Board of Aldermen - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everyone. Good evening. And welcome to the Tuesday, 04/21/2026 meeting of the Carrboro Town Council. And so smiling right here directly in front of me is our illustrious Carbara Poet Laureate, Doctor. Amanda Bennett. We're very excited to hear from Doctor. Bennett as she opens our meeting for us. So welcome, Doctor. Bennett. Doctor. Good evening, everyone. Good evening.

Tonight, I wanted to share a little poem from Adrienne Murray Brown. She's a local activist and thinker rooted in black feminism and community. This poem is from her collection, Loving Corrections, and it is called A Spell for the Spring Equinox. Let us remind the world how many shades of green there are, how together we look like life itself, how tender the dirt gets in the spring. Let us burst open one multitudinous bud, unfurled by that internal pressure of petal, ripe, yes, and soft.

You will learn to inhale us. Let us punch up from the earth a lava bright and abundant dreams of tomorrow, flowing molten and free, turning ignorance to ash. Let us act like we got some roots. Know that we are held deeply even as we dance toward the golden breast of the sun, life delectable again. Let us remind ourselves that life moves ever towards life. This is a season of our nectar. Beloveds, this is a season worth the sting. Thank you.

JANETTE Fantastic, Doctor. Bennett. And before you leave the microphone, aren't there some events going on this month, or have been going on? There's one coming up on Monday?

Yes, yes. Unfortunately, will be out of town, but there are some amazing poets facilitating at Poetry Popcorn and Pie. It's a wonderful opportunity to fellowship and connect with other folks who are interested in the written word.

Thank Yeah. You for that.

Yeah, thank you.

And thank you for the poem. I appreciate it. So I do have oh, Council Member Mayor Pro Tem, actually, Mayor Pro Tem, welcome. He is joining us virtually for the meeting this evening. Can you hear us? Everything's okay?

Yes. I can hear you. Can you hear me?

Yes. Perfect. Alright. Welcome virtually. So I do wanna acknowledge that he is in the meeting, virtually. So I have, two proclamations. So I'm going to start with proclamation in honor of Small Business Week. And joining us to accept is Sam Nguyen of Say It With Glass. Welcome. Small Business Week.

And whereas, the U. S. Small Business Administration sponsors National Small Business Week every year to recognize the contributions of entrepreneurs and small business owners. And whereas small businesses are the backbone of the economy, creating jobs, supporting local communities, and fostering innovation. And whereas small businesses account for a significant portion of North Carolina's economy, with more than 1,100,000 small businesses in the state employing more than 1,800,000 people.

And whereas small businesses in Carrboro play an essential role in supporting a vibrant community, making up 96% of businesses and employing more than 3,350 workers, providing eventual I'm sorry, providing essential services, creating new jobs, and supporting our local economy to help make Carrboro a wonderful place to live, work, and do business. And whereas many people still dream of starting their own businesses, and there are numerous sources of assistance. The Small Business Administration provides loans and free counseling. In North Carolina, organizations and programs such as the Carolina Small Business Development Fund, the Small Business Center Network, the Small Business and Technology and Development Center, the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina, and others can help prospective business owners learn how to start a business. And whereas the town's Economic Development Department, John Hartman Brown, supports the business community with a special emphasis on locally owned businesses by serving as an information hub to help businesses succeed, administering loan programs to support job creation, business retention, and energy efficiency partnering with the Carrboro Tourism Development Authority, the Chapel Hill Orange County Visitors Bureau and the Carrboro Business Alliance to promote local businesses and support networking among and maintaining a list of black, indigenous, and people of color owned businesses.

Now, therefore, I, Barbara M. Fouchey, mayor of the town of Carrboro, North Carolina, do hereby proclaim May 3 through 05/09/2026, to be Small Business Week in Carrboro. I encourage all residents to support local businesses during this week and throughout the year, appreciating and celebrating the very unique expertise small businesses offer and the economic resilience they foster. This, the April 2026, I am going to present this to Sam Nguyen of Say It With Glass. Would you like to say a few words?

Yeah, sure. Oh, yeah, come on. Thank you so much. Well,

I'm glad you mentioned all of those organizations because I feel a little bit like the poster child for starting a business from scratch. And I definitely took advantage of many of those as I was getting started. Again, my name's Sam Nguyen of Say It With Glass. We're a stained glass studio community workspace and generally creative hub serving creatives of all ages, including our littlest artists. And it's an honor to be in front of you all today accepting the proclamation.

I don't need to say any more about how important our small businesses are. But in the economic times that we are in right now, it is certainly a harder and harder landscape for small business owners as they're getting started. And I feel very thankful to have purposely put roots down here in Carrboro because I'm feeling those deep roots, as were mentioned earlier by our poet laureate. As I was getting going, there was always someone at the council or at town hall that I could reach out to with questions. Our chamber of commerce has been absolutely incredible in getting me connected.

If they didn't know the answer to someone I needed, to connect with so that this, educator artist could get out of her garage and front room and into a brick and mortar space because the glassy people were asking, when are we going to do that? Because we're outgrowing this space. So now we connect with over 1,000 people a year in our studio space. We're coming up just on our second year. And it feels like such a treasure to be a part of Carrboro.

I taught at Carrboro Elementary up until this past December. And so it was a scary transition, but one I feel even more sure of every day, thanks to the support of the council, the initiatives that you all pass, the robust community resources that we have at our fingertips. And so I'm very proudly here to receive the proclamation on behalf of business owners here in Carrboro. And I want to thank you guys for all that you do to help support us. No, thank you.

Dean, something going on with my voice. Where is council member Merrill? You want to take delight in every ride? I'm gonna call up Councilmember Merrill. He likes, you know, he loves this. Know, bike month, bike to school day, bike to work week, and bike to work day as my voice acts like it wants to leave me. I'm gonna turn this over to Councilmember Merrill. That's my guy, thank you.

As the resident bike nerd on the council, it is my honor. So whereas National Bike Month is a reminder that biking can be added to many people's transportation routines, especially considering that 28% of all trips are a mile or shorter and 40% of all trips are two miles or shorter according to the national national household travel survey. And whereas transportation is now the leading source of greenhouse gas emissions in North Carolina, and biking is an easy way for people to reduce their carbon footprint and advance the town's climate action goals by reducing miles driven by single occupancy vehicles and relying less on nonrenewable resources for transportation and whereas high quality bicycle infrastructure can help communities achieve equity goals by expanding the availability of transportation alternatives that are less expensive less expensive and more accessible for more people. And whereas National Bike Month is also an opportunity to experience the joys and health benefits of biking to get outside during the spring and to see and experience the community at a different scale and pace. And whereas in 2010, which is now a while ago, Carrboro became the first community in North Carolina to be designated a silver level bicycle friendly community by the League of American Bicyclists and numerous town plans including policies that support biking such as Carrboro Connects comprehensive plan, the updated bike plan, and the Safe Routes to School strategic action plan currently being updated, and we'll get a presentation on that tonight.

And whereas the town will promote biking at several upcoming events, including Carrboro Bike to School Day on May 6, Carbboro Bike Breakfast on May 12, Carbboro Bike on Bus Workshop on May 23, and several other events organized with local partners including Shift Chapel Hill Carbboro in the town of Chapel Hill, and whereas more work is needed at local and regional levels to ensure that more residents can participate in planning for infrastructure improvements and have equitable access to bicycle infrastructure so that biking both on its own or in combination with translate transit are reliable options for commuting and for meeting everyday needs. Now therefore, I, Jason Merrill, on behalf of Barbara M. Fruci, mayor of the town of Carrboro, North Carolina, do hereby proclaim May 2026 to be bike month in the town of Carrboro. Thank you very much. No.

This is the April 2026.

Thank you. Thank

you, council member Merrill. Thank you, madam mayor. Thank you, other other members of the town council. And it's always great to get another one another bike month proclamation added to last year's. But I I want I just want to to show this list of events that we've that we've given to all the members of the council and also to our town manager and town clerk.

And for anyone watching, if if you would like to see this list of of events for for bike month, we have lots of things going on in Chapel Hill and in Carrboro. Just go to the biking page of our town website, carrboronc.gov. And I would love to encourage everybody to come to our bike breakfast on the twelfth. That's going to start at 07:00. We'll be on the Lubbockton Bikeway handing out biscuits from Eagles Deli, coffee from Open Eye Cafe, lots of other good stuff for our cycling community to celebrate and promote cycling here in Carrboro.

And with that, thank you very much.

Thank you so much, Becca, for those comments. As Becca said, just lots of Viking events, some of which have started already. And all the way through the May, the Recycler is also hosting Saturday open workshops at Doctor. Martin Luther King Jr. Park in Carver from 10AM to 2PM.

And there are dates on this wonderful flyer as we head into bike month, which is always a fun time here in town. And we're going to move right on down to the town manager's update. Town manager Tony does not have any updates, so we're going to move right on down to public comment. Do we have anyone to sign up, Mr. Joyner?

No one signed up.

Okay. So no one signed up for public comment. But is there anyone in the audience that has a public comment but just neglected to sign up? All right. Council members, we're going to move down to the consent agenda. We have three items on the consent agenda. I have not heard from anyone questions or about pulling any of these consent agenda items. So, I'm believing that we can adopt the entire consent agenda by a single motion. Okay. Do I get a second?

Seconded. All right. It's been moved and properly seconded that we adopt the consent agenda. All in favor, please say aye. Any Thank you. There's going be a lag there. That's okay. And so the motion does pass seven-zero. The consent agenda has been adopted. Town Manager Tony, we're down to the general agenda. I believe there's one information item.

Yes, Madam Mayor. There's one general agenda item tonight. It is information only. This is update about our Safe Routes to School strategic action plan. And, our PZI administrator, Tina Moon, will introduce our consultants for the evening.

Great. Good evening, everyone.

Thank you, and thank you, Lamar, for

starting our presentation. I'm pleased to introduce you to Jennifer Baldwin and her team from Three Oaks Engineering out of Durham. Some of you may remember Jennifer. She was one of the co leads on the update to the bike plan not too long ago. So great timing to have that proclamation today. And so as I turn it over to them, I'd also like to take this opportunity to kind of acknowledge the work of Becca and Berto say they've been the staff leads for this project, which is really important for these to be successful. So with that, Jennifer, Annie. Thank you, Tina.

Awesome. Thank you guys for having us on the agenda today. And my name is Jennifer Baldwin. And I'm going to go through if I figure out how to advance the slides. Yes. Okay. First, like Tina said, we couldn't be more excited to work on this with all of you and especially grateful for the collaboration. Town of Carrboro staff have been hand in hand with us throughout all this process and really appreciate the insight that have been has been given throughout the process. So this graphic just really shows what we've done and where we are now in the process. So we went through our first step is to make sure we were familiar with all of your previous plans, including the original Safe Routes to School Action Plan.

So this is an update, not a redo. So it's really an opportunity to see what has been accomplished since the first Safe Routes Plan was done, you know, why or why not, and really kind of grade where we've come. And then also take on all of the other documents that have been adopted since that first Safe Routes plan was adopted. So, you know, looking at that bike plan, making sure that all of those recommendations are upheld and we understand, but also taking into consideration a lot of your strategic initiatives, such as really focusing on equity and climate change and a healthier community for Carrboro. The next step was the heart of this process is engaging with the schools in Carrboro.

And I'll talk a little bit later about just the great experience we've had working with each principal of each school and staff and parents. And so, we couldn't have gotten to this point of recommendations without all of the great engagement. And so, I hope you'll see we really tried to prioritize hands on engagement, giving lots of different creative ways. Annie's going to talk a little bit more about the things that we did, but we really put that as the number one priority when we kicked this project off last fall. So once we had all the engagement, then we started to analyze what are the existing conditions just from our more technical perspective, making sure we were up to date on program projects.

We'll show you in this presentation. You all have a lot going on. NCDOT has a lot going on, so making sure that we're tying into what's coming online soon and identifying some of those quick wins. And then where we are right now is we're drafting that plan. And so this is a critical step to get your feedback and input.

These are still preliminary ideas, so nothing, of course, is yet set in stone. We're still working through, some of these, so there's still opportunity to adjust with your feedback and with some feedback from each school as well. Our goal in the schedule is to have a draft plan released to the public in the summer and then come back to you for adoption of the plan in the fall. So where we started is, again, because it's not a new Safe Routes plan, we started from the vision and goals that was the original Safe Routes Action Plan. But that plan had a lot of goals.

I think there were, like, 20. And so we decided to distill them down into four very clear goals to improve safety, expand access, support a healthy community, and build a lasting Safe Routes to School program. And we talked a little bit about equity is woven into each of those goals. So you'll see that too when we get to some of the performance measures and some of the actions we're currently undergoing. But equity is definitely a clear goal of the plan, and it's a principle of each of these four specific goals.

The vision statement is to make sure all students deserve a safe route to school and the option to walk, bike, or roll when it works for them regardless of their age, race, ability, or neighborhood. And so the keyword there is when it works for them because we do recognize there are some students that don't have the option, that live too far based on the districting, based on things that are outside of your control as the town of Carrboro. So we really tried hard to think about different ways and program opportunities so that those kids could also have an option, but recognizing that there's got to be flexibility built into that vision statement. And so we looked at those five schools in Carrboro, which I'll talk about, but I wanted to also spend a highlight of what we've currently and actively been working on is also these regional connections. We heard loud and clear through the engagement is that there are a lot of families that live in Carrboro, but their kids go to school in Chapel Hill.

And it's a combined school district. And so how do we navigate that regional boundaries? The average person doesn't know when the town of Carrboro ends and Chapel Hill begins. And so, you know, as an add on to this process, the staff recognized us early on. We worked with NCDOT and IMD, so we created a new task to basically split the town into three different focus areas.

So we could look at Chapel Hill schools where the families are living in Carrboro, and we could look at what are the Carrboro routes that could make it easier to get to those Chapel Hill schools. We've been working with the school district as well as the town of Chapel Hill. We just met with them, I think, week and a half ago to kind of pour through some existing conditions, identify making sure we understood as a project team all the things that Chapel Hill is doing on a Safe Routes to School front and identify where those critical routes are. And so you'll see in that in the draft plan, we'll have a chapter devoted specifically to these regional connections, identifying those opportunities. And there's a little bit more coordination that needs to happen, so we're not getting into the weeds on those projects for you today.

But this is just a list of some of the core roads that I know that some of you have heard about, and a lot of the residents are very concerned. So we're we're working with NCDOT, Chapel Hill, and the school district to see what type of regional improvements, can be identified. The heart of the plan is really focused on these five schools. And so, we'll start from the North. This whole presentation starts from North Carrboro with Morris Grove Elementary.

This school wasn't included in the first because it wasn't built when your first Safe Routes plan was adopted. So it's been a new opportunity to engage with Principal Rickard. It's a unique scenario for Morris Grove because they don't currently have a walk zone. So you'll see that there's none of the brown area around the school, and it's not very walkable. But what I'll talk about later, there's some improvements that are coming online later this year that I think will will close some of that gap, and we had some great conversations about what could be done.

The other thing to note, Morris Grove has a really large district, so kids are coming from really far. That's just not feasible to walk or roll to school, so that was fairly unique to Morris Grove. McDougall Campus, great, co co shared campus between the elementary with principal Jones and the middle school with, principal Horn, and a lot of active walking and rolling that's currently happening today. Some harder to cross streets, which we'll talk about, but great engagement with that campus. And then, Carrboro Elementary.

So, both Carrboro Elementary and McDougall campus were included in your original Safe Routes plan. Carrboro Elementary has a really healthy walking, rolling. It's your downtown school, so it has access to more amenities and facilities. And a a lovely principal, Roman, who was so engaged, has a really great team of both staff and teachers that were really active throughout the process. And then the other school that we we worked with was Carrboro High.

And so that school also wasn't included because your original plan only looked at elementary and middle schools. This this time, made a concerted effort to bring in the high school to see what what could be done and engage. I will say engaging high school students is like they're aliens. They're hard to engage with. We had to be really creative.

Becca went many times during lunch, which we'll talk about. But engagement and programming and infrastructure for high school students is very different than it is for the other schools. So, you know, Carrboro High kind of sits by itself and looking at ways to improve some of the infrastructure that's there. And then also, again, kind of like Morris Grove, Carrboro High is a huge district. Kids are coming from all over, and we're digging into the, school district student data as we speak. And almost half of the students that go to Carrboro High live in Chapel Hill. So again, the Carrboro High recommendations that we're identifying has that real importance of the collaboration with the town of Chapel Hill. And I'm gonna turn it over to Annie to talk about engagement.

Hi, everyone. My name is Annie Uman. I'm a planner with Three Oaks Engineering. I'm really excited to talk to you all about what kind of engagement we did. So our engagement approach prioritized equity. We really tried to meet people where they were and provided all materials in English and Spanish. And we also really prioritized user expertise. We let students, parents, faculty, staff, district leadership tell us the the who, the what, and the where of the safety issues that they were aware of and challenges so that then we could dig in and interrogate the why. You know, why don't more students walk to school when they live nearby? Why do they or don't they have certain travel patterns and routes?

Our approach also really emphasized program sustainability like Jennifer mentioned. This effort included three new Carrboro schools that were not in the 2012 plan Morris Grove, McDougall Middle, and Carrboro High. So in engaging with these schools, we really sought to establish a relationship between the school community and the Carrboro Safe Fast to School teams that that relationship can last through future iterations of this program and also, of course, future collaboration and program opportunities. So what did we actually do? Well, we reached over 1,600 people in the community through a variety of both digital and physical engagement methods.

Our online survey offered in both English and Spanish was live for about four months and yielded over 300 responses. This survey was full of rich information. It informed so much of our engagement process as well as our as well as our recommendations development. Another really rich data source for us were walk audits that we conducted at each school. Attendees included students.

We had several very cute and bright Carrboro Elementary safety patrol officers lead the way for us. We also had several parents, siblings, faculty, staff, administrators join us at each of these locations. Whether or not we did a, you know, a distinct scheduled walk kind of varied, but we left each walk audit with a huge map that was marked up with a draft travel route that we all collaborated on together where we all identified this seems to be the main way that most students go. And it was also marked up with pain points. Well, why don't students go this way?

It's because there's no lighting here. Or opportunities, well, would really go this way if x y z were different. So we left each walk audit with great relationships and really rich narrative about the lived experience of the students. I should also say that, you know, we did many pop up events at both town wide and school events. We had tables, we distributed swag and print materials like bookmarks and postcard mailers.

This was a great opportunity to just have some casual conversations with folks. We gathered this big list of comments from everybody. We also would typically have a lot of interactive activities, so people could tell us through placing a pom pom which what is most important. If you could only prioritize one change, what would you do? And like Jennifer mentioned, Becca did some great tabling at Carrboro High.

It's important to note that our engagement process was very live. We shifted gears halfway through when we realized that Carrboro High is a bit difficult to reach as Jennifer mentioned. So we really deployed an additional targeted approach where we launched a teen specific survey survey about a third of the way through our engagement process and deployed these more targeted efforts such as tabling in the cafeteria. After that, we did bring Carrboro up to speed with the engagement statistics of the other schools. So I think that's a really great example of what an iterative process this

was. So

our engagement findings really informed every step of the planning process. Nearly every recommendation that we're gonna share with you today can be traced back to a written comment or a conversation that we had with somebody. Findings of course really varied by school and neighborhood, roadway, development context. You know, for example, Morris Grove only has one route to school, the Twin Creeks Greenway. On the other hand, Carrboro High is surrounded by a relatively hilly terrain.

So even if a lot of students live close by, it's still very challenging for cyclists because of that. So there's a ton of variety in the information that we found. But there were a few very strong themes that came up across the whole all five schools. I will say very positively, there is seems to be a very strong community support for efforts like this. Many many people shared that they really want to be able to walk and bike and roll to school.

And the real meat of what we found is why don't they and what can we do to make that happen. We heard there's probably three big themes of things that we're hoping to change with our recommendations. The first being driver behavior. So many people shared stories about near misses that they've personally experienced because maybe someone driving a car was didn't yield to a pedestrian, didn't obey stops or stop signs or signals. So we do have some recommendations to address that.

Another big finding that we found is that for a lot of Carrboro families, unsafe conditions due to a lack of facilities and dangerous crossings are a huge barrier for walking, biking, rolling to and from school. These issues can manifest in a wide variety of ways such as visibility issues because of overgrown brush or a lack of lighting or just a lack of pedestrian crossings. And there were a few folks like Jennifer mentioned that they, you know, when they filled out the survey, they said, Yes. I do have a child in the district, but I don't live in Carrboro. And these folks really echoed what we've already shared about how this is a small but mighty contingent of the people that we're trying to help with this plan who really need that inter cross jurisdictional planning to meet their needs as well.

So we have organized our recommendations into three big buckets. The first being our school travel routes. We've identified based off of our walk audits, but also some other existing conditions and analytical work. The main route that students seem to be taking to school today, it's important to mention that this is not necessarily a formally recommended travel route that is going to be the safest route possible. We are communicating to the public this seems to be what people do and if you want to, you know, have company or take a route that people seem to trust, this is a great one for you to take.

Another big bucket is program recommendations. We're gonna be sharing that at the very end, some ideas that are town wide. What can we do just in the town to improve safety for all students versus what are some changes we can programs we can employ at schools to make walking, biking, rolling to school safer and more fun. And lastly, we have infrastructure. Like Jennifer mentioned, you all have a lot going on.

So we take special care to point out what are the things that are currently they have some level of commitment. There are going to happen whether or not, you know, we this plan supports that, but we wanted to really highlight and make it known that these efforts are already in the works and they are gonna help support our effort. And then the next three priority, long term, and longer term. Those are our time horizon buckets. Of course, we can't do everything tomorrow even though we wish we could.

So priority projects are ones that we've identified as being really directly on the travel route or really close to it or addressing really immediate safety deeds. These above all else, these ones should really try to be prioritized first. For long term and longer term recommendations, these of course have a longer time horizon because of a variety of reasons. Perhaps they're more complex, they require more study, they require additional coordination, they're still very important and address needs, but they just may not be able to be feasible in a very short amount of time. In the longer term, similar to long term, very similar level of increased complexity, perhaps investment, coordination.

But also these are big, big ideas and we don't want that we don't want to lose sight of the things that maybe feel impossible if they can really help somebody. So we took special care to include those as well that we it's a vision for us to work towards together, these bigger ideas. And lastly, as we get into the nitty gritty of what these infrastructure recommendations look like, we are working from a toolbox of improvements that we're including in the plan. So we pulled a list of countermeasures from the Triangle West Transportation Planning Organization's Vision Zero Action Plan. When building out our list of countermeasures, we specifically chose to select from the Triangle West TPO's toolbox because these have already been vetted and studied by Carbrough's own parent TPO.

And so in sourcing our toolbox from a single organization, we can also ensure consistency in their feasibility and application across the schools regardless of their location and context so that all schools if they're if one school and another are receiving the same thing, they're receiving the same guidance that support those as well. And additionally, it should be said that working from the Triangle West TPO's Vision Zero Action Plan, that was a really important way for us to maintain alignment with our key goals here, which is above all else, safety. And it also importantly connects the Safe Routes to School Plan with a very similar effort, Vision Zero, and maintains a sort of continuity of efforts between these two different organizations. And I will hand it off to Jennifer.

Okay. Great. So now we're gonna get into the school by school infrastructure recommendations. And before we start, we thought we would just put this on one town wide slide. I'm sure you're all very familiar with this list, but there's a lot going on.

And so a lot of these projects are key. If if you didn't have these already programmed, they would have been priority projects for each school. And so some of these projects like the Jones Creek Greenway, filling that that's a critical gap for Moores Grove Elementary, adding Hillsborough Road bike lanes, you know, to have more bike options for kids going to Carrboro Elementary and or McDougall Elementary and Middle School, all the way down to the Morgan Creek Greenway phase that's gonna be starting and close and be able to provide more opportunities for Carrboro High connectivity. And so just really excited about these. Want to mention, I think, understanding some of the program projects, they have various level, like Annie mentioned, of investment.

And so the timelines are still not immediate. So we're still also looking for quick build opportunities for some of these projects that are still maybe several years out so that we can close some of those safety needs. But that becomes challenging of what do you invest in when you know something is longer term. So that's some of the the discussion we wanted to have with you that we're still working through in terms of implementation. So we're gonna start at Morris Grove, and I know you guys have this in your packet.

So at any time, stop me if you have questions. I'm gonna go through these fairly quickly just so we can get to more discussion, but please feel free to flag me if I'm going too fast. But as I mentioned, Morris Grove is kind of a unique school in the system. It doesn't have a walk zone. There was honestly a lot of parents that were concerned this effort was going to add a walk zone.

And they very they clutch their carpool line very closely. Some of them, especially at Moores Grove, we were there. And an hour before school releases, there's already a pretty significant line. And a lot of that is to reflect a lot of the students are coming from fairly far away. But within that Lake Hogan area and the neighborhood, there's a lot of kids that live there that do currently walk or bike maybe once once a week, maybe some twice a week, a lot of weather dependent, but there's that that gap.

And so adding in the Jones Creek Greenway is gonna make a big difference. Our first you can see once that is in, that's our school travel route. That's really the only option, which is to really capture students that live south of the school. And there aren't any students that were are within walkable distance that live east, north, or west of the school. So really having one travel route, you know, makes the most sense, and that's connecting down to the neighborhood.

And so we don't have any priority projects recommended for Morris Grove, and that's really to reflect the fact that you're already working on the priority project is filling that trail gap. And then once that is in place, there's some additional improvements that could be made that could help facilitate some broader walkability. The first is the Rogers Road. We know that there's some development happening on Rogers Road, so maybe there that could be leveraged. We really wanted to bring awareness to the Rogers Road connection.

That's also relevant for some of the Chapel Hill school coordination that I talked about earlier. But so working with NCDOT on Mount some crossing improvements along Rogers Road and some of the transit access access and first last mile connections. Tally Ho Trail is that main route east to west. Maybe having a direct connection at the at the end of Tally Ho to the new trail connection would provide some great connectivity. And then the Bowling Creek Greenway phase two project to also increase your overall Greenway Trail connectivity.

And then as a longer term big idea, we we talked a lot about Eubanks Road and what does that look like? It's the school's frontage road, you know, but Carbo doesn't make maintain much past the school. And so what does it look like? What investment would you make? There's really no student connections that you're connecting to from, you know, old NC 86. We worked and talked with Chapel Hill about have long term recommendations to do a multi use path as well as a bike lane on Eubank. So we just have here as a longer term to match that. Who knows what development could happen in the future, so we wanted to make sure that that was captured. Any questions about Morse Grove? Because we're gonna move on to McDougall.

Okay. McDougall campus. You can see here the difference. Like, there was probably 1,000 different options we could have made for the school travel routes. And like Annie said, we really use the students.

And especially our middle school audit, we really had those middle school students identify what routes are people taking, where they live. And so this was just a section, and we kind of worked our way almost like a spin wheel or spokes on a bike to make sure we were connecting kids no matter where they live. So coming from north from Homestead down Burlington Hill, coming down Hillsborough, looking at Park Avenue to Pathway to make that West connection and eventually connect to your Bowling Creek Trail. Quail Roose, which I'll talk about a little bit later, was where we heard a lot that a lot of kids are already walking on from Quail Roost to get to campus, and then looking at that James Street connection to connect down to Main Street, and then Old Fayetteville Road, which is where the school fronts specifically. And so like Annie said, I wanted to make sure and we're going to make sure in our draft plan this is very clear because we've identified these six roads of school travel routes, they does not mean they're safe.

It just means that these are the roads that connect the most students to campus. And so they help us prioritize the improvements. They could serve as a wayfinding for students, but we're going to make it very clear that they're not a reflection of safety. They're what we want to achieve and improve moving forward. And so we have a lot of priority projects as it relates to the McDougall campus.

I'm not going to go through each of them unless you want me to. Just a highlight from from this campus, we talked a lot about crossings and where can we cross safely. Looking at Old Fayetteville Road, you know, what that looks like at the school entrance, trying to improve. There's an existing crossing on Old Fayetteville that I can tell you from experience, people do not stop for even on midday when it's not the peak AM and PM. And so what can we do to bring more awareness to that?

Looking at a potential new mid block crossing just a little south from the school entrance at Stroud, which would connect down to Anderson Park, and we thought that that was great and connection. And there's a lot of existing middle school students that cross there anyway to use the park after school for some practice for track and other activities. And then on what I learned the most about McDougall campus, so even though it fronts technically on Old Fayetteville, it really is a lot of activity. The students are all coming from the Hillsborough side. So what they call the back of the school, especially the elementary school, the back of the school is really their front of school.

Where the bus drops off. There is more carpool kind of chaos happening on Hillsborough side of things. And so looking at what those neighborhood connections look like on Hillsborough, where those crossings are, there's some really good crossings, but what can we do to install curb extensions maybe to try and slow traffic? So I think what you'll hear are some of these themes is identifying these routes that are also on your high injury network. How can we get drivers to slow down and make them more aware that they're in the school zone?

And so the other key point here is the number five, James Street and West Main Street. And I should have mentioned, and we will have in the plan, NCDOT is a huge partner for this. We've met with them. They're aware of the planning process. We're going to be meeting with them again. Part of the implementation challenge that you all have is a lot of these recommendations are on state roads, which means you just have to work within the parameters of NCDOT. And they've been a great partner. They're willing to come to the table. They prioritize safety. So I'm not saying that that is necessarily a challenge.

It's just another layer of coordination that's necessary and another layer of process just to kind of work through. And so one of those is introducing mid block crossings is challenging because we want to make sure we're doing it safely. And some of these big arterials, such as this Main Street intersection at James, can be really hard to cross, but it also has some sight line distance because it's so close to NC 54 and the other signal. So just working through that, we've identified, hey, we need a crossing here. But the first step is just more feasibility and being able to get a little bit farther in feasibility than we could in this master planning process.

Some of the other priority recommendations is moving up north to Homestead At Claremont to install rapid flashing beacons to improve that crossing along Homestead. Homestead is another one of those big regional roadways that connect to some of the schools in Chapel Hill that Carville families are going to. We look specifically at some advisory walkways. You can't tell from this map here, but if you're looking at the school campus and middle school, a lot of the elementary school students, if they're coming from Quail Roost or the South, they have to walk through the middle school and along a road that has a lot of parking and teachers coming in. And so there's not a lot of pavement and not any room for sidewalks.

So an idea we had is could they just stripe out an advisory walkway so that the drivers could be aware and the students could know where they should sort of walk to get up to the elementary school. So that would be a recommendation that would really be taking the coordination with the school district because it's on school property. And then finally, looking at Hillsborough Road and Old Vail Road and North Greensboro to install more sidewalk because there's only sidewalk on one side. So I know you've had that as a a previous it's not gonna be a cheap sidewalk project, but we definitely wanted to to raise and elevate that recommendation. Some of the longer term recommendations are the Bowling Creek Greenway phases.

We also brought forward some of the on road connector recommendations that were developed years ago. It's just an almost an alternative to the Bowling Creek Greenway, but really, we think it's just increasing access to the Greenway once it is built or when it is built or could provide an on road bike option of connectivity through these neighborhoods. And then looking at Pathway Drive traffic calming, so that's been something that the town has been looking at is in partnership with some stormwater improvements, some opportunity for green infrastructure, and just provides that really great East West connection to the school campus. And then the big ideas, which you'll see this also for Carrboro High, is NC 54. So we've got the two pedestrian hybrid, signals that are coming in under construction as we speak, But the bike plan had a recommendation for a multiuse path along the entire length of NC 54 through your town limits.

And we just thought we should elevate that here. There are students. 54 is a barrier for a MacDougall campus. There are students living across. And so we broke that into smaller chunks for a realistic implementation, but that's definitely going to take more coordination with NCDOT. Any questions on McDougall before I move to Carbara Elementary? Okay. Carbara Elementary. Oh, go ahead.

That was one question.

Yeah. Yeah. Can can you just because I know that some of some of these interventions were in the 2012, plan. And how are we going to make sure that, these move from priority to programmed and programmed to their shovels and not have it be another decade?

That's a great question. And we'll talk a little bit more about that in the implementation strategies. But it really comes down to funding and staff capacity. And so that's going to be a discussion that we would love to have with you about how you want this plan to talk about that. And we don't we won't want to set the right level of expectation. But, yeah, we also have some ideas, which I'll talk about later, about trying to move some shovel ready projects forward. So being able to do some quick concepts or picking one project for each school to kind of move through design. So that's one idea. And IMD is willing to help support some of the funding on the design side as part of this grant effort. So there are some ideas, but at at the end of the day, it really comes down to funding and staff capacity, which are hard hard things in these times to move forward.

So Carrboro Elementary. The and it's on the second slide. But before we talk about the routes is Carver Elementary is being rebuilt, so I'm sure you're all aware. So we're also working really closely with the school district to make sure we understand how the campus is changing. A lot of the students also had ideas that were important to get on paper.

So the timing is great to have this plan while they're still been able to kind of hear some of our ideas and work through before they submit that site plan for official approval. But from a connectivity perspective, again, imagine that bike spokes. We just went through looking at Hillsborough Road plays a key connector connecting from High Street to Ash Street, looking at Pine Street connection, North Greensboro, of course, down to the roundabout. The Francis Setley Bikeway is a critical, amazing asset to the school. A lot of kids use that today.

Shelton Street, which I'm sure you've heard a lot about. You guys have a program project to add a multiuse path. The school, the community is really excited about that improvement, but it also lends itself to some a lot of conversations about what we're doing at the intersection of Shelton and Hillsborough and the intersection there with Maine too because those are really tough pinch points for folks as they try to cross. And the principal and school administration share a lot of just real concern about the safety of their students at those intersections. And then using Ash from Shelton to Maine, and then West Maine from Ash to Hillsborough Road, some of those key routes.

So the priority projects. One thing that we've talked a little bit about with the school district and our designer that's working on the site plan concept is trying to make a connection directly from the Francis Shetley Bikeway to the school entrance. Because right now, you have to come down and then navigate through all this the carpool chaos. So that's we were trying to avoid is to get those walkers out of that chaos. And they're still working through their site plan, but they heard us.

So they said they would look to see if there could be a direct route. The the challenge is there it's through a wooded area. Nobody wants to cut down more trees, and we don't also wanna add more impervious surface. So maybe just adjusting where that area gets flooded. A lot of the students told us they would just cut through today. But when it rains, they can't use that cut through for a solid two weeks sometimes. While we all would pray for that rain right now, but that's how it normally is. And then so the other priority projects, like I mentioned, but looking at those crossing improvements at Maine and Hillsborough and at Maine at Popular. So just thinking about kids that are coming down. We explored a couple of different specific countermeasure ideas.

We're still working through that with NCDOT. They've also explored some different ideas. So I think those concepts are moving forward. They just need more feasibility assessment on what's the right treatment and then how much will it cost to implement. And then lots of long term projects, and I won't go through this long list, but mainly crossing improvements.

There's you know, these are neighborhood streets, much of them, except for Greensboro and Hillsborough Road. So how do we get across Greensboro or get kids to Greensboro safely and looking at some of those connections? And then what else should we talk about? Exploring, you know, taking advantage of the Greensboro Street resurfacing that NCDOT is doing. That's one great opportunity for implementation because it's a low cost effort.

So working with them to see if there potentially is opportunities for more crossings or how we could elevate some of the crossings that are already existing. And then some of the longer term projects or bigger ideas is exploring a multiuse path along Hillsborough Road from Greensboro to Shelton. There's only sidewalk on one side, and so being able to, again, have that connectivity on both sides of the street and have a wider off road connection for those kids. There's a lot of traffic up and down Hillsborough going to Carrboro Elementary. And then adding in those missing sidewalk segments along Main Street and looking at buffered bike lanes if there's a way to take the existing bike lanes and adding buffers on Greensboro from the roundabout to Hillsborough Road.

Any questions about Carrboro Elementary? Okay. Carrboro High. Like Annie mentioned, really interesting. Carbrough High, when you look at from an existing facility perspective, they have a lot of great existing facilities. Club has great bike lanes, fairly new, resurfaced. What we can't change is all of these high school students said the hill is the biggest barrier to walk or bike. And they get their kids or they get their parents to drop them off in the morning so they can walk home on the downhill portion. So a lot of them are doing that. We talked a lot about or tried to look at ways for the connectivity of the Greenway Trail is the big piece.

And so the travel routes, we're just looking at where most of the students live. If we can use the Morgan Creek Trail that's coming and extend it down through the long term phases of that trail, that provides a great school travel route. And then looking at using the at the roundabout at Smith Level and making the Smith Level, you know, safer, lower speed, trying to bring more awareness to the school zone for drivers too. So the priority projects. So phase two of Morgan Creek, you know, that's definitely the number one priority here.

And then some of the longer term is to continue the the recommendation or the the vision for Morgan Creek includes a spur that would connect down to the campus. And so that would be great to have a complete off road connection for all the students that live from NC 54 and potentially even across NC 54 once you get the pedestrian signals in place. So that's the vision there. And then, again, just bringing forward that multi use path recommendation for NC 54. Think of all the schools NC Carrboro High has facilities.

There's a lot of kids currently not utilizing them, so it leans in more to the programming to try and understand why and encourage. And then that also is a challenge because high school is just chaotic time for students and parents. And the school administration is also going through a lot of changes internally. And so this being the first opportunity to engage with Carbara High, think we did a good job starting the foundation, but it's probably going to take a little bit more time and coordination until we see more students being able to walk or bike to Carbara High. And then any questions about the infrastructure?

Yeah. Annie's gonna come and just cover the program pieces and then we're gonna talk implementation.

So we have organized our programmatic recommendations into town wide versus things that you could deploy specifically at schools. I like to think of this first bucket as things that are good for everybody in the town of Carrboro, but just are have a particularly positive externality for students. So the first would be a uniform 20 mile per hour speed limit. We have that in a couple places in town, but I would hope that with a uniform speed limit that maybe some of these issues related to driver behavior that a lot of people shared could potentially be mitigated. We also really would suggest partnering with Chapel Transit to increase awareness and use.

This is especially relevant for Carrboro High School. A lot of our findings were about how students do like to take Chapel Transit either to offset the difficulty of that terrain or because of distance or other safety reasons. It was very interesting, the conversations we had with them about that. Additionally, we also recommend more pedestrian scale lighting along several of or along all of the school travel routes. I have just particularly remember a conversation with principal Jones from McDougall Elementary. And, you know, when we

went

on the walk audit with her, she talked about how I you can't see anything. If it's after 05:00 in the middle of winter, you you have no idea where you're going. So I think that would be a huge town wide benefit. And another would be just a targeted, say, us to School education and promotion campaign that would be a byproduct of this effort with more targeted efforts towards education and letting people know what their options are. At the specific school level, we recommend implementing trail and neighborhood street amenities.

So in the context of Morris Grove, for example, this could look like amenities to the existing Twin Creeks Greenway. It's wonderful as it is, but we heard some suggestions for maybe a call box or some, you know, some people reported poor cell service and other amenities at that level that could just improve the experience of existing infrastructure. We also recommend an annual bike education program, so within each school based off of both analysis and conversations with folks and conversations with district and and administrators, we landed on fourth, sixth, and ninth grade being the particularly impactful ages that where we could reach students at all of the schools. In the high school context, the current interim principal, principal Moreno, he suggested that, you know, leveraging ninth and tenth grade health class would be a particularly impactful way to implement such annual bike education. And we also have biking and walking school bus programs.

I'm sure you all have seen some of the viral videos of like a bike bus and Carrboro would be a really great place to try to make something like that happen. And there's a ton of interest as demonstrated by our survey responses. There's a lot of parents that said, I would be happy to lead or I would be happy to contribute. Please keep me in mind if something ever happens. So this is definitely something that I hope to see happen. And we also recommend conducting school travel tallies. This one is definitely very flexible and school dependent. Every principal we spoke to, they like the idea. They might be a little worried about how to make it happen and our response is whatever would be most feasible for you. For example, some schools may have parent volunteers that come into homeroom and that could be great once a quarter just, how did you get to school today?

Great. But that might look different at a different school. So we're remain flexible about what that could look like in practice. Another recommendation is to apply for the NCDOT Multimodal School Transportation Analysis Grant, MSTA. We had some interesting conversations in particular with Morris Grove staff about what that might look like given the congestion issues that Jennifer mentioned.

And lastly, we suggest exploring satellite park and walk locations. This could be a possibility at maybe any of the schools, but we really highlight in our plan MLK Junior Park and Wilson Park since they do have such close proximity. And similar to a bike bus, if you make it a specific outlined program that people know, if I do this, other people will be there, just kind of saying it almost makes it happen more. And so we're hoping to suggest that as well.

Okay. So now probably the most important part is how do we make this happen? And I hope you heard throughout all of that. I mean, there's a lot of thought that went into the recommendations and a lot of engagement with your community of how we got here. We're still working through what these priorities look like and how we don't leave this as a plan that sits on the shelf and just waits another decade.

And I think that's always a problem for us planners to try and solve. And this is where we're looking for some of your feedback and ideas of what you'd like to see in the plan of how we can help make that be different. Some of the things that we're working on is we're developing a prioritization matrix. So even though we already sorted those projects into timeline buckets, we're going through and doing a more data driven scoring process that also takes feasibility into account. So it will look at is it on in CDOT road?

What is the potential cost level of effort? Can it be done in a quick build fashion versus a full construct fashion to take advantage of some of your grant funding that you've already secured. We're also going to be developing planning level cost estimates for all those priority projects. And they probably will be like very high contingency. So they might be higher than what your actual cost is, but better to ask for more than to come up short.

And then we're looking through, based on the existing funding that's available today, what could be good matches for some of those projects. Full disclosure, there's not a lot of available funding with the current administration at a federal level, at the state level, you know, with Hurricane Helene. It's really kind of scaled back what's available to you all, but working through some of that, that's beyond the control of us as we develop this, but just trying to be really pragmatic with what you can expect as for grant opportunities and how that could look. And then exploring opportunities to advance priority projects by doing more design and concept development. So right now, these are just lines and dots on a map.

They've had some engineering review just to kind of make sure that we're being feasible and realistic with what we're recommending. But getting into CAD, laying it out, having a more refined cost estimate could help you be more successful for potential grants that come up in the next year or so. And then there's another piece for implementation is that we have I have concerns just on your staff capacity is building these programs with the school takes so much time. Just this past year, just keeping that relationship, these principals are doing 1,000 things a day. And so a lot of their they rely on their parents.

But it definitely takes staff to kind of keep that communication flowing. And we have a lot of program ideas. But how much can your staff actually take on? Even being able to manage and maintain volunteers, you know, takes a lot of coordination. So what does the staff capacity look like? And then how are we going to evaluate your success? So we've come up with a series of performance measures based on the goals so that you can track those tallies that Annie was mentioning. I think having better data. We've worked through I think it took us six months to get access to the student address data at the school district, but now that process has been done. Hopefully, you'll have access to that annually so you can be updating and evaluating your program and if you're successful in getting more kids walking and rolling to school.

So now we wanted to turn over and just have discussion with you. And we've got a couple of leading questions here, but happy to answer any questions as well. But we as we move toward implementation, we just wanted to see what type of early action, quick build improvements, advancing larger capital projects. What is on your mind of how you think this plan could be implemented faster? What would you like to see in that final implementation chapter?

Oh, Okay. So we're down to the discussion phase. You've read the question. But I did want to thank both of you for this very intense presentation

It's a lot.

A lot of information. If I could ask for the timeline again that you talked about earlier with the presentation of the draft and room for more engagement, maybe?

Yep. So we are working on drafting the content right now with staff. And then we hope to, in early May, start developing the graphics because nobody wants to read pages of text. So we've got the text about 90% done. We're going to work on graphics. And then it will be available for public review on the website.

Okay. And then there's still there's a space for, you know, engagement?

Then we yep. If we want to do more engagement, we have spent most of the engagement budget that we had on this But if that's important to go back out and do more individual engagement around projects, that's something we consider.

I don't know about I don't know. I guess we would just have to see.

I should say, too, in the engagement, once we had this first set of recommendations, we held virtual meetings with every principal of the school and walked them through for their schools and made tweaks. They gave us feedback and we made adjustments. So we've had that kind of tier review of these recommendations with principals.

And so you've really done quite a bit of engagement already, obviously. About to run out of engagement money. All right, I appreciate that. Council members, questions?

On the zoom?

No, no, no. Not questions, I'm sorry. Comments about the question here. Quick build improvements or advancing larger capital projects. Where would we like to see early action? Any, my favorite bike nerd, Councilmember Merrill.

Yeah. So yeah, this is great. It was good to go back and look at 2012, Safe Routes to School Plan, and compare it to this. Certainly saw some things that have improved since then. Saw some things that were recommended there that have been programmed, which is great.

Saw some things that also were coming back up fourteen years later that I'm scratching my head about and wondering, when are we gonna get some of these done? I know I think one of the ones that seems like low hanging fruit, even though I know it's an NCDOT street, are crosswalks on Greensboro. And I know we're kind of bundling those with resurfacing and re striping, and that's great. But I just want to make sure that we are getting all of them, that we're not looking back. And I know a part of that is on our end, too, obviously.

But I just want to make sure that when that happens, they're putting them all in. Mean, there was even a call for a hawk signal at Shelton. That was before Shelton Station even existed. That was in the 2012 plan. And if anything, there's a lot more pedestrian crossing there now, and it's a lot more chaotic. So, yeah. I mean, I think if we're gonna have certainly, if we're gonna have so many things riding on the Greensboro repaving, restriping, I don't wanna be like have us kicking ourselves a month after it's done. Be like, oh, we should have put those crosswalks in. I guess we'll wait another thirty years, that sort Again, of it feels very low hanging fruit. So I just wanted to make sure that we're targeting those as they come up.

That was the first one I had, but I'll let other folks.

Well, and just as a response to that too, the resurfacing doesn't go all the way to Hillsborough. So part of our recommendation is also looking at that section from Hillsborough to SCs because there aren't there's one opportunity for to cross there. And then looking you know, it's hard resurfacing are is a great opportunity, but it's also just the finite limits based on pavement. So, yes, it's something that the town is already looking at and something that we've prioritized. So potentially advancing, doing more analysis, and having strong recommendations to NCDOT on we would like to see crossings at all of these locations for Greensboro.

And then my personal strategy with NCDOT is sometimes you ask for everything, and you have your two that you really want, or you just understand what that negotiation is. Because some of the challenges on Greensboro is the sight line challenges, is that there has it's a windy road. So navigating that in the speed that is currently happening on the corridor.

Yeah. And I guess bringing up speed, I would happily do a 20 mile per hour town wide speed limit. So and I see at least one nod. So that's something we can do on our end. Obviously, I don't know how that would apply to an NCDOT street. They pick the speed limits for those, I presume.

And I think the yeah, they do. And I think the priority of that was within the school zones as a start, just to make a consistent school zone so people know and make them aware of when they're entering a school zone. And we can work with recommend that to NCDOT, but NCDOT will ultimately set their speed.

Yeah. I mean, guess I also feel like if we have a standard for our town that presumably, at least, that's the conversation starter with them. Like, hey, we want it 20 miles an hour in the whole town. Why are your roads 35 miles an hour? Where everyone's going 45, you know? So okay.

I'll stop for now. Do you have more?

I'm good for now.

Okay. See council member now.

Yeah. I really appreciate this presentation. The thoroughness and and the and the school by school focus, it's really helpful. I think you know, my sense here depending on what we call quick build is that quick build what, I mean my answer here is everything. I want everything.

Sure.

I want it perfect now. But I think the better way, well as far as larger capital projects, we have several of these as you've referenced like in other work streams that are also priority discussions apart from the Safe Routes to School discussion. And so to me, it seems like to the extent there is a separate procedural staff workflow or budgetary bucket toward implementation of what is in this presentation. I think the priority intersection fixes, most of which fall into something like quick build in terms of signalization, striping, things like that. I think those are the things to be most expeditious in this plan with.

The other I mean, I think it's impossible to answer this perfectly because I think in particular the construction of Carrboro Elementary School puts a burden on some of the capital expenses and a finite time window. And so some of the things that we've talked about around priority intersections at Poplar and at Hillsborough and Maine, I don't think a flashing beacon would within the next twelve months would do it in coordination with so I broadly speaking I'm curious what my colleagues think. I think like acting on this plan most responsibly to start to fix some of this problem of fourteen year malaise, I think that we do want a real priority toward quick build improvements. And then I think to the extent that we want some capital focus, I would really like close alignment with the Carrboro Elementary construction. And then in separate workflows while we do everything that the town is trying to do, I think the larger capital projects we want to make sure they're coordinating here.

But I think sort of like the responsibility to students you know, like sort of like Bowling Creek or Old Faith or NC 54 and things like that. That's across other discussions and other possible sources of money and time.

Oh, thank you, councilmember Ronald. Councilmember Palmer or Frey, whoever was Go ahead.

Thank you for the presentation. Thank you for all the work that clearly went into this. I just so I I'm gonna sound to people who are new to this, like, I'm talking funny. I'm using acronyms, and half the time, I don't remember what they stand for. And I know that staff are probably tired of redefining stuff, but but there's I had a conversation earlier today where the term programmed came up.

Like, what does programmed even mean? And I I just could you define programmed? And not all of these projects are gonna end up being funded under STIP, SPOT, what do those mean? And what percentage of total state budget for safety improvements could possibly go to bike pedestrian crosswalk. If if if you would just take a minute and

Sure.

Speak to that. And then I will come back, I'll have a specific crosswalk example.

Yeah. So from the programmed definition, the way that we were defining programmed is if it had been given any amount of funding. And so if the project had been submitted and was awarded for design only or for design and construction or it could be a project that was going to be constructed this summer. We recognize that that's hard for the general public to understand because it means so much. So part of our draft plan thoughts is we can break that down into additional categories and show them very discreetly.

It's hard to put a timeline to some of them because you don't know. If you only have design money, then construction is TBD because you haven't secured construction money. So that's the challenge of having really clear timelines for that. But we're going to try and communicate that better and would gladly use any other terminology that y'all have developed. But that's a hard one.

I I've I've done these plans in other areas. Everyone struggles with this. And the the reason we included it is we just don't wanna spend any extra effort on locations that are already moving in some capacity. So from our technical perspective, we wanted to consider those done so that our resources could be spent on what else would be needed. But we do recognize that they're not done.

Your question about what percent of state money could be spent is kind of a trick question because of the STI law. So, you know, we it it is a struggle with state funds, I don't think we can guarantee that there's any access. Working with the TPO to understand what are coming up. Your staff is very familiar, and they take advantage. And you have also got an SS4A grant, which many towns have not been successful getting a grant. So there are funds to better, you know, understand. We're trying to work forward toward understanding exactly how to use those SS4A funds here, as well as some of the other priorities from the Vision Zero plan. So I don't know if that answers your question specifically, but it's challenging at the state level.

And specifically, I just wanted to get that the STI law, that that is our state legislature, our lovely state legislature, has decided in their wisdom that less than 10% of total transportation safety funds can possibly go to projects like these. And so maybe folks can encourage our legislature to address that, to fix that. Okay. So a specific one, just a yes and on the crosswalks, crossings, yay, the 54 crossings, shovels actually going on that. That's rolling.

One that was in your priority projects was crossing at Homestead and Claremont. And I just want to lift that up as so I know you know what the curb cut effect is, but for folks at home, we put in curb cuts so that folks using wheelchairs, folks pushing strollers can get over a curb. But the net effect is that everybody benefits. And I think that that is an example that community members on both sides of the road use resources on both sides. And and so that then is also geographically bounded.

And we have heard in other contexts that folks on the North feel disconnected, and so that's a good connector. So just to lift that up as an example, but there are plenty. Like, I noted several Hillsborough and James. That is I've biked around there, and that is a wild one. I've biked in a lot of these places. I would love to see the Jones Connector. I got myself lost in the woods trying to No. I'm I'm serious. I I was doing the drop and and thought I looked at a map. Like, I should be able to cross here. Right? Mm-mm. So anyway, I'll stop there.

I want to circle back around to the question that council member Nao asked earlier about what do we think about the The question you're asking us, should the priority be early action for a quick build, advancing larger capital projects? I think you've highlighted our two most critical constraints staff time, funding. It's really challenging for STCOs. There is an enormous portfolio of potential projects that we know would do good. And I think often staff are trying to sort of sort out which ones need to go first.

So things that help us prioritize that, if we can end up with a I think I loved to see that you had sort of decision metrics, prioritization tools. If we can get to the point where you say, Okay, we know we have this big pile of projects, but we also know what order we want to tackle them in, whether that's quick build at the top or things that have the greatest impact in the middle, like just something so that staff are not having to constantly churn on, Okay, what's the priority now? But can just make focused progress and even say some of those long term projects are feasible if you can say, okay, we know that this comes in, looking at this, we think we might want to be trying to get to this one in ten years from now. And guess what? That's great.

That means we have ten years to identify funding sources, accumulate, assess what the budget might need to be for CIP, accumulate balance in the CIP to help fund when we get there. If we can get a sense of what order they go in, we can plan ahead better. And I think that also lifts some of the burden from our staff and makes it easier for them to do that day to day relationship building work that they have to do instead of trying to recapitulate the prioritization exercise repeatedly. I do think it is helpful where there are these larger projects. I think that some budgetary estimates would be very helpful towards that goal.

One of the things we struggle with in this S TIP and SPOT environment, we actually have a challenge figuring out which projects to put up for that. And knowing that we might get nothing, it still also consumes staff time to figure out what should we even promote. So anything that can sort of break that down into smaller chunks and say, okay, well, based on what we see here, we think this larger project might be a priority, and so here are some strategies for helping break that down into more manageable pieces. So I think things that you can do that would help to sort of create a regular flow of projects that are already prioritized and sort of chunked up so that they can focus on executing them, I think would be really good. Coming back to Councilmember Nall's question, I'm not sure whether it makes sense to say, if you have a big project that we know about that we know has effect across different areas that we're looking at all at once, Is that a sign that we should deprioritize it in Safe Routes to Schools because it's going to get handled in another stream?

Or is that a sign that actually we should pay attention to the fact that it's coming up over and over and over again and give it a higher priority, including in Safe Routes to Schools? I'm not sure. And I'd love to know what you think.

Yeah. I mean, I think we're not going to put North Greensboro stop crossings through RFF or SPOT. Those are going to come in a variety, but more regular flow of money. You know, I think our large capital program strategy is, you know, something that we're addressing with the budget that we have on hand. Then also in conjunction with the reality that like, I mean there are less cynical people than me in the world. But spot may never come back.

Yeah.

So when I, when we talk about like we have some number of projects, I think one, I mean I do I believe both in the like outcome value of moving projects. I also believe in like the governance and citizen mobilization value of moving projects. And so my like I don't mean to philosophically like deemphasize the Baldwin Creek Greenway or the 54 Corridor. I mean the 54 Corridor in particular, which we are waiting on a Hail Mary that will not hit in spot. You know, like that's probably like the Of that's like the single biggest equity safety, you know, like that corridor fixing it comports more with our goal.

I mean, we have like mammal cyclists like me risking our lives. We have children with backpacks. We have commuters, we have shoppers, we have renters. That like is the entire discussion of like how equity shows up in public resourcing in Carrboro is like the intersections and 54 Corridor in a nutshell. And so I certainly don't mean to say that we need to but in terms of what we can do considering how difficult it's going to be to get the money for the multi use path from the post office to Anderson Park, We could make intersections safer.

You know, we can do paint, which isn't gonna save any lives, but it's gonna change driver behavior maybe. We can have discussions about speed limits. And if those are quick build, I think we need to do those because we have to keep working on the bigger ones anyway. And I don't mean to deprioritize them, it's just that we like there's so many other levers to pull to make them that I actually that what I think is true is that like the things that are closer to being layups are the ones that we risk losing if we're just focused on moving the boulders. And I hope that the manager and staff hears how open I am to being corrected on that.

You know like this is this is I mean this is this is like the most extraordinarily challenging part of our job is sort of like regular, regular civilian oversight. You know like this is it's I I don't mean to be telling our staff this. This is my sense of what our values are. And so for the for that reason, I think quick build on this plan from what we're hearing tonight is gonna deliver the most value first. I mean like to the extent we have to answer this. But I don't want us to lose track of Carbara Elementary in particular. And even in saying that, I'm aware of those radii around MacDougall really call into question some challenging questions. So I think that's the most earnest way I can answer it.

Yeah, makes sense. Okay. So I found that very helpful. But I think to sum up where I'm at, would any things that we can do to reduce uncertainty and confusion for our staff so that they can focus on sort of the part of the job that comes easiest and helps most would be what I'd like to see early action on.

If I may, can I ask I think you had mentioned earlier, like, define quick build? So I think what we can do and what we're currently doing is scanning all these projects and identifying what could actually be done quickly. And I think that means something different for everybody. So I'd be curious in terms of what you would see as a quick implementation. Is that one year, two years, six months? Because there's a lot of different project types that fit in. And we might not need to use the word quick build because it can be deceiving. Because when I when I think of from a transportation, build is three years. But to an average person, oh my gosh. We have to wait three years to get a crossing, so I know we don't want that.

So just having some clarity on that would be helpful for us.

I guess quick build. Like one?

One year?

Two years.

Okay.

Really one. Council member Pozzada popped up on the

Uh-huh. I see him there. Thank you. Were you did you have anything else that you you were sharing, were you finished pretty much?

I would love to answer the question that was just asked, but I think I want to let Council Member Posada Mayor Pro Tem Posada in first, Posada Orozco in first because he's been waiting.

Yep. So we will move to Mayor Pro Tem Posada Orozco Orozco who has his virtual hand up. Hello?

Hey. Thank you. Thank you, madam mayor, and and thank you for the presentation. I think it was really great hearing all of the the work I've been putting into this. And I really appreciate the different ways that you're engaging folks because, you know, it comes as no surprise if folks on this dias and everyone who's heard of engagement is one of my biggest things. To answer your question directly, I'm very much in line with moving the larger projects as much as we can. I understand. And this is just I this is my opinion. Right? I think, in many cases, I see the larger projects is gonna have the most impact, and I wanna make sure that we're moving on those.

So I would prioritize those. Obviously, I wanna hear kind of the analysis of where, know, the visibility some of those are and also recognizing that some of those larger projects are not fully under our control. Right? And I think, so but specifically with some of the ones that have more talent control and have been, like, in the planning or in the conversation phase for, you know, the long periods of time. I think it's time that we we we get some some movement on those.

Not to to not to say that, you know, the short term or, like, kind of the quick build are not important, but I do think that if I was to, you know, be given, do we do we focus in this plan on the long term or the kinda quick build, specifically looking at staff capacity, I would wanna get those longer, longer term projects off off the ground as much as as quickly as we can knowing that they're gonna be multiyear, and I'm hoping not multi decade project.

But that

was just that was kind of just what I brought up bring into the to to answer your question. And, again, thank you for the presentation. Yield back, madam mayor.

Alright. Thank you so much, mayor Pro Tempasada Orozco. And so I'm gonna swing back to council member Frey really quick. Thank you, So Madam

what is quick build? Yes, I think realistically it's less than two years. Staff of the town attorney and any DOT reps listening may want to cover the areas at this point. What role in a Safe Routes to School project does when I think quick build, I think grill infrastructure. I think, hey, do we need to get some concrete filled pipes out and some planting beds out and some extra paint out?

Two years doesn't sound like quick build, but I know that from official municipal infrastructure point of view, that is quick. I hope that gives some context to what I was saying.

That was great. And your guerrilla comment, I mean, think that's great. We're also looking for opportunities. And we can in this next scan, we can sort projects into what is maybe a a year or less based on maybe it's on a town street. It's only gonna take a little bit of payment. Your guerrilla opportunities are gonna be really limited on the NCDOT roads, obviously. And so that's going to wipe out a huge portion that's going to so I think that's going to be a low list because they're just not most of our recommendations are state maintained roads or interact with a state maintained road. And so that brings the timeline challenge a little bit more.

Can I say something more? Please. I just mean, I'm thank you. Of course. Thank you, Mayor.

And I'm the newbie here. And so I'm still getting up to speed on a lot of this. But for me, I mean, this is probably redundancy to all of you, but to me, I think about safety most because children, because of you know, when Councilmember Palmer mentioned curb cuts for people in wheelchairs with strollers, I immediately think, Okay, well that makes it easier for people to cross, but it doesn't do anything necessarily to slow people down, to slow drivers down. And one of the things that I was you know, the intersections that I think where speed is those are the kinds of things that I would like to see prioritized because those are the things where I think we could have some tragic situations. Particularly, I mean, we mentioned Homestead and Claremont, like that's a blind corner.

And I know how I drive on that road, because I drive on that road regularly. And anyway, I'm not trying to be morbid, but it's that passageway is really challenging. And so, for me, I want to see where safety I understand it's all safety, right? But I would like to understand better, and maybe it's research on my part, just to understand where safety is in the metrics of how we establish priority, if that makes sense.

I'm real quick, and I appreciate the distinction from our feedback between, you know, what is under our control and what is the state maintained. Folks who, you know, have a fourth grader that they're making that decision, do I let this kid walk or not, they don't care if the crossing guard is there because they're a volunteer or because it's paid by the school or because it's paid by some program. They care whether there's a crossing guard there or not. Right? They care whether there is a refuge island that is there that maybe prevents the kid from going all the way across because of the way it's designed.

Or they care about the things that they can specifically see. And this is a long winded way of saying yes to years.

I had another thing that came up. So we've talked about the cross jurisdictional nature of this, staff capacity, programming. And one thing that popped out to me in the item abstract that you didn't talk about in the presentation, but I was curious about was there's talk about when this grant was originally funded, part of it was looking at a staff position at the school level. And I was just wondering where are we at with that? Because that seems like that would address a lot of these issues, or at least would kind of

yeah.

You mean recommending a full time Safe Routes to School Coordinator at the district?

Yeah. So it just yeah. Just says Project Scopa Works, three main components, updating the plan, collecting current demographic data, and working with Town of Chapel Hill and city school systems to create a district wide Safe Routes to School program with a staff person?

Yeah. So that was when the grant was submitted a year ago. We've had a lot of great conversations with the school district and collaborating. And the school district, which I should have mentioned at the beginning, you are all aware of what the school district is going through from a funding perspective and how that affects our recommendations because some of the schools could or could not be closed. We know that redistricting is gonna happen before the next school year, so that's gonna change a lot of our scoring.

And so quite honestly, I think the the realistic or feasibility of the school district having a full time position for a safe route to school is very low, we could still have that recommendation in the plan, or the town of Chapel Hill has moved forward with their own Safe Routes to School coordinator at the town level. So that could also be a potential recommendation is to have, you know, a part time or a full time safe routes coordinator for the town of Carrboro.

Yeah. And I guess that was part of my question. I know town of Chapel Hill does have someone in that position. And so where is Carrboro in that kind of decision making administration? So so, yeah, it's just something that popped out. Just

I can speak a little bit, Scott.

Oh, okay. Was given it to ask for some

So with so my I'm I'm if if anyone is the Safe Routes school coordinator, I'm probably the closest thing to it to fact. Was Safe Routes school coordinator. It's one of the many hats I wear in my job as a but there's it's also been a it's also you know, we we have a team. We have a we have our core four. We have our we have our platoon of of planners who who work on work on transportation issues, work on all other planning issues.

So I can tell you that the coordinator in Chapel Hill, her position is paid for by their grants. And right now, there is some concern that that grant is not going to be renewed. So I've I have a lot of colleagues that I sit in meetings with who are, to be honest, worried about their futures. They're worried about whether they'll have a job next year because of this grant. The idea of having a full time person here in Carver doing that in a similar way, it could it's obviously something we could recommend.

But I just wanted to point out some of the difficulties of that because they are being funded through the state grant and that funding may not be there in the future.

That's helpful insight in the background of the funding and everything. Maybe there's an opportunity there to and this is truly an open ended question. But is there an opportunity there for Carver to contribute to that person who's doing this in Chapel Hill so that they can broaden their scope and take some of the things off your plate? Because I certainly don't want to put more work on your plate. I know everyone in our department has got plenty of hats.

And so, Councilmember Merrill, are you talking about like a cost sharing? Like we share the cost of

Of transit.

Mean, you

know, the The position.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, like, you know, we do this with other roles. Is there an opportunity here? Truly an open ended question.

I mean, it is definitely something we could discuss. I mean, we would have to there are probably a lot of legal ramifications of doing that and a lot of a lot of, you know, lot of bureaucracy to do that. But we would we could if if that is something the council wants to wants to look at as a recommendation, you know, we can we can definitely look at some sort of a cost sharing mechanism with Chapel Hill to have a full time person.

Cool. Alright. Thanks.

And does the school district have Probably not a position, but I don't know a voice here at the table with Safe Routes to School. They do. The

coordinator at Chapel Hill, her name's Allison Ward. I mean, Allison West, by the way. She holds a monthly meeting. I attend, sometimes attends, and several members of district staff attend. So there's lots of coordination between between us and her and the district. And we've had a lot of coordination with all of them during the Safe Routes to School process. But even even just even just programming day to day stuff, are doing a lot of coordination with them.

Yeah. And I was just trying to think about, you know, the cost sharing, like who we could potentially cost share with, you know, share the cost of that position.

I can say that we have gotten some requests because, of course, one of our recommendations to have is to begin by education programs in Carrboro. And Chapel Hill has begun to do that, and they have a part time person. And they have actually expressed to us potentially sharing costs. However, you know, we're kind of at a loss to how we how we even go about doing that. You know, it would be you know, we would we would and it's something we could look at, but it would something we would need direction on.

And, you know, we would have to work out the the details of doing something like that.

Okay. Thank you for that information.

Of course.

Customer Mamero, did you have something else?

That was it for

me Was for that it?

I'm sure I'll cook up something else in a minute. Oh.

And that's fine. Yeah, so all this information is being picked up about this whole idea about cost sharing for the position, which I think that would be pretty good if we could get that together. I don't know about legalities or anything like that. I guess our town attorney can tell us about that at another time. Palmer, did you have something?

I just wanted to ask, did you have another question?

There was another question. It can be quick at the very end. Do you want me to advance them? Oh, perfect. I believe it's we just wanted to make sure that the recommendations, if there's any other potential partners or funding sources or from a programmatic you know, these are just kinda wide big picture, but is there any partnerships we should be thinking about from a nonprofit or Carrboro local perspective that you think could be good fit for Safe Routes of School goals? That's something we've been talking about, but would love if you have thoughts. We've already talked about some of the prioritization, and then you've already mentioned some of the elevated corridors to to look into.

Mhmm. Go

ahead. Well, I just I I wanna elevate that the Bowling Creek Greenlight phases three and four have come up multiple times in this and that Owasa and the university are key partners in that. And so to the extent that this conversation can be rehighlighted for them as safe routes to school context, that if you're recruiting young faculty, they're gonna have kids. And the school system here is a great advertisement and a deciding factor in some of those young faculty coming here. And so let us help you in that regard. You know, framing that conversation in that way can really benefit everyone involved.

That's a good idea. Madam mayor?

Two two quick items that I wanna pick up here. On the policy action side, I am really interested in the town wide 20 mile an hour limit. You've already highlighted some of the gaps in that around DOT roads, but really interested to know more about what that might look like from a town policy point of view. And then on the specific corridor schools or connections, I had a thought and a question. The thought was, I think it makes sense as the district is continuing to work on their plans, You may be done with the project before we know for sure which other schools are staying and which ones are getting rebuilt.

But just to note that you're insofar as you're able to keep up with that, that's helpful to sort of upregulate the ones that are having major work done and that are staying open. And then a question you focused mainly on the walk shed here, which I think makes complete sense, particularly for elementary schools. Are there any other projects or routes that you would include in terms of thinking about the bike shed of some of the schools, particularly the middle and high school level?

That's a great question. And we did have we did map those out. And then it became a conversation of it would be a whole plan for Carrboro, because then it would cover the whole town. And then you would just be adding to the list of priorities. So It would just be

our bike plan all over again.

Exactly. Yeah. So we are having in the plan. We're gonna mention the bike plan and have those, you know, when you look at our recommendations, maybe the bike plan recommendations are gonna be underneath in a lighter color so that they're not lost. But trying to kinda drill down to what do you need to do first. Because I think one of the benefits of the 2012 plan is it had a robust list of projects, but it was really overwhelming even for me twelve years later. Like, what are what are you supposed to have done? So we're hoping to kind of sort through that so that there's some clear directive within a five year window because we would probably have a recommendation in here to update this again in five years because the school communities change and, you know, situations change.

Okay. I think that makes sense. If there are, for instance, particular projects that are listed in our bike plan that dovetail really well with this work or things that are in our bike plan that you're like, actually this is, you know, counterproductive or unfeasible and doesn't contribute. It's helpful to know if there's any waiting that you can apply to the

bike plan in general. We've been tracking that. Okay.

Great. Great.

Thank you, madam mayor. That's all for me.

Any other feedback, council members? I feel like it's been great. Quite a bit of feedback. Good direction?

Yeah. Thank you guys so much. This was great.

And how do we reach you after tonight, if needed? We can share.

Through Becca? I'm happy to share they can share their contact information.

Doctor. Okay. That would be great.

Great. Thank you so much for the

time. Doctor. All right. Thank you. Amazing. Great presentation, both of you. Thanks so much. And council members, we have received that information and given our feedback. And that is the only general agenda item that we had. Councilmember Posada Roscoe, mayor pro tem, I'm sorry.

Was there anything else before we was there anything else from you before we move on? Okay. And so I would entertain a motion.

Do we we don't have a closed session? A what? Do we have a closed session?

Uh-huh. That's what I'm going to ask. I'm asking for a motion to move.

I move that we go into closed session with the note to staff that we will not be coming back with any votes.

Correct. And it is a personnel matter. Thank you so much. Councilmember Nell.

Second. All

right. It's been moved and properly seconded that we head into closed session right now.