 Thank you very much. Right. One hand, virtual hand in the air. The public forum when we get there. Let's get started. Commissioner Bose may well be missing today. I'm sure about commissioner Gellman, but let's go and get started for if you're ready on your answer. We are ready on staff and thank you. Good evening, everyone. Good evening, everyone. I'm Brandon Hogan chair, calling to you order the April meeting of the public works commission at 6.32 p.m. Welcome all. First item. On the agenda is the agenda itself. So I'm going to have any. Oh, thank you for sharing that. So you don't have any. Comments or. Modifications to the agenda. I'm not sure. I think we should pull item C off the consent agenda. Because I was thinking we had a resolution of it, but maybe there's more discussion that should happen on that particular document. So I'll, I'll suggest pulling it off. I was going to ask about it. If we were just going to have a discussion, but let's pull it off. Everybody would have gotten an email within the last hour about it. Okay. So I make a motion to accept the agenda with item. See from the consent agenda pulled off to become 4.1. I second that amendment. All right. We have a motion that's been seconded. Is there any discussion around that motion? All right. To a vote then. Commissioner Archambault. Thank you. Commissioner Barr. Hi. Commissioner pose or Gilman. Vice chair on the obivanco. Hi. You and commissioner over me. Hi. Hi for myself. All five presents. Jenna's best. All right. Moving forward to. Public forum. Hi commissioner. Hi. Chair Hogan and members of the public. If you are looking to speak tonight during public comment, either right now or at future public comment periods that the chair announces. Please use the raise your hand feature on zoom, which you can find on the bottom of your screen on a, on the toolbar on the bottom of your zoom screen. If you have called in or are going to call in, you need to press star nine. That will alert us that you wish to speak. And then we will announce your, the last four digits of your phone number. When it's your turn to speak. Thanks to channel 17 for covering this. If you have joined us on channel 17's YouTube page. We do not monitor those comments in real time. So please join us on zoom. Or via the phone. If you do wish to speak during public comment. At this time, I will promote, if it's okay with you, Jason Van Drash. To speak. Please. Great. Thank you. Thank you, chair Hogan and commissioners. I'll keep this brief. My name is Jason Van Drash. I'm a Burlington resident. And I am speaking today about. One project in particular, but in the broader context of the fact that you have joined us on zoom. We're via the phone. If you do wish to speak during public comment. I will also provide a brief brief. In the broader context of the fact that you are. As I understand it in the next couple of months, evaluating the city engineer and making a recommendation to. The administration regarding reappointment. I will also provide feedback via email and at your next meeting. But I wanted to do at least some of the feedback at the meeting itself. I'm not going to go into that. I'm not going to go into that. I'm not going to go into one project in particular. But it's emblematic of broader issues that I'll address in my written comments. And that project, as I'm sure you might guess is the. Champlain safe route to school project, which included intersection. Reconstruction near my home. At the corner. Caroline and look at streets. The design is excessive delays. The project. Was originally conceived a decade ago. And took a decade to go through multiple rounds of planning. Design and finally construction. And a decade is in my opinion. Significantly longer than it should take to deliver three relatively straightforward reconstructions of. Inefficient use of funds. Presumably due in part to the staff and consultant costs incurred because of the long delays and multiple rounds of. Redesign. There's multiple. Important elements that were on the table originally and that fell off of the table because of budget reasons. A paved path through Callahan Park from Caroline to the city. And a speed table and bump outs at Locust Street and Locust Terrace. None of those were part of the finished product. Third is a failure to meet as best I can tell. Some of the key stated goals of the project last fall when I was communicating with the city engineer about the project. He stated in writing in an email a goal of target speed of 15 to 20,000 miles per hour. And that was the goal of the project for cars coming through the intersections. And the, really the purpose. One of the core purposes of the project was to slow vehicle traffic down at intersections where numerous people, including many, many children, cross the street to get the school and to get to the park. As I understand that data have not yet been collected on speed going through. Those two intersections. I'm not going to go into that. I'm not going to be benchmarking them against a friend driving a car through for me at specific speeds. The typical speed going through the intersection is more like 25 to 30 miles an hour. So a critical difference from the very safe speed of 15 to 20 miles an hour. And then the last thing I wanted to highlight is multiple instances of. Poor quality work. And the idea is that the water goes to the rain garden and then during very heavy storm events when it's too much for the rain garden, the extra. Runoff goes into the normal storm system. When the project was first installed. One of the locations where there was a. Some storm water rain gardens. And sort of double storm drains, one that goes to the storm system and a pair right next to it that is supposed to go to the. Rain garden. And the idea is that the water primarily goes to the rain garden. And the other locations where there was a, those pair of storm drains had the storm drain for the. Rain garden installed about four inches higher. Then the storm drain for the storm system such that no water whatsoever went into the rain garden as designed. That was fixed at city cost with a city crew coming in and delivering the storm drain. So I'm not going to be referring it. But it's the kind of thing that really should have been gotten right on the first time around. And there are others, but I won't mention them for lack of time now. Big picture. This project is one of many reasons why I do not believe that the city engineer should be reappointed. And I'm bringing that feedback to you as the folks who are responsible for that evaluation. And I'm not going to go into that. I'm not going to go into that vein over the next few weeks. I believe we need a city engineer who is not only deeply dedicated to the city, which norm absolutely is, but who also is committed to the kind of design and the standard of implementation. That we've come to expect in a 21st century city. 21 years into that century. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right. Good morning. I'm here with you. Thank you. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your time. I need to get to the building. Is there anyone else. Interested in. Public forum. Chair Hogan just because some looks like some members of the public may have recently joined. I will just remind folks who do want to speak during this or future public comments to use the. Raise your hand feature on zoom. At this time, though, it does not appear. Anybody else wishes to speak. All right. Thank you. public forum and go to the consent agenda now, consisting of items A and B, update to free employee parking policy and B, parking requests for Lakewood Parkway. Motion to accept the consent agenda. Thank you for that motion. I second the motion. Seconded by Chair Neal. Thank you. Is there any discussion around that motion? All rights, go to a vote. Commissioner Archibald. Aye. Commissioner Barr. Aye. Vice Chair O'Neill-Vavaco. Aye. Commissioner Overby. Aye. Aye for myself. Consent agenda passes. Thank you. Moving forward to item 4.1, Design Vehicle Guidelines. Welcome a brief introduction from staff on this piece. Look information manager Rob Golding, could you promote members of our tech services team, City Engineer Norm Baldwin, Olivia Doris is on. We'll do Director Spencer. I'm not recognizing them on the attendee list. I do see somebody signed up as Burlington DPW. So if that's you, would you raise your hand? There we go. Sorry, Rob, I didn't realize I was not under my name. Hi, I'm Olivia Doris. I'm Public Works Engineer and I was the project manager for the development of this Design Vehicles Guidelines document. I work here and worked with an engineering consultant, stand tech consulting services to develop a design resource that would be provided to consultants and other city staff that would provide guidance on the geometric design for traditional intersections. So this involves kind of classifying some like classifications for different sized design vehicles, establishing thresholds and standards for which certain intersections would allow encroachments for certain classifications of design vehicles specific to kind of the functional classifications of the intersection intersecting roadways in the location within the city and within the downtown. So the goal of this document was to kind of provide a balance between the needs of pedestrian and cyclist safety as well as functionality of the intersection. So ensuring that we're kind of narrowing up intersections enough so that we're providing safe crossings and slowing traffic down enough through these intersections but not affecting the functionality of the intersections in a way that's going to cause issues with vehicles and cause delays. So that's the purpose of this document. I understand Commissioner over B and I, we've had a little bit of back and forth over throughout the day today. And her concern was that we didn't really discuss or mention the use of roundabouts anywhere in this document. I do want to clarify that this document is again specifically geared towards providing guidance for traditional intersection treatments. This would happen, of course, after the scoping phase occurs and after selection of a traditional intersection happens and to provide guidance on that selection. But to kind of remediate Commissioner over B's concerns, we offered to insert some language into the guidance which acknowledges that roundabouts can still be viable options for traffic calming or for slowing down traffic, managing traffic, and providing safer facilities for all users, adding some of that language into the introduction and providing references to those design resources that can be used to design roundabouts. So I'm certainly happy to work with the consultant to do that. I think that he's straightforward. And Commissioner over B, I think the language you propose works well and will probably use something to that effect. But if you have anything else you'd like to discuss, I'm happy to answer any questions or. Thank you for that. I can just point out that the commission is not really required to take any action on this. This is largely an informative item, is that right? Yep. For what it's worth, but yeah, I'm happy to have a dialogue on it. Commissioner over B, is there anything else on your end? She's on mute. Yes, I was just going to make sure I did the permanent mute instead of holding the space bar down. I understand. Yeah, I wanted to. I really do have a concern that the document is labeled intersection design vehicle guidance. And the issues of design vehicles are just as relevant to roundabouts as they are to what you call the traditional four-way stop kind of thing. And so my concern was that this didn't reference that. And in our back and forth, one engineer Baldwin weighed in on it just like one hour ago, he was saying that it was a financial decision. It was a cost decision. Why this was only covering the old style four-way thing and not addressing all the safe kinds of intersections for bicyclists, pedestrians, and making proper, easy mobility for vehicles. And I just literally before it came on the meeting, after I'd sent you the proposed language to adjust the introduction, we all received information from Tony Reddington, who was like one of the roundabout gurus in Burlington and beyond Burlington. I'm not sure Vermont, Nationwide, whatever. But the reason I'm so I have a little bit of a concern now. And I would like to find out what the proposal might be if the language I proposed to you was to make sure there was a reference to it. And so it's very clear that you're saying this document doesn't relate to anything except after there's already been a decision about an intersection. But my concern is that nowhere does that really is that reflected in the introduction and the application. So based on what Tony just sent to us recently, my concern is that it may be that this isn't, I mean, obviously, since we're not voting on it, that may be great. So maybe we just have this discussion and that we then say consultant money needs to be created so that this actually does deal with safe intersection design vehicle guidance, not just four-way intersections. So I'm somewhat backing up from what I suggested, the one paragraph language, because it just makes me concerned that it might be that you could do better with this. And rather than you implementing this, it may be that it should be actually held off on until it can actually speak to the entire intersection design vehicle guidance, because it really does relate to everything. And if it's just a financial decision, I get that. And that's where I understood that now it really is. It was that there was only money to do this paperwork, this design work for what you call traditional intersections. So my thought is I propose some language. Is it possible that you can actually, we don't have to do anything with this as a vote anyway. So we just discuss it and then maybe you can recommend that there really, it needs to be revised to really deal with completely with intersections and not just this one type of intersection. Is that a possibility? Obviously there's gotta be money, so somebody's gonna pay for it. Sure, Dr. Spencer. Yes. Thank you, Commissioner Overby and engineer Doris. What about us pulling this item from the agenda and working over the coming weeks to bring it back with some further clarification and a plan moving forward, being responsive to the commission's interest. Is there need to get any action tonight? No, we didn't ask for any action tonight. Just one thing that I kind of do want to mention is that while I do recognize that, there may be a time in the future where some supplemental guidance is needed on roundabouts. Kind of the main reason for putting this together was more about the immediate need for this supplemental guidance, again, specific to traditional intersections, no existing resources really catered to the city's specific needs and objectives. And I guess we're just, we're not in a point within the city where we kind of know, I guess what type of other supplemental guidance we need to existing roundabout guidance. So I struggle to say, yes, we're going to delay this until we get supplemental roundabout guidance in here because I don't think we're at the point where we can even know kind of what that would look like, but there is an immediate need for the supplemental guidance for the traditional intersection. So I'll just leave it with that. I just think we're at kind of different points with each of these different intersection treatments and but I'm definitely happy to discuss how we might be able to work some language into this document that kind of speaks to how we will approach that over the next couple of years and in the type of things we'll look out for and how we might be able to incorporate some additional guidance specific to roundabouts into this document. So. It just occurs to me and it was my original problem is that the intersections are always an issue in Burlington and we have lots of intersections and if we just don't deal with them as with the array of options we have, as I think I said in one of my communications to you, it pretty much disappears the roundabout option if you just have this and it doesn't refer to it and it sounds very general about how we deal with intersections and particularly all the design vehicle guidance applies just as well, you know, the length of trucks and what's gonna go through. So it's to me, it is really a glaring omission that we didn't do it properly covering any kind of intersection that should be made safer for pedestrians and bicyclists and facilitating mobility. So it's not a matter of like an add-on. It really isn't. I was trying to figure out what we could do in the interim but I really am, I'm really feeling now that I feel like you really, and you obviously this can be for, you know you can use this as your, you know without having it be official, you're obviously gonna be using it for people but it's not an official document. Obviously even living for years with no official document as we've been living for years with using the NACTO and the FHA or the Federal Highway Administration roundabout guidelines. But in order for us to actually move forward people need to see, okay if you're using a four-way intersection stop traditional what you call it. This is how the trucks move and here's the cars move and we figure out that or here's the way we deal with it when we deal with roundabouts. So they're all comparable right in front of everybody and it's not a matter of an add-on. So that's to me why I think you've got something if you feel like you need something right away I'd say people are gonna use it because you feel like it's better than nothing for what you're doing now. But I really feel like it definitely is inadequate for dealing with making it really obvious when a roundabout might be a more appropriate and where the same design vehicles can get through the intersection better, worse you know that needs to be dealt with and we're in that money space where we haven't gone where a lot of communities have to understand how roundabouts work better. We're still on the barrier of it costs more money it's more complicated you gotta get rights away. We really haven't taken it on as committed to where can we do it and where will it make things safer for pedestrians and bicyclists. So this makes it look like this is the way to make it safer for bicyclists and pedestrians. And so that's you know I think a lot of work went into it but that's my comment about this and right now I don't feel like the sentences that I propose for you are gonna cut it because I have a feeling we're just never gonna get around to doing the roundabout thing it's always gonna be we'll just use the national standards and they don't really aren't relevant yet to us so we'll get around to this local version that will be helpful in our circumstances which is why you did this one we'll have to do the same thing what's the local conditions that make us able to do roundabouts and how do they work here? So because it's design vehicle guidance that applies to everything so anyway that's my input I'll shut up the other commissioners may have input on it but that's my reason for having taken up so much of your time are they trying to work this out early? No, I appreciate that and it's certainly a good point and I think over the next few weeks let's stay in communication and figure out how we can satisfy your concerns right now and yeah, well I don't think we need to continue this discussion here I think you can kind of do it do it offline over the next few weeks and work with a consultant to get some appropriate language in there looks like norm has something to say Great, thank you I'm sitting in an air ballroom Yeah, I just want to be clear that we had very limited funds and very limited time to respond to this issue and it was driven by the fact that we had Maple and St. Paul as a challenging intersection that we took a first step and it caused all sorts of kerfuffle within the city and we had to respond and so this was a very limited scope just sort of make it fit in to respond to that complaint, that concern and to really kind of make it fit and so it's of evolution it's a process of learning and we had no intention of purposely excluding roundabouts we were trying to deal with the matter at hand in front of us and as the city engineer I've experienced very little to no standards of practice as I walked into this position of responsibility and we are stretching ourselves to do so many things at once that it's impossible to be comprehensive as the commission would prefer and still try to respond to all the capital reinvestment that's going on on a daily basis so it's not our intention to step over or step aside or avoid roundabouts we have no aversion to roundabouts roundabouts have their place we understand the value it provides we are and it is a method of control just like any other that we would apply but it has to be specific to the challenge and the task and so it's really hard to sit and hear that we somehow have purposely stepped over the idea of a roundabout we are not doing that we are actually stepping out and stepping hard in front of things at great risk with how people perceive our level of professionalism doing the work is when you take risks and it doesn't work people want to call you on it and we're taking risks so I would hope the commission sees that we're taking risks Thank you All right, I don't know fellow commissioners have any comments or questions on this item? All right, we're not on the hook for a decision on this one tonight are we safe to move forward here? All right, thank you for the discussion I appreciate it That's it, we'll close out item 4.1 and move to item five water resources rate recommendations Great, we'll be joined by our water resources team led by Megan Moyer, division director and we have a short summary presentation of the changes and adjustments made since our last presentation to you a few months ago and we're seeking your recommended approval of the proposed rate study tonight and appreciate your time Let me get my screen shared up here How's everybody doing tonight? Well, thank you How are you? I am doing pretty well Why am I having technological difficulties though? Okay, screen two is my screen Sorry, I wish there was a way for us to do this in advance but I don't think there is Are you seeing what looks like a PowerPoint? Yes Okay, let me get to the right slide Hang on to your hats people Okay, so everybody can see our title slide Okay, so as I think Chapin was mentioning as the system kicked me out and then brought me back in as a full panelist we are here to just do a quick check in We last visited with you all in January of 2021 and we just again want to do one last check in after our latest round of public outreach which included the NPAs a public meeting last week and a postcard that was mailed to every single residence in Burlington and we also wanted to take the moment to just share a couple of quick changes that we think are improvements to our overall proposal So I've given the rest of my project team the night off because they have been doing the bulk of the night meetings but we do have a fantastic project team Jessica Lavallette is our customer care finance manager Jenna who runs the policy and programs part of our work and then our consultant Dave Fox So as I think you guys recall the whole impetus for this project it started back in 2019 when we started trying to figure out how to address the tension between the rate increases that we need in order to make sure we can take care of our system and the fact that those rate increases if not now ultimately could cause affordability issues for some of our rate payers potentially particularly those who have less annual income than some of us We talked about how there is a cost basis justification for being able to charge different customers different types sorry different rates and that is based on the sort of base level demand that our residential uses are needed and then as you get into irrigation and commercial properties and providing fire protection those types of uses actually place additional burden and so in many utilities those types of customers actually get charged more Ultimately the overall rate structures that we're proposing haven't changed since we met with you in January of this year The one thing I really wanted to draw your attention to is the fact that by establishing cost base rates so we're not leveraging the cost of service recovery to the extent that we could We are doing it for irrigation rates and then also for being able to charge single family homes as well as you'll see now duplexes and triplexes a different rate we could have and we certainly looked at charging commercial properties more but what it came down to it is those properties are already experiencing a significant cost of service realignment as it results to the the fixed fee that we're going to be charging them A lot of those buildings have very large meters and so they are seeing a larger fixed fee readiness to serve charge and then many of those properties also have fire services and so that's another cost of service realignment that they're seeing with this turn of the wheel and that was resulting sort of on average of commercial properties seeing an increase of about nine percent in their water bill that plus the fact that we know businesses are struggling due to COVID we felt like you know it's not the right time to additionally also charge them more volumetrically for the water but I wanted to make sure that citizens and decision makers knew that with this specific ability to charge different customers different rates we would be able to kind of look at that in the future in future years budgets and future years rate setting and decided that time whether it was the right time to start sort of ouching their rates up to start matching their true cost of service on the affordability side we had talked last time and we're super excited to bring forward a lifeline rate tier and this is one of the central tenants of our proposal and it it centers on this concept of essential sort of life water right everybody uses a different type of water but there's a certain amount of water that we are tying to the median usage for a particular property type that we feel like should be discounted if you will because it is really necessary for life and we want to make sure that folks who are able to use median or less kind of get a benefit from that the cool part since we met in January is that we have figured out how to also provide that tiered rate for duplex and triplex customers the one thing I want to draw your attention to is it's not a simple linear relationship where if a single family gets 400 and a duplex gets 800 duplexes and triplexes because it's a shared yard often smaller units their median usage when we look at it in the system is actually lower and so the tiers for the lifeline rate tiers for duplexes and triplexes are set at 600 and 900 cubic feet of water for the property respectively we're still advancing the fixed fee waiver and that's the piece that if somebody has income constraints and they can show eligibility or they can show proof of being eligible for certain types of federally linked programs like LIHEAP or SNAP three squares they show us evidence of that we're going to go ahead and for a year's time wave that fixed fee that readiness to serve charge for those customers which is going to see when we look at the rate the rate impacts table provide significant benefit we had also added senior senior eligibility criteria you know we hope people are going to be somewhat self-regulating and that a somebody who happens to be over 65 that doesn't have income constraints isn't going to come and apply we're kind of willing to have that risk in our system at least for this first year and kind of see what happens rather than trying to set up some sort of other type of income verification process and then we're also providing that fixed fee waiver to non-profit affordable affordable and senior housing developments one other thing we added is we haven't previously had a budget billing option people were are required to you know pay whatever it is they use that month but this with the budget billing they hopefully are going to be able to kind of smooth out those payments if they have typical fluctuations can you guys hear the background noise I certainly can my children are yelling upstairs is it okay okay two things that were additionally really excited about we finally did the last turn of the budget and we've been talking about this for some time at least the last couple of years we are for the first time going to be doing a little bit of a pilot program some infrastructure and some infrastructure assistance and conservation assistance programs so in the case of the infrastructure assistance we've talked about the significant cost that can be incurred when somebody has to replace their sewer lateral the sewer lateral is entirely on the private homeowner the city doesn't have any ownership from the house to the main we're we don't have enough money yet and we don't really have enough data to support you know the grants or loan programs to be able to help people replace that piece of infrastructure that we do think there is a possibility that we could see some money from the state or from the feds in the form of stimulus so we're keeping a close eye on that but we are what we are going to do is for your typical residential property we're going to pay up to $200 of what seems to usually be a $250 cost to get your line filmed so we we hope that by doing that people will at least have the information about what the condition of their line is understand probably through that process what an estimate might be to repair it and then it will also give us data to develop those future programs for income qualified customers we would go ahead and cover up to $250 which at least with the the filming companies that we discussed we talked with should cover the whole cost on the conservation assistant side right a big piece of controlling the cost of your bill you can try to get your kids to use less water or your spouse to get to use less water but the best way is actually to engineer something in and make it harder to use said water and so we're looking forward to being able to provide $75 rebates for residential customers towards the purchase of a water since plumbing fixture I think at Lowes or Home Depot you can buy a dual flush low flow toilet for about a hundred bucks and so we think hopefully people are going to be using these rebates in that way the one other thing I wanted to address and then we did talk about at this last time but we're making a bit more of a commitment with this last turn of the proposal you know the the RAP or the water resources assistance program fixed fee waiver currently really only easily reaches single family properties and other individually metered residential units so there's a limited number of duplexes or triplexes where the way the building was built the units happened to be individually metered and so that fixed fee waiver would apply in that instance when and where the occupant is the actual account holder in water and then as we mentioned the RAP fixed fee is going to apply for to nonprofit affordable or senior housing accounts unfortunately renters and multi family rentals aren't going to really have access in this phase and why is that one of our biggest issues is that if the city provides a fixed fee waiver to landlords some landlords not saying all you know we have no way of making sure that they actually pass that affordability measure onto tenants and so we want to make sure if we are giving this money back that it's getting back to the people who really need it the other piece as I kind of mentioned above is that multi family units often share a meter so just doing the fixed fee waiver structure isn't really going to be beneficial in that particular instance and so we probably need to look at it in a different way I think as we shared last time most utilities across the country are struggling to address this gap most utilities don't have a renter specific program DC water and New York City water are the only ones that we or Raftelis who works with utilities across the country are aware of and in particular we're really looking to DC water who just launched their program I think in the last couple of months and I can get into further details of people have questions about how their program works but suffice to say their programs knew we want to see how it works for them before we try it try it in Burlington we also want to have a full year up to 18 months of us launching our existing program and seeing how many applicants we actually get so that will be better able to turn any sort of remaining money that we had set aside into the next phase of the program but what we are going to do is promise to evaluate for you all and for the city council by no later than April 2023 what those other options may be out there this is just a quick redo of the the rate tables that you had seen in the past and you'll see the addition of the duplex and the triplex tiered rates so that first increment that first tranche of water is discounted but you do in exchange then when you use more than that do end up being charged more multifamily residential commercial city all are being charged that same four dollars and 24 cents under our proposal but we are still advancing that irrigation and or heating cooling water which is using clean safe drinking water for something other than what we believe it's intended use is is going to be charged more there is going to be an exemption for the community gardens and folks should know that if this is something that may be unpalatable that they can look at having their irrigation meter pulled the old it's and then they would be using it's complicated because if they do that then they will be getting charged wastewater so there's definitely some cost analyses that need to be done before somebody goes that option when we looked at a redo of the customer impacts based in particular on adding the duplex and the triplex categories one sort of benchmark if we weren't doing any of this we didn't have a rating increase last year we've got a fair amount of debt service to cover we would have the typical single family home owner myself included would have been seeing an increase of about 5.9 percent in their overall water resources bill assuming they use the same amount of water over last year so that's sort of the good benchmark to compare against if you look at the median volume single family customer with our current rate proposal they're not going to be seeing an increase at all they're going to be paying about what they're paying this year you go down to the duplexes the median volume customers they're going to be seeing a decrease as well as the triplexes are going to be seeing a healthy decrease I think we talked last time about the sort of imperfection of the fact that low volume customers seem to be kind of getting the raw end of the deal and this is largely because of the introduction of the fixed fee right so that fixed fee is about readiness to serve and nobody's residential customers in particular aren't paying that right now and low volume customers in particular because our fixed costs are embedded in our volumetric aren't actually paying their fair share now and this starts to correct that it does look like a healthy increase it isn't for an unburdened customer that much money it is $51 over the course of the year or $4 and $0.25 a month I think I would have more discomfort with the low volume if it wasn't for the fact that we do have this wrap program so if somebody really is income constrained they're going to be eligible for this low volume sorry this wrap program and with that they would be seeing a decrease this is the customer impact this is just kind of to demonstrate that even though we aren't leveraging the volumetric rate for institutions and our commercial properties they are already seeing a bit of an increase which is again why we didn't choose this year to also hit them with a increase in the volumetric charge although we are cost justified in doing so hopefully all of you got the the postcard that we sent out we've been really trying to push people who are concerned about these changes to complete an account impact summary request with this our customer care team looks at what the typical usage of a property is and then applies the new rates and is actually able to estimate what your future bill may be and whether it's going to be going up or down and also why we've also been sharing with people a number of different ways of action that they can take in order to mitigate any increase that they may be seeing in summary our team is super excited about this proposal we're excited on the financial sustainability side because we've actually been able to prepare an FY22 budget it's built to ensure proper operation and sustainable stewardship of our infrastructure and it has that targeted funding for those customer assistance programs that we've been talking about for so long if we weren't doing this all residential rate pairs would be seeing that approximate 5.9% increase on their bill or at least single family duplexes and triplexes with the proposed changes we're super excited that the income-qualified rate pairs and seniors are actually going to see a pretty significant decrease in their overall water resources bill on average of about almost a hundred bucks a year for somebody who uses that 400 cubic foot a month mounts a significant the majority of single family residential rate pairs are going to see a benefit on their water resources bill doesn't necessarily mean a decrease in all cases but they're going to be seeing less than that 5.9% increase median single family users are not going to see an increase and then duplex and triplexes are actually going to see decreases and then lastly even though we're not leveraging it fully we are now we now will have customer class based rate structures which is going to allow for us to have that future conversation about how much more we could be or will be or decide to be charging some of our commercial customers with that we just those are the last few steps we're visiting with you all we're visiting the two next week and then we are headed to city council to hopefully have them review and hopefully support this framework which would then be the basis for coming back in June when we approve budgets and setting rates according to this structure really like to think my team they've been doing an amazing amount of outreach customer care has been responding to these you know account summary impacts we feel strongly that we have done we've tried to keep our no rock unturned as far as trying to get the word out to folks but we'd love to hear from you guys okay thanks so much exciting stuff to be moving on that I'll bring it to the commission for discussion let's start with commissioner archambuff yeah hi just coming back in here I know Megan has been hard at work at this with her team for a long time so I really have no questions just compliments for all the work that she's done so thank you Megan for all this I'm quite sure the council will be supportive which will reflect all of the work that you have put into it so that's it for me you commissioner bar I echo what commissioner archambull said and I really like the idea that there's going to hopefully be some help for those out there who may not be able to pay the increases that are commensurate with whatever their properties their water usages so hopefully it's not going to be too complex to keep track of but you've done a ton of work on this and I really appreciate it thanks thank you I would just say one more round of outreach when this gets approved which we're very hopeful it will it then turns into outreach to educate people about how these bills are going to look because we do know it is going to be a shift in thinking and we're we're going to we're prepared to get all the calls with people not quite understanding what's happening so that's a good point thank you okay vice chair on you Ivanka Megan I totally geeked out and last week was sitting in on your your recent I saw you and I even went online and requested an impact summary and got that today so so that just just because I wanted to kind of see the the process so I could just get excited even more about my water rates I have teenagers so I think if you if you throw it out to parents of teens like what strategy do you have to have to save water you might come up with some really great ideas one question I have is you know I appreciate the the wrap program but and maybe you don't know the answer to this yet I'm just anticipating folks who especially the irrigation folks there's some folks who have automatic sprinklers that go on all the time and I feel like some of them are the kind of people who might complain about this increase or just complain and then how do you I guess how is your team ready to deal with that maybe it's you don't have to answer it but but just assuming that there's going to be that additional layer of outreach for that sector and that is a great point so in addition to the sort of general outreach that we've done the postcards we are sending direct letters to anybody who has an irrigation account so that they are it's not necessarily going to help them not complain but they will be more prepared the last thing we want is for somebody to not know this is happening get the bill and be like what the what happens so we are sending them outreach explaining why you know it's the case sort of explaining their options so we think that will help or at least we'll have people engage with us on that conversation now and not when they get the bill and they're even more frustrated we also are sending direct letters to anybody who has that fire service because that's that that new charge that nobody's ever seen because and we think that it'll also give us the opportunity to make sure that our data is correct that yes they have a fire service and that we have the right size so it's very good point and of all of the people those are the folks people are passionate about their yards and it's just it is a little bit intention though with the fact that it is it is clean safe drinking water that we are putting on soil and we're trying to price it in that way and people may choose that their gardens are important enough that they want to keep having that service or maybe they're going to come up with different ways of harvesting you know storm water and we can give them a rain barrel to help with that in most cases they're going to still need more water unfortunately if they have really large gardens great thanks so much and great work with your team thank you thank you Commissioner Overby I have to second the comments about everybody who's saying it's been so excellent the amount of work that went into this and the amount of time that's been put into it because a change like this it's very complicated when you do have financial impacts on people and I feel like it's one of the things that helps people to understand the actual cost of having that fresh water it's actually a great deal you know we don't have to go down the street and get water out of a pump in a bucket and bring it home so we forget how important it is and so I realize that this I totally appreciate how how much work and how much time and how much refinements as as information has been coming you know been brought out like the triplex and the duplexes that were just added so I I completely support this getting it a sustainable basis the the cost of providing fresh water and treatment of the the sewer water stone water so I think this is great I appreciate this and I will totally support this thank you very much Megan thank you so much and you say triplex like I do we've been having this tension about whether it's triplex or triplex and you and I are aligned with the triplex I just want to say so from the Midwest because it's maybe a Midwest thing versus an East Coast or West Coast thing maybe I'm from Texas I'll have to ask my Texas friends what they say it's often when you have something like that that's different you have to start asking people where you came from you do you write a tricycle or a tricycle no that's the thing I do triathlons so it makes more sense Latin wise that it would be tri but it's been rolling off my tongue to say triplex I'm trying I don't know where I want to land so by triplex go for it luckily our our vote will be on printed material and not on pronunciation exactly on my end couple of questions if I wanted to know what size of service I have is there an easy way to find that out or do I request an impact statement like Maestro Niel uh right I know there's a meter sizing there's a meter sizing review request where you can submit information to make sure that you have the right meter size so what we're finding occasionally particularly for large buildings is that people have thought bigger is better the design engineers have thought bigger is better and sometimes when we look at it again a building actually could use less could have a smaller meter based on the number of fixtures so there is that I don't let me just check I will check while we're talking I can't remember off the top of my head if there is a form for having somebody to come check your service otherwise it would be for a larger building where this would apply where you have a fire service and you would just need to literally measure the diameter of the pipe that you see coming in your wall the service service size isn't going to affect a residential property like a single family duplex or triplex or wouldn't in most cases it's really a larger larger ones okay thank you and one question on your opportunities to save it was a long clear on one of under the fixed meter charges and this is you had it on slide 15 if you want to look back to it your fixed meter charge one of the opportunities was listed to evaluate meter removal what is that a meter a meter seems pretty fundamental here what does a meter remove that would probably be in the case where you occasionally we come across people who have bypass meters or have other meters that are just there waiting and don't need to be used I think the other one would be the removing your irrigation meter so if you're somebody who has a so people in the past there has been an advantage particularly because we charge them the same rate to if you just water your garden with your regular domestic water meter you're going to get charged for water and for sewer even though that water is ultimately not getting back to the wastewater system so people in the past it was advantageous to put an irrigation meter because then we would only charge you for the water that you were using I think it's going to depend on where people are on the break point but in some cases it may be better to just go back to the old way for some properties versus keeping your irrigation meter oh thank you yeah that was all right nothing further on my end I'll open it up to public comment at this time Hi Chair Hogan there is nobody currently signed up but just as a reminder four members of the public if you do wish to speak please use the raise your hand feature on zoom all right and at this time there's nobody signed up all right thank you Mr. Golding therefore we'll bring it back to the commission there is a suggested language in the packet around providing our support for this as it advances to the Duke and to the full council later on some motion to approve staff's recommendation using language provided in the packet thank you and I second that motion we have a motion that's been seconded thank you is there any discussion around that motion seeing none we will go to a vote Commissioner Archambault Hi thank you Commissioner Barr Hi Vice Chair O'Neill Blavanco Hi Commissioner Overby Hi Hi for myself motion passes thank you very much thank you guys so much I really appreciate it immensely and my team is going to be so pleased because it has been work but it's been very passionate work got yeah so thank you so much it's very exciting thank you have a great night thank you you too stay away from the winter yeah all right moving forward item six consolidated collection study updates right from one large policy item to another this one over in our maintenance division division director Lee Perry is here to give an overview of consolidated collection as we evaluate whether there's a more efficient cost effective and more environmentally friendly way of collecting our trash recycling and organics so while it was listed as an action item on the agenda tonight we are not seeking an action tonight we were able to give ourselves time to do the presentation tonight seek your input and any questions you have over the coming month and then seek your direction next month so with that division director Lee Perry has a short presentation then we'll open up for questions hey how's everybody doing tonight well thank you how are you I'm doing well thanks it stops no one so my life is good I'm gonna share my screen give me a quick minute can everybody see that yes perfect okay so we're here to talk consolidate collection as Chapin said and we're gonna talk about the results of the franchise study we had and as well as the municipal model that staff have been evaluating these past six to seven months give you a little background on consolidate collection there's many communities that coordinate the collection of trash recyclables and food scraps here in the city of Burlington it is pretty much a subscription based where residents will contract with a private hauler to pick up their their waste you know according to a survey 461 communities nationwide this is actually not the norm only 11 percent of communities actually subscribe to this service or on the other hand it's a more common approach at 83 percent of communities having consolidated collection that are either municipally operated or contracted by municipality through private haulers to have the the collection of trash recycling and food scraps and a little more background the idea of consolidated collection has been in our region for decades and you know as recent as 2018 city council passed a resolution um requesting that DPW undertake a citywide consolidated collection feasibility study and we partnered with Chitton's Always District and the city of South Burlington you know and the study we had done you know it was evaluated the franchise collection model of consolidated collection but you can see all past materials can be found at the city website DPW maintenance consolidated and the summary of the results from the the franchise study who was was completed by our consultant GBB you know it listed many benefits such as you know reduced cost reduced environmental impacts reduced litter noise in neighborhoods increased recycling and diversion through consolidated collection increased safety less traffic on roads in neighborhoods especially the smaller areas we have tight tight roads and not good visibility increased compliance the state and local mandates and it also allows a more fair bidding process for you know all haulers you know we we have the three big ones around as well as some smaller haulers and this would give the smaller haulers the opportunity to possibly bid on districts or some of the other services that would be provided such as bulky items in such the program would also allow residents to opt out of service meaning they could sell haul to drop off centers in this allowance you know could possibly be capped at a certain amount this next slide breaks down that 83 percent number of how common it is that a franchise consolidated collection is in the United States so it's broken down to that 58 percent would be private haulers contracted by a municipality 40 percent would be where a municipality is actually collecting the the waste streams themselves and then the 2 percent is municipalities bidding on contracts to remove the recycling trash and compost so when the city did their municipally operated collection evaluation we found a lot of the same benefits that went along with the franchise model and this past summer we presented the city CSWD and GBB presented the the franchise study to the two committee and in that presentation some questions arose from the Duke that they wondered and the public why we didn't explore a municipally operated consolidated collection model so with that they requested that we we do a that staff do a municipally operated study gave us six months to do it so we came back this past March with a conceptual budget and presented it to them and in that you know municipally operated collection model you know it'll provide like I said similar environmental and cost benefits that the franchise model outlined but in that you know the staff through multiple conversations you know this is going to have to be a new division or department that needs to be created to support this municipally operated model and with that you know it's projected to require 14 new full-time employees that would add to the three existing recycling employees we have for a total of 17 employees in this division and they'd be ranging from CDO drivers there would be a manager customer service billing fleet and outreach and enforcement personnel and with that you know we there's a lot of capital invested into this this program upfront capital cost between 5.9 and 6.7 million and that really you know it depends on size of subscription and location of facility I'm going to explain as we go down through the bullets here so for fleet we would need 1.4 million we're going to have to add four new fleet vehicles to that fleet it would be split body trucks similar to our recycling trucks we have now that we would pick up trash and compost with we would need another recycling truck because implementation time the fleet we have in rotation of replacement will be needing another recycling truck as well as a pickup truck for the manager of this division to deliver carts and respond to customer requests and we're going to need a place to house all this staff and equipment the carts the trucks customer service people um and at our existing 645 pine street location we just have reached max capacity down there and with environmental restrictions we can't expand on the building so we need to find a location and the two that we came up with were the 339 pine street location of the former street you know department of public works and 195 201 Flynn avenue which the city is in an option agreement right now with Chittin's always district and that option ends this fall so we would either need to purchase the property or at 339 pine street with again with environmental restrictions it would be costly to to build a building on that property with all the environmental restrictions and then next is you know 901.2 million for equipment it's a lot of recycling carts a lot of trash carts and compost carts you know 13,000 plus residents would need one of each you know we would be eliminating blue bin use everyone would have a cart for all three waste streams and lastly building and customer service you know would need to be provided and in our conceptual option we explored using water resources as Harris flexible software for building purposes and on this next slide if we have a breakdown of options between municipal and franchise you can see one option the zero percent opt out is using the Flynn Avenue property in there and that would be a weekly no opt out in annual cost to residents of 414 38 3453 a month and so on and so forth for the 15 and 25 percent opt out you can see the comparison between you know municipal and the franchise models they're fairly close I do want to point out that in the 25 percent opt out in the initial study the consultant only gave options up to a 15 percent opt out you know in staff's conversations we figure you know with the residents in Burlington we kind of got a little better understanding that there would probably want to be more of an opt out than the 15 percent people like to sell hall use a drop off center you know it's a social aspect of it as well so so we added that 25 percent opt out and in looking in that you know because we we had to adjust the disposal cost for the franchise model because when they did their study soon after they raised the rates on tip fees for trash disposal and recycling so we adjusted those rates and the 25 percent opt out option was not close to what we thought it should be so I I called the consultant and they're going to work on some numbers for us and give us feedback on that and I'll touch base with them this week and below that you can see the current subscription months monthly price range so this is what private haulers charge residents to pick up 64 gallon weekly trash and recycling which is 28 to 49 dollars but these costs do not include compost and food scrap pickup so that would be an added cost to that price and you can see they're they're pretty comparable to what the monthly cost assumptions are so next steps and we're meeting with you tonight we're going to the Duke on the 27th we'll be doing additional research and be coming back to you in May for a recommendation and then the Duke again in May and hopefully council presentation with the consultant and a recommendation and that is it for my presentation Paige thank you for that you're welcome I'm bringing it back to the commission for discussion at this point do you want me to take the stop sharing or do you think you want to refer to any slides um just stop sharing for no more thank you but vice chair on here with Anaco kick us off our thing um thanks Lee for for this presentation so you know I don't want to read between the lines but I guess on the one hand as you point out if the city takes this on then you increase capacity for CDL drivers and employment in the city however it's a huge capital expense and as you point out then the priorities of the city then have to get shifted if we're starting really not quite from square one but because you folks started your recycling but certainly square one if we're going to add trash and compost to that so I'm so I'm concerned that that we just don't have the capacity not that public works couldn't do it because you folks continually impress us but is this really where we want to put our priority so that's that's a concern I have and then um I guess on the other side where if we go with franchise is that what it's called like yes the private haulers where kind of where's the enforcement or can we add enforcement I mean we don't I mean we have kind of enforcement with the recycling but there's rubbish everywhere from the blown recycling bins would we be able to better enforce you know bins that get tipped over whether they're recycling or trash um if we get an RFP out for the private haulers yeah in that language would have to be written into that RFP and with performance standards and consequences and DPW is still going to have to play a role in one way or another is you know just in conversations with we've had you know there's going to be misstops how concerned our contractor is going to be about those misstops you know will we still have to get you know a manager to oversee the the private contractors to help enforce this with our code enforcement you know that's something we've we've talked about as well so you wouldn't see so if if we were to go as a city with the franchise model we wouldn't lose any city jobs as a as a result well we we have our three recycling employees we have now doing recycling my goal is to absorb them preferably into the street department or maintenance division but as of right now yeah we only have the three that that do all of the recycling which is why we've we're so conservative with labor for the the municipally operated model because there's no redundancy within our recycling program whenever someone gets hurt or is sick or takes a vacation we need to take our employees from the street maintenance division and have them go on a recycling truck which impacts our our day-to-day jobs it impacts our snow plowing I mean it could we've had employees out for months on injured you know workman's comp injuries and have to substitute our street maintenance workers in a rotational basis to cover that that's why you know we're adding so much labor into that program all right and then just one more question kind of so with the franchise model and maybe I haven't thought through this or I remember reading something a while ago getting the private haulers to bid so that it's fair I don't even know if that's kind of the best yeah the best so that you know you don't have I'm just gonna throw out a name like you don't have Kasella doing all the bidding but you get I don't know there are a couple small ones Duffy's maybe is one of them there's Duffy's and yeah and that could be written into the RFP as well as you know they're only allowed to bid on so many districts or could use a smaller hauler as like a subcontractor all right no that's all for me thank you so much welcome thank you Commissioner Overby okay I have a quick couple questions one comment to start with that one of the decisions that relates to between private franchise and public municipal has somewhat to do with how well the municipality can actually control you know any of the conditions and the affordability and basically having control over things like the cost the cost and the quality so having a municipal manage you know you have some control over like affordability and like the work that we've just been doing with the water you know but if it's all been contracted out in some ways you have a little more challenges of pricing so it's a philosophical decision about whether that should be a municipal function or not and you know and we're heading in the direction of a lot more privatization of municipal services because you know for some of the reasons that you see and the reports that you've provided here the study but specific questions I have were do you actually know the percentage of the 13,000 households now that are opting out and taking their own trash to the you know drop off site do you know what that percentage of opt-out is right now I do not okay that's something we can figure out but I mean I just yeah that would seem relevant to the projection of what would be the future opt-out as expectation yeah the the consultants when questioning the local haulers didn't get much information from them they weren't they weren't too excited to give out that kind of information and you know the surveys they did I know I can I can look into that further just to make sure I'm not going to spoken but well it could be that it is like you said proprietary so nobody wants to say what their customer numbers are so that you could figure out that we have 50 percent of the people taking their own trash to the dump I don't really know so it would just seem relevant to to what's realistic my understanding from the survey that was done the GBB found it was approximately 25 percent of Burlingtonian self haul according to the survey we'll double check that but again it was a limited survey yeah but that that's sort of where I was going with it you know you have 13 13,000 households we know and some of that question would be what were that I had a question about up with the opt out how does a cap work it was said that you can have an opt out with a cap what does that mean that only certain once you once you're the last person trying to get you know not have the monthly service you're out of luck if you've already hit 25 percent how does that work right we haven't set that up but fundamentally what you're discussing is kind of the approach is that there would be either a lottery if you wanted to opt out or it would be a first come first serve the fundamental mechanics here are really ensuring the financial viability of the service the fewer customers you have the more expensive the bills are for the remaining customers and as we've seen from Lee's chart showing what the city cost is per customer you see a real direct correlation and once you get up to 25 percent opt out the city's costs go up significantly over the zero percent opt out so it's a bit uncharted territory about how many people would choose the opt out which is why trying to understand what the current situation is as an indication of the future scenario is so important and that's why we actually did the 25 percent opt out scenario the consultant only did 15 percent and I thought you know based on the survey data I saw that we should run a 25 percent opt out scenario well related to that is the fund the the cost of doing self hauling who gets the funds for that I mean obviously they're probably dropped off at you know Chittenden Solid Waste District drop offs but obviously that 25 percent of the revenue that is going you know six dollars a bag or six dollars of in to the drop off how is that money does that is the city in any way participating in getting a return on on that that 25 percent where people are doing a drop off themselves well currently with the drop off system well Burlington's drop off center is closed for for trash now but the current system the way it's set up to fund our recycling program we would get that solid waste generation tax fee from Chittenden Solid Waste District for every for the trash that's dropped off down there so we would get a monthly payment from them for the solid waste generation tax which they would yeah would fund that funds our recycling program but if we go to consolidated collection and there would be no solid waste generation tax well I'm just thinking that you've 25 percent of your business is is going to you know to the drop off does the city would the city be able to actually get a portion of the $6 for a garbage bin dropped off you know on Patchin Road so there isn't that wouldn't be there would be no transfer of some of the lost revenue by the people that want to do it themselves is that what you're saying currently there's no mechanism at the drop off center to do that transfer and CSWD frankly struggles to keep the drop off centers open because they are expensive to run so you know they're trying to figure out how to keep them financially viable I did just find the breakdown of Burlington residents where does their waste go 15 percent do drop off at the drop off center but a number seven percent do both and there are some other so generally it is somewhere in the range of 15 to 25 percent who self haul in some fashion some bring to work some other but then generally three quarters do curbside consolidate curbside subscription collection yeah one of the the related to this is why would people take their trash to the drop off and and one of the questions that relates to whether it's a municipal or a franchise is which of our those options are going to actually help help reduce waste generated by residents and you know so right now I think I don't have hauling service because I do not generate a lot of trash so for me I will take it only because it makes no sense for me to be having no trash and and paying monthly service but the tipping point will be if all of a sudden I'm paying $28 of in at the drop off you know I'm saying there's going to be and we don't want to be having a system that encourages you know people to be having making trash and so I'm thinking you know the minute which of those things which of our options might actually encourage reducing trash and it may be that there it has it doesn't matter whether it's franchise or a municipal thing but it is an important factor that if there's a profit motive from a private haul or to have more trash we're not going to be encouraging less trash you know so that was a question of it may be that that's just something to think about and making this decision it's not just financial let me see I had some other sort of questions here you had said that right now you have actually seen on page three of the document you said that you actually seen an average increase of 40 tons a month of recycling that's correct over what what is the amount of what is that as a percentage while you while you I'm not sure how big of a what that really means it's an increase because annually we've been basing our recycling budget on 2,880 tons and now it's projecting to be you know right around 3,400 tons some months are more than others but since the pandemic started you know everybody by myself I contributed to people working from home ordering more stuff online because in talking with the drivers it's just a massive amount of cardboard so they all have smiley faces on them their amazon boxes and that's the bulk of our recycling right now they're they're they're making two trips a day and then still having to come in early the next day to dump because they're still collecting recycling after the Murph closes you know material recovery facility out in Williston so this is this may be the the the future that we'll always have this increasing recycling as a percentage rather than the trash part of it it could be and I know personally myself since the you know compost was made mandatory I my my trash has gone down personally at my house you know because we're composting and that stuff is coming out of the trash so instead of having three bags I might have one bag now and I expect that to reflect you know your concerns about more trash but you know I don't believe everybody is is composting right now or having your food scraps picked up but you know they would have that ability now and maybe those people I did sell fall would say oh look I can get all three picked up or 34 dollars whatever is a month and I know personally that I'm paying over 50 dollars a month to have my trash recycling compost picked up once a week so I do believe there is a cost benefit to residents yeah some people because I think that 25 percent potentially it really depends like I said if all of a sudden the rate of the drop off is tripled then people might go oh well it's the same amount to get it picked up as drop it off right so we don't really know one other question I had about the proposal whether you use a special revenue fund or an enterprise fund what's the difference between those ways of setting up a municipal with a municipal method yes an enterprise fund under charter has certain rights and it's as a enterprise fund for example on borrowing for bonds there are different thresholds for getting bond approval for enterprise funds I think it's 50 percent from the voters instead of two thirds for a general fund general bond obligation so enterprise funds are water wastewater storm water the airport BED so this would be a similar business to those but there was a suggestion that there's an alternative method of the special revenue fund that it could be set up yep special revenue funds traffic and parking those are special revenue funds and so their regulation is is a bit different than the enterprise funds I'm not going to be able to you know be the expert here as to how how those regulatory differences play out but the special revenue funds are less restricted often than the enterprise funds which are kind of a separate business of the city okay and the last question is with the franchise model is that and you know assuming you're going to be doing a franchise with the other you know South Burlington and the other municipality where that was was generated you know as part of the study or are we talking franchise just for the Burlington city just for Burlington South Burlington would have their own separate RFP to go by this is ours is just exclusive to the city of Burlington so there wouldn't be any cost advantage to having something done as a as a multi municipality arrangement there could be and that's part of the conversation of what we hope to bring you some more information for next month we're talking to our union about their interest in doing this work if it was municipally operated we're talking to South Burlington they are interested in a private franchise model they're not interested in doing this as a municipally run operation so but to your point Commissioner Overby certainly if South Burlington Winooski in Burlington got into consolidate collection district together you know we could bid together maybe all areas would be geographically distinct within those communities but that's something that we would need to further discuss with them yeah and and you do have mentioned that that large developments may not be part of this arrangement so like a large apartment complex might just be not part of this whole arrangement at all correct so they can still continue with their own personal private hall or anyway so I think those are my questions I think my biggest my biggest takeaway from this is that it doesn't appear that there's a favorable interest in that in the in the municipal arrangement due to the amount of effort involves not that that's a bad thing but in fact it's just sort of like nobody wants to do toll collecting and so all the states are signing up for easy pass which I think is a problem as well privatizing that it's a problem but so I I appreciate we've got the information here I think I can see the handwriting on the wall of what the direction that will go but I've just you know provided some input that I think there are other factors that are maybe not just financial that might not might not outweigh that particularly control over you know the pricing and when you're privatizing things you have you lose some you lose some advantages of looking doing things that are best interest of the community but might not be best interest of the finances of the private company that's doing the work so that's my last comment all right thank you thank you Mr. Archibald yeah thank you just a few notes here so I know this conversation has been going on for a long time this commission has heard a presentation some years ago from the regional planning commission I believe when this was first bandied about so it was a great presentation it's one of my favorite presentations and I'm just going to go on records I'm a big fan of the consolidation just a few notes about what we're looking at here I see at the end right in the summary and I think commissioner over be summarized it well you know like reading the tea leaves here it seems that there's not much interest to the city level to take this on just due to competing priorities which is understandable I would put out there though that this is not so much about competing priorities is it about equity so for example New York City privatizes trash hauling programs and saw workers deaths and injuries increase exponentially as a result as the owners of those companies squeezed the profits out of it right they pocketed the the profits and had the workers pay for it by paying a minimum wage or what have you and really not adhere to the safety requirements although they were on the books right so let's face it this is a way to squeeze people who work for a living and do super important work so I see it as an equity issue if this were to go franchise even that you know the backup option is an equity issue in the sense of smaller haulers now would have a fair opportunity to participate in a market like Burlington's which would be a pretty sustainable business model at that point so a couple other comments here if we do go private I would recommend using haulers who have a a positive track record with the city again last time when we visited this it was brought up of how some haulers have actually been cited by the department for violations of one sort or another and let's be honest right we got choices here it's it's not us our jobs to accommodate those violators here let's just use the folks we can trust and cut away the others so I know it's kind of a a bit of a cold approach here but you know why are we why would count how like to people who just commit violations over and over again lastly if we back to if we stay public with this option here the municipal option we have to pull it off without using the property taxes as a source of revenue and I recognize Lee you've set up in the report here it's kind of a revenue generating model in itself and that fees will be passed along to subscribers of course so that would be super important along with some kind of capital reserve for emergencies you know the truck breaks down or we need a part whatever it is that that we go above and beyond we're saving for a rainy day so to speak and planning for that so just sharing some of my thoughts I am a fan of the municipal option primarily for the reason of equity for employees I'd rather see employees get a livable wage and and have a reliable retirement rather than a wage where they're going to struggle and live off the system and then not really have a retirement to speak of in the end and in the end we're all going to have to pay for it anyway so that would be my my utopia if you will no matter what I am a fan of consolidated collection I appreciate the many years of work that have gone into this and would like to see this come to fruition thank you thank you thank you commissioner bar thanks great comments from other commissioners and and I I agree with almost all of them I would say that as somebody who already subscribes to a private hauler and and a private compost picker upper I'm also like you Lee seeing less trash and and but I have the ability to reduce the number of times they pick up so I guess one of my questions is whether it's a municipal or a franchise does the household would I have the ability to say I don't want to pay $50 a month because I don't have $50 with the trash or whatever the the cost might be I would be able to to to say less but then that's going to affect your bottom line right right because you're going to need a certain amount of money and if I'm producing less because I'm doing the right thing maybe I'm being sustainable or I've got a really good garden that I'm using rainwater for with Megan still on here somewhere you know I just those are the kind of things that as as a household we're already seeing assessments go up we're already seeing water bills go up now this might go up to it's going to get so expensive and I'll just say it really quickly and then I'll go on to something else that we might drive people out of the city of Burlington as these costs go so high that they can't afford it and they go somewhere else having said that though I am a fan of consolidated trash and waste and recycle pickup I think that I'm probably more siding with the franchise only because there's a lot of haulers out there and I think there's a couple of really good ones and I think that if you put it in the RFP so that their proposals must have you know maybe maybe you set a minimum wage maybe you set certain things within it I know that in other organizations that I'm in they set specific guidelines that whoever wins the bids have to comply with you know university dining must use a certain amount of sustainable local foods all those kind of things and you can hold them to it if they breach the contract then then you go with somebody else so that's the kind of picture that I would like to see painted here that's I guess that's it thank you all right thank you questions on and could you clarify you mentioned in your presentation that a single cart would be used for all three services so it'd be a cart for each service so there would be three carts per resident gotcha okay yeah no more blue bins for recycling so they would they would be required to have carts with covers that you know can be lifted up by the we call it toter arm on the truck to dump dump the cart sure okay my recycling cart of that description is blue as well but the color doesn't didn't point me in the right direction but yeah I got you okay so three cover things for correct for residents so recycling would you know stay the same you'd use your blue cart our recycling trucks that we have would pick it up then the additional trash and smaller compost cart which would be picked up by the same truck with a split body so we could get both streams at one stop gotcha okay just tell me if you envisioning one stop for all three services or there are like three compartments of the truckers nope so there would be same day service trash compost picked up with one truck recycling with the other because we already have the recycling trucks so nothing would change for that um I would recommend maybe the information material also including just by way of comparison what a current private compost hauler service costs and your rundown I don't know if that was included in the 28 to $49 that it was quoted you mentioned that was you mentioned that was not counting compost but it might be relevant here how much a compost service costs yes yes I could get that information for you okay I uh am myself hauler and I will just note in this conversation here that it has been an inconvenience that the drop off center on the cell phone drop off center on pine street is not accepted trash in months and months and months for what it's worth I would look forward to that returning but well that's for the part of the equation here as well like you don't given that calculus if I got to shut it out to Williston or something that I mean that sort of changes that dynamic for me but and I think I'm sort of sort of I can echo some of the sentiments of my fellow commissioners with regards to the municipal option and the sort of control that then you know we're currently dealing with drivers that are on our on our team and appreciative of other goals of the city and other priorities and shared uses of the city rather than a I guess in ways that private haulers may not but in any case I mean regardless I would echo what Mr. Barr was saying about sort of writing in the expectations into the RFP so forth and here's in terms of behavior of courtesies to fellow city residents performance standards yeah and yeah I oh one last thing with this if we go with the municipal option does that help our pool of available plow drivers having extra truck operators on staff or weekends and nights I think it would yeah it was you know the additional CDL licensed drivers would help with you know off our big storm events as well as our sidewalk program yeah absolutely okay we would utilize them great all right well yeah no thank you so much for the presentation I will open up for public comment in this time I see one participant hand has been in the air for some time Mr. Golding could you check where we are with public participants sure thing Chair Hogan I will promote over person currently listed as Wendy co and if any other members of the public are still with us and want to speak please use the raise your hand feature on zoom okay this is actually Jean Bergman for those of you who know me my computer always sets up Wendy for the reason that she's the big one in the family and I know many of you there but not all I'm Jean Bergman I live on St. Louis street I used to be a city attorney 20 years including advising the department of public work so I'm happy to come on occasion but only on occasions and I'm here because I think that solid waste collection and management is recognized as a public need a public function and essential good and consolidated collection is essential to fighting climate change it reduces redundancy and trip collections and it's shown to be more economically efficient so I really support a change to a consolidated solid waste system however a consolidated system creates monopoly conditions and those are the least conducive to lowering cost through competition so in my mind public a municipal consolidated waste collection system is the system that is the most in the public interest I really appreciated Solveille and Tiki and what I hear out there people speaking as well I disagree that there's no interest in a municipal system in fact when there's been public input at the tukes people have spoken and it hasn't just been me I think there's a lot more interest than what Traff the staff may be portraying and I hear at least two commissioners who are expressing that interest and I want to encourage you to keep that and not give up a public system as you've heard a little bit from your own conversation keeps democratic and cult and economic control in the hands of the public it's not based on exploiting the labor of low-aged workers a public system means that we have greater control over rates since public rates are not based on making a sufficient profit for private owners it allows us to be more flexible as you're talking about the reduction in your own personal waste because maybe we would change the system to reduce the pickup to every other week whereas if you set it out for a bid system you are going to be locked in for a significant period of time because nobody will bid if you don't and I don't think that this is the least it builds a significant number of new union jobs and it builds the region's middle class and Tiki hit that nail right on the head I just want to encourage you to never give that up as public servants that you are the proposal on water rates is an example of how a democratic public control can and should take considerations other than private profit of owners into account and a municipal collection system I think will be in a similar position to take the concerns of rate payers the environment the taxpayers as Tiki was saying and workers into account I truly believe that more privatization of public services is not in the public interest and that's what franchising of a consolidated system would do since the current recycling system is going to be eliminated and turned over to the private sector and those are that I really believe that that's going to be a loss of those jobs and there's no guarantee that those jobs are going to be retained or you know absorb you have had a department with commendable frugality and I have real doubts that you're going to be able to absorb them you already don't have those positions in those systems that you're needing and you've got to pay for them if you could easily do that you would be doing that now I understand the desire to always be good but I believe that laying them off is is more likely than not the city actually is in a really good position to administer a program having the experience to have having run the citywide recycling system and we run a water resources billing system we run a public water system we run electric systems and this proposal this program is proposed to be self-sufficient and so it would also build capacity into the department I'll get to that decrease in innovative capacity in a little bit but you know just to reiterate the biggest so-called advantage to privatization is its supposed cost effectiveness you know providing the same level of service at a substantially lower cost but DPW's own analysis which is conservative shows that this not true and consolidated collection creates the monopoly situation that makes competition not advantageous so you know the newest analysis which is a little different than what they gave to the Duke it used to be 13 cents shows that the there's a difference per month between the zero opt-out option of 36 cents a month between a municipal and a franchise option that may you know 36 cents a month please even the municipal the 15 percent opt-out is within 75 cents a month of the of the franchise option it was noted by commissioner O'Neill Vivianco I think I have that correct that there is going to be a need for monitoring others have said that as as well those costs are not included in the the systems that you have in the analysis that you got out they've not been considered and in fact if we don't have a municipal system then those are going to be on the property taxpayer they're not going to be in the system maybe you can shovel some monies that you're going to be getting from the franchise I'm not even sure how much you know what kind of money we'll be getting but I therefore believe that the franchise models cost to resident is residents is low ball and I got a direct experience I think Tiki talked about going after haulers I mean because we have underestimated the costs of enforcement around this tax through my years of having to work on it and having worked on it for the department so all of this shows that even a conservative plan that even with the conservative plan that the city can undertake this public good in a way that's price competitive with the private option and is still and is focused on public good not private profit and it provides a bunch of other benefits so it can pay because it is a it will be a revenue department or revenue division it will it can pay for the purchase of that Flynn Avenue facility and that's it and if you look at the numbers it's like a third of the land so we can I think also by having that drop off center then you're going to be charging people for delivering their their own garbage and so then we collect that money as well into a solid way system I think this is a is another really good reason to go municipal it also adds the capacity to DPW staff that's can used in other conditions in other circumstances like Lee was just talking about and it contributes to the city's economic health through the payment of indirect costs for attorneys and HR functions those are democratic and public uses of revenues that we are generating it's the benefit of being a revenue division I have got a number I had a number of issues with the memo that I shared previously with the department and the Duke and I won't speak to all of them I just want to highlight two of them tonight and then then close the first is that the memo speculates that private orders haulers may not need to expand their capital facilities unlike the city but I don't see any basis for that and in fact even the biggest hauler could sell it would have to and would have a greatly expanded customer-based service and therefore it's not unlikely that they'll have to expand their capital facilities and staff and then adjust their bid accordingly it may not even be in the first one as they try to low ball to get the initial bid but you can be sure that those costs are going to go up as they do consistently right now the second is I really disagree with the assertion that we are going to be losing the innovation capacity and I know that Commissioner O'Neill McConnor made a comment about that that might be true if the department was being hollowed out by austerity but that is not what I've seen presented over the years I know that people are stressed we heard norm earlier today but as Megan showed in the work that her people do there is tremendous capability in this department and if you look at the presentation in the packet on page 75 I'm going to ask you to wrap it up please I got justice two points left we're on your second thanks thank you very much you'll see that the use of innovation capacity is going to be limited to just three or four year startup and after that you're going to have a self-sufficient program so this is a real smart investment and I would also say that that's just a false statement that says that we're going to not be able to do other things if we do this so there is not an analysis or a description of that and I I just don't buy it I love Chapin I've known Chapin for many decades and worked with them a lot I just don't buy it so in some I really think that you should support a consolidated municipal solid waste system for the city and thanks for letting me go on with a comprehensive statement thanks for your input all right Mr. Goulding do we have anyone else interested in public comment at this time? that is it for now chair all right thank you that said we are not in need of any action on this item as we heard we will as a preview we don't appreciate the the chance to get together that preview and to have a discussion on it so it will look forward to revisiting this at future meetings thank you chair we're going to believe we're looking for a vote on this if I'm just for clarity purposes no we're not looking we don't don't need a vote here okay my apologies thank you I think it was perhaps the advertiser is having an option for a vote but we don't need it that we can take this as a preview in advance of a future vote the commissioner over me I understood we're going to have a vote at the next meeting and the question I have is what will be be voting on to endorse one or the other of the proposals we are still doing research at the very least it would be great to get a vote fundamentally on whether or not the city should pursue consolidated collection we've heard a lot of support on that tonight and while there may be a difference of how to implement it I think we're hearing significant support for the model generally which is great so that would be one area to weigh in on and then the second area is how best to implement and there is the option of municipal operation there is the option of contracting through a bidding process with private haulers we're also researching a potential third option of going out to bid for a franchise system and having the city go in and bid as well as part of that process so we're doing more research on those three options answering some of the questions that came up tonight and hoping that we can give you enough information to guide your conversation so that you can put forward a motion at the next meeting regarding not only whether to not pursue consolidated collection but also a recommendation on how we should so I would hope that we are able to have separate votes because people might want to vote for consolidated collection the vote should be separate not at all in one thing if you really want us to make those kind of recommendations okay thanks thank you sure any other final questions or comments commissioners all right I will close out item six then thank you division director Perry appreciate the presentation thank you and thank you for having me yeah good evening you as well thank you you're welcome moving forward item seven bsd school travel plan kickoff Peterson all right pleased to have associate engineer Philip Peterson on this one Philip given the hour if he can hit the wave tops and we'll open up for questions after lots of information this evening let me share my presentation okay so and I think we also have some representatives from the ccrpc here tonight so we're working on the Burlington school district travel plan we're collaborating with of course the school district the ccrpc and consultants from Du Bois and King the purpose of this project is to complete a school travel plan for all elementary middle and high school well and high school in the Burlington school district this hasn't been done since the 90s and obviously we're going to use standards based guidance and we've created several SOPs narrow streets crosswalk guidelines several other guiding documents plan BTW walk bike specific goals are to develop uniform traffic controls for the school district while understanding that each school has some individual needs so individual traffic control plans for each school improve or enhance safe travel to and around each school we also are interested in maximizing walking biking and active transit to schools while minimizing traffic impacts to streets and neighborhoods around each school so what we're working on right now is we're working to acquire data relevant to the travel and traffic control plans lots of information that we're looking at traffic counts you name it wits of sidewalks shared use paths crosswalks roadway and street work network AADT traffic counts pavement width all sorts of stuff I could bore you to death with all the information that we're collecting and to support the existing conditions data acquisition and the development of a more complete understanding of access considerations surrounding each school especially as it relates to walking and biking we've been conducting site visits to all of the schools on foot bicycle and automobile collecting photography documenting and assessing conditions we're calling these walk audits and we're also hoping that the local community will get involved walk audits our self-directed tours the document travel conditions safety concerns and opportunities surrounding your children's schools so parents staff and the school district made an announcement on April 12th of last week they're kind of leading the way with the public outreach piece the Burlington school district there is a link for the project website I'm going to post this presentation on the DPW agenda webpage afterwards and I will send it to all of you commissioners the actual project website is a much longer name so this is a shortened link kind of our next steps is to develop citywide traffic control plans some drafts to also teams going to compile the results of all the surveys and all of the information and put together a draft report the hope is that it's going to contain information that we can review with the commission by probably late summer at this point and eventually we will have a final report maybe the late fall and it will involve recommended traffic regulation changes and there are some potential construction projects that will come out of this and that's it I hit the wave tops thank you for that well done happy to answer some questions Jason Charest who is somewhere Rob in the in the queue somewhere in the chorus of people he's also here to answer questions if if you want to promote him he's been promoted welcome Jason all right um commissioner overby I'm just I just I'm trying to figure out what exactly is happening here what is the the end result of this are we trying to create maps of walk walk paths for students or I'm not sure what exactly the end result is of what this project is it's comprehensive I think I think I made I think I made that pretty clear in the presentation that it's comprehensive that we're looking at using MUTCD part seven which is part seven of the MUTCD is specific to school travel plans and we have not looked at the entire travel network all the schools in the school districts in 30 years so it's it's time to do that we have you know opportunities that we're looking at we you know we want to we want to have a more active transit network we just just want to look at the school travel plan how are people getting to school how can we improve safety that's kind of the plan but is this a requirement from somewhere that we do this every you know periodically I mean I get it it's a great idea but I'm just curious so where it's coming from that all of a sudden it's come out of the woodwork that we're doing this and does it does it get presented yeah I'm just I just this the first I've heard of it so I'm that's why I'm confused but and I'm just curious is that so are the schools needing to have these documents that they can provide to parents how the kids can get to school or something I'm just not sure what we're going to end up with as a result of the work Jason can you help in I'll I'll just start and say that one of the things we've been hearing from school administrators as well as parents as well as students of the need to make improvements at various schools there are parking and circulation challenges that create safety challenges to those who are walking and biking and each school has had discussions with us about changes to curbs to sidewalks to bike routes to the schools this will enable us to develop a prioritized list of improvements that are needed around the schools to be responsive to the concerns that we have been hearing and that the schools have wanted us to take a more holistic approach this was a joint I think joint request that came from public works in the Burlington school district for the CCRPC to utilize our consultants on retainer to take a look at the school district as a whole I think earlier you had asked about maps and I just wanted to clarify that yes they're they're willing maps I think that we won for each school and will be won for the whole the whole city identifying walking and biking routes to and from schools so it will inform the the staff and the teachers and everything and the principles of the schools and then that will be maybe shared with the public the PTA association so everybody has improved the facilities are improved by public works and the schools are able to communicate that to the families that have their students coming to those schools that's sort of the goal of this correct absolutely absolutely and I would say that Commissioner Overby as you know we have brought several recommendations for pretty much all of the schools over the over the years at least ever since I've been here there several projects that have come up and this is an opportunity for us to work with the school district and consultants to just finally say okay let's look at all of the schools let's finally come up with a consistent plan and then independent plans for each one of the schools so then we've done it here it is we have a school travel plan and now it's it's good to go and it's also we're not just showing it to staff we're not just showing it to students we want their involvement we want parents involvement we want them to give us information on what is going to work for them I think that explains the whole thing and I think it's I think it's absolutely an excellent idea but I just was you know there is right it was just curious how it's going to actually be used in practice so I think you've given me enough information for me to understand that thank you I do want to emphasize Philip's last point because we are at that critical stage right now where we're really trying to do robust public outreach piece and there's a couple of surveys that are out there and we're inviting people to give us feedback on on how they get to and from school and what sorts of issues they encounter if they're you know specifically walking and biking or taking the bus absolutely more involvement the better thank you all right Commissioner Archambault sorry I'm slow on my I'm you but no questions at this time but thank you very much all right thank you Commissioner Barr no questions per se but I I seem to recall there was a position that a person that I know used to hold called safe routes to school and I'm just curious if that position is even filled and if that's somebody that you might reach out to because I recall that person doing several things along this this line and hopefully it hasn't gone away for 30 years I know it hasn't gone away for 30 years but anything you can say about that no I believe we are aware of the older plans and it is something that we are the older safe routes to school plans and it is something that the consultant team is is taking into account looking at the new routes nor so my understanding is there's been a history of Nicole working with the schools in a somewhat limited way depending on the resources that are available within the school department and over the years she's made many attempts to incorporate some of our work tying into the schools and I think this sounds like to me like the school departments more actively involved in participating in a more comprehensive plan so I think this is a great thing we've done number of things over the years example being studies for where crossing guards are but tying the sidewalk inventory transit service all these different things that kind of pulled together to make a safer route the school as well as really getting the feedback to the customers that are being served which is parents and students trying to attend schools and trying to identify where they see the problems are not just what we as staff so you know I think this is a great thing it's it's a deeper dive to some of the things we've done in the past and it'll I think bear some significant fruit to improve our systems and this is just the beginning of the process we don't have any recommendations yet so this is you know we're making sure to be proactive give the commission information so that you know as things proceed we'll be able to bring that information to you and get feedback like there's the draft of the plan what the folks think and then eventually we will have I'm sure that we will have some recommendations and approvals that we'll be seeking all right nothing further from me thank you Vice-Chair O'Neill Blavacco couple things one and this is to public work staff my youngest spoke in front of the commission maybe one of the last times we were in person or right before the pandemic about the crosswalk at Union in Maine and I crossed with her just this week and hell hath no fury like a sixth grade girl because she said look at this you people haven't haven't fixed the cross crossing so I'm just passing that on it's right in front of admins on main street so put that on your list first I have to say so Jason the outreach coming from I'm a very involved parent certainly on bikeped stuff this predates any work on the commission probably I got under you know Chapin's nose before all this started you know the Burlington school district has not done a very good job on outreach I mean I'm pretty plugged in and saw something just this week or just last week it's when everyone's going on holiday even if we're all on staycations so I would encourage you to encourage the school district to get to roll out this information again because I a blur but then I was like did I see it through here did I see it through a school district yeah we I'm I appreciate the input and we will pass it on it is the plan though to that that is something that came up in our meetings that we are we are trying to soft roll this out before a vacation okay they are planning something a little bit more robust when people come back into the side okay okay very good and I think with these these school travel plans I was very involved with safe routes to school which was originally federally funded or state funded that funding is dried up and now they work through local motion I think Mary Catherine or there's a new person now who's doing the outreach Chair Hogan might be able to speak to that because I passed that baton but just making sure that you know we're kind of talking to as many folks as possible and that we are prioritizing our most vulnerable users which are bikes and pedestrians instead of the circulation of vehicles that traffic is also the human who are physically using the infrastructure not just the vehicles it would be great if all these plans fit into the walk bike master plan as well as the city of Burlington's net zero energy plan those are you know our guiding documents for our infrastructure so please let's look at that and I would also say as the I don't know if any of you folks have children at the Burlington High School anybody anybody what high school you asked be young for that okay yeah and what high school right so any any surveys about the high school so right now my son or was in school for six months on Institute Road he's now at the mall he's going two days a week and he will graduate from the mall so any surveys to go out to kids you're going to ask the freshman who haven't even gone to Institute Road or are you asking them about getting to downtown BHS so and if you're aware of what they're aware of what's going on with the PCBs at the school district I feel like we don't even know as parents what's going to happen with the re-envisioning so I would almost say if you're going to focus on anything focus on the downtown we're there for the next three and a half years because anything on Institute Road is such a huge unknown that I feel like we're either pushing a boulder up a hill or just wasting energy right now until that gets sorted out so those are my yeah we have had as a team we have discussed those very things and it's a dynamic situation I will admit to you that we we discussed this at length with Burlington School District to figure out where to focus our survey efforts and since we thought this was you know a more long-term vision walking and biking to school specifically that we would we're actually asking them to focus on 52 Institute Road and not downtown it's a really hard one to handle as you said everything's in a complete state of flux difficult one for us to really zero in on but that was the thought process there that yes we knew they were going to be there probably at the mall for at least three years but I think when we made the decision to finalize the surveys and put them out the thought or hope was still that they would be back at 52 Institute Road in the future I understand that more information is continually coming out there that is probably throwing that into question but that's the best information I have right now yeah I mean it's just what you're asking of you know teenagers is to be predictive so you know four years the seniors they're out of there they're out of there right so now you have the juniors who would probably give the most comprehensive information the sophomores who are you know resilient but it's tough for them to answer like what did they how do they get to school last year how do they think they might get to school they're probably like I can't wait to get my license and I can't wait to graduate from high school because it's been such a disaster and the freshmen have never been there so if you look at just the the data set that you'll be able to get I can't imagine being predictive of anything other than trauma so good good luck with that and I do hope that I really do hope in the short term that they can find some I get some information about you know the downtown VHS just because that's where they're going to be for the short term anyway but thanks to you I'm sure we will get information in regards to the downtown high school I'm sure that that's what we will get information about that and these surveys and the walk-out it's our one element of an entire picture that we're trying to put together you know that that this is that's the anecdotal data and the you know the actual data that we collect will also be another major piece we I mean we were looking at starting this project way sooner um last year so in January, February of 2020 we had met with the I think it was the Burlington City and Lake semester group of kids at I was like yeah we were there yeah and I mean we were very excited about you know collaborating on an engineering project with high school students and um and then 2020 happened so yeah all right we'll get those kids to school safely and just think about the bike pads but thank you Philip thank you Jason that's all all right thank you thank you yeah let's say look forward to seeing more on this and I expect we could have a perhaps a juicier discussion with some reading material in advance so maybe it'd be appropriate to have a you know a check-in sometimes the summer early fall like you know before like the thing drops I think you would sort of get perhaps I have more to say at that point one question on our sort of goals or or mode share goals part of this plan or what is you can sort of talk me through what and I know you're collecting data on the sort of as is current condition but like what's aspirational about the document to come here well as I said we want to improve or enhance safety and we want to use the guiding documents that we've created with with the commission and other documents that the the vice chair had mentioned the plan B2B walk bike which is new when you compare to the last time that this was done back in the 90s and then all the other guiding documents we also want to improve and enhance opportunities maximize walking and biking opportunities taking a look at where our crossing guards you know and looking at looking at that collecting data on on those and so that that's the plan I comprehensive plan that has cascading effects over all of our projects really do you think about it I mean the schools are kind of these these GPS points all over the city that drive transit in a multitude of ways I mean speaking of I would suggest surveying the crossing guards as well and sort of their their take they spent a lot a lot of time here some of them are facing aggressions from drivers and getting buzzed at high speeds in some areas they would probably have lots of good feedback on the current status quo and ideas for improving it all right thanks I will also sort of encourage you all to sort of in those aspirations to really sort of go go big with them I mean there are places in the world where vehicle traffic is just is just blocked within a certain radius of a school and people in private vehicles can you know park at the vicinity but this is really putting the safety and comfort of people student staff visitors number one and you know we can perhaps borrow some borrow some from those examples anyway I look forward to see much more here I'm so glad that this is taking place I know it was it was teased that this you know survey and plan was a thing that was going to take place a while ago I probably will refer to it over a year ago I kind of see it coming to fruition I mean schools are such a huge driver of transportation trips and you know I sort of just you just notice the difference in streets for instance lately on you know Wednesdays versus a Thursday when schools in session versus not it's sort of like a ghost town out there I'm like wow this that you know if we really made different modes more attractive and shifted the mode share quite a different experience out there for folks anyway so yeah that's all I've got to look forward to seeing more on this thank you you know we look forward to bringing you more a big special thanks to the CCRPC and Jason and his team for keeping this ball rolling without the other support I can keep you know to be where we are so thanks Jason thanks CCRPC thank you thank you always pleasure working with you Mr. Golding do we have anyone from the public interested in speaking Chair Hogan I don't think we have any members of the public left but just to check I'll ask if any members of the public are on and would like to speak please use raise your hand and I don't think there are any members of the public at this time all right thank you for checking with that we'll close out item seven thank you both Mr. Phillip Mr. Charest for your input tonight and move to item eight to annual downtown parking report sorry just navigating the portal from being promoted with a little bit of sorry that thing so so the packet has a annual report for occupancy in the garages actually in Lakeview garage in it would you like me to go it's about five six slides do I need to go through it I'm happy to go through it but otherwise I'm happy to answer questions I think it's pretty self explanatory basic story is we are nowhere near capacity which was the point of having this report given to you so that you know we weren't abusing giving out of permits I don't think we need the presentation but we could certainly refer to it if there are specific questions absolutely yeah I appreciate you getting that in the packet for us I will open up to my fellow commissioners for discussion here Commissioner Archambel I'm parking I do not have any items to contribute just thanking Jeff again for his attention attention to detail his diligence all of that is a tricky issue so thank you Jeff thank you Commissioner Barr yeah I also don't have any extra comments other than it's great seeing this kind of data I know that back when you were on the commission you wanted to see this kind of data and now you're providing a test and so that's that's really cool so thanks thank you all right Vice Chair O'Neill-Vabanko Jeff love this stuff it's great even though our numbers are low but looking like I mean even with like the BHS things are picking up a little bit and I guess one thing is just use did you indicate it here maybe I saw it elsewhere in the packet just being able to audit the the businesses who are offering the free parking for the employees to make sure you're doing that on a monthly basis okay everybody's permit expires every month so basically if you have a permit in the garage your permit expires every month and as soon as you pay it gets renewed and so what we're doing is having the all the businesses that have employees signed up every month they have to send us a list of employees that are still valid for parking and we renew each and every one of them manually so if you know say they had 10 employees last month then they only got eight well they only need it they just need to send us those eight those two that they didn't send us they just expire and they go away okay and when we are we do I mean we're the employee free parking is brand new just started last month you know so we have we're actively auditing businesses and as the time goes by we'll start auditing employees also to make sure that the appropriate people are getting the free parking consistent with the goals and the policy yeah I saw the criteria I guess one thing last month you mentioned or someone maybe a public caller mentioned that that the businesses felt like this this would help them because it's a benefit to their employees because they're low-wage workers are you tracking that at all through the employers that this is this free parking is any sort of you know kind of retention or is there any way to track that to see is this really helping out our businesses right now the the response has been huge I mean we've got I mean we had a free employee program going for a year to do it using a validation style process and once we actually launched the real program so to speak we got way more activity we got a lot more people in so there is as we go on in this we will have to come up with metrics and we just don't quite know what those metrics are yet exactly how to measure how much it's costing exactly how to measure how when to audit how frequently audit you know these are we're going to learn how to do it okay yeah I think that would be that would be interesting to to track yeah absolutely like a public investment point of view okay that's all thanks thank you nothing nothing further on my end I appreciate the the update while we we don't like the news I think we're all appreciative that we have we have our finger on this level of detail here I do have to thank the the ambassador crew that works there every day all those numbers all that data and that charts are gathered manually so they're counting cars at least once a day if not twice or three times a day to generate that data and the parking garage manager operations manager is actually managing that data set so it's a it's a team effort from a tough spot so to speak thank you for that I appreciate it the announcement yeah question how how far off are we from um getting that data without bugging someone to collect it manually that's uh that's the item for another day we have some oh we have some ongoing we have some ongoing challenges and some instability you know it's so it's a very little variability in the system right now that it just they're they're next thing but but we work on it one way or another every day so it's very much on our mind we don't want to be kind of collecting this data manually sure but we are for now okay um Commissioner Overby I just wanted you know always remember that there's supposedly 1200 spots in this and I appreciate having this data it's great and we just need to keep reminding the public and ourselves that there's that many parking spots in those lots and despite the fact that we're selling monthly parking passes so Jeff I totally appreciate your your again like everybody else your your on it as far as looking at the stats and trying to figure out how to explain what's going on and I just have one comment that relates to the usage of it that might help that has nothing to do with your numbers but the fact that the of the way finding getting people out of there a lot of people I think can't use that parking lot because they can't a figure out how to get in it and they can't figure out how to get from it to church street so just a comment that relates to these numbers and if we want to start boosting the numbers it would be that's going to be that's going to have to happen we do have an interior way finding design package that should be it has to be complete by the end of fiscal year so it has to be done by June 1st or June 30th July 1st sorry once that package is is finalized then we have to figure out how to pay for it it's about a million dollars of the signage for between both garages and it will do exactly what you're saying it will it will direct you from the fourth or fifth floor to the waterfront or the church street or to the hotels or to wherever that's the goal specifically when you see that as a problem at Coastal yeah I'd love to see how that what your proposal is and those big P's that are now lit up outside of the you know marketplace garage or one end one end of it not the not the cherry street and seems to be burnt out or not on but those are really excellent cherry streets not the big P was not lit the other day when I walked by but one on the on the bank street was but not the cherry street one well look right into that they should all be working marketplace garage marketplace garage the big the large P that's right above the sign it says open the open was lit but the big P was not oh that's interesting all right great job otherwise but getting people to find things is really what we need to do yep I agree all right you with that touch on everyone on the commission Mr. Goulding is there anyone interested in public comment at this time not at this time chair all right thank you with that we are not seeking any action on this item thank you again spread it for the presentation thank you see you again soon yep sure all right have a good night we move forward to item nine on the agenda approval of draft minutes from the March 17th meeting are there any proposed yes so Commissioner Overby I actually do have suggested changes which I sent to Val and I don't know if they want what the mechanism I sent them to you too I'm not sure what the best mechanism just read them off or should I read them off to you what's the best method method to do this sure I don't does anyone have this handy with the technology to share or is there I have them on my computer maybe somebody sure we have the minutes as post okay you want to just okay why don't I just I'll open up on my side the one that proposed changes and then you can look at them on the on the on screen sure you're muted Commissioner Overby you can't look at your own document and and have turn on the speaker as well so let's see if we can get that document back so I can read it to you can you hear me yes we can okay good the item five the parking program for restaurant and retail workers I I wanted to change the way the way that it's written it just says Commissioner Overby stated she is not in support of this amendment for change and what I really was wanted to clarify it have it say Commissioner Overby stated she supports the concept but thinks it needs work for two reasons to provide incentives for not driving and to acknowledge the value of the parking pass as a supplement to employee wages in an effort to help downtown businesses recruit employees I have this document and I don't know if anybody else wants to share it I think Chairman Hogan you have it too so I don't know if you would rather display this on your screen okay or do you want is this okay if that work for you guys I'll just move on and if that if you want me to repeat what I just read I can do that I don't disagree with what you just said as a clarification if you haven't anybody else think I said I didn't say that I realize how much how difficult it is for people to you know synthesize what my wandering kind of explanations of things might be so that's what I thought I said if we're good with that I'll move to the next one I'm good with that yes okay the next one is on item eight the rail yard enterprise project it says currently commissioner overby stated that she had contacted city engineer mullison earlier to see if we could go back and look at other options to make it a little more clear I would recommend that it gets written this way commissioner overby stated she had contacted city engineer mullison earlier to clarify an item in the memo provided to the commissioners that stated the plan is to quote reconsider all proposed alternatives the 2016 scoping study had recommended advancement of three alternatives 1b2 and 5b mullison clarified that all proposed alternatives meant other alternatives besides 1b2 and 5b will be considered for the design of the rail yard enterprise connection between pine street and battery street that's what I said in all my wandering around of what I was saying if people recognize that seem to be about accurate then I'll move to the last one I have a question yeah in that place yes are you are you making a statement in there declaring what engineer mullison meant she she she I asked very specifically yes that was the clarification she did present that to us I'm uncomfortable with a commissioner declaring the intentions of an engineer you know maybe your interpretation of that and that may be true but to say you know to state that she actually meant that let's word it however you want to word it she clarified to me during the meeting that what all proposed alternatives meant was not just the ones the three that had originally been in the mix because I was trying to get us to have the actual maps of those three alternatives available to the public and and she said they're all proposed alternatives meant beyond so there because it's going to the federal it's going to the federal it's going to be funded federally we now are not limited to those three choices does that make sense let's word it I don't need an explanation I'm just uncomfortable with any commissioner declaring the intention of an engineer from that okay interpretation okay let's see how we could word it Molson stated that all how about we just say she stated that all proposed alternatives meant all alternatives will be considered I think it's fair to say the discussion of which alternatives were on the table was had and there was clarification that like yes even alternatives other than these three could be considered going forward that's that's that's all I'm trying to say if you if we can word it that way that's what I was just trying to say so it's clear to the public that in fact there will be more than just those three alternatives available in the potential connecting options in the railroad enterprise connection that works for me if we can figure out a way to word that do you think you have something chairman Hogan that addresses commissioner Archambault's concern about the way I wrote this well I would ask commissioner Archambault that that sound okay I feel like I would summarize the conversation that said there was discussion around which alternatives would be considered going forward and a resolution that that yet even beyond those three stated alternatives were still on the table like like nothing was off the table moving forward right so so now we're just highlighting what what event occurred during the conversation right and I think that would be far more digestible than projecting what we we believe was intended by an engineer yeah that works fine that's that's all I was getting at okay Dr. Spencer if commissioner Archambault is good with that I'm that's that works for me yeah and then the last one was item 11 and I don't know Dr. Spencer did you have a suggestion there I think the important clarification if we're going to make a make a a more detailed comment here is that how I understood the conversation last time and what staff's understanding is that that the three alternatives that Commissioner Overby mentioned will be evaluated and there's a possibility that other alternatives may be looked at as well that the all other options being evaluated I don't think quite hits the message right from what we understand from Federal Highway and I think how Susan described it at the last meeting yeah I think yeah I just wanted it to be clear that we we got more choices so people can't count and it may be one of those three that was what I was trying to get clarification on so the item 11 it said Commissioner Overby heard that there was a no longer an appeals process for permitting and inspections for and ask for clarity that was concern was expressed to me by a city counselor so I had said I would replace that with just adding in changing it to Commissioner Overby heard concern expressed by a city counselor that there was no longer an appeals process for permitting and inspections and ask for clarity and the rest of it's the same but I didn't have a concern that there was an appeal you know lost by the new new division but I've had somebody who a commission a counselor that asked me that and I said no I don't think it's changed so we're we're sure now that's what what the issue is it has it's not changed does that make sense is it necessary or not I'm fine with that anybody else that didn't hear me say that or maybe they did I think we're good if unless somebody else has a you know if I didn't say it that's the problem here we don't want to have me making up something that I didn't that I didn't say so this is Tiki Arshenbogan sorry if I could make a suggestion maybe just to it sounds like commission overview has some important points to be added to these minutes and it might be best if we push these minutes off by a month so we can review what that language would be if it could be circulated with the rest of the commission and then that gives us a chance to just look it over and see if there might be something that that stands out for any of us kind of like the injection that I had yeah I think that's fair let's let's do that then um we can perhaps you know if you get your suggested modifications in front of the commission in advance for for review well perhaps we should just yeah figure out that process because I I send them but I don't know what the process is and I can't I'm not supposed to communicate with everybody in advance as a group so perhaps if I send suggested or anybody sends suggestions to the minutes to you as a chairman you could circulate them directly to people in advance of the meeting so we can all have them all in advance I didn't know how to do it efficiently obviously if that's sent day of it it may not happen okay yeah well then we're back to where we're at you're posted three days after the last meeting so they're all luckily all the opportunity to right to review in advance but yeah we can get these to staff you know you know get them to now and like maybe have what we've talked about in the past perhaps have you know sort of like a track change like yeah these are suggestions you know prepared in advance for presentation yeah I just I will do it whatever is the most efficient way because this feels terribly inefficient and I totally appreciate I apologize for doing it this way but I don't didn't know how to do it more efficiently than send them to Val send them to you they're available but I didn't feel like I was allowed to send them around to the rest of the commissioners in advance so sure good enough yeah the commissioner bar I guess I just want to make a quick comment is this not why and I've been on the commission for a while I guess so I've seen it start and finish this way isn't this not why we had a clerk position on the commission that would kind of do a quick overview of the minutes prior to the the next meeting and I know we just did away with that too so I'm just trying to figure out are we are we ebbing and flowing back and forth you're trying to figure out how to get this done the most efficient way oh so we have we have a clerk that's a staff member so okay but but it doesn't work if you just send them to the staff and then the rest of the commissioners don't get to see the words which is where we're at here today if you do it on the day of the meeting which sometimes does happen so that's the real question I'm sure Hogan if it's all right I may make a recommendation to consider yeah please so so Val and I just didn't connect on that one and my apologies on that but I could recommend that if folks have changes for the minutes to be sent directly to me and Val just in case her and I don't connect because then I can make sure that they are available to bring up and then maybe we can figure out if there's a better way to do that but at the very least if I have them they can be present on the screen sure yeah no that would be good apologize I didn't wasn't on the flick here for these to you for sharing on the spot I think that's a no worries we had them Val had them and her and I just needed to connect better on that we can make that work better sure all right well I'll do that and I apologize for always having changes but but sometimes I feel like it's important when clearly my my spoken words have not you know have been so circular circuitous that it's hard for people to figure out what I said sure okay thanks we'll do it next month yeah I thought of that do we I guess we do we need to formally say we're tabling until next month to make a motion to action is necessary I don't think you can just take no action and it will we'll put it back on the agenda next month no action is no action all right so no motion is necessary no motion necessary I was ready I was ready too Jen I don't second that no motion and who's going to circulate the the proposed minutes change is that going to be Rob are you going to do that he usually gets sent to us right I just didn't know should I send them to you now yeah you can send them to me and Val and her and I'll work together to make sure maybe we can figure out and propose the best format to Val had them and Chairman Hogan had them but that was the only two people I sent them to so I failed to send them to you I will send them to you and Val again no worries at all we'll we'll make this work for next month perfect thanks and I see that I had them but I was not in a position to take time do anything timely with it during the day today any you moving forward to item 10 director's report great thank you so much given the hour you have the information in your packet one key element in the director's report was our mid-year report on our FY 21 goals and objectives for DPW next month you all will be reviewing the performance of the director and the city engineer myself and Norm Baldwin and we wanted to give you all the materials to see what the department has I think successfully accomplished during the midst of this pandemic and happy to answer any questions at this point but we hope that the document is helpful for your review yeah thank you do appreciate the input if there are I guess commissioner responses let's take them in our commissioner communications that's next on the agenda all rights let's commissioner bar to start with any final communications actually oddly enough I don't have any for this this month I've been biking a little bit out there I can see the infrastructure starting to grow again some paint being put down so appreciate that and looking forward to next month's conversation about Colchester Avenue other than that always a great job thanks all right thank you vice chair O'Neil Lavacco I'm hanging on honey I'm almost done sorry so just a comment about recycling that someone sent to me so I'm just going to read it I just posted this to see click fix but don't have any confidence that it will have an impact I'm having just walked up Henry and Loomis I can tell you how many similar circumstances are evident and how much trash is in the street and along the sidewalk this should not be a baseline condition recycling is becoming anti-environmental if at all it is doing is pushing putting trash into the streets and down storm drains as well as glass and other dangerous items on sidewalks and in the bike lanes there is a widely ignored ordinance on the books requiring some landlords to supply totes DPW now has a lot and no more curbside bins are given out increasingly cardboard boxes and paper bags are falling over into the streets this has gone on for years and before that and before the ordinance about rentals and totes was taken up I was reporting this to Chapit and the mayor at our recent NPA meeting DPW explained their current policy of sending nice notes to residents who do not keep trash contained but there is no requirement issued or follow-up contact with planning commission indicates that there has been some discussion but no movement and neither the mayor's office nor DPW seems inclined to take action to even enforce what we have not to speak of taking up taking up keeping trash out of pedestrian ways and bikeways as well as storm drains I hope there's an opportunity to take this up at the DPW commission so and we think we've all seen it you know the blue bins that don't like that are not the totes you get a windy day especially this time of year it's just gross and rubbishy and I don't know where enforcement lies or how we can get more totes even like my neighbors across the street I just like get frustrated that I'm constantly picking up their their recycling so it's happening across town that's um that's my comment thanks all right thank you commissioner overby if you're there you've muted try it again that space bar was not working gotcha I don't have specific communications but I do have questions that I'm going to add I have about the the goals and objectives which I will just I guess instead of because of the lateness of the hour I will directly ask those questions of Director Spencer because I did have questions about that about several items on the objectives and goals and um it's just too late for me to try to ask those questions considering the lateness of the night so you will we will not benefit from from like my questions or the answers probably sorry all right no other no other comments sure all right yeah take that offline in that case Commissioner Archibald yeah I had no comments until we got to the public comment section here and I just feel the need to respond it was to Jason Dander each made some comments especially we get into the season because in the next month we are expected to review the director and the city engineer as part of our charter you know our mandated course as a commission and I just wanted to take exception to the comments and I really do appreciate Jason as a community member super smart and in many ways I'm sympathetic I've advocated for a long time for quick wins from this department and we don't see them that often so you know I continue to try to advocate for that but where I take exception is that I'm not is the problem right I see a city engineer struggling with a community where there's a lot of voices almost every last one of them willing to lay down on a road over a crosswalk or a pothole and it is got to be immensely challenging for someone in that position to produce quick results when there are multiple opinions on an issue so I do take exception to that and say that really I don't know I'm not convinced that problems is city engineer as much as us ourselves and what we expect of the folks who work for us especially when our we hear about our snowplow drivers the level of human dignity I guess if you will for our city employees seems to be at an all-time low and I take serious exception to those comments so I had to put that out there feel compelled to honor our department and those who work for them including our city engineer and I don't know but that's just me tonight so thank you well stated thank you I said just to meet one I've been thinking about of late sort of reminiscing on some of the bright spots of their disruptions over the past year and change here and wondering you know where things land with you know some of the neighborhood streets programs that were rolled out last year and as you know as we're sort of looking forward and starting to see the political winds shifting towards coming out of emergency status or mind all of us that there's it doesn't necessarily take an emergency to give space to people and on their neighborhood streets and you know maybe worth the reflection got the bandwidth and a future meeting to take a step back and look at some of those you know some of the streets that were designated as local traffic only arguably you know maybe there's not a good reason to to to welcome other than local traffic and to you know make that more of the the rule going forward rather than the emergency exception so anyway I know it's late and I won't dwell on it too much but it's something that's it's been of of mind as we're well except for today you know looking past winter maintenance season hopefully and you know with an eye towards people being outside and still breathing and sharing space anyways we'd be happy to talk about that at a subsequent meeting sir that's good all right well you know thank you all and all of your teams for the the great work and the efforts as always we appreciate again the depth and breath of interesting conversation topics tonight and I look forward to connecting that I will close out item 11 and go to item 10 adjournment in next meeting day May 19th item 12 a motion to adjourn there's been a motion I second that seconded Vice-Chair on Yavavanko all right is there any discussion around that motion all right I think we're safe to go to a vote here all in favor if you say aye aye aye for myself any opposed all right don't oppose we are adjourned in 928 thank you all we'll see you May 19th thank you thank you good evening good night thanks