 Okay, thanks, Guilford. I'm going to read the little language here, language for remote meetings. All right, so it says, hi everyone, pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021 and ascended by the chapter 22 of the acts of 2022. This meeting is being conducted via remote means. Members of the public who wish to access the meeting may do so via Zoom or telephone. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted, but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time. All right, so I think we're good to go. Thank you all for being here. I will ask that we just take attendance out loud because Amber really appreciates it, especially for people who are quiet during the meeting. And I see now that Councillor Henneke has joined us and Eve Vogel has joined us as well. So can we just go around the room quickly and just everybody give their names so then Amber will record it in the minutes. So I'm Tracy Ziffian and I'm the Chair. And I'm Marcus Smith. I'm Stefan Siege. Joe Federuso, TAC member. Chris Lindstrom. Okay, and we have two guests. So Eve Vogel is here and Mandy Joe Henneke and Guilford Moring is here as our TAC liaison. All right, so we'll get started. We do want to try to end this meeting promptly. That's a little before seven. So 645 and Chris Lindstrom said she has to leave at 630. Okay, so all right. So because Councillor Henneke is here I'd like to just start with this street lights. Well first of all, so we don't have any members of the public for public comment period. So our first item up will be to, well actually Chris Lindstrom if you have just like a few minutes like three minutes or so do you want to just give an overview of safe routes to school and the great eye walk and our partner the weather who made it all possible and increase the turnout and then we'll go into street lights. Yeah, so safe routes to school again a federal program administered and I think supported by Massachusetts and the Mass Department of Transportation to make communities more bikeable and walkable for kids starting at the schools. We had, you know, approached the school district about this project and thought that there would be a lot of interest and this year we were able to identify and recruit parents and run sort of some initial walk, bike and roll to school events at three elementary schools and at the middle school this past Wednesday in conjunction with the Massachusetts Safe Roots to School. They were very successful I think we ended up with mostly all green parents who never really organized events before but we ended up with about 150 families participating across the four schools, about 300 donut holes consumed as soon as the kids arrived at the schools and zero places for bikes at any of the bike racks especially at the elementary schools and there's a really funny picture of Derek Shea the principal at Crocker just like herding bikes into a corner like not knowing where where they could go or what to do with them but yeah and I think it would have been a decent event but the fact that we had really gorgeous weather on Wednesday morning you know definitely made a difference and so people were on a high and really loved it so lots of good positive feedback from the families who were on the rides and interest in doing more so that's really exciting. That's some great momentum so the Massachusetts Safe Roots to School program they do run quarter events like the iWalk and so I think we'll try to tap in and get the schools interested in those again and it's great to see all that excitement and we'll have to work on more bike racks so it's all a good problem. Okay so on to street lights so we um Councillor Hanneke has come back to us I believe we've met with her very early in the year um to talk about the street lights policy there have been many revisions to it since earlier um I believe it's been before the council since August of 2022 and so so just for today's meeting um because I know that TAC you know we had met with her and with uh Councillor Devon-Gothier and had some general feedback we didn't see the version that TAC saw was an early version you know and that was while there was still that second section in the street lights policy related to where street lights should be located um so we appreciate the opportunity to learn more and to hear what the latest updates are and um this is the opportunity if TAC chooses to do so to give some feedback to TSO and the council it is coming back to the council in November and I believe TSO will be discussing it at their meeting next week on the 12th and in the meantime I know that I mean I know that many of the TAC members know that I'm like personally interested in this and I have invested a lot of time and Eve Oakles here and she's spent a lot of time as well and the councillors who are the sponsors have too so there we all will get TAC up to speed so um Manny you have the floor thank you um so yes um this was referred out of TSO and to the council for action in August and then um there was some concern about the document that was referred out of TSO on a positive recommendation um particularly concerns from Eve Vogel and Tracy Zafian so as sponsors myself and Ana we reached out to Eve and we have been trying to resolve a number of our differences um we have not been able to resolve them all and we may not be able to resolve them all um but I guess I'm here to talk to you about where the policy sort of stands now I will say I apologize for not being able to get you documents ahead of time um because of all of the back and forth and the schedules for myself and Ana um we were not able to finalize some documents to send to TSO TAC and finance the other committee this policy is in until today so they just got sent out to Tracy today you will get that packet I believe Tracy will forward it on to you so you have all the documents it includes a memo um the the newest revision of the street lights policy and a new task force committee charge proposal um so I I'm going to start with sharing my screen to show you some basic pictures of what our goal is for the street lights policy from from a dark skies point of view um as you as many have heard um I believe you can now see pictures right is that correct yes yes okay I'm not getting the typical green box around the the application that I normally get to confirm that um these two pictures that well four pictures the pictures on the left represent what what we would call bad lighting design um one is of a building and one is of a street um you can see there's very dark sections on the street the upper left hand corner and very light sections on the street and that the light really creates these I almost call it a zebra effect that that creates some very dark sections of a street and some very bright sections of a street the problem is the glare in in that picture and so when you fix the glare um they're the same fixtures that the other problem is that they're very bright white and so when you turn them to a warm white and you fix the glare you get what's on the upper right hand side of the screen much less um no glare which is helpful for visibility and for reducing um light blindness as some people refer to it as um and and you just you you minimize that sort of zebra light dark contrast effect to make a much better visibility section of a road where things are more visible on the bottom set and I'll page up so you can see what's going on here on the left again is a daylight bulb it's 80 watts it's unshielded so the glare is tremendously bad um in the picture you can barely see that there's a door on the right hand side between the first two lights there on on the right hand side picture you've shielded the the wallpacks so they're fully shielded there's no glare anymore you've changed to 32 watts and you've warmed the color down to 3000 kelvin from probably four or 5000 kelvin and suddenly you can see all the doors very clearly you can see some of the mechanical functions sections between some of the doors and you can see other doors so you can actually see the pathway a lot better than you could in the other one and then finally what does glare do this picture on the left um the only thing the difference between the left and the right is shielding the glare fixing the glare and when you do you can easily see that there's a person standing in that gate you couldn't see that before the glare so what we're trying to do that that that shows you how much glare affects your ability to see things beyond the light um and so what we're trying to do with our policy is basically remove the glare improve visibility and improve um that that ability to see um me where's my mouse so I just wanted to show you some of those pictures because not everyone has seen the difference that good lighting can actually make on a property compared to bad lighting and and some of the problems we have with our street lights right now are that they're very bad lighting they're they're very blue but they also do produce a lot of glare despite the fact that they have some shielding um and so what we're trying to do is fix a lot of those problems without reducing safety um we actually believe fixing those problems will increase safety um as you saw with the one street you lessen that zebra sort of effect and you can actually see better so so the policy changes from the last time you saw it um I will summarize some of them the language is very dense so I don't want I want you to just sort of be able to read that later um because because I don't think it'll be effective to go through the actual language at this time but what we've done since the last time you saw it is at the last time I was here we were talking about removing the streetlight placement standards completely they are still essentially removed from this policy you will see a section called streetlight location and placement standards those standards are a a copy of what are current from the current streetlight policy placement standards are that was a lot of peace um the policy that the select word adopted in 2001 is still in effect and these streetlight standards placement standards that are in the document right now mirror the current policy um intersections dead ends cul-de-sacs where road conditions are deemed potentially hazardous severe curves downtown streets streets with heavy nighttime pedestrian bicycle micro mobility and mobility aid users such as near near schools and commercial centers and other locations deemed that that the council deems require a streetlight due to demonstrated need um it would be the council because in the current policy it's the select board and so we've just replaced select board that doesn't exist anymore with council the goal of the task force that is a new addition to this policy the creation of a task force and then the charge for that task force is to have the task force come up with better placement standards to look at our entire town to look at where lights should be or shouldn't be based on what they are what roads they are adjacent well where the what is adjacent to the roads so a task force would come up with potentially a policy for the downtown area that might include a lot more lighting and a lot more light street lights because of the higher traffic and commercial activity and just pedestrian traffic that is there versus somewhere on say off of bay road where there is less traffic some of the neighborhoods off of bay road there is less traffic it's much more rural it is adjacent to conservation and natural resource areas that we might not want to disturb the wildlife for where they might have completely different standard for where to put lights that would be the task forces job right now our proposal is keeping the current standards there and saying let the task force really dive deep into what do we want how do we want to light this town with where the lights go and so we've created we're proposing a task force and a charge for that task force in terms of the performance standards the shielding is still there and it has not changed we have changed a little bit of the language regarding nuisance about glare in consultation with Eve and Tracy and I believe we've reached agreement on what that language is but I could be wrong there's so many back and forth we've revised the language for light trespass to a revision that I believe Tracy Eve myself and Anna all agree can go forward to widen where the measurement for how much light there is is taken the original proposal had it taken at the property boundary between the public way and the private property we are now taking the proposal 10 feet from the finished edge of either the sidewalk that is closest to that line or the street that is closest to that line to make sure there is an adequate surround light and we have increased the level of lighting allowed at that measurement from 0.01 foot candle to 0.1 so 10 times higher as a and with a goal that it only be 0.05 five times higher than the original proposal but allowing up to 0.1 foot candles which is approximately one lux so so we've compromised into a higher light trespass level on to private property in the name of trying to improve and address the concerns about safety regarding some of those edges where someone might be traveling on a sidewalk or the edge of a public way where a pedestrian or bicyclist might be one of the items that still out is outstanding in terms of where we disagree still between Eve and Tracy and myself and Anna is the color the correlated color temperature cct we've actually moved significantly from our original proposal our original proposal was 2200 Kelvin 20 yeah 2200 Kelvin we quickly moved up to 2700 Kelvin we are now proposing in our proposal a general level of 2700 Kelvin but an increase to 3000 if 2700 is hard to find up to 3000 Kelvin and 3000 Kelvin is the lowest range of the federal highway administration's general range of 3000 to 4000 Kelvin we've also put into our policy a maximum of up to 4000 Kelvin that high and which is no longer a warm white light but the high end of the federal highway administration for roads arterial roads that have speed limits in excess of 40 miles an hour so arterial roads with a 45 mile an hour speed limit or higher because there is a federal highway administration guidance there's some studies out there that say that show that at 55 miles per hour 4000 Kelvin provides better visibility in distance detection than 3000 Kelvin but at 35 miles per hour the distance detection length is the same between 3000 and 4000 Kelvin so in an effort to compromise Anna and I have proposed a 4000 Kelvin limit for speeds at the middle of that two they only tested 35 and 55 so at the middle of those two going up to 4000 Kelvin but I believe that is still a disagreement between even Tracy and myself and Anna the illumination levels we have proposed to meet the IESRP 8 handbook meet them exceed them by no more than 50% so actually you can go over the handbook recommendations that handbook and those recommendations have been found by the federal highway administration to be adequate and within the research for adequate detection distances and lighting maximums for those roads so it's within federal highway administration standards and that is the proposal we have and you would be able to exceed them by 50% because sometimes there's some light loss over time and the other change there are some other minor changes we've tried to reword the waiver section and the adding or removing street lights section to try and make it more clear how things go and then finally we have this implementation about the task force and I'll talk a little bit more about that and then a proposal to use a couple of upcoming projects or potential projects as demonstrations of options under the policy and that would include College Street between Pleasant Street and Railroad Street where there's been a lot of construction recently that that construction will ultimately result in no street no utility poles on the street and so street lights will need to be replaced they're currently on utility poles and then North Pleasant Street between Eastman Lane and Pine Street there's a little bit of work going on there and a proposal for an ultimately a redo of the entire road in terms of a complete street sort of reworking of stuff that's in TSO right now and when that happens using that is also a demonstration of some options under the policy the task force the goal as I said of the task force would be mainly for for addressing the placement of lights and where lights need to go in town where the fixtures need to go so they would have a lot of things to do besides that besides the typical do their research do outreach get some public feedback and everything they would be developing a lighting zone map on where zones should be in standard light street lighting policies and light policies towns are split into zones where a zone is supposed to have no light low light medium light or high light depending on what's in those those areas of town so a zone such as a part of a zone where there is conservation land might be deemed a no light zone or a low light zone a rural residential area might be deemed a low light zone a high light or medium light zone might be some commercial areas so so the task force would be coming up with that lighting map and then also the standards that go along with that map I touched on that earlier you know in in a conservation area you might not want any light or very little light but in a commercial area or where there is high pedestrian traffic you might want more light or more frequent light so that it's more even across things versus just maybe identifying cross streets and putting a light at a cross street so they would be coming up with those standards the task force under the charge that we've drafted would also propose revisions to the policy to fit those standards into the policy but also standards related to for some of these roads things like that color temperature to really delve into where is the appropriate color temperature for particular roads what are the appropriate illuminance levels do we need them at a high two lux or five lux or ten lux or can we have them at one lux or a half a lux or even lower depending on where they are and so the task force is our goal for the task force was that they would really delve into that and really come up with a map and a plan that that gets to in a very grain granular detail all of that and with that I will stop and and let there be questions but I believe Eve is going to do some talking too before this all right thank you thank you Mandy that was very helpful so you are you ready to talk to yeah sure it'll be a third there'll be some repeat definitely from what Mandy just said but I'll try to go through that part relatively briefly and let's see I can share screen that's pretty exciting all right so we can see Amherst Street lights toward a win-win solution so so this is I think you guys have heard enough from me but anyway Tracy and I have worked really closely together we've also been going back and forth with Mandy a lot Mandy and I have met one-on-one several times it's been a pretty intensive process and there's been a lot of back and forth so this is kind of a broad overview of sort of where I see what we're trying to do and then I talked about some broad areas of agreement but I think we're all on board with that sort of structure the whole thing and then some specific areas that are not yet agreed upon and I'm not going into quite as much detail actually as Mandy let's see if I can do this all right so this is kind of what our street lighting looks like now we have occasional lights most of them are very tall they light up a lot of area there's a lot of glare they go into the sky so they do a lot of the things Mandy showed and then it's also really dark not that far away so there's a lot of inconsistency so it's sort of bad for the night sky and it's also bad for any kind of visibility and right now we have the definition of where we want street lights is by specific location there about 500 street lights across town most are about 6300 lumens there are some that are 27,000 or 50,000 lumens most are mounted on utility poles that's because that saves money but that means they're high up which causes some problems problems with all of this you've got a ton of up light going into the night sky you've got bluish LEDs which was supposed to save energy but causes you know some less optimal light lots of glare UMass is just a huge source of glare and excessive light and then indoor lighting also is a big issue then you also have problems with darkness where people in vehicles can't be seen sometimes as Mandy showed you that's because of glare but sometimes it's because there's no light people can't see in those conditions it's worse for young and old drivers for mobility aid users like people using canes or walkers and for bicyclists who need to see farther ahead longer distances and then in addition to all the people who are already out in this causes problem for there's a whole host of people that don't even venture out at all because they find that it's too dark and they're just not even going to go outside at night unless they're in a car unless they're poor low income have a job and don't have a choice is lighting really a big deal for safety yes the research is very clear about this and these are some statistics general ones on the left Amherst ones on the right and I'm actually just going to let you skim this rather than reading it to you it also matters for transportation mode shift the research is pretty clear on that not there's not as much on this but basically what you need in order to get the about 50 certain of people who just don't walk or bike very much you need to get them to feel confident and safe and lighting is a key part of that and what you need really for people at night is you need continuity you don't need bright light everywhere you just need some continuous light so there's not these black holes of gaps in the lighting and the research shows that minimum lighting is more important than any kind of maximum so in other words you're not getting there's a certain minimum amount of light that you always have on a walking or biking route you need adequate sight distance for bicyclists and you need higher lighting for intersections and marked crossroads so this is my approximation of what this might look like and you'll notice there are actually no lamp posts shown here there's one implied over here at the crosswalk but the point is you need a certain amount of light but how it's provided by what kind of lamp post and where that light comes from is really like there's tons of different options for how that happens and it could totally happen in a shielded light which would be great because then it doesn't provide glare so you put all this together and you get something that might be possibly ideal conditions for a high-use walk bike bus area like a downtown you make the lights lower down you could even shield these on the side as well as on the top to reduce the glare further and you get enough lighting for people to be seen all along the way as well as to see you're going to start running into words like this as you get into more of the details shielding means you know you're covering this light so you don't actually see it when you're walking that reduces the glare the uplight is any kind of light that's going upward the backlight is something that's going to make someone like silhouetted make them hard to see the spectrum is the color well that's the Kelvin that Mandy was talking about and illumination is sort of how much and how they're illuminated but you can't do this everywhere you don't want that much light everywhere and it would be super expensive to have that many light poles and that many lights all over town replacing our 500 street pull lights so what do you do instead you do the kind of thing that Mandy was talking about having the task force do where maybe in downtown you do something like this in a neighborhood you might keep the speed relatively low and still deal with your one lamp post and allow it to be dark further away because your spirits speeds are low enough that people are still going to be pretty safe and then in a in a road that's an arterial road where you have high speed traffic and bicyclists are on the road maybe pedestrians are on the road to like my local all to your arterial east plus it then you might have wider lights that are brighter this is according to the federal highway administration safety standards they say 4000 Kelvin armoured arterials so that's why these are shown with brighter lights so you might have different areas where you choose different things this is all too much for us to figure out right now and would get us an even more back and forth detailed deliberations than we already have so that's why the idea of the task force has really come up for for a small committee to really look at detail at multiple manuals and really figure out what streets get labeled in what way and then what are the standards for each of those so the broad areas of agreement among all of us is that you use performance standards so rather than saying Guilford will have this exact kind of luminaire and this exact illumination you know location it's gonna what we're looking for is this is the kind of light we want and where and then the specifics on the poles and the lamps and the you know angle it had there's some discretion about that how that happens and where you can still have those performance standards say things like fully shielded and no glare but there's still some discretion about exactly how many and where and all that stuff secondly we're going to have a classification of streets by function use and safety and then each classification will get it's assigned a lighting performance standard we're not going to do that now so that becomes the task force proposal then this these standards with the classification the geographic classification and the lighting standards that's going to get updated periodically maybe every 10 years 20 years basically in time to inform the next round of bulk purchase of streetlights for the town as at least that often because technologies are changing research is being updated and so we want our streetlights each time to be informed by the newest information the current policy will set some broad performance standards but isn't going to get into this level of the detail it's not going to change the conditions too much from what we have now it's going to create the task force and it's going to create a framework for decision making but it's going to leave again those details of the standards to the task force and then there will be some street lighting and an alternative visibility safety trials on Amherst streets right now in the next couple years and then maybe in the future before the next round of revisions as well so my alternative visibility Mandy and Anna have really done a lot of thinking about the fact that there might be some places where with some really bright painting and some really well placed reflectors you might at some day actually be able to take out a light and still provide enough visibility that's not going to be everywhere but that might there might be some places like that and so we should be open to that kind of trial in the future to see how it works before you know to inform future standards where are the continuing areas of disagreement this is as of the last draft we didn't see the one from today tracing I believe that lighting in the policy until we get the task force should remain either at the current lighting or within the range of biting recommended by traffic safety experts not below both so for example when Mandy was saying 2700 the traffic safety experts say between 3000 and 4000 so we think it shouldn't go below 3000 um safe systems approach basically means you're providing the infrastructure including lighting that's going to keep everyone safe and including if they're stupid if they're drunk they don't have reflectors on they don't have all you know a lot of gear they're really poor they're whatever it is they still should not be dead at the end of the night on our streets um traffic safety experts Tracy's really done a ton of work with her role in the um transportation center at UMass but the traffic safety experts are really the federal highway administration and then mass DOT uses a safe systems approach NACTO um is the the expert for bicycle design bicycle design and then the reference manual must be freely available to public we keep harping on this because the reference manual that Mandy to Anna have used is the IES 8 manual and that is not available to the public for less than several hundred dollars so we weren't even able to review it to see what it says and so we really can't recommend that it be the reference manual for the policy um one of the purposes of emmer street lighting should be to facilitate more walking biking transit micro mobility and mobility aided travel I call that a mode shift but um this is some of the freezing that got into at least one of the earlier drafts of the policy with something like this um and the standard should be updateable so the goal of the policy should not be to set the standards but to set a framework whereby the task force and its successors can update the standards um and that's it okay sorry yeah E just a quick question why shouldn't we use a manual that the town has access to so I guess the question is does the town have full access to the IES R8 manual um if you go online it is $350 for the public so I guess yeah I wasn't talking about the public I'm not asking why we wouldn't use something that the town has access to um well so a couple so one I mean I asked Mandy and she said she doesn't have access to it but I actually think it's really important that members of the public including like the tack for example be able to reference manuals and look at what it says and compare that's a different that's a different thing though right you can create opportunities for them to be able to reference it that doesn't mean they have to have access to their own house yeah I didn't see the access to their own house I mean if the if the town owned a copy and put one in the library yeah if they if they if the town bought a copy and it was freely available at the library and reserve that would count as accessible to the public right true I mean I think in the name of Trent do we have a copy of that then or not well Mandy hasn't seen it so I don't know yeah I mean I'm just asking if we're referencing something we have nobody had access to that kind of a brilliant thing in the beginning so Guilford I mean maybe Guilford have you as I don't have access to it so I mean so here the director of the DPW does not have access to this guide that's supposed to be setting the standards yeah no that's fine yeah I just you know yeah if we're referencing it and nobody have access then that's kind of a new point so but I'm sure if we actually decide this is what we're gonna reference whatever we have we would buy it and make it available understood thank you right so Chris do you have a comment yeah I just want to thank you Mandy Joe and Anna and Tracy and Eve I feel like the I mean people on tack have heard me say this before I didn't really like how this debate was playing out initially because it was such like a you know one side versus the other and I feel like you guys have really really found the common ground areas and and so now we're really digging into the details and I really like the idea of the task force because I think you know policy that's so granular also becomes dangerous too and enabling the task force to kind of house that moving forward so I just want to thank you guys for for being able to sort of I don't know shift the debate and the dialogue and make it a lot more comprehensive and sort of sound for the overall goals for our policy and then I just one other thing I do other types of lighting fall under this policy to you know IEA big commercial sign or lighting over gas stations I just was curious if this actually applies to things beyond the actual street lights themselves or you know even I guess homeowners might have certain types of lighting Andy go ahead thank you not right now is is the quick answer this the goal right here is the street lights only at this time and I say at this time because Anna and I have always approached this as a two-part process we would have had many towns put the street lighting standards into a zoning bylaw on lighting for the town some do not and we decided to approach this with a don't put it into the lighting zoning bylaw at this time because we weren't sure what kind of reception we would receive for dark skies type lighting in town and so from a legislative point of view starting with street lighting that is in the control of the keeper of the public way which is the town council only and does not come with any time limits to negotiate and flesh out and do all of what we've been doing for the past year felt like the right place to start our goal has always been if we get to a point and if the town was receptive to this and really supported this and we can do something with this to come back and figure out a way to put a lot of these standards into the zoning bylaw as a new sort of lighting part that's where the classification the lighting zone map would come in because you wouldn't just be dealing with streets then you'd be looking at the rest of the town and and when I talked about those lighting zones a low light zone or a high light zone that would then apply to the parcels in that zone too and the lighting for gas stations and and you know parking lots and and houses and residential and all there are some towns that have adopted stuff like that and that's been a five to eight year implementation to get all the houses and private parcels in compliance with a new policy but that's sort of like step three now because the task force would need to do its work before we would approach any type of zoning to make it apply but the ultimate goal is to not just have street lights dark sky compliant but to have every part of town dark sky compliant and then since we know UMass is not always subject to our own laws be able to put the pressure on UMass to do the same thing from their own planning point of view and now I mean there is there are when there are development proposals like I mean unfortunate Chris press up couldn't be here tonight but there is consideration of lighting when there's redevelopment and so there is some language already it's just we haven't looked very much I guess at um private lighting so thanks that was helpful okay does that anybody else have other comments no I think it's a great spotting point I like the idea of the committee on it yeah I'm trying to hack it out now it's it's not gonna work but I can really have a good look into it yeah no I think that the I mean I think we all agree that the task force is needed because it's complicated and there needs to be outreach to find out how people feel about lighting in different areas so and so now Guilford do you can you speak to a little bit on what's the time frame for like when you can see there being um like a large replacement of lights in town there's not there's not one scheduled okay if you want to use the college street project as uh as a guide I think you're gonna you'll that'll be a good one so how much of the college street project is going to be from Amherst college and how much is the town we haven't decided yet okay we haven't I mean we just got started I mean we've just been kind of playing around with the layout um the ever source is getting all their stuff out of the way we reached out to the other utilities we've talked to them so it's slowly coming together and that has to be money for it too which um I'm not quite sure if there really will be any money okay yeah I mean for the I mean just a general question but I know when Amherst college when there's been a number of improvements you know in terms of safety around on College Street and was at South Pleasant Street and so on are those projects where the college was I mean I'm sure the college consulted the town but like was the college funding some of them themselves or was it also using uh town funds um it was a it was a lot of college money you know in some town money okay and we I mean we're talking to them they're very open to talk and do things um the college got kind of quiet after the downturn in 2008 is that when we had the downturn they got really quiet but they're they're talking more now so it's nice so any other comments from the committee just thank you for your work that was great thank you for the presentation and the task force is a great compromise yeah thank you I mean I think for one thing for me is that just I like to get about the timeframe of when lights will be replaced and I mean even when I read and I have done extensive reading like over the past year about safety and lighting um you know nighttime safety for pedestrians and drivers and other road users but just how quickly it's changing and how much even the researchers themselves don't know like one of the documents I was looking at recently and I know I sent a link to the counselors as well was about it was a federal highway um lighting guide and they just came out in 2023 and in each of the sections that they cover they say no these are things that we've learned and these are things that we still don't know and for example they some of the leading researchers in this area they still don't think that using like the cct like the warmness of the lighting is actually like a good way to measure to differentiate um in terms of how lights will impact people and so they feel like that that's sort of developed in the industry and so that people say we want lighting of certain kelvins compared to lighting of other kelvins but there really there's like so many other components um and also just in terms of you know what configurations of roadways with lighting what configurations of lighting like how everything interacts um and even the leading research themselves are still figuring it out and so I think particularly as a traffic safety researcher and somebody who's always focused on um saving lives and um preventing deaths I think so for me that's always a focus about particularly like what will we know you know how will the research be expanded what new knowledge will we have before like this implementation happens and making sure that whatever detailed standards we develop aren't out of date by the time that happens um and I mean federal highway you know in the US DOT and mass DOT they're all committed to a safe systems approach which is really to like save lives on the roadways to save all lives um and even in cases where there are any sort of follows like international vision zero principles that um you know even if there are situations where the driver error or pedestrian error or are so and are contributing to people's own risks and people's own injuries and even people's own deaths like for example with drunk divers for example but just to also like work on saving those lives as well so I mean that's my that's where I come at this issue from and that's why when I originally made comments on the proposal a year ago um and it was pretty clear that the original proposal which is so different from what we have now but that it really hadn't looked at traffic safety at all at night except for from like a crime perspective for pedestrians so but thank you I appreciate all the work that's gone into it so okay um well so I guess the question is so um I mean so the counselors the sponsors just sent us the they are detailed um latest version of the policy they sent a cover memo they sent the task force um I mean it's a little much for us all to like absorb right now and I know we want to end the meeting in 20 minutes um so I guess the just a question to the TAC members who are here and I know uh Chris has to leave in about five minutes but you know from this moving forward the extent to which the TAC would like to make feedback to the TSO and the council um whether people want to review the documents I just forwarded them to you um I received them from Mandi about an hour ago and if um if people want to look them over and then send me comments alone I can incorporate those into a feedback document and send that around for review again we can't do any of it interactively um to make sure that we comply with open meeting law but um that's an option I know in the past sometimes right that I've drafted something and then uh people have been told to send their Kim months to Kim not to volunteer Kim because Kim wasn't able to make it tonight but that we could do something similar um TSO is meeting on Thursday on this um and so if people agree that like the task force is a good idea I know we could speak to that I mean as a TAC we could say we support the task force if if people have other feedback that'd be helpful to hear so so I don't know Marcus or Chris or Stefan or Joe so you're wanting to hear right now no I mean just like in general I mean just in general I mean I know I know that none of the four of you have thought about this as much as I have so um and just as a TAC you know what do you think that is like the best pass forward and um do we want to just as a TAC while we're in session now you know in the next like 15 10 15 minutes do we want to take any kind of motion and send any overall feedback to now I'd like to um spend the time and read the report okay sure okay I'd prefer to read through it and okay all right thank you all right that sounds like what we'll do then Chris does that sound okay to you yeah okay great all right so I guess that's the end of our discussion for tonight um if you also want I can send you our comments that we sent on the previous draft yeah of the continuing disagreements so and I need to be reviewing it too um I mean the I just took a brief look at the cover memo while we were talking it's clear that it's clear that the council sponsors like are using the memo to outline the areas of disagreement so we'll see how that goes so all right well thank you thank you all for that thank you Mandy so are you guys thinking you're thinking you're gonna send comments to Tracy and potentially the TAC will um do comments for the TSO meeting is that right yeah I could compile people's comments if people want to send them individual to me I mean what what I've heard is right the people generally support the work that's been done and the attention that's been paid and to generally support the idea the task force but if people want to send specific comments I will compile those if you could please send us to me like by the end of the weekend that would be very helpful and then well actually Monday's the holiday so you know by the end of Monday I'll make sure that they get submitted okay thank you all right so thank you Mandy thank you okay so um let's see what other businesses we have I didn't have too much else um so while we were in this session you know in terms of others updates that was the next item of our agenda I guess before Chris leaves actually which is going to be in five minutes if we could just set the date for our next meeting um do we want to try to meet like sometimes we do meet twice a month and sometimes we meet months a month is there an interest in meeting on um so not next week next week as I said is a TSO meeting so we can meet again on the 16th how does that sound to I mean I'm sorry on the 18th I'm sorry the 19th sorry I'm I'm a little tired so for my conference um does the 19th work for people to meet the people who are here currently which is five of us okay great I can do that yeah great okay thank you yeah I'll make it work all right thank you guys I really appreciate that um and if you do know anybody who wants to join TAC um we do have the vacancy now I did get I was emailed information about one person who was interested so I may try to connect with them but um it's always good if we can have a full committee again um okay let's see what else the um Tracy you said there's one more position yes uh well since Tate left yeah okay yeah I mean I did um somebody said when they were out campaigning that they met somebody who's really interested in transportation and so that person was encouraged to like fill out a one of those interest forms I think if there's I think I'm not sure the town manager's office will take it up until they've received a couple different forms but if we do find that we're having issue making quorum then we could ask for somebody to be replaced and I also saw Tate I was at um I know Stefan was there too I was at MassDOT's annual moving together conference which focuses on different types of mobility and safety and um and I saw our former member Tate Coleman there um he's very busy these days with the micro mobility project he's doing for the Berkshire Regional Transit Agency and it just made a grad student and he just won a graduate fellowship like a national fellowship so he's continued to do great things but unfortunately not with our committee okay so one thing I wanted to um so in terms of status of road improvement projects Gilbert do you have any updates for us on those you were saying that the is there still work to be done on route nine in the North Hampton Road um on North Hampton Road there's just a little bit of work to be done there's some driveway aprons and just the striping is the biggest thing left to do out there there's a couple drainage issues they have to resolve but other than that it's almost 90 98% done great so I have one question is um on the section that's closest to town on the north side the path is very wide so is that intended to be a multi-use path that would include bikes as well as pedestrians though even though it's not really lines like there's no lines or anything for that do you know I mean the sidewalk yeah the sidewalk well because it's like 10 feet or it's quite big now it's meant to be an off-street bike lane so there's a bike lane and a sidewalk there they had to move the bike lane onto the shoulder where the sidewalk is because there's a huge Verizon duct under there they couldn't move okay so will that actually be striped to like differentiate between bikes and pads it's supposed to be yes it's not going to be kind of a it's not like a multi-use path okay got it all right thanks that's helpful I mean I know that you know sometimes just from going to the disability access advisory meetings that some of us are concerned about multi-use paths or even multi-use paths where the uses are separated just in terms of like the safety but but I thought that was nice um and then the other the other projects and and pomeroy lane I'm hearing a lot of really great things about the roundabout and uh yeah it's kind of fun to stand out there while you're working and listen to people as I drive by what are they saying it's pretty much they like it there's very good a few negative comments which is fun excellent yeah usually we're all paving it's it's usually a lot of negative comments even though we're paving but this is actually kind of cool good that's great and do you have any other big projects that are going on like this season so we might start paving again here shortly depending on weather um so we may have some more roads we're paving we they're definitely going to be working on college street down to this all the way to the substation I'm out of here guys okay bye thank you um this may work this may work on boltwood in front of town hall which is part of the north common project um hopefully we'll get the Kellogg street there's a little section that's not finished of sidewalk which is supposed to be some it's called perky pave it's a per permeable um pavement is supposed to go in it's a brand name um hopefully we'll get that done before the fall um and now the plan with boltwood is still to make it um that whole section from main street to route nine to make it one way going north is that correct correct parking on both sides when is that expected to be implemented yeah when the project's done I don't know that's so well no what I'm saying it won't be like implemented kind of in the interim it will no what's the time frame for the project overall um though they'll wrap up sometime in mid-summer next year probably what about the um stop signs on wildflower or wherever it is up in the wood in the woods and stop signs on wildflower that hasn't been brought up as of something for us to look at yet so I um sat in well I missed it actually because I had another conflict but last Thursday there at the TSO meeting they talked about the north street I mean north pleasant street from eastman to pine yes because I was coming back as because one it had been a referral item from the last council and the idea was to have an update on it um my takeaway from that was that there still really isn't much funding to do the work there but that they're the TSO may look at one specific area like where the near where the bus stop is um well or something so there's funding to rehab sidewalks so if there's a plan for an area to rehab sidewalks there's mine to do that we're working on west street right now we're going from um palmeroy to uh crocker farm that's just that's just sidewalk rehab money um yeah go ahead yeah north pleasant street has sidewalks already and we kind of have a plan on what we want to do so we just started doing pieces of it and the council's like got a little concerned and some neighbors got concerned because we were implementing changes and then there's also a developer who were making changes no one wanted so we got sucked into the anti-development discussion so now we're going to probably bring the whole project back and go through it again when TSO is talking about like how much they could do like before the end of the current council too so yes they're running out of days so and um okay um that makes sense I mean I it still sounds like a lot of it doesn't have funding so I mean I'm not sure what had happened with that but I remember back in the summer of 2021 when this first came before TSO and then we went out and we did the two different site visits with you and um like we did have comments then and so and I had shared that information with the TSO chair but I will share it again just to like make sure because and then in fact I mean even before I was on TAC like I know that the pre like the earlier TAC like had reviewed the project as well so I mean TAC has looked at that area quite a bit too which I hope would could inform the discussion a little bit so uh although north a lot of sidewalks next year are going to be on um we're doing boltwood down by the common south common because we have a grant we have to spend the money we're also doing sidewalks on um uh belcher town road past southeast street up to colonial village so we have a grant for that so those sidewalks would be the sidewalk areas we attack next year and those sidewalks be widened because those are on such busy streets that bikes really can't go on those streets well you know if we possibly could if people didn't have conservation land butting up against it and all these other things um we're grinding in as much as we can um there's actually a house in the public way on belcher town road um I don't someone's proposing moving a house out there but I don't know if that's the house we need to move um but how did the house end up on the public way because it was built back in like the 18s 18 well 1790s that that way back back so could it be like real so I know and where I grew up that there was like a well there was a large there was a large property and they realized when it got resurveyed that part of the property was going like into the public way and so and they had like big stone walls like a lot of like work at the border of the property but they just relocated it all like they realized at some point they like made the property owner like give it back yeah but the house is actually in the road so it's not in the road it's in the sidewalk oh all right so if we want to widen sidewalks there we have to move the house or we have to shift the road uh north um so um but that that's those are where we're going to go next year so there's north hampton we're not north hampton belch town road um boltwood um we'll be working on college street a little bit but not a lot um but those are the the two areas oh southeast street in front of the in front of the old school gets some work next year as well um and hopefully that dovetails in with the school work across the street but I'm not sure it will and Kendrick park or their sidewalks there the Kendrick park plan is ready to go we just ran out of money um so we'll see how that goes so the other thing that came up at the TSO meeting um was just about people asking about like their roads and paving and things and just like where are there there are where are their streets on the list so I don't know if people have been reaching out to you but it seems like people wanted to get updates about that and I I mean I thought you did a lot of that those decisions like based on the index that was developed like when you did the overall evaluation for the road surfaces themselves right yes yes I mean there's a there's a paving contract waiting for money right now and we think we figured out how to fund it so everything came in overpriced so we'll try to get that one that one hopefully we'll get a bit oh it's already been hopefully we'll award the contract before the end of the middle of the month and then we can get started sometime before the end of the month okay great that's great I mean what what is sort of the limit of when you can continue to pave well usually when around Thanksgiving is when all the plants okay so as long as the weather is as long as it's not raining and as long as it's above 45 degrees and temperatures rising we can pretty much pave yeah great um and one update I saw which is like too late to put on the agenda but that the um well the council on was it Monday to the council on Monday on that they are proving like the idea of the safety zones they have approved that they want to look yeah they've accepted it so now they can fund studies and then see what the studies so um I know Marcus had sent me like some emails related to this but just uh for Stefan and Joe so there's a section on mass general laws that if you approve it and the council recently approved it then you can create safety zones in certain areas around like schools and daycares and other uses but it does require like to do some studies and so on before you actually create those zones but now now that this section has been approved they can be created like once that work is done yeah so I mean realistically go for I mean do you think that they're well I guess if you have to hire consultants for the safety studies like it could be a year or two before any safety zones are created would that be your realistically thinking so yeah actually to tell the truth we have lots of work but we don't have a lot of consultants knocking on the door to do it I mean our surveyors our surveyors who are using are busy and they're not um it's just interesting there's a lot of work to do and not many people who can have time to do it and so what's the time frame with the study that's that the the town just like signed a consultant to do it with the Fort River School intersections well they came back and they don't like a scope they want to change the scope a little bit after we had a discussion so we're proposing an alternate scope and I haven't got the alternate scope back so would that just be like um you know like I mean what would be the time frame for that I guess would that be something done in the next like year hopefully we'll get it done before the spring okay do you really want to know what the consultant said but you can't tell anybody what I told you this well you're being recorded so I don't know you might not want to say it but some people do watch the meetings but yeah I want to know why we chose that site for the school over the other they said we have to get our pocketbook out for the school site we chose interesting and there's yeah that's all I'll say okay there's other colorful but I'm sure it was pretty cool sure I've never had them tell me things they've never talked to me like that before and I was like really wow okay well it's good to have those good closer consultant relationships so all right so I guess um I didn't have anything else uh Marcus, Defon, Joe, do you guys have anything you want to cover at the meeting? No we're good no we're good okay so then I'll make a motion to adjourn uh does anybody want a second? They all second it all right yeah well I can find my news revenue all right okay thank you see you guys bye thank you thank you Joe's cute baby who gets to come to our meeting so all right take care we'll see you next time we're all about transportation soon I'm sure all right all right thank you