City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening. I now call to order the September 8th meeting of Lancaster city council. A few reminders before we get started this meeting and its participants are being live stream and recorded. So if you have not done so already, please take time to silence your cell phones and devices. Tonight is a regular meeting of council. There will be a general public comment period on our agenda. First, we will hear comments from city residents who have contacted the city clerk in advance, and then we will open it up to items that are not on this evening's agenda. Speakers must begin with their name and block of residence. To keep time, we will use a light. It'll turn green when your time begins, flash yellow when you have one minute remaining. and it will flash red when your time has been exhausted. Thank you in advance for keeping equal time for all and now all those who are willing and able please join me in the rise of the Pledge of Allegiance. Mr. Harris, will you please call the roll of members?

Yes, Mr. President. Ms. Gastineau?

Here.

Ms. Holland-Jones?

Here.

Mr. Hirsch? Here. Ms. Majon?

Here.

Mr. Miller?

Here.

Mr. Stahlsface?

Here. And President Metz? Here. We will now hear the approval of the meeting minutes. This meeting was held on August 25th, 2026. Motion to approve.

Second.

Councilors, we have a motion and a second. Any comments on the minutes? Hearing none, Mr. Harris.

Ms. Gastineau.

Aye.

Ms. Holland-Jones.

Aye.

Mr. Hirsch. Aye. Ms. Mijon.

Aye.

Mr. Miller. Aye. Mr. Stolzfus. Aye. And President Mead. Aye.

Next, we will have proclamations, honors, awards, and resolutions of recognition. Before we begin, I do want to make a motion to move the mayoral proclamation recognizing Hispanic Heritage Month to our next meeting on September 22nd. I'll second. Councilors, we have a motion and a second. Any comments? Council President, is that the 24th?

Or am I looking at the wrong date?

I believe our next meeting of council will be the 22nd.

Okay, I'll take your word for it. Yes, Tuesdays at the wrong date. Thank you, Council President.

Mr. Harris, would you please call the vote? Yes, Mr. President. Ms. Gastineau?

Aye.

Ms. Holland-Jones?

Aye.

Mr. Hirsch? Aye. Ms. Mijon?

Aye.

Mr. Miller. Aye. Mr. Salcewicz. Aye. And President Med.

Aye. That brings us back to proclamations, honors, awards, and resolution of recognition, which we do have one, a mayoral proclamation recognizing welcome week.

Mayor Arroyo. Thank you, Council President. Before I read the proclamation this evening, I want to first give a thank you and a shout out to our Department of Neighborhood Engagement team and a few members who are joining us here today, led by Director Milsi Carrasco and our Language Access Service Coordinator Zyda Fallou, who lead our certified welcoming work, among many other things. to ensure that what I think is one of the best qualities of our city is a welcoming city, one where folks, no matter what background, no matter what language you speak, and no matter your documentation status, you are welcomed and you belong here in Lancaster City. and we will be hearing from some of our team members as well as a few community partners to talk about what does that mean in practice as a community. So with that, I will read the Welcoming Week Proclamation. Whereas the city of Lancaster has welcomed immigrants since its founding in 1742, and as recently as 2017, took in 20 times more refugees per capita than in any other city in the United States. And whereas Lancaster has welcomed refugees from nearly 30 countries in the last three decades, most recently those from Afghanistan, And whereas the city of Lancaster has opposed discrimination based on race and natural origin since 1964 and codified that position by ordinance in 1991. And whereas fostering a welcoming environment and treating all individuals with compassion and respect regardless of race, ethnicity, place of origin or citizenship status enhances Lancaster's cultural fabric, economic growth, global competitiveness and overall prosperity for current and future generations. And whereas Lancaster is a welcoming place where people, families, and institutions thrive and the contributions of all are celebrated and valued, and whereas Lancaster is committed to ensure a welcoming and neighborly atmosphere in our community where all people, including immigrants, refugees, are welcomed, accepted, and encouraged to participate fully in civic life, and whereas Lancaster has undertaken a continuous process to review and enhance efforts to welcome those arriving from other nations and to continue or designation as a certified welcoming city by the International Welcoming America Organization. And whereas Lancaster refuses to be bullied into excluding our refugee and immigrant neighbors, and we deeply appreciate the work nonprofits, places of worship, and our residents do to ensure all people are truly welcomed here. Now, therefore, I, Jamie Arroyo, Mayor of the City of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, do hereby recognize September 10th, 2026 through September 19th, 2026 as Welcoming Week in the City of Lancaster and celebrate on that week its designation as a city which embraces and celebrates its immigrant and refugee residents and welcomes and encourages their contributions to the collective prosperity and security of all current and future residents. And with that, I'd like to welcome our Language Access Service Coordinator, Lizetta Fallou, and Matt Johnson from Church World Service.

Thank you Mayor Arroyo and thank you City Council. It is a pleasure and an honor to be with you here today. As Mayor mentioned, my name is Zaira Fallou and I am the Language Services Manager for the City of Lancaster. I'm co-joined by my Church World Service partner Matt Johnson who will also be providing some comments related to part of the presentation. Today I'll provide an overview of the Office of Language Services, including the 2026 accomplishments, language access findings, language access in action, language access assessment, five key recommendations, certified welcoming update, refugee and immigrant consortium convenings update, and finally the upcoming welcoming week events that will be taking place in our city. About the, next slide please. about the Office of Language Access. Our mission is we're dedicated to ensuring that all residents have equal access to city services regardless of the language they speak. The office supports departments through translation, interpretation, and language access consultation. Translation includes written materials, public-facing documents, and citywide communications. Some translations, to be honest, are very complex and technical to the specialized field or department that is requesting them. Interpretation supports meetings, events and direct interactions with residents. Language consultation includes planning, technical assistance and cultural competency for all departments and programs. Next slide, please. Here we have an overview of the 2026 service accomplishments. Just to note that this service request update is only for the past six months of the year. Therefore, more service requests are on the horizon. The office has completed a total of 161 service requests that include 34 in-house Spanish translations. Some completed by myself and others by Abraham Milano, a team member of the Department of Neighborhood Engagement. We have also completed more than 18 outsourced multilingual translations, more than 52 HIVE requests were processed in these past six months, demonstrating a growing departmental engagement More than 20 city hosted and partner events that included ASL and Spanish interpretation within the events. Along with that, there has been more than 37 in-person ASL interpretations that have taken place internally, externally, in the community with regards to our city services. Finally, the Office of Language Services acquired a new EnerSound interpretation system, which includes assistive listening equipment to strengthen accessibility for our future public events and meetings. Next slide, please. In here, we're going to appreciate a proprioanalytics comparison of the year 2025 and 2026. This comparison includes a full year data usage of 2025 that is being compared to six months of this year, 2026. And we can appreciate that the services are increasing in requests and in services. We can appreciate that some of the numbers in six months are actually meeting some of the numbers of service requests from last year. For both years, Spanish remains to be the most frequently requested language by a significant margin. Other languages continue to demonstrate the diversity of residents accessing city services here at the City of Lancaster. Next slide, please. And in this slide, we're going to have an overview of what language access in action takes place at one of our very important city offices, the Let's Save Homes team. This slide demonstrates what language access looks like in practice by the example of the Office of Lead Safe Homes. Families dealing with childhood lead poisoning are often receiving complex and frightening information that when paired with language barriers make the experience more difficult and stressful. Our caring city team uses Propio to communicate with families, answer questions in real time, and explain available services. This example shows how language access can directly influence whether residents understand, trust, and enroll in essential services. For the Office of Let's Save Homes, effective and equitable communication contributes to healthier homes and better outcomes for our neighbors. Next slide, please. The City of Lancaster finalized the language access assessment as part of the certified welcoming requirements and to also understand how our global neighbors are being served. And this assessment was completed this year, 2026. The assessment confirmed that Lancaster already has a strong foundation, but there are opportunities to make language access more consistent citywide Key recommendations include strengthen policies and procedures, build staff capacity, improve communication and outreach, enhance data accountability, expand capacity and resources. These recommendations provide the roadmap for moving from a service-based approach towards a more institutionalized system embedded in city operations. Next slide, please. Now we're moving on into an update for our certified welcoming city certification. Next slide please. One major priority for 2027 for the city's next welcoming city audit and recertification will be this process is going to give us an opportunity to evaluate how far the city and partners have come, where additional improvements are needed. This is an intense and demanding process in which we will review current practices. We'll be reviewing evidence, policies, programs and partnerships. The objective is to ensure a continuous improvement for Lancaster's commitment to inclusion, belonging and equitable access. Next slide please. As part of our certified welcoming requirements, The city holds convenings with partners that are focused on the serving organizations for refugee and immigrants in our community. In partnership with CWS, the City of Lancaster engages in quarterly partner convenings with the purpose of strengthening services and partnerships in the community. In 2026, we held three quarterly convenings focused on relationship building, information sharing, and collective priorities. More than 20 partner service organizations were engaged in these convenings. And we have also launched two active task forces that are in reference in relation to economic empowerment and language access. And Matt Johnson will now provide further comment related to the convening.

Thank you Zyra and thank you Mayor and Council for having me here today. I am here from CWS but also as the proud convener of the City Immigrant Services quarterly convening and it's been really one of the joys of this job to Have been able to lead this group. I also just want to start by saying two things one Thank you for your continued support and and you're leaning into welcome as the mayor said people see that people from other areas of Lancaster Constantly asked me. How did the city do this? How did the city do that? I? That's everything from the act that we passed to make sure that our immigrant neighbors feel safe, the language access work. People are asking about Zyra all the time when it comes to that, like how do you provide immediate in-person translation services. And the other thing I want to say is that the most, The most common refrain that I hear from our convenings is just how grateful everyone is to be in the same room together. As you know, nonprofits, especially those serving immigrants, are being slowly and not so slowly defunded by the federal government and from other areas. And the ability to work together smarter and work together across silos has been absolutely crucial to keeping important services alive as we see other communities losing them so this convening is both an ability to extend our reach but also keep necessary services in place as you'll see so we've met for almost a year we had one meeting in 2025 and then we're about to hit our fourth quarter in November. We have an average of 20 participants per meeting representing all major sectors of immigrant facing organizations, including banking, economics, health care, social service, public safety, housing, and more. The typical meeting includes table-wide updates on trends and programming, legal updates, guest speakers for a deep dive on some subjects, including the Gateways for Growth Grant, which is a partnership between CWS, the City of Lancaster, and the Chamber, the services at Neighbors Welcome Desk, which has emerged since 2025, which is a new welcome desk for refugees and immigrant, and even Mayor Arroyo, who visited right here where that picture was taken to tell us about his vision for continued welcome. And we look at points of collaboration and need, and most importantly for all of our sanity, some good news updates when they happen. As we prepared to create a name, mission, and vision for our convening, a couple of stories of collaboration emerged that I'd like to share real quick to show just how powerful it is when this group is working together. One participant said that there was a collaboration among Neighbors Cafe, Rehome, PRC, and Hope in Action recently led to a large refugee family facing homelessness being rehoused and assisted with funds to purchase a refrigerator and beds. uh... one person said for myself this convening has meant finding out what other agencies are doing in the community and figuring out how i can slot in two examples are the volunteer drive services provided at the hub on print street uh... they found someone to let a student driver borrow their car for their exam uh... and that's a huge deal uh... because as you know uh... you it's very difficult to find employment without vehicle and it's very difficult to find people who will allow you to use your vehicle when you're learning As somebody who has taught several new neighbors how to drive, I understand the concerns, and you just have to white-knuckle it and get through. Finally, there is a working group convened by Asante Community to facilitate a community gathering of Swahili speakers to discuss how to be successful in caring for US housing. The event is looking to be supported by SOE, Hub 450 and run by Eastern Mennonite Missions. And as a result of our work together, Lancaster Public Library is also offering story times in ASL, Spanish, and Arabic. We're also working on a Swahili story time as well. As you saw there, Swahili is after Spanish, the next most spoken language in the area. In 2026, we established standing subcommittees that meet on a monthly basis. Three of them. They are economic empowerment, language access and legal services and we're hoping to introduce civic engagement later this year. Economic empowerment is hugely important right now. The demographics of Pennsylvania are not looking good. Population is dwindling. Even in Lancaster County, the majority of our growth came from foreign-born migration. We are now essentially a year and a half into zero net migration here, and the Chamber is talking about how workforce is probably the top concern on businesses' minds. So we have to figure out a way to make sure that those folks that are already here Maybe those that have certain barriers their single moms their folks without transportation are getting involved in the workplace to make sure that we don't fall behind on that and that's exactly what the economic empowerment task force is all about so we're working on finding access to quality family sustaining jobs via job fairs networking among the group and transportation volunteers. We're looking to attempt to interest businesses in Lancaster to try out a Strupey style approach to employing immigrants. If you're not familiar with Strupey, it's right across the street. Jenny Groff has an amazing program where she has a wait list of 95 immigrant women waiting to work for her, where she helps provide a daily care team that comes in and helps with everything from ESL to how to prepare taxes to how to navigate social systems it's an amazing model obviously it's a thriving business and she'd like to see others try it out and we're working on that together and as I mentioned without any foreign migration to Lancaster over the last year and a half we're looking about how we can make sure that the gateways for growth grant gives us the maximum bang for our buck in terms of data that we need to understand that contribution and the lack of that contribution but also how do we overcome those existing barriers like language barriers and transportation barriers. The second subcommittee task force is language access, ensuring that, like the city, immigrants can have their needs met in their own language at work and with service providers. If you're familiar with Amr Al-Fayyad, who's the leader of that subcommittee and a member of the convening, he created a community survey, one for the immigrant community and one for businesses and nonprofits. it found exactly what we expected. Immigrants shy away from certain industries because they're worried about language barriers, and those orgs shy away from hiring immigrants because they worry about the language barriers. So it seems like we have an obvious matchmaking opportunity there to figure out how we can get technical assistance, cultural competence, and language access in these workplaces so that people can feel comfortable hiring and working jobs. We've seen it work in the past. Over the last six to ten years, we've noticed that organizations are more and more centralizing HR outside of the community, which makes the flexibility of local industries a lot less likely, so we're trying to reintroduce some of these tried and true ideas. And the other thing I think that AMR is looking to do is create a Language Justice Institute that would help industries solve these problems and work together to make sure that everybody's language access needs are there. And then also, as I mentioned, we want to make sure to tie in the economic empowerment work with the language access because that's the major problem that we're seeing. So in October the two subcommittees are going to be meeting to try to come up with a strategic plan for how we can get that information out to employers quicker. It has also meant more programming, like we said with the library, languages for places in the library, reading hours has expanded because of the work that we're doing. Finally, the legal landscape is really important to everybody at this moment. It's constantly changing, those of us that work in this world. could get a text message or an email halfway through the day that completely upends what we thought we knew going in. As you know, there's very little processing for green cards. Our Haitian neighbors, of which there are 25,000 in Pennsylvania and approximately 4,000 between York and Lancaster, have lost TPS. And so we're trying to figure out how to coordinate legal services to help triage and connect people to existing help. One such area is the PIAC clinic that started beginning of 2025, which was a combination of CWS and PRC, which was a pro se, pro bono legal clinic that provides help with asylum paperwork, legal avenues, and then expanded to provide food, both prepared and take home, and now includes union mobile healthcare. Think about all of those in one place at a low barrier clinic. It's just amazing. Also, CWLS has been able to hire on a deportation defense attorney and are figuring out ways to continue our work defending immigrant children. There are 1,400 immigrant children in Pennsylvania right now that lack representation in court. These are children as young as two all the way up to 17. All in all, I think it's the city's ability to bring all of these stakeholders to the table that has meant streamlined services for immigrant neighbors and better outcomes for those people who call Lancaster home. And I just want to impress upon you the importance of this convening for everything from the mental health of those that that attend to actual strategic work on the ground and i think that we have a really strong foundation with these task forces and the civic engagement task force to really revolutionize how this city does more with less to serve the immigrant neighbors that are here so i appreciate it and if anybody has questions i'd be happy to hear them

Thank you, Matt. We appreciate the excellent update on our refugee and immigrant convenings. For the last slide, we can move on to the last slide. Please join us for Welcoming Week. We'll have an assortment of local events taking place. You can also see it at the city of LancasterPA.gov, Welcoming Week. And thank you, everyone. I thank City Council, our partners, for this opportunity that has been given to us. And if you have any questions, we'll be happy to answer them.

Thank you for the presentation. And thank you, Mayor Arroyo, for this important proclamation. As someone who came to this country as a refugee, as someone who got my start in local government, by doing a Welcome Week project where we made welcoming packets for new immigrants and new refugee families. I cannot speak to the importance of the work that the city and CWS, our partners, are doing. And I just want us all to collectively think about some of the comments that were made about how Lancaster is head and shoulders above other municipalities other simulated situated cities um and that should not be the case um you know people shouldn't be coming to matt saying you know how can we be like lancaster they should be doing that um and i think it is uh on all of us to advocate not just at the national level but here on the county level of how we can keep our new neighbors safe, whether they're crossing a line to a neighboring township or a different borough, they should feel safe and they should feel welcomed. And we pride ourselves in our commitment to welcoming here, but during these challenging times, We have families across the county who could really use our collective support. And it's not just immigrant and refugee families, it's also those who are doing the work to provide the services, are facing cuts, are facing potential possible job losses, and we need to be there for them as well. So I just want to thank the City of Lancaster, thank the Department of Neighborhood Engagement, Zyra and her team, and Matt, who has been a mentor of mine for many years, and a dear friend. I just want to thank everybody and thank you, Mayor Royal, for your leadership on this. Any other council comments on the proclamation? Councillor Michaud.

If I may, I just want to recognize and say thank you to the engagement department and to the mayor for recognizing all this. You don't know how important is this for all of us. I'm talking for myself. I arrived in 2008. So thank you for everything. And I'm seeing how the city has changed. Thank you.

Councilor Stoltzfus. Thank you, Council President. Thank you for the presentation. Thank you for the great work that you do. I agree with Mayor Arroyo. It's the people here in Lancaster that make us special, and our diversity is definitely a huge part of that. I lived in Nepal for two years, and when I moved back, it was around the same time that we were resettling a number of Nepali-speaking Bhutanese. And I remember, like, one of the first times I walked a market and seeing Nepali folks at market, it kind of brought my worlds together, and it was a really special moment and just made me super proud of the city. But I just, yeah, a couple questions on the presentation. I saw the, there seemed to be like a spike in ASL service requests kind of from last year to this year. It looked like a pretty significant spike. So I'm just kind of curious about what's driving that, if you know.

Absolutely. Well, we are providing ASL services at many events as long as there is a request. If we have a deaf community member requesting services, we'll provide the services. But also looking into becoming an accessible city, a city that is accessible for everyone, specific to our city hosted and planned events. All of them include ASL public interpretation. And I have had community members come and comment on the joy to see ASL interpreters at events and be able to be a part of the actual crowd and enjoy the events just like everyone else.

Yeah, I love it. That's great. And then my other question is, how long does the certification last? Like how often do we have to renew it?

Every four years.

Four years. And where are we in that cycle?

2027 is the assessment year for certification in 2028. The process is extensive. And it is not only city. It is also our city partners. And also to understand that there are stars that build upon the other star. And this year we're going to be looking as to how we have grown and whether we can move forward with a higher star level.

Great. Excellent. Thank you.

Mr. Vice President. Thank you, Zyra, for your presentation. Pardon my ignorance here, I guess, but I saw you had mentioned HIVE requests. Can you just explain what those are?

Absolutely. The Office of Language Services of Language Access, in partnership with the communications team, we have an intake process for all departments to ensure that there is efficiency in processing service requests for all departments. And so what we have is a platform where, through a form, team members can put in a request, whether it's translation, in-person interpretation, ASL services. And once a team member puts in a request through a platform link, it comes to the Office of Language Services for it to be processed. From there, we also acquire metrics. We can store some of the documents. that are being translated or there is a record of services that is there available for us to count on metrics.

Thank you. And I just wanted to thank both of you for all the work you are doing. You're doing the real work. I feel like it's one thing to provide people resources and say, here you go. It's another thing to actually make sure that they understand how to fully access and utilize those resources. And you're both doing a lot of that. loved hearing about the convening because I think it's amazing what can happen when neighbors come together and they say, I know this person has this need and all these other people say, well, we have these resources that we can provide and we can come together and we can make a difference for family or for, you know, people that that that need that help and so I just want to commend both of you for not only providing those resources, but making them usable in a way that That people can really fully access them. So, thank you Thank you. Thank you.

Mr. Hirsch. Do we have any other comments? I Any comments from the public?

I just have to say that as a City of Lancaster staff member, I have to thank our administration and Mayor Arroyo and our community leaders that are the people that are really supporting and backing up this work for our community. All I do is work.

You do more than that. And your work is very much appreciated. Any comments from the public? Please come to the microphone, sir. And if you could please begin with your name and block of residence for the meeting record.

My name is Kevin Brownlee. I live at 541 Burroughs Avenue. You did a very good report, both of you. But here's the one question I always have, and I guess the one thing that gnaws me about Lancaster City is that nobody cares. This is good, and working with people who are new to this country is very important, but the city forgets about the homeowners. What about the homeowners? Is there homeowners? Person that can come here and address complaints if we have complaints To to to the mayor and to the council Because you you sure enough can't call I had a problem I called City Hall and the lady and the mayor's office. She was out left a recorded message and then left the number to call, I called that number, nobody picked up that number. And this is not against this. I'm just saying this is very important. But what about the homeowners in the city? Who do we call? What person do we have that's gonna speak for us before you guys that will make you listen and comment the way you did today? from the mayor on down. That's my question.

Thank you, Mr. Brownlee.

Any other public comments? All right. Well, thank you for this proclamation, Mayor Arroyo, and we look forward to the Welcome Week events.

And Council President, I do have copies I would love to present to our staff as well as our Mr. Johnson from CWS. If you guys are okay with taking a photo and welcome Council to join us. Members, we got to vote first.

There is no votes on. I just wanted to clarify if there was a need for a vote.

Moving along with our agenda, we will next have our public comment period. Mr. Harris, do we have any preregistered public comment this evening?

We do, Mr. President. First, we have Sydney Brookmeyer.

I do not believe she is here. Do we have any other preregistered public comments, sir? We do not, Mr. President.

Thank you, Mr. Harris.

At this time, we will take any public comment on items that are not on this evening's agenda. Please begin with your name and block of residence, and your time will be three minutes. Feel free to come to the microphone as you wish.

Hi, my name is Natalie Hendrix. I live on the 500 block of North Plum. Good evening. First, thank you for your work. It is certainly not an easy or enviable position, and I appreciate your efforts in meeting the needs of the city and its constituents. I work as an outreach worker with Lancaster City's unhoused community and have been able to spend a significant amount of time at the encampment off of Rink Mill Road. Unfortunately, this encampment is set to be cleared this coming Friday. Before working in outreach, I had the opportunity to work at Milton Hershey School as a house parent. One of the most frustrating parts of that role was having students treat every problem with the same level of urgency. If someone didn't like what was served for dinner, well, this need needed resolved immediately. Once, when I was actually in labor, a student came to me upset that someone had removed a light bulb from their lamp. It sounds like a joke, but this was a matter that was presented with some real distress. Meanwhile, another student might have actually fallen out of a tree and have injured themselves. It was a consistent challenge to respond to the varied needs in a respectful but sensible manner. we could not treat someone's dinner preference with the same immediacy as an injury. So while not on the same scale, I do understand what it is to hear from all sides one request after another. I also understand what it is to have every one of those requests presented with the gravity befitting an emergency, and I think about that distinction often in my work now. Sorry, this is just upsetting because I know the people who are there. When an encampment is cleared, it can be easy to talk about it as a matter of cleanliness, inconvenience, property use, or enforcement. But for the people living there, being displaced means losing their shelter, belongings, community, and possibly connection to the service providers who actually might be able to assist them. That is not an inconvenience. That is an emergency. I'm asking this council to recognize that distinction and respond to this displacement with the urgency it deserves. If the city continues to be a part of the displacement of its residents, then it needs to be a part of their future and journey towards housing. When someone falls out of a tree and can't walk, we don't tell them to move along. We recognize that they are in an emergency and we respond accordingly. Our neighbors experiencing homelessness deserve that same recognition. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Any further public comment? Good evening.

um yeah so good evening uh members of lancaster city council mayor arroyo my name is duncan hopkins i live in the city's northeast i'm here with a few other members of lancaster stands up and our housing team to get some answers and clarity around what natalie just mentioned the city's planned sweep of a homeless encampment off of rank mill road taking place this friday september 11th The encampment, as you may know, is in Lancaster Township and on city property. And last Friday, signs from the city went up reading, this area is to be cleaned on 9-11-26. All belongings must be removed from area or they will be discarded. We understand that this encampment has been around for several months and that there's been an ongoing conversation around its presence. However, we're very skeptical that you know, given the one week warning that the city of Lancaster has done the legwork to ensure the health, safety and well being of the image of the individuals who are scheduled to be displaced on Friday. I know that's never fun to get heat for something that you know is not all on the city. This is on lexer township as well, and while we're here at Council chambers tonight i'm literally going to go home and send some of these questions to lexer township officials. going to be a late night, but here are a few questions that would really like to get some answers to like tonight one. How is this date decided on and what is being done to ensure the residents who are scheduled to be displaced have their physical needs met, especially given the incredibly short timeline to. It seems like there is a major breakdown in communication, I would love to know what protocols currently exist and also like why it takes a resident of an encampment texting a picture of a sign. for an outreach worker or anyone else to know about it. So what will you commit to tonight to ensure that people experiencing homelessness are treated with dignity and not rushed displacement in the future? Third, these folks were swept away once and then came back and this cycle is going to continue without an intervention. Will you commit to working with Lancaster Township to make sure that this area can be safe and livable for people who have nowhere else to go? And just to close, I'd like to remind everyone that we are in a housing crisis. Not all of us have enough money to afford a roof over our heads. And that means that for now, there are going to be people who are homeless in Lancaster City and the surrounding areas such as Lancaster Township. These conversations and encounters can be stressful. But all of us in this room, I believe, are going to go home tonight and sleep in a bed with a roof over our heads. And the folks off of Rank Mill Road are going to be sleeping in tents that a cop is going to tell them to move on Friday morning. So Lancaster City's made a lot of progress over the years, and especially in 2026, but that doesn't mean that harm isn't taking place right now. I want us to be able to work together, and part of that means we're gonna speak out when government does harm to our neighbors. So thank you for your time. We'd love to know the answer to the questions I read. I can also email everybody them when I get home tonight. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Hopkins. Good evening.

Good evening. I'm Perry Haseltine in the 200 block of North Shippen and also in part of the housing team. And I got really interested in it during my time as an outreach worker to unsheltered homeless here in the city. So, you know, I'm going to read a proposal that we've been talking about. I think we've, one of the people on our housing team have talked to most of the counselors. And it's basically to adopt a protocol in coordination with the police department for when and how encampments are cleared, including public sleeping in parks. We emphasize that protocols should include communication between all involved parties, social workers, outreach services, city resources, police, and the affected homeless population through established channels. Secondly, a timeline that allows enough time for people to find another place. When a timeline is given, it can really And if it's announced publicly, it can also bring about public resources. A week is not near enough time. Individualized plan for each members of the encampment to move to their next home, you know, like we have. Older people that are going to be more complicated to find a place for, for example. We need more time. And to not conduct a sweep when there are no reasonable alternatives. And for that, we point to Izzy Smith-Wadell's bill that he proposed for Pennsylvania in the State House. So, Mayor Arroyo, I implore you to at very least slow this down. and sit down with Lancaster Township and make it a public thing. Let's make it a public discussion that involves outreach workers and other service organizations so these folks can have a soft landing. All right, thank you very much.

Kevin Brantley, 541 Barrels Avenue. I know Cheryl personally.

So I'm gonna show her this.

She can pass it down. That was written on my wife's car. On the overnight of, from August the 31st to the 1st, someone had inscribed the word nigger on my wife's car. But my wife's car has been targeted several times. I had the car painted. We had the car painted before. It's got scratched up, we had it painted. And I refuse to get it painted now. I told her, I purposely let her ride around Lancaster and see what going on in this city. There's no, and I called your office, your lady that I usually talk to wasn't there, and that's what I was referring to, and I called the police department, and I reported it. But I'm here to let you guys know what's going on, because you should. You have a right to know what's going on, especially with these problems like this.

Thank you, Mr. Brownlee, and thank you for contacting the Lancaster City Police. That's a very serious matter, and thank you for bringing it to our attention as well.

COUNCIL PRESIDENT IF I MAY TAKE A MOMENT TO RESPOND I KNOW WE TYPICALLY DON'T DO THIS BUT JUST THE NATURE OF THE CONVERSATION WELCOME THE OPPORTUNITY TO JUST TRY TO ANSWER SOME OF THE OR GIVE A LITTLE BIT OF ADDITIONAL ACCOUNTANCE CONTEXT TO MEMBERS OF OUR PUBLIC AND CITY COUNCIL AS WELL FIRST OF ALL KEVIN I'M I'M EXTREMELY SORRY THAT THAT HAPPENED TO YOU AND I KNOW THERE'S BEEN A LITTLE BIT OF PHONE TAG WITH THE OFFICE FOLKS ARE OUT AND BUT I DO UNDERSTAND THAT YOU WERE IN COMMUNICATION WITH OUR POLICE DEPARTMENT AND THEY ARE INVESTIGATING THE SITUATION SO Just so you hear directly from me, sorry that you and your wife are having to go through that. It's not the city that we know, so sorry about that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, regarding the encampment in Rank Mill Road, first of all, thank you to the folks that came out here tonight. I understand, appreciate your advocacy, work that you guys continue to do in the city of Lancaster and beyond in the county. As we know, this is a countywide issue, frankly, a nationwide issue that we're dealing with when it comes to housing and the crisis that we're dealing with. This specific situation and just a little bit of context for city council, it's a complicated one. There's probably multiple different parties that are involved. I can tell you, and the folks that are in this room today, I know Natalie, I've met with personally, Duncan, we've met personally, Perry, we've met with personally, one-on-one still waiting on and welcome the opportunity for a task force to be developed which we have discussed months and months ago so still that's on the table if that is of any interest uh to partner with the city on what more we can can be doing so Love to hear that. Again, just a lot of the recommendations. I just want to make sure that council and the public is aware that the administration is listening to the feedback and some of the concerns that have been brought since my time as mayor back in January. This specific situation is complicated. It is city property. However, it is located in Lancaster Township, which means that we do have to abide by Lancaster Township laws. As many of you know that I have talked to one-on-one and as the folks that are in this room that I have conversations with, We have, as much as possible, tried to give grace and create a timeline where it was as manageable as possible to allow people to move on with dignity, understanding that our hands were tied up to a certain point. This specific location, we've had communication with Lancaster Township as well. to try to figure out what are ways that we can collaborate to make sure that we are giving proper timelines of folks that are meaningful and give them the opportunity to find the resources that they need. We've also partnered with the Lancaster County Homelessness Coalition to ensure that they're able to communicate when necessary to outreach workers, to the folks that are actually out doing the work and connect folks with resources, which I appreciate your work, Natalie. I know you've been working for months with a lot of these individuals to order to do so. Can there be improvements? Absolutely. But I do want to say that this is one of those tricky situations and while the city of Lancaster is committed to continuing to improve and making sure that folks um do have first and foremost a right to shelter uh you know we have proven that over the years and investing in that uh but also when folks can't find shelter or do not trust uh the the resources that exist and take a little bit more time how we can walk alongside with them as much as possible um to make sure that we can connect them to those resources What I will say is that, again, in this specific situation, and everyone here knows that, we have treated case by case. What are we legally able to do? What can we do? What do we have the resources to do? And in this situation, I would implore that the advocacy does go to Lancaster Township. If there is an issue, with the way this process is unfolding, I encourage you guys to go to that municipal meeting and share those thoughts as well. We can't do this as a city by ourselves, and my voice alone won't move the needle. It will take residents and people that are concerned. The way you're sharing it with council here, to go to Lancaster Township supervisors and let them know you have the same expectations of them as you do of the city of Lancaster. And then we can start having, I think, some more meaningful progress that I think we all really want to make sure we're doing this with compassion for our neighbors, quite frankly. I'm going to throw in there while I'm on the tangent, we just take a little bit more time, Council President. county government as well. I know our Lancaster County Homelessness Coalition is significantly, significantly under-resourced, right? So again, the same way we have high expectations and high standards of our city officials and city council that I know is committed to making progress in this area, we have to continue to advocate to our county government to make sure that the resources are invested in the coalition that are needed, not just for the city, for Lancaster County as a whole, to make sure that we are making progress in this issue. So hopefully that gives a little bit of context around the situation that's going on. I welcome more dialogue. uh and and again i welcome the task force and and uh the action steps that we talked about months ago and and i'm still waiting on so again uh happy to collaborate too happy to uh to uh support your advocacy not just for the city of lancaster but for the surrounding municipalities as well thank you council president thank you mayor arroyo and that uh concludes the public comment period

We will now move on to reports requested by Council. Council, we were going to have the capital budget hearing this evening. However, that will be postponed, and Chief of Staff, Bay K, will talk a little bit more about that.

Good evening, everyone. It's pretty low. Good evening, members of council. The administration was alerted earlier today that the capital budget hearing plan for this evening was not properly advertised. In responding to that, we also realized that we were proposing to adopt the capital improvement plan on the meeting on the 22nd, which was only 14 days from the intended hearing, not the 15 days required by the charter. I sincerely apologize for this error. It should have been caught long before this meeting. We will still deliver a presentation to council this evening in conjunction with the first reading of the capital improvement plan adoption ordinance. We are excited to address some of the specific feedback and questions that council has thoughtfully asked. However, we will need to ask Council President Ahmed for a special meeting to hold a hearing on Monday the 14th at 6 p.m. This will allow us to properly advertise the hearing. We also ask for a special meeting for the second reading of the ordinance on Wednesday, September 30th at 6 p.m. This ensures that we meet the timeline requirement of the charter. Again, I do apologize for this confusion. As someone who once sat in your seat, I know this can be disappointing to hear, but I do believe it's important to be transparent when you've made a mistake and also adhere to our charter. Thank you, Council President.

Thank you, Chief of Staff, and Council. Mr. Harris will be sending out a meeting notice for both of those special meetings. Once again, we will be meeting Monday the 14th at 6 p.m. and Wednesday the 30th at 6 p.m. So there will be two additional meetings. And thank you for the transparency around that. And it is, you know, the charter. We have to make sure that we get this done by the end of the month. So thank you, Chief of Staff.

Thank you.

all right that will bring us to reports of committees of councils uh this me these meetings were held on september 1st 2026. we will start with the public safety committee public safety committee did not meet thank you councillor mijan we will skip over public works until councillor miller is back but uh economic development committee councillor gaston uh the economic development committee did not meet Thank you, Councillor Gastineau.

Finance Committee, Mr. Vice President. Thank you, Councillor President. The Finance Committee did meet on September 1st and had four items on its agenda, all of which appear on the agenda later this evening. Resolution 74, authorizing the sale of municipal tax claims. Bill 11, adopting the capital budget for a first read. And Resolution 76 and 77, which amends the capital project list funded by the 2018 and 2022 bond issuances, respectively. That concludes the report of the Finance Committee. Thank you, Mr. Vice President. Community planning.

Thank you, Council President. Community Planning Committee did meet on September 1st. We had three items on our agenda. First was historic commission recommendations for 502 West Walnut Street, Resolution 75-2026, amending the sewage facilities plan to include 502 West Walnut Street, and Resolution 73, approving a project, a projection easement for 227 North Prince Street. All of these items will appear later on our agenda, and that concludes my report.

Thank you Councilor Stolzfus. Personnel Committee, Councilor Holland-Jones.

The personnel committee met Tuesday, September 1st, and reviewed a nomination for appointment to the property reinvestment board. Mr. President Christian Heilman was nominated by the mayor for appointment to the property reinvestment board. Mr. Heilman could not be with us this evening, but I'm told he will attend the September 22nd city council meeting. So I make a motion to table action on Mr. Heilman's appointment until September 22nd.

I'll second. Council, we have a motion on a second to allow the gentleman to be a part of the meeting on the 22nd. Do we have any comments on the motion? Hearing none, Mr. Harris?

Ms. Castaneda?

Aye.

Ms. Holland-Jones? Aye. Mr. Hirsch? Aye. Ms. Majon? Aye. Mr. Miller? Aye. Mr. Salas-Fuze? Aye. And President Mead? Aye.

And now I'm also excited to share that I was recently assigned as a city council liaison to the Department of Neighborhood Engagement. In this role, I look forward to helping keep council and the public informed about the department's programs, events, partnerships, and community impact. the bureau of civic engagement continues to strengthen connections between residents neighborhoods and city government in august the bureau of civic engagement unveiled the 2026 neighborhood art project installation at the lancaster am amtrak station featuring local artists and stories that reflect Lancaster's neighborhoods and community. The installation is available for viewing at the Amstrak station upper platform. This initiative was made possible through the National Endowment of the Arts. Looking ahead, the applications are open for the Fall Neighborhood Leaders Academy, a six-week program that helps residents build leadership skills and learn more about city government. The next session begins on October 26. Applications are also open for the Youth Climate Action Fund, supporting youth-led environmental projects in Lancaster City. More information is available at LancasterCityPA.gov. and engage Lancaster. The Bureau of Tourism and Promotion recently completed another successful Celebrate Lancaster welcoming nearly 14,000 visitors including approximately 10,000 people for the headlining performance of 112. Welcoming Week activities are also underway and planning continues for Hispanic Heritage Month on Saturday, October the 3rd, featuring headliner Joseph direct from Puerto Rico. The department remains focused on creating welcoming programs, supporting local businesses, and ensuring our events reflect the diversity of Lancaster. That concludes my report, but I'd also like to thank Zara and Matt for an excellent presentation tonight.

Thank you, Councilor Hall and Jones. Mr. Miller, if you would like to give from the Public Works Committee. Public Works did not meet. I have nothing to report. Thank you, Councillor Miller. All right. And that brings us to our legislative agenda. The nomination for appointment has been motioned and seconded to be moved to the September 22nd meeting. So that brings us to the Heritage Conservation District.

Mr. Harris.

Considering the following application recommendation from the Historical Commission for improvements to a property within the Heritage Conservation District, we have one this evening. 502 WWS LLC owners of 502 West Walnut Street propose partial demolition of a modern attached warehouse and removal of a modern loading dock addition to allow new construction. And that application was recommended for approval by the Historical Commission.

Motion to approve.

Second. Council, we have a motion and a second. We did go over this in our committee meeting. Anything else to add, Councillor Stoltzfus?

No.

Do you have any council comments on the resolution? Any comments from the public? Hearing none, Mr. Harris. Ms. Castaneda?

Aye.

Ms. Holland-Jones?

Aye.

Mr. Hirsch? Aye. Ms. Majan?

Aye.

Mr. Miller?

Aye.

Mr. Stoltzfus? Aye. President Metz? Aye.

That brings us to our ordinances for first reading, which we do have one, bill number 11-2026.

An ordinance of the Council of the City of Lancaster, County of Lancaster, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, adopting a five-year capital plan for the fiscal years of 2027 to 2031, a program providing for the proper acquisition, repair, and provision for the necessary equipment and infrastructure for the effective and efficient delivery of public services, including projects resulting in the additions, replacements, or changes to city facilities, infrastructure, and equipment, allowing for a severance provision, providing for the repeal of inconsistent ordinances, and providing for an effective date.

And we have a Councilor, Council, we have Chief of Staff Beke as well as Director Campbell and his team to give us a presentation on the capital budget. Once again, we will be having the two special meetings as we had already announced, but tonight we will hear the presentation, and thank you, Councilors, for those who have submitted your questions to the city using the JotForm, and we look forward to getting some of those answers.

Good evening, members of council. Yes, so while this isn't the hearing that we had anticipated, we're still excited to deliver this presentation because it does address specifically your comments and feedback that we received in this process. So thank you for submitting those. They were very thoughtful. And I think as we go along here, myself and our director, Stephen Campbell, and our public works team are going to be able to address a lot of the project specific questions that you all had. Next slide. So just as a reminder of what we're going to be covering, tonight's presentation will include relooking at what the definition of a capital plan is, providing an overview of each fund and department, defining the funding sources and answering questions that you had about those. Throughout the presentation, we will address feedback received from council and the public since we first presented this plan to you back in June. Next slide. All right, so what is a capital improvement plan? Just as a quick reminder, it's an overview of potential needs in a 20 to 30-year window. This includes regular maintenance and replacement and projects driven by future mandates if and when they are known. The capital improvement plan includes projects that we intend to have fully funded within the five-year horizon. You will see unfunded items in this plan. That means that efforts will need to go into finding grants or possibly the projects can be deferred. And it's important to note that this plan can and most definitely will change year to year as priorities shift, funding sources open up or close, and mandates change, et cetera. So one of the questions that we received specifically was, what is the process for assessing the greatest need, public health and safety, asset condition, areas that have historically experienced underinvestment, et cetera? Director Campbell, would you like to take a crack at a response to that one?

Sure, thank you very much for the question. Projects included in the CIP are identified through ongoing assessment of greatest need, including public health and safety considerations, regulatory requirements, asset condition assessments, which we'll talk about a little bit later, prepared for each of our facilities a few years ago, and areas that have historically experienced underinvestment. These factors help ensure the plan reflects responsible prioritization rather than a list of aspirational projects. Water and wastewater projects are primarily focused on regulatory drivers that are for human and water quality, health, and asset condition aging infrastructure that has reached the end of its useful life. That replacement is dependent on the age of the assets, with pipes having a much longer life, 50 to 100 years, and mechanical components, 20 years, electrical, 10 to 40 years, depending on that component. In water, replacement of old cast iron pipe is primarily in the city, while transite pipe, about 40 miles of which, is in the ring communities and around the Spring City Mall. Sewer piping is mostly within the city limits, while some lies within our PUC service area, in all totaling about 148 miles. Much of this sewer system was built in the early to mid-1900s, with the city constantly evaluating and planning rehabilitation and or replacement needs as necessary for continued service to our ratepayers.

Thank you, Director Campbell. Next slide, please. When we look at the capital improvement plan, we can look at the project totals by fund. The general fund includes parks, streets and public work admin projects. We can see that the general fund projects constitute about 20% of the total plan. Water projects are a little less than half of the total plan. We've talked a lot about this year about the cost of maintaining water infrastructure, and Director Campbell went in depth about useful life and replacing components just now. Additionally, state and federal regulations that are essentially unfunded mandates are driving expenses in that area and utilities overall. Next slide, please. We can also look at a little bit more about the sources of our funding. As an overview, this plan includes several types of possible funding sources for future projects. The first type are bonds. They have relatively low interest rates, although they do fluctuate with market conditions. They also provide us with the most flexible usage. As you're now very aware, and we'll talk more about this evening, Council actually sets what the bond proceeds will be used for when a bond is approved, and also approve changes in their use going forward. Next is Penvest. You have been hearing about this quite a bit as of late as we wrapped up that process. Penvest is the Pennsylvania Infrastructure Investment Authority, and they offer the absolute lowest interest rates available for certain capital projects, particularly in utilities. This process can also be long. like bonds and does require a lot of financial reviews. And as I said, it is restricted to utilities projects. So for instance, we wouldn't necessarily be able to use pen vest funding for a park or street paving, but we would use it in our water and our wastewater. Then, of course, we have grants. The city has over $93 million in grants under management across all of our departments. So while we have had some success in seeking the grant funds, these are not guaranteed, and they also sometimes require up to a 50% match. And then last is partner funds, and those funding sources only exist within the sewer fund when we have municipal partners that are covered in some part by our sewer system. Next slide, please. We can look at the funding sources across the full capital improvement plan. A few things to note for the purposes of planning. You see three separate categories of committed grants here. You might recall this is because some projects have a complicated funding stack that might require one, two, or three separate grant applications. So it's helpful to view them as three different categories when we're looking at each project. There's also a potential grants funding source. That just means that a type of project that has perhaps historically been funded in all or part by grants or if we've identified a grant that hasn't yet been awarded. You will see there may be something that says 0% here, and I just want to note that it really means it's less than 1% of the total. So committed grants 2, for instance, is looking like less than 1%. I will also just mention here that there is a 2028 bond funding source. We'll talk about this more in just a moment, but to be clear, we haven't started the process for that bond. And then finally, you'll notice the unfunded categories we mentioned last time. It's important to note that we've taken a lot of care to keep almost all of the unfunded projects or portions of the projects in the outlying years of this plan, so 2029 through 2031. I went back to review the presentation from last year, and at that time we were sitting at about 10% of the plan unfunded. So we've moved a series of years with larger projects. We've moved into, rather, a series of years with larger projects that have unpredictable mandates attached to them, and so this percentage has gone up. And then, I don't know, Steve, if you've had anything additional to add to that about the bonds and priorities.

Just a couple more words. In many ways, we intentionally placed the unfunded projects in the later years of the CIP, which effectively means they are deferred until funding becomes secured. This does not necessarily mean they are lower priority, but rather that they may not be able to be funded within the five-year window.

I'm sorry, Director Campbell, could you speak into the mic a little bit more? Thank you. I just want to make sure the folks at home can capture that. Thank you. Thank you.

This does not necessarily mean they are a lower priority, but rather that they may not be able to be funded within the five-year window given current debt capacity limits, grant availability, and regulatory uncertainty. Project starts for these may be deferred to reduce incurring financial obligations to the city before funding is identified. At present, the break point is the capacity of the proposed 2028 bond fund and the likely appetite for a bond that's that size to come in 2028.

There was also a question about projects that are currently in that unfunded category if they were or to be deferred. Are there any that we anticipate becoming more costly if they're not addressed within the next few years? And we note that most of the projects in this list have an inflation factor built into their costs of about 3% per year and are currently shown in the plan where we believe that they should be in terms of where they should fall in terms of priority. A delay of more than about three years will often require some reconfirmation of design and other regulations, and thereby we can incur additional costs beyond just inflation if there are longer delays. So such updates will occur annually as we go through this process. We mentioned that these will change from year to year. Those inflation factors will also be in subsequent capital improvement plans. Next slide, please. So we can talk a little bit more about the other types of bonds. Committed bond funds constitute the remaining funds in the 2018, 2022, and 2025 bonds that the city already has taken out. And those projects, of course, align with the projects that were approved either at the time the bond was taken out or in subsequent approvals by council. And we already addressed the bond question. Next slide, please. This is estimated financing across each one of the funds. There was a question we had, a questioner concerned around budget capacity for additional debt in the future, which is a great question. Concerned about costs around water for both city and outside rate payers. Hope we continue to monitor all projects to ensure it's aligned with the appetite for debt and does not turn into a wish list of projects. And they go on to say that they have confidence in the staff and leadership. So thank you for that. Steve, would you like to address that question a little bit?

I can address it a little bit, and I may turn it to Christine to answer a little bit more as well. Because we are a municipality-run utility, our budget capacity is naturally more limited than private utilities like ACWA or American, which can borrow more freely and recover capital costs. including profit through regulated rates. Our debt capacity is constrained by municipal borrowing limits, affordability for rate payers, and council oversight. This is exactly why we closely monitor each project, reporting out on them on a quarterly basis as per the Home Rule Charter. annually update the capital plan and size future borrowing based on debt service capacity and rate affordability. The plan is not a wish list. It is a list of projects that allow us at minimum to deliver water and wastewater that addresses state and federal mandates for water quality. Projects will only move forward when they fit within responsible long-term financing and rate payer impacts. Chris, are there other things you'd want to say?

Yeah, I think the... Pardon me. The biggest drivers we're seeing right now is regulatory drivers. In water, we've been hit with the new PFAS regulations by the state, and in later years, those numbers go down even further by the federal government. This is going to impact the water fund significantly. The revised lead and copper rule took a 30-year plan to replace the lead service lines that are within the water sector and took that down to 10 years. So these drivers are taking limited resources and requiring us to look at our capital plan so that we can meet the regulatory limits. within this Within the sore fund. We're also seeing regulations that deal with our permit that allows us to discharge the judicial consent decree with the federal government on reduction of the combined sore overflows and some very recent movement by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and to change the regulations or excuse me to change the permit which is almost relying like a regulation to further limit the land application of biosolids generated at the wastewater plant. So these things are all requiring us to look at the projects that we're going to undertake at the wastewater plant looking at future drivers of increasing costs to now landfill biosolids instead of land apply. So we see these as really affecting what projects we have to undertake. And coupled with what Steve was saying, all of our rate increases in water are governed by the Pennsylvania Utility Commission for those services that we provide outside the city limits And, of course, there's an impact on city customers when all these projects are occurring. We're seeing decreased grant funding opportunities from the federal government, so hence they all become unfunded mandates that must be taken care of through our rate increases. And those rate increases have certainly impacts on affordability to all of our customers.

Thank you, Kristen.

Thank you very much. Sorry. Before we get into some of the project specific questions, there was two more things I want to address. It was a great question asking if there's anything council can do to help alleviate the financial strain associated with these unfunded mandates. So that's a challenging question. But there is need for collective advocacy at the state and federal level for just what Christine was mentioning. All municipalities that run their own utilities are dealing with this. And we're asking ourselves, how can we remain compliant while also ensuring affordability of our residents and ratepayers? I want to underscore that because we do take that very seriously. and are undertaking the work of analyzing what that means for the city of Lancaster and exercising all of our options in terms of keeping our utilities affordable. So appreciate that question. We need to advocate up for that. We would welcome your voices in advocating for more support for municipalities like us. And then lastly, there was one project specific question I want to address before we jump into the rest, mostly because the full answer will require a lot more time than will happen this evening. But I want to make mention, because there was two folks that asked about projects on the Sunnyside Peninsula, and specifically, will Partners for Environmental Stewardship be contributing any funds? So I will say in brief that yes, Partners for Environmental Stewardship will play an important role in the fund's development for this area. It would be too preliminary for me to share any more at this point, but we are looking forward to the completion of the master site plan that they have led and working with them on a governance agreement in accordance with the lease. It's an exciting project with pieces that are still coming into clarity, so much more will come to Council in the coming months on this. Next slide, please. And now I'm going to turn it over to our deputy directors of public works to speak to some of the project specific questions that were asked by council.

Thank you. We'll start with public right of way. So I think a lot of the work that we do is driven by three primary plans. We have our parks master plan, we have our vision zero plan, and active transportation plan. So these are all plans that were developed in trying to identify a vision for the city and where we want to go with these different plans. So obviously the parks master plan I'm sorry. So the other thing that I wanted to touch base on based on a question was you will see in the capital plan there are implement parks master plan, implement a vision zero plan, and implement the active transportation plan. So these are basically placeholders within our budget that we can use to advance projects. When we have a master plan, maybe a lot of the details of a project aren't vetted quite enough, so we'll use sort of that generic fund to get a project to a point where we can actually put it in the capital plan. So we've developed maybe a cost estimate, we've done a little bit more preliminary engineering, and it also positions us for grant funding as well. So once we get a project to that point, we can then identify it separately as a project. But we do have those sort of placeholders in the capital budget to be able to advance them. In addition, we also have some of the projects that if we haven't identified projects for out years, we will use that line item to also identify sort of a placeholder that we know we want to keep advancing projects. with this plan, but we haven't identified the specifics. Again, trying to develop more of that preliminary engineering and start that cycle again to get it to a better place where we can better refine what the scope and cost will be. So I just wanted to address how we sort of use that line item within the budget to advance projects. I think based on the presentation last time there were a lot of some of the projects that we have coming up related to the parks master plan. Ewell Gantz is under construction. Joe Jackson will be starting construction very soon. We are at the south end park. We are in design and then we're just starting a master planning project. plan for Reservoir Park. So that's some of the things that we're doing with that. I will get into another specific project question in a minute, but the Vision Zero plan is also, you know, with our Safe Streets for All grant that we have, we're implementing a lot of the projects that we were noting here. Today we just did a presentation to Traffic Commission about the two-way restoration, so there's definitely more information coming out about that. I encourage everyone to... Attend some open houses that we have planned in November as well But that is definitely something that that we are moving forward with next slide So to go back to the parks master plan Just highlighting one project that was in the plan. There was a question about the Duke Street Mall and what that project entailed Obviously we have the Duke Street project that we are currently working on that includes a side path, a shared bike pedestrian side path. It includes lighting amenities and other improvements along the Duke Street corridor. But we have the Duke Street Mall, which is a 50-foot wide park, basically. So it's a very narrow park. And there have been a lot of conversations in the past about how to better activate that space. So this is a project that we're looking to, are there better ways to use that space? Are there ways to engage better with the neighborhood and have it be more usable? So this is showing sort of the different segments. It's almost viewed as a bunch of pocket parks. But if you go to the next slide, In the master plan, they took each of those little pocket parks and developed some concept level plans of what could potentially happen there. So in this case, this is at the corner of Church Street and Duke Street. And it's identified different areas like potential gathering places, potential terrace seating, There's even potential locations for food trucks. Just some ideas about how the space could be used in the future. There's still a lot of work to do with this. There would need to be a lot of public engagement and just trying to understand what the community wants and being able to better refine this. It's shown as a project in the out years as we anticipate that more work would need to be done say in year three or four and then maybe we could get to construction with five. But this is a project that is currently not funded based on but it's still identified as a priority. Next page. So I mentioned the other plan the active transportation plan. So this is just listing some of the projects that are happening. related. to the active transportation plan. We did just receive bids last Thursday for Broad and Chesapeake. So in addition to the Church Street project, Broad and Chesapeake will be advancing and Water Street is expected to go out to bid soon. Some of the projects also on the capital plan include maintaining existing infrastructure, obviously paving that we do every year that the operations team does, and then also looking at traffic signals. So we've been able to obtain a pretty reliable source for upgrading a lot of our traffic signals. It's the Greenlight Go grant that pays 80% of those. So we're continually trying to identify how we can upgrade our infrastructure there with very minimal match and take advantage of that. One of the questions was related to traffic signals at the Plum Street that we're looking at in the Northeast at Clay and Ross. We're looking, you know, when we look at the infrastructure, we're also trying to identify is the traffic signal really needed. So that is one location where we're sort of questioning if a traffic signal is needed there or whether an all-way stops would suffice. So we did apply for a grant through Greenlight Go and do have the funding to do a study to see if it is warranted. And if warranted to be removed, that funding would cover the removal of that traffic signal as well. Next slide please. So then just to get into a little bit more about our active transportation plan, there were a couple questions about some of the projects that we had listed there. This is the 2019 active transportation network that was laid out. I've identified some of the projects that we have in the capital plan. related to the bike network. So you can see a lot of the connecting, or a lot of the network that was identified are listed here. It includes Pearl Street, Conestoga Street, Christian Street Phase 3, which I'll explain in a little bit more detail, and then Franklin Street and continuing what we're calling the eastbound connector, which would be a continuation basically of Lemon Street. So this, obviously, the plans have changed. So on this plan, we actually were still looking at Chestnut Street as an eastbound route, but plans sometimes need to adapt to changes. So that's what has happened here. If you go to the next slide. This is our bicycle network viewer that's available online to the public. But this is showing where our existing infrastructure. So the bold lines are showing where we have existing infrastructure. And then there's more skinny black or gray lines that are showing where infrastructure is planned based on, you know, The active transportation plan plus, you know, adjustments that we've sort of made along the way. The highlighted areas are, and, you know, the existing infrastructure, we have about 17 miles. The highlighted areas in green are ones that are currently going to construction. Some of those I just talked about. Broad and Chesapeake, Duke Street, Church Street, and Water Street. So we're excited that there's another four miles coming online. And then in the blue are the projects that I just identified in the previous slide, which include Franklin Street, the eastbound connector, Christian Street Phase 3. That will connect from basically Orange Street down to Church Street. And that would provide a you know a north-south link that links us all the way up to Amtrak Franklin Street and Pearl Street or streets that are coming up in our paving so you know basically Since we are paving those streets. We want to make sure that we're implementing the bike infrastructure that we had planned for those streets with that so Yep, those are just some of the projects that we have happening With the active transportation plan so hopefully that answered that Yeah, the questions. So I think we would go to Matt next.

Good evening. Thank you. Matt Metzler, deputy director. I oversee construction and operations for the city of Lancaster. Next slide, please. Just as a reminder, just to briefly recap what we spoke about at the last presentation, my team oversees the construction and then maintenance and operation of the facilities that we design and construct on the projects that Cindy is planning. Eventually, my team will oversee the construction of and then oversee the life cycle from when it goes gets put into public use and until it's no longer an asset that we can maintain so some of the ones that will stand out excuse me in the capital plan are the public pools specifically in the parks obviously the pools are a maintenance heavy operation for any municipality so you'll see in their multiple projects or reference whether it's recoding, changing the mechanical systems, potential conversion to splash pads rather than the wading pools in their current state. And then in our parks, we have a lot of public restrooms and things like that. So Basically, the main driver and the questions that came in from the public and council were related to how are we determining what needs to be done and when. So there was a project done about three years ago. It was a facilities condition assessment. It's abbreviated as FCA in the capital plan. And that's what the FCA means, Facilities Condition Assessment. So we had a consultant analyze all of our assets, whether it's a park, it's a building like City Hall, or the fire stations. Evaluate every single item it could be doors it could be the flooring it could be the windows it could be the brick facade Whatever components it's a thousands and thousands of line items across the entire building and asset portfolio With a 30-year it's got 30 columns and the next 30 years how much you should be spending on every single one of those items So that's how we determine like for the last three years the consultant had recommended for our bond issue about $3.96 million that we should be borrowing in order to reinvest into the assets we already own just to maintain them in its current state so that we don't have dilapidated buildings and facilities later. So that's really the driver for construction and operations is we're the ones who are taking care of everything. So the people that are in my group, they're the ones you see maintaining our streets, maintaining our parks. We need to find those things. It's important that once you put something into service that we maintain them. Right. And that's kind of always the afterthought for some of these projects. So there's a lot of ongoing coordination with me and the other deputy directors and other departments for that matter that making sure that we're right sizing the projects to begin with to not bite off more than we can chew. And then all of a sudden we're stuck with something that we can't maintain. So That's really the driver. So I hope that answers the question that came in about what like how are we prioritizing where these numbers come from and Where did this schedule come from? It's very meticulously laid out plan It took over a year for the consultant to develop it and it's it's a tool. It's not gospel things change We're already seeing things break earlier than what we were expecting. Now we have to accelerate those projects. So what are you going to punt down the road? You know, you have you only have so much money. So what were you going to do next year that you can now not do because something popped up that you have to spend that money on something else? So that FCA line item in the capital plan is a bucket of money that's kind of these smaller projects. It's not a big fancy project, but it might be an HVAC unit. You've got to cool a building. We have a couple HVAC projects right now that are either out to bid or going out to bid that weren't necessarily planned, but it's something we have to do. We don't really have a choice. Next slide. And then I'll just say the only other driver is when we want to completely renovate a space. The big one coming up is the Welcome Center. We're actually getting ready to bid within the coming weeks. We're finalizing design right now. That's going to be a reconceived space. We're leaving it open to a lot of flexibility for future use and adaptation. So that's basically in a nutshell the key drivers for my group. So it's been recommended in various studies and plans that due to the maintenance burden that comes along with the wading pools, they're regulated by the Department of Health. They're basically required to have, even though it's only 18 inches of water, there's still a lifeguard presence that's required. There's still certain Department of Health like water chemistry regulations and things like that that is very maintenance heavy. Right now our staff spends six hours per day every day during the summer just maintaining the water in the six wading pools which is an insane amount of time if you think about it for us to be running around just balancing the chemistry of the water. So from a maintenance standpoint and from a manpower The time resource it's been contemplated that these facilities all be eventually Converted over splash pads not yet been confirmed. We will be seeking public feedback on that but at this point in time It's it's something that's it's we're putting a pin in it for now and we'll be get you know looking at that as we move forward Turn over to Molly

Thanks. Yeah, thank you. Yep, Molly Dagger, deputy director overseeing sustainability and environment division. I'm going to move relatively quickly through the next two slides. But as a reminder, a lot of what you're seeing in the capital plan before you and what you've had a chance to review has to do with, to Chris's point, those regulatory drivers for stormwater management as well. We do have two types of sewer systems here in Lancaster. one that's combined with our wastewater system and both the federal EPA and the state have requirements that Christine alluded to before, our long-term control plan. And we are using green infrastructure as a less expensive tool in the toolbox of some of those projects. We also have a separate storm sewer area called our MS4 system. And the state regulates that as well, the State Department of Environmental Protection. They've recognized and recommended the use of green infrastructure for those types of improvements to our sewer system as well. So we have a few projects in there. A lot of them are in coordination with projects like the paving plan and with the active transportation plan. We found that it's much more cost effective for us to be piggybacking and using different types of different funding sources and grants. to be Driving down the overall project costs or at least sharing it amongst different funding sources next slide, please We also have a robust urban forestry program that I spoke a little bit about before and we are investing and using federal dollars Primarily to be providing a healthier room more robust urban tree canopy in our city to be improving public health for the stormwater management benefits, for cooling our streets. And so that's a critical project that's coming up and has been going on for the last few years. And then last but not least, and then I'll get into one of the questions that city council had is the climate action plan where we're implementing the plan that was adopted in 2019. There has been a lot of sort of operational decisions and different efforts that have taken place over the years. So you're not seeing a lot in the capital plan, That may change as funding sources become available and as we continue to look at what those investments look like moving forward. Want to touch on the next slide, please. And I really appreciate it. I did not write down the question. So I looked it up because I just wanted to make sure I had it right here. So there was a question that came in. My understanding is that federal funds for the EV plan were revoked. Is this correct? What funds are being allocated to this, and what are the investments going towards? So I really appreciated the question, and it might be a good opportunity to do just a little bit of a primer on how we're sort of treating the EV implementation citywide. Matt and his team and the operations have really been leading the implementation of our municipal fleet. So we have dedicated EV chargers with several more planned. We seek grant funding. We can use somewhat limited operational funds to be adding some of these chargers in some of our more frequently used spaces. I'm really impressed to say that when we did our 2025 report of the municipal climate action plan at the end of last year, we had seven electric vehicles in our municipal fleet. In early 2027, we expect that number to be around 20, so nearly tripled. And we've really, again, been able to kind of operationalize that and do it in a way that's very cost effective for our city. And then to the question more explicitly, this aspect of community charging. providing adequate electric vehicle charging look like citywide. We did receive initially an award for a $3.1 million federal grant at the end of 2024. Nothing was formalized, nothing was finalized, nothing was signed. And then in the shift in federal administration in early 2025, that funding was no longer available. So we have been sort of working in the background, thinking about what that looks like moving forward. We did have an initial draft of an EV plan, a community-wide EV plan that was primarily targeted around those federal dollars that were no longer available. So taking a step back, what does that look like? We have been working with... a consultant through a free technical assistance program that the Pennsylvania DEP has called the Shared Energy Manager Program. They've helped us write some grant applications. They've helped us develop some feasibility studies of thinking about how we can be implementing electric vehicles and other energy efficiency improvements citywide. They're helping us prepare for an RFP, a request for proposals that we expect to be out this fall where we're going to be looking for actually a third party vendor or vendors to be partnering with another grant application that's out there called the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Grant. This is a national grant, but it's administered through PennDOT. And we may be looking at some other public-private partnerships through this. The city-owned parking lots are somewhat limited. There are a number of other privately owned or non-city owned lots that that may be interested in hosting some public charging stations. And so we've reached out to some of those folks and we're developing a list and then looking for that partnership, that vendor to be doing a bulk of the work. So you're not seeing that on the capital plan before you because the city's role this point is looking to be more of a facilitator we want to make sure that there's equitable distribution of the electrical electric vehicle chargers citywide and we are looking at we're not at this point looking at investing any city dollars more looking at the partnership and what some third-party vendor opportunities could look like so I think that's it for that

Next slide, please. Good evening. Christine Balke-Hilditch, Deputy Director of Public Works for Utilities. So expanding on what I was talking about before on wastewater, our investments are in our aging infrastructure. We have many facilities, the treatment plant itself on New Danville Pike, the pump station, the collection system over 115 miles of sewer. We've been looking at electrical upgrades, a lot of our switch gear, our motor control centers have been upgraded over the past couple years, so we're continuing those projects. And we have a new secondary clarifier and primary clarifier upgrades that are, the secondary clarifiers are in design. Our south primary clarifiers are under construction now and north will start design later this year. We are under a federal OSBT, Karen Hollweg, EPA judicial consent decree for our combined source, we were required to develop a long term control plan as part of that decree those deliverables were last year in we submitted a plan, almost a year ago September 18 of last year. where we proposed some sewer separation, some green infrastructure projects, and a pump station upgrade, as well as a storage tank off of New Danville Pike. These are all being reviewed right now by the Environmental Protection Agency, and we do not know yet when we will get approval and then subsequently how we time those projects within the overall capital plan. What we have proposed that a lot of the project starts be after we deal with the water upgrades that are going to be required for PFAS so that we look at the affordability for the community that we address water first and then waste water later. So we still do not have approval of that particular plan with the EPA, but that's what was proposed. We're seeing over the past couple years limited sites for biosolids disposal and biosolids are the solids that result from our wastewater treatment plant operations. We're seeing restricted land application and more importantly we're seeing increases in landfill. capacity so our projects are going to be focused on generating less biosolids right now we use what's called lime stabilization and we add lime to our process so we are actually increasing the amount of solids we have to get rid of so our focus is on anaerobic digestion, which is also in the climate action plan, to be able to generate what's called green gas. So digestion results in methane production. And that methane is no different than what we can use for homes for heating. But we clean up that methane and then give it back to the grid. So it would be given back to UGI. And right now, you can monetize that with different programs. in selling gas back. It will also more importantly give us less biosolids to get rid of. Right now we generate about 2,000 wet tons a month so we're looking to significantly reduce that. Our current NPDES permit for the plant which allows us to discharge into the Conestoga River restricts our nutrient capacity. A couple years ago DEP in the efforts to reduce nutrients to the Susquehanna River and consequently the Chesapeake Bay had capped how much nutrients we can discharge to the Conestoga River. The equivalent of that in flow is 26 MGD even though we have a 32 MGD hydraulic capacity. So as the city grows, as our SOAR partners grow, we will be looking at expansion of the aeration system when flows reach approximately 26 MGD. We're at around 20 right now during normal weather, so we have a couple years out, but we're looking at that probably in the next 10 plus years of when we hit 26 and we have to start looking at expanding the plant from a nutrient capacity. Next slide, please. So in water, our investments also are in aging infrastructure and resilience. You've heard a lot in council about our Susquehanna large diameter transmission main. We have started construction on that with interim financing and we do intend to put that into a PENVEST loan which we've been given approval for but we're still struggling with one easement, two easements from one property owner. That particular project will give us resilience as well as eventually replace our existing transmission main which is right now about 80 years old. We're looking at some minor projects in comparison, pump station upgrade at Hess, Lafayette tank, which is in the picture. We're looking at some water quality improvements there to improve circulation and disinfection product removal. We've got ongoing transite and cast iron pipe replacements. We have about 40 miles of transite pipe and about 63 miles of pipe that is over 100 years old, cast iron pipe. The water system's been around in Lancaster since the late 1800s, and we don't, we almost have some pipe that's just as old, or older, not as old, 100 years, so that's about 100 years old. 40 years. We have proposed later in the capital plan a pump station called the South Tank Pump Station to improve water distribution. And every 5 to 10 years, we have membrane replacements at our water treatment plant. Those processes last about five years at the Conestoga plant, and we tend to get 10 years out of the membranes at the Susquehanna plant. As I mentioned, our state and federal regulations are driving upgrades that will be needed at the plant to address PFAS and PFOA, as well as a water withdrawal permit. DEP gives us a 20-year permit for water withdrawals, and they are clamping down on how much water we can withdraw from the Conestoga. So to invest money right now into PFOA and... The compliance issue with the water withdrawals, we're looking at having to change our water source to the Susquehanna River. The lead laying replacements have to be done between 2027 and 2037. the federal regulations give us a 10-year window. So our efforts right now have been on finding all the lead we can using machine learning, using a model, as well as going out and potholing and knocking on residents' doors to look at the service line that the customer owns as well as the service line that the city owns. So those two federal regulations have caused a lot of money to be will cause a lot of money to be spent within the water system just to comply with the regulations as well as having you know the need to replace components over the years

Thank you very much. You can go to the next slide, just the end of the presentation. I want to take a moment to thank these amazing Deputy Directors of Public Works for their work in addressing your questions but also the work that they do every day. It's complicated and it's daunting when you think about the costs and the scope and the magnitude and I just appreciate always getting to hear from them about the projects that they're working on They have a deep level of care, responsibility, and also deep understanding and knowledge. And I appreciate getting to hear from them and getting to work with them on this. So again, counselors, as I mentioned earlier, I apologize again for the misunderstanding about the hearing itself. We did think it was important. And I wanted to, while we have them here, get to hear from our deputy directors on your questions. And thank you in advance for allowing us to have an official public hearing, which will give us one more opportunity to get any feedback from the public on this plan before it's adopted, hopefully on the 30th of September.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Councillor Hirsch. And thank you guys for the presentation. You know, I know that this is very challenging work to try to make the necessary improvements while doing it in a fiscally responsible manner and while doing it and making sure that we're not deferring maintenance. I guess the only question that I really have that I keep coming back to is, you know, given These unfunded mandates given restrictions on borrowing and given appetite and future debt service capacity. Are there any other sustainable alternatives for the future? Especially of the water fund that would not amount to. The borrowing and the and the future debt. I mean, are there any other municipalities across the country who are faced with the same situation situation? Or is there any other alternatives that we could? I mean, other than selling the water, obviously, but is there anything else that we could because it just it does give me a little bit of anxieties looking out into the future. And then also thinking about the the subsidies that were made to the general fund, which are no longer which I would like to see return. But I understand the challenges around that. And that's more of a question we'll have for budget season. But I just it keeps coming back to me, you know, and I know water is important, obviously. And I know, you know, we own our water. But, you know, are there any like what is the sustainability of this?

I'm just gonna introduce a few comments and then I'll turn it over to Christine. We are not alone. Almost every municipality in America is facing exactly the same kinds of challenges that we're facing. Part of our challenge is that as a municipally run entity, we do not have the access to the profit and the rates that allow for a profit to be taken from the system in the way that many of the private sectors do. Our rate payers and our utility users are the ones we serve and we try to keep our costs low while meeting all the regulations that are required to fulfill the water quality requirements. The we have introduced the idea in the past of entering into a series of discussions about alternative financing related to the water system. It's in its early stages of discussion and we're wanting to expand the the working group and working groups and professionals that would be necessary to be involved in making such key decisions as well. But we are very, very aware and have been aware for the last two or three years, if you've been listening, about the concerns that we have here. being being hit in the gut as we have with the PFAS PFOA regulations and with the lead service line regulations where both of which had longer terms to be able to take care of them and those who have been reduced down to as little as 10 years is an extreme challenge for all of us. But one of the things that we did by having a home rule charter was to explore, to the extent practical, what is available in terms of alternate financing from the general fund that might assist, if not counter, and it will not counter, the extraordinary costs that we're talking about. As I like to say, I'm not sure if I want to say it here, but I do like to say, we have several generational challenges right in front of us. Ordinarily, you're hoping that you might have no more than one generational challenge, but we have PFOS, PFOA. We have lead service lines. We have a variety of other extraordinary challenges in the age of our infrastructure that has to be replaced. So part of having a working group and a task force to be putting in place to talk about these things with municipal finance consultants, et cetera, is part of the way to explore what our possibilities are, what our options are, and what kind of appetite do we as city have for the kind of debt that may be necessary. And if so, augment our arguments to the variety of oversight agencies that we should have different time frames involved to manage the work because we are still a relatively poor municipality. We do not have unlimited funds to be able to make the investments that are required by the feds. Chris.

I'm going to go back in history. When the Clean Water Act was passed by the federal government in the 1970s, there was a construction grants program. And for every dollar that was spent, the Fed gave you 90 cents, and the local government came up with 10 cents. And those programs have completely gone over the years, and PenVest came, and we got into having loans for our infrastructure. It's been very, very difficult to qualify for any grants from Penvest. The only one we got was one for lead to replace some lead service lines. But the vast majority of funding has been in the form of loans. And unfortunately, the country is facing a crisis in infrastructure with so many new regulations. The AWWA has put out some new programs about the billions that water is facing. We, like other municipalities, are going to be faced with the tough choices of deferring projects, raising rates, looking at lifeline rates, looking at changing our rate structures so that the affordability issue can be addressed with a lifeline rate and the rest of the rates get to rise. When you look at how much water we get for a couple dollars, we get a thousand gallons of clean water, right? We can go to the next door. My example is always you go to the coffee shops across the street and we can buy a latte, right? And we can put flavorings in it and it'll cost four bucks, right? For one latte. There are increases that we are unfortunately going to be faced within our community and our outside customers that we service through the PUC district. And rates, unfortunately, are going to have to rise. But for those residents that can't afford, we can look into lifeline rates like some other communities have done, the city of Philadelphia, DC Water. some of the very large water providers out there but we look at that some of our financing can be addressed with special exemptions through the the state government They do allow some exceptions for debt increases, but that debt does have to be repaid, and it's going to be repaid through rate increases because the federal government just isn't given the money that they used to in the 70s when the Clean Water Act came out. So the more advocacy we have with other municipalities to address the funding crisis, we are not alone, but that doesn't make us all feel better. But we're just, you know, we could start support groups, but we do have that challenge in funding. And the more advocacy I think we do with the trade associations, with the federal government, it's hard, right? Because they just don't want to fund Water infrastructure is not sexy right it doesn't get the money and the attention it deserves, but start the sayings right water is life and We struggle to do the best we can with what we have Thank you and as always we appreciate the work that you guys all do that concludes my questions mr. Vice president this is coming from the Finance Committee, so if there are any other questions from council I

I have none at this time other than to say thank you to all of you for the information and answering our questions.

Thank you. And do we have any other Council comments? Council Gasson?

Thank you. Thank you so much for the presentation and for answering so many of our questions. I know for me, I asked six. So thank you very much for answering all of the questions. One thing that I still am just trying to understand a little bit more is around the prioritization. I understand that the facilities conditions assessment really drives a lot of the priorities, which certainly makes sense and is data driven and evidence based and speaks to that maintenance of our assets piece, which I fully understand and respect. The one thing that I didn't hear come up in comments tonight was the priorities of neighbors and of community. of how we are equitably investing in our capital projects across the city. I wonder if it would be helpful if there would be a map where we could draw pins of where projects are happening, or where they have happened, or where they could happen, just to provide a little bit of transparency around just what the spread across our city looks like, just because I appreciate the data-driven piece of how we make these decisions and i also um you know just hope that we're consulting neighbors uh and community members as well about like what what their like feelings and priorities are as well and that's that's just my bleeding heart so thanks for listening

Thank you for that question. I would start just to say that I think outside of things like facilities condition, what's driving the priority and the equity or the plans that were mentioned as part of these? So the active transportation plan, for instance, the parks master plan. Those plans are developed with extensive community feedback and also developed because of needs in certain areas. So the projects that are part of those plans are really what's being driven by making sure that we're having equitable investment across the city. parks master plans, reservoir park plan, and specifically we're talking about maybe a park that's been under investment in the past, in a section of the city that's been under invested in the past, and so there's been a lot of intentionality around including those areas in particular projects outside of our infrastructure. Um, but things like the, um, active transportation plan and where we're placing bike lanes, I think about, uh, Cindy, you showed the map from 2019. I think about pre not 2019 by. Like, uh, infrastructure implementation and the ways that we've expanded that into neighborhoods and areas of the city that traditionally didn't have investment and things like that. So it's been a big difference, I think. Thinking about putting all of that into a map is like there's just there's so much. But I will say that through this process, one of the tools that we'll have available to us that we're just beginning to implement, because remember, this is only year two of capital planning are some more information about each individual project. So we'll include a map. that will include links to relevant plans and public engagement. So watch for more information on that soon. I think this team is just kind of beginning to dip their toe into that functionality of the capital budgeting, but I think it will also illuminate those types of questions around where the investment's historically been.

And if I could just add a couple more words to that. Many of the capital planning work projects that we're doing, including the Parks and Recreation Open Space Master Plan, the Active Transportation Plan, the Vision Zero Plan, are also integrated with the Comprehensive Plan that we spent time on a couple years ago. so that citywide there are priorities as well as input from the public about what is important to them as we go forward. The program that we currently use will allow us to, not only currently allows us to track where it's appropriate, what sector, what quadrant, what annex investments are in, but also whether the investments are citywide or beyond citywide, so that we'll be able to report that out in the future. But also the intention is in the next year's cycle, we'd be able to indicate project by project what the impact is, Visually what it looks like so you have some idea of what does a digester possibly look like? type of thing but also What kinds of? Investments in which neighborhoods are going on graphically on Maps as well as project by project But that's the future Anyone else want to say anything in that regard?

Thank you very much

Thank you, Mr. Miller. Council President. Yeah, thank you. And thank you all for these presentations. This is really excellent. And I think that publicly owned water and water infrastructure is one of our greatest assets. So I really appreciate the time and energy that you all put in to maintaining that. Just a quick question I had about funding sources and streams. Have we considered the possibility or are there plans to use any of the sustainable development and clean energy fund from the community benefit agreement to offset some of the costs specifically like the anaerobic digester which for the record I do think is sexy. I wonder if we can be using any of those funds towards projects like that that can be pretty much explicitly billed as sustainable projects because I think that like investments in hard infrastructure like that could be a good use of those funds. What are the considerations there?

That's a great question. I think the short version is to be determined. We are still in the early stages of planning the Installments of that fund will be coming over the next couple of years. The first installment will be used. The plan is to propose to use that to fund the rooftop solar initiatives that are finalizing. The designs are being finalized now, and those will be installed in 2027. Earlier this year, there was a bond transfer to use the water fund Bond for interim financing, but the desire is to come back before Council Once the first installment has been made to propose to use that instead moving forward Those are the type those would be an example of the types of projects that we would like to see We are also working closely with community planning and economic development looking at the city's comprehensive plan and there were a number of Climate priorities as part of that planning initiative as well. So looking at whether it's municipal projects or larger community Climate projects looking at how that can be a catalyst for advancing climate action in the community at large Great, that's helpful.

So you expect sort of the majority of that fund to go towards the solar panels on the roofs and

That is a likely proposal that you would be seeing. That is just around $2 million.

Okay, great. And I do realize that even though $10 million feels like a lot of money, it is small in comparison to many of the projects you're working on, unfortunately. My last comment is just a comment and it's that sort of around the idea of equitable investment. I run all the time on the new path that goes down Duke Street and I'm very familiar with that area. A lot of working class folks live there and I was just running on it with my buddy who is from out of town visiting and he made the comment as we were going up the hill which I don't know how he did because it's a very steep hill. But he said I can't imagine like it would be so fun to grow up here and ride my bike down this hill. And it was just wonderful to look at that community and know that they have a new safe spot to ride their bikes. So that's what this work means to people in the city and I really appreciate it.

Thank you. Councillor Miller any final questions from council.

Thank you, Council President. My question is more around staffing. So I know we have the five-year plan. Obviously, there's some staffing implications. I know that we probably outsource some of this work, but some of it is in-house as well. curious about how you think about the best way to staff some of these initiatives. And maybe I'll give more of a concrete example. I know from my previous work at Zoe, this year when the waiting pools were open, there was kind of a scramble to get the concrete work done. And I know part of that was I think we just didn't have enough internal staff to work on that. So we have to outsource it. And then that takes time. So I'm just kind of curious how that all kind of figures into this. And maybe it's a question for you, Matt. Or I'm not sure who should answer that question.

Sure. So we're going through that right now. We're in level two budgets and we're talking about staffing for this coming budget proposal. So it's tough that it's a juggling act, right? So you can't really ever predict exactly what your manpower resources are going to be. So in your example, we had a really harsh winter. The freezing and thawing, February was one of the coldest months we've ever had and with all the snow that we had, our pools took a beating and we didn't really realize it until the spring thaw comes and it's already March, April by the time we see the damage. At that point, we're kind of scrambling, trying to figure out what's the game plan and where's the money coming from. So in that case, we do the best with the resources that we have. We selectively use Contractors that we can afford to use to do a lot of time It's putting a band-aid on it to just get the pool open and ready for the season So that's why I'm putting a heavier focus on the pools moving forward I know it's it seems like an excessive amount of attention, but it's one of our most popular amenities that the public loves and We got to take care of the pools We put a lot of money in all of them over the last since I've been here over the last 15 years or so and And yeah it's one of those things where we're putting all this infrastructure in place. Cindy and I just had a conversation about this recently related to the Vision Zero and active transportation stuff. We are putting a ton of pavement markings all over and they last five seven 10 years and they need to be replaced. So there are no grants for that. So we have to look in the mirror and look hard that we spend a million dollars on pavement markings on Lemon Street. So and notice that already we're four years in now. So in six years we're going to need to find money

And I guess maybe like a related question, which I think you've sort of answered, but I guess I'm kind of wondering, you know, because I know with like paving, it like made sense for the city to like bring that in house because in the long run, in long term, it saves us money. So I'm wondering, how do we think about that kind of with some of these other projects? Like, are there opportunities where, you know, maybe it actually does make sense for us to increase staff because it's going to save us money in the long run?

Yeah, that's going to have to be a cost benefit analysis that we're going to have to collectively as a team run in the next few years. We did that about 10 years ago. We started the pipe crew and we started doing our own water main construction and we figured out we're saving about 50% on water main construction by doing it ourselves. We moved that during COVID. We decided in order to keep our employees working during rather than furlough employees, we decided we were going to get them proper training and get proper equipment. And we elevated them up to be able to bring that function in-house. For every dollar we would have spent on a contractor, we're only spending 60 cents to do it in-house. So we can perform the same kind of analysis on the pavement markings and the parks maintenance and all these other things that we're doing. It's just a matter of time. As we get into owning these things and seeing what it actually takes to maintain them, then we can have a better handle on doing that analysis.

That's great. That's very helpful. Thank you, and then I think just I think one other question I'm curious because this is a question that I asked a lot is like for paving like how is the prioritization done for? Where we pave because everyone in Cabbage Hill doesn't think that the city paves our streets I'll speak to that a little bit.

So this is a group effort here. It's So we do a pavement assessment every five years. We have specialized equipment that drives every street and alley in the city of Lancaster, and it gets a pavement condition score, a PCI, pavement condition index. So we have a map in GIS that shows us. We can click on a road segment, and it'll give us a score, tell us the last time it was paved, what condition it's in, et cetera, and what the recommendation might be, whether it's resurfacing or reconstruction. We take that as a tool. We will say these are the top 50 streets that need work. So then we'll put that out between Cindy's group and mine. We'll put it out to the utilities, the UGIs, the PPLs, the Comcast, everybody, and say these are potential streets that we might pave in the next five to ten years. Take a look at your infrastructure. and let us know if you want to upgrade your gas mains or if you're ordered by the PUC, in UGI's case, to replace your cast iron or your bare steel mains in the next five to 10 years so that you can get in and do your stuff and not rip up a brand new street that we just paved because we didn't coordinate. So a lot of that coordination needs to happen with all the utilities, our own water mains, our own sewer mains, and then to further coordinate with Molly's group, do we want to implement either stormwater improvements or green infrastructure? So we maintain this massive spreadsheet and we meet on a quarterly basis more so during the summer during paving season but we go through this huge list of like what year is this road getting paved what are the you know are there lead service lines are there water mains is UGI going to be in there what's everyone's schedule when can we feasibly then send curb and sidewalk notices to residents in order to get their stuff done does Cindy have any plans for vision zero do we want to you know do some daylighting do we want to do some bike lanes like so all this goes into one massive planning effort it's very coordinated it's frustrating for all of us to try to get to a good place but we put a lot of time and effort into it

Yeah, that's very helpful. It's helpful to know the process. And I know that there is a construction map, is that correct, where you can see streets that are being paved and streets that are planned to be paved?

Yes, our project manager, Travis Good, he tries his best to keep that updated. But yeah, we put that up. When we know UGI's own projects, Kevin in engineering will coordinate, UGI is going to be here. Water main contractor is going to be here. This is the paving list for the year and the approximate time of the year that we're going to be doing the paving.

Okay. And then, sorry, one more question. When UGI does, like when they're replacing lines, typically there's kind of like pavement that happens, but it's not like finalized, right? Like the city comes back a certain amount of time later to kind of clean up the work, I think. What I hear from my neighbors is, we had this on Strawberry. UGI tore it out. It was paved, but just paved over the part that they tore out. And then it was the next year that the city came back and did an excellent job paving it. But I think residents thought that this was the final project and were upset about it. So how does that timing work?

well yeah I mean it depends on is if it's a project that we are like Matt said if we identified it as a project that we're gonna pave then yeah then there may be a delay when UGI does the work and the city comes in if it's if UGI is just doing the work and we didn't say we were gonna pave that street then they are the ones that have to come back and sometimes there are delays Like do if we maybe the other some reason we need we want them to delay a year like if we wanted to put out curb and sidewalk notices ahead of that paving we may ask them to delay a year. So sometimes the projects do sit for a little bit or what's perceived to be a long time. But. That's helpful. And just to go back to your other question, I think like Matt said, we put out what we want to pave and then depending on when utilities are doing work, whether or not we get sort of these streets that we say, okay, they're good to go. So then the other thing we're trying to do is make sure that we're hitting all the quadrants. So that is another factor in how we're picking streets as well. Okay.

we're trying to hit the quadrants and say like one year maybe we couldn't hit this quadrant as much because of utilities we're trying to you know make sure that we're doing that equitably excellent thank you so much for those answers thank you councillor salzfus any public comment all right hearing none we will move on with our legislative agenda thank you guys all for the presentation and for your time this evening That'll bring us to resolutions. We will start with resolution number 73, 2026. Mr. Harris.

A resolution of the Council of the City of Lancaster approving an easement agreement between the City of Lancaster and the Paul C. Miller Jr. Spousal Trust granting an easement to the trust for encroachment into the public right-of-way over North Prince Street as more fully set forth in the easement agreement.

Motion to approve. Second. Second.

We have a motion and a second. Councilor Solis, we did go through this in our committee meeting. Do you have anything to add this evening?

Just a reminder, the original plan for 227 North Prince Street was going to be commercial. There was an easement in place with the city to provide an ADA ramp into that commercial unit. That is now, the plan has switched. Those will be housing units, and they need two points of ingress and egress. So the city had to cancel that original agreement and is now coming back with a different easement, but basically doing the same thing.

Thank you, Councillor Stolzfus. Any council comments on the resolution? Any comments from the public? Hearing none, Mr. Harris.

Ms. Gastineau?

Aye.

Ms. Holland-Jones?

Aye.

Mr. Hirsch? Aye. Ms. Majan?

Aye.

Mr. Miller? Aye. Mr. Stolzfus? Aye. And President Med?

Aye. That brings us to resolution number 74, 2026. Mr. Ayers.

The resolution of the Council of the City of Lancaster to authorize the administration to sell the 2006 tax claims, the anticipated 2020, I'm sorry, 2026 tax claims the anticipated 2027 tax claims, and the anticipated 2028 tax claims to the redevelopment authority in such terms and conditions as approved by the mayor and the city solicitor.

Motion to approve. Second.

Council, we have a motion and a second. Mr. Vice President, this is coming through the Finance Committee. Do you have anything to add?

Just to say that this is a routine ordinance that comes across Council every three years or so, authorizing the sale of future tax claims that are not collected, basically to provide stable cash flow to the city and then transfer the responsibility of collecting on those to the Redevelopment Authority. Thank you, Mr. Hirsch.

Any council comments? Any comments from the public? Hearing none, Mr. Harris. Oh, no, I'm sorry. Go ahead.

Thanks. Okay, is that on? Okay. Sorry, I was holding yarn. I had to set that down. Taylor Raymond, 500 block of St. Joseph Street. What kind of tax claims are these? I work for the Tax Collection Bureau for earned income tax and some real estate, but not real estate for the city, so I wasn't sure what that falls under.

Believe it would primarily be real estate tax. No earned income, because that would be, yeah. So just primarily real estate tax.

Great, thanks.

Thank you for that question. Any final public comment? Hearing none, Mr. Harris. Ms. Castaneda.

Aye.

Ms. Holland-Jones.

Aye.

Mr. Hirsch. Aye. Ms. Majan.

Aye.

Mr. Miller. Aye. Mr. Stolzfus. Aye. And President Med. Aye.

That brings us to our next resolution, number 75-2026. Mr. Ayers.

A resolution of the Council of the City of Lancaster approving the adoption of an amendment to the Act 537 Official Sewage Facilities Plan for the City of Lancaster.

Motion to approve.

Second.

Council, we have a motion and a second. Anything to add, Mr. Stolzfus?

No, this is pretty routine. Thank you.

Thank you. Any council comments? Any from the public? Hearing none, Mr. Harris.

Ms. Castaneda?

Aye.

Ms. Holland-Jones?

Aye.

Mr. Hirsch? Aye. Ms. Majon?

Aye.

Mr. Miller? Aye. Mr. Stolzfus? Aye. And President Med? Aye.

Thank you, Councillors. That brings us to resolution number 76, 2026. Mr. Harris.

A resolution of the Council of the City of Lancaster approving an amended capital project list to be funded by the proceeds of the City of Lancaster General Obligation Bond Series of 2018. Motion to approve.

Second.

Council, we have a motion and a second. Mr. Vice President, this one's again coming through the Finance Committee. We did go through this in our committee meetings, but feel free to add any additional content.

Just to add, it's kind of related to what we were talking about with the capital budget tonight. I do just want to add, again, a kudos to city staff. 12 to 13 sewer projects were listed in there, most of them under budget. Collectively, they were around $800,000 completed under budget. So kudos to city staff for getting those done and freeing up those funds for other investments.

Thank you, Councillor Hirsch. Any questions or comments from council? From the public?

Hearing none, Mr. Harris. Ms. Gastineau?

Aye.

Ms. Holland-Jones?

Aye.

Mr. Hirsch? Aye. Ms. Majone?

Aye.

Mr. Miller? Aye. Mr. DeSalvis? Aye. And President Matt? Aye.

That brings us to our final resolution, similar to Resolution 76, Resolution 77-2026. Mr. Harris.

A resolution of the Council of the City of Lancaster approving an amended capital project list to be funded by the proceeds of the City of Lancaster General Obligation Bonds Series of 2022. Motion to approve.

Second.

Councilors, we have a motion and a second, very similar to the previous resolution.

Anything else to add, Mr. Hirsch?

Only to say that this is just reprioritizing projects, whereas the 2018, it was mostly completion. This is reprioritizing more urgent projects, shifting some funds around.

Thank you, Councilor Hirsch. Any council comments? Any from the public? Hearing none, Mr. Harris.

Ms. Castaneda.

Aye.

Ms. Allen-Jones.

Aye.

Mr. Hirsch. Aye. Ms. Bajon. Aye. Mr. Miller. Aye. Mr. Stoltzfus. Aye. And President Metz. Aye.

That concludes our legislative agenda. We will now hear the report of the mayor.

Thank you, Council President. Just two items. One, Councilor Holland-Jones actually touched on is the Neighborhood Leaders Academy that is coming up. Just wanna let you guys know that applications are open and anyone that's interested in participating in our Neighborhood Leadership Academy has until September 30th to apply. I believe, Council President, you are actually a graduate of that program, so some fine folks that go through there and actually make their way to council, which is always cool. The second one is that we are offering a Citizens Police Academy this fall. Applications close on September 18th, 2026 at 5 p.m. So counselors, if you haven't had the opportunity to participate, in the Citizens Police Academy or members of the public that may be interested, this is an opportunity for you to see a little bit of behind the scenes with our police bureau. You can visit police.cityoflancasterpa.gov slash CPA to apply. That concludes my report, Council President.

Thank you, Mayor Arroyo. That brings us to the report of President of Council. I do not have a report this evening. However, I do want to give a shout out next week is International Housekeeping Week. As many of you guys know, Lancaster has a thriving lodging and service industry, which could not be, we could not be the city we are if it were not for the room attendance and dedicated housekeeping custodial staff. So if you see a housekeeper next week, make sure to wish them a happy International Housekeeping Week.

And that concludes my report. Any council comments?

Council President.

Yes, Council Kasano.

I just want to wish a Chag Sameach to those who are celebrating Rosh Hashanah. It's coming up this weekend. It starts on Friday night. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilor Mijan.

Thank you, Mr. President. I would like to invite everybody to a benefit fundraiser for the Scout Ridge program this coming Thursday on Bird the Elephant. And the Public Safety Day is going to be on Garden Court Apartments parking lot by the Anne Street parking lot. It's coming this Saturday from 12 to 5. Please join me in those events and support the city.

Thank you, Councilor Mijon.

Any final council comments this evening?

Hearing none, I will hear a motion to adjourn.

Motion to adjourn.

Second. All in favor? Aye. We are adjourned.