 I'm going to try to get started. My name is Bill Shepulek. I'm the municipal manager. And we're here to have a discussion, a presentation about the Main Street Reconstruction Project. We'll try to provide as much information as we can and answer some questions for you. There are some seats around. I know there's probably more people standing than there are seats. But there are seats. And if you'd like to sit, please take the seats. If you can't hear, wave your hand, and we'll try to talk a little bit louder. So March 15th was my 31st anniversary of being the municipal manager here in Waterbury. And that's a long time. Thank you. And when I came here, I certainly never dreamed that I would be in this position for 31 years. And I hope I make a few more years to see this project to its fruition. When I was interviewed in November of 1987, Ed Steele was the chairperson of the select board. And Everett Coffey was the president of the village. And together they told me that this Main Street Reconstruction Project, which they had been waiting for since the 70s, was going to commence in the early 1990s. There was one small segment of the Main Street Project that was done in the 1970s, when Alec Tuscany was the municipal manager here. The section down from Damerit Place, down toward what was then known as the Smith Bridge. And if you drive down the street, you can still see that the cross section of the road looks a little bit different there than it does coming back up this way. For a variety of reasons, this project has been delayed. My name is on a document that was signed between the federal government, the highway administration, federal highway administration, VTRANS, and Waterbury Municipalities, the cooperative agreement that spelled out the responsibilities of this project. So we've been waiting a long time for it. And here we are now in March of 2019. And we are, I hope, within a month's time of construction starting. We're going to have some snow over the weekend, it sounds. Ken Upmall here from VTRANS just told me that they're predicting 30 inches in some places up in the higher elevations. So we've got a little winter to get through yet. There will be some things that we'll be starting probably here in the next couple of weeks. There'll be some tree work being done. And Eric Boyden is here from J. McDonald, the contractor who has been awarded the contract for this job. We're very happy that McDonald was chosen. They put in a good proposal, a good bid. It's been reviewed by VTRANS and a little bit by us. We're happy that they got the job. J. McDonald was the contractor that built the roundabout for us. And while there's no construction project that you're ever going to have, especially a highway construction project in a busy area like Waterbury, where there will not be problems, I think from the perspective of the municipality and most people in the community, they acquitted themselves quite well in that project. It's a beautiful project. They made it turn out very, very well. And by and large, they were able to manage the traffic flow and keep people happy most of the time. And that's, I don't mean to, I don't want to set the bar low, but there's an old saying about not being able to please all of the people all the time. And we're going to make that old saying come true. I promise you that. We won't please you all the time. But we will certainly do our best. I'm going to do a couple more introductions and then talk a little bit about what this project means to Waterbury taxpayers and ratepayers. But as I said, Ken Upmall on the far my left is the project manager for V-Trans. I've known Ken for a long time. I've worked with him on other projects. Ken was, you managed the Barry Big Dig, was the V-Trans project manager for this same type of project in Barry. So he has good experience. He's been with V-Trans for probably longer than he wants to tell you. But we have a good person that will be leading the V-Trans project here. I already introduced Eric from J. McDonald. Eric is a local person. He grew up here in Waterbury, and I believe went to Harwood. So Eric knows the community. He knows some of you. Ask someone if that was Mrs. Loose that was coming through the door. So he recognized you, Margaret. He was assured that was Mrs. Loose, yes. And then Greg Goyette. Greg is an engineer for Stantec. And while this project is a V-Trans Waterbury project, the design of this project was done by Stantec, by and large, with lots of input from the Agency of Transportation, lots of input from us. But Greg was the lead engineer on this project for the roadways section. And there is others that were very involved from the water and sewer, the storm drainage, all of which is, of course, incorporated into the roadway, even the utility work. So it's a big team, an experienced team. We think a good team. And we're very happy that all of these folks are on our team and going to help get us through these next two and a half. That's a good place to start. This project has been a long time in coming, as I said. It will be two full construction seasons and at least part of a third construction season to get this project completed. It's scheduled from April 15th of this year, 2019, until June 30th of 2021. So all the construction season of 2019 and then 20. And then we are hoping, landscaping and cleanup and just the punch list items in the 2021 phase, if I have any of that wrong, these people will correct me. Funding for this project, we've waited a long time. We're all paying for it because we all pay the local taxes and water and sewer rates that are going into this project. We all pay the state taxes, whether they're income taxes or sales taxes or gasoline taxes or property transfer taxes, whatever makes up the VTrans funding. And then we all certainly pay federal taxes. This project, however, is 95% funded by the federal government, 3% by the state and ours. And that's a wonderful example of how our federal system works to try to use the resources of the entire nation to help build projects that are important for commerce, for local economies, and the like. This funding formula, I'm sure, has been changed by now. And if we were starting this project today, any cooperative agreement we signed would have a different funding formula. But that's the formula that we are agreed to. And all the players agreed to keep that funding formula in place here. From the perspective of our local money, this is not an exact science, because when the contractor responds to the bid documents that the engineer and the state put together, they're asked to build this. And if you look at it in one way and you just add up everything that is truly water and everything that is truly sewer, it's a smaller share of the pie than it really should be. Because while you could make an argument that, well, you can't build that road without doing all of this excavation, that's true. But you also couldn't get the water line and the sewer line where they need to be under the road without excavating and getting down to where you need to go. So Bill Woodruff, I haven't finished introductions. Bill Woodruff is in the room somewhere, way in the back as expected. Bill is the Public Works Director here for the town and village, or the town in the Edward Ferrar Utility District. I promised I wouldn't make that mistake, but I argued. So anyway, Bill Woodruff will be the key person in Waterbury. He is my designated representative to be involved in the day-to-day projects. I'm going to be very involved in this project. I have lots of dealings with Ken. I will be out in the field. He'll see me around. I'll be involved. But Bill is going to be the lead person for the municipality because the construction, of course, involves the three municipal departments that he oversees, the town highway department and the utility districts, water and sewer departments. So you will see Bill around. His phone number will be well-publicized. You'll be able to get in touch with him if you need to. Barb Fire is the community liaison for this project. And she is working closely with us. Reviewing plans has been for the last couple of years. So she understands the project. She was very involved in the right-of-way process. And now she is beginning to kind of morph into being the community liaison where she will be trying to get information about the project from the people who are constructing it. Thank you. She'll be keeping in tune with the project schedules, what's supposed to be happening in the next week, in the next coming weeks. And she will be pushing information out into the community by various means, which we'll talk about a little bit later. Folks from Revitalizing Waterbury, Karen Nevin and Alyssa Ariel has just been hired by Revitalizing Waterbury to help with this type. So there will be a lot of people in a lot of different ways that you will be able to find information about this project and that you'll be able to contact and we'll tell you about those ways that. On my sheet, I talked a little bit about the funding allocations. We're fortunate in that we don't need to finance this project locally. It's a $21 million project. 2% of that is a little over $400,000. And as I said, that $400,000 is split between water and sewer and highway. It's not a third each. The highway is probably the biggest component, but we have allocated to the water and sewer, the fact that we have to dig up the earth to get down there. But because it's a project that will take place over three construction seasons, we will be able to finance this work through our normal budget. So in our capital improvement plans for the highway department, our infrastructure project, we've got $100,000 in that line item for this year. It may be that we spend more than that this year. It may be that we spend less than that. But we have the capacity to move forward through this project using just the normal operating and capital budgets that we have for the town and for the utility district as well. So that's a helpful thing. If this was all being done all in one construction season, Ormula was not as beneficial to us. We would probably have to go to the voters and ask for a bond. But you've heard that in this year's budget at town meeting. Budgets for the water and sewer departments that will be opted by the commissioners in the next couple of weeks, and discussed that the EFAT annual meeting A will have the funding involved. So with that, I think I'm going to stop. I'm going to turn it over to Ken. And he's going to talk about the project in general, the planning and engineering, and the scope of the project, and then something about utilities. So before I turn it over to Ken, is there anybody that has a question right now of my? Thank you, everybody, for coming. I was thinking about this for a long time. Well, not a long time, but the last few weeks. And I thought about, what am I going to say tonight? And finally here, this is. Yeah, I came on board on this project about five years ago. There was a lot of work yet to do. This project is an incredibly challenging, complicated project. It took a great amount of work and effort to do. And the first thing I'd like to do is thank a bunch of the people, a lot of them not even here tonight, that made this all possible. I'd like to thank the town. First and foremost, Bill Sheplek for being the man of reason and soundness throughout the development of this. I know at times it was complicated and people were frustrated, but Bill was always behind us and in support of the project and the voice of reason. That's really important when you get into a project like this. I wanted to thank Alec Tuscany and Bill Woodruff for their public work support on this. They've been involved from the get-go. And I want to thank Byron Farr and her folks for coming on board and being part of this project because Byron was going to play an instrumental role in the public outreach, which is a significant component of this project. So I want to thank all those people from Waterbury. I actually want to thank all the butters. And I'll tell you why. This project, I believe, was the single largest right-of-way acquisition effort in agencies at 122 separate parcels. And Harry Petrovs, I want to thank Harry. He's not here tonight. Harry was the head of the plans and title section for the agency. And he retired as we were closing in on final right-of-way plan development. But he happened to go to work as a consultant for StandTech and he led the effort in finalizing the right-of-way plans. All those properties, we had one challenge to assess out of 122 parcels, which really is amazing. So I want to thank all the butters. Agency staff, I cannot tell you folks, I can't emphasize enough or let people understand how many people from the agency and supported and were part of this project. As I said, the right-of-way folks, it was a very significant part of the project. Environmental folks, all the stormwater permitting requirements we had to do, Act 250, that was an effort in itself. I want to thank all the environmental staff for the agency for all the support they provided us. There's a gentleman that's not here tonight, but he has been part of this since I came on board. His name is Sean Corbett. He runs our utilities section and I can't tell you the effort that he has put forth on advancing this project through all the utility coordination. From the get-go, I think we had two dozen special meetings at the agency to coordinate the utility relocations. So incredible effort, incredible effort. Lastly, I really need to thank Stantec. I'd never worked with Greg Goya when I came on board this project. Greg and I got together and took on this effort. And I can't thank Greg for his leadership and support and overall professionalism in leading this project forward. And there's a gentleman that's not here tonight, part of his staff, his senior most engineer, Carl Richardson, who was the primary design engineer on the project. And Carl has been steadfast in his efforts in bringing all this together and bringing all the plans together. And if you saw a set of full-size plans up here that's about nine inches thick, it might give you an appreciation for the magnitude of work it took to bring this forward. And then, of course, all the other people in the agency of transportation from the contract administration folks, the construction section, all these people, it took a great effort in bringing that forward. So I wanted to recognize those folks tonight. As Bill referred to earlier, we've got a good contractor on board, a very experienced, well established contractor in J. McDonald. And although somewhat premature, I'm glad Eric you're on board and J. McDonald's here. So thank you. I've had a handout here. Now, I don't want to get too bogged down in questions during my presentation. I'm going to give a brief overview of the project. And I'm going to pass it on to Eric. But we put together a listing of commonly asked questions. These are typical questions. You can read through it, read through it now, read through it later, et cetera. We're probably going to get asked some of these questions as we move forward tonight. But these are commonly asked questions and some of the specific business concerns. And these somewhat give a generic response to some of these. I don't know if this is on the set of commonly asked questions. And I'm hoping that I don't disappoint anybody with this. But I just want to tell you, this is a meeting for you to be informed about what is going to happen. We are past the stage of changing the plans. So if anyone here tonight has a suggestion about how to make this better, I'm sorry, but it's too late. And I wanted you to hear that from me and not have to have Ken tell you, I'm sorry, we can't do anything about it. So you can direct to your ire this way. But no changes to the plan. I think most people are pretty familiar with what's going on here in general. We are going to reconstruct the highway, full depth reconstruction. We're going to dig down about five feet. We're going to reconstruct. We're going to replace all the sewer, all the water. We're going to do underground utility vaulting from about Stow Street all the way to what I call the North Access horseshoe to the state office complex. Same of that state drive. Full depth reconstruction, meaning we're going to dig down five feet. We're going to do 12 inches of sandbarrow for frost protection, 24 inches of dentscrated crushed stone, and 10 or 11 inches of pavement. We're fully reconstructing the highway. We're going to reconstruct all the sidewalks, streetscape amenities, new lighting, and new landscaping. So and storm drain, of course. Storm drains with the highway. So we're reconstructing the whole highway. We're not expanding the highway. We're not making it wider. We're not putting in new lanes. This project is actually classified as an FEGC project. It's Federal Economic Growth Center. So it's not for mobility and safety, although we are enhancing safety, but we're reconstructing the highway and all the infrastructure. So that's what we're doing. When we started out, Greg and I spent a significant amount of time with the utility companies and some construction experts and trying to figure out, how are we going to build this project? Because our approach to building it certainly was going to affect all the contract language. So originally, our anticipated approach was to begin at the roundabout downstream, low end, and construct through in the first year water, I mean sewer first, water next, underground utility vaulting, and then at the end of the year, shut down and clean everything and secure everything. So that would have been really sewer going first in a train, coming through, affecting everybody, water coming behind them. That's such a lag. Then underground utility vaulting, and then patch it up at the end of the year, secure it for winter, come back the following year, and reconstruct the roadway. J. McDonald was awarded the contract and came back to V-Trans with a revised approach to construction. And working with the town and J. McDonald and our design staff, we considered their approach, which is starting just upstream of Pirke Row, going down sewer, water, a portion of the underground utility vaultings, what we broke into three segments. Briber, is there a three-segment thing here? All right, so there we go. The lines, I saw it in a roll, so I wasn't used to the breakup. So segment one, just this side of the roundabout, to Stowe Street. Segment two, Stowe Street to Pirke Row. Segment three, Pirke Row to about Batchelor. And segment four, Batchelor to Damerit. So J. McDonald came back and said, and I'm not going to get too deep into it, but general, because Eric's going to talk about this in field questions hereafter, but in more detail. But J. McDonald came back and said, listen, we'll start on Pirke Row here, and we'll do water, sewer, portion of the underground utility vaulting to that north leg. And then we will reconstruct the roadbed on one side, storm drain, stabilize with pavement, switch to the other side, do water, sewers on one side, waters on the other, build that up, build the roadbed up, stabilize that, come to segment four, do the same thing, build one side, build the other. And then in August of this year planned, come back to just this side of Alam Street and do a portion of the sewer before the end of the year. We evaluated that approach, and I think it was a very innovative approach, and I think it really works. And the reason I bring this up is I want the public to understand that we're approaching this in what we believe is the least detrimental and least impactful to the community. Because by doing this in McDonald's approach here, this will all be left in segment one this year. It won't be affected. In segment two, it won't be affected until mid-August if they're on schedule, and that'll just be sewer and water, so I mean sewer on this side and underground utility vaulting. The main work is going to be this year in segment three and segment four. Vice versa, next year, this will all be stabilized with base payment. It'll be stabilized with base payment this year. Sidewalks will likely all be done this year. So this will be done. These people won't experience this for two years. And then we'll come into these sections, and these will be in segment one and segment two in year two. So it really separates the work and I truly believe minimizes the overall repeated impacts to all your businesses and residences. In year three, we'll let everything settle up to base payment, and in the spring of 2021, we'll come in and put the final paving on the whole thing and the line striping and the final landscaping. So that's the general approach to how we are going to construct this project. And as I said, I'm going to let Eric talk a little bit more about it. So I think it's a good approach. As I said, I think it was a real innovative approach that they came up with. And we worked with the town and the contractor and with VTrans and came to that conclusion. So we're pretty happy with that. As I said, I think we're glad to have J. McDonald on board, very experienced, accredited, professional contractor. And with that, I'm going to turn this over to Eric Boyden and let him talk. Thank you, Ken. So I'll start. I'm Eric Boyden, J. McDonald, owner and president. It was funny. I was talking to Bill as people were walking in. I grew up in Waterbury, so I see a lot of familiar faces here. And it's pretty neat. So from a personal standpoint, I'm very excited about this project. I know it's been a long time coming for the town. From a professional standpoint, I'm equally excited that my company gets to do the work. This is a high-profile project. And we're excited to be a part of it. I'd also like to introduce one person from our company that didn't get any props yet. Matt Moran, you want to raise your hand? Matt is our on-site project manager for this project. He's going to be the guy you see every day out there in the field. Tom Mancini with the V-Trans. He is the resident engineer. You'll be seeing him out there every day as well. He'll be out on the streets. So to pick up where Ken left off, so we've got four segments on the project and two and a half years to bring this to completion. When we started looking at it, we said the original plan was start at segment one, do all the sewer, all the way down to segment four, start at segment one, do all the water, all the way to segment four, all the storm drainage segment four. There was going to be multiple redundant impacts to businesses and residences. That's A. B, we felt that by doing that, we didn't have enough time in the contract to get it done in two and a half years. So we said, why don't we break this project up into halves and we'll start in what we felt was an easier place to start, segment two or segment three, I'm sorry. It's more residential, less business, less traffic. And let's work our way towards the south end of town. But as we go, let's not just go and do water all the way, sewer all the way. Let's actually build the road behind us so that by the end of this year, we've actually built segment three and segment four to a point that there will be limited disruption next year in those two segments. Now, midway through the summer, again, because of the compressed schedule that we need to do this in, we're going to jump back to segment two. I'm over to Elm Street and we're going to put in all the sewer to park row. Then we're going to try and get in all the storm drainage from Elm Street to Park Row. And then we're going to start doing all of the underground electric and vaulting on what I'll call the right-hand side of the street. So if we were to start at segment one and go look towards segment four, the right-hand side of the street is the lower side. Left-hand side is the upper side. So we'll be doing everything on the right-hand side of segment two this fall, late summer fall. Before snow flies, we'll put temporary pavement down on that side of the road for the winter. And then next season, we'll pick right up segment one and we'll build segment one and segment two similar to the way that we did segment three. Break the phasing down a little bit more in each segment. Our approach is going to be do to limited space at three and four because of power poles. We're going to push traffic to the left as far as possible from centerline where people are currently parking on the left side of the road. That will become a travel lane. That will give us enough room so that two lanes of traffic, one in each direction, can be going back and forth through town. And we can do our sewer work on the right-hand side, storm drainage work, any utility work. Generally speaking, all of the underground electric and utility work is in segment one and two. There is a little bit in segment three. Beyond State Office Complex, Warren Court, everything stays overhead. So that would be phase one of our operations. After all the underground utilities are installed on the right-hand side of the road, we will then excavate the road to put new sub-base in, new sand, dense graded. At that time, we expect there to be about a three-week window. And this will be the same in each segment. A three-week window where off peak hours during the day will cut it down to one lane of traffic with flaggers. And what that does is it gives us the room to excavate beyond centerline and have enough width to put two lanes of traffic on the right-hand side of the road, then go to the left-hand side of the road in the next phase, water, storm drainage. Once those utilities are in, then we would excavate the left-hand side of the road and a base course on it. So by that point, then we have a fully functional road with base course pavement. And the work after that in the segment would be sidewalks, light poles, light pole bases, lighting conduit, then on to the next segment. I miss anything? One thing that these maps do not show, and I think it needs to be reiterated, there is a significant amount of underground electric and communications, basically, from Whiskey Street to Park Row. And there's quite a bit that is off of Main Street. Up from the, what's the name of this side street? Thank you. Foundry and Bidwall. There is going to be underground conduits coming in these back streets, back lots. We will be running almost all the way to the village market, cross-country behind many of these. And that work will also be happening late fall this year into the winter and spring of next year. That was a lot to digest, but I guess I would open it up to questions for now, if anybody. Hi for me. If segment three and four are significantly completed in 2020, would the trees be planted on those two segments since the sidewalks will be in and the curbing? Yes. OK. Our intent is, I'll defer to you, but we would plant trees in the spring. Right, 2020. Thank you. A few more aspects of construction that we anticipate. Reconstructing the primary intersections is going to be a challenge. So I know that Barb has provided questions from the public, both residents and businesses, and talked about night work. Is there going to be night work? We do expect to reconstruct the intersections at night. We also expect, correct me if I'm wrong, Eric, to do final course paving in the final year all at night, but the regular base course paving in the day during the two primary years of construction. Would there be any other night paving other than final? No, OK. I think define night work. I think you set up to maybe 11 o'clock at night or so, but not overnight? Or how's that going to work? So our intent is that work would end for us around midnight. We have no interest in working throughout the night. Having said that, it's construction. And there's Murphy and his laws, and things happen. So the other things that would be happening at night, for instance, would be sewer service connections. I'll give you a brief idea. In segment three, so we're putting the sewer main up main line on the right hand side of the road. And as we're putting the sewer line in, we're testing it and getting it so that it can be active. The existing sewer line is on the left hand side of the road. And all these houses are tied into it. So as we get the new sewer line active at night, we will be digging across the left hand side of the road to tie the new active line into the existing sewer services. That work will be happening at night. It's the only time we really can do it because we need to cross traffic and close lanes down in order to do that work. But again, that would end by midnight. We have no interest in working through the night on this. There's not enough resources in the state for that to happen. That may have to happen in some instances with the water service as well, but we don't think so. We think we can get almost all the water services done during the day without disrupting traffic. So we lay out the basics for what we want to do, and I'm just going to add this in here. But I like to have Murphy's Law, you know, that dynamics of a project like this and the unforeseen things that happen, whether it's breaking unknown subsurface infrastructure that we didn't know was there or whatever, all the complex coordination of service connections of utilities, it's going to be complicated. So I can't stand up here and say, remember the last director of the project when we got into the whole Waterbury Regional Projects? He said, don't set forth the expectation that everything's going to be perfect. Things are going to change. There's going to be adverse conditions throughout the project. I have to say that tonight. You know, we're going to work together. The contractor, Tommy and C, the resident of this project and the inspectors, we're going to do everything we can to minimize and or mitigate these impacts. You know, so we're committed to that. But I hope the public understands is there's going to be situations where we don't have any choice. We're going to be backed into a corner and there's going to be adverse impacts and disruptions. So I think everybody should expect that, but we're going to do everything we can to minimize it. One of the topics, another general thing, and I'm just touching on a few bullets here. Everybody wants to know about their access. Can I get in? Can I get out of my house? What's the duration of the closure, et cetera? Well, access to residents and businesses will be maintained at all times, except for those times when the contractor is reconstructing the highway or the primary infrastructure directly in front of the driveway. At that point, the driveway's got to be closed. So our mitigation approach to this is to give plenty of advanced notice, accurate, trying to accurately predict when this is going to happen so that Barb and our folks can let people know that whether it's on Thursday of a week and Barb comes to the folks and says, OK, Tuesday morning, that's when we're going to be to your house. And it's probably going to take this much time. So we're going to try to give as much advanced notice and communicate that to the public as possible. Another issue people ask is about utilities, how long my water going to be shut off? How long is my power going to be shut off? Well, the power is kind of a complicated thing. We're coordinating that all now through separate meetings or weekly meetings. Green Mountain Power has to give one week's notice for transfers, but we'll refine that notice as we move through the businesses and the residents not only one week in advance, but in two to three days leading up to that to say, OK, now it's hard to predict one week from now exactly what we're going to be doing. We don't know what's going to happen in between. Anything can happen. That Murphy guy, he shows up. But when we, Bob and Tom and we'll be communicating that to the public to doing everything we can to give you the notice of when those things are going to happen, people ask, how long is it going to be? I think typically power shut offs, a generic answer to that would be anywhere between four and six hours. That's the goal. But sometimes the businesses are different. For all the people in the corridor with power, there's going to have to be coordinated new panels put in and a bunch of other preparatory work before we shut the power off and actually do the connections. But we've got to schedule the state electrical inspector to be on site when we when we do those things. It's going to be complicated. Birebs getting all the contact information from all the people so that we can get in touch with those people and provide that advanced notice. So with respect to your driveways, with respect to your sewer and your water and your electrical, that's the game we face. So that should be known. Now, one more issue I just want to briefly touch upon. Another issue that was repeated in the stuff that Birebs applied to us was on street parking. I know that's going to be an issue with a lot of you folks. So we are going to be eliminating on street parking within the construction zones for construction. The contractor cannot perform his work with vehicles parked within the construction zone. And we're not designating, designating additional parking areas outside the project. For one thing, we couldn't do that because if it was not on, it could unbalance Act 250 and bring us into that. But Bireb and us will be working to identify potential alternative parking sites for our opportunities to do that throughout the construction. But we don't have designated alternate parking areas. A neat approach that Bireb brought up the other day was kind of interesting. And she talked about it was the potential shared use of coordination, people working together, you know? So I have to mention the parking thing because I know that's got to be on people's minds. And another brief thing I'll just touch on was people have mentioned, are people going to park in my driveway? Are people going to do this? Well, no, we're going to try to prevent that. I don't know if we can stop anybody from doing anything independent, but we have the flaggers that are going to be out there and we'll have Bireb out there and Tom's going to be working out there and we'll do everything we can to prevent and minimize those things. But these, I just want the public to understand that these are the challenges that lay ahead. So we can't come up here tonight and tell you folks, no, this is okay and give you a straightforward answer to all these questions, can't do it. So I just want you to understand and appreciate the dynamics of this project and how it's going to move forward. And the fact that we're committed to, again, as I always just say, minimize and or mitigate the impacts to the public. There is one thing that's a little bit different from prior meetings that we have advertised to the public. And I think the contract documents still require two-way traffic all the time. There's a provision that allows the town to say will allow one-way traffic with flaggers. So this construction schedule and means of construction that J.A. McDonald has proposed, as Eric just said a little while ago, in order to be able to build that roadway behind them and then to be able to connect all of the subterranean infrastructure, they're gonna have to creep across the center line. And in order to be able to do what they wanna do, during off-peak hours, they've asked if we will allow flaggers to stop traffic in one direction. So a segment of roadway, I don't know how long the segment will be, they'll be alternating two-way traffic and you'll be passed through with flaggers. There's stipulations in the contract that talk about how long one who's driving should be able to transverse through the one-mile long construction zone of the village. So even though sections one and two aren't gonna be under construction this year, it's still considered part of the construction project. So they're going to be diligent to try to make sure people aren't waiting too long. But it's a little bit different than we had talked about months ago when we thought that we were going to continually have two-way traffic in both directions. It's more important in the business sections, we'll talk about that more when we get there, except for August this year and the sewer work, August and probably through the construction season, they'll be in that section too. But there will be alternating traffic from time to time. If the town feels that it's being abused and the public is not being served, we'll work with V-trans and with McDonald to solve the problem. But it is a little bit different than we thought, but we believe, given Jay McDonald's proposal, that there will be far less disruption to all of you in the aggregate doing it this way as opposed to having a parade of construction three or four times down in front of your businesses and residents for two and a half construction season. So we think this will be better. And I'll stop there and I have one more thing before Barb talks. We're meeting with you tonight because we want to tell you that we're looking forward to answering your questions, we need your input, we know this is going to be frustrating. I would really encourage you if you have concerns or if you have questions that you call one of the people or email one of the people that can answer the question. I'm not gonna tell you don't use Front Porch Forum, but if you use Front Porch Forum to complain and whine about the project, you're not gonna get any answers. We'll probably see it, but we're not gonna get involved in what people are gossiping about. If you want an answer, call us, we'll get you the answer. We'll try to get as much information out through the website and other media throughout this project, but I would really ask that we don't kind of light a bonfire through Front Porch Forum and get people all riled up about things that really aren't happening. So if you've got a concern or a question, ask us. And if your question is, if you ask the question, there's probably somebody else out there that has it and we'll get the answer out so that all of you can see it. So with that, now you can talk. Thank you. Ken, you kept mentioning my name and it sounds like I'm gonna be really, really busy this summer, but I did want to mention that we've got partners in crime here and we've got Karen Nevin with Revitalizing Waterbury, who's a significant partner with visitors coming in, marketing, we've got Alyssa Johnson over here, Economic Development Director who has been working directly with the businesses throughout the construction area and we've got Arielle Mon-Duck, I hope I say that right now, over here as the Assistant Marketing Person. So this is a joint effort. As you mentioned, Bill Woodruff back here, Public Works Director. We're all working together as a team. So please, I get my messages out through Front Porch Forum and a variety of other ways, waterburyworks.com. If you're not signed up, please sign up. That's where information flow goes out. But if you have a question, you've got a concern, you've got a gripe, please give me a call or give anyone a physical. Thanks. I am one of the businesses that's in the non-business district. We own Family Physical Therapy, which will be involved. Hear me, Bill? That will be directly affected by this and when we went through the negotiation a couple of years ago about one of the things we had agreed upon was widening our entrance, which is going to involve relocating a storm drain and also paving a portion of our parking lot. One of my questions or concerns is, is who do we talk with about the timing of when that happens? Obviously we have patients using that parking lot Monday through Friday and during the day, not in the evening. But I just want to make sure that we stay in front of this as far as we talk about the timing beforehand. So when it gets there, we're paving it tonight. Here, Barbara. Sorry, there was a business meeting that was sponsored by Alyssa in revitalizing Waterbury for the businesses last week and you were there for the meeting and the question was, you raised a great question. I think I brought it to the team last week and as much as possible will be done to try to accommodate you, but a lot of unknowns as to exactly when that's going to happen. I seem to remember that there was a golf cart involved to cart people around. Anyway, we'll figure out a way that's the least amount of impact for you and as much information at a time as possible. I think to answer your question, the coordination will be with Barb. We will be feeding her information daily from a scheduled perspective. These are the lots. These are the houses or businesses that we expect we're going to be affecting in the next week and then we'll be able to break it down even closer than that the next day. So again, Barb would be the person that will be that liaison for us. If you say you're coming to, you're working in front of our property on Tuesday, the more important part is our parking lot for our patients if someone has a knee replacement, they can't shuffle them around, is when our pavement is going to be done in our, in the parking lot, the flexibility to say, hey, we know this property has to be paved, but it needs to be done after 6 p.m. So I'm just looking for confirmation on the flexibility that we were told that we were going to. Yeah, no, we know there's going to be flexibility with a lot of businesses. So Eric, just a generic question first, why did you chose what I would consider latter half before the first half? Second, more importantly question, being it's a five foot excavation, could you talk briefly about some of the aggregate that's going into the road, where that's products coming from, possible impacts of heavy trucks and also the material that's coming out and where that would be going to and how you'll deal with that as well. Sure. So we chose segment three and four as segment three and four have a reduced amount of sewer. They are, there's some of the sewer in segment three. Bill, correct me if I'm wrong, is actually in the back lots that is not getting replaced by us. So there are some segments in three that don't have any sewer. We felt it was a great place for J.A. McDonald to get our feet wet in Waterbury and for Waterbury to get their feet wet with our operations without affecting what we felt was the major traffic coming in from the interstate, going into the state office complex and coffee rosers for that matter. So primarily it was for everybody to get acclimated to each other for a year. Second, so your next question was the excavation. Waterbury and maybe I should let Ken speak to this but the state of Vermont designated all of this excavation as building soils. Therefore it's got a classification that required the state to find a place to put this excavation that was basically local to the project. And so the state designated two areas up at the interchange here at exit 10. One is behind the armory. It's basically between the abandoned southbound on-ramp and the armory. And the second location is in the abandoned northbound off-ramp. That's where all the excavation of all these excavated materials, segment one through four will be going there. The materials that we're importing, it will be a foot of sand. We haven't decided for sure, but it will probably be coming from Varen's in Richmond, Bolton. That will be coming via route two. And all of the dense graded aggregate that goes on top of the sand, I believe it's two aggregate. That will be coming from Wickham's and that will be coming via I-89. And it will all be coming in from, well, possibly some of it will be coming in through Middlesex, but I would say primarily it will be coming in through, not yet. Also, a good point is brought up that because of the ability to leave this alone primarily for the first year, it just allows the particular access for ourselves to be better flowing without traffic control, et cetera. Is that everything? Kevin, right? Chris. Chris, the ends, yep. Segment four, and hey, I noticed that there's a material staging site that has come up in a hard place. And I wonder if that is going to remain the site for the entire construction for segments one, two, in effect segment four active for all of the years. The quick answer is yes, that staging site will be active throughout the project. Did you talk to what residents in segment four can anticipate, obviously once this year's construction is completed in three and four, what can we expect to see and hear and win during segment one and two construction? Primarily that's a pipe yard, so what you will see is that yard, sorry, that one's green. Enough. And there will be material stockpiles of sand and dense graded truck traffic, minimal dump truck traffic. But our intent is once we get into segment one and two, that we do find another staging area. So when you're saying that you're having construction sometimes in the sections, say Stow Street or Foundry, and you need some of that material, we could expect to hear trucks entering and exiting from that site doing whatever they need to do up until midnight. Yes, yeah, that's a, yeah. So our normal hours of operation, and that's one thing that we didn't touch on, our plan is basically 6.30, 5.36 at night. That's our general operating hours. Those nights that we are doing sewer tie-ins or night work, those would be the nights that we would work till midnight. And again, those aren't every night. I can't tell you how many nights it will be as few as possible as far as we're concerned. I'm sure you all are too. And our intent also is to work very few Saturdays. They may have to happen depending on schedule and timing we'll need the occurrence with the state and the town to let us do it, but our intent is not to work weekends either. Will you be using the Stanley Hall parking lot for anything? We're not sure. Okay, second question. On the stormwater drainage, will there be more water going into the swales behind the state office complex or will it be going into those swales faster as a result of the improvements you're making? I think that's a great question for Mr. Goyette. He would be the design engineer. So overall, the project itself is not really increasing the amount of impervious area. It's basically rebuilding the impervious area that's out there now. And what I mean by impervious area is the area that doesn't allow rainwater to infiltrate into it. So if you can imagine pavement, concrete sidewalks, curbing, all those hard surfaces that stormwater hits, rain hits and runs off into storm drainage, we are not anticipating any increased flows into those drainage pipes. So what we have done though is we've improved the sizes of those pipes so they can handle more water. So when it does rain, it handles more water than it does today. So that's how the drainage was designed. We also have a permit to treat some of the stormwater runoff that comes out of those pipes and some of that treatment will be in the form of regraded drainage swales on the state complex property or near the state complex property. And there will also be a large underground vault under Main Street that will accept a lot of that stormwater runoff and treat it and then discharge it out into Thatcher Brook. That's right, so some of the stormwater that currently discharges out behind Randall Street is being redirected to a new swale that was constructed along the state complex property. So if you can imagine that wet area now that's behind Randall Street, that's still gonna see some runoff but not as much as it did before. Everate coffee from Winnowsky Street. Couple things, I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, any of the butters should have received a certified letter from a company out of Albany, New York who is working for J.A. McDonald at no cost to the property owner to come in and video your foundations and around the interior and outside of your building so that if when they're using the vibrating roller or whatever instrument they're using to compact the soil, whether they do any damage to your foundation, there'll be a video of it the way it was before they started and a video that you can use for compensation. I'm not saying it would happen but that would be the principle of it. And so any of you who got a certified letter and haven't sent the answer back to Angela Fields, who was the administrator for that operation, I'd highly recommend you do it because it's costing you nothing to get a video of your foundation, object, do any harm to your structure and your foundation. Another thing which Ken mentioned, cooperation. In my meeting with a couple people from AOT, I think Bill would, if Bob, and this is no big deal except cooperation-wise it helps. If the driveway at 110 South Main Street is open, I have agreed to allow traffic to go through there and they can serve 108, 106, 104, and 102 without McDonald having to close off or open those driveways up for the individuals to use at night. And it's a matter of moving a set of steps and moving a little brush. So there is cooperation there, so we're gonna have, if it works well in that section, so they don't have to, about driveway closed off that night, it will be, and we'll probably have some cones and some signs out there. So that said, am I correct in that thing about the patients are getting videoed? I have a question on hours of operation, especially during the summer months when we have some big events going on between Waterbury and Stowe, will you be shutting down maybe Thursday and not doing any sort of construction on a Friday or Saturday, if at all possible? Like what they did on Route 100, like the Stowe La Crosse Tournament, they didn't have construction on the Friday before, so I was just curious if we could speak to that when we have big events, thank you. I don't have the special provisions in front of me right now in the contract documents, but we worked with the town of Waterbury to identify those special events to certainly to avoid active construction during those times, and I don't know what they all are, but they're in the contract and J.A. McDonald's well aware of them. A question on traffic control, if you're starting off in sections three and four, Winooski Street, which is already difficult at the top of the street with the Comer, with the bakery and the library and people parking, I know parking will change, but that's gonna be a byway out to Duxbury and to go around the traffic as it's going down in three and four. Are there gonna be, is there gonna be any remediation, are there gonna be any traffic signs, any bumps, any limit signs that throw up that tell people how fast they're going? So under state statute, federal guidelines, we cannot do what we call a designated detour on somebody else's highway. We can't do it on the town's highway, and of course, Duxbury's highway, so we do not have a designated detour along the backside of the river. However, that's not to say that we don't expect that. I've actually worked with the town of Duxbury in the last few months. What we do is we, when we are going to, when towns can expect additional traffic on a corridor there as a result of one hour by hour projects, we develop what we call a state, a town highway grant. And we have developed a town highway grant with the town of Duxbury to compensate them for gravel, we gave some money for that culvert to stabilize the inlet and the outlet. We have dust control and we have law enforcement. So Duxbury has signed the grant, received it, and I think they'll get their first payment on April 1st. So we've worked with the town of Duxbury. We're not telling people, we're not in a position to tell people where to go. But with every project like this, vehicles are gonna seek these alternate detours on their own. And that's the way we have to do it. There's a sign, the sign out here, I've spoken with, you from Duxbury? No, no, no for what it is he's doing it. Okay, so they're aware of that. We may have to provide some additional signing here, but the town of Duxbury wants to make sure that there's adequate signing to make sure that there isn't heavy commercial traffic down across the bridge, the trust bridge and onto the backside of the river. So I mean, I'm just concerned for, I mean, my kids were all grown up now so they're not gonna be stepping off into the streets, but Winooski Street's a runway, flatten it straight. And if people are frustrated because they're sitting in traffic and they're finally on Winooski Street, we know that they're gonna hit the gas somewhere around 10 Winooski Street, Duxbury. So that's my general concern on Winooski Street along with being able to get in and out with the flaggers or whomever again when there's gonna be backups. So we can certainly look at trying to make that, you know, well signed so that we don't have excessive speeding. We can try to find a way to provide law enforcement. Although this is not in Duxbury to prevent excessive speeding along there. If you set the precedent up front, people know don't do it. So I'm the five foot ditch in there. I don't know if we can do that. So again, thank you for that comment. Beat you to the punch. Back on storm drainage, I've one that goes through my yard that there's a easement on, which is great. But I understand it'll be dug up and replaced. My question is about what of like, you know, our fencing and or yards, what sort of position it's left in after the replacement? Certainly, I have the answer to that, but I'm gonna let Eric's contract or something to let him respond to that. V-trans will have us put it back to the, how's that for an answer? Like I assumed to like, you know, fence will be put back. But like if it's going through, you know, the vegetable garden with perennial things, does that, like that would be extra. I wouldn't necessarily expect that, but like, typically it would be restored with topsoil and whatever was there. Thanks. I assume your traffic control is subcontracted for the most part. They work for you, but it's a different outfit that does that. It will be a composite. We will have some of our own employees doing traffic control as well as subcontracting some. Okay, I just wanna make a comment about the work at the roundabout last year. You did a great job there, but the interaction of the public with your company is usually through, essentially through traffic control. And my, I personally experienced and my daughter in another car with her daughter in the car, experienced profane language from the traffic control guy because we didn't understand his hand signals, which are kind of confusing anyway when you got a lot of activity going on. And I just think that what I took away from that is, that's McDonald's problem. And I think you need to probably have a little session with your traffic control people make sure they understand, especially this contract, which is gonna be a lot more complicated than a roundabout was term of traffic control. People don't have to be abused by the traffic control people. The other thing I would say, suggest is that this is going to be difficult for elderly people who wanna come into the community's shop and maybe go to a doctor's appointment or something. They are going to already have difficulty maneuvering through a very difficult traffic situation. I wonder if there's any, been any thought given to kind of some kind of ride sharing that could happen where people could be picked up at their homes by volunteers and taken to a doctor's appointment or taken to shop without them having to come into the village and interact with all of this construction. I think I would defer that question to Barb. Well, actually, before you start, agreed on the flaggers. That was the first part of your comment. With respect to the flag. I have a question. There are approximately, I think, six businesses at least between Bidwell and Foundry as well as a number of apartments, both renters who are residing there. And I'm wondering what we know at this time as far as what impact might be in terms of those roads either being closed and inaccessible as well as either electric disruption, power disruption or water disruption if we know that yet. Bidwell and, oh, okay. Back here. So that work will, there will always be traffic flow on Bidwell. Underground conduit work will be such that the contractor has to maintain pedestrian flow. And that's one thing I should probably point out on even on Main Street. When we are working on one side of the street, there won't be pedestrian access outside. It will be on the opposite. So this will be the same on Bidwell. As far as access to businesses, there will be brief times where your primary access that you're used to working in front of. But we will provide alternate access where we can. So there will be access. It just may not be your primary access. I did want to address ride sharing. We haven't really addressed ride sharing. I think it's important to note that when you're working in certain segments, certain phases within those segments that everybody should keep in mind that it's not a, you're not gonna be in front of that place in front of that business or that house for six months of the year. There's gonna be a transition from one place to the next. So I think as far as ride sharing goes or encouraging people to get rides to certain places, I think it's one of those things we're gonna have to work at. And if there's a gap out there, we'll need to try to fill it. But for right now, I did have a conversation with Green Mountain Transit today and they're gonna continue to run busing through the downtown and make sure people can get to where they need to go if busing's an option. We'll work on that. And if there's a gap, please let me know. When you talk about power outages and discontinuances of water services, when you're working in a certain sector, will that just be within that sector or will that go throughout the entire course of the project at one point or another? So with individual homes or businesses, water service, that will be the only stretch over. When I can see blocks or areas of business or homes affected would be in a emergency. Or some kind of event where there was a water. Waterbury has some redundancy in their system so that they can be looped. But for individual homes, it will just be one at a time that's affected. Thank you. Hi, my name's Jamie. At first I wanna say I'm really excited for this and optimistic and this looks beautiful. And thank you for all the hard work you guys have clearly put into this very complicated project. I'm gonna build on Nicole's question a little bit. I am one of those renters on that tiny little street back there and I'm not so concerned about my personal access, it's just an observation. It's an extremely narrow street there. It's like the logistical back end for all of those restaurants back there and it's kind of the large parking area of downtown Waterbury. I've lived there for three years and I've noticed just recently before this construction has started, we have these huge Coca-Cola trucks and stuff parking on the side of the road which typically is not a problem but with the pressure on parking, we now have people parking on the other side of the road and literally blocking the road. So my concern is if we go down to that one lane, yes, most of the time already is a one lane road as it is. And I guess I'm just curious on not the plan but the plan to sort of regulate that issue because it's already an issue and construction hasn't started. Thank you. Maybe just to clarify, really the only work that we're doing on these back streets is underground conduit. We're not rebuilding the road or we're rebuilding the install. We're installing sidewalk. That's really all we're doing on those back. I'm not gonna speak for the town but we have a responsibility to not allow closure like that to happen. So the traffic control is gonna be a dynamic thing and as we approach it, when we see situations like that that may pop up, we're gonna have to work with the town, the contractor to mitigate that. I can't give you specific details on what we're gonna do right now but we're not just gonna blow that off. We can't allow that street to be blocked because too many people are using on it or whatever but that is a town street. So we'll address that issue. Anybody else? I wanted to ask about parking. I wonder if the town has tried to contact the owners of parking lot if it's possible to make some arrangement. Them that make that parking lot more available. Somebody said it was $4 an hour. Imagine that. And then there's the parking lot, private parking lot that's over on the other side of the legion where that place came down and there's a big area there. You'll see a couple of cars there but it's private and has anybody tried to? I think that last lot that you just talked about has just received a permit to be developed so I think there's gonna be a building going there at some point so that's not possible. The utility district is in the process of having 51 South Main Street demolished not being so much demolished as disassembled and that building we hope will be down sometime late April, early May and we will get that lot graded off and get a number of additional parking spaces in there to supplement the spaces that are already there so we will encourage people who are trying to make that available for replacement parking for the on-street parking that will be lost. We've had some communication with the TD Bank property. They own the property, they have the right to make money from the property if they want. There was discussion amongst the select board and the former village trustees. There was a small attempt to reach out to them but that's what's there now. I'm not sure we're gonna be able to change that. But anyway, we would encourage people to look for relief in the 51 South Main Street lot to help through this process as well. Idea that I had at last week's business roundtable was to have a live camera feed along the project so I can or other business owners can let our customers know that there is a way to see how great the traffic is moving in Waterbury and that they should come down and frequent our town. I know that on the highways, you do have some cameras that you can check in to see what the traffic is like. I wondered if that technology was accessible along this project to act as almost a marketing tool and a public relations tool. We don't have any provisions like that in our contract. It's a good point. We can talk about it and possibly consider it but I can't make any commitment to that tonight. A Waterbury Works website would be a really great way to access that feed if it were ever able to be live. Sounds like a good idea. Anybody else? So just a couple of other points about water and sewer in Waterbury and we have had a couple questions about disruptions and Eric talked about if there's a break and it's possible in construction things break and things break that you don't even know are there and all of a sudden somebody's out of water. The downside to this phasing that we've agreed to is that we're gonna have to live through at least one more winter season with the existing water and sewer in sections two and one. Some of the sewer will be done in section two this summer but the bank hill area and many places along the way Main Street where we have the most problem with our aging infrastructure now. So the first reaction that myself and my staff had when we heard about the proposal just to do sections four and three was wow we gotta wait another year to get a new water and sewer main system. I think it will be worth the wait but having said that just understand that if there's a break you know what the disruptions are and we're gonna have to deal with them locally. The other thing Ken and Eric brought up was a lesser amount of sewer to do in section three there and the fact that there's a sewer main that goes out behind those properties and down right behind the village market and then out Foundry Street. Just so people understand the village did replace that sewer line a number of years ago with the ARRA funding that came after the financial collapse in 2008 and 2009. So that's a new pipe now. So I don't want anybody to think that we're leaving sewer pipe in the ground that's ancient. It's already been taken care of. So I want to thank everybody for coming. I want to thank everybody that's been a part of this project and bringing it to this point. I want to emphasize the fact we've made provisions for an extensive public outreach with the town of Waterbury the key to this I think the key to minimizing all these impacts to all the butters is communication. And so we're hoping to initiate that maintain it and accentuate it and we'll do that. Jay McDonald's not a first timer at this. They're very experienced contractor. You guys deal with this stuff all the time. Jay McDonald's going to be able to do everything they can to make this work. And I'm very confident that we'll be able although we can expect to experience certain disruptions or unexpected disruptions. I'm confident in the VTrans construction team and Jay McDonald that we can make this work with the most minimal impact. So I'm confident. I'm optimistic. I'm relieved to get to this point I think. And so I want to thank everybody. Eric you want to add anything? I guess I was wrong. I can't be heard. There are two trees one at the corner of the house that's abandoned down here in the front yard and then another one were there next to the dentist's office that are marked with X's. When will those be tended to? I think the plan in hopes of them being cut down can you give me a time schedule on that? Next week. Did you hear my answer? No. Next week. Yeah. Just one more thing to state that sidewalk superintendents people who want to watch what's going on construction wise, et cetera can be an annoying thing to a contractor and I know they're revitalizing Waterbury is going to try to help to mitigate that situation and help to that regard but the whole community is going to have to realize that some of these excavations that you're talking about are greater than five feet or six feet. I think the deepest section might be close to 18 but it's deep. It's deep to put the sewers in, take the sewers out, put the sewers in anyway. So to get that deep you need to be pretty wide contractor so I think the word needs to go out to everybody in the community that it'll be vigilant when they're walking through the area and standing around watching to see what's going on. Gonna be interested and it's interesting watching it but it can also be a safety issue for you. That's agreed. Thank you everybody for coming.