 It is 5.30. I will call the meetings and public works to order. I'll start with roll call. All the person cells are here. All the person Raimi here. All the person Ross present. All the person Hyman here and all the person Decker is here. So we will start with the budget. Congratulations to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God. Inevitable liberty and justice for all. We'll start out with a quick introduction. All the person Decker chair of the committee from our district 6. All of enjoy them in that district. So sign orders across district 8 by share older Angela Raimi. Older Anna Salazar district 3. As major legal for in Louisville just here with I guess you're going to act of transportation just listening to Steve Jorgensen interested citizen. Joel Coles D.P.W. Joe Curlin D.P.W. Jordan skip D.P.W. Stacy Westlejack P.D. D.P. Heather Burke D.P.W. David Bebel Public Works Department. Change it up. I'm Ryan. Just go to number 5 approval minutes from November 14th 2023. I move to approve the minutes. Second. Great. Second. Any discussion on those minutes. All in favor. Aye. Opposed. Chair votes aye. Those are approved. Okay. Number 6. General Ordinance number twenty nine twenty three twenty four. Darvins commending sections. Fifty four dash three ninety seven fifty four dash three ninety eight fifty four dash three ninety nine of the municipal code. The sewers and sewerage disposals as to make changes to service charges. Director. Well. We're going to defer to Jordan as the budget was passed as part of that. Now we have to set the rates since the budget's been established. That helps then Jordan in the waste department plan set the rates and that's what's before you and I can let Jordan dive into the details of that. Thank you and I think many of you have seen this annually before we're toward the end of the year we review where expenses have come in from this past year what the budget looks like for next year. And then pretty complex rate tool that Donahue Associates helped put together several years ago basically used to advise us on whether certain rates within our structure need to be updated. This year there is recommended a small rate increase for volume for fixed which basically means two dollars a quarter for your for every customer. So that's just a four percent increase there going from fifty to fifty two. We're also looking at a little more significant increases for specifically for industries or communities that have a higher than average concentration of phosphorus. That's going up about six point two percent and then also volume rates. So basically the amount of volume that we get from the outlying communities. Shabodian Falls, Kohler, Wilson Town of Shabodian their volume rates would also go up about six percent. Basically this rate tool takes a look at what our expenses are in these different categories. How much volume how much we call loading or strength is coming from these various industries or communities and then calculates whether our pass rates are sufficient for moving forward and fair. And so it's a good tool. It's very complex, but I'd be happy to sit down with somebody and show them what I've learned of it so far, although there are mysteries that remain in there. For the most part, those are the biggest changes for proposed for 2024. Also, we are adding a separate hold in waste category in the past. We've had holding tank waste and septic waste at a relatively low price. And what we were finding is that when porta potties are brought in and that waste is dumped, it is much stronger than those other waste. And so what we were charging was not adequate to cover our treatment costs. And so we've created a new category and that's significantly higher price than what those other two existing categories are. But for the most part, I think that the rates are fair. We've tried to keep them as low as we can. We've also communicated these proposals to the holders and to the town of Wilson and town of Sheboygan, specifically, we're asking about them. And we really occurred significant concern and it really recognizes that, you know, costs just tend to go up. So how does this affect the constituents? So our average city resident will see about a 2% increase and that's only based on that fixed fee. Roughly like, it will be $8 a year $2 a quarter. Some of the industries within the city might see their prices go up some more because of that phosphorus component. But again, that depends on whether it's an industry that has high phosphorus in their waste products. Okay, the outsliding area is Sheboygan Falls, town of Wilson. If they've already established their budget as to what they thought the fee was going to be, does that when they come back to us and say, hey, we didn't budget for that? Or the automatic, they just say, okay, well, they kind of have the service. So it's not like you're going to shut us off. I don't know what their inner workings are. I do know that I did bounce these numbers off of, again, Wilson, Sheboygan, town of Sheboygan about a month ago. And so our hope was that they would have at least that picture in mind before some of their budget decisions had to be made. And I didn't hear any significant concerns. So, but yeah, that is definitely a concern. My understanding is that especially the town of Sheboygan was also facing significant increases already. So they might have accounted for some of this going. You know what they prepare. Right, exactly. Thanks. How do you account for the phosphorus in, like, say, Sheboygan Falls? Like, their industries and their, there's just bulk and that's what it is. It's bulk. Essentially what we do is the waste that we get from those communities are all come in one pipe. And so they're sampled and reared together. So we as the city of Sheboygan don't know what's coming from industry, what's coming from the households in the community. We just know here's what Sheboygan Falls is sending us. Here's their bill based on that. Okay. Any other questions? I guess I'm looking for a motion. I moved it. That's the ordinance. I'll second. I'll submit and second it. Any other discussion? All in favor? Aye. Chair votes. Aye. That is approved. Okay. Number seven resolution number 104, 2324 resolution, authorizing staff to file a claim in the multi-district litigation settlement, an aqueous film forming product liability litigation. District court for the district of South Carolina, master docket number two, 1-8-MN-2873, M-G. Alder Decker, you passed the test. You made that as difficult. I say five times faster. I was like, who's taking this one? I will. We are asking that staff be authorized to file a claim in the 3M, Dupont PFOS litigation. There is a class action lawsuit that has reached settlement stage. We believe that we may be eligible for some money out of this lawsuit, but because of our testing results, which have been very, very low, thankfully, we think our payout will be on the smaller side of things. We won't know for sure what our payout would be until we would file that claim and work with the claims administrator, but they've provided councils with, or city attorneys with a table that says the payout may be anywhere up to nine million depending on the flow rate and how much PFOS is detected. We pull our water from Lake Michigan and we test it regularly. We have had two historical tests that have had some presence, but it has been very small. We don't know if it's below any thresholds by the state or the federal government, and our most recent test result was negative, so we're thankful for that. But we do want staff does support getting into this litigation to receive some money that we can use to improve our filtration systems if PFOS increases in the lake. By signing on to this, we're releasing 3M and DuPont from further liability. That goes along with any class action lawsuit, right? You agree to take a certain amount, a certain payout in exchange for money from water. There is a concern that this happened with the opioid litigation a year or two ago. The state government set a limit if your municipality hadn't opted into the class action lawsuit or the deadline, the state preempted cities from signing on. So we learned from that and have decided that the sit back and watch approach is maybe not a city's best interest. So if we can get this money for a better filtration system, we'd like to take advantage of that. Any questions? Would this resolution state that all the money we would get would go towards filtration systems? There are terms within the settlement that say how the money can be spent. Thank you. Any other questions? I think this is, you know, PFOS are concerned. We've been reading more and more about it. We've been talking about it at the conference over in Green Bay. I think that anything we can do to minimize any chances of us having problems in the future is as imprudent for us. So I guess I'll just... Just a quick... Liz, is this only for water supply systems? Yes. Okay. So Jordan, I guess for wastewater, we'll have to pursue... That's what he's jacking up rates. Well, because the wastewater does get... not all of the water necessarily is derived from Lake Michigan because some of the communities we serve have well water and they may have higher concentrations that Jordan may have versus certainly many of the industries in Chicago that generate some. And this is... Wastewater tends to be kind of a... The main focus right now is drinking water and probably that's where it should be, but wastewater will be a consideration both with the biosolids that we generate as well as the water that gets put back into Lake Michigan. Our current treatment does not really address PFOS at all. There's a pretty significant concern on the wastewater side down the road that the DNR, the state, the EPA will look to water treatment plants to handle it even though we're not the generator of it. Pretty big concern. And so that's an excellent question just because we would like to know that if there is some sort of settlement in the future with the wastewater side that this doesn't tire hands in that way. Sure. And I'll make a note in my litigation memo to the city attorney that that's something that we should stay on top of and follow up as needed. I have a question, but probably isn't someone here to answer. And that would be, do we have any of the firefighting foam in stock in our fire department? And is there something about disposal of that because that's one of the biggest contributors of PFOS and the area is the firefighting foam? Locally, that is one of the largest contributors nationally and this was a surprise to me. One of the largest contributors is the Department of Defense. I don't know whether our fire department uses compression foam. Okay. It wouldn't surprise me if the county used it. I understand that it is used regularly at airports. Yeah. I'm not aware of any gold company that would be manufacturing or testing PFOS type chemicals within our watershed, not to say that they, they could be either. I just don't know. Mr. Chairman, to answer part of your question, I believe we do have, we have it available. We don't necessarily use it regularly. We just use it head to and we don't use it the larger. I believe there's a replacement now for it. So I didn't know if there's something for us. If there's some kind of a fund or something to get rid of this that we have and replace it with non-PFOS. I guess that's a question for us. That's not a question I know. That's a very cheap question. Okay. I guess anybody else has any other comments or concerns? Can we, so I'm looking for a motion? I move to adopt resolution. Second. Motion's made seconded. I'm in the discussion. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Chair votes aye. That is approved. Okay. Number eight, resolution number 962324. Resolution directing staff to develop complete streets policy to improve citizen accessibility and all forms of mobility within our community and to increase safety, comfortable and conventional convenient travel while promoting public health and sustainable environmental practices. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes. So tonight we're asking this board as well as the comic council to give us guidance in developing basically a complete streets policy for the city of Sheboygan. And what does that mean? So what it means is we're really looking to when we do road projects within the city or transportation projects, we're really looking to become more holistic and not just what I would say is what we have been focused on, the automobile. There is a lot of other modes of transportation such as walkability, sidewalks, accessibility for handicap, accessibility with programs that need to be installed, other modes of transportation, electric vehicles in the future, as things become more and more involved, need to take more of a larger approach. So with this policy does, and we've started a website already, kind of just some guiding principles. And once this gets approved through the board tonight, as well as comic council, we're going to publish this live and get a lot of more input from the community. It's much more community driven in terms of really how do we want to have our community move people in traffic in the future. And I think the Indiana project is a prime example. We kind of use that as kind of a, what I would say is a demonstration or as a test project. You know, Indiana used to be, at one time used to be four lanes, now it's down to two. We've called, we roll diet, we've added a protected bike lane on one side, sidewalks on the other, some terrace area for trees to be planted in the future as well as some lighting to make it much more safer for everybody as well as calm the traffic in wider streets. Traffic tends to speed up speeds. The higher the speeds are, the worse the accidents are. So what this does is when we, we have more of a, like I said, a process that's going to be centered around community driven priorities and values. We also will have, when we look at streets in certain areas, we'll have kind of some guidelines in terms of, this is what we would recommend for street width, given the amount of traffic, where the homes are, and so forth in terms of geometry. So it talks about that kind of process and what other amenities that would be needed within this design. If you just want to kind of scroll up. So again, we want to create a safe and convenient, reliable, we also want to make sure that we're being portal to, we just can't say all those numbers, we don't care about that because we want, we want to be good words of the taxpayers and the community's money, and ultimately accessible. And that's accessible either to race, ethnicity, religion, income, gender, immigration, all of those types of factors play into it in terms of access to vehicles, access to transit, bicycles walking. So we talked about the streets. We know we have a vast network of infrastructure that's in place today. It's mainly again, then automobiles. However, we do have a great sidewalk network that's also aging. And I think you've heard from some of the other elements, what are we doing to address it? Part of the complication is we'll factor that side of the equation. It just won't be a separate program that here we go, we're going to throw some money in sidewalks. It's going to be more taken into every project that we deal with. We have to focus on the sidewalks at the same time. We've already, we've already done some initiative with the community. This past summer, Heather and some of our team, we had a couple of groups at the farmer's market asking the community to be involved in this process, sign up for newsletter. So we've already have quite a bit of people that are signed up that are interested in participating with this program. I like how many? We had over 150 people sign up between farmer's markets. Okay. Yeah. And that's pretty good considering people don't like to hand out their email addresses too freely. And we're not trying to spam or dunk them with just, you know, so we can communicate directly with those that are really active and want to participate in this. Bicycle infrastructure is, it's continuing to grow. And I think everyone is well aware, eBikes is becoming more and more prevalent. So how do we handle it? You know, they, they travel a little bit faster speed. How do we, so not only is this infrastructure based, there's a community information education outreach that has a huge component of making sure that we're all being good stewards of our transportation network. And we all have to be good citizens as well as we're traveling. You know, the cell phones and distracted driving is probably one of the largest contributor to ACTS events nowadays. One of the good things about the complete streets initiative and policy, once we get it developed and get your approval to move forward is we will be eligible for more state federal funding. We just hide for a grant that's called Safe Streets for All. And a lot of the data that Heather is pulling up right now was a key factor in, in their application as well as the development that you will be seeing within this next year of our complete streets. So the left, what we call these are heat maps. So the brighter the spot, that's where the most activity is. And I think this is the, is this access or speeding? I believe this side is speeding right to access. So clearly 14th Street, Calium and Drive, the wider street, no parking, four lanes, where people are speeding right through the heart of the city. So, not, and then the one on the right is the last 10 years history of all the accidents and where they've occurred and kind of the hotspots. Yeah. And it's 10th and Georgia. Oh. You know, my uncle got an accident, car accident there. I was like, bad one. I think, you know, people think it's a four-way and it's not. Yeah. So, but this data also, and it's interesting, I think if you want to, can you scroll? Yeah. So the next maps, I think what's interesting is, okay, these are the bike routes. We have them all mapped as well. The bike racks, the one on the, on the right is the transit. But what's interesting is, you get the low and minor intermittent. These are intersections with traffic control, stop signs, four-way stops, the ones with signals. And with, this is where we start talking about federal grants and state grants is where you see, and I'm going to stand up here and just, what's in the yellow is the high accident, or high traffic and high accident corridors. And in the dark areas, those are areas that are, what we consider the census and it's the disadvantaged community. Those community that might not have the income producing opportunity or have other disadvantages, either handicap accessibility and so forth. So, you know, it really bisects that part of our community. So, how do we solve that opportunity for them to travel safely across this area? So, that's part of the demonstration grant that we went for, for the Safe Streets for All. So, we're in the holding, we got an email back from the gov.com and our application is being reviewed. They've already awarded 250 some grants nationwide already in the first phase. We're in the second phase because part of our grant request was not only just planning, we wanted to hopefully get maybe a demonstration. So, sometimes what they'll do is they'll set up some temporary track calming or narrowing of streets or bike lanes and try it for maybe a couple of weeks to get traffic used to it. Right away it's all confusing. People kind of get upset, but then it calms down and it sees, okay, how is traffic now starting to accommodate and adjust their behaviors? So, that's part of this grant where it's a $250,000 grant where we're excited because we have a lot of the factors that would hopefully make us eligible. This all again feeds into our Complete Streets policy. So, that's what we're asking. We're asking your support this evening to really give us guidance that Common Console supports this initiative. It makes sense for our community and you would like the staff then to develop a policy. Once we develop it and get it drafted, we're going to have community input on it. We're going to get it further refined. We're going to bring it back to this board in the Common Console for final adoption, obviously. But in the meantime, we didn't want to get too far ahead of this without your backing or your input. I have some questions. I'm excited about this. I think it's a really good opportunity for us to move forward with a lot of, you know, make some great changes to some of our infrastructure. I'm looking at what we did on Indiana but I love the way it works. It really does. It's a nice street now and it's safe for everyone and that's our goal. So when we're looking at when we're applying for the grant, what specific neighborhoods are we looking at? I know that you pulled up that this is sort of a lower income area and maybe have some disadvantages and that's probably most of our diverse community lives. I would worry about us putting money towards, it is important for them to have a safe bike lane and sidewalks, but I would hate to spend this money and then re-genrify the whole area. I think it's a good opportunity to move because people are like, it's right here now and we all want to live here. Now all these people who live in the flats all have to now try to figure out where to go. So I just want to be thoughtful about how we implement it. I also want to provide safety but I don't want to flip it upside on its head. I would agree. That's a concern. We concentrated on when you overlay the kind of bisects those areas that we've talked about those disadvantaged communities. So we want to make it safer but we're not making it so what I would say extravagant or anything that would flip it in terms of of being able to be unaffordable in other words. We want to be and we want to make sure that's not a negative associated with them and result. I would agree. So how do we accomplish that? I think again, that comes part of the community. How do we work together coming up with a design? How are you going to get that community to participate in your things? They're having a hard time getting to the farmers market so you'll have to make yourself available in their space. Exactly. With the involvement that you need. We plan to actually do physical outreach within this neighborhood and get together. The Erie Hill neighborhood has an association and we would start with them and then ultimately try to even further ingrain ourselves and get out there and walk it and be part of the neighborhood as well. Physically witness some of the stuff that's going on that they witness every day. I do have one follow-up. Is this in conjunction with the Smart Growth America? Like this community street? Okay. Exactly. In fact, we have a link on our website that if you want to learn what is a complete streets That's literally what I'm on right now. It has a hyperlink to it. Right. So we'll be able to sort of see what they've done with other communities. They're saying some big names, right? Tennessee and Nashville and all these I don't want to... Nashville to the north? I don't want to mimic them. I want us to be like what fits your best. We can't afford anything there anymore. I'll give you one of the communities that... What's that one? They have a really... They're very comparable to Shaboy again. And Urban Eye Area. It's got some older industrial areas. They have a really nice plan and program that we've been kind of it's local. It's our size. We've been kind of back and forth with them for idea sharing. Have they implemented some of these plans yet? Yes, they have. So we could like see that. So that's... Yeah, they actually have a report that they've... that they're working on. Awesome. Cool. You guys are on it. Thank you. Okay. Okay. Great idea. So we have complete streets. Is there ever... someone's going to say within the community, hey, what's that program getting into my part of town? You know? Or how do we prioritize it? And how do we let those people that are thinking about this and see the advantage of having this? What is it, 23rd? Can I get that? Is that going to be projected out as to where when you get this finalized and you're interacting with the community and they say, you know something? This is how we're going to arrange it. Just like doing road research, we all have priorities. Every district's got to be done. So is that consistent with that? It will be. And that's how we're... It's going to be data driven. So there's, you know, pavement condition, age, where are we at? What's the infrastructure? Where is it in terms of the accidents and other factors that would prioritize this project over a different area? So yeah, there'll be a plan. We're going to hopefully, once we get the policy place, that policy then will apply to our capital plan that we have for our street improvements. And then through that, how do we then build these new facts into those capital projects? Broadway and beautiful streets. Was this... Was there anything that coincided with this program that happened on Broadway? I think we did. Did we narrow it up a little bit? We narrowed it up a little bit. Every intersection is 88. They were bone stone at the intersection of 12th and... 12th and Broadway. Because of all the streets up there, that intersection is heavy, heavy pedestrian. That's the heaviest pedestrian. The 12th street, yeah. That's one thing that drives us to is utility work. Utilities are shot in a road. Right. Broadway kind of fell under that. Besides a road to eat and work. There was some major utility work. Plus we work at the Water Utility quite a bit, especially with this land service stuff. So we all work together as a team that kind of dictates a little bit too. Either comments, questions. I'm in full support. If you're doing things with data and making it being thoughtful about it, I'm in full support of this. You're exciting. I'm in full support. Would you like to make a motion? Yeah, I'll make a motion. I'll second it. I'll second it. I'll second it. Any other discussion on it? All those in favor? We have a... Do you take public input at this point or do you want to finish this? We can take a little if you want to. I just wanted to thank you for this action. Because I've seen this in community that I've lived in before. I'm pretty new to Shibuya in a couple of years. It really can make a huge difference. In the little... Just the day-to-day transportation for people. And I'm an avid cyclist, so it also helps us out to be a little safer. I've talked to a lot of people in the community about cycling and why they don't. And it's because they don't feel safe. And why people stick to me. I just don't feel safe on the street. And I don't want to ride on the sidewalk for whatever reason. Sometimes you can't. But providing well-designed infrastructure for everyone is really... I commend you for taking this action. Thank you for your comments. That. All those in favor? Any opposed? That is approved. The next meeting date is December 12th, 2023. I move to adjourn. Second. Aye. You're adjourned. Thank you.