a police office inside that would have one of our community coordinators and then policemen in and out of there all the time working with the staff. Is that covered? Sure. Yeah, so I'll echo the major's statements. We always adapt and adjust to whatever development happens. But one thing that the manager mentioned when we were in Boston is that we were looking at the model down there and they had an in-house clinic in this shelter. So that would, although they do have EMS responses down in Boston, we were looking at maybe 400 people they were housing there. Their responses for emergency medical services are far less than what we do in town. So that would be one of the things that I would push for is that we would contract having a clinic, a full-time 24-7 clinic inside the shelter. But again, we would just like the major mentioned, we would adapt and shift resources there. We do have two ambulances in Deering, one at Stevens Avenue, and you were correct, one at Allen Avenue. Just the third point you asked about was the widening of the turnpike that's scheduled. That's scheduled to go up to just past the Warren Avenue bridge where they're doing the widening right now. So it'll go from where it leaves off down in South Portland up just past that bridge. As you can see from the bridge work that's going on, that project has started and they'll be going out with their first earthwork contract sometime early next year from what I've heard. Thank you. And just to reiterate, no matter where the shelter is built, the model will not only have food available, but also a health clinic. I don't believe it would be 24-7. Last, I have not heard that anyway, but Greater Portland Health has committed to operating a health clinic at the new facility. There'll also be community policing at the new facility, a station. And so that's part of the model of a new shelter. And it's part of why we need a new shelter because Oxford Street is not able to accommodate all of that in that small building that we rent. I heard you're going to have several street... Robert Haynes Home Avenue. Understand you're gonna have some paving projects here. Last summer, there were streets that went nearly three months with the rings having been raised with their covers with orange paint around them. And if you ever drove Woodford Street from the Boulevard to Woodford's Corner, you zigzagged all over trying to miss those. I don't know how little an incentive it might take for a contract for the bids and the contractors. Get in, do the work, finish and get out. Instead of leaving these things for months, at least many weeks, sticking up and people trying to avoid them. So that's probably a question for Mr. Branch. I agree, the three months is unacceptable. I have to dodge around them too. I think the problem we're running into is that most of the paving companies that we use do not have staff that do manhole raising and they have to wait for a subcontractor to schedule to come in. Yeah, and that's a scheduling issue with the paving contractors as well. So we've had some difficulties with that. As everybody here I think is aware of, we have a huge demand for contractors in the southern part of the state and it just makes it really difficult for scheduling. That we'll do our best next year. Any other questions? Go ahead. Two questions. Are you closing the shelter in town? Thank you, Alden. Are you closing the shelter in town when there's still one adult? Yes, I think the question was, will the Oxford Street shelter close when a replacement shelter is built? And the idea is to move the city's shelter, the low barrier shelter for single adults to a new location. And so the plan was not to operate Oxford Street and an additional shelter. The only additional shelters that we've discussed and I haven't had an update for a while. So if I'm saying, if something's changed, let me know, but is with Avesta and with the Opportunity Alliance and those would be new facilities as well. I was wondering what you're gonna do with all the people that don't wanna go out there gonna stay in town. Are you gonna pick them up and take them out? Well, we certainly, as a city, do not require people who don't have a place to stay to stay at a shelter. So we are not rounding anybody up and saying, I'm sorry, you're on the street, you must go here. It's completely voluntary. So if the question is, how will people get there if they want to access the shelter? They will get there in just the same way they got to Bayside. Most of them did not come from Bayside. Or they will take the bus. Or the city does provide some shuttle services currently, so don't other organizations. So transportation is an issue, but to the extent people want to get to the shelter there will be a way, there's a number of pathways for people to do that. But to the extent that people want to be in Bayside and do not wanna access the shelter, I'm not sure which way your question was going. The city, I do not believe has any plans. It wouldn't be constitutional for us to pick people up and say, here you are. No, I know, but you don't want them in town, so the goal is to get them out of the town. No, the goal is to provide people with shelter if they need shelter. And some people who we see hanging around in Bayside are not people who are staying at the Oxford Street shelter currently. And that, to the extent those folks are staying with friends anywhere around Portland and find themselves there for whatever reason, then that's what they will continue to do. And I have one other question. There's a new crosswalk down by Saabox on Forrest Avenue. They just built a granite island with a solar light. Was that funded by the city or was that funded by UNE? Okay, then my next question is why down at Riverton Park, isn't there even a light? There's a little orange cone in the middle of the road. Does both people have to run for their life? That's like a dead man's curve. They come out of Riverton Park. They have to cross Forrest Avenue and you can't see them. You're coming around the corner. Why isn't there a light on somebody's cross in the street? There's little kids there, everybody. Sure, and we, I mean, that's good feedback. So if that seems like a place where there's a lot of crossings and we need some better infrastructure to ensure safe pedestrian. I think we should take care of them people rather than UNE. I'm not, you know, I'm not sure. I guess I wouldn't have pit it as one versus another. I know that we have limited budget to do a number of these things. I would personally love us to spend, you know, more money. I'm not quite sure what we would not spend money on, but on pedestrian improvements and bike improvements. But we have installed more and more of those throughout the city, especially as particular areas either come to our attention because people mentioned them or because there have been accidents or whatever. I mean, one way or another, it's come to our attention that there's an issue. And so certainly that is an area that we can take a note of. I see Chris is writing things down. And we install more of those each year. You probably notice flashing signs more places or medians more places. And as traffic gets worse and as we're more sensitive to making our infrastructure accessible to not just cars, but pedestrians and bicyclists, we try to invest in those things to say that we're finished with that work is not accurate. I don't think anybody up here would say that we've done enough. We have done what we can and certainly we'll put that suggestion down and to the extent there's other places any of you see where additional pedestrian crossings or lights or medians pieces can be installed. Please bring those to our attention as we're going into the capital improvement plan process and others. So thank you. Thank you very much. And my understanding is the city is renting Oxford Street shelter, right? And then I understood that once the new shelter is built, the city is gonna rent that building again. Is that, did I understand that correctly? You mean Oxford Street or the new building? The new building. So, the council has not made a decision on that and I expect that as we get to that part of the process of actually doing site planning, that I hope that the council weighs in on that process. I think there's a couple of different ways that it could be done. And if you'd like to address what those might be, I'll let the city manager. Thank you again, councilor. One of the ideas that has been kind of a design build concept where the city issues an RFP, a developer builds it, we lease it back over a term. That's one way. The other way is to certainly go out and bond. If we were going to pay for the city, was going to pay for everything, we'd go out to the public, for a public bond to go to a vote of the citizen. So there's multiple ways that we could fund this. I think that the council is right, the city council has not made a decision on that next step. They're still working on the resolution and rules and everything else governing. So we're working on draft concepts to present to the council at whatever given time that that comes before the council as the way in which we could actually develop the building itself. I hope that's helpful. I appreciate that. I think Gina has the mic and then I'll ask her to pass it over here. Yep, go ahead. Gina, Beliav. Thank you for the Riverton playground. I just wanted to say it was a long time coming. Thank you. We got to keep the upkeep on the schools that didn't pass for bond. Riverton has Drippy Pipes. We got a new playground, but we still have Drippy Pipes. So don't forget Riverton. And two more things. You go to Shaw Park and Gorham on the river. They got this beautiful kayak place and people can hang out on the beach, on the river. And on Presonskite River in Portland, we're gonna put a homeless shelter. So I don't know, just throwing that out there. And I wanna hear why Mercy Hospital is not an option for the shelter. We can, everything's right there. The Sisters of Mercy, that would probably be their thought that would they want to do. I need to hear why not Mercy Hospital? Certainly. I'll let the city manager say, I will just say that Mercy Hospital was going for market rate and is owned by Northern Light Health, as I understand it. So, and you may have more specifics on what happened with that process. Yes, thank you. So as the counter just mentioned, Mercy Hospital on State Street is not owned by the city. It's owned by the consortium that's based in the northern part of the state. They are seeking maximum dollar. Anywhere between 12 to 15 million is what the numbers were. The city, of course, would be impossible for us to go buy the Mercy Hospital at that level. I would also just mention though that they are close to closing on that property, potentially even this month. So that process is well down the road. And it was well down the road for the last six months. They've been doing their due diligence with the potential buyer. So even during the course of all of this discussion at the HHS committee around location, that property had already been negotiated or the negotiations had been ongoing for a private buyer for that property. Thank you. And just so you all know, we're just about at eight. I'm gonna close the meeting at eight. I'm happy to stick around and try to answer additional questions, but I know others need to be getting home. And last question. Hello, my name is Michael Armada. I live on Beverly Street in Riverton. Two things. One, I wanna say thank the city staff, Kristen Dow, and everybody that worked on the HHS committee. I know there's been a tough back and forth with questions and us harboring and people getting in all these types of things. So thank you for your efforts. The other question I actually have has to do with the busing. And I know in April of 2020, it looks like we can't find where, like when the next bus is coming, I know there's that map that's out there. But I mean, that's one of the main things why I can't take the bus into town because I'm working too late. I won't have a bus back, nor do I know it's reliability back and forth. And I know there's upgrades happening to the Metro. Well, we'd be able to look at an app to see where the next four-staff bus is coming and where it might be in its location. Great question, thank you. We do have an app right now. It's called, well, it's not our app. It's what we call a global app. It's a third-party app. It's called Transit App. So if you go on your app store and just type in Transit App, it'll come up. It's a little green icon with a little squiggly track-like thing in the middle of it. And when you download it, it's gonna know exactly where you are. It's gonna pull up all of Metro's bus routes, as well as South Portland and also Casco Bay ferry lines is on that system as well. It is real-time. It's gonna give you real-time arrival predictions. That's the best way to access it if you're app-prone. If you're at a bus stop too, there's information on each bus stop on texting into a number. And that's also gonna give you the real-time arrival information via text for whatever routes serve that particular bus stop. So two options to access to real-time. Maybe we haven't marketed it well enough, but it is out there. I use it a lot. It works pretty well. It's great. We do have automated fare payment coming in the spring of 2020. There's gonna be an app around that so you can pay your bus fare with an app or a smart card. So I just wanted to put that out there as well. Transit App, T-R-A-N-S-I-T-A-P-P. One word, thank you. All right, so everybody, it's eight o'clock, so I'm going to close the meeting. I know there are additional questions. I'm happy to stay and try to answer the questions or write them down and make sure somebody gets back to you. I really appreciate everybody coming out tonight. It's cold, it's Friday night, and they feel free to come up and I'll try to, my best to answer your questions.