 Let's do this. Good evening all and welcome to the October meeting of the Public Works Commission. Yeah, thanks so much. Slide this between us. Welcome. And we are seven outstanding. All right. First item on the agenda is the agenda itself. One note or modification from our end is believe we no longer need item six, the obligations bond item. Is that right, Director Spencer? That's correct. On record last month supporting this initiative. I think we're fine with what we said there. And to clarify is that with item six? With item six removed. All right. Thank you. Is there any discussion around that? All in favor please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? The agenda passes. Moving forward to public forum. Is there anyone from the public interested in speaking? Yeah, welcome to come forward. And Chair Hogan, while the member of the public joins us, I just want to let the folks online know that if you've joined this meeting and want to speak during this public comment or subsequent public comment periods, we would ask that you use the raise your hand feature on Zoom, which will be on the lower part of your Zoom screen. You might have to hit the three button, three dot ellipsis to see that. If you don't see it automatically, that will let us know that you want to be in queue to talk during public comment. Thank you for that. Welcome. Thank you. Good evening. My name's Maureen Fry. I'm actually a very new neighbor down the street. I bought 57 through 59 Lakeside Avenue. And so I'm really just came tonight to kind of see how the DPW Commission works and hear what y'all have to say and what goes on. I had the pleasure of meeting with Chief and Spencer. Was it Thursday? Week ago? Yeah. Yeah, a week ago. So what I spoke to him about was the fact that I live on Lakeside and my house is right in the middle of the four residences that are actually on Lakeside across from the Hula campus. And so I've only been there. I've only been sleeping in the house now a little bit longer than maybe five or six weeks. But in that short amount of time, it's become incredibly evident that the street has a lot of activity. So being right down the street here, I'm sure you see it and deal with it yourself. Down there, it gets a little bit chaotic because you have people parking on both sides of the street. We have deliveries with various St. Johns and Hula campus. We have garbage trucks coming and going. We have people on bikes. We have people walking, people running. It gets pretty busy down there. And so in front of my house, I seem to take the brunt of the parking on that side of the street because the first house has no parking here to corner and the last house has no parking here to corner. So it's really of the four residences, which there are multiple residents, there's just two houses that really have to deal with the parking that happens on that side of the street. And so I get it. We talked about it. It's a public street. I understand that. But this is my retirement home. And so it has become very, very much of an emotional issue because people drive up on the grass. They turn around in my yard in my driveway all the time. Like I say, I've only been there five or six weeks and we've already had four or five cars ticketed, three or four cars towed. And so as a director that's in charge of managing the people that have to go down there and deal with that, it just seems like there should be a better way to be able to manage at least the resident side of the street. Now, I get it. I know that Hula brings a lot of income and a lot of really, it's the brainchild of an amazing organization. But again, those houses aren't cheap. I'm eating ramen noodles because it's a big house. And so my proposal was that if we could have on our side of the street the no parking on this side of the street and just keep the parking over there near Hula, that would alleviate the stress of the residences that have to deal with all the cars. It's very, very difficult to pull out of your driveway. It's not so bad to pull into your driveway. But pulling out of the driveway, there's been multiple times that there's been near collisions. And I got flipped off last week because I was pulling out and somebody was pulling around somebody who was also pulling out on the Hula side started my day with that. But the long short of it is I did the math on Hula. They have 278 numbered parking spots. They have 15 spots on their side of the street. They're authorized to park at the St. John's Club until 1500, in which case then it switches. St. John's Club can park at Hula. And then right across the street here we have about 100 spots that are designated for Hula overflow. So the seven little spots that people continue to jam their cars into in front of the residences there on Lakeside, it's just, it gets like a told Spencer, it gets, Mr. Spencer gets kooky. And it's just dangerous. And so we have kids riding bikes and all kinds of things. So without going on and on about the situation, I'm asking for essentially the same courtesy for the residences. There's only four houses there to have parking on single side of the street instead of dual side of the street there. So that's my request. You know, Mr. Spencer said that he would look at all options and I just met Philip, the engineer, but in terms of a workforce situation where the easiest thing to do to relieve the stress and anxiety on our street and also minimize the amount of workforce that has to be down there parking, you know, parking enforcement, the tickets and towing and all that stuff is to just be able to look down the street. It would be pretty obvious that somebody was parking on that side of the street and there were signs that said, please don't park here. So I'm appealing to your sense of fairness. The rest of the neighborhood has single side of the street parking. I don't know what winter looks like here. I can't imagine what double side of the street parking plus everybody coming and going when the snow starts to fall. But I'm sure that you guys have worked it all out. It's just and I speak on behalf of the four homeowners on my street. So that's, I just, you know, I would ask for a favorable consideration for the single side of the street parking. Thank you. Thank you. All right, Mr. Goulding. Any takers online? Yeah, Chair Hogan, Zoe Richards, you're next in queue, so we'll be unmuting your microphone now. Thank you. Can you hear me? Yes, I can. Awesome. I just wanted to speak because I think tonight on your consent agenda is actually going to single side parking seasonally on Catherine Street and Charlotte Street. And I'm a resident of Catherine Street. And I want to thank you for the process that us neighbors have been well informed about what you're working on. So that's been great. And I just wanted to speak. I leave the decision up to you as to what you decide to do in terms of the parking. But I did review the narrow streets, your narrow streets document, or at least what I could find online. And I was just hoping as, you know, as you continue on your deliberations about how to deal with parking, that you consider that that streets are for everyone and not just cars. I mean, I know they're mostly, you know, I'm not in favor of having seasonal parking ban because I feel like it will pick up the speed of traffic in our neighborhood. One of the things that we love is that because it's narrow that we have a lot of traffic calming from that. And I know we're on Howard, we've had to put in traffic calming. So I don't look forward to actually having, I actually really value having parking on both sides of the street keeps the neighborhood really calm. So I was hoping as you generate your narrow streets, and I didn't know if if you could really consider the common potential of having narrow streets and have that be a high value. It's one of the things that makes our neighborhood great is that it's quiet, having that cars can't go very quickly, especially when there's parking on both sides of the street. So I will not look forward to that couple of months if parking is banned, just because it'll pick up the speed of the traffic and we're stuck between Pine Street and St. Paul Street, which are really very busy and a lot of traffic that moves through the neighborhood. So I hope that sort of the residents, pedestrian, biker experience of having slow traffic is considered. It seems like the parking ban is really looked out for one potential problem, which is the perceived problem that baby emergency vehicles can't come through. But it will lead to another problem, which is picking up speed. So I'll leave it to you to decide what's the best thing to do. But I hope that, you know, the residents experience speed and traffic comment or something that you really consider as you think about what to do in narrow streets, just making them wider and faster. For me, it does not feel like a benefit. Thank you. Thank you. No, we'll be all. No further. All right. At least that. Yeah, thank you all for the input. Moving forward to the consent agenda, just one clarification as you relate to the last comment, the narrow streets item that's on consent agenda here is not a taking action at this time. It's really a summary of the feedback to dates and a synopsis of staff's current thinking on that. But there's no change that come. It's coming forth out of this. That is correct. As part of our extensive outreach to the neighborhood, we have told them that this was coming as information only tonight and that we would be acting next month. We found in our past history with the commission that these can be challenging conversations and that having more time and more opportunity for dialogue has resulted in a smoother end process. Any other three items on consent agenda? Sorry, can I just so just to clarify the what's in the summary as the staff recommendation will be coming to us next? Okay. Okay, thanks. Unless there is a significant change in what we're hearing from the public that informs us for a revised recommendation, we are plan is to come back with that recommendation next month. Can I, I mean, I know this is the consent we're not voting on. Can I just ask one further clarification to that or is that all right? Just in terms of what goes in to the rationale, I would love to see when the staff recommendation comes forward the comment that was just made the public comment about the potential of traffic calming of the narrow streets. That would be great. Thank you. Motion to approve the consent agenda? Motion from Commissioner Barr. Second from Commissioner Mutano. Is there any discussion on that motion? All right, let's go to a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? No, consent agenda passes. Thank you. Moving forward item five, parking compliance reform. Welcome a communication from Mr. Badger. I'll just tee this off and say that I've been very pleased to see solid work out of parking and traffic's team re-envisioning how we do some of the more challenging and controversial elements of our work and looking at how we set up systems to help people succeed and not end up on on the back end of a compliance challenge with the city. And to that division director, Jeff Padges, former commissioner, as some of you recall, has really, I think, taken his experience on this commission to heart and come forward with a suite of recommendations that I'm very excited about and hopefully you will as well. Thank you for those kind words. So I'm division director for parking and traffic and parking services now. And so it's been a big week for our little group. Parking services has officially moved from the police department into 645 Pine. So just down, just next room over is now where what used to be John King's group is now Leonard Dusharm's group. And also as of Monday night, Leonard Dusharm is now the new John King and John King position has now been merged with the old Leonard Dusharm position and we created a senior coordinator position to support that person, to support Leonard. So he got a new job, which is merging two jobs, but then we created another support position so that one person could do those two jobs with support. So it's been a transformational week for us. But what we're here tonight for is scoff reform, which sounds terribly wonky, but it is really important. And it's basically scoff is when you don't pay your parking tickets and then you get your car towed. During COVID, scoff was suspended because the mayor recognized that that could be, you know, members of our vulnerable community, they get their car towed. All of a sudden they can't go to their job, they can't make their money, then they can not get their car. You know, it's like going to a poorer prison or whatever from the old days. So this gave us the opportunity to rethink how scoff works on multiple levels. So what this sort of long memo that I sent you does is articulates the various changes and substantiates. So I'll hit the, I'll hit the wave tops and then I'll leave it to you to ask questions because it gets fairly, we can get in the weeds really quick and I don't want to get there if you don't want to go. So basically it does three critical things. First thing is it raises the scoff threshold from $75 to $275. Under the current $75 threshold, you can get one ticket and then get towed. It's way too, way too low. It's like the cliff is too close. So we moved the cliff out to $275, which allows you, if you're just getting normal, you stayed over your meter too long, you can get like six, eight, 10 tickets and you're still not getting your car towed. You still owe us the money and if you get to that 11th ticket, you're going to get your car towed. But what we have a suite of different tickets that we issue. So I sort of imagined this basic concept of let's say you get two parking tickets at meters and then you get your car towed because of a snow ban. That seemed like a plausible scenario that someone might get themselves into. And under this scenario, that's $265, not $275. So you still won't be towed, but if you get another meter ticket, you're towed. You should know by that point two small, two small tickets and a big ticket. You should be, I mean this is if you let them go, if you let them go overdue, right, with all the penalties and fines and all that. So that's the first thing we do is we raise that threshold and then we put in, codified this concept of SCOF being a secondary violation. So in simple terms, we can't hunt for you in SCOF. So our folks with their license plate reader can't read your license plate and say, ah, we got on these in SCOF and tow you right out. You have to actually be in violation and receive a ticket. That ticket can't put you into SCOF and then get towed. You have to already be over that $275 threshold and then get another ticket. And then we say you owe us over $275, then you get towed. So we still have the teeth of towing your car, but we can't hunt for you and the threshold has been raised. So those are really critical sort of equity concepts that we think this change really reinforces. And then we created this, another interesting program which is called the WHPS program. So what we've done is we've said if you get a ticket in the city of Burlington, you can get out of it one time a year. Only for tickets if you overstay a meter or if in your resident park, if you're in resident parking. So if you park in front of a hydrant or handicap or here to corner, you still get, you can still get towed because those are safety issues. But this is a big, this is a big deal. So it basically, it takes that, you know, getting parking tickets can be one of those catalysts to a downward spiral. So this gives people the opportunity to get out of that one ticket that might be the trigger that gets them into some kind of a mess. So they're pretty, these are pretty wonky concepts, but to me they're really fundamentally, we try to look at this through an equity lens, social equity lens and say, how can we change these rules so that we don't create criminals for lack of a better word? We want to create education. We want to give people as many opportunities to learn how to park correctly and not jump to towing them. So that's my intro. There's lots in here if you read it. I'm happy to talk about any part of it, but we're pretty excited about this. We think it's transformational for culture and all these, you know, internal culture and how we approach the community. Anything I missed? Oh, okay. Thank you. Thank you for that intro. We'll open it up to commissioner communication, commissioner discussion at this time. Start down. Yeah. Okay. I guess, so I think this program sounds really great. And I think it's great to like give people some slack when it comes to parking violations. And I'm just curious. Well, first of all, like logistically, how would it work with like parking in residential areas without having a permit? Like would that still require being towed? Right. So this is an interesting concept. And we were just musing on this tonight after we actually presented this in a sort of informal fashion to the city council about border finance on Monday night. And we got some interesting feedback that made us think about it a little bit. And we started thinking about that. What happens in resident parking? Basically what the whoops program does is it resident, if you know, when you have a resident parking permit, you get a little blue sticker that basically they call it a blue chip. And it's a get out of jail free card. It's a voice, a ticket, right? So what we've done is we've basically expanded that blue chip program to everybody, anybody in Burlington or anybody, any visitor that parks in a resident parking space, they can appeal the ticket. And if it's their first ticket for the year, they get out of it. So it's the same exact thing as the resident parking blue chip program, but we've expanded it. So now one of the side effects of this program is the whoops program is we don't need the blue chip program anymore, because the whoops program doesn't. So it eliminates buying blue chips, it eliminates holding blue chips, it eliminates hitting them out, it eliminates junk drawers full of blue chips. So these are sort of, this is the exciting systematic changes that we're making. That was an unintended benefit and we just hit us today. And then just something else that I was thinking about while reading up on this in the packet. I've heard of like programs in, I don't know of any in the US, but I know of some like in other countries, like Finland, for example, where tickets are instead of like giving people like one ticket, they don't have to pay each year, like tickets are based off of income and disposable income instead of like it's a certain percentage of your disposable income for what I have many days. And I just, obviously this is not that, but I, and I also don't know the logistics of that under US law and if that's allowed, but I think that that's like an interesting conversation that could happen in the future with this being like a stepping, like a gateway to talking about bigger programs like that that provide like even further equity. That's exactly how we see this. We see this as the first step towards taking a decision that used to be made by the attorney's office. Avoiding tickets is technically something only the attorneys can do. And this ordinance gives us administrative power to avoid tickets. So now we can go back and we can go to the next step and say, okay, what are the, fundamentally the concept that becomes tricky in ideas like what you were just saying is due process. That's where we get, I've had conversations with the attorneys about this and it's not the attorney's fault, it's just how due process works in the United States and there are just sticky wickets in there. But yes, this is a gateway policy as far as we're personally unconcerned. Okay, thanks. Yeah, thank you. So I'm going to preface what I'm going to ask by saying how strongly I support this as a idea as a program. I also serve on the CJC board, community justice center board and one of the things that has always been striking to me is that when we look at some of the contributing factors that lead some folks into a kind of a cycle of just, you know, job loss and housing loss and one of the precipitating factors is actually what many of us would consider a fairly low threshold of violation, you know, not violent crime, et cetera, but it's just not having access to it. So I'm all for this as an idea and I was trying to parse through some of the different sort of triggers at which, and you know, it was helpful to have, I was a little confused at times that like what the amount was owed and how little was needed to be paid to avoid impoundment, but I understand kind of the concept behind that. But really my questions are about the other side of this is that if we still want to use fines as a deterrent in terms of certain kinds of behavior, and I mean we've even heard in this today about like what's some of the other pinch points that are going on in the city when it comes to parking, whether it's resident parking or, you know, and you have a new development come up and how do the residents there deal with, you know, whether you're around a park and you see all of this parking, whatever, all the different uses of specific spaces. When I first moved to Burlington from a much larger city, one of the things that really struck me off the bat was I got a parking ticket and I was like that is all I have to pay. And honestly like right away I was like I came from a city where like it was what, $15, $25 an hour to park. And the fine was so high that you really, really didn't want to, you know, pass the meter. And so, you know, I guess I kind of wonder where you see that side of things of people kind of, you know, understanding this as a policy, as a concept and trying to, I guess for lack of a better term, game the system and sort of say like, okay, well, you know, I know I can get away with this, this and this. And so, where do you see managing that pendulum swing if this is kind of a policy push from the department? So as you know, the whole parking services thing is new to me. So I'm learning something new every week. And one of the things that I learned through this process was that we actually have very, very good compliance, very high, like 90%, depending on the class of ticket and how you measure it, it's somewhere between 80 and 95% of fines are paid. Now we're still, there's still quite a bit, we collect a lot of money and fines. So that still leaves a lot on the table financially. But the point is, with 80, 90% compliance, most people are able to pay. The people that aren't able to pay, and then they're getting impounded, are the vulnerable. So they're already down. So like that's what we're trying to change is, we know that the fines are cheap. So many, many people can afford to pay them, speaking loosely. It's these people that can't, and they get themselves into a jam. And we're trying to loosen it up a little bit. And you feel this approach would be targeted enough? That's the hope. That's the goal, explicit goal. And if we're not hitting it, then I'll be back and we'll change ordinance. And so I guess I don't want to dominate. I just had two questions about that. One was because as you just raised the question of how much this would cost and how to make this sort of revenue neutral, and you have some materials in there about adjustment. And so do you see this as not a pilot program, but what would be the threshold of initial assessment, a year or so? That's what you're... It's like everything we do. We are increasingly keeping statistics on things. We're doing BTV stat in a couple weeks, which is an analytics presentation to the mayor on performance. And this will be part of what we're looking at. And we've made pretty explicit goals that we want to lower the impoundment rate. And if we can lower the impoundment rate, we are going to be crowing about that. I just want to say again how appreciative I am that the department has taken this on. I just think it's such a material demonstration of a commitment to equity concerns. Thank you. Thank you. I also think this is really an excellent piece of work as far as getting, getting, coming up with an improvement, and particularly on the impoundments. Do you have statistics on the number of impoundments that annually just wall parking? I don't need a lot. I'm just curious. I can't put it off the top of my head. These are numbers that up to... You can give it to me another time. I'm just curious, you know, how many that is. That will be something we are, that is a metric we are. For comparison purposes. And one of the things that relates to the comments already made, that this really does go to the, clarifying what the intent of tickets is all about. Is it to influence behavior or is it to generate revenue? And there's always that ambiguity because if, if everybody did everything perfectly, there would be no revenue from tickets. So, you know, and sometimes, you know, like maybe that's not what you want, you know. But, but the nice thing of this is that you're, you're, you're sort of, I think somewhat more acknowledging that a little bit, that we do have, we do want to influence behavior where there's parking issues or safety issues. And we're not just having a system that is intent on generating revenue for the city. So, I put that in there expressly so people understand that what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to, we are, the 53 is the parking services fund and, and they are a contributor to the general fund. And I'm actively reorganizing personnel and staff services so that we can defer, we can keep them revenue neutral, but we can move money from economically, economically driven revenue like the garages and the lots and the meters into parking services to backfill the losses from this program. So then in essence, what we're doing is we're now backfilling the general fund with economic activity versus fine activity, what I call clean money versus dirty money, you know, in rough terms, you know, and that's a sort of a, that's a big sort of philosophical shift. We don't want to, we don't want to lower the amount that we're contributing to the general fund to be clear. They depend on that money. It's significant, but we are trying to shift how we provide that money to the general fund. But it, but in fact, if everybody was, was perfectly civically inclined, we would have no, no fine revenue, right? So that's going to always be a problem. We don't want, we don't want perfect people. We do not want that. Maybe, maybe, but you're, you're acknowledging, I think it's why it's important that I recognize, I like what you're doing. I, and I, and that was related to my second question, which is, you know, the sentence that you had, which you just referred to, which was that you're saying that you're shifting on your, whatever your final page was the shifting the general fund contributions from being generated by fines to being generated by sales, which wasn't immediately obvious to me that you meant by parking revenue and other revenue things, not punitive things. So I think this is great. I, I totally support it. I think it's great. And I appreciate the work you went into doing it. And I'm, I think a lot of people that live here are going to appreciate that. And I'm really impressed that we already have a 90% compliance rate with the fine. So that says something about having a $15 ticket for, you know, overstaying your, your stay at a meter, which people don't, oops, my bad. And I won't do it again. All right. Thanks. Thank you. Vice-chair O'Neill-Vanaco. Again, I do think this is great. And to the perfect people, commissioner, over B, there, there are some folks, maybe someone I'm married to who will pay, be like, Oh, you know, I'm not going to pay like the, the $5, I'm going to pay $2 because I think we'll be back in time to the meter. So there's that, there's that level of imperfection in our perfect world. So I'm assuming that we have like the data management system on the parking. I mean, you've reported on the car parks. But with the, with the meter parking and the, certainly I have the app and love it, that that's allowing some of this tracking. Is that, is that correct? Actually, the tracking is done on the back end. So that think of Park Mobile as the front end, they're the actual transaction that you're dealing with. Okay. Park Mobile is integrated with in a program called T2 Flex. And it's called, and it's a citation management program. So all the, like this 80, 90% numbers I'm throwing around are all numbers I've seen that they can churn out of this back end software, which is sort of like a CRM. If you know what that is, it's a relationship manager. People have accounts, we have all their license plates in there, and they're actually connected with the DMV. So we can, that's how we take somebody's license plate number and then get their name. So that office down there is actually a federally secured space with cameras and key codes. And yeah, it's pretty serious business. No, that's like, that's like a good information to have, I think. And so within that data management CRM system there, is there, and I didn't, I didn't see it in here, doesn't mean it's not there, sort of the tracking and payment plans, so that you get your 275, you reach that threshold. I'm thinking of like library finds, where it's a dime, it's not a big deal, it's just a dime. And the next thing you know, it's like four dollars, which is not, may not be a lot, but it is, right? And then they have with these library find forgiveness things, right? Because you don't, you're not tracking it, right? In theory, I should be responsible for those orange envelopes on my car. But, but if I'm, if I'm not, how can I, can I, how can I check that for my kind of parking history? Maybe on the down low, so that I'm like, I don't really want to stir the pot. I just, because I don't have the money right now, but I kind of want to find out, is there a computer program? There's no pot, you either owe the money or you don't. No, to be serious, when you get a ticket, you first, it goes in as a license plate number. And if you pay your ticket in 30 days, that's it. You take that, that is resolved. If you don't pay your ticket in 30 days, then a fine is attached and we send you an invoice. And that's when we actually physically go and get your name and address so we know where to send the invoice. So you'll get an invoice at 30 days and then at 90 days, you get another invoice because the fines just went up again. Okay. But they don't keep sending invoices. So you do need to know that you... Okay. But you can come down here and then... I haven't gotten to the point where I've received an invoice. I am, of course, speaking to the public. Okay. You can come to parking services right here at 645 Pine Street. They're nice. So there's a window and there are people sitting right there and they will tell you what your parking citation situation is. As far as payment plans, we do not have the authority to set up a payment plan right now. But you can come in and this is something we also changed in this policy is we made it explicitly clear that 275 is a threshold. So if you owe $300, you don't have to pay $300 to get your car back. You have to pay $25, $26 to get it down below the threshold and you can get your car back. You still owe the city the $274. Right. But it doesn't prevent you from keeping getting your car. So that's quasi payment plans. I was going to say that's the... So again, baby steps towards this. But we would love to be able to get into a situation where we see somebody that's cars impounded, $400, we could set up a payment plan. But we're getting there. Okay. Okay. No, great. This is really helpful. Thank you. That's all for me. Thank you. Push the bar. Thanks. I've never gotten an orange envelope on mine. Cars are green. How many green ones did you get? I know that I know the rules. I often look at it as there's a stick, there's a carrot. And for this, the sticks sometimes aren't high enough. And so people will take those chances. And should I try it? Should I not? I'm just curious. And you kind of answered it, the notification. You don't have people's emails. You don't have that kind of information after a month. And then they get the invoice. And then let's just say they pay the $26. Will it compound again in their car, get towed again, if they don't pay the $274? No, no. As long as they're under $275. No, but then they pay the $275, and then they're an habitual offender still. Somebody could consistently owe us $274. But they get another ticket. They get another ticket. It pushes them over. Then they get that next ticket. They have to get two more tickets to get towed again. Well, 90% compliance is unheard of. So fantastic. Congratulations. That's really good. Don't quote me too hard on that because it might be a little more volatile. But the idea is that it's a lot. It's a significant compliance. The idea is education because we have enough parking in the city, even though a lot of people don't agree with that. If you go one more block, you're going to find some parking. So it's not a matter of having to tow so that space is open for somebody else every time. But I do get that idea. And I assume there's no warnings, right? This is, I'm not prepared to discuss warnings to see. I'm not suggesting that there's something you need. I know that on campus it's easy. The first time through, everybody gets a warning just to make sure, because again, it's education. They do right now. They have historically recently been doing some sort of warnings. I'm not sure how they are doing it because there's no ordinance justifying or supporting them in that. So this is a conversation I literally had today with them as we got to talk about how and why you guys are doing warnings because we're seeking equity here. And it's, and you can't, that's why I'm not prepared to, this is a, I get it. I get it. I'm not trying to dig, dig, dig. I just want to echo the support and basically what everyone else said. I definitely think this is a step in the right direction when it comes to equity, when it comes to parking. My question is just regarding sort of the way the whoops program would work. You right here that you expect 60% of people to be appealing their first ticket once this program is around. How is it actually going to be communicated to people that this program exists? And how do we make sure that everyone's aware of that, right? Since there isn't really a consistent warning system, might it be more fair to have a one warning across the board for every license plate that enters the city's parking sphere system? Communication out to the general parking public is challenging. I've already had preliminary conversations with organizations like the BBA to get them to partner in because they have an interest in this also. And we do have, you know, Rob Gould is our public information guru. So he will be involved in that, obviously. I've recognized we have to have a robust communication platform. I'm not exactly sure what all the pieces of that are going to be. And this isn't going to, for practical purposes, this is not going to be rolled out until December, January timeframe. By time the ordinance goes through all the process it has to go through to get on the books. So we have a little time to build. I've been basically putting a pin in the public relations understanding we need to do it aggressively, but also understanding it's a little complicated. So let's get this done, get the ordinance set, and then we'll go. Absolutely. We've got our website, we've got Twitter, we've got all that stuff we can, we'll get the word out. And it'll have to be in some fashion on either the envelope or the ticket. So we need time to work that out. And the appeal site. Yeah, I mean, I have a lot of those numbers that are kind of guessing and sort of putting reasonable estimates around general behavior. Some people don't even bother to appeal their ticket because they don't even think that way they can or whatever they decide. It's easier for them to pay the $15 and move on. And other people will go to the appeal site and never, even if we put it on the appeal site, go check out whoops, they may not even get to it. So yeah. I'm thinking more like language barriers. So you see that it is a ticket. But if you can't actually read, like if it's written really small, there's, you know, plenty of other things that could be a barrier in that regard. Language barrier with the ticket, physical tickets themselves is a challenge just for scale. But I know like I was just looking at the snow band announcement that goes out and it's translated into what, seven, eight languages? I think right now we have it translated into six languages. Six. The goals to get it translated into a few more. Yeah. So that's another initiative that we're definitely cognizant of. This is communicating with all the communities we have. Always great to hear. And my last question is about the current stay when it comes to actually towing. How long is that going to be in effect and sort of what's the city's move on that? Again, we'll have to have a press release. We'll have to get it out. We'll have to somehow weasel our way maybe onto the TV, you know, get the word out to people that scoff is coming back. You get a ticket. I mean, the people that have, there are people that have tickets and a lot of tickets because they knew they weren't going to get towed and they're going to be subject to towing again. All right. Thank you. I guess my last thought is just that there'd be enough time between when the ordinance actually kind of goes through all of the mechanisms it needs to in the city and then actually the effective date where that rule will go into effect when people will be getting a ticket and oh my now I'm towed. I agree. This is not happening tomorrow for sure. Thanks so much. Thank you. Question. Do you have a sense of how much it costs us to impound the car? How much it costs us? It's, well, actually, technically it costs, it should cost us nothing because we, when we tow a car, we, it's a hundred and twenty five dollar ticket, seventy five of that is the fine and fifty of it is the tow. So when they pay their hundred and twenty five, we get fifty dollars which we then give to the tow company. So the tow company bills, sends us bills every month but we, if everybody paid their tickets, all of Solvix, perfect people that pay their tickets, we should have no gap. So we just got a towing contract approved too with Splains which is a hundred and forty thousand dollars a year but ostensibly it should be completely reimbursed contract because the people, the person that got towed pays for the towing. Okay. And on the whoops thing, your one comparable city does like a, like a one-time freebie. I was curious about the reasoning to do it to have a yearly freebie. Is that because the blue chip was a yearly thing? Um, it just sort of felt right. I mean, I couldn't really justify every six months, twice. I couldn't justify two a year. I couldn't justify one every two years. Just annual seemed like an easy reset and seemed like reasonable. Like somebody comes on vacation to Burlington in the summer and they screw up and they get a ticket and they come back the next summer and they go, oh, I did it again. You know, but I don't know, it seemed reasonable. No, particular justification. And I stumbled on it. I was googling around looking for comparables for variety things and I just stumbled on it. I haven't seen anything. I actually emailed, there's a traffic consultant in Boston that we've worked with before and I emailed him and he was like, dude, I haven't seen ever anything. And he sent me a couple of vague links to some things that, so nobody's doing this. This is a, this is very novel as far as I can tell, as far as Google will tell me. I tried calling those guys to talk to them to find out how their process works, left them a message, and you didn't get back to me. I think that's all I've got. And thanks so much for the work on this. With that, I'll open it up to any public comments if anyone's interested. As a reminder for members of the public who are still on, if you do wish to speak during public comment, I'd ask that you use the raise your hand feature on your Zoom screen. And at this time there is nobody signed up for public comment. All right, thank you. With that, I will bring it back to the commission then. We are seeking action on this and there's suggested language in the packet as to a motion. Can I make a motion to accept staff's recommendation? Second. Yes, you're on. Second from Commissioner Bose. All right. Is there any discussion around that motion? Let's go to a vote then. All in favor if we say aye. Aye. Aye. All opposed? Motion passes unanimously. Thanks so much. Yeah, thank you. All right, moving forward, we are on to approval of draft minutes from September meeting. So I'm fine. I move to accept the minutes from the September 15th meeting. Seconded by Commissioner Barr. Thank you. Is there any discussion around that? All right, and there were six of us present last month except for Commissioner Overby. I think we're ready to go to a vote then. All in favor if we say aye. Aye. Aye. Not a motion. Not a motion. All right. The minutes have passed. Thank you. On to a director's report. All right. I usually say I'll be quick because it's late, but I'll just be quick so we can go home. All right. In your packet is a pretty thorough director's report. I'll hit some highlights. Thanks to the commission's good work five years ago. A number of you were on the commission at that time. We approved an update, a very significant update to the parking management plan, especially for resident permit parking in Burlington. That plan asked for us to review the program every five years. Hard to imagine it's been five years, but it has. And so staff has undertaken a review. And we're welcoming any feedback from you all. But our plan, given COVID and given that there's been positive feedback on the program, the whoops component, the blue chips have been very popular. We've heard from city counselors that there's much less acrimony when guests come by and get a ticket, that it's a lot less work to unwind that and that some of the new systems are working well. So we're going to be coming back in November with some proposed tweaks, some very minor changes to the program for your review, but would welcome any input here tonight. Consolidated collection, thanks for your work over the past several months. The council did not pass the resolution last month for a fully municipal option. It tied 6-6. Staff has gotten additional feedback now from city counselors, CSWD and a number of the haulers. We're taking a look at that feedback. And the plan is to be coming back to the council probably in December or January with likely a hybrid recommendation once we respond to the input of these various stakeholders. Champlain Parkway, you see here we're expecting a record decision within the coming weeks, within the next month. That is the federal permit for the project in the last remaining permit. And we are on trajectory to have this out to bid this winter. With the Raleigh Art Enterprise Project, we are planning to go to the council at the November 8th meeting to get approval for a consultant contract to bring us through conceptual design. And we're very excited to have this work fully underway. It will be a fast-moving process as this project is a strong priority across the city. And then one final one before I check to see what I forgot from City Engineer Baldwin is 195201 Flynn Avenue. It is a three-acre parcel. We will be going to council this Monday, October 25th, seeking the council's approval to extend the MOU out three months to give us time to negotiate a lease purchase agreement for the city to purchase this three-acre parcel. It is possible that what would be developed on this three-acre parcel would be a modern safe drop-off center. As you all were familiar, there are drop-off center here now at 339 Pine is limited just to organics due to the fact the site is constrained. It does not have a tip wall and some of the modern features at CSWD really counts on to provide the broader services. So we had a public meeting last week. We'll be going to council on Monday and excited, hopefully for council approval, so we can negotiate a lease purchase agreement. Fall leaf pickups coming up as you see on the back here and City Engineer Baldwin what I forgot. Main Street, Great Streets. Come on up. Yeah, so members of my team, specifically Laura and Olivia are advancing the Great Streets project and went to council seeking authorization to execute a design contract with VHB to begin that work. So that work is beginning. There is still continued financial follow-up that needs to happen to fully fund it to aspire to do all six blocks, but I think there's limited authorization for two blocks with both VEPC and members of the public and then- Economic Progress Council. Yeah, sorry. And another two segments that have VEPC approval as well. So there's still work to be done to financially support full build-out of the six block segments, but we're pursuing that and interest. Thanks, City Engineer Baldwin. And just to put a fine point on that, that's a major multimodal full rehabilitation of Main Street from Union Street down to Battery Street in line with the Great Street standards that we did on St. Paul Street. That was our first project. Second project was City Hall Park following the Great Street standards. Now we're looking to tackle Main Street and really appreciate Norm's team's leadership as this is expected to be a very large, ambitious project in tens of millions of dollars and managing impacts to local businesses will be an important part of this. We'll need to manage expectations as we look at changing parking from diagonal to parallel in order to unlock a lot of the public realm benefits that we're seeking such as improved stormwater, dedicated bike facilities, and place making. And the Street six block segments begins at Union to Battery. And so one other project, passenger rail, that's continuing to progress. Contract two between college and King is struggling to kind of get traction with some of the work and obviously there's implications with stakeholders on the opposite side of the crossings. But I think we're slowly getting there with contract two, but progress is important here and I think we're in good progress, reasonable progress there, but even more progress on contract three, which is between King and Maple, you probably have seen some bike path detours, your bike path segment between King and Maple has been closed for now and allowing parking there while rail work, crossing work at Maple Street is continuing. That's anticipated to be complete by Friday. We'll still need to have the bike path detour going down King Street for some time until such time as they have to repave King Street itself because they're doing signal work there as well. So there's a lot of moving about within those block segments and it's difficult to maintain continued bike path circulation, but I think we've got it down. But that doesn't mean there's not impacts to the public and we're trying to minimize as much as possible, still getting it done. But ECI, the contract for contract three is doing a hell of a job getting it done and they work. Chip and I got a dual site visit last Friday, late, later in the evening and saw them working at 6.30 at night. So I'm really appreciative of them working hard to narrow that time of disruption. Great, thank you for that. With that, we'll move forward to Commissioner Communications to start the other end of the table here, Commissioner Mutanu. No communications at this time. Thank you. I just have one and it's something that we've been discussing for a while at least DPW and UVM. It's in relation to the Main Street and White's intersection. I know that Great Streets doesn't extend out that far. We've done a lot of great things, but I've heard an increase. A lot of people, including me, has been reaching out to asking about it. So I think what I could do to help with that is to do some education and some messaging. So I think if we just get together and make sure, because we've done a lot of things and there's some things that are pending to do, so I guess what I'd like to do is maybe try to get those things out there to people to reduce the angst from some. That's pretty much it. Great. We're happy to work with you on that. We've gotten a couple of media inquiries this week after students have been posting on social media some of their concerns. We have been working well with UVM on a number of updates and upgrades, some short-term, some long-term. I understand students may not know all the contacts, but happy to continue. The conversation is hopefully that will help people understand that we do have our eye on this ball. Thank you. Vice-Chair O'Neill-Valvaco. Yeah, another note on, you know, not being ahistorical here. Looking at the Great Streets, the main street, what blocks are the priority? Would you start like the Union to St. Paul? Because you said you didn't know if there would be funding for the six blocks. So I think maybe you don't have the answer right now, but kind of what the rollout might look like. Yeah, with all the conversations, obviously, what is authorized is what we would do first. And I'm trying to remember the first two blocks thing that's the authorization, both from Pepsi and the voters. I think it's right. The two blocks that have full approval are between Church and Pine. But I think the important message is we are ambitiously moving ahead with a six-block plan. If we're going to create dedicated bike facilities that connect the waterfront to downtown, we're not going to do a two-block section. Right. You have transitions. We are committed to going big here. This will be a major lift. This will be controversial, I'm sure, around some of the parking changes. But we need to hold strong to the vision of Plan BTV. We need to hold strong to our climate goals. And we will appreciate the Commission being an active partner in this, given there will be a number of regulatory changes that you all will need to kind of help approve for to unlock the benefits of the Great Streets design. And I think, you know, back to St. Paul Street, which is such a wonderful place to move around car, bike, ped with kids, without kids. It really is a testament to the great work. And I know that there were issues. What did Tiki say? It's like testing the cake while you're still baking it, which I think was great. I think that's what it is. Interesting analogy. But I think that idea of what are the lessons that staff have learned in that process, and can any of those be pulled? So some of the communication pieces, and I think always recognizing that public right of way is controversial. But our streets are our largest public space. So utilizing them for all users, I think is really important. I would say a few things. One is supportive businesses and communicating with them and evaluating what we can do to support them through this process and sequencing the work. The other piece is to make sure that we have at least be good partners with private property owners who have services that need attention before we make the investment in all the things that are above ground. We can do all utility work, but there's certain constraints on what we can do as it relates to their service connections. Sewer and water. From the experience of St. Paul Street, there are property owners who were on board with making that investment and ended up that one of those services failed and it was disruptive to the project, but it was also disruptive to the business. And so it's important that we all in agreement of what risk we're taking and making the best choice before we advance a project like this is that our property owners incentivized in some way to take care of these services. There's only so much the city can do, but goes to the bike path detour changes on Battery Street. I think communicating out, sorry, communicating out in anticipation of upcoming changes helps whether we're looking at St. Paul or Great Streets or that. You know, C-Click Fix and Bikeable Burlington now. I know folks who got their knickers in a knot because the cones were moved without knowing, wait, what's going on? So I think trying doing the best we can to stay ahead of that communication curve so that folks are at least aware this is temporary. We'll go back. You can now go through here. You just eases the anxiety. We agree, but we are secondary to that conversation because the state is managing the project and their contractors sequencing and advancing the work based on conversation with the state. And we as a city have taken on the task of dealing with the bike path detour along Battery Street simply because there's a series of contracts. And so some of what we were informed about is late coming and we've expressed our concern about that, but much of what these construction schedules are are very weather and material predicated on. So for instance there are some of the purchase of switches and that sort of thing for rail work has gotten a way of affecting the schedule. And so how they sequence the work, sometimes is driven by that. And so it's really kind of we're hopping back and forth to be responsive and getting out the message on the message boards and taking out meter bags and moving cones. It's hard to have everybody understand because they're striping on the ground. When you put paint on the ground people think that that's what's there. We can't take it off for a two week period and restripe it again later. It's just there's just a certain reality in that circumstance that we can't avoid. We try as much as we can, but that's that's really helpful information. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's it. Thanks. Thanks. Doesn't mean that we can't try to get on social media more once we know it is not our project. We're not always in control, but we can help communicate. Forget who wrote the post on C-click fix. I did. That was that was great, but of course it was after. Yeah. Yeah. There was, well, it was kind of a bizarre question. It's like, where's the bike path? Well, the detour is in place and it should be pushed to King Street. So I didn't quite understand why people didn't understand it just by visually seeing it, but sometimes people need to be convinced and a more one-on-one level. Right. Thank you. Thanks. Mr. Holbe. I don't have a special communication, but I did want to follow up on one of the items about the rail yard enterprise project. Yes. I know you said it's November 8th that you're going to have the city council look at it not October 25th. Yep. But the question is, is it possible that that rail yard enterprise project can be time to fit between the phase one and the phase two of the Champlain Parkway? Because I think one of the concerns that a lot of people have had are the traffic increasing in the King and Maple neighborhood when the whole Champlain Parkway project is funneling traffic off of I-189. So with this, you mentioned it was going to be more of an expedited schedule for the rail yard enterprise. Can you envision that the timing could be between the two so that that would in some ways respect that concern? Right. I think our goal is to get it completed as soon as reasonably possible following all the federal requirements and that in a perfect world it would mean that we would have that work complete before phase two of Parkway, but there is no firm, there's no way of knowing exactly how it's going to play out. But that's our goal. Yeah, well that's what I wanted to know if that was actually something that you will try to make happen. That along with sequencing it with the roundabout project and other projects because there's so much going on in the south end that we have to think strategically about how we can best serve the community and that's what this whole sequencing plan is about is trying to achieve all those objectives within that sequencing plan, not just that one piece. Well, for the south end construction coordination plan with you for the first time ever we are showing the REP projected to be under construction simultaneously with phase two of the Champlain Parkway. Okay, I think that's helpful. That is the first time we've ever been able to achieve that's been a lot of the hard work we've done with Federal Highway in the state of Vermont to kind of bring forward the local interest so that we can all succeed. We understand there's concern with traffic in King and Maple and if we build out all the south end neighborhood transportation facilities that are planned there will be a decrease in traffic in the King and Maple neighborhood over today. So we have a path forward to achieve I think goals that we can all support and it was really just looking at the phasing so we're going to be running like crazy on the rail yard enterprise project and appreciate if we come to you for a fast decision it's it's it's due to our desired expedite not that we're missing dropping balls. Yeah well it's not yeah I mean that rail yard enterprise is like we've you know that has been going on for like five years so at least as a planning study this will be the first time we ever moved to yeah it sounds like you're now like serious and it's really happening so I just wanted to address that because I know it has been a concern with people that I think would be great thanks for that. Yep I just have two quick questions just in your commissioner and your sorry director's report the point about the consolidated collection you mentioned that the hybrid model will be advanced to the city council for consideration the next couple of months I know in the earlier discussions with us I believe we took action on that I'm just wondering if that's coming back to us either for just review or for a vote. We'd be happy to to bring it back either for update or engagement we brought forward your vote which was for the hybrid model five to one the TUC the Transportation Energy and Utilities Committee voted two to one for the municipal model given that there is subcommittee of the city council the council chair made it very clear that they expected what was going to be brought forward would be the recommendation from the council subcommittee so that's why the resolution came forward with a full municipal recommendation and we're happy to continue to engage you and the TUC as we move forward. I was curious about that because I mean and I don't know what consultation the city council makes with us when we make a recommendation and there's a counter recommendation and I just I had no idea what sort of happened at that. Yes it was a very unique scenario that does not happen often but we had counteracting recommendations but the council subcommittee being the formal body that leads up to the council kind of had the right of way so to speak to to bring their item forward. The other question I had has nothing to do with anything we've talked about here but we've talked at length in in the past years about the upgrades to the stormwater and drainage systems in the city and it just struck me as we had a couple of big storms recently and we haven't had any reports of of anything I was just thinking nothing urgent on this but I'd love to at some point hear something about how the upgrades are functioning because it's not be good but I'd love to just get an update at some point. Thank you. We'd love to because the the plan BTV BTV stats excuse me that we are preparing for for next month includes data on the number of CSOs year over year we'd be happy to share that with you that we're continuing the generational trend to reduce the number and the extent of those CSOs but we still have work to do. Great thank you. Kennedy. I just wanted to quickly go back to what Commissioner Barr was saying earlier about the U Heights main street intersection I'm a student at UVM right now and I don't use the intersection very much anymore but I did use it a lot for a few years and I would love to have further conversations about what we can do there and I know a lot of students that care a lot about the intersection so I feel like I could offer a good insight on that. That's excellent. We were talking this week about engaging you and Commissioner Monteneu potentially if you're interested or anybody on the U Heights work given that it has a multi-year trajectory and history and some of the newer commissioners may not be aware of some of that and we'd welcome your engagement and insights into what we may be missing so we'll reach out to you and set that up. Thank you. Let's see what am I going to say. Oh I am glad to hear that the BTB Stat presentation is in the works we'll look forward to seeing that I guess in the past I don't need a full report of it but in the past that's been on your website as well or at least on the city's website that sounds great and I hope things are coalescing on your asset management work as well because one of the things I want to do state allowed for everyone's benefit here is considering a shift in the minutes handling it again I'm just putting that on the consent agenda I've noticed that other city boards in Burlington do that it's just prior minutes are on consent if there's an issue or something of course it can always come off so anyway it's just something that's just to me saved out for everyone's benefit here you know there are some details to sort out exactly like reminding everyone that the minutes of previous meetings are posted within a few days per open meeting law and sorting out procedures again for if there are suggested edits and how we might handle that anyway I guess that's all my news for now with that is that the commission's interest going ahead we can start next month if that's a direction you'd like great I don't think we need a formal motion but I think if I'm not seeing any opposition we'll plan to do that next month great all right with that I will close the commissioner communications and move forward to the next item adjournments and next meeting date november 17th I make a motion to adjourn motion from vice chair new or not going to second from commissioner bar I'll get it closed at the second discussion on that to a vote all in favor aye opposed we are adjourned record record time 746