 I'm going to have to sign in if you don't want to. And I was going to say, I didn't re-affirmly, whenever it ends, I don't know what that is. Maybe at the end. I've been on here for a long time for a new person. I'm going to be sitting there. You're going to get me there. More offensive. So that's it. Just so you know, I meant to send an email letter. I can try it in. I've been trying to get the juggling of the question. I just couldn't get it together to send you an email, so here now you know. I don't know what the hell is great. You won't see the end. But I won't have to be sitting here. That we're clear about. Come on your own terms, your own schedule. And your own schedule. Well, yeah. Yeah, it's just, it's a general, you know. Thank you, got to do it. Yeah, I said, you heard, I'm not really lying. OK, I didn't know who I could communicate it to. Jean Bergman's trying to sign. I got to watch you guys. I watched the whole meeting, but the audio was just a mess. There was some sort of technical problems, so hopefully it won't happen again. So how have you been? Pretty good. Yeah? Wicked busy, I feel. Busy? Yeah. I always run around campus and here in downtown, but it's fun. Are you working still on that dissertation? Yeah, so I'm working on a dissertation proposal this summer that I'm going to defend. And then I guess I'm officially a PhD candidate. Then I'll be finishing up the rest of that work, writing it all up, applying for God knows what. And then actually defending the document itself. But you have the topic. Oh, yeah. Well, the next part we're doing tonight, I'll just have to stay on the side. I think are we in good shape for a certain meeting? We are good on this end. So are we ready to roll? All right, good evening, everyone. My name is Brendan Hogan, chair of the Public Works Commission, calling this May meeting to order at 6.35. Good evening, welcome all. Thank you for coming. First item on the agenda is the agenda itself. Motion to approve the agenda. We have a motion from Commissioner Barr. Thank you for that. Seconded. The motion has been seconded. Mr. Fox, is there any discussion around that motion? All right, let's go to a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Myself, the vote is agenda passed. Thank you. Before we have a public forum, I will note that we've also warned a public comment specific with later agenda items on the agenda. Welcome public comment at this time, especially if it's on general public works things, if you want to speak specifically to the Main Street item and have time to stick around for that or the time limit parking item later and have time to stick around, please feel free to hold your comments till those items. Any general remarks at this time? Seeing nobody jumping up in the room, can we check Mr. Goulding? Anybody on the phone interested in speaking at public forum at this time? Chair Hogan, I'll be promoting over Sharon Busher. Hi, good evening. And although this item is on your agenda, I'm jumping from the Board of Finance to you back to the Board of Finance. So I wanted to just, and I'm chasing Chapin because he was at the Board of Finance too. And he revealed some information that now prompted me to want to make a comment to you. It has to do with the Great Streets, and it has to do with the parking lot that is on Main and Winooski, the one that is beside the fire station, lost for Mr. Mike's. And I just learned just moments ago that that will be a staging area when you do the work for the Main Street. And I was hoping that the Commission had had a very in-depth conversation about this because that parking lot is used a lot by visitors. And I don't know how many spaces are there. And I haven't been able to do anything because, as I said, I just learned about this. But with those spaces being gone, plus the elimination of spaces on Main Street, I'm really concerned about the impact on the Flynn. And I'm concerned about the impact on activities scheduled for downtown on Church Street and the businesses in general. So I don't know the length of time that that parking lot will be used for staging. But I really hope that this is discussed in depth. And there's a plan so that we don't further impact what is going on for our small and not, and somewhat fragile business district downtown. So I just felt obligated to make those comments. And if you already know all of this, I'm just also just reiterating it. But if you don't know it, I'd like you to consider it and try to figure out a way that minimizes that impact so that we can continue to have the Flynn thrive and at least the activities downtown be well attended. So thank you so much for listening. Thank you. Thank you for your attention to multiple meetings tonight. Mr. Golding, anyone else on the phone? Chair Hogan, I'll just note for folks who have joined us online to use the raise your hand feature if you do wish to speak during public comment. But given at this time, no one's got their hand raised. There is one more person just signed up. And Michael Arnold, you're free to speak. Hi. I just wanted to speak in favor of the plan with protected bike lanes on the full length of main. I think it's really important to consider this as a regional connection between the lake and Burlington, all the way to new dense development that's coming online in South Burlington. And I hope that after this plan is approved, the Public Works Commission will consider trying to connect the rest of the way from Burlington to South Burlington with a fully protected bike network. Thanks. And that is all of this time. All right. Thank you, Mr. Golding. That will close public forum and move forward to the next item on our agenda, the consent agenda. Three items on the consent agenda tonight, minutes from April meeting, removal of 30-minute spaces on South William Street, and a time change regarding bank street meters. Motion to approve the consent agenda. All right. We have a second motion. We have a motion from Commissioner Bahr and a second from Vice-Chair El Niel Ivanko. Is there any discussion around that motion? All right. All in favor, please say. One question. I was not at the meeting. Do you need to have that part voted separately? I was not at the meeting. I don't think so if you generally consent to the content of it, because I did watch the video. So don't. Yeah, my understanding is that if a person's absent, there's a warrant here to be sent, then there doesn't need to be pulled out. But it's noted here that you were not at the meeting. Any other discussion around that motion? All right. Let's go to a vote then. In favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye for myself. Any opposed? Consent agenda passes unanimously. Thank you. Moving forward to item five on our agenda, Main Street, Great Streets. Welcome, a communication from staff. Here tonight with me, I also have a night center from the heavily to the communication tonight. I'll quickly go through what we will be looking at tonight and review kind of the summary. So this is a little bit non-traditional, how we've presented this information to you in the packet. We have four very tightly related items. So we want to have a broad discussion and then wanted to also give you the opportunity to act on each of the items individually as they do have different meaning and substance. And if we made any changes to them, we didn't want it to affect the larger group in an adverse way. So to look at what those are, the actions that we're going to request tonight is looking to accept the parking study that was done for Main Street, looking to effectuate some permanent parking changes on Main Street that we talked about last time, but maybe not all of them, looking for action on our proposed temporary parking, which is very similar to what we have already discussed, as well as a host of corrections that we have found as we went through the detail of our parking on Main Street. These would generally be an administrative correction, but we didn't want the perception that we were putting some very technical content on your consent agenda and what that appearance might look like of staff trying to move Main Street items throughout the contents. So those are included in the packet of information. You go quickly into the different items. We'll start with the parking study. So this was presented to you back in March. Generally, the updates that have happened relate to creating the executive summary. So we heard a lot of content about people not understanding what was inside of it, missing some of the proposed goals. And so what's inside your packet tonight includes two new pages, which is an executive summary, highlighting what the goals were of the study, which was generally the purpose of Penn Main Street, Absorb, Penn, the surrounding area, Absorb, the loss of the 67 spaces, or do we need to do something different to be able to take that within our network? Generally, the conclusion of the study was that our network is, and infrastructure is adequate to Absorb the loss of the 67 spaces. There is on-street space within a five-minute walk shed or space through surface parking lots, private surface parking lots, or structured garages. Through that study, though, we did have the advantage of coming out with other conclusions as professionals were looking through the corridor. We presented some of those strategies for optimizing our network through the last few meetings. And we'll continue to look at bringing some of those recommendations forward with actually looking at the larger area of the downtown, not just Main Street. So to speak to the permanent parking changes, again, very, very similar to what we had presented the last time, what we are looking for action on tonight is specific to the accessible parking spaces, electric vehicle spaces, the loading zones being designated as vehicle loading zones with a 15-minute time limit and no charge for those spaces, looking to effectuate kiosk-metered parking through the entire corridor and the bus parking spaces. Those are the only items listed inside of the communication, as well as the technical content that would have action tonight. The way that this would come online is that the parking changes, the accessible spaces, the electric vehicle, kiosk, bus stops would effectuate as the different blocks complete. What we are looking for, though, is to have the loading space, the vehicle loading space designation change throughout the corridor more immediately. And this is one of the strategies that we heard through our community partners that would better serve the businesses and the community during construction to have those loading spaces be designated as the single-type flexible for multiple users. What we pulled back on a little bit and also have more work to be doing on are future changes coming back to this commission as we complete the design and head towards construction. So we will continue to review the additional parking mitigation for the loss during construction as well as upon completion. We will do a more comprehensive rate review of the downtown and the Main Street corridor to make sure that the recommendations coming forward make sense for the entire community and not just the Main Street project. We will also, in that outreach, review the time-limited parking that we talked about, the three-hour rate time limit and how that relates to the actual turnover that we're seeing inside of the downtown. We will continue to look at other parking opportunities. This could come from some minor tweaks to the design where spaces that we were reserving for stormwater or public art have no necessary need under the concept design. We are at 90% plans. We have the public art cited and there's some areas that are unprogrammed inside the corridor that we could change their use of exact parking. We have also discussed last meeting but would need to complete proper outreach to look at adding parking on the south side of main street on South Champlain. This is a space that is certainly a construction zone this summer but with the timing of when that project would complete and when we would start our construction it's an opportunity where we could look to add on-street spaces temporarily to help mitigate the on-street loss. We have also talked about what some of the concerns were from the local businesses about why they are using the long-term brown-metered parking spots, why are they take advantage of the no time limit in our gray-metered spots and this has to do with some of the change in our culture post COVID. There's hybrid workers that, I think I have that on the next slide too, maybe. There's hybrid workers, office workers that don't find advantage in purchasing a parking garage pass because they're only here half the time and so it makes it twice the cost for them to purchase a monthly pass and so we're looking at those types of programs to actually respond to our business community and make parking in the garage the same cost effectiveness that the brown meters are or the monthly passes to others. So our ongoing collaboration with our community partners is really looking at all of the changes in the downtown. This work will occur over the next few months and we aim to be back to you at least one more time if not two before we start construction with these additional changes. Some of this could include looking at the brown meters that are on College Street and King Street as potential construction mitigation and changing those spots so that they do turn over more during the construction time period versus being the long-term full day parking spot. Our community partners emphasized the need to make sure that the way finding signage that's mentioned in the parking study truly does get implemented with the project and helps to carry out those recommendations directing people to where existing parking is off of Main Street and then promoting the Park Burlington website making sure that that stays current throughout the construction as well as just reminding our community about this tool that we have available to different business owners keeping that fresh. So I just wanna quickly touch on some of the plans just to highlight what the different colors mean. There are two sets of plans that are listed inside of your communications because it got really busy really fast. So this first set talks about the proposed changes. Inside of here you'll see a couple notes that talk about the purple and it's kind of either indicating a future action or this is the fallback plan. So if you choose to not take action on some of the items tonight this would be the no parking near April Cornell. What reverts back is actually a correction in ordinance which falls under the last action of your items tonight because what is written for that location has a few different connotations and none of them are how we use that space today. So that is kind of how these plans have been set up. Very, very similar to again what you saw previously at the presentation in April with vehicle loading in the spaces, the accessible spaces what we've added is the connection to what ordinance those tie to. The one of the items that came out through the outreach is reviewing an accessible space request by the comedy club. So that is one of those ones that's in purple that will come as a future action. It is not listed inside of your request for tonight. They do wanna show that our response to some of the comments and that if others look at this know that they were heard. The block around St. Paul's street and the center of the city. Again, these are all unchanged from our previous presentation. There is one accessible space so it was asked at the last meeting do we have the same number of accessible spaces in the proposed as the existing and we actually found one hidden spot up near Memorial Auditorium that we weren't gonna put back so we need to add one more space back to the corridor placing it on lower church street in the vicinity of main seems like an ideal location. It is one of our curbless sections but we didn't do outreach on it. So that is one that we need to come back to you after we complete that. Now all of these are still the same as last time moving up the block to Union. There is one potential mitigation that was talked about with our community partners and that is reviewing whether or not we could allow any daytime parking in the vicinity of the schools. We have met with the schools. We have talked about the night and weekend parking. They were, they describe themselves as neutral as their position and their comment on that proposal. They didn't matter. It didn't impact them any way, one way or the other. We have not yet proposed the daytime option to them but do wanna acknowledge that as one of the pieces of outreach we've received. And that just repeats for the spaces all the way up the block. To touch on the temporary parking really quickly because there are no changes from our past presentation. The temporary parking looks to add seven 10 spaces on the west side of battery in the vicinity of Main Street and nine spaces on the west side of South Champlain, north of Maine. It would also turn the street into a one way street. To effectuate this, we do need to relocate two bus parking spaces. One goes in front of Acme Glass and on Pearl Street and the other would take some unused previously allocated spaces from the wise use on College Street and would use that as a bus parking space. So I just wanna bring us back full circle to put the actions back in front of you being requested tonight. We're looking for acceptance of the parking study. We are looking for effectuation of the vehicle loading, accessible EV and limited parking space removal on the concept plan. The temporary parking changes to support construction activities and then the corrections to appendix C's regulations. Thank you. All right. Thank you for that overview. And especially pointing out the changes from last go around here. So I'll bring it back to the commission for discussion around this one. Start over B. I did watch the video. I tried to watch the video from the last meeting. So I was not here in person and did not participate. But just with that in mind, I'm based on the information in this packet primarily. I do have a couple of questions by accepting the study. What exactly are we doing? Are we just saying they did the work or are we some way endorsing the content? The idea behind accepting the study is that they completed their goal of reviewing the loss of the 67 spaces through the concept change on Main Street and that we find their conclusion that there is existing capacity within the network and that finding. So it does not require us to act on any of the strategies. That is something that I feel is a conversation between DPW, the commission and our parking services group to bring forward, you know, we liked these recommendations. We're gonna pursue these further. How does everyone feel about that? But you're saying that we would be accepting that there's a sufficient parking available with this change in the usage of the parking? Okay. And that we don't need them to make any more amendments to the document? To the report, you mean? Correct. Okay. That was that question. On the permanent changes, I'm wondering about the one thing, the motorcycle parking that's been removed. Where is that being relocated? There are a few opportunities within the curbside on Main Street where we could return motorcycle parking without having actual as built construction. I don't feel comfortable recommending any of those nooks or crannies, which is how they got designated currently be designated as motorcycle parking yet. Because there was, I was part of the decision that was made to put the motorcycle parking on Main Street near to the Church Street corner beside the two EV spots. And that seemed to go over really well at that point. So I'm concerned that that's going away and there's another one that was listed that was also being removed, which doesn't sound like a good idea if we haven't actually planned in for that somewhere else. So that answered that question. One of the things in the paperwork was that there's discussion about the contracting or communication with the unified parking company to standardize the private parking lot rates to the $1.50 an hour from the, I'm sure I think it's four or $5 an hour to make it during this construction period. What's the status of the contract discussions with them about changing that, coordinating that so that the unified parking rate is $1.50 an hour instead of four or five? Those conversations are continuing, including today. We are honing in that I think both UPP and the city recognize that the top priority for this would be at the Courthouse Plaza lot, which is right off of South Winooski across from the VFW. There's approximately 85 spaces in on that level. And the UPP is indicating that they are ready to participate with the city at that level. We are negotiating terms still at this time. The other locations they have are largely private lots during the day and public at night. And those lots are still being discussed with them. I think as we've heard from the business community, the Courthouse Plaza lot is the one of greatest interest. As soon as you come into the city that there's 85 spaces at the usual $1.50 an hour. And we will be working very hard to finalize a negotiated agreement there. Have you told them this timeline that you're on? So that, I mean, I'm just concerned that I'm concerned about us making a decision tonight without having that in place. That's why I'm asking the question. Right. The timing of that? We can bear with them, we want that up and running at least a month before construction starts to get the public used to the situation, which would mean having it in place for October. But I mean, when will you have an agreement with them that you know that's gonna work? Right. Yeah, my goal is to drive that as close to fruition in the next month or two as possible, given that I want to give certainty to the downtown stakeholders that this additional resource is available. Yeah. The other question about the, one of the things about using Park Mobile for as much as possible, is there, are there continuing ways for people to not have to participate with that private companies app and parking, including with the kiosks? Yep. So the kiosks will take coin or card like a meter would. So it provides another opportunity as kind of a different layer of way to pay for parking on Main Street. So the kiosks change will not force people to use the Park Mobile. Correct. And it's K by plate and it doesn't require someone to pay and then go put a ticket back in their car. So it does act in kind of a similar higher functioning service that you can leave your vehicle assuming you remember your plates and pay and then keep going to where your final destination is. And I think the question that was on the meeting last month was about the border, the zones. Is that, do the kiosks have the same issue of paying for a certain amount of time and then going away and coming back in that zone? Does it have that same problem? So we are not looking for time limited parking tonight. The kiosk would be assigned a similar zone and should function to be able to limit time parking. But that's not something that we are seeking to have effectuated at this point. In order to we have the zones designated. I think Mr. Overby, two things. One is that outstanding request generally is still being looked at across the downtown I think as senior engineer Wheelock's talking is that for Main Street in particular, our interest long term is to bring back to you in the next couple of months the actual regulatory policy for the Main Street meters. That is not being sought for action tonight. Yeah, and I think it's just somewhat confusing to me which is another question for me is there's so many things that are in and out and I know you've tried to break them out into those four nice little voting things but there's still ambiguity from my perspective in the what are you voting for on those, for the permanent changes particularly that's what I'm talking about right now. So, and the question that a former city counselor, Sharon Bushard brought up about the staging area is that really true? I know that's the first time I've heard that in effect that those parking spots which I know you're gonna try to reorganize the layout of that so that it's more usable and grab a few more spots. Is that truly gonna be a staging area for the three years of the construction or are you gonna use maybe the old Midtown Motel portion of it with a contract with the owner of that property? Both are being reviewed along with a section of parking near Memorial Auditorium. Fundamentally inside of the main and Winooski lot the work for the ravine sewer when that occurs will take a substantial portion of the lot including a reasonable number of parking spaces dedicated to our firefighters at station one. And so thinking about the fact that construction is gonna take a reasonable portion of the lot it seems that allowing the contractor to stage on another portion of it will be a reasonable opportunity in a very congested area. So yes, it is something that we are investigating. We know that we do need to bring that back to you before we can effectuate it. Division Director Padgett and I were discussing that agreement this morning and the timeline to be able to do so. The project would be able to compensate the traffic fund for the lost revenue basically for the fact that the lot will be out of commission during that time. It is also one of the reasons why we are having these active conversations with UPP recognizing that if we lose the onsite on street parking surface parking at that lot that there needs to be a place for those cars to go. And so that's one of the reasons why we are pursuing that opportunity during construction. I mean it seems completely logical that you're planning for that use of that space. However, I think it's sort of again sort of a last minute piece of information that makes me concerned about the way that this is being we're being asked to approve it at this point. So one of the other things that I wanted to comment on and I think this was something we talked about a year ago or more when this was starting to come down the pipe about the recommendations from the study as far as getting people familiar with actually parking somewhere else now or a year ago. So they're happy with getting into the downtown parking garage or other places with signage and one of your speakers at the public forum was I think, his name was Andy Wheeler, talking about getting people, doing all these things now before it just becomes like discovery of there's no parking lot at Maine and Winooski anymore and also the bus thing. And I do have a concern that we've had years of coming toward this project. I mean, it feels like years to me, I'm sure it feels like 10 years to you. But I have a concern that we're not acknowledging the fact that these things need to get done. They sure they show up in the report. They needed to be done, but it's always like, well, we're working on them. And then nope, if I were to approve this permanent changes, there's no, it just whatever happens to get done, maybe gets done. So I have a big concern about things like that, that we've had a lot of chance to get organized about that. And the way finding stuff, I know we've talked about this for years. How do you make it pleasant and easy to get in and out of the downtown parking garage? I mean, we've talked about that forever. And we don't, and there's nothing in here that says how you're gonna make that happen. Correct. So to provide you an update on kind of this larger question, the changes to start promoting the other parking locations will start in September. We are working with our business and workforce development office, which is the church street marketplace, kind of former role in position with broader expanded duties to be able to help with this marketing outreach. We've identified funding to help support their group, to be able to support this project for continuing it over the three years of its duration. Additionally, we are about to select our outreach consultant to help during construction. They will be on board and under contract ideally by mid June. So again, putting all of these measures in place so that we can start these mitigation tactics earlier before we start construction. Yeah, well, that's laudable. I mean, that's, it's gonna be what it's gonna be for sure. And I know I read through the material from the Burlington Business Association too and their concerns that this is, it's just not ready for, it's not ready for a vote, frankly. It's not quite, it locked down enough for us to vote on it. It's a great, you know, wish list and conceptually what looks like it might be great, but I don't feel like it's ready for a vote on that particular thing. So I think the temporary changes, I don't have a problem with. I think you've got, you know, pretty much got that organized. There was a couple, I think the temporary change that I had a question was about the unified parking commitment and that's something yet that we don't have a commitment on that, which I would be much more happy with if that were there, but I might be willing to support that. And one thing I did want to make a comment about and a question on the method that was used for the proposed changes to saying that what's in place physically for various things does not match ordinance and that instead of taking what's in the ordinance and saying we should actually conform the way we have it on the street to what the ordinance has as passed by whoever was doing that, why did we just say, well, whatever's there now is what we're gonna make the ordinance. It seems backwards to me and I would have thought you would have looked at the ordinance for each of those locations and said, well, here's what the ordinance is and then the thing that would have come to the commission is the ordinance says this, what we really would prefer is what is in place now. Can you adjust the ordinance to match what is in place now? Does that make sense? Yeah, I understand what you're saying there. Yeah, and I know you're being efficient. Probably, oh, let's just get it all done and here's the stuff that doesn't match and somehow it fell through the cracks and let's just make the ordinance match whatever we happen to be doing right now, which seems to me not a good process. You know, just, you know what I'm saying? If I can clarify, I would say 90% of the changes are cleaning up past actions by commissions to move towards what the existing on-street regulations are. The one in front of April Cornell is probably the oddity in the fact that there's no existing ordinance that supports how we currently use it. All the rest of them come from, most likely just the changes in technology and how we keep our ordinances online and keep them up to date and deleting out to the ones that are no longer needed. I mean, there's ones in there from when Main Street in front of Edmunds was diagonal on both sides. So it's just, there's a lot of really old information that just didn't get electronically effectuated. So I may have misunderstood. So I misunderstood you. So what you're saying is that commission actually voted to remove the diagonal parking on Main Street both sides. It's in the record and in fact, somebody didn't get around to actually putting it into the city code. Right, but then it's, to be able to truly clean it up and make it so that what's on the street. There's again, the one location in front of April Cornell, which is why it is on the proposed sheet in purple is the one spot that there's nothing there to do what we're doing. But we would write it in to be what is currently there. Right, but if you don't pass, yeah. But in fact, it wasn't really a matter of an ordinance change that was made and has not been implemented. What you're saying, it was ordinance change that was made, but somebody didn't get around to making the legal, the ordinance change on the computer record of it. Is that what you're saying? There's no official deletion of past old ordinances that should have been changed. And so now there are some places that have four ordinances written over the same spot and enforcing in that spot could be challenging if legally existed. Yeah, if you have anybody that's looked at the ordinance and the way it's done, it's really insane. So that helps explain it. But I mean it just, based on the fact that I know historically it's probably impossible to do it any other way. That might be the shortcut to getting it cleaned up with the ones that you discovered in the process of this. I think that is, let's just see if I have any other comment that I had made a note of when I was watching the meeting. Oh, the one other comment that was made by Mr. Wheeler was, and this is something obviously that the city doesn't have so much control over but maybe Director Spencer does. The Rain Mountain Transit promoting the loop methodology because that was one of the suggestions that was made is if you wanna get people to not be having their cars, let's get them using the bus more. And he admitted that he didn't ride the bus but in fact, a lot of people don't ride the bus. And so again, it's something that if we're not doing that and like in September, like whatever, two months before the construction happens, you're not gonna get people riding the bus at the last minute. It's like it has to be, and I think Mr. Wheeler was really great about explaining how you have to get everybody on board with being comfortable with the where things are gonna be with new places to park and ways of getting into town and around. And I feel like we haven't, there's nobody that's been sort of paying attention at that high level in this project and it's been very technical. It's been the maps and where the parking spots are and all that kind of thing. And that's what we're talking about tonight. But, and I, this has nothing to do with parking but I will continue to say that I'm very concerned about the fact that we have the most dangerous intersection in Vermont at Main Street and South Manuski and there has been no way, we're still using 50s technology of stoplights to deal with that intersection, which is gonna continue to make it a deadly intersection. And we were told that every intersection roundabouts would just be ridiculous and complicated and expensive and too much work for public work. So it has nothing to do with parking but I will say that that is a big problem with the entire Great Streets Main Street project that we will live to regret. So that's my questions about the parking parts of it though. And thank you very much. All right. Commissioner Martino. Yeah, I don't have any specific comments about the temporary and permanent changes. I thought, I mean the engineering drawings make it like pretty darn clear. What is gonna be there? I guess my only question is about the implementation of the permanent changes themselves as construction completes. How does that actually commence? Is it just like the second that the sign goes up it's officially enforceable? Or is there another process where either the commission's involved or some other administrative process where right now there really is and no parking is out here or now this really is a bus only spot or loading zone or whatever. Yep. The reason why this is coming in front of you guys tonight is from my experience on St. Paul Street where construction does change quickly knowing that being able to bring something in front of the commission takes a few weeks of lead time and it takes 21 days after you act on something before something can be effectuated. So you add that six week period and sometimes a contractor is ready to give back a street before we can actually have things effectuate and so what we would look to do is understand when we start to see that a contractor is ready to give the street back to the public for parking we would write what you effectuate into what you act on ideally tonight and maybe in the next few meetings into ordinance and have it be warned. It still doesn't actually become regulated parking unless the contractor gives back up that section of the road. But when they do ahead of a weekend the signs that are in place the conversation we have with parking services makes it so that the regulation that the signs indicate is what is enforced on the street. I'm happy to bring back updates and progress of the construction schedule so that you have an idea what blocks and the approximate timeframe that they're gonna be opened for regulated parking that's very reasonable but it is hard to predict with specificity when a contractor is gonna be like I'm done with this block that turnover happens inside of four weeks and it was really challenging on St. Paul Street when we were looking to make parking be available back to people make the street be available back to people and being like actually there's no parking regulation on that block we need to act more quickly so. Alrighty so basically no delay from the time that construction is done to when? We could use the street in the ways that we've outlined. That's what we're aiming for. Awesome, that sounds pretty logical. Sounds reasonable to me. All right, that's it. Thanks. Mr. Damiani? So I guess I have one sort of specific focus area question first around the Sapnicki main intersection and maybe I missed this from a previous meeting around where the gas station is and sort of the I noticed the one way in and one way out around the bus stop and I was just curious I thought I can see there's gonna be a lot of a lot of cars, people walking, people getting on and off the bus in that particular intersection. I feel like I recall at some previous meeting where maybe one of those entrances was I know it's currently a really wide entrance and maybe one of those entrances was gonna be closed completely to car traffic so I was just wondering if you could speak to that particular corner, south-east corner of the intersection. So that location, we have an ongoing discussion with that property owner about the access. It is an ongoing and very active conversation at the moment. The city does prefer the single driveway option which you had seen in the previous concept. What is being shown is the alternative proposal to that property owner with the request that they had for two-way access or two driveways on Main Street. I don't have an idea today where that will land in finality just because it is still ongoing. Okay, and do we have, and if that particular configuration is what ends up being the final configuration does the commission have control over sort of like on the exit having cars only turn right out of that particular access or just trying to control the traffic along? I'm not sure if that authority lives with you or the DRB, but we can find an answer to that. Okay, great, thank you. And then yes, I guess I also share a similar concern around sort of during the construction period with the use of the Main Street south-west parking lot as the construction zone and I guess I was trying to do the numbers quickly of I think it's 60 space or 50 something spaces in that particular lot. Yeah, and just trying to get an understanding of if that is, I totally understand if that needs to be used during the length of the construction, the time of the construction. So just trying to get a better handle of how many spots potentially we're gonna be losing during the temporary portion. If for some reason the courthouse, the UPP agreement doesn't come through, I don't know, there's a sort of quick number to that that you'd be able to. I think we'd ideally be looking to bring both actions forward. At the same time. At the same time. I will say that during construction for the ravine sewer portion of the construction which I anticipate being a solid year, the portion of that parking lot all the way through the air station is likely unavailable because it's just not safe to have occupancy above that work type. And it may be an open trench, so then it may not be an option. Okay. And then at that time, we would have to relocate the nine parking spaces for the firefighters as well. So it does come at a further loss of available parking in that lot. Okay, and then I guess overall sort of speaking to the temporary portion of the project, the temporary parking loss during the project. What sort of metrics or things are the department looking at sort of to measure the impact of the temporary parking loss during the construction period to sort of just see how nimble the department can be around helping businesses and residents and visitors? Yep, so during construction, one of the ways that we are looking to get a better understanding is having the contractor propose their traffic control and their temporary, the different phases for the work type with their bid. So that we are able to understand at selection of the contractor what that impact looks like based on how they plan to complete the work. With that said, we are still looking at ways in our urban downtown, like other communities do, to patch back up the construction zones for nights and weekends so that as much parking and moveability through the corridor can be restored. Most specifically, the impact is around the utility construction with the water and the sewer mains and plating or repatching back in trenches. I think those are all the questions I have now. Thank you. Mr. Box. So I have one quick comment on the temporary changes and then a couple on the permanent ones. So with the temporary changes that bus stop that's going to be temporarily added in front of ethnic glass on Pearl Street, I think that makes sense. Those parking spaces are hardly ever used. I just want it to be known to be sort of cognitive of all the different roadway users in that section, people biking and walking towards Battery Park. It can get kind of hairy when there are even just one parked car there because their driver's trying to move into the right turn lane, that sort of thing. So just sort of being cognizant of how having a bus there for a couple hours a day might impact all those different roadway users it's going to feel different. So that's all on the temporary changes. And then I had a few sort of specific things with the permanent changes. So I'm looking at the schematic that's between Church Street and Winooski. And I'm not sure if this is true for all of the different vehicle loading zones but it's saying that there's vehicle loading zone 15 minutes, 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. And then three hour meter parking, 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. cool. Like I think it's good to have that sort of mixed use of parking. But I'm wondering, I feel like it could potentially be confusing in practice. You know, if people see like a meter there during the day and accidentally parked there. So I'm just wondering if you can speak to what that sort of looks like in practice in terms of enforcement and sort of education for people who won't be unloading during those sort of business hours. Yep, we are working on the signage. We have this in practice elsewhere around the city on St. Paul Street is probably the better example to site and the fact that there are no meters there. And so really is 100% on signage. Don't love the way that the signage does look on St. Paul Street right now because there's like three large signs and it requires a lot of reading to figure out. But people are parking there after the loading zone expires. And so a reasonable number of people are getting it. I would say the one that has been the least effective is over by the downtown high school where we basically allow parking during the summer and nobody still parks there in the summer. So. Helpful, thank you. The other, this is just sort of a general comment. I like the addition of the accessible spaces, right, sort of around the bottom of Church Street. And that's great when you're talking about the sort of the south end of the pedestrian mall. I'm super supportive of those spaces in particular. And then the last thing, and I think I brought this up at our last meeting is just the addition of those spaces in front of the school, in front of Edmonds. I have to say I'm still skeptical about adding them and with the caveat that I totally understand the city's position and why you want to add additional spaces there. I just do feel like it could be really sort of confusing for the users and also hard to enforce. So yeah, just wanted to make that known again. I understand, but I do feel like, yeah, it's confusing and could be hard to enforce. That's all for me. All right. Mr. Barr. Thanks. And I guess I want to applaud you for redisecting everything after some more community engagement. It's made it clearer for me for sure. And hopefully we can get through the temporary and the permanent changes. I've got a, I guess, a clarification question because we've talked about kiosks taking out the meters. And this has nothing to do with UPP or the private lots, but just the parking along Main Street as it either from the temporary areas or once it becomes permanent. Will Park Mobile still be able to be used in addition to the kiosks? So everywhere that it was used before. And there'll probably be some signs saying what zone it is, even though the meters are gone. Correct, yeah. There's still signage because it's gonna indicate the Park Mobile logo and then it's gonna say remember your plate or it's gonna have the kiosk and it's gonna say remember your plate and then there's also the Park Mobile sign that'll go kind of in the same thing. So it'll give people all of that information in one sign. And as we kind of talked a little bit earlier, the zone, if it's three-hour limit, Park Mobile will also restrict it to three hours so that you can't park somewhere else within the same zone using the same four-digit number. Correct. Because I know that my experience is people will try and move to a different spot. If you use the same number and see if they can get away with it. Yeah, if that is a direction that we go after a little bit more outreach, then yes, the three-hour can be enforced with Park Mobile. Because I like the idea of the businesses having spaces available to them, what few do remain on Main Street. Available to them and so that there is time-limited parking so that it doesn't become a camp ground all day long. The signage too, and we already touched upon that, but I think it's so critical that during not only the temporary construction portion, but afterwards that the signage be very clear. That when somebody who's used to coming to a certain space can't go there anymore, where do they go? And I don't know, I know that there's a Park Mobile app. Is there a Burlington parking app that's in the works? We do have a Park Burlington interactive map that's being overhauled on the city's GIS platform that will be available as it is now on web, but to your point, is it available on mobile? I don't believe it is specifically designed for that currently, and that's something that we can work on. Because those are the things that as a visitor coming to our city, those that they're not gonna know to go to a website on a computer, they're gonna be looking on there. Most people use phones now for navigation, so. Yep, we have received some comments, is there a way to get a QR code on a banner or something so that people are, as they're moving around and get frustrated to have a way to find what they're looking for? Yeah, so again, I like the way that you've broken it up into pieces. It's a little bit more digestible, not only for us and our votes tonight, but for the community. So that's it for me today. All right, thank you. Vice-Chair, I know we're on it, but. My notes are in no particular order, but I'm gonna try. So I really appreciate the efforts that the staff have undertaken outreach and work with BBA and the business community on this parking issues. So I really think that's a very important to mention. I think we had a lot of lessons learned with St. Paul Street, folks use St. Paul Street as like, oh my gosh, remember how horrible that was? And I personally feel like that was a really wonderful learning opportunity for all of us because it showed how responsive staff could be while we were in the process of kind of constructing and using and not having parking. So I appreciate the learning that we have from that that you're implementing now with this outreach. That said, I think we do need more kind of wayfinding and clear communication. These are really two different things. The wayfinding piece, we need this up, what's the June 1st, as soon as possible so that folks know where to start parking, where the parking really exists, where those kind of hidden gems because there isn't a parking shortage at all. But if you look around and see there's no parking, well then you think there's no parking instead of looking a block away. So that's one thing. And the communication piece, I go back to those VTRANS reports that I'm still getting on the roundabout, it's fantastic. And I know that requires an investment and a level that may not be at the budget for this project, but if we can aspire to something like that for this, that would be great. We're spending a lot of time talking about where cars are gonna park in this. And right now I look at this and I'm thinking, wait, as someone who drives, I will be able to see that. But also someone who bikes and walks, what's the communication that's gonna go out to me so that when I'm biking down the hill, I know before I get to Winooski Avenue that I should have turned a block away for the detour. So thinking about all our users and the level of communication that we need, so it isn't like I'm doing my middle-aged mom bunny hop over the curb, which is not pretty these days, to be able to navigate. And again, other users who maybe have mobility issues and are still using our sidewalks that they, this information is available to them as well. So wayfinding and communication. Another thing that's come up as well which kind of ties into the wayfinding is the safety and security. So for, and this is also addressing issues that go beyond maybe the purview of public works, but it's falling in our lap right now. When we talk about public safety downtown and we talk about access to the car parks. You know, just using an example, I was biking up Main Street Tuesday night maybe. And Monday night. And it was one of those things where I was like, I just felt a little sketched out at one point because the car pulled up right next to me even though I was in the box on my bike. And I thought, how would I feel if this were my 14-year-old? Biking home from work, right? So what are those pieces? That's a safety issue that the city deals with, but it's an infrastructure issue maybe that's now falling in our lap. So what are those pieces that staff can push back onto other departments or that we even look to the ambassador program with parking services? How do we make sure that staff who are working late shifts can be able to feel safe walking to, their vehicles are walking across town? What else? So these are most statements and questions. The, I guess one question though. The loading spaces that we have thinking about the businesses along Main Street. And is the 15-minute space, like is that based on data that that's like the turnover rate? I'm thinking of comments from like the bike shops. If you're bringing your bike in to be fixed, you're not necessarily riding it. Is the 15-minute window enough? Is it 30-minute? Because I think it's not in their benefit test, someone warehouse their vehicle right out front. So just wondering how you got that time limit, 15 versus 30. Yep, it does come a recommendation kind of as an industry practice. When you put up 30-minute loading spaces, that doesn't feel like an in and out type of a space. And as we change this connotation to not just be trucks that are loading or loading by permit, we really wanna make sure that the personal vehicles that are coming in to load or unload, people or goods, are doing so in an active fashion and not say parking in these loading spaces and walking two blocks up Church Street, grabbing a quick coffee and coming back because that takes 30 minutes and I look at 30 minutes and I can do that. And so the mentality is that a 15-minute spot is a quicker turnover. What that realistically looks like sometimes though with parking services staff is maybe not even seeing it again for 30 minutes, maybe not even seeing it again for an hour. But the helpful thing is that if they do find somebody who has been there for that long, because it is a no parking loading space, they have the ability to take it in tow. And so if we do find someone who is not using the space appropriately, they have the ability to move them so that that space, which is necessary to serve the community, can be restored back to its use for them. Okay, that's good. But that's the psychology actually behind that amount. I did a test when I was dropping a bike off. I even doddled and I was like 15 minutes is plenty enough, but I think my survey of one is probably not scientifically accurate, so. Couple more things. And I mentioned this last month as well. The bus parking on College Street, I just have such huge concerns about that because that is a major corridor on Union for the middle school kids. Who are coming and going from Edmunds, going to City Market to get a snack, going to the Y, going to the library. That space there has always been a really high pedestrian and bike area. I know some folks feel comfortable, much more comfortable riding up College Street because there's more bus traffic, so it just feels less frantic than say the Main Street corridor. But now it's already tight, so you're just gonna get really squeezed with if you have that bus parking right on College and Union, and there's parking on the other side of the street, and then you have the College Street shuttle, which is the number 11, going up and down there as well. It just makes me extremely nervous with those frontal brains that they're just not fully developed. And because it is a high pedestrian and bike area, I don't know if there's another location, Perkins Pier or anywhere else. One of the fall back locations was to use in front of the school just because we know that this is a transient nature of that bus. I mean, it's a long-term bus spot, but it is not a bus pickup kind of spot, so that was one of the other alternatives. It generally was a neutral, that was a neutral placement location for GMT based on how they were needing to find parking to reroute, but it's a little out of the way to serve the downtown hotels and other destinations, where two of us is service, so we'd have to keep looking, I think, to be able to make that be viable. I just really want a really thorough look at that corridor. It makes me really nervous. We could test it over the summer without schoolchildren there and see how that works geometrically for other users. And then if it's unsuccessful during what is a less stressful time, I think we'd still have time to be able to alter that location. I think that would be great. I really do. If it's at that first spot on the north side of college, I think that could give some pretty good data. High peak days usage. Nice sunny day. Okay. And then one final thing is this back to the school. And while the school may be neutral, I think it's been 17 years I've been there, there are evening events and weekend events. And so there, I feel like if there's just like a free for all kind of parking up there that could cause conflict for those like, the school graduation, the spring concert, the fall concert, the open house, the fall play, the school play, the band concert, the orchestra concert, the choir concert, like there's just a lot. And it's, so I think maybe asking the schools like ES and EMS, like what are the events so that you get a sense of what some of those conflicts are? Cause if you have parents coming in from work to like screech into a kids concert, they're probably driving as opposed to coming home necessarily and walking. Cause then they're scooping up their kid who's been at school since seven in the morning. So that's when there tends to be a heavy crush of parking along Badminton Street corridor outside of those hours. I did specifically ask both principals in our meeting that we had about two weeks ago from your comment at the April commission. They didn't seem overly concerned. Talk to the PTO. I can get you some names. Yep, there's, I am a parent at my kid's schools and I fully respect where you're coming from that the user of that experience is different than the organizer. Exactly. I do wanna highlight though that if the schools are using that section for parking currently, they are outside of ordinance and could be ticketed in towed. Whereas if they use that in the future, then that would result in less conflict but there are ways to manage that. And we can collaborate with the school on their use of that side of the street during their events. And make sure that it is legal. I think that that's all for now. Thank you. All right, thank you. Also say that I very much appreciate the continued coordination that's taking place between the department and the business community and other stakeholders here that's largely out of sight from the public's eye here. But I know there's been a lot of maneuvering here and anyone can sort of take a gander at the packet and the feedback that we received at sort of site meetings, even meetings earlier today where we're referenced here. So I appreciate that and that's sort of like a key piece to this whole project. We have a very exciting opportunity in front of us. We know it's gonna take a lot of work and it's gonna be challenging as well. So we certainly need to keep working with all stakeholders on the specifics as we go. One theme that was brought up in, I believe the business community's sort of summarized take in recommendations here was about availability or sort of like, the way finding has come up. I will interpret that in my mind to also emphasize the urgency and importance of getting to real time occupancy data is something that I ask division director Patrick about twice a year. And I know there's still a few hurdles, legal and political and otherwise between us and getting there but I see that is really important to the, along with the conversation of the way finding, the re-upping the Park Burlington website. I mean this is the idea that division director Padgett floated a couple of years ago even like the prospect of looking before you leave your house and just seeing what the availability picture is. Or certainly we know we could get smart with the Park mobile data. I think at some point when I really get smart at the sort of city block level. Generally at these times of day or days of week here's what the occupancy tends to look like. So anyway, so certainly bump that up the lists for our efforts the next few months and years and I'll ask Jeff the same, next time I see him. Let me ask if there are other lessons learned from the St. Paul Street process. Looking back on now, some of the pain of that is faded in my mind, so maybe less so for others. I see a beautiful street now with awesome stormwater treatment and nice wide usable sidewalks and so forth. But from a process perspective, we heard one thing tonight but could you elaborate on other sort of pain points from that that we're striving to work around this time? Yep, they don't fall into the realm of parking regulations so I apologize if we've not really shared those previously. A lot of the lessons learned come from better understanding what lives below our 200 plus year old city and what that means for its existing infrastructure, what the condition of the water in the sewer mains are, how and where they actually do exist or don't exist. And so we've done potholing, we've done extensive investigation to understand their condition and what we're gonna do with them interfacing with property owners and how that connects to buildings. That is one item of during construction that made St. Paul Street's construction take longer which does then relate back to the impact on the community. We have done significant investigation to the contaminated soils and so the regulation about how the soils that are not the most environmentally friendly that exist in the corridor are able to be disposed of and the coordination that comes with working with the state takes time. We've done extensive work ahead of time to have a plan similar to the roundabout where when we encounter this, we have a way to manage it and keep moving on and keep construction going. There are other ones, but you caught me a little off guard but those are the types of things that we've really worked to manage and know as much as we can about so that the delays that happened on St. Paul Street don't perpetuate themselves into a longer construction timeline. Yeah, thank you for that. Jogging a lot of memories about some of the the surprises we found when that work took place in St. Paul Street and certainly here's to the appreciation that you're doing some detailed testing to prep for that on Main Street. Yeah, I know it's sort of not germane to the parking right. Ordinance adjustments that you're looking to get a vote on tonight but an important part of the whole puzzle here. Thank you. All right, nothing further on my end. I will open it up to public comments on the Main Street item. Miners, everyone, we have a sign up sheet on the table. You're on the top. Come on forward. My name's Robert Leidy, I live in Ward six. I'm a walker and biker and one thing I thought was interesting relative to your comments that the St. Paul Street is thriving and I use it all the time. I can park my bike there, I can go to Shy Guy, I go to the coffee shop, I go to the restaurants there. And if you remember, I've lived in Burlington for over 45 years and I used to go to restaurants on Battery Street which is, it's got plenty of parking there now but the restaurants are all closed. Just about all closed. So the arguments that are made by businesses that it's parking that drives business is not quite the reality. We walk down, we bike down, making these areas better for biking and walking is better for their business. The people on Church Street are getting walk-in business. It's walking and biking are what make our city great. Relative to the safety issues, especially on this corridor, we have, I really like the scramble on Pearl Street and Winooski. Everybody knows how to scramble across that. It works great. Why don't we scramble across these intersections on Main Street? I think it would be, as we built out our walking infrastructure from Church Street, scrambling is a great way to go. And I think it would potentially be far safer than trying to deal with cars turning while people are walking. So I live up on near Champlain College. I'm concerned about the speed of traffic coming down Main Street into this new project and hope we can do something at that intersection to keep. I know it's being monitored now. I hope you're finding good data, but it is concerning that there are, I cross that street every day to go to the Y and it can be scary. And lastly, as we said, there's going to be this huge bridge being built across the interstate and it was brought up earlier. I think there's a potential for a real wonderful connection there where South Burlington, where there's lots of low income housing being built would have a corridor into our city. It's a walking, biking corridor. Thank you. All right, I don't know who's next in the room. Mattie or Norma, would you be able to just take a peek at that list and call off who's next? Hi. My name is Evan Gould. I'm a resident of the South End. I've lived in Burlington for all coming on 15 years now. I just wanted to voice my support for the Great Streets Project. I think it's super exciting as somebody who walks, bikes, also drives, but would prefer, you know, safer bike infrastructure. The one thing that I wanted to advocate for is just I understand the concerns of the business, but also seeing the transformation as a resident of the South End of more walkable neighborhoods and access to that and how vibrant it's made the community down here. Making me drive less to go into town and just being able to kind of explore this area. I just wanna say that any additional, I think, addition of parking I would advocate against. So I just wanted to voice that and my support for the project as a whole. That's it, thank you. Thank you. Hi, I'm also a resident of the South End, although I have not been here as long as those two, which is pretty cool. As a whole, I really support this project. Like I trust DPW to make these amendments that I've been hearing that wanna be made, especially with like directions and all that. It doesn't feel like the concerns that I've heard should necessarily like hold up a project as a whole. Like it seems like such a great idea. I'll echo what I heard from some others back there. Biking and pedestrian infrastructure is better for business than parking. I know that there's a temptation to think that people drive in, but the studies that have been done on that do not support that idea that is just the idea that people have. I understand this will be a minor pain for a brief period of time for some car drivers that don't necessarily know where the parking lots are in town, but I think that we're all going to benefit from this infrastructure over a long period of time. And I think holding it up more will only serve to hurt the community over that long period of time. I think there was a mention of St. Paul being a really great place now, despite some potential perceived pain for a limited period of time. Last point, the main issue that I see with biking in Chittenden County right now is the lack of regional connections. It's absolutely terrible to get to South Burlington, say on biking. This is a really important part to that. This is going to be the first step towards making it so we can actually have that connection and bike around Chittenden County and instead of just the capacity we have now, I'd like to see it go even further in the future, but I think this is a really good start. Thanks. Thank you. Can we get your name? I'm sorry. Oh, Gordon, very good. Hello, my name is Ali. I'm a Ward 3 resident. As someone who drives for work goes to the different businesses on Main Street, the bike shops, comedy club. I'm in support of removing the parking spots in favor of more accessible street to pedestrians, to bike lanes, protected bike lanes if possible, and yeah, I'd echo what others have said about that being better for businesses all around and also trees if possible. I know the Great Streets Project is working on some tree canopy cover for warming days of summer and fall that I think that'll help keep the city cooler. So yeah, thanks for all your work. Thank you. Hi, my name is Carlos. I live in the Old North End Ward 3. I really like to think the city as a part of our house that we collectively own and share because I feel like that's what it is at the end. It's just the outer extension of our house. So following that analogy, I don't think it's fair how much space we give to single occupancy vehicles, especially when we think about the amount of spaces they need to move and to park, for example, compared to something as a bus, biking or walking. I really don't think that's fair. On top of that, would you allow someone going around your house, smoking and making really loud engine and honking noises? I know I wouldn't like it. I know this might not be a popular opinion, but driving through the middle of the city shouldn't be comfortable. It should be slow and therefore safe for everyone inside or outside of a car. I also have this small story. I think the other day, my friends ordered Chinese food from Fuda and they live on North Street and so we drove to get that food. It was half a mile away. Now, we also took, we generated some traffic just for that trip and we also took a parking spot that someone else could have needed. And we did that for no reason. We really didn't need that parking space. I mean, someone else could have needed more. So that's how induced demand works. If it's a pain in, well, if it's hard to find parking, then they probably wouldn't have driven there in the first place. But if there was, for example, a protected bike lane, they might have done that trip by bike instead of driving and therefore that parking spot would have been taken for someone that needed it more. I wanted to encourage the world to take decisions from a data and science point of view. We already know how induced demand works and yeah, that's it. Thank you for listening and that thing for making that design. Thank you. Hi, my name is Josie. I also live in the Old North End of Burlington for pretty much three years now. And I'm speaking to encourage the proposed changes to Main Street, including the parking changes and removal and parking management plans. And I think we should consider prioritizing other ways of moving besides driving. Currently, Main Street is not really a place to hang out. There's too much traffic, there's too many cars, a lot of them are going too fast. There's walls of parked cars like around the sidewalks. Personally, I try to avoid Main Street as much as possible, which is kind of sad because I know there are a lot of great businesses there but as someone who doesn't drive and sometimes like is biking on Main Street and like you mentioned, it can get kind of sketchy. So I hope that these proposed improvements will make Main Street really become like a Main Street in the city where somewhere that is lively and vibrant for people. And I'm excited to see wider sidewalks, separated bike lanes, trees, all things mentioned. So thank you for your work so far. Thank you. Yeah, come on up and please make sure we get your name on the sheet. My name is Jack Tiana. And I've been Ward 5. I've lived pretty much all over the city at this point. I wanted to speak out in support of approving the changes to parking on the Main Street redesign, allowing the project to move forward as designed. Main Street as proposed will be a far more human scale route with narrower roads, slower traffic, accessible transit stops, improved stormwater management, more space and safety for both pedestrians and cyclists. I wanted to kind of try to explain kind of how I think about this in any context of the larger systems of the city and kind of the long-term goals of what we're trying to do in Burlington. So as a potential primary route between the two highest trafficked destinations in the city, both the residents and tourists, Church Street and the waterfront, the increased amenities for non-drivers should dramatically increase the foot traffic and cycling traffic in the area, leading to more spontaneous patronage and discovery of businesses on the street which should overcompensate for any perceived impacts on the commerce from the reduction of parking. So beyond that, the increased vitality of a human scale movement through that area should increase the economic viability overall, leading to establishment of new businesses and jobs along that corridor over time. I don't know how many people are into like soil and stuff, but I think of transportation networks kind of in a permaculture point of view. If you slow down the water, you let the nutrients settle into the environment around it, you're gonna get more economic vibrancy, and stronger neighborhoods. So the parking study in the agenda packet outlines in detail how our existing parking is meeting demand and how those adjustments to pricing and enforcement can further maximize the utilization of the future set of parking spaces that will be available. And then outside of commercial benefits, which I know has been kind of a little bit of a pushback for this stage of the project, I think the well-protected bike infrastructure along Main Street is the beginning of a hugely important development for active transportation in the city. The design as proposed will give cyclists and pedestrians coming from the waterfront greenway from the limits of Burlington and beyond. People use that even from Canada. A safe and convenient entry point into the city along one of its main boulevards up to Church Street. So you're pulling in these people from all over the city and all over the county and pulling them right up Main Street up into Church Street. So beyond that with the existing dedicated but currently unprotected lanes on North Union and North Manuski, the waterfront greenway can connect directly to the old North End, through the old North End along the Riverside path to downtown Manuski. So we're building the backbone here of a really strong transportation network and economic network connecting the cities by foot and by bike and making it more viable to not have a car. So we want to think about the network effects that we're causing here. So it's foundational to beginning to deliver on the longer-term goal around climate and transportation. So in summary, I just wanted to say that walking back or watering down any of the designs to accommodate just a few more parking spaces is not only short-sighted for commercial interests themselves but also be a major setback in delivering on many of the goals set out in detail in the cities planned BTV goals. So let's keep moving on these big goals and use the detailed research and planning studies that have occurred here in Burlington as well as the successes of other cities of all sizes and in all climates around the world to be our guide. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else in the room that would like to speak at this time? All right, Mr. Goulding, we check on the phones for public comment, please. Sure, Chair Hogan, I'm going to promote Kelly Devine for public comment. Thank you. Thank you, Rob. Thank you, Public Works Commission. Kelly Devine, I'm the Executive Director of the Burlington Business Association. First, I want to make sure it's clear and I think I stated it clearly in my letter to you all today that our business community isn't coming forward in opposition to the project nor to the outcome of the project necessarily. We do believe that there are, as some of the speakers just talked about, I think potential long-term benefits to the community of the project itself. I want to say that I really do appreciate the work that we've been able to do with Director Spencer and the team in this past couple of weeks to talk through some of the concerns which have primarily been around the construction period. And I want to thank those on the commission who acknowledged that and say that I think we've made some good headway. I think we still have more work to do because I have to actually agree with Commissioner Overby that I feel like there, in my head anyway, there are unanswered questions and having served on the parking advisory committee for many months and spent time with the final report, we never really got to have a meeting of that parking advisory committee where we got to ask questions on the final report. So I still have questions in my mind. Based on what I've seen in the report and what I know today, it's not clear to me exactly how we're going to, where we have capacity to address the loss of parking that will result in the project in its final stage. I think that I do appreciate that we're working on that. In fact, I assisted Director Spencer in getting in touch with UPP and our organization is, and some of our particularly concerned members who have been engaged, are very happy and willing to continue to work together to try to find solutions, both in the short term as we get through the construction period, which will be, I think, painful and difficult because of the impacts and then when we get to the final outcome. So those are some concerns I have. I'm not necessarily looking to stop the project necessarily, but I just wanted to make sure that it was clear that as a member of the parking advisory committee and I think Zandi Wheeler who served with me and Meg McGovern who were the representatives of the private sector would all echo that we never really could clearly see a plan in place that would replace those parking spaces that would ultimately be removed at the end of the project. And when we asked DPW to see if there was any opportunity to make any modifications to the project to bring back more parking, they were able to find three spaces but it's a pretty small number considering. There is data that shows that most people show up by car in Burlington to both shop and work. And I don't think that that's not just anecdotal report outs. So thank you all to the commission for acknowledging that for the work we're doing together. I look forward to continuing to work. I hope that you'll feel free to rely on our organization to help be a bridge between the members of the business community and the work that DPW has to do and wants to do to make our city better. Thanks. Connor is next in line. Hi everyone. I just wanted to come out and support the proposed changes to Main Street. I think everything looks really great and I'm excited to see those changes. One thing that I did want to bring up was just to potentially consider bike parking in this par door. We talked a lot about car parking in this par door but as a primarily bike user, bike parking is already challenging in this area and adding dedicated bike lanes would make it potentially more desirable for bikers to be in this area and hopefully would cause more people to be riding their bikes here and subsequently parking. I was wondering if any considerations would be made to converting the existing meters that it sounds like are gonna get removed in favor of kiosks if you could maybe convert those into hitch style bike parking racks. The infrastructure is already halfway there in terms of a cemented into the ground post. It seems like we could just make an extra little effort to add a hitch for people to park their bikes. I for one know that I've already been locking up to trees and meters in that area. I would hope that we're gonna start planning for increased bike parking in this par door. Anyway, thank you. Chair Hogan at this time, there's no one else in queue for public comment. All right, thank you, Mr. Golden. We just had a hand, actually we've had two hands go up so several flash is next in queue. Unmute here, couldn't resist. Giving my full support for the project and if I can mildly or in an equal level echo the previous caller about bike parking. I feel it's as an institution pretty understated or I'm not quite sure the word to use but in general, for instance in the winter time there's very poor, it seems like for instance on church street bike racks are taken away. So whether it's the city market or I think that bike racks could be paid a lot more attention to all year round and it seems like very logical suggestion the previous caller had about adding hitches or whatever his term was to existing parking meters. So bravo to the Public Works Commission and certainly a huge bravo to the staff, DPW staff for all the hard work on this project and also bravo to the public it's huge support for more bike infrastructure pedestrian infrastructure and really making our city taking another huge step forward and congratulations everybody, thank you so much. Next up is Dan. Hi everyone, thanks. I just wanna add a few comments. First I echo everything that Jack said I was able to catch what he said and he said it really, really well so I echo everything that he said and that I support the removal of parking headline for BBC this morning was about how quickly we're gonna get to 1.5 degrees Celsius from a climate crisis standpoint and removing cars and making it easier to walk and bike and take the bus is crucial to mitigating the worst effects of climate change. I also was recently biking in South Burlington at the intersection of Dorset and Kennedy where the freeway spills out there and that was my first time there and just how awful that is when you are on foot or on a bike and just how this removal of parking, removing of cars from Main Street is just gonna make it far more pleasant. People will linger, there will be more trees the air quality will be better, it'll be less noisy it won't smell as bad and so I think we should move forward with this and then finally extending the protected bike lanes to in front of the school is critical for the next step so I don't know when DPW is planning on doing that but doing it one more block so that the kids going to and leaving from school can get right into the protected bike lane is really important because we have to build out our network and so that next block is really important especially for the kids who go to school there so thank you very much. Thank you and that is all for public comment. All right, thank you Mr. Goldie. Last call in the room. Hello the pilot. All right, I think we're clear in that case we'll bring it back to the commission and can I ask staff to bring up sort of a, we'll take these posed actions one at a time could you sort of bring up and show us the quick synopsis of what we've got one at a time. All right, we have four proposed actions sort of take them in order here and would welcome a motion starting at the top regarding the parking study. I'll move it, but I just have one question about the subtext, like the subtitle. Is that part of the motion as well or just kind of like a summary there? It is purely just a summary and it is not part of the motion. Got it. So let me find a different document for you then. But yes, I move to accept the communication of the parking study report. Thank you, Commissioner Mutano. Is there a second? I'll second that motion. We'd love to see the language though. Yeah, hold on. It's pretty simple. So it says 5D staff recommends the DPW commission to accept the parking study laid out in attachment four. What page is this on in our, gosh. No, I'm not sure. 300 and 162. Oh, and then is this the updated one that you sent? Okay. I'm looking at the updated one. I think it's that one. The motion's the same, yeah. Okay, this is the original packet, although the motion language is the same, but your true request does remove the metered parking rate change and would not be effectuated with your action tonight. And just a clarification there, that's related to a different sort of. That'd be under 5D, yeah. Second motion still holds. So we have a motion that's been seconded. Is there any discussion around that motion? All right, let's go to a vote then. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye, myself, any opposed? All right, 5D has passed. Yeah, thank you. 5E, we're looking at here, permanent changes. Noting that some have been pulled out from the original packet. Correct. Understanding with certainly all of our work in projects of this duration, things are gonna evolve and I'm sure we'll be seeing you again to revise a couple of things, but looking for a consensus on this direction and this suite of proposed changes to the permanent ordinances. And just that final language will be amended. There you go, final language will be of the amended ordinances subject to review and approval of city attorney's office. I'll make a motion to approve the permanent parking changes laid out in attachment one. A motion from Commissioner Damiani, thank you for that. I'll second that motion. I have a second from Commissioner Fox, thank you for that. Is there any discussion around that motion to a vote? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye, for myself, any opposed? No, I don't get that it was ready for a vote. All right, and Commissioner Mutan, did I hear you? Aye. All right, so that motion passes, vote of six to one. Moving forward, item 5F here for a suite of temporary parking changes to support the construction process. You could find us a brief synopsis of that, just to refresh our memories, that'd be great. This is the 10 parking spaces. New bookmarks in these PDFs to help you jump around. Yeah, I know. And this is the one that's, is this contingent on an agreement with UPP? No, this is just adding the 10 parking spaces on Battery Street and the nine parking spaces on South Union and relocating the bus parking. Right. Which we will start sooner rather than later on College Street. Understood. I know. This one, that picture goes large. I don't know that there's good motion language here because this is more of a regulation change that we would have proposed during like a concept packet. Sure. All of those items. And this one is pretty much as it was in the packet. This one is unchained. No, it does not have any revisions at this point. Very good. Thank you. Well, I would welcome a motion on these temporary parking changes post here. I'll make a motion to approve the temporary parking changes as outlined from page 96 to 100 something. Thank you for that motion. Vice-chair on the El Vavaco. Is there a second? I'll second. Go ahead. You guys say second. All right. Second to Commissioner Mutanio. Thank you. Is there any discussion around that motion? All right, let's go to a vote. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? All rights. 5F for the temporary parking changes passed unanimously. Moving forward to 5G for PENIC-C corrections. And this is, if I can briefly summarize, this is sort of clarifying things that were not accurately represented in the ordinance today, compared to what's on the streets. And duplicative in their overlay in the street. I'll make a motion to accept staff recommendation on item 5G. Thank you for that motion, Commissioner Barr. I'll second the motion. There's a second from Vice-chair on the El Vavaco. Thank you for that. Is there any discussion around this item? All right, let's go to a vote, please. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye for myself. Any opposed? All rights. 5G is passed unanimously. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate all the work, and we shall still see you again soon. Yes. All rights, moving forward. Item 6 on our agenda, time-limited parking violation changes. I am going to channel division director Jeff Padgett and public works engineer Philip Peterson. Jeff is presenting his budget up at the board of finance and a philanthropic conflict. So what's before you is a policy recommendation that came out of briefing the city council on the North Winooski project. And there was concern that we are adding more time-limited parking on the North Winooski Avenue corridor. And there were questions about whether that was going to be understood by the public and when that put members of the Old North End in financial hardship. And there is a question of equity that we at staff took to heart, and we have brought forward a proposal, that we generally see time-limited parking and metered parking as similar strategies to encourage turnover. And yet, for a meter violation downtown, it's a $15 violation in ordinance for overstaying a time-limited space that does not have a meter is a $75 ticket. And so as we were having the discussion on North Winooski and then an internal policy discussion, overall, we felt it was warranted to bring these two violations into greater alignment, a meter violation and an overstay of a time-limited non-metered space. So in front of you is a recommendation to change the violation for time-limited parking down to $15, same as a metered space, and to add language given that the violation fine now would be much less with your approval that for anyone who had three or more violations over a three-year period for overstaying time-limited parking could be towed. The goal here would be that if there's a business that depends on a 15-minute parking space or some service adjacent to the parking space, don't want to see one person's kind of flagrant violation to impact long-term the access to said business. And with that, happy to answer any questions. Great. Thank you for that succinct overview. We're back to the commission for discussion here, but Commissioner McDonough. I don't have the packet ahead of me, but could you just remind me of the language regarding the three strike? Is it, like, shall be towed? Like, it is elsewhere in the parking ordinances? Or is the language any different? Uh-huh. Also may be removed. OK. Yes. Cool. And in the cases like St. Paul Street, where there is a time limit written into the parking ordinances and also meters or kiosks, what's generally the, what's actually used in practice? Like, if you were to, well, I guess, overstay there, it would be treated just as a meter violation, right? If you're at a meter and you don't comply with the terms, whether that's you didn't pay or you overstayed, it's a meter violation. This would be specifically for time-limited spaces unmetered. Specifically, got it. Yes. Although there are other places where there's both kind of layers applying on top of each other. Usually time, like dual-use space, is loading zone in the morning and then regular unit parking at night. So if it was a time-limited in the morning, that would be the violation if that was when it was. OK. I think that created it up. But yeah, thank you. I generally support the idea. Thank you. Commissioner Damiani. I think my only question is, I can't remember how many months ago we heard from division director Pat around the WHPS program. And I was just curious for being, if it says you'll be towed after three or more time-limited parking violations, if somebody goes through the WHPS program, that doesn't eliminate that they had a parking violation. Is that correct? That is correct. So the WHPS would count as number one, even if they didn't have to pay for the ticket. Reduces the financial part of it. Correct. OK. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Fox. Sorry. Was there anything in our packet on this item? Yeah, it was added. And it was an attachment. If you go to the commission web page, it's the first link on the item below the packet. And it was added as a supplementary piece since we were moving fast from the council conversation. And my apologies for it not being as part of the full packet. That'd be helpful. Sure. Let's circle back. Yes, that'd be great. Fisher-Bar. Sure, and I did get a chance to look at it. And I'm very much in favor of trying to make things more similar. I mean, it is about trying to turn over spaces and to have time limit versus meter. I think this is a very good move. I think just making sure that it is something that is communicated, whether it's written on the ticket or something like that, because any kind of change like this where they used to maybe have more times of violation before they got towed, it just needs to be clear if they're going to keep doing it. OK. More education. Yeah. Thank you. Vice-Chair, unable to come. A question of clarification. While this seems to be a response to Northman-Husky Avenue, is it exclusively for Northman-Husky Avenue? Or does this cover city-wide? City-wide. OK. Yeah, and I think, again, just kind of clear communication. These new policies probably would be appreciated by the public. I just visited the fucking website, and it's pretty impressed by the clarity of things there. Good stuff. You get a gold star for being so interested in reviewing all the information on that website. My son got a parking ticket and didn't notice it. That's why I was thinking that. All right. Commissioner Overby. I support the whole thing. I think it's great. I don't have any questions. I think it's a good way to go. Thank you for noticing it and making that change. Proposing this change. Thank you. Commissioner Fox. Yeah. I'm also supportive of this measure. Yeah, sort of bringing down that violation such that it's in sort of a similar category makes a lot of sense. And I think I would encourage the department to look to see if there are other violations where you can do that to sort of increase consistency and clarity across sort of enforcement. Yeah, that's all. All right, thank you. Nothing further on my ends. There appears to be no members of the public left in the room. I guess one quick extra question. At the $75 rate for violating a time-limited spot, how many of those are there in an average month, for example? Just like a ballpark estimate. Are we talking like 10-ish or 100-ish? Much more than 10. I don't have the numbers in front of me. That's something Jeff could do. But we do raise over $1 million in fine revenue each year that helps fund the general fund. So it isn't lost on the city as we're trying to balance our FY24 budget that we're reducing significantly fine amounts for this one infraction. But I think policy needs to be an important consideration as well as our financial health. Got it. But this type of violation is a relatively small portion of that total million or so? Yes. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Golden, can we check on the phone to see if there's anyone interested in speaking public comment on this one? Sure thing, Chair Hogan. At this time, there's no one signed up. Right. Thank you for that. With that, I will bring it back to the commission and would welcome a motion. A motion to support staff's recommendation. You have a motion from Commissioner Barr. Thank you for that. A second. Give a second from Commissioner Damiani. Thank you for that. Is there any discussion around that motion? Right. Let's go to a vote then. Please all in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Myself and opposed. All rights, item six passes unanimously. Thank you. Moving right along to the director's report. All right. Great. I'll be quick. And you'll have in separate communication City Engineer Noam Baldwin's and my self-assessment and our proposed goals for 24. Going into executive session later tonight to discuss our performance. I did for the public put a link to a revisiting status report on our FY23 goals for our organization, goals and objectives for the public. Any member who's interested to take a look at what we had hoped to achieve in this past year. Actually, it's a two-year look back through 22 and 23. The director's report mentioned that we've pushed back the toter deadline on requirements to have tooters for recycling. We ran out of the 35 gallon tooters because they were more popular than we thought. So given that we weren't able to get them in prior to May 1, we pushed the deadline back to July 1. So that said, things are going smoothly with us filling those final orders. Budget updates you've seen. We did present to the council tonight on the council's website as our draft budget for the year. It's a $10 million budget. In addition to the general fund $10 million budget, there's also capital projects managed by Norm, the parking and traffic budget managed by Jeff, and the water resources budget managed by Megan Moyer. We are probably the most complicated department in the city, but happy to answer any questions if people in reviewing those budget documents have any questions. I would say a major success that I want to acknowledge from Norm's team today is that the judge in reviewing the litigation on the Champlain Parkway, the litigants were alleging that we had not followed the full federal process for getting proper permits for the Champlain Parkway. Judge ruled in our favor today, and the project can move forward unimpeded. And just the amount of work that it took to get here was remarkable, thank you, Norm, and the crew. Is there anything else? Oh, I would just add with clean sweep. We did get a number of complaints this year from residents who were concerned with the street to street toes that when we dropped a car in somebody's neighborhood at early morning hours, there were some complaints that it woke people up. So we pivoted very quickly to then start dropping in Perkins Pier for the last two nights. There are pros and cons of dropping in different locations, but Perkins Pier seems to be a reasonable location that has good pedestrian access after hours for people who are tracing down their car at all hours. And we have committed at this point to dropping in lots first away from residential neighborhoods to the extent we possibly can. So we've heard the concerns and are pivoting quickly to respond. City Engineer, no problem, anything to add? Yes, so I think what's important for the commission to be aware of is that you probably heard some complaints about some of the condition of the paved sections in the city. Obviously, we're concerned about that as well. We have not yet had a full-developed plan for, what I say, small-scale patching. In other words, you'll have areas where there is clusters of potholes together that we would simply mill a small section, not the full width of the road, to make that repair. And so there's money allocated to patching, but that money can only go so far along with the existing paving plan. And that's concerning, so there's obviously choices to be made in terms of what we can accomplish and what will have to exist for another year. And obviously, as time goes on, things progress, and they get worse. But we're trying to make do with what we have, make the best choices with what we are given. So that does not mean that we're not giving up on trying to find more funding to do a better job at paving, but there are limits to what we can and can't accomplish with the funding we have. So stay tuned as we begin that list. I will tell you that one of the things I think that's important for me in my job is to understand context. So it's not enough to be in an office and hear it from staff. It's important that I go out in the field and kind of understand the existing addition that people are dealing with as a public. So I think it was actually Tuesday, Dora, one of our associate engineers and I drove around the city for hours and hours. So I got a good sense of where the real ugly spots are. And one of those obviously people said was a Stanford road. So we're trying to not only find those hotspots but also be equitable in our choices. In other words, there are people who are sitting by quietly suffering through these things. We got to put this workout fair and equitably and be thoughtful. And so we're trying to put all those pieces together that makes sense for the public. We'll have that patching list to you very likely by that next meeting. Thank you for that. All right, appreciate that update. With that, I will move forward to commissioner communications. Let's start with commissioner Damiani. Great, thank you. Just speaking to the budget conversations that I guess multiple DPW staff are going to board of finance for tonight and probably other meetings as well. I guess being new to the commission, sort of what opportunity does the commission have to provide input on some of that given that money is what is going to help a lot of the issues that we're facing in the future? So one thing I think is important for the commission to understand is the budgets you see or they're presented are the ads, the asks for additional asks for this coming fiscal year. And there's already existing funding within certain products that we're making use of. And so that if there's no, not a continuing need then there's not an ask shown or listed in that budget. So worth noting there are products that are ongoing that are asking for more money but are active. And so a fine distinction there. And that's for capital projects, for the operating budget. Happy to have you take a look at it on your own. It used to be that the commission had, the city organized itself in a way that the commission had much greater power than it does today. It used to hire and fire the director and it used to pass budgets. Currently that authority has been taken back by the city council who now the mayor appoints people in the council. He recommends appointment, the council appoints. And budgets are approved by the council. So the commission, we have often brought proposals for bonding requests to catch up on capital needs but have not engaged the commission substantively in building the budget since that responsibility lies with the city council. Great, thank you. And then the FY24 goals that were sent to the commission a couple days ago. Does that eventually turn into the chart that you were provided for sort of looking back and that's just the continual process? Yes, usually we develop the chart for the proposed coming year goals and bring that to you which we will in the coming months. We'll take what our self-assessment language had for what Norm and I are looking to do in the coming year but then we'll reflect more broadly to the organization as a whole. Put together that chart for the looking forward piece so that you have a good measuring stick to see how you think the department did when you're looking back. Great, and then my final comment is while I don't generally support free parking, I just happened to notice on the past few Sundays a lot of folks utilizing private lots on Sundays when they could have parked for free on city streets. So I just wanted to emphasize making it known that there is free parking available on Sundays as many places as you can do that. Great, we will continue to remind folks and I'm sure Mr. Golding who's listening in can help us get that message out. So for the capital project I just said, we'd also note that we are trying to make our dollars go as far as we can and working very closely with CT offices about pursuing grant opportunities. And obviously it comes with strings attached when you use other people's money that means potentially that project could be more complex and take longer through a public permitting process but is probably the only way we can really find a way to kind of make our dollars go as far as they can. So we're working pretty hard to capture as many other people's monies as possible given the limitations of our budget. Great, yeah, and the perspective that I was coming from was really just around sort of the back to basics of what you were talking about with the roads and sidewalks and sort of the basic infrastructure that the city maintained. All right, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Fox. I think just a few quick, positive anecdotes, I guess. So my parents came to visit a couple of weekends ago and we had dinner reservations downtown on a Saturday night. I encouraged them to park in the Cherry Street garage and they were so impressed with how easy it was using kiosk and these are curmudgeony people who complain and they did not complain at all. And so they're like, wow, it's so easy. We ended up staying longer than they had paid for the meter and I was like, no problem. I can update you on Park Mobile because I have the app. And so I just wanna share that that was a very positive experience that two people who are not familiar with the system had with using our garage. It's not all bad and how, you know, just, anyway. Felt like that was good, wanted to share that. I know that not everyone has that experience but it is out there. Yeah, beyond that, I think just, yeah, kudos on the Great Work with the Main Streets project. I think we had a lot of amazing public engagement on it and so just, and I think a lot of that is because of the work that the department put into it. So yeah, just great, that's all. Thank you. Mr. Barr. Thanks. I wanna echo the laudatory remarks of the staff and how fantastic we've been working for these past many years that I've been on this commission. I would say too that my neighborhood in particular has applied for grants and we're hoping that we get them so that we can do some work with you on our streets and try and fix those little things that need to be fixed to make it a more walkable community for seniors as well. I guess the only thing I wanna echo is what I heard earlier too about, let's make sure that we add bike parking into the Great Streets plan. It's increasingly important. If we're gonna make it so that people can bike through there we wanna give them a space to park so that they don't start filling up our trees and our accessible ramps and things of that nature. So, thanks. Thank you. Vice-Chair on the other, Marco. Where'd he go? He's still listening to all your comments. He's still listening. Oh, here he is. Director Spencer. Sorry. Who's choking, I can see. Copy, fit, no time. I'm back. Yeah, just even the feedback and we got a lot of feedback in our inboxes on Main Street and even from the business sector who had their critiques. I didn't feel attacked and I did read through all those messages and it's clear that they were communicating that there was this work with city staff. So thank you, it really is important to note. With city staff, are we fully staffed up in all departments, especially streets, just thinking about the sidewalks and paving and potholes? To mix back, our technical team is fully staffed right now but our operations team has a number of holes. So street maintenance has two or three holes currently recycling has two vacancies. We have some positions in water and wastewater that were down. So it's fortunately in some areas we're great crossing guards. We're higher than we've been, we need 33, we're at 26. We haven't been fully staffed in crossing guards in years. So we're still low in many areas and trying to rebuild. Because one comment that came across is just concern as where we have these big, these capital projects that we're working on and we have, you know, Stanford Road, we have sidewalks that are in disrepair in North Street, among others. That public works has the capacity to not only engage and deliver on these capital projects but also maintain our neighborhood infrastructure adequately and equitably and in a timely manner. So I think being able to at least communicate out, you said you were gonna come up with a patching list. You know, I even think of sidewalks because we all use them to get even from our vehicle, right? And that equity piece is, you know, making sure that those heavily corridor areas where people walk the most, where there's lower ownership of private vehicles, whatever the equity calculation we use that it takes all those bits into consideration. Yeah. And then I guess updates on staffing as kind of we move through this construction season would be helpful. Two more things. One is the clean sweep. Many streets including my own are having their pipes relined. So there's gravel, there's hoses and so forth. So I know, or if you did come through, I doubt you did. It doesn't make any sense. Will there be an opportunity to sweep again once some of these projects are done? And I'm not even sure the timeline on some of them. I know what Walnut Street is being here, having some work done as well. So looking at those streets that are under some of these projects and if there's an opportunity once the heavy machinery is out, because they're like, they're just a ton of, and there will be, there's a lot, but. Yes, we continue to sweep through the year and I can make sure to bring up size with staff that we clean up the post construction sites. I mean, there should be some, you know, EPSC requirements as an ongoing project, how to contain that material from basically the blowing or going and dropping it. So there is, should be a method of control for those. EPSC is a venture. Sorry, erosion prevention set of control. Okay, yeah. I mean, I just think, you know, there's gravel at the end of every single driveway because it's holding the hoses down and there are three big holes in our str- Yeah. I think it's impossible. I think it's a little different challenge than probably most, and because of that crossover with the temporary water supply. Exactly. So it's not, it is not a critique. It is just when we're done. Yep. Oh, it definitely needs to be cleaned up and packed away. Yeah, it'll be great. And then finally, I wish division director Padgett were here, I really appreciate his work and staff's work on that progressive penalty structure with the non-meter violations. Thank you. And again, my visit to the parking site, it was great because apparently my son did not see the parking ticket that he received and didn't notify anybody or pay the tickets. So when we got the notice in the mail that we accrued late fees, it was just like, don't you understand? This is not how I am. But I went online and there are photographs of it, which of course I then forwarded to my son. Did you not notice that? So I really appreciate this from this really firsthand just yesterday. No, I paid it this morning. It's really clear. There's a picture of my vehicle because it's like someone made a mistake. There's a picture of my vehicle. There's a picture of the ticket. It's time stamped. All that information, I think, is really kudos to the team. No one wants to pay for a ticket, but at least be like, aliens did not abduct my child. He did it. And of course I was like, you could have parked in the car park two hours free. But no, thanks to Jeff and his team on that. So thank you. We'll pass it on. Yeah. Good stuff. Thank you. I have two questions that are related to the director's report and also some other comments. But the first one in your director's report about the Colchester Avenue project updates, it says that you're gonna have the city council reconfirm their preferred alternatives. And I have had that concern about the Colchester Barrett five way, you know, Colchester Barrett Riverside thing. Where is the proposed design for that posted? Would that be possible for you to point that out? Is that on your construction portal or is that draft? That's obviously not there, but. The design for that intersection shows up in the scoping study and I can certainly send a link to the CCRPC website. Yeah, Chittin County Regional Planning Commission website. Well, right, because I know it's, I was concerned if it's still the, you know, not gonna be considered a roundabout option to really clean that up instead of having five way dangerous thing. So I would like to see what the current plan is that you're expecting the city council to. Yeah, that was sent to city council just in between the time I wrote this and now it did go to city council on Monday night and was approved, but I'm happy to send that link to you. Oh, so they've already approved something? They approved both of the preferred alternatives on Monday. So we can look and see what those are. Yeah, I'll send it. So, and then on the goals and objectives that may review, one of the things, you know, under the metrics, I know you've had things in there, but one of them, some of the metrics don't seem to be, you know, I know it's really a hard thing. These are sort of so generic, but you do have one on the growth opportunities for training for the staff. Right. And you've got to, you know, the metric is the percent of staff participating in professional development every year and percent of the positions that are filled internally. Do you have that percentage? I mean, it just says work in progress, doesn't say we had, and maybe that percentage is not the best way. You could just say six people that took training, but I think it's really important, you know, for the morale of the staff. And so we had that as a metric, maybe you chose to do that. You don't have to give me that now if you don't know, obviously, but. I'm happy to say the reason it's a work in progress is we've switched over our training platform so we used to have very clear numbers that I could give you. We switched it mid-year so we don't, for this year, have that number, but next year we will have that number. Yeah, yeah. Well, I appreciate one of the things that are real numbers. Yeah. Which would be great. Yeah. And I do have a couple of comments. The first one is I was very shocked to hear about Jared Wood passing when I watched the video from the last meeting. And I'm sad to hear that because I spoke with him numerous times he called me and asked me about things. And we had wide-ranging conversations beyond public works things. And I'm really sorry that I, to hear that. The next comment I wanna make is about the parking discussion that, you know, in the communications that we had today in this meeting. Because the discussion about parking, I think it's a generational issue about switching more to biking and walking. But, and it's also, in some ways, a class issue. But, and what I mean by that is I'm very sensitive to young people being concerned about the global warming climate change problem. And so they wanted to transition to people biking and walking more and making that more comfortable. I'm a walker so obviously everybody knows that. I'm really, really committed to that. However, the parking issue actually has other elements to it that didn't get discussed and there really wasn't a place for it, particularly in this conversation. Number one, that elderly people do need to have parking. And that's something we know. You know, second, New North and residents have many times expressed a concern that they have. They need to bring a car in to do stuff downtown. So they're sort of excluded if we start taking away opportunities to make it easy for them to participate in things as well. Also, you know, residents that have to live outside of Burlington because they can't afford to live here. Now, we're in some ways excluding people for economic reasons that cannot live in Burlington. So it's a class situation. People need to drive that have to live somewhere out of town, so that's another factor. And also, frankly, our concern, our problem with people that perceive riding the bus is just not for them and they're not comfortable for it's unattractive for whatever reason. They just think it's for old people or it's for students or it's for people that don't own cars. And I really feel like part of my comments and what was related from Andy Wheeler is we really, we've missed the boat so much in making some of these decisions about how we're going forward with this Great Streets project without acknowledging some of that. And I'm not saying maintain all this parking, but I really, I wanted to make sure people are aware that that is part of the reason why we have to be more sensitive to it. And also acknowledge the young people are seriously concerned. So I just wanted that to be brought forward. The next of the last thing is I wanna, again, reiterate what somebody's comment in public comment was about the use of what they call the scramble method of crossing the street on Main Street. As I've said, roundabouts I think are far safer and would be much better to use. However, plan B is what we saw and we see at Pearl Street. All of, all the way stop, everybody crosses in the scramble thing is way safer than having time lights and it's really not safe. And I know I asked that question during the discussion about with the experts that presented the study on what we can't do roundabouts because it's too expensive, too complicated. She said, no, we can't do scramble either because that will defeat the purpose of our 20 mile, let's keep 20 mile an hour going down that road. So I just wanna reiterate that if you can't deal with roundabouts, absolutely try to break the rules about that 20 mile goal and put in scramble at those intersections as a way to do the stop. It's a way to help make it possible for people to get across safely. And the last thing is I had a conversation with Andrea Rogers, the former director of the Flynn and it came up that the College Street Congregational Church is having some kind of problem with what the commission did to provide an access from their parking lot up the driveway that is between the College Street Church and the Memorial Auditorium. And I don't know how many people were on this commission at that point but we all voted to make it possible for them to exit to the south and then up that driveway because they have, I don't know if it was a childcare thing or whatever. And she said that at this point, there is now a claim that the paperwork and all the legal, the paperwork was not properly filed to acknowledge that and that it was just a temporary thing and too bad, it's not happening. And I said, that doesn't sound right to me. So I am bringing it to your attention to figure out what actually happened because I remember us voting on that. I don't know again who was on that commission when we did. Okay, so you're familiar with that. And I'm very concerned that she said, oh, I'm gonna have to hire a lawyer and I'm having to get, because nobody can find the signed copy that says the attorneys did their thing and put it on the record as an easement to get out there. So I would love to have you look into that. I've spent time this last week of resolved it with our attorneys and we're moving forward to get that signed and to continue that work. Thank you very much. It was accidental that I was sitting next to her at the Eric Holder lecture this night. Sorry, she's had to go through this. There was some questions between the two parties about the terms of the MOU. We've worked with our attorneys to have a favorable kind of perspective that allows it to get re-executed in a way that I understand works for both parties. I really am happy to say that. I don't have any way of getting in touch with her so I'm glad that you've resolved that. We do, and I can follow up. Yeah, just let her know that I did my part if I was able to help, but you've already solved it. So it wasn't necessary at all. Well, just this week, so. Yeah, well, this was just last night that she breaded up to me. All right, that's my thing, thank you. All right, Commissioner Montana. Righty, where'd it start? All right, quick question about the Cherry Street Marketplace Garage. I'm happy that the kiosk parking is working well there. I find that, yeah, I haven't heard any complaints. But the actual structural work, has it completed on all parts of the garage now or what's that looking like currently? Very close. There may be some cleanup work still to be done. I haven't gotten a recent update, but the majority of the structural work has been completed. And in terms of the timeframe, right? So is this extending the lifespan of the garage? Yes. Five-ish years, 10-ish years, versus what the original, you know, what they expected when they were building it in the 70s, 80s? Like what's that looking like for the structure itself? Right, I would say we have a much better preventive maintenance plan for the garage now than we did previously. And as a result, we're catching up on a lot of deferred maintenance. This will give us another five to 10 years in the garage, but it is over, it's nearing its 50-year age mark. It was built in 76. And so the community is gonna have to figure out whether we invest further in the facility to do a larger capital renovation, or whether we consider a repurpose of the redevelopment of the property that could include a parking garage and other mixed-use activities or what. But that is gonna be a big discussion. Jeff and his budget this year has some planning money to start that conversation. We know these construction projects don't happen overnight, so we better start planning for that future now so that we're anticipating five to 10 years out, having something actionable. Speaking of construction, not overnight, the Champlain Parkway, the ongoing litigation didn't delay any of the city's activities, like everything that was gonna be going on this winter spring has gone on. It did impact the project schedule and it did make it challenging to complete many pieces of elements of the project that made it funny sequencing. So we minimize that as much as possible. We honored what the order required, but now we need to press ahead. So it did have an impact. Yeah, I don't know if I picked the right word there, but yeah, didn't stop it entirely. No, we continued work. It was probably not as efficient or in the linear passion approach that we were intending, but we were able to keep the contractor going. We have not received any delay claims from the contractor as of yet. And we're... We had one claim for a week. Okay. All right. That was it. All right, thank you. All righty. And the last thing, kind of tying into the main street, Great Streets and Solvig's comments or Commissioner Overbees about access and how some people, say living in the New North end of the city, necessarily need to use their cars in order to access downtown, which yeah, I mean, certainly, but relating to like the buses actually access into the downtown core from all of the different parts of the city could be a little bit better in the sense that for a lot of people, your only option is to use the car if you have 20 and sometimes 30 minute headways, basically in every neighborhood of the city. So certainly this isn't something the city could do alone, but investigating more frequent headways on, I would say, each of the trunk lines, spokes going out from downtown, if not to their final destinations at least to somewhere closer to the city center, where at least people living within the city limits and in the development going on in South Burlington, especially could have buses as the actual meaningful alternative as opposed to not something they would ever consider. So one thing worth noting, and you may or may not have picked up on the design for Main Street, Great Streets, but there are three primary transit stops that are gonna be an improvement to what we currently have now. One of those key ones is Church and Main, and one of the things that we struggled with in terms of use of space is the fact that the bus has two doors in front and back, and how you have a landing to accept people loading or disembarking out of the bus. So that takes a huge amount of space, but we believe that that is first of high priority that we understand and know that transit services seem to be more people than say two or three cars turning over in a day. And so that is an important balance to be had. I would also say addressing some of Soviet's concerns about people with disabilities and access to parking. That was very mindful of the design, and we've had a lot of discussions internally about the balance between parking and transit and bikes and pedestrians. We've not just wholesale look to eliminate parking because we think walking and biking is the only priority. There is this balance, and I think it took Consolidate Work on Chapin's part to find that right balance, working with all these different partners who have an interest, whether it be the businesses, the walking and biking community, so on and so forth. So it's gone through a number of deep dive iterations with our design team, our staff, Chapin with the public. So it's arrived where it's arrived for reasons, and it is certainly a new balance from what we've had before where our mindset was only let's serve parking needs. This is gonna create more broader public space for those other activities that I think are important temporarily without people see a street should behave and operate and function. Along with activating businesses and having open spaces where they can make use of that front space. So there's a lot of good positive things that are coming out of this design, I think. Totally, I wouldn't doubt that for a minute, but if the buses, even like the number one bus had seven minute headways instead of 20 minutes, then you wouldn't even need that second door, like people could just hop on, hop off, whatever, if the dwell time's a little bit longer, that's all right, like it's an option that's just there for people whenever. I don't know, it's something to consider. G&E board is talking about a big push this next legislative session on transit funding, study's been done, we'd welcome your participation in the community's participation as we try to adjust the funding which is still predominantly for local match on the property tax. Thank you, yeah, I've been kind of thinking about that kind of city contribution aspect as well, but yeah, that's. I just wanted to ask a question about those bike, you prompted me to think about, you know those bike lockers that are in the Cherry Street parking lot? What can be done with those to repurpose them? Because I see them sitting there and I think they really would have a life somewhere. Don't know. Okay, so they're still gonna, no decision yet? No. Stay tuned. Stay tuned, yeah. Yep. A couple things on my end, my street benefited from some fresh sidewalk replacement since we met last, which is exciting, I think generally. No special favors, of course. That's right. Yeah, yeah, that's my next question. Generally the work was good, it was a contractor crew from Ireland and hanging my neighbors, I think people were pleased with the quality of the work. See Maddie out there? What the? Did you see Maddie out there working? No. She's a big part of our successful program. Yeah. Oh, great. See her out there. I didn't, but it was cool watching that. About it was tough to get the kids to school some morning, so they really wanted to watch the action. But yeah, generally the crews were courteous and appreciate the work. I'll send along a couple other comments. There was like some litter that got left behind and then grass seeded over the top of and things, which made me just a little attention to detail on the cleanup stages could be due. Please get us that, this contract's been working all summer long, so. Yeah, very good. Curious about the prioritization, like can the public look somewhere and sort of see the queue of what's up, I mean I feel like we've seen somewhere like the list of. The system you're referring to, sidewalk or paving sidewalk? Sidewalks. So sidewalk, there is this whole redevised process of incorporating equity within that decision making. And there's the internal math of how these streets are, these sidewalks are selected. And there's this whole thing of short run versus long run. So it's very complicated. I'm not sure how we've communicated and shared it with the commission, but it's been, it's a process that's evolved significantly over the last two years. We've shared the methodology, not the numbers per se, but if there are commissioners who are interested in the numbers, we'd be happy to meet with you and show you the numbers. We've been reluctant to just be completely open with all the numbers because it is very complex and a technical document that some people will say, well, why is one sidewalk section higher than another? And then we have to explain the relative weight of an activity score versus a barrier score, vertical displacement versus walling. Yes, it's complicated. It's complicated. So many different things. But happy to meet with commissioners if they're interested to go over the detail of the methodology at times. I get it, I like it. And I've seen the conference presentations about the dashboard to help interface with that stuff. I like that. My point is that you want to be able to have an answer for the public or councilor to sort of they're asking sort of like, generally year over year, like how's that spread over neighborhoods and wards and? Yes. As it relates to an equity analysis of whether we're hitting all wards, councilor Grant has asked for that information. So Norm's team's compiling it and we'd be happy to share the findings with you all. That'd be great. Thanks. Speaking of conferences, I was able to catch part of the Institute for Transparency and Engineers Northeast Conference last week. Unfortunately, I missed Director Spencer. So I understood he had a talk Wednesday that I was out of town for. I was there Thursday. Pleased to see I did catch one of our city engineers taking advantage of a freshened development opportunity to commissioner Overby's. There's some people, it's happening. Take time out of our otherwise busy schedule to do that. One comment I was looking at some of the vendor displays and drooling over these sort of rubber curb stop sections. I was like, yes, that would be sweet. To sort of beef up art, like the buffer for our formerly protected bike lanes and union set. And get to chatting with the rep about that Burlington purchased some of those. They're not on the streets. And that was like a, we've had a lot of COVID purchase. We've had a lot of materials we've used and experienced and some are successful. Some are colossal failures. I'd love to find out more about, yeah, sort of where that stands. And if you could. And I'm curious to see which one you're referring to, but the Zebra, whatever the heck they were, they were the armadillos. So yes, Brennan, if you can get the name of that, or the manufacturer will then track it down and let you know. Okay, thanks. What's the story with the North Champlain Street thing? That was something that I think we were hoping for last year, like from the sounds of it, we're still a ways off. Is that a product of? Yes, so we put it out to bid for construction and the numbers came in exceptionally high. So high we could not justify the expense. And we're seeking to pursue great opportunities that kind of make our dollars go as far further than they are. So it's a delay, but it's with being mindful of how ridiculous expensive it came through a bid. And maybe it's a function of where we are with the economy and how people are, when the bid was released. So where we were hesitant to say yes or go ahead. Yeah, I know it's a balance of all. Was that a bid process for like this spring? That was potentially going to be the summer. Potentially go for construction this season. Over half a million dollars. We used up all of our traffic calming, all of our bike pet money on one installation. So we're going to try to find 80, 20 or 90, 10 money so that we don't have to spend all of our one year money on one project. Appreciate that. Thanks. It was a bummer. Yeah, I get it. I know it's all a balance. Yes, staff brought that to me. I cried a little. I'll share your tears there. Okay, nothing further on my end with that. We're not adjourning. The next item on our agenda is to move the new executive session for leadership annual abuse. We'll welcome a motion to go into the executive session. Everyone has one. We have a motion from Commissioner Barr. Thank you. Seconded. The second from Commissioner Fox. Is there any discussion around that motion? All right, so let's go to vote. All in favor, if we say aye. Aye. Aye for myself. Any opposed? All rights, we are entering executive session at 917. Thank you all. TV, I think at this point there will be no action taken after executive session, so you all can wrap up and these folks will reconvene in another room. Give you the ability to wrap up. Thanks so much. Recording stopped. I just case the meeting up. I got snacks for you all too.