 So I was commissioner. Welcome. Thank you. We were calling to order the December meeting of the public worst commission at six 33. Yeah. In the interest of time, we had a nice full agenda this evening. And I'll. Appreciate the input from staff. Let's say in advance, we have on the material in the packet. Give us an overview of the key points from your ends as you get, we get to your various agenda items. The. Next item on the agenda is the agenda itself. Comments or suggestions regarding the agenda. I have a motion to take. Item A out of the consent agenda so that I can. Have some information from engineer. Space and her name. Miles on. Yeah. I'll second that. We have a motion to pull. A. Seconded. Any other discussion around that motion or other. I'll say do this. We're missing. I'm missing agenda item nine. I think given the full schedule and everything seeking a vote. We'll put the. Informative item of. Listed as. For a. Towards the back. We'll bump up. Marketplace garage into the blank. And the slots. Eight. And call. Queen city park. Road and burn hub proposal. Agenda item nine. Is that working on. For. You all. As long as that works for. Engineer. Miles only. Staff son. I don't know if that'll work for her. I have communicated with her extensively today. A little bit. So she knows sort of. The kind of things I'm interested in having a discussion about. So that might be. You might be ready to sort of. Launch through it quickly. Sure. I think that is. Your motion on the table. The agenda. With the changes. That already there. Yes. We made a motion. Mr. Archambault. I don't know if that'll work for her. I have communicated with her extensively today. A little bit. So she knows sort of the kind of things I'm interested in having. A discussion about. So that might be. The motion. Mr. Archambault. Seconded. And I was. Suggesting that we take that item from. Send agenda, which was just informative item and put it. At the end of the. The rest of our action items here. Friendly to the. Motion or. Not like it is. Is that acceptable to engineer. Yes, we'd talked about that this evening. I think given that there are a number of action items on the agenda, let's work to get through those. And then we use the balance of the time to answer any questions. Great. Thanks. Friendly to the seconder. That's where we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the. Gen modified agenda here. Say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. No. Sir Galen. Do we have any. One hand raised? Perhaps. Thanks for village board members of the public who have joined us on zoom. Please use the youth. The Rise your hand. The feature if you'd like to speak during this public comment period. It looks like at least one member of the public has joined via the phone. If you would like to talk please hit star. And that will alert us that your interest. Okay. So, I just wanted to say that. Kelly divine is asking to speak. So I'll promote you over. And you'll be able to speak at once. Thanks, Rob. It's been a while since I've spoken before the commission. Just wanted to say that I've been in communication with. Assistant director Padgett about the item coming forth about the feedback that we've gotten from businesses in Burlington. I want to say that there's strong support. For the idea of moving the start date forward. As I'm sure many of you know. Our downtown businesses, not only are really challenged in the midst of the pandemic, but we had both an uptick in cases and additional emergency orders further restricting people's ability to gather. And discouraging people from. You know, being out in the community. In mid November. So it's hurt the holiday season. We still don't know how many of our businesses are going to remain open for the first quarter of the year. We're hearing a lot of them may go into hibernation. I know that since director Padgett's aware of that, I expect it's going to continue to have impact on parking revenue. I just want to say that the Burlington business association is still working together closely with Jeff and the folks on the team over there to try to both problem solve. The challenges facing our downtown and then the sort of the consequential tat challenges that are facing the parking system. So I just want to say thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Chair Hogan at this time, nobody else has their hand raised, but as a reminder for the public, if you hit raise your hand on zoom or star nine on the phone, that will alert us that you do wish to speak. But at this time, nobody is, uh, Is looking to talk. All right. Thank you, Mr. Golding. That will close out the public forum and move to the consent agenda. Okay. I'm not, if I could send agenda here, we're seeking a vote on that really for B, loading zone adjustment, Jason to 372 North Avenue. I'll make a motion and pass the consent agenda. Thank you for that motion. Second. Second. Commissioner Bose. Thank you. Any discussion around that motion? Go to a vote. Go around the list here. Okay. Okay. I'll make a motion. I'll make a motion. I'll make a motion. I'll make a motion. I'll make a motion. I'll make a motion. I'll make a motion on the consent agenda. Commissioner. Bose. Nothing for me. Okay. Can we take it to a vote, please? Mr. Bose. Can you get your votes on the consent agenda? Oh, sorry. Uh, approve. All right. Thank you. Mission or over B. I support that. Mission or Neil. I support it. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Gilman. Hi. Hi for myself. All right. Consent agenda passes. Thank you. Forward. Next item Shelburne street roundabout project update. For a staff presentation on this. City engineer Baldwin and. Senior engineer, Laura Wheelock. And public works engineer, Olivia Doris joining us for this item. And here you are. It's because she's looking at the Northern light. Yeah. Right. When we're being promoted. I think you were introducing the item. So we're all kind of. Are we on the roundabout? Yeah. Olivia has a presentation to share with you guys tonight. If the sharing screen is available. I have very rambunctious kids. So if you hear. Children in the background, I will try to mute myself to. I will try to mute myself. I will try to mute myself. But I'm not presenting. To avoid that distraction. So. DPW wanted to bring forward to the commission. Kind of where we are with the Shelburne street roundabout. This presentation was actually put together by V trans. And used in a couple of different places. So there's going to be a few slides that. We kept in there for your information since it's uploaded to the commission. So I'm going to start with you. Here tonight, myself, Laura Wheelock, senior public works engineer with DPW. On the project team for the roundabout. Olivia DeRis. Who's also helping to manage this project. And obviously with Norman shape and supporting us in this effort. This is really a partnership with V trans. V trans is managing. These are really useful to support for various components. And, and have the design. So the first couple slides are some historic images of what the roundabout used to be. And this intersection of Shelby Street, Ledge Road. Locust street and Willard. Couple of other views. with gas stations and we'll get to that implication a little bit later in this presentation. Go ahead. So the Rotary as it was called really came to the forefront of an area that needed attention because it's a high crash location in the state. It's one of the highest crash locations in the state and it's been there and continues to be there year after year after year as VTrans continues to do their evaluation of high crash locations. So with that being noted it was eligible for federal funding under their highway safety program. It's 100% funded from VTrans which also means that it gives them a little bit more control over what's happening and also provides some limitations because it is 100% federally funded. Go ahead. So this project came through our process starting 2008-2009 timeframe with the CCRPC doing concept studies of what the intersection could be, couldn't be, and how we wanted it configured. And ultimately around that timeframe I think it was concluding in 2012 or so the single lane roundabout was the intersection choice that was selected throughout the various governing bodies of the city. And I apologize you know on Zoom these are always hard to see to orientate you north as to your right with South Willard Street going down to the bottom right, Shelburne Street also known as St. Paul's Street going directly to your right, Locust Street going straight up the page, price the kings off there on the side, and then Shelburne Road as people would generally refer to it which heads out to South Burlington down to the left and then the little street going straight down the page is Ledge Road. So this is the proposed configuration of the single lane roundabout certainly a complicated area with all the various side streets and driveways and our heavy bike ped use but this gives you kind of general ideas to how various aspects of the project are going to be managed. The Century 21 property, let me get back over there, we're modifying the in and out of the driveway to better create structure for the roundabout currently they have an opening that kind of goes straight out into the existing rotary. The driveway for the majestic car rental becomes an exit only into the roundabout but is preserved so they have in and out flow and high function of their parking lot and then I think you know just importantly that the channelization and that the movements that are technically being restricted by appendix C ordinances really will become enforced which will help to improve the safety of the roundabout. The last thing that I want to point out when it comes to the geometric changes that are happening on the roadway is that as you enter this from the south so you're heading up Shelburne Road heading into town you know this is going to be one of your first gateways Shelburne Road will narrow down into being a single lane as it enters the roundabout so there's a merge right in the vicinity of Adams Court to become single lane. The entire facility has on and off ramps for bike facilities. If there's a biker that is using this corridor that doesn't feel comfortable proceeding through the roundabout as a cyclist we do have kind of these on and off ramps onto the pedestrian facilities to be a separated bike facility to be able to facilitate those movements with you when you're ready. So kind of the big pros as to why the roundabout was the best fit here. The current vehicles per day today and into the future really work best with a single lane roundabout. The one hesitation that occurred during the design is that depending on if Burlington stayed vehicle centric it could be conceived in the distant future that a lane a hybrid is what they would call it is a slip lane that would have gone from Shelburne Road up to Willard. The current geometry is set so that the city has the ability to create that addition onto the roundabout in the future if necessary but I think that the the really good news is that as we've been watching the vehicles per day through this intersection and even before COVID they're actually going down you know our trips are turning into bikes and peds so that's a positive trend gives this intersection configuration even more success. The roundabout oh sorry well a couple more highlights on this page is the crash reductions that are anticipated by providing more structure to this intersection those shortened crosswalks that the roundabout can provide and the splitter islands and the safety opportunities there and one of the hidden but will be certainly felt impacts during construction is kind of the reconfiguration of all the utilities adding in dedicated storm water replacement of water lines improvements to sewer lines water sewer and electric are all city utilities and all of those costs are being covered through the project. So these are a couple ones that I'm just going to loosely skip over when BTrends was giving the presentation about some of the challenges that are going to be encountered through the project that really have no bearing on transportation. I do want to talk a little bit about the storm water though so the project is going to take a significant portion of the project area off of our combined sewer system and move the water into dedicated storm water. They're also going to add detention tanks with sand filters to be able to help pre-treat the water that is going into our dedicated storm water and it's going to be a huge benefit for this area and the integrated plan. As I gave a little bit of a preview the numerous gas stations that existed in this area certainly have some leftover remaining effects that are going to need to be mitigated. We're still in the process of working through BTrends with those getting soil reports. Preliminary testing was done this summer but certainly a challenge that's going to lead to time that's going to need to be used to manage this during construction. So one of the things that's also been done to help prepare for the project a few summers ago we dug over a hundred holes in the right way to locate all of the existing utilities. As we started drawing on the network of existing utilities that occur in this area it became clear that we needed some specific information and going out and gathering this information at that time to figure out exact locations and exact depths where utilities crossed each other is going to help us significantly when it comes to construction. So it's no longer a guesswork it's a view inside of the earth to be better prepared when we start digging. So to give an idea of what this looks like there's 37,000 linear feet of existing utilities within the project area that's seven miles inside of this one area. So a solid list on the on the slide there of all the different utilities that are there that are going to have to be rearranged to be able to fit in the dedicated storm water that is probably the leading driver of most of this relocation. The existing assets are also not new the water line is so delicate it won't survive construction it's going to be one of the first things that gets upgraded. We took time this summer to reline the sewer lines that are going to remain so that they can survive construction and then there's still a few sewers that are going to get replaced and relocated as part of this work effort. So the next slide I think shows some of the other electric and communication utilities and yeah just the map of all the existing stuff that's out there. So I'm going to give it over to Olivia to walk you guys through our transportation traffic management plans during construction. Yep thanks Laura. So yeah transportation management traffic control is something that we and VTRANS take taken very seriously throughout this process especially as we move forward get closer to construction obviously these questions are coming up a lot people are concerned about how they're going to get to work how they're going to navigate as a pedestrian or a cyclist. So VTRANS and one of their consultants, Stantec, have developed a very comprehensive and robust traffic control plan to accompany the project plans and I'll give you kind of like a little preview of what those look like but we're not only focusing on moving vehicles through the work zone safely but we're really focusing on moving pedestrians and cyclists through the work zone safely. So everything's considered. This page shows an example of what these phasing and sequencing plans look like. Provide a layout and provide some guidance as to what this phase of the work itself looks like as well as some of the strategies that will be implemented to move traffic around and maintain flow through the work zone as well as an estimated duration for each phase. So there are several phases with each with accompanying narratives that are really really informative and invaluable so we'll take a look at what those look like as well a little bit. So as far as you know what was done to prepare these these sequencing plans VTRANS and their consultant can analyze how each sequence would affect existing traffic operations not only in you know the immediate vicinity of the work zone but also streets that will be used as detours, streets that are closed by, how it kind of like affects the big picture in this in this area. Assessing construction risk factors and how to mitigate those risks. We're recommending mitigation measures for traffic mobility. So some of the strategies utilized you'll see are your typical lane shifts. Lane shifts will move traffic around the work zones but in most cases maintain two-way traffic which is you know certainly the goal for peak hours. Implementing left turn restrictions. This will be important for reducing conflicts within the work zone. It will make for a much safer work zone. We'll maintain flow through the work zone better. Reduce delays especially in situations where we do have still have where we are still trying to maintain two-way traffic. For you know pedestrians and cyclists implementations such as temporary ramps and crosswalks for example near Adams court to lack pedestrian egress from east to west across the project since no closer to the rotary won't won't be accessible during much of the project. So there's been a lot of special considerations for you know very specific situations that you know require a little more attention. Mobility recommendations again the goal here is to maintain two-way traffic during peak hours which is a pretty big window. 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Sheldon Street south of the roundabout and then north of the roundabout maintaining one-way traffic with detours to kind of you know keep keep traffic flowing, keep the mobility there. Use of uniform traffic officers and flaggers. We have seen uniform traffic officers do a really good job of slowing traffic down through the work zone especially if they have their blue lights but you know this personnel will be here to help you know guide traffic and maintain traffic slow traffic down through the work zone. We've been coordinating closely with property owners and will continue to do so on roads where one-way alternating traffic detours or road closures will be implemented. Underground utility work will often utilize one-way alternating traffic that will be mostly performed on off-peak hours and or a weekend so really trying to minimize the disruptions for those major operations. Another example accommodating pedestrians will be you know temporary sidewalk on east side of Sheldon Street after underground utilities are installed. Re-establishing that north-south pedestrian route so kind of with each phase you know will be constantly you know re-establishing these pedestrian routes as as things are torn up when they need to be replaced and then replaced immediately as soon as feasible. We've also been closely coordinating with the Champlain Parkway project so most of you are aware that's coming up so we have been close coordination with them to ensure that you know none of our traffic control packages are in conflict with their plans and that we're kind of you know working in harmony. There's you know good chance that some operations will overlap throughout the course of both of these projects so definitely you know working closely with that team. Public outreach the chance hired a public information consultant to assist with outreach and project alerts it just so happens that this is the same consultant being used for the Champlain Parkway so that's really handy this consultant is like fully familiar with both of those projects and how to kind of communicate you know communicate to the community as a whole between these two projects using platforms such as front porch forum social media vtealware where anybody who signed up can receive text messages alerting alerting them of traffic disruptions for that day as well as developing an email distribution list. Pretty much we've started developing this list with this public outreach consultant as of right now it you know includes residents and businesses and pretty much people who have been reaching out with an interest in the project we you know always you know add them to the list and there will be more to come on that in the in the future but that's another way that will be used to reach out to folks to keep them informed. So as I kind of going back to the traffic control plan as I mentioned there are these narratives that kind of accompany the traffic management plans and these are really great because they're very thorough in giving a description of what work is occurring when it's occurring how long it's going to take how it's going to impact the traffic operations and then they give some really great rationale about why you know some of the strategies and mitigation strategies are being recommended what the risks associated which with each plan and tail and how to mitigate some of those risks. So it's really great narratives again accompanying the plans that I showed in slide 16 this kind of just again another close-up of that text that on the layouts that will describe each phase and each each kind of strategy and plan moving through construction. So future regulations we DPW wanted to make the commission aware of and just don't need any action at this time it's just we wanted to put these in in front of you right now so as we get closer to as a project draws closer to completion these will things that are going to be things that need to be taken care of but parking regulations no parking zones that will be implemented on the legs of the roundabout each of the approaches and we obviously don't want folks parking on the center median of the roundabout I can kind of zoom in on on the next slide but the roundabout itself will have a truck apron in the middle that will be kind of a mountable apron of course for to accommodate larger trucks going through the roundabout and what we want to avoid is people thinking that those are at the parking area so the exact signage and sign placement is still to be determined but you can expect to see something for that regulatory signs yield signs will be implemented on each leg of the roundabout approach both in locations where existing stop signs exist and where stop signs don't exist yet obviously such as on the legs of the actually Shelburne road in St. Paul street this sorry the speed limit will need the 25 mile per hour speed limits and will need to be extended to begin at Adams court currently it starts at ledge road so and it's 35 miles per hour until ledge road so we will be looking to reduce that that's approximately the location at which the lanes merge into one and then crosswalks and rectangular rectangular rapid flashing beacons will be implemented on all the legs of the roundabout as well we've seen great success with these in their current locations it really made a difference made the made the roundabout or the existing rotary a lot safer for crossing pedestrians especially with the school being right there and you look forward to having these on on each on each leg so this is just kind of a visual again of what to expect this is the truck apron that I was describing where we want to avoid people parking each of the legs you know the most of these side streets have on-street parking so we want to make sure that our no parking zones extend to the appropriate locations especially here on south wither willard street there's quite a bit of on-street parking right here again existing crosswalks and rfb's exist here currently but you'll see them here as well and then yeah again extending the 25 mile per hour zone back to Adams court and also changing the stop signs such as on locust street and ledge road to yield signs and adding in yield signs on like these legs as well so lastly just a quick overview of the schedule we we trans is looking to have the final plans completed by the end of january submitted to contract admin reviewed and then put out to bid near the end of february that means we'll be reviewing bids in march and likely be awarding bids in april so we're looking to hopefully break ground sorry made 2021 the budget as Laura mentioned this is a 100% federally funded project and as of right now that the price tag on this project is about seven million dollars so um that's about it i suppose i'll stop sharing now and open up for questions i have just a couple quick things to add i think that there may be a truck route during construction that we need temporary approval for for a couple of the phases that we'll have to bring back to you we need to wait to get the contractor on board to see if they are really going to run their construction phasing like we've planned it out for feasibility the other things as Olivia mentioned for the distribution list if you find that people are reaching out to you guys looking to to be on this list it is active right now and we can start adding people about roundabout communications we do a quarterly update there's a number of counselors that are on it that have been on it um throughout the design phases but we're certainly happy to add anyone who's interested in getting quarterly updates or any of the construction updates that are going out and then last we are still planning neighborhood meetings ahead of construction closer to the start of construction so it's more relevant but definitely a few of those meetings to be able to get the information out to everyone thank you great thank you for that we're back for commissioner discussion at this point we're not in need of a vote here but you might have and I think on behalf of the commission thank you for the the early preview of you know the work in general and ordinance changes that we required along the way let's go around the virtual room here commissioner Bose yeah thank you and thank you for that that detailed presentation as somebody who walks bikes and drives using that intersection pretty regularly it's it's exciting to see I had two specific questions in your slides you I can't remember what it was titled the some of the challenges I mean looking at the utility service that passes underneath the intersection I mean I was I was kind of yeah it it seemed like a daunting task indeed so I was wondering I know you talked a little bit about the the scoping that's been done already to map out some of those so I was wondering if you could just talk a little bit more about how you're approaching I mean not not in in great detail but some of the perhaps interaction you have with some of the utilities you know the services that you you have to coordinate with you know how how early do you give that kind of notice or how early do you engage with them and the second one was a very specific question around the roundabout and the I think it's the majestic or whatever that I think it's the the driveway that still will have access on and off I mean I guess I wondered a little bit about that I see that they they need the access but I I still wondered that's already a point of entry into that intersection that I think is challenging and I I guess I still didn't really see how that would be resolved in terms of where that driveway opens out onto the roundabout so I was if you could just talk a little bit about those two thank you yep certainly so for your first question the utility engagement be trans started on the utility design in 2016 which is right around the time that I actually started managing the project they had meetings with all of the utilities including our own water sewer and electric and have been actively meeting with them at kind of every major milestone after the potholing was done to figure out exact locations they've sent them relocation plans for where they'll be asked them inside of the duck banks that are being planned how many spaces do they need how many future spaces do they need can they be paired with other utilities so really a lot of diligence has been done to try to mitigate what we know our typical risks I think you know just driving recently come up St. Paul streets construction we're going to dig in the ground and start figuring out that you know the best laid engineered plans just somehow don't quite work with a vault with a setup with a rock with whatever we find and you kind of have to pivot and work with that but by far we've taken the collective of you know the four engineers on on the call for DPW and a ton of them from V-trans to try to do the best we can because this location can't go down as kind of the water berries or the berries or of the of the V-trans world so so to move on to the next question the majestic car rental the original design when I started taking this project over didn't include an exit for that property V-trans was holding to a purist design and just before we entered the right-of-way phase that V-trans would deem it which is generally you know land taking construction easements feasibility you know space that's needed to to feasibly construct the design the review found that the project or the parcel would not be viable without that driveway that you wouldn't be able to have the number of parking spaces that are necessary by our zoning to serve that parcel and so V-trans would have had to purchase the entire parcel at minimum to be able to to have that work without that driveway they did review it it will work it works with the flow it's a little bit more awkward if and when we ever went to a hybrid situation for that roundabout by adding a lane I think there's a big concern when it comes to that parcel because the driveway would have to go away so for now it works it functions it helps keep a business hopefully in business in Burlington um for the time being I wanted to it's a one-way it is a one-way driveway so it's out only I believe yeah yeah it's configured and pointed to the north so that it will only flow with the circulation as an exit only thank you all right um commission over me um I have a couple quick questions uh one this sort of generally where does Shelburne Road as the name and and Shelburne Street start is that just at the border of Burlington and south Burlington which is actually down by Spear Street yes okay so I mean I've seen that in other contexts with another this other thing we're talking about because thank you very much yep um the second thing is are we entitled to actually bring the approach speed limit down to 15 miles an hour instead of 25 because I think based on you know and you know my my my favorite favoritism for roundabouts but one of the factors that actually makes a roundabout like this safer has to do with the reduction in the speed for pedestrians and bicyclists and anybody like that so I don't feel that it's very safe to have people approaching us this roundabout at 25 miles an hour we're trying to get through it in 25 um particularly with the you know that driveway situation but honestly what would we have to do to get the permission to be able to actually approve instead of dropping it to 25 at Adams I think where we said we needed to down to 15 as an approach to that roundabout so I'm going to ask Norm to to follow up on this one my understanding is that legally there's only certain locations and certain designations that you can even legally permit or enforce a 20 mile an hour speed limit and that anything below that is not enforceable you could use an advisory 15 mile an hour um but I I would welcome norm to follow up with this one sure so what uh you may not know the history of this but when we went from 30 miles an hour to 25 miles an hour in the city we were challenged by the traffic uh transportation board about our method of study and decision making because traditionally the the view is that you need to rely on the prevailing condition to set and establish speed limits but we made the argument then that we could lower the limit to 25 by discussing the intended uses and the the potential of saving lives by reducing the limits to 25 miles an hour we know that reducing limits to 25 miles an hour uh exponentially improves the possibility of surviving a pedestrian being hit by a car so that's the reason why we went from really 30 to 25 there are some exceptions because of the geometry of the road and it becoming a speed trap so we certainly didn't want that and we had many conversations with the police there is um a threshold that the state is established that they will not allow allow any community to lower the speed limit below 25 miles an hour with one exception that is there was a downtown bill that allowed in the downtown core 20 miles an hour but we found that it was nearly impossible to enforce in discussions with the police so therefore we didn't reduce the speed limit to downtown to 20 miles an hour but we have worked to constrain people's speeds by geometric design so there's there's always the possibility of geometric design constraining people's behavior beyond the regulatory role so that's what we do we try to have the geometries drive the behavior well i i i think that's great and i think that this will actually do that um but i absolutely think that it is critical with the speed at that roundabout is 15 coming into that roundabout for the pedestrians trying to get around there in the school so whatever we do i'm really happy to see us going down this path because it's we really need to do it but i don't know what i need to do if it's something i have to start working with the state legislature to do but it really is not you know the whole one of the major strengths of a roundabout is the fact that you have a slow enough speed that the vehicles are looking for pedestrians at a separate separately from trying to negotiate the roundabout in other vehicles and and at 25 miles an hour you're going to have another experience like the wanouski rotary which is not a roundabout and so that's my concern and i'm just expressing it now and you've answered the question that right now we we supposedly are not legally allowed to do it so i that was that that's doing your answer right now and it sounds like other work has to be done to get us authority to do that i would just add that um if you if laura pointed out this out that we're reducing from two lanes to one lane as it approaches and there is i think in the longer view i think we want to look at how we view what operationally needs are on shelbert road and whether or not the forlain configuration is the appropriate configuration for our wants and needs in the future so that is a longer view but you know i think it when you come to an approach with that kind of volume of traffic and you're reducing from two lanes to one you're going to see a significant reduction in speed just to for people to accommodate that those types of movements together and merge so i think you're you'll you'll see some significant reduction in speed there has been some concern that outside of the modeling what what how will people's behaviors change and how will this intersection be able to function in in service that volume of traffic and is it going to create standing queues from the south heading north and uh this is this is why there's been some conversation back and forth about the provisioning of a hybrid space so we will not know how people receive this until it's opened and it's settled in and i think over time people's people's behavior will settle in and they'll start to not have probably the standing queues that we would anticipate at the beginning that's that's true we will find out but i will do my own independent research on how we could potentially do it in a in a safer way and hope we don't have any issues before that so congratulations on actually getting ready to do this it's excellent the one question i did have about the presentation of the budget item that was a million dollars of added reimbursable relocations added to the budget what is that that's the third party utilities so communication companies that are not a city utility um have to pay their own way through the project so they're so that's not a city expense correct yeah that's that's that mine items there's for communications utilities relocations yeah there are still a few non participating items that the city will need to fund like our center sculpture some participation in the contaminated soils but it's not a million dollars it's not close to that great thank you very much that's all i have thank you to mr archamount thank you just i'll make my briefs uh sometimes in these presentations there's always that one picture that uh says a thousand words and i think this presentation was one of those with that one of it's an overhead it's kind of a blueprint for this shows all the utilities running running underneath that section uh i just thought my first thought when i saw it on the agenda is oh we're talking about the rotary again right it's been over the entirety of my years to see that but that one picture kind of explains why so i'm really thankful for you offering and putting that in there to show us the complexities of that i know we've talked about it a little bit in the past but uh again it goes to you that one picture really highlights why it's taking so long so that's it for me thank you thank you thank you mr arneal great yeah thanks i i looked at that uh slide and i thought like neurosurgeons brain surgeons have that level of detail um so yes grateful for that um a couple points to tag on to commissioner bows and commissioner ovaries comments um i wonder if it's possible for the majestic car park like to pull out um is that that pullout um is going to be before the crosswalk correct that will so if i so if you were crossing east right on willard street and then you're walking along the sidewalk i'm a vehicle pulling out of the majestic and i'm looking okay this happens all the time i'm looking for the cars coming on the rotary so i can get out and then pegging a kid who's going home or whatever so i just wonder you know that kind that conflict area is there a way to request majestic to put a stop sign or something that the vehicle stopped before they go over the sidewalk um i don't know if that's possible but that's one concern i have um and then i think more broadly about this this rotary which which really does look great um this is a school zone right there's a that modern christie school the catholic school there uh whatever what is christ the king there's um an enormous um field that the city's responsible for a callahan there are tons of kids who you use that intersection and so this will be safer but i think if we keep in our minds that this is a school zone and the traffic calming engineer bald one that you had mentioned the geometric designs but thinking about that traffic calming certainly as it's coming heading north on shellburn street to really slow it down so that we are trying to protect our most vulnerable those are just my comments that i hope we can forward with or keep in it's not in the back of our mind keep that the four that's all yeah add a little something just to your last comment um and maybe it's not quite what you have in mind but to bring maybe bring you commissioner overby some comforts a reminder about the rfb is that will be in place so pedestrians will be able to actuate the the flashing weekends uh to cross the road which will you know theoretically um give um you know alert alert motorists that pedestrians are there so maybe not quite what you're looking for but just a reminder that those will be in place as well and those will be at all the crossing areas so that i saw one um on the south side of the rotary right so in the completed design there's actually a new crossing that'll be on the south side of the intersection all legs of the crosswalks are will have rfb's available for those who feel that they you know want the extra comfort of the alert thank you all right thank you pressure bar comments on your end yeah thanks and thanks for a wonderful presentation this is one of the more comprehensive ones that i've seen for this area um and i don't think you necessarily need to put it up on the screen but my my only comment has to do with um the approaches to this roundabout where it was depicted in red these triangles and little segments of things along the way all right is that just going to be pain on the ground or is that actually going to be structured because i've seen some roundabouts and i'll use jeffersonville as a perfect example um they've got a lot of nice cobblestone that has a lot of tread marks on it because cars tend to just go right across it and especially with the crosswalks there um i i imagine there might end up being some and maybe maybe not maybe i missed it in the drawing but uh some some crosswalk islands if you will where pedestrians only get halfway across and then it feels like frog you know you're in the middle of traffic so that's yeah happy to provide a little bit more detail on that so all of those median areas um the islands and even the center truck apron um are all a vertical displacement off the roadway they are they are proposed to being colored stamped concrete for the truck apron area in the center so similar to jeffersonville you'll see that raised textured pattern um but it'll be a colored concrete so it'll probably still show marks but all the other areas are um as you approach in our full height curbs there are at-grade pedestrian recess areas uh refuge areas um the rfb's are being timed for the entire crosswalk and not just for the refuge frogger concept okay good that's that's sorry and it also contributes towards the uh um traffic calming if you will because once you get to that check point or choke point you know you even if we don't get the 15 miles per hour that soviet was uh commissioner overview was requesting or talking about um it's it's like cows going into a chute getting ready to get into the bar and you got to go slower because there's less less of an area to go through so sorry Olivia no sorry i'd prefer to repeat um i just wanted to add and i don't know how much of a difference it makes but the colors shown on the drawings are probably not accurate um it's probably not going to be red those raised areas probably be more of a neutral color so just don't want to get any recent um expectations uh wrong sure thank you all right commissioner gillman uh nothing else for me look at mine uh some of the things i was curious about uh the packet were a little more detail on the scheduling i'll just point out uh the city's project website has a dedicated page for this shoving street roundabout which also links out to the v-trans project website for the same project if anyone is looking for the detailed uh one pagers for each of phases one through 12 i believe and uh the rough timing by year of when uh various phases are are targeted uh i guess workflow or communication workflow question when do we uh get more dates on this like suppose this goes out for bid in the spring and it gets awarded may or never like i mean when do we would you expect dates on construction phase so we do have some of those loose dates v-trans is looking to let this out for bid um february 10th they're very structured with their organization um they have a pretty good shot of making that date if they miss it it's maybe by a month or so um with that being said the contract would get awarded april time frame um v-trans has a pretty robust pre-construction submittal package requirement so the actual tentative construction should be after school let's out in this pandemic year um what that looks like it may be significant it may not be a significant thing to have achieved um but it should be sometime in june that work would start great thank you um a couple terminology questions around just could you comment what's a smac and what is a sleeving the existing sewer um smac you'll have to let me know where you found that one because again this presentation did come from v-trans but sleeving the sewer is relining the sewer so it's um and it already happened we do it within the existing manholes and we run a fiberglass sleeve through and expand it out and basically create a new pipe inside the existing one thank you for that translation um yeah it's okay i guess that's all in my hands thank you um are there any interested public commenters on this item please hit raise your hand you're i don't know if it's just me you're a little muted there mr goulding all right sorry about that is that better much better thank you okay um there is nobody signed up at this time if any members of the public do wish to speak please hit star nine on the phone or raise your hand on zoom thank you for that at this time there does not appear to be anybody looking to speak all right great i will no action needed i'll close out item five here thank you very much moving forward university place conceptual designs we'll come back for um so yep it was a long trip back and forth um so also here tonight to bring for back to you guys uh for consideration the university place conceptual designs uh philip has a much shortened presentation to kind of go through you know where we concluded after coming out of the october meeting with you guys um and what we're looking to move forward with so philip would you like to yes i do i will try and keep things brief um so as we discussed last month good evening everybody by the way uh the department public works in partnership with the university vermont we've been working with consultants on developing conceptual plans for university place uh university place is a priority project for the historic and iconic nature of the buildings involved it's visual prominence and location at the heart of campus uh university place is also identified in uvm's active transportation plan um uvm moves and is a signature project recommendation both uvm and the city are interested in improving safety on the streets and this presentation kind of marks the beginning of the end of phase one hopefully um which is concept designs so the first phase is included two concept designs for university place uh whoops hang on not quite done yet conceptual designs will be in accordance with standards adopted by the city of berlington as well as playing the documents adopted by both uvm and the city of berlington this phase started in march of this year and might finish this month we'll see hopefully or we might extend into next year not not quite sure yet um but let's talk about uh the two concepts uh here's university place um for orientation north is actually heading to the left i know we're used to north being straight up on drawings but colchester avenue is on the left and main street to the south is on the right for the basic concept uh we're trying to limit the work to be within the existing curb line the basic does attempt to meet some of the key design criteria for both concepts we are proposing to eliminate one lane of vehicular traffic and university place would be a one-way going north from main street to colchester avenue the traffic study in 2017 confirms that there's more flow going north this transformation to one-way flow frees up space for bike lanes for most of the roadway we are trying to improve pedestrian safety so in accordance to standards with this basic concept we need to consolidate some of the crosswalks which is a little bit of a drawback with the basic concept which means we would go from nine crosswalks to six which is a little bit of a bone contention between the university and city staff some of the crosswalks need to be moved because they're going into driveways or they're right next to each other or they go into a stairway a historical stairway and this does not meet accessibility or ADA title one needs and we need to make sure our cross crosswalks meet these needs the crosswalk consolidation this is an issue for the basic concept as there are several paths on the green as you can see which lead to logical sort of logical crosswalk points and the removal of these crosswalks should kind of coincide with adjusting these paths and this is like I say this is where the basic concept is limited in what we can do to make university place more bike and pedestrian friendly we're proposing the removal of majority of parking in this scheme we show the removal of all the on-street parking with the exception of food trucks on the south end of the street so we kind of zoom in on the south end of the street where the food truck area is like I said you can kind of see where that drawback is with the crosswalk I don't know can you see my mouse I don't know if you can or not yes you can awesome so we can see there's a pathway that comes up right here and this is where a crosswalk maybe a student or pedestrian would think oh I can cross there but there's will be food trucks there and a crosswalk would not make sense so that's kind of a drawback with the basic design also you can see that the bike lane kind of has a break oh wait somebody have a question or something somebody piped in okay just keep going all right so again we're working within the existing curb lines there is some possibilities of you know notching in the food truck area for the basic design but this is this is you know these are the concepts these are not finished designs so that's that's the basic design basic concept here's the enhanced so in the enhanced design we're addressing the same issues and objectives in this version we have more flexibility to move and adjust the curb line as well as the sidewalk and paths on both sides of the streets this provides us with some interesting opportunities and improvements which take things a little bit further you can see the dash line on either side of the road and this dash line represents the curb line as it exists right now so you can see that we're proposing to narrow the roadway from about 30 feet to 22 feet so we will be increasing the overall green space for the enhanced we are looking to widen the existing sidewalk on the east side based on the wear and tear on the grass adjacent to the existing sidewalk the current sidewalk is not wide enough to accommodate pedestrian traffic needs at this particular time for the enhanced concept we deal with the crosswalk crosswalk consolidation in a little bit of a unique and more logical way with a crossing plaza in the middle of university place the crossing plaza enhances the sense of place and historical context at the heart of campus with the university green additionally we would be constructing a sidewalk on the west side the directs pedestrians to where we want them to go which is a marked crosswalk so if we look at that south side again now we have the food trucks notched into the curb so we have a continuous bike lane which is something we could do with the basic design and you also can see we remove the the path that kind of goes to nowhere which points to the pedestrians where we want them to go looking at the north end we show well we don't show it here but we could show some potential drop-off parking which is something that we feel like is necessary again these are just concepts they're not finished designs well we do feel like that would be a necessity to notch in some temporary drop-off parking for events and whatnot you can also see that we are removing the left turn from colchester avenue onto university place which eliminates a turning conflict which we found caused some accidents at this intersection this is also based on the 2017 traffic study so based on our overall analysis and feedback we've received the enhanced concept is our recommended preferred alternative the transportation energy and utilities committee has supported our recommendation for the enhanced concept at their meeting last month so we are seeking a motion tonight from the commission to approve the enhanced concept as the preferred alternative what does that mean for the commission it means well that you support the concept but it also there are some probable commission approvals moving forward which will pretty much be the same either way the basic concept or the enhanced um the one-way street designation the university place in a northerly direction no parking areas um so on the east side of university place with the exception of a vehicle loading zone in front of ira allen chapel and the food truck parking in front of the royal tile of theater and the um the so the vehicle loading zone itself and then new regulations are on the use of the food truck spaces which are currently not uh regulated in traffic regulations at this particular time so and we can discuss that and come up with the criteria that we want in the future i kind of laid some of that out in the memo that was uh sent to all of you uh with the um the agenda with that i'm going to pass it over to laura and she's going to talk about the budgets so coming out of uh the october meeting you know we heard the strong message that you know the the basic concept doesn't you know either of the two don't really feel like a loser loser you know there's no real loser of the two because they're both such dramatic transformational changes that are available on the street to reorientate the use to being you know the going to accommodate the heavy bike ped users that we found during our outreach we did take the opportunity to pare down the enhanced to really come back with a really good not quite great fit and finish of the street so the plaza has materials now that are more concrete and asphalt um you know maybe colored whatnot you know not any sort of other elaborate landscaping type features to really help make this affordable for both partners within this agreement and to fit both in closer to the original budget so where we landed with the design that you just saw you know our our design construction inspection costs with contingency really comfortably and conservatively hit the the 1.357 million dollar mark um within the current agreement there's a cap on the city's funding that goes into the project shown below is kind of the resulting uvm and um contingency that would need to come out from uvm so all of that being said Phillip is there any other slides or is that the end i have a timeline just so that we can kind of yes um where things are where we've been so as i already discussed the the two approved um the enhanced concept is a preferred concept we did present this the city council on monday so they are situationally aware and they obviously they had some questions and now we're presenting it to the commission tonight so that uh we can get your approval of of what uh of our recommendations and then we're going to bring this to board of finance and city council later this month there will be some uvm boards and committees involvement and then we're going to phase two and the earliest anticipated construction would be 2022 yep so the present oh i can go back just a second uh the presentation that we gave to the city council on monday of this week um was a little bit of a revised version from what we were anticipating we would be presenting conversations with the university in the city uh throughout the week really have us still thinking about what the enhanced concept does look like um and you know there's still some challenges around the dates that have been set by um by administration who crafted the agreement now down to the staff who have to facilitate the work so on next monday we're actually going to the board of finance and the city council to ask for an extension of time to be able to revisit um the agreement overall that we have around the dates that are inside of university place and what that means for the roles and responsibilities um they still do support the enhanced concept um we also both parties want to see a memorandum of understanding about the pearl prospect colchester have intersection as that intersection does play a supporting role in this proposed project with the traffic um coming that would have gone southbound on university place now proceeding through that intersection and so both parties are looking to kind of get a better memorandum of understanding about how that intersection plays into this project so we're seeking more time from the council on this um mostly because of the really creative wording that we are living within so that we don't end up with a penalty payment both parties are supportive of an extension we just need a little bit more time so with that thank you so that's it we'd be seeking a motion from the commission this evening to support the staff recommendation that the preferred alternative for the concept is enhanced concept thinking bring it to commissioner discussion on this start with the commissioner bar i don't have any questions or comments i've actually been a part of the process so pretty familiar with it all the way down to the smallest detail thanks perfect commissioner gillman nothing else for me i think a pretty good understanding of this from the last time it was presented uh you know i think my concerns were the costs so i appreciate seeing that we're trying to keep that in consideration and uh you know make a modified enhanced i guess for a better term and you know keep this you know at a reasonable price while taking the opportunity to capture the value that you know this opportunity gives us so thank you thank you commissioner bows i don't have any further questions or or comments i appreciate the clarity of the presentation commissioner overbie i don't have any other comments as well i i appreciate what's going on and i think you guys are receiving as you need to thank you mr archambeau no questions for me nice work philip and laura and everybody involved you too uh commissioner neal no none for me i think you uh you folks did a great job synthesizing our comments and probably comments from city council so well done good good luck with the negotiations on the uh the contract the mo you sure all right uh that's everyone on the on the commission side uh i don't have any additional comments again thank you i think appreciated the the detailed look at this in october and i'm excited to see you see this move forward i think you know in reviewing my notes from our last conversation about this everybody was sort of supportive of a range of options here and uh we talked about maybe some hybrid of the two approaches and it seems like we're sort of settling in a in a nice place with this proposal here's looking forward to see you go forward uh mr golding do we have any public commenters there is no one signed up at this time jerry all right bring it back to the commission then seeking a vote on this motion to uh approve a second the motion seconded by commissioner o'neill thank you is there any discussion around the motion all right bring it to a vote uh commissioner archambeau thank you commissioner bar i commissioner bows i commissioner gillman commissioner o'neill i commissioner overby i i for myself motion passes unanimously thank you very much thank you all next item russell street charles street seasonal parking prohibition okay i'm gonna get to do this again so narrow streets um it's it's it's hard to believe but we uh this is your three that we've been working together on the narrow streets implementation um unfortunately the pandemic has prevented uh further data collection and further work uh but um we do have uh some work that we want to do that extends from last year so just to kind of get us back up to speed with narrow streets um in 2017 which was three years ago um staff and the commission worked together and agreed that the best course of action would be to take a comprehensive look at narrow street citywide and bring forward a policy that can guide decisions to ensure fairness moving forward so based on this narrow streets policy and collaboration with the fire department and dpw maintenance we brought forward this recommendation and our first implementation was in fall of 2018 and this was uh the seasonal parking restrictions on germain latham and hoover um and then in fall of 2019 last year the commission approved uh one side of parking on charles and russell from january to march also to get us back up to speed uh so what is a narrow street narrow street is a residential street and uh it's 28 feet wide or less from curb to curb um so after discussions with the city fire department it was determined that 14 feet is the fire department minimum and that's the preferred width for clearance the winter maintenance team also has 14 feet as a preferred width for clearance so after last year's narrow streets work the city now has 17 narrow streets which have less than 14 feet of effective travel width with no existing restrictions so chipping away at it which is good um so as we've discussed before this we're continuing forward with this measured approach to implementing parking restrictions on these narrow streets we have this history of these narrow streets um this approach has allowed us to balance the community needs the fire department requirements and maintenance needs and we have been observing and analyzing the impacts and also collecting data as we go um so we started the parking restrictions with the streets which are most constraining this is why those streets that i already mentioned germaine leitham and then hoover was uh requests by the residents and then russell and charles was last year because of the the funky geometry um if you remember from last year come on um this was from january of 2019 uh the the truck is is uh commissioner archambault pointed out sometimes it's one picture that jumps out at us and i think this was the one picture from last year that that jumped out at all of us as a situation that we needed to remedy and you know several folks mentioned that what if that was a fire truck and and local residents also had mentioned on c click fix well what if that was what if that was a fire truck because if it was an emergency and not a recycling situation and we've also had a lot of discussions around uh how much space the fire department needs to do their work um it's not just the width of the vehicle itself but it's also all the the uh equipment that they need to use so that they can do their work um get us back up to speed on the streets that we're talking about this evening charles streets um which is in the old north end and it's 25 six feet wide and during summertime there's 10 feet of existing roadway available for emergency vehicles and that that's what's available during the winter time as well um which when you get a lot of snow that that can become even more constraining pretty much the same statistics for rustle street um and so some of our data collection here's uh occupancy counts of both streets and just to kind of get us back in suit with speed with that this information tells us how many how much parking is available for residents or unavailable um and the occupancy counts in january and february of this year uh did not raise any major red flags so it's important to note that these counts were conducted prior to the pandemic uh so this is what i would anticipate as the peak use during winter restrictions um because there were college students that were there it was not the um the problem that a lot of the residents were concerned about um so that's good so our recommendation is to continue the restriction so this last year was a pilot um so we would continue the the seasonal parking restriction january 1st to march 1st and it would be on the south side of charles west side of rustle and this would maximize the number of parking spaces um so our january to march recommendation um that's uh from last year so another timeline um you can kind of see where where we were and where we're at and and where we're going um unfortunately any future efforts with uh our narrow streets i can't really collect data we wouldn't get an accurate account because of the pandemic so once uh once life goes back to normal whatever that means um then we can uh reconnoiter and and talk about what what our future efforts are for for narrow streets i'm happy to take some questions thank you for that presentation um so uh commissioner overby i'm i'm fine i i think it's great we're going to keep going with that thanks thank you um mr bar i i'm also fine my daughter actually had lived on on charles street at one point and i used to remark all the time how narrow that street was trying to get get through so uh thanks staff good work still narrow all right uh commissioner o'neill um i guess my one comment is is just uh the the last email that came in from one of the residents carl lucop on rustle street yep um so i just want to kind of i saw it really as as we were sitting down for this meeting um um it so it sounds like he's kind of fine with it even though it's an inconvenience but but based on your data there wasn't a significant impact uh at least an availability of parking and some of the issues that he's talking about here um including um summer traffic from the park um right so you know one thing that he mentioned probably is the resident parking like i know that was something that was brought up a lot um when we had meetings with the neighborhood you know what what is the purpose of resident parking well the purpose is because you know you have these streets that are next to these big parking generators like the baseball field or the hospital or the downtown core so in those places it makes sense to do that um but if the residents are the ones that are parking on that street and no i mean and data kind of showed that percentages weren't really changing in terms of the data then granting them resident parking they think that it solves a problem but it doesn't it actually what we're doing is we're opening up pandora's box on their street so now we are we are bringing parking enforcement onto their street where if you know folks come to visit we've had many residents come to commission and why is the city so punitive and why can't my guests park here without getting a 75 dollar ticket but you want a resident parking on the street so it's not really solution they're not within a designated zone to be a resident parking street and it's not the solution that they think that it would be no i yeah i agree i kind of wanted to just make sure that we at least acknowledge this public sure in an email but one thing he mentions is the notorious white boltzwagen van which was in that photo yeah so who is the owner of that white van and is that something that we can encourage residents to use c-click fix for if if it really is a problem that a vehicle is parking in the travel so i don't want to make i don't want to make a problem where it's not i support i totally support this and it looks like even this resident who has some issues is supporting it but if there are problems kind of reminding that outreach that c-click fixes a tool to get the notorious white vw ticketed or something i will send them an email and have a discussion there there are some regulations that we have cars are not allowed to park on the street for longer than 72 hours they have to move and you definitely can't block the travel way so i mean there's there's things that can be done and and those were discussions that took place when you had the neighborhood meeting as well but you know folks want to be neighborly they don't necessarily want to call i i know yeah it's a tough one i but i i really think this idea of this of this pilot that we got going last year and that we're revisiting now even um counselor nodell's comments that it wasn't as bad as they had anticipated um and then it works smoothly i think i think kudos to the communication and implementing this and now moving forward so thank you welcome team effort commission was involved with this too commissioner gillman i'm okay i uh supported this when we uh we rolled it out i think uh you know based on you know positive feedback from those involved uh no reason not to continue yeah commissioner archambault thank you i distinctly remember this last year when we talked about it and one of the main reasons we gave it a one-year pilot rather than make it permanent last year was because of the concern over the abbreviated snow season that was special for the street from january to march right wanted to check in again on that i mean you you included a little bit of information in the packet but maybe you could speak to that though right i i think that was uh it was a compromise that we had developed with the neighborhood to give it more of a seasonal restriction january to march i think i kind of understand you know where you're driving at here that why can't we do this from this like the other streets from december to to april um i don't know it's uh we i think if that was something we were going to do then we definitely would have to do more outreach with the neighborhood and let them know that we were gonna do that yeah sure so i don't think it's fair to anticipate where i was going with that problem sorry i was doing the exact opposite that oh okay seems to work well however my concern is that if we move forward with this my question to you is are we now telling the city that our snow season officially january to march that is no longer december to april i i don't know i don't know okay i could offer some i offer some perspective on that because it's part of the conversations with philip last year about this and that was i don't think we're trying to i guess communicate that our snow season starts in january and ends in march i think our thought process was that the most extreme periods in time in the season is january to march because of uh continuing free frozen conditions so in other words all that snow would not melt and so that was the most constrained challenging time of year and we're trying to be as flexible as we could with the neighborhood to allow as much parking throughout the year as we could so i think that's kind of how we arrived at that it doesn't mean that we couldn't consider some other solution but i do think that that is really kind of the bottom line with trying to manage parking in that tight condition unless we begin the process of removing snow consistently with every event which i don't think we have the resources to do that for that neighborhood or street no right yeah you mentioned that in the past to get the bucket loader in there to do that it's not really feasible you know so many areas in the city to hit but are we are we opening those doors you know so let's say there are restrictions somewhere else in the city and the residents say hey i want that short season too you know if it's just open those doors if we effectively are now staying we have to entertain those motions no not necessarily i think every street is different each condition in each street is is a different circumstance so i think we we make arguments based on the conditions on each street as as we work on them so i i think that the intent was to have this be a trial to decide if this was too too forgiving and that we maybe needed to broaden the the range of prohibition but that as philips said i don't think we can get to that stage without having another conversation with the neighborhood we were trying to be as forgiving as we could at the start as a as a learning process yes so i i don't i don't know what the will of the commission is about that but at least that's the the process of thinking at that time yeah so i would agree i mean if we were heading to the root of a December to April timeframe we could not approve that tonight right residents but i am just thinking of alternatively because we're we're saying yes it's applicable to this street but when when looking for you know the a little bit of data to back that up it really is done right we just really manage the conflict this particular stream and that's the primary source of how that timeframe comes about and so if that's the premise to which we allow a snow season from parking then that becomes a premise elsewhere too that that other streets could be just mine like hey i'm gonna dream of the cops like say we need a choice yeah i can just add to that also part of the consideration as philip mentioned we we look at it street by street and then considering this shorter time frame you know we did that as well because on this street in particular there are several properties that do not have any driveways and also considered the adjacent other parking resources so nearby there are other resident parking only streets which these residents would not be able to park on and other streets that have parking restrictions or limited capacity to handle that so that was part of the consideration and what would be considered as well if if we were to change the time frames for other streets so susan i think that would be data that could be used to justify such a decision whether it be of you know homesteads with a lack of driveway or lack of parking combined with the density of the residential for example like those would be data sets could be used to justify such a thing rather than avoiding conflict that's a tougher one for me so if if there were maybe some assurance you know is that something you could foresee that we can implement for future requests right the next street comes along and says hey i want my snow season to be january to march could we say we must have this data in place in order to evaluate that yes i think so and i think yeah we could you know in entertaining those proposals look at kind of the full neighborhood available parking resources one one thing worth noting this street had some handicapped spaces or disabled spaces one thing spaces that were displaced by that decision and so we were trying to limit also its impact on those people who have those disabilities right and i would also say that when we you know when we enacted this on germane and leifem and hoover i felt like there was a lot of resistance and we all commission included had to be brave and had to you know stand firm and say this is what we're going to do and so i don't think that you know we would be for lack of a better term afraid to to present that on other streets and if if it makes sense for another street to be january to march okay then that makes sense but if it makes sense for that street to be december to april then it makes sense it depends on the context of the street yeah right but that's abstract right like this is the point that really no susan had mentioned and i had mentioned you know the context of russell and charles the lack of driveways for many of the many of the homes um that's that's what i'm talking about though i'm sorry to interrupt people but that's what i'm talking about we can't say it makes sense for the street we're actually going to say lack of driveways uh residential dense any cap spaces you know whatever i'm not going to say i know what the formula is but those are the those less abstracting is the data points that people can wrap their heads around to understand why you know a street would get passed or something like this versus not and that's what i i'd love to see right because anything we can wrap our heads around all the better to having buy into that community as well such as you found here you did you do good work right good point mr archambault i think it's your point as susan mentioned we're we're supportive of putting pens to paper when the next round comes around and make sure we have documentation for how we would evaluate different requests based on the character okay thank you yeah i think i your point is not lost commit commissioner archambault i think that that is an important piece is what precedent are we setting in these decisions and how do we differentiate one street from another and be very specific yeah that's great okay so i have no other questions beyond thank you so much for entertaining my questions thank you christian bows no questions from me thank you all right i think that's everyone to myself i questions are similar line to commissioner archambault and i'll just say that yeah there was certainly intent when this narrow streets policy came up to you know take an objective approach to this and we sort of sorted the list of streets by some criteria and picked off a couple and and you know in doing so some other issues are coming to lighter nuances of other streets and it sounds like and i'm supportive of the next time this comes up but you know we have a couple more criteria to consider and to put forward in that in that ranking i have nothing further there mr goulding do we have anyone for public comment on this item and at this time uh chair hogan all right we are seeking a vote on this item i'll bring it back to the commission commissioner overby yes would it i concur with the concerns that that commissioner archambault has expressed and i'm wondering can we put into the is there something we could do now to actually just put in those those criteria that you just listed about the handicapped site and the lack of drivers so that it's very clear on on the face of what we're doing here if we're going to make this a permanent thing with those dates can that be can that be you know part of our thing of our our proposal that we vote on my thought would be if we're still having some questions about whether we want to do you know that snow season and setting a precedent if we just we could say this is another another temporary one-year thing while we're gathering the current status of what is the season that that berlin can have for snow and cold weather and and those criteria that we can use going forward so do we want to sort of add the ones that you've just put in there so it's very clear that we're going in the right direction and the next folks will see these other kind of factors and we will become more organized in our way of of of doing that uh with our own criteria like that i don't know if that's possible here i was just it would be like making a temporary another one-year application of this not making you the permanent thing and then we you know undo the impression we're going to definitely do the work to make sure that we have a very defined what's the what's the a winter snow season dates and b the criteria that we use to assess whether we use that or something broader or narrower can i can i add a comment real quick sure um i i don't disagree with you commissioner overby and commissioner archambault except that there's there is even other things that because our snow street is the same are we going to say too many trees on a street um one side has uh you know a big hill that you know it makes it difficult to pile snow so that may that there could be so many things that you might want to write into this i almost think that it'd be better to say rather than identify those specific things just to say something of the effect of you know if there are extenuating circumstances which may allow a january to march versus a december to april you see what i'm saying because we're just going to paint ourselves into a corner and then a year from now address another one that says you know that it's precipitous terrain on either side or you know i don't know could be anything just food for thought no i i i i i get that so so we would say that our normal our normal uh winter season is december to uh april but in this circumstance we've set it in error because of circumstances on the street without specifying them is that what you're saying yeah for this specific one we're specifying january to march and it says that in the recommendation and we're approving it based on the what what they said right i i think it said and i'd have to go back to it i'm on one screen so for me to go back to to see does it say um phil in in there about uh the reason why we're doing it january to march and if not it would be good to just make sure that that's recorded in there so that when we refer back to it and somebody else wants something we can point to that and say it's not just because we decided on this day to do it it's because right that's where i was going with that we very specifically said the handicapped spot and the lack of driveways that's why we have a narrower time frame right right i yeah in this circumstance rather than generally all the less i get it so that would make it clear to somebody else that that was why it was a narrower one than our standard one i'd be less inclined to have it go to another year and then revisit it again because we could keep kicking this down the road for quite a ways um that's just my my opinion so i'm fine i read of this is that there's um specific ordinance language and in parking restrictions for these streets on the on the agenda here this the rest of this um is really like backstory about reasoning and so forth it would be in our in our minutes and for our us to review in our notes the next time it comes up but at the recommendation that we're being asked to consider is specific language around specific streets may i jump in here sure uh yeah looking at the reasons it's a big year right best i can see is that the statement is that the january first march first park industry during the coldest part of winter with the system the low freezing conditions and snow easily accumulates so again i'm not going to argue that data of course but that is the data that's presented here has effectively defines that season as that because it's coldest part of the winter and i i'm just saying that the custom data ought to be considered in there i think commissioner bar has a good point right we don't want to creating a list of all the possibilities of what that day should be so i think the department deserves the flexibility to be able to conclude whatever that data might be but i'd rather see that in a report no for example so a few driveways or whatever and you know it's just really cold good is that then i see consistency in the policy from a december to april and i just you know feel unfair to the community and people wonder well what do we call it our specific and i know it's just one street right now so i'm certainly projecting perhaps for that may never exist but uh i guess that's the way my mind works so perhaps i mean one idea should over be had was to to perhaps another year pilot for example with that data focus another idea would be maybe just to add one more bullet that just maybe compels the department to use data and we will let you define data however you wish for any future requests those two ideas that pop into my head i don't know maybe commissioner over to you and chime in if you have any feedback on that oh i was looking i was trying to look for the language of uh commissioner hogan was a chair oh hogan was talking about and about what i don't see the language in here that works that we're changing but um my thought was just that we make it very clear that what were the reasons why we used a different date range from our other implementations and we have 17 more streets to go and what's the plan so if we put this one down for this date range permanently then um we want to sort of have a basis of why we made that decision on its face and so i that's where i'm going uh to be keeping it narrow we i don't see the language here you know that we're actually approving um and i'm probably just missing where i'm looking but is there a way to do that um chair hogan are you saying that we we have one set of language that's already going to the ordinance and that's what we have to work with and we don't put any logic into the ordinance language that we already have to uh to vote on i'm not sure philip and you know what so i mean the relevant traffic regulations are what the traffic regulations are um what we're i think what you're discussing is the so p so how we collect data how we go about what narrow streets are what um you know how do we go about these things um but i think that that's a they're almost like two separate conversations i mean that's that's my take on it chair chair hogan can i offer something here please so my reckon my belief is last year we opened this idea just as a trial and understood from a staff perspective that the commission wanted us to return and discuss this to decide whether or not this was something that would need to be either modified removed or uh indefinitely continue forward and so i think and then you know my apologies maybe weren't clear in this this communication but i i believe our recommendation is to indefinitely continue forward with this this prohibition as as currently adopted so i don't think there's any need for anything specific within ordinance as really just an understanding with the commission about our commitment as staff to return to this conversation to further deliberate and decide so i mean can i just clarify a bit and i mean the recommendation here in the packet say you know there's there's three bullet points restriction south side of trial street etc west side of brussel street relocate ad a space uh with dates attached to those three things is that it is ordinance spelled out that specifically and we're saying that like we put this in last year with a one-year suspense or something we need we need to make it permanent that's my understanding your motion last year was only for one year we'd like you to approve tonight this the three bullets to be a permanent ordinance and that you can also as part of that motion request that we develop a list of criteria to help determine the duration of the parking prohibition thank you sir come mr archibald yeah actually norm what you said was very impressive i think that uh was a student observation and uh yeah we're kind of nitpicking on like how the department goes about drawing their conclusions rather than speaking to the ordinance itself so in a way you're right the language is what it is you know to throw something else on there it's kind of a monkey wrench in there uh so i guess you know i could back off you know i do trust you of course and i think you do good work and i would also say just open this up to the possibility of confusion for others in terms of like how does that streak in january to march versus december to april and it's something to think through like how are we going to tackle that whether we involve mr goulding and his um expertise in communications or however it happens i think that'll that'll help to eliminate some of that confusion well i i think that chapin's recommendation of a policy that supports the explanation in hand is adequate when people call and ask we can explain or we can have it in documents that is transparent in available to the public but i think it's just impossible to write every ordinance in the supporting evidence why it just needs to be in in the regs mr overby i think that makes complete sense and as long as we have somewhere the the criteria that we in our our minds recognize what we're trying to apply and i know i know commissioner bars like we don't want to have the you know the universe of every kind of thing trees and hills and all but but it would be it would be helpful if the public was aware of the factors that they can that they can understand we've used to make a difference between december and april and january to march so i i'm very happy with going with that as long as there's more put into that and then there is a way for us to explain it i was going to suggest that we just put in our minutes that we approve this you know to continue permanently and the basis was because of these were the factors that we were we're depending on but i like the idea of having the public works department actually come up with the criteria that that they think are relevant that should be considered the next 17 streets that we're going to be addressing this way sure commissioner bar to comment yeah just just very quickly i i mean i like all this discussion this conversation and where it's headed and i'm thinking that if if we could refer to and maybe i'll make a motion and add this to the to the to the motion but just to talk it out if there is a right now or criteria or an s o p standard operating procedure is as phil referred to it um it's a dynamic document that can be changed because as we when we do and end up addressing another street that has different criteria than we've dealt with that's in our minutes right now you know we will have to review it based on that new criteria right it might be too hard to comprehensively go around the entire city and gather it all into one list this is what makes it so that it's you know december to april this is what makes it so it is january to march but um i just it's we could really get wrapped around the axle here trying to figure this out director spencer i tried to summarize what i understood the conversation to be and there could be a sample motion to approve traffic relate regulations described in the packet and to direct staff to develop written policy to inform decisions on recommended duration of future seasonal parking restrictions can i say so moved go ahead i'll let you have it thank you very after all my you know stir the park here i gotta do something so yeah i will move through except that i'll second it i'll second it thank you for the suggested language um uh motion by commissioner archambault by commissioner bar there's any discussion around that motion seeing none let's uh take it to a vote and uh commissioner archambault hi commissioner bar hi commissioner bows hi commissioner gillman hi commissioner onio hi commissioner overby hi and i for myself it passes unanimously thank you all thank you all right thanks philip thanks susan thank you philip happy holidays everybody sliding into the number eight slot on our agenda here extension of two hours free at marketplace garage welcome mr pageant good evening everyone let me get my sharing going here if i can and given the our assistant director pageant i'd suggest hitting the the high wavetops and uh folks got the memo yep that's what i'm planning on doing i can figure can you see my screen the memo got it yes thank you got it okay all right great i mean just got it i've got to sew the screen up there here we go now i look like you know so thanks for having me back again tonight um back in june um we did a bunch of sweeping changes to parking rates in in downtown burlington and the garages particularly um and one of those sweeping changes was the removal of two-hour free from the marketplace garage we came back to you in july and asked that that implementation of the removal of two-hour free be delayed until january one with the reasonable at that time expectation that we may be past the covid crisis in some material way obviously we are not there yet um there are still challenges to downtown there are still challenges to our budget um and for all the reasons i as jay said i articulated in the memo we would at this point we think it's reasonable to push the implementation of the removal of two-hour free to april first um and a note um just a side note there is a typo in here down below i left a july first in there because we weren't deliberating and debating the merits of april versus july um but in consultation with the mayor and after a reasonable discussion we feel like you know we don't want to kick the can too far down the road we want to we want to be optimistic we want to keep uh we can always come back to you in april if we need to push it again so um so anyway so i'm happy to leave it at that we're basically delay delaying the implementation of this from july of April 1st to April 1st and it's important to note that we do have funding they have about 60 000 dollars in funding available to support a validation program so it's not a cliff so april one is not the absolute removal of two hours free it's the changing of the rate the garage we have a validation program to support a you know we're guessing between a month and two months worth of transition period where people can get validations and still get two hours free so it's not like the cliff hanging out there um so anyway so that's the the wavetops i'm happy to entertain any questions talk a little more about the the financial impact if you're interested um i think i'll leave it at that unless there's any major topic i missed chapein i'm trying to be brief all right thank you back for commissioner discussion here uh commissioner boz and you're sorry no questions for me okay commissioner over me i'm just wondering about the uh uh financial impact is there any other sources of you know any of this coded 19 federal you know contributions of money to states and municipalities is any of that um potentially on the horizon available to grovington that might help with this so that we don't you know fall into that problem about our loans on the garages none none has i'm not aware of any um it's i've asked about it a couple different times it's not i i mean the city doesn't have any i'm fairly sure that no money's coming the city i don't know i can't speak to it specifically i don't have it um and as far as the loans i know the the clerk treasurer's office is working with the bank to restructure the loans so that we are not in violation but it's still it's not the place we want to be there is light at the end of the tunnel we have uh you know the burlington high school's coming in we we may see some revenue from that we may not depending on what type of help they need because they're in crisis as well and they're part of the city so we all try to play together so we'll be back in a February time frame to give you a package about how we're going to work with i've been in conversations with the high school and they've got so many moving parts going right now that we just said we'll talk about it January and we'll come to you with February and we'll have a plan and we do have a short term tenant coming in the state of vermont is doing massive construction on their garage and we're selling them it's gone up i think i sent you an email back in august about this and it was at 380 and now they need almost they need like 450 480 so that's going to be a nice little shot in the arm for us but that's only for six months or so so we do i mean there is hope i mean the garages despite covid the garage marketplace garage was full three times it was full in october it was full in november and it was full in december once each month usually it's two or three times a day three or four times a week but point is there is still people still want to come downtown um so and we want to support that so there's hope there's hope but we guys we gotta struggle through this right thank you mr bar i'm in support of this because with with the covid pandemic and it just seems to keep dragging on even with even with the vaccination coming in and i just think that the burlington businesses downtown need need this to just try and entice more people to come in there i'd much rather have people walking and keep the bike lanes open so they can bike down there or take the bus but i think this is something important to to consider and like like jeff said we're not we're not making this something that's going to go into june or july or something we're just pushing it to april for now and then we'll readdress it then so i agree with that thank you commissioner o'neill yeah i i i agree with it commissioner hockermill jeff thanks for staying on top of all this it really it means a lot i think to downtown the business community also on the commission so i'm just personally very grateful that we have you at the helm to oversee all this it really helps me sleep at night and you know there are certainly challenges we're only just opening our eyes to some of the challenges that are going to face us down the road from this pandemic and eventually i mean garages have to be maintained right so if we don't make money this year gotta make it up somewhere else i'm hopeful that we'll come back to a good economy in 2021 and maybe we can start to shore up some of those funds towards simply maintaining our garages and it's super important so anyway thanks for all that you're doing thank you commissioner gillman anything on your end no i'm i'm aligned i think this makes sense thank you but yeah i mean i have no further question i thank you for um the presentation here and i think it's a sensible move all things considered all right any mr. golly do we have anyone interested in public comment at this time chair hogan i don't see anybody signed up for public comment so it does not look like anyone is at this time all right thank you bring it back to the commission we are seeking a vote on this i'm going to make a motion to pass the language that is recommended thank you motion from commissioner archambault seconded by commissioner bar q is there any discussion around that motion all right so we'll go to a vote uh commissioner overby hi commissioner neal hi commissioner gillman hi commissioner bows hi mr bar hi mr archambault hi hi for myself passes unanimously thank you very much great thank you okay thank you all right with that we move forward to our item on queen city park road and verdant hot proposal great so senior engineer susan molzan is here to answer any questions this was a request by commissioner o'neill to provide some background so we put that together memo in the packet happy to proceed however you would like whether you want a quick presentation given the hour we're just happy to answer questions could i interject with just one question that might help any information that might come along is what are we looking to approve what are we voting on nothing this is purely it was an informational request from a commissioner and we had provided the information all right there's been consent agendas that i guess that implied that we were voting on something so i was mistaken well it consent how i understand it and maybe i'm incorrect that you can accept a communication that has no action in a consent agenda it just acknowledges that it's been shared with you you're far more seasoned than me so i appreciate that thank you all right thank you for that so we are not seeking a vote here um welcome to discussion on it commissioner overby i had uh asked to pull this off of the consent agenda so that we could i could actually get a little bit more information i really have been working to understand the the traffic uh documents that are provided in this uh report that we got and so i had actually communicated with um the engineer that had worked on this project and i keep mispronouncing her name i apologize susan molzen today and i was just i i was just trying to figure out what we have here that makes it more understandable to me the basis of some of the information not that we have a vote but that we periodically do get things with these kind of traffic report documents um so i was hoping that i could get some clarification on how that works uh there and so as an example i had sort of proposed that that engineer molzen would sort of show show one of the you know the questions that i had was the way that the documents were trying to compare what's to what um and how to even interpret them and i i just feel like um it might be helpful um she explained to me the the way the footnotes and where how you even can look at what is the data that you're looking at and how you can compare the data from uh 2008 which is one set of data and the data of projection of 2028 so what i was suggesting that would be helpful to me and maybe to others was to take a look at the document um uh for example on our on our uh packet pages uh 12 and 13 sort of are the data that relate to westbound traffic on queen city park road and from so i'm not sure if it would be helpful for uh the engineer to actually explain the the way that if you were to i don't know those of you are looking at that yourself but but to be able to understand what the what's actually are we seeing here and so it makes it possible for us to actually have a meaningful uh discussion of myself i'm talking about myself maybe everybody else is familiar with this um but if we were to look at page 12 um of the packet you know you should see data that has to do with that the the westbound uh queen city park road and my my my question for starting with that was this is related to potential access to the burton hub project that's in the works and it's been approved for a conditional use permit so the question in my mind is how are people going to get there and how are they going to get back and this leads traffic data or what are supposed to help us understand what is anticipated and it will look to me like people are going to either get in via the queen city park road or they're going to get in by home avenue and how can we interpret what we're seeing in these documents uh and so just as an example uh there there is westbound data so to get onto queen city off of us seven shelburn road heading west to get into the vicinity of the burton hub uh there are the 2008 document and then there's the 2028 so i was hoping and i don't know those of you are looking at if you look at the bottom there's some very small footer information that that tells you on page 12 it says that this is actually a uh statistics that are predicated on being no champlain parkway but a burton hub being built so that just for the sake of the details and you can look around because there's so many that look all the same and so i'm sticking to just page 12 and 13 you look at the bottom you look at the top you can see the location you can see that it's an unsignalized intersection look at the bottom you'll see that it's the year on 2008 or champlain park no bill and burton bill so just for the sake of that um how can we see whatever what we're seeing between the change of what the 2008 traffic is versus the 2028 projected traffic and i so i was you know if we look at this it it sort of says you know what the what each of the items are and i don't know if it's going to be i asked to just sort of see how can we compare um traffic volume in 2008 people that are northbound making a left turn going west on queen city park we say there's 30 33 vehicles an hour that's for 2008 so in 2028 it still says 33 vehicles an hour now i don't understand something like that so i'm wondering how to understand these documents so is it possible for engineer susan mo moulson to be able to sort of give me a little bit of a of a follow through as to how those numbers compare and why there's that decision that was made that there's no impact there's going to be no impact on queen city road um you know show based on the statistics shown by this traffic study that was that was paid for and provided by the developer of the burton project does that make any sense i'm not sure i i ramble a little bit but i was trying to give you a foundation of what i was trying to understand and hopefully give us uh some help to to understand these documents because i think we've seen them before and we'll see them again yes sure i'm happy to provide some context maybe just taking a step back so what i've provided in the memo or in the packet is the cover page kind of summarizing where the project is at now based on our understanding and dpw's role in this development process um so i've also um as an attachment to our memo to the commission for tonight i included a memo from june 2020 which is the dpw's review of the traffic study that was prepared by burton's traffic engineers so burton is one that prepared the traffic analysis as part of their development and permit approval process and i can maybe share my screen quickly might help us kind of walk through some of those documents so susan would it be helpful to also explain the framework of us working with a peer consultant to review this in the very unique situation of contending with a parkway that's either in or not in this conversation in the the understanding the kind of nuance of that but also i think from for the commissioner's benefit we might want to if you really want to do a deep dive it really the general premise of how you arrive at additional traffic introduced to the traffic system how it's redistributed within the traffic system and how it's analyzed to determine its impact on the system and if it's adequate capacity or not so there's you know you can get into the specifics to this particular quest or do you want to talk about how our general analysis kind of happens and how our role plays out with planning and zoning my my my thought was to deal with it sort of exactly where you're saying what the process is in a lot of ways so that so that these documents are not sort of there we can actually digest them and make use of them and in this case i and i've obviously was looking at them in the context of the north avenue camry and rye's intersection in those traffic so i've been looking at this and i feel like it's very challenging yeah quickly and one of the comments that was made i know uh is that the way that the output comes out of the for these reports it doesn't come out in like the two documents that should be compared to each other the 2008 there so you're looking at you know trying to figure out which two do you match up and and looking at the small print at the bottom was really a challenge so i feel like we need some help understanding the process of making it easy for us to understand in general and your process and so it doesn't have to be done tonight if we feel like it's too late i'm more than willing to go forward uh i'd do this at a time when it's you know would be better and um if it's only me that's interested in this then i'm going to try to do it with somebody uh one-on-one but i feel like it's an important thing as a person on the commission to be to be able to um have some credibility that i actually have been able to understand this and i'm not just going to be saying oh yeah it looks great and i don't have any really ability to go oh in 2008 they said there's only to be 33 cars making a left turn on the queen city in 2028 they're going to be only 33 cars making a left turn on the queen city head north on shell so that just doesn't compute to me and so something about this i'm not understanding yeah well it's that's where i'm at you probably found the most complicated of analysis and development review analysis that needs to occur that we've experienced but you know i we can talk you through just a general approach and then you can begin to decipher some of the what is in there but even is you know i've not been following it directly susan has and she has all the history but i can tell you even reading it myself is pretty complex given the various permutations and possibilities and and issues that go with and assumptions that go with this analysis so um i don't know if if the commission wants either susan or i to go through just a general explanation of the process or if you want a deep dive into this individual request well i think the commissioners should yeah weigh in on this because i don't want to hold everybody up i do think it's an important thing that we understand um and i don't feel like the numbers compute for me based on just the initial looking at it so i would like to look at them you know in detail but it doesn't we don't have any regulatory uh input on it so it's not a thing we have to do is a commission i just thought it would be useful for the commission to understand just as well as me how these documents work and we're to look in the fine print to actually be able to compare documents we're happy to entertain whatever approach the commission wants to take chair hogan i defer to you on this from uh commissioner now so so i was the one who opened this can of worms when i asked director spencer just for really i wanted an update on this i felt like um this is a could be perceived as a controversial um build there was because it's on the border between burlington and south burlington and certainly some of us have heard from folks from burlington and from south burlington about this residents in that area um and so i just felt like i really need um really kind of high level um concept uh and where we're going and because burton had some of their traffic studies and then reading the report makes a little bit more sense about what recommendations dpw is making um just so that we can or i can better respond when someone asks about this because i feel like it makes the commission and public works better if we can respond in an informed way so for me i was looking really for some of the high level pieces what the next steps are and because it's this puzzle with missing pieces like the shamplain parkway if when how that's going to factor in it to be i felt even more muddy so if there's any way um you know you can give is it possible to give the kind of the quick and dirty on the really high level what the next steps are what we can anticipate um as far as any future decisions for us and then if if we want to go into sort of the data analysis on traffic projections perhaps we can leave that for another time when we're more bright eyed well i'm i'm happy to jump in susan if you unless you want to take this um i can take this okay all right so i think i'll leave it to you share my screen um and hit a few of those uh points that we just talked about so first um i would direct you to the december 16th uh memo for this commission um down on the second page identifies what the drb approved as part of this permit which includes dpw's recommendations so that's kind of the high level um what's been recommended what is required by the permit and sort of what's being done to address the traffic um kind of specifics of this project um so here is a map from the traffic study submitted by burton which just identifies the intersections that were analyzed so here is route seven so there's a signalized intersection at queen city park road the one leg uh there's an unsignalized intersection at another leg of queen city park road there's the 189 ramp intersection of route seven and home ab intersection of pine and home intersection of the champlain parkway and home and the intersection of home austin and queen city park road um so those are the intersections included in the analysis um commissioner overview your questions i believe were primarily related to the tables that look like this um which are really the detailed printouts from the traffic analysis software um so this is as norm mentioned um pretty comprehensive in-depth uh technical reports uh that were submitted by the applicant really as support um and backup documentation for their traffic study so i would rather than going through these i would focus your attention just going to scroll through to the summary pages there are a lot of these um so this information and analysis almost there here we go um is summarized in these two tables that are uh further down in that packet um so this captures some of the key information and the results from that previous analysis um so as norm mentioned this is a pretty complex analysis it deals with you can see the headings at the top the condition without the champlain parkway champlain parkway no build and then the champlain parkway built um and then for each of those further goes into the burton no build burton build for each of those and for each one of them further 2008 which for this study is used as the existing today's condition which is matches up with the traffic analysis for the champlain parkway and then the 2028 is the future projected 20 years um and those numbers from 2008 are still valid now based on uh we haven't seen as much traffic growth as was anticipated so those traffic numbers are still uh still consistent um so kind of from these charts the main things is really just comparing the columns um so we're comparing the volume capacity vehicle delay and level of service um is one one of the key kind of analysis and takeaways from all of this traffic analysis um so that I think would be if you're looking to really get into the nitty gritty would be a good place to start to start comparing rather than to the the full printout analysis um and these are covered both for the signalized intersections as well as the next page is the unsignalized um and so I think I can stop there and there are any further questions thank you for that unless um Commissioner O'Neill does it help with the the flavor of overview are you interested in or are there other things about time you want to get into yeah kind of timing on on what's next and and you know I know that you indicated that Burton is going to have to do some traffic studies once the site opens up when we think of traffic I also want to think of the um the folks who are biking there and right now where the bike path ends onto Queen City Park there's like if someone's turning like there's there's no easy way for um you know if you're biking back and you're heading east right away from Burton you go over that little bridge and you're going to turn left onto the bike path there's no crossing there um certainly the excitement of being able to bike to a venue like this would be fantastic and I know there are lots of folks who live in the south end that would be easy so when we think of traffic it's also thinking of the bikes and pedestrians so wondering is there an opportunity to have that included in some of the Burton studies and then kind of what those stages are do does any of this come back to the commission so regarding the the bike access and the bicycle network and their surrounding area I do not believe that is part of analysis that they perform for the DRV I mentioned in our memo we are undergoing some additional scoping and feasibility studies as one of our goals in furthering the plan BTV walk bike plan and increasing connectivity through our bike and sidewalk networks I would just add one thing to that Susan and that is when we have these developer view requests come through we also circulate that within the tech services team which includes Nicole to look at the those qualitative not quantitative issues that you're looking for and so she does take a look at these projects as well and provides comments where we're appropriate so it's it's not just that we're exclusively looking at operational performance we're also considering those issues and one of the things that Queen City obviously in our radar has been had we better accommodate other modes and so you've seen some significant reinvestment in Queen City but there is still more to be done and unfortunately it takes to see if I have money and probably see if an amount of engineering to address the balance of issues that are there on that street given the way it was designed and built originally which is I think very limited in its capacity to serve and I think our work has improved that but we still want to do more. Thank you for that. Commissioner Overby. Um what I was I think it sounds like I'm interested in looking at the detail behind the summary more than maybe other people so that's fine but I did have a question a follow-up question about the the statistic on the summary chart that's called the volume to capacity ratio can you explain the the meaningfulness of the that that value I know we've heard about level of service letters you know ABC and F and all that but that one is your first column on each of the summary charts can you explain what that ratio is what that means volume to capacity ratio? Yes so that's a metric obviously with the traffic analysis it compares the actual volume on each leg to the capacity that is able to handle so that closer the number is to one the more the closer that the volume is reaching the maximum capacity of the road. So one lower numbers are better and you'll see they're they're correlated to the level of service as well. So one would mean that it's at exactly the number of cars that it's supposed to have per hour on that stretch is that what it means? Yes I believe it's looked at per hour. So the answer to that is it's it means it's operating in its full capacity based on its design geometries. So what does that mean? If it can service 1500 cars that's what it's running at. So if you had 75 percent of the 1500 cars it would be you know I don't know what's 75 percent 1200 1300 cars. So it's only using so those numbers mean the proportion of its capacity that it is using. That's correct and as you reach a small proportion. And as you reach closer to one it goes to level up some measure of failure because it's unpredictable models are unpredictable. So it's you know when you get into and there's as Susan had noted the level service A through F is a kind of a qualitative explanation of the degrees of delay as a result of reaching capacity. And is that and oh yeah that's that I think that's defined as in seconds but but in effect the the first one that you see there under the Queen City Park Home Avenue Austin Drive Westbound left from Home Ave that one is .11 that would mean that it's it's really only like a tenth of of the track it's only anticipating the tenth of the traffic. That's right. Whereas that with with the build with no Champlain Parkway and Burton build it's .12 so it doesn't make any difference what's a very infinitesimal difference of whether there's a Burton build or not. That's correct. That's what the statistics are saying. And you could see an A next to it means it's it's highly it's servicing well the condition. There's a very low experience of delay. Okay. That's helpful. Well I will I will think I don't want to drag everybody else through the details of this which is what I would like but I will work that out in an inter and an individual way because that would help me understand better. Commissioner Obie if you want the same reason that Commissioner O'Neill I said we do get asked about these things and I don't want to feel like I don't have an understanding to explain in a credible way like how how this has been resolved this way. Well I would just I would just say that the DRB ultimately decides these things and staff is I guess providing providing assistance to the planning permitting inspection department. The commission should be aware and understand the nuances of all these things but ultimately it's the DRB's decision that and I'm not sure many times I think this is kind of the second time staff's been kind of in the middle of a decision by the DRB that we're just providing recommendations to guide the process. And so I'm I'm struggling with what the commission would like from staff as it relates to our decisions and our recommendations. Yeah and I think we like I think we are aware that that was all that all that Commissioner O'Neill Obie wanted was the actual what's happening down in that area. Yeah this was not to put put staff on the spot at all but really to help me be able to answer some questions on something that some people have severe emotions about. That's really awesome. Yeah yeah I appreciate that. So I guess what I would have an open-ended offer to any member of the commission who liked to kind of get a basic understanding of the development review process and how we do an analysis that guides that process particularly the the tech the technology of how they calculate new traffic being introduced to the system how it's distributed in the system and how that's analyzed to determine whether there's adequate capacitors any issues. I I'm more than happy to kind of talk you through how that works and how that's done if you'd like just to kind of get get context. I will raise that separately for that would be great thank you. If you would like you can schedule time with me and I'll go through it with you. That would be fantastic. Yeah thank you. I think it would help me to just look at you know going through like I said two pages comparing because I would just like to hear the numbers from 2008 to 2020 and 28. I can understand what what is what is going on in there. Great thank you very much thank you. I appreciate that thank you engineer. Yes thank you thank you for my part in fact I'm much more of a narrative like if I can tell a story that's that's relatable to people who ask questions I think it's far more important for me to do that well than to give them because I wouldn't do it well to give them some of these these numbers and so I I read through those and I was like oh the narrative that you gave was was was much more helpful to me so so thank you and I did not mean to go down a rabbit hole at nine o'clock at night. It's quite all right. Well I apologize for bringing people down the rabbit hole but all right just it is it is a credibility of understanding that if I have responsibility I feel like it's my my responsibility to understand what I'm supporting so yeah so I'm willing to help you you're welcome to contact me schedule time you've always been very very good at about that and I appreciate that thank you very much right uh do any other commissioners have comments or questions on this are you nodding in heads so thank you you know I'll say that this issue of the dbw's role with the drb process I think is is generally of interest especially earlier in the evening and planned ahead um that you know maybe we can we can come back to that um in our time it's sort of a high level like day one is a day in the life of like you know various uh hats that are worn by dbw the staffers and also sort of a life cycle of different types of tasks that the staff is asked to um to play a role in interesting conversations for another another time thank you all for the points there mr goulding do we have anyone interested in public comment on this item at your hogan at this time nobody is signed up for public comment thank you for checking that all right with that uh thank you again to staff i will close out this item i appreciate the uh the info as always moving forward looking at uh general item 10 approval of draft minutes from november 18th all right is there any three comments or concerns about the the minutes or are we ready to entertain a motion one quick comment it's saw in the minutes uh there was an identification of of you chair hogan as the chair and i didn't know if the protocol was to also identify the vice chair because i did not see that and identified it there for mr. o'neill super small detail if it's not protocol fine but i figured i'd ask thanks i think we've seen in the past we're happy to add it in sometimes we show all the titles sometimes i think we don't uh but i think for consistency state listing all the titles is is fine and uh we'd welcome any uh motion to approve the minutes with that change so moved i'll second bar and seconded by commissioner arginbaugh thank you all right any discussion around that motion we have two votes then please one second vote to approve the november minutes with that one at addition to specify uh vice chair o'neill racco in attendance we get a votes commissioner overby hi commissioner o'neill hi thanks tiki commissioner gillman hi christian bows hi commissioner bar hi commissioner archinbaugh hi hi for myself the minutes pass unanimously all right moving forward director's report all right let's see here there were a couple items in the director's report that i'd love to just quickly touch on we are still active in our construction season i can't believe it but 33 north avenue we're continuing to do a stormwater pipe repair and a slope repair right on the backside of depot street that work is going well and should wrap up in the next week or so i had mentioned the waterfront rail and bike path coordination i think it may be fertile ground to brief the commission in january or february on the project we are working very hard with parks and v trans and vermont rail to undertake a pretty significant realignment of infrastructure through the waterfront in order to achieve the city's goals of putting the bike path on the west side of the tracks continuously through the waterfront while also bringing passenger rail to burlington it has not been an easy effort and i want to thank norm and team parks for a lot of hard work and happy to bring some more information and detail on that in the future we've wrapped up our construction of this season but we have another big year next year that will have impacts on the waterfront and i think for the community's benefit it would be good to provide a briefing we're in the midst of procuring an enterprise asset management system i'm really excited this is kind of an inside wonky effort on our part but we have millions of dollars of assets and our ability to efficiently steward them thanks to your effort through the sustainable infrastructure plan burlington is reinvested in our assets more than we have in decades that said if we don't maintain them well we will not get the full lifespan out of those assets so the enterprise asset management software is a tool that would spread across departments in the city and enable us to track work history public work order requests and a whole host of data that will enable us to make the wisest decisions on these investments so we're hoping that in the next two or three months we'll have a system selected and we'll be going to city council for approval and then lastly i'll just say that the the last paragraph talks about the fact that we're about at the five-year mark for the sustainable infrastructure plan hard to believe that in november 2016 the voters approved two bonds to kick off a renewed reinvestment in our infrastructure those bonds were really meant to last through the five-year window so now we need to figure out what we're doing next and unfortunately with covet and the economic challenges this will be even a more difficult conversation than last time but look forward to engaging the commission in the coming months on that conversation thank you all right thank you for that director schmetzer moving forward to commissioner communications start with commissioner bar um i i don't necessarily have any huge ones i know that we've had some very cold weather and some of the bike lanes have gotten attention and some have not so i know looking in the future that if cyclists especially at culture extra avenue on that corridor entrance into burlington if if we can put some attention to that but otherwise i think that things have been pretty darn good considering so thanks um i also wanted to add too and this is part of the old east and neighborhood group that we have down here in the forgotten part of burlington we're going to be putting together something and we're working with parks to put together something at shamanica park so i'll probably do more of a of a commissioner comments in january once we get something a little more firm but with covet uh we're really trying to do something to get some people outside and in an area where we can maybe even schedule some some outdoor activities which could include snowshoeing or or snow sculptures or sugar on snow which i think should get everybody's on this calls attention uh because that's the best stuff ever so um we'll we'll i'll keep you informed but it's an old east end we're going to call it i think i think we determined we've got a meeting on friday i think it's going to be called winter lewd which is stealing from ottawa uh they they do a winter lewd up there very similar to the winter carnival in kebec so stay tuned thank you mr ornelling is very important for that event there uh commissioner bar lewd it better not be i don't have any comments except for um to say thanks it's been a phenomenal year in so many ways um and just really proud of some of the um the the ability of the public works staff to continue plugging on and my vision of busy town for those of you who have kids or had kids um and that book and realizing that um you know on the commission i get to open pages of the books to see um everything that's being done and i think uh it's just a testament to um kind of our success our success is in being able to kind of maintain our infrastructure when for some of us at the beginning things just felt so out of control so thank you and no other comments all right mr archibald uh just a quick note shape and i've brought this up before there's a facility down at the uh if you're on the 127 bike path right you you enter from i think that's manhattan drive you know it's kind of that little not so much traffic on that road the entry way to that bike path go all the way down the hill there's a facility there because back there in the inner valley used to be the old dump and i believe at one time it was off gassing and burning methane it's not doing that anymore it has not for some time but i bring this up because that facility is has been broken into there's a container next to it and there's flammable supplies it's true and about someone's broken into that gotta secure that site man there's some equipment in there that i think is worth money and uh we're gonna shore that up please thank you speaking of uh the broad array of assets the city uh stewards yeah it's true i know even though i happen to run by it all the time so it's they will follow up and uh yes i will work with team water resources who's responsible for maintaining the landfill related infrastructure and we'll get you an update on what uh what our plan is i appreciate it thank you that's it for me thank you uh commissioner gillman uh nothing for me today all right commissioner overby i don't have any commissioner comments but i just wondered do we need to circle back because i pulled that consent agenda item out and actually have something of accepting the communication and uh did we have to do any anything to that as another accepting the communication like we would have done in the original consent agenda you know procedurally do we have to do anything no i don't i don't believe so it was since it was pulled and put on the deliberative agenda and was discussed and will be included in the minutes i don't think any formal action needs to be taken great i wasn't sure all right thank you i have no other comments all right i think uh that's how i'm going to uh commissioner bose step out i will say uh sorry i've got some of the sentiment here that uh in a trying year on a number of levels very much appreciate uh team dpw's effort to keep everything holding along amidst undoubtedly personal as well as professional challenges along the way we have the city uh are are better for it um a comment speaking of i mean the certainly the the environment's ability to to make such great progress and anything is only as strong as the the in healthy is the staff that are um they're working on the team and something that i've mentioned in in the past i think is is worth a closer look at sort of just for polling staffs morale and satisfaction polling staff for suggestion and so forth is something that i value in my day job when i get the chance to be surveyed um and have it you know i was just doing in a way that information we collected uh in anonymized sort of brought up to sort of group levels and sort of just get the pulse on on things and maybe spot early concerns or just generally um just with the fact that people are being asked may go a long ways towards improving said morale as well um so i i don't know if there's anything in the way of employee survey currently but if not i would love to revisit that and talk about maybe we can do that in the future and um i would respect us as a commission we're interested in that sort of in the the bigger pictures we're looking at you know we have goals each year on staff sort of development and everything and staff uh health avoiding lost time injury you know we track this sort of stuff it's also sort of track general job satisfaction are people feeling like this is a this is a great place to work please yes great but we do have uh employee surveys periodically we had one i think want to say about six weeks ago especially targeted to the pandemic some folks as you know are coming in and working every day in the field and others are in a remote look location working from home during the pandemic so we have a very diverse workforce being asked to do work differently in many different respects so we have done a survey internally we are working on some of the areas that came out of that survey to best support our employees and i would say one recent material effort was the hazard pay effort that we were able to bring forth to the city counseling three weeks ago or so for our frontline staff and i really want to appreciate the union for working quickly with us to identify the individuals who fit the policy and would be eligible for the hazard pay and it was distributed last week i believe in paychecks and there's a lot more to be done obviously than just the hazard pay we've been working with our safety officer to try to ensure proper ergonomics at home working with staff in the fields to have safe protocols for how work gets done in the covid era our work has been turned upside down and i really do appreciate the compliments from commissioners at the end of the year we had our last all staff meeting uh tuesday where i got to pass along my appreciation but i will certainly pass along yours as well okay yeah thank you for that all right with that we'll close out commissioner communications and move on to item 13 adjournment and next meeting day january 20th motion adjourned oh quick we draw commissioner bar we have a motion i second the motion go ahead gillman you got it we'll give the second to commissioner gillman any so season of tradition so all right two of of votes please all in favor motion to adjourn say please say hi hi hi for myself any post all right thank you we are adjourns at 9 24 see you on every holiday everybody