 I'm in Hogan Chair of the Public Works Commission here, calling to order the October meeting, October 2020 meeting at 6.31 p.m. Sides from the call to order. Next item on the agenda is the agenda itself. Motion or discussion around the agenda. Thank you. I would like to pull item B on the consent agenda, if I could, and just have a more expansive discussion. Motion to accept the agenda with item B pulled from the consent agenda. I second the motion to pull item B from the consent agenda. Thank you for that. We have a motion that's been seconded, it's starting discussion around the motion. So let's go to votes. All those in favor can say aye. Aye. For myself, any opposed? All right, the modified agenda with B pulled out has been approved. Next we go to public forum. Mr. Goulding, are you able to help us along or invite any public members to speak at this time? Sure, thanks, your Hogan. If you are signed into Zoom and are a member of the public and would like to speak, please hit the raise your hand button, which should be at the lower third of your screen. If you have called in and it doesn't appear anybody had, looks like somebody has called in. If you have called in and you wanna speak or in public comment, please hit star nine. That will alert us that you want to speak. And if you're having any trouble speaking or signing into the meeting, please email dpwcommunicationsatberlingtonbt.gov. And again, thanks to channel 17 for live streaming. If you are watching on YouTube, we do not monitor YouTube for comments. So please sign into Zoom, which you can find on our agenda. First person signed up at this time is Wendy Bratt. And I'm going to promote you over to have the ability to speak in one second. Okay, I think I'm unmuted. Yeah, okay. Can hear you. Yes, thank you. Hi, my name is Wendy Bratt and thank you for listening to me. I do have something I'm gonna be reading to you just so I can be most efficient and effective with my words. As I'm sure that you know, Burton and higher ground have plans to build a hub on their industrial Avenue property to include a 1500 person, 500 vehicle concert venue. Burton once said to me that this hub will be quote, the likes of Ben and Jerry's and Waterbury. The problem for me is that the Berlin venue site does not abut a major state road, such as route 100. It abuts home Avenue with all of its stop signs and Queen City Park with its one lane bridge. These streets lack the infrastructure to safely manage the onslaught of drivers, bikers and walkers that this venue would bring with it despite recent paving. The DRB unanimously approved Burton's conditional use permit without requiring a shred of new traffic infrastructure. They turned a blind eye to the safety needs of bikers and walkers. They quietly overlooked the structural upgrades undeniably necessary for this venue to become anything less than chaotic. That the DRB accepted Burton's traffic study is to me either foolery or it tells me it was not read thoroughly. My understanding is that Burlington knew it didn't have funds to pay for sidewalks designated bike lanes and crosswalk improvements. And rather than wait until they did, they chose to ram Burton's permit through without stipulations. To me, again, this is a slap in the face to your constituents who choose human powered modes of transportation, such as me. Burlington chose profits over people. This enormous concert venue should not open until Burlington can afford to build the necessary infrastructure needed for safety that was shockingly not flagged by the DRB. I also urged the city to require bussing in from a major artery to reduce the onslaught of traffic. This would alleviate congestion, heavy traffic and parking on streets that are clearly ill-equipped to handle it through the years. It would deter pre and post concert loitering in nearby areas too, thereby reducing police presence and residents disruptions. All in all, we just don't wanna train wreck here. The construction of bike walk infrastructure in accordance with the city's goals and principles prior to the startup of the venue is absolutely the right thing to do. I urge you to move us down and specifically consider patrons and neighbors on foot and bicycle. Thank you so much for your consideration and for listening to me. Thank you very much for your input. Chair Hogan, there is one other person currently signed up and that is Lori Smith. I will unmute you now. There, can you hear me now? Yes, we can. Good evening commissioners and good evening Chapin. I just wanted to follow up with what Wendy had to say and say I'm thrilled that Queen City Park Road is being worked on as we speak and that they are improving the roadbed and repaving. And I think it's wonderful that they're planning to do advisory striping for the road for pedestrians and bicycles. Given the amount of traffic that this road currently experiences, that's a fabulous solution. For this road to end up with up to 500 vehicles coming in here in the evenings when those of us that live in the neighborhood are trying to walk to the market or go for a bike ride or do the things that we do. And not have the appropriate infrastructure in place before that venue opens seems irresponsible. And I just want to encourage the commission to get involved in any way that you can to help ensure that those of us that live at this end of town are properly protected and that there is the bike and walk and safety infrastructure in place to ensure that those of us that live here can come and go without fear for our lives. And that's all I have to say this evening. So I really appreciate it and thank you very much. All right, thank you. If there are any other members of the public that do want to speak, please hit the raise your hand option on Zoom or hit star nine if you have called in. Chairman, at this time there is nobody. Oh, Tony Reddingtons hand has gone up and down. I'm gonna allow you to talk Tony. And if you choose not to, that is totally fine. Okay, I think I unmuted myself, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Okay, two or three things. First, thank you for having a chance to get access is still seems to be barriers and getting through on the system, but we made it. Number two, have not given up on getting further information and confirmation on the capacity issue for a mini roundabout at Cambrian. I had some communications with Dr. Zhang as well as with a couple of other roundabout engineers and we'll follow up on that. I have two questions, two things I wanted to mention. One is one that is a south end issue. It's been an issue now for more than a decade and it's an issue that has not been resolved by this current Weinberg administration in nine years. And that is the high crash location intersection at the rotary. And it seems to me that there's something very, very amiss when we have a public works department, a city council, a mayor, and let's add the Vermont Agency of Transportation that has 10 years to take care of one of the top two or three high crash locations in the state where last year at this time at the NPA six that's the Spencer, Chapin Spencer was there and he saw and felt the concerns of that community about this intersection of death being repaired. This seems that right now we're still playing dodgeball with the Champlain Parkway. And it looks like the latest is that the roundabout will be built in 2022 or 2023, it's more, but that's too late. That's a failure, that's a failure of administration and leadership in a systemic way. That's number one. Number two, I wanna talk a little bit about transportation racism because it's new to me. I don't really know too much about transportation racism and discrimination based on low income. I always was interested in transportation safety, safe intersections, a walk safety advocate, but it turns out that because low income people and those and racial minorities have lack of access to cars and they also have to walk and use transit. Well, those are the same people that are discriminated against when we don't have safe walking facilities. So it turned out when we're looking at Cambrian rise, for example, that an unsafe intersection there means a discrimination against low income and minorities if they exist in the case of the, any mixed use residential area in the city, a traffic signal by definition has a higher crash rate by about 20% for pedestrians, for example, and therefore we must begin to think about how we handle our intersections based on the needs of low income and minorities, 24% minorities in the case of the King Maple neighborhood, 24% of all the city and in the case of the old North and 32% have no access to a car according to numbers that are developed by a representative, Karen McCormick. So I just bring that as an issue. I don't have any answers yet because this is still new language for me, but we need to begin to think about how our decisions and transportation affect the low income and racial minorities and we have not begun to have that discussion yet. There's nothing in the city transportation plan and of course there's nothing in the, any of the documents in the parkway or other plans, whether it be North Avenue or the, or even our, our Winnowsky Corridor plan. We need to begin to change our mind and respond to the needs of our minority and minorities and low income. I think it's a consciousness raising. I'm an old guy, I'm an old white guy and this is all new for me and I'm looking forward to trying to learn the language. Thanks. All right, thank you. That's right. Chairman, there's one more person currently signed up and that person is calling in from, I'm gonna read the phone number out and we'll unmute you and you're free to speak at that time. It's 802-658-3604. You'll need to hit star nine there, there you go. Hi, this is Sharon Busher. Can you hear me? Yes. Oh, yes you can, thank you. Okay, so I'm calling tonight specifically to speak about university place but I would like to do that during the public comment. I wanna, I wanna find out if the presentation is going to answer some of the comments that I might be making. So I just wanted to alert you to that and I know that there's a spot for public comment. So I just, that's number one, but number two is I did follow the higher ground proposal that went before the DRB and they've already approved it but I do want to let you know and I'm sure that Chape and Spencer knows that the director knows that the CRZ group is appealing this before the environmental court. So the decision, but what I wanted to share with you was that I was trying to be helpful because a lot of the traffic relief will be realized if the parkway is built, if the roadway is improved. But in the interim, I wanted to cite, I live on East Avenue and I wanted to cite the success of busing people in to the lake monsters games and how that really reduces the traffic impact and the congestion and I made those comments and either there wasn't an appetite. Certainly DPW had a chance to weigh in. I don't know if that was discussed in earnest, but if indeed this goes through an appeal process, I don't know if there'll be an opportunity for the department and the commission to be kept informed about this and to weigh in on whether this idea has some validity or not. And I just wanted to speak to that and let you know about that. Thank you very much. All right, thank you. Chairman, we do not have anyone else at this time signed up for public comment. All right, great. Thank you, Mr. Golden. At this point, we will close the public forum and look forward to hearing more public comments related to individual agenda items later on. Next item on the agenda is agenda item number four, the Consent Agenda to review this Consent Agenda now includes just items A, 57 North Ave and item C, temporary pickup parking. Motion to approve the Consent Agenda with the item B removed. I'll second. Yeah, a motion and a second, thank you. Is there any discussion around that motion? I have a question that just relates to item C about the status of the parklets and the encumbered sidewalk right now. I know that was done under the emergency procedures by the mayor. And I'm just curious when that, how long that's gonna last and whether that'll actually eventually come back to being reviewable by the Public Works Commission again. And so we can get the public involved more in making decisions about that. All right, thank you. Absolutely. A Dr. Spencer, Karna. Sure, thank you, Commissioner Overby. So the expanded sidewalks, the permits for this year expire at the end of this month. So in about 10 days, then those features will need to be removed. And then we will evaluate for next year, depending on where we are with the pandemic about whether or not the state of emergency is still in place. Whether we wanna revert back to kind of the regular parklet and street seats program or whether it suits us to continue a low-cost expedited approach for distressed businesses. Happy to discuss that with the commission over the coming months as we prepare for spring 2021. As it relates to the grab-and-go spots, you'll see on the agenda tonight, the extension of those grab-and-go spots through the winter as those have been very popular and uncontroversial. I appreciate that. I'm just wondering when, I think some people have expressed concern about it being sort of not reviewed by anybody when there's been incombrances to different parts of the sidewalk or the parking. And so it would be helpful as far as public relations with the public that does have questions about it or brought attention to me about it. So the sooner we have a way to at least provide some understanding of that or input for the public about who's getting to have their sidewalk used for their business and who isn't, it might appear fairer. So that's where it'll be helpful sooner we have that. Even if you try to do it under the emergency method, I think we just need to make sure that it looks like it's been done fairly because that's sort of the concern that I've heard from some people. So we'll see how it goes this winter. Thank you for letting me know it pretty much ends at the end of this month now. And we'll wait and see for the spring. Thank you. No problem. And if there are any specific concerns or issues of fairness, please feel free to send them off to me and I'm happy to work with you, Commissioner Overby. Thanks. All right, thank you. We have a motion that's been seconded. Is there any other discussion around that motion? All right, so now it's none. We'll bring it to a vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye for myself. Any opposed? All right, the consent agenda passes. Thank you for bringing us to new agenda item 4.1, correct Mr. Spenser? 4.1 regarding College Street Parking and Jason City Hall Park. We were not planning the agenda for any presentation or anything that is available from staff to introduce this. Yeah, we have two folks on staff here, Senior Engineer Laura Wheelock and Associate Engineer Philip Peterson. I guess it would be helpful for us. We can give a very brief overview if that's the request of the commission. Sure, yeah, I mean, quick overview, I think it would be in order and then we can have a discussion around it. Great. So I'm Laura Wheelock, Senior Public Works Engineer. I was the project manager of the City Hall Park Project, which is where this request stems from. Under the parks concept and design phase, the spaces that are at the end of what the project calls Park Lane, which is a widened, pervious, paver sidewalk that parallels the backside of City Hall, BCA and the Chittenden Trust building. The idea behind Park Lane was to provide some connectivity throughout the park to open up the view corridors to the Flynn and to provide more encouragement for people to cross mid block and use the park as they come across the feature. So with the project, specifically on the College Street side, the removal or the request to remove parking at this feature, which provides tip down access, serves for both the pedestrian aspect of the project and the visibility as well as the driveway into the project. At this point in time, DPW has not pursued the mid block crossing on Main Street, waiting for Main Street's Great Streets to continue on with its process, but the College Street side was created. The College Street side is identified really as the driveway to get into the park for utility access maintenance. And as we went through the construction phase, the fire department also really was keen on the idea of having back of building access to these main structures. So they are for to keep this access area open, accessible, encourage as parks vehicles and other maintenance vehicles need to access the park, which has a lot right there at that College Street driveway. We're seeking to remove the two metered parking spaces. We only really needed about a space and a half. So the other half of the space we're proposing to create a motorcycle space to at least reactivate that area. Yeah, thank you. I'll open up for a commissioner discussion at this time. I'll restart with Commissioner Archambault. Yeah, thank you. Questions about that access? Why that point in the park to access it from College Street rather than any other point? You kind of described why not on Main Street, but there are two other places where this could come in. So Main Street hopefully eventually will also be an accessible tip down potential not driving over a full height curb access into the park. The other places to enter the park are either on the Main Street corner at St. Paul Street or the College Street corner. Both of those diagonal walkways are not as wide as what is Park Lane. And certainly the mid block crossing on St. Paul Street doesn't have good access for turning radius based on the features inside of that bump out. So there's definitely concerns with making either of those two corners, which are also certainly very popular areas and with the park redesign meant to be kind of stopping points to having them be the access into the park. So really, oh, I'm sorry, I don't mean to. I was saying, I'm sure we'll see vehicles exiting that location depending on their activities, but it's not really meant to be the vehicle entrances. Yeah, okay. So really, the plan was decided to have the access exit College Street at the proposed location rather than those corners, just because basically, right? I mean, there was no former access as far as I know into the old city hall park, right, or was there? Only over full height curbs, but that was the primary location that our parks department entered. They either entered from Main Street, driving up the pathway behind the buildings where Park Lane now is, or they came in off the College Street side, but they were just driving over a full height curb to do so. Right, okay. So a couple of concerns that I have with this is that number one, it's eliminating two of, arguably the hottest spots in Burlington and the revenue that is consequently generated. So how much revenue will be lost by taking out those two meters spaces? I don't have that information. Okay, so this I think part of it is selling me on this and the lack of that data does not help to sell me on this. The other piece would be that the College Street sidewalk right there where there would be access, again, arguably has some of the busiest foot traffic around other than Church Street, of course. It's a very popular section, especially if the warmer weather, of course, tendency for foot traffic there. So now we have ministry and safety issues here and of course everybody wants access to that, fire department and utilities, but there's reason there's not that access to it is that it's a location, right? It's where it is. So I'm hard pressed to support this, not having the right data at hand and it feels like this plan all along was meant for this commission to kind of rubber stamp it and push it along without careful thought put into the lost revenue number one and then the safety of pedestrians number two. So that's where I'm at. I'll leave my comments at that, Chair Hogan to do with what you will. Thank you, Chair Archambault. Are there commissioner comments or discussion? Director Spedrick, do you care to add something? Go ahead. Commissioner Archambault raised some good questions. Traditionally what we estimate downtown is that the smart meters on average receive around $8 a day just for estimation purposes. So around $2,000 a year per space in revenue. That's a ballpark for you. And I think as senior engineer Wheelock stated that fire department was seeking this during construction for us to accommodate this as parks as well, the level of fit and finish of this park and the level of programming that's expected is much greater than the previous park and the intensity of use and activities such that formalizing a safe and designed access for such use makes sense. And this was deemed to be the most optimal approach. Commissioner Hogan, Chair Hogan, can I just ask a process question since this was removed from the consent agenda? What exactly is the process at this point? This, I mean, is it an item that's been suggested by staff for us to approve? I mean, is there a motion? If you could just speak a little bit as to what our next steps are, thanks. Yeah, we basically would have the opportunity to vote on this agenda item individually after discussion. Staff still is recommending a language and performance change for the parking changes and that's what we are asked to vote on. Thank you. I was going to clarify a question based on some of the information that Director Spencer presented. Sure. Two in the math on the meters, I believe it's a buck 50 per hour per meter. Am I wrong on that? I may be wrong. Yes, no, that is correct. Okay, and then I understand that meter is technically, it's billable so to speak for 12 hours in a day. Is that about right? Yes, we've reduced the hours it used to be. Well, actually it's now nine to nine, right? Yeah, so it used to be more than that, yep. All right, so if I say a buck and a half times 12 hours would be 18 bucks a day and it's six days per week, so times six, times 52, I'm coming up for one space to be about $5,600. And that's given full capacity of course and this is where I'm unaware of what the data is. So two spaces would be out about $11,000 per year by removing these. And I just wanted to confirm next, I thought you had said, well, $2,000 a space but maybe you have data that I don't have. Sure, happy to respond to that Commissioner Arshambo. So yes, in a perfect world, if all parking spaces were full at all hours and were not used by either city officials on city business or by patrons who have handicap placards, they do not need to pay at meters. Because of all those reasons, we do not get the max daily rate. And while I gave you an estimate of around $8 on average per day at smart meters through the entire system, there may be smart meters that do much better and smart meters that do worse. I was just giving you a ballpark of smart meter revenue. Obviously right now, the meter system is not delivering anywhere near that level of revenue given COVID. So it is dynamic, but yes, to your point, at a max rate, I think your numbers are accurate. There are also holidays where we don't charge. So once you factor that in, accessible patrons, city officials on city business and people, frankly, who aren't paying, but aren't getting caught, you get to more of a number around $8 a day. Yeah, I think these spaces will probably pair more revenue given their location in particular and proximity to Church Street, but nonetheless. I do have one more thing to add for your consideration. Chapin reminded me with the accessible tag is that there is an accessible space in one space direct towards Church Street from this location. So the removal of parking makes the ramp into the sidewalk network and provides the accessible space for a van or a rear offloading vehicle to have that opportunity. Yep. Thank you. All right, let's move through see if there are any other commissioner comments here. Commissioner Gilman. No, there are no other questions for me. Commissioner Overby. Yes, I am. I'm concerned a little bit as well about this because it always seems like the system is set up so that there's not a whole lot of opportunity for the commission to do anything, but just to prove what's already facts on the ground. It sounds like the design of the park was clearly intending to have a road through there from College Street to Main Street. And it would seem like this would have been thought through and we would have had a discussion about what we might want to do about it before the last minute at this point. And we don't know right now anything about, I guess, whatever the expanded use of the park, which may involve vendors, bringing their carts in and out of there or other uses of this entrance that it's expected or being requested to be permanently available because the alternative is you definitely change the driving so that there's not a raised curb there, but you don't get rid of the parking and when there is a need for an event that you need to get in and out of there, you could actually block it like they do with parking, no parking for a period of time if there's events, say for the farmers market or whatever. So I mean, I originally was thinking, well, obviously now the way it is, it looks like we have to have a driveway there. I haven't been in the park since it's been renovated. I've been traveling, but I really do have a concern about the fact that it is now, we're just being asked to rubber stamp a design and now the other thing it sounds like there's another going to be another driveway on the other side that will turn into maybe a walkway. So we're piecemealing things instead of actually looking at this in ways where clearly these weren't surprises that were not part of the thought process and all of a sudden we discovered that, wow, we need to have a driveway there because there's a pathway through the park there. So part of my discomfort and frustration is sort of related to the fact that we're, it's sort of left to the last minute. And the solution, I'm not sure, an alternative is to not lose the parking and have it marked as a, if it's 100% for fire access, well then I'd love to see that as a request by the fire department. If it's for vendors to bring in their carts, whenever they want, whenever there's things going on, that would be great. We have no statistics about that and so right now I feel like I would, I don't think we have enough information to really make that decision, much as I would like to say, well, it's already a done deal. There's a road there. Why don't we have a driveway too? So that's my concern about it and my input on it. So I'm thinking I might not approve putting in a driveway there and removing the parking. Thank you. Thank you for the input. Commissioner. Yeah. I get, I think I have to agree with commissioner over be about, about the process. Right. We get these mostly baked ideas. And then we're asked to rubber stamp them. So that, that's a frustration. However, I do really support the fire department having access to, to the park. And I'm wondering, like, what is the opportunity to create, you know, that kind of fire zone? What is it yellow hash marks or something in front of that, in front of that spot? I feel like there's, you know, having looked at the state of the city parking study, there's, there's plenty of parking and there's plenty of available parking. So right down the street on college street is the college street garage. That is not far from for anyone to, to, to walk. And there are handicap accessible spots. So for me, reallocating that space for a fire lane is, is fine. The half bake come now and we've got to make this decision. Always feels a little frustrating. I guess another. Well, question is how much access does parks need? To like, what's the frequency of vehicular traffic that parks is anticipating through that little roadway there? Yep. At minimum, there needs to be daily access for maintenance of the fountain. They need to be there every morning to check that it's. It's safe for public operation. So that's every day that the fountain is running. They also need to be emptying trash and recycling. And other waste containers that exist. And any general cleaning that needs to occur. So. I mean, I know this is, this may be now spoiled slightly outside of our purview, but it's certainly for that application. It would be great to see a low speed electric vehicle instead of, you know, a big Ford F 250 going through the park. I think to kind of fit with the scale and having the, you know, having it across a major pedestrian area. Again, that may fall out of our scope here. Do you know if the checking of the fountain every morning would presumably happen. Before, you know, church street kind of got bubbling again, thinking outside of the COVID times. And in theory, yes. The parks department, I believe starts their day at six o'clock. And there's also talked about the marketplace staff helping to do these checks. They need to bring safety equipment with them to be able to mark off the opening to these large vaults as they open them. So, you know, working with DPW and not being on the parks maintenance team. I don't know exactly how they're going to do that. I don't know what their vehicle status is. Are. You know, I had the good fortune of running the construction project, but there's definitely a lot of operations and maintenance that occur that I'm not. Paying as particular of details to the one thing I do want to say, and I know it's not fair to all you guys. And we've had to do this before. There's definitely a disconnection between DRB permit approvals of driveways and. Parking in the downtown. Parking anywhere in the city. DPW usually responds to those. Requests for driveway access. You know, by granting curb cut permits and adjusting parking. It's not super fair because you're not part of that permit process. And we're not always part of that permit process. So I understand that this feels like it's coming to you guys at the last minute. And I, I don't think that the DPW commission has seen any of the great streets projects or concepts since our original outreach in 2016 where we kind of, we did run through the park with the commission at the time, but you know, the focus really for you guys wasn't on that project. It was the tie of the park to main street to St. Paul street. Thank you. Sorry. Can I ask a question on that or sort of follow up on that, the process issue that's been raised a couple of times, but I think what. Laura just said. That was the question that I kind of had is that, and this is not the first time we've obviously had this conversation in terms of what the role. Of this commission is when it comes to decisions that are, that have an impact on us downstream, but we are not actually involved in. In certain kinds of approvals. We're not necessarily. I mean, it. Even if we were given information at the time. It wouldn't be a good idea. I mean, even if we were given information at the time, it wouldn't be information that we could necessarily act on. I mean, when I was looking at this particular set of recommendations, I was wondering about that as well where it said. Somewhere here that just during the planning stage, the need to establish a no parking zone was established by staff, et cetera. But even if staff know that ahead of time. I don't know what the process is in terms of approaching. The commission when, when I guess we'll have this downstream. Decision to make me. And so I don't know if. If there's a recommendation from public works leadership about how we. We sort of create that process because I also. You know, we've talked about the need to balance between kind of micromanaging, which is not the role of, of the commission. And remaining informed. So we then don't feel blindsided or. Made to feel as though we're rubber stamping. So I don't know, Chapin, if you have any. Sort of thoughts on that, but, but that's something that I've kind of struggled with. Because I think that that. I'm convinced by this particular. Request, but I am also sensitive to the sort of the sense of like, where do we fit into the overall process? Thanks. And I can, I can share a little bit if that helps. Go for it. So, you know, you know, subsequent to our last conversation about Cambrian rise, I had consulted with the city attorney's office about how. The commission can fit within the process with the DRB. Obviously there are staff decisions that just have to be made on a practical standpoint. But there needs to be a, I guess, a common understanding about. What, how the commission will fit within that process. While still allowing staff to be able to function on a daily basis and make decisions that have to be made in a timely way. So I've not gotten any real good answers yet, but that was something I was trying to drill down into. To help this process along, because there are numerous decisions that have to be made on a daily basis that have to be made on the spot. And then there are other things that really could be have more time to really seriously consider. And so I'm trying to find and figure out the right balance to support the commission while still being able to function as staff making these decisions. Cause I think you, I think you've hired us to make decisions. Some of what many of which we have to make on a daily basis, but there are others that we have more time that you could be part of and participate in. So we're trying to sort out how that all fits. And it really requires probably a conversation with our attorney's office about how we can restructure some of the development review process. We, as Laura even noted, we even struggle with some of the decisions that are made in administrative level that we don't even see that we are reacting to, to protect the public. And I've had one particular situation that is really kind of rubbed me the wrong way, particularly about having to protect the public, but being accused of short sheeting someone because the conditions have changed on them because of decisions made by others. And that's not a comfortable thing. And so I'm trying to figure out the best way possible to move forward. And hopefully we can come to some conclusions. It may be that the commission has to, once we have some sort of recommendation from the attorneys and something to put in front of you, that maybe the DRB and the commission should meet to talk that through as well. Once we have a strategy. So it's just an idea. Thank you for that. So it's not that this issue has gone deaf ears. We're trying to find solutions. We just haven't gotten to there yet. Commissioner Bose, anything else on your end? Commissioner Barr. Sure. I'm, I've got 15 years in the parking industry and, and I'm, I'm not as concerned about using those two spaces based on my experience early on when we were talking about downtown in the excess spaces that existed one or two streets outside of the core. So I agree with commissioner O'Neill, that there are some spaces relatively close. So that, that doesn't rub me as far as the wrong way. I think that's something that we need to focus on and put aside the, the thought that we're being asked to rubber stamp something. I'm not suggesting at all that we rubber stamp this and push it through, but public safety is always something that overrides most other decisions that I might want to make. But I will share that I was there for the opening. I've been following this project since the beginning of the initial drawings. And this is very much like many other really great parks that I've seen out in the Northwest. That it's going to be vibrant. And I think the access is something that we need to, we need to consider. So, and I'm not making a motion right now, but I'm, I'm throwing out a couple of ideas that if we don't decide, definitively tonight on something, I would suggest that we at least offer up the temporary access when necessary, you know, as, as DPW can do and has done in the past. If we need to, we can block the spaces. Use it when we need to. That doesn't fix the fire safety because if a fire truck needs to get back there and there's a fire truck, you're not going to get through it. So, and that's the shortest access from what I could see. If you go from any one of the corners or even from St. Paul street, you're going through the center of the park where you hope that most of the activity is. Whereas that, what, what did you call it? Laura Park Avenue. Parkway. That that's kind of a, a, a, a, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you can see that that's. That's. That's kind of a not quite behind the scenes, but it's at the edge of the parks. So I'm just putting those things out as, as comments and ideas for us to consider right now, whether we decide to vote yes or no on it. I think can be at least at least need to have that. Temporary solution. So parks can get in there. Do the daily maintenance that they need to. the hard surfaces for tents, vehicles if we decide to bring food trucks, whatever it might be so that they don't ruin the grass and then beautiful rain gardens and the flowers and shrubs and trees and so forth. So I think this is something that whether we feel like we're being pushed to rubber stamp it or not, it's the one thing that kind of makes sense. And I don't want us to lose sight of that. I love the idea that City Engineer Baldwin has already been in conversation with the City Attorney's Office to talk about how we can have a closer tie to these decisions earlier on because I agree and Commissioner Overby has brought it up many times as Commissioner Archambault that we're getting tossed these things to decide on at the last second without much input in the beginning. So that beginning input is going to be crucial I think. If not by us, by staff, so that we're prepared when it does come before us. So just throwing that out there. Thank you Commissioner Rock. I think that's all the commissioners are then myself. I'll say I also appreciate the outreach of the Attorney's Office regards to interacting with the DRB. Just thinking to myself there's a way. The DRB doesn't operate anything in secret. They're observing open meeting laws as we do and that certainly be paying closer attention to there. I personally don't follow their agendas or anything. I've been thinking that maybe it's worth us even though sort of quarterly checking in on what's in their pipeline that maybe headed our way and I don't know what the right avenue is to help raise that visibility at the proper times and the workflows of the DRB side and the workflows of the public work staff side or not. Anyway, yeah, sort of look forward to conversations about that process on the road. One question about sort of treatment options here. Was there any consideration given to retractable bollards? I guess we're picturing it, you know, so in Church Street there's fixed bollards there. I'm guessing someone has to go and manually move out of the way for deliveries or something. You know, the technology exists to have bollards that are fixed and remove themselves as needed when maintenance or emergency access is required. Can you just shed any light on that or whether that's a technology that's been considered here or elsewhere in town? So the Church Street marketplace bollards don't actually sit in the ground. They're just a surface feature. They are placed out and taken in every day by staff that is paid, a team of staff that is paid to be there. Parks isn't really set up to be able to do that so extensively, nor have we really reached that point in time. I don't think with the conversations with them about how they're going to be maintaining or accessing or how often and what times of day. It's a tough challenge being the difference between the two departments. I just wanted to add in, I've got a lot of experience with bollards as well and you mentioned retractable bollards. Unfortunately given our climate and the ground freeze and the challenges associated with all of our surfaces, that doesn't work here in Berlin. I've tried it on campus in a couple of areas and with the water getting in and then freezing and cracking, it just creates this huge headache. Then they don't work. Then you have to pull them out anyway. It's very costly. The best we can do is surface bollards. Thank you for the reality check there, staff and fellow commissioners. Nothing else on my end. Open up to a public comment if there is any at this time. I think so they had something. Question over. Yes. I want to follow up on what Norm Baldwin is talking about as far as the discussion about how the commission participates with other decisions because really stepping back, Burlington is sort of unique to have commissions at all. It is a difficult situation for the administration and the actual executives, the public works department, to be doing things when they have commissioners who are like us, volunteers, trying to, what I consider, serve a role in helping the public understand and representing the public in questioning things that might be worth bringing up that were not necessarily on the radar of the people that really are just struggling to get the job done quickly and effectively. We have that tension. I think it's not just so narrowly should the DRB somehow inform the public works commission before they do something about an intersection. In some ways, it's a revisiting of the concept of a commission and what is the commission supposed to do. I do feel like we are in a position to offer the community an opportunity to improve the quality of the decisions that are made about public works kind of activity. If you take that responsibility seriously, then you want to have the ability to actually have meaningful input, which is why you end up with this last minute stuff where you are just rubber stamping. You basically have been denied the opportunity to provide that input and the public has as well. I'm always inclining to find ways to make sure the public has a way to understand what's going on, provide good input. Maybe it's not going to be taken as useful and it can't be incorporated, but it is important if we do have a commission or we just say we didn't revisit the whole idea of commissions and the public works commission is one of them. That is my comment about that. I think it's great to have a discussion with the city attorney about that, but I look at it in a bigger terms than just that narrowly with one point of are we informed ahead of time before decisions are made because that is going to be challenging. It will be. Going back to our decision about the driveway, it's even more than that. It appears that we actually now have a new street, the parkway. There's a lot to that. Is this a street? I mean, we didn't talk about a new alleyway street or anything as part of public works possible responsibilities. It's called parkway. What happens? Do we block it off with a chain so that the public doesn't see that as a driveway that they can drive in there? Are there security issues like somebody who wants to take a truck full of something that's not so good and park behind the city hall and do some damage? We've basically gone down the path to create a street with the want to build a driveway and now we really haven't had any public discussion about it as what it is. This is what's the concern. If the commission actually is expected to do something of value to help improve these kind of decisions and ask these kind of questions, where they're at a point where they can be evaluated and go, whoa, we never thought about that. Well, how are we going to handle that? Is there going to be a gate? I don't know. Nobody's said anything to be about a gate or chains or manual ballers or anything so that it looks to me like it's an open driveway. If I wanted to drive in there and drop my kids off near the water park, what's to stop me? I mean, because we haven't had a discussion about it. So that's just my input on those two items. I wanted to add that in because it's part of our process here to try to do best for the city of Burlington and ask these kind of questions. Thanks. Thank you. That'll open up to public comment. Mr. Golding, can you tell if there's any interested participants? Hi, Chairman. As of now, there's nobody signed up, but I will remind members of the public to use star nine if you've called in or to hit the raise your hand button, which should be on the lower kind of lower tier of your Zoom box. And it does look like a member of the public is signed up just now. So I'm going to call that phone number out and when I do so, you'll be unmuted and available to speak. That number is 548-481-5439. Hello, I'd like to propose a mandated white supremacy. Mr. Golding, anyone else? At this time, it does not appear that there's anybody else signed up to speak or emailed in, but a star nine and raise your hand are the tools to do so for now or future public comment. Thank you. All right. Closing out public comment. City Engineer Addisanda to talk. Yes. No, I was just thinking about Solvee's comments. And I think one thing that the commission could consider is just looking at our civic engagement, public engagement process as it's written and decide if there's something that we need to reconsider in that process because that process maps out what level of review and involvement in public discussion goes with specific decisions. So that's one idea. The other idea is that, or just really context, all parcels have right of access at some level and public works kind of interfaces with the zoning process on any given parcel. So there is this connecting decision that happens. The DRB decides that they will allow a driveway or access to a property, which comes first, the driveway or the access on the property. It's kind of a dance that we make on a daily basis as public works to decide whether our driveway access permit is allowed. And I have actually developed or put in front of the commission of a driveway access policy that limits the amount of number of driveways on any given parcel. So this is kind of the general structure, not just for city parcels, but any parcel in the city. And if we think we need to make modifications to that policy, that would probably be the place to discuss it, but also have it work in interface with DRB's decision making. So there is complexities to these decisions and there is a place for it to be, I guess, reviewed and modified or improved as we go along. So that would be the point, the place where I would point to to suggest some review or considerations. Thank you. All right, with that, I think we'll bring it back to the commission. Kevin has to make a vote on this. We'll leave it there and see if anyone has a motion to make. So Chair Hogan, if I just chime in before I take any action, this is more of a procedural thing. And it does seem like most commission members are open to hearing further data ideas around this concept that's been proposed. So it seems that we have two options, right? One, we could just outright deny this language and move on or shelve it, I would imagine, for a conversation at another time. So I kind of defer to you and whatever you're feeling the temperature in the room might be for a hard proceeding. I'll make a motion to approve the staff recommendation. Okay, we have a motion. Thank you, Commissioner Bose. I'll second that motion. All right, thank you. So we have a motion that's been seconded. Is there any discussion around that motion? All right, so you know next we'll bring it to a vote at this time. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Opposed? And you're gonna have to do a roll call. We can't do this vote like that. Gotcha. Okay, so we'll go go down the list then. Commissioner Archambault? No. No. Commissioner Barr? Yes. Yes. Commissioner Bose? Yes. Commissioner Gilman? Yes. Commissioner O'Neill? Yes. Commissioner Overby? No. And myself? Yes. The motion carries by vote of five to two. Thank you all for the discussion. A comment, Dr. Spencer? Yes, I think staff hears very much the conversation that happened this evening and it's not lost on me. I will say in kind of context, City Hall Park was a 10-year project that was exceedingly complex project that we were given the project management responsibilities towards the end to actually construct the project. And there are many players including the fire department, parks, BCA, everybody else, and it was a complex project. That said, we understand your desire to build a better mousetrap, and we will work with you in partnership to continue to improve our systems and processes. Thank you. Thank you for that. All right, moving forward, we are on to item five and our agenda, University's Place Street Improvements for presentation from staff. Okay, Laura, are you going to share your screen? I'm going to share. Okay. All right, excellent. So while Laura's doing that, I'm Philip Peterson. I'm the project manager for the University Place Street Improvement Project, and Laura and I are going to walk you through where we're at in the process and where we're going to go, and we're going to talk about some of our traffic regulation amendments, possible ones in the future. So we're all on board with that. So next slide, please. Yep. Maybe. Maybe. There we go. So this project originated a few years ago. It came about during the city's sustainable infrastructure plan and working with the University of Vermont to help the city fund that plan. From those discussions came an agreement where UVM would help provide funds and the city would complete some long deferred maintenance for our infrastructure surrounding the campus. Within this agreement, specifically for University Place, was outlined the development of two concepts, as well as some provisions around shared funding. So the agreement also provided structure as well as structure too specific to this project where the city of Burlington and the University staff would be in complete partnership throughout the development of the design and the concept. The funding as it was laid out for this agreement comes from the city first for a portion of the design. It indicates that in the basic concept, the city will pay for the full estimated $350,000 of the street improvements. If the enhanced concept is selected, the city and UVM share 50-50 up to the first million and then above that, the University would be responsible for 100% of the remaining costs. So we've been working with University of Vermont staff, Commissioner Barr included throughout this process starting, I think even before 2018, when the agreement was finally signed up through what we're showing you today. Yeah, my dog is trying to participate in this presentation right now so he has to be removed. Really exciting. So it's important to note that this project is broken into three phases and we are still in phase one, which is the concept designs phase. Phase two is when we'll get into engineering plans and phase three is construction. So we're still in phase one and what we have in front of you right now is the existing conditions. Important to note that north is to the left. Colchester Avenue is right up top there and then Main Street is on the bottom. I'm sure we all know University Place. Got some pictures for the existing conditions and what we were looking at. So when we first met for this project, as a team with the University and our consultants, we decided a survey was the best way to go and we got some pretty good results. Next slide please. A lot of positive response and as you can see from the results, most folks are biking, walking. This is the main use, at least from the folks that responded to the survey, which was robust. We did send it to several stakeholder groups, the Med Center, local neighborhood, the university community, pretty much everyone that we can send it to, the food truck folks that are on the streets. The main concern from folks is safety, walking, biking, accessibility needs and improving the character of the street itself. Next slide please. These were some of the driving principles for how our team drove the design. Safety first, also understanding that this is a unique opportunity. This place is in the center of campus. There's some historic context. What are the operations of the streets? And then we also want to make sure that we're multimodal, complete streets, all ages, all abilities, bikers, bussers and also cars. And as I said, safety, that's our main thing. One thing that we came across that is an interesting issue along the street is there are several crosswalks. And so as we get into the design, you'll see that we're streamlining that and making a system that makes more sense. Also a lot of accessibility issues. If you've ever been on university place, there are stairways or what's known as a carriage stop that are in the public right of way. And that doesn't really work for accessibility needs. So these are all things that we're looking at, signage for crosswalks, things like that. Yes. So as I said, it is more than just a street. This is an opportunity. University place is in the heart of campus. And it could provide for almost a, I think, shape and set at the beginning. It could be a festive atmosphere along the street. And there are several opportunities for gathering and events and also food trucks, where we put them and how that works. There is some historic context. University place, it's been there since forever. So we understand that. We're also working with some, I forget what's the name of them there, Laura, the historical person with the university. Jim might remember. I can never remember that poor man's name. Professor Visser. Okay, that guy. Okay. Thank you, Jim. Thank you, Commissioner Barr. Thank you, Commissioner Barr. So yeah, we want to respect that there's some historic context of the street and operations. So the street does have some operations. It is in the heart of campus. And there are several driveways that are kind of a key area for accessibility needs. Also buses, we want to make sure that we can remove the snow. And then we've also been working with the fire departments to make sure that we're maintaining emergency service access. And multimodal, just like any of our projects now, we want to make sure that, you know, folks are biking more, they're walking. And as you can see from the survey results, this is what folks are interested in. This is what the community is driving towards, it's what they want. And it's what we've heard as we've presented this community. So Laura. So I'm going to walk you through our two concepts that were developed. This is our basic concept. I want to highlight that both of our concepts are proposing to make University Place one way northbound. This was done for a variety of reasons to create space on the street, as well as the fact that our data that was taken indicated about two thirds of the traffic already used the street northbound. And so making this switch for our traffic pattern would really open up the street for many opportunities to kind of rebalance the way that the street is used. The reason why the northbound direction was chosen besides the current predominant direction is it still helps with our transportation network. The intersection of main and prospect currently prohibits left turning vehicles. So having this connection allows for a nearby north northbound connection up to Colchester and Pearl. Additionally, our fire department based on the intersection's geometry is at Colchester Pearl prospect. They currently use University Place to be able to make the turn back on to Colchester Ave without encroaching on other vehicle lanes. The transit direction for UVM also flows northbound. So to speak a little bit to the overall picture of this concept, focusing on improving pedestrian safety by designating more specific crosswalk locations based on our survey results. These were the high populated locations where pedestrians indicated that they are using the crossings of the road, adding bike lanes in both directions that are buffered. This alternative as well as the other will remove all on street parking which is currently unrestricted on this street with the exception of food trucks. We are preserving some space at the southern end of the street for food trucks to create a space or a place for this activity and activation. Obviously with this project we are going to improve the surface condition which is quite poor at the moment. The next slide will take a closer look at the southern end of the project so that you guys can see exactly what is happening. This concept will create some improvements around the main street intersection removing the nose and island and striping in tighter radiuses to encourage a slower turning traffic. Again one way northbound through the project area. And then the north end of the street where again very similar flow and connection. You see the new Colchester have side path connection here. It's important to also note that with this change in lane configurations and removal of parking that the effective crossing with of the travel lane is narrowed down to I think it was a 10 foot lane that we used 10 or 11 at the moment that we were thinking about during our concept planning. The one kind of like option I guess that we have for both of these concepts is way to describe it is to accommodate some short-term parking on the street. It's the one kind of clashing use that we found for the parking where in general nobody thought that they needed the long-term parking on the street but there was definitely in the survey results a suggestion of use for drop-off of students either for accessing campus or for events at I or Allen. So that is our basic concept. To look at the cross-section of the street 11 foot I guess that's where we landed with our travel lane with on this alternative buffered bike lanes and bike lanes at our existing curb lines. The premise of our basic concept is that we were not going to move the curb lines except for maybe a bump out here or there if necessary depending on where the concept really led us. It also does not focus or address any of the deterioration of the existing greenbell or widening of the sidewalk. It's really focused on resurfacing the street and adjusting things with paint markings and other regulations that that fit that level of the project. This is a rendering of what that might look like. You're facing north close to the mid-block area. The next concept the enhanced concept that was developed kind of takes as much as imagination as you want to put into it. So to walk you guys through again looking at the main street end the roadway width is being narrowed to really just accommodate those uses that we just talked about bike lanes in each direction buffered and a single northbound lane of traffic. So that narrows in the road which very much shortens the appearance of the physical crossing but still keeps the crossing of the travel width. The narrowing of the road should also help with the entrance speeds into the street. This concept widens the east sidewalk to better accommodate the volume of pedestrians that are being experienced on University Place. It provides a notched-in food truck area which we think we could accommodate under the basic concept but that really would need to be explored more in detail but under the enhanced the explored more in detail but under the enhanced the sky's the limit. This is the preferred configuration for food trucks to be able to maintain a through bike lane without any sort of conflict or interference. This concept adds a sidewalk on the west side of University Place which would be a brand new feature never before experienced on the green on this place. It is within the right away there's obviously things we do need to look at as it relates to this. It has been placed such that it will help avoid any of these shaded in mature trees that you're seeing but really it helps provide the connectivity on the west side to move pedestrians between the crosswalks and provide a consolidated crossing plaza. The idea behind this is that it would look and feel a lot more like pedestrians crossing say Church Street so this would be one of those side streets Cherry Street or Bank Street where you come up and your priority now really goes and becomes the pedestrians inside of this plaza area. Last note is you know another a little bit of additional sidewalk down at the north side so just to let you guys see kind of a closer view of what this looks like here at the southern end the project really proposes and and this falls more to UVM and and if that's really a feasible option but certainly if we think about how this could look and a plan to work towards removing of this connection in our survey results we found that nobody was really using this connection at this point in time with the development that's happened on campus and the shifts of moving students from living maybe down in this area of the city and walking up that this sidewalk didn't seem to be used as well as it crosses in a really challenging location to be safe for pedestrians. You get a better look at the plaza the materials and look would would be proposed to be different to make it identifiable but those materials haven't been specified or conceived quite yet and then I'll change over so you guys can see the north side of the street and how this would all come together in this plan view you can see this dashed line on this west side and that's indicating where we're moving the curb line into the street the curb line on the east side generally stays in the same location we're just going to snag some of that extra space and dedicate it to being sidewalk this one like the other one has the option for the short term drop-off parking which because of moving the curb line does look a little bit different it doesn't kind of have the same symmetry that the basic concept can offer but could accommodate that potential need on the street this gives you kind of the the quick cross section of both a typical section on the street as well as the plaza which feels very much like a curbless street so the elevations of the sidewalk would be at the similar elevations of the travel way so that pedestrians are able to freely flow in and around and through this space I want to highlight in these cross sections you can see where the existing curb line is today so for a majority of the street outside of this pedestrian crossing plaza and sidewalk you know we're recapturing what is paved space to be green belt space and then to kind of be able to connect it all together this is the rendering of the plaza area and street configuration with the bike lanes that are buffered and the contra flow bike lane that would be proposed Phillip so after our initial presentations to the npa we presented to the award I forget one and eight one and eight npa's on september and we presented to the Duke we put out a survey that closed on october 9th and this was the response so folks as you can see they feel like the basic we get kind of like a b plus in terms of good improvement and for the enhanced it looks like we get like an a minus parking in terms of having the short-term parking it's not quite split folks are leaning a little bit more towards not having on-street parking at all except for the food trucks that's going to require a lot more discussion these are this is a concept phase we're not into design yet and so once we do get to that point we can have a more robust conversation around any short-term parking so that's the recent survey and just to note that throughout the meetings that we had for the public process I mean it was very positive you're presenting almost a win-win situation is what everybody felt like because it addressed so many of their safety concerns and really focused on reprioritizing the street to the abundant bicycle and pedestrian users yep and provides measures to try to slow the perception of vehicles down without really putting in hard traffic calming yes oh my so some traffic regulation amendments that we could potentially be bringing to you would be some parking removal we would be making the street into a one-way going north or potentially have some time limited parking if there's if we do go one way there would be a contra-flow bike lane going south and and then also if we go one way we would be updating stop control currently there's a stop sign on university place going on to main that would be removed don't think there's other traffic regulation amendments at this point but you know as we discussed with the previous issue we want to keep the commission in the loop while we go through this this process so that's that's kind of where we're at with that so here's our overall evaluation matrix this is a lot of information to digest in terms of if we did nothing obviously it's not going to cost us anything but we will not achieve the goals of the project if we go basic it will cost approximately $350,000 it's important to note that that would be all city dollars so the cost share from UVM would not be kicking in on the basic however if we go above the 350 and we get into any enhanced design elements that's when those cost shares would kick in and it could be between one million and two million dollars we get into that two million range when we start doing lighting and other sustainable infrastructure improvements stormwater green water green infrastructure type elements so on the left these are the meetings that we've had thus far and we're here tonight to conduct some more engagement for our upcoming meetings we are hoping to bring this back to you in November and get support from you for whatever the preferred alternative is we're also going to bring it to the Duke in November hopefully to get their sport and sponsorship so that we can bring it to city council and board of finance in December and then also the UVM board of trustees will be consulted in December for their approval and that's that and just to wrap up the way that the agreement that we're working under is structured we are providing recommendations for the ultimate selection of both city council and the UVM board so it's looking for your input your questions as we do take our feedback and take one of these concepts a little bit further to bring back to everyone great thank you for that so enough for commissioner discussion at this time go down the list here commissioner Gilman just relative to the cost of the program is this something that the university initiated or that the city initiated with the university it's relative to introducing this cost to the budget part of it was the campus master plan so the in the campus master plan I think it reads university place is a preeminent amongst the priority projects for the historic and iconic nature of the buildings involved its visual prominence and location so it I think I'm not sure I wasn't part of the beginning but from the university's end there that's I think that's where it started correct me if I'm Laura Laura yep it it stemmed from the agreement for our sustainable infrastructure knowing that the condition of university places is not in the best of shape the pavements in poor shape the green belts trampled because the sidewalks are not wide enough and there are the images that you're seeing is the existing conditions out there today on the top our basic and then our our enhanced concept but there's there's just a lot happening on the street hevians has changed its character they've changed their development and it's just time for university place to kind of come up to that that next standard that they're already at yeah I mean my question stems from if if if we need to resurface the street already anyway and of course let's go do something smarter with it great I'm just concerned about you know adding a two million dollar project that yep which is where the cost share of the enhanced condition goes in early discussions there was conversations of UVM even taking over easement of the street so this has kind of become a compromise and in those discussions UVM recognized that if they wanted to really increase the fit and finish of the street then that cost would really be theirs the million dollars really buys us widening sidewalks which is a city asset repaving the roads adjusting the curb line you know the enhanced lighting that they're seeking potentially or has been discussed as a wish list item would really kick the project outside of our 50-50 share so I don't necessarily see creating the enhanced concept is really that far beyond our city obligations it's it is a hard thing to bite off though at this current stage in our pandemic yeah that's just I mean if yeah if the answer is hey we're going to spend 300,000 anyway let's do the let's do something smarter with it I'm all in but if we're going to go take on an extra half a million dollars right now for something the university wants to upgrade yeah there's a cost share so that's attractive as well it just seems like that's my only concern so anyway thank you that's it for me all right thank you Commissioner O'Neill Laura do you stop screen sharing just so we can see everybody actually I was going to ask you to just go forward I think go forward one slide that had the grid could you just do that just for a second just because I wanted to see the storm water infrastructure okay so the basic wouldn't cover that okay you can you can stop sharing yeah so like Commissioner Gillman I have concerns about the city taking on this big cost and also wondering as a UVM employee if you yeah if UVM continues to have the appetite for for this you know to go for we have we have several UVM employees on this call on this commission I would and I bike that route regularly like like my two other commissioners um and would love to see the would love to see the enhanced view but part of me feels like how do we get to yes how do we get to um something that's safer and still doable so do you have a sense that UVM is definitely committed to at least one of these options that they that there's many earmarked for it or um what what you're what you're feeling on how they are ready to approach this yeah I mean I think like the city we're all have our own base level of concerns where the economy and our our own capital budgets are going the basic concept is almost free for UVM so you know and the street condition which is the responsibility of the city is in poor shape and the 350 is in our street capital capital dollars to reinvest in this in this place so as it relates to the enhanced the public comment just finished knowing we were having this meeting our next meeting is is set up for soon to be able to kind of review all of the feedback that we've heard a lot of our feedback actually landed um with people wanting something just above the basic but not all the way to the enhanced and that really focused on the sidewalks that are on the west side and connecting um the crosswalks that are in the middle so that's not so many crosswalks need to exist but there's still a sidewalk but under the basic that requires moving the curb line and as soon as you start moving curb and adding sidewalks you know those those are it's really costly amenities unfortunately so I think at the team level we need to have a debrief of all of the information that we've gotten out of this before we obviously come back to you guys which is why we're showing you know November and we've pushed our Duke meeting off to the end of November so that we can have those conversations and hopefully also have the budget conversation but so just just two more questions then um uh maybe the easier one is um you know of a deep personal concern coming you know from UVM back home that that crosswalk intersection um kind of biking heading south towards main street to get to the um you know the the the crosswalk so it's so you're biking on university place and then you have to turn up on that crosswalk where you're dodging traffic just kind of belting in there because that the current curve is pretty kind of wide and just a gulf before you kind of jog up to get to the the little traffic light to cross kind of back behind admissions are you with me um so the basic model doesn't it doesn't shorten that as much as the enhanced right it would only be able to do it with paint um and we could probably put the flex post ballards out to help enforce the you know reduced um turn in apron area that uh you know v-trans era 2001 felt good um but that's not really how we're creating streets and corners right now so it does it with paint it does take an attempt at achieving it but it doesn't you know doesn't do the full lift that yeah i guess if there are ways to even think about how to again add on and i i filled out these surveys too add on that little bit to the basic because you know gosh you got hit in the crosshairs but the rest of the street is fine so if you can survive that first intersection you're okay um and then um another probably a bigger question is what are there are there major concerns with um stormwater issues at uvm that need to be or should be mitigated um in thinking about the enhanced um proposal so all of uvm's water is handled on campus um the stormwater of the street is really what's in the city right away um and for this concept phase we've really been focused on the modes of transportation we've talked about you know the opportunities that stormwater they're informed that we are working on this concept phase um and that likely a design will come in front of them there might be places where they want to take the initiative themselves um per all of the other stormwater things that are happening in our city and and trying to meet regulations for the lake um but as it relates to the design reconfiguration we're really focused on the modes of transportation and creating a um university place to be a place okay i was just channeling megan moyer right there okay all right that's uh the different questions thank you thank you now christian overby hi i would echo some of the question about what the uvm award is thinking about some of these basic versus enhanced opportunities and um just i don't know if you can structure them so that you know they're they're broken up by the parts a little bit so that it's not just basically enhanced or enhanced one or one a or something like that i'm not sure but related to that the the question i i think that the the you need to think about the fact that you've got the drop-offs in front of world tyler which could also serve as the food trucks and then you have the drop-off in front of ira al and i think those are going to be pretty critical if you're going to actually remove the parking um and i was really pleased to see that you did have that on the concept one um and aesthetically i really think that the the plaza concept i hate to say it sort of is a is very attractive um and i don't know whether that would be even easier for a maintenance for the plowing because it would just you could take care of it you're not dealing with working around all the various obstacles so um but again we know the price tag for that kind of work so um i guess my first question is make sure that we have some buy-in of the way that the university of vermont is going to do it so that it's not well they don't get they don't get it late i guess they were supposed to be getting it in december after a lot of other work that's been done by the other groups that you're doing so that would be a little worry of mine that it was sort of late for them um but i like the concept one with the drop-offs for the giant food truck drop-offs to world tyler and also the ira al and so those features are appealing to me and then the rest of it i think you know i think you've got you've got some good ideas to work with and i guess it'll be a price a price issue probably between uh university and the city so uvm has been our partner in this and one of our meetings was with their campus master planning as well as throughout the development of the early concepts before they even went for public consumption consumption uvm's project manager lisa kingsbury had been sharing with her own with the board and with other staff members um for their comments and consideration kind of where this all came through so this definitely has their voice in it but i agree with you you know we definitely need to understand where our capital budgets are at so they yeah so they um they have they expressed any kind of sense of uh that they like the enhanced more or let or the basic do you do you have any gut feeling about that it's it's hard to know but uh go ahead laren yeah i was gonna say i mean i think that we've received positive feedback for all of them yes most of the feedback including our campus master planning meeting really landed you know people want almost a um a happy middle ground and then they feel really satisfied a basic plus basic plus and one question i had about the the carriage stops and the fact that there is that you know uh accessibility issue are those historically ones that were there when they actually were using those because i think there was some on um on on south prospect that were and maybe it's not south prospect it's uh no it's it's south willard willard uh i was just curious are those just are those remnants of some historical thing or are they uh not they are historical so yes um but they are carriage stops for them the horse and buggy days of people being uh able to get out to the edge of the street um before even sidewalks existed so that got you out to your transportation and people would walk on the streets and you'd get in your horse and buggy but something needs to be done to have some way of preserving them not as areas that people are trying to climb up to get onto the sidewalk but i would say they they should be preserved if they actually are so that people understand what they are uh just a suggestion in your in your planning is there some way to make them into a little historical objects i think it's a possibility understanding that you know we have a different set of needs now we have accessibility issues and you know stairs i'd walk up with them because you look like you've got them angled at a certain angle maybe just move them or something so that you're sitting there and you i don't know i'm just i'm thinking of it because that was why i asked this the question about the historical element to them um rather than just disposing of them and it's and there nobody got a learning experience of that that was a way it used to be in the past you know no it's it's a great point commissioner overby um you know that would have to be something that would be discovered during construction um whether or not that they are capable of being removed and still staying intact or at least enough pieces to be preserved but um it's a great point that if that's physically possible um there's probably a way to to repurpose or create informational art out of them are they in the in the exact location where the cross the renovated crossings would you know those crossing ramps would go not all exactly no a lot of our crosswalks are being updated so they don't use driveways as they're receiving facility well i'm not going to tell you anything about this thing but i i just yeah you've answered the question and i've i've posed a an opportunity that may be a nightmare but it would be great there was a way to make them a historic object put a little hitching post with one of those little metal rings next to it or something all right thank you thank you commissioner bows thoughts on your end uh yeah i will belabor um some of the earlier points made by my fellow commissioners about the capacity to undertake some of um this work uh especially seeing the number of projects that uvm has deferred um in light of the the pandemic right now um so obviously that's something that you'll you'll deal with uh as someone who is a major user of this street and saw my office in a number of your your visuals i absolutely love both of the design plans a number of the things that i heard from others who had taken the surveys about you know concerns that all traffic would be um whatever band from the street or you know a number of these different things i feel like a lot of the the design elements uh take into account a number of the different stakeholder groups i was a little curious to see how the the clustering the potential clustering of the food trucks um in those those particular locations i think in front of royal tyler i couldn't tell exactly where and knowing that there's at least one or two car share pods there and a few other things i was curious as to how some of that would actually um work out it's already a mess the sort of the the ways in which you cross those streets are are insane i have no idea how those really came to be um but at any rate i mean i i think that the design plans look fantastic i actually i like that the basic itself is so much of a step up from what is there now um that that alone will be something that would be a tremendous improvement but i actually wanted to uh my only other comment is actually to step back from this particular plan and just say since there's been a lot of concern in this and earlier meetings about the process through which uh decisions and plans come to us i wanted to uh to thank you for presenting this um you know at this stage and give us a sense of the timeline and you know where we are in the whole process which i feel like has come to us in other cases as well um paradoxically i feel like again as being a fairly new member of this commission we get the scope of these really big projects sometimes um it feels to me in multiple layers and stages and early on it sometimes maybe the smaller tweaks are smaller changes that that that kind of come upon more more suddenly so anyway my thanks again for this really pretty thorough presentation thank you all right thank you um can i just speak to kind of the idea about bringing this to you now and what we're what we're asking and what we're going to be asking um so we did this you know not to not to put bad taste in people last but during great streets more specifically st paul street where we knew that there was going to be parking removal we came to the commission during the concept phase and basically asked for your support and understanding of where the concept was going um knowing that there was obviously going to be regulation changes that we would be seeking at a future meeting um uh similar we are going to do the same thing with this concept knowing that there are a lot of regulation changes that the concepts do have we're presenting it to you tonight we're hoping at your next meeting to be able to seek um your support yeah support the right word because it's not really approval you're not approving any regulation changes tonight tomorrow or even probably next year um we're looking for your support that this is the direction that we're going to work towards and that will follow all the the right outreach and data collection to move towards that concept um but knowing that part of our checkbox is to get to the next phase and to that information is to have the city council and the uvm board accept the alternative to move towards um we are hoping to have your support to bring to the council i would just i just want to um say in that sense however that i think commissioner overby's uh comment is a really important one that it's to some degree it's harder to to to speak in favor of one planner or another without knowing what uvm's capacity is so for me at least it would be helpful to know even if it's not at the board level um you know how much uvm is able to support one idea or another or how how you know what sense there is of which way the wind is blowing so i i do think if this does come back to us um in the manner that you've described having at least some sense of that would be really important thanks thank you that commissioner bose commissioner bar thanks um it's tough on chomping at the bit as i hear different pieces of information that i want to jump out and answer or talk about um so i i just jotted some things down um one of the topics of discussion was how long has this been discussed between uvm and the city i can tell you it's decades it's at least six presidents from uvm ago it's when i went to school there i won't tell you when but it's several decades ago um it was solidified um officially though in the latest master plan which expired in 2016 it was a 10-year master plan that started in 2006 um and just food for thought it was actually the last bullet but i'll hit it now um uvm is in the process of of starting to develop the successor of that campus master plan so talking about an enhanced version of this all those things can be incorporated into this new campus master plan um and and there will be public input into that as well so i think that there are opportunities abound for that um one thing that wasn't necessarily brought up here although ancillary it was talked about was the parking um i've talked with my colleague at the university of mont medical center um because most of the parking that occurs there is typically either coming to either uvm as an institution or the hospital as an institution um and both of us feel confident that for the i'm going to say 60 or so cars that might be parked there in the different various times of the day peak and not um that we have the capacity uh for those parkers to park on our campus and i think that they just choose to park there because it's free parking um so by taking that parking off i really do feel like it's not going to be a huge a huge kill if you will um on all of those people that might be parking there um the food trucks uh wanted to quickly address that too and and they're going to be on the south's end of or so far in the in the concepts we're talking about pushing them to the south and i want to make sure that there's no confusion there is a small pull-off in front of rtt used to be a shuttle stop for the university um that is now not a shuttle stop it's where um commissioner boz mentioned there's a car share car there we had to push the car share pod there because of ad a needs behind moral hall so all the configurations of what's there now as well as drop off in ad a parking um is many years in the making and i don't feel that uvm intends to turn that into food truck parking um however that will remain drop-off parking for rtt when there are events there so there still is the ability to do that kind of um the temporary parking that that we're talking about in front of our island chapel we've already got that drop-off area in front of rtt so nothing else necessarily needs to be constructed there however i will say that is there a question about the appetite for the enhanced by uvm the enhanced concept of course there is you know the enhanced concept by anybody who uses that area would love to have the plaza and improve bike lanes um and a better infrastructure for not only for pedestrians and safety but for storm water and rain gardens and all those kind of things so uh but uvm also is is very aware of the cost and that's why again i'll push this to say if we push this into the campus master plan that's going to be coming online who knows when we're in the concept phases now um i think that that that is the future of it um the last thing i want to quickly drop drop into everybody's thoughts are and i probably should have done this in many meetings ago but but uh commissioner onia levonco kind of pointed out the concern about southbound bicyclists and how are they going to negotiate main street once they get to that end for years we've been talking about there is really no north south access for cyclists um because prospect is is somewhat busy and challenging uplace and its current state is challenging going all the way to east avenue there are some bike lanes there but it's a share all going north so this opens up a great opportunity but going south again that's that's a good point so i'm wondering if we could consider a cycle track pushing both bike lanes to the same side on the west side um i don't know if that already has and if i missed it in one of the many meetings that i've attended i apologize but as big as this head looks there's only so much space in it um i'm just wondering because what that would do is that would tie the southbound lane into the shared path that goes behind the university of ramon admissions building right and that that shared path that connects unfortunately though that's kind of just pushing this problem a little further south because once you get to the end of that you're in prospect south prospect street and there's nothing there you're either in the road or on the sidewalk so just food for thought on those those things that may be a concept further down the line that might be something that we consider a cycle track on the west on the east side excuse me east side the building side yep um it actually was something that the design team looked at i don't think it was brought to your level or if it was it was back in maybe may the challenges that were identified by our design team with a cycle track is there is a large volume of pedestrians and there are a large volume of bicycles on the street and putting them in the close proximity to each other was deemed to be a little less safe than the configurations that we've shown you guys today but obviously if there's room on the street for two-way or bike lanes on each side and buffered you know it's something that we can take a look at again um while we you know process the comments so okay thanks that's all i have chair thank you commissioner archibald in your end i'll say thank you all right um this is just me a couple uh can you remind me uh about the specific percentages of cost sharing on the second tier there yep so um if the enhanced concept is selected then the first million dollars is a 50 50 split and then anything above that is uvm and it basically costs a million dollars to resurface the road move the curbs and add sidewalks yeah okay yeah thank you that um resonates more been staring at these plans yeah like i mean so i said uh even the basic is a very exciting prospect to not get sort of uh stuck as a pedestrian if you're looking for a safe ramp if you happen to be in a wheelchair and it's pushing a stroller or something that's um nice to be connecting those the class is beautiful uh which feed into cuvm getting uh emotionally sold by that one at the graduation day scene and having that uh being open whatever just you know interested in sort of the the price points it's like uh you know the basic maybe plus a little more maybe not digging up everything or they haven't the most fancy uh led lights you can find but if there's opportunities to more plaza ish or you know carve out a little slower entry in the corners or do something to give uh cell phones people on bicycles well safer egress personally i would see uh value in uh you know a little bit of up charges for those types of things anyway yeah those are all my comments thank you for the the overview today commissioner bars i had to add something too because i you mentioned about the historic value of it and and professor viscer is is i can't volunteer him for this but he's always eager to participate in these kind of conversations and discussions and the thought about taking those carriage blocks let's call them um and i actually have a couple here at my house from when this used to be a carriage we used to have horse and carriage here i've used incorporated them into my landscaping but i think he might be interested in contributing comments at least on what we might be able to do with something like that i think it's it's something that might be interesting to him and he did talk about slate and some other things in the last meeting i think that we we had it might have been the campus master plan to be about this whole area um but i think that would that would be one thing that he he just might be interested in um and i'll also throw out there real quick too that during our commencement um we typically go to the city and ask for permits to close that road anyway so you know whether it's pretty or not is another story right now it's it's when we have commencement not during cobit it turns into a plaza anyway right so this will just make it a pretty plaza okay thank you uh with that open up to public comment heard one preview of state interest in speaking public comment here mr golden could check in on uh active participants hi chair hogan yes i believe uh sharon busher is raising her hand on her uh phone so i'm going to unmute you and you'll be able to speak in about uh five seconds thank you hi thank you thank you um i i appreciated the um overview because i have not been able to be at some of the more recent meetings but having said that um you know i was a city counselor for a long time and there has been a long history of university coming to the city and looking to acquire you know university place and i have been one person who's been pushing back on that because i felt that it was a city road um and so the current version that we have is that the city owns the street but there is collaboration and looking at the university to make these enhancements um acknowledging that the university students and faculty use that street on a more regular basis than most of the other residents in ward one um so having said that um i didn't hear the um i have a question with the with the traffic being just in one direction um will the ambulance and fire trucks be able to go up that road in the wrong direction in order to access something no one mentioned that yes yes we've had those conversations with the emergency services and yes they they will be able to do that okay because that's really key and that was always been a problem um so university place is one um north south connection east avenue is the other and prospect is the other in our section of the city so when you change the traffic pattern even though and i'm glad to hear what you said where most of the traffic is actually going from south to north to south right is that true no they're they're going from south starting at main street and going to south to south to north yes sorry yes so you're and that's the pattern that you that you're um going to incorporate yes correct yes okay so i'm glad to hear that because um i was concerned about the other traffic um the bi-directional but i feel more reassured hearing that aspect um i also um really like the enhancements that i'm not let me just say the improvements that go along with the cheap proposal the 300 000 proposal the basic sorry not the cheap the basic proposal um i really do i know it's not cheap but it's cheaper um and i i guess um i guess i wasn't sure how rigid um the agreement was even though i know i signed off on this agreement um if we went beyond the basic so i heard some people mention some other improvements that weren't the full scope to the one or two million dollar um enhanced version but some other improvements and if you could do those and that portion would be shared do you have that flexibility to be able to just incrementally add on to the basic without going full blown to the next phase um not and participate in the 50 50 funding at least under the agreement and i feel like through this public input process um you know uvm has heard it the city has heard it that the rigidity of the agreement that was set um is certainly challenged i think everybody in the understanding um right it's one of the conversations that we plan to have is whether or not a middle ground alternative is something that both parties is willing to consider and it would just be part of our acceptance of the preferred alternative and amend the original agreement to me if they're you know i i listened i tried to listen really carefully to the people that spoke tonight which was the commission and all of you and um and i i feel that there was i would be very supportive of of making an amendment that would allow us to do some additional enhancements beyond the basic concept um to get us to a better place and then i respect jim bar's statement about the fact that you know they're just starting on the master plan and that once um the full blown enhanced um well there might be a new design for the enhancement of of university place but um that would be part of the master plan i understood that piece and there might be more appetite more funding that would go along with an approved new master plan i got that but in the interim um it seems like we should try to seize the moment and do what we can in the last comment thank you for allowing me to speak but the last comment is i'm a pedestrian and i know that the world a lot of you are bikers um i heard that um but i walk and i have to tell you bikers are almost worse than drivers as far as trying to deal with pedestrians they'd rather run you down i feel like i have a greater risk of getting run down by a bicyclist than a car and so when you're making these improvements i hope that you really protect the pedestrian ways also not just the bikers but the pedestrians because i don't think enough consideration is given to them in this city and i'm really serious about that i i did census work from the beginning of august till the 15th of this month when they shut it down and i walked the streets of wanouski and burlington and south burlington and burlington was the worst as far as being pedestrian friendly we've known that but bikers present a new challenge and i just wanted you all to know that thank you very much mr goulding do we have uh any other public commenters at this time it looks like there's nobody else signed up for public comment all right thank you with that we are not seeking any action on this item to close it out and move forward to item six on the agenda dpw f y 21 goals objectives thank you so much um what you see in front of you is the same document that was shared at the meeting last month this has been a tradition since i started here in 2013 of providing the commission high level goals and objectives for the department so that the commission could understand the general direction of the department that i as the director and other leadership were orienting the department's work and in the past this has been from what i understand in a helpful document for the commission to evaluate the performance of myself as an appointed member as well as the city engineer who was also an appointed opposition as you provide your feedback to the administration every year on our work so we are very excited for this year it's been a remarkably productive construction season despite the pandemic and our late start you'll see a number of very ambitious efforts here some are aspirational in terms of trying to change the funding split with various other departments in the city this is a hard time to be having those conversations whether it's how to fund the school crossing guard program or how water pays pilot to the general fund but there are a number of pieces here where we have made substantial progress over the years but still have more work to do i'm really excited by this list and uh city engineer norm baldman and i are here to answer any questions you may have and ultimately it's your decision is commissioned whether you want to act on this to somehow endorse it or whether just to accept it and have it be a document to measure our performance but it remains an exciting time at public works despite all our challenges and we look forward to productive f y 21 thank you for that all right i'll open up to commissioner discussions time your commissioner barb just started here i'm starting off i did review this and and this is something that we've seen before so i like that you've updated it too with the coven 19 pandemic and response and so forth so that can be added into this year's goals and objectives coming up i think that it's very good it's i've been on the commission for several years now and i've seen through the the work of many of the existing commissioners and commissioners past in helping formulate this with you and put it together and i can i can only say positive things about it because anything that's accountable creates accountability i think is a good thing for us and for the public so right now that's it i don't i don't see any any glaring edits or errors in it thank you commissioner archambault no comments at this time thank you you uh commissioner overby yeah i always like to see this document as well and i meant to dig out the one from last year to compare it but i i i failed to get the time to do that um i did have a couple of quick questions about two items that are software or it related um the item number two about the asset management program i'm just wondering i'll ask both questions and then you can take your time to answer one um what what is the status of the asset management program and being able to track the assets and their maintenance schedules and things so that was first and then item number seven together a software related thing about the capital project accounting um you know obviously i'm assuming that's you know budgets and revenue and expenses and and making sure we don't you know over spenders our budget um so how you know do you do you have the software at this point in place to be able to do an adequate job of the the capital project accounting um the way you want to do it so those are the two questions good questions commissioner overby i'll start on number one and hand number two off to uh city engineer norm Baldwin as it relates to asset management we have a fair bit of variability across our asset classes there are over a dozen different asset management tools that the city is currently using that stretch all the way from an asset management program uh really looking at our fleet and what we're maintaining when uh to excel spreadsheets and uh they don't all integrate and they don't integrate with a work order system uh or customer service requests so uh we are getting by currently with a fractured system but uh burlington deserves better uh we can be a more efficient staff we can be a more responsive staff uh if we have a unified uh computerized maintenance management system and that may mean that there are still multiple different platforms but that they would integrate uh so that customer service requests could turn into work orders that can be tracked across the platforms and that uh an issue that started out potentially is a uh a tree issue could morph into a sidewalk issue if there were roots that were displacing the sidewalk for example so we're really excited about that the RFP is out for vendors and uh we look forward to reviewing it uh our goal is to procure this system uh this fiscal year and uh be able to start standing it up uh before the end of the fiscal year uh norm you want to tackle the second one yeah we just add a little bit on asset management first of all um be clear we have gone through some transition of staff and uh unfortunately peter egoff who was tremendous in that role has moved on to another opportunity for his own reasons but we have filled the position with gustof sex hour and um we're excited to have him and he's getting up to speed fairly quickly he has a deep knowledge and understanding of GIS and uh asset management and matter of fact he's not just foreign to the city he actually worked for the department of parks and rec so and doing um land conservation type GIS work so he's got some significant experience working in arizona developing mapping for um trails and so on and so forth so i think he's going to be an excellent add to our department to kind of spearhead this process and uh make things happen and we believe that asset management really is the intelligence to a capital plan without it um we are going to struggle with the highest and best use of the resources limited resources we have so this is uh going to take a considerable amount of staff resource not only in our department to facilitate this process but other departments who are in a stage of infancy and gathering information about those systems and their condition and inventorying that information so this strangely ties into capital accounting in that our capital accounting um is in a process of re-examination to restructure our accounts but also to account for how our information is gathered to guess continue to value the assets that we own to identify the value of the assets we own which ties in asset management so public works uh and parks are really kind of the leads on capital reinvestment in many of the systems that we're talking about whether it be roadways, sidewalks, bike paths, buildings and facilities uh there are obviously there are other things like fleet so on and so forth but um in order to have good financial accounting you really need to have standard process and procedures across the board not just public works in parks but the city as a department as uh as a whole organization and that's what that's what we're working on right now the ct office has limited staff resource so they've hired cla as a consultant to support that process we are moving from a project accounting that is on a fiscal year basis to a life cycle accounting my staff spends a considerable amount of time at the start and close of fiscal years both creating po's and closing po's and pay rex and tracking expenses and some of it is needless work that doesn't add significant value so we are we are moving to a life cycle accounting for projects and i think that when the end will add greater value and still get at good proper accounting and the other piece of it is we also want to narrow the kind of latency between what we know as in real-time expense versus what the accounting system is showing for numbers and our we are working very closely with the ct office about entering that information in a way that could easily readily be reported to both the administration and our auditors so that we limit the exposure of audit findings so on and so forth so there's a lot going on right there my team has dived into this and really has played a significant role in shaping that process it's been tough while trying to advance projects and pay bills and change significantly how we do business but it's i think in the end we'll pay dividends so we are i think finally starting to kind of plane out with some of that work and be able to to get rid get i guess address some of the smaller issues but the major work has been done to date so so am i getting from both of you that there is software uh there's an rfp out for the for the asset management part and that that separately the clerk the uh the clerk treasurer's office is has a consultant who's actually helping you work with the transition to this life cycle accounting and and you have software available to do it and it's sort of a matter of just implementing it yeah well the city the city uses what's software called new world and it's tyler uh i forget tyler what's tylers tyler technologies tyler technologies is the software developer provider and it's hosted locally on our network but it's their software and uh i think there is some functionality that we are not making good full use of and what is good is cl a comes from an experience of using that software and can get the most value out of that system itself and so they're giving good advice as we go along and part of it is just to create the structure that kind of feeds that information into the system that is going to be useful in different ways than we have in the past and who is c r a that's the consultant cl a c l a for kids yep c l a c l a yep they're their consultant team two people that we work primarily with and they do a great job but maximize the value of the of the new world software for doing this transition to life cycle accounting yes okay and are they also helping with the asset management uh software rfp process um no that's that's a separate consultant doing network but they certainly are aware of that work with the other team and working with ct office about how they record asset value great i i i appreciate your giving me a little bit in the weeds information about it i have an interest in the the uh the computer parts of it and and and believe me i i understand how challenging it is to work with vendors and consultants and and uh software that you know promises one thing and doesn't work exactly way you expect so i i commend you for plugging along in it i know this has been on our um our our goals and objectives for years before and and it sounds like it we keep getting a little closer to making it work better for you guys so i appreciate that thank you for the update i would just add one more thing is that many many of the departments are as sophisticated as our department and we are leading the way in terms of how that process should work where we have payrex purchase orders we're following a procurement process many departments really don't understand that level of detail that's important to following those procedures and so my team i'm very proud of them have really kind of put together a good process that is rock solid well i think one of the challenges of uh you know the the public doesn't understand the way all this financial stuff works and we really don't do a very good job of financial literacy so so the i appreciate that you're you really are doing the work to to do it right and then uh the fact that other departments haven't quite gotten there yet you're going to be able to um show some leadership in it and it isn't an easy matter it really is frustrating but i appreciate your your you're really working hard to do that because that is the only way we're going to actually get value for all of the money that we're spending on anything we do for public works in the city and frankly anything else but but there's so much money involved in public works activities so i'm i i think it's a good thing that you guys are working hard to make this work well and um i i totally appreciate it i do understand how hard it is and i i congratulate you for working hard on it and thank you very much for doing that because that's going to pay off yep and we're talking about parking and you know moving this parking spot over here and there but that's really like minimally important this is important what you're doing so thank you very much i do appreciate your hard work on it you're welcome thank you all right uh commissioner on y'all thank you um so just just two comments uh one on item number five increasing engagement with underrepresented constituencies so appreciate that and think that with every bit of outreach um that dpw does it that should be our first like the overarching have we reached out to the underrepresented groups um just to kind of keep us keep our feet to the fire on making sure that we're you know hitting all our engagement points so thanks for that keep up the good work um i definitely have noticed improvements in communications um and then another question um this goes a little bit to the asset management bit so i mean i'm even confused because for my work i was just down at pine street last week with Dave Hammond and Claude and um you know where's the where's the line between what's a parks vehicle or or what's a dpw vehicle or what's a water vehicle they're all assets for the city that public works maintains um and so you know i i wonder what um what role public work staff has in helping to set policies that move vehicle procurement towards that that align with the net zero energy plan um do i keep go further than that we're we're we're the center uh yes uh when we take that responsibility very seriously that we have set up a fleet committee uh that involves public works but other departments and fundamentally uh with the fleet manager who you've met with we do the first uh review of all vehicles that need to be replaced and uh we know that the council's directive uh is that uh if there is a viable alternative fueled vehicle especially electric vehicle that they want us to either bring that forward or have a very clear uh explanation about why we did not select that item why it would not need our long-term operational or financial needs and so we're exceedingly clear we got a finance or a fleet committee that delves into that and uh this year we're bringing forward uh i believe 10 vehicles that are either hybrid or electric with at least half of them being electric and uh we will not bring anything to the council without having fully vet at first and while there are some heavy-duty vehicles that are starting to be electrified we need to make sure that they are gonna stand the test of time and we don't necessarily want to be the first in the door with a vendor who has no track record but we'll do our due diligence and and be the second or third uh you know once once there's a sense that the public tax dollars are well supported no no i appreciate that and i think um i spend i don't know well not not lately i've only been down to pine street garage probably three times since covid um i love those guys i think they're fantastic they're brilliant they're really committed um they're really good partners for certainly for my work and recognizing you know as a resident of the city i so appreciate lee and dav and um claud and and what they do also recognizing some of their limitations um and this is where the policy piece comes in because when we bring demo vehicles in they allow um the different city departments to come in and try those vehicles and there's reluctance by some users on the adoption of some of this alternative technology so i appreciate that i guess i appreciate those limitations and and i think it's helpful to hear that these guys have backing with this uh fleet committee so that's absolutely and you could look at the the uh fleet we've brought uh through in the last year or two that there have been several several items that uh became quite contentious internally uh but we have we have won out and uh we will continue to lead in this area now that's great thank you that's it thank you uh commissioner gillman in your hands nothing else separate from what uh you guys have all been talking about so all right thank you commissioner bows uh yeah i just have a couple quick questions um i really appreciated uh the document and what it's intended to sort of give us um i just wondered if you could talk really briefly about the commission role given all that we've been sort of talking about um process and other kinds of things i was kind of curious as to are these commission roles as you sort of see them you know there are some in which there's kind of direct action that you envision the commission taking there are other ones for example um the professional development opportunities within the department um number five uh which as um uh was previously mentioned is i think a really uh important uh one there's a number of these where i i mean you know you have roles listed for a lot of things that we do uh there are other ones in which i'm assuming you'll sort of keep us apprised of what's going on um but there are ones like number five where i see the possibility of of us as commissioners i don't know potentially supporting your effort so i was just wondering if you could talk a little bit about where you see or how you've got about defining our roles whether you want feedback from us about about any of these and so on thanks sure some of these uh are cut and dry that there's ordinance language that says the commission shall uh do those things and i've tried to identify uh those where uh where applicable there are a number where i've added uh roles that are more uh providing guidance and evaluate different strategies because they are heavy political lifts that uh really require commission and council seasoning uh to be fully vetted and be ready for uh vote or consideration or debt incurrence but there are a number of others there such as uh you noted with uh our enhanced engagement that don't have a commission role currently we are open to the commission you know there's a dance here ultimately the commission has to fulfill its role regulatory role as defined by ordinance there is also an opportunity for the commission and for the leadership of the department to work together to advance changes uh that they want to see and if this commission has a priority and engagement and you want uh to have a more robust conversation with us about how we can improve our outreach then absolutely happy to work with the chair and staff to uh to have those be agenda items and and set the kind of ways that commission should be involved all right thank you for that anything else commissioner boss all right uh looking myself can you take ours to number 10 can you give me an example of an engineering standard maybe uh in the works for this year absolutely norm you're muted sorry i have a very bad habit of not unmuting myself it's it's becoming a rowing joke within our office i think but um anyways we we are i when i began the role of city engineer i felt like i had taken on something that didn't have much of any standards at all in terms of standard of practice and so i think it's important for the public to understand what our approach is but also what and the elected officials what our approach is to to buy into that approach and if we find things that are flawed in that approach we can actually build on that experience absent any standard practice it just becomes kind of a free floating process that really gains no strength and so that was my goal since starting as a city engineer to to do that i think the first thing i encountered that was problematic was we had streets that were looking to be developed and going through a DRB process would no real standard of practice to require a developer to have a street developed in a specific way that would add value to the public and not be a burden to the municipality sometime into into the future and standard firm was the first example of that and unfortunately i think fortunately we had a developer that was responsible and and respectful of the importance of that value and had done all that was needed but if i were to encounter a developer who was less um scrupless then we would probably be vulnerable and challenged and so my goal has been to get those engineering standards in place for development purposes the other piece of it is is we are evolving a transportation system from um a very single-minded use of the right-of-way for vehicles to a system of transportation that accommodates all modes and what we found is is that we're trying to find the right geometric balance of accommodating all those modes in the safest way possible example of kind of the the you know you make mistakes and you learn from growth from those mistakes maple in st paul was a growth opportunity for us it was there was wouldn't necessarily say mistakes but it was challenging to you know we were very principled about the idea of making very narrow crosswalks for pedestrians and we're very single-minded in that approach and we didn't think about how people could function on a daily basis to travel that street network in a car or other means and so we've had to dial that back and look very closely at a new standard practice looking at turning templates and movements and those sort of things so uh we are we are really looking very closely at um turning templates and how it all fits together to be compatible and that's those standards will drive us forward with how we build our streets and how we think about making it the best place possible as we learn from that experience we'll we'll evolve those standards but if you don't have a standard to start with what are you building on thank you so something um not necessarily any specific uh you know sort of keystone standards that you're aiming for but evolution of well it could be roadway geometries it could be green belts it could be what class of streets we want different streets and how they how they would service the needs of the public because not all streets are the same they all serve a different purpose and serve a different function and so we have to have a very sophisticated approach to looking at what is the best fit based on those demands so sure and then you get all the things like the normal standard practice public work stuff water supply sewer working with other departments like BED and electricity where that fits within the right away in fire department and how it works with emergency services so all these things have to come together in a in a coordinated way thank you i don't have anything else on my thank you for that uh that overview our pleasure uh let's see mr buildings are any when interested in public comment on the FY 21 goals objectives no there does not appear to be anybody signed up at this time all right thank you uh with that we'll close item six and move on to item seven on the agenda approval draft minutes from september 16th um i know commissioner overby has some uh suggested language change to those uh to those minutes uh the staff may have some input on on those as well um i guess before we get to that just anyone else have any uh corrections or suggested changes to the minutes all right hearing none let's um take a look at commissioner overby's suggested edits um i don't i'm i'm patting i don't have technology for sharing those um director spencer but yeah i'm happy to share them um rob gulding would you be able to give me the authority to share yeah yeah you should you should um if you don't have the ability i will do that if i think i do postpones our efficiency of reviewing right let's see if this is bringing it up so are you able to see that yes i can thank you um so this is what uh um commissioner overby had provided uh to edit the items in commissioner overby maybe i will summarize your track changes here and then you can let me know if i got anything incorrectly under public forum uh commissioner overby wanted to add a sentence saying uh rob gulding noted that several people were unable to participate via zoom due to unknown technical reasons although the telephone option was still available then moving down um she summarized the changes here but if we delve into the meat of item six you'll see she had recommended to strike out one sentence add this sentence that's underlined that talks about norm baldwin's uh memo from july 24th she had what was in yellow where it said where he recommended a signalized intersection and uh commissioner overby we've suggested uh from staff's language that his memo wasn't so much recommending a signalized intersection but reviewing the cambrian rise traffic consultants memo and rendering a determination on whether or not a roundabout could fit so we have added that language uh to modify yours commissioner overby men commissioner overby goes on uh to talk about uh clive soyer's uh review of the data from rsg uh all that was favorable uh to us as she mentioned that the expert soyer recommended a single uh mini roundabout at the south entrance an emergency only access at the north entrance uh she asked questions about bike and pedestrian counts uh we've we're fine with that we added a little bit of clarifying language that she had asked to see staff's document that we provided to the drb regarding uh bike and pedestrian uh access and transportation access overall so those were the edits that we understood commissioner overby wanting to make that are all available there commissioner overby anything you want to add no that that that that addresses that that's just fine thank you for uh sharing that director spencer and for your confirmation uh commissioner overby any other uh discussion around where there's uh proposed changes here all rights is there a motion i'll say there was uh all of us were present and eligible to vote on these exceptional commissioner gillman motion to approve oops go ahead uh motion to approve the minutes all right i get commissioner bows with a motion that commissioner barbs a second all right any any discussion around that motion all right so i'll just uh go down the list uh seeking a vote on these to approval of draft minutes from september with the edits as uh we're sharing on the screen here commissioner archambow yes you commissioner bar yes commissioner bows yes commissioner o'neill yes commissioner overby yes and a yes for myself so the minutes pass for six two zero all right moving forward to gen item eight director's report all right uh thank you very much um in the packet is a good list of uh activities it's been a very busy uh end of the construction season i just uh want to thank uh staff and the huge effort it took to successfully complete saint all street and city hall park the openings this last weekend were were glorious the tours were a lot of fun with members of the public the amount of financial management uh this project entailed with norm shop and the project management overall the dpw was given halfway through this project uh was really uh an awesome responsibility and a lot of difficult situations from contaminated soils to utility conflicts to preserving the trees to limiting parking impacts during the construction really a bang-up job integrated plan there's a link here actually to jenna our water quality program manager here we are finishing up an outreach phase on how we are proposing to unite our phosphorus management in wastewater and stormwater usually uh utilities have two separate permits we're working with uh vermonte ec and the epa to develop an integrated plan across wastewater and stormwater to protect our water quality and look forward to ongoing engagement with you on that effort we are proposing to set up a stakeholder advisory group and we'll be coming to discuss that uh with you uh in the coming months that would uh that group would help advise the implementation of our integrated plan uh woonewski af corridor was uh a very impressive milestone that we reached last week with the implementation of the four to three lane lane reassignment downtown the team was able to get that done before the temperatures dropped and the rain came in welcome inputter feedback from from you all we've heard very little feedback from the public which we take as a good sign there's also the intersection control in the drb process we had a good conversation tonight just about how the public works commission interfaces with the drb process and we discussed that last month as it related to the cambrian rise intersection with north avenue i look forward to continuing to work with you all on evaluating changes that we can make to uh have a smoother development review process and uh i think i'll leave it at that the last thing i'll just say is that normally the commission has provided an annual report to the city council that is something that former chair arshambo and i worked on for many years uh because of the council's busy schedule around the pandemic and police reform issues the council has not requested an annual report from the commission for this year so we're off the hook for a year um and wanted to make sure you are aware of that that's what i've got thank you all right um Mr. Baldwin i'm wondering if it was possible for me to just you add some more to chapin's briefing and that there there are two items that uh i think are important to the commission please so one is um in recent past throughout the summer i've been trying attempting to address an unsanctioned skate park issue on the southern connector contract one south of home avenue there was uh some development of a quarter pipe that was not sanctioned or approved by the council and uh gave them that group the opportunity to address that the council and have their consideration of their request to have it continue the council elected to deny their request and that was driven in part by staff's recommendation to deny their request since they didn't provide all the right uh i guess conditions or circumstances that would make it make it safe and limit the city's liability there is likely going to be continued conversation about the balance of other amenities that are out there that were developed in 19 early 19 but actually late 1990s um so just stay tuned on that if you have questions you can contact me well i'll give you a deeper briefing on that but uh our insurance care has raised exception to the idea of it continuing and then the second piece is public works is working very closely with parks and recreation and v-trans to do really a coordinated effort to bring passenger rail to city of burlington but also to uh relocate the bike path segment between college and king street and then it's progressing you uh will likely see work this coming week what what we call early season work for the passenger rail project which is scheduled to start next spring right now they're doing some utility work at college street the trans project is doing utility work at college street but we are also doing uh force main relining there as well at the same time the Vermont rail systems will be looking to realign their rail system to be a single track but be a straighter alignment for passenger rail the this early season work is intended to set elevations for the passenger rail boarding in an unboarding location so it's it's critically important network occurred before the frost is in the ground and we are working very closely with them and other rail operators to make this happen some of which requires city property rights to be exchanged to allow this work to to continue so just thought you should be aware of that activity nice update all right with that bring it to gen item nine commissioner communications uh commissioner gillman objective sorry nothing for me thank you we're glad to uh glad to have you back with us here uh commissioner o'neill um okay i think i just have two things um one was about um the the the public comments at the beginning of our meeting um on the the Burton property and the infrastructure when will that come before us are we going to deal with another half i guess i guess i've here i'm hearing a lot about this issue from people and i go to red rocks regularly so i'm also concerned about just that narrow narrow bridge and and when it's going to when we can um you know have a say in it um if we're going to have a say in it and um what are the other possibilities being considered including the busing suggestion great yes we could bring a report to the commission next month if you wanted on the briefing uh on our roadway reconstruction that's actually actively underway uh our planning efforts to evaluate the addition of a sidewalk or a shared use path along the corridor uh we can discuss you know what we've done to the bridge historically and what's uh in queue uh it is it is an area that where there's a lot of interest uh and i have to say uh we've done a lot of reinvestment uh in that area and there's uh i think a lot more coming down the pike so if the commission would so like uh let the chair know and we can add it to the agenda for next month okay thanks i think does it mean certainly for me the more we're informed about some of this it's easier than to speak in an informed way when when folks ask us questions um so thanks absolutely and i want to be explicit i don't think there are uh specific things that are coming necessarily to the commission uh soon uh the work right now is just a roadway reconstruction of an existing facility um the d rb has already issued the permit for the project so there certainly is a role for kind of future considerations of whether we build a side path or sidewalk uh long-term planning in that area uh those are all fertile discussions whether we rebuild a bridge to a two-way traffic uh or two lane bridge uh but there are no imminent kind of permit related approvals that this commission would need to provide okay so we just deal with the d rb issues as a commission okay um my other my other point um i have is 127 and park street um we're still dealing with um complaints i know it was on c-click fix the and i saw a response um from public works on the i guess is the new flashy light thing that's going to go on there um i really guys like these are kids crossing like going to school and it's 50 mile an hour traffic and sure you might blow by that sign that says 25 before you get to that intersection but like what can we do as a city to to deal with that intersection um like short-term long-term fix i don't know is this a place for a rotary maybe it is um but that that's a really big intersection and you're coming off of 127 and you have you know a seven-year-old walking to school it it it makes me panic and think how are we serving our how we're serving our kids so um what can we do can we lengthen the the light the the pedestrian crossing signal um are there any things that we could do in the short term to just try to make it safer before we rethink like how we slow that traffic down off of 127 great we're uh yeah we're we're uh responding to the concern and we've taken a number of actions this year we have lengthened the red time prior to the walk signal to reduce conflicts we have we are putting up that radar speed feedback sign permanently we adjusted the speed limit approaching that intersection going southbound we added this year as requested a new pedestrian signal at Manhattan and North Champlain that was requested and i'm excited to say we are getting a consultant under contract this winter to look at the design of Manhattan Drive and whether we can tighten the intersections both at Manhattan and Park and Manhattan and North Champlain uh so there's a lot of good work that has happened and City Engineer Baldwin is working on getting approval from the state to clear out the the section of the fence to allow greater visibility so uh we we've got three or four different active strategies underway right now and uh we recognize that the transition from a limited access roadway to a neighborhood is a difficult one in this intersection uh was not designed uh decades ago with a multimodal activity in mind okay thank you i mean i guess i'll just keep i'll just keep asking about it but i appreciate that and i and i know i know that that many of these steps have have been taken and i appreciate that um you're looking to kind of get a consultant there because i feel like we need we need a bigger better solution to slow that traffic down before someone gets hurt thank you yeah and we look forward to engaging you and the public in that uh discussion around uh those intersections and what intersection changes we can uh really implement in the short or long term based on you know the the cost and uh other considerations thank you all right thank you commissioner now commissioner overby um i only had one thing uh i had been asked by former commissioner jared wood about the uh asking some of the the recycling folks when they emptied the bins to not leave the lids open apparently there's um he was he was told that they he's concerned about them filling up with snow in the winter and rain and he was wondering if it would be possible to somehow suggest that that the folks that empty those are flip the lids shut or lay them down or something like that so that they don't end up catch basins for the large ones at this point which have no drain holes on them um and so i said i would relay that um that concern along um and i do want to second the commissioner anneal the bonkers concern about the the speeds and the the traffic coming up to that intersection and i would maybe suggest that i've seen in places where there would be a lights and a sign that basically says uh you're approaching a stop light and in fact you know there are speed bumps and they've done this so that you start hitting speed bumps at that point where it changes you know not speed bumps but those vibration bump things like you have right coming up to a um uh a toll booth so there's a sign that's warning so right around where you're about the 25 mile an hour thing you've got a thing that just says you know you're going to be whatever speed bumps are ahead or vibration bumps or something like that we're going into you're going into a neighborhood i'm just suggesting that is an an option that might we you might want to add because i know it is 50 to 25 people just not paying attention and they might be looking up to see do i have a green light and they're just looking more at the light than they're looking at anything else so those are my comments thank you we got the same call from jared wood i have followed up uh we are clarifying with our recycling collectors that the proper way to uh finish their collection of a bin is to close the lid so we are addressing that and then second uh to your issue of rumble strips we have looked at that one of the considerations is the number of residential units immediately adjacent to the intersection and there are folks who would very quickly uh get annoyed with listening to cars hitting the rumble strips 24 hours a day so we have to find the context sensitive solution that works with the neighborhood as well as uh with the intersection could could they be put back farther down um not right right before you hit the stoplight but at that point i don't know how many feet it back it is where it goes to 25 because you really don't need it right at the stoplight you need it at the point where you're trying to get their attention which would be back where you've already put that 25 i i don't know i'm just suggesting it obviously people that are in a hurry are being they're more focused on getting where they're getting than they are paying attention to the the traffic i remember correctly we uh stepped down from 50 to 35 to 25 so that people had enough time to be aware of the reduction in speed and actually not have it be a speed trap because there's certain standards of practice that are required so right you know the hope was that because you stretch it out a little bit that people are getting it early than late and uh so it'd be interesting to see if there's been a shift in behavior now it's been kind of in existence for a while but well that's a good point maybe you need to just put some of those sensors out there and see if you actually do see a transition from the 50 to the 35 to the 25 then you would know i mean how how what's the percentage of people that are are doing that because there's some people that are just going to speed anyway i mean yeah thank you very much and and i appreciate i'm sure that jared i know the guys in my neighborhood flipped the little small bins on their side when they're empty they don't leave them catching water but those also have bit drain holes so i guess the big ones are the big his concern of the the large ones so thank you very much for considering that all right thank you christian overby christian archibald i think here ends yeah thank you just a feedback on the uh south nuski av changes it seems that the timing of the lights will need to be revisited at some point with significant traffic backups now with the reduced lanes uh so that's one observation i had also i'm curious we at one time explored at the top of church street replacing the stop light which is not a standard application for a crosswalk situation i wonder how the new dynamics on south nuski will change top of church street in that crosswalk scenario and if we could maybe that would help us migrate a little bit easier to an rrfv in that location so i can just bring that up as a couple of observations about the south nuski changes a couple of questions uh i would love the honor director spencer if you could on a status update on one mentor veil as yes absolutely on the on the first one we have identified um a signal timing plan to update the corridor on whenuski it has not been implemented yet it's the old timing plan but so great minds think alike we are evaluating tweaks to improve the throughput on the three lane configuration on the one interval av there should be an email in your inbox this afternoon the signs have been put in and the the spaces have been remarked and if it's uh working great if it's not providing the desired outcome please let me know and we'll continue to work on it yeah great i did see your email i just thought for public benefit it might be worth just sharing a little bit of an update so thank you for that i really appreciate especially the painted lines to to be more standard they're not so far off the roads and how right away properly navigate ironically i did drive by after seeing your email and saw uh someone parked on the green belt there right so you know i i you know i i guess when you have pavement in the green belt the assumption is going to be i can park there and i just wish i know what phil was mentioning you know putting up the signs would deter it but you know you just know people are going to park between those signs and i know there's only so much to do there i'm wondering if we can explore using some of the quick build planters or other items to kind of provide some beautification and at the same time discourage behavior that we don't want to see that be i would love that if some kind of cheap solution kind of digging up that pavement it's not it's not cheap or putting in curb it's just not cheap so yeah something like that would be pretty cool okay yeah thank you for that or another question jumping to another part of town had a comment about the cones on north baths along the bike paths there or sorry i should say the bike lanes on north bath is that not redundant right because we already have marked lanes for bikes why the cones and apparently it's creating a bit of a hazard especially for delivery drivers or people making quick stops right that was a request uh from the new north end and uh we uh received the request to look at additional protection the north aft quarter plan does talk about future protection of the bike lanes the bike lanes in their current form are either marked as bike lanes or their buffered bike lanes which means there's a painted buffer but the long-term plan for north avenue is to provide some level of protection given the pandemic and early on in the pandemic that neighbors were reluctant to ride the bus there were requests in the new north end to try protection with temporary cones we had public meeting that the city councilors organized they got feedback based on the feedback we heard and the codes we had available we agreed to do a season-long effort and after we're done it'd be good to get some input and feedback from folks on what worked and what didn't but the cones will be coming down by the end of this month so in the next week or two uh because we can't manage snow uh with those cones and that's great thank you very much uh sorry I had a list trying to check it out here uh I don't want to get into a larger discussion at this point you're considering the hour as commissioner communications but about setting expectations upon how do we as a community adapt to department's needs in this time of the pandemic so understanding you can't so readily hire say summer interns right so that slowed things down but just to give you an example right our recycling it was last week did not get picked up on its scheduled day right so you know took a few phone calls and it sounds like you know the things happened a couple people called out they were sick or whatever and just couldn't get around to it but but it took significant effort and most of the week but everyone with a question marked over the head saying what's going on here but we readily see communication about you know projects like you know digging up north that I've over near scout and and things like that so wondering when it comes to the nuts and bolts of the city like recycling for example or water or things like that what can we do to take care of those rent and butter type issues as well as we do with uh some of the expansion projects or the capital asset program that we have yeah public information manager Rob Goulding do you want to jump in uh we've been using Vermont VT alert more these days to try to help with that Rob do you want to jump in yeah thank you I think uh Tiki our commissioner Arshenbal I think you raise a really good question one that I really appreciate um one thing we have added recently is a mail chimp account that I think I think uh some folks on this call may have signed up for already and I'd encourage you to do so if you want to hear more regularly from DPW and sign up right from our homepage right on the uh updates screen what that's intended to do is to hit some of these more nuts and bolts things that I I agree I think you know I think on the project side we have greatly enhanced both with my position but also with the amazing amount of work Norm's team does Megan's team does you know the coordination we're doing it to let folks know about big projects and major impacts um I do think that we've taken a step in the direction of hitting some of these you know to to keep using your phrase because I appreciate it and I'm very focused on it the nuts and bolts um Director Spencer has has made it clear that things like that need to be looked after as well I am trying harder and harder to coordinate with our maintenance team who you know they're they're in early they're often in late and they're working their tails off and I think one of the things I need to improve is how I coordinate problems like misrecycling with them because one of the categories you can sign up for on MailChimp right now is a recycling update and we've used it once before where I had some advanced knowledge that uh recycling uh had not been picked up in the neighborhood and so what we wanted to do and what we did was proactively communicate on that you know and it's a small listserv right now we only have a few hundred people signed up but my intent is to get you know massive amounts of people signed up there to let them know about some of these smaller things we've already this uh last week and next people have a reminder blasted out our our fall leaf pickup communication so people are aware of when that is and they get reminders of when that's happening because these are the small things that I think give us you know I think everything we do gives us an enormous amount of credibility but it's these little things that folks expect to hear about expect us to get right especially on the communication side and I take that very very seriously so I agree with you that if if uh you know if one address misses a recycling pickup maybe that's where C-click fix really comes in handy the person can report it of course to get an answer but if it's a neighborhood and we're delayed by a few hours we're delayed by a day we're worse and and there are always as you said good reasons for that the team is working their tails off or they're sick um I still you know it is still my priority that we're letting people know MailChimp is but one way for these non-urgent items Director Spencer's raised VT alert which I definitely encourage everybody to sign up for for these more urgent issues uh well water advisories hopefully we don't have any more but we've already had two water main breaks major road impacts from these are things we've been using VT alert increasingly regularly for so um I think one thing you know in terms of the commission role here is to help me bridge the gap on the technological divide because everything I've communicated right now is uh our tools that we're using text messages emails robo calls for but if you know if there's other ways we can help bridge that digital divide uh you know I think we're all ears so thanks for raising that I think we agree pretty much uh very much with you on that thank you for that and I'm very sympathetic to how hard that must be to communicate those those types of issues uh for length of day you know you're only one person and you know the staff works on basically around the clock so yeah it's gotta be really hard so thank you for entertaining uh it's probably a good time for you to make a plug I think we have Leith Pickup coming up in a couple weeks November that that is sorry I'm putting you on the spot now yeah fall Leith Pickup is um on the schedule for and I'm just gonna double check because I think last year I gave I gave everybody the wrong date director Spencer gave everybody the right date and I corrected him and I turned out I was wrong you're shot a redemption here so to make sure I uh I don't get it wrong and you know don't get reprimanded when you folks leave the call just get it is uh scheduled for November 9th it'll go that entire week uh you're being asked to leave your leaves out that Monday for eventual pickup throughout the week it's maybe slightly different um uh that needs from the maintenance team but November 9th that Monday set your leaves out by our degradable bags by uh by 7 a.m. and they'll be picked up throughout that week but by Friday and if they're missed you're absolutely encouraged to give us a call or or you see ClickFix to have those picked up great thank you that is it for me I appreciate it very much thank you Professor Barr thanks thanks a lot of great comments here it's encouraging to hear all these topics come up and and be discussed um I only had one um from the npa that I attended the word wanted uh an eight npa and it it's involved it involves sidewalks again and I think that first all I'll start start with saying that amazing job that we've been doing bbw's been doing with sidewalks in the city um but one one constituent supported by another was was talking about um some tripping hazards on the sidewalk along pearl and uh near the uh health and rehab center so just just throwing that out if somebody could go down there maybe it's grinding uh you know to level if it can be ground um that's that's one of the one of the things that came up from that and then the only other thing I have is that uh just it jumped into my head when I'm when we were talking about rumble strips and trying to make some changes to the to the surface of a road to help reduce speeds and so forth uh there's a lot of different ways for traffic calming and and reducing speeds um but what one of the things that the mutcd talks about is is actually using paint and there's there's some really good changes in the paint and the color of the paint uh or or the width of the pain as you get closer to an area that that lets you know that this is a slow down area um runways use it all the time when you're out there you can see where planes are coming in so that's just a thought it's a it's an easy thing and it doesn't as as was discussed create rumble strips in front of somebody's house because no matter if you put it at the intersection or down from the intersection somebody's going to be affected by that uh the rumble strips so just those are the only two things that I wanted to throw out so thanks all right thank you commissioner bar commissioner bows uh nothing for me thanks all right um on nine of say briefly I am um celebrating the reduction in conflict points on when you ski out it just it feels feels much better cruising through there it's not absent of conflict points but it's uh vastly improved by my view I'll say zero report on the integrated plan survey reminded me I took that that survey and uh was very very impressed with the uh language in detail there it was not um you know not not your standard uh form had one through five it was uh it prompted a lot of uh at least for me I think above average uh uh thought and processing of uh sort of the options at hand and I'll um I'm hoping that correlates with the quality of what you're receiving from having done that survey but I was uh impressed with how that was organized and yeah I guess that's all all I have with that I will close out agenda item nine let's move forward to agenda item 10 adjournment and next meeting dates scheduled for november 18 motion to adjourn the motion from commissioner bar second oh who got it was it commissioner gillman with a second nice okay is there any discussion around that motion all right all in favor who say aye aye all right I for myself any post all right we are adjourned in 942 thank you all