 We'll call the meeting to order at 6.32 p.m. First item is the agenda. Motion to approve the agenda. Second. Second. Any discussion? Nope. All in favor of approving the agenda. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. OK. Commissioner Sears, you're online. Aye. OK. Yeah. All right. Thanks. All right. Motion approved. She's connected. OK. And then we have public forum, three minutes per person. Anyone here interested in speaking? OK. Can you come up to the table? Sign your name in, please. If you could state your name. Yep. My name is Jack Tiano, Ward 5 resident. I don't really have any, like, super prepared remarks for tonight. I wanted to briefly speak out in support of, like, a sub-number of one of the things on your agenda package. I think the CCRPC funding approval item or whatever, just about the Main Street connection is one of those items, the scoping study report for that. I think just from a broad context, putting together and building a network of bike infrastructure in the city I think is extremely important to making it functional when we only build things piecemeal. It doesn't really make a big impact if you have a bike lane that goes from one non-destination to another non-destination. And so I think that connection on Main Street from what will be the new pedestrian overpass over the highway and connecting that into our downtown will be a huge, huge piece of infrastructure, conceptually, maybe it would be a big task to design and build too, but it's that network effect that you get when you build things that connect to other things. And so kind of going off of that too, I just wanted to say publicly, this isn't really related to anything today, but just how to kind of push on the commission and the public works department to kind of continue looking at how we can build out that network in other parts of the city. I know we have a Burlington Walk bike plan that is kind of lagging behind where we wanted it to be. So looking at kind of this scoping study that we're looking that hopefully will be approved tonight and how that connects Burlington to South Burlington, we've got right now what's supposed to be protected by clans in North Union Street or just all Union Street and whatever, from Main Street North going into North Manuskiab that connects to the Riverside Path, we've got the Main Street project going on that lost some of its protected bike infrastructure going down to the Waterfront that connects to the Riverside Path or another Riverside, the Waterfront Path here. So when we think about just these networks, if we could have a protected bike path along the Waterfront that we have and that connected up through Main Street by Church Street and that connected up Union to the North Manuski Avenue in the Old North End and that goes to the Riverside Path down to Anuski, like that becomes like an economic and transportation backbone for cycling infrastructure. So again, just to kind of frame where we should be hopefully going as a city overall and how this kind of one small item on your agenda tonight kind of moves us in that direction to just kind of urge everyone to keep these things in mind as we fund certain projects moving forward and then just kind of small brief note. There've been, it's hard to tell if it's an uptick but there have been a couple of recent incidents in terms of like pedestrians and cyclists being struck on our roads and roads that are right next to us like on Shelburne, technically on the South Burlington side but it's all kind of the same infrastructure someone was killed recently. So how do we just to kind of again urge the commission and the department to really take safety into consideration in a more kind of urgent way. Cars are getting bigger, cars are getting faster, drivers are getting more distracted, cars are getting heavier. It just, it creates a recipe for danger for all non-car users of the road and car users of the road alike. So just again, thinking about how do we take that more seriously moving forward before we start seeing more frequent tragedies in Burlington, so. Thank you. Public comment, things going on, things I wanted to say. Thanks. There will also be an opportunity to speak when we bring up those items. Okay. If you're interested. I probably won't be able to say for the whole meeting. Okay. I just wanted to come in here. Thank you. Anyone else here to speak at public point? Welcome, if you could sign in and then just state your name. Sure. My name's Colin Larson. I live in Ward 7. I guess like Jack, I've been somewhat alarmed of course by a lot of the recent incidents involving pedestrians, drivers hitting pedestrians and cyclists. One happened on North Ave at 8 a.m. That was a juvenile in a crosswalk, broad daylight. There was a bike crash where a driver hit a bike, a cyclist on Pine Street, I think. And then today an SUV driver hit a utility pole on Plattsburg. So, you know, this kind of rash of things has made me really concerned, worried, upset. I took a look at our 2017 walk bike plan again, which I had done before, but I pulled out this line from the mayor's letter at the beginning. As with plan BTV, this plan isn't meant to collect dust on a shelf. I'm not assigning blame here, but I think sadly that's kind of what's happened with our plan as it has collected dust. On the new North End, within 12 months in the plan, we were supposed to get a Letty Park bikeway connector. Hasn't happened. Within two to five years, we were supposed to receive, among other things, a shared use path on Plattsburg to Flynn Elementary, traffic calming on Goss Court, striped bike lanes north of Plattsburg, section which actually doesn't have any striping at all. None of these have happened. And then on the long-term project bank, I don't think any of the projects are even in progress. The most significant, which is a North Ave, complete streets upgrade, which already has a scoping study, I don't think has gone anywhere. We were also, I believe, planning to have a Vision Zero program in Burlington. It seems like that might've been abandoned. You know, I got really tired during the last election of hearing conventional discussions around public safety. When for me, the most dangerous part of Burlington is getting hit by a car. That's the thing I'm most worried about every day. And it was really hard because I felt like I couldn't get a lot of candidates to talk about that. This is the Public Works Commission, so I kind of hope that maybe you all, I mean, I'm gonna be pressuring my counselors. I hope that you all can also maybe take up this mantle to advocate for some of these things. I have a few ideas that might be helpful. I know the city's on a budget crunch. So, you know, I think it would be nice for DPW's community-led demonstration project to be simplified. Currently, it takes four to six months to receive planning approval for projects, and they can only last a maximum of one week. So if we do wanna get some of these cheaper traffic calming measures set up on residential streets by groups of volunteers, it needs to be a lot simpler than that. And it would also be helpful to have even small pots of money for some of these low-cost solutions like planters. You know, we can't rely on all these federal grants. I know managing the Main Street project is really complicated, and we just don't have the capacity as a city to do that all the time. And then I would like, perhaps if this commission would draft a resolution, recommending the city council to take up a formal Vision Zero policy that, you know, will hopefully go somewhere. So thank you. Thank you very much. Anyone else for public comment here? Mr. Goulding, anyone online for public comment? Yes, Chair Neal, Sharon Buescher, you're welcome. Thank you. Hi, good evening. I wanted to speak to you about the resident parking communication that you have at the end of your packet. And I know you're anticipating or contemplating increasing the fee. And I know that the program, you know, has an enforcement component that is labor-intensive. So I understand that. I'm concerned about it, but I understand that. My real point is that I really wish someone would evaluate how the transition from the permit on the car to the electronic permit has worked. From my perspective as someone that lives on East Avenue, where there isn't regular enforcement of violations, it's really hard. Neighbors and residents used to be able to say there's no sticker and we would call to ask someone to come because they weren't always circulating. I would ask someone to come and check it out. Now, because you can't see a sticker, you're blind to it. And I call and I give the license plate, but it oftentimes necessitates somebody to come out of the downtown where it's much more strictly enforced to come up and not very often to my section of the city where we have the hospital and we have the university people vying for spaces on our street. So I think it is a cost factor that people actually have to come up to remote sections to help enforce, whereas you don't have the residents helping. People thought that we were being punitive. I think we were trying to just save spaces as some of us get older and if friends wanna come to visit and you don't have a lot of off-street parking, you might only have one parking space if that in some of the older sections of the city, that space is for the resident. And so, or if you needed some kind of service, let's say you needed groceries delivered, any number of things, there's no place for people to park. It's not a luxury, it's a necessity. In other sections of the city where you don't have the same competition, you don't have that same vying for spaces on the street. So I'm asking you to look at the electronic implementation and has that saved you money or is that more costly? And I feel that we as a community can't help enforce some of the regulations we put in place if we can't help be the eyes and the ears for the departments that then actually have to take the action. So I understand the need for increased revenue, I'm not naive to that. So those are my comments. The other thing that I've always tried to grapple with even when I was on the council was when we have so many single family homes that are converted into multiple units and when you give so many permits per unit, when you have four permits that can be utilized on a street with one structure, it doesn't take long before there are no spaces to park on the street. And I still question whether or not that should be reduced. I know that's not a popular statement but I still question it and think there's some value in looking at that. So I thank you so much for listening to my comments and I'll look and see how you all grapple with this and what's decided. And I understand this is the beginning of public engagement. So I decided I'd seize the moment and be part of your public that wants to engage. And I hope other people do also so you can hear some well-rounded feedback on this. Thank you. Holding anybody else online? Yeah, next to me is Jason Stubble. Great, thank you. You can hear me. Yep, so I'm Jason Stubble. I live on Colchester Ave and I'm also a member of the Burlington Walk Bike Council. I did send an email earlier about the Main Street Scoping Study which I think is very important. It's just about even planning what we're gonna do. So I think we have to at least take that step let alone implement it but I'm actually here to speak to a different item tonight which is we have a local group called the Old East End Neighbors and we work with a lot of groups but we formed out of AARP and we were able to get grant money to put in a radar speed sign on Grove Street. So I don't know if everyone's aware but it went in about a week ago and it's programmable, able to do multiple messages and things like that but at this point we're just doing, the speed is solid if you're at or below the 25 miles an hour and flashing if you're above that and it has the ability to record speeds that are there. And so this area is pretty problematic because there's a single speed limit sign although apparently another one was installed at the sign today that was probably a thousand feet up the road at the city limits but it's a downhill 12 and a half foot wide road area where people go very fast and so after it was installed I was encouraged to go sit out there around rush hour and just watch the sign and the sign does work as intended in slowing people down I could watch your speed slow down but I was discouraged that out of about a hundred vehicles I saw only one actually got the sign to stay steady with their speed at 25 miles an hour or below but one vehicle was going 48 miles an hour through this section and if you're not familiar with it it leads up to the entrance of Baybury and then two RFBs at Shmanska Park where families and kids are crossing the road there and although there's not been a tragedy to this point there's been a lot of near misses and a lot of people changing their behavior based on the vehicles there so I'm very thankful for the old East End neighbors for getting this installed and working with DPW to help us get that installed but I feel like that shouldn't have been on us to address the situation there that should have been something that was taken on by DPW without our grant money and efforts and other things going on there but now that we've done that I hope that maybe this can be applied to other places in the city with a sign that provides feedback that affects driver behavior and actually records what is actually going on and I'll be very interested to see the actual numbers that come out on how fast the vehicles are going and what time of day but I'm hoping that it has a lasting effect on driving behavior and it doesn't kind of wear off after a little novelty period but also hoping it informs some changes to the road infrastructure there where people go very fast right into our neighborhood so just wanted to make people aware of that and if you haven't been there please go check out the sign and see how it impacts people so thank you very much. Great, thank you, Jason. Next in queue is the intended rule. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, we can, thank you. Hi, my name is Edna Gould, I'm a resident of Ward 5. I also wanted to speak in support of the moving the CCRPC to look at the Main Street scoping study. I'm primarily by bike and there isn't really a good east-west connection so I think with the overpass and the Main Street work that that is gonna be very fundamental to a larger regional bike grid as well I wanted to kind of echo the thoughts in my neighborhood, right? Somebody sounded like got hit riding their bike on Pine Street so kind of also echoing I think our walk bike plan needs to be revisited and I'd like to see some forward momentum with quick build solutions or things like that explored in the near future so that's all, thank you. That's it for the public comment. Great, thank you. Okay, and that's it so we'll go ahead and close public comment. Great, next up is the consent agenda. I move to adopt the consent agenda in full. Second, discussion. Vote to approve the consent agenda. All in favor? Aye. Commissioner Sears, do you vote to approve the, thank you. All right, the consent agenda passes as well, sorry. Next up we have the UPWP, the Chittinette County Regional Planning Commission Unified Planning Work Program. Planning Work Program. It's a mouthful. It is a mouthful. I tried to like not use too many airpins. And we have Phillip Peterson here, if friendly to you, give a brief overview. Attending remotely. Okay, that would be great. Hello, good to see everybody. Sorry, I can't hear you. There's no one under the weather. Jaypen wanted me to do it with the hands and then. I don't think anybody wants to do that. So, yes, the UPWP, so we're seeking approval from the report commission for the proposed projects under the FY25 Unified Planning Work Program. So most of you probably know UPWP is vital for implementing regional strategies outlined in the ECOS plan, which kind of outlines all sorts of different efforts around climate change and energy land use and active transportation. And then, of course, supporting local planning efforts funded primarily by federal dollars. There is no local match this year for any of our projects and projects focused on transportation planning. Most of the projects are the usual ones that we request, the Turning Movement requests, traffic counts, the PCI Pavement Condition Index, the Inventory Request Form, we're on a three-year cycle where the CCRPC has their interns come in and they inspect one-third of our streets. The next year, actually they do half and then the other half and then they take a year off. So no street in the city of Burlington is outside of an inspection by three years. We do have two new projects which include a South End Traffic Analysis and Main Street Scoping Study. As I said, these projects do not require a local cash match. So really the South End is undergoing some rapid transformation. There's a lot of developments on the horizon, a lot of developments that are happening. Phase two, the Champlain Parkway is slated for construction starting this summer. And then the South End Innovation District is kind of set to introduce hundreds, possibly thousands of new housing units concurrently, projects like Shelburne Street, Roundabout, so that's kind of that one. Happy to discuss that even a little bit more. And then the Main Street Scoping Study, I kind of know it was already mentioned in public comment. There's the study is gonna bring together prior plans, current construction projects and hopefully start working on that Main Street Quarter from Winooski Ave to East Ave. And we'll include scoping of East Ave, Spear Street. There's Jug Handle Intersection and it's supported by the city of South Burlington. So that's kind of the gist of it. I think we can kind of get into discussion around this and welcome Chape and Thomas as well. Director Spencer, do you wanna add to that? I wanted to just say that two things. One is thanks, Philip, for that. For folks who don't know, Philip was recently promoted to senior transportation planner for our department. So congratulations, Philip, for that. And secondly, the team is very busy with existing projects. So we appended onto the back of this memo, a full list of all the CCRPC projects already underway, which is quite a long list so that you can understand the kind of full context of the planning initiatives underway in the city. Happy to answer any questions. Who wants to start? Wish or Fox, do you wanna start? Sure. For the members of the public online, I work for Chittin County Regional Planning Commission so I have no comment on this item. I'm going to recuse myself. Commissioner Barr, questions, comments? I don't necessarily have any questions so much as comments that I think this is a much needed action. So I'll be supporting it. Great. Vice Chair Jamiani. I think my only question for this item is around just the general process of how the particular projects are decided upon for this. I think in the memo it says the applications are submitted back in January. So I think maybe just it'd be nice to sort of get this ahead of time of it coming to the commission before it sort of gets submitted to the RPC. But I understand staff constraints and everything. Yeah. I'd like to say there's a word. As Chip had mentioned, I just took a position we're in a little bit of a liminal phase with our shifting chairs. The other thing is we're kind of trying to figure out who's responsible for what when it comes to getting these approvals. This was with our grants director, Nicole Loesch. And so it kind of got pushed into our seat as far as getting the approvals. So totally understand that. I absolutely agree. I'm not a fan of getting things to the commission. You know, this way you guys should definitely get the heads up as far as what we're doing and how we're doing it. So we'll improve that process in the future. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. And I think just, you know, for next year or two, I think just having a better idea of, you know, there's projects that have to happen that, you know, you need the CCRPC support for. And then there's, I think there's projects that could address some of the issues that folks brought up at public meeting tonight. And I think have brought up at previous meetings that we could sort of tie together hopefully into an application. Great. That's a solid comment, Commissioner Damieny. I would say that one of the things I didn't mention that I probably should have was that a number of the underway scoping studies will address a number of the interests that came up tonight, such as the bike walk action plan. So point well taken. We'll come earlier next time. I'm really glad to have Phillip in this position and we'll make sure that happens for next year. Excellent. Thank you. Commissioner Hogan? Yeah, can you clarify what the action is here? This is warned as a vote, but I understand this is sort of a retrospective. Here's what we did. Here's what we applied for. So if the requirement is under the U-P-W-C, that the basically public comment section, this is an opportunity for public comment to be solicited, but also we needed our own body and city to actually approve. And yes, we can implement and go forward to the complete application. They have not allocated their funds yet. They do so in the next month or two so that this basically is the sign off that the city of Burlington's appointed board, in this case, is supportive of what was submitted. Say that like if we get the resources to pursue the things we asked for, this commission's on board with carrying those out. All right, well, I'm definitely supportive on going forward with all three of these projects on top of the seven or eight that are already on the way. Some of those are concerning other neighborhoods in the city, among them the planned BTV, New North End sort of study. So there is certainly a lot of work already underway. For each of the items, I noticed there was a start date assigned for all of them, but it's not immediately clear to me when the end date for these projects are and whether or not we as a public works commission will have the option to review the findings and have discussion and make recommendations. So at least for these three items here, when can we expect to see a draft report and give the opportunity for public feedback before, perhaps before the funding period is over? Are these generally like shorter six to 12 month term studies, or is this gonna be a longer term project like we see for the planned BTV sort of scoping in the New North End that's been going on since 2021? So like for these three projects, will the current commission be able to review them? Right, I don't know if we can provide dates at this point. I mean, if we're thinking in like the South End traffic analysis, I mean, that's a traffic modeling effort that we don't even have finished projects for us to model traffic after. You know, we need to get a clearer picture of what it is that we're trying to collect it on even before we can start doing that work. So, yeah. The year term project for each of these is what it seems like. I mean, I think this is a fair way of looking at it. Jason? Yeah, my take is looking at these. These are not large scale global corridor studies like Battery Street corridor study or Colchester Ave corridor study. As such, these are more surgical. I would expect, you know, the work on these wouldn't start until July one, the beginning of the fiscal year, but I would expect by the end of the fiscal year by June of 2025 that we would be able to come back and provide you an update, if not a final report. That sounds fantastic. And I do have another question regarding the third of the three that are coming up regarding the condition of the roads. When we had a presentation, or I guess a couple of presentations now from the BTV STAT project update, it seems that like road and sidewalk condition is one of the items that should be appearing on these public dashboards regarding, well just the status of our roads. And I don't ever recall seeing any public information about well where we're at, right? Like what's the trend of the quality of our roads and sidewalks? And as there's money being allocated to this project now, I'm wondering if integration and reporting and actually sharing the data to residents of the city could be made part of that process. Great, we can do that tonight in the packet is the initial start of that with some of our performance metrics. We do have on the paving side more information on the pavement condition index, the PCI, it's trend data that we could bring to a subsequent commission. And Phillip, we can work with the team about where we are with the sidewalk condition index, the SCI and whether or not we can bring that. I mean those are a couple of things that we can do and actually our folks have been working with our new asset, I think it's asset manager Warren Rich on how to kind of map those things as well. So yeah, I'm gonna put it in my notes and send some messages off to some folks to see what we can do. I guess one final clarification, we should have those numbers available for all of the streets in the city, right? If you're saying the CCRPC interns over the course of three years, actually assay the whole 100 or so, 100 plus miles. So we should have data for everything basically, is that correct? We do have data. All right, that sounds awesome. Thank you so very much. I'm good on questions. Great, thank you, Commissioner Mutano. Commissioner Sears. Mr. Golding is Commissioner Sears on. Oh, hey. Sorry. Window is open here. So this is an application for assistance from CCRPC from their staff. In light of some of the public comments, do you think you need another scoping study for Main Street? Like you don't feel ready to move ahead with some infrastructure improvements working towards some of the better highlighted in that memo? If through a scoping study is to discuss how we design and implement the designs, there are off street options, there are on street options, there are options that may impact private property and needing to understand how much of private property may need to be acquired to accommodate the connection. Is the idea that some implementation would happen in the near future? Medium term future? There are certainly a number of projects that are kind of further along the interval shared use path that has grant funding, Lake Street shared use path that has grant funding, the Queen City Park Road shared use path that has grant funding, all those are in design. This is a scoping phase, this would be conceptual. And then once this conceptual design was completed, then we could move towards the more hard preliminary design and property rights acquisitions to construct. So this one, honestly, scoping is probably gonna take a year and then after that, we could move into the other phases with funding allocated. And that's the intention? Yes, my sense is that unless there's a quick build approach here, which I doubt within curb to curb that there is an easy alignment, that there will likely be a capital intensive project that comes out of this scoping study. Okay, thank you. Good luck with your application. Thank you. Anything else, commissioner Sears? No, no, okay, thank you. Okay, I think to kind of reiterate these, getting some of this before, and I know I haven't been part of UPWPs, we know how the sausage is made, but getting some of that information to the commission beforehand would be helpful. And kind of to tie in from commissioner Sears and what some of the public comments were, that timeline, and you mentioned that this would be the scoping study for Main Street in particular, a capital intensive project once the scoping is finished. Is this, what part of this falls under an EV Trans Purview or is it all city? Philip, this is route two and route seven, you wanna handle this? Right, so that is a regional connection. So it would be, there are grant opportunities that are very advantageous in those situations, but we'd have to work with South Burlington, city of Burlington would be working together, which we already have started those conversations. So in terms of long-term, when we're getting to show ready how we're actually gonna implement and where are we gonna find funding and that kind of thing, they're regional projects and that's a little further down the road. Okay, and I guess then kind of fitting this in to the kind of iterative walk-bike plan, then where is Burlington in its commitment to achieving the goals of really prioritizing all our users, not just vehicles, and working towards creating the safe infrastructure so that folks can move around. And again, the first commentator, and I'm sure I've mentioned this in many versions on either side of this table about making sure that really we have connected ways, networks to move our pedestrians and cyclists around safely. So how is this scoping going to, is it going to lead to that? Or is it just another, you're skiing on the bunny hill and then all of a sudden you're dumped into the... I'm sure it will. I don't like that. I don't want another plan, scope and study to sit on the shelf. We gotta get somewhere and make things happen. So yeah, I would prefer not to chase them. When I first took this job in 2013, Burlington was no longer getting any more CCRPC grants because there were three grants that were not moving that were five, six, seven years old. That has completely changed at this point. We have half a billion dollars in projects that are either construction or in the design phase right now. That said, we have two huge gaps that I think this commission could help us with. One gap is we don't have local match money. We are so short of capital dollars. Fortunately, we've been securing some grants through the federal sources that have no local match, which is very unusual for the history of state and federal grants. We received a $22 million raised grant for bank and charity that had zero local match. V-Trans is upgrading the intersection by the Winooski Bridge at 100% federal grant, the same way that the roundabout was constructed with us only having to contribute contaminated soils and other non-participating costs. So we are short of local cash. Most of our debt is now gonna be tied up with the high school construction. So we need to figure out as a community how we're gonna be able to fund local matches and local projects outside of state and federal grants. And then the second piece that we need to tackle, which is a lot less sexy, is the day-to-day maintenance. We have expanded the things we wanna maintain over the past 10 or 15 years. We have stormwater gardens that we didn't used to have. We have bike lanes that we didn't used to have. And all this new infrastructure, we have amenities in the green belt that we haven't had. And we haven't had an increase in our staff to maintain it adequately. And I acknowledge that we used to have a protected bike lane on Union Street. And we haven't been able to maintain that. So I'm not thrilled about that reality, but ultimately we can only do what we have resources to do. And I look forward, if the commission wants a higher level of protection out there, other than the off-street shared use paths, then we need to figure out how to resource that effort differently. That would be a great discussion. Thank you. Yeah. Right. And this scope study, this regional project, regional projects like this usually there are grants that are 0% local match. And so that is the kind of thing that we wanna tackle. So maybe at an upcoming meeting, Chair Unil Vavanko, we would add to the agenda some conversation about resourcing and what role the commission might wanna play in advocating for a higher level of service. Right, no, I agree. And thank you for kind of bringing light to this. We forget, I think that the day-to-day maintenance is absolutely vital. And the staffing to support that maintenance is important. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. All right, any comments from the public? As of now, there's nobody signed up online. Okay, and no one in here. Okay. So we have an action and thank you for that clarification, Commissioner Hogan. We have a motion to approve and this vote is that we are supportive of what is submitted to the CCRPC in this plan. Is there a motion to approve? So moved. Is there a second? Second. Second by Commissioner Demianni. All right, let's see. Any discussion? Okay, call in favor of approving the UPWP? Aye. Aye. Aye. And one abstention? I abstain. Okay. All right, and I for myself and this motion passes. Thank you very much. All right, next up is the cleanup, which I read through that stuff. Just ripped, really did. All right, is there a presentation? Oh. I mean, there's a bit of a presentation, I think we can just discuss it. So this has been a kind of a long term project, you know, with Appendix C, with the regulation to enhance accuracy, eliminate some of the redundancy, improve readability. And we've been working with our attorney's office, our new attorney, Eric Ramakrishnan, and he's awesome. He is very helpful. He gets things done very quickly and you know, he feels like this is an important thing to do. So it's, you know, traffic control light location, stops on locations, some one way streets, no parking areas, parking time limits. So each recommendation was looked at and kind of we're addressing specific discrepancies. A lot of them, Eric would have called administrative changes, but what we decided to do is just to present everything to the commission anyways, just to seek, you know, that final approval and to clean it up and so that's pretty much, there's the presentation. Cleaning up Appendix C, we may need to do it again. Any comments or questions from the commission? Anyone have, I'm sure Commissioner Hogan has some burning this is right up your alley. No, no. It's a good read. Only commissioner over be we're here. I think there, I think there is a misplaced modifier and perhaps a comma out of place. Commissioner Mutano, sorry. Should I make the motion to approve? No, just wondering if you have any more, any comments? Oh, no, any other DPW employees that we need to thank for making these changes and actually making sure that they match the conditions on the road. I mean, our track team, you know, the guys in the back, Allen and Trevor and Steve and, you know, the whole, the whole team Colby and, you know, that the team Jackie and Mark, you know, we have a lot of discussions around these things where we're not on the island. So those are the folks that have to deal with it on a day-to-day basis. Of course, my partner Kelly DeCarla, who unfortunately was moving on, she's a mechanical engineering major and she got an internship at Boulder Foundry who's gonna go make microchips. Come on, you gotta stay with us, please. But she did a lot of that work and then Norm Baldwin, of course, too, you know, to the engineer. All right, thank you, everybody. No further comments. Thank you, everybody. Penny, nope, no. Okay, I'm, I do, I don't know. I have a question. So I don't know why I got hung up on the university place one, but I did. And I guess I'm just curious, like, why you pick one, like, phrasing of the regulation over the other. You know, the, one refers to being the loading zone space. And the other one talks about parking spaces on either side of the driveway. So I'm just curious, like, why one supersedes the other or makes more sense, I don't know. I don't know. I just got hung up on it, I'm sorry. No, that's a little fine, um, first of all. You have what number? It's in the sharebox. Okay. Seven dash two, that's right. Seven dash two. Yeah, seven dash two. Right, cause those are not, like, the same, they're not saying the same thing, but it's referring to the same place. Right. It's in front of the chapel. Yeah. Theater. Oh. Maybe I just didn't read closely enough. Yeah, well, it's not on the parking area. Yeah, one is a food truck and one is a visitor. Yeah. So it's saying it's in the parking area, we're removing that because it's not. So we had, um, Oh, okay. It's actually not supposed to be in the parking area, it's a food truck. Okay. Got it. But our parking service folks are very, very, okay. They only took her with us when the vendors actually showed up to the service. Okay. Thank you. I'm sorry. Thanks for the clarification. Okay. That's it. Okay. Nothing? Mr. Sears? It's very detailed. Mm-hmm. Yeah, thank you so much for the, I have no cuts. It's a, it's a, you feel proof. Yeah. The two people stood in the back, Mark and Jackie, the watchers are there, so. They are. Is there still more, more to do? I mean, this was comprehensive. It looked like a good start. Uh, there might be, we have a spreading contractualities. I think we're, I hope, I hope we're done. It's been an honor. So I think there might be. All right. No, I appreciate this kind of thorough sweep and then what we need to sweep again. We will. Thank you. Motion to bring things to, to approve. All right. Any, but any, any comments from the public? No comments at this time. All right. Okay. All right, commissioner Barr. We have a, a motion to approve. Started. To approve this comprehensive document. Of changes to appendix C. But I can look and see how it was written here. What they're asking for. What was it? Second. Sounds good enough for me. Okay. All right. Any discussion? Nope. All right. All in favor? Hi. Hi. Hi. Any, please? Hi. All right. Passes with full approval. Thank you so much. Go get better, Phillip. Yes. I'll get better. Thank you so much. Looks like he's under water there. Yeah. I am. This is a reckoning. Yeah. All right. You sound congested. Next step, we have the permit options for the courthouse closet. The Stanley one was until I asked Jackie. It's very short. This is just some permits that we'd like to implement in the new courthouse plaza by garage. Right now, our goal with these permits is just to utilize the garage a little bit more. We are working to get the word out that we have spaces and just another way we actually just have time to reach out to us today looking for a permit in this area. We do think it'll be utilized. We have a couple of options for the permits similar to the downtown garage, $84 for a five day Monday through Friday, $100 for a seven day because this garage is enforceable on Sundays. So that $100 does cover Sunday as well. And we also are going to offer a $40 city employee permit which will be just for city employees but billed to their respective divisions. And all of these would sunset on December 31st of 2026 with the lease agreement. That's it. We're short. We're short. Hey, we, Commissioner Fawcett, service of parking permit questions. Yeah, I'd say not a lot. Generally, I'm supportive. I guess I'm just curious because these spaces were acquired for the Main Street construction project, right? And so I guess I'm curious like how many of this, and this is not something we can measure. I guess I'm just sort of thinking out loud, but if it's supposedly to compensate for those spaces that we're missing on Main Street, I'm just wondering if this makes sense in terms of like how we want those spaces to be used. And that's not like I'm against it. Does it make sense? It's more of a curiosity. Does this make sense? Yeah, let's say if you were to drive down today, there's a lot of other streets off of Main Street that are also not, you can't park there right now. I think that's the intention with some of the city permits that we have because they are either parking close to City Hall or they're parking close to 200 Church. So that's part of our thinking with this. And yeah, the businesses as well, but not with not so much the permits. Maybe if you have a business and you wanna park, you normally park on the street and you wanna park in the garage, I think that would be a great outreach that we plan to do. Okay, yeah, cool. That makes sense. I was just, yeah, curious and that's how cool. If I could just add one additional thing. It's also time of day. Downtown is busy, nights and weekends. We're really looking to, the garage is currently under subscribed during low volume weekday times. So we're really trying to get city employees off the streets to allow higher value spaces to be available to the public and to fill the garage and off peak times. Clearly our goal is not to, you know, lock out people who are coming downtown, but I think it's kind of a synergistic marrying of demand. Okay, yeah. Thanks that's helpful and that makes sense and that was the only question I had. Commissioner Barr. I support this. I only have one quick question on the rates because I can't recall, are these rates consistent with the same rates that we charge at the other? Okay. Downtown garage, yes. Not marketplace, they're a little bit more, but these are the same as downtown. Right, right, okay. That was it just to make sure there's some standardization. It's great work. Commissioner Demian, Vice Chair Demian, sorry. Could you just remind me how many spots are at the courthouse? 86. 86 something, okay. 87. And so this particular lot wouldn't be allowed for the, I forget what it's called, the employees of like downtown tertiary area that they only can park at downtown garage. That is correct. Through that discounted price. Yes, the free employee permits are only for downtown garage. Okay. I just wanted to see if that was, they were also eligible for that. At this time, no. Okay. I wish you were in the bridge right now because I was going to say it. Commissioner Ogan. Are those 86 or 87 spots the entirety of this garage or the ones that are allotted for public use? It is the ones that are allotted for public use. It is one level. So you enter on the level and you can't access any other floors. Which is the one level. Multi-level garage, one level that we have access to. Okay. And the other levels presumably for their existing tenants and the building nearby. Yeah. That's their business. Okay. And obviously we haven't offered these yet. So we don't know how many of those 86 we'll get. We don't know, but we have two on a wait list right now. Two people. Yeah. Okay. Nothing further here. Thanks. Commissioner Rotano. Yeah. You mentioned 200 Church Street. Is that the Burlington Telecom building, if I remember correctly? Yes. Is Burlington Telecom eligible for the $40 city permit? Only folks that are employed by the city must receive a check from the city. Got it. Got it. Yeah. Right. Yeah. That was a confusion there. You put it with city hall and I was like, wait that doesn't sound quite right anymore. Interesting. But this is right around the corner for them. So hopefully there might be additional use there. Yeah. More comments. Thank you. Great. Commissioner Sears, any comments on the courthouse, car park, parking garage? No comments. I think it makes a lot of sense. Great. Yeah. And I think this makes a lot of sense with love. You know, once you kind of get this rolling to see what the uptake is and if the city is going to do any kind of direct marketing communication outreach, you know, on this in the menu of offerings, parking would be great. Okay. That's it. That's all I have. Any public comment? No, not at this time. Alrighty. Let's see. We have a motion to approve. Motion to approve staff's recommendation for parking rates. All right. Second. Second. Okay. First and second. Any discussion? Nope. All right. Let's vote. All in favor. Aye. Aye. Anyone again? Aye. Okay. Full approval. Thank you. We'll close that. And now we'll move on to residential parking permits. Mark Willidoo. I'm the parking manager here in Burlington. And Jack and I are here to present you guys with a kind of a refresher overview of the residential parking program. And some ideas that we may have to perhaps modify this in the future. We'd like to give you a recap of residential parking, a few revenue totals that the program uses. The changes that we are considering working towards and the additional revenues that that may generate and the next steps in the process if this is the direction we would like to go. So quick overview. The residential permits, there are 48 streets currently, eight plus miles of Burlington streets that are residential parking only. They are $10 permits that are digital or visitor hang tag, which was also brought up by one of the public commentators earlier. The homeowners are allowed a combination of four digital and four hang tags. Home owners can also purchase for a duration of one or two years. Renters are allowed a combination of three digital and or hang tags and they must renew their permits every year. And what we provide for these permits and areas are daily checks, which was also brought up earlier in public comment. Those are done every day and we log the information about when they're visited and we check those vehicles for either an input in our system or a hang tag as a visitor. And the hang tags that are returned when they're renewed get a $5 credit towards the new, the next year or two years. So some of the revenues that are produced by this through April 16th, there were $22,130 that were generated by the sale of these permits and hang tags. Through the fiscal year. That's fiscal year to date. Right. Yes. And the total amount of active permits and hang tags. This is taking into account the both the one year and the two year permits. These are the numbers that we're looking at through the sale of permits and hang tags. These two streets are currently issued free permits and hang tags because they are part of the focus on having part time public parking as well as residential parking. I think that Phil has talked spoken about that before where between six AM and six PM it's public parking and the remainder of that time is all residential. And so some of the changes that we are considering thinking about are increasing the yearly fee for residential permits from 10 to perhaps $20. The streets that we just looked at that were the free issues we would want to include perhaps in the fee structure, but at a discounted rate of perhaps half the price of a regular full time residential only permit. It would include all the fee structure for all future residential streets that participate in the program. And we would maintain the $5 credit for the return visitor hang tag. And we would maintain the ability for homeowners to pay for two years when renewing at no discount. Another thing that's been brought up, I believe in this venue previously is perhaps the change over from street specific residential parking to zone residential parking. And none of these things or that difference wouldn't change anything we're talking about today. It wouldn't make any difference in any of the numbers or any of the revenues that we're talking about. So the next steps are we currently have the ability to nearly at a 100% compliance to contact all of the residential permit holders through email. And we are working on that correspondence if it were to take place. We would also use the residential parking page to be able to post this information as well, whatever changes that we feel is appropriate. And we would notify all the appropriate counselors and commissioners. And there's a two meeting next Tuesday. And that would be another place to make this information available. So these are some of the projections for the comparisons between what we have now on the first three lines. One year, five year revenues projected and what changing the permit prices to from 10 to $20 a year would increase the revenue for the city. So we are doing currently going on the user fee study. So the reason that we didn't implement that we definitely want to do 20 is because we're going to wait for their input on these fees. Once we get that, which will be any day now, then we'll have a better understanding of where the fees should be. That's a city-wide user fee study as part of the general fund FY25 budget development. So the other thing that the team is working on is doing a cost analysis of what it costs to run the program and understand how the fees counterbalance the cost of operating this program. So we wanted to give you a heads up just because the budget development process is coming quickly. And so while we don't have final recommendations in place off in the commission, it appreciates the two step process. So we're laying out some of our initial ideas and we're going to get your input. Obviously we'll get input from RPP permanent holders and others as we move. Great. I'll start because I feel like I always go last. Don't say everything every time. We're arguing it. Because I have the gavel now. One thing on the PDF that we have the residential parking management recommendations is it paid page 53 of 73? Do you still have John King at Burlington Police Department for transferable permits? Yes. That's no longer accurate. I know, I know. Where is that? Is that on our website? It's on page 53 of the document. So that's from the old parking management plan. Oh, that's from the old. Oh, okay. And this is the new because I was like, wait. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was tired a while ago. He's still working from home. Yeah. He still has his own story and he will take next. Can't really retire. Um, so talk more about like zone parking. You mentioned it. So I'm going to grab onto that. And is this something that might be piloted, for example, in neighborhoods, if you said, because you said it wouldn't impact if we had a zone park. I think I would say that's more on Phillip. He's Phillip still on. Yeah, nice. He's thinking about it. There's multiple different questions here. And fundamentally the question of is the program generating enough revenue to cover its cost is a more simple, straightforward budget Terry kind of exercise. That needs to move quickly for FY 25. Appreciate the chair's kind of comment about policy. Do you really? Staff has frankly, we were interested in advancing zone by zone RPP during the development of the plan originally, but got a lot of pushback from residents as I think Commissioner Barr recalls. And so I guess my request, we are happy to revisit that policy decision, but probably want to bifurcate it from the decision on fees. Get that ready for FY 25. And then we can have a more substantive conversation about the policy of zone RPP. All right. So maybe another, maybe a simpler question or simpler response. So when you said that people, homeowners have access to, they can purchase four digital tags. It says and hang tags. It would be a total of four. Total of four. Okay. And so renters three. Do you have a sense of how many homeowners and rentals purchase their full four or their full three? Well, no, let's talk homeowners first, the full four and how many actually use them? Wondering, this is my kind of parenthetical question here. Say you just really use two on a regular basis, is there an option to say, oh my gosh, it's the holidays, cousin Myrtle's coming in, grandma's coming in, can we, we still have, we've only purchased two, but can we buy two temporary ones, is that? So they can, you can only purchase as a homeowner, you can purchase two digital and two hang tags. You can't do three and one or four and zero. So it has to be two and two. We do offer temporary permits. So they are hang tags, we just use paper ones. So you can purchase those, but if you only have two, you can come in and buy, so let's say you have two digital ones, so they're linked to your license plate, you can come in and buy the other two at the holidays or something. So you could come in and purchase those other two. We don't have any data on how many third households. Anecdotally, I would say that I don't think I've ever seen four sold to a homeowner. Generally speaking, the homeowners have access to the full driveway where renters are usually sharing driveway and they don't have the ability to park in them because the situation of them blocking each other in is one that creates situations where they're not gonna use the driveway like a homeowner can. And so when I'm selling those, generally speaking, the homeowner will say, I only need a couple because I can put two cars in my driveway. So I've never sold more than three. But I would say for rentals, probably 100% are three. That's what I was gonna ask, and so the renters then, and I forget if it's, is it per unit? It's per unit, yes. So regardless of how many bedrooms in the unit. Correct. So you could have a two bedroom or one bedroom and you have access to the three tags and then you get them and then you sell them. Or is it, is it, yeah, okay. We do not distinguish number of bedrooms. Might that be causing congestion on, is there an elevator? No, I can share that from when Fletcher Place used to issue 70 permits for 18 spaces because the ordinance at the time indicated that every unit was authorized for. And so that's why the RPP came into play and to try and reduce it. And it could or should be reduced more, but at this point, you can't delineate between bedrooms yet. Yeah, that would be doable, probably, it would be doable. Or even number of people on the lease, something like that. Right, we didn't require the hard copy of the lease. And that way they couldn't sell it to the freshman that's going to UVM that doesn't have a parking space on campus. Yeah, we haven't figured out how to do that yet. Okay. All right, well. Any ideas we're open to? We love parking. We love talking about the public right-of-way here. So am I. No, that's all I have. All right, we're done. No. Let's see, Commissioner Sears, you wanna tackle residential parking? I think it makes sense to bring the prices in alignment as we're raising other parking fees. My primary question you've already addressed, which was does the program pay for itself? Which sounds like you're on top of that, but it seems like the fees should follow from that. And we'll have more to report when we come back to the floor recommendation. Sorry. Yes, we will, yes, we are doing that analysis and we'll come back with our recommendation with justification that it does appropriately cover the costs of the program. Great. Anything else? Okay, so I know that the $20 is preliminary. There's gonna be the impact study, but like off the cuff, gut, it feels too low. Doesn't, I get that we don't wanna overburden our residents, but I know we're facing a budget crisis. Space is really valuable in Burlington and so it feels like our public parking should be, or not, you know, like our parking, regardless of who it is for should be priced appropriately. I guess, yeah, the question I had is like, what is the $20 like based on? I get that we're at 10 and so we're maybe like thinking 20, sort of like between the zero and $100, which other cities have, but like 20 is pretty low on that spectrum. So yeah, curious on that. It's definitely a good thought, we're open. I think we're waiting to hear from the fee study just to see, but I would, I would, I think we tossed out a couple of other numbers too. So we're very open. Okay. I think the higher we raise it, the more trouble will have with the public on that. Absolutely. Yeah, and I get that and I know there's not like a simple way to do this, but I don't think like one blanket price for this kind of permit makes sense. Like, I don't know, like I'm just thinking about Summit Street, which is residential parking and how many people actually buy residential permits on Summit Street versus, I can't think of a really high capacity residential street, but like that are full and is there a way to, you know, make the prices variable based on use? Like, I don't know, because 20 feels too low, but I also like don't wanna over, you know, outpriced people who, you know, live in lower income neighborhoods don't make as much and have to park on the street because they, you know, like I wanna be cognizant of that. So, yeah, anyway. I came across this when I was looking into, or researching all this, something from the 2016 memo that Phil submitted around the creation of this. The statement was with this said, there were public comments seeking to make sure that fee did not unduly impact low income households so we have brought forward a very modest recommendation of $10 per permit per year. So at the time, in 2016, it was felt like 10 was very, very modest. And so I feel like it goes along with what you're saying that we're really, modest. Modest still, we're, yeah. And with great intent, but we are at the lower end of the scale. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so I look forward to hearing what the final recommendation is. Commissioner Barr. Yes, thank you. I guess I would have to say that the original RPP and I was a part of that process. I can't remember how many committees I served on with it and it came forward and being in parking as part of my profession and my previous job, I was really pushing to have the cost be more for those permits because you have to have skin in the game if you will, if value added, if it's super cheap, then do you use it? Do you share it? Do you let other people use it? I think that the original plan, and you can look way back, I can't even remember what year that was, I think it was in 2015, 14, 13. The first permit, I think might have been 20 bucks, the second permit was 30, and so it was adding onto it with an intent to try and say, do you really need four permits because it's gonna cost you this much more? If you make each one 10, then they're gonna buy all 10 and if you have a unit with renters with three people, of course they're gonna each pay 10, but it's just one of those things, the value added part and how much do you really need as many permits as you can get because there are some people that do need it, there's some people that actually have the need, maybe there's folks that can't get around very easily, they're not mobile, so they have to have cars. That's one of those things that you have to do. And speaking to the residential zone parking, I'm also very much in favor of that because some streets just don't have the capacity and it needs to spill out onto other streets that do. And the studies, and I went around this city so many times counting parking spaces and figuring out where there was capacity. Everybody said there wasn't enough parking spaces downtown and we couldn't restrict them and that if you go one block out, I found there was 1,300 spaces during peak time available. And I know things have changed now, but the same thing goes for parking on residential streets. My street currently isn't a residential permit because it's primarily tenant parking. It's not so much single family or homeowners anymore. But when they took the parking off of Colchester Avenue, there was no parking and so we needed to try and look at a zone because should Chase Street be the one that takes the full burden? Should Barrett Street, should any of the other ones? So zone parking I think is something that needs to be in the toolkit. It may not be used in everywhere and it's not gonna fit every single application, but in some places it's the better choice, I think. So that's what I have. I support this. I know you're gonna get a lot of people that say, this is horrible, I can't believe you're doing this to me. But it always happens that way. Yeah. All right. Commissioner Mutano. Yeah, I think $20 is nothing and I sure hope that it at least covers the cost of administering the program. I think that should be the bare minimum there. It's like doing the city of service ensuring that the right number of vehicles are using the road in this way, especially since a lot of the streets that are part of this program are really in the hub of the city where walking is a viable option for most people. So yeah. My question is about the timeframe of implementation on this. When could we expect the new rates to be enforceable or on the menu, I guess, if everything were to go according to plan in this public engagement step and then future action by this commission. Is this like a before the new school year kind of thing or a longer term change that'll need to be made? So we hope to bring with as long as the user fee study comes out for the next week or two, we plan to come in May with asking for a vote, which would then mean implementation mid June, mid to late June. Right. So then any permit spot before that time would be at the lower rate. And essentially whenever that effective date is you're paying the $20 or whatever it is. Yeah. So we do see a large influx very beginning of June. We did miss that deadline, but the most come in August. So we will hit that. Right. So if it were to be the May commission meeting that you return to, it basically can't be, we can't set a June one date then. Right. Which is when all of the leases turn over in the area where that is, what's the waiting period required? And is there, is there a statutory requirement that that take place? 30 days. So once we implement the, once we get the guess vote, then we can send it off to the lawyers to put into ordinance, which then takes 30 days. All right. Well, I look forward to seeing you all back here maybe next month. Thanks so much for your work on this one. Commissioner Hogan. Hey there, thank you. I agree with some of the sentiment here that $20 is not a lot for religious storing a private vehicle in the public right away for an entire year from counting, right? That's so pretty low. Another thing to consider in terms of the, you know, being interested to see what the fee study says, but the other lever here is to protecting it's over subscription. And we've heard Commissioner Barr mentioned Fletcher place is one legendary location that had dozens of permits out for not dozens of housing units. Have we looked, and if we haven't could we at whether this very modest fees that we've implemented have moved the needle at all in terms of the over subscription problems in some of those locations? And I would just suggest that if we haven't, if that hasn't moved the needle, that the price is not sufficient to move the needle in the direction that we want it to in places where over subscription is a problem. That's the other part of the conversation to me is like what do we think is fair? Like it being like a very minor increase to reduce the screaming, right? But in terms of the objectives that a fee could help further, let's look at that. If $10 has helped it all, then for some of those measures over the $0 that it used to be. Let's all go. That was a good one. Vice Chair Jamie, any? Yeah, I too also agree with a lot of the sentiment that everyone else has already mentioned. Just in terms of the outreach, I don't know what resources we have available to us to get stuff out, particularly to landlords essentially, if there's any other targeted information that can be sent to landlords to give to their renters. I think that should be included in the outreach as well. That's it. All right, one more, one more. I think as I'm just using the last, I think, again, thinking of some of our low and moderate income residents and just being, I do think, towards a super, super low. So really making sure that we have a price point that really reflects what it does cost to warehouse, a private vehicle in our public right-of-way. Also recognizing some of our low and moderate income from renters and is there the possibility for like a sliding scale based on anyone who receives some public assistance or is on SNAP benefits, et cetera. Thinking about, you know, that range as well. Period, that's all I'm going to say. All right, and this is, oh, I guess any comments from the public? Yes, we have Ebony Gould up in queue. Great. So I have a couple of comments specific to this residential parking thing. I think it echoes some of the sentiment that I heard around the table. The $20 feels incredibly low, especially when put side-by-side with the garages that charge $100 a month. So raising that, I think, you know, the state does income sensitivity for property tax. So to deal with the equity issue, I think it could be reasonable to do income sensitivity for the parking permits to try to address some of those concerns. But in general, looking at a map of the residential parking, I think a lot of it tends to be in areas that are in more affluent parts of the city. It's also a small portion. So even, I think, especially with the budget concerns, right, like tax money is going to maintaining these roads from across the city. And so just, you know, I think most residents are concerned about their taxes going up. And so if this is helping some of the shortfall or road maintenance or other things, I think that that's like valuable because this is like, I don't know, 5% of road mileage is under residential permits. So it feels like a small impact. The other thing I think the zoning idea is really good and also exploring, I know San Francisco with parking, since we have this digital parking system, they do demand-based parking. So like, you know, surge pricing like Uber, if there's a lot of occupancy in spots in downtown or on some of these paid streets, you know, the price increases to try to encourage people to mode shift or do other things. And so I think kind of peripherally related to this, but I think that would be a good additional way to increase revenue during peak demand times. And then also, you know, expanding potentially the paid, like parking, there's a book, High Cost of Pre-Parking, that talks about, right, like the impacts and maintenance and how people kind of get accustomed to their free parking. And so making those costs more realistic to what the city spends on maintenance of those spaces, I think is a valuable long-term goal. Thank you. Great, thank you very much. Connor Smith, if you're on cue. Go ahead, Mr. Smith. Hello, yes. I just wanted to echo some of the other comments about the $20 feeling a little low. You know, as the city is staring down a shortfall in local match dollars, as well as struggling to meet operational demands without an infrastructure, seems like an easy way to address some of those shortcomings by going a little bit higher than $20. So thank you. Thank you. That's all for public order. Okay, and that's all in here. All right, so that's a wrap. There's no action to take. This is just information. Thank you. I was gonna make a motion to thank them. Oh, yes, a motion to thank them. And then we'll see you next month, yes. Great, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Are we ready for director's report? We are ready for director's report, director. Thank you very much. So let's see. I, in the director's report was very pleased with how our eclipse preparations and execution went. Big shout out to GMT for the shuttles on the belt line. I was originally concerned that the system would not hold if we experienced gridlock, but the Northern connector was filled probably 80% with parking and the buses were well transporting folks and it was a big success. As you saw in the memo, we did secure more than $27,000 of parking revenues in the garages. We are still doing additional calculations from, we had special event parking on the top floor of the garage that brought in additional funds and a number of obviously stronger on-street performance as well. So more to come on that, but thank you to everybody involved. The team in the garages was amazing and worked a long day to manage that. It was a very good day. I'm excited, a little known project, but a very important one is the Rock Point Bridge replacement. Most people would be surprised to know that Burlington's responsible for a bridge on basically private property crossing over the old railroad bed, but the rail line legal agreement with the property owner for the purpose of putting the rail line through basically agreed to maintain that structure and when the city took over the rights to use that line as a bike path also took over the responsibilities along that corridor. So it is up to us to maintain that access for Rock Point and the bridge replacement is underway. It's nearly a million dollar project should be done by the end of this year. It will have some intermittent closures of the bike path and we'll be communicating with the public about that. You know, the construction season has restarted. Obviously, we're noticing some traffic impacts, especially in the South end in the downtown. We are trying to be as proactive as possible with the notices and if there are questions or concerns, let me know. The Duke meeting on Tuesday, we will be discussing whether or not to keep the city loop fare free. GMT and the city have decided that the Coltry Shuttle, the Route 11 will stay fare free in Burlington and FY 25, but the question now is what do we do with the city loop? And so that will be discussed Tuesday. I last month had pledged that I personally would check my service line for my water service at my home and that has been done, but I would take the opportunity to encourage the rest of the public to do the same so that we can make sure there are no lead service lines in the city of Burlington. And then lastly, I was pleased to finally get to, right before the meeting, a status update on our FY 24 goals and objectives. And we have put that online for the public and I have provided printed copies to the commissioners. This is our effort to outline, I think, a very strong record of success this year on many, many projects and initiatives. And I wanna just thank staff for their hard work and continued performance. Our hope is that this can be a helpful document for you all as you review the performance of my position and the city engineer as part of your review next month. So happy to answer any questions tonight about that or to be available over the coming month to either add supplemental information or answer any questions. Thanks so much. Great, any questions? Did you find any lead in your pipes? No. Comments, questions, concerns about the director report. Justine, did you hear me? Oh, okay, I didn't know. Did you talk to me? Yeah, any comments, questions or concerns about the director's report? No, but I did find my bike on the 127. And yeah, it was filled with cars. It was very well-executed and played around the local city. Great. How about we head to commissioner comments, items. Commissioner Mutano, you wanna start? No comments at this time. Thank you, everybody. Bears to say, I still IOU on the service line check, but I was just relieved to see I could find it relatively easily, find the information on the Public Works website. Thank you, yes. Just scroll down. Here's to be able to get this done electronically even if you're a post-cardist. You're in the recycle. Recycle. I would say in light of public comments tonight and some of the themes in recent meetings, I know we've got a lot, decided a lot on the queue for the mega projects that are multi-years and thousands or hundreds of millions of dollars that I would invite us to pursue some of the quick wins along the way as well, to sort of get a mix of quick wins. Get sort of enthusiasm if there are to the extent that there are low cost, low barrier improvements that can be made to improve the safety and select spots around town. I mean, some things come to mind, sort of daylighting intersections around, if there's low visibility spots. I know, I believe we still have some rubber curb segments in the collecting dust in the warehouse that could be dusted off and then laid down somewhere when it was sort of given a lower space or re-protecting some of the union for North Ave or wherever else. I don't know, it takes staff attention to do these things, even when the capital cost is not great. But I think that's gonna be a recurring theme here as so much attention is going into the huge multi-year projects. No easy answers there, but just something to keep thinking about how we can toss us a little wins along the way. And Lester, you remember the reminder that commission applications for this and others are due May 15th, I believe. I don't know, get your applications in people. That's all. Just two quick comments. One was just a reminder it was included in the meeting packet, but clean sweep across the city is coming up in a couple weeks. I just wanted to make sure to highlight that information and then also just wanted to give huge, huge kudos to the city for the eclipse. I got this in this room a couple of days before the eclipse happened with other city departments as part of my day job and just hearing all the planning and effort that went into all the city departments and other partners I think was really great to see and correct me if I'm wrong Chip and there was a camera crew potentially putting together a documentary of the process for planning for the eclipse. So I'd be really curious to see that when that comes out. Me too. I haven't heard any follow up, but we can check up on that. Who is it? I don't remember who was the camera crew, but they were in here filming and they've been at other meetings filming. Okay, because one of the ways is for us to just talk about it. I could have been them. That's it. Okay, good. Yeah, great job. I was down at Oak Ledge, so pleased to just bike home and pass a string of cars and then cut across Shelburne Road and go uphill and yeah. So well done. You know, shout out to Parks and Rec because they were, John Adams Collette's was down at Oak Ledge. It was just well done and it was so wonderful to have this kind of fantastic emotional experience and before this I was like, eclipse, eclipse, whatever. Once I was there I was like, holy cow. I get it, I'm traveling next time. Wherever it goes. So really well done. Folks came in from out of town and just spoke about like, you know, the website and information and clarity on where to go and park your car and walk. So kudos, like GMT, so it was really well done. So thanks to your team. I'm sure it was a long couple of weeks leading up to it, but I hope we were able to at least jump outside. Indeed. One, two things. One is thank you to whomever in streets filled. There's a little, there were some holes on Summit Street where I bike every day and on the right side, there are these like really kind of crappy little speed bumps that had kind of some brick overlay. It's kind of closer to Maple and it's right at the point where I like fully have to go like almost into the middle of the street and it's been chunked out, but now it's filled. Oh, it is filled. It is filled. Okay. I don't need to create a work order. You don't. You do not need to create a work order. It's great. And just, I haven't ridden up college in a while but just I will and I'll report back and see if there we need a work order on that. Again, thinking about those uphills when we're doing all these constructions on just that East-West connection and College Street is notorious for like the bike lane being like moors. There's a bridge. I was at an Ethan Adlin homestead and there's a bridge over 127 that's not on this map. It's the bridge that goes to nowhere. It's probably a B trans. It goes to somebody's backyard. But what's up with that? Will it ever be connected, decommissioned? There are just a lot of new Americans and a lot of folks without vehicles who could utilize that if it was structurally sound but I don't think it is, do you know? Yes, that bridge is, was developed as part of the Northern connector to provide access to other public land on the other side of the road that was bifurcated as a result of the project. The city has explored a couple of times connections up to North Avenue. There's very significant grade challenges and to date, there's been no kind of viable proposal. There are stakeholders who are worried that the bridge is needing to be inspected. We do periodically inspect it and it is unfortunate that that bridge was constructed and then not connected. I can follow up again with my team and also Parks to understand whether there's interest for taking another run at looking at a connection with the last time. I think it was five years or six years ago that did not find a viable linkage. Is it, but it's a city, not a V-trans thing even though 127 is V-trans? Just wondering if you can put that down. The city's finance and maintenance agreement with V-trans, we are responsible for the paving and we repaved the road five, six years ago. I believe we're responsible for the structures as well but we'd have to review the finance and maintenance agreement for a definitive answer. Okay, it'd be great to hear about any connection or decommissioning of that if it's not before, get ahead of a problem if we can. That's all. We need to put a sign on the other side of the bridge that says welcome to nowhere because everybody says it's a bridge to nowhere so it clearly needs to be signed appropriately. Cushion or bar. Thanks. Just anecdotal, is there any way you can cut the bridge out and then put it at the rock point place across the building, save us a million bucks? Just crane it in there. Crane it in there like you're maybe a caboose, I don't know. You used the four letter word just, did you? Well it could be like moving the Johnson House across the street, it's a monumental event. You see them roll it across, they're a foot an hour. It'll get there. So I agree with Commissioner Hogan's, let's go for the low hanging fruit so we can get some things accomplished. One of the things that I'd like to see because I really love or support or like having seen in other cities the quick build projects and the ability to do stuff for a lot less, to do the demonstrations so that in the future it can be something more permanent. And I'm just curious if there could be a way through many of the different organizations whether it's the Walk By Council or there's all sorts AARP, anybody, to try and get groups of people who are interested in helping do something like that. Whether it's under the public works supervision, I think Norm would love to get out of the office maybe and come out there and tell me what to do but move this, move that. Put a little spray paint here and it'd look really cute, you're nice. But that's just something that I think that if it needs supervision, great. If it needs to have some sort of a presentation to you to see if something would work and then we'd do it. Rather than me do it with my headlamp at night. Not that I would ever do that. And we just recently had a couple of steering committee meetings in the old East End and one of the subjects that comes up continually is the intersection of Chase Street and Culture Street Avenue. The paint's worn down again and the cars are speeding down. I'm thinking of borrowing AARP's speed gun again and see if I can get, because there has to be cars going 40 to 50 miles an hour sometimes with a loud muffler attachments, whatever they are. But it's just disheartening and I continually use and follow what's left of the paint to the chagrin of my wife who says what are you doing? You're gonna get hit by somebody chewing that. But I think that it needs to be more than paint I guess and I don't know whether the bollards, I still have one of the bollards that got hit and I'm saving it and I'll bring it in. But I'm just wondering if those are the next, putting those back in is a good next step. I wonder if there needs to be something a little more. I know we can't go hard scape so much as a bump out, but yeah, I just wanted to throw that out there as we've gotta do something to slow down the traffic, especially once the bridge starts. That's, I know a lot of traffic is gonna be diverted. I wish for a box. I'm gonna try not to sound like a Debbie downer in my comments, but sorry. So on the eclipse, I wanna echo that it was fantastic. It was so well organized in fact that there was no traffic at 8.30 a.m. on Monday morning. So my bike commute was amazing. I made it in record time, but guess what? So did all the people driving because there was no traffic. And I just wanna highlight that that speaks to how dangerous our roads are, right? Like if they're empty, people, they just, they drive really, really fast. And so I wanna come back to what some of the public comment that we heard tonight. I'm really grateful that members of the public came forward to speak to what happened on North Ave last week. Cause I just feel like it's really, really unacceptable. I flagged that crosswalks on the southern end of North Ave feel dangerous before and just to be more specific about that. It's a straight line. People zone out when they're driving. We just need better traffic calming. Yeah, there's no reason why a child should be hit by a car in a crosswalk in broad daylight. So yeah, just to reiterate, it's a straight line. People zone out despite it being increasingly residential. So yeah, just to put a finer point on that. And what I wanna add to make this maybe less doom and gloom. I recognize and that the city is working to address these corridors that we feel are really dangerous, right? Like we're working on Main Street, like with the scoping study. I think in this, the UPWP item included the plan BTV, New North End, which we know that's not a street study specifically, but that's a neighborhood study, right? That's, and so yes, the quick build is really important in the interim, but maybe relaying to the public that recognizing that the city knows that these are problem areas and that they've been identified starting to study them just so members of the public understand that it's like this didn't just happen in a vacuum, right? Like we know our streets are, these parts are maybe unsafe and we're trying to understand them better and come to the best solution and that may take some time. So yeah, I think that's the point I wanted to make and that is all. Great, thank you. Thank you for reminding us about the student who was hit on North Avenue. Commissioner Sears, any comments? Commissioner Sears, any comments? Hi. No, no, I agree with, it's always, I'm grateful to the folks who came in to make the public comments. And yeah, I guess it's, I heard what you said, Chapin, that I guess you're just kind of in maintenance mode, so you're not really in, you don't feel like you're in a spot to take on additional work. I guess I'm curious when that happens, how those priorities are set, what's the role of the commission in doing that? Cause I guess I look at this commission and I think that a lot of us are here because we want this, we want it to feel different when we move around this city. And then the agenda comes each month and we spend most of the time talking about parking spaces here or there and maybe that's just the purview of the commission. That's the end of the story. But if there is a broader conversation to be had, I'm sure a lot of these commissioners would like to be a part of it. Yes. I think there's certainly the regulatory kind of responsibility, the ordinance requirements of the commission to take on largely the parking regulations. But the commission certainly has the role of the bully pulpit should the commission have an agenda, policy, financial or otherwise to advance and certainly staff is ready and eager to work with commission if there are gaps in the network as we've talked about today with maintenance funding. We certainly, we do more than maintenance, absolutely. We have all sorts of capital projects and bold initiatives but there is clearly more interest in a higher level of service in some areas of our purview that we need to figure out how to finance ourselves or resource ourselves differently to make that happen. And so I think staff is eager to have that conversation and I think to your point, commissioner Sears is maybe what we do is make sure that there is time working with the chair to at upcoming meetings to not just discuss what needs to be voted on but where we wanna go as a community and how we get there. I agree with that. Just figuring out what additional space that we can take to really help support some of these initiatives. We have a committed commission. Yeah. Thank you, commissioner Sears. That's it. Next up, the motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn. All right, commissioner Barr. Anybody else? What's the second that? Second. Second, Mutano. All right, all in favor? Aye. Aye. We are wrapped at.