 We certainly have five members of the board present. Yeah. This is going to be an awkward thing, but I'd like to call this meeting to order. This is not a regular schedule meeting of the DRB regular scheduled. We have before us. Three applications tonight. Because I think this is going to be cumbersome and slower than normal. We have agreed, I think, to. Continue the third application, which is the application of rhtl. To Thursday. But only here two applications tonight, which is the ones by Katrina Collins and by the state of Vermont. And the applicants have been made aware of this. And I believe all of you have if anybody's here tonight to hear those. That, that rhtl. That's our plan. Not to hear that tonight. Excuse me. Excuse Mr chairman. Yes. So, so. My email address is zoning. B O N. I N G at Berlin. everyone who was that I knew was interested in. 20 dash or 23 received an email from me. Saying about this Thursday reschedule. interested in that that hearing so please email me and sometime likely tonight after this meeting concludes I will email everybody the zoom agenda for Thursday's meeting so with that said I don't much much bandwidth we have here if you're here for the 2023 meeting if you could log off of this meeting we will see you on Thursday thank you Tom so who do we have here I because I'm here from the DRB Josh is here Rose here John Friedrich I'm here one two three four five so we have we have six board members tonight before we proceed I think because only five members we only have five voting positions we need to establish who will be voting tonight unless somebody wants to bow out I was going to select the five people with the longest period of service the DRB well I'm an alternate I'm an alternate and I'm happy to bow out if you'd like so our two others Josh that doesn't get you off the hook I was gonna suggest I was gonna suggest Polly Josh Carla John and myself and tour I appreciate you being on and I hope you stay with us I will so this is technically my first meeting I'll go ahead and still listen in I'd appreciate that I'd be good okay well so having called the meeting to order much order we're gonna do next year do we have this Bob do we have a secretary is there a secretary here I mean it's I don't see Kristi on here is she on I don't think so you can record the meeting the meeting is being recorded okay so the meeting is being recorded I thought Kristi would be on right Tom he's supposed to be yeah so let me just confirm that this recording is happening it's really worth it to have a headset if you do this a lot so yes we are recording I think Katrina is here tonight maybe just via phone my name is Katrina Collins I live at 130 chase road I am on via phone but I can also I also joined via computer and so I can see what is going we need to get sworn on Bob yes so anybody else is it's anything else anything else let me sit does anybody else want to be an interested party in this application tonight this application by Katrina Collins for a waiver hearing none then I will proceed with this hearing Katrina would you please give us an overview what you'd like to do all right so we're proposing the removal of our current non-conforming structure and then seeking a waiver for the front yard setback for the new structure we believe that the the location of the existing structure is the best place for the new structure because the majority of our land it slopes the new structure would be less non-conforming than the building that is there currently because it's gonna be about 10 feet smaller and so we will be able to increase the setback from it's currently only 13 feet off the road and we'd be able to move it to 50 or 25 feet back Bob can I just ask you did you do a swearing in how does that work I did not I apologize you're exactly right I'm not sure how that works but because I can't see her we can we can swear her in anyway Katrina you swear to tell the truth not but truth imagine before this board tonight on the penalties of perjury ideal I do as well thank you Tom thank you for that catch Carla you've always been doing this more than I have lots of zoom meetings and teams meetings I'll continue with you when Katrina sure so mostly what we're like I said we're looking for a waiver to be 25 feet off the road instead of 50 feet because most of our land is sloped and then in the areas that we actually have flat land our top flat area houses are well and then our backyard homes houses are septic and leech these tanks so those are not really conducive to building and then the rest of our law is sloped the space behind the existing pole barn we think it's ledge so it'd be really costly to to have that taken out and so that's pretty much a brief overview okay thank you and you have furnished us with a very detailed discussion of the project description and responded to these specific criteria yep did you want to elaborate on any of those criteria unless there's any questions I think that everything's written out I can go through them if you want me to but if not I'm fine with that does the zoning administrator have any comments on this question I do not all right questions by the members of the board yes Polly okay I just had a question of Katrina about the landscaping and screening I was just wondering if any landscaping is going to be added any screening going to be added or is it basically going to be the way it is I think if I understand your question correctly it'll be mostly the way it is okay with the exception of some nicer landscaping around the new building thank you I have a question Bob yes go ahead so Katrina I'm looking at your sketch that's included in your application and the building you're tearing down a shed or a pole barn and you're putting up a garage correct yep and it's a two-car garage yeah and how do you how will you enter that garage will you enter it from the street no you enter it from the side yeah from in between the house okay that's that's the point I want to make because it seemed like it was only 25 feet if you're entering directly from the front into the garage you'd have to back out onto the road right no we won't be doing that okay so so you're entering so which is somewhat like you have you had a picture maybe you could show the picture of the of the barn is that available so that I think it's like some of the last the last one I think yeah yeah so this shows up this is a picture of the barn as seen from the house yeah okay so you and so where the shed is or where that looks like is that a vehicle I can't see what that is or a dumpster I can't tell what no it's a truck right in front of the pole barn that's that's how you would you would come you would comb off the road and then sir take a right turn and drive into this into the garage yeah right okay okay and is it gonna are you gonna are you gonna are you just getting is the only thing up here Bob the the waiver on the setback and not and not approval of the the design or the or the road surface or any of that's their issues that's that's correct the really the only question before this board tonight as I understand it to understand the regulations is the waiver it's a waiver for 50% of the distance which is within the allowed distance yeah and unless you want to review it she has addressed the criteria I think she's done an excellent job showing that the you know going through the criteria and pointing out that there were you know not very many options in terms of being to do this and and particularly it's it's a non-conforming lot now and these changes will make it less non-conforming which is important thank you Tom Josh to answer your question after making the assumption that that you folks would approve this waiver I would do the new building as an administrative act I see okay does anyone else have any further questions or comments if they're not I would maintain a motion to close this hearing I so moved to close this hearing I'll second it this is Josh Josh and I suppose I'm supposed to do a roll call so okay all those in favor of the motion please signify by saying hi Polly hi gosh yes I Carla hi and John hi I'm also I the motion was carried and we are this hearing is closed the evening thank you very much Christina and thank you guys thank you I'll get it right here yeah okay thank you thank you so our next application tonight is an application by the state of Vermont the site plan approval site plan review under chapter 320 associated with a park and ride facility with expansion of existing park and ride facility on route 62 so and this is site plan review although I may want to discuss that as we proceed yes Tom I just want to note that gentleman titled Dana Hadley is really Mr. Clark one of the folks who was was seeking party status on that he's just using a town of Berlin a PC to access this meeting thank you and I see that not Carolyn but Christie's on I think that's Christie but anyway who's representing the client Tina yeah can you hear me I can hear you can't see you see me now yes we can so why don't you tell us about the project give us an overview and we'll go through this specific criteria afterwards actually there's a whole whole team of people that I want to introduce and I'm also gonna just briefly go over some stuff and then have our design consultant go over the plans all right and again I only only see nine people so that I'm limited here is who I can see yeah you're gonna want to swear everybody in again yes I am right I want to know who else is going to be speaking yeah I'll I'll let you know it's gonna be myself and there's Derek Kenneson as a project supervisor with VTrans Scott Burbank you're breaking up Tina she has video but no place I hear you Tina Tina maybe unfortunately you want to turn off your camera get more bandwidth there we go hi that Tina no no nothing doesn't show as muted either it's not hello my name is Dennis Verdias Mr. Chairman I would just like to point out that I need to request permission to share my screen as we continue and I just wanted to just jump in and share that presenting from behalf of Green International we are the design firm who these plans I couldn't hear you guys I couldn't hear Dennis I couldn't hear Tina yep okay I want to let the team that's presenting this sort of introduce themselves as they proceed apparently they're sharing yes Tom Tina I suggest you leave the meeting and come back in often that works if you can hear me or somebody can send her a text I can't hear you somebody have her cell phone that can send her a text we can send it here if she looks Tina she doesn't have cell phone service at her house so that's going to be a challenge but I can start so my name is Derek Kenneson as Tina said before she commuted let me stop let me stop you Dennis I want to first ask if we have anyone that wants to be an interested party in this application besides the applicant just hold the hold the space bar down okay um can you hear me yeah we can hear you hold the space bar down my name is Robert Clark and I'm in a butter to the park and ride and I'd like to give testimony tonight thank you is anyone else want to give testimony this matter before the board tonight okay so I can't see you all we're gonna play this by trust but I ask you please to raise your right hand you swear to tell the truth and nothing but the truth in the matter before this board tonight and the penalties of pressuring I do I do I do thank you I want to see Scott what is your role Scott oh I am a project administrator working with Tina and Derek and then Derek Kenneson is so I'm actually a design consultant much like Dennis he works for Green I have to work for VHB but I'm in this capacity I'm assisting V-trans so I'm like a V-trans employee and managing the project with Tina and Derek and then Derek Kenneson is a supervisor and he reports to Tina so he is also assisting so in total their three of us sort of helping out on this project tonight presentation I Scott Dennis will be presenting from Green International thank you well why don't we do say we have they might miss anything Carla I don't I don't think so okay and Bob this is Josh a preliminary question yes we we we took this up a while ago was six months ago or so what what did we do then was it just a sort of a general overview of the project and this is the more specifics as I recall we did we have considered this the park and ride a while ago I'm just trying to orient myself I'll be honest with you I think we only heard about it I myself have seen the presentation on this project multiple times as a member of the regional planning commission as well as a presentation by the V-trans to the site board so I don't think they made a presentation the DRB for a permit okay right I missed I must have heard it someplace else then so that's fine am I mistaken Tom you're correct Mr. Chairman okay so Tina you're back on I think well she's on mute but she's back up well but she's not officially muted oh she is muted okay here we have it can we have an overall discussion of the project from a representative from V-trans sure I happen to have the document that Tina had prepared so we've already gone through everybody that's gonna be dissipating tonight from Dennis when you when everybody speaks because we're videos aren't up and stuff and you just state your names for the record please sure this is Derek Kenison work for V-trans so V-trans is proposing to update and expand the existing parking lot facility off exit 7 at the intersection of 62 and pain turn pike north proposed design will provide 112 parking spaces improve vehicle access and circulation especially for buses improve lighting provide level one electric vehicle charging stations provide a new bus shelter and bike rack and extensive landscaping intended to protect the quality of life community character and environmental qualities as you know it's proposed the parking right is proposed within the town center zoning district boundary and gateway to the new town center designation area making these improvements to the park and ride facility will be a benefit to the town of Berlin by enhancing the overall appearance to this gateway to the town center throughout the development of this project we have sought input from general public butters Berlin select board and the central from out regional planning commission at a number of meetings from the local concerns meeting held in October of 2016 through the presentation to the select board on June 7th 2019 in general we have received support for this project our last step is to present to you the Berlin DRB and at this point we're going to let Dennis give his presentation as to what's been developed thus far let me stop you one minute who was just speaking Derrick Derrick Anderson yep thank you Dennis Mr. Chairman my name is Dennis Verdi of can everyone hear me yep yes can I please have permission to share this share my screen I will be putting plans that we've prepared for this meeting up on the screen all right so I will be sharing it looks just to clarify it looks like someone else is currently sharing their screen hold on that's me Dennis you should have it now I do not yet have permission it may take a few moments in the meantime I'll introduce myself I am project engineer working on this project for Greenwich International we have been hired by VTrans to develop the plans for construction of this park and ride we've worked closely with VTrans and have been preparing these plans through from conceptual up through the final plans the middle stage and I still unfortunately do not have permission to share my screen if Tom I I'm currently getting a notification that says that the host has disabled the participants screen sharing Tom perhaps you can go to the participant list and right click on his name you might see the permission the opportunity to make him presenter it looks like I have the permission now doing that what everyone should see on the screen is a colorized plan of the park and ride facility and so as a general overview as Derek mentioned the this project is located near from at the intersection of Vermont 62 and paying paying term pike north the existing facility was located at this at this location and we had worked closely with VTrans to develop a plan that would allow for the expansion of this facility this facility was identified as a facility that was over capacity and over that identification was made this facility was put on the list as a potential upgrades in the future and that is when we were retained by VTrans to start to develop the plans for the alternative layouts we work closely with VTrans and through public hearings and input from the butters and also the public that utilizes this facility we identified multiple alternatives for this park and ride facility different layouts different approaches and after extensive review settled on this proposed alternative that you all see on the screen today this proposed alternative proposes to expand the existing facility to provide additional 36 parking spaces beyond what is there today which is 76 it proposes to provide a an upgraded bus shelter at this location additional accommodations for accessible parking spaces a bicycle rack landscaping throughout the facility upgraded lighting pavement markings and signage along with that we had worked closely to develop a plan to provide a screening along the property line here as you can see this entire facility is located within this Vermont state right away along with Vermont 62 so there is no property line between this facility and Route 62 the existing facility property line is located along this red line on the plans and the existing driveway is located here where we are also proposing it as far as the layout of the facility you may see that we are providing an existing driveway here this driveway will allow for one way circulation throughout the facility so as you can see we have angled parking throughout the facility that angled parking is allows for vehicles that are traveling in this one-way direction to pull in and then back out of these spots here the general circulation of the facility is to come in circulate through this front aisle and then either come down and exit out of this stop control driveway onto Vermont 62 or continue around and exit the way that they had come in on the western end of the facility you you see a large area of pavement one of the primary issues with the existing facility that was identified during the scoping study was the lack of access for public transit vehicles buses had a very difficult time maneuvering around this facility and under existing conditions often had to do a 16 point churn essentially within this end of the facility to be able to turn around and leave our proposed design allows for a full size bus to be able to come in here circulate and turn around within using this area and then leave through the driveway that they had come in through as I mentioned earlier we are providing a bus shelter here circulation for buses would allow the buses to pull in out of the travel aisle stop pick up people who are utilizing those surfaces and then the bus would be able to either a circulate around and continue north or if the bus needed to exit access the highway they would be able to exit right from the bus shelter directly through this stop condition exit driveway in addition we are proposing a berm along the front of the facility between Vermont 62 and the in the parking ride this berm is necessary in order to provide drainage for the site along with the existing drainage coming off of route 62 we have a cross culvert here under the driveway and the entire facility is designed to drain all to the west and then down and into the swell that surrounds the facility like this as far as snow storage and snow removal and maintenance in the winter time the no curb is proposed at the facility to provide it easy ability to plow there is snow storage provided around the entire area of pavement and note there are no restrictions such as fences or anything else that would eliminate the ability to store snow on site and allow it to melt on site one thing that I touched upon earlier that I will talk about now as well is the screening that we are proposing within the within the site this private residence here is is something that we had looked into extensively to make sure that we are able to provide screening to this to this parcel here and as you can see we show a small berm along this end of the facility here to provide a change in elevation on top of that berm we are proposing trees and landscaping we've also angled all of the parking spaces so that none of them would be angled towards the private residence as people were parking and pulling out and as you can see we've stopped the last stop parking stall here just short of that line of sight so that people weren't parking directly along this property line facing the property itself along with that we've also changed the grading of the site as a whole we've decreased the elevation of the western end of the parking lot and by lowering that parking lot we were able to increase the screening that would be naturally provided with the change in elevation in addition to that we do propose trees throughout the facility primarily along the property line here but also here to provide additional screening from Vermont 62 to the private residence one of the things that you may see here is that there is a a berm that I mentioned earlier this berm is proposed to be graded directly from the edge of pavement down to the center of the bottom of the berm and then back up to Vermont 62 there is very limited space here between Vermont 62 and the parking ride and that was primarily one of the driving forces behind the angled parking and the one-way aisles was because of the lack of overall width that we had here in order to be able to provide the additional parking as far as the intersection improvements go we had evaluated this intersection we understand that there are some concerns with traffic at this existing intersection and so we did a traffic analysis we evaluated what the current situation was and what the future situation would be with these improvements one of the things that we identified is the ability for us to provide a slight widening of Paintern Pike North and by increasing the width of the overall roadway by just a few feet we're able to provide enough width to provide a dedicated right-turn lane on Paintern Pike North we understand that there are some vehicles who currently are able to make this maneuver in today's conditions but because it's not a formalized lane it only takes person to stop and make that right turn through this area for this area to back up and so by adding this dedicated right-turn lane we were able to reduce the amount of queuing Paintern Pike North during the PM peak hours and the AM peak hours during the highest traffic flow times as you can see another striping change is this no do not block the box striping along with some signage we hope that it will allow discourage drivers from stopping and blocking this intersection there were there wasn't a whole lot we could do as far as preventing the queuing but by increasing the amount of storage that we provide at the actual signal and providing the dedicated right-turn lane that the reduction of the queuing that resulted from that and the do not block striping will help to reduce the amount of vehicles that stop here and prevent vehicles from entering and exiting Pike Drive and the park and ride itself something that I also wanted to touch upon I mentioned this earlier but we are proposing a stop condition driveway exit only driveway onto Vermont 62 this will further reduce the amounts of the amount of vehicles that are using the signalized intersection and will help to reduce the amount of queuing that exists here under the current conditions we understand that many park and ride users come off of the highway and get on to the park and ride and then as they're leaving get back onto the highway and we felt that providing this driveway would help to reduce some of the traffic and the congestion that occurs here at this existing driveway at the existing facility I believe I described most of what we had provided on this plan in addition to this plan we also provided a lighting plan that I will bring up in just one second the lighting levels plan is for the most part it's the same that we were just looking at but in addition to that we had developed and shown the light levels that will be produced at this park and ride facility as you can see the existing light poles are being proposed to be in the center of the park and ride for them for most efficient design and layout that allows us to use the least number of poles and the least amount of lighting itself and what you'll see is that the way that this lighting diagram is set up and the light levels are developed is essentially using software that displays the amount of light that will be provided at all of these locations from the existing light poles that or sorry the proposed light poles and then the one thing to point out is that this software in the way it works it does not take into account the change in elevation and the existing screening that's provided and so as you can see that what this ultimately shows the worst case scenario as far as light encroachment so any kind of light leaving the facility itself the red line as I mentioned earlier is the property line and the small amount of light that you can see that leaves the facility right along this vegetation just barely crosses that red line and that's if there's no vegetation there at all and no change in elevation at all and so when you account for the evergreen vegetation that's existing on that's along this property line that we are not proposing to remove under this project we feel that the level of screening will be complete and that no light will essentially be leaving the facility itself along this property line it was important for the park and ride to provide lighting that is safe as you all know parking rides are used at night and during the day they're 24 hours and so one of the things that v-trans had identified a while ago and has has been aware of is that facilities that are well lit and appear to be safe end up being fully utilized because people feel safe and comfortable using them so that's one of the important pieces of criteria that we considered providing the lighting that would be sufficient and safe but at the same time making sure that all the lighting is cut off lighting and does not encroach beyond the property line beyond what actually needs to be lit and visually safe. At this time Mr. Chairman. I have presented the general overview of the project. We had also provided to the DRB members a narrative of our evaluation of the development requirements for the town and we had gone through and presented our responses line by line for all of those sections. We are prepared to go through that but I wanted to ask you to what extent you would like me to go through that document. Well first what I'd like to do is thank you very much for your presentation. First what I'd like to do is ask the members of the board if they have any questions about your immediate presentation before we go into the criteria. So. Polly. Polly. You is that a berm to the left of the proposed parking lot there? Yes this area here it is labeled proposed berm and you are correct it is an elevated location so what we are doing here is proposing some grading to increase the elevation of the land located here. And the and the purpose is to what? The purpose is twofold one of one of the purposes is to use some of the existing material that we are excavating on site and to keep it on site. The in addition the placement of that berm was strategic because we felt that it would provide additional screening between the private resident and Vermont 62. Any further questions Polly? Actually I do and it's not related to this but what what will you be using for compute commuter parking during the construction period? We are currently working we have we as Green International along with VTrans had looked at multiple offsite parking locations to offset the parking during construction. And my understanding is that VTrans is currently in the process of discussing that with property owners that are offsite and negotiating and discussing how much of that parking will be provided offsite during construction. Okay so you are planning to provide something though. Correct. Any other questions by board members? Bob I have some specific questions but if we're going to go through criteria by criteria I can raise them at that time. I thought we'd go through criteria by criteria. We won't ask the applicant necessary to reiterate but it'd be a good time to ask questions related to individual criteria. I have some also related to specific criteria. Tom Bedowski you have some comments with regard to the application. You're muted. I think I'll follow Josh's lead in that when we get to the criteria. I do want to just point out that the fire chief put in some comments and I have not seen a written response from AOT on those comments. So I hope those will be addressed tonight. And I know Mr. Clark is here tonight too so yeah. Thank you. Mr. Clark can you hear me? I can. What is your position on this application? My position on this application is that the site is too small and the traffic has grown in this area so much that this is not a suitable site because of the change in the traffic flows. The entrance to the parking ride is four cars deep from Route 62 from my driveway that it accesses the parking ride. And that is the biggest reason why Berlin shouldn't want this expanded here. Or even I wish that the investment was made to move it to a better spot like across from the Maplewood. I think it would be safer for everybody. I was told it would be better to write something up so I have a written testimony if you don't mind my reading. I think that would be the most brief. Please go ahead. I am Robert Clark owner of the Homestead butting the current parking ride. I live in this duplex with my partner, my daughter, her husband, and four young grandchildren. I want my loved ones to be and to feel safe and secure in this home and yard. I've lived in since 1984. Four mornings ago, Friday, at 6 a.m., I happened to be gardening when a woman marched briskly and unsteadily down my driveway and up to my partner's car. When I called to her, can I help you? She was startled and replied, I'm just doing inventory. Turned on her heel and left. I was stunned and asked what she was looking for and she replied that she was taking inventory and just doing her job. I went in the house. I told my partner what had happened and as a nurse, she was concerned and insisted on checking on her welfare against my advice. She followed her to the parking ride where she observed the woman checking each car. When asked if she was okay, the woman replied she was fine and did not want any help and did not want to be approached. A nearby man advised my partner not to press the situation, saying he was a daily user of the parking ride and that the lot's usage was changing and that it was becoming a place that people could stay. He also advised that one man had been there since the fall. We had only noticed him being there for several months living in his car. I support having enough safe and convenient free parking for the purposes of car sharing, commuting, catching a bus and meeting to travel together, but I can tell you that after 30 years sharing a driveway and living next to one, that the times have changed the parking ride patrons and the management are lack of it. I am deeply offended by the quantity of trash that accumulates and is thrown over our shared fence. It's not cleaned up often enough, if at all. The fence has been popped off the posts in places by their snow plow and never repaired. The Berlin police are well aware of drug transactions and other illegal activity that sometimes takes place here. Sadly, with our current crisis in 2020, we can expect an increase in people with nowhere to go. The gentleman I've witnessed living in his car near my mailbox has been there many months in very cold and, last week, very hot weather conditions. I'm concerned about the comfort, safety, and health of anyone living in these conditions. The AOT plans and places these lots and doesn't maintain police or supervise their use in any acceptable manner. By providing these spaces, don't they bear any responsibility for how they are used or misused? The lack of any meaningful management sets up the situation for the intended regular users of the lot and its abutting residential neighbors to feel increasingly uneasy about a minority of bad actors. We should all have the right to feel safe. My concerns about the public health and safety of the AOT's parking rides extends to all of them across the state. The AOT has proven to be an unresponsive and thoughtless neighbor with no accountability. The fact that they are able to expand and encroach closer to my home with pavement, street lights, traffic, and pedestrian noise is unjust and makes me furious. That's my testimony. I do want to say that I think given this site, which I think is the wrong site for this, I respect and appreciate how much they've tried to be sensitive to the encroachment to me. They've tried. It's just there's not room there to make the real sized site that they want. And so they've gone to great contortions to shoehorn this in here. I think the entrance on to 62 directly from the lot surprises me from the standpoint of safety. I have a lot of experience here. I've lived right there since 89. I've lived in the same house since 84. My house used to be across where Shaw's driveway is now. It was moved because we were trying to get away from development. And this is a real sharp stick in the eye. I guess that's about all I have to say and I thank you. Thank you, Bob. Comments, Tom, you're muted. Mr. Clark, if you could please leave a hard copy of your testimony would be appreciated. And share that with everyone on the board. And the applicant. I didn't understand. Are there any other parties here besides the applicant? Mr. Clark and the board hearing none. I assume none. What I propose to do is go through the criteria. I'm not going to ask the applicant to reiterate what they have there. I'm going to ask them to have any further to add to it. I'm assuming that we all have it before us and we've had an opportunity to look at it or we'll have an opportunity to look at it. I know I have some questions on it. I think Carlos said she did. So I do too. Yes. Bobby, you said something. I just said I have questions too as we go. Okay, good. So the first criteria and there are multiple criteria. But the first criteria is parking and loading areas. And I didn't have any particular questions on that section. That section 302A. Bob, I have a question. Yes. So Mr. Clark raises an issue about the capacity and the trends of the parking ride. Did the agency transportation do any analysis to sort of say, well, this is what the demand is likely to be now, what it likely to be in five years and 10 years, and try to analyze whether this is a spot that's going to be critically saturated and therefore you're going to have to find another parking ride or another spot. Can you address that question, please? I've seen it have lost people. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. Is the applicant still with us? Yeah, we're here. I'm not sure if Tina's audio is working. Tina, I think you just muted from what I could tell. You were unmuted and just became muted. Am I unmuted now? We hear you. You're back. Did you hear my question? Your question had to do with whether we studied in how many years and the utilization and whether this will have to be replaced or be overutilized by the time 5% or 10 years from now. Right. The utilization is not anything you can predict with any certainty because a lot of the utilization, some of our highest amounts all over the state had to do with the price of gasoline and its effect on people. And we have, when the price of gasoline is really high, people tend to try to save money and commute and take public transit. We don't really have any way of predicting how many people will be utilizing any of them. We do do counts three times a year. We have our regional planning commissions go out and count the number of spaces that are utilized at all of them just to give us an idea. But actual analysis, we don't do. Okay. And in counts, maybe this is a good time to raise this topic too. Do you address the issue that Mr. Clark raised, which I'll refer to as the misuse of the park and ride? In other words, the existence of people who are basically living on a park and ride. Do you do any counting to the extent that what's going on? We are aware of the homeless person here and is also another issue that's happening in Springfield. And we're working with our district folks, are working with the police as well as our legal section to make a decision on what can be done. Because frankly, I don't know if, because they're open 24-7, no overnight camping is allowed. However, I mean, is camping in a car or staying in your car overnight camping? But anyway, our legal people are at this time trying to address this one as well as in Springfield. Okay. Can I just add a couple of things to that too? Sorry, this is Derek Kenneson. The, as far as determining, you know, future usage, it's not something that's easy to pin down. I can say that generally the, our rule for gauging when parking rides are due for improvement or expansion is when they reach 50% capacity. That's given the project development timeline. Generally, by the time they've reached 50%, if they're growing, by the time the project is implemented, they've already reached 75, 80% capacity and would warrant expansion. So in this case, there's still plenty of room to grow based on the current usage. The counts, there was a couple of counts a few years ago that one of them was actually over 100%. So it sounds like somebody was freestyling with their parking. But then in regards to the people living or misuse of the facility, we actually just got, you know, somebody reached out to through the parking ride contact, which right now goes to Wayne Davis inquiring or reporting the individual in this particular facility. We then reached out to the district who, you know, reached out to Berlin PD and they sort of advised us of what was happening and that all happened within an hour. So the communication is pretty free flowing with that. But that right now is the generally the best way for us to facilitate that is to reach out to the district who will then reach out to law enforcement. Thank you. Any further questions? Yes. This is John Frederick. How many or what is considered the capacity of the current facility? I saw that you know, what you expected to have after, after redesigning this, but what was the capacity or what is considered the capacity currently? This is Dennis Verdiya. The facility has 76 parking spaces. And there, as Derek mentioned, there's been times when there's been more cars parked than that 76 number. People are using, as Derek mentioned, people are parking in unofficial spaces in order to fit. So this facility has shown that it is at capacity and if not beyond capacity. One of the things that VTrans does in their evaluations is they understand that when a facility reaches a certain point, you know, such as 80 percent or 85 percent and it appears full from the road, it starts to get people do not use it because it appears to be full. They don't see there's available parking somewhere within the facility. And so that's one of the issues as well is once it kind of fills up to about 80, 85 percent, it starts to appear full yet that also is an issue for for us as well. And this facility is heavily utilized. Thank you. Any other comments or questions? We are talking about parking and loading. Can I just ask if the state considered alternate sites? We did that. We have an alternatives development stage where we go through, as Dennis had previously mentioned, that we went through. What were there six alternatives, Dennis? Seven, actually, yes. Seven different alternatives, and we evaluate them on a number of criteria. And this one was the one that was the preferred alternative given all the things that they were looking at. And this also goes through not only getting public input, but through our own VTrans project definition process. We have our highway management team takes our scoping report for this. And before we move forward with a project like this, they give us their approval. And that's what we received for this particular alternative. And I guess I'm just curious because it seems as though you're suggesting that the growth that it may may may be outgrown quickly. And, you know, being that we're looking at this new town center proposal and hopefully developing that, which would try to promote walkability versus, you know, traffic, it seems as though it would be nice to have this may people may use that for that purpose were there to a walkable way to get to the town center. And I'm just thinking that there maybe could be better locations for that. But anyway, just a thought. So this is Derek Anderson again, of the other locations that we looked at two were next to Shaw's, one of which was essentially between the driveway of Shaw's and the Honda dealership that also has limited capacity and would provide no significant advantage over the current location. Yeah. The other ones on the other side of the driveway, that was, I believe it designated wetlands Dennis, correct me if I'm wrong. And then third location that we looked at was the former state library. The issue with that is that there's zero visibility from the roadway. So from a safety standpoint, that's not a good location. Additionally, it's also at the furthest limits from what commuters will generally travel to a parking right. So that location inherently reduces the likelihood that people would use it. And to be honest, they would probably just start parking at Shaw's rather than drive all the way out there. And if I could add public transit won't go that far and pick up people either. Hmm. Public transit is a big fan of as many right turns as they can possibly manage. Other questions or comments with regard to parking and loading area? There are multiple sub criteria and this is we all know they have addressed, I think most interesting enough, they did not address the one I was interested in, which is maintenance. It's something that Mr. Clark just spoke to a few minutes ago, but this removal of dirt, trash, debris, who will be responsible for that? For the maintenance? Yes. The maintenance of the facilities is the responsibility of the V Trends district offices or district garage that has to, that is in charge of this area. And what office is that nowadays? Pardon, which one? Yes. That's a really good question. But at this moment in time it's part of district, considered part of district four, which is Joe Ruzo is the DTA. Where? District four. Joe Ruzo is the DTA for both district two and four. And where is he located? He, well I don't know if he goes between offices or not because he's in charge of two districts, but it would be right river junction for district four. Well, see I can echo the observations by Mr. Clark. I visit this site on more than one occasion. Use it. I'm astonished at how much trash there's laying around this place. And very frankly, I was just taken back by the condition of the existing bus shelter. Everyone was smashed in. There was garbage in there, food in there, so somebody's not maintaining it. Right. So one of the requirements of our bylaws is that it be maintained. One of the things we have found is that particular type of bus shelter has always attracted that kind of thing and graffiti. And now that we use the wooden bus shelters that you see in some of our other new parking rides, they don't accumulate trash and people do not put graffiti on them. They're knock on wood literally. They seem to leave them alone as far as bus shelters go. What is what is the procedure for maintenance? Do you know, Tina? To tell you the truth, I do not know how often a lot of times the district unfortunately needs for someone to contact. In this particular case, it's Wayne Davis who's the contact on the website to tell them that something's amiss here and then we have to then contact the district. That seems cumbersome. It would seem like we should be able to call somebody when we see bagging garbage. And if you need to, then I would say that you can call Joe Ruzo directly. Because I don't need to tell you, Tina, that keeps changing. Yes, they do. Not only do the DTAs change, but we change which DTAs in charge today. Yes, we do. I agree with you entirely. Because if you look at our website, Berlin is in District 7. When I wanted to get someone from the district involved in something, I wrote to District 7 and they said, oh no, that's District 4. So I understand. I think it's worth noting that there may have been some confusion between the districts when the central, the district was broken up and that area was divvied up. But I think one of the byproducts of this project being developed is that we have been asking them questions about maintenance and that sort of thing. And it has helped, I think, to clarify with them as to whose responsibility this facility is where, like I said, there may have been some confusion once the districts were re-divided. From a security point of view, has V-Trans ever considered cameras or other security measures? We get asked that a lot. And we don't because, one, we don't have the resources to have someone, one, watch the cameras. And two, we don't want to put up something that will give someone a false sense of security, literally, because we're not watching them. And we don't have the resources to, you talk about maintenance or even keeping the cameras in good condition or someone to watch them. So we don't do that for that reason. I don't think most cameras are watched. It's recording. Right. But who's going to be keeping those recordings? And where are those recordings going to be sent? That's just sort of, I mean that could be, it seems as though that could be worked out. But I mean, I think having a camera there and saying, you know, not monitored but recorded is doesn't give people, that wouldn't give that false sense of security. And that would provide a deterrent for people if they thought they were being recorded, I think. Certainly would affect the drug transactions. Anyway, Tom, you're muted. Is there ever any consideration? We have some of our other larger entities in our town enter into contracts with our local police force to provide police service. What are best a consideration here? It would have to come out of maintenance's budget. I'm just telling you, we talk about trash removal and snow removal. All those things cost money and doing security and paying other people to do it. I can't say yes or no, but it's still a cost. Yeah. And I guess this is Scott Burbank. I mean, one thing is I would assume that Berlin, I mean, I think the first thing to know is that this older parking ride looks older. It's hard to tell, but the parking right itself, the parking is pushed up against the fence. So something we learned from Williamstown Northfield is there is a fence between the district garage and the parking area. And so when it's easy to walk to the front of your car and chuck something over the fence, people do it. You're going to have more green space between the right-of-way fence and the paved area. You're also going to have a much nicer bus shelter, a much nicer layout. It's going to be grass. We use a low-growing fuchsia grass because the district doesn't mow it every week in June. So I think overall, it's going to be a much better situation because it's going to look nicer. You're going to have proper lighting, et cetera. So I think that's going to help you do that. So I think those are all positives to do that. So I think overall, security is a concern. But I mean, I will say that in Richmond, for instance, Richmond Park and Ride, Richmond PD tend to hang out there randomly and stuff. So I'm assuming if your patrol car could drive through there easy, which under the new condition it could, that it would take a swing through, right? I mean, I don't know why they wouldn't. They probably drive through the mall parking lot, et cetera. So I think right now it's tight. It's hard to get through there. So why would they want to enter that? But under this scenario, there's free moving, free flowing traffic. So I would assume that they would patrol it like they would any other property within Berlin. May I speak? Again, they have limited resources too. Right. Mr. Chairman, may I speak? Yes, please. Go ahead. If the Agency of Transportation is providing and upgrading and investing in something that's meant to be a public space, why isn't it maintained on a regular basis? Why isn't every park and ride cleaned up twice a week or once a week or once a month? Or there should be some kind of a maintenance plan just like there is to plow when necessary and to mow when necessary. It seems to me completely unacceptable that it's not a regularly done thing. And I also don't accept that a camera has to be at this huge expense, that it's recorded, sent somewhere. I know lots of people that have them in their homes and they're very inexpensive. I just think those are cop outs and it's just a failure to maintain something that they're creating. And I think that that becomes a public health problem, a public safety problem. The Berlin police regularly drive through that lot and I witness them going through and talking to people occasionally. But I don't feel like the Berlin police should be responsible or its neighbors responsible for doing the job of the agency of transportation when they're providing this public space. Bob, I have a question. Are there any waste receptacles in this facility? No. None are planned. They're none there now and they're not planned in the future. That's correct. Correct. Is that because it just creates a bigger problem if you have a receptacle or get to the issue where you have one, who's going to empty it? Yeah, they no longer, they used to have receptacles that pull off throughout the state and they no longer do that. So they've eliminated the garbage service within the maintenance districts a long time ago. So I think it'd be a maintenance issue. I think that one reason why they've eliminated them is they're the concern about people and coming and dumping their personal trash, their home trash there. Yeah. Okay, we need to move this ahead here. Was there anything further we want to talk about with regard to parking and loading areas? That's a great criteria. I think we made a point about maintenance. Next criteria is access and circulation. And does anybody have any questions about that? I have a couple of questions. Yes, please. On the exit that takes you, I guess, yeah, it's called proposed pipe. Is that what it's called? It's in the area of the proposed pipe. It's not the proposed pipe, which I guess is for runoff. But it's that exit, whatever you want to call that. It's a driveway. It's an exit only driveway. Okay, so I had two thoughts about that. One was, and I know you had a pretty extensive plan that showed all of the signage, which is a lot of signage in this small area for various purposes. Is there any signage that says if you go out that exit, you can only get to route 89? Yeah, good point. There is a sign proposed that points out that it's a one-way direction. So it, as you leave the facility, not only are you angled to go this in this direction itself, but there, I believe I can double check, but let me believe there is a sign that's directs that it's a one-way blow in this direction. I think the question was though, yeah, it's one way, but do people all realize that they're stuck onto 89? There's no other way. I mean, they, once you leave that way, you have to go onto 89. And then you have to wait till another exit to get off and turn around. Yeah, I know. I mean, I, to some extent, the problem exists already, because once you go by the intersection, I know, but you, but probably is there's, maybe people just learn that they do that. But in a new park and ride, a new exit, you'll find some people will be turning there and say, oh my god, I didn't mean to do that. And, you know, I'm just pointing that out. The other issue I had was being able to see any ongoing traffic in that lane. I know it's not the main travel lane, it's sort of an auxiliary lane. And then you sort of merge over, I guess, to the left after you go a little bit through there. But you will have some people turning on, on pain turnpike north, turning right and getting into that lane and going and not moving into the, to the left of the center. So I cite visibility from that exit. And particularly if we're, if there's any snow piled up there at all, you're going to have some difficulty, people may have difficulty seeing onto that lane. That's only my thoughts. Is that a yield or a stop? It's a stop condition. And I guess to the point about the snow, understand that it's a stop condition as if you're driving to the white line. So you have an eight foot, 10 foot shoulder that would be plowed that would allow you to crawl onto before you enter the travel lane. So you're saying you'd be, you would, you would be sufficient sight distance? Yes, there should be. Yeah. I mean, obviously it's just like any stop condition. You pull up, you stop at the stop bar, and then you pull forward until you have visibility that it gives you authorization to enter the travel lane. Now this drawing does not show a merge lane. Is there a merge lane? There is not. And it's not intended to be. So I guess from that point of view, perhaps we should add some line striping, but yeah, I'm not sure the color plan. Is there a reason you did not do a merge lane? We do have enough room to extend it before you have to get over further to the west. So yes, you need, in terms of the length to get up to speed, because it's 50, 50, 55 in there, there isn't enough area to go from zero to 55, and then to merge over before you come up to the, further up there's guardrail because there's a wetland down below. So there wasn't enough room. And so this was the next best safe alternative. So I'm not sure I follow with that. So you stop, you're going to pull out, you're not forced, you're not in merge lane, but you're going to have to get over to the, to the left, aren't you? No, you're going to have to go, sorry, go ahead, Dennis. So in the yield condition, there is, there is, there's a built-in understanding that you have enough space to accelerate and pull out before you actually have to, you know, merge into the lane. Under a stop condition, we felt it would, it would put more emphasis on the fact that you do not have a dedicated lane within Route 62 and that you do need to come to a complete stop and only pull out when it is safe to do so. Obviously there are some similarities between a yield condition and a stop condition, but we felt that a stop condition would be a safer alternative to a yield condition here that would potentially provide someone with a false sense of assurance of having that dedicated lane to accelerate within. So in this case, the person's going to stop and then they're going to pull out and they, and I'll call the shoulder, they're not expected to drive in the shoulder, they're expected to drive right into the right hand of the two lanes. Correct, they're expected to wait until there is an opening in which they can pull out into the main travel lane itself, not drive on the shoulder. They got to do that carefully because people drive you point out or drive in 55 miles an hour right now. Yeah, we felt that with the signalized intersection so close to this location that there would be enough gaps within the traffic during the red lights and during the switchovers that people would have enough gaps to pull out into Route 62. And I'll mention this earlier, but I mean later, but another thing to keep in mind is even during the peak hour as we did our evaluations, there's only at the most, you know, 10 to 11 vehicles leaving this facility in any given hour time frame. So there's is not, you know, and that's leaving the whole facility, so in two driveways. So there's a, you know, if you take that, you split that in half or even a quarter and you say that four out of the 10 vehicles will be here per hour, or that's only one car every 25 minutes, you feel that there is going to be enough gaps and ability for people to pull out with such a low volume of traffic pulling out of the facility. Another question that I just wanted to clarify, I just double checked our plans. If we do say that the exit is to 89, we have a sign that already shows that on the plans just to clarify, I know that question came up, so I just want to follow up. So if you have so few vehicles that will be using this exit, I mean, is it worth it? Yes, primarily because of the signalized intersection and the congestion that's there. We did not, we wanted to do everything possible to decrease and actually make the situation at the signalized intersection better than it is today by allowing as many vehicles as possible to first bypass that signal altogether, and then do end up using the signal to have a dedicated lane. I'd like to go back to that traffic study, but perhaps we'll wait till we get later on in that criteria, but I was interested in turning movements and traffic counts, peak hour accounts, that kind of thing. Perhaps I'll ask that question right now, since we're talking about traffic. So what is your analysis of the traffic leaving this during peak hour? So leaving the facility itself? Did you do a traffic study? We did a traffic analysis of the existing signal and we also, once we optimized the signal and added that right turn lane, we also did a signal analysis for future projection of the signal itself. And the results were? Yes. Let me, there's a lot of technical information, so let me just pull up the actual notes that I have so I can make sure I don't misspeak on any aspect of that. I will say, so as I'm opening up this file that when we evaluated the signal, we identified the fact that the current level of service as a whole at the signal was during the AM peak was a level of service C and during the PM peak was a level of service D. And that's just to clarify that, I misspoke a little bit. That's not the current condition, but that's a no build condition. So if we do nothing here and we do our future projections, the level of service at the signal will be during the AM peak will be C and during the PM peak will be D. With our improvements able to by adding that right turn lane and optimizing the intersection signal signals, we were able to check out to a level of service B, so move up a level of service for the AM peak and also move up from a D to a C for the PM peak. We then evaluated how much additional traffic our facility would add during those peaks. And one of the things, one of the things that we had noticed is that the facility utilization peak is actually during the middle of the day, rather than the PM and AM peaks. So not only do the PM, the utilization does not line up with one of the peaks, but because when you evaluated for the worst case condition, which is a PM peak, we calculated that with our future expansion and the additional 36 parking spaces, we would be only adding about five vehicles to the signal per hour during the PM peak, which is the worst case condition. And that assumes that all vehicles are leaving through that driveway located here and that no vehicles leave through this exit. And so because this signal service is about 300 vehicles during that PM peak, five additional vehicles is insignificant to the overall operations of the signal. We were also able to reduce the queues, and I mentioned this earlier, down to, let me make sure I got the numbers here correctly, we were able to reduce the queues down to 145 feet, which that just to kind of give you a visual of that, that would essentially be just beyond this striping here. And if we under the no build condition, the PM peaks would go as far as the back end of the fire station driveway. That's if we do nothing here at all. And so we felt that it was a significant improvement to the signal operations here, and is actually an improvement over what's there today. Is that timing and the dedicated right turn later? Both. Both feet. Is that study available to us? Tina? Yeah, it's part of a larger document. So it's inside another document. So we can offer that document. It's just that it's really large and it will have to do the same thing we did with the plans and put it on FTP site. Yeah, it was part, we had performed this evaluation as part of our alternatives evaluation. So as when we evaluated all of the different sites, we evaluated the signal at that same time and had a large document that we pulled together with all of that information. Is it possible for you to just make the traffic study period available to us? Pull out just the traffic study? Yes. We have a couple of charts too, right? Dennis, not just the Yup. We have a lot of data, obviously. We have a lot of tables and charts. It's something, we can discuss this maybe after the meeting. We could just take that stuff out if that's what you want. Yeah, I think that's kind of a burning question for a number of people, witnessing what's happening there today, recognizing that there's some pretty bad queuing just coming out of the parking lot, saying nothing about the queue on 62. So I think people say, okay, well, you're going to add 36 more stages. How much better is that going to get? Or how much worse? Yeah, we can do that. We can have them pull out all the traffic information and make that a smaller file and send it to you and all the board or just send it to Tom to send out? Send it to Tom to send out. Okay. I'm assuming it's a manageable piece of data. Would you reduce it? Other questions for the applicant on access and circulation? I just had a question about, you know, what the fire chief said about a preemption. We are going to have to discuss that with our traffic signal folks to find out what the best option would be there and who would do it. But it's not something that I can say that we're going to, we're going to have further discussions within VTrans on what to do here. And is there a way, you know, if that's the case and, you know, emergency vehicles have to go through, is there a way to keep people from coming out of the park and ride so that, you know, that you've got less traffic at the signal, you know, like a flashing light or something that sort of says, you know, don't go out yet? No. I mean, red lights from the fire trucks, there would be nothing, which I'm assuming when they leave they're rather loud and bright, I would think. Yeah, I think the real problem is, is, is activating the bypassing the control on the signal. Right. So, like I said, we'll have to discuss that with our traffic signal folks to figure out what the options are there. It is a key intersection. I remind you that probably I'd say a third of their visits are actually to the interstate 89. They get called out. It's usually regarding an accident on 89 frequently. So they need to get out there. And there's also hospital emergency vehicles. It's a critical, it's a critical intersection from that point of view. I'm going to take liberty here, accelerating, unless people really feel like they need to interrupt or say something. Landscaping and screening, landscaping and screening. This is Josh. I hope you're getting a some kind of a warranty on the elm trees. Maybe you're lucky enough to have found elm trees that will last a while, but they're generally prone to disease. These are probably supposed to be disease free, but, and I admire you. I like elm trees a lot. So I hope it works. Although I have no comments. Thank you. So you're taking down a lot of trees too with this project. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. So I just, you know, you talk about doing a lot of landscaping, but is there a net gain in the trees or a net loss? I mean, like there's a line of trees along 62 right now, like 19 of them that are going to be taken down. Plus a lot of, you know, woods kind of trees that, you know, where you're expanding and putting the berm in. So we are proposing additional trees to offset the ones that we remove along 62. Unfortunately, we had looked into saving those trees with our, some of our original concepts, but just with of the parcel and the proximity to 62 didn't allow us to save those trees themselves. Of those, of those trees that are there, there's quite a few that are in really great shape. There's, there's a few that are dying in pretty rough shape. And what we had looked at is maximizing the amount of trees that we are able to place back on site. We cannot place any trees inside the swale between the parking rides. So in this area here, we cannot place any trees because they just simply won't live. And they would be a maintenance issue with the swale itself. This area will stay pretty wet as all the drainage comes through here. And so, but as you can see, every place where we felt we could place trees, we have, we have trees here along the back. And we did, like I mentioned, tried to maximize the amount of trees that we are either saving or replacing. One thing to point out here is we, there's, there's some trees back here as well. For the most part, this area of the proposed berm is actually cleared. It's mostly grass. There is a small outcrop of trees that comes to about here. And we are going to need to remove a few of those trees. But for the most part, this is the, this area is mostly grass. And the trees along the back here, we are actually looking into preserving as many of them as possible. We have a tree protection zone that we have in that area that we're trying to maintain it as much of that vegetation. So I would say kind of between these contours here and the property line, we're able to save a lot of the trees that are in this location just because the amount of fill is not too much for those trees that are there. Dennis, I have a question for you. What's the purpose of that proposed berm? Just, just disposal of salt solids? It's, it's twofold. Yes. One, one, we looked to see if we would be able to use all of this, all the material that we're excavating by, so one of the things we did was lower the entire lot in this area so that it would be out of line of sight of the private property owner here. And as much as possible, obviously not entirely, I understand that, but as much as possible, we tried to lower it. And, you know, when we excavate that, we had all that excess material. And so we were looking for a place to place it on site. And we had discussed with Mr. Clark in the past, you know, the ability to provide a berm through this area to whatever extent possible. And so we had essentially used that material to then create the berm to provide some of that additional screening. Thank you. Other questions? May I speak? Please. Dennis, I just wanted to make you in the shade. Bob Clark, the, a butter. Dennis, the area that you just showed between my house and that large berm, along that, yeah, along on the state side of that throughway fence, it's really lined with a ton of buckthorn trees. And for us here, that's an invasive species that's actually really destructive. So the more buckthorn, this time of year, they make a nice visual barrier for me, but they're something that we're trying to eradicate. I'm trying to on my property. And the buckthorn trees, it would be really nice to get rid of uproot as many of those as possible from the standpoint of they're a destructive invasive species here. Understood. And we'll take note of that. Thank you for letting me know. Thank you. Other additional questions or comments with regard to landscaping and screening? Outdoor lighting. Dennis, do you have anything to add to what you provided? Let me ask you this question, Dennis. You don't mention, is there going to be a light on the shelter? So there is no built-in light within the shelter itself, but we made sure that there was sufficient light spill from the light that's nearby that would be able to light the area around the shelter as well. So, Bob, is it Josh? Yes, Josh. So a couple of questions. All these fixtures are all, the light goes directly down. There's no, you can't see horizontally, you can't see the fixture at all if you're at the level, right? Correct. They're all cut off lighting with full cut-offs. So the light is angled down. Okay. And how do you decide that, I see in the most intensively lit sections, it says it has 3.1 foot candles or something like that at the bottom. Correct. So is that considered a standard for parking rides that you need to keep, you want 3.1 or why did you do 3.1 as opposed to 4.2 or 2.6? How do you decide that it's, that's the requisite amount of lighting that's required? You see my question. Some lighting is very annoying to me. For example, the car dealership diagonally across the intersection, the Honda dealership will put in lighting and it's very bright. It's a very bright form of lighting. And I've always wondered whether it needs to be that bright. So I just didn't know where you get the standard for foot handles. So I can, this is Scupper Bank. So there's two-fold we do. So we ourselves, the agency has a lighting document that we would use that requires balancing or we would have gotten that from your bylaws. So it's either town of Berlin or the agency of transportation that gave us that guidance. Correct. And we meet, so the way, I wasn't sure if Tina, you were going to add anything that's the only reason I was waiting, but I did want to just mention that, you know, what we do is we look at the minimum requirements from the state. We then look at the minimum requirements that the town has and we make sure that we at least meet the minimum requirements. We do not exceed those at all. So what we do is we meet the minimum requirements and that is the minimum amount of lighting we provide. We do not go beyond that. That minimum amount is what's needed to provide an area that's considered well lit and safe, but nothing above and beyond that minimum requirement. We understand that light pollution is a big concern and we work really hard to prevent any sort of light pollution from leaving the facility. Dennis, what's the lumens on that and what kind of light bulb is that? I would need to look at that. I am not sure off the top of my head. I do have a set of plans that I can flip through and get the exact number for you. They're all LED lighting. They are LED lights and I know that ultimately the foot candles is what's used for the design because you could have different levels of lumen up at the actual bulb itself, but the foot candle is how much light is actually put on the surface itself. The lumens will be picked based on the height of the pole and the spacing of the poles to make sure that we provide enough foot candle on the actual surface and that's how the amount of lumens is typically decided. I can't get it quick enough. That's quite all right. Come back to that. I have a set of plans here too. I also didn't take the time to look for it. I guess the question is let me ask you in a different way. We have very specific requirements for certain lumens as to the type of lighting and as to the intensity and my question is can you assure us that your lighting meets our minimum standards? Yes, I can. We reviewed your lighting standards with our lighting electrical design consultant. We went through your standards and we confirmed that all of your standards are met with what we show in our plans. Thank you. Questions about lighting? Signs. You talk about signs. I didn't have any questions on your signs. They're all directional. Yep. We meet all of the federal and state standards for the signs that are required for this facility. We make sure that we prevent sign clutter and we try to not put too many signs out as much as possible but obviously that's difficult to do when you have an intersection and a park and ride so close together but we did our best to make sure that we don't provide unnecessary signage but none of the signage is lit or moving or rotating or anything like that. It's all just standard reflective signage that you would see on the side of a road. Questions by anyone else on signs? You're asking for those signs to be part of this application, correct? Yes. Thank you. I did want one more question for you on lighting. I didn't see where the pole height was mentioned. What is the pole height? What light poles? The light poles themselves, they meet the V-trans park and ride light pole standard. Your town's bylaws also meet, they're the same, it's the same standard as what V-trans uses and so we meet the light pole height requirement that you have in your town. That is 20 feet, is it? There's a lot of numbers. I know I looked it up and I confirmed that it meets but I'm having a hard time remembering it now. It is, yes, 20 feet. Yes, I can confirm that. Thank you. No outdoor use areas? No. There's no seating or anything like other than in the bus stop? I don't believe there's even seating in that. I think it's the bench. There's a small bench, yes, inside. Questions on performance standards? This course speaks to things like noise, glare, odors, vibration, waste disposal, quality of life off-site. Do you remember the further down to that part? You said there'll be no change. The rows of control, stop me if I'm going too fast, but it's 830, actually 845. Yeah. The rows of control, basically you're going to get a approval from ANR. That'll be their standards. Yep. We have less disturbance on site. Anybody have questions about storm water management? Well, I do. I just, because you are increasing the impervious surface and you've got the swales, are there any other sort of, you know, LID or green infrastructure techniques that you'll be using? Try to keep the storm water within the site and free it. We do have, we are providing a rail. It is relatively flat. We're going to promote infiltration, but unfortunately this site is, the soil here on site does not infiltrate well. It is a pretty low quality soil for infiltrating. But what we are doing is we're providing permanent check dams within the swale to help with some of the sediment control. And so there is going to be some sediment control provided within the swales themselves, but it is minimal. And for the most part, the increase in impervious, though we are increasing impervious to some extent, we're also decreasing some of the impervious as well. And so when we've done our evaluations, we've tried to make sure that we weren't increasing beyond what the permits would allow us to do without that additional storm water treatment requirements. So you're under the threshold for storm water discharge permit? Correct. But you are providing swale treatment and a minor amount of overlap as well? And we will, obviously during construction, we'll have all of the required erosion control measures installed during construction until the site becomes, you know, well-vegetated again so that we prevent any kind of erosion during construction. And am I correct in the solution that based on the contours, all the drainage basically flows south and east? Correct. For Austin Park and Law? It's a little, it's a little interesting. So all of the park and law flows from east to west and it leaves the pavement. It then follows this swale and flows along the swale all the way to the low point here. There is an existing catch basin and then that catch basin has a culvert that discharges across pain-turned onto the other side of pain-turned pipeline. So by doing that, we're actually, we're helping to, you know, provide as much of that sediment retention as we can within the swales without just directly discharging everything to the catch basin. Dennis, excuse me. Hi, this is Eric Atkins from International. I just wanted to just make a quick correction. Actually, Dennis, the contouring goes from left to right. Yeah, I was going to say. The left side of the parking lot is higher than the right side. So pain-turned brick north has a low side of the parking lot and everything pitches from the left to right, as you see on the plan. So 975 and then the contour 970 is at the very far right edge of the parking lot. You are correct. My mistake. So before I cross and to the east, cross meaning to the south, I have no questions for a ground stone water. Anyone else? The only other question I had for the applicant tonight was traffic impact. I think you addressed it. I think what you're saying is there's five new trips. Is that correct? During the peak hour, PM peak hour is what we're expecting. Well, that's what I'm concerned about. Did you also do turning movements? Yes, turning movements were performed. Do you mean as far as counts go at the section? Yes, we did turning counts at the signalized intersection and we use those to evaluate the benefits of adding that right turn late. Are there any other questions for the applicant tonight? Tina, would you be terribly opposed if we insisted on the recommendations made by the fire department? I wouldn't be opposed, but again, I'm going to have to talk to traffic, the traffic signal folks, but I wouldn't be opposed. No, it makes good sense to me. Excuse me, Bob. Yes, I know we had some earlier conversations with Tina's team about that swell area of being wet. Maybe there could be some plant things in there that would be conducive to make it more aesthetically appeasing there, if they had some sort of plant things that can go to wildflowers or something like that. Yes, we did discuss that. One of the concerns that we have, because it is a swell, it ultimately has to be maintained and mowed in order to stay functioning. And one of the major concerns with putting plant things in the swell is that either you don't mow it and it grows up, such as a wildflower mix, it grows up and it may look nice, but then you may have drainage issues on site. And the alternative is to mow it, but then you're mowing your nice planters essentially. So it is a concern that we've looked into and we've looked at trying to see what other ways we could make that look a little nicer, but I think for the most part from a maintenance perspective, it will likely need to remain a grass swell. There are no small bushes that can be put on the top of the swell? There's very little space. Unfortunately, when you plant something on a slope, it tends to die because there's very little water retention, because the water just runs along the slope and into the swell. We can definitely consider that. We can talk further with the V-trans group and see if there's any potential alternatives that we can come up with, but it's a pretty tight area with a steep slope. It's a two-to-one slope down from the pavement into the bottom of the swell. So it doesn't lend itself well to vegetation. Well, you recognize that the existing design does not meet our standards, glad to hear that. We looked at that. We did have a question about the existing town standards. They required the frontage to have plantings along the frontage. We typically are a typical understanding of what a frontage location is would be between the property line and the abutting property or the street. In this case, they are both on the same property within the state right away. Both the highway itself and the facility are on the same. They're both within the state right away. There is some questions about interpretation there. We did try to maximize the amount of plantings and we do need it from a sense of we provide the number of plantings that you would need if you were to follow it based on that frontage requirement. It's just that we don't have those trees planted at those locations, but as a site, as a whole, we provide the required amount of trees and shrubs. You're widening the park and ride quite a bit. Does it really need to be that much wider? Is that much of a problem today in terms of the traffic going around? All of the dimensions that you see in the plan are the minimum dimensions. The aisle size is at 16 feet, which is the absolute minimum for a one-way aisle here, and along with the stall sizes, also those are the minimum stall sizes we can provide while still maintaining that level of service for the facility itself. We looked pretty hard at reducing the footprint as much as we could here, and unfortunately, we couldn't reduce it any further than what we currently have. We did try to provide some separation between the private property and the proposed pavement. As you can see, we pushed it just a bit where the existing edge of pavement is up here. Right along the property line, our proposed edge of pavement is offset further from that. One of the things that we tried to do is maintain that property line offset for the town regulations as well. I believe it was 10 feet. Any other questions or comments by the board? Tom Badowski, any additional comments or questions? I have none, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Clark, did you have any additional questions or comments? No, thank you. No, thank you. I hear you. Thank you. If there's no additional testimony to be taken, I will entertain a motion to close this hearing. I'll move that, Mr. Josh. Josh, would you move it? Second by Polly? I'll second. Is there a discussion of that motion? All those in favor of that motion, please signify by saying aye, and I'll start with you, Josh. Aye. Polly? Aye. I don't see you, Carla, but I shouldn't be there. Aye. John? Aye. And I say aye also. This hearing is adjourned and is closed. I mean, I thank you all for your participation and patience. It's always trying. Thank you, Tina and her team. Yes. Thank you. We're going to go ahead and see the time. You know, I Nine o'clock. It's nine o'clock. I could do minutes. We do have another and we do have the continuation of this meeting on Thursday. And hopefully we can get through that as fast or faster and we'll have time for minutes and anything else in deliberation. Would you like to deliberate this tonight? No. No. I probably shouldn't have asked the question. I guess I was the only taker. I was going to say yes, but that's okay. You must be a night owl, John. Well, I just hate to make it even worse Thursday. Anyway, I'm happy to go along with the... I have to be very honest. I have some personal problems. My septic system has failed. I'm not sleeping well at night. I had four hours last night. Oh, no. When is the meeting on Thursday? Seven. It's seven PM. I'll be sending out a notice here in short order. Okay. All right. Will everyone that participate tonight be able to participate on Thursday night? I am able to. Yes. Yeah. Good. Because Tura, are you still with us or are you lost interest here? I'm still here. Thank you. I'll mention your take later on. Okay. In that case, I'll entertain a motion to adjourn this meeting. So moved. That's John. Seconded. John, Polly. All those who pay that motion, please say if I have a say. Hi, Josh, Carla. Hi, Polly. John. Yeah. Thank you. I got it. Good job, Bob. Good evening, everyone. Good job. Thank you. Good job. I got to fix the lighting in this place though. I guess so. Thursday. I'm ending the meeting. I'm ending the meeting.