 to the fifth meeting of the parking management plan city council stakeholder committee. Looking forward to the meeting tonight. We are going to share screen here momentarily and share members of the stakeholder and city council committee who are here on the panel with me. And we'll do a quick round of introductions. My name is Chapin Spencer, director of public works for the city of Burlington. And with me are a couple staff members and consultants. Why don't we do introductions with them and then we'll move on to the committee. Nicole. Hi, I'm Nicole Loesch from Public Works. Brian. Good evening, everyone. Brian Davis, transportation planner with the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission. And Jonathan Slason, the project manager with RSG, the consultant great. Thank you so much. And for the city council stakeholder committee, Mark. Sure. I'm Mark Barlow. I'm the North District City Councilor. Great. And I'm just going on my screen. Kirsten, you're next. Kirsten, Mayor Montiapiro, citizen stake, citizen member of the committee. Great. Jack. Hi, everyone. Jack Hansen. I'm the East District City Councilor and the chair of the Transportation, Energy and Utilities Committee. Great. Thank you, Max. Hey, everybody. UVM. Your audio there cut out a little bit. Max, do you want to try that again? End up muting himself. It appears. Yeah. All right. Max, your connection, the audio sounds. UVM graduate resident. Great. Member of the committee, UVM graduate and resident. And you may want to try if we're continuing to have problems to turn off your video and we should be able to hear you better. Charles. Hi, everyone. I'm Charles Seismore. I'm the owner of Taco Gordo, which is a business on North News Avenue and I live on Cromby Street. Excellent. Well, I appreciate it. And thanks, everyone, for being here and members of the public. Thank you for being here. There will be two public forum parts of this evening's meeting. Thank you, Nicole, for pulling up the agenda for today. I will check in momentarily with the committee to make sure there's no changes to the agenda. But the plan this evening is to discuss items raised at the last meeting and Public Works has a power point to share with the committee on those items and then that would be followed by a public comment period. And then at that point, the plan would be to have the committee discuss the updates from the last meeting and the public comments and consider recommendations for tonight's action. And then have another option for a public comment period prior to any action and then seek parking management plan, stakeholder, city council committee action on the parking management plan. And if there are additional next steps that come out of the meeting, we will summarize them. So that is the proposed agenda for this evening. Are there any proposed revisions to that agenda from the committee? Okay, any last changes? If not, I propose that we adopt these by consensus and move into the agenda. So thank you very much. And we will take it at this point. Nicole Losh is here to provide an overview of an update since our last meeting. Thank you, Chapin. So the bulk of our presentation today is going to be trying to answer a lot of the questions that we heard last time. So I'm just going to jump right in. We had a lot of questions about what council actually directed the city and the committee to do through the resolution after the corridors of transportation study was completed. So just going to highlight what is in that resolution. I'm not going to read this line for line, but I've highlighted the really relevant pieces here. So the first one unlines 22 to 24 is where it introduces the parking management plan. And so this is where it's directing us to pursue a plan that identifies practical strategies for balancing parking supply and demand north of Pearl Street and set a goal for meeting essential parking needs while freeing up space for dedicated bike lanes. The bike lane recommendation came in unlines 35 through 39, just highlighted at the bottom of the screen here, where it directed us to pursue shorter term improvements in 2021, which were a bit behind because of the pandemic. But those were to include new pavement markings for bike lanes in both directions between Pearl and Riverside. There were some other things to consider with those improvements, but I just wanted to highlight the bike lanes since those have been the biggest part of our conversation. The piece that relates the bike lanes and the parking management plan is highlighted here, where we were directed to delay implementation of the bike lanes until review and approval of the parking management plan. So that's where we are now. And this is just a summary of the committee's role and all of that, and I'm not going to really spend any time here since that hasn't been much of a discussion. So jumping ahead into one of the next questions, have we really defined essential parking needs? So I'm going to try to summarize what we've heard. In terms of what we've heard as a parking demand, we've heard that there's definitely a demand for residential parking and notably south of North Street. We've also heard that there's a demand for community health center visitors and employees at the northern section of the corridor and for visitors to businesses and nonprofits all along the street. And then for the essential parking needs. If we try to distill it down, we've heard that we need to keep access to all of the social services along the corridor. We need to provide residential parking, at least within a block for low income, our BIPOC residents and for residents with disabilities. We haven't necessarily heard that that means that we've defined a dedicated space for every vehicle, but again, ensuring that we're providing residential parking. We've also heard that we need loading for businesses and parking for visitors to businesses. So this is a summary of what we've heard for the parking demand and the essential parking needs. And those are again, really key things to keep in mind as we come back to the parking management strategies that we have a place to try to account for the demand and the needs. We also had a lot of questions last time about, you know, is North Winooski the right place for bike lanes? So I've highlighted a quote from Director Spencer. This is in a memo that's online as well with all of the meeting information for tonight, but we're really pursuing the bike lanes on North Winooski Ave because having continuous lanes here is really a top priority for the city for a lot of reasons. For our commitment to fighting the climate crisis, promoting public health, achieving a regional transportation system. And to that end, we're really focused on closing the gap that exists between Union Street and Riverside. And we'll come back to this piece later in the presentation, but we do have a recommendation to consider for closing this gap in particular. As you can see in the graphic, we do have a northbound bike lane on Union Street and a southbound bike lane on Winooski Ave. And so we have that paired network in the southern part of this corridor, but we don't have any accommodations to the north. You know, we were asked to look at other routes. Are contraflow facilities safe? Have we considered or could we consider seasonal use of the bike lanes? So we dug into this a little bit as well. And just like with driving north Winooski Ave is definitely a destination for people biking, who live there, who work there, who visit there. So from one perspective, north Winooski Ave is important for those reasons, but also using Hyde Street and Willard Street in particular, which is the closest alternative provides, or sorry, has a lot of challenges. There's a difficult intersection at Riverside. It's very complicated to get people across there safely. It ends up being a somewhat circuitous route for people trying to get up to the Riverside area or down towards the Union and Winooski section that have the one-way pairs. And ultimately it just redirects this parking conversation onto some of those other streets, North Street and North Willard Street in particular. We did do the comprehensive corridor study that looked at all of the different ways we could install bike lanes on North Winooski Ave. There have been a lot of questions about can we widen the roadway, you know, take the green belt and the trees, and is that a viable option? And that is something that we did look at. But ultimately the advisory committee, the public feedback we got through that process, and ultimately council opted not to go with that option, which is why we're looking at the option of staying within the roadway as it's currently defined by the curves. For contraflow lanes, we've actually been using these in Burlington since 2005 or 2006. They're on South Winooski Avenue and we recently extended the contraflow section when we completed the downtown work. So there's an additional section of contraflow lanes there. So we do have a history of contraflow in Burlington and they have proven to work very well. We then tried to find some examples of seasonal bike lanes and we honestly could not find any examples in the United States. What we did find was a lot of research and data around basically having a lack of infrastructure and poor maintenance for more of a deterrent to riding in all weather conditions than seasonal or just weather constraints. And so what they found is that as infrastructure expands and maintenance gets better regardless of what time of year, more people bike. And the most data that's available for comparable northern, I shouldn't say comparable, but comparable in a weather sense. Northern communities, Montreal, Minneapolis and Finland have all seen really drastic shifts in their bike ridership even in winter months when, again, there's more connections and better maintenance of the facilities. So that's ultimately what we as a city are working towards. And it doesn't sound like seasonal bike lanes are really a viable option. We were also asked if we could do some additional outreach and do some additional evaluation of other options to try to regain more parking. So we did some enhanced engagement and did an additional parking evaluation. We made direct connections with all of the large off street parking owners in the area. Quite honestly didn't have a lot of luck getting anything secured, but we do have a couple of property owners that are at least willing to entertain some conversations in particular with the community health center since their employee parking is such a huge demand in the northern section of the corridor. So we'll continue to work on those relationships and try to connect employers in particular with potential parking opportunities. We also did some direct outreach to our BIPOC owned and our small enterprises north of Union Street. And yes, so we tried to reach them directly. We connected with all but two of them to we left messages and haven't heard back. And then we also did an evaluation with STAN Tech, which we had referenced, but their their recommendation is now included in the appendix that's attached to all the meeting materials tonight. And this was specifically to look at are there any options to not chin parking? And what we found is that definitely not viable north of Union Street. The green belt is too narrow. I would take major reconstruction of the entire like everything from the sidewalks outside of the sidewalks in to try to fit this in. And then south of Union Street, there are very few opportunities and it would be quite costly. You know, it's maybe a handful of spaces and still would have tree impacts, utility impacts, drainage impacts. And it's it's a heavy cost for the few spaces that the city could gain. So with all that said, those are the main questions that we heard at the last meeting. So we wanted to try to address those before we open it up for public comment. But before we even get there, we wanted to just highlight a big change in some of the recommendations where we think there's a viable opportunity to do a phased approach to the implementation of the parking management strategies and the implementation of the bike lane. And so this really focuses on the northern segment only between Riverside and Union Street. And I might have, John, if you could jump in and just recap the actual parking impacts here and the strategies. And then we will keep this going. Before John does that, I would just insert that this was a decision that I didn't take lightly, that there are two parallel efforts here, a parking management plan, and then the overall implementation of the Winooski Avenue corridor study. And in evaluation of all the information that you saw that Nicole has gone through, I have made the decision to recommend the city council that the implementation of the Winooski Avenue corridor improvements be phased. And I feel that that is the wise decision based on data that we've collected on the notched-in parking, the public feedback that we've gotten from many of you and many members of the public, and also trying to coordinate with the paving program for V-Trans and did not feel that if we tried to do everything all at once that we would be able to meet their deadline. So I put together a memo that's in the website here that describes why I arrived at that decision and hope that the committee will see this as a real indication of us pivoting the recommendation based on conversation and data for how we move to implement the corridor study. So the recommendation that I'm bringing to council really is looking at phase one union to riverside and then subsequent phases being south of union. Thanks, Nicole and John, take it away. Sure, thank you. Yeah, so everyone should have received the updated parking management plan itself. So the document does reflect this new approach of a phase one and then a phase two concept. And so the next couple slides just go through the particular elements of the phase one proposal, which are focused from that riverside to union. And I'm keeping with the same north to south approach that has been used in this. So just to orient ourselves. The phase one is proposed to remove 40 spaces out of 103 on street in this northern area, which is about a 39%. So we wanted to kind of clear the air and make sure we understand what numbers we are talking about before we go into any decisions. The parking model has been helpful to understand what degree we think of capacity exists during the average weekday condition in that area. We believe that there's room to park about 75% of the cars that would be displaced by this by the space one proposal within the study area. And that would be basically within two blocks of your destination. 600 feet was the distance that we had set originally to say that's a reasonable amount that we expect people be willing to walk to their destination. And so that would be greater utilization of some off street lots, but also greater utilization of side streets. Now, we're also looking at this in the totality of what are the full extent of these changes and what is the magnitude of this effect. And going section by section, we can see that of the northern block between Riverside and Archibald be 22 spaces on street out of a total of 233 total spaces that are available for the land uses that are immediately adjacent to that section. So it's a 9.5% reduction and then moving further south the Archibald to Union segment, it's 18 spaces removed out of that total 293 spaces and it would be a 6% reduction in total. The phase one when we account for on street and off street, it's about a 7.6% reduction is what we're looking at for that phase one plan. So some of the strategies that we've just mentioned is that this phased approach is a change. And so we're proposing at this point that that is the plan that's being suggested here, is that this phase one would be implemented after approval from the relevant planning works commissions and other partners. The city will continue to pursue off street parking options. I know Director Spencer can talk more about where those are in their current status if there's questions, but to where Nicole mentioned is that there has been direct engagement with a number of landowners and they are continuing. There is an idea that time limited parking could be an option to extend on side streets if we are determined that that was a request for businesses. If they're not seeing the turnover in the parking and they're not getting the visitation, then this is one option that could promote faster turnover and greater utilization for visitors, clients, short term users of the parking spaces. There's also the reduced recommendation to add meters in the phase two. So in the report itself, it goes into the section, particularly the north the grant section where the original strategy was a full time metered approach. It was brought up at one point during the committee that is a residential parking permit suggested there and it really didn't get the interest that we maybe had thought about. And so we heard loud and clear that the meters and the short term parking would be an option that would be tolerable. However, from the public comment, it really appeared that the residential parking needs was important there. So we're trying to find a balance particular in that north to grant section is that that section, rather than full time meters, it was proposed to basically offset the meters that were being reduced between the grant and Pearl Street section and then replace those between the grant and north section. So the result would be that half of that block would be unmetered, unmanaged spaces that would be available for residents all the time. And then the other half might be meters that would be available for during the weekdays. And then there is an added recommendation that there be an investment made in the green ride bike share system near the community health center at the north end of the of the corridor. So I think here in summary, the phase one is that the time limited parking meets the essential needs of the visitors in parking. It's that we clearly heard from a lot of businesses that they need parking and to get parking, we need to find a way to accommodate the turnover and to give them the frequency of spaces to accommodate the variety of parking needs along the corridor. We would maintain the parking spaces on the west side that hasn't changed. We would relocate the existing zone loading zones from the east side to the west side. So that has happened in a few locations. As I think we've discussed where those are, we would allow the unrestricted parking in the evenings and overnights and the ideas whether the weekends, whether the meters in that southern area apply for Saturdays or not. I think that's up for discussion when the phase two pieces go forward toward implementation if they do proceed at all. The support for employee parking through existing resources. So I think there is an effort underway that the city is trying to encourage and work with businesses along the corridor to say how can we support non-vehicle travel mode changes? How can we support walking and biking? How can we find financial mechanisms to provide a transportation demand management solution? So that's what that TDM stands for. And so these conversations with property owners are continuing and that's where Nicole and Director Spencer are continuing those. Yeah thank you Jonathan and Chapin. I think at this point we are ready to turn it over to public comments and Brian I don't know if you can help us navigate this part again. See we have some hands starting to come up and yeah if you're if you're signing on please use your raise your hand feature. If you have called in you can press star nine and that will raise your hand as well. And when we get started here can we get an indication Brian of how many people may be interested in speaking? How many people do we have on the call and whether we need to have time limits to keep things moving? Sure. Thanks everyone for joining. We've got about 30 people from the public on the call which is great. More hands keep going up. We're at about seven now. So I'll call in people in the order I see. So again appreciate your interest in this. We've got about nine people Chapin so I'll take your sense on this. How about we ask people to keep it to three minutes or less if possible just so that we can make sure we hear from everybody and there are two public forums tonight. So we're just trying to make sure that we can get through everybody and hear everyone for the committee's deliberation. Great sounds good. Okay I'll call you in order you raise your hand. Lee. Can you hear me? Yes. Yes. Oh yeah great. This is Lee Anderson I'm the owner of Radio Bean and also a resident of North Muskie Avenue. I read Chapin's memo and about the phase implementation and that is a big relief for me being on the this end of North Muskie Avenue down here. I guess my main question is is what is going to qualify phase two to move into action? What are the metrics that are going to be being looked at for the phase one to implement phase two and is there a date or a time? Is this like 2023 or something like that that that this would be happening? I can't I can't say that I definitely see the value in and looking at that and following the you know the bike path from Union Street and connecting it to Riverside and connecting downtown Burlington to downtown Winooski and that does make logistical sense to me and so I I do understand that but I'm curious also like what phase two means and when that would be happening and what the again like what the metrics that are going to be looked at if phase one does become implemented that would that would cause phase two to be implemented so but I can say that you know for myself and my patrons and employees and the residents around here that we're definitely really grateful that at least this summer we're not going to lose all the parking on that side of the street and also that's it I guess thank you all for doing your public service it's really beautiful to watch thank you very much all right thank you Lee uh in shape and I don't know if we want to address those directly or in a follow-up? Im flexible just to keep things moving maybe we go through the all the public comments if we'll probably hear some similar themes and then I'm taking notes and I'm sure Nicole's taking notes and we'll make sure to respond at the end of the public forum sounds good thank you all right up next we've got Jeffrey good evening how's my sound great good um yeah my name is Jeffrey Desena quite new to Burlington and really mostly here just to give some positive feedback on generally the direction that I've seen a lot of the the planning and infrastructure headed we were actually drawn to Burlington because of our ability to get around without a car I know that's not true for all of Burlington but walkability and bikeability here has been better than just about anywhere else that I've seen in North America but I actually started thinking about such things when I lived in Norway and regularly visited friends in Oslo and I've seen a lot of cities but if I had to choose I would say that Oslo is probably my favorite and I think one of the reasons is you know it it's striking how quiet a city of over half a million people can be and I assume it's only become more so since I last visited because Oslo has strategically been removing basically all of their surface parking spaces it's a piece of a larger plan to make the city more human centric and less car centric there still are cars in the city but it's really only residents for commuters it's just easier to bike or take public transit and that has made the city both safer and more pleasant in 2020 also actually achieve vision zero it's zero traffic deaths within the city that kind of statistic encourages people to get out of their cars and on bikes which I will gladly argue is good for a long list of reasons which I think a lot of you understand but most people aren't losers like me who guide their life based on statistics most people go where it's just pleasant to be and forgive me for being captain obvious but anywhere near car traffic is not a pleasant place to hang out so here's another obvious factoid cities aren't loud cars are loud that's plainly obvious in cities like Oslo Copenhagen and Amsterdam where bikes dominate transportation so I'm very much in favor of this redesign of Wenuski Avenue all of it and if that has to be in a phased approach that totally makes sense and I think this is a great step in that direction I'll probably have some constructive feedback on the particulars but in general I'm encouraging cycling while discouraging driving is a win win win for everyone especially the people who really do need to drive and can enjoy less traffic so thank you great thank you Jeffrey um up next we've got josh cats hi can people hear me great um hello thank you for letting me speak um for those of you don't know me my name is josh chats I'm a data analyst at Katma the chinan area transportation management association and also resident of the south end and just someone who uses um Wenuski Avenue to commute to work by bike so speaking uh well first I personally just speaking for myself and I'm happy to see this project moving forward um as someone who uses Wenuski Avenue I am personally like a pretty competent biker I grew up in New York City so I can handle myself but um even it could even be scary for me sometimes riding on those streets with no lanes um with no bike lanes so I'm excited and happy to hear that that is moving forward um speaking as like a Katma employee every year we conduct a fall transportation survey um to our members which are some of the biggest employers um in the city including um UVM Champlain College like uh the city of Burlington employees and um the medical center and we hear almost every year that the biggest factor that would encourage people to bike as a commute is better bike lanes so that is something that we really need to invest in as a city and continue to invest in and we hear comments constantly like the bike infrastructure is horrible um you want people biking to work make the right infrastructure so just really continuing to push that in the right direction is something I appreciate and hope we continue to do um people want to bike you just have to give them the resources infrastructure to do so um safely um so excited to see this personally excited to see this move forward um I think as this move forward we really need to focus on having um better witness maintenance of the bike infrastructure especially when we're having the the two-way lanes on a one-way car traffic street because I know on Monuski on south Monuskiab which I live right off of it gets really hard to bike in the winter because the snow is piled up on that um in the lane in the lane going against the traffic the the uh northbound lane so just keeping that in mind as we're implementing this and excited to see this move forward and create a more bikeable walkable human friendly city thanks great thank you Josh up next we have Natalie hello you can probably hear me now yes um yeah my name is Natalie Braun I'm actually a resident of Essex but I'm kind primarily as an individual who provides some leadership in 350 Vermont and particularly the 350 Burlington nodes so I I come not only my own heart on this but also the energy of many many members of 350 Burlington behind me and uh this been mentioned but I want to say how grateful I am this is an incredibly complex juggling of the stakeholder needs that you have and I I think you have an exceptional plan here at this point but I I commend you for all your effort on this um I'm here uh so beyond each stakeholders concern the primary concern I bring to you this evening is around the um climate emergency that we're in the midst of and the this provides this parking management plan provides an exceptional bold and very public demonstration of of Burlington's commitment to addressing the the climate emergency and it is uh in for for Vermont in particular supporting the transition to people powered transport away from the use of fossil fuels is a is a central feature of addressing in in our brave little state the issues of climate change many other areas as well are important but anything that lifts up the option of using transportation other than those requiring fossil fuels will assist in mitigating this accelerating climate crisis that we have and it also will do the things that two this two people before me mentioned all the other positive aspects of having fewer cars and more footfalls and bicycles so I am fully in support of the parking management plan particularly the aspects along north when you ski avenue and I will look forward to traveling that corridor in the future great thank you um up next we have the initials aw hello uh can everybody hear me yes okay uh my name is alec I just put aw because it's shorter and easier um I've lived on north and new ski for the past six years or so um and I have uh never you really don't see very many bikers come through this stretch and but particularly I mean from uh union uh up to archibald and I haven't certainly never heard about any accidents or anything like that involved bikers um although it is possible but like I said if we're six years never heard anything like that um I had a few questions but uh just in response to the last person's comments um in terms of the climate emergency issue I'm totally in support of finding ways to lessen the impact of fossil fuels however what needs to be considered is that if people who used to be able to easily find parking on the street near their house can't find it anymore because particularly in this stretch it's been basically cut in half as is proposed if they have to cruise around the block two three four times to find a spot have to consider what impact that has as opposed to being able to find a spot near their home and park and just go home that's not I mean there's there's a yin and yang there and I think uh like I said I'm in support of finding ways to lessen the impact of fossil fuels but down the line you have to think what happens when people can't find a spot immediately so that's just one comment um I don't think this is necessary at all like I said I've lived here five years never uh heard about any accidents or anything involved biker with bikers you hardly ever see them come through this stretch I saw in the proposal notes this is the most populated area in the region or whatnot and if that's the case I I don't see how making more bike lanes will help anything people who live here aren't biking through they're trying to find a parking spot near their house so I don't really see what I just don't I just don't think this is necessary um so the goal it seems like the goal is to make it easier for people who don't live here to bike through which thus makes it harder for people who do live here to find this parking spot near their house I that seems backwards to me um and I'm I just made a whole bunch of bullet notes as I was listening to all this so I'm sorry if I'm cruising through it quickly um I don't see how this is help gonna help businesses I mean bikers aren't really biking down to these businesses that are on the street on their bikes people are driving down here there's a garage there's a food place you know there's restaurants it's not people aren't really again I just don't think it's that necessary um I can understand from say archibald over to runuski across the bridge having a bike lane but in this small stretch from union uh up to archibald there's two large apartment buildings here which is a small stretch with a lot of people living here and cutting the parking in half uh I just don't understand how that just doesn't make sense to me um just a couple more here um I'm limited well if this goes through and the uh will will all the remaining spots be metered and time limited because that adds obvious constraints to people who live here need to run out to feed the meter just seems more complicated than is necessary um where is the proposed additional off-street parking and um I was curious if anyone on the council or who is in support of this lives on these streets and if they have to park on the street or if they have parking behind their house or whatnot because that seems like something to think about and lastly I was curious how much total money uh the these various studies and evaluations cost the taxpayers thank you great thank you for your comments we'll we'll be answering the questions at the end of the public forum just to remind folks that we'll give time for all the input and then we'll uh take notes and respond thanks great thank you Chairman um up next we have Sarah you can hear me yes great so hi um I'm Sarah I'm a resident of school street right by um the intersection there and um yeah as a biker in Burlington I really do often find myself dodging cars or um just being in feeling unsafe in um different types of situations due to a lack of essential bike infrastructure and I really do think that expanding bike infrastructure is not only an issue of sustainable transportation but also one of equity because not everyone can afford or physically drive a car and folks who aren't able to do that should not be forced into danger to allow for more parking for people who can drive um Burlington really does pride itself on being a bikeable and safe city so we should be taking every step that we can to make up the case if we're going to claim a status as a bikeable city we have to do the work to make out the case and um yeah I know I've known too many people who don't bike out of fear due to a lack of essential bike infrastructure and it's true and I think very clear that expanding that infrastructure will have an impact that a lot of people might not think make sense but um it just totally does I mean as you expand bike infrastructure and make Burlington more bikeable and green you generate more bikers and make Burlington a much more enjoyable place to spend time and live and also set an example for many other cities across the country um yeah I've also in that particular area got into a by accident before and I know that many folks have said that they don't think it's necessary but um yeah in that particular stretch of road I think that it could be super useful to have a bike lane um in my experience but yeah thanks thank you Sarah um up next we have Dan hi there thanks for having me my name is Dan I'm a resident of Burlington and Ward 4 and I think as much on-street parking as possible should be removed for bike lanes for lots and lots of reasons um the number one for me is the climate crisis uh our climate and ecological systems are collapsing um I worry about climate change I became a father last year um and I work for a non-profit um doing climate change education connecting teachers to resources to teach about it um the biggest sector of emissions in the United States is transportation and the largest chunk of that sector is personal vehicles and so we have to get as many personal vehicles off of the roads as possible as quickly as possible and so in addition to the climate crisis which is number one it would make a safer Winooski Avenue people would be safer biking and walking it would be a more equitable transportation system for those who cannot afford to drive a car it would be far quieter like the gentleman said before it'd be much more enjoyable to be outside the air would be cleaner there would be less air pollution uh less ozone less particulate matter healthier lungs healthier children um and I wholeheartedly support removing as many parking spaces as possible as quickly as possible and thank you for your time thank you Dan uh up next we have Beth hi thank you appreciate you guys sitting through another set of comments again this is Beth I'm on the lower block um the lower block of the northern part of North Winooski Avenue down below north street um I want to say first of all that I appreciate the recommendation the recent recommendation to pause um on our block and the block south of ours um I understand from the report and the letter that the future plan remains that the parking on the east side up in the north will be removed or eventually done in ours as well um with potentially meters being installed um um concerned what the plan is to determine um what will happen after that where people move their cars I assume that will be still to be discussed we also need to talk about how to improve public and multimodal transportation for sure um I appreciate that there's been outreach to some of the businesses and service agencies along the northern part of the corridor I realized that's happened somewhat recently I think I've mentioned this before I'm a board member at the community health center um coincidentally this is the second month in a row that I'm missing the board meeting to be here with you you might hear it happening in the background um I've expressed concerns about how the parking pressures are going to access or may impact access to care and um and I think the CHCB will probably be speaking to that again tonight I don't um I still don't get the sense that there's been secured options for businesses um up north from us um and I've heard a lot of the the concerns from those businesses continue I can't yet fully support the parking plan even with the um how much I appreciate the the recent compromises that have been introduced um but I it's important to me to know that our entire corridor um will meet the needs of bikers walkers people with physical disabilities residents and of course people who need to access services and businesses I work in disability services I've worked in this field for about 30 years and one of our um tenants is nothing about us without us and when I look at this what's happened here um so many people didn't know about what was happening on our street um despite being told uh that there was lots of opportunities for them to know it I think people more people who live on the street needed to be involved in the conversation you know it seems to be an assumption that people wouldn't be on board with new ideas or perhaps aren't sophisticated enough when it comes to speaking about the climate crisis to talk about it or be involved but encouraging people is meaningful and forcing them into something they're not prepared for doesn't necessarily work and I I wonder if we hadn't spoken up um what would have happened um I'm concerned again why people who live in this area the most dense part of the corridor um weren't invited to participate um and I think you know it's it's totally understandable to me that people who have supported this and who have waited a long time are frustrated by the additional delay um there's been so much work done on it for a long time and I appreciate each one of you and your investment and the time that you've put into this I know it's a lot um the updated proposal as well as Chapin's letter and recommendations um demonstrate that you that you've been listening to us um that you appreciate where we're coming from and and say that I appreciate that um I would say that I I don't think that the problems that we're encountering here should be solved on the backs of old northenders without their participation and again without their buy-in I know and I agree that having a biking corridor is important I know it's wanted and I know how important it is to have better bike safety but um the decision to to put it in and to change the street to accommodate um a bike lane and losing half of the parking was made without the input of our residents and our businesses despite so many of our attempts to be heard it wasn't done with us so I thank you again for hearing us um and and once again I'd ask for a pause for the whole plan for us to to discuss it more and to come up with solutions together please keep listening thank you great thank you best up next we have Jason okay can you hear me yes okay so I'm uh Jason Stuffle and I live on Colchester Ave and I think I've been through a similar situation as this is we put bike lanes in on Colchester Ave and remove parking I removed parking directly in front of my house that was convenient for me but put that you know kind of in context to the neighborhood and people who want to uh commute through the area and people who live in the area who want to commute and so I walk I bike I take public transit I use my own vehicle and when we remove parking off the road it made it safer for you know emergency vehicles the fire trucks the ambulances coming through the area and people had to change their habits and that's hard for people sometimes you want to just stay the same but in order to move forward with making our public right away that's for everybody safer and not store public you know public area having private vehicles stored on it we have to we have to make a little bit of a change and so I encourage everyone to vote tonight to make a little change forward and it won't be perfect it's never perfect but we can go from there and continue to work on that because people in the area need to be able to walk and bike even if you have a vehicle because once you get to some place you're not parking directly in front of it and you have to walk or bike and you know I bike two old spokes home and it's hard it's hard to get my bike there to get it fixed but I also bike to Taco Goro and get some food and so that's you know I understand both of those you know viewpoints but I think you know we have to try and make a change forward for the better use of everyone and I think that is removing some of the parking you know be a little hard but you know we'll take steps forward from there so I'll leave it at that but I just encourage you to think about that that we remove parking in Cold Chester Ave and it was hard but we're at a better place now that we've moved forward from there thank you thank you Jason up next we have Gene can you hear me everyone thanks um so I just wanted to sort of comment on a few things uh I'm a resident on North Wayne East Gavity and just to sort of respond to the the previous speaker I certainly uh as a biker understand where he's coming from I think like when we try and compare streets across our city though we run into the difference in their usages so I think about Cold Chester Avenue which has you know a cemetery and a forest on the big stretch of one side of it on which the bike lane is put um and you know our street in many places has two sides of densely populated apartment buildings many with um you know that are occupied by four or five even six residents in each unit um many of us do of course walk bike and have cars uh but what worries us about plans that go rid of parking is that it seems to insist that we don't have cars that we can't have cars um and as you know I completely want us to fight climate change um but sort of an agreement with somebody who spoke before I don't I don't want it to be on the backs of our more vulnerable old north enders I think the first thing there's a big difference between a cycling culture like Amsterdam for example which was I think brought up earlier and Burlington and the difference isn't more bike paths I mean obviously climate is climate but we are the largest city in a rural state and it's a really different circumstance than living in a country like the Netherlands where you can get from village to village by train we just don't have the infrastructure and many of us for work family necessity need to leave Burlington and for that we need a place to put a car um such that we can as much as possible not drive it uh you know and I think like you know we have this 19th century uh housing system where most of us live in converted houses from that were built before there were cars so it's just simply not a an issue of residents um being greedy or something we just live in an old place where the infrastructure for cars isn't there and so currently the already paved locations on which we can park are absolutely vital um a third point I wanted to make is um you know I have a biker I bike to work I bike to UVM from the from North Winieski and um I have at times felt safe on my bike but it is almost always a I um because of the condition of the road the surface of the road because of ice snow potholes um I don't know if anyone's recently biked up Pearl Street where there is a bike lane and one side of the street has no cars so there is a bike lane it is what the goal of this whole project is but the street is not plowed to the curb and so you bike either on the line at the edge of the bike lane or in the middle of the road and weaving around potholes and um you know when when we think like where accidents have been shown to happen I think I've said this before but it's in the intersections the heat map for the study shows that it's in the intersections and that's why if I recall the original council request was for roundabouts um in order to help the safety of those intersections where the majority of accidents happen if they happen at all north of Pearl Street the heat map shows they were primarily south of Pearl Street but those were discounted because of space constraints in the intersections it wasn't practical and I'm just not seeing how bike lanes on North Runuski Avenue is any more practical because we still don't have answers about why North Union's dedicated bike lane isn't adequate if the goal is to have a dedicated bike lane connection between downtown in the city of Wynuski um I'm still very concerned about the residents and business owners north of me um but I do see that like if the goal is a dedicated bike lane connection then why is phase two necessary uh thank you again for all your help and we do feel listened to and included and we appreciate your time thank you thank you gene up next we have Liz am I unmuted you're unmuted okay thanks um yeah I just want to really thank chape in especially for your leadership and the committee um for for listening and for um you know really stopping the um the process that was in play and um turning your attention to the people who have come to express their concerns and I I feel like you know you have taken us seriously and you've taken seriously all the issues and concerns that have been raised and this process shows what's possible when you the city does include the voices of neighbors um but I would echo what Beth and others said about you know how hard it was to get people's attention after the January 2020 resolution passed um you know for me I'm a white privileged middle class able-bodied educated person and this this process is like I can do this in my sleep and I can bike in my sleep I mean I I have no problem you know with wanting bike and we all want bike infrastructure we all want safe bike infrastructure we all want to solve the climate crisis it's you know what I think for me is um is hard that I see a city um I see people with power and privilege you know not remembering we have systems of inequality and and that many voices and people are invisible because of the color of their skin or that it's not safe for them to show up or their they don't or they use a wheelchair and safety means something really different for people of color and people whose wheelchairs in LGBTQ plus people it means something really different when it comes to something like cars when it comes to something like the distance between you know where you park and where you're going and when it comes you know when you're a black person driving around the block and like a you know black woman grad student got pulled over by a cop a couple weeks ago you know and it's just like that kind of stuff so safe when people talk about safety I think we all really need to remember um our privilege and check that but um you know it's also easy to dream about Oslo and having a great subsidized public transportation um you know system but that's that's not who we are and I feel like you know just like white people created racism our auto mobile industry and land use planners created the spatial jobs mismatch and created a transportation system that doesn't work and we have a capitalist system that doesn't subsidize public transit so we're all a part of that and just because people use cars doesn't mean they can they have to bear the burden of the climate crisis solutions that they are not asked to help solve and especially just because you know when you blame cars you're blaming people and the people in this neighborhood are the people who have the least resources to help solve the climate crisis and a just transition recognizes that and I would like to ask the city to adopt the principles of a just transition which say that the people who are most impacted by the change by the transition not impacted by climate crisis but are most impacted by the transition are the people who should not be left out of the process and should not be left out of the solutions and that's what I feel like has been going on here so I appreciate you slowing down but my concerns about I'm and I think it's going in the right direction and and specifically even though I feel like it's a shame Pat Bannerman had to appear on the six o'clock news to get everybody's attention and that the committee didn't didn't go talk to her first um you know when we think about what Pat needs she is probably going to be fine with her customers parking across the street on the west side of North Moosky that's probably not the problem um but she's going to be competing with all the other cars from the new Richard T. Kemp Center from Fohang and from low-income tenants who live in those brightly colored pink buildings some of whom have disability hidden disabilities so you know all those people in that block we're talking about like you know this is the downtown of the old north end and it's the downtown full of low-income tenants low-income business owners immigrant business owners and people who aren't you know inclined to use the bike lane most of the time so when the city creates your parking plan for the west I I strongly support what Beth said that it should not there should be no change until you have signed agreements for community health center and for outright and for legal aid so that those um that competition is reduced the competition for spaces is reduced and there's a sure plan there's a framework for that plan and that it's on the record and everybody's you know good with it and then that will reduce the competition for those spaces on the west I also noticed that there should be parking there should be parity across the city the parking spaces in front of dealer.com all the way to deadless are all free one and two hour spaces and so I would be vehemently against any meters going in here as long as the the wealthy white middle-class businesses on pine street have free parking that is on parking parity so I think we need a principal parking parity and nobody should be charged for parking in in a poor neighborhood if you're not charging them in a rich neighborhood and there's only one ADA space in front of pathways and legal aid is going to use their lose their ADA space so there's got to be more ADA spaces on the west side as well thank you thank you this uh I see um Jeff folks hear me a little quietly but let's give it a shot I will uh I will try to speak up all right good I'm I'm Jeff McKee I'm the CEO of community health centers of Burlington and a Burlington resident since moving here about 18 months ago um and I know this conversation has been taking place for a lot longer than I've been involved and I do truly appreciate the time and energy the committee has committed to ensuring that we emphasize doing the right thing over doing it right now um first of all a CHCB is an enthusiastic supporter of the goals of the city's initiative to support a healthier environment encouraging healthier communities and developing more pedestrian and bike-friendly environments we love that concept and we will support it wherever we can but we cannot support the original or current phased implementation plan because it will have a very significant and direct negative impact on the most vulnerable members of our community who live work visit and seek vital health care services in the old north end um what we've been presented uh we've had presented to us in terms of uh the plan uh less than two months ago is not a parking management plan it's simply a parking reduction plan with the hope that parking solutions will emerge hope is awesome but it is not a plan just within the past week we've been truly pleased that the city has reached out to begin conversations about how we might develop alternative parking solutions and irrespective of the direction taken on this specific initiative we're very pleased to be partnering with them on developing solutions but let's be really clear none of the conversations we've had with the city your neighbors today should give anyone optimism that solutions will be developed within the immediate future creating a true plan simply takes more time um and if we uh if and when any alternative parking options emerge the idea that a nonprofit such as ours can simply make a large capital or operational investment is entirely unreasonable we're struggling to fill critical staff positions because we can't keep pace with wages every dime we spend on parking is one that doesn't end up in the pocket of our staff i'm confident that we can get there together with the city over time but implementing this so quickly harms our staff harms our organization it harms our community who relies on us for health care and harms our neighbors who will bear the brunt of the parking reduction when parking disappears on north windowsky avenue and the remaining spaces are converted largely to time limited spaces our staff will begin scrambling for all-day parking in front of every home within a 10-minute walk from here not because they want to but because there are no there has not been time for other solutions to be developed vetted in and implemented and they have no other choice so while the phased implementation plan is ostensibly designed to lower the impact on residential neighbors it will have the exact opposite effect we absolutely want to reduce our parking footprint and we want desperately to reduce our dependency on street parking but there's just no possible way i can get all that done this summer we need more time and we need the city's continued support to work with all of our neighbors find actionable solutions that balance the needs of all of the stakeholders so i appreciate you hearing me out and and thank you thank you jeff up next we have thomas sorry i was muted um thank you so yeah i um i'd like to ask um whether this plan is just whether it's socially just and i think the way we can look at that is see who stands to benefit from the plan and who stands to be hurt by the plan um and it seems to me that the people who stand to benefit are those who commute by bike um downtown um perhaps people who own homes further afield um and the people that um stand to be hurt by the plan are local residents renters and small business owners and if you look um if you look at what's happening to our neighborhood as as a whole i think that this plan is going to um is going to enhance the forces of gentrification it's going to drive out current residents people who rent here and are able to because they are able to park on the street they need their cars they're not able to park here they will move they'll be forced out of the neighborhood um increasing gentrification and the small business owners um that we we know and love some of whom are immigrants people of color they're going to be harmed by this plan so i don't think this plan is socially just and i think that progressives should be particularly concerned by by that um the other quick comment i just like to make is um there seems to be this idea that all is stand all that stands between burlington and the cycling culture of somewhere like amsterdam is that we don't have enough bike paths this is absurd the climate is totally different the situation vis-a-vis public transit is completely different uh somewhere like the netherlands has incredible rail networks tram networks that can take you wherever you want to go in the country we cannot get to the majority of our state without a car if you live in downtown bellington and you want to visit anyone else in the state effectively you need a car this is not um not a situation where a few bike paths are going to make the difference the climate is completely different and the rural nature of our state and the lack of public transit um is just we're not going to get there by building bike paths that is my contention um so thank you for listening to me i'll i'll pause there thank you thomas up next we have sandy hi um i'm with vermont 53 50 and i just wanted to encourage you to improve some version of the parking management plan it sounds like it's in need of a few changes but i think we need to move forward in general um and that's basically where i'm coming from i agree that is a huge problem and it's complicated and i think we do need more alternatives to cars my problem with bike lanes is that if they're not designated just bike lanes the so-called um multi-use paths are dangerous i've seen bad accidents happen on them if you do do a bike lane make sure that it's it's separate from people walking this is going to be a difficult transition and i just applaud you moving forward um and i wonder if there isn't someone somewhere else closer to home that could give you more ideas about how to do it that isn't amsterdam uh the name budajae budajae budajae i'm sorry i can't pronounce his name comes to mind um maybe there's another town that's further along than us that could give you some ideas about how to do that but i am concerned about um people who don't have cars what are they going to do and i'll just stop there because i like i said it's complex and i wanted to speak up in favor of both just transition and also the parking management plan however imperfect it might be thanks thank you sandy and those are all the people who had hands up so thank you all for attending and for your comments thank you brian uh i think we're moving into uh committee deliberations at this point so can we uh maybe reduce the presentation so everybody can see one another excellent and uh we have two additional members of our uh committee that have come since we started the meeting welcome hunter stormberg and kelly dugan thank you both for being here it appears we've got a full uh committee attendance tonight for this important conversation so with that um i'll turn it over to the committee are there members um we want to jump in can you so is this time i'm sorry can i just see the agenda again i just want to make sure i understand the process going through the rest of the evening yeah give me one second to get back there yeah there's some way back up here too far there we go so our intent here is to have a discussion now um have another round of public comment if um if you'd still like and then revisit again any final discussion before we take any action okay so i just wanted to be clear like if this was the time to share or ask questions uh relating to the plan itself potentially perfect okay thank you thank you kirsten and as you were uh asking that clarification which was helpful i realized that we did not do what we promised which was to provide quick answers to the questions we heard during public comment so uh is it friendly to the committee if i take a few moments with staff great yeah please great uh kicking off lee anderson asked in the beginning of public comment is there a date or time for phase two and what are the metrics and the response is that there is no firm plan at this point this concept of a phased implementation is something i uh put forward in the memo and brought this evening uh my expectation in working with council would be to allow phase one to function and to see with that continuous facility part of it being directional uh a northbound lane on union and a southbound lane on wanouski uh from union down to pearl that this would give us a chance to try out that scenario and based on feedback on that installation based on uh potential improvements along the corridor uh securing other funding you know there are a whole suite of considerations that would help us determine when and how to implement phase two so the proposal that i am recommending tonight is really to focus on phase one and to leave phase two for a subsequent conversation uh alec w asked will all spaces be time limited and metered uh the answer to that is that some uh spaces would be metered those are predominantly the ones north of grant street up part way to north street there would be a number of time limited spaces sprinkled throughout the corridor to encourage turnover but that there would also be unregulated spaces available 24 seven for resident uh alec w also asked where is the proposed off street parking uh and the answer there is there are there is no additional on off street parking secured at this time we are talking to property owners predominantly in the northern section of the corridor between north and riverside is that would be where phase one would be implemented where the greatest parking pressures would occur with that removal on the east side um going down uh gene beset asked why is phase two necessary i think that the question here is to allow uh phase one if phase one is implemented we can evaluate how phase one uh creates a continuous facility and whether or not it is sufficient or whether we need to create a more direct route uh up and down north winewski and south winewski avenues so i think the jury is still out on that conversation it was a recommendation in plan btv walk bike uh to have continuous facilities on north winewski and so we would be wanting to evaluate uh the phase one and whether phase two it was necessary um those were the questions and then thomas patchby asked whether this plan is socially just and then provided his commentary there is a section in the plan on um on the equity component and evaluation of this project looking at vehicle ownership in the old north end and vehicle access uh and parking availability this is a complex issue uh with a broad array of individuals some who are mobility challenged who need vehicles to assist them moving and then there are folks who don't have access to vehicles and require other ways of getting around so i do acknowledge that this is not a simple uh uh calculation here those are the questions i heard uh staff or consultants did i miss any great thanks for indulging me with going through that kirsten and the rest of the committee uh we're up for your deliberations and i would encourage everyone yeah if you have any questions additional comments um this does not have to be a formal process of uh going through everyone so feel free to jump in i have a few but but first i would like to start with sharing um a couple of things so i also not only am i a citizen of burlington i like to bike i'm not against bike lanes um i am concerned about the removal parking here without addressing the essential parking needs of of um the social service providers but also some of the small businesses as well as residents that live there that may not have the mobility choice to ride a bike as an option right not everybody is physically able to ride bikes as well to get places and i think some of the other folks who spoke earlier really talked to some of those concerns and challenges i also work for champlain housing trust um and i wanted to share that you know in this area our tenants 93 of them are at 65 or less of median income and 55 or 83 i think is um are below 55 percent of median income and so that's considered income burdened right right housing burden people are people are really at a lower income and really don't have access to the resources that many of us do have no have access to and um that is a concern i would also say that among our tenants that live in the study area over 46 of them are non-white um and i would also say that over 14 or 14 percent of our households have four or more people in those households so we do have still a reasonable amount of our tenants who have larger households and so having a vehicle and a bike for transport is not always the vehicles may be necessary and using bikes to transport a large family is not always um an easy task i would say or or or something that people can actually do so i just wanted to share that because to me that also gets to some of the equity we talked about and the report focused a lot on racial equity but i think there's also economic equity here that we're talking about and i also think it's really important to remember that we have a lot of social service agencies along this corridor and they located here over many years because there was a density of population it was important the city at that time a years ago was recognizing this corridor needed reinvestment it needed um it was an opportunity to bring services closer to the people who needed them decreasing their travel time perhaps even and making it more easily accessible and so they've made those investments and they have located on this corridor and i still hear even in the phased approach the phase one is still going to impact them in the report i don't really see the acknowledgement of that impact in the executive summary it doesn't even mention it but people have brought this up time and time again the impact that would have on their clients the people who use their services and that we're that this is actually creating additional burdens and barriers to people who want to use the services provided by outreach burlington children's space feeding chitonton legal aid pathways and the community health center and during the pandemic the community health centers only seen and so are these other agencies have only seen the need in our community grow and so it is very concerning that that is doesn't seem to be acknowledged anywhere in the report and in fact is you get into the details of the phase one and the parking management plan itself um particularly if you're talking about the segments um starting on page 70 you do mention the community health center but then in the next section between archival indicator there's no mention of all of the social service agencies that are located on that on that section of block two and impacts that will happen and the challenges that it presents to them to provide these services to members of our community so I think that is probably incumbent or would be a good idea to at least acknowledge that in there so that it would give a more well-rounded picture of the challenges and opportunities and specifically um it's just not mixed use there's specific uses and we know some of them we actually know all of them it's not that many um so I would ask I would ask the team to really look at that and to think about that as we go forward and um as you're finalizing this report um I think some of the equity analysis really does miss miss some of the things that I think about when I think about equity so I think about equity is everybody has access more balance to all modes and so I I just want to reiterate that um I know that Chape the director Spencer has um really worked hard to reach out to the eight entities that he listed in his memo um and I believe at this point six of the eight are firm knows and two have not yet said yes unless there's some new update that I'm not aware of so that concerns me when we talk about ameliorating impacts to the businesses at the northern end of the avenue by counting on off-street parking that has yet to materialize right or has no certainty at all right at this point today unless I'm incorrect and please if something has changed I'm glad to hear that still talking to three but appreciate your comments okay um and then I I get I'm a little um thinking about reaching out I had asked for a little more detail on um the outreach to the nine businesses that had sent letters to the committee as well as the petitions from the OSI that had petitions right from the neighbors but those were letters and I know there was some outreach there maybe you could illuminate us to to the details of that outreach it didn't seem like it seemed like it was a mixed bag yeah and then maybe try to give a quick update um yeah it was I think that's fair it was mixed feedback um we of the nine businesses that we did reach out to we did speak with seven of them and I would say three of them were still concerned um two felt neutral about the changes and um one thanked us for stopping by we didn't have anything else um to add or any additional questions so yeah mixed mixed feedback there into that um we haven't directly connected with yeah I wanted to let some of the other committee members have some time I have a few more comments but I want to give other people some time thanks kirsten anybody else from the committee have questions or comments at this point councilor hansen okay I'll see you then oh Jack go ahead oh no I just wanted to I think something we haven't really talked about in this committee that someone commented in the chat um that's really important is the feedback that we've gotten um especially in the survey that we've relied upon is very skewed towards car owners in a way that doesn't represent the population so like the the people who respond to the survey owned cars at a way higher rate than the actual neighborhood so yeah hi I think to Michael's point how are we how are we weighing the feedback of of the huge chunk of folks um the don't the don't on cars in the neighborhood how are we ensuring that that's being represented I know that's a technical question or how it's how it's being represented councilor hansen uh as I think we've we've seen there's there are impacts to removing parking and we're not replacing all the parking that's lost we're not adding more spaces and so we've been dealing with trying to meet the needs of those existing residents and businesses in terms of the the data that goes into this and understanding how many households may be living without a vehicle and understanding how the travel behavior currently occurs along the corridor I think we we have done our I think best to represent this in an accurate way we have public census data that's available to us and that's where I believe that the comment is referencing there's a figure nine in the report which shows the number or percentage of households that are in those census tracks that uh were per census data estimated to not have a vehicle and this is the highest rates of zero vehicle households in the state uh in this in this area uh there's maybe a population just across the river but including winewski and north winewski avenue in burlington this is the the highest percentage of households that have zero vehicle households there may be a pocket in berry as well the survey data that was taken was done in a way that we were able to represent the census characteristics of the residents and per that I feel confident that we were representing the average vehicle rates appropriately I don't know if I fully agree with the representation of of those of those magnitudes of of who is represented who wasn't but I believe that the data that we're that we're showing as to who lives there how they're traveling how they're getting to work those are those are represented accurately as far as far as professionally from my point of view and if there's questions about that data I'm happy to dive in and answer any questions questions with any individual thanks that's that's helpful I just yeah I think we often are undercounting that population the population that doesn't own vehicles and it's it's underrepresented throughout this process and I think a lot of the framing around this has been you know this is this is good for climate it's good for safety it's good for x yz reasons but it's inherently gonna harm people's ability to get around or normal people's ability to get around I think we've kind of created this narrative that to some extent we we've sort of yeah we we've discounted or undercounted the fact that a lot of folks a huge percentage of folks a huge chunk of people do get around without a car and and this is going to make it easier for them to to access these services and then get around but thanks for clarifying that it's a varlo jump in you know I would just say that I appreciate that you you're using the data that you have right of the census tracts but there's a level of granularity that sort of is lacking there and detail that is often I think missing I was really pleased and had a chance to talk to Kelly Dugan about the one mobility audit that that came up at the last meeting because it was really eye-opening for me to go back and take a look at that and one of the things I just want to share that's in there in there what kinds of infrastructure improvements we would make getting around easier is people said better sidewalks number one number two is better sidewalk snow removal number three was having my own car number four is bike lanes and five is crosswalks and there were other recommendations there to improve safety which was lower traffic speeds protected bike lanes or the use of shadows crosswalks wheelchair accessibility better maintenance of the road better bus headways better transit so those are all things that I think also should be informing sort of where we're at and what we're thinking here so I'm encouraged by you know where we are tonight in this conversation I think I don't think we have a totally workable solution yet but I think it's come a long way since the last time we talked and I too really appreciate the work that director Spencer's done trying to trying to square the circle on this one and also all the outreach he's done for or to the to the parking potential parking solution providers and to the businesses but you know one of the things that I think about this is and I think one of one or more of the public commenters mentioned it is you'll wonder whether or not this is phase one or this is the solution if we can figure out how to provide adequate parking for or this part of the corridor that we're considering for phase one if we can figure out adequate parking for that and if it worked out we may have the suitable biking infrastructure that I think we all want that would that would make it safer for cycling and support those with cars and needs for parking you know I'm hoping that we can still work on work on that and I would almost like to see um us able to find that austere parking before we decided to move forward with this one that's just kind of where I'm at right now but I feel really encouraged by the work that's been done um and and I'm supportive um of this idea of northbound on union and southbound on when you speak from you know uh it is currently proposed if we can we could solve the parking thing I think we'd have we'd have some so I'll just offer that for now thanks councilor barlow charles thank you uh yeah I feel I feel fairly similarly to mark I I um really appreciate all the work that that you all have clearly done since the last meeting um and the the pivot that that has taken place I think is um it definitely shows a consideration of of the things that the concerns that have been raised and and efforts have been made on that on that side and that's very much appreciated I also um echo what somebody said in the comments the frustration that that there seems to be as well with a lot of people that are involved involved with you know this project over the years that it's being delayed um or over its potential delay um but you know this is a largely working class neighborhood um and public engagement is you know it's a privilege and um so I don't think it's necessary you know I don't think we should be surprised that as the rubber starts to hit the road you're going to find a bunch of you know a lot of residents have never been like what you know uh what's happening exactly uh and and voicing their frustrations at this point so I think we just need to understand that and uh and have a little patience there um I feel like you know at the beginning of this process I think in the first meeting for me um I do own a business on on North Knoosky Avenue but that doesn't you know that honestly that doesn't really bother me at all we have a fairly young clientele we we have a bike rack we we participate in bicycle benefits um I actually that the the um you know the potential of a bike lane that goes from downtown Manuski you know past my business as it goes to downtown Burlington is exciting I think um you know frankly I see I see my uh my standing like opposing this would would pose a greater risk to my business than uh than the bike lanes me put in um but anyway I said at the beginning that of the process that you know the the community health center feeding Chittenden outright Vermont legal aid these non-profit services on this corridor if we if this happens and and we in any way inhibit their ability to serve the community this is a failure and um you know listening to Jeff McKee talk and at the at the end just saying um as this stands this harms our our staff the the people we serve and the community that we're in um you know that that just that really struck me and and you know you're hearing it not just from him but from other people that work at the community health center and and and not just the residents uh you know of the neighborhood so it's going to be hot you know it's tough um I wish that there was a way also you know listening to him say that the engagement with the community health center seems to have happened um kind of like quite late into the process I wish there was a way to and again I understand the frustration with the potential of delaying this but um I wish there was a way to further engage with with these non-profit organizations figure out a way to before we start taking away parking to help them manage that parking because again these are organizations that like he said they can't just um make you know they can't build another you know a parking structure um you know these are non-profit organizations with tight budgets um trying to do as much as they can with as little as they can and they're incredibly important organizations um if there was a way to further engage with them try to figure out solutions before this goes into place that that'd be something that I could I could really in good conscience feel feel supportive of so that's it thanks thank you Charles. Councillor Stromberg. Thanks so much um thank you everybody for your input this is very helpful for me um I honestly don't think I could say it better than Charles but I do DVA in some ways I mean I would like to see us move forward tonight because again we've really pushed this I think naturally it's gotten more input and engagement than it would have had we like done this earlier so I do think like there is there are certain entities and individuals that are maybe hearing this kind of late in our process um and for that that you know we should be engaging with them in a very responsible way going forward and making sure that we are being very transparent in in how we're kind of laying everything out timeline wise um but I do yeah I do think that like residents and business owners um like we've heard a lot of feedback from people and I it's it's it's nice to hear that especially from you Charles like and other business owners too that are kind of open to this and one thing that I feel is important is that like if we continue to hold off on starting this progress and like making these changes happen then we like I feel like you're not really going to get as accurate um I guess feedback as you would as if as if you were to start it and then people kind of wake up to it and then also engage further on it as it is starting and to Charles's point of you know if we impede or inhibit any type of service or anything that these incredible organizations are putting forth I think that that would cause for you know some level of concern and a discussion and also maybe some alterations moving forward but I don't think we're going to be able to like I think we're just kind of speculating going forward at this point if we don't actually just try um so you know I I would like to see us move forward on this plan um I am open to the the northbound on Union southbound on Winooski to some extent I think that that's interesting I might have a little bit a few more questions around that um yeah I'm sorry I'm just kind of openly brainstorming but that's kind of how I feel and I just want to be transparent about that um so yeah happy to hear from others as well thank you thank you Councillor Stromberg um anyone else from the committee yeah if I could butt in leave my video off because I seem to be having some connection issues but I hope it's working now yes yeah great next hey everybody I really love to see all the sort of continued effort and increase in public comment that we've been getting I think to Jane's point um this is really a big leap in faith um to sort of set in motion a project like this um and to our point it does require some action to kick off the whole thing and I think as far as we deliberate and deliberate there's always going to be some sort of opposition and some party that won't be completely satisfied but as long as we start this and thank you Chapin for drafting up the phased approach I do like that a lot um that's reassuring um then more people can learn to adapt and hopefully in the future you know those businesses and people that may need parking spaces more than others can hopefully be prioritized in finding alternative options for them in the future and as we move into phase two so those are just sort of my general thoughts I I like the phased approach and I think we should move forward thank you max anyone else Kelly or Kirsten I know you had a little more to add but Kelly anything before we go back to Kirsten yeah I guess I just want to say like I appreciate hearing a lot of the public comments um I appreciate how many like bikers have expressed their opinions today I feel like we haven't heard a lot of that and coming from old spokes home of course I appreciate it um I kind of agree with this sentiment like like I wish there had been more engagement with the nonprofits along North Noosky Avenue during this process but I also understand like that this has been in process for like five years and there needs to be some action to see what's going to happen like we can talk about it all we want but we're not really going to know what's going to happen until we implement something so I kind of agree with those sentiments and yeah I mean just to talk more about like the representation just to talk about the mobility audit again and again um so in our one mobility old north end mobility audit we did find that 30% of the folks we spoke to um didn't have access to a car like Kirsten pointed out um it was really important for them to have sidewalk infrastructure they said it would be easier for them if they did have access to a car that was another thing that came up and of course I think that's a reflection of how some of Burlington as a city caters to that car culture um so I think any sort of move we can make towards pedestrian infrastructure um is positive in my opinion um I would be curious about the capacity and future projects to work on sidewalk improvements as well and I guess that's kind of where I'm at thanks Kelly um Kirsten uh and then well yeah Kirsten or Councillor Hanson all right Councillor Hanson I see you just drank Kirsten um I don't know if this is our last chance or we're doing public comment and then coming back to us or not but I would agree um I'll just I'll just go you know I guess um I would agree with um Jane and Max and Kelly of you know we're we're very very deep into this process and over the last four and a half years and we've we've heard a lot of public feedback I think we should we need to move to the next phase of the process because we have to remember this doesn't really end with this parking management advisory committee this is going to the city council and to the public works commission but um I think we should advance it to that that next stage of the process but I know people are trying to give potentially more public comments so I can save other thoughts for after thanks Councillor Hanson and Kirsten yes I just um this goes back to comments on the report I know that um Brian had um some folks had emailed the committee um their thoughts about the the parking management plan and Brian said those would be included in the appendices and I would like to make sure that the petition as well as the letters from the businesses are included in the appendices and I really think that it's important that the concerns and the challenges that have been expressed by the social service providers that this will cause them difficulties it will increase barriers to access for their clients and needs to be reflected so that it's clear the decision whatever decision the council continues to you know go forward with that they do so understanding the choice what choice has been made which is would be to impact those um providers and the people they serve at this point and juncture and I guess I have a few more things I'll say but I'll wait until we come back from the next round of public um forum. Thanks Kirsten. Say briefly that we have been combining all the public comment but we've been receiving them up to the up to this meeting so we've haven't we have not pressed uh save as and and published the full set of comments yet Kirsten so I think after this meeting then we can at least post what we've received up to tonight. Thank you. Thank you um Councillor Marlowe. Thanks um I just wanted to respond to this idea of taking a leap of faith um and I appreciate that this process has taken a really long time it feels like like I said earlier we're really close so I feel like there is progress being made but I also think um as Kirsten indicated it would be irresponsible for us to just move ahead knowing we had significant impacts to stakeholders on the corridor so it seems like it's it's um we have to we have to find some we have to do it with our eyes open and know that we're going to impact them negatively and be okay with that or we have to find solutions before we move forward even more but I do think that we have made significant progress even within the last couple of months so um I'll leave it at that because I know we want to get back to public comment. Thanks Councillor Marlowe Charles um yeah kind of kind of echoing what what Mark said but like um I'm not terribly comfortable with the idea of a leap of faith I mean we've got um represented at multiple representatives from the community health center that provide I mean to some extent yes like the neighborhood will just adapt you know we you do this you do it and uh we will figure out how to live with it that that is true um and you know some of that isn't as concerning as others like you know but this is uh this is an organization that provides essential health services to folks you know largely low income um folks and that's not I mean to to um I don't know I don't want to like accuse anyone of being flippant about that but it does seem like we're not taking that seriously enough um and uh yeah it doesn't it just doesn't sit right with me so um I just want to like reiterate that we're not talking about like um we're not talking about my restaurant we're not talking about um a house full of of college kids we're talking about a non-profit organization that provides essential health services um to with thousands of of people in our community largely low income folks and um and and putting like you're hearing it from them this isn't you know like this they're not like we're not um you know we're not speculating as to what the impact will be like we're hearing that these are very real impacts that are going to be felt by this organization and it's going to get in their way of being able to provide these services and they're not quite sure how they're going to figure out you know how to get around that and um so yeah it's not I don't know I don't know that that's being taken seriously enough so I just feel the need to say that again thanks thanks Charles um I might suggest that we go back to the public forum now if everybody is good with that um recognizing the time and that we still want to come back for one more discussion and an action um I might ask that the public forum comments be um yeah as brief as we can make them um so we might actually try to time these down to I think Chip and you had suggested three minutes earlier I had I think at this point if we could these are I think supplemental comments I think having two public forums is generous and I appreciate it want to give people time but if we could keep it to 90 seconds just to give everybody a you know final conclusion thoughts and perspectives after this conversation that would be helpful so that everybody has time and can still give the attention to these comments and figure out the next step for it whatever that is that works for me is the committee okay with that Kirsten I see you here's not a question I'm sorry I have one more question that I think is important if you could clarify that before we go to the next public comment period because I think it is important so again could you be clear what the time and the schedule is for the work that is proposed that is not in phase one and what would be that and then not only would that but what is the process that will happen what triggers that when is it what's that process and how will people know and what will be that engagement process if you're truly going to to do this phase right thanks the way I had envisioned it and I can lay that out I have not worked with the council yet but the concept was that phase one would be the only phase going ahead in the near term and that we would have phase one on the ground and have a chance to experience that and see what worked what didn't and phase one the reason why phase one is timely is because of the B trans paving project once that's done that that pressure is gone and then we can discuss phase two on whatever timeline the council and community feel based on how phase one works what needs to be addressed I have no specific plan I haven't talked to council formally about what phase two would look like this was a proposal I put forward given the very real concerns and issues that have been put on the table at the last meeting and thought that an incremental approach was better than a who would all at one approach and I'll just add that the process going forward for any of those future changes would likely involve council again as Chapin said and will ultimately come back to the public works commission as well so this would not be done in a vacuum there would be a whole other round of public engagement again before phase two would start so the engagement would be at those meetings so you would have to know that it was happening and on the agenda for those meetings and that's how people would know to clue into the that that was going to happen I think that what what I understand Nicole laying out is those are the the required steps at public meetings to get something approved I would fully expect us we've done here to have many more public meetings that would afford the public an opportunity to discuss the plans in advance of a public works commission making a decision on a regular spray change of traffic or park right yeah this isn't like a decision that staff is just going to make and suddenly surprise people so yeah there are those two kind of milestones that I expect but they will be processing up to it so so does it why why is phase two still in the parking management plan at least for my my work because council directed us to develop a parking management plan okay I get yeah sorry it's just a little confusing a lot of moving parts understand I just want to make sure people understand what you know where they're since they're engaged now how they can continue their engagement right yeah thank you know that's an important clarification and it is good to make sure people know okay all right so Brian if we can turn it back over to you to help us navigate this I'll try to be silent in the background keeping a timer going and we'll gently try to nudge if if we're getting long winded okay great thank you we have Alec ready to go thank you all for your help on this I'm it's I'm sure it's not easy I just some other people were asking questions just just about particular like just clarification was that would that be okay real quick or is it just okay I can't remember who said who was who answered whether the parking would all be metered or not I believe the answer was some metered and some unregulated does unregulated meet paid or unpaid or just not checked or anything at all not signed at all okay what is there do you know what percentage remaining that would be metered you said some so first first phase would include no metered parking any of the metered recommendation was would be phase two further down the pike okay so if I look closer at the phase two projection I'd be able to find that correct okay and for Jonathan where can I find the source of the stats that you're citing about the percentage of vehicle owners in the old north end or in this proposed area we have a few statistics but most of it comes from census a american community survey the 2019 five year averages that's presented in a few charts there on page 22 of the report is one of them and then page 20 of the report is another one of them okay thank you lasting are there any similar projects that have been proposed and implemented somewhere in town in the city and in you know in the recent history past yes definitely and now like I'm happy to follow up with you after the meeting to talk through some of those projects okay and the very last thing I'll say and I appreciate your time one thing that really occurred to me is that if people are worried about biker safety you have to imagine it imagine the same amount of people looking for pitting over the half the amount of spots all slowing down turning on their blinker looking around pulling into the bike lane to maybe find a spot maybe not maybe not using their marker now their blinker excuse me if you can just um that that that particular scenario does not seem and that's assuming all this goes through I mean it just it just doesn't seem to make any sense from it even just a safety sake we all know what people what we do when we're trying to find a parking space we pull over we put on our blinker hopefully but in this case if I'm reading the illustration correctly you'd be pulling into the bike lane into and over the bike lane and probably stopping you know thank you Alec yeah we uh does that I would encourage people to think about the yeah what the accidents that could potentially happen for that I'm sorry I'm stumbling over my words but we all I think we all can kind of foresee that anyway thank you very much thank you very time I appreciate it great thank you um up next we have Liz thanks actually Alec's question was mine around um actually I can point out where there is a table that it shows the percentage of car ownership per household that you linked to in your report Jonathan it's the footnote on page 33 under Benuski Avenue quarter study and you open that link and the data in the linked table goes to the appendices and it really contradicts the data in the report around households without cars it's table two under vehicle ownership and it says the number of household vehicles um for 92 percent of the households is one or more vehicle so I don't understand how you reconcile that data with the data that says like 14 percent of households and that sort of thing and then so that's one thing I wanted to ask and then um again I just wanted to say that when you pass whatever you're going to pass whatever you're going to recommend to the city council please include um baselines like the volume of cars parked on side streets so that you have that baseline count and then you can measure it um when the pilot happens and secondly there should be key performance indicators um other key performance indicators to measure the impacts and those key performance indicators should be written down clearly to the city council so that the public knows what they are and how the impact will be measured including talking to businesses that are low income and immigrant owned um and please include parking parity with pine street which has free one and two hour parking in between dealer.com and Daedalus please add ADA spaces to the single ADA space that exists um and that is it thank you. Thank you Liz. Up next we have Randy. Hello. Hi. Hi I don't I don't have a lot of comments actually thank you a lot of other folks have spoken and again I want to echo my appreciation for what the committee has done um the work you put into this um one of my main things just I would like folks to maybe try to think as globally as possible not in a sense globally is that it's commonly used but I guess I do have a little bit of an issue with the idea of you know um act globally think um act excuse me act globally you know sorry I'm screwing it up anyway but the idea that we do need to be concerned first and foremost about the folks that are here right right here in our city and those that have concerns about this plan aren't against bike lanes um earlier um folks that were um talking we're talking about wishing that I'm hoping the city has this commitment to to bike lanes and more more bike lanes I don't think we should put by the wayside our commitment to many other things that the city should be um that are important to us um you know affordable rents you know making sure people can afford where they live and prices don't go up because of such things as looking elsewhere for a place to stay because the lack of parking um you know supporting the BIPOC community we've had a very long commitment to that as well and last but not least the vitality of this part of our city that's we have a decades long commitment making sure that the folks who choose to have their businesses and those who provide social services in this area have that opportunity to do that without hindrances um so you know yes bike lanes commitment by the city but also not dropping those commitments that are also very important um and just a quick comment jack mentioned earlier and by way of saying we should be moving forward with this plan that there's been a quote plenty of public input there has been more public input recently but when you talk about the period four four and a half to five years there hasn't been a lot of public input during that whole period most of the public input most of the engagement has been in the last months or even weeks i'm not sure that talking about the longevity of how long this is taken really takes into account the fact that much of the public engagement much of the public input has happened only in the last several weeks so that's it thank you again thank you randy um up next we have jason yep uh thank you i was just trying to make a couple quick points that i think are necessary that um this isn't a new study it isn't something we've looked at recently i was involved in the study in the early 2000s about re-transferring windows d avenue that's 20 years ago and we we still stand here looking at the same thing arguing about what's best for everyone around but i think that making the streets calmer so that cars go slower so that people who are walking and biking neighborhood have a place to be is a positive thing and it transforms the neighborhood and it's hard to see how that will have an effect five years down the road but it will and so i think that's what everyone has to take into account is that um if we see that just parking and vehicles is the future of the old north end um it's not going to go very far because there's a lot of people there who walk and bike and it's a very vibrant community i think it'd be even more vibrant if we could have better equity to the public right away in that area and so i hope everyone considers that with how you vote going forward so thank you very much thank you jason and those are all the hands that i see great thank you so much um all right so we are back at the point of the agenda of uh the next committee discussion and then asking for an action um where through the action we're looking for a majority vote in whatever um path you take and not sure if anybody would like to kick it off but i will leave it there or japan if there's anything else that you want to cover before we jump in that sounds good i do have to put my daughter to bed and need to leave at eight thirty so uh conversation can continue i will have to leave it that thank you kirsten i see you're unmuted but that might just be a continuation from before um i'm sure if you wanted to add anything otherwise anybody else wanted to jump in i'd like to make a motion and i'd like to have the screen please to share my motion with the group brian has our control so we're just gonna pause just a minute we'll get this ironed out thank you try it out kirsten okay um before i share i just want to say i i had two motions prepared for this evening and in listening to the dialogue of the evening and the people and the efforts and in an effort to try to further meet people where they are everywhere on each side of all of this i'm going to offer this motion in hopes that it is something that will be able to discuss and this is my second motion which was um north when i can read it for folks or people feel like they would like like it or i'd like a second maybe and then allow people time to to read it i will second that so i i chose to offer this because i really do feel that the impacts on the social service providers and people who are low income and our um our biboc restaurants and smaller businesses along the corridor have not their essential parking needs have not really yet been met to accommodate the removal the bike lanes which are needed through the removal parking i'm not saying no never i'm suggesting we pause the removal of parking i'm suggesting that during the pause public works would work with the small businesses and service providers on additional tdm before removing in parking and that this shall include signed agreements for shared off street parking to mitigate the loss of parking for reasons residents businesses and service providers working to make transit service 15 minute headways on this corridor we talk about really want to change mode shifts that's really critical to doing so is making that as an alternative you're taking away parking and you want people out of their cars you've got to get to 15 minute modes additionally there are segments of the study area and corridor that don't have transit stops along them and so particularly in that last block between archibald and riverside i don't believe there's any transit stops there so that makes that a very difficult place to connect to transit and then i think you know after that effort it'd be good to come back with a new parking management plan that continues the collaboration that has been occurring in the last several weeks and really focusing on low-income immigrant own businesses social service agencies tenants and it provides a comprehensive solution to the public for their review and comment i also am not unaware of the fact that there's an opportunity with the repaving to make improvements to the corridor and so during the pause i think the city should take advantage of that but my approach to how they should take advantage of it is is not to strike the full bike lanes but is to add sharers improve crosswalks post speed limits of 25 miles an hour i realize it's priority 25 miles an hour but 25 mile an hour signs aren't there and also there's a lot of other signage that could happen with you know clear signage that bikes and and cars are sharing the lane i only see this as an interim solution i really feel that the city should continue to pursue additional resources this is not in the resolution but i do fully support that to really completely address the corridor from sidewalks to storm water to all of the modes and and and so i would offer this to the group for their consideration and feedback thank you kirsten um any thoughts or comments from the committee um yeah i'll speak up as i said i i like the idea of more time for engagement with particularly the uh nonprofit service presiders on the corridor so if there's an openness to that i would certainly be in favor um and again just want to also at the same time acknowledge the frustration that i'm sure that makes a lot of people feel with the the potential of slowing down this process but that's something i'd be happy to answer barlow um yes i'm also um i also support the idea of slowing down a little bit but i also don't think that um slowing down is necessarily incompatible with getting it done um in a way that allows us to take advantage of um the v-trans paving i mean i'm not sure how far along these conversations have been are with we i know we don't affirm commitments but we have conversations or director spencer does with three potential off street parking providers that could unlock a lot of opportunity here so um you know i'm for until we have a um a better answer for the concerns of um community health center in particular but some of the other stakeholders along the northern end of the corridor i'm i'm i'm supportive of of us so that's all i have uh council hanson yeah i i don't i don't support this i think you know jason stuff will raise a good point is that we've been debating and discussing when you ski have for i think since 2000 was the first the first study i wasn't i wasn't in burlington at that time but that's my understanding um it's been debated for over 20 years uh we've seen a lot of you know this goes to the conversation earlier but we've seen a lot of data and speculation and everyone has their own opinion on what the impacts are going to be none of us know that we'll only know until changes are actually made to the corridor and what i've seen time and time again um with these projects not only in burlington but elsewhere too and and some of us were able to go to montreal and learn about a lot of the changes that they made there they made really dramatic changes in a really short amount of time uh and there was there was quite a lot of opposition prior to the changes but after they were implemented they were supported and i think that's in burlington too like colchester ave and north avenue some of these other examples where you know these changes are always controversial essentially it's what i'm getting at they're always controversial there's always a lot of competing opinions and strong opinions about what the impacts are going to be um and there's there's always these concerns that businesses or services are going to be severely damaged or they won't be able to be impact or be be accessed in the same way as they were but when when the projects that i've seen that have actually been implemented and have gone in both in burlington and elsewhere have proven to be beneficial and have proven to um been a positive change overall when you look at safety well-being access equity climate and all these other concerns i've never seen us kind of go back like once a project said and say oh this was this was bad we're gonna have to reverse it i haven't seen that happen and i think you know at this point we essentially have to decide like we're never gonna know we we're never gonna know exactly what the outcome's gonna be unless we move forward and we've been talking about this for for so long and even the time i've been involved i think maybe four years in a few months um since the first public meeting i attended there have been a lot of voices i think someone said that the public input just started but i remember going to meetings with over a hundred people far far larger than this where we were debating and discussing this um and i worked with some some students at uvm who did an extensive survey along the entirety of wnuski avenue and they talked to hundreds of people and they had they had hundreds of petition signers you know supporting the implementation of this and they had testimonials from a lot of folks who had been injured on the corridor trying to get around or who didn't you know who didn't feel safe enough to even try to bike on the corridor and a lot of concerns so i just feel like it's at the end of the day it's a debate of looking at the status quo of what's there now and how it operates and what are the impacts of that and then speculating about about what we're gonna see so it's none of us have perfect information none of us know but i would argue that we are in we are in a climate emergency and we're gonna have to really change our transportation systems dramatically not just on this corridor but throughout the city and throughout the world and it's gonna be a lot different and it's gonna have to be a lot different if we're gonna actually um really take this this crisis seriously and move forward and so i i think for for that and a number of other reasons i i think we should move forward i don't think we should continue to to um pause this further after we've we've been discussing it for so long thanks um kelly you are next thanks yeah i guess with this motion um i'm wondering about the capacity of rsg and the rpc to kind of pause and go into this sort of like more in-depth engagement process with like the community health centers and other non-profits and residents along the corridor um i'm also wondering the capacity the room for the committee to be able to have input on that going forward if this motion was approved um and i'm also wondering about this might be kind of a dumb question but i'm wondering about pilot projects i know a few years ago there were pilot projects downtown that turned it into more permanent bike lanes just because they had a positive impact um and lowered crashes significantly um i'm wondering if a pilot sort of bike lane would be a better compromise just to see how it really does affect like the community health center parking situation um if we did decide to pause and try other solutions before moving forward but yeah just a couple questions um i'll try to answer some of those questions before even um jonathan or brian maybe i think um yeah in terms of capacity of any of the project team here it'll definitely be something we'll have to talk about um i'd say it's too early to know how it would unfold um if it would look the same with the project team that we have now or if this would be a city-led effort um and even in the city hard to know how much would be within dpw or if we need some other city partners to help with some of the things that are listed here um and the question about the pilot definitely something we can consider you know at least in my time with the city there's been a long history of pilot projects um so definitely something we could entertain as an alternative um charles um i i guess i just i hadn't even thought about the idea of a pilot that's another thing that i'd be totally in favor of and i see the potential of you know like if you look at from what is it it's um is it as far up as archival or does it start a union that the bike lane um where there is parking to the right of it you know where you know could be potentially um put a painted bike lane uh keep the parking on north winewski avenue continue to work with community health centers and the other service providers on the on the on the corridor um as we sort of like move forward towards um you know um realizing the vision of like the fully connected downtown winewski through downtown berlington bike lane which again like i think i think we all ultimately want and yeah just to clarify maybe charles i think um so if i'm understanding even kelly's question i think the pilot might be between union and riverside or basically what was going to be the first phase so you know taking that as a pilot to um try bike lanes there while continuing in whatever fashion it is that we're we would follow up with specific metrics at that point to measure the right so my question was could they look like because the bike lanes you know the bike lane that goes from north street that way you know to where there isn't a bike lane there is parking you know on the other side of it there's like parking and then the bike lane yes right i'm trying to get oriented like in front of barrio for example you know there's like there's parking spots there's parking spots and then there's a bike lane right right and then there's traffic yep it could it could it potentially look like that further north to riverside so where we don't have room to stripe a bike lane in that section to the north without removing one lane of parking okay yeah that section with barrio it's just a little bit wider so we have more that's why there's no changes recommended for that segment all right any other discussion otherwise we have a motion and we could take a vote on this and then depending on how that turns out continue our conversations and options so i just want to understand oh go ahead no go ahead kirsten and kirsten your connection is a little okay body right now so are you you might want to turn your video off for just a minute so we can catch up on any lag there so i i guess is that better yes thank you great no problem um don't know why wind seems to like mess with my internet it's the weirdest thing right like who knew um since kelly raised that i'm i'm wondering if that is like an amendment that she would like to see to this motion that we consider amongst all these other options that you know i have i have put out here that that perhaps over the course of the summer um that there could be a a a pilot of a bike lane with those fancy planters that you get and maybe it is a eight week trial and we try to really get some data on impacts to the parking and see what happens and then you could still do this i don't know what the schedule is exactly for the state when it comes through and paving maybe it's later you know you know maybe we could try this sooner i don't know if they're going to be paving in june or could they be paving in october i don't know but it provides a real opportunity so i don't know if that's something that you would see is um a friendly change that i would be amenable to kelly and maybe before we um go there with kelly i'll just clarify that i think if we go the route of a pilot i would encourage everyone to not put too fine of a schedule on that because there are so many unknowns at this point um we'll definitely work on a schedule that is doable um and we'll need some time to basically outline what the pilot would look like including the schedule the metrics um people can expect with that so um i don't i don't want anyone to get too worried about you know trying to to think through um any of the extra details about when or how that may happen we'll have to come up with that as the next piece if that's the direction we go yeah thanks kirsten um i would be more comfortable with the pilot lane i think it's also an opportunity for like as we were saying maybe folks that live along the quarter that aren't as engaged in this process or don't really know what's going on they'll know what's going on if there's a pilot lane and learn more and be able to have input and yeah i mean i think that's something i can see being a beneficial kind of compromise in this case uh cancer cancer so this pilot lane concept i don't i don't know how that's compatible with the motion because the motion is to not remove parking right the pilot lane would have to remove parking i feel like so help me understand i guess if if if we're trying to do a motion around a pilot lane i would suggest that we pause the permanent removal of parking and then um that would allow more time for public works to really work on this off street parking and maybe really truck work on some of the the transit improvements and then it could be another bullet point and to nicole's point i don't want to box her in on making it happen but she's done lots of these throughout the city with i think you know um with things that aren't permanent um and that's the idea of the pilot and i know they usually seem like they're maybe eight to ten weeks or so so i would add that as a bullet just to for dpw to prepare a temporary pilot yeah and maybe i will just clarify again like in addition to a schedule there i would also just ask that you don't box us too much in on a timeline for the pilot um yeah i'll be honest like a schedule to do to do a real pilot we will want to give it more than just a few weeks like we really need a decent amount of time to really let people adjust to changes and then be able to go back and measure changes um so i'm going to pause there because i know we have a couple of their hands up so i'm going to go to barlow um i i like the idea of a pilot um i guess mildly comment on a pilot would be to minimize the impacts to um stakeholders along that part of the corridors to try to try to um you know collaborate closely with them during you know in before and during the pilot period set to make sure that we didn't um you know undoing impact services too too much because that's essentially why we're we're doing it to better understand the impacts but at the same time the impacts will be real potentially but hopefully you know maybe they'll be minimal we don't know but um we've heard that they could be significant people who have legitimate concerns so we should um if we do a pilot just to make sure that we coordinate with at least community health center and anybody else on that end of the corridor that could be potentially impacted even within whatever the pilot time period was so just to help this process um i think i see kirsten typing as we go um yeah and i think hey we have a couple of options here we can let kirsten keep trying to like wordsmith this and see if both kirsten and council barlow can um since they're both the two that have put forward the motion um you can get some friendly language here otherwise we can vote on the motion as it was if that isn't passed we can work on another motion around the pilot um that is an option i if i can just from a planning perspective and i think i've mentioned this before to councillor barlow during pilots we have to be mindful that parking particularly does take time to change behavior and that is part of at least what i had hoped to make sure it is represented in the document and saying that there are short-term impacts for sure and longer term impacts that we don't know but that behavior change is fundamentally required in an area that we're removing parking now i understand that there's a desire to add more parking so a pilot is a short-term uh nature and so we have to be really sensitive if a pilot were to go forward that there's a a honest um understanding that that it needs to go on long enough to see those changes thanks jonathan three months six months what are we talking at kirsten i don't think we want to pin that down tonight quite honestly okay well i wasn't in there but it seems like people keep in the time it's important so i was leaving that open the motion um all right councillor hanson yeah i guess i i don't know i i i still don't feel comfortable with this motion because again like having been involved in the process for for years now i feel like this this committee was specifically created to look at this parking management plan and develop it and get feedback on it and and vote on it and if the committee feels like the parking management plan is not good then you know we can take that vote but this idea of like you know four years into this after after that the first stakeholder committee that was actually looking at the project itself approved it unanimously after the council approved it i just don't think i don't think it makes sense at at the final stage here for this committee to be making these somewhat dramatic changes to the project itself i think if yeah i think we should express where we're at on this parking management plan that we were tasked with dealing with and if we say we don't like the parking management plan it's not good enough that's that's fine but i i just think tinkering with the overall project and not even tinkering completely changing the overall project i don't think is the role of this advisory committee and so i just yeah i can't support this thank you councillor hanson um and as i'm stepping back and thinking about yeah how this does uh you know add a layer of complexity there are these two pieces that we've been trying to somewhat coordinate but kind of keep separate the parking management plan that you all are tasked with trying to move forward and that's related to the bike lane work we're trying to move forward separately but obviously related to this and yeah it is a tricky spot trying to weave through recommendations from this committee that impact both of them i think so i see max has his hands up we'll take that comment but i think i might suggest that we do take a vote on the original motion unless there are clear amendments from kirsten or councillor barlow and then otherwise um i'll come back with some thoughts about how um we're from based on what i'm hearing um some other things that may be friendly to consider in the parking management plan process um so max quick comment on the pilot plan um i do think there are a few limitations there in allowing something like that to go through i do firmly believe that in taking at least the steps of phase one um we will it will force us to look elsewhere for alternative parking specifically i i know of a few places in particular living on the street um that are very available there are many many places off street um so actually putting a plan in action will i am i wholeheartedly believe set some of these other motions in place to really find other alternatives for the people that really need to use the corridor and to drive to the corridor to access facilities there so i would motion to go ahead and vote on the original proposition here thank you max um any other discussion before i turn this over for a vote councillor barlow and kirsten in particular any friendly moments you want to discuss i have a question so is the is the new bullet about a pilot is it in or is it out right now that is up to you too i have not heard that um you wanted to add that in yet but kirsten has offered it there okay thanks so i'll assume it's in i i would again leave that up to to you you seconded the original motion um if it really is your level of comfort if you want to leave it in we'll take that as a friendly amendment and ask for the vote otherwise we'll take it out and all right hearing nothing is that friendly all right so then i'm going to ask for a vote um since not everyone's cameras are on i'm just gonna do a call um going in the order that i can see people on my screen so sorry sorry to interrupt nicole but so what are are we voting on what's on the screen or what exactly are we voting on what we're reading on the screen what we're reading on the screen is what's been put forward so far so yeah if you want to take just one more second maybe start at the top kirsten because we can't quite see all of that sorry there may be a chance to read it so um councilor stromberg so this is the we are yes there is a motion uh and i tell me really clear on like what we're doing and if are we i guess i'm just confused because this doesn't feel like it is within the scope of what we're supposed to do so i'm not really sure like are we voting on something else after this like i just i'm just concerned yeah i mean i guess it's a good question at least how i read this is that this gives dpw the direction to go to council and the commission to say we don't have a parking management plan approved by this committee okay i guess i would say yes sorry i just want to be really clear on this or so this is saying that we don't have a we don't we're we're not proposing anything back to council then i don't see the so the only is christian if you can scroll up yes this is what i anticipate would be forwarded to council as the recommendations coming out of this process okay and then that's it then then there's nothing else after this um then okay then then then no then that's a no for me sorry my god no that's it's helpful clarification sorry i would like to have too many things open on my screen understandable okay so we've got one no i'm just going to keep going down my screen counselor barlow oh yes uh charles sorry you were muted there i think you said yes but yes okay um caster hanson yeah uh kirsten yes max no and kelly am i allowed to say i would say yes on the candidacy that the bike um the pilot is recommended is that allowed the pilot is included in there um it yes the bike the it says a pilot lots for a temporary bike lane on north woody's gab new between union and riverside to be developed by dpw to better understand impacts okay i'd say yes okay so this motion does pass i will just clarify that this is a bit of a difficult thing that we'll have to move forward because this is directing us to do a pilot without any parking management strategies that you have all endorsed so we'll see how the next process goes with the council and the commission in terms of what that means um but i did just want to clarify that because i just realized that we have um no parking management strategies approved by you all related to the pilot well i i do think that there are parking management strategies that were listed in the resolution which is continuing to work on off-street parking continuing to to to really maybe think can we get better headways on the transit that those are things that can continue i think and our strategies that are were laid out in the plan as being options right and that they're feasible options right because you're pursuing them i would say transit is not going to be one of our near-term practical solutions that would fit with a timeline for the pilot um but like i said at this point i can't no but you could continue but you could do that simultaneously there's nothing that says you can't always be pushing for 15 minute headways we're constantly yeah that is a yes constantly on our wish list um yeah but i just wanted to be clear that that is the direction that we will have to take when we bring this forward to council in our well i don't yet not sure what we're bringing to the commission at this point um we don't have any yeah any strategies yet that we will be bringing forward but um okay so we've got to vote um and at this point i think that really concludes the work of the committee um we will keep you posted on the council schedule and if we go to the commission if they give us any further direction of engaging the committee or pursuing anything else obviously we will let you know but um any final thoughts questions i just want to clarify something um that you said Nicole yeah we will still continue to work on off-street parking options correct that's that's part of what we're going to be doing as part of this pause this isn't scuttling everything this is trying to find a way forward and building on what's been done already this is not trying to undo anything uh yeah quite honestly i have only skimmed the motion i've spent most of my focus here really trying to make sure you all had a clear process to get through what you needed to um so yeah i will obviously read this in a lot more detail after to understand what what we as a city are actually doing going forward but um yeah that's all i can say at this point well i don't know uh quite what will go from here but i appreciate everyone's time over uh the duration of this plan and as um councilor Hanson said there was a significant amount of time during the corridor study and then now the development through the parking management plan and um acknowledge that it was a very very difficult picture here and clearly this is where we're ending up so i appreciate all of your dedication to this donating a lot of time yes i second that thank you all very much and to all the public who um has shown up throughout the process uh so thanks to everyone for their time energy passion commitment it's vital to this process and i i'm i am appreciative of the extra effort and work that the staff is really putting to try and and meet this challenging set of circumstances thank you all right thank you everybody that concludes our work here and um we'll keep you posted good night