 at the beginning. So thank you everybody and apologies for the delay. Moving into the fourth stakeholder committee meeting for the Winooski Avenue parking management plan. My name is Jonathan Slason, the project manager from RSG. And we'll do just the round of introductions to get all the committee members to say hi and make sure we know who's on the meeting. So we'll cover that in the first agenda item, which will be the introductions and then we'll confirm whether there's any changes to the agenda. Then we'll have a couple of slides to more of the introduction and history of where we are today. There's six or seven slides pretty quick to go through. Most of us where familiar things haven't changed much in terms of where we've come from and where we've got to today. Then we will open it up to the public comment period where we'll give everybody a chance to speak. And I know people have already been raising their hands. So that's probably the way to identify whether you're interested in speaking. And then we'll go through pretty much the management plan strategies, which is a segment by segment summary of how the parking management plan was as recommended to be carried out in terms of how to manage the available parking on the corridor. And then we'll return to a public comment period. And then the idea is that we would vote as a committee would recommend to approve the parking management strategies that have been developed over the course of the plan. And then we'll talk about the next steps of where we go from here, depending on the result of action number five. So without further ado, Nicole or Brian, any changes to the agenda? No changes on my end, but yeah, open it up to the committee members if this looks good or if you'd like to make any changes. No changes for me. I was going to suggest to John that you run through sort of the first set of slides as I provide you with an opportunity for the city. Okay, great. So the committee knows by just jump in if there's any questions or concerns, but to introduce the project team for those who have been joined us before, we have the city of Burlington supported by the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission where Brian Davis is on the call. He's physically in the meeting room today facilitating this Zoom call. And then the consultant has been RSG. And so the folks here named at the bottom of the screen have been the team involved from the technical side delivering the project. Then, excuse me, I did forget to the introductions. We were going to go through all the committee members. And so actually I thought we had a slide and maybe we just go through this one real quick while we have all the names up. So poor order of the slides, apologies. So let's go through Brian. If you have the attendee list, can we just go through everybody's names and just get a thumbs up? Sure. And I'm Brian Davis again with the Regional Planning Commission. We've got Jonathan Farsi and Nicole. We've got Chapin from the Department of Public Works joining us tonight. We've got Councilor Hanson, Councilor Stromberg, Councilor Barlow and Kirsten Merriman Shapiro. Great. Well, thank you all for continuing to devote your time to this project. So let's back up. Here we are. Where we started the Parking Management Plan is that we came from the Winooski Avenue Corridor Study. And that was an 18th month project which created a number of scenarios for how to achieve a complete street for Winooski Avenue. And over 13 corridor options were defined and evaluated in a significant depth. And there was a preferred option that was accepted by the city council. And that preferred option unfortunately did result in some parking loss. That's the genesis of the Parking Management Plan while we're here today. And the idea is that we're part of the corridor option. There's a desire to install two directional. So both a northbound and a southbound bike lane along the entire corridor that would stretch from Riverside all the way to Point South. Now at this point, they've already made some parts of the changes through the center of the city from Pearl Street down to Main Street. And the idea would be in the figures below, there's three sections that where parking would, there's several sections that the parking would be removed. And then there's a section between North Street and Union Street where it would remain. It would just simply reallocating the existing road space to make room for the on-street bike lane. Something else that has changed during the course of the study timing is that the city has changed their zoning code throughout the corridor itself and has removed any parking minimums. So that means that as any land use changes occur all along the corridor, there are no required amount of off-street parking to be provided by that land use change. And so that just sets a bit of context for how parking is considered from a bigger city perspective. Now, why a parking management plan? The city council directed the public works to install the bike lanes in both directions in this study area, which would be between Pearl Street and Riverside Avenue. There would be a removal of parking where it's physically required to attain that bike lane and then complete the parking management plan. And this would be identifying practical strategies for balancing supply and demand while also providing essential parking needs. Now that is the challenge. Identify what those balancing and the supply and the demand and those essential vehicle parking needs. So we have the committee. We've already introduced. I assume no one else has joined us. Right. Okay, where we go from here that tonight we're meeting on the 20th of January to hopefully approve the parking management plan as presented and as developed by the committee. And then it would go to the city council and public works commission as it looks forward toward detailed implementation. And the idea is that it would be eventually put into the paving plan that VTrans is doing along the Winooski Avenue. And that's been a guiding light of how this is moving forward in terms of schedule because we want to utilize the fact that the paving is going to happen. And if we're going to reallocate and remark the pavement, we'd rather have that project do it. So with that as the background of the plan itself before the public comment per Brian's suggestion, Chapin, can I turn it over to you? And then do you want me to stop sharing this screen? We can see you in a larger picture. That's fine. Sure. Great. Thank you very much. I wanted to just say thanks to those who have actively participated along the way. And for those who tonight is their first meeting as it is my first meeting tonight. And as John has just laid out, the parking management plan really was the outgrowth of the council resolution in March, 2020. And this work really follows the policy direction laid out in a number of city plans, the comprehensive plan and other municipal policy documents. The city staff has been directed to implement these plans and we're routinely asked by the Transportation Energy Utilities Committee, DPW commission about why progress on implementing plans like the walk-by plan is not happening more quickly. And I think the answer is really that finding the right path to balance the transportation and parking needs of a variety of users along narrow New England corridors is not easy. It takes time, it takes dialogue and that's why we're here. So I understand that there's been a very broad range of perspectives shared during the process and have been monitoring the process while I haven't been at the meetings. And I know that there still remains a high degree of concern from many stakeholders. And I'm confident we'll hear some of that tonight. I'm here for the full meeting and I'm ready to listen. I've appreciated the time that a number of stakeholders and including some on this call have given me time over the last couple of weeks to hear your thoughts and perspectives firsthand. And the stakeholder committee can choose whether or not to take action tonight based on the feedback and conversation that occurs. Whichever direction the stakeholder committee chooses to take tonight, I and my department will continue to work with this committee and stakeholders as we determine the best path forward. So I'm gonna look forward to the meeting. I would ask that we all try to be respectful and ensure that we can all hear the comments as best as possible so that we can have the best informer work ahead. And thanks again for coming. Thanks, Jeff. I don't need to show us a slide that says public comments. So I think we can keep it in the current screen share setup. So Brian, are you able to facilitate the comments? I can do that. And I'll do my best to call on folks in the order in which they raised their hands. So Tiki, you should be able to unmute yourself. Yeah, I think I did. If you can hear me. May I ask how long we each get for a public comment? We haven't set a timeline. Originally it was a minute total time, but the number of folks dialing in, I don't think that 10 minutes appropriate. So we've been a bit unrestricted, but I think please be gracious with all of our time and try to be concise. Yeah, I do want to be gracious. Okay, I'll just try to do it like a standard public forum kind of thing. Thank you. To limit my time, just for a little context, I was on the public works commission for nine years, chair of that for three. And my understanding from the North Wunewski Ave corridor study, at least for this segment of the road was that it would explore alternatives for parking, for that, which would be displaced by a second bike lane. And the implication from my understanding was that if alternatives were unable to be identified, it would not proceed. And so for further context, I was there and voted in favor of the North Ave plan, which allowed for bike lanes. I voted for both Colchester Ave plans. They were in two different segments there. Also the Flynn Ave down on the south end. I don't believe this one is, I would approve of it. Were I sitting there as a decision maker? Let me real quick, just go through a few points. One of my requests early on with this while I was on the commission was for an economic study of this to accommodate the extensive engineering studies. And for my understanding, and I may be wrong, I don't see any evidence of that. So I do believe that would be an important piece for this particular stretch. Number two, I don't see any data gauging the current use of the bike lane on North Wunewski Ave. When comparing different value points, I believe parking is used far more regularly than the bike lane, at least especially during the cold months anyway. Two bike lanes on the same corridor to me poses a significant underutilization situation which we try to avoid with any of our public streets. Number three, safety is a concern by comparison when we passed the one greenway over on the Parallel Street on North Union, we had concerns about bikers approaching oncoming traffic and rerouted that greenway to honor the direction of traffic flow. And so this would be no different than that it would be you have opposing traffic. Number four, the trend lines, if we look at it that, you know, barring an unprecedented move for public transportation, likely people will switch over to electric cars, right? And, you know, hurry for us if we do that, but that means we will, folks will still want space for their vehicles to park. Number five, I think there's room to maneuver with this situation here with the bike lane if we revisit the residential parking program. And I'm surprised Chapin doesn't wince when I say that because it was, it can be a painful process. However, if we move to a zone type situation like in most cities, it would allow for enough flexibility that the parking could be potentially displaced onto accommodating streets rather than just simply told they can't park on the street. Today we have kind of a rigid street-based system. Let's see. Lastly, number six here is right now, just as an instance, I can't bike. I broke my wrist last summer, still rehabbing it. And it gives me pause and it made me think, well, who else can't bike? And I thought of a whole lot of examples of people in our community who can't bike or maybe might not bike is probably fair to say, I shouldn't say can't. So for instance, the elderly, people who work late evenings, there's perhaps new parents, parents towing young children. There's inexperienced bikers, they're sick. There's people who don't wanna get wet or cold or sweaty or whatever you would call it. Maybe they've got large grocery purchases or just people like me who have a broken something and can't do that. So this is a significant population who just can't use those facilities. Just in conclusion here, and I apologize, I may have run over here, but I totally respect all the time and effort that go into this. The engineering crew is top notch when they look at these things. And that view I do think is, I respect that and I respect that it can feasibly be done from an engineering standpoint, but I think from a community standpoint, a cultural standpoint, that this is not quite ready for prime time. And I would just kindly ask that this alternative be halted until reasonable accommodations could be made. For example, my zone plan that I mentioned. So anyway, thank you. I apologize for going long. Okay, thank you very much, Tiki. Up next, we have Kim Anderson. John, are you driving this thing or am I? There we go. Kim, can you talk? Excellent. I just got the unmute. Can you hear me now? Yes, you are. Perfect, hi y'all. So I'm Kim Anderson. I'm the director of development and communications for the community health centers of Burlington. Just as Tiki was saying, I first want to begin by acknowledging the work that's been put into this initiative by this committee. I know it's a lot. You all must be tired. And honestly, from when it first began, I was really excited to share your vision of creating safe, inviting and convenient travel for all ages, all abilities and all modes. But unfortunately, here I am once again. Here I am just voicing my concerns about the current plan and urging committee members and city counselors to seek alternative solutions because they are there and we've actually seen some of them. And I guess I also urge you to think very seriously about the legacy you'll create if this is past as is. And let me be clear, the legacy won't be a good one. You'll be remembered for preventing people, your own neighbors from receiving the medical, dental and mental health care needed to survive. That's the exact opposite of the vision previously mentioned. And it's the exact opposite of racial and health equity that I'm sure you're all trying so desperately to achieve. So at CHCB, we've read the current plan, all of it. And the picture that's painted around the needs for CHCB is so slanted. I mean, when it says things like, visitors and guests are already forced to compete for parking with employees in the unmanaged spaces. Yes, we're all trying to find space. That's literally the problem. And that's why removing just one space has its impact. And truthfully, this actually isn't about staff parking as the report would show. We have the appropriate staff members at our Riverside Health Center to meet the needs of the 70,000 appointments we provide at this site. And so just really quickly for some historical context, when we first built the new building in 2011, we never expected that over 400 new patients would come into our doors every single month. Clearly the need was there and we mercifully did what we had to do to meet it. So to continue pushing through this parking plan that negatively impacts the largest economic driver in the Old North End, helping the sickest and the most diverse people in our community, it just seems unjust. And just a couple more comments. When I asked to help in finding a solution, does somebody know of an available lot for our staff or some other answer, no one has said anything. And yet the current plan still moves forward. So the community has gone through enough, like we've all gone through enough, right? But traumatizing our most vulnerable patients even more isn't okay. When the report says 22 on-street spaces removed is a minor change in the overall supply, like that equals actual people, right? Who actually could rotate through those spaces but are now not able to access our life-saving services. So this committee and the city should be doing everything in their power to build capacity to patient access during this time and into the future. And this is just truly, I'm sorry to say, this is truly a tone-deaf answer to whom you think rides a bike for pleasure or rides it for survival. So again, thank you for your time and I really appreciate if you could reconsider this. Thank you very much, Kevin. Up next, we have Chris Rivers. Thank you very much. And I'll echo Kim's sentiments and thank you for all your work on this and the effort over a long period of time to try to come to a consensus on this. I'm also and hoping you'll take a pause and hear my fellow neighbors this evening as we sort of in unison kind of voice a concern that this plan needs a really, needs another look. I live on the North Manuski quarter between North Street and Grant and had been following this since the survey was created and touted by RSG. And it seemed that that was after the decision was made to add the bike lane, a bike lane that we already have, I should add. There is a shortage of parking every weekday along this part of the road, including this evening. As I said, we have a bike lane. We bike lanes are not a climate crisis solution. I'm a biker like many of us and frequent the city streets on my bike in good weather. There's a bike lane already. In fact, bike lanes both inbound and outbound. Those that rely on their cars during the winter months need that parking. I feel like the consultants though, best and well-intentioned have been unsuccessful in capturing the useful data that led to lack of viable answers to replacing all of the parking that would be lost. And that's echoing Kim sentiment as well. The committee has not come back with adequate answers on the negative impact on parking on this mixed used avenue. The consultants have yet to share answers to key questions about where we're gonna put these cars. From my vantage point, the process has been flawed from the outset. The data is a little bit too old to be reliable. And also there's not been a clear sort of inclusiveness on this. When we went out and canvassed the neighborhood in a few hours, for a few hours back in the fall to a person, most people hadn't heard anything about this. Some had heard about the survey, but most were shocked to hear that this decision actually had already been made and that things were moving full steam ahead to take out all of this parking. There was a lot of sort of incredulous nods of the head and lots of funny looks as we told them the facts. So please consider putting pause, reevaluating this situation. And perhaps maybe go back to old school door to door and talk to the neighbors that we talked to because I think you'll find a different answer. Thank you very much. Great. Thank you very much, Chris. Next we have Jean. Hello. Hi, I can hear you. Great, thanks. I'm also a resident on North Winieski Avenue and with Chris witnessed over 150 neighbors, actual residents on the street signed that petition, begging you to revisit and revise this plan. I've heard Ms. Anderson sound the alarm. I've seen a petition with more than 12 business owners begging you not to push them out because their customers can't access them. I'm sure you recognize all our voices because we've been here. Because we've been here, we know that we haven't heard an equal collective support for the plan. We know that the overwhelming neighborhood perspective, not only from our presence at these meetings, but on the petitions is begging you to reconsider this. So it was really disheartening to read the newest version of the plan and see that it doubles down and then some. It makes us feel like our collective neighborhood voice doesn't matter. I've started to think even the name of it as a corridor project, as if we're some kind of sort of flyover state between downtown and the old North End or something, as if we're not a densely residential area where we pay lots of taxes and raise our kids and participate in this community as teachers and nonprofit workers and healthcare workers and service workers and students. We're not a corridor, we're a neighborhood. And I'm not even sure from the report, I was like, do they know how densely residential it is? When we speak in the language of households but not individuals, we don't know how many of these units house four, five, six individuals. When we say that we're surprised at the use of the street considering the units, I think it's because we're not factoring in the housing shortage we have and the way that our residents are crammed in with roommates. You know, we've come to these meetings again and again saying, you know, those percentages that say how much of our on street parking is used doesn't reflect reality. And we've invited the committee and the council to come walk with us and some of them have and they've struggled to do so because they couldn't find parking to come visit us. But then when we walked, they saw what we meant. And, you know, reading the report and seeing the line about my block North to Grant Street saying that we are at 79% existing full capacity. What that means on our block out of the 60 spaces is that we regularly would have 13 open but we never have 13 open. On a Wednesday at noon, we might have two. It's just not true. And so we're trying to feel like we're sort of screaming into avoid here. And what I think was most demoralizing about the most recent report was the decision for our block to take away half the parking and then replace the other half with meters. And what that effectively does for residents, it is acknowledged in the report that we have the most densely residential stretch. What that means for residents is that 100% of our parking during the day is effectively taken away. And yet the same table that says we are at 79% full capacity suggests that this plan will reduce demand to 68% taking away effectively 100% during the day will reduce demand. And I don't know. It feels like that is a number invented to support a vision but not to make a vision work. I think about what I will do when the meters come. It will not make me drive less. It will make me drive more. I will drive around looking for parking. I'll drive around in a couple of hours so I don't get a ticket. I might even start driving to work because there's nowhere to stow my car. I wanna get rid of my car. I believe in climate change but I can't. I live in a very rural place. When I need to leave the city, I live in a very cold place. I can drive less but I can't not drive. And I've been to so many of these meetings now and I just would beg this committee to reconsider and to respond to our questions. We've asked so many times and we are desperate for an answer about why this very considerable, very real harm is worth it when we already have these spacious bi-directional lanes that go with the direction of traffic that we use every day when we can. I just, I hope that you could help restore our faith in this process because we care so much about our neighborhood in our city. Thank you. Thank you very much. Appreciate that. Beth, Sightler, got you up next. Hi, everybody. Assuming you can hear me. Yeah, we can hear you. Notting heads, thank you. So I too am a long, long time Old North End resident. I've been here 35 years. I've lived, I'm on North New Ski Avenue also on the block between North and Grant. I also just want to note, I'm a board member of the community health centers as well. Been a patient there for many years and have been challenged by parking. I've heard over the last few weeks as we've been meeting with you and talking to other people that are complaints or in general complaints about process or requests to slow down or sometimes seen as a soft way to try to kill this plan. And I just want to be clear that that's not what's happening here. I and my friends and neighbors have read the parking management plan and we're clearly asking you not to approve it. Yes, we're not trying to necessarily kill it. We're trying to slow it down and have you listen to us. I just want to also be clear that I agree that people need access to safe bike lanes. I use them, we need to have them. I also want to be really clear that I absolutely understand that we are out of time in terms of climate action and that we need to act. I also believe that this is not the solution here on my street. I want to be clear that I understand that what's happening here is not just about us on the street and that part of the intention or behind this plan is about creating a safe corridor for our city and I appreciate and understand that. And also again, amplifying people's comments about the effort and the planning that's gone into the report. I'm sure this has been thankless for each one of you and I appreciate your investment and being here and listening to this. Having said that what's presented here isn't a real solution for our parking needs here on the street. It's not what I would consider just transition. I don't think many of you would either. In order to make a real change, people, us, we have to be engaged. We have to feel included and to be a part of what would I hope be a transparent and a correct process. Our neighbors and our livelihood have not been seriously considered. I have to say the continued narrative by the committee that there was robust and communication is false. And frankly, I have to say it's disrespectful to keep saying how much outreach took place. However much you did, it wasn't enough. We've talked about the 150 signatures, the 150 people we talked about and the 149 who signed. I wanna just say that was in two hours on a beautiful Sunday. So I don't know how many people were home, but in two hours, it was really quick to get those signatures. You should know that this, the pushing through and the lack of communication or a sense of lack communication makes people wonder if perhaps you intended for them not to know or to understand that this is significant change. Maybe that's coming from a point of paranoia, but that's how it feels on this end. The report data about parking vacancies, residential occupancies and the impact remain, I've said this before, empirically and experientially wrong. And there's no amount of fancy graphs or modeling or anti-car, pro-bike lingo that's gonna change this. It's not gonna make them accurate and it's not gonna help to engage the community. And it's not gonna help anybody change their behavior or support climate change anymore. It's just making people more upset. The recent doubling down on the report that came out and has been modified based on our contributions, even after we've given you corrected information, after as my neighbor Jean said, you've been invited to come and observe it yourself. After you've heard from community business leaders, after you've heard from CHCB, the fact that it changes, but it doesn't change the direction of the plan underscores what I see as a bias to just get it done roughly and not to get it done right. There were alternative solutions that have been put out there. How can we incentivize landlords and businesses to share parking right now? It's clear they're not interested in doing it. Looking at phasing, looking at a pilot, potentially followed by really robust community feedback. How do we look at public transportation? I don't think that that was really, really clearly looked at. There were other solutions that were put forward that were a little more expensive, but it would have been, I believe, more acceptable to the people who live on the street. My question to you is, was it ever possible to return a report or to go back to the city council and say, this is just not feasible? Because from my perspective, it's not. I'm asking you to please consider how to advance all of our common interests, including the people on the street. Please slow down this process. Consider that it's not been complete. I know you're not trying to harm people. I know that you've been trying to do the best that you can, but the way you're going about this is certainly going to harm people, especially my neighbors on my street. Please do not approve this plan, especially with its inaccuracies, its biases, its shaming language as it's written. All right, thank you Beth. Up next, we have Lee Anderson. Hello? Hi, Lee. Hi, my name is Lee Anderson. I own a radio beam. I'm also calling in to say that I do not think that this plan is good for Berlington. I have lived on Northamieski Avenue for 22 years. I still do. I've owned a business on Northamieski Avenue for 21 years, and I don't have off-street parking where I live. So I'm also one of the people that's competing constantly and have been for 22 years for parking in the neighborhood. And I really, I really, I mean, I love biking. And people who know me know that I love biking. My business is arguably one of the most bike-to-businesses in town. And I still don't think that putting two bike lanes in and picking out all that parking is going to be good for Berlington. There's a residence on Northamieski that are going to be directly impacted by that, trying to find parking. But also all those side streets that people are going to be forced to try to go find parking in, those streets are going to be heavily impacted by all the people who used to park on Northamieski, trying to find parking on those side streets. And I would bet money that the city streets that aren't already resident-only like Bradley and Grant Street, Upper Grant Street, and Peru, that those other places where we can find parking like North Union and occasionally Elmwood or something like that, that I bet that those residents bond together to say, hey, we want to get residents of parking only too, because now we can't find parking anywhere ever. We used to be able to park sometimes in front of our house, but now we can't at all. And I can totally see those streets becoming residential only too and making it even more difficult for residents on the street to find parking. And on a business perspective, losing that loading zone, like they're going to obviously see that it's the east side of the corridor, it's referred to being losing the parking. And that loading zone is something that obviously my business uses constantly. And with musicians loading in and out all day and night long, lots of deliveries coming in for my business for the Shalimar of India, for the OP, for the CNX-PAI business on the corner. And even not having a mechanism, I'm guessing that like, you know, Farrell distributing parking or just parking the bike lane or something during the day to try to unload everything, or like all the other vendors probably will. But it's going to be a major impact on the neighborhood. And I mean, as everybody else has said, like, you know, it's a cold place and not everybody can bike and everything. And I just hope that the committee really deeply considers that where we actually are, that we're not Portland, Oregon, we're not San Francisco, we're not Amsterdam, we're a small city in a very rural state where most people are required to own a car or like, you know, that there's not a robust public transportation system running 24 hours a day. Most people are dependent on cars, whether they own one or they use Uber or Lyft or something, but they, but people, it's a car-based state. And I don't think that this bike, double bike lane on North Manuski is really going to be effective. I don't think it's going to, I don't think it's going to dramatically increase bicycle traffic. And I think it's going to dramatically impact people who live here and come to businesses on this trip and all the way up to Riverside. I think it's going to be a really big deal. And I've read, you know, what, and I've read what you guys have written about it and how you feel that it's going to impact people, but I, it's a lot more than that. As the other commenters have said, it's really, it's going to be a massive and unfortunate impact on the neighborhood. So I'm putting my public record down and saying I oppose it. Thank you very much. Okay. Thank you, Lee. Liz Curry. Good evening. Thank you for setting up this agenda with two public comments. I guess I'll just, I was, yeah, I'll just join everyone and kind of just sharing my overview and then I have a lot of specific questions about the report itself, the data and other things after you do the presentation. But one thing I'd like to start with is that there's been this narrative that the city council directed the bike lane to go in. And I just want to read the resolution that the city council signed, blah, blah, be it resolved that interim improvements are to be completed in 2020 to include a parking management plan for North Winooski Avenue that identifies practical strategies for balancing parking supply and demand north of Pearl Street with the goal of meeting essential parking needs while freeing up space for dedicated bike lanes, pilots or demonstrations of mini roundabouts or other strategies for improving multimodal safety and performance at key intersections, blah, blah, blah. It does not direct the committee to implement bike lanes. It has a context that arrives at a different conclusion. So the narrative has gotten very narrow. Second, I would just like to share that as someone has been involved in community-based development efforts on this avenue since the 1990s when we, the land trust and I worked for Lake Champlain Housing we built them up, they'll make a co-op, we cleaned up pollution in the brown fields, we created a microenterprise, technical assistance, and then the land trust raised millions of dollars to co-locate all the social services so that people who need them wouldn't have to walk and bus all over town to get the support they needed. And the community health center was like the gem, the central gem of that whole neighborhood to anchor that corridor. And this neighborhood, thank you, Jean, for saying it's a neighborhood. And this neighborhood is like the size of some rural towns in Vermont. It has everything people need. So let's keep that in mind because this rush to kind of blame people who drive cars for the climate crisis and put the responsibility on us on people who drive cars is a very kind of individualized solution that if that's our policy, then it's insensitive to the neighborhood. And I'm glad Jean brought up just transition because this neighborhood has always been full of community-based participation. And the social service activity is huge as a compatible use with businesses. And I was just out yesterday in the day before talking with people. And for example, Dana Kaplan at outright gave me permission to share his comment and why he's unhappy about the plan. And he said, the main concerns in our end are for the folks seeking some level of anonymity accessing outright who may feel it may not be safe or too much of a barrier to park far away or a block away or whatever. And also he said, one day when COVID-ism is acute we hope to be able to have larger community events and forums here and street parking ensures that we can do that. So Dana was echoing a lot of the experience that the health center has as a service provider for safe access to their services rely on those spots. And then I was like talking to Pat Awaiti owns the global market and she just moved down the street to the Old Salvation Army. And I went in to visit with her to find out her thoughts and she wasn't there, her sister Grace was there. And Grace said, this would be terrible. And then today I just happened to be talking to Pat's son, Prince, who's on the call. And sorry, I don't mean to embarrass you, Prince. But when I told Prince what was going on he said to me, wow, those people must be so powerful that they can do that. And I was like, yeah, they are so powerful. They are some of the most powerful people in our city. And I just think it's really unfortunate that this is the way people are choosing to use their power in such an insensitive way without honoring the tradition of this neighborhood which followed the just transition principles of involving the community, asking them for solutions, asking them to come to the table, inviting them. But we had task forces. We had the Greater Archibald Intermail Neighborhood group gain that led the process of redeveloping that said, we need affordable housing, we need small businesses, we need social services. That's how the avenue got created and designed. It was not a group of top down professional planners coming and saying, you need this stuff and we're gonna put it all here because we know what you need. So that's why I'm just upset. This isn't about a climate solution. We each save 10%, we reduce our carbon reduction, our carbon by 10% when we ride a bike as opposed to drive the car. But you know how much we reduce when we ride the bus twice that. So why aren't we talking about transit? If we each can save 20%, we can reduce our carbon by 20% by the bus. Why are we inviting our natural allies like Jesse Baker and Aaron Frank to the table and saying, let's find a regional solution to raise money for transit. I don't see anybody doing that. Instead, we're talking about 10 people who bike in the winter. So I'm sorry, I have more specific questions about the report and the data after it's presented. Thank you. Great, thank you Liz. I appreciate those comments. Cobra. Hi, can you hear me okay? Yeah, thank you. Great, thanks for making time for all of us to speak. And my name's Cara Greenblatt. I'm a resident of that same most densely populated portion of North Winooski between Grant and North. I've said this at other meetings, but I'm also an avid biker and I'm actually really proud of the bike infrastructure in our community. I'm also a social worker for the Howard Center and my job requires me to have a car because I drive clients to the health center. I drive them to the food shelf and a lot of other services right here in our community. I will say upfront that the current plan to remove what I understood to be between 75 and 100 parking spaces is one that will cause unnecessary hardship for essential workers like me as well as vulnerable populations here living in our community. I use the word unnecessary very intentionally here because there is as someone else said already a northbound bike lane on North Union which is just one block over. So I ride my bike north on North Union and south on North Winooski and that for me has always worked great. What I would hope we would be advocating for as bikers and bike advocates is that we maintain the existing bike lanes and keep them in good condition for us to use for at least most of the year. I would also echo with the first speaker, I think it was Tiki said about safety. I don't believe that adding a bike lane that goes against traffic could be safer than maintaining and encouraging people to use the current northbound and southbound paths on North Winooski and North Union. That just doesn't, from everything I know about biking putting us setting us up to go against traffic does not sound safer. On another friend, one of the things I found most frustrating is that the data that's been used to support the current plan is by my read, faulty, deceptive and outdated. It just does not reflect our current reality. And I'll give you a few examples. The transportation claims that on my block between Grant and North, only 50 to 70% of the parking spaces are occupied in the evenings, making it seem like there would be no problem to remove half the spaces. This is absolutely inaccurate and as I've said this many times before I invite anyone to come over here on any evening of the week and check out the parking situation. It's competitive. My partner and I typically circle the block three to four times to find a space when we get home from work. And we see people parking blocking driveways because they have no choice in the matter. Number two, given COVID significantly more professionals who are working at home, very different than when the assessment was done and the data was collected. So there are more residents parking in the street day and night. We cannot rely on an assessment or data collection that was done in 2017 for today's planning, for planning today's reality. It just doesn't make any sense. Number three, data collected for the study noted that 86 households are being impacted in our section of the corridor, this block. When we pointed this out, when we pointed out it was dramatically understated the consultants changed that number to 131 and yet no effort was made to reconsider the foregone conclusion that this plan would go ahead. Corrections are being made but no one seems to be reconsidering the premise. Number four, my next door neighbors like me rent rooms in their house and just had their tenants move out due to a lack of street parking. Number five, parking meters placed on the block down one block from us between Grand Pearl a few years ago have already had the effect of pushing those tenants cars up under our block. So any plan that includes expanding meters or instituting parking permits will not in any way address the insufficient parking spaces. In conclusion, I'll just say that I feel very strongly that this plan, the current plan prioritizes a privileged minority who don't need or depend upon cars over residents and essential workers like myself and other people who live and work in this neighborhood. I would ask that the folks in this room tonight please consider rejecting implementation of this plan until number one, there's more engagement in the planning process and number two, a plan can be constructed that does not cause undue hardship to residents, nonprofits, businesses and vulnerable members of this community. Thanks very much for letting us share tonight. Great, thank you, Kara. Eric Kay. Okay. Hi, my name is Eric Crataville. I live in Burlington and work in Burlington and I just want to say or acknowledge that we're a couple of hats here in regards to where I'm coming from in regards to parking in North Manuski. On the one hand, I'm an avid bicyclist. I have great respect for what our city is doing. Moving forward and creating a safer infrastructure for cyclists. I also greatly respect Chief and Spencer and the department he runs as a fellow white accountability group member with him. It's worth mentioning. I don't currently feel as safe as I'd want to feel when I bike on the roads in Burlington. So I think that that's an area that needs to be improved. Another hat I wear is I'm a member of the board of directors at community health centers of Burlington. And for a long time as both a patient and as a board member, I've been aware of the parking challenges that they face. They have shoehorned as many spots as they can on their lot and they have staff members and they have patients who rely on street parking there on North Manuski for them to have access to care. Something that I just want to kind of reflect on as we talk about parking in North Manuski, I attended a BTV STAT presentation a couple of years ago where our director of planning here in Burlington gave a presentation where he talked about consciously reducing parking in Burlington as a means to move away from automotive transport for people in Burlington, to make it harder for people to drive in Burlington. And I think that's something that's worth keeping in mind because when I drive around Burlington and I look at cars that are parked on the road, I'm always shocked with how many side view mirrors are hanging off of those cars. And I think, you know, if other people drive around and just kind of keep their eyes open, they're gonna notice that a lot of cars have the street side of the bumper smashed in and a lot of cars have the side view mirrors hanging on the street side. And it's very clear to me that people who are parking there on the road aren't parking there because they want to. They're parking there because they have to. And, you know, their mirror gets knocked off, it's hanging by a cable, and they still park there because they have no other option. You know, these aren't people who have the luxury of having somewhere else to park. And that's only evidence by them continuing to park in a place where their car is getting destroyed. And so, you know, these are people that have less options and availabilities to them. So for the city to consciously turn the screws on people who park on the street when they have nowhere else to park, I just worry that that's impacting people who might be less advantaged. You know, people who don't have the luxury of a parking garage spot for their apartment or don't have the luxury of a driveway. So I don't know if that's something that's been studied. You know, when we look at, you know, the impact of on street parkers, but what I look at is that, you know, I see all of these mirrors hanging and I see a lot of misery and yet people still keep parking there. So that's kind of where I'm at with it. I just wanted to speak up. Thank you for listening. Great, thank you very much. And it looks like those are all the hands that I see. Okay, well, thank you all very much. I took a number of notes and some of you have noted that the report has evolved with time. Fundamentally, the data has not because it was historically collected data. So there are, there is that fact. So I really appreciate you bringing up a lot of these concerns and at this point, we're going to cover what were the management strategies that were developed as part of the committee process, but also as part of the technical planning process to say what types of management strategies are typical of parking management plans. And we spent one meeting, two meetings ago to say, here's some strategies. How do they sit with you as a committee? And we refined that. And at this point, this is a proposal for you for the committee to look at these strategies. We're going to, we are able to amend them on the fly. But the idea is that we have a set of strategies that were being tabled tonight as a complete corridor management strategy. And the idea is that we would vote at the end of that discussion to see whether we would feel comfortable as a committee recommending that those strategies go forward. So I'm going to share my screen again and we'll go from there. And committee members, of course, much like any other meeting that we've had, feel free to ask any questions as we go through. All right, so these are the management strategies. This slide should be familiar. We go through this typical sequence of what are easier strategies, typically easier to achieve, lower cost or less political or less space requirements versus our harder things to achieve. And these are the strategies that have been employed, some of them in the management plan itself. I'm not going to go into too much depth here, but clearly shifting modes and getting long-term behaviors of lower vehicle ownership, that takes time and it takes a lot of effort by incentives and changes over time as transit becomes more available, as other modes become more acceptable. The residential parking permits, I forget who it was that mentioned about the zone idea. I think that's absolutely a great idea. We were not recommending a residential parking permit, really in the corridor, it was identified that that was maybe undesirable, but that could be partnered up with other opportunities, such as the paid parking. And so we'll discuss that when we get to that section. So moving toward in parking management, there are 82 spaces and it is a little bit in flux because there are not dedicated spaces on much of the street. And so if you have a bunch of smaller cars, you can get a couple more spaces if you get some very large cars or some poor parking. So it's not perfect. I walked the corridor maybe a month ago and try to make a count of the number of spaces and walked that before. So we've landed on about 82 spaces or being the number that we expect to be removed on the east side. And there are definitely specific segments that'd be affected more than others. And acknowledging that we've heard the North to Grant is a complicated section. We can discuss a little bit about that when we get to that section. But we realized that also between Union Street and North Street, the space is large enough there that we're not proposing to change any of the parking in that section. The out of the 82 spaces, it's estimated that about 50% of those cars that would have to be displaced would be able to find other parking. And to be clear, that would be using existing off-street lots to a greater degree. It's clear from observations that I've made personally and all the other observations that there are available off-street spaces that are just not as utilized. And sometimes that's a physical limitation. If it's two cars back to back, maybe there's other restrictions that it's not evident that maybe there's one tenant that has three spaces and one tenant has zero, you never know. So the idea is that maybe there's some greater occupancy of those off-street lots and there'd be greater use of those other streets that are available. And so that would be further up Archibald. It would be on in other locations, further afield. And so there would be, there would be some vehicles that may not have parking within that 600 feet of where they are destined. There's a 5% number identified in the report as saying this is a threshold and where if we were to attain a 5% reduction in parking rates through successful travel demand management and that is kind of a global policy suite where both it applies to residential and employment opportunities where if you were to be given incentives to take transit, if you were provided other opportunities to work from home in the case of today in some employment opportunities, if there's greater use of walking, biking and transit and a long-term shift away from vehicle ownership. If we were able to reduce the overall parking rate by 5%, it would more than offset for the impact of the reduction in the parking spaces. Now I acknowledge fully that some businesses and some residents have greater or less opportunity to shift in that magnitude. But the point was to try to provide a quantitative number for those, I know Councilor Hanson was asking last time we met, he said, tell me what do you think the quantitative amount of impact is of adding a bike lane? And at minimum, that effect would be about 1.7% of the parking rates. That's what was estimated for some models that we had available to us that would be applicable for this area. So there would be a difference, 1.7% versus 5%, we're not there just with a bike lane. And so yes, acknowledging that longer-term changes have to occur in this area to fully offset for the removal of the parking spaces. So going through here and you all, I have a menu bar at the top of my screen, but you don't see that, correct? Okay, so the proposed management strategies here on the most northern section is that there are, there will be 37 spaces on the west side that will remain. And the proposed strategy is that there will be 22 spaces that would be time limited. And this is the detail that we don't need to go into because the Public Works Commission would if this was to be pursued, they would decide if it's one hour or two hour, but maybe there's a recommendation that we have where basically 15 of the spaces would be two hour, one, seven of the spaces would be one hour. There's currently three or four spaces that are one hour today at the most northern end. And then maybe half the spaces or 15 spaces would be unmanaged. So this is a strategy that I think we've heard from the committee before as an attempt to try to say, how can we balance the different needs? The unmanaged spaces would be available for employees. And then there would be a mix of other shorter term spaces that could be appropriate for visitors, clients to the health center, as patients of the health center, and then also visitors to the businesses in the corridor. And then we heard in the evening that it would be an unmanaged situation as is today. Any questions from the committee? Any comments, any changes? Is there anything that we've put here that was not in agreement with previous conversations? So feel free to pipe up. We'll continue to go through. I have one question. It's not, you said 1.7%, the bike lane would produce a 1.7%. What exactly, decrease in parking rates? Yeah, that would be the estimate of the change in the amount of travel that would be demanded by cars in the corridor. And so it would be, it's an appropriate, yep, go ahead, John. How exactly, so where does that, so there'd be of the existing rates of parking, you would estimate that 1.7% of that would be decreased by adding these bike lanes. And that would be probably more appropriate to the employment areas and to commercial areas that they would be able to have patrons that would avoid parking. Acknowledging that that shift is an annual number and that on poor weather days, some people may not bike and it may not be appropriate for all times of the year. But there is that data out there and this is from a model that's been used many, many times in the state of California and California is large, they have Northern California cities that would behave similar to this. And that's a nationwide number that is the best source of an estimate of a demand for a bike lane without a much more robust study. Okay, but that's the, okay, those are the assumptions you're making. It's a point, the 5%, let me be clear for all of us is that the 5% is a threshold to say if we were to achieve that, that would make the parkings. The 1.7% is also just to, again, give you a flavor to say, this is the amount of change that we might expect if this bike lane were to go in. I am not proposing to you that the bike lane would mitigate our parking problem. So I'm giving you the- No, I just wanted- Yeah, I just wanted some clarification as to how you're getting that 1.7% number. It seems very optimistic to me, but I was just, you answered my question. Yeah, and Charlie, there's the spreadsheet and the model. There's, I think, the link to the document that's in the report as to the source of that model. It's a very, very simple model. And so by all means, anybody can check it out. Okay, cool, thank you. So the next section to the south is a very busy commercial section. We realized that today's on the parking utilization in the off street is definitely not reflective of the older demands. And so this is a sentiment that I would say professionally, it's very difficult doing any of this type of work during COVID, but during, in this particular geography, we have to rely on an expectation that the commercial space will bounce back. People will be filling up the spaces as they once were. There's not gonna be empty space in the future. And so by using pre-COVID data is the most appropriate source of the demand for the parking. And so we acknowledge that it's a very busy corridor. There is also a lot of very unique land uses here. So none of the forecasts are going to be perfect. And so we have to use the best data that we possibly can. And that's why we've used the nationwide data for pre-COVID parking rates and trying to classify the land uses the way we did. So the way that we propose the west side being managed would be that there would be some, basically the two-hour limits would be used and that would be reflective for the visitors and the guests for most of the uses in the corridor. The residential uses predominantly have parking and then most of the employees in the corridor appear to have that there's sufficient parking. So it's primarily visitors that we look to be accommodating with the two-hour type of time period for the spaces here. We acknowledge, talk about essential needs. The accessible spaces would remain. There is one accessible ADA space that would be removed in front of legal aid. So that could be shifted to the other side of the street. It's not a perfect situation. Then the loading zones that would be around the Dolan's auto and the old Butch and Babes that would shift to the other side of the street as well. So it's not a perfect accommodation but that would be the proposal. Any questions on this section? Can't see everybody's head, so. Okay. The next section down as we mentioned before this isn't changing. And so we're keeping all of the spaces that we have. These charts here just kind of help us illustrate where there's time limited parking and where there's different restrictions. So the North to Grant section we've received a lot of comments here. This one, it was discussed that the residential parking permit was not a desired solution. And so we've looked at the amount of parking here. If we leave it unmanaged, it would be full up quite often. And we realized that a parking meter solution would assist with the employees that we're assuming that are parking here from downtown. This section is part, it's all related South of North Street. The folks that are already living South of Grant Street, they don't have parking during the day. And we expect that some of those residents are parking in this section today. And then they would be further moved to other streets. The mix of brown meters and blue meters, approximately half and half would provide some opportunity for some employees to have a long-term parking solution here. And then the blue meters would allow for some shorter-term turnover. So this space would be managed much more actively and basically the proposal that was discussed by the committee, I believe two meetings ago was that this section would be basically an extension from the points to the South. So it would be the emulating the Grant to Pearl Street now continuing it North to this segment. The absolute mix of brown and blue, let's again, I think the Public Works Commission would be the ones to actually handle that exact allocation. But I think this committee is in a good, we should be informing to say is the mix about right? Are meters the correct thing? Is it mostly brown in this section? Maybe no blue. Any comments about what's being proposed here? I will say that there's opportunities and I think we tabled this at the MPA meeting where if the meters could be tied with a residential parking permit program where if you are a resident in the section, maybe there's a certain number of spaces that would be available for a lottery or that maybe the brown meters would be available for parking by residents. And so that way there would be some available for resident parking in addition to having meters for visitors or for employee, for other people visiting, maybe a housing visitor would have a tag. Okay, maybe just a real quick comment about the parking demand in the model here is that the amount of parking that is being forecast for the section, it stated in the report that the model doesn't align with the observations in the section and the reason is not clear because the amount of off street parking based on the number of units here, it shows there's about a 1.5 space per unit. That should be adequate based on the average number of vehicles that are owned by the households in the corridor. Someone mentioned that maybe there's a greater number of people per average unit on this section. And so therefore then maybe the number of vehicles is higher. So there's a number of reasons here why that could be the case. The comments that were also in the report was that during the earlier study, there was anecdotal conversations with people living in this section that said, I don't know where these cars coming from, they don't live here. And we were under the impression that they might be people who live further to the south or they are residents that were there or their visitors during the day, they could be employees that work downtown. So those are the observations that we've heard that I've heard personally but also were conveyed during the corridor study about some of the parking in this section. The last section here is in effect not changing on the west side. We are proposing to remove the 13 spaces on the eastern side. The loading zone in front of Lee Anderson's place is that it would be planned to shift. We've seen the larger loading vehicles already use the space on the western side of the street, basically commonly today, acknowledging that there's a lot of small loading activity and curbside activity and that loading zone would have to shift to the western side of the curb. So group, our agenda had this conversation about the management strategies occurring and then going back to a public comment and then a vote. I wanna make sure we covered these management strategies if there's any questions on them or anything else that was discussed or concerns about comments that you heard committee. I wanna make sure that we make space for you to ask any questions before we go back into a public comment and then a decision that whether these strategies are appropriate. Yeah, Councilor Barlow. Yes, thank you. I just had a question. I had spoken with Director Spencer about the inability to obtain off-street parking options and when we spoke he was going to look into trying to see if more off-street parking might not be available. And I was wondering if you had any conversations and if you made any headway on that. Thank you, Councilor Barlow. I did have the opportunity. I'm still in process. I've probably spoken with five or six key parcel owners or businesses on those parcels that have ample off-street parking or some off-street parking supply. And there has, have been, I'd say one to three of those five who are willing to further the conversation. None of them have at this point provided a yes, let's do it. So at this point, there's no secured shared parking. I think the concept is something that a few of the property owners are open to. We have heard that I'd say two or three of those six have said that they are not able to provide shared parking due to leases with existing tenants or operational needs at their facility. So I am still waiting to hear back from a couple but that's the update from this point. Okay, thank you. One other thing I do just wanna add as a reminder similar to the work that Chapin has been doing with some of the adjacent property owners. We are still trying to work with STAN Tech on finding opportunities to notch in any parking and regain some opportunities there that work just isn't done yet. But yeah, I just wanted to throw out that reminder that is a potential future opportunity where we might be able to find some ability to keep some parking especially on the each side in the lower blocks. I think that's probably our best opportunity but that's all in that. Kirsten. I wanted to maybe touch on a couple of things. So one of the things that it seemed indicated in the plan wasn't particular to the presentation but in the plan is the idea that if parking is more scarce and more people seem to have access or they have just a narrow driveway and chuckling cars is the problem that people then will choose to park off street more frequently because there isn't any on street parking. And that those property owners are likely to either create new parking or no longer use the street parking. And I just think one of the questions is in terms of creating new parking on properties or various parcels, was there thought given to the needs for permitting for that, lot coverage, creating additional impervious paving within the area? Yeah, I'm aware of particularly some of the North to Grant section as well as in that area of particular, it has a 40% lot coverage maximum. And a few of the, most of the structures have, I don't know how much is there fully pervious driveway already for some of the ones that are more well parked but some of the households that have one or two spaces, there are space based on my look of aerial imagery and GIS suggests that there's adequate space to add more parking space off site in on those residents, at those residents as to how to treat this actual stormwater itself. I don't have that level of granularity. There is a, I don't know what the requirements would be to adding more driveway space but in terms of lot coverage, most of the lots, if not all the lots show that there's adequate space to add more off street parking. I really struggled with one of the assumptions and I just want, maybe there's some room to sort of talk about the idea that the census data shows was used to assert that if you're a lower income or you're a black or a brown person that you are more likely to take transit bike or walk to your destination. And it strikes me that that might not, that might be because of necessity and your circumstances in life, not necessarily by choice but as we've gone through this, it's clear the goal of part of this is to force mode shifts to some extent, I guess. So I just, I don't know. I mean, I think what about, so I am a blessed person. I have a job. It has allowed me to have a house with a driveway with enough room for my car and my husband's car and we both have bikes. I'm not the most avid biker, but I don't dislike bikes but I have that privilege, right, of making that choice and the way my life has turned out, I have that economic opportunity to buy a house that has those amenities that allows me to have that additional mobility choice and the like. And I have to wonder if that choice is available to some others depending on their income or their circumstances, which may have led them to be lower income because of systemic oppression over many years in terms of our society and the like. So I don't know if others have thoughts on that or would like to talk about that a little bit or how they feel about that. Councilor Hanson, feel free to unmute. Yeah, that element of the report struck me as well and I think it would have been good to maybe include that in the presentation, although I guess that's not showing the parking management plan, that's just kind of giving background to this situation. But yeah, I mean, I'm looking at it now and so it's data on income in Northwestern Vermont versus vehicle ownership and those households with no vehicles that the median income is 24,000. With one vehicle, households with one vehicle, it goes up to 46,800 households with two vehicles, the median income is 98,000 and it really just keep, it continues to go up to where those, there is that correlation basically and I think that's been lost in a lot of this is the fact that folks who don't have vehicles are specifically in Burlington, specifically in Northwestern Vermont, are much lower income than folks that do have vehicles and that's why I think, and a lot of those folks aren't necessarily coming out to these meetings and their voices aren't necessarily being heard, but we're trying to create a transportation system that serves people that have been completely left behind and are forced into options that are unsafe because we continue to create public policy and uphold and defend public policy that is really about providing infrastructure for those that do have automobiles directly at the expense of those that don't. When we already have, when folks that don't have vehicles are already struggling in other ways, even more deeply. So I just think it's important to bring that into this and yeah, if you, this data also shows that, because some people might think, oh well this data is skewed by college students because they might be classified, their income might be little or nothing even though they come from wealth or whatever it may be, but this data shows as well household income for respondents that are older than 25 specifically and the lowest income people who are older than 25. So you're now cutting out almost all college students. Half of them typically bike, a quarter of them typically take the bus and a quarter of them typically drive. So the dominant mode that that category of people using is biking and again, we're not really serving that population with our infrastructure, we just don't have a safe bike network through the city and I think this corridor is really, really key to creating that safe network. Thanks. I'd just like to follow up that I think it is somewhat offensive to assume that people under those circumstances may, they may wish to drive, they may, some of the people who answered our survey in those categories, I don't know what the percentage is between those who do and those who don't have cars or typically would drive or need to drive. And so versus the more generalized census data. And again, it's just another, it feels like another way of penalizing the poor or limiting their choices to me. To Kirsten point, we didn't ask people their desired travel choices. And I think it is predominantly that the chart that is table four and table six of the report. I think those are powerful data points that they do show that of the existing data, for instance, table four, I'm not gonna share my screen, I think it's just easier to talk through it, but it just shows that out of those who take transit, only 62% are white. And white is makes up a larger number of our population than just 62%. So that's why down below in the table five, you can show that transit users are underrepresented by white individuals. And so that's how that data can be read. And so I think to Councillor Hanson's point, I'm not going back to the corridor study, but that these modal priorities are meant to enhance opportunities for mobility for those that may not have a vehicle. And I really appreciate Kirsten's perspective here that we don't wanna assume, however, that you want to be stuck with a particular mode choice. You wanna have flexibility and you wanna have choices. So... I think it's important for people to have choice and to feel like they have agency over their lives and their decisions that they make. And I guess I've asked the question and I don't think it's, you have the information, but is, did we find in the survey, if you were to look at black and brown people, would you say 50% is there a sense of how many do actually typically use, say, a vehicle versus these other modes? I believe the survey data that we had reflects, they were aligned that the population, the resident population of those persons of color, as well as households that might have lower or medium experiencing lower income or more modest medium income. Their behavior actually was aligned quite well with the census data at large. So I think that's what the facts do show, but I think you're still raising up a point where is that really what they want? Yeah, Councilor Hansen. Yeah, I mean, I think that's the point, right? I'm not sure who was assuming that this was a choice. I didn't hear anyone assuming that. I think if anything, it's safer to assume that it's not a choice because for the simple fact that it's extremely expensive to own and maintain a vehicle. And so if your income's low, I think it's probably very difficult to access vehicle ownership. And I think that's a huge part of the point here is that you're talking about a population that has this barrier to accessing a vehicle, whether that's, and it's not just necessarily income, but I think income is clearly one of the big determinants of whether someone can access a vehicle. And so the question for us as a community is, are we telling that group of people essentially you're on your own, figure it out, or are we gonna provide real safe connected transportation options for that population where again, half of them bike and a quarter of them take the bus. So are we gonna make it so that those folks can get around the community safely? Are we basically gonna say, once you get a car, we'll take care of you, but until then, you're basically out of block. So I think that's, again, what this is about is that a lot of people can't either, some people choose not to, but a lot of people don't have a choice. They cannot access a vehicle for cost or other reasons and they should still have the right to move throughout our community safely. And right now that's not the case. We're not providing a safe and efficient way for those folks to move throughout our community. Councillor Bailor, I'll go with you in a minute. I just wanted to be sensitive that we are getting to 7.45 at time. We have, we've put on the agenda another comment period. We want to get to a decision tonight. So I do wanna remind us of that. Councillor Bailor, are you gonna say something? Yeah, I just wanna weigh in and we've been talking about this like it's an either or decision. We're either gonna support safe bike infrastructure for folks who can only afford that mode of transportation or we're going to support cars. And there are strategies, perhaps not this current plan but there are strategies and plans that we could envision with more work. And it's outside the scope of this parking management plan discussion we're having tonight. But it might be worth having those discussions. If this doesn't work, are there other options that where we can have both? So the people that need places to park their automobiles can still have places to park their automobiles. And people that need to bike can still have safe biking infrastructure. So I just don't wanna lose that perspective. Charlie, your hand matches with the wall or I didn't see it. You have a question? You're muted at the moment. Yeah, I do have a question. I was curious if we have any good data on the utilization of these bike lanes that we currently have in the winter time considering it's gonna be negative nine degrees out tonight. I'm just curious, like, do we know currently what people, like how many people are utilizing bike lanes? I ride my bike all the time, like spring, summer, fall as much as I can, but like it sits in my basement all winter long. I know some people make the choice to, you know, have like studded tires and gear up and travel by bike in the winter time. But do we know like numbers? Do we know percentage of travelers? Nicole, can I point that to you? Sure, no, we don't have clear numbers on that. Definitely not for this corridor. I think it is a piece of data that local motion has been trying to collect so that we do have more year round data. I don't think we've seen the results of that yet. You know, for the purposes of this study, we did not get into that level of detail since our focus was really around managing the parking. The bike lane design and the bike lane decisions were somewhat separate, obviously very, very intertwined with this conversation about parking, but at least as we have read it in our direction has been that we are still trying to implement the council direction of installing the bike lanes, but first trying to identify the parking management strategies that will help us get there. Yeah, we did not dig into bike-related data. We were really focused on parking data. All right, committee. Kelly has her hand, Kirsten has her hand, so are we committing? Kelly should go first, sorry. Yeah, can we commit to sticking this out to see through our agenda? No one's gonna fall off at eight o'clock, right? Okay. Kelly? I just wanted to add to your point, Charlie. And the winter bike lanes are very poorly maintained. They're usually when I'm out and I commute year round with like studded tires and muddle up, they're covered in snow. So I'd say like, I mean, from my experience, and I work at Old Spokes Home, and a lot of our customer experience, even when people are out biking in the winter, like that small percentage, they're typically like, they're not always gonna be in the bike lanes because they're poorly maintained. And that's where I would question using something like California. I mean, I know there's limited data in Vermont and there's so many models from California to drive from, but somewhere with such different weather conditions. Yeah, it's not as applicable to Vermont when it comes to the winter. Kirsten, are you gonna say something, or are we? I did, there was another, there were a couple of other things that I wanted to at least make sure I understood and raised as a concern in general that were mentioned as strategies in this parking demand, managing parking demand. And one of them was the concept of unbundled parking, which I really didn't know. I'm sure I maybe heard it before, but I hadn't really thought about it until it was in the report. And then I also wonder about how unbundling parking, which means that you would pay rent for a parking place and you would pay rent for your apartment if you wanted to have an apartment and a parking space. Is that, I had that correct, that's sort of the idea. It's not tied into your base rent, yep. So an example here for our tenants at CHT, we're providing affordable housing. And so to then, I can't see us implementing that because it seems sort of the antithesis of we're gonna penalize you for having a car or going to work or making you pay more when you're already housing burden, right? And so I think it would add a burden to folks who are already housing burden. Now, this might work really well if you're a renter that's at the higher end of the market and you have sufficient income and that works out really great for you, right? You don't even notice that you're paying another 60 bucks a month for your parking space on top of your rent of $1,000 or whatever it is. And so it begins to make me think also that with this idea of removing parking minimums where people won't have to build parking or will only build parking where they can get a second rent for it, is that going to spur gentrification within this neighborhood further than it is today making the housing more less affordable? I can't answer the second one, Kirsten, but the unbundled is a transportation demand management strategy that has been employed by many cities and it has a positive, it has a return that it reduces the total amount of parking is that those residents who might be moving into that building typically have fewer vehicles than other residents at other buildings. So that's been the, it's a strategy and it's simply part of demand management strategies is a bundle, it's not put in as an explicit recommendation into this report to achieve that 5% reduction potentially is that that's a strategy that would probably be employed as new land development occurs over time. And so we don't think it will lead to additional gentrification of the neighborhood. I'm not a gentrification expert. Councilor Hanson. Yeah, I can speak on the unbundling just because the council did, we changed the requirements for new developments and required them to unbundle and the idea behind that is right now developers have the ability to just roll the cost of a parking space into rent and basically force everyone to pay for parking space regardless of whether or not they're using that space. The unbundling gives the tenant the option to forego not only the space, a lot of tenants obviously forego the space because if they don't have a car they're not gonna use the parking space but now tenants have the ability to forego that cost as well. Whereas if you allow developers to just roll into rent then no one can forego that cost. They're just gonna be forced to pay it through higher rents. So that was why the council kind of changed that policy around new development. So that's already the case though. I mean, that's completely independent of this committee. That was policy that council passed that applies to this corridor already is that any new development is gonna have to take that cost out of rent. So then if you have a housing development and what is the amount that has to be, is it what 25% or 10% for affordable units? I don't remember how to talk about that. 15. So in any new development there's some inclusionary zoning which requires some of the units to be affordable. So would they, when the unbundling what happens to the affordability as it relates to the unbundled parking spot? In terms of like what unit is considered affordable or not? Yes, if you're required to build a certain amount of affordable units within any new housing development in the city, right? And you don't have to, and you unbundled parking. So if you're an affordable unit, then I guess, yes, you just don't get to have a car, right? But then I have to wonder if you are poor and have a car, then you're not gonna be able to live in this neighborhood eventually, right? No, no, it would be the same cost for someone who has a car. They just wouldn't pay it through rent. They would pay for it on its own. On top of their rent. Yeah, I got that. Right, right, but the rent would be lowered though. Like Cambrian Rise, for example, was the first one to, they weren't impacted necessarily by the policy, but we changed our development agreement with them and they were the first to do it. It's, you know, you lower the rent by the amount that you're charging. Because again, you're pulling that cost out of rent. So team, is this, Kirsten, is this related to a particular management strategy in this document? No, okay. It is because I was curious about the unbundling and I'm curious about the impact on low-income people and people who are working, people who have cars and need cars to get to their jobs. And whether that would then, through gentrification, does that make people go further afield or live further afield and include, and increased vehicle miles traveled overall? So that was sort of where I was at, but some of that. And I do see the gentrification pressures on the old North end, the Lewinowski Avenue corridor and throughout the city. So, it's already here, I'm wondering if this would exacerbate it. I just wanted to have that conversation. This plan removes some available on-street parking that if you were in a residential unit, you might have access to, but that's what we're looking at today, okay? Well, it involves bike lanes too. And it provides alternative ways of getting around without a car, yes, but that's the corridor plan. All right, committee. Are we able to, we're gonna open up another conversation. I don't know how many more comments and questions there will be. And then the idea is that we would vote on the strategy. So before we vote though, we went through the corridor, we went through all of those strategies. It was as those written into the report saying basically how we manage these parking spaces, are they metered, are they not, are they time managed, are they unmanaged? So that was the proposal. Last chance for any comments from the committee. Oh, Councillor Barlow. Thank you. Yeah, I guess I have a question about process for us going forward. If we don't vote tonight, what's, what happens? I mean, so I guess the options are, we vote yes, we adopt the parking manner, or we approve the parking management plan and it goes to DPW commission and the council. If we don't approve it, what happens? And what if we just say it needs more time? I mean, I'll be honest. I'm not ready to vote on this plan. I think there's a lot of questions still and we can talk about it when we get into deliberation if we vote tonight, but there's a lot of, it needs a lot more work or at least it needs more work and there's still some things that we don't know. So especially not on street parking, we haven't identified what essential parking is really. We've talked about it, but we've never really defined it. You know, there's residents and businesses who've shown up meeting after meeting with lots of concerns and the Austrian parking options have been materialized. It doesn't seem like we're ready, at least I'm not ready to approve it. So I'm just wondering what the various permutations of things we do tonight, how it might play out. And so I don't know if anybody can speak to that because I'm unclear. I can take a run at that, Councillor Barlow. I think it really is up to the stakeholder committee. There, if there are specific things that the committee still wants to see before acting, what I would suggest is that we try to get as explicit as possible on what those are and work to come back to a subsequent meeting. I think what staff had framed out earlier, maybe it was Mr. Slason, is that there is a timeline to have this be coordinated with the repaving effort along North Winnieski Avenue. So I would hope that we could make a decision and get to an approval by February because time is gonna get short at that point. But if the stakeholder group needs additional information before voting, as I said earlier in my comments, I will support that effort because I think that this is a complex project and it's important we get it right. Councillor Strumberg. Thanks. Thank you to everybody who spoke up about this. I know that there are incredibly valid concerns behind this. North Winnieski Avenue obviously is a main artery a lot of people use it. And I think I do tend to agree with Councillor Barlow and his comments earlier about there being that balance. I do wanna see bike lanes on that road. I really, really do. And I want to see them maintained and be used. And I know there is a demand for it. I speak to a lot of people about this. And I think that maybe tonight we're not hearing that necessarily but there have been many moments where we have heard that. And I know that there is a demand in balance too or balance in demand rather, sorry. I feel like I do want, I'm hearing over and over again that there's no alternatives. And in some ways that is true. And I do think that there should be at least one solid alternative identified to move forward and feel good about this because I don't want to take the chance of granted a lot of worst case scenarios were brought up but I don't want to take the chance of having any one of those necessarily come up. But I also know that we are on a time crunch. So I'm just curious what our options are in terms of exploring what at least one good alternative would be. I'm not really sure who would be best to answer that question but I think that's something we should talk about because I do want to make progress on this road and then needs to change in some way or another. And I think that I'm also hearing a constant theme of people caring about the climate and being avid bikers to some extent but also wanting to maintain some balance here. So I think there is a way to do both but there does need to be change to get us there. So just kind of curious what like a remote law or whatever it would look like. I know that that's something that we've talked about before. So apologies if this is kind of repetitive but still relevant. Anyone hear from Charlie before? Yeah, it's a conversation. I don't want to drag this on too long but just I want to thank Mark and also Jane to an extent for what they just said because I'm feeling the same way. My understanding going into this was that the parking management plan was the point of it was to address, look at what the current needs are and what we would be like removing from the street in terms of parking and finding other places for it. And I don't feel confident that that's what has been achieved here. I don't feel good right now approving this as a resident of Old North End. I live on Cromby Street. The people I talk like part it's a stressful situation and I don't, it just doesn't feel like we've come up with appropriate alternatives and address what's going to be lost by the neighborhood. So if I'd be and like pushing this forward because of paving or it needing to like line up with work that needs to be done and the cost is going to be on the standard of living and of those of us who live in this neighborhood just it just doesn't feel right. I can't in good conscience like move forward under those circumstances. So just want to echo kind of what has already been said there. Can I hop in again? So is there a way to kind of balance this with like in terms of the seasons like maybe allowing for a bit more parking in winter or like I do think we need to move forward on this. I think there it is time sensitive that we do get this kind of like just moving because it's been dragged out for so, so long. And that's, and I'm pretty new to this committee and this conversation compared to other counselors. And if I feel like it's long, it's pretty long. So I'm just curious if there's some options around kind of the seasonality of it. And then also if we do implement something now and we make a decision to move forward and I feel like there is time to also make it, inform the public of transit options and also explore other things simultaneously. It almost kind of like makes it so there is pressure to do that because in general, that's something that I think is going to be needed. So those are just some thoughts and comments on that front. I would like to hear about the kind of seasonality option of this as well if that is even remotely viable. That was listed in the very end of the document as a potential alternative. There's not good examples that I could find about seasonal bike lanes in Northern climates. There's a handful of planning reasons why not to because you want to have reliable options. You want to know where the route is for all those other things, but there's a practical application here that there is fewer bikes in the winter and there's still a parking demand. So it was listed as an alternative, but it doesn't have a lot of good, I can't point you to any good resources. Okay. Does anybody else have any thoughts on that? Like is this something that might be worth trying just because of how busy that route is in many different ways? I think if I can offer, maybe I think it's an excellent question and I think that is the kind of question in any other similar ideas or concerns that any of the other committee members have about either alternatives or other data that you'd like to see just looking at the time already. I think, you know, maybe I'll suggest that we focus our conversation around those kinds of questions now and then schedule another meeting and a very quick turnaround so that the project team has time to really flesh out those answers for you and at our next meeting be able to really dig deep, give you a little bit more information in advance for any of those alternatives and then we'll share the whole chat thread that we've heard from the rest of the public too and maybe pick this up on a short turnaround. So that is just one option that I will throw out. Thanks, Nicole. Given that we are still waiting for the StanTech report about notched-in parking, given that I have not finished reaching out to the larger property owners along the corridor, I think that makes sense to get the feedback from this committee and then bring back a fuller suite of information. That would be friendly from my perspective. Charlie, thank you. We're saying something before I jumped in and then Kirsten, I know you have your hand up as well. Oh, I just wanted to, I'm glad Jane brought that up because I had forgotten. Like the seasonality of the bike lanes makes, I mean, it just makes a lot of sense to me. You know, yeah, just seeing it like losing part, like bike lanes in our climate, like you just very few people utilize them. You can just see with your own eyes when you're in town in the winter months. And in light of all of the people coming and saying how much this is going to impact them to make these negative impacts to this neighborhood for any increased bike infrastructure that's going to be utilized for maybe half the year, it just doesn't really make a lot of sense to me. So something an alternative like that makes a lot of sense. So thanks for bringing that up. I would like to know if this ends up going to a future meeting with some other alternatives, I would like to understand the potential for the bike lane to continue to parallel Winooski Avenue because in any of the alternatives at the end of the report, it all still removes all the parking from Decay Union to Riverside. And I think that will have a very detrimental impact on the social services per the comments tonight and on many other occasions. So I don't know if the city could look at continuing the Union Street bike lane, jog it up North Street, down Hyde Street, get you over to Riverside, you're one block off of Winooski. We talked about having people park one block off of Winooski, maybe they could bike one block off of Winooski. It seems like it's that less average daily traffic. I don't know if that's realistic or not, but maybe that's something at least that could be into. Other things that I think would be important is to really then understand more and think about other things that would support the or ameliorate some of these impacts if this plan is to go forward. Looking at subsidizing ride shares, really digging into the details, as Chapin mentioned on the off street parking. I do feel like there is a nexus and it relates to this project because it's removing a parking and it's changing the parking dynamics around gentrification in the corridor. And that relates to the economic health and vitality of this corridor, which a lot of people may take for granted. But this was something that was tended to and cultivated by our community, the city, nonprofits, the people who live there being engaged and caring about this neighborhood. And so that's very important, I think, to not lose sight of that vitality. And I don't wanna see that damaged. I don't wanna see the long-term affordability damaged or the diversity. So I think having a better understanding of some of those other alternatives and how they would ameliorate any pressure would be very important because at this point I don't know that I feel comfortable going forward with the plan as proposed. Thanks, Kirsten. Councillor Stromberg and Councillor Barlow. Thanks, I hear that. And I think that we do need to keep in mind, we are tasked with coming up with a solution. Like this is already something that has been agreed upon. This is a project that we do need to move forward. And I do hear those concerns. I think they are valid in many ways, but I also think like, yeah, we should just, we as much as we need to move forward, we need to do so responsibly. And so to take kind of a little bit more time, not too much more time, but enough time to just get to the next meeting with more information would be good. And I do think that in, I know it's a short turnaround, but if we can engage residents and businesses and kind of, you know, some folks as much as we can in, I know it's a short amount of time, but just as much as we can about kind of like the seasonality option and maybe talking about some alternatives that might include a remote lot, like not even part of the corridor, just kind of a little bit further away, just to have as a backup backup, you know, again, like I'm just open to other ideas, but we, you know, I'm gonna be very open and transparent. Like I'm very supportive of moving forward with, with, you know, bike lanes, but I do think, you know, I'm not gonna just not hear all of these other pieces of information too. So yeah, I do appreciate that and do want to, I do want to see us make progress on this road. And I think we all do. I think there's a lot of room for improvement. And I think that there is a good feature for bike lanes and we can, we can do it. We've proven it with other streets in the city, major streets in the city. So I think that this is just the beginning of the transition and it's not always easy, but this is the project. This is what we're tasked to do. The city council already voted on this. And yeah, let's just, let's just feel good about coming into the next meeting with at least a little bit more information. The stand tech report will be very helpful too. And yeah, I do think the seasonality option to me is just the most efficient in some ways. I will kind of look at that myself too, just kind of thinking about that because I kind of just said it all at once here and left my thoughts for later, but I actually do, I do think that that's probably something that might be quite viable and helpful. So yeah, thank you. I'll stop talking now. And I just wanted to sort of echo what I think Kirsten was saying is I'd like to know how use of the northbound lane on Union might help ameliorate some of the, you know, parking pressure that would result from removing, you know, to having the northbound lane on North Moosky Avenue. I know it's someone outside the scope and I know that there were decisions made to have two bike lanes on North Moosky Avenue. I was not on the council then. So I don't understand why that was the preferred alternative, but I'm wondering if that's something that is worth revisiting given how constrained the parking is on North Moosky Avenue as we discovered through this process. So I'd like to at least understand that if there are viable options there and how much parking would it, you know, we had potentially, I guess, all of it if you didn't do any of the northbound lane. So that would be useful information. Thank you, Councilor Hanson. Yeah, I was just gonna echo, I think some of what Councilor Stromberg was saying of, you know, keeping in the context of what we're trying to do here and the fact that we did have a two-year process that was really all about, okay, what do we, you know, what does this corridor wanna look like? And there was, you know, I was involved in a lot of that process and there were a lot of people on a lot of, coming from a lot of different perspectives that felt really strongly that weighed in. Ultimately, after that two-year process, the advisory committee, you know, approved this configuration of the corridor unanimously and the council approved it coming out of that. And the council, you know, made this amendment to come up with this parking management plan. And I think we really need to focus on, yeah, how can we get there? Like how can we get to a plan that is satisfactory for parking management? I don't think our role is to just completely reopen or reverse, you know, those two years of process and kind of the result that came out of that, it's possible. I mean, the city council could come up with a resolution to reverse that, that is possible, but that hasn't happened at this point. And again, you know, this group is trying to figure out a way to make this work and trying to come up with a parking management plan that can work for this change that's been approved. So I think we need to try to figure out how to get there and how to do that. I would just like to add though, if we're gonna do this extra work and have an extra meeting and ask people extra to come to another meeting to hear where we're at, like if this is simply a rubber stamp and a given of there will be bike lanes, the parking is being removed, then I don't know that it matters as much whether we vote tonight or we vote in two weeks. I don't know that, right? Because as proposed, I feel like this is gonna have a negative impact on people who are accessing our essential social services and as well as the tenants and CHT building. And when I saw the petition from the small businesses, I already believed it would impact them, but to see that they feel that way is concerning to me. And many of those small businesses are BIPOC-owned and it seems like we're having a negative impact on by this course of action. So. So I've heard, I just wanna ask what, if we go forward with another meeting, I need to hear more ways. We'll look at the comments, but what to address to satisfy the committee's questions. I heard seasonality, heard Councillor Barlow to talk about the, we can, the use of Union Street, which was part of the corridor study, but we can document how many parking spaces, would be saved if that were, if the bike lane was not put on North Winooski. Kirsten was talking about an alternative using Hyde Street. So those are all things. I think Councillor Stromberg also discussed the feasibility of any remote lots. Those are the things that I've heard that we, that you wanna hear more about. And transit maybe too. I mean, I'd like to really have a better sense of where transit's heading. You know, where do we think transit's gonna be in the next couple of years in this corridor? How is it gonna function? Is there an anticipated influx or other mechanisms that are happening throughout the state or the county to beef up our transit? Okay, team, where do we go from here? Is there an official, we can go to public comment and then are we gonna then have a motion that we don't vote tonight? Is that the official process? I think maybe to, yeah, given the public forum that I've heard to date, given that there's a lot of concern and requests for additional information, I think that if the committee felt comfortable with taking extra time to answer the questions that you've come up with, maybe the remaining public forum could be to identify additional information they might wanna see for the meeting next month. I'm not saying we can do it all in that period, but maybe that would be a beneficial use of the last public forum. Yeah, that would be extremely helpful. So committee, are we, let's proceed with public forum again? I'm with that. Okay, so Brian, are you still, can't see you in that big room? I assume you're still there. I'm still here at the camera keeps shifting around, but it's me. So similar to the first round of public comment if you would like to speak, throw your hand up on the screen, or your virtual hand, and I will call you in the order that I see hands go up there. And I do wanna acknowledge that chat has been populating, we're aware of that, we'll capture that as Chief had said, you can sort of view those if we can. So all right, Jean, I see your hand is up. Yes, hello. So I understand from what you've just said that you're looking for what we want more information about, is that correct? Yeah, thanks for your like us. Yeah, I would like a really clear articulation about what exactly the council approved. We've heard conflicting things tonight about what apparently can't be reversed. I heard from I believe Liz Curry a different interpretation than I've heard more recently about what must apparently happen on our street and how we must sort of move around that. So what I really wanna know is what exactly did the council approve? Does everybody on this committee as well as the council have a shared understanding of what that is? I have a second question about what evidence we have that this existing stretch of bike lanes, like we've said, South on North Manuski, North on North Union, what evidence do we have that it is not safe? So I've heard a couple of motivations for this whole project tonight. One was an apparent sort of sense that things aren't safe enough for bikes. The other is that a desire to reduce car ownership and usage and these motivations kind of pop up at different points depending on the context. But I would like more evidence that this stretch of existing bike lanes is unsafe. I recall the heat map in an earlier report showing that the study area was not actually very unsafe for bikes. The places where accidents happened tended to be in intersections which is not a bike lane issue, as far as I know. And most of the accidents happened South of Pearl Street which is not in the study area. So I'd like to know more about that. Like what proves that they're unsafe and how do we know that they're unsafe for any reason besides the fact that they're not maintained properly and people aren't using them. So they're biking in the middle of the road because they cannot bike in the bike lane. And then I'd like to know particularly, I was really interested in hearing from Councillor Stromberg about what isn't working for her for the existing bike lanes, like what motivates individual members of the committee for feeling that like our particular street must be different. I just, I want some answers and I really appreciate you giving us the opportunity to ask our questions. Thank you. Great, thank you. I don't currently see any other hands up but I invite members who are still here to raise your hand. Tiki? Hi, thank you. Just a quick comment. I won't reiterate everything that was said earlier. I don't believe there is a time crunch for this. So if there's a repaving plan, my understanding is that that footprint will not be changing, including curves. And therefore if, even if this plan were to proceed that it would just require repainting rather than pavement changes. So I'm not seeing the dire need for a quick decision here. And from the consensus, it seems like more deliberation might be needed. So just throwing that out there. Anyway, thank you. Great, thank you for that. Anyone else? Here we go. Hi, thanks for giving an opportunity to talk again. I just, first I want to say that I appreciate the, I guess it's a consideration of a reconsideration and how you've been listening to people. I think I find a lot of good information in the chat about recommendations or suggestions. I want to say that I want to see progress on my street. I just want to be clear about that and that the strategies that have been laid out just still aren't appropriate. And that there isn't a plan right now for off street parking right now. And I hear Jean's question about clarifying what's needed and what's not needed. And I too, I thought the parking plan should be a plan for how it works. And it's not, it's a plan of how it might work or it could work. And I would like a plan that's actually a plan that works. And then my recommendation or things to look at would be, let's look at transit. Let's find ways to talk to landlords. I'd really like to explore, see if we're allowed to explore alternatives to North Nootsky Avenue, having two lanes looking at Union, maybe looking at Archibald, maybe looking beyond that. I just like to know how, whether or not it's even possible to explore that. And again, I just want to say that this plan, I really ask you, please don't approve this plan. Thanks again for the time. Liz. Yeah, thanks. I appreciate everyone's reflections. And I put about seven questions in the chat about the report itself around some data points and analysis. And I understand it would be onerous to ask you to stay and answer them all. I'm just wondering if there's a way I could get those questions answered other than sitting here till nine. So that's one question. And then I just had a question for Kelly if she's still on. I really liked the one mode audit that old spokes home did. I thought that was really nice, a really nice piece of work if people haven't seen it. I don't even know where it is, it's maybe on your website, but there was a Kelly, I guess got a grant from regional planning and did a mode audit and interviewed like 125 people, which isn't statistically relevant. But I just thought that it was interesting that the major conclusion was that, a lot of the people who they talked to, I think most were either English learners, people of color or people with low incomes. And the major conclusion that I took away, correct me if I'm wrong Kelly, was that people don't feel like they're involved and they get asked enough what they think and that the major recommendation was really around that principle, the just transition was centering those voices in decision-making and solutions. So Kelly, I was just wondering, if you could speak a little bit to that and was that mode audit integrated into this process or how do you build up that? Yeah, thanks for bringing that up Liz. So the one mobility audit is research, we did old spokesman did alongside CCRPC and the old North End. And we really tried to target like underrepresented populations. So we surveyed at the food shelf, we spoke with folks at ALD and the senior center and went through our transportation equity coalition to really reach out to those specific communities and compensated everyone for their time. So it felt like a fair process. And a major outcome, it was not necessarily about, I mean, we had some specific infrastructure recommendations but the biggest outcome was that these underrepresented folks do feel left out of the public process. So it's something I've tried to advocate for in these stakeholder committee meetings. I feel like I did see that in the way the survey was conducted. But overall, I mean, that's where I kind of feel torn as a stakeholder because through this audit, I mean, we found that 30% of households in the old North End don't own a car but those folks aren't necessarily biking and whether they would bike, if there were more bike lanes is kind of an assumption or a question. The biggest impact I think infrastructurally would be improving the sidewalks, improving potholes, just working on that street level infrastructure before implementing anything like a bike lane. So that's kind of where I'm at right now related to the audit. And I linked it in the chat if anyone would like to view it, it is on our website. And I'm happy to answer questions about it. So thanks for bringing that up. Yeah, so I guess what's a little disconcerting to me is that the survey was 766 people, the majority of whom are visitors to the corridor. So seven of us has spent the last three months talking to over 170 people in less time than paid consultants have spent on this entire study. So I'm not really understanding like how seven of us volunteers who work full-time, some of the work overnight at Howard have been able to talk to so many people in between all of us, I'd say like 20 to 30 hours. We've been able to talk to almost, we've knocked on almost every door on North Winooski Avenue between North and Riverside. And so it's just a little baffling, how the committee can represent that they've talked to people or like had a process with fidelity. And I think that this report is a great phase one and it raises all the right questions. And it would be great to see phase two invite the public to answer those questions. There's so many unknowns and I really appreciate the sentiment of slowing down because I think what we wanna say to the city council is we're sorry it wasn't possible to comply with this resolution because there wasn't enough data, the data is 11 years old, the new census data comes out in April. We'd like to wait for it because it will show a drastically different picture given the rental turnover and the businesses that have changed and people's lifestyles have changed. Including maybe owning fewer cars because there's greater awareness. So I think it would be great to say to the city council, this resolution was probably a little premature. It came during a major pandemic. It's, there's a lot of outliers here. And there's just like in the report there's one thing I just have to point out Jonathan if you can help me out with this like on PDF page 17 or 16 there's a picture that shows 16% of households are, let me just find it, I'm really sorry but this one's really tripping me up. 16% of households, it's where you have the big markers on, yeah, with zero vehicles. But the census data that you linked it to the federal highway data, the map, the data, little pop up blocks, they don't have the number of households they have the number of people. And then they have 14% of the people don't have vehicles. So I didn't understand where you got the household data given that that specific federal highway map mapping tool when you pop up the census track data it only talks about population not households. Liz, I'll have to go and look at that in more detail. I was under the impression that the FHW tool was households but it's population. And that would be a really different number. 14% of population, because the only place you can get household data is if you go to the American Fact Finder census data that has households as an option for the POM tables. So it didn't work. Happy to dive into the details there with you. And I think it's nothing is fully representative you have to marry several data sources together. Yeah, that's another issue because on another table it conflated census data with survey data, which is like, I think probably not the way you wanna go out with your final report. So just a lot of fact-checking there would be good. Which is another reason why this is a great phase one and take time to get the data right maybe have someone review it or something but it's a little inaccurate. Thank you. And to answer your question, I'd be happy to spend the time answering, going through the report and trying to identify where you have identified whether there's questions or inaccuracies. Yeah, that'd be great if I'm still on, I mean, it'll take a long time. Not right now. Right, right. Okay, thanks. All right, thank you Liz. Up next we have Kara. Everyone, can you hear me? Yes. Great. Thanks, I realize it's late in the evening and I really appreciate that you guys are giving extra time for public comment. So just two quick comments. One, Jane said that, and I'm using the names that are written here on the screen. Apologies if I'm not using correct titles but Jane noted that this process has been going on for a really long time and we need to make, I think she said progress tonight. I would maybe suggest that the reason for this, for a lot of people coming out tonight in the last few meetings and maybe putting some barriers in the way of quote unquote progress is that outreach potentially was not done as robustly as it could have been done from the beginning and that I love the idea of thinking of this as phase one and that we now see that there are a lot of people coming out with alternate opinions on what's happening with this plan. And so I echo what Jean said earlier and just saying, asking or begging for you guys to really consider that all of what our neighbors and residents have said tonight. And then my second comment is just that Jack noted that not moving forward with the lane tonight is like saying that poor people are out of luck. I really, I heard that out of luck comment really loud and I, you know, to me that's the equivalent of saying that putting a second lane, bike lane on North Winootsky is equivalent to, you know, promoting access to services of poor people. And to me, that's not in the slightest bit true. I'm one of those people that works for the Howard Center on overnight shifts site. You know, I work with homeless people. I work with people in the group homes in this neighborhood and to me that bike lane is not in any sense of the word promoting access to services for poor people. In fact, to me, what should be done is promoting maintenance of the existing bike lanes since as we all know, we already have a northbound bike lane over on North Union that's covered with snow. The barriers are broken down. Even on my own street on North Winootsky, there's snow in the bike lane and there's people driving straight into the bike lane as they approach Pearl Street. So instead of the current plan, my recommendation or my hope is that you would consider better maintenance of existing bike lanes. Thank you. Those are all the hands that were up, everybody. So we've heard a lot of comments, questions. I think we probably don't need a motion to meet again, but maybe do we need to set a date certain or some expectation or is it premature given that we should probably consolidate all of these to-dos? I think we should set a date. I think that would be good. When is the STAN type report back? It'll be back. Well, it's probably within that. Yeah, I'll have to talk with Chapin about where we are with one of our maybe next steps, but I don't think you need to let that hold our scheduling of our next meeting. Okay, that sounds good. So what do we propose? Do we, Nicole, are you looking at dates? I can either pull up dates tonight or we can just follow up with an email tomorrow and ask that everybody be able to just respond to a potential poll tomorrow. I'd say ideally we can meet within the next two weeks. And so that's what I think we'll focus on. If that sounds okay to everybody. Yes, do you need a motion from the committee that says we would like you to do the additional investigation into the issues and questions that were raised tonight? I don't think we need one. All in favor. Yeah, I'm happy to entertain one if you'd like to make it official, but otherwise we've been capturing all the notes. Yeah, we will come prepared for the next meeting for sure. All right, well, thank you everybody. I appreciate the feedback and the continued time that everybody's devoting to the effort at hand. Thank you. Thanks everybody. Have a good night. Stay warm. Thank you. Take care. Bye bye.