 jump to a slide if the question deems it necessary. Also, reminder for everyone too, if your cell phone is not into vibrate mode or the volume's turned all the way down, please do that, that'd be great. My video and audio will be on for the very beginning because I'm just gonna welcome people in and I have the first slide and as soon as I hand off the first slide to Laura, I will put myself on mute and turn my video off. And yes, as Evan says, do not forget to turn yourself on when it is your turn to speak. At all possible, turn your cell phone back on. Yep. If for some reason it's your turn to speak and you are speaking and your camera's not on, I will send you a request to turn your video on. But that's only if we need to. 5.57, we'll give it another minute. I'll make sure Laura is okay and Bushier for us to go live before we go live. Okay, I got a thumbs up from Laura. Everyone else, everyone okay to go? Yes. Now meeting TV, we are going to open the meeting room or broadcast in the webinar. Can I just get a confirm from you that you're okay? Okay. And you'll bring the meeting room over as a panelist, right? Once you're in. As soon as I start, I will bring Bushier over as a panelist. Thank you. Yep. And I should just before I go live, how many people do you have in there? One resident and a news agency. Okay, great. If you had a big room, I was gonna put you on mute so we wouldn't hear the background noise. So we don't have that. We don't have to worry about that. So, okay. All right. Okay, so we are going to go live in the five, four, three, two, one. Here we go. Recording in progress. Good evening, everyone. Thanks for joining. We're gonna get started in just a minute. We're gonna give some time for people to join the Zoom meeting and for anyone who's joining us live in the Bushier conference room to take a seat. So we'll be with you in just a minute. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. Thanks for joining a moment or two early. We're gonna give it just another minute or so or actually two more minutes because we did open the room early for folks to join the Zoom meeting and anyone who's joining live in the Bushier conference room to take their seats and we'll get started shortly. Thank you. Good evening to those of you joining the meeting this evening. Thanks very much for spending some time with us. We're gonna give it another minute or so to let people finish taking their seats both virtually and in person and then we'll get started. Thank you. Good evening to those joining. We'll get started in just a moment. Just gonna give another moment for people to join. Thanks. Okay, with that, I think we can get started. I've got three or four after the hour. My name is Alan Domeyak and I'll be helping assist, facilitate the meeting. Just wanna spend just a minute or so to go over a couple administrative items for the meeting itself and then hand it over to Laura to kick us off. So as you know, for those of you joining us via Zoom, thank you. For those of us in the Bushier conference room, thanks for joining in person. We'll be running this hybrid meeting using a couple of different features and commands. For those of you virtually, we'll be providing some polls, some in-question in Zoom polls and those will pop up on the screen at the appropriate time and you can vote accordingly. Instructions will be self-explanatory. The question will be presented on the slide first for what you understand what's being asked then you can respond. In some of those poll questions, we'll be using the Q and A feature which is down below to add an other response or some other sort of supplemental material. So because we're using that, we're asking you all to not actually submit questions for the general project just yet. We do want to receive those but maybe let's hold off until the end because again, we're gonna use the Q and A portion of the Zoom chat for these supplemental poll, supplemental information in the polls. For those of you in the Bushier conference room, there will be handouts that are matching these poll questions. So we will be able to collect responses both in person and virtually. Speaking of the buttons down below, you should see a few. There's one that's called raise hand and that's for when the time is right after the formal presentation. We'll be soliciting questions and comments from everyone. And if you click raise hand, it signifies to us that you'd like to share a verbal question or ask a verbal question or share a verbal comment. There's also the Q and A as I mentioned below. We'll be using that for the polls as well as if you'd like to type in your question or your comment instead of raising your hand to speak. Also, we have a live transcript button. So if you want to see live transcripts slash closed captioning of the meeting, you can toggle that on or off if you wish. And we are recording the meeting as well as broadcasting live. And I'll repeat some of these instructions when we get to the Q and A portion later on because I know some people might join late. So with that, I'd like to hand it over to Laura to kick the meeting off. So with that, Laura. Thank you all for joining me. I am Laura Wheelock. I work for the City of Burlington, Senior Public Works Engineer. I am one of the project managers for this project. We appreciate everybody coming in tonight or logging on tonight to be able to hear about the kickoff of our Main Street project. So some of the things that we're gonna go over tonight we'll give a bit of an introduction to who we are, our project team, a little bit of the background for Great Streets. And then really let our team be able to speak to you and engage with you on the project and really our next steps. The presentation tonight is about 45 minutes long. We hope to take a really quick break right at the end of the content materials to let people take out of their thoughts, think of their questions, maybe type them in or raise their hand, or just take a minute to get up and stretch. So with that, we get the opportunity, we're gonna kick off the introductions. So we're a real arts and public works engineer. Also on this project is Olivia Duris, who's one of our project managers. She just turned her camera on so you can map it up based to that name. We're also working really closely with our Water Resources Department as this project is a total streetscape renovation. So it'll include the water and sewer components of the street as well. The city is lucky enough to have contracted with BHB Grayscale and Agency to be our design team on this project. And you will hear a little bit more from each of those components later. And then from BHB, who's turned on his camera. Steven from Grayscale. I would imagine that Susanna and Steve Woods, you'll see those two faces later. So we're gonna do a couple of polls for early in our presentation tonight so that we can get a better idea who's in our audience tonight. And you will also be able to see who's here as well. So we'll be able to share those results. So our first poll that's gonna come up is asking, what is your relationship to Main Street? This is asking, do you live, work, visit around Main Street that comes up from all of our attendees? I feel like you can just place a box in there. Maybe just a few more minutes to close this poll out so we can see who we've got. What your interests are around Main Street. Okay, it looks like we have about 19, 20 respondents so far. Okay, shall I end the poll? Yes, that sounds good, let's see what we have. Oh, so there's a pretty good mix of working on Main Street or living adjacent to and a little bit of all they live in town and then come down this area for shopping or anything. So that's wonderful to know. It gives everybody a bit of an idea who's here tonight to hear this presentation to start providing our feedback. The next poll speaks to a little bit of how we're working on diversifying our outreach and so we're interested if you're willing to share your eraser at this city with us. Similar to the last poll, you can see that the results are confidential. They do just do a summary poll. So if you're willing to participate and share the poll, it is active. This really will help us understand who we've reached tonight and where we need to provide a little bit more effort. So we appreciate your response. It's also an option, the other button and this is where the question and answer at the bottom of the screen can be used to be able to indicate any other preferences. Those two state anonymous, they just go to the project team specifically. Okay, it looks like the results have slowed down. Shall I share the results? Thank you all. You bet. Thank you everybody for coming. This will touch on a little bit later when Stephen Gray starts to speak about some of our other outreach efforts. So thank you for this feedback. It's appreciated. Do you wanna close that Alan? We can move on. Next poll is gonna talk about our age demographic that we have here tonight or the household that you represent. So this is a multiple choice question. So if you can enter multiple boxes for what best describes your household. How are we doing Alan? Got a little over 80% participated and just gonna give another five or six seconds. Okay, I didn't see any net new responses. So I will flip those over. Thank you all. We have certainly a little bit of a grouping for those in attendance in your household. This also speaks to one of our outreach efforts which we will touch on a little later in our presentation. Just trying to make sure that we represent the full broad section of our community. Thank you, Alan. If you're not able to participate in these poll questions, we are going to put a SurveyMonkey link up on our website which we'll speak to all of the questions that you're gonna see tonight. So if you wanna provide more feedback along those lines there is a link to the website. We'll talk about it a few times but we'll also be these questions repeated there. So we're gonna go through a little bit of our project background. There is one last poll question that I get to have you guys do before we really kind of go through a little bit of history and so we're interested to know how familiar you are with the Great Streets Projects and the Cities Initiative. So if we can load the poll, you can let us know if you're familiar with it, very familiar with it or maybe haven't heard anything or are new to the area. So help us in how we reach out to you tonight. Okay, a little over three quarters have responded. Give it another minute or I'm sorry, another second or so. I will share those results. Well, it's good to hear. I can see some familiar faces in our audience as well. So yeah, this is about what we expected. So this is good that it's still a little bit familiar but we have a little bit more work to do. So if you wanna close that, Alan, we'll go back to the history lesson with this next slide. So the Great Streets Initiative started in the city of Wellington in 2016 where we really kicked off three efforts or four efforts, I guess it is. The Great Streets Downtown Standards. So these are the design standards that we used to look at all the blocks of the downtown from Pearl Street to Maple, from Union to Battery and really help assign the character that amenities that happen on each street or transit features. So which streets are transit streets? Which ones we wanna be slow streets? Which ones are gonna have bicycle accommodations? Which ones are more of a pedestrian focus? And so we went through each block east, west, north, south and really helps to define what we needed to accomplish within each of these blocks. The standards then also speak to kind of a general palette of materials so that we can have the whole downtown when we work through these projects be unified at a base level. Generally a similar material for the curving for some of our pavers so that it's very functional and easy and durable to maintain. More consistent lighting, but there's also a lot of other palette level choices and activations and ways that we can use our streets that these standards don't prescribe and that's really one of the features why we're here tonight. So for Main Street, the standards prescribe wider pedestrian spaces, dedicated separated bike facilities, parking on both sides of the street, a wide tree belt for street ecology, stormwater management and a minimum of vehicle travel in each way. The other great streets initiatives that have happened to date is in 2016 we started on a concept plan and took on the six blocks of Main Street that we're talking about tonight, two blocks of St. Paul and City Hall Park. And this was done so that as we looked at this very large central focused area in our city, it could be a cohesive plan and everything would relate to each other. It is definitely the heart of the downtown and it's important to highlight that Main Street is one of our last links and it really connects a lot of really important destinations and features within our city, in our city. So as mentioned, two projects that we've completed to date, City Hall Park was completed in 2020. St. Paul Street, which is two blocks from Main to Maple was completed in 2019. And tonight we kick off and restart our Main Street effort. The work that's happened to date had taken in some general concept information and more so now related and updated the standards. But we've learned things from City Hall Park and St. Paul Street that we want to apply to Main Street and our city has changed in the last five years and we wanna bring that into this project now too. So to focus on our project area, it's a little hard to read at least on my screen that I'm looking at here. There is a black dashed line that encompasses Main Street from Battery Street up to Union. And so this project is gonna connect and work through seven intersections in our city and it translates to six downtown blocks. It's a significant undertaking. The corridor crosses many different areas of Main Street that have different feels and character even in just the short six blocks. So at this point in time, I'm gonna turn our presentation over to Susanna from the agency to walk through a little bit more of the design details. Thank you, Laura. So as I think, at least those of you who are well familiar with this project know there is a concept plan in place from 2016. And so we're not picking up from scratch. We're gonna build on the really good bones of this concept design, but it is after all concept design and it's important for us to hone in on the kinds of details that'll make it a real place, a real space and that are gonna help it achieve the sort of goals for the character and identity of Burlington that I think we all wanted to see as well as to address what are really some very different conditions as we'll talk about along those six blocks within the scope area. So streets in some sense, they seem pretty simple, but in another sense, they are one of the great complex landscapes of our sort of civic realm. They do many things at once. They're of course functional, providing a space of movement for pedestrians and cyclists and cars, buses, utilities, infrastructure. They do stormwater sort of uptake and treatment, lots of really sort of solid functional things, but it's also incredibly important to us that they be unique and beautiful and reflective of the place where they are and not just sort of any street USA. And then lastly, these are really, as I mentioned, sort of public open spaces and we need to understand what the community needs out of the streets and what spaces they wanna see. And so we're looking at this project and our team through these three lenses in terms of function, sort of character and beauty, and then the community led principles that will get us there. And so to sort of flesh out what we mean by that, we can look at what is a sort of section of the street as shown in that previous concept, divine design, and pull out all the little elements that are happening, some of them the functional ones, a lot of them are beneath the ground, so invisible to the naked eye, soil for trees and stormwater management, permeability, underground utilities, street lighting. So those are some functional elements. There's some aspects that make the place unique and beautiful. We know we already have a really great palette of architecture along the length of this zone and we wanna figure out how to sort of amplify and enhance the character through street furnishings, planting, signage, and then lastly, achieve the goals of the community. So is that about comfort? Is it about a vibrant storefront that's great for businesses? Is it about activities that takes place and sort of attracting a diverse group of users? And so starting with that functional lens, I will hand it over to Evan at VHB. Thank you, Susanna. Good evening, everyone. I'm Evan Dietrich with the engineering firm VHB out of South Burlington. And as the engineers on the project, I'm gonna talk to you about the functionality of the street. So when we think about the functionality of the street, we think about a couple of different things, right? We wanna serve all uses and all users, right? So we have to provide a street that's good for motor vehicles, that's cars, and buses, public transportation, delivery trucks, and people just passing through the area, as well as emergency vehicle access along the street. We also want to be able to accommodate the utilities in the street. And of course in Burlington, all of those are underground, we have water and sewer and electric and things like that that are all part of the street. We have to accommodate things like people on the sidewalk. So we have walkers, pedestrians, people in wheelchairs, and all sorts of people that are using the street sidewalks and congregating along the street as well and just resting and taking in the sites. And we have shoppers and all sorts of people that use the street on a daily basis. We also want to build in a stormwater treatment. So we want to treat the stormwater runoff right at the site. Burlington has been on a mission over the last several years to really do a better job with treating stormwater before it reaches either the sewage treatment plant or directly into the lake. And what we're trying to do with this project and all the great streets projects is to treat stormwater right at the site. So we're hoping to build in some rain gardens and things like that, like you've seen in the St. Paul section. And we certainly want to make this a street where we can include public art in the spaces that are available, as well as support the local businesses and all of the curbside uses that we have along a typical street. So all of those factors go into what we think of when we think about the functionality Main Street. So now turning the presentation over to the audience again, we have our next poll question, which is gonna be coming up. So we'd like to know what your number one functional priority for the future of Main Street should be. And you have a number of choices that'll come up in the poll or you can write in another selection under the Q&A section of the Zoom meeting. So go ahead and take a minute and answer the question if you will please. Okay responses are coming in. We're about two thirds, give another couple of seconds. All right, it looks like about 80% of or so people on the Zoom have responded. So I will close that out and show the results. All right, it looks like we have a pretty good mix of users and priorities here. Quite a few pedestrians and quite a few cyclists, some storm motor treatment and motor vehicles making the cut as well as well as another choice. So good to know that there's a broad cross section here tonight in the audience participating and we do hope to hear from many of you later on. Okay, next up we're gonna talk about the community input program that we're going through for the project. And to lead that discussion, I'm gonna turn it over to Steven Gray of the Gray Scale Collaborative. Steven. Thanks Evan. And thank you all for joining us tonight. My name is Steven Gray, I'm principal and founder of Gray Scale Collaborative. I've been working in Burlington now for almost two years. I did some work to help develop Burlington's Racial Equity Strategic Roadmap which was released last summer or last fall. And so I'm really here to sort of really tap into various communities and make sure that we're getting ideas that are well representative of a full cross section of Burlingtonians. Next slide. So the first thing that I did and that we did as a team was review what had been contributed in terms of ideas and potential concerns at various stages of the Great Streets Initiative, particularly those that related directly to Main Street. And so we looked at these plans right here which you see labeled and I'll give you just the highlights of those planning efforts just as a reminder of contributions that you and your fellow citizens have made so far in terms of where this project is envisioned to go. And then for you to then have an opportunity to confirm that or potentially contradict that or add to ways in which we can fully realize the vision that's being developed. Next slide. So far since 2016 there have been six public meetings, 17 commissions and boards meetings. A project website was developed as well as a social media presence. And all of those have been the conduits for some of the feedback that I'll review over the next few slides. Next slide. So one of the big projects in 2016 to 2018 was looking at City Hall Park, particularly the tree planting scheme. And so reviewing this document, it really provided a summary of public comments received for the Great Streets presentation with City Hall Park as the focus and the interim concepts for public gathering spaces. And so a couple of the points of consensus that were documented through this process were a desire to improve the ecology of the park through the design so that design and ecology and performative aspects of the ecology were not separate. To diversify pathways and levels of activity as well as seating. To balance active and passive uses and activities that were possible to enjoy within the space. Provide ample time through the process to incorporate public comments in an iterative manner. And so this is one of the things that we're incorporating into this particular process is really having a number of touch points with the public as well as with focus groups. Designing public gathering spaces with a consideration for size, flexibility, connectivity and functionality. And trying to find the right balance between the preservation of history and places where you don't really have to do that much to really make the place really shine. To other places where you might want to have a much more significant reinvestment and reimagination to really meet the needs of Burlingtonians today. Next slide. We also looked at a summary of Main Street comments and these were comments which were provided on conceptual plans for Main Street in November and December of 2016. This document provided a summary of these comments again with the Main Street as the focus. The consensus was really to at this point in time was to expand pedestrian activity and safety. And that seems to be reflected in that last survey we just saw. Include place making elements such as stormwater gardens, street trees and street seating. As well as making sure that those improvements are safe and also well maintained. So not just good capital investments but good long-term maintenance strategy. Adding bike facilities where street parking is limited or removed. I noticed there's already a question about bike facilities so we can get into that later in the presentation. Phasing implementation and public communication was really important. And so we're making an effort to find new ways to meet people where they are and folks who aren't able to or aren't aware of these processes and projects to really kind of find ways to meet with them. And then there was generally full support for the Main Street initiative but there was cautious agreement around what that final plan might look like. And so this process is really to move us through into the design phases of the project to the point where we can begin to come to agreement on what might get built. Next slide. So frequently asked questions from Burlington Parks, Recreation and Waterfront. This is a City Hall Park update from November 30th, 2021. And what we learned from that update was that folks were really reinforcing and reiterating that they wanted a balance between green passive spaces and programmed hardscapes and that they wanted to find a balance again between historic preservation and new uses. Again, the ecological functions and aesthetics were something that folks wanted to make sure were balanced and well integrated, particularly stormwater handling and stormwater management. And that the particular significant historical features that folks were interested in enhancing were number one, open space identity. Number two, gathering space with a water feature. And number three, making sure that those visual views to major landmarks were retained during this visioning process. Next slide. So we've got two questions for you and it's really to kind of see how we're doing with you so far through this process. So folks who have been engaged in at least one other meeting and those who are new to the process, how can we make sure we continue to engage you effectively? And then the next question is gonna be sort of thinking about others. So the first question, poll question six, do you believe that your issues or concerns have been addressed in previous Burlington Great Streets engagement processes? A, yes, B, no. And if the answers no, please put in the Q&A box exactly what it is that you think we should be doing better so that we can make ourselves aware of that and incorporate that into our process. Or you've got about 60% or so answered. Why don't we give folks another maybe 10 seconds? So first answer, yes or no, just so we can close up the poll and then put your answer, your more detailed thoughts in the chat if your answer is no. Okay, we're still hovering around 60%. So I think that might be the balance we're gonna get. Give another five seconds or so. We'll end the poll and share the results, Stephen. Okay, so we have a divided room and I think there were some comments about more targeted citizen involvement in some of the no follow-ups. And so we've got more on that later. Next question, if we can move to the next slide. So now think about not just sort of your own experience, but the experience of other fellow citizens in Burlington. Do you feel like you and your peers have been included in previous engagement processes? Yes or no? And then we've got a follow-up after this to sort of think about who might be left out of these meetings that we really want to be targeting. About two thirds have responded. So we'll give it a few more seconds like before. Five more seconds for anyone who also wants to throw a response onto the poll, please. I'll close that out and share those results. Okay, so 64% of people feel like they and their peers have been included and 36% feel that we're missing out. Thank you, so let's go to the next slide and this is where we can get even a little more specific on that question. So poll question number eight. Which groups do you think we need to prioritize engaging during this process? So please select one, sorry, all that apply so you can select more than one. And if you select other, then again, please offer your thoughts about who else we should be focusing on and targeting in the Q&A. So again, first select all that apply and then go to the Q&A and add in any additional information. And I'm aware that some people may not know what BIPOC means, black indigenous people of color. It's another acronym essentially for people of color. So far about two thirds of people have participated. We'll give it another 10 seconds or so. Quite a few more responses. Okay, I will end the poll and share those results. All right, great. Thank you very much. This is super helpful. So let's go to the next slide and now I'm going to hand it off to Steve Woods who's going to tell us everything we need to know about what could make Main Street unique and beautiful. Steve? Thanks, Steven. That's a big task, everything. Good evening, everyone. Most of it, most of it. Most of it, most of it. Good evening, everyone. Thanks for hanging out with us tonight. It's great to be here. My name is Steve Woods. I'm a landscape architect with agency. I along with our team really want to act as sponges and active listeners for this project. I'm striving to hear and understand and retain all the information you would like to share with us. So as we touch on this third aspect of sort of the unique and beautiful, what does that mean? I think it's often seen as the blending of the function and through the use and interpretation by the community. So it touches on all the other aspects that happen there but how those coalesce to really make a unique and beautiful street. Main Street, Burlington and its roads and walkways and storefronts, its eddies and inhabitants all kind of blend together to make this identity. So we want to know, we're curious, we want to know what Main Street is to you and what community is and what the quality of that unique space is. So to do that, we're going to take a little virtual walk down Main Street. Unfortunately, we can't all go together right now given all the conditions. I'm sure some of us would rather be cozy in our houses rather than out in the cold and snow. So it must be out in that area but we're gonna do a little virtual walk down Main Street. So as designers, we love to question, we're curious, we love to analyze things and sometimes we read and translate with success on the qualities of a space. That success is often grounded in the sensitivity to the community for which it serves. So that's why we really want to read those sponges and listen to you. But yeah, we like to have initial responses too as designers. So this quick walk down Main Street begins to take in some of the key moments and spaces and views and textures that are there now. One way to do that is kind of identifying zones, if you will, throughout the whole quarter length. This is noted by gray change, available views to the West of Lake Champlain, the density of blocks and the uses of the activated storefront that are in that area. We've noted four unique character zones bound by one street here and provide some simple name and conventions just for identification for the moment. So starting at the east, we have the Hillside Gateway, moving to the Market Core, a middle transition space and then the Waterfront Gateway area. So these are just little simple naming conventions. As we move forward down this walk, we're gonna share simple collage views within each zone. So we'll go to the next slide that begins to show what that looks like. Starting with the Hillside Gateway view in space, you'll notice in this slide that we have a first glance on our walk. That for orientation purposes, there's a plan at the bottom of the screen and you'll see a little orange circle. That's where we are within the walk down Main Street. We'll have our little walking icon that's sitting there in the center of that blue arrow and the arrows are indicating the view. In this case, we're looking north as if we were standing along Main Street and looking north. With that, we have a collection of some of the existing conditions that are here now. Most of these are expressed in text bubbles that captures the qualities of the three aspects of a streetscape, the functional, the community led and the unique and beautiful. So for example, with this collage, we have a memorial auditorium, it's a historic piece. We begin to see some of the aspects of the street being very steep with the metered parking. And then there's also some set site elements there. They're now rounded planters with seasonal plantings. The next block, the market core, as I'm sure calling it, begins to take in some of the really rich character and density of the center portion of Main Street. I had entertainment and nightlife come alive here with nectars and body art tattoo studio. A really beautiful architecture with the green corners right at the corner of Church Street with that often photographed that kind of view down to the Euterian Church as you're looking north. The next block begins to take on this middle transition. We sort of left that portion we're beginning to take some slope again as we're headed down south towards Lake Champlain. The eastern edge of this northern view again captures the Mad River distillers that went in, a parking lot, niche in the middle, private parking and then the North Star sports at the bottom at the left end or the western end of this view. Again, metered parking, diagonal parking, happening on both sides of the street here, large parking lot. And again, it mentioned the topography and sloping down. The last block in our little walk takes us towards the waterfront gateway section. This time we're spinning around and looking south as we stand on Main Street. So in looking south to the left of the screen you see we have August 1st, a bakery and cafe next to Palco. And then obviously you have the view down at the very end of the iconic station, Union Station. This street is a little bit different from the other ones in the area which sort of began to differentiate this block. We have a grander setback from the facing curb till we get to the building edge. And we also have sort of green buffered space occupied by some trees, many of which are struggling due to their nature and disease, a lot of ash trees there now. So all these aspects begin to make up unique qualities and characters of the site that exists now along Main Street. Not just a simple linear singular one note space, definitely a space that's rich with lots of different unique spaces along the whole length of the street. So the first question we want to ask in this section, question number nine is today Main Street is, and we've began to pick some very simple character questions associated with that, A, B and C. And obviously there's an option to add your own thoughts in section D. Again, following the same thing we've done before, putting your thoughts on what Main Street is today to you in the Q&A. So we'll take a moment to do that. Okay, about 60% of so people have respond so far but I am seeing a couple others. So we'll give another minute or so so people can finish typing out their D, other responses in the Q&A. And we really do appreciate those other responses. It's very hard to try to take a simple poll to capture something that means a lot to so many people in the community and that's why we're here. We really want to begin to be those active listeners that are taking that information in and listening and retaining and responding to those questions. So no need to rush this, take your time and put your thoughts on what today Main Street is. All right, we've got just the touch over 70% responded and like Steve mentioned a moment ago, we'll keep it open for a few more seconds than normal to make sure you give you enough time to type in those other responses if you're doing so. And as Stephen mentioned, this is a kickoff meeting. We really are looking forward to having multiple opportunities to reach out to the community. So if you have time to answer questions later or we'll make time to touch on these points, really important points, let's move into meetings and follow this one. Excellent point on that Steve. All right, so with that the response, oh, just got one more response I spoke to soon. We'll give it another in a second. I don't want to shut anyone out by mistake. Okay, we've got about three quarters of people responding. So with that, I'm gonna end the poll and flip the results. But just like Steve mentioned a moment ago, ample opportunity later on and throughout to provide feedback that we're definitely looking for from you. So I'll share those results to this poll here. Great, seems like just about half do feel that there's an empty and uninvited quality at Main Street. So I think this is a good sign that a project and some work is needed making sure we're doing it the correct way. A lot of answers in the Q and A as far as how that feels now. See if I can touch on some of those. Seeing how it's, it could be more statically pleasing and some fears of the safety that's evolved there. So these are really good points to be made. We appreciate the time and taking a look at those. The next question that we had, question number 10. It's more of an aspirational question and it may be just a direct reaction response to the first question. But tomorrow I want Main Street to become. What do we want Main Street to become or what do you want Main Street to become? If it's something that is working perfectly now, it could be unchanged. Safety I think is a concern that we've seen before. So that might ring a bell or something that is really brand new and animated or other. And again, take the time to share your thoughts in the Q and A for question 10. Tomorrow I want Main Street to become. All right. We're up to about three quarters responding so far. But just like before, we'll keep it open this one a little longer. So we get some good colorful responses for anyone who is using the other option. Okay. I think we're, the responses have slowed. So with that, I will end the poll and share the results so we can talk about them. And again, more than half having aspirational views to have the Main Street become brand new and animated for the people who are attending tonight and sharing the responses. I really do appreciate that. We really do see and understand the great qualities that are existing in Main Street now, especially for those that are finding that there's things that don't want to be changed. But we also recognize through safety and through different conventions that we can really create something that's brand new and animated for the community here. So thank you so much for answering these questions. And we hope to gain more and glean more as we move forward to the process. So with that, I'll hand it back to Evan to talk about next steps. Okay. Great. Thanks, Steve. So we're gonna have a question and answer period at the end of the presentation and we're almost there. But before we get there, I did wanna talk about a couple of next steps for the project. The city is gonna be continuing the public engagement and outreach process. So there'll be a number of public meetings and a number of engagement, community engagement meetings that are coming up. I'll tell you about in a second. But for updates on all things Great Streets, you can always go to the website, greatstreetsbtb.com. And there are things there. There's photographs and graphics and an events tab. So you can find out about upcoming meetings. And the public and stakeholder input that we are getting from the engagement process will be considered throughout the design process. We want this to be a community led project. So your input's very important and we do appreciate you participating today. One thing to note is on town meeting day March 1st it's coming right up. The public will be asked to vote on a bond related to this project. So keep that in mind for town meeting day and I have a little bit more information about that on the upcoming slides. Before I get there, the project schedule in case you're wondering, we're gonna be working on the refinement of the concepts from now through this coming May. And then we're gonna enter into the design and permitting phase which will be from May of this year through the summer of next year. So we'll get all the design plans drawn up and get the city ready to go out to bid for construction. Then construction will begin in the fall of 2023 and is expected to take a minimum of two years and could be longer depending on what we hear through the public engagement process and what other initiatives the city has going on at that time. And again, the public and stakeholder engagement process will continue throughout not only the concept review which we're doing now, but also through the design and then into construction as well. So some of the upcoming engagement items that we have we're in phase A of the project now and we're holding this public meeting today as you're all aware of. And we do have some leadership meetings coming up. This is with city leadership as well as stakeholders and then different focus groups. That'll continue throughout this phase A which takes us into May. And then we'll be into the design part in phase B and we'll have another public meeting at that time as well as many additional leadership and focus group meetings as we start to develop the design and we'll be looking for your feedback as we get more and more detail behind the plans. And then finally, when we do get through the design part of the project and into construction the city will keep everyone up to date on what's going on through the website and social media and such with public notifications things about sidewalk closures or partial street closures or whatever the case may be but the city is going to keep everyone up to date as construction unfolds as they do with many of their projects as you know. So some of the upcoming focus groups in this month we're going to meet with a youth group, a BIPOC group of seniors and differently able folks, immigrants and refugees and businesses and nonprofits. In fact, tomorrow morning we have a meeting very similar to this one with the local business owners on Main Street. So we want to really reach out to all of these groups on a continuing basis to hear what people have to say about Main Street and try to make it everything that the community really wants the project to be. Now, if you want to participate or you know someone who might want to participate in these focus groups, you're welcome to join us. And you can do so by going to the website and there is a feedback tab on the website and there are some contacts there. You can reach out to the contacts and say, please sign me up for this group or that group or to find out more information and someone will get back to you. Okay, project funding, everyone always wants to know what's this going to cost me? So there is the bond vote that's coming up on town meeting day and that's a pretty large bond for the entire city which is almost $26 million of new debt. That's the request on town meeting day and Main Street has already been funded to the tune of almost well, a little over four and a half million dollars from an earlier bond vote in 2015. So the Main Street project is already partially funded or mostly funded actually. There is an additional 1.5 million in new costs related to Main Street as part of the upcoming bond vote. Important to note, taxes do not increase to repay any TIF debt. And if you wanna know more about the TIF program, you can go to the website there at the bottom of the screen, brohintonbt.gov and then you're slashing to CEDO and then the downtown TIF district or you can simply scan the QR code on the screen there. Another thing more about funding. Okay, that's the end of our formal presentation. We do wanna take just five minutes and give everyone a chance to collect their thoughts, maybe get their questions together and for the panelists to stretch their legs and get a drink and we'll be back and see you in five minutes and we'll open it up to questions at that time. Thanks. Questions, the least important bond vote. Okay, looks like we're at about our five minute break. So let me clear the timer and stop sharing my screen. Flip it over to, now we're moving into the question and answer and comment portion for those who may have joined late just a quick reminder of how this is going to work. If you've been here since the beginning, then it'll be just a bit of repeat. We've got a couple ways you can ask questions or share comments in this meeting. If you're with us in the Bush or conference room, thank you, please raise your hand and you can work with Laura to let us know that you'd like to ask a question. I do see Laura's hand raised, that's great. Other ways include using the Q&A section down below in Zoom, you can hover over that and type in your question, some of you already have. So thanks in advance for doing that. And also you can use the raise hand feature and that just indicates to us that you'd like to speak. And what we'll do is we'll call on you when the time is right, ask you to unmute your line. You can ask your question or share your comment. It doesn't look like we have any dial-in participants so we don't need to worry about that. But of course, if we get one that joins, I'll let them know how they can raise their hand as well. This meeting is being simultaneously broadcast and is being recorded. So with that, I'd like to hand it over, like to go to Laura and we'll start in the Bush or conference room first and then we'll mix it up a little bit after that. So with that, Laura. You can speak, this should be unmuted. Hi, my name's James Lockridge. Thank you for this process. I know how best everybody, as I appreciate that everybody's looking for a good outcome. My question is based on a couple of direct experiences. When the inventory of predetermined amenities was formulated, it was distressing in part because it was so exclusive of the engagement of creatives from our community and the design or presentation of any unique amenities that would contribute to Burlington's identity as a creative environment. Separately related, the city has an old fashioned perspective of public art, which you can see in the Percent for Public Art Ordinance that passed in June. And it leads me to ask if this conversation, which at present seems so pointed towards setting a streetscape and then moving along to other projects, will have an inventory of continued public engagement programming as part of its design process. Will you be creating things on the street that are platforms for continued and continuous engagement of the public? What feeds into this is an experience about 10 years ago where students and architects and creatives across the community were going to be able to design public bullet boards that design build firms were then going to construct from the artwork that was crushed by the amenity inventory of this project. That was a project with Church Street Marketplace. Public art per this recent ordinance is a thing that's purchased and made permanent in the city of Burlington. It's not a platform or infrastructure for the curation of public art in and out so there's continual enrichment. So I'm trying to draw lives between this need for expression, creativity and continued public participation and your word in the design world related to our downtown to our main street. So I think the practical reality, my understanding is we're going to build a pretty street and be done. I'd like to think that we could move even further down the road of continued public engagement through the way design is thought and amenities are thought of. So that's my question. Is there a possibility of that? I can certainly start with that but I would certainly enjoy our team to chime in. With this project, the public art ordinance does come into play and there certainly will be curated pieces that I believe BCA will choose this as a site to activate. They have a process that comes into play with the new public ordinance where they can either collaborate and collect a bunch of their percent fees of a project and then put it into one larger effort or take it and spread it out and let their committee help choose a location. As it relates to some feedback that we heard earlier late last week, we've got with the Flynn, their new executive director highlighted a lot of potential opportunities are asked for as one of their wish items is more flexible space to program. And I think that's one of the things that we wanna hear tonight is about, is that an interest of the community to be able to have flexible spaces for private people or smaller organizations to say, let's have this street corner. I can activate this for a few hours. Evan, do you guys or agency have anything that you wanna add on to that? I'd love to just say that I, yeah, we love that feedback and it's you've got your finger sort of on the pulse of what we're seeing everywhere, which is that individual pieces of art that are permanent and usually pretty expensive and unchanging aren't necessarily what people wanna see these days. So I think I would just encourage you to continue engaging with us and sort of rally the folks you know, the creatives who would be interested and let's start to talk about what that flexible space looks like. I think it can't just happen what we will have to work with the city on is how that is going to get managed and funded and sort of it usually requires someone essentially to kind of I think coordinate different sort of performers or installations or whatever coming in and out at different times. So we have to think through what that structure looks like. We can't just necessarily put a platform and expect it all to happen. I think we wanna think about how it's gonna work, but we love that. Other questions or are we also correct? No, thank you very much. I appreciate you entertaining all that. Thank you. Thanks very much for that. And as Laura said, we can come back if more thoughts on the matter surface. All right, next I'd like to ask Olivia to maybe pull a question off the top of our text Q&A stack and we'll go there next, Olivia. Yeah, thank you everyone so much for all the great questions. Our first question from an anonymous attendee, where are you involved with the street changes in St. Albans? I can answer that pretty quickly. No, the city was not affiliated with any of the changes implemented in St. Albans. I can actually think VHB was actually one of the engineers who participated in some of that design work in St. Albans. But as far as the city itself goes, no, we're unaffiliated with those projects, our improvements are unique to our Burlington Great Streets downtown standards that Laura touched on in the beginning of this presentation. And again, unaffiliated, although there probably are some parallels between the St. Albans project and the Great Streets initiative, but unaffiliated and independent projects. Evan, do you wanna add to that? Yeah, I kind of wonder what the question is about really, VHB was involved in the St. Albans, most of the streetscape projects up there. And if there are things that you like, St. Albans, great to know about, if there are things you think don't work in St. Albans, that would be good to know about too. So if you're thinking about comparing St. Albans to what could be done possibly for Great Streets, it would be good to hear that feedback if you wanna offer more thoughts on that. Yep, that's a great point. It'd be great to have some specifics. So next couple of questions, I think we could probably answer. That's one, RJ Wally-Mir asked, where are the cycling facilities? And Stephen, if they're just added a comment that, oh, sorry, that question was removed. Evan, do you wanna take the question on the cycling facilities? Sure, the project does intend to include cycling facilities. We realize out there today, there's not really anything for cyclists unless you're riding in the street along with motor vehicles. And that's not the ideal situation for most cyclists in Burlington feel differently that there should be dedicated facilities for cycling. And with the project, back as far as the 2015 and 2016 concepts, they did include dedicated bicycle facilities along Main Street. It's not true for all streets on the Great Streets grid, but for Main Street, bike facilities were included. And we do intend to include them with the Main Street design. We haven't gotten into yet the detail of what they may be, but we certainly do intend to include dedicated bike facilities on Main Street. Next question from Steven McClure as a business operator on Battery Street, how will this project impact travel to my location, asking for both potential clients and team members? I can start to answer this question. Yes, you're correct. There will certainly be some impact to travel during construction. Pedestrian access and vehicular access through the corridor will be maintained to the greatest extent possible throughout construction. Businesses will be able to remain open throughout construction. One important thing to note is that the city utilizes many channels for communicating, changing traffic patterns and disturbances to impacts to travel. We will utilize VT Alert, front porch forum posts. Also, this project we're intending to manage an outreach contact list for both business owners and interested residents and stakeholders. So we'll be actively communicating with the business owners throughout not only the design development phase, but also leading up to construction and throughout construction to ensure that our plans are well communicated with those business owners and that business owners can communicate with their patrons as well. And Evan, I'll hand it off to you in case you have anything to add to that. Well, you pretty much said it all, I think. Certainly, we're not gonna limit the traffic flow coming to Battery Street by any sense. There may be some temporary traffic setups that slow traffic volumes on Main Street, reduce traffic volumes, there may be some diversions onto other roads possibly, but people that are coming down to Battery Street and the waterfront still gonna be able to get there with, we would expect very minimal delays or diversions onto other roads for the most part. You just wanna highlight, this is certainly a conversation that will have been throughout the project. And as we've talked about that we're gonna continue the engagement and talking about construction well. It's helpful to address maybe some anxieties. We definitely want to engage in this in more depth and we'll be able to provide more details later on. I believe I see a few hands raised in our audience. Are we able to go towards those? Yep, absolutely. I know we were just trying to pick off a few of the quick hit Q and A. So the first hand raised I see is Tony R. And so Tony, I'm gonna send a command to you for you to open your mic and when you do the floor is yours. Thank you, Alan. Tony Reddington, I live the opposite Seahaw Park with a few feet of the Main Street and St. Paul intersection. A couple of questions. First, I did actually participate in the outreach that was done in 2016 at City Hall and always had real reservations. That was six years ago. And from what you guys, you folks presented today there really hasn't been much public engagement since until the sudden flurry that's going on between now and election day. And as a member of the steering committee event Neighbor Planning Assembly two and three, which includes a good, a major portion of Main Street basically from North South Manuski to Union Station. I can say honestly that we've had advisory committees that have been involved in other street projects, whether it's the Wunsa Nuskies, whether it was the North Avenue plan the intersection, recent complex intersection of improvements on Colchester, Colchester Avenue at East Avenue. And I just cannot bring myself knowing the degree of public involvement that we traditionally have that this particular project has never had advisory committees, has never had neighborhood involvement and that for that reason alone we don't have the information and understanding on what kind of a decision should be made on this. And I'm advising the folks I know that there's just a lack of transparency which is really sad. But most important, I wanna say this, I have moved from near radio bean down to the downtown. And that was like it seemed like it's only five or six blocks but it's a total change in lifestyle. I right now can go to the marketplace and City Hall Park, coffee shops and restaurants without ever having to encounter a traffic signal. And you know what? It's a different kind of life because of traffic signals you have to push a button, you have to wait to cross this heavy traffic and so forth. So I really wanna emphasize the presence of traffic signals is a barrier to a social activity. It's a negative in terms of the desirability of a neighborhood and walkability. In regard to two intersections, South Wunewski Avenue is the consultants that I've talked with use the term it's death valley. And the end of death valley is at Main Street and South Wunewski. That intersection is the highest crash location in the state of Vermont of the 111 intersections. You can look it up on the state high crash list. There is a plan in the plan BTV walk bike that shows a roundabout there, which of course we now know that there hasn't been a single pedestrian ever killed on a marked crosswalk at the 9,000 roundabouts in the United States and Canada, not one pedestrian has died. We've had two pedestrians die on marked crosswalks that are traffic signals. One at Shelburne Street and Home Avenue and of course the other one that I call the dominoes crossing at Barrett Street and Colchester. So we know that the safest thing we can do for pedestrians is a roundabout and the AARP office which overlooks that intersection. There's been many a day that we've come out of meetings there and said something has to be done. What is your view of what to do at this number one unsafe intersection in the state of Vermont, Evan? Well, we certainly want to make it safer and we are going to be looking at options for the street intersections and along the street corridors for the project, which in my mind right now can include any number of options. We know that roundabouts are safer but they're also not always right in every situation. So we have a lot of work to do in front of us to try to make this street just as safe and as functional as we possibly can. And we haven't made any decisions about what we're gonna be doing there yet. Some of the things that we have talked about is putting bump outs at the intersections to reduce the crossing lengths and also to have a traffic calming effect on motor vehicles, both of which have been shown to make crossings safer. I can talk a little bit about the gap in the engagement. So early in the presentation, we talked about the two projects that we completed already with St. Paul Street in 2019 at City Hall Park in 2020. That end of that City Hall Park happens during the pandemic and the change and the city's resources and availability of staff for the last two years have been really challenged. This level of a project for Main Street really requires efforts from every department and a lot of our other city resources have been focused on helping manage the pandemic keeping resources available and information to our public. This opportunity really comes at what we thought last fall was a slowdown in the pandemic and its impact on our community. We're obviously sitting here mostly remote today and that's an effect of that. So it's not for the fact that we're trying to do this in a rushed process. We did have a significant engagement that started in 2016 and lasted for almost over a year for Main Street as well as the fact that it's spoken to and a lot of other transportation level plans. So we're here to talk over the next few months about this concept and then we'll continue the conversation as we resolve the concept for Main Street and move into the design and let those details result in. Great, thank you team. And thank you, Tony for the question. All right, let's see. We'll take one more zoom raised hand and then we'll flip it back to some other methods. The next raised hand I see is Karen L. So Karen, I'm gonna invite you to take yourself off mute and share your comment or ask your question. Hi, thank you. I'm sorry I came late. I thought the meeting was at seven. I'm wondering how many people are at the meeting? How many Burlington residents are at this meeting right now? I have a couple of questions. So do you want me to ask them all at once or can you do a little bit of back and forth? I'm sure we can do a little back and forth. And I think besides the project team right now we have a little bit over 20 people, 20 to 25 people that are participating in either online or in person meeting. Okay, great. I mean, I only saw this once. It was a week or so ago maybe on Front Porch Forum, advertised and then tonight because it's hard to look back at those to get this information. I went to the calendar and it's not on the city calendar. So I mean, I think 20 is a really pathetically small number. I know that when this came up at the city council meeting we've looked back to find out when this was introduced and there was supposedly a public forum. There was only one person that spoke. I didn't know about it in October, October 25th. So I'm wondering if you could please do a better job of letting us know about these things. I talked to a couple of people today who had never heard about this meeting. But anyway, I really had trouble finding it tonight at the last minute without, it would have been really nice to re-advertise it today or even yesterday to give us the information since it is a Zoom meeting or mostly. And so that's, I'm sorry I missed it. So I know there's a business one, it might be the same. So I could go to that one. But when you said that the travel impact will be minimal to the business owners, I'm wondering how that can be true when people on St. Paul Street, when that was redone. I know it took well over a year to do that work and those business owners were up in arms. There were several newspaper articles about that. So if you can address that and a question I've asked before and I did go on Main Street today and noticed how much of the parking now is parallel is, excuse me, diagonal parking. How many parking spaces will we lose when you change it to parallel parking? So those are two questions if you could answer, please. Yep, I can start with that Karen. Thanks for finding us again tonight. This is really the first meeting that we are participating in the outreach for the public. So the meeting that happened in November was being able to bring our consultant on board to this process so that we can start collecting information and having put the presentation together and an outreach strategy. So really we were asking the public to find us before tonight. There was additional outreach done to at the community level we sent out over 2000 mailers through the properties that are within a few blocks of Main Street. But we do appreciate your feedback on other outreach strategies that might be more helpful. I'm putting it on the calendar. I believe it's on the DBW one but I can't speak to the city calendar so that's unfortunately on this there. Business meetings are only very similar content but a few more questions and orientation towards the business. Evan, do you wanna talk about the other questions about some construction and parking? Yeah, sure. So we do realize that getting people into businesses throughout construction super important to all of the business owners and we understand that. Our intention is to do this work, the construction work with minimal interruptions to any of the businesses. So we'll do things like stage the different areas where construction will be happening. I think for at least part of St. Paul the street was closed and everything was under construction at one time. It's not likely that that would happen with Main Street given it's such a busy street. We're still exploring options for maintaining traffic during construction but it is such a major thoroughfare. It's unlikely that we're gonna be just shutting down Main Street unless that's what people really want to see. Assuming the case is that we keep traffic flowing construction will be phase. So we would only work on say one side of the road at the time or maybe only half of one side of the road at the time only certain sections of sidewalk at any given time. So there would be these piecemeal constructions of the project that would maybe proceed in a linear fashion. So if you're down on the lower end maybe you don't even feel or see any of the construction going on up at South Union or the Winooski area. And it could be that way for weeks or months and you don't really feel it at all. You would only feel it when the construction comes to your front door and we are talking about reconstructing the entire street with underground utilities, new sidewalks, streetscape elements. So there are gonna be some impacts to businesses but we wanna do that in a way where it minimizes the effects on people's livelihoods. The contractor will be required to keep access to every door open throughout the duration of construction. There could be very short duration closures when they're pouring the sidewalk for instance right in front of your door that would last just a couple of hours and all of that has to be coordinated ahead of time with the property owners before that work is ever done. So we're going to be implementing a strategy for the project that really is sensitive to the business owners and tries to keep people just as busy as humanly possible. There was a second part to that? Yes, the parking, the number of parking spaces on the whole main street area. Yeah, very important subject of course. Today main street has a lot of parking and a lot of diagonal parking that takes up a lot of the space between the travel ways and the parking, at least in some of the blocks most of the width between the buildings is dedicated to motor vehicles and their parking. With the proposed project, there will still be parking and it may change and there will likely be somewhat less spaces, but we'll be talking to property owners and business owners about what they really need for parking and how best to accommodate their deliveries, right? We have to get trucks to the businesses and people to park by the businesses and we're thinking of the curb space. So between the curb and the street where cars are driving as flex space and in some cases it will feature parking right in front of businesses in other places. It may feature things like bulb outs where businesses can have their restaurants and tables out on the street. It may be transit stops. It may be stormwater treatment areas and there are a great variety of things we can do with that flexible space. Which today is all parking, but the parking studies have shown that it doesn't need to be all parking. It can be utilized for different functions as well. So we are sensitive to the parking issue and we're gonna be talking to community members about how much parking they feel is a comfortable level for them. So that still doesn't answer and I specifically went on Main Street today and I am a walker and a biker, but today it was 30 degrees and I had an appointment on Pine, actually like Flynn and Pine. So I was in my car and almost every diagonal space on Pine Street had a car in it. I'm excuse me, not Pine Street, Main Street had a car in it, which I didn't realize that they were so busy. But I really wanna know a number. It looks to me like it'll cut it in half just because a single parallel parking spot must be, I don't know, 20, 25 feet. I don't know how much they are and probably you can fit two diagonal cars there. I have a lot of friends that live in Shelburne and South Burlington who don't even come downtown anymore since we lost the mall parking garage. So I think you aren't thinking and it's really hard on businesses that don't have, and actually my eye doctor, they complain all the time. There's nowhere for their patients to park anymore because they used to park in that mall garage. So I really would like to know a number. You're asking us to vote on this for the funding in March and I think you could give us a ballpark number. And I actually, the parallel parking to me on a busy street is hard because you have to block the traffic at least I back into a parallel parking spot. Sorry, learned. A diagonal one you can pull right in. And then when you come out, you are stopping the traffic some, but if you're stopping it, there's always someone there waiting to pull right into your space. So I am not crazy about cars downtown, but this is Vermont. It's pretty darn cold most of the time. I'd say we have five really good months that people really like to be out riding their bike downtown, people that live in the new North end have to drive downtown. I saw somebody today and that she's like 30 some years old, a biker, two children, she drives downtown. And so there are concerns and it's just not something you can put your head in the stand and say, oh, we don't need parking. And actually, I guess the surprise I saw today and people are talking about how dangerous that corner is at Winooski in Maine. The right turn lane, if you're coming down Main Street to turn right, if people are going to say city market or something, there are now big planters there. So you've got rid of that right turn lane. So I'm wondering about that. Is that something new? I had not noticed that. So I don't know how new it is. I don't drive down that street, like often at all. So can you answer that please? And give me the parking number, that's all. So those are my two, the parking number and that new planter thing. I mean, those are your ideas that you're using. And I'm wondering how that is helping Main Street and. Hi, Karen. I'm going to try to quickly answer some of that but we do have other questions that we need to get to. You and I have obviously spoken previously about the number of parking spaces that we anticipate to lose. And that's not a number we have today as we are looking to understand how people want to use this street. If they want to use it for street seating, it could take away more parking. If they want no rain gardens, it might provide additional parking. It's just not a number that we can create until a thorough public process has occurred. The last effort, the quick numbers that turned diagonal spaces to parallel parking retained more than 75% of the parking. And so it's not a loss of half. It's still a significant amount of parking. We are engaging with businesses again tomorrow morning. We've already met with over 20 of the businesses in the downtown two weeks ago. And we did talk about parking and it wasn't actually a concern. The understanding that there is other parking in this area. We just need to do a better job of informing people where they can find that. So that's one of the components that we are considering with this project is providing more information where that available parking does exist within the city. And as it relates to your question about the planters, those are quick build materials. Those are things so that we can work out and test and reshape the road without necessarily building a hard curve that might not be what we want in the final condition. We're happy to take a few more of your questions if you want to type them into the Q&A but we do want to move on to some of the other questions we've already received tonight. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, thank you for that. All right, so what we'll do is we'll go to back to Olivia in just a second to maybe take two or three in the text Q&A and then it looks like pushers empty but if that changes, Laura, you can let me know. And we can go to some hands raised. Just let you all know we are taking hand raised questions if you like. So but with that, we'll go back to Olivia to look at our Q&A stack. So the next question we have in the queue is from Jody Landon. Jody says, I live on St. Paul Street. It seems to me that maintenance of stormwater areas is lacking. What is the expectation for these areas? Is the city responsible or the residents? I'm going to pass to Laura just because she's more familiar with the St. Paul Street effort and how we might be improving on that process for Main Street. Yeah, that is an area that's within the public right away. It is something that our stormwater department is in charge of managing. We struggled a little bit early on after construction completed with the consulting firm or landscaping firm that we had contracted. And our parks department has stepped in a few times to help save those a little bit. We feel like that the effort had improved by late last year. And we certainly are planning more efforts this season. I do know that when we were constructing St. Paul Street and with that some of that engagement, some of the adjacent property owners actually were excited to know that there were going to be gardens outside and actually asked if maybe their employees could help garden with the wellness program. I don't know that our stormwater group has taken on to that, but I think that the question could go both ways. I know it's ours and we are working to do a little bit better of a job, but we also offer our catch-based program. If you want to adopt a rain garden, I'm sure that we can help work something out there too. Great. Thanks, Laura. Next question from Curtis Bear. He says, I think Burlington should consider seasonal changes primarily between warm summer months and the rest of the year, mostly cold. And the dramatic change in use in these times of year because needs will change with seasons. For example, bike lanes at Main Street in winter, ice and snow, how will we make that realistic year-round and usable? So I will just touch on this a little bit and then I think Laura kind of already touched on this with a reference to creating kind of flexible spaces and by creating flexible spaces, for example, maybe it's a curbless area on the street with removal of ballers that can be used for street performances or parking lots in the summertime in use for parking at other points or perhaps the rain gardens, that can also be used for snow storage in the wintertime. Also, we feel there's a growing, a high and a growing demand for bike lanes and even year-round cycling. So we do plan on or we are working closely with our street maintenance division to ensure that whatever is implemented is actually maintainable with the equipment that we have. And I will pass to Evan to add on to that as well. Yeah, it's hard being in such a climate where it's hot in summer and cold in the winter and what do you do with a bicyclist in the winter and how do you maintain bike facilities and that sort of thing. So it is a complex question with the cities, what they have been doing is temporary installations during the summer for some components anyway. So these would be the ball bouts that the city creates with the bollards and the planners to make available some more space in the summer, which is then to some extent dialed back in the winter. I think as is typical practice with the Burlington bike path, the city expects to maintain bicycle facilities to a large extent, especially something as significant as Main Street, that if we're gonna go through the effort of providing dedicated bike facilities, then they're gonna be available year round for something like Main Street. And there are people who do ride bikes, of course, all year round in Burlington and Vermont. So it is a complex question. And I don't know, Rick, if maybe you have a few extra thoughts there, you've seen practices in other places. Yeah, I think, thanks, Evan. I think there's a combination of solutions here as Olivia mentioned that the maintenance is a big component. And we're gonna make sure that this facility is usable by all modes year round. And I think thinking about what kind of equipment is gonna be clearing the snow path and making sure that has an area to deposit the snow, but also maintain a clear width and make sure there's not a melting and kind of refreezing throughout the colder months. And there's also an opportunity, as we mentioned earlier on, to kind of think about how we program the space, the pedestrian kind of bump-outs and deposit areas that could be programmed through interactive art exhibits and make sure that the corridor is usable in an attractive destination, not only during the warmer months, but also during the winter months. And it can really be a compliment to area businesses and things like that. So I think we're gonna be thinking holistically about the quarter, not just away a warmer seasonal month, but from all seasons and how we can kind of engage a wider audience of modes throughout the seasons. Thank you all. All right, thank you for that. Olivia, do you want me to take a raised hand or do you want to pick one more off your stack? Sure, you can, yeah, you can take a hand. All right, next hand I see raised is Dan C. Dan, I'm gonna send a command for you to open your mic. And when you do, you can share your comment or ask your question. Great, thanks, Alan. And thanks for hosting this forum. My name's Dan Castragano. I'm in the new north end of Burlington and just became aware of this project and just wanted to add my public comment. I urge you to make this section of Main Street completely car-free. And here's my reasoning. One is our climate and ecological systems are collapsing. Transportation is the number one sector of emissions in private cars. That's the biggest chunk of our transportation emissions. Traffic violence kills like 40,000 people every year. Disproportionately kills VIPOC women, our houseless neighbors. There's noise pollution, there's air pollution, there's respiratory health, there's the urban heat island effect. We have impermeable surfaces and poor water quality in our lake. So when we think about, so that's all the reasons why we shouldn't have cars there. And when you think about what people love, what do people love when they visit Burlington? When you have family or friends come to visit, where do they want to go? They want to go to Church Street because there aren't any cars. So just imagine the city we could create walking from outdoor gear exchange to Waterfront Park with no cars without having to look over your shoulder. Imagine erecting play structures in the middle of the street so kids and families can play, have trees in the middle of the street without looking over your shoulder looking for cars. And I just firmly believe that streets are for people and not for cars. And you can connect Church Street to the Waterfront, completely car free, it will be immensely powerful. And I thank you for taking my comments into consideration. Thank you for that, Dan. Yeah, it's not the first time that we've heard that. And I don't think that that's something that we can move to entirely within this project, but the idea of we've done this once with Church Street, we can certainly keep that under consideration as we do create the design for Main Street that we're not excluding its option later in the future without a significant rework of the street. All right, Olivia, I'll go back to you to take a couple more tech space questions and then we can, after that, we'll flip back to a hand. So our next question comes from Tony Redington. Where is their description of the intersections? I think we already touched on that when you asked your question live, Tony, but we will be continuing our development of the concept phases over the next several months where those intersection concepts will become available to share with the public. We will be attending several public neighborhood meetings over the next several months, local MPAs. Actually, we're gonna see you at the Bike Walk Committee tomorrow. So you can look for us at meetings like that to be able to share more of the concept as those concepts continue to be developed. And Evan, I don't know if you have anything to add on to that. Yeah, I wasn't really sure how to think of any question. Laura had described it as between Batters Street and South Union and it's all the blocks in between. So it's all of those intersections and again, what we're going to do at each one of the intersections has yet to be determined and that's why we're collecting an input now so that we can figure out what people are thinking about all the intersections. Thanks. Our next question comes from Trees Alding. They say that all stakeholders need to be involved significantly at every stage from needs assessment through implementation and evaluation. And as we touched on previously throughout the presentation and through these questions, we feel that we have a very strong public engagement plan in place not only with the project stakeholders, residents, some of the more targeted focus groups as well as the business owners and we look forward to continuing to engage with the community over the next several months on this project. Trees Alding had another question wondering if the St. Paul improvements have been evaluated, have they been worth it? It looks nice, but I can't ride safely. My bike through, can't ride my bike safely through there. I rarely see much foot traffic, not what I would call a lively place. What measurable objectives are being measured there? Laura, would you want to take this one? Yep, I didn't touch on that one. For the bike facilities, it does match what is in the bike walk plan that it is a shared use street for the bike facilities in that area. Knowing that we were going to work on a primary north-south path being when you ski out. As it relates to what's measurable, we do this project and St. Paul Street had used our proposals to use downtown tip funding. And the whole purpose of it is to help generate economic growth and activity and encourage private development by putting substantial public improvements within the corridor of the right-of-way. So the measured expectation is really a 10 to 14-year timeframe from now. Our tip district for the downtown expires in 2036. So that's really the end goal of what we're looking for. It's not a two-year window. It's not even a five-year window. It's much beyond that as to what we're looking to help Burlington find a way to encourage new growth in these areas. I think we're going to go back to some of the handrails now. Oh, yes, the next handrails I see is Chris H. So Chris, you should be able to open your mic and share with us your comment or question. Yeah, thanks for coming out tonight and sharing with us the designs that you guys have put together here. A little late to the game tonight. I do apologize. This is something I just kind of got wind about on the last couple of days and I had a little bit of a problem finding the meeting because it was not on the city's main calendar page. So what I was curious about though, I want to make sure if you could help me to understand the financing piece here because I'm not sure I've got a good firm grip on it, but as I understand it, the increment financing is that at the beginning of the project, a given parcel is valued at a particular amount. And as the project moves forward and development happens, the value of that parcel will raise, which will bring about the increase in revenue that will be used to pay back the bond. Is that the correct understanding or am I missing something there? That's a really good early understanding of stiff. The detail that's important is that that benchmark of where we started to take the increase in growth started back in 2011. And so really it's taking the growth of the downtown since 2011 and has given us substantial capacity because of all the development that has happened since that point in time. But the city has enough projected increments to be able to afford this project without counting on anything else new happening in the area over the next 14 years, which does seem unlikely. But really it takes when the city was taking in taxes and when the Ed fund was taking in taxes in 2011 and keeps all of that consistent. And then here marks that growth above that point as eligible funding to be able to create public. So just as a follow-up, if I'm understanding correctly, the taxes that are currently assessed, there's I think there's a valid item related to that as well. And there's a small tax increase. That's, taxes are assessed as it's like a percentage of the property's value then. You are outside of my realm of expertise with that one. As it relates to the other valid items that are coming forward for town meeting day, we can certainly take your question in and get back. I'm not looking to focus on the other valid items. Trying to understand the tax and the financing piece here. This is way outside of my expertise, but as I understand, the taxes generally are based on a percentage of a property value or is that changed? That's my understanding as well, but with the TIF district and the state statute regulations, we're actually not able to count that as possible increment. You're not allowed to count municipal tax rate increases as the opportunity to build a bond against it. So the fact that it's happening at the same time is an odd coincidence and choice of the administration, but it's not related and it's not relied upon for funding. Okay, so I think I'm getting a better picture here and I appreciate you kind of taking the time to clarify me. So if I understand it correctly, if the parcel has an initial value and then the development takes place, the parcel goes up in value. And if it is in fact true that taxes are a percentage of the property value, it seems to reason then that if the value of the property goes up, the revenue generated the actual amount of the taxes. Now the tax rate may remain constant or it may even go down, but it sounds like if the property value goes up, so too with the revenue generated in the form of taxes, which would then be captured and used to pay down the debt. I'm gonna say yes, but again, that was a lot and certainly a complicated subject. It is a complicated subject. And if that is in fact the case where a property value rises, and if for example, the tax rate is a percentage of the value, that means that as the property value rises, so too will the actual tax amount paid irrespective of what the rate may be. So I'm not really sure. It's an accurate statement to say that taxes will not increase because if it is in fact a percentage of the property values and property values are kind of engineered or to rise over the period of the project, it seems like as the property values rises, so too will the actual dollar value that the property owners have to pay in their taxes. Right, and I see where you're going with this conversation and it does get a little bit kind of construed. The natural inflation happens in the background and that's not something that's forced as it relates to a tip improvement project. The tip improvement relies on individual parcel development and that real kind of substantial jumps is really where this gets funded. But I'm sure that we are above a lot of other conversations here and maybe even both my design teams conversations with this one. I would love to take this offline, Chris, if that's something that you're interested in. I would be glad to hear a more detailed explanation for it because again, this is well outside the scope of my expertise and I'm having a hard time wrapping myself around it because if property values go up and taxes are a percentage of the property value, it just seems like at the end of the day the taxes are gonna go up in some way and I'm really having a hard time kind of understanding how that's not gonna be the case. So if you can provide some information to kind of help me clarify that and help me to understand, I would be very grateful. Yeah, if you can drop your email in the Q and A I will reach out to you. The city is developing or they have a crazy detailed fact sheet to help with some of what you've asked about that's coming out of our C-DOT department so I can give you that information. And then the only other comment I would have that I've had the opportunity to question is is I actually live in the downtown and I just got wind of this a few weeks ago but we do have a bit of a parking problem here. So even though there may be a marginal loss of parking I would argue that given the utilization of the parking as I think some of the other folks have commented upon I think would have the loss of really any parking would have an adverse impact, not just on the businesses but more importantly on the people who live here that maybe cannot afford to park in a private lot. So I do appreciate your time. I will reach out to you directly and we can get the ball rolling. So thank you for taking my question. Yep, no, thank you for your feedback as well. Excellent. All right, looking at a clock. We do have a hand raised from Tony who already spoke when we flip back to Olivia. Is there any quick questions you can acknowledge or burn through just so we can try to cover as many as we can? Yep, and then I guess I'll say I'll try to answer a few quick questions here for the ones in the chat that we don't have time to answer tonight. We will answer them and provide we'll provide responses to those questions on our website which will be made available within the next week or so so we can make sure that we do get the chance to cover everybody's questions. So if I skip your question now no worries I will get to it. We will get to it later on in the week. Austin asked if there's an email newsletter for all updates and future forums that you can subscribe to. We're not at the point of developing a newsletter at this point, but I think probably in the future we'll certainly develop something like that for one of our other projects The Children's Street Roundabout Project. We issue weekly construction updates so we're putting something like that together for the time being if you like to drop your email into the Q&A we can make sure that we have that on file and we are maintaining a list of contacts as I say businesses and stakeholders and interested residents and we can make sure that you're included on any future outreach materials that go out through email. So we have another question related to from Chris Balding. Bumpouts make bike paths impossible unless they are within the greenway. How would you do bumpouts and a bike lane? Evan and Rick, do you want to tackle this? Sure, the bike way and the bump out should be able to coexist. The bump outs of course go out into the flex zone. So between the curb generally and the travel lanes and the bike facilities that we're envisioning for the project would be behind that curb line or you can imagine behind the parking or the bump outs so that the bike lanes would traverse right through the bump outs and they could coexist together. That's my vision for it. I'm not sure, Rick, if you have different thoughts on that but I think that's where we're probably headed but we'll see how the process works. Yeah, just real quick. I mean, we do accommodate accessibility standards but as Evan described that there will be a space for pedestrians essentially to pass over the bike facility and have the bikeway run likely behind the parked cars and separated from the pedestrian facility. So, yeah, thank you. Great, thank you both. I'll just answer one last question we are out of time. Sorry, it just, here. Maybe we go back, is there a, yeah, are there any hands raised? We do have one last hand raised and that's Tony from Tony spoke before but we can see if Tony wants to add one final comment as we're reaching the witching hours. So Tony, you should now have a command to open your mic once more. Okay, thanks so much, Alan. I did have a comment as nothing to do with intersections. It's really a point of information. Our US Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg put out a new national road safety strategy. This past week and this is a major, it's really sort of the American equivalent of vision zero but it's more than that as he points out that not only is safety important and that's number one, not number two, it's number one but also equity and I think you are going to be having meetings with some lower income groups and with the minority groups and also climate change and I haven't heard the word climate change once tonight and so I would hope that we would in the city would follow the new federal approach to roadway safety where we have 21,000 excess deaths a year and Burlington has contributed to several of those death increases, particularly pedestrians over the last two decades and that's so safety is number one but also we need to consider equity because those people, the pedestrians who have been injured and killed a disproportionately low income and people of color, that's in that national strategy. If you do a search national roadway safety strategy you can get right to that report. It's fascinating with some very good data and I hope that the principles in there that each of us will begin to follow and recognize that we really have been behind the curve or as Secretary Pete says we've been trailing a lot of people, that is other countries so leave it at that, thank you. Thank you Tony. Okay. So that really wraps up a lot of the comments and questions that we received. There's definitely some information that came into the Q&A that were comments and observations that were really great points and so we appreciate the thought when I tell those. At this point in time, I don't see any more hands raised. There's nobody left in the room at the moment so please if you do have any last thoughts or any last quick questions, it will take one more and then we'll let everybody have their night's back. Tony, do you have a, was that a new hand or an old hand? I'm not sure but I went back down again so. Okay. Give it a second. In the chat, which it was a one-way feature we provided the link to thegreedstreetspeedtv.com. Again, on the feedback page you can find email contacts for Olivia and also one of our design teams. So if you do have other questions or comments after tonight, please feel free to drop that any of them that way. You are going to work on kind of a different way also to collect feedback on that page so if that changes in the future, that's us managing the city's Greed Street's website. Again, there are other outreach opportunities as early as tomorrow morning kind of for repeat performance as well as other various structured city meetings and some of the other focus groups that we're working to kind of put everybody together with later this month. Evan, any other last words or advice? No, I would just say thank you to everyone who did participate. We appreciate the public input into the process and this is a community project. So you want community input to make it just the best thing it can be. So thanks for everyone. All right, with that, I will stop the recording and end the webinar. Thanks for joining us. Have a great rest of the evening. Thank you. Record.