 It comes with parents not being able to smoothly drop off and pick up as well as the buses. So we tried to shift some spaces around and doing that we reached out to all of the surrounding businesses and the courthouse and the hotels and there's one residence as well and the courthouse did have some concerns. I reached out to them to see if we can get them, if it would help if we got them parking passes which they currently have for the metered spaces which they had been using, I reached out to see if they would like to have parking garage parking passes for their staff. I haven't heard back yet but that is an option that they seemed to be interested in so that may have solved their concern with essentially there was three spaces right in front of the courthouse that they were going to not lose entirely but just have them be loading zones in the morning and the afternoon for the school drop off and pick up so it would still be widely available to them but they had been using those spaces for staff so it could be that the parking garage will solve the problem. I just haven't heard back from them yet but they seemed interested in it. I just never heard the final confirmation. Sure. Thank you. All right. Let's check with the commission if there are specific questions on that. A question or overview. Is there something in particular we're hoping to clarify? Well, I was concerned. I know they're mentioned, the material we had just mentioned that they did have victims that were coming to the court parking in those spots along the back and it looked like there was part of it in our packet, it was missing some other drawing but my concern was that that is the courthouse and they do need to have not just staff parking there during the day but people that are actually coming to court to testify or to be a part of the court case. And so my concern was that they mentioned in their comment that I couldn't tell what other communication, it sounds like there's still ongoing communication about those three spots on the north side of Cherry Street which are being cut back to any time other than the school loading morning and afternoon. But I just wanted to know how that might have been addressed in the fact, it sounds like that's still an open question about that and the parking passes wouldn't really solve that problem. I suppose it would if they didn't use any of their staff there but did they talk with you about options for the victims that would be parking there? So we did talk about the accessible space. We had talked to them to make sure they use, there's an accessible space right in front of there. The courthouse, we checked that they are using that space, they wanted that space so we're keeping that for them. We are right across the street, there is the parking garage that has wide availability for the users of the courthouse as well as the staff. And the spaces will still be metered parking for a majority of the day. That's just in the morning and the afternoon, there will be two windows of time that it is loading or unloading. And there wasn't a proposal to only convert two of them to that. There wasn't any other discussion about that, like leaving one of the three still usable all the day, time, during the courthouse. I don't know, I'm just asking you. Well, the thought is that those spaces can still be used. It's not specific that it is only school loading and unloading, it just happens to align with the school loading and unloading times, but those spaces could still be used for whoever is trying to access the courthouse as well, even in the loading times if they are truly loading and unloading and then if they need to park in the parking garage for long term, they have that option. So as long as that seems to be okay with the courthouse, I know they seem to be concerned. They said that all the north and the south, and this is obviously a temporary thing while the high school is still downtown. However, that is a critical function, the courthouse. And so they're mentioning, just reading their comment, that they lost all of the parking on the south side of Cherry Street initially, and then they lost most of the north side and now this is where they're really losing everything else on the north side. So as long as they're comfortable with that, that's my concern about this. If it could have been adjusted to not take all of those spots, but maybe it's not possible. Yes, it is only six spaces on that north side that in total we are turning into this temporary loading zone with still meter parking for a majority of the day. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Any other comments, questions from the commission? Yeah, it just appears on the engineering document that the parking meter heads are going to be removed for those three parking spots for kiosks. We are planning to put in. Yes. All right. Ultimately. Any other commissioners? Doctor briefly, if anyone's interested in speaking from the public on this item. As of now, there's nobody in queue online here here. All right. We'll get back to the commission for a vote. Motion. Welcome to motion. Yes. That's great. Motion for Commissioner Barr. Thank you. Seconded. Seconded for Commissioner Fox. Is there any discussion around that motion? All right. Let's go to a vote then. Commissioner Damiani. Aye. Commissioner Montanou. Aye. Commissioner Fox. Aye. Commissioner Barr. Aye. Commissioner Overby. Aye. Aye. Ayes for myself. Motion passes to 0. Thank you. Now, we'll get ahead of ourselves before. Now I believe we are on item five. You are crying. Whoa everybody. I just have a presentation that I'll share, just looking at the same thing. Thank you. My name is Juliere Saki. We are here tonight to talk about the Platsburg Ave bike lanes. So just for some brief context, we originally looked at this street because it was paved this past summer and in plan BTV walk bike there are painted bike lanes recommended in the short term on Platsburg Ave, also in the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission's active transportation plan. They have Platsburg Ave as a priority route for bicycle connections and this bike lane on Platsburg Ave would provide key connections between Burlington and Colchester, also connects New North End neighborhoods to the bike lanes on North Ave and access to Flynn Elementary School, which is on North Ave just up the street. So the existing conditions of the road is about 31 feet wide right now. So to fit in the bike lanes we would have to remove the parking lane but no changes to the curb so this can just be accomplished with restriping. The next few slides are the concept plan that were attached to the memo. This is basically showing how that section that we just looked at translates to what would be painted on the ground. I will just note that the design of the North Ave in Platsburg Ave intersection isn't finalized yet. We're still looking at traffic volumes and going to do a traffic model to see if we can make these changes to this intersection. So that's not part of what we're here for tonight. It's just about removing the parking along Platsburg and restriping the bike lanes. So we have them continuing some markings through the intersections along Platsburg Ave and they continue past Turf Road up to Rivers Edge Drive where they'll stop. Currently there's a path a little further to the north over here and I'll talk about later. We're hoping to have another phase of this where we'll get the next step for bicycle connectivity here. As part of this effort we did a bunch of parking counts for the existing on-street parking on Platsburg Ave and we eventually also started looking at the side streets nearby just to figure out if there was enough capacity nearby for the cars that would be displaced from being able to park on Platsburg if they had anywhere else to go. We did see mostly very low parking utilization on Platsburg. The highest number of cars parked we saw was two cars mostly on the weekends out of the approximately 47 spaces there are on the road now and we also saw that there was ample parking on the nearby side streets to accommodate that loss on Platsburg and just for the record there's unrestricted parking on the side streets, Turf Road, Clover Lane and Barley Road. We also considered the possibility of basically widening the road to provide parking and bike lanes just to see what's possible but we determined that it would be too expensive and there is not enough space on the side of the road where the parking currently is because that's where the sidewalk is in all the existing utilities. And then a brief overview of the outreach we've done to date we originally had a neighborhood meeting back in May where we sent mailings to the about 100 residents and property owners along Platsburg Ave telling them about this concept. At the neighborhood meeting we heard concern from the neighborhood about parking loss and in response we decided to do some additional parking counts which we did twice and also traffic counts. And then a few weeks ago in advance of this meeting we sent out another mailing notifying the neighborhood of our recommendation. We also communicated with the New North End counselors that represent this area just to let them know that we were bringing this recommendation tonight. And these bike lanes also have received strong support from the Walk Byte Council and local motion. And like I mentioned before we are thinking about a future phase of how to connect where these bike lanes end up through the 127 corridor all the way up to Colchester. So that's kind of our next step. We just want to acknowledge that we're going to be working on it but we're just trying to take it one step at a time. So that is it. Great. Thank you for the overview. I will bring it back to the commission for any discussion or comments on this. Commissioner Fox. I'll just say I'm really supportive of this change. Someone who lives in this area kind of between the Old North End and the New North End of Burlington and bikes all the time. This is a much needed connection. I'm super grateful for the data collection effort that the Public Works Department put into this. I think it's a really strong case and I see no reason why it shouldn't work. Mr. Barr. Sure. I'm very supportive of this as well. I tend to bike out there quite a bit. I'm just curious if we thought about extending the belt line bike path out to maybe meet this at some point. I'd just like to throw that out there as a possibility because I tend to get off the bike path and then try to find a way to cut through to get to the newest part of the New North End. Yeah. I don't think we thought about that yet specifically but could be part of the future. That's just a fun one and that's a recreation path a lot of folks will use. But I think that it's a great, great thought. We're always going to lose parks here and there but as long as there's zones that people can continue to find parking within the post park. Thank you. Commissioner Damiani. I'm also very supportive of this. I think I'm most excited about that future phase coming off of 127 and sort of speed traffic calming efforts that we can put in place to get cars coming off of that particular road. Commissioner Modena. Yeah. I can be more supportive. I'm excited to see the full implementation once it's beyond just like the colors on the road in some places. But this is certainly a really important step. I got a couple questions actually. The first is about the parts of this plan that might be delayed. So you mentioned it was the North Avenue intersection that there needs to be more work done because you just like elaborate on that a little bit. Yes, absolutely. So to fit the bike lanes through the intersection we would have to remove the right turn lane which is something we brought this a very similar presentation to the neighborhood meeting back in May and heard a lot of concern about losing that right turn lane. So we actually just did a traffic count there recently and are going to look at it in traffic modeling software just to see if you know it works for everyone to remove the lane but if not we're definitely going to work hard to accommodate bikes through the intersection still. Right. And what about the northernmost section between Rivers Edge Drive and Turf Road? Yeah. So we're hoping to have a bike box and make it easy for bikes to get who are traveling northbound to kind of take that left and get onto the path that exists on the west side of the road now and definitely connect into the future phase of hopefully keeping bikes on the road up to the 127 intersection. So is that also waiting just for their study? Yeah. So the future connection is a little complicated because 127 is a limited access highway up to the city limits or where the bridge is which means bikes and pedestrians aren't legally allowed to be on it so we can't put a bike facility on it and also there's the slip ramps the right turn lanes that are pretty dangerous for bikes so we want to look at making that whole intersection a bit more safe before we had a bike facility there. Right. I was referring to like just the one block north of Turf Road so that's still a little bit a little bit of ways from from where it actually becomes a highway where it really meets 127. So these would go all the way to Sunset Drive on Turf. Got you. All right. Cool. Yeah. Very excited. Thank you so so much. Commissioner Overby. I also support the the bike lanes and this change and I had a question about the intersection there at North Ave and Platsburg Avenue as well. Isn't that part of the North Avenue plan there was a whole study done of the whole North Avenue and that might have been one of the intersections that was considered for a roundabout in the future. Is that am I remembering that correctly? Yes. Commissioner Overby you are correct. The North Ave corridor did look at the potential of roundabouts at various intersections. This was one where roundabout was studied. It said that further study was needed but that was a potential improvement along the corridor. Yes. So so so you know I took that because it was Marcus for further study that it wasn't it wasn't relevant to being able to accomplish what we're talking about in this vote. Correct. It's going to be fine to be able to approve this particular proposal that you have now with that in mind that it that decision about how to fix the problem with the right turn lane or the whatever that intersection is can go forward. Am I understanding that? Yes that that there's nothing with the decision tonight that precludes that intersection from receiving improvement in the future regardless of whether it remains signalized or transitions to a roundabout. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Overby. I appreciate the the counts in the data that were shared here as well. I know it's been a gone-out process with a few touch points with public meetings along the way and I appreciate the effort there. Question on what sort of milestones we'd be looking for before we would look at a protected protected bike lane here. Is there any consideration to just doing that now? We did definitely think about that. I think the challenges there are a lot of other places in Burlington that are also waiting for protected bike lanes and our funding constraints and staff capacity is kind of limiting that factor so because this was initially just supposed to be coordinated with paving it was supposed to be kind of an easy we can just restripe it the way we want it kind of no-brainer. That's the direction this is now it wasn't a separate you know we're building the best bike facility we can on Platts for Gav which I think is going to come in the future. I'm not sure when I think once we look at the connections up to Colchester and can make that a little better it's like kind of one step at a time versus trying to do some big project that won't really be on the ground or we won't see an impact for many many years. Yeah I get that thank you we should also say demonstrate our ability to properly maintain and keep the protection up on a bike. That's right bike lanes elsewhere. I think the the other important note is the cross section here it's a limited 31 foot curb to curb and without moving curb the protection zone would be extremely narrow. This is a truck route so it would not only be challenging to maintain but costly and that there are other areas in the city that are probably a higher priority that are definitely a higher priority for that kind of level of protection as we'll be installing soon on North Wienewski at North Champlain Street for example with a two-way protected facility. So we're looking to prioritize the protection in areas where we're going to get a high level of use and a high level of safety benefit. Like the renderings the street mix the street mix stuff there I was wondering if you looked at the 3d rendering tool that sort of like spins off of that. No is it 3d? Yeah it's free and open source it's 3dstreet.org. I believe you can feed it your street mix rendering probably more exciting in places with a little more interesting cross section than what we're looking at here on Plattsburgh. Yeah that's what it could be a fun and easy thing to play around with you know there's uh I haven't tried it myself. It's a thing that's there and available we're trying okay yeah that's all I've got thank you let's open up for public comment the least one take in the room welcome we've got your name on the okay yeah good evening my name is Jeff Comstock from Ward 7 and I happen to live on Plattsburgh Avenue so in my view putting two bike lanes on Plattsburgh Avenue as this proposal does I think is ridiculously unsafe and will be ineffective to provide the key points listed on that Julia provided earlier in terms of neighborhood connection transport to and from Flint School and a connection to Colchester and and I say that because the plan as proposed really doesn't reflect the neighborhood traffic pattern as it exists on the ground and the way the neighborhood actually uses these streets so during the public engagement process the neighborhood actually came up with an alternative proposal that seems to be disregarded in this decision and I'm really troubled by that because I think it's far more elegant than the solution on the table so the neighborhood came up with the idea of that the North Avenue bike lane when it hits that intersection at Plattsburgh Avenue should continue north on the same side of North Avenue to the intersection of Turf Road right across the street from Flint School and one point advantage to that is you're not losing any parking on that side of North Avenue because there is none so what it would do would provide a direct transport route to the intersection of Turf Road and then put the bike lane across Turf Road through the Turf Road neighborhood out to North Avenue at that intersection which is and then from there you could very safely turn left onto the bike path that proceeds to the 127 bridge across the bridge into Colchester and never be crossing traffic for what and so all of the the river's edge condominium neighborhood valade park sunset drive all of those neighborhoods cross north avenue right there at the condominium so that would be the place to route traffic across the road bike traffic and pedestrian traffic across the road that would then and so the bike lane would travel on the west side of Plattsburgh Avenue at that point up to Turf Road cut over through Turf Road neighborhood directly to Flint School because that's the way people use the neighborhood and then again it would facilitate it would facilitate the transition to the Colchester connection much more effectively than this plan would because then there would be no need to cross traffic back across Plattsburgh Avenue to connect to the Colchester connection and I guess the other point I would kind of like to make is that uh in the neighborhood I would say that the loss of parking on Plattsburgh Avenue is a secondary concern to trying to represent a realistic traffic flow pattern within within the neighborhood and by putting the bike lane area on Turf Road you could still use parking on one side of that street and it would be much more efficient or effective for people who were displaced from parking on Turf Road to park on Clover and Barley which is much more nearby than requiring people who live on Plattsburgh Avenue to go all the way around the other side of the block and park on Clover or Turf so I think there's an efficiency to be gained there as well all right so that's that's kind of the highlight that I really would encourage you to reconsider the alternative proposal that the neighborhood you know came up with during the public engagement process and if you have any other questions of me I'd be glad to try to address them I don't at this time thank you I know I think um line of suggestion I think was in some of our you know the public comment that was in our packet as well it's not the first I've heard of it yep I guess I would just sort of add that sort of I think another advantage to this approach is that it would help resolve any of the future traffic management congestions that are concerns that you have about the the Plattsburgh Avenue North Avenue intersection headed and the two lane portion headed south right there I think I think this approach would also eliminate some of those complications as well all right right yeah thank you for your comments anyone else for public comments there's no one currently signed up in queue all right mr. Stoffel speaker earlier um I did this but no one's in queue I guess we could bring it back to the commission welcome a motion on this item if anyone has one I would make a motion to accept second motion from commissioner bar second from commissioner Damiani is there any discussion around the motion I just wanted to bring up one point because what mr. Fransk brought up I I do understand that it might change the uh the dynamics of a part of bikes going along Plattsburgh Avenue but I I did know that that would mean that bikes would have to go against traffic because it's one way coming under the turf so if I understand it right the bikes would come up and go down turf and pick up north avenue if they're going south so all the bikes going north would go where there's no cars right now along the cemetery on Plattsburgh Avenue but the ones coming up if they didn't go down Plattsburgh they would be going against traffic on turf and there's right now two lanes and I use that when I drive there as well from from uh Curtis Avenue and start farm road that area that's that's one of the reasons why I um commissioner Overby I'm a clarification on the questions on the motion I did have I feel like it's really hard for me to understand what this alternative routing is without seeing a map and uh I I'm not sure if that was in materials that I didn't get I got the packet on paper format and if the map of this alternative proposal by the community was in the packet electronically I apologize that I did not get it but I have okay could it that would be helpful where where what is the route that we're talking about that was proposed by the gentleman that just spoke can you see my mouse I can see your map okay I don't know why the labels aren't loading but this here is turf road and then that little piece of barley and then this is north app okay so that's the route so the proposal is to just continue straight up and then cut over okay so I mean it looks like that's an alternative but um it looks like most people would not take that route were they trying to get to Colchester in the future so ultimately we're going to end up where we are with this proposal anyway having like you know having the bike lanes on Platsburg Avenue just I know we've had the the the wiggle in the old north end and I had a concern about having a route that was set that just didn't you know make make sense for people that are just trying to expeditions to get from point A to point B but thank you for showing me the map and I I see that it could be definitely could be used but it seems like it's probably going to be both both of those routes for bicycles probably make sense so that that helps me out where where turf road was thank you very much sure we have a motion that's been seconded is there any other discussion around the motion all right let's go to a vote then commissioner Fox hi mr. Barr hi mr. Mutanu hi mr. Damiani hi mr. Overby hi hi for myself motions past six zero thank you very much thank you moving forward item six north and east you have update great thank you all joining me is Philip Peterson now with the PE license great power comes great responsibility great we're going to tag team and he brought the memo and I didn't so thank you for for that Philip so basically we're not seeking any approvals tonight but as the commission has requested for complicated complex items you've asked us to do it in a two-step process wherever possible and so what we'd like to do tonight is just give you an update of our work to date and telegraph that at the january 2023 meeting we're likely bringing forward traffic regulation changes to adjust the regulations on the parking that's remaining on north Winooski Avenue between Union Street and Riverside Avenue as you all may recall the council city council has supported the implementation of a Winooski Avenue transportation study which was a corridor study but they asked in this latest resolution that they passed for us to delay the paving a year and the restriping a year which we have done they have asked us to work with businesses to maximize shared parking and off street parking because with this phased implementation it will remove parking from Union Street up to Riverside Avenue on the east side of the street 40 spaces will be removed it's around I think 40 percent of the parking that's in that section there's more parking on the west side so with that Philip and I and many others on this team have been working to carry out the council's direction and so Philip's going to run through some of the initiatives that he has coordinated I'll talk about some of the ones I have coordinated and then in January we'll be looking for you to change the regulation of the remaining spaces to best meet the needs of the residents businesses and visitors of the corridor so baked into the city council's resolution at the march meeting was 15 000 dollars in seed funding for transportation demand management grants to be distributed to folks along north Winooski Avenue from Union to Riverside nonprofits businesses alike so that they could take advantage of that I provided that information in the memo I believe I had a chance to review it we did distribute those funds some were as simple as we're going to install a bike rack for them some were more complex CHCB would like to do a survey through CATMA to get an understanding on their patients transportation demand needs coming to CHCB so along with that I've been looking at geometric things that we can do possibly putting in some curb extensions so we can get a couple more parking spaces in there it's not the best solution but every space counts at this point and with that I'm what what's going to happen in December we'll send off mailers to folks along north Winooski Avenue letting them know what our intentions are to proceed with some recommendations to do the parking removal and then engage with the public directly through email through knocking on doors I'm sure we'll be talking to folks directly there are a lot of needs out there in terms of time limited parking there's daycare restaurants you name it and all these folks have different needs competing needs in the streets and now we want to provide resources for those folks in this transition time period and then I think Chapin can talk about some of the public parking on street that's right so coordinated with the work Phillips been doing I've been connecting with property owners and businesses along the corridor to help open up shared parking so that if they needed their parking say during business hours Monday through Friday could they make their parking available to customers on nights and weekends we have made some progress it has been slow and small at this point we have indication from the Burlington Housing Authority that they're willing to share six spaces of theirs to the community health center of Burlington which is CHCB for their employees or patients so they are negotiating that but a number of businesses have been reluctant to share their parking out of concern of liability or of their own primary needs so what the city is preparing to do is put together a proposal where we would offer a turn key program right now the city manages the parking for Champlain College under 194 St. Paul Street which was developed on an old municipal parking lot it's Brown's Court for those who remember and the commission had approved that effort so the city has precedent for enforcing and managing private lots on others property and our proposal will be to do the same here which would relieve the burden from the property owners of having to manage off-peak parking and we would provide a a share of the revenue a majority of the revenue that would be shared with the property owner such that it would be financially beneficial to them to to utilize this service if so interested so we will be sharing that with them in the next couple of weeks hopefully that will generate some additional interest and I have also been in discussions with the community health center of Burlington around developing off-street parking for them there are two potential property owners adjacent to the community health center of Burlington where off-street parking could potentially be accommodated the community health center Burlington is working with a consultant that's exploring this option uh they community health center Burlington has asked us to look for grant opportunities where the city may be able to help fund the project they estimate that the uh projects that they've been just roughly estimating would be somewhere in the realm of five hundred thousand dollars for these off-street uh lots and as you may know the community health center of Burlington their employees and their customers currently use a lot of the parking on North Winieski Avenue and surrounding streets because they're on uh on their their on-site parking is insufficient to meet their current need so um that is the update we are also committing to ongoing neighborhood outreach we've told the council that we will have at least quarterly updates to the community as this moves forward paving is scheduled for next summer uh v-trans is doing the work as North Winieski Avenue is a class one town highway uh and the parking changes would be made at that time I always gloss over the fact and I probably should be explicit that the reason we're making this change in alignment on this section is to finish the final gap in a city of Winieski all the way to the south end of Burlington uh bike lane connection with all the other changes that we've made in the city we have this one gap in the system and uh while this change does impact 40 spaces in a vibrant area we're committed to minimizing that impact to a great extent possible thank you great thanks for the overview bringing back to the commission for discussion from uh question from Damiani yeah I I just have two questions and comments one is that for the public outreach that occurs in that neighborhood I just asked that some of that happened sort of right before shift times started especially at the local restaurants along that corridor I know a lot of folks who work at those restaurants spoke out at previous public period um and then speaking to that too I I wasn't sure I know that the particular part that we're looking at is just the parking regulations but I was just curious if there was any um discussion around any sort of infrastructure improvements to the surrounding neighborhoods where folks may park um on those side streets in terms of public safety I don't know what those exact improvements would be but something's addressed many of the public safety concerns that were brought up um during past public meetings um I am not aware of a discussion that we've had of any changes on side streets we have made some minor tweaks to signage to help compliance on some of the side streets if there are concerns such as with lighting Burlington Electric is a good partner with us and they are the ones who evaluate lighting levels and can increase the the brightness of a particular street for it to meet their standard so if there are concerns on particular corridors with light levels then contact us or Burlington Electric. Thank you. Mr. Montana. I guess I just have one quick question regarding this plan to develop off street parking uh what are the what what what other like specific updates do you have like where might these lots be how'd you come to this $500,000 number and like what other parties are involved in seeking this grant funding and then executing this plan. Right um thank you uh we've been in communication with community health center of Burlington and then they have been in communication as have we with some of their adjacent property owners particularly Charlebois rigging and Queen City Steel. They're both vibrant businesses in the city with their own operational needs but there are conversations about working with them to explore off street parking in their facilities. There are significant geotechnical concerns there's significant elevation gained between both of those properties in the community health center of Burlington so whether it's uh bank stability which we you all have heard about along the Riverside Avenue corridor for the parking areas or simply uh pedestrian access up to the building itself are going to be uh challenges that need to be addressed and designed so uh the community if if the city was desirous of of exploring a municipally run facility we could uh have those discussions at this point we've really advanced uh the communications is how can we help CHCB meet their parking needs uh and we can look for funding we can help provide guidance we have offered our engineers to provide some conceptual support they have their own consultants on board and have not tapped that but we are aware that while ultimately their parking need they need to lead that effort to meet their need we understand this change on street is precipitated from the rebalancing of the street which is an effort that we are advancing so we have a role to play at this point our role has been supportive but we're open to hearing from others if there's a different role you suggest we play thank you for that update that's all for now all right uh to the phone Commissioner Overby I am I just want to first say that I am very impressed with the process that's been taken with this project um and the and the department's efforts to to to work with everybody and willingness to delay and figure things out because this is really um a challenging area for everybody but I just want to I I want to commend the department for the way this has been handled and the continuing effort to integrate all the various needs and and and interests um and particularly the suggestion the comment that was just made about the possibilities of parking structures down on off the intervail road section there for those other businesses because I know we've talked in the past about I know this is a focus of right now community health center meeting parking but in fact the some of the problems we have in Burlington all these parking problems have to do with people who need to store their vehicles on the street and that does not leave parking for people that need to come and go to a business or a job or as a patient so the idea of maybe even considering things like a city facility or or I mean there's another parking facility down on intervail road opens a possibility for something like a long-term parking structure that people could use and then the parking their vehicles very accessible whether it's just chtp you know the community health people but in the future so I'm I'm just want to state first that I'm really impressed with the way that process is working things like this that come about when you do take the time to let everybody put some input and chew it around and push it around very impressive how this is going and I appreciate that effort the other thing I wanted to just mention in the comment in the comment about green mountain transit being uh added encouraged to continue doing the free uh transit I think one of the challenges to green mountain transit and and it is there is a marketing of it and so a lot of the transportation demand uh issues that people just are not riding the bus and not because they they don't want to it's they just aren't really familiar with the routes and the timing and how convenient it is and where they come and go from so that suggestion that green mountain transit have have that route to continue and I think it was called the uh city loop uh it needs to be marketed so that people know very clearly where that city loop is because I'll I'll bet you a lot of people that live along the city loop don't even know where that looks or they might not know where the other you know the route nine bus that goes between downtown Burlington and downtown runuski so I'm impressed with this um project and I know it's going to be painful for some of the people along north runuski that would you know are comfortable with what we have but I I I feel like we're moving in the right direction and it's going to make it easier for people to to commute back and forth and many more bicyclists I think are going to then make use of coming into the neighborhood on a on a bicycle or the bus if we can do a good job of marketing all those other other options um and then there will be and if you remove people that are storing their vehicle on the street then that leaves more spaces for those people that do need them to go to the restaurant or to shop uh because they're not just people that need their vehicle to go skiing on weekends but they leave them there for the rest of the time so congratulations this is really moving in in a direction that I'm happy to see and I I appreciate the effort thank you very much thank you pressure box um I really appreciate the update the only question I had that director spencer kind of already answered was um yeah around like the precedent for the parking agreements with the city as a person who manages parking and understands that the city also does a lot of managing of parking I feel like there are ways to ease not easily but to address those liability concerns with like really short to like kind of template contract language and that sort of thing so I appreciate that that is an approach that the city thought of and is working with the businesses on um because it's creative and I think it could be a good good strategy here um but yeah that was the only thought I had on this one thank you pressure box so I guess I'd like to say very well booked all of the descriptions and it makes it very easily understandable um but the plight of TDM and trying to make sure that communicate all the different transportation options is something that's going to continue to be a struggle because as people are used to driving single occupancy vehicles and parking them they are just used to that and they don't a lot of people think that cyclists are for recreation when in some cases that's the only way that some people can get around so we really do need to make sure that the streets are complete and they're used for all modes so I know that it's a pain for some of the folks that might park in those 40 spaces but if they are found for them I think that that's that's definitely the direction we need to keep going so I appreciate everybody's work towards that thank you thank you yeah I'm excited to see the uh the progress here and the innovative options we're pursuing I wish you the best in uh in that um I want to mention um myself and Vice Chair O'Neil Ivanko had a good conversation with a woman from AALV at the transportation summit last month and I could share her contact info offline but I just want to um point out again that like they're a great resource for connecting with the new American communities and it's a good one helping um that idea is for engaging with different segments of our communities that we don't often catch from our regular meeting cycles yeah another uh question with it we are the paving in 23 we aiming for protected bike lanes there no no they would be painted at this stage of the game uh one on each side no no just yeah yeah it would be yeah yeah thank you we end up with uh with a very similar constraint it's a cross section constraint in order to keep one set of parking the lanes are going to be close to minimums and so there is no room for protection without moving curb which could be a subsequent phase uh of the project but is beyond the financial means at this time yeah okay um I don't know top of this that's come up cage I know we brought it up last year it was brought up in public comment earlier this fall on uh Zones residential parking and I wonder in in cases like this where it's obviously the parking's tight I wonder if his own residential parking permits could provide some additional flexibility here and what it would take I obviously that's conversation not just for a forum that's sitting here tonight there are other uh right city boards it play with that here's what you think right it is it is a possible tool it's one of the tools that was mentioned in the north winewski uh parking plan to look at uh it does come with pros and cons uh and one of the things that we thought is moving up the level of regulation is to work with time limited parking first we believe that time limited parking throughout the day at least during peak times would uh limit the number of people who are storing their car on the street because there would be a requirement to move it at least once a day so we think that that's going to be able to get cars rotating and moving if neighbors don't find that to be sufficient we can go up the regulatory ladder the challenges it brings registrations in people need to pay for it it requires you know more due diligence of people on the street when they have guests come by it so it it has some implications and given that this is a commercial corridor uh with commercial needs uh it just it's a level of of complexity we're hoping we can address without going uh that direction yeah the issue is like public parking for folks to come restaurants things like that okay yeah that's more the constraint and we want to drive people who live in the area to use the lots off street to the greatest extent possible not use the precious on street resource that are yes being used heavily by commercial users I appreciate the unique thinking and it's something that's on my list and I would love the contact information for the gal yeah we'll do okay is there we're on a we're on a good path here like the preview in advance of um any need of votes on it I feel like the curious what it would take to to make those the zone residential parking happen like even if it's not the right thing now for norwood woosky could we have is there something like do we need ordinance changes or something that we need to like where we need to get it in the queue this year to be able to do it next year somewhere else we can definitely take a look at that I believe that we can just establish an area that may include multiple different streets as the same zone but we'll double check in ordinance that that there's an easy fix that wouldn't require we we have done that before when there's been paving projects get the streets on the uvm campus that we allowed to park on another street so we created a temporary zone during construction season I think it's like three years so we have done that and we've had to look at things for like corner lots absolutely addresses on the street right that help with my driveways here we'll take a look at ordinance and see if any changes are required I think one of the x factors here is there's a lot of social engineering it's going to go into this because you know the folks in the community have to sign off great uh nothing further on my end it's enough for public comments jason stuff will you are in view and I'll ask if you can hear me okay hopefully yeah loud and clear okay nice perfect um yeah I would just say I'm my only comment it's on the zone residential parking that um that's something that makes sense to have citywide to be flexible with the parking uh on cold chest or avid currently makes sense because eventually all that parking is going to be removed and I say like I had a cold chest or ab residential pass still do where I can park a thousand feet away from my house but Nash play sets like 150 feet away I can't park on there so it doesn't make sense kind of from that logistical standpoint but um another area that makes sense is on flin av where there's only a bike lane on one side and not the other and I see very few cars park there but there's plenty of side streets there that um you could park on but they're kind of residential only for that only street so I think it would just make a better flexible system and if maybe it's not applied here uh please pursue that for just future um city you know parking resources to make them not strictly by a street basis because that doesn't always make sense so thank you all right that's it for uh public comment you okay great we got everyone from the commission all right we're not seeking any action at this time oh yeah I appreciate the preview and all the work behind us thank you all right moving forward to uh director's report great thank you uh I'll start off and then uh ask uh city engineer nor baldwin uh what I might have forgotten here um the big update for um for the commission was related to green mountain transit in my packet uh as uh as you may know uh Burlington is looking at a significant assessment increase this year and in addition GMT in order to balance the budget is looking to reinstate fares as of FY 24 and I know the community has been very interested in keeping fare free and so I am working as a commissioner to advance efforts to look at changing the way transit is funded which relies heavily on uh local member assessments Burlington pays over half of all member assessments in the region and property tax for transit if we truly want to grow transit is going to be a very difficult funding mechanism to grow our transit service so um we have asked GMT finance director nick fos to join us uh at the um next Transpatient Energy Utilities Committee meeting on the 22nd I believe of this month is that right 22nd so the public's welcome to come to that 5 p.m and we'll have a discussion both about expanding service uh regional funding and the FY 24 assessments uh project updates I'm really excited to announce uh last time we talked about the roundabout moving towards completion the opening celebratory event is going to be tomorrow at 10 a.m you're welcome to come join us uh the mayor and leaders from the state will be uh celebrating the opening of the facility tomorrow we will also be having an opening for university place in the coming weeks so those are my major updates norm what else is covered most everything except uh one important point and that is uh as you're aware we've been down staff particularly two positions more recently when Nicole Losch's departure and Elizabeth Ross's departure and our transportation team and you you heard some of the good work that Julia is doing to continue to push forward with some of the active transportation our intent was to have three people really committed to that work to make significant progress as it relates to traffic calming and and uh bike and walk facilities and um happy to announce that we actually have offered and filled the two positions we have a senior planner his his name is Dayton Crites and then the planner is Ravi I can't pronounce his last name but they are intending to be here at the end of December so we're excited to have them on board I think they'll be really great addition to my team and we're looking forward to having us make significant progress on things that have kind of been sitting latent and we've been struggling so the public expects us to begin to really push hard and we're going to be trying to do that thank you that's great to hear thank you bumping up our uh expectations yes good yes norm's team's been under staff for a while very appreciative of the extra effort you saw most of the team tonight and uh I had the team presenting early this morning at btv stat so people put in a long day today that's it uh mr goulding anything else he hit it all right great thank you all right thanks so much with that uh move forward to item eight commissioner communications it's uh start down here mr fox i'll be honest i don't i don't have any comments all right it's time thank you mr bar mr overby i just had one question about it looks like you've been doing some white crosswalk striping have i noticed that is there a change in some of the method method of doing the crosswalk striping from the the red fake brick to the white striping which i know has been advocated by a former dpw commissioner for years that is that i spoke to that former dpw commissioner just yesterday he was very engaged um yes we have been transitioning away from the red brick crosswalks greatest concern is that they have been slippery under wet conditions and they also are not as visible so we are transitioning to the traditional continental markings around the city and that's also been helpful was we've been short on labor on our striping crews and it's easier to manage one paint color than two paint colors so i understand it's a little bit of a transition i but happy to get feedback from the commission so we're frank textured asphalt yeah yeah thank you very much for that i i do think that they stand out the white striping stands out quite a bit more and i noticed it on mansfield avenue but i i am sure that former dpw commissioner is very happy to see that take place and i'm glad you had a conversation with him yeah thank you thank you commissioner damiani my only comment was around uh temporary sidewalks specifically around the south end city market area with the construction and uh for the shampoam parkway um i've been traveling that particular quarter a lot lately and um i'm just worried about sort of the ADA accessibility of the gravel that's currently out there for that particular i think it's on the north side of flannab right now um even just crossing it yesterday in the morning uh i would i think i would find it pretty difficult if i was using a walk or some sort of mobility device to to get across that particular area specifically to um a local grocery store in that area sort of hatens the attention for me for that particular section and i don't know what in the future can be done to sort of improve that temporary yep so i would not disagree with you and as a matter of fact the last two or three weeks we've been pressing the contractor to to be more mindful of that issue along with uh traffic control signage that's in bike lanes and so we're we're working with both the contractor and our re to make sure that they have some higher degree of sensitivity to those issues than they have in recent past i know that they're pushing hard to get this utility work done on flannab before cold hits and we have no asphalt but that doesn't excuse the fact that we need to make sure it's reasonably accessible and safe for all modes so thank you yeah okay thank you mr mutana uh no real comments but i'm happy to see that the work on the marketplace garage is moving ahead um yeah certainly really really important work and especially as we move on to looking at what the long-term future um of that site is we're i'm excited to be part of that conversation all right thank you um whole things on the uh the leaf pickup but my public eye seemed like it was timed well i don't know if you were chatting with the arborist or just lucked out there but it's uh you feel well clean whether you need to you know we're pushing late foliage ish here yeah pushing us to go a week later and uh right between them is now yeah nicely done uh glad to hear on the the hiring updates that's exciting i noticed that those positions were no longer listed and i was hoping to hear that thank you um a couple um things i noticed a lot of like digging in the right-of-way rounds down of late on the union and bank and cliff and all over the area once in a while down excavator deep in the in the road i was curious if that's the kind of thing i don't know you know it's probably i'm guessing not terribly well planned or like i don't know if that makes it on the construction portal or if you ever get inquiries like that but i'm curious maybe um mr gulding is for like i don't know ad hoc or emergency stuff or like though people are digging what's going on questions obviously like i'm it wasn't like a part of my house so i would have been notified i'm sort of walking by like yeah um do you have a a means to get that information out there a place for people to check or yeah certainly that's a rather digging in the road that's a great question i think um projects like that tend to fall in a couple different buckets one of which would be the long-term projects we know about that would be on the construction portal that we hope people are checking first um so that's number one number uh it as a caveat to that and that's going to apply to all of these if we if this is a project that's going to lead to any kind of utility impacts like loss of water on our end or any kind of major traffic disruption that we can foresee any kind of traffic control that's really going to disrupt the public and that we can give actionable info for we are going to use the vt alert system at this point depending on the area of the city depending on the level of impact we can reach up to about 1215 thousand people with a text message within seconds or minutes so that kind of applies for any of the these buckets i talked about so there's the long-term buckets there's the short-term kind of we recognize there's something in the right of way that needs to happen in an actionable kind of quick way we had a few incidents on pine street recently similarly we've used vt alert social media uh one of the some of the feedback we get from social media is number one the metrics are just down since the pandemic for some reason we talked to other kind of communications departments in the city and so we don't get eyes on that as much and the other kind of level of feedback we've gotten is that that just doesn't reach people as in targeted a way so we're using more travel advisory language on our website big yellow block letters on the top of the website vt alert for things that we can predict that we know about that is fed to me in a kind of timely useful way there are i think a third bucket that crosses our excavation inspector shop which if it's a private project that's doing any kind of digging on their own or any kind of project that's encumbering part of their property that doesn't often get to us we do have a certain level of requirement for the contractor to meet norm may have more articulation to say about that but like if there are certain levels of impact will require certain signage will require certain outreach to a budding neighbors if that does reach me and we've determined that that's a large enough project we're going to use similar systems but for the public i think what you're asking for is like what actionable info can we say to the public so that they can feel informed i'd really encourage people to sign up for vt alert you'll get texts you'll get emails and in certain cases robo auto calls if it's a certain level of impact like a boil water advisory i would say check our website berlingtonbt.gov forward slash dpw we're using a lot more of quick hit kind of language social media yes but uh front porch forum i i should also put in kind of the top tier we've uh greatly expanded across division across the board our use of that there are some projects where we've deemed and it's either gotten to us late gotten to me late or we've deemed just doesn't have the level of impact where we're not doing anything but if you are seeing things that a is disrupting daily life or b you think the public should know about we'd like to know we're doing some soil boring work on the water resources and to do some kind of inventorying of our subsurface soil conditions around the city we have done some targeted front porch forum outreach about that we haven't done that much more but it's it's important work and it's pretty interesting for folks who are into that so there's a kind of top tier bt alert from porch forum uh check our website and then there's you know if you're on social media hopefully you're coming across our page and our posts and you should see most of what we're up to there so uh your comments have kind of prompted me to kind of here's an opportunity for the public to see or hear some key points here so the parkway itself in the construction that's ongoing is crossing and intersecting major streets they're crossing and intersecting flint avenue our longer history was sears lane you know it's flint avenue and now we're slowly progressing south and impacting home avenue so it's important that people are aware of our project website to sign up to get our weekly construction updates and uh to check in we are making an active effort to actually as of this evening uh put uh hangers on door hangers for residents west of home avenue that are directly impacted by what could be what is future work to do uh stormwater water supply work within home avenue it's also worth noting come spring there's going to be significant impacts to make improvements to those rail crossings that are associated with the project so people should hopefully be aware of the website but we're trying to actively get them signed up to get weekly updates and uh we'll see how it goes but this is kind of a chance to kind of sell to the world that there is a lot of activity there and is there's going to be disruption and I think no one likes surprises and who try to try to get the word out as much as we can but for whatever reason we don't hit everyone that's impacted by it and if we can really kind of get the word out then people are less surprised and it's less of struggle for everybody because everyone has to live their lives and get to work and so on and so forth and we're trying to be as least disruptive as possible but it's a very disruptive activity well said thank you um I see front porch forum is neighborhood specific which is great uh the vt alerts is that generally like a general like brilliant infrastructure or is that more targeted to area so for vt alert it's it's really become a really important tool that we've uh I think used almost exclusively in the city we have helped parks uh get set up for some of the beach issues they might encounter on cyanobacteria as well as cedo now with warming shelters we've trained their staff but basically uh with vt alert um we have a couple different tiers we've sketched out a process internally uh in how we want to use it and so so basically um we can get we can send out citywide alerts to registered users uh via text via email and via robocall which we're not using often we don't want to hit uh you know alert fatigue um so that can be citywide for registered users on anything but basically major traffic related impacts uh like pine street issues north ave issues um when it comes to traffic uh we're actionable details we can share with the public that's where we're using the uh the specific and i should add for the public and for the benefit of the commission we do have a website access right off of our homepage that kind of lays out how we use vt alert but basically you can sign up for road uh you know road issues uh construction related traffic impacts i should say you can sign up for boil water advisories you can sign up for snow ban winter parking ban issues you can sign up for beach closure notices and those would be specific categories you're choosing um there is a level of impact like a boil water advisory without regard for what you've signed up for as a member of the public we want you to know and we want you to know quick so that's going out to anybody who's registered to receive any city burlington alert um you can sign up for the benefit of the commission for the benefit of folks who may not be burlington residents you can sign up for any number of addresses in vermont so we are encouraging business owners folks who might have uh older residents older family members who live in town you can sign up for burlington alerts you can sign up for specific address alerts um so that way you can stay informed if you own a business if you have a relative that lives in town um i hope i've answered your question yeah yeah i think so and thanks for the overview i feel like i've signed up to a bunch of those so i forget those there's a number of options we want you to hear from me but not too much the ability for us to draw a map is huge and so for water main breaks such as on uh new north end we had on staniford last year able to draw uh you know polygon around the folks who are going to get impacted and just vermont alert them so the tool is really powerful we are going to stick with it for the long term so really encourage people to sign up great thank you so the champlain parkway's project is champlain parkway dot com so people want to look and see and check it out excellent yeah and i'm sure and of course like your regular updates sort of every once in a while plugged up oh yeah there's the yeah newsletter if you're if you really want to get directly up thank you um last thing along the lines you know at times when there's been a for like a pop-up or like a pop-up bike lane or something there'll be like a a sign with a qr thing but what is this what is a rain guard there what what is a whatever with the like a qr links to the project yeah it might um i don't have ever in the habit of like digging a bunch of holes in the route have a little a little a little sandwich board like uh water improvements in work or yeah planning for prepping for next year's water improvements yeah whatever yeah the long signs have been a big hit we'll continue to use those for our class signs yeah great all right um nothing further on my end appreciate all the the updates here with that forward to item nine motion to the jury i remember the next meeting day hang on we've got a motion from commissioner bar here is that a second i heard yeah for a second third whatever we have a second from commissioner muntenu excellence any discussion around the motion uh maybe yes are we all good with that date of the 21st it's close to some major holidays do we have a quorum maybe an early afternoon others sounding okay for the 21st okay we'll try to make it a short agenda yeah thank you we'll plan as if it's uh happening December 21 yeah all right great thanks for the discussion under adjournment any other uh discussion on this motion let's go to a vote then to the phone uh commissioner overby hi mr fox hi mr bar hi mr damiani i mr muntenu hi i for myself we adjourn to 756 good evening all all right thank you