Planning Commision - Regular Meeting

here. Commissioner Zoy here.

Commissioner Gettinger is not here at the this time and Commissioner Ericson myself is here. So we have eight out of nine remmers and we have a quorum. Um I will read our standard introductory statement for how we conduct business at our meetings. During tonight's meeting, plan commission members will be participating in person and deliberate and take action on the agenda items that are before us. The plan commission attempts to conduct its public hearings in a relatively informal manner um within the constraints that we must conduct uh and deal with our issues before us in an orderly and businesslike manner. Um, we give the applicant an opportunity to speak first and then others are each permitted to speak either for or against the proposal. We do request that everyone restrict their comments to the issues before us, avoid unnecessary repetition, and be prudent in the use of time. We want to be sure that we have adequate time to deal as carefully with the last items on our agenda as we do the first. If you wish to view not comment at tonight's public meeting, it can be viewed through the live link event link on the city's homepage under public notices and meetings. This meeting is being recorded at the same location. Item number five tonight is the open public comment period for items on our agenda that do not appear on tonight's agenda as a public hearing. Item number seven on our agenda is a public hearing and a separate uh comment period will be held during that public hearing. Um items uh number six is our consent agenda. It's open for a public comment at this time. Is there anyone here

wishing to give public comment on item number six or any other comments not related to tonight's agenda? Please come forward to the podium if you wish to speak. I see no one. Um so therefore I will proceed with the agenda tonight. Tonight our consent agenda has four public or four agenda items. Uh item number A is approval of April 6, 2026 plan commission minutes. Um the uh PLU, excuse me. Uh item number B is a certified survey mat uh uh for four lot CSM on Venture Drive and right ofway dedication. Item C under the consent agenda is uh certified survey map for uh four lot CSM on music road with right-of-way dedication. And item D is a two lot certified survey map on Hamilton Avenue with right-of-way dedication. Are there any comments? Any questions on the agenda item? Any commissioners wishing to have any items moved to the regular agenda?

I was going to move approval of the consent agenda. Okay. Thank you. Uh approval has been moved by Commissioner Brewster and seconded by I'll second. Commissioner Wolf Grant. Any other comments? I'll call the roll. Commissioner Brewster. Yes. Commissioner Wolfgrrim. Yes. Commissioner Hollesman. Yes. Commissioner Lawson. Yes. Commissioner Leonard. Hi. Commissioner Reid. Hi. Commissioner Zoy.

I. and chairman Eric or Vice Chairman Ericson. Well, it's I and the item passes 8 to zero. What's that? Did I not call you? No. Oh, I'm sorry. But you appear to have skipped item four on the agenda and also three.

Oh, I skipped over that. Well, okay. We'll go back. I'm sorry. I'm a rookie. Excuse, excuse me, please. I am sorry. Um, we are to introduce our new plan commission members. And tonight we have two new members, but one member is not in attendance, uh, Commissioner Gettinger. So, tonight we'd like to welcome back a former plan commission member, and that is Susan Wolfgr. Thank you. You're welcome. Happy to be back. Anything you'd like to say, Susan? I'm just happy to be back. Thank you.

Great. You bet. And now we also have election of officers. Uh we have to elect a new chairman because our past chairman has now left the commission and uh we have to elect uh vice chair and uh secretary. Are there any nominations for the chair position? Before I make the nomination, are you willing to take the nomination? I am. Okay. So then I nominate Mel Ericson to be commissioner, chairman of even with my faux paws already. Yes. Thank you. Is there a second?

I'll second the nomination. Second by s by commissioner uh Reed. Thank you. Um Oh, excuse me. Yeah. Yeah. Boy, see I'm starting off on a great foot. So, I will now call We have a We have a nomination in a second and I'll call the role. Just want to check probably want to check to make sure that there are any other nominations from Excuse me. Any other nominations? Any other nominations? Seeing none, now I'll call the role. Uh, Commissioner Zoy, I. Commissioner Reid,

I. Commissioner Leonard. Hi. Commissioner Lawson. Hi. Commissioner Hollesman. Hi. Commissioner Wolfgram. Hi. And Commissioner Brewster. Hi. Thank you. And I hope to do a better job than I'm doing tonight in the future. Now, I will open nominations for the vice chair. Any nominations for vice chair? Yes. Um, I would like to nominate Susan Wolfgram for vice chair. Susan Wolfgram has been nominated for vice chair. Is there a second?

I'll second it. Okay, we have a second. Are there any other nominations? Seeing none, I'll close the nominations and I will call the role. Uh, Commissioner Reid, I. Commissioner Leonard, I. Commissioner Lawson. I. Commissioner Hollesman. I. The chair votes I. Commissioner Brewster. I. And Commissioner Wolf Grim. I'll accept. I. Thank you. And Commissioner. Thank you. I've got your back.

Okay. Now we have uh nominations open for the secretary. Are there any nominations for secretary? Yes, I nominate Josh Zoe. Okay, I'll second that. And there's a there's a nomination and a second for Commissioner Zoy. Any other nominations? Seeing no other, I will call the role. Commissioner Wolfrram, I. Commissioner Hollesman, I. Commissioner Lawson. Hi, Commissioner Leonard. Hi, Commissioner Reid. Hi, Commissioner Zoy. Hi, and Commissioner Brewster.

Hi, and the chair votes I. And we have a new secretary also. Thank you. I think that's all the nominations. Is that not correct? Okay. Thank you. Um, now now I will open it up to the public comment period on any items that do not appear on the agenda as a public hearing. Uh, are there any items other comments that you have in the audience? Seeing none, I'll close that portion of the agenda. Now, I'll move on to the consent agenda. We already passed that.

Yes, we did. I we did that and I marked it down. Okay, this is this is um exhausting. Um you'll get there, buddy.

Okay, now we go on to our regular agenda. Number seven is a public hearing for recommendation to the city council of reszoning. Can we have our staff report, please? side. Okay.

Um, it's a sign. Okay. Um, good evening planning commissioners. My name is Annie Tangman. Um, I'm the planning intern. So, for this reasonzoning, it is um submitted by real land surveying and has requested to reszone three properties on the 900 block of Monomin Street from urban residential and urban residential plan development to urban commercial. Um so the three properties are located near the Sonnet Tag building and across from the Hobs Ice Arena as you can see in the aerial photo there. Um the lots total about 0.92 acres and they are currently vacant. Uh the purpose for this resoning is for a future mixeduse building which is allowed in the urban commercial zoning which they applied for. Um, the future building outlined in the narrative will include commercial space on the ground floor and residential units above. And as you can see, the lots are surrounded by other mixeduse and residential lots. And then the block pattern uh consists of UC and UR zoning. So if the resoning is approved, two of the parcels will be resone reszoned out of the existing plan development. So that was previously approved for residential multifamily um units and the historic Randall Park neighborhood association had supported the increased density in this area back in 2021. And then for this current project and adjacent property owner voiced their support and willingness to cooperate. Um the applicant anticipates a land division to consolidate the lots to meet code requirements and to support the development plan. And then the LDO provides that there are no minimum lot standards for UC properties and then a future site plan will be required and

then reviewed by staff. Um and that will also need to follow the LDO. So the proposed resoning does align with the future land use map from the comprehensive plan which designates the area as transitional medium high density residential and commercial. Um the request is also consistent with the comprehensive plans land use and growth management chapter. So if the plan commission finds the reasonzoning of these parcels consistent with the comprehensive plan, staff recommends the commission should approve resoning. Um the applicant is also in the audience. So and staff can answer any questions you might have.

Well, thank you an are there any questions from the commissioners? Yes. In the write up that we had and you just made the point if conditions are meant for the LDO, are there any that do not to the uh Randle Park Neighborhood Association? And if if so, do they have uh any commentary on it? Um not that we know of. The only thing we know of is from back in 2021. Um yeah. Okay. Can I do a followup? Yes.

So, from what I understand, correct me if I'm wrong now because it's it's it's been a bit, but I understand that the new LDO does not require developers to reach out to neighborhood associations. And I did check with Ned today that um and Mr. White, you might be able to weigh in on this. That developer agreements now include sending the packet monthly to neighborhood association presidents andor point persons. Is that is that what you understand as well?

Correct. We are doing some broader notifications of packets and just letting them be aware that projects are up, projects are available and they can they can access that information from the city website. I would like to recommend from my perspective, just to follow up on Commissioner Brewster's comment, that um I do think it's a good idea for a developer to reach out personally in spite of the packets being sent. I think it really gives a message of goodwill and partnering. So, I just want to be on the record saying that. And you did a very nice job, by the way.

Thank you. Any other questions or comments from seeing none would the representative state your name last name?

Good evening. My name is Sean Bohan. Um I'm an engineer with Advanced Engineering Concepts. Um, address E5055 Interlockan Boulevard. Um, just here to answer any questions. From my understanding, they did reach out to the neighborhood association, I believe, um, and stuff. So, but other than that, I'm here to answer any questions that you may have. Are there any questions?

Mr. Bohan. So again, I might, you know, it's been a while, so I might have missed something, but historically, I don't remember um when an owner just identifies as an LLC. I didn't see a name or an address. Is there is there a specific name and address of the owner? Um I'm not sure if the we end up having one or is I don't believe. I mean, yeah.

No, I know that. So, I just So, so again, I I know that one thing we've been concerned about historically is um guarding against out of town investors coming in. And I'm wondering if we are able to um get the owner's name and address instead of just identifying as an LLC. I mean, it's local. I mean, we can definitely send it. Um, but staff ends up knowing and stuff. I mean, James Robecki is the open is the property owner. Okay. Thank you. Are there other comments or questions?

Yes. more more of a comment just uh I think this is a given its proximity to Sentinag I think it's a a good space for some some redevelopment and um I like the fact that you're looking at increased density in that area so thanks when do you suspect that the reserveying and all this is going to happen and long term for when the buildout would happen?

Sure. Um so the surveying has been done. Um there's a couple um older residents and stuff that have been taken down um on that property. So um we're looking at construction this year and stuff. So we end up having obviously the next step if we end up having the reszone um ends up being our site plan approval through staff. Um so we'll be looking at doing that um probably mid midsummer to go through an approval process. Um but yes, construction we're looking to start um this fall, build through the winter. Any other comments or questions? Seeing none of

Thank you. And I'll entertain a motion. I'll move approval. I'll second. Commissioner letter. Hi, Commissioner. Hi, Commissioner. Hi, Commissioner Wolf. Hi, Commissioner Brewster. Hi, Commissioner. I

Commissioner I and chair votes I and motion carries. Uh the next item on our agenda is presentation and discussion of the long range transportation plan. West Central Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission representative. Please state your name. Yep. My name is Eric Anderson. I'm the director of the Chipo Clair MO and our address is 800 Wisconsin here in Oaklair, Wisconsin. Thank you.

Could I hand out a few things? Is that okay if I maybe pass them out and you go there? Yeah, it' be perfect. There's all I'll take one there. I might have a few extra. How much time do I have or do you want? We will allow you as much time as you need. Oo, okay. Dangerous. Dangerous. Please keep it real.

That's fair. That's fair. That's fair. How many of you are familiar with metropolitan planning organizations? Okay, so half. Okay, perfect. So every urban area in the US that has 50,000 persons or more has a metropolitan planning organization. So you can see um this here is annual report for our Chipo Clair MO. So I'm going to have you open up real quick to the pages two and three and I just want to kind of go over kind of an intro to the Metropolitan Planning Organizations, what we do, who we are, what we do, um how we work with the city of Oaklair specifically. So on page two, you'll see the map there. So everything in red inside that red boundary that's our metropolitan planning area. So inside that area our staff those are we work on projects and work with communities that are in that area. And then if you go on page three you'll see that we so we work with the two counties. We work with the three cities. So we work with Oaklair Chipua um Altuna and then we also work with um Halley. So so the village of Lake Halley and then we also work with 11 towns. So the 11 towns that surround those incorporated areas, we serve and we work with those communities as well on a variety of different types of projects. So our MO, I'm staffed to the MO, I'm the MO director. The MO is the highest elected official for every unit of government within our metropolitan planning organization. So the city of

Oaklair, city council president, that's who is on our metropolitan planning organization. So, Chipa Falls, obviously, they have a mayor. So, the mayor in Chipa Falls, mayor Altuna are on those. Uh, Gary Spildy, he's a um village chair for Lake. So, those are all the individuals that are on our policy council. In addition, we have a technical advisory committee. So, that's made up of all the planners and engineers in our area. As you probably know, a lot of the towns in our surrounding area don't have planners and engineers. So usually on that that's their highest elected official as well or maybe their their clerk will come. So that's kind of the structure of the of the Metropolitan Planning Organization. What we've been doing I've been the director for the I've been at the regional planning commission since 2007 and I've been in the MO for about eight or nine years and have been the director for 5 years for the Metropolitan Planning Organization. So about 5 years ago when I started I thought we need to get our word out a little bit better. the fact that only half of you know that our MO exists. That's the reason why I wanted to invite myself and see if I could come here and speak just so I'm introduced. So, I have like 11 different communities and and and meetings that I'm going to be attending over the next month and a half and I'm going to try to do more. One thing we want to do is we put together this annual summary report. So, this report highlights all the projects that we worked on in 2025. So, I'm not going to go through all of them. I'm going to highlight a couple of them just because they pertain to the city of Oaklair. This year, um, and then you also have a poster here with you. So, this year, every 5 years, we have to update our long range transportation plan. So, you can maybe kind of think of that as like your comprehensive plan. And we have to update, we're legally required by the federal government to update that every five years. And we did that last year. So, we worked on a lot fewer projects

last year. We most of our hours and time went into updating this long-range plan. But you can see here real quick, I'm just going to go over some projects that we worked with the city of Oclair on page nine. Some of you, is everybody here familiar with the McKenley Road shared use path that's going to be going in? I'm hoping. If not, I guess I'm letting you know about it right now. But we uh brought the city, we brought the school district, we brought the town and the county all together with the idea to apply for this funding for this uh state funding that was 80% funded. So when we applied for it, we were told by the state it was the highest scored application in that cycle. So and that's not just because well maybe a little bit because we did it, but I'm just I'm just kidding. But it was because we we found that is the biggest gap in our metropolitan area that needed a shared rice shared uh shared use path. Um there's the two schools there if you're familiar with that. Uh there's some commercial area there. It connects the the trail on the south side and the north side to the north crossing. So we we worked we we wrote that plan or wrote that grant application. Um did that for the city. Um some of you might be familiar with the Chipa Valley bike routes. It's a 20 route system that's all, you know, those signs up around town that have a bike on it and it's colored and it has a number. So, we were the ones that facilitated that whole process. Uh, I think we're about 90% complete in regards to putting up signs within our whole urban area. We do capital improvement plan story maps. So, this map here on page 13, you'll see that there the city of Oaklair has their own uh capital improvement plan map. Um, we'd be more than happy to do that for the city moving forward, Mr. White or anybody else. We'd be more than happy to do that. If that's something the city would like us to do, we do that for Chipo

County, Oaklair County, Altuna, and Chipo Falls, and Lake. Lake didn't even have a CIP when we went up to him. said, "We can do a CIP map for you." Um, they said, "We don't have a CIP." So, we helped them put together their capital improvement plan. Did that. So, more than happy to work with all the units of government on those things. So, this is an interactive map. When you would click on one of these purple dots here, this is the Oaklair County one. Uh, what would come up would be a box would come up. You could have a picture. It could talk about the funding. Uh, it could talk about the condition of the roads, you know, specific things that are happening. You could house this on your website. You could it could be internal just for staff to have. So, and we we itemize it. We we customize it for each unit of government so it's not the same. One big thing that we've been working with the city of Oclair on is on page 15. So, do when traffic control signage or changes come, does that come to the plan commission first? Like if if the city wants to put in stop signs or yield signs or something, does it come to you first before it goes to city council or do you know?

Okay. I I didn't know if it did or not. Okay.

That's fair. Yep. Yep. Yep. So, we've been working with uh Al and Leah quite a bit. We purchased this mile vision camera. So, maybe you've seen it around town or there was an article about in the paper I think one time. But the city of Oaklair gets a my understanding you get a lot of requests for stop signs, yield signs, crosswalks, those types of things. What we have is we have this camera now and we'll we take it out, we install it, we put it up. Say the city wants to have it out for 6 hours, 8 hours. We just did one one for Altuna a couple months ago and that was like 72 hours. A whole report comes back and it's traffic movement counts. So you can see here this map on page 15 or this this diagram here. So that's the intersection. So you can see how many vehicles are going through the intersection, going straight, turning, all that. So we we've done I think almost 60 of these for the city of Oaklair now. And a lot of what's happening is um we we actually worked with you on your safe routes to school plan and safe routes to parks plan. The safe routes to parks plan that we did for the city, it was the first one in the state that was ever done. But now when people come and they request, they want yield signs, they want stop signs. We can go out there and we can get the actual data for the city. So it's not just them saying, it's not Lee or Al saying maybe, maybe not. So they'll have the actual data and they can do that. That that new one on Water Street that's going to have those flashing signs. We went down on there on Water Street and did like three different intersections for there. when that young lady went to the university in the city asking for um some some crosswalk enhancements there. So this here shows that any questions on the summary report

so is it okay if I take two more minutes which will turn into four.

Okay. So this year we completed our long range transportation plan. So that transportation plan uh looks at um we do current um current data existing conditions. We do a lot of outreach. So this year we did three five or six hour open houses. We did one Chipa Falls. We did one in Altuna and we did one here at the library in Oaklair. We also did a public survey. Um we had 1,200 respondents on that when we did our our long range plan 5 years ago. uh we had over just over 300 respondents. So sure we had over 1,200 respondents um for our survey. What we do then is we look at our whole urban transportation system. So it's not just vehicles on streets. It's bike, it's pad, it's transit, it's uh freight rail, it's passenger air, uh it's also uh passenger rail. I think you know that there's the Western Wisconsin Rail Coalition that's trying to get passenger rail here and we work with them as well. So that whole document we completed, it's about 150 pages. What I've realized over the past two cycles of doing these and doing a lot of different planning projects for communities in our seven county area for the regional planning commission is that when we're done, we don't we don't help those units of government. We don't help those communities implement their plans. We just kind of say, "Here's your plan." We walk away and say, "Good luck." Right? A lot of times for some communities, they forget that they even have a this plan, right? they forget they have a comp plan, they forget they have a safe route to school plan. What we wanted to do, and I realized that last time when we did this um long range plan update was that most people in our urban area didn't even look at it and I get it, right? It's cities and villages, they don't have to use it, but we want we think there's a lot of good information and data in it for people to use. So this year, what we did is we put together this poster. I was just at the

no director meeting. The state has about like 13 or 14 NPOS's. This is the first one that's been done in the state. So like a poster that goes along with the long range transportation plan. And you can go on there's a QR code on here. You can go on here and you can look at the whole plan if you want if if you want. But what we want to do with this is we really wanted to highlight the high-end things for our long range transportation plan. So here's our vision. And when I say our vision, it's not Eric's vision, right? It's not the regional planning commission's vision. This is adopted by the our our policy council. Right? So we we help give direction. These are all fed from public input. It's all fed from our surveys. It's all fed from our open houses. So that you can read our vision here. You can read the five goals that we have here. Um so that's we wanted to put those at the top. In addition, we have some just basic information there in regards to the planning area, the population, projected increase for our whole urban area. In addition, what we wanted to do is we wanted to have um a little bit of information for the online for the uh public survey. So, we had probably 30 questions or so. And this is the question that we pulled out here because we felt like it says the most. So, in it, you can read the question here in regards to the transportation system in the area. How important is it to, you know, fill in your answer here? As you can see here, reduce the number and severity of crashes was by far the highest rated thing that people responded to. And what I found what interesting was is look at the bottom one. It's how fast can I get to point A to point B. That's the least that's that's the one that had the lowest score. And so you can see the weighted average there. So like the top one there was rated 4.35. So if somebody scored something extremely important, that would have been a five. If somebody would have

scored something very unimportant, that would have been a one. So you can see how that breaks down in there. So we found that really interesting, which for us that allowed us to present to the TAC and the policy council what I think are a little bit more aggressive kind of strategies and goals. One of them what we're trying to do is there's a strategy in our long-range plan is to reduce number of crashes and fatal and serious crashes by 5% every year over the 5year cycle of this plan. So we want to work with the communities, we want want to work with WISDOT. We'll talk about WISOT in just a second, but we want to work with the communities. We want to work with WISOT. We want to work with everybody. Help be that facilitator to help reduce crashes and fatal crashes in our urban area by 5% each year over the next five years. Just a lifeless plan. Almost done. Everybody loves maps. We try to pick out what map do we want to do. So, we picked out the heat map. Is everybody here familiar with heat maps? Pretty much. Yeah. Okay. So, you can see here the highest concentration of crashes in our urban areas. It's probably not a surprise for you, but it's Claremont, London area, right? That whole area there is the highest concentration of crashes. You can also see some other like smaller hot areas. You can even see up in downtown Triple Falls, they have a a small one up there. But then when you get out by Golf Road, you know, 53, that's that's a high one. And then downtown Oaklair here. Remember, this is number. It's not severity. We have we have a map in our long range plan, too, that has a heat map for severity as well for serious and fatal crashes. So, you can see that as well. So, the crash type and severity, we have it broken down there. We did a three-year before we did a five-year. We did not want to have the COVID years in there. We we didn't want 2020 in there. We didn't want 2021 in there. So, we started with 22, went to 23 and 24. The bottom the bottom line or the bottom category down there is intersections with the highest number of crashes. Um

I'm just going to be honest with you, it's again probably no surprise. Uh but most of them are in Oaklair, right? I think out of the top 20, there might be one that's not in the city of Oaklair. Maybe that that just comes with the territory of the types of roads that are in the city of Oaklair compared to, you know, some of the other communities. What we have found though is we have found that uh the units of government in our MPA, Metropolitan Playing area have been receptive to the data that that that that we push out. When we did this 5 years ago, um uh Hastings and Bracket was the number one crash intersection. All the city did, all the city of Oaklair did was protect the left turn lane going north. So if you're going north and taking a left on bracket during rush hour, now there's no yellow arrow. So it's red or it's green. And it reduced that specifically. Nothing else was changed the intersection. It reduced crashes by 30%. Just at that intersection, just doing that. and Birch and Hastings has been one of the highest um crash intersections and highest crash rate. So number of crashes based on the volume of traffic going to the intersection almost every year that we've done this for the past five or six years and I believe the city you guys applied for a hissup grant I think right so you plan for a hup grant so that's a highway safety improvement project so um the hope is is that the city is going to uh be able to redesign that intersection to make that intersection safer. So and that's coming from the data that that we're providing. What we also called out is we also called out Claremont on this map as you can read that data there. I don't have to get into it, but 11 of the top 21 intersections are in our MPA for total number of crashes are on Claremont. Has one some of the highest volume of traffic, but then disproportionately has some of the

highest rates of fatal and serious crashes as well. So, um the number of crashes in our urban area went up. I think it was 6.4 5 years ago. now 6.9. And then on the right there, we put in some of the other items that were brought that kind of rose to the top, if you will, in regards to all the public input that we got. So, another big one, people want a regional transit system within our area. People from Chipua want to get to Oaklair. People from Oaklair want to get to Chipua. People in Chipua, northern Oaklair want to get to the Walmart in Lake Cali. Those are those are just the facts. Those are the things that that we heard. So we pulled out those things in here as well. Uh people wanted separated bike and ped facilities, you know, not not not just bike lanes or sheros, they want separated facilities for for bike and ped. So you can kind of see those types of things that are in on that right hand column there as well. So more than happy to answer any questions that you might have. Um but wanted to bring this uh in the past we've worked with the city on again safe routes to schools safe routes to parks and a host of other types of planning projects and I should say state as well all the projects that we work with the city of Oaklair and everybody else on there is no cost there is no cost to the communities so all of our funding 80% of our funding is from the federal government I believe right now it's like 4.6 six is from the state and then the regional planning commission matches the rest. So when we work with the city or say we work with you know the town of Seymour on something or whatever like when we put together this grant application for McKinley there was no cost to the city on that. So more than happy to answer any questions if you have any but if not that's fine too.

Thank you chair. Um, so looking at the heat map on here, I see it uh being yellow transitioning into orange for a pretty sizable chunk of downtown. Um, would you would you guess that, you know, so one of the things that I've been saying for a while is it would be good to have more four-way stops down there because especially like at the four corners area, a lot of people assume it's a four-way stop, right? and I've seen, you know, tons of near miss accidents between cars and pedestrians and everything. Is this the sort of data that would would allow us to do that in in a more

I mean is is uh my understanding is like if we want to change that, we have to make the case,

you know, to be able to do that. Um is this the sort of data that would help us do that? I'm not an engineer and I'm not the city's engineer, but I'll just say this is that when I personally when I see this map and I see that color in downtown Oaklair, I see that as a problem. I see that as an issue, right? We can address it or we can't. It's it's up to the city to decide what they want to do with it. And then if you go back to this document with the camera and be able to see how what's the volume of traffic going, let's say north and south, east and west, those types of things, we can kind of see what the data is in regards to the vehicles going through each intersection. And we can we we have the crash data for every intersection. Like we can get we could do a downtown study for crashes for the city and we could we could tell you what each intersection how many crashes are at each intersection for each one and then we could do a study and we could see what intersections have the worst ones because obviously it's not like all of them that are in this yellow and orange are an issue. Um, but I know with downtown parking and just me, this is Eric personally, not the MPO, but when I'm trying to cross some of these streets, um, sometimes, and I've lived here 20 years, sometimes I forget which ones have stop signs and not in regards to those types of things. So, um, does that answer your question? Yeah. Okay.

Thank you, Mr. Anderson. Just an access question. Did you hear from the public at all about the need for Sunday service, Sunday bus service? That was um Yes. I don't think it was as much as more regional. You know, I guess I'd have to look back and see. We had, as you can see here, we had 20 almost we had 2200 plus open-ended comments. We had these open-ended comments for each section. So, I'm guessing in some of those people said they wanted Sunday service, but it didn't reach a significant data point. No, thank you.

But at the same time, transit comments were a lot less than, let's say, crash comments. Yeah. uh chair just to provide some some uh additional information on commissioner Brewster's question. Engineering will be taking a look at the downtown area and traffic movements and and some of this data will become part of that. Uh particularly with the council direction to look at exploring Farwell Street with a road diet. They will have to analyze to see what alternate routes traffic is likely to take, how that impacts Bartow Graham Avenue. So count the engineering part. We'll definitely be looking at these downtown areas and looking at this type of data to determine what needs to be done going forward. So, that's definitely part of it.

Can I add one one thing to that real quick? Is that okay? So, this is getting really technical here. But um they do so they project out like they look at um they can project out in 2055 what congestion will look like in our urban area based on the growth of our urban area in each kind of census block if you will or census track. So they look out they looked at the amount of congestion that's in our urban area right now and it's like less than 1%. What they did is they pushed it out to 2055 and it's still like less than 1%. It's it it doesn't exist. We had a scenario just out of curiosity because we were under the understanding that the city was going to for sure reduce farwell down to like a road diet. So we had them put that in a scenario along with adding with um the increase on on uh county highway T. So they're going to expand that be wider. When the state ran that scenario, that forecasting, that projection, there was no increase of congestion in the area. And they and and they're running everything. In addition, what was interesting was I said, "Can you just run one for Claremont being 40 miles an hour?" Not saying that we should or shouldn't do it. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying Claremont at 40 and 93 at 40 m hour both. And both of those came back as being no added congestion within within our urban area. And that's within our whole, you know, these these projections and these forecasts and everything, they don't know municipal boundaries, right? It's it's it looks at everything. So there was no there was no added congestion in those areas. So

when you want to facilitate pulling the different groups together to reduce traffic accidents by 5% whatever statistics you want to put out when you're gathering that information for accidents at the intersections are you also including what caused the accidents is that information given to you so you can try to address you know what the cure would be. to reduce that. Um I would be curious on that and how do you how do you want how do you reach your goal of 5% reduction each year over the next five years? Yep. Yep. How long do you got? So

well I know I know I know I know I know but this is this is this is interesting for me. So um you're going to see over the three-year period there was what 7,500 crashes. So when we put this report together, we cannot look at each individual crash or even even the intersection with the most crashes and do any sort of analysis. We just can't. We get all of our data from TOPS lab. So that's from the state. So all law enforcement um um crash reports go to the state of Wisconsin. They they put it all together and then we have like we have access to it. So we can look at all crashes within the state. But obviously we're looking in our area here. If let's say Chip Falls was interested in a certain intersection up there or the city of Oaklair or wherever said, "Hey, C can you do an analysis for this intersection, right?" And maybe that's what Leah and Al did when they changed that those that left turn and protected that left turn, we can do that for you. So, if there's an intersection that you're interested in or a corridor that you're interested in, like if you were interested in doing let's say the the Claremont corridor or the um 93 corridor, whatever corridor, Barstow, and say where are most these like how are these crashes happening at each in specific intersection? We can easily do that. How do we want to reduce these crashes by 5% each year? We're not engineers. We're not the planners. We can't do any of this. What we want to do is we want to provide data. We want to provide information. We want to let people know what the facts are. Right? So, we have in our report, long range plan, if you go on our website, you can go on the QR code and go to the website, we have a specific crash report just for the city of Oaklair. And that crash report shows you all the crashes for those three years, has your own heat map, has contributing factors. You can see what percentage of all crashes within the city of Oaklair maybe were drug and alcohol related. How many of them are at night? How many of them are

in weather? So, those are all things that are in there. We want to we want to let people know when we are going to give out this information. We're not going to say did you know in the city of Oaklair, did you know in Lake Cali, but we're going to say like the MPAwide and we're going to like we don't have a Facebook page, but we're going to get a Facebook page. We want to start putting this data out there for people to let them know what this data is so people can be more aware of that because we think if people are aware let's say let's say it's like 13% of all crashes in the urban area are drug or alcoholrelated I don't know what the number is say it's 13%. people start knowing that and they realize that and maybe they think to themselves, man, if I don't do that, maybe maybe I'm less like Yes, of course you're less likely to get in a crash that way, right? So, that's one of the approaches that that we want to take.

Thank you. Oh, uh, thank you, Chair Ericson. Um, and hello, uh, MO Director Anderson. I just wanted to reiterate something. I don't really have a question, but you said that on Hastings and Bracket um it was made safer by removing flashing yellows. Is that correct? During rush hour. During rush hour. So that was just not even all the time. Just for Okay, that's my understanding. Would that be reflected in anything? Could you point me towards, you know, is that in the report? It's just a really good anecdote that I appreciate. So, yep. I can get that data for you and I I I would need to talk to Leah and just find out when when that was changed. But when we looked at that data, it had it had dropped by like 30%. Nice.

Yeah. I just uh Yeah, I really appreciate that. So, yeah, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Eric or Anderson, sorry. Uh for the downtown heat map for this construction, do you feel a contributing factor was the transit centers construction for the last since this time for for Farwell and in that area? I my official answer is I don't know. Okay.

I I don't know. But I think it slows traffic down. I got you know, I'd be curious what that intersection of Maine and Farwell was was maybe six years ago or five years ago when it when we narrowed it. I mean, I'm just being honest, right? I mean, and then what it is now or like the past two years and just to see what that is. But I think Farwell what it was was I mean, people drove pretty fast on it, right? And now I think people have slowed it down. And then when we were redoing the library a little bit, it was it was narrowed down to one lane in each direction for a little bit during there's like two there's been two times that Farwell in that area has kind of been reduced in size, but I think if you look at this heat map from five years ago, downtown Oaklair is going to is going to be this color as well. So

uh speaking of a heat map from earlier times, uh is that possible to get that type of data as well? Um maybe just to compare and contrast where we're improving things. For sure. Yeah. I mean, we I can get you your current heat map. I mean, I'm guessing you're interested in the Oaklair heat map. Is that is that fair? I mean, we're here, right? So we could get you a heat map from the long range plan this time and then we have the heat map from our long range plan five years ago and we can get that for you and you could you could take a look at that. One other question. Yes.

Uh so you'd mentioned uh working with the state in terms of looking at uh reducing speeds on Claremont. Was there any look in terms of like a road diet to portions of Claremont if reducing the lane count would potentially have reduced speed?

Um, yes. I mean, that's that's that's something that I don't know. I'm the type of person if there's a problem, let's try to fix it, right? I mean, it's a problem. Like, there's a lot of crashes there. I mean, should we have that many crashes there because there's that many of cars there? Some people may say that or not, but when you look at it, 11 of the top 21, like we can do better, right? The city, the state, I've talked to the state and they and I and I don't want to speak for the state, but it's not like they have enough money to come in and reduce Claremont to two lanes in each direction, nor maybe do they want to, right? Maybe they think that it shouldn't be. Maybe they think it should be three lanes. But what I and I did talk to um the state, their safety traffic engineer uh at a at a triple county traffic highway safety commission meeting and her and I agreed that what we would like to do is get the units of government together that border Claremont. So that that would include, you know, Altuna and just sit down and just see what we can do. Like we like we realize because like when you think of the state as a whole, you have to realize that we're just up here and Milwaukee may have like 15 Claremonts, right? Or Madison might or those types of things. And we realize that Claremont like the infrastructure probably isn't going to change in the next 5 years or 10 years maybe. But what things can we do that are like lowhanging fruit to make it safer? And so I don't know if that answers your question.

Yeah. Yeah. I guess also just looking longer term in 5 10 years. Yeah. What we should be proposing or asking.

Yep. But it's not my road. It's your road. It's the city of Oaklair's road, right? It's the state's road. So that's one of those things, too. It's like what what do you envision it being, you know? And maybe that's a study or something that the city thinks about in the future. How do you make that safer? So, another interesting thing was, and this was a new thing that we put in there, but you can see uh reduce noise andor air pollution. There's probably very little no air pollution for transportation within our urban area. But I thought that was interesting was how noise pollution from traffic ranked pretty high um for that too.

Commissioner Do you fi do you find the cooperation to be pretty good with our with Oaklair to get to the bottom of what's causing these issues? And is there anything in your presentation coming to plan commission that we need to be doing to push this up to city council or is everything going as good as it can? We we've done this is this is minor saying and and you and you would have to ask the planning and engineering department how they use the different documents. I I don't know what I've what I've been told is that we've we've done safe routes of school plans and safe routes parks plans for the city when they redo roads along those corridors. They use those documents and that can justify improvements. Keith in front of uh memorial. Perfect example, right? Before it was like a runway, right? And they redid it, but those were all recommendations that were within our long within the city's safe routes to school plan. So the engineering department and our planning department, they looked at that and when they go to you or city council or whatever, I'm guessing that helps them. It's not just their idea. It's like, no, this was adopted by you by the city and they're using that. So my understanding is that the city is using them for that. Um in regards to in regards to other things and that I think if and again I don't want to step on any toes. I don't know exactly how it works in regards to moving up and down ideas within the city. But if the if I come here and I present something and it's new data to you and you think it's important to tell the city council that we need to move on, I guess that's that would be your prerogative. Is that fair? Maybe I don't know.

I don't know. But I but I do think like my experience is the fact that the city's even thinking about reducing Farwell to like what we call like a twiddle, right? Two one lane. Like that's innovative. Like that's that's looking at it and you you you have to study it. You just can't do it right. And we're kind of studying it right now with the transit center. But when you look at the things that the city has been doing in the in the past, I don't know, five years or 10 years, there's been, you know, there's been some things that, you know, like this whole safe routes to school thing, I think it's been implemented a lot trying, you know, applying for that McKinley path, those things. So, and those were all things that are in safe routes to school plan, safe routes parks plan, and probably in your comp plan as well. questions.

Thank you very much. All right. Thank you. Uh it's it's on a QR code. My name and number is on here. Is that fair? I was going to say, Eric, if you could get some of that extra information the the commission asked for, you can get it to staff and we'll get to full the full commission. So, I just want to make sure you want you want your you want your heat map for specifically for this this long range plan and then Yep. Yep. Okay. Was there anything else? The crash for Hastings and Bracket. I can get that.

And if you had compared with L. I'm curious that too. Yep. Yep. I couldn't ask him that, but I did ask him for the speed reduction in regards to just congestion. So, all right. Your agenda items and announcements.

So, no, I was going to say that didn't leave any instructions on that. So, I'll leave.

So, I'll just take a minute because I know we all we all want to leave, but um Angie sent you out our Jonah affordable housing task force flyer for our keys to afford um to unlocking affordable housing, our three-part series. The first one is May 14th at 5:00 in the Riverview room and a lot of our local developers that many of us know and work with. So, Cody um Philipsac, so he's um the co-owner of CNM. And then Justin Held, owner of Rocket Construction and Property Mines, and Tim Mather, executive director of Westcap. James Rebecki, property owner. And then Christina Thrun, executive officer of the Chipoa Valley Homebuilders Association, and they're co-sponsoring it. They are going to be talking about how they build affordable without any the ideas that they have to do that without relying on any state or federal funding. Very local on the ground ideas. So I hope that if you have time that evening that you stop in I think it's going to be very very interesting. So I'll leave it at that. Um the second one also is June 11th meeting our Oaklair tenant landlord resource center. And so thank you. I'll just leave it there. Thank you. I did remember we are meeting with our uh consultant for the comprehensive plan update. Uh we will be doing their our first uh connections and internal staff meetings and then starting to to move the process forward. So the first steps are occurring this morning.

See we completed our agenda. You know what's great about something There's no place to go.

That's right.

That's exactly right. I can show you these heat maps and I'm sure they can do this and when you look at what correlates does this correlate for instance to fatalities These are these correlate with crashes,

right? This is just where mostly crashes, but they signing off. Yeah.

So, appreciate it. That's red flag.

35 hour magnitude danger. And then also, you know, I'm assuming probably it's more dangerous. because the right hand turnies are notific. vehicles have gotten safer, too. So fatalities are

argue though like the the parent companies bridge corporation they have seven companies in the platform that only it's under 80 companies over 80 companies over there products they don't Sure.

Really nice guy. We're excited. We appreciate that. that questions about it. I guess they did ago. Definitely not water,000. million gallons to accommodate.

engineering firm that does the last physical structure capacity that's the capacity treatment plan we 20 million gallons per day capacity is well% all the They said we have to pump a certain amount of water out of it because the hydraulic pressure. So it's so young most people understand it sounds huge. It's hard for people to wrap their heads around. I always found people tend to try to

quite back to their household what they know. What do you understand? use water does still process resource bank. I like we did oursc Then we had to do a survey and it's like

all right. Well, you have a wonderful name.