 Okay, so we're now recording. I want to welcome everybody to our Amherst community chat for Thursday, March 25. Today we have DPW superintendent, Guilford mooring, as well as the town engineer Jason skills joining us to talk about the pomeroy village intersection improvement project. So thank you both for being back here today to talk about this. Before I have you all introduce yourselves and get to the q&a. I just want to give your town manager Paul balkaman a chance to give any town updates. So, yeah, there's a lot happening. I think I say that every week. So the news on the vaccine front is that we are we've done 1100 vaccines by the end of this week we'll done for this week. And I think that that's a really good number. We are we're doing a homebound program where we've done about 30 at the end of by the end of this week people who are homebound giving that getting them the vaccine for our mobile unit going out. We've also reserved 25% of our vaccine load that were allocated which is permission permissible by the state for teachers and childcare workers and things like that and those are special special sessions for those educators for anybody in Hampshire County and so we're coordinating that with the city of Northampton. So that we had our first one for that last night and that was very sold out basically not exactly the term you're supposed to use but you know, is what it was. It's a really busy time of year on Monday night the town council voted to approve the moving forward on a plan for the North Common, and so we'll be moving forward on that on the planning for that construction probably won't happen anymore but it takes time to get the final designs and bids and construction and all that kind of stuff but that's really exciting, because it sort of speaks to a lot of the other work that's happening in town and you know the things I'm going to talk about are very DPW focus and that's why I really appreciate Jason and Gilford spending a few minutes with us today because it's their super busy time a year. The playground on Kendrick Park is back, you know, the construction crews are back, putting that together. The, we've got a grant to complete the multi use path from on Mill Lane that will, will connect graph park to the numerous apartment complexes we on East Hadley Road and the DPW put in a multi use path, all along East Hadley Road which is really, if you haven't been down it's really nice. The dog park is moving forward. Another big construction project under the DPW eyes. So there's just a lot of, a lot of things happening, you know, Hickory Ridge will be coming down the road worse. So I was kind of excited when we started listing all these things like we're really making a lot of progress and things happening on the ground that are improvements. And there's more work at Mill, Mill River and other places so just appreciate it. So, and not to mention the paving and all the contracts and bidding that DPW has to do so. That's just a short long way of saying thanks to Gilford and Jason for taking the time to be here today. Great, thank you Paul for that update so I love for Gilford and Jason maybe just give a quick introduction of themselves and then I want to remind the folks in the room live to feel free to use the Q&A function it looks like we're already getting questions coming in so continue to use that or raise your hand and we'll acknowledge you live. So Jason you want to introduce yourself first. Jason Skeels, Town Engineer for Amherst Public Works. I've worked for the town for a little over 20 years if you count my intern years, I think it's 18 full time and three or four intern summers and semesters while I was in school. That definitely counts. We'll put you over 20. And I'm sure most people know Gilford but Gilford. Hi, I'm Gilford mooring. I've been here about the full lesson Jason I started full time here in 2002. So, being ready to go to 20, almost 20 years. Great. So, you look at his eyes when he said that. It happens to all of us. So we have some questions that are coming into the room live and some that were prepared. I'm going to start with the live question in the room from Sarah has the town finally acquired Hickory Ridge. We still operating under the purchase and sale agreement. And so there are numerous things to work out, mainly related to the solar project that the owner has to wants to secure the permissions and the all all the things that have to go into making sure that that can be up and running before they are willing to transfer the property. We're still looking forward to doing that but it. The, with solar projects as you know with our solar project on landfill can take a long time to get through the permitting process and get the kind of level of support it needs from at the state level. So, not yet, but we're still optimistic. And I do see that coming up that question or that comment associated with Pomeroy Village project a couple of times on our engage page so I think that's, you know, people are thinking about those things geographically and probably tying tying the two together. So, one question that I think that we have here is how did this project come about a lot of people say that it just kind of popped up when we got that grant but can you talk about kind of the history of this project. What led up to where we are now. So this project started before Jason and I even work for the town, even Jason's intern years. The state started looking at this intersection back in the mid 90s and actually designed a complete intersection that included turn lanes and signals and was basically basically a typical intersection. This was the town around 2002 and three. The town kind of didn't appreciate the attack it was very, even though it had crosswalks is very pedestrian unfriendly and very not Senator for bicycle or any type of movement just just as your basically it was your 25 year ago designed by Mass Highway to move traffic through the intersection. That was all it was. No, we don't really like that. We went from having stop signs on Pomeroy in 2002 and three to installing the traffic lights that are there now. That was an interim step and over the last. That's 20 years right 1820 years. And working a little bit on this project and then setting it aside when something else comes up working a little bit more on this project. We've applied for three mass works grants are two mass works grants here. And this is the first one we've received. So this has been going on for quite a while. So it's been a project you've wanted to do is just that it takes so much funding to do a major intersection project like this you have to hope that you get state funding to make it happen. So all of our road paving money for the for the year to do this one project. So when we're thinking about those, the improvements that you have planned does the does the grant that was allocated one and a half million does that seem to be sufficient or will there be other funds used, or how will that work in terms of funding. The one and a half should cover most of the intersection work. The one and a half percent of the intersection work, whether we pave beyond that or do some people are asking for sidewalks down West, West Pomeroy and Pomeroy. Those would be things we'd have to do with additional funds from somewhere else so this money will just concentrate on the intersection. And will this project fall in line, you know, is this a complete streets project or how does that this fall in line with the work towards complete streets that the town's been doing. The truth, the one thing, the one part of complete streets that may not fit in this project or trees. We have put everything else in right Jason. There's bike paths and sidewalks and everything else, everything else for a complete street but you're right there's not a whole lot of room for trees since we're already crammed within the right of way and probably need takings to boot. I'll take this quick opportunity to for folks who are watching who haven't interacted on the project page for this improvement project on engage amherst.org. There's a project page for the Pomeroy project and there you can post your ideas and some we've got a lot of comments coming in so far and we did some word clouding and the things that kept popping up were, you know, sidewalks and walking and landscaping. I think even fruit trees came up a bunch so I know that that I have seen that for people's vision of this. That's this project so that's interesting. So, so on the design, we do that all in house right I mean we have a under Jason we have an engineering department that that does all the design work so it's that we don't have to contract out with someone or do we do contract out some of it. We'll contract out the surveying and we'll contract out the data collection and the data analysis and then probably for this project most of the actual design work will come in house. And you guys know how to do that right Jason. The modeling stuff that we don't have the software for so it's nice to have someone else model it so that sort of a third party takes a look at it make sure everything flows correctly. And when you say there's not enough room for trees I don't really understand what that means is that. Well, if we're just focusing on the intersection and that's really all we can afford to focus on with the money we have. If we were going further out, we could put in grass strips and trees and you know make room with the sidewalks and bike paths and and put, but not with what what you don't have to focus in on for the for just the intersection. That's going to be, you know, I mean, you could put a single tree in the middle of if we do a roundabout you could put a tree in that but there's not a lot of room on the edges. Since you've got, you know, all the establishments directly abutting this property are very impervious they don't have a whole lot of green space. So there's not a whole lot of opportunity to fill in any of that green space. But a property owner could put trees on the edge of their property if they wanted to you're just talking about what we haven't that we own. Right. Right away is is difficult to squeeze. And one thing people have been asking is, are, will they expect to see construction work as early as this summer or when do you anticipate getting at to that to that phase of this project. Construction will be next summer. Do the design work this year and do all the make all the decisions on what which way we want to go with the designs and then get it all designed up and hopefully out to bid next spring. Can you talk a little bit about what the kind of options you're weighing the major options for the intersection. So we've got one that's just a simple multi lane, signalized intersection with two dedicated left hand turn lanes on West Street, slap 116. The pomeroy approaches remain pretty much the same no, no additional turn lanes. We're adding bike lanes and sidewalks just within the immediate intersection that we can hopefully expand on later. And that's just the simple streamlined intersection that would have a much smarter signal system in it would they would, you know, reduce lag time and stuff like that, and would would recognize traffic coming in all the different directions, and hopefully accommodate it but with any traffic light you're always going to see backups at prime times. And then the other, the other option is the roundabout option. You know, you see them all over town like triangle and, and East pleasant. And we like how they work we, I don't know that they're both good options. And is there a preference, you know from your standpoint with your background and your expertise is there a preference amongst your team. I always like roundabouts, they reduce accidents, and the severity of the accidents that happen out around about our 10th of the severity that can happen at a, at a red light if someone runs a red light there's going to be a serious accent. When somebody, you know, when they, when people kind of go have a little diagonal crash and around about its low speed, it's, you know, minimal damage, minimal injuries, even even had bicycle accidents at the triangle and East pleasant street roundabout and the cyclists were able to ride away, like, so that it was an accident, yes, but nobody gets injured. So that's the nice thing that that intersection used to have a high injury rate and we looked at the studies with the left within the last four years that it's been an operation and there have been accidents yes but there have been zero injuries. So it's the safest option. Right. Yeah. You're muted, Gilbert. If you think about the roundabout your speeds reduced all four approaches. You have a traffic signal, two sides the speeds of two sides the speeds reduced the other two sides, they're going through the intersection. And they're going through at the speed limit. And then when yellow they turn yellow they're going through a little faster. The roundabout actually makes everyone going through the intersection slow down and that's one of the biggest pluses to it. One of the things that when I first started here, Guilford told me about how because I was, you know, we have a roundabout where I used to live, but much larger one. But like you said something about how fast you tried to go through a roundabout how fast can you drive around a roundabout is like the maximum speed without I mean without your car tipping over is like 20 miles an hour something ridiculously low because because of the bend you have to slow down. Have you been testing that Paul the upper limits. No, I think Guilford said he was good. He was testing it. I just really start to squeal at 30. I actually drove through drove Paul around the one on the north side of campus and we got up to 25 and at that point he was getting a little. I was out the door and he was starting to feel like he was uncomfortable so that usually around 25 most people feel that they're going too fast through that circle. So I think that's a good thing. Another question that just came in. Are there any bike share locations in that area. If not, could there be well good thing you brought that up because there's going to be one right there next this year. As we speak, and where will it be located specifically or is that still up for debate. So there's a small sort of abandoned building it used to be a dancer computers it used to be a bank drive through bank teller. I want to say it's 650 West Street. There's a guy currently working on that building trying to turn it into a coffee shop. So we're hoping to put the bike share right there which is just adjacent to a bus pull off so hopefully you could. There you can hop on a bicycle and you know make your complete your multimodal trip to wherever you were wanted to get going. Oh that's excellent news and it's it's good to hear about a coffee shop because again going back to the submittals we've received so far. We've had 10 mentions of coffee shop and some were way shape or form so people are asking about that too I think they'll be happy to hear that. I'm curious about that too because I did come up through the rumor mill a little bit. I'm not sure if anybody's really talked to planning or anything about it but that's exciting news yeah and slowly going through the planning and inspections process he's he's not in a rush. Yeah. Is it somebody we know. No, not really. I think people have been in that part of town have been asking for that that with or without considerations to the intersection improvements people have been asking for coffee for a while so that fits in nicely. The desert down there. Yes, so maybe. I mean I think that's another question you know part of the reason for the grant was to you know activate this village center could any of you talk about what the project, how the project might impact live in that space activating that village center, it's either design option it you know promotes walking right now without, without signalized crosswalks or without the traffic calming and crosswalks it's, it's, you have to, you have to take your time to cross the street and find your gap. So it's, it's good that there'll be more walkable walkable options and people will be more likely to do it since it's not, you know, since it will no longer be a dangerous trip on foot or on or by bicycle. And there is a couple opportunities coming up this week actually tonight and I believe Saturday in fact to talk about this project so what what are those events look like, what can people expect to learn from those. So, tonight is, is a, we, there are sort of public just engagement sessions so we're trying to hear from the public, what, what, what they go to this, what they go to the village for we call it Pomeroy village and people say does it doesn't look like a village to me but we want this to build into that kind of concept where it is a destination and a service area for people who live in that area of South Amherst. So we want to hear how people use it, how they would like to be able to use it, and I think there's multiple ways to engage. This is one of them. Another way is the TSO committee of the town council is having open meetings where you'll have a little bit of a presentation and then mostly the time for the council and the staff to listen to your concerns and that's one is happening tonight at 6pm. There's another one happening on Saturday, the 27th at 6pm. I mean at 2pm from two to four. And so those will be times where staff will make a brief presentation and then sort of help to engage people in terms of what do you go there? How do you go through the intersection? Are you on foot? Are you using the bus? Are you driving? Is your interest to get through there as fast as possible? Is it there? Is it a destination for you? What are the things you like about it? What should we enhance? What should we try to eliminate? I think we sort of have a sense of that but we want to hear from the public as well. So those are the things that we want to hear and then from that we take that information, work on it, and then ultimately we'll present a recommendation back to the town council for its decision. The town council will make the final decision on the, not the details of it, but the big concept of what the intersections should look like. And again, I think Guilford mentioned this. $1.5 million seems like a lot of money but it really is, it keeps it right. It's just enough to do the core of the intersection, all the other stuff. You know, as much as we'd like to do it, probably isn't going to get done with this money that's available. And just quickly, those meetings that Paul mentioned tonight at 6pm, Saturday at 2pm, those are on our public meetings calendar. The links are there on our homepage. You can also find them from the engagement platform, engageammers.org slash Pomeroy where you can add some ideas and suggestions and get access to those meetings and any other present, previous presentation so it's a good place to start if you want to dig into this project. So we have another question in the room. Apologies if this was asked earlier, but are there plans to incorporate walkable access to Hickory Ridge as part of this project as the course hopefully becomes conservation lands with trails. We did briefly mention Hickory Ridge, but can anybody respond to that? There currently is no plan to have a sidewalk down West Pomeroy with this project. So if you're asking for a sidewalk down West Pomeroy, no, that's would come later. There are plans as Hickory Ridge is being developed to tie existing conservation trails through Hickory Ridge and bring them out to Orchard Valley and take them to other places using the trail system in and around Hickory Ridge, but on the side of the road sidewalks are not anticipated for West Pomeroy at this time. And there's some reasons for that. There's some challenges to that because of conservation area or what are the challenges for that? Wetlands, mostly there's a lot of wetlands we have to cross and fill to get a sidewalk all the way across. And so that that's a that becomes a permitting challenge. Not that we wouldn't want to do it. We don't have the money to do it, but then we also recognize that disturbing wetlands becomes an issue as well. All right, great. Thank you for that. That's a great question. I want to remind the folks who are live attendees in the room where I've got about seven minutes less left. So feel free to ask your question and Q&A or raise your hand and we'll hear from you live. We've got a question here from Julian. Is the rotary or the improved intersection plan less expensive? Are there cost differences between the two options? Jason, what was the number that Mass Highway uses for their intersections? I'm not sure, actually. I don't see that there would be much of a difference in the cost of either one. It's all boils down to how much asphalt you're putting down as the big ticket item. Although the signals do get expensive. So the roundabout just incorporates more granite and asphalt, whereas the signals incorporates more technology and so it kind of ends up being a watch between a roundabout and a signalized intersection. So there's no cost incentive to go with one or the other. Not especially. I was in a meeting earlier and I think I thought Jason was there too, but they were basically saying that when Mass DOT does an intersection improvement project, they start with a million and a half dollars as the base estimate without even deciding what they're going to do. So one question we've been getting a lot and it doesn't necessarily pertain to this project. People are asking when is outdoor dining returning to downtown and I know DPW was pretty critical in getting that set up in the past. So any information or updates on that front? We started repainting the lines this week. We're moving the Jersey Barriers starting, so we'll probably move some of the Jersey Barriers, the ones that are there currently will probably leave on Friday. And then Monday and Tuesday will be grinding some of the lines that are some of the blacked out lines out and bringing in Jersey Barriers Tuesday and Wednesday, and then the restaurants will feel free can be free to bring their tables out and have their little setups. And that's mostly in the town center. Correct. So by April 1 is the goal to let restaurants be able to be open and I think we saw that, you know, this weekend when the common and all the outdoor areas downtown were jammed with folks. All the tables were full. Yeah, I was down there on Saturday. Can you, I mean, this is, can you talk about the new playground that Kendrick Park to because it's I was excited to see the workers back and working so quickly. Yeah, they're, they're aiming for a June 1 opening date. We may have to delay that to let the grass get us become established though. The contractor is going to be done by June 1. So what what we have to do then is just sort of let the, let the grass seed become established. There might be options for opening parts of the playground while keeping some of the grassed areas cordoned off. So we'll have to, we'll have to think about it going forward but yeah they're moving pretty fast and expect to be complete by June 1. And what was exciting about that is that one of the things when we early on started talking about downtown and recreation said parents would say I have no nothing to do with my kids when I bring them downtown I want to get a piece of pizza and take them someone there's no place to take them and so this is in response to that and it and the fact that we got a major grant to support this as opposed to town funds and and all the design was done internally again. So I think that's a real that's an exciting positive thing for us. Alright, I'm going to give one last call to the folks who are in the room. Now's your last chance to ask a question of Jason or Guilford or Paul or I put it into the Q&A or raise your hand. Otherwise I'm going to give Guilford and Jason a chance to give us some information that we didn't ask specifically about or you didn't get a question on is there anything you want people to know right now about your work this project or otherwise. So there's a lot going on when everyone's been sitting at home for the pandemic, being at home with their children are working from home. We've all been here working. We, we've been doing it quite a lot quite. We've been doing it all along. We have a couple issues that are coming up. Basically that have been because of people being at home. We have had a lot some sewer issues, more people being at home fleshing more stuff down the toilet is cause some sewer backups so if you are at home, try not to put things you shouldn't put down the toilet in the toilet. If your child put something in the toilet they shouldn't please take it out. Don't flush it. That includes flushable wipes right. They're flushable but they don't break down like toilet paper does in the system, and they tend to bind up the pumps and cause overflows. So that's probably one of the biggest things we've been having issues with is is more flow in the sewer systems even though there's less businesses open and less students around. Water is good. We should have plenty of water going into the new, new, new summer. And then we have our regular projects will be starting up. There'll be some paving that goes on around the south end of Amherst and mostly we're finishing up with work that we started which is in the center of Amherst and some in the north end of Amherst right now. And I can attest it despite Guilford's background it looks like he's in ski country. He and everybody at DPW DPW staff seven days a week they run the water, they provide water they take care of the wastewater and said seven day week operation and so all through the pandemic. DPW workers have been showing up without missing a beat so we appreciate all the work that they've done for this for us for the town. I've got a couple of quick comments here from the Q&A, not a question but thank you for introducing and curating the engage platform it seems great so far. Well done. Well thank you for visiting and enjoying it. And then another question here pothole repairs soon. Question mark. Repairs are a constant thing. We've been doing it all spring. The weather is actually ahead of the asphalt plants. So we've just been using our small machine for patching right now, and we expect the asphalt plants to probably open up the first of April. And then once the asphalt plants open up we'll be able to put more people out to patch potholes. If you have a specific location please let us know you can enter a service request from our homepage or email us however you want to get us the information if you're seeing a particular pothole that you want us to send in to DPW. So you need the asphalt plants open and operating before you can do really fix the potholes right you do cold patch or some other temporary fix during the winter. We're using cold patch and we also have a machine which reheats asphalt but machine can only do a cubic yard at a time. So you're really limited if you can go to an asphalt plant you can get you know seven eight tons of asphalt at a time and do some patching and then move on that's that's the ideal way of doing it. See. Great well we Jason did I skip you that is anything else that you wanted to say. Okay. We are at our time we will put this recording up on our channel I want to thank feel for it and Jason for taking time on other busy days to join us. And all of the information we talked about meetings and engagement opportunities are on our website, but if you have questions you can email us at info at Amherst MA doc of and we will get you some more details. So thank you everybody. Thanks for Anna. Have a nice day.