Board of Aldermen - Regular Meeting

Thank you so much. I appreciate that. Next up, I'm going back. I have Cecil Charles. Cecil Charles here. Lloyd Farm Project. Welcome, Cecil.

Madame Mayor, Talent Counsel. I've been here before about this a long time ago, and I find myself back again because one of your items for consideration tonight is continuation of the phase one project, and I fully expect that that continuation will happen. However, having lived through this decade, as all of you have, it's it's been a little, problematic. As things happened, post pandemic, we the Argosy Group is no longer the developer. And we're in a situation where I think it's hard not just for citizens and residents, but for town council staff, anyone to gather good information about what's going on.

There's very little communication coming from the owners. They still have not negotiated with me for the little sliver of property they need from the road to move forward with the project. And I would like for you to at least consider the idea that before we say, yes, let's you have another year or another two years, that maybe we can induce some contingencies in there. Would think after a decade that they should be able to give some idea of when they might break ground on phase one and what the sequences would be to go on into later phases in the project. Thank you very much.

Thank you so much, Cecil. Next up, I have Julia. I don't want to murder your last name, Julia. Come on up and welcome. And Lloyd Farm as well. Welcome, Julia.

Thank you. The first thing I want to do is thank Randy, because Randy spent a decade dealing with the Lloyd Farm project and all the increases, and she's still here, and she hasn't gone insane yet. Anyway, we really appreciate all your help, Randy. And I think that the questions Cecil asked and some other questions from people in the neighborhood are very relevant. It's like where time has stopped, and there's no answer to what's gonna happen next, when it might happen.

And I know that Harris Teeter is now part of Kroger, and I know that, you know, the town ordinances have changed and and all of those things. But I think the time to start asking the questions is now so that if we give them an extension, we can say everything is contingent on answering these questions before we give you any other kind of extension. So I thank you very much.

Thank you so much for your comments, Julia. Next, I have Ed Corbell. Ed? Welcome. Weaver Street closure.

Yes. My name is Ed Corbell. I am the owner of the Spotted Dog, kind of in the center of the little area that's gonna be closed. I'm gonna talk a little bit about it. We first heard about this back in January, February.

I had some feedback solicited. And next thing I know, I hear about it again this week and see that the plan has kind of been formulated. I wanna make sure that we've actually considered the ramifications of closing that section of Beaver Street. In terms of deliveries, emergency services, trash pickup, recycling pickup, Will people be able to if people in the middle of the area where the street's been closed, are there their car can they park in the Weaver Street lot or they can be towed? Those are some things that I wanna make sure that we were considered.

And I've seen some of the solutions. I've read through the plan, the proposal today. And I see the bollards and talking about, I guess, there's gonna be keys. And the intent is that that will raise up and down. I'm not sure that would work with delivery drivers.

I'm not sure how where they're gonna be able to park to get out, to open that, to then come in, then go back, close it, and so on. Seems clunky, unwieldy. You know, we also have people that come in the middle of the night when there's no one there to do things, to do cleaning in the restaurant, things, stuff like that. You know, if there's like separate keys for each one, we're probably for just us, we're looking at probably 30 or 40 different vendors that are gonna need a key to do that. One thing that I had suggested, you know, back when I first spoke with them about this was perhaps just doing some like a closure on the the weekends.

Evenings and weekends perhaps. We could work around that. I'm sure that the other businesses I'd spoken with to Soro today and got some feedback from them, which is kind of similar to what I'm what I'm saying. But something where we're not necessarily closing it during the weekday, during the daytime. That's the hard part. That's gonna be the part that's gonna be hard to work around. So I am happy to if anyone wants to reach out to me to stop by, I'm happy to talk about this and and happy to provide more targeted feedback to specific areas. But yeah. You know? So, like I said, I'm not opposed to it in general.

I think that the weekend idea certainly could work. We've already done some things where it's closed on Sundays for different festivals, for stuff like that. And that has worked great over the years. So again, I would suggest something like that maybe rather than just a general all around closure. All right. Thank you all. I appreciate it.

Thank you so much. Appreciate your comments. Next up, I have Grace Holton. Grace, Weaver Street closure.

I'm Grace Holton. I am the landlord at 10102 East Main Street. Y'all may recognize it. It's where Tyler's was. Tyler's was our tenant for twenty two years. We've spent since he left at the beginning of the pandemic, we've spent a good bit of money updating the property, making it ADA compliant, etcetera. I'm also a long term resident of Chapel Hill Carrboro. I'm a graduate of Chapel Hill High School in 1975. That does date me, but we just had our fiftieth reunion, and

it was great.

I wanna thank you. This is a delayed thank you, but thank you for the parking deck at the Drakeford Library Complex. I appreciate your working with the Carbara Business Alliance to see the need for it. Originally, the plans did not have a parking deck, and I know y'all worked hard with the architects, with the county, with everybody to get it done. I think it's a great benefit to the East Main Street businesses, and we greatly appreciate it.

My concerns are about the increased traffic near the corner of East Main Street and Greensboro Street. That's what affects my businesses. I have four spaces. Currently, restaurant, if anybody wants to rent one, is available. But I have great three long term tenants potentially.

Neil's Deli's been there since 02/2009. The Speakeasy's going strong. There's a wonderful hair salon. All great local businesses owned by local people. And I'm concerned how the congestion that will be created by closing Weaver Street seven days a week, days and nights, is going to affect customers coming to the businesses and how they're gonna be discouraged due to the congestion and down increased congestion in Downtown Gerber.

Tonight, I came up North Green South Greensboro Street, and I stopped at the top of the hill. Before you get to the top turn down to Old Pittsboro Street, where my best friend in high school used to live, and traffic was backed up all the way from Carmel Mall going north. And one of the things to consider is Weaver Street is how a lot of residents go home in the evening that live off North Greensboro Street and Hillsboro Street, and come to work in the morning if they're going towards UNC. I look forward to tonight's discussion, and I hope there'll be a discussion of the traffic surveys that was done. I can't really read that stuff because I'm not an engineer, but I hope you all got a better understanding of what was on it.

Thank you very much.

Thank you so much, Grace. And the last person I have signed up is Willie Quick. He's a retiree and he has comments about retirement benefits. Welcome, Willie Quick. Good evening. Hi.

As she said, my name is Willie Quick. I am retiree for the town of Carlborough, having served ten years with the police department. As retiree with ten years, I earned the privilege of insurance coverage for up to 50%, of which I have to pay the other half. Also, with having retired from the police department, I get a supplement that is paid from the town to carry me over until I reach Social Security age. The reason why those two matters are relevant is, as I was preparing for retirement, I spoke with members from the HR administrative arm of the town and asked to have my contribution taken out of my supplement.

And the answer that I got was, we don't do it that way. No other justification. Okay? So that was July 2023. My portion was roughly $500 a month.

That's $3,000 from July 23 until December '23. I made an appeal back to the town after receiving a w two to account for my income from the town. And since it was a w two, my familiarity with Munis deductions for insurance benefits through a group plan are pre tax deductions according to the IRS, which I provided researched and provided information to the town. As a result of that, the town not only changed me over to take out my deductions from my supplement, they reimbursed me the effective tax amount, rightfully so, based upon the $3,000 that I paid in, because that would have reduced my taxable income by $3,000. I asked him about the three months from January, February, and March 2024, and the response I got was I will have to make that appeal during that following tax year.

I have since made that application, turned in the same documentation, and the response that I got was, well, we're not going to do that. No other justification. It pains me that I have to be here before you to ask for a remedy to this situation, but I remember seeing the fiscal awards that the town used to have posted in the awards cabinet out there. So, certainly, the town can understand fiscally. I have to be just as concerned about my own fiscal well-being, being that I'm retired and on a fixed income. So, I have the documentation I presented previously, and I'd certainly be willing to make that available to anyone that can help me resolve this. Thank you.

All right. Thank you, Mr. Quig. Town manager Tony, I'm sure, has taken note of your comments. So, that is all that I have that have signed up. Is there yes. You would like to give public comment. So I have you one. Okay. Let's wait a minute. Let's start with you. You come up and say your name, and then we'll swing on this side and come back around the back and come up. I think I saw five or six hands. I'll come to you next. Okay.

Good evening. Hi. My name is Tricia Lester, and I am here representing Indivisible Orange County, North Carolina, or IOCNC as we call it for short. I founded the organization earlier this year and now serve, excuse me, on the steering committee with a number of other like minded and passionate activists. We meet once a month in Chapel Hill or Carrboro and once a month in Hillsborough, and you can find our meetings on Mobilize.

IOCNC is a nonpartisan and nonsectarian group of individuals who, in response to recent grave threats to our democracy, organized to nonviolently advocate for the inalienable rights protected by The US constitution. As you know, executive power is being abused, misused, and overstepping bounds of authority. We're witnessing the actions of an authoritarian government and must resist. Many of you know that there will be a second No Kings Day on Saturday, October 18, with rallies and marches happening across the country. I'm thrilled to tell you that Indivisible Orange County, North Carolina, and Franklin and Elliott, which is a tenacious group of demonstrators who show up twice a day at the corner of Franklin And Elliott Streets to demonstrate, We'll be hosting a local rally right here in Carrboro at the Town Commons from three to 04:30 in the afternoon.

We'll have inspiring speakers, some great music to keep everyone revved up, and we'll do it peacefully in keeping with our MO. We've been working with staff in the Department of Recreation, Parks, and Cultural Resources and appreciate all their help thus far. We're so pleased to bring this important event to Carrboro and know that attendees will appreciate the town's commitment to resisting autocracy and bolstering our democracy. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Tricia. We appreciate you bringing forth that important information and announcement. Thank you. Could I get hold on for one second. Let me get a gentleman right here in the front. If you could come up and state your name, which I think I may know you. I'm pretty sure I do.

I'm Tim West.

Tim West. Yeah, good to see you again. Hi Tim.

Nice to see you here. I live on Carroll Street, which is pretty close to where the development proposed development is going to may be built. I I think my my comments are more of a a sort of an aesthetic or emotional way rather than a logical way exactly. I don't know how many of you all have actually walked on to Lloyd Farm property, but it is a beautiful, beautiful piece of property and with with huge old oak and pine trees that must have been there two hundred years or more. It's just it's it's just hurts to think about those trees being cut down and asphalt being laid there, to me.

This is beyond the issues that, like, storm water, which of course would be increased with the trees being cut down. There wouldn't be any trees to absorb, whose roots would then absorb the water. Or traffic, which has been around, that issues have been talked about for a decade, but it still hurts to think about what's going to happen if that development takes place and not just to Carroll Street, though that'll be a big impact there, but other places too. So I hope I haven't wasted your time. And thank you very much.

All right. Thank you so much, Tim. No, it was not a waste of time. Thank you for coming out. The gentleman in the back was getting up. Come on up. And just say your name and

I'm a David Periton David operator Periton.

That's what I

restaurant at 100 East Weaver. It's Tesoro. I wanna come up and just voice a couple concerns. First of all, I think the idea is wonderful. I'm just hoping that the bullet points that are outlined in the town's agenda for tonight, which also overlap with the DOT's report that the town received within the last month, can be addressed as like a whole, like as a group. One of them being visibility, is like the least of the concerns. Like, that'll be offset with some pedestrian traffic. Having people on that street is wonderful. Mostly like logistical issues. Like our businesses run on very tight, like around the clock schedules.

And if you've ever tried to tell a guy cleaning your grease trap at six in the morning that he can't come in your building right then, it doesn't go well. That's just one example. A Wassa requires that of us. Like, we don't get it done, if they don't come, we can't operate. Delivery drivers, ADA compliance. We have one of the older populations in a county in the state, and a lot of those people patronize. There's four restaurants and a hair salon on our little peninsula. A lot of them get dropped off like real quick on the curb. If they're not able to have that access, I just think they stop coming and find somewhere else to go. I've seen kind of like the hybrid outline days, nights, weekends.

I think the festivals that we do now are wonderful. The $24.07 $3.65 gives me a lot of pause, I'm just hoping as a body and as a community that we could have a more detailed conversation about how to mitigate some of those concerns. My neighbors my neighbors are here, Ed. I've talked to a guy at Napoli. We're good neighbors with the Beehive, with Jade Palace.

None of us run on big margins. If our visibility and access is hindered even to like 10% of our patronage, it's not a locally owned business in those addresses anymore. It's just the margin we're operating on. So like I said, I've seen some creative outlines and options in those slides. And I'm just hoping as a community, we can continue to question those things and come up with some good answers.

You so much, David. We appreciate you coming in. I want to swing around to the back on the other side of the room. Either one. I see Clem Self and okay, so you're going come on up and just say your name and what you wanna talk My

name is Margaret.

I'm Margaret.

I grew up here and I know Grace Holton. I missed the reunion, but I did communicate with Grace. I'm and my husband moved here to Shelton Street, which is the Shelton Station community behind the breakaway. So I'm in North Greensboro traffic every day. So when we're turning, especially on a weekend, the traffic around here is just about to make both of us drop dead.

My husband Rick is 70, and I'm a few years younger than that. So we're turn turn left to where we'd live, the same place that the employees turned left to the Breakaway Cafe on North Greensboro. And I've had a couple of times where an entire truck passes me. I'm being passed in a bike lane. And then one day, I had three cars go around me in the bike lane.

So I'm sorry about bikes, but we also have that situation. On one of those days, a person with bikes on his vehicle is passing me. So I almost get hit by the bikes. I have a medium sized car. I can't, like, pull up to the right to get through to that. So I'm scared of the traffic. I don't want this Weaver Street change because it totally affects what I'm talking about. If you go down to where that breakaway is, there's a parking lot that every day we have too many people, too many cars, too many everything. So the traffic here is crazy. And I wish somebody would go look at what I'm talking about, where you get past.

On the right, I got my left turn signal on, driving a Lexus, reasonable human, need to be safe, and neither one of us goes early. And almost every day, we almost get killed right there. North Greene Park.

Thank you so much, Margaret, for coming in, bringing those safety concerns forward. Ms. Clementine Self, come on up.

I'm Clementine Self, and I live in the Lord Street area of Carrboro. And I'm here about the change for the traffic flow in Carrboro where you when you remarked the street traffic, that's when the problem became a problem. Because before that, we didn't have all of that congestion. And the one simple thing that I think would help out tremendously is when you change that traffic flow pattern, if you had put up a green arrow and a red arrow, you wouldn't have the same problems that you have. I go through there three and four times a day, every day.

And as a result, I always have to blow my horn to get the people to move even though you have the caution up there. And they see caution as stopping for some reason. And so therefore, nothing is flowing. And the traffic is backed all the way up to Lord Street, where we have to come in. And I think there you know, I just don't see I see more congestion taking place if we have to go all the way down Main Street and then come back up Greensboro Street.

We will never get to Harris Teeter or any of the other businesses or pharmacy that's located there because it's going to take a long time for that traffic to flow. And I wish you would really look at it and have someone to come out and see just at certain times of day. Now, I walked out here today, and every car was going right through the caution light just like they should. But at certain times of day that this is not happening, people are just stopped. And I wish you would reconsider how that pattern flow is going to be.

You know, I don't know if the Department of Transportation needs to come and look at it or what needs to happen. The other thing is Roberson Street. When people make that left turn on Roberson Street, you have to sit through two stoplights before that can happen. You can't turn or go straight. We would be going straight because they're sitting there through two stoplights. It might be better if those people who want to make that turn, make Roberson Street almost like one way where they have to go through by Wendy's and go down and come out of Roberson Street versus trying to go in Roberson Street. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Ms. So. Appreciate your comments. The gentleman with his hand raised, and then Mr. Ian Scott from the chamber, and Jessica from Edward Jones. Welcome.

My name is Graham Bashai. I wanted to speak in enthusiastic support of the proposed change to Weaver Street. I think that as a resident around here, one thing that the town could really use more of is plazas, central gathering spaces. We have town commons, but it's not a very accessible place. There's the Weaver Street frontage, but that's a privately owned business that, you know, is largely just catering to one business.

When people are able to gather and, you know, enjoy, you know, being together in town, I think that's what Carbro is all about. You know, we call ourselves the Paris of the Piedmont. Paris is known for its plazas and its walkability and that kind of culture. It's not known for how quickly you can drive around town. And I think it, you know, it, we need not lose sight of there are issues, of course, you know, whenever a change happens, people have to adjust.

But I think life goes on and people see that there's a new way and to some of the businesses that have spoken today, you know, I hope that this sort of thing increases traffic to your business. I can imagine it would, you know, having a storefront right on the main Square of Carrboro. I can't imagine who wouldn't be excited about that. The last thing is just like our health. We have need to get outdoors.

We need kids to be able to walk around and feel safe. If you're sitting at Weaver Street, imagine extra space and how much further it would be for your kid to have to run to run to the road. This is the kind of community that I think we want that people come to Carrboro for. You can drive quick and get around anywhere, but you can't find a town with a town feel anywhere. And I think that the pedestrianization of Weaver Shoe would really enhance that.

Thank you so much, Graham. Ian? Scott from the chamber.

Good evening, mayor of Fushi, members of council. I'm Ian Scott with the chamber for Greater Chapel Hill Carbara. I also provide staff support to the Carbara Business Alliance, and I'm here to speak on the East Weaver Street proposed closure on behalf of local businesses. And we do recognize town's goal to enhance pedestrian experience in downtown and share your desire for a vibrant, accessible, safe community center. However, we do have deep concerns about this proposal that we respectfully ask you to consider.

First, the concerns raised by the CBA back in March in a letter to council, we feel really have not been fully addressed. Our businesses locally depend on vehicle access for customers, employees, deliveries, ADA compliance. You've heard a lot of those comments tonight. The proposed service lane and movable bollards, we don't believe solve these fundamental challenges. We do think they create some operational complications. Second, transit and emergency vehicle access. We know more than 30 public buses per day travel along East Weaver Street. We also know it's a vital connector for fire, EMS, and police vehicles. We're not sure that the advantages of this project outweigh the obstructions it will cause to public transit and public safety. Third, traffic impact.

The capacity study shows mixed results. Some travel times and intersections improve, others diminish. But we are concerned that removing a functional street from a transportation network downtown that's already quite tight. We'll push congestion to surrounding streets and complicate access to many downtown businesses. You've heard from a lot of those already tonight.

And finally, fiscal responsibility. This council raised property taxes by 20% for this year's budget and drew from its reserves to make its fund balance. And tonight's presentation estimates 300 and some thousand dollar for signal and street enhancements that doesn't include the plaza or construction. And we question whether now is really the right time for a discretionary project that addresses a problem, meaning our business community simply don't believe exists. Our ask is kind of straightforward.

We don't think you should move forward with this proposal. Instead, we'd ask you to collaborate with the business community or other stakeholders to advance solutions that enhance pedestrian safety and downtown vibrancy without closing East Weaver Street to vehicle traffic. We know there are proven traffic calming measures, improved crosswalks, better signage, and other modest investments that can achieve safety goals without the disruption, cost, and unintended consequences we believe this closure will have. Local businesses are a vital partner in Carrboro's success. They're essential to this community's tax base. We want to work with you on solutions that serve everyone, pedestrians, cyclists, drivers, and businesses that make downtown thrive. Thank you for your consideration, and thank you for your service to the community.

Thank you for your comments, Ian. Jessica? Are you coming up? Jessica? Yeah, yeah.

I didn't raise my hand initially, but there's

just one question. Oh, fine. You come right after Jessica. Welcome, Jessica. Jessica works for Edward Jones in the Fleet Feet Building. And so good to see you. And what you got?

Thanks so much. Hello, everybody. I'm the council and mayor. Thank you for introduction. I'm Jessica Villagrano, wealth advisor with Edward Jones.

For the last twenty some odd years, we've had one representative of our firm in Carbrough, really has been, a staple, presence. I intentionally, or with quite a bit of intention, moved my practice from North Side Of Chapel Hill to be a member of the Carrboro business community. As of now, I am on the leadership council for the Carrboro Business Community, or excuse me, the CBA. And, just wanted to share that with the addition of myself and Dan Ryan, we are also adding another two advisors within the next six months. So, we're going to go from one representative to four that are interested in the and highly invested in the business community here within Carrboro.

Together, as of right now, we manage we have over $300,000,000 under care between the two practices, and that represents monies of community members' hopes, dreams, wishes of Carberites and those in the in the area. So, we have a con considerable impact on the business community and in the community itself within Carrboro. So, I'm here to talk about or share the concerns of my fellow business community members about the closure of the Weaver Street. As the madam said earlier, that if you have the privilege of being in downtown on Main Street, you also have the privilege in sitting in traffic for quite a long time. You have to sit just leaving the East East Main Street Plaza, it's impossible for me to turn left at that light that, of Lloyd Street and East Main Street.

I have to go way around the parking garage even just to get home. And that's the problem at the end of the day. It's the problem, getting into work. And then, also, if you were standing at, in my conference room looking down, during the day, you can see the backup and the traffic as well. So, as you'll hear, a lot of our concern is about traffic, but it also is what it takes to bring people into town and getting them back out in a safe way. As you can imagine, we have a lot of elderly members who need close, access. So, I join my fellow, business community members, restaurants on on Weaver Street that are would be deeply affected, and hope that you'll reconsider the plans and listen to the concerns of the business community and take

that to heart.

Thank you so much. Jessica, come on up. Yeah, just introduce yourself. Who you're with.

Hello. I'm Emily Kreutzer with Carbara Plumbing. I just wanted to add one extra point about the Weaver Street closure that has been mentioned, but kind of piggybacks off of what some other business centers have said. Is that if access is denied to their suppliers, their costs will likely go up. People aren't gonna waste a lot of time getting things in. I know it's gonna happen when your grease trap person can't get there, you'll get billed for it. So I would hate to see something that's the benefit of a business actually increase their costs and maybe not necessarily increase their revenues that match that. That was just kind of the one point I wanted to add. Was think about some of the unintended consequences of vendors not being able to access these businesses. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Emily. We appreciate it. I see a hand in the corner. Come on up. May I introduce yourself?

Hello, I'm Nathan Millian from the and Carmel I also represent Anshas Properties that is a property owner on two buildings on the Lloyd Street, as well as two buildings on West Main. So we have amongst those buildings amongst those properties, you've got close to a 100 tenants, and we I've surveyed many of them. No bar barring one person who's unsure, everyone in that thinks this is a bad idea. I think our I'm I'm here to ask you to engage with these businesses, engage with us. It feels it really feels like this has moved along without proper input from the business community.

We're the ones that are gonna be the affected the most. All of us have our own individual kind of bugs that this does for us, and we just think they they haven't been properly received. And we'd like for you to kind of pause this thing at least to have at least in a to a situation before you go too much further down the road spending money to to find out what it is that is bugging people, what is the big thing, and what are the little things, and see if there's a way to work around it. But we'd at this point, what's on the table, we object to strenuously. Thank you.

All right. Thank you, Nathan. Appreciate your comments. Is there anyone else? I see a hand all the way in the back. Come on up.

Hello. My name is Brian Hsu. I'm not a business owner, but I am a resident of Carrboro. So I live just by the Community Works Thrift Shop. I just wanted to add my comments strongly in favor of the the current, like, Weaver Street pedestrianization plan.

I do, know, I I think I agree with the previous speaker that there's just so much to be gained from the perspective of, you know, the many people who enjoy being outside and socializing at the Weaver Street Market. And I do, like I certainly understand the concerns of a lot of businesses and I think they should be addressed, but I just, you know, want I sort of want the council to remember that there are so many people who use Downtown Carrboro who don't arrive in cars. They walk. They bike. And I think the concerns about traffic are real.

Like, I I myself biking and walking around Downtown Carrboro. I know how frustrating it can be to, like, as a pedestrian and also as a driver, just like all the traffic, the backups on Greenborough Street, for example. But I just sort of I I strongly think that those things can be mitigated. Right? There are there it's a current problem now. There are ways that I think the town could address those with, you know, installation of traffic signals, other sort of traffic mitigation measures, other ways to, you know, incentivize people using non motor vehicles for trans for transit. Yeah. I just, you know, I just want to express my enthusiasm for the project and sort of urge the council to keep those thoughts in mind. Thank you for your time.

Alright. Thank you so much, Brian. Is I see someone in the very back corner. Come on up. What's your name?

Robert Mercadante.

Hi, Robert. Welcome.

I live and work in Carrboro and have for a long time. I'm from here. I wanna speak in support of the Weaver Street plan, and I just wanna there's been talk that the business community wasn't included, and I personally went to several meetings about this and, you know, downtown area plan meetings and I I you know, there was flyers all over town about it. So I'm surprised that people felt like they weren't included. I don't know how not doing it is gonna improve traffic and or parking or anything like that.

And I think the only thing that's really gonna improve traffic is increasing ways that people can get around without driving. I don't think traffic's gonna get better unless we get cars off the road. So that's how I feel about it. I think it's a great idea. I wanna have more public spaces, and thank you for putting it forward.

Alright. Thank you so much, Robert, for your comments. Yes. Come on up.

Hi, I'm Stephanie Hoover. I'm a resident of Lloyd Broad Street. I received the mailed invitation to the letter to the meeting tonight. Thank you. I am in favor of pedestriasation of Weaver Street.

The current plan as I understand it from my own study doesn't appear to be adequate to address some of the concerns. And, I would very much look forward to continued revisions to arrive on a plan including addressing the climate impact and how there's an opportunity for a more climate resilient plan in that space. I'm not an expert in that and it still feels apparent to me. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Stephanie, for your comments. Is there anyone else? Public comment on anything? So we have gone through the public comment for this evening. I thank everyone for the comments. We will now move down to our consent agenda. Council members, we have, five items, and I would accept a motion to move these five items. I don't think I've heard from anyone about pulling anything.

Second.

That fast. Got it. It's been moved and properly seconded that the consent agenda item be approved. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Seven-zero. Thank you, council members. Town Manager Tony, we're down to the general agenda. We'll wait. Good night. Thank you for coming in.

The general agenda has one action item and one information item. The first action item is a continuation of Special Use Permit A extension request for Lloyd Farm Phase 1 at 70706 Old Fayetteville Road. Marty Roach will introduce and provide the presentation for this item.

Welcome, Marty.

Thank you. Good evening, everyone. I do have a few several slides here to go through, so I will just jump right in and try to keep moving along here. Thank you for introducing the topic. We've already heard some comments about it tonight. Let me see if executive summary. Let me jump right in. So I will go through this. I won't be too long winded in terms of my comments. I do have some graphics to share as well.

But I do just want to kind of back up and talk about kind of how we got here and just talk through how we got here and where we are. This project went through several years of discussions, iterations of design, site design. We had a summer full of facilitated meetings with some of the elected officials, town attorney, and lots of staff folks, and arrived ultimately at what was a final site design that was presented to council by way of a conditional rezoning request. And in 2018, that was approved and became and is still, as the first bullet point here notes, a mutually agreed upon contract between the property owner and the town. It does govern how the site may be developed.

It does run with the land. So with respect to property ownership changing, everything about this remains binding at the rezoning level. In 2019, following the approval of the rezoning, we also had a special use permit approved, special use permit A approved by council that was consistent with and in accordance with the conditional rezoning that had been approved about a year earlier. Again, this runs with the land. It is binding all the agreed upon conditions at the rezoning level and the special use permit level are binding as we consider whether to extend the life of the permit or not.

I do want to note and we'll talk through some of these as I move forward here that the facilitated meetings I spoke about, there were some agreements that were made between the developer and the council at the time that went above and beyond the ordinance requirements. Stormwater is one of them that has come up as a topic of discussion here and some other facilities that I'll I'll note as I move through the presentation. I I guess just down here at the bottom, I will make it clear here. Yeah. That this is a a two year extension request.

That is kind of the norm, and it is common for extensions to to be requested, and it is, up to the council to make a decision as we move forward tonight. So regardless of your decision, the conditional rezoning will remain in place. This is just a quick aerial photo of the property. Another one of the questions that came up was regarding the donation of two of the part two parcels of land to the town of Carrboro, and that does remain binding as one of the conditions on the the rezoning that that was included included in the rezoning. So I've highlighted those in red here.

Those are tied by way of the special use permit to issuance of the first building permit for the project. So they the land has not officially been donated to the town, and if and when there's a building permit issued, it has to be donated ahead of that. But this is just an aerial image of the land with that highlighted. I won't go over every one of the words on paper here as part of the presentation. Just this does capture the totality of what was approved.

We are focused on what is known as phase one with respect to the special use permit extension request. But in totality, there was 145 approximately square feet of 145,000 square feet of commercial space, parking, list of uses there, office, multi multiple office buildings intended for medical and dental type uses, restaurants, gas station, multi story apartment building, and that would be in phase two as, we will hone in on the phasing plan in a minute here. All that remains binding though unless, a change to the rezoning takes place. Some of the amenities that I pointed out that were agreed upon was included an outdoor event space, amphitheater, multi use path and greenway above and beyond what the ordinance otherwise required and some bike pad connections. This is the the site plan, the illustrative site plan that was included with the conditional rezoning.

And as I use the mouse, I will just quickly walk through here for anyone that may not have seen it or otherwise educational purposes here. This is the grocery store. The retail and restaurant spaces around the grocery store and around the parking lot. The amphitheater space is down here in this southwest corner, the gas station. What you see in blue are what were approved as, again, medical office type buildings.

And then the Spine Road kinda goes down in a curvilinear fashion through the project. Across the street from it is the residential complex that was approved. So this would be a multi story, multi family building intended for 55 and over a community of residents and townhouse type cottages around the the exterior of the the vertical construction. And then you'll see stormwater ponds around here and the gas station, think I mentioned. And the land to be donated to Town of Carver is up in the Northeast Corner.

So here's the phasing plan. So just to hone in on this for a moment, phase one is everything you see in white here. It's, again, the grocery store, the road going through the development, the gas station and the storm water ponds, and the donation of land to the town of Carrboro up here in the corner. Phase two are the medical office buildings, phase two a, b, and c as you see it here, and the residential portion, the 55 and over community. So that's and the main point being that all we're really talking about tonight is an extension for Phase one.

The whole of the project remains binding under the rezoning. This was the site plan approved for Phase one. Again, I won't spend too much time walking through it. I've already noted most of these features, but again, this is just for reference, the site plan approved for Phase one. And then some procedural notes about the decision before you tonight. One option, obviously, is to approve the the request for an extension, and that would go until October 2027. Deny if the SUP is not extended. There there are a few choices outlined here. I won't speak to every one of them. You can see them there.

And then one more time, I'll just note that even if the SUP is not extended, the conditional rezoning for the land remains binding. The property owner could initiate some kind of change to, you know, a request to change something about the conditional rezoning, something about what was approved in terms of the number of uses, the types of uses, but that does have to be it was a mutually agreed upon contract between the town and the property owner, so it does have to be initiated by the property owner. And with that, I'm happy to answer questions. And I will note that we have in the back room, I believe, the town engineer available if you want to focus on storm water questions or anything along those lines. We do, at least, I believe, have a Harris Teeter representative on Zoom available to answer questions that you might want to direct to Harris Teeter directly.

And with that, I'm happy to answer questions.

Thank you so much, Marty, and thank you to the Harris Teeter representative online available to answer any questions. Council members, are there questions? I know there have been some questions from council member Haven O'Donnell, which I believe were supposed to be answered tonight in the meeting. But I guess I have one question about the appeal process, which is the first bullet point there. And so what would that look like for them, you know, with the appeal process?

Like, what is that? Or is that a Nick question?

That is and I'll I'm happy to say I should have said if I missed any of the questions, we tried to address them by way of the presentation, but if I missed anything, please feel free to ask me. And Nick, yes, I'll defer to you on the matter of Yeah, the

so the appeal process is what I'm

Is this working? Yeah.

Yes.

Okay. I believe that the appeal, if there was a denial of the extension request, one option available for Harris Teeter would be to appeal that decision to Superior Court to argue that it's invalid. I don't think it would go to the Board of Adjustment. I think it would go directly to Superior Court.

Okay. Yeah. So that's helpful to know. Thank you, Nick. And Marty, I think, for the gentleman the gentleman online, what what is what's his name?

Mr. Farris, Jacob Farris.

Farris?

I I hope I'm saying that last name correctly. Let me ask him. Actually,

Jacob isn't available at an emergency soccer deal with his kids. So this is Steve Jarvis, with Harris Teeter.

Okay. Welcome, Steve. Do you have any idea about when Harris Teeter was would would break ground? I realized in 2021, we were in COVID and 2023 coming out of COVID, you know, kind of weird economic times, now, with the tariffs and inflation and everything in between. But I was just wondering if you had any information, about that, as far as, like, plans moving forward, specific timelines, if there are any.

So I I apologize in advance. Jacob gave me kinda limited talking points here. And and, what he had told me was, you know, like you said, due to COVID and and everything that came after that and then some cost factors that just kinda hemorrhaged the the deal to the point that it is now, We have an interest in in moving forward with the the project if we can reach some sort of, you know, partnership with the city to try and figure out how to mitigate some of these costs. He had said that, you know, we really didn't have a an an interest in in going through a whole new entitlement process. But to the extent that we could work through some of this with the city and the partnership, I think we would love to, try and make it another spin at developing the property.

Okay. Thank you for that. We appreciate that.

That is that good? Did that answer your question?

Yeah. If that's what you have, that's what you have. And I'm feeling like you're saying that that is what you have right now. But we appreciate that. I think something else that has come up about this project is if any aspects of it have changed enough. I think maybe that was Councilmember Haven O'Donnell's

concern.

So I'm going to send that over to her and Councilmembers anything else that you have.

Yeah. I don't know that Steve, is for you, but Marty and Nick, I think this is more for both of you. So, we had concerns in 2013, 2015, 2018, 2019 regarding storm water. And the storm water regulations that this project was approved under, what are the flood regulations for that?

Sure. I can speak to that briefly at least. And then again, we do have Will Hines from Sun Gate if you want to get into more details. The standard ordinance requirement goes to up to a twenty five year storm. What was agreed upon at the rezoning level and therefore, you know, remains binding as a part of this is to go up above '25 to the treat the fifty and one hundred year storm as well. So,

you know what I'm gonna ask, right?

And I may wanna get Will up here to answer.

That that would be fine. So it's not 2019 or 2018 anymore? Yes. Especially because of where that land is located, the fact that the pond itself is fed by two live streams, that Hillsborough Road has had a tremendous amount of development in the area around McDougall since this plan was approved. Is there a need to look at the storm water regulation and bump it up from 50 to 100 to 500 to 1,000 simply because the neighborhood, which by the way, this is parenthetical, but it's important to the community.

Everywhere on the documents where it says plantation acres, please change that to Barred Owl because it's not Plantation Acres anymore. Well, but that came from community. So my question is should we considering that we're in the UDO rewrite, should we pull that out and at least address the fact that what was binding then for storm water regulations probably is woefully inadequate right now?

Thank you for that. I'll offer a couple of comments and then see if Will wants to add anything to what I'm going to say. We certainly are, during the UDO rewrite, going to be looking at storm water standards and may anticipate making them more stringent. Exactly how that looks or reads ultimately, I can't necessarily say tonight, but we certainly are going to be looking at that. The point that I'm trying to make clear is that this is an agreed at this moment, without putting Steven on the spot too much, it's an agreed upon contract between the town and the developer.

They may choose to initiate some changes and that may, I'm just speaking hypothetically, that may open up the discussion for, you know, more discussion about storm water standards. But the town can't even if the SUP is not extended, we can't self or impose unilaterally any additional standard at this moment. I might let see if Will wants to add anything more generally about your what you're saying about SUP.

That would be helpful. Yes. Thank you.

The only thing I would add by the way, my name is Will Hunt with Sun Gate Design Group. The only thing I would add is the when this the storm water for this project was analyzed, they used information from the federal agency NOAA, which provides statistical analysis of historical rainfall data and which is a very common thing for engineers to use. And that's what they used in their analysis. And they did analyze the fifty year and the one hundred year storms and provided detention for both those storms.

I guess what we don't know is what the data looked like in that entire neighborhood following Chantal which was only a tropical storm.

Yeah, I can't tell you how specific NOAA gets. You do when you look it up, do give it latitude and longitude for your location. So it's specific for Carrboro.

Yeah. Yeah, I would, and Marty, I really appreciate your explanation. I think the one thing I would, that I would ask Steve and Harris Teeter is to seriously consider making that offer of the regulation, shifting that just as a protective measure and also as a matter of a trust and good faith with the community. That neighborhood floods tremendously and all the time. It doesn't even take a Chantal to do so.

My other question is about the parcels that are being dedicated to the town. The neighborhood really worked hard with Ted and Argus development and in seeking to have open space because a good piece of those woods are considered open space to the neighborhood. And so because that those parcels are within the phase one, I would just like to underscore that the intention for that four and a half acres and so that Steve and yes, Steve and Harris Teeter understand what was discussed is to have open space for that neighborhood and that community. That was one of the items that right through the entire mediation was a through line of great interest. And so I'd like to see that understood.

Think that's it.

Thank you for that. My only comment about that is the way the condition is written, are obligated. As I was saying, we can't unilaterally impose additional storm water at this moment. They similarly cannot back out of donating that land. The way the condition is written, we'll figure out what to do when and if it is given to us. But I I do recall what you're saying about the discussions that went that took place. But they are bound to give us the land, assuming they do go forward at the time of the first building permit being issued.

Yeah. And I just want to take a moment just to thank the Bartow Creek folks, number one, for changing their name, but number two, because they've stuck with us, and they've really worked hard during that mediation.

Thanks for pointing that out. We have some old plans that just still have that reference on them, but yeah, moving forward we can

change that. Thank

you, Councilmember Haven O'Donnell. And so I thought I also read that if and when we get to that point, of course, about what to do with those parcels, you know, that there would be community engagement, you know, and that there would be community conversations, and that the voices of those adjoining neighborhoods would would be heard in this process. Correct?

Correct. Thank you. Thank you for stating it in that way. I I'm not trying to sound contrary to this notion that it was that it would be open space, but it is an open discussion as to how that land will be used ultimately.

Right. Council members, any questions? I see council member Frey.

I'm gonna, make a motion at the end of this. So if anybody else has any other questions, I'll, I'll yield to that. I just wanted to note it's very helpful that, that Harris Teeter has sent a representative so that we can understand that what we suspected is, in fact, the case that as of the current moment, the project as planned does not pencil. Right? And so I see no obstacle to us extending this.

We have a UDO to get resolved, which may then help Harris Teeter taking a look at our new regulations to say, hey. We like what we see there. We would like to come to you and renegotiate, you know, do a do a modification to the conditional rezoning, which is the only way that anything about this project is able to change legally. So is there anyone else or I will make a motion that okay. Thanks. I'll yield to you.

Do have a comment? Council member Palmer?

May I? Just just very briefly.

Oh, okay.

So so speaking directly to that, I one one thing I tried to wrap my head around after public comment that we got last time was the idea of, I believe, the stories given were eight, eight stories. And so I started doing some digging. And the conclusion that I eventually came to is that 60 feet would be too tall, not just under the. If we let it expire and by right, 60 feet would still be too tall. We cannot go taller without change of the conditional rezoning that is underneath.

Right? So I just wanted to state that that is my understanding, and I guess I'll ask that as a question. Is that understanding accurate?

Yes. The number in my head was actually 50 feet,

but it's noting a margin of error.

The ordinance limit as as we're, you know, here tonight. But, yes, that could potentially be changed in the future. Yes.

Madam Mayor, if I may?

Is there anything else? Councilmember Pesado Arrowsko, nothing? No, ma'am. Looks like nobody else. And one last, question, Marty, for confirmation. Any changes would have to be initiated by the property owner as far as the conditional rezoning in the SUP, is that correct?

That's correct. There are by, not to get too detailed here, but there are by way of state statutes, some very minor things that can be changed administratively. But there was a condition put on this one that says any changes have to come back before council. So, yeah, that's the short and sweet version.

Thank you for that.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. That being the case, I move that we grant the continuation of the SUPA for this project.

I have a motion on the floor. Is there a second? Second. Alright. It's been moved and properly seconded. Any further discussion? I don't think so. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries, seven-zero. I want to thank the representative from Harris Teeter for being in and, capturing, some of some concerns, since 2019. So thank you so much, Steven. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Time manager, Information item. Which is next?

Thank you, mayor. The next item is information only, no action tonight for an update and next steps on reimagining Weaver Street project. This presentation will be given by our planner. You come on up. Duncan Dodson.

Good evening, town council and madam mayor. Tonight, I will be providing an update on the reimagining East Weaver Street project. We will go through the engagement done to date, talk about the recommended design for safe implementation for the strongest opportunity for success, talk about the updated cost estimate, and then talk about the standard next steps for the project. As you all are well aware, this interest was expressed in the January work session, and throughout this year we have undergone a series of tasks at the direction of the manager, looking at the capacity study that we presented preliminary results of back in June. At that time, you all directed the manager to get staff to conduct engagement for the community for residents and business owners, as well as continue working to finalize that capacity study.

It was completed on September 19 and posted to the town's website. In the interim, since we've spoken in June, we took the reimagining Weaver Street item to four different downtown area plan events, one at St. Paul's AME, one at the Community School for People Under Six, and two, Carrboro in Motions. In addition, we mailed out a letter on September 17 to residents, business owners, and property owners in the vicinity of East Weaver Street, which noted the study and the NCDOT memo were available online and directed them to the town website that had previous work session items and presentations and to notify them of this meeting this evening. We, much of the feedback that was expressed by the community expressed both support and concern, and resonates with what you have heard this evening, here this evening.

These excitement for supporting health and social life, that this effort is long overdue and provides greater safety to cyclists and pedestrians, as well as concerns that the traffic congestion impacts due to the closure of the street could affect emergency services and response time delays, business visibility, ADA access, as well as transit. To address this, the town engineer staff and NCO DOT have finalized the study. So what we know from the study is that these lane re stripings, the stop bar adjustment, and other changes that I will get into detail shortly do address some of the congestion. NCDOT and the engineering consultant recommend maintaining the southbound only direction of Maple Avenue to help address some of the anticipated congestion due to the closure. If you all remember, the conceptual design that you see here on the screen was the one that kind of garnered the most support back at the January work session.

This idea of removable bollards on either end and a service lane that could be accessed by solid waste trucks, fire and EMS in the event of an emergency, as well as deliveries. We would explore opportunities to potentially create a pull off on one side of the closure that vehicles could pull into and idle while the bollard was unlocked. We have also we also would explore the timing of what that access would be like, whether it would be a specific time of every day or a specific day and time to explore. But we also know that the recommended design does show that there will be relocated vehicular traffic primarily to Greensboro and Main Street. And in response to the finalized capacity study, fire and EMS have still expressed a concern that while access to the street is paramount to them being able to respond to emergencies, vehicle stacking and delays in the downtown could impact emergency response time.

Chapel Hill Transit has been part of this conversation throughout. They have said they will move the bus stops from East Weaver Street to East Main Street for the F and the CW route. They have expressed that they in response to the capacity study, they are not sure that that bus that those buses will be able to make the left or the right turn even with the stop bar being moved back. And if the schedule is impacted or those buses are not able to make that turn, that they will either reduce service or remove service from Downtown Carrboro for the CW and the F routes. I will go into the re stripings quickly, and then we'll come back to this image because there's a lot happening here.

I wanna make sure you all can see everything that's happening. The biggest things that really address that congestion, this when we spoke in June, we talked about a build and a build with improvement scenario. I do have the cueing diagrams as supplemental slides to this presentation, and I'm happy to review them at your leisure. But when NCDOT finalized this study, they said they recommended that we would go ahead and implement this closure with the Build with Improvement scenario. And so as follows: the southbound left turn lane on North Greensboro Street, as you approach Greensboro and Weaver Street would become a southbound through lane only.

Rather than having a dedicated left turn lane for northbound traffic moving up Greensboro to turn onto Weaver Street. That would become a left and through lane shared through lane. And that southbound left exclusive lane would be extended to accommodate more vehicles that are waiting to get through that light. You see here that the stop bar has been moved back 25 feet to accommodate for those bus fire and large delivery vehicle movements. Additionally, to see the benefits simplification of of the intersections at both ends of the closure, as well as the reduced delays over at Main and Roberson, The study recommends that the through lane be swapped over at Maine and Roberson, and so this is just a close-up there.

That we presented on that in July or in June. There's no change here. I will note in June, there was a conversation around converting the loading zone in front of Neals, in front of 100 East Main, to a right turn exclusive lane. The pavement was measured, and it was found that there is not sufficient pavement width to conduct that at this time. So that is a change from what was described in June and presented on in June.

So back to this diagram, we have the three restripings. Minimum changes for safe implementation, again, for the strongest opportunity of success for this project, require design and construction of signals here to see the benefits of simplified intersections at either end of the closure and to minimize the impacts to queuing and delays at other places in the study area. Because we would be pursuing a concept that has removable bollards on either side as well as a dedicated service lane that when not occupied by delivery vehicles, solid waste trucks would could function as a dedicated bikeway. There would need to be control entrance and exits for cyclists so that they can then move safely back out into shared vehicular traffic on either end of the closure. Just some curb realignments, some signage.

Again, this is really the minimum changes that we need to make to make sure that this is done safely and with as much information for users, pedestrians, cyclists, and drivers in the downtown area. Has provide town the engineer has provided an updated cost cost estimate, as you see here. As of note, this does not include costs for the design or construction of the plaza space, the kind of reimagining that we started with, with the storm water features. Those would come in a later phase of this project. So the standard next steps for that, we have the cost estimate.

That is very different from a bid in hand. So the standard next steps for this project would be to bid out this project and secure kind of an updated finalized cost for this work. Because the we are anticipating that the cost because the cost estimate is coming in about $104,000 over what was approved in the CIP the adopted CIP, the anticipation is that we would come back with a budget amendment to meet the actual cost of phase one construction based off those bids in hand and to authorize the town manager to execute contracts with those project vendors. So I that is all I have this evening. Like I said, I have the queuing diagrams that we showed at the last meeting.

I have the capacity study here. I have information about the letters and responses that we've received over the course of the engagement. And there are other staff here who can answer any questions you have. Thank you very much.

All right. Thank you. Thank you for your presentation. Council members, any comments or questions? I see you may approach him now. And then Council Member Saraworska and Council Member Frey. You so much. Council member Haven O'Donnell, go ahead.

No guarantees. This is my last round of questions. But one thing that troubles me, Dig in for me if you can a little bit more on this process like Chapel Hill Transit is not sure those buses can make the turn even with the stop bar. What does that exploration look like? How do we know that? What are what are the next steps in assessing? I mean, not just the buses, that is my primary concern, but there's, you know, if that stop bar doesn't work, a lot of vehicles aren't using that intersection well.

Sure. Great question. And the summary of it is most of the things that we can predict, that we can anticipate are we have tried to answer with the design, and there are a handful of things that we cannot know for sure until the street is closed. So while the engineering design creates enough space for a bus to turn, there would be driver behaviors as well as other factors that we may not we are unable to predict with any more information from the capacity study. What the capacity study says is the design of the road would allow for large vehicles to make that turn.

And so there it is difference between what what the engineering study design says and what traffic or what Chapel Hill Transit has seen of, drivers on the road.

Okay. That's very helpful, for those of you who are listening to the decision making. I think that that puts us in a tough spot to analyze. NCDOT in my, experience is very conservative with these kinds of considerations. I don't think of NCDOT as being particularly aligned with any kind of activist vision for a car free future.

It's it suggests to me that the design is likely pretty solid to the the the the DOT would cosign the build with improvements plan suggests to me that it's relatively firm ground for us to assume that these vehicles could make this turn. But I am given, I mean and it's a subjective point here that Chapel Hill Transit is making, but it does give me real pause. A little bit. Can I? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do it.

Yeah. I'm gonna ask a clarifying question because you said driver behavior, and there's the bus operator, but there's other drivers, cars, overshooting the stop bar. Is that their concern, or is it their own driver's ability to make the turns?

I can't be more I don't have the exact breakout of to that answer. They have just talked about vehicular and driver behavior at the intersection there.

So there's that. And then, so talk to me about the concerns that we've heard from David and others with the practicability of the bollard and the timing and the, those also seem like real concerns. What would be, what would what would extended consideration of those concerns look like in our process? Being that this is an informational meeting where we're not taking a vote.

Sure, absolutely. So I think the primary change here was that the exploration of automatic bollards or a different design here would start with a cost revaluation, and we could anticipate higher costs. This cost estimate from the town engineer does include the kind of removable manual locked bollards at either end of the street here, as well as this kind of service lane. And so we would need to conduct research as to what with the business community and with kind of professional stakeholders as well to understand what the alternatives are and what would work. We have explored removable bollards, and we would anticipate that the cost would be much or I'm sorry, automatic bollards.

And we have anticipated that the cost would be much higher if we, say, went in with a, electronic, removable, lower able, and, bollard that would then be triggered by either the presence of a vehicle or a RFID chip or something like that. So we have we are ensuring that on either on one side of the closure, there is space for a vehicle to pull off the actual out of the intersection and go ahead and making sure that folks can move through. And then either the staff unlocking of or the delivery slash driver unlocking of that bollard. And then of course, as I said, movement or pavement markings on each side and signal redesign to help those drivers and get back into the intersection after the business is concluded.

I guess in the interest of being efficient with my time as I famously am, I will say that I it strikes me that I mean, so we are not we're not on the hook for any expense while we continue to consider this and look at these bids right now. Yeah? This this thinking that we have in hand represents yeah. I mean, we are at a moment where we can continue to have these conversations sort of at no expense. Yeah?

Yes. You know, we this is the design that has, you know, this design work has come from our contract with Exalt and with the town engineer. And so I think that the question depends on the the level of exploration that we are continuing to to do here. But primarily, yes. Are Yeah. On the hook for additional funding here.

Understood. I, you know, I look at the network and there's a lot to like here. There's some very real and serious things that I think for me, colleagues, all that makes sense here is for us to get with CBA and stay at this for a little bit. I'm thinking about my four year old who's a walking head injury. She's just insane. And how delightful it would be to not have to worry about these cars. I'm thinking about the grid in the zoom out vision. It is like removing that miserable five face intersection. There's just there's a lot of sort of general congeniality improvement. But there are real there's real things here.

Money is real, especially with I believe it was Emily's concern about climate resilience. I think that we are all interested in seeing this space not be blank asphalt long term. And I think that we are all given some pause about thinking about committing a large chunk of change before we have a plan toward that end. So I think that we would like to get sharper on that. And then I think we just have to continue to, my personal 2¢ right now is this is a great informational item.

Nothing is happening tonight. But I think those of us who are invested in the possibility of this succeeding, this is me here. I'll I'll be getting at you, Jessica and Ian and Emily and David. We'll we'll just stay at it is kind of where I'm thinking right now. And that will be all I have to say about this.

Can I pop in real quick? And so I want to pop in real quick because this particular space is used by a lot of people. I think about my own husband who biked for many years until he busted his knee up and, you know, now is solely in a vehicle. And some folks are they're going to drive. And so the roadway is for a lot of people, right?

So you've got our drivers. We have our public transit. We have our bikers. We have our pedestrians. And another thing that's at stake for me is public trust and believing us when we say we're going to do, when we say we're going to listen, when we say we're going to take into account what everyone has come in here and said tonight.

Some folks don't even know this conversation is going on. They'll show up, the road will be blocked, and they'll be like, I ain't going to say it because I got a hot microphone, but y'all know what I mean. And so, we're here to represent everyone's interest. And so, I'm piggybacking off of what Mayor Pro Tem Niles said, that these conversations must continue. Everyone's voice has to be accounted for.

This is a huge change for a lot of people within the community, and I would hope that we would work until we get it right. And I am into seeing this on the ground, right? So I know we've had these computer modeling and all this stuff, but also like what would it really be like to have East Weaver Street blocked off as a pilot to see what it's like, to get a feel for it, to just see what's going on with it. Because I think to talk about it and to be in theory is going to be a lot different, you know, when it's blocked off and people aren't don't have access to it, traffic spilling over on other streets. This is what's important to me, the public's trust, because we're we're living in a time where, you know, elected officials, you know, folks are are looking and saying, Are you or aren't you?

You know, and just kind of what are you doing? And so this would be a good opportunity for all of us to just kind of work together and just see what we come up with. Because to my understanding, there's not a timeline here. I know that there is a desire to, you know, have it closed off and, you know, for, you know, folks to gather and conversations about social distancing and things of that nature. I I don't have a problem with that.

But what gives me pause is what I've heard here tonight from various people, some who walk, some who bike, some who drive, you know, the bus, all of it. And then there are those who don't even know this is happening and and could be impacted by a decision from this dais. So I'm piggybacking off what Mayor Pro Tem Niles said about continuing conversations and, you know, seeing if we, you know, can make a more informed decision for the broader community. Council member I'm going to say it, Posada Orozka.

Thank you, madam mayor. So I have a couple of concerns at the moment. Two pretty major, the first one being, around transit. And I think, you know, the mayor and the mayor pro tem already addressed this. But to just so that I get this right, we won't know whether or not there'll be, routes on Weaver until or if this is done. Right? Am I can am I understanding that correctly? That we have a concept that says it's doable, but we have the transit system saying we have to see if it actually happens before we know we're gonna have to either remove or not, or move the routes or just eliminate them altogether.

In response to the finalized capacity study, Chappelle Transit has said we will need to see if those buses can, in fact, make those movements and how service, is affected. And then we will we, but contingent on that, we could reduce or remove service, those routes.

Okay. So I'm gonna be frank with all of my colleagues up here. Unless I have that answer, I'm not gonna support this period. Like for me, I think that is a big key. And while I want to see this happen until I have a yes or no and what that's going to be impacting, I just want to be completely onto those folks on this dais.

And that's going to be a major concern for me. And I don't mean to be overly enthusiastic about this, but it is a piece that is impacting so many of the community that we're trying to serve. We're talking about some nonprofits on that route that people rely on those bus stops to be able to get to. And if we are looking at unable to answer the question whether or not those routes are going to be there, while we're going to be supporting a lot of folks with this change, we could be impacting many of the folks that need those services. And we're not just talking about, you know, folks who are fully able.

And I mean, yeah, we move it down one road. People have to walk a couple of blocks. There's some folks who will all access those pro those programs that I've worked at who know will not go to those programs because they won't be able to access them. So gonna be completely frank with folks until we have the answer at least and I'm one of seven. So, there's that.

Cost is another one of my concerns. And I brought this up at the budget hearing as well. I would kind of want to understand a little bit more what some of those implications look like here specifically if we're going to continue having, you know, looking into this, addressing some of the concerns around the bollards and, like, what's going to actually cost for us to have something that is both safe for folks but also usable for the the restaurants and businesses on that road. It's gonna be important for me. And then on the community engagement piece, I think we've brought this up multiple times, and we do have, I have a serious concern around, towing.

Right? We've already seen some of the towing disasters that have happened in that area. We're now opening that street up. Has there been conversations with folks in charge of towing, primarily in the Weaver Street lot about should someone go to Weaver Street and then decide they want to get on that road, does that qualify them as leaving the property in order to get towed? And I have someone shaking their head back there, but has the town had that official conversation yet?

That is a better question

for

John Hartman Brown, who has been communicating directly with business owners about this project. And so I would turn it over to our economic development director, John Hartman Brown, to answer that question. Good evening, everyone. I would those are very specific conversation that we would, of course, need to have with the property owner. My presumption is that that's likely that if people parked in that lot and went off the property that at least under practices currently that they would be towed. So Yes. We can continue to have that conversation with

the property owner however.

Thank you. And and for folks on the side, as I know that the person in charge of that is in the room, but people watching at home may not know this. But I think this is a key point for us to continue to have conversations because we need to that's something that we need to answer. Whatever needs to happen if we move this forward to not see the same results that we had, what, a year or two ago. And, you know, we all had all the conversations with community members and the emails and all that fun stuff. So I think those are where I'm at right now. I I go back to them. Thank you, John. Yeah. So that's I'll pause there.

While I think this is I would love to see this. I want these answers before I'm willing to put my name towards this project. Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Yep. I suspect that that we're going to be that we're going to be on the same page with each other, that we're not interested in jeopardizing bus service. I do have a question, not for you, Duncan, but for for Chapel Hill Transit that I hope will get conveyed about what Carrboro can do to help them have greater certainty in that outcome. If they've got concerns, for instance, about driver training or something like that, we'd like to hear about it.

If their concern is that Carborough is going to allow drivers to sit out in the middle of an intersection because they feel like it and that that's going to block the buses from getting through, I think we have other means to handle that. We're not just going to let that happen willy nilly. Right? It's the same as any other intersection. We would not be permitting drivers to just roll on out into the middle and stop halfway through.

I take my colleague's question about towing, but as I understand it under state law, the only person who can answer questions about what Carmel will and will not do is mister Millian, so it's not in our scope. I have a couple of questions, Duncan, about sort of how the price estimate was arrived at. Could you share a little more information about the kind of removable bollards we're talking about? Because I'm sort of thinking what I'm familiar with is you got the kind you see down on UHC's campus where you unlock it and it falls down. You've got the sort of fun spring loaded ones where you can press them into the ground and then if you unlock them they pop back up.

Then And you've got the fancy electronic ones usually where you have an RFID chip. I'm I'm assuming something like a chip because if it opened they have these lovely ones that they use for low speed and low traffic roads in Europe where they're automated. Mhmm. But if you allow that to work for any vehicle, then it is effectively not closed to vehicles in The US especially. And if it's based on RFID chip, what I've understood from some folks about their service providers is that they don't know which truck is going to show up, they don't have an opportunity to help their providers install a chip.

Could you share a little bit more about what kind of leaving aside the automatic ones for the moment for budget as well as feasibility reasons, what kind of removable bollards you looked at?

Sure. Staff and the town engineer looked at some of the removable bollards that we already have in place around town, like over on the Little Bit Cotton Bikeway, Roberson or not Roberson, sorry. But the I guess to quickly get to the answer to your question, the ones that flip down are that's what this cost estimate includes here, the ones that flip down.

Thanks. That makes sense. And that cost estimate doesn't if I'm looking at this image that we've got up on the screen, which shows removable bollards, planters, and then a number of other things. And if I understand correctly, the estimate includes only the removable bollards and the planters and nothing else that's depicted here. Is that right?

Correct.

Okay. Got it. Could you tell us a little bit more about what or whether there's been any consideration of the role that the parking lot behind Century Center has to play in this design? I've had some some very helpful conversations with members of the CBA who've helped sort of given me a good picture of what the delivery and logistics process looks like for the businesses that are in this block, right, the ones that are affected. And one of the questions that came up was, hey, is there an you know, I've got drivers who even if you gave them an RFID chip wouldn't wouldn't you know show up on time or wouldn't show up in the

right

place. Businesses along this area already sometimes deal with deliveries that just stop on Main Street and hop out regardless of what the traffic setup is. Now that happens today, so that's not in our scope because it's already occurring. But what I was trying to understand is, for this design, what happens to the north end of the parking lot here behind Century Center? Because right now that sort of feeds out into the street.

And has there been any consideration to whether or not that space could help resolve any some, like, logistics concerns in a different way, for instance, if that's access? Because I believe that gives access to the back of the century center to immediately next to Tesoro And Jade Palace and what I understand is a reasonable distance from Spotted Dog. I'll I'll leave it for you there.

Okay.

Thanks, Duncan.

Thank you, council member Frey. That has been part of the conversation. We do know that some delivery vehicles as well will pull in when Main Street is at at this time now, when Main Street is, crowded, to go ahead and stop and make those deliveries. In conversation with, our, police chief, and even in some of the responses that we got in the mail, to this to the letter that we sent out. Folks had kind of expressed some questions and concerns about the then the turn the truck being able to turn around.

Currently, this would be envisioned as blocked off, not able to kind of turn right onto that. Though we could explore a pass through during times when it is open for the pedestrian space is open for delivery or solid waste collection. But the ability for the trucks to turn around or as well as if the congestion predict projections by the study are accurate, then there is not a lot of space backed up from for eastbound traffic and westbound traffic on that block of East Main Street for a large vehicle actually pull out back into the road. And so it is then the impacting the schedule for trucks that have pulled in there to make deliveries or to address services.

Duncan, could you clarify that last bit? So you're saying that there is or there isn't a way for the trucks to get back out if they're able to use that space?

So there is space, although tight, for trucks to be able to kind of it'd be like a K turn, but with maybe a few more than just K.

A few extra arms.

Yeah, an asterisk turn. And but the, I guess, question in the conversation with our police was the distance here from the intersection to the actual driveway cutout access point here. Some of these queuing diagrams show queuing far beyond where that actual access point is. Here we go. Greensboro and Main Street.

Yes, you can see here. So they show that cars can be backed up beyond that point. And so then it is, again, dependent on vehicles allowing space for a delivery truck or any kind of truck to actually get back out onto the road there.

Got it. Thank you. The other feedback that I heard that was very helpful was that we've this design sort of envisions, if I understand right, that so the bollards being unlocked, would they be unlocked for a particular scheduled part of the day? Would they be is it like somebody at the business has a key and can go out and unlock it if a delivery turns up out of schedule? What's the idea that we have envisioned so far?

That is still something that we need to home in on. One idea is to give drivers keys or business owners keys. Another is to dedicate staff. There are not always staff present at the Century Center or a town hall who could be able to do that. So more exploration is needed into exactly the logistics of how that will work.

All right. Thank you. I really appreciate that you've brought up this. And I wonder if you have one of these for the intersection of East Main and Roberson for the PM. Perfect. Thank you.

And the purple line, just for the folks that are listening in, the purple line is the build with improvements. Last time we spoke about kind of the this kind of turquoise line, that's what we were considering. But the this change would forecasting is that purple queuing diagram there.

Thanks. This is something that I wanted to highlight, and particularly hearing from folks who spoke today, including miss Clementine, are saying that they are currently and I just wanna emphasize that in this diagram, currently is orange. They are currently having problems with cars queuing in a variety of places. And we've received an analysis that I know, I don't know if this includes all of the updates after we lost the extra turn from Greensboro or if this is the original set of images that we got in the summer.

It is the original set of images. We did ask the consultant to go ahead and provide updated cueing diagrams. They or not cueing diagrams, cueing table. They were able to do that. That is in the approved study that is online. In addition, for the only intersection that it changed was Greensboro and Main Street, and it did not show substantial changes to the build with improvement scenario. And so we did not generate new cueing diagrams Thank for

you.

Very effective. I wanna take a moment to help translate these for folks who are trying to follow this at home, having read through the study. Because this is an important part of explaining why we are considering this change. So if you compare the length of the orange and the purple lines, what that is showing is orange is how far the cars back up right now, and purple is how far they would be expected to back up accounting for adding all the cars from East Weaver Street to one of the other cross lanes. And if you're thinking, wait.

This shows the queuing getting shorter at a lot of this intersection. Yes. It does. And if you're thinking, well, how can that be possible if we've just taken a couple thousand extra cars and put them onto East Main Street? The answer is because when you do this, you get something like a 50% longer turn cycle.

So the light at this intersection stays green longer, which means more folks can get through, which means the intersection functions more efficiently and you can move more cars through and have folks back up less. This is just modeling. I want to emphasize that. But it's they basically assumed that every single trip that was gonna that was currently recorded going along East Weaver Street, they took real data counts and they said, if we took these cars and we moved them onto the other side and it takes this long to get through the intersection and we change the signals in this way, here's the physical space that those cars have got to take up. So it's really solid modeling.

The point of that long digression, and thank you for your patience everyone, is that we're not doing this in ignorance of effects to traffic. We are doing this, in fact, in large part because we want to resolve some of the current problems with traffic, including access to neighborhood issues, queuing that backs up past entrance to Lloyd Street, including the time that it takes to get through these lights. Know Ms. Clementine pointed out that she began to have trouble when Main Street was restriped so that we lost the dedicated turn lane from westbound East Main Street onto Roberson. This plan puts it back and enables us to update the signals to go with that.

So I think it's clear that there's a number of issues we still need to hash out. In particular, I'm thinking about delivery logistics for the businesses right there. And we really need some clear answers on bus service because we just cannot leave that hanging. But I'm still really happy to see that even DOT who are notoriously down on pedestrianization projects, they actually thought that this would improve our traffic throughput, which is wild. That I didn't think we were gonna end up on the same page as DOT on this, so I'm glad to see that.

Especially on that just to I mean, the other intersection with the build would improve the queuing would I'm like so this surprises me very positively to that that we would see improved throughput particularly on the like the North Greensboro, North South with like three phase improvement and one very modest change for the negative to the northbound. I mean, this is a wild this would be a wild success for traffic.

Yeah. I wanna know that this is not just any old traffic. This is actual measured trips from Peak Farmers Market. Thank you Thank very you. No. Thank you very much, everybody, for listening. I just feel it's really important because we've got a lot of highly technical engineering stuff, it's really helpful to, like, boil that down for folks who are paying attention. And I yield back. Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Councilmember Haven O'Donnell.

Okay. So, I really appreciate the comments of the the, fellow council members. I think they're really important to consider. I'm just going to take a step back and a step aside for a moment. I don't know, well over a decade ago, I was really excited about the concept of a WUNERF up in Asheville.

And our mayor at the time, we had robust conversation about East Weaver because of that because we were all like, yeah, we could do what Wall Street did in Asheville except Wall Street happens to go into a network of streets that's within a network of other streets and Carrboro really has two streets. And that's what brings us here today. And so I've learned a couple of things over the years. I really appreciate that we have done this study and worked with a consultant. However, I feel like the study and all this information tells us how we can do it.

It directly says this is what you can do. If you want to do this, this is how you do it. It does not include some key factors. And one of them, I'm just going to start from this space and try and work back in. Last year, a group of us went to Ann Arbor.

In Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor is like, I don't know, five, eight times the size of Carrboro, and has a robust downtown that far more robust than Raleigh. Okay? And they spent a good deal of time working through how they were going to create bike and ped spaces downtown that would be car free. And what they did, and I talk about this because not that there's not other places that have done this in just the same way, but because many folks on staff had gone to Ann Arbor and counsel. So what they did was they tested it to get a measurement of who's coming down, when were the times that businesses would be least impacted.

They looked at one day a week. They looked at weekends. They looked at Sundays. They ran filters over their pilot. One, we need a pilot.

Two, we need to run it maybe once a month, maybe on Sundays. This goes back to the conversations over the last two decades that we've had right here in this room with the council. And even though this study shows we could do we could go forth and do this tomorrow, I agree with Council, you know, it's more than just conversation. We need data, okay, on if we tested this out and we looked at it, you know, one day a month, maybe on a Sunday, what would that look like? Additionally, what we do not know, you know, is how folks coming downtown that one time a month, what they would think.

What's their impression of it? Ann Arbor did something interesting that I thought they had multiple streets that tested it. We won't have that advantage. But they had multiple streets and they got data from multiple street closings so that they could see which one worked the best and why. So all I'm saying is that if they could do that, they set a model that to me makes sense for us to follow before we throw money at anything else.

Second, engagement. Staff has reported that engagement occurred and it bulleted out four places neighborhood engagement occurred, which means that folks had to come downtown to come to these engagements. None of the engagement occurred in the neighborhoods north or south of Carrboro's downtown. Those are the people who have to drive or very often drive or very often do not have a bus option. They are not included in this.

So in terms of engagement, we're also just not ready because the engagement process needs to go out into the neighborhoods to the people who will drive, the people who are going to these restaurants. And if nothing else, they

will

park at the Drakeford or they will park at the deck, the Hampton Deck. Okay? So they would have to be coming through, especially those in North Carrboro. We, for a very long time, were dedicated to the local living economy. I fear that if we do not pilot this and get clear data on who's coming and from how far away and under what circumstances, we will not know about the business that will be lost.

This to me, I understand the how. I'm a science educator. I get it. Okay? But what I'm concerned about are the economics because we have two kinds of economics.

The

economics that are driving this little engine that could that's downtown with a couple 100 businesses, you know, where are people coming from? They're not all coming because they're walking and cycling. We cannot have the dollars leaking to North Carrboro that if we create something down here that's 20 fourseven immediately, we just have no idea who's going to say, I'm not dealing with it. That's what's happened to Chapel Hill. Just it's just words of caution because, you know, Downtown Carrboro is hometown to nearly 22,000 people and they all don't live immediate to downtown.

In fact, we keep building further and further out without thinking those are the people whose money we need downtown. So the economics of keeping our businesses thriving and vibrant and people circulating our dollars locally so we're not leaking them, not even leaking them, I'm sorry, Chapel Hill, to Chapel Hill. But in addition, knowing that the community of folks who are in vehicles other than a bicycle and a bus are welcome. This last week, we had an EV rodeo, okay? A lot of folks in Carrboro are buying hybrids, they're buying EV vehicles.

We're supporting that with EV stations. We know that there's going to be vehicles and they're going to be emissions free. So, you know, are we talking out of both sides of our mouths and saying we want to be car free when we're supporting, you know, a future that is going to say change the kind of vehicle you have and we're going to support you. So I'm just being flat out realistic here that I love this idea. I've always loved it.

But there are things about it that need to be tested before we say yesno. This study looks to me like it's a yes without any of this other information. And so, you know, I feel that there's a whole community out there that needs to be engaged, that doesn't even know that this is, you know, as far along in its deliberation as it is. There are businesses who these changes that you can figure out how to mitigate might kill them, might just kill them because they're mom and pop businesses, because they're small businesses, because simple things to us that we could figure out what to do with bollards just might be too much in terms of delivery or in terms of access. And so this is all to say, great idea, but would rework how we address the interest with designing a pilot and running a pilot for a year or so so that we can get the information we need and the right kind of measurements.

Additionally, get engagement to include all of Carrboro and not just where we say, well we're to have it at four or five places, we're going to have it at, know, just four or five places and they're going be all downtown. You've got neighborhoods who they're driving through this town all day long, you know, and they have no idea that this is going on and we need them to be involved. They want to be involved and we need their revenue. That's it.

Thank you. I didn't get a hand clap.

I was

kidding.

No, but I was. It was coming off of you. Yeah.

Thank you, Councilmember Heaven O'Donnell, all my other colleagues for the weigh in. I see Councilmember Merrill and Palmer. You're welcome if you have anything. Councilmember Merrill or Palmer, whoever wants to go first.

I don't have a whole lot to say. Surprise, surprise. I

have talked

to a handful of folks in the business community. Obviously, I've heard from some folks here tonight, too. I do like the idea of a pilot that is focused on weekends so we can kind of get the maximum draw benefit with the minimum disruptions, I think that would be an idea worth exploring. I think if and when bollards go up, and hopefully this is part of the kind of bid they include very clear signage about where public parking is located and where private parking is located so that when visitors are arriving from our east, they know which way to turn so that they don't get towed. And I just wanted to echo what I thought was a really impactful comment of the night, which is you can find a town full of cars anywhere, but you can't find a town like ours anywhere, especially full of people.

So that's all.

Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Merrill. Councilmember Palmer, if you have anything?

Yeah. I just

I I wanted to echo my colleagues who have concerns about that losing the FNCW or disruptions to FNCW that that for me, that and the concerns about, emergency service delivery are are the potential deal breakers. And so I'm you know, I what I'm hearing in a sense was that there's there's not a a great way to know without some real world testing. And so what I'm wondering is in the spirit of some sort of pilot, like I know that Chapel Hill Transit runs special buses to figure out timings for route changes, drivers. There a mode in a context where we could have cones or we could have something that would essentially mimic the And I'm sorry.

I apologize. I muttered so that they can test it out

in real

world Yes. Something so that Chapel Hill Transit can get a test that captures their concerns. Because as I asked before, as I sit here, I don't have a clear picture of what their concern is. Is it about their operators or is it about carbro driver behavior, which as council member Frey said before, you know, we have tools that that can deal with that that are outside the scope of this. But that's all I had to say for tonight.

We will have to examine what a test would entail, including the capacity for and cost of staff presence, depending on what those barricades look like. I do want to point out that the Chapel Hill Transit response, as well as the other responses, is to the Builds with Improvements scenario. If we were to test and not make signal and not pay for signal redesign and changes, we would get information on something that the capacity study doesn't consider, which would be no lane reallocations, no re stripings, no changes And so, the we we would need to examine what the cost and scope of a of a pilot would entail.

And if I could jump in on that, I think like that should guide our discussions which is not to say that we should jam through this plan without a pilot if a pilot but that a pilot for this plan is likely not feasible. But that doesn't mean that say like an Ann Arbor model like evenings and weekends, something like that might not be feasible. But I just the to to pilot the particular design that we are considering here to achieve one of the we're thinking quite a bit about the people who drive to downtown. I think if we did community engagement and told them that traffic was going to get better downtown, they'd likely be pretty happy. But I think we can do that.

The problem with the pilot would be particularly this stop bar. And so this is just like, this is just a little note for us as we move forward here and for those of you following at home, my interest is not like, let's do this right now. My interest is I think a pilot is likely not viable toward this particular end goal. But a pilot of something like say Thursday evening through Sunday morning like Ann Arbor is doing, that may well be more viable. But since that has come up tonight, I felt like I wanted to weigh in just because I think we are just not able to test this, to Duncan's point.

I? I just want to echo and reiterate that the build with improvements, the improvements I have to take a step back. Folks at home may not have gone to as many meetings involving DOT. I don't want to disrespect anyone working in DOT. They're working great.

But they're working within state laws that exist right now, which is 90% highway funding for say, like, the context where we get pedestrian improvements is because there's demonstratively unsafe space. Right? It is not DOT never says, oh, yeah. Let's do this because pedestrian access is gonna get better just on its own. They just don't do even even with no penalty to cars.

That just doesn't happen. Right? So so I just wanna echo and reiterate that what DOT gave a thumbs up to is this build with improvements, which means cars do better. I'm gonna say that one more time for emphasis. Build with improvements, Cars do better on the whole.

There are little places where that's not true. But if we even if we can't test or maybe especially if we can't test, I think that's a reason to get more information. That's a reason to go further along and figure out what those tripping hazards are with the c, w, and the f because to me, those are deal breakers. We can't risk that.

Councilwoman Freire.

Thank you, madam mayor. And I won't test your patience again like I did last time.

You won't test some of my patients.

All right. Thank you, madam mayor. There's something I wanted to note here is that I think it is possible to let's break this apart, right? Because we are hearing a lot of business concerns about visibility and pedestrian traffic, ADA, some delivery, depending on when we do this. Some folks are coming to us and saying this is great, but could you please do it weekends?

The trick is we don't get the traffic improvements if we do this on weekends because if we do it on weekends, we can't redo the signal timing or restripe the pavement. So there isn't a viable pilot for the build with improvements part of this. That doesn't mean that we couldn't do a viable pilot for business visibility and access. So thinking about breaking these apart, what can we do to help the businesses that will be right along this stretch assess what changes they can expect in pedestrian traffic? I'm reminded that internationally, there is this, like, pretty much ironclad rule which is when you build a bike lane, the businesses along it hate it until it's in, at which point they tell you, you can never take that away because my business just spiked.

You get a lot of traffic from bike and ped, but it can be really hard for businesses to see that in advance because they're only seeing the cars and it's hard for them to do that kind of measure you know, for them to measure that. So I'd be interested to know if there's something we can do in terms of a weekend or evening closure that would help businesses see the traffic impacts, the the foot traffic impacts into their stores as separate from the part of the car traffic, which I think the modeling does a good job of showing us. So maybe we can split those apart and help make this a little bit easier to work with the owners right there to give them some more clarity in what's coming. Alright. Thanks.

That's my thought.

Anything else?

Chief Potter is available to answer some more questions about large vehicles making that right turn, if you all would like to hear from him this evening

as well. Yeah. And before we hear from him, again, I'm going to reiterate the importance of more engagement, which I feel like it is critical, as well as working with our local businesses to see, you know, just what the impact is. It doesn't matter to me about the pilot with build, what's being put in front of us, whatever. All this could be changed, right?

We don't have a timeline for this project. But what I do want is buy in. I want community buy in. I want local business buy in as much as possible and for voices to be heard and accounted for. And with that, Chief Potter would love to hear from you. Thanks.

Good evening, mayor and council. I wasn't planning on speaking, but just with some of the questions, I don't want to speak for Chapel Hill Transit, but I think I can approach from a similar perspective. And the answer to your questions is all of the above. So there are some concerns with drivers. We are all faced with driver shortages. We are faced with newer drivers driving that the biggest thing that they've driven is is a Honda Accord, and now we're putting them in a fire truck. So that's a difficult turn to make when you're doing that. Beyond that, though, it it is narrow there. So a vehicle that stays too close to the lane in what is now a left turn lane, if they are too close to that white line, you can't swing to make that turn at all. So that's that's potentially problematic.

If that's a, a bigger, larger vehicle, a delivery vehicle, an Amazon truck that's sitting there, then you you may have trouble making that turn just based on the other vehicles that are there. We also already in this area have problems with vehicles stopping even just a foot or two feet beyond that stop bar, which then makes that turn impossible. And with queuing, those vehicles can't then back up to allow the vehicle to make the turn. So it's difficult to say exactly what it is. I think it's really, really multifaceted in what the concerns are for making that right turn.

That is a it's a tight tight intersection. It's also, that you have short sight lines because of the building being there. So really, that's that is problematic, and we won't know because we feel confident that people will drive past the stop line, that's difficult to to police. And we know that, once again, we do have younger and newer drivers that, will have trouble making that turn.

Thank you for that.

Yep. Just wanna like I said, I don't wanna speak for Chappell Transit, I'm guessing our concerns are probably similar. So

Any questions for No. Thank you. Chief Potter? All right. Any other questions for no, staff?

Direction? Any direction? I've heard a lot about pilots. I've heard some about community engagement, the need to gather more input and work more with the business community engagement out in our neighborhoods, particularly North Carrboro is what another thing that I'm hearing. And so council members, this is the direction that we want to go in as we try to figure out about East Weber Street.

And then there was concern at least one concern about cost. And nobody knows how much the cost would be to actually turn it into this plaza atmosphere, which would be quite nice. But that's a cost that we don't have. We have like that initial cost that you showed us in the of 300 some thousand. I see Councilmember Palmer and Posado

I just wanted to make sure that we captured the request to get some feedback from Chapel Hill Transit of what we could do that would allay their concerns if anything.

He has it. Okay. Mhmm. Thank you, council member Palmer.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I think one of the only things that I would add to the community engagement piece is if there could be some targeted outreach, not just to the businesses on they're going to

be directly impacted by this,

but also the nonprofits and the other folks down Weaver Street. I don't know how much engagement has happened with some of the nonprofits there, but I'm curious if they're aware and kind of any possible implications of not having a bus route potential. I'm not you you know what I'm saying? Because I wanna engage them as well so they understand some of that. Yeah. That's where I'm at. Thank you, madam

mayor. Mhmm.

Madam mayor. Yes. I'm particularly interested in making sure that we gather information from directly affected businesses about their logistical needs and make sure that we have a design that, allows them to get their key services delivered.

Oh, yes. Yes. Very good. Mhmm. Yep. Council members, anything else that we want? Looks like And everything else is so will you come back to us about information about a pilot and what is most feasible based on feedback from council members? Is that information that's going to come back as far as any type of pilot?

At the manager's direction, we will at the manager's direction, we will go ahead and answer gather information and, you know, kind of go through the direction that you've provided to the manager and us this evening. And then at the manager's discretion, we will likely return with another information item or more information either in the CMU on the project website. There are a myriad of different ways that we could inform the community about the findings of this kind of the follow-up to this meeting.

Okay. Sounds good. Council members, anything else before nothing? Very good. Thank you.

We

And appreciate thank you, Chief Potter. So we just were to receive that information, and we did. And the request was to follow multiple points for more information and engagement from council members. I think we have one more item.

Last item of the evening is board appointments, our town clerk.

Good evening, mayor and council. We get to the fun stuff now. We get to a board appointment. We have one applicant for the Board of Adjustment, and I think you have the little sheet I tried to conserve on paper. So I gave you a little slip. So if you could just I will turn it over to the mayor and let the mayor have the discussion on how you want to proceed with this appointment.

Right. So board board of adjustment, we have looks like one applicant. And I presume we've all read the application. And I am just gonna ask if there's a motion on this name.

Madam Mayor, I would move that we appoint Andrew Whitmore to the Board of Adjustment.

Mhmm. Second. Thank you so much. It's been moved and properly seconded that we appoint Andrew Whitmore to the Board of Adjustment. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries, seven-zero. That is the I see a finger up. It isn't. Council member, do you have a comment or you have a motion?

Just, another matter just for the council.

Oh, okay. Yes. Yes.

Yeah. For sure.

Thank you, madam mayor. It's, I just wanna let, y'all know that next week on the fourteenth, I will not be able to attend the work session. I'll be, out of town. So I just wanna give a fair notice to everybody on that.

And you will not be able to join virtually is what you're saying?

No. You

just will not be available at all.

I won't be available.

Thank you so much for that. Anything else, council members? Motion to adjourn. There it is.

Seconded.

All right. So it's been moved and properly seconded that we adjourn the meeting. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Seven-zero. We

are adjourned. Let's go.