Transportation Board - Regular Meeting

It's past 530, so I'm calling the meeting to order. First item is roll call. Member Connolly, Member Chappell, Member Gephardt-Kleinrath, Member Lasavsky, and Member Hampton are in council chambers, and Member Muck is online. Member Edwards is absent. Is there anyone who has any proposed changes to the agenda?

both to the agenda and to the minutes of last meetings, my name is spelled incorrectly. There is an H, there is one H too much in my last name.

Mr. Chair, member, we'll go ahead and get that corrected. Thank you.

Thank you. So, with that, We don't really have to change the agenda. It's just wrong. So, with no changes to the agenda, that's approved unanimously. Is there any other changes to the minutes other than the spelling of, remember, Gephard Kleinrath's name? All right. So, With the exception of that change to the name, I'd say the minutes are approved unanimously. Is there any public comment for items not in the agenda? Any online?

No comments, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. And with that, we lead to our first presentation, the Fairway Drive Improvements Project.

Good evening, Chair, members of the board. I thank you for having us this evening. We're excited to share with you this next project that we have coming up in the coming year. And tonight I'm joined by my project manager, Henry Roybal, as well as DPU staff. Jennifer Morrow and Sam Herseg for any sort of utilities questions. And Brian Romero, our senior engineer for public works, is also here too. So we'll all be ready for questions if anything comes up afterwards. But with that, I'm going to hand it over to Henry for his presentation. Thank you.

OK, thank you, Eric and Mr. Chair. Good to see you tonight, members of the board. I do want to just go over our fairway drive improvement project. This is for the Transportation Board. If we could go to the next slide. I do want to just say, as far as supporting council goals, these are all in line with the council goals. This project is to maintain and improve transportation and mobility maintain quality, essential services, and supporting access and infrastructure and quality of life. Next slide. This project includes the full reconstruction of pavement, storm drains, improvement targeted reconstruction of curb and gutter sidewalks and ADA ramps. So we went out on the field to inspect the curb and gutters and also the roads. And we have found during our inspection that we determined we could target some of them that did need to be replaced, and some of them did not need to be replaced. So we are moving forward with that. And I think right now the project, we're working on that. The project's in coordination with the Department of Public Utilities, which will replace aging utility infrastructure. Water replacement of aging. On the water part of this project, the replacement of aging cast iron water lines with new PVC. And also on the sanitary sewer side, there's segments of vetrified clay sewer line with reoccurring problems, which will be replaced as well. Next slide. And so the project background. Basically, the county hires a contractor to come out and identify priority projects. The project selection is based on pavement conditions, the pavement condition index, which is PCI. The project area in question is at 42.5, which is a poor rating. Basically, a scale from 1 to 100, 1 being the worst, or as I like to refer to it, is reclaimed by nature. And we don't have any at that point, and basically 100 being the best. Transportation, the CIP budget for this project has been programmed for $3,987,000. Staff has applied for and been granted NMDOT local road funds in the amount of $637,598. That amount is, of course, included in the $3 million amount. So that's a reflection of 16% of the total project. The Department of Public Utilities budget for the water portion is $900,000. And for the wastewater collection, it's $800,000 for the collection, the funding. Next slide. Next slide. Okay, so next we have the project location. So if you look at the location, basically where Trinity Drive meets 47th Street, it's going to start at that point, and it's going to go from 47th Street to Fairway Drive. I don't know, not everybody probably knows this, but 47th Street actually in the road transitions into Fairway Drive. So then it's going to go from that point, which is where it transitions into Fairway Drive, it'll go to West Road. And then from West Road, we're actually going to go from Diamond Drive all the way down West Road to the property gate for Los Alamos National Laboratory. And it's approximately 600 feet. So that's what we reflect here in orange. Next slide. So these are the potential staging areas. We still haven't decided on the exact area. On the top slide, there's a few locations that are located. off of Fairway and also off West Road. The bottom slide is actually on the bottom of West Road, and that area is laboratory property, so we're working with the laboratory on that staging area. So if we could have our next slide. Okay. And here we have our proposed schedule. So right now, THE SCHEDULE IS WE'RE LOOKING AT ADVERTISING THIS JOB IN OCTOBER OF 2026. WE'RE LOOKING AT BEGINNING CONSTRUCTION IN FEBRUARY OF 2027 AND OUR ANTICIPATED PROJECT COMPLETION WILL BE AUGUST OF 2027. NEXT SLIDE. BASICALLY THERE'S A LOT OF SERVICES DURING CONSTRUCTION THAT WE do everything we can to mitigate any issues with getting these services. And I think the county has done a really great job. But some of these services are Los Alamos County Environmental, like trash and recycling pickup, Los Alamos Public Schools, transportation, school bus routes, USPS, UPS, FedEx, mail delivery, residential access, senior center meals on wheels, public safety and emergency services, traffic management, vehicular, bicycle, pedestrian access, to be maintained phased to minimize construction impact and maximize safety. We'll have clearly marked work zones and detours. Our work hours are going to be between the hours of 7 and 5 p.m., but they'll be better determined as we award the contract. Of course, we'll put in for permits required for any work proposed from 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. But these services, we'll make sure there's minimal impact and correct any issues that are out there. But I just wanted to make sure that everybody was aware that we would keep those services moving forward. Next slide. So as far as public information and involvement, the T Board and we're going to have the T Board meeting, which thank you all for being here tonight. This is the T board meeting, September 3rd, public commitment or comment requested by September 17th. So we'll have comment cards in the back of the room where we can get those. And we're asking you can either bring them back here or you can mail them. But if we can get those comments by September 17th, we're also going to have additional public outreach, local media and cone zone. I'm not sure if everybody's familiar, but the county has an area on its website that has the cone zone that's updated weekly. We'll also do door hangers, continued communication. The cone zone, which I mentioned earlier, will be updated weekly, 48 hours. Advance notice for any temporary construction disruptions, you know, like the water shutdown, any water shutdown, we'll let you know 48 hours in advance. And then we'll also let you know when there's not going to be any on-street parking in a certain segment where construction is at. Next slide. So with the comment cards, you could leave cards with attending staff that are here tonight or mail those comments in. And on those cards, we're going until October 9th, 2026. Public Works Department, you can send them to attention Henry Roybal, which is me. I'll be the project manager for this project. I did leave some business cards in the back also that you can pick up and, you know, feel free to call me if you see me out in the field, feel free to come and ask me questions. Next slide. And so here we have an area for you to give us questions either on the utility side or on the road construction or sidewalks. Is there anybody from the public that would like to ask questions? Would you like to come up and state your name for the record?

I live on Fairway. You said your sanitary sewer is going to be worked on, and most of that sewer line runs behind our houses. Is that going to be moved, or are you going to be going through the back yards and whatnot?

And so we have Sam Hersek, and he's going to be... You guys make sure you speak into the microphone. So we have Sam Hersek. He'll be the project manager for utilities, so he'll be able to answer that for you.

Yes, ma'am. On some portions of the fairway, we're looking to move the sewer line.

Move to the microphone, please.

On some portions of the fairway, we're looking to move the sewer line into the center of the road. And other portions, we won't.

I thought you'll have to be just doing some re-routing.

We will be required to reroute some of the sewer lines from the backyards and the front. Do you know where those are? I do.

Also, if you're a member of the public speaking, please speak into the microphone also. We have people online.

I'm asking about the sewer lines, because they run behind our houses, and whether or not they're going to have to reroute them. And he said, yes, they will have to reroute them. And I was just wondering where that's going to take place.

It depends on your address Different we're gonna have a different solution for for every resident here some sewers will change some won't I'm asking because there's actually sewer line that goes through my backyard Yes, you were there actually yes last week. Yes, and yeah yours will be brought into the front of the home Okay Okay, does that get rid of this manhole cover I? Let me review our plans before answering that officially. I can promise you it will be improved.

Okay. And the other question I have is, is the street going to be widened at all? Is it pretty much what it is right now?

Okay. Thank you for that question. And, yes, the street is going to remain the exact width that it is now. We don't really have any room to move it in any direction, so it will remain the same width.

Those are my questions.

I'm Jenny State, and I'm at 4417 Fairway. So are you also talking about every now and then you guys have to come out and pump because those lines are real small that come from our houses that go down towards the canyon? And y'all have to come out sometimes because it starts backing up. And you guys are great. You come out every time and you pump it out and everything. You guys are wonderful. But is that included? Those lines that are too small that come from houses that go down? I just know mine goes down towards the canyon. I'm on the side that obviously on the canyon right above the ice skating rink. Will those be addressed?

And just for clarity, is this storm drain?

It's for when you flush your toilets and take a shower and all that. Okay.

Yes, a big part of the project is making sure that our operators won't have to continue doing maintenance like that. That's fantastic. You'll have a solution upgraded to modern standards.

Okay, so then the water line coming from the house will be redone because the water comes, there's a meter right in front of my house, comes from the street, comes into my house. So that'll be done and also the... So that would be the water line. And then the sewer line that comes through the backyard down towards the canyon will be, so all that will be addressed?

It will.

Oh, that's great. Thank you.

Thank you, Jenny. Next.

I'm Laura Segillis. I live at 4439B Fairway. I just had landscaping done in my backyard, like a significant amount. So how is that going to be addressed from a county perspective? And also, I just had my driveway report. And so my neighbor was across the street and they said they were going to cut out part of my driveway. So how then is that going to be addressed? And when are we going to know specifically what you're doing in the front and the backyard so that we can plan for that as we're going forward? Because the road, the lab people use our road as a detour to go and miss some of the traffic. And so we see a lot of traffic day in and day out up and down that road. So it is going to be, and the road is very skinny, so it's going to be a really significant inconvenience for all of us. I do know that this is going to be something that needs to be done. But the communication, I think, is really key on when you're doing things and how you're doing things, so we know when these things are happening. So that's what I have.

OK, so I'll answer the portion in regards to your drive pad. When we said earlier that we identified areas that would not need replacement, I'll get your address from you, but there's a good possibility that your drive pad was newer, so we decided that that was something that we didn't need to replace. But again, depending on the side, do you have a sidewalk on your side? Okay, so if you didn't have a sidewalk and the drive pad is is in good shape, we're probably not going to touch that dry pad. But if you could give me your address, I'll be able to let you know that for sure. I think the other one was just a question about the landscaping in the backyard. Is that correct? And we won't be back there, but utilities will.

Yes, thank you. We will, end of the contract, we will write a landscaping allowance based on just the area of disturbance. with the idea that the contracted entity will have funds to replace whatever they disturb in the backyards. I also want to clarify that, as Henry said, we'll be replacing the water main. We'll also be replacing the service laterals that run from the main to provide water to your homes up into the meter. Anything downstream of the meter will be will be private and we won't touch.

If you have additional things to say, please come to the mic just because we have people online. They won't be able to hear you.

Okay, come on up.

Hopefully in the next couple of weeks I'm having a remodel at the house, and part of it is taking up the driveway and widening it. So I've been down to the county before, and they said that you guys are responsible for, I think, 10 feet, 5 or 10 feet in. So would my contractor, do you think, be handling all that, or do I need to coordinate with you guys? That driveway will be in before you guys start now that I see your – your schedule but do i need to do any upfront scheduling or talk to you maybe offline so that we make sure that because i it'll instead of just being a single driveway it'll be a double driveway okay once again i was wondering do you have a sidewalk on your side nope okay so no sidewalk um we if we if we can get your address or you could take my card i can meet with you in the

in the field and go and look at that or at your house.

OK, I'll grab your card after. OK, perfect.

Thank you. Thank you. Is there any other questions, comments, concerns?

So this is at at 46.79. fairway. And my question is, I heard you say you are going to replace their water line from their front yard to their row. Is that true? Yeah.

Yes. So the water line is only in the front. It's in the street. And our service ends. It should end at the property line. That isn't the case with every residence. So if the water meter can is in your property, we will remove it and replace it with one at the property line.

And you said something about the driveway. Are you going to do anything about the driveway without the sidewalk? Yes.

So on the driveways that do have sidewalk, no, that don't have sidewalk. Oh, yeah. There are going to be some areas, and they've been targeted on which ones need replacement as far as the curb and also the drive pad. So if it's been identified, and I can meet with you, too, and tell you if yours is one of the ones that we felt needed to be replaced. I don't remember the exact number, but there's not a whole lot on that side of the road without a sidewalk that will have to replace the drive pad. Okay. Yeah. Any other questions? No? Just state your name for the record.

My name is Matilde Brewer, and I live on 4611 Fairway. I have a question for the person that's going to do the sewer line. About a year or two ago, we kind of made it a little bit, we did a little bit of small garden project that I think it goes following the sewer line.

we likely wall and a raised garden and I need to know what will happen if they need to replace part of the sewer on on that address that Yes, so if I recall your your residents will get a new a new sewer line to bring From flowing into the backyard it will flow under the front We will have in addition to landscaping allowance

set aside amount of money if the if the driveway needs to be replaced that will be covered so it's not the driveway but is following the path where there was in front of our garage we put like a triangular wall that right now has some some flowers and does that need to be torn out

I'll have to check the location specifically, but should anything be disturbed, our contractors will be paid to put it back in kind.

Okay.

Phillip Rivera, 4438 Fairway Drive. So when you guys replaced the sewer, like I have an Eastman in the back of my house right now because I can't go past that sewer line, that sewer. When you replace the sewer and put it in the street, is that going to go? Will that easement that's behind my house where I can't build on, is that going to disappear? Because I built my house right to that. That was the reason I didn't go deeper into my lot.

Hi, I'm Jennifer Morrow with utilities. We will look at everyone where we are abandoning, but at the same time, there is also electric in the back of everybody's yards, which are also using those same easements. So because anywhere that it's being used for electric or sewer, we will keep those easements, and those easements will remain in place.

The electrical is fine, but the sewer that's directly like right behind my house because there's a house with sewer to my house, to the house, then into the hole.

We'll look at each one of those individually, and we can talk with you guys individually about what we're going to do. Yeah, like there's a chance. No promises.

No, you're fine. Jenny Staten, 4417 Fairwick Inn. So the line, I'm on the canyon side. So the line, the sewer line that runs from the back of the house down towards the canyon, it'll be gone? And you guys are going to run it up to the street? It'll be gone now? Or do the canyon side houses, is the sewer still going to run towards the canyon? Like the street? The street's here. My house is here. Right now, the sewer line's... and back of my house going down towards the canyon.

Yes, so depending on where you live on fairway, there's a portion of it where that will run into the street after work is done. There's also a portion of fairway on the eastern side of it that flows into an existing lift station, and those sewer lines will remain in the backyard.

But they'll be replaced?

If you're living on the eastern side, anything that drains into this lift station won't be rehabilitated.

Oh, so you guys will still have to come out and pump it out once in a while.

I'm just not sure of your residence exactly.

Okay, all right. Well, I'll get a meeting with you, and then we can talk about it.

Actually, for utility stuff, it'll be Sam. Oh, okay.

Larry can put you in contact with me if I can answer any questions you have.

Okay, thank you.

Sorry, Larissa Gillis. So are we, you're gonna have a meeting with everybody up and down the street to talk specifically to them about what's happening on their property, or is that something we would request on a comment card of, you know, like we're gonna have to go in the backyard, or we're gonna do this in the front yard, or that type of stuff, just so we know what you're doing on our property?

Yeah, so for any residents that would like

For me to meet with them and explain to them what we're doing in in their area I can we can schedule that meeting out out at your residence And to add to that if we are relocating your sewer from behind the house to the front we will meet with every one of you because we will have to find where your plumbing comes out of your house and reroute that so we will have to very much coordinate with everyone and If we are not changing your service location, if the sewer line is staying in the same location it is now, then you can request that we meet with you. So maybe the best thing is if you want to have a meet and talk about it, go ahead and request it. We'll make sure we meet with you. But everybody who is going to be impacted by the relocation of the sewer line will have a one-on-one.

My name is Kimberly Piazza. I'm at 4309 Fairway, and I'm at the intersection where the stop signs are, and there's a large tree in my yard. And I don't know if that tree is going to need to be removed because it's right on the curb and on the street. So what is my obligation if that tree needs to be removed?

So thank you, Kimberly. And if I'm thinking of the correct tree, if you're coming from the other direction or coming, I guess, from west to east, the stop sign is actually covered by that tree. Is that the correct location? Okay. So I did go to your house one day because I wanted to talk to you about the tree because we've identified that tree as it being a safety issue. And so we would like to remove it because it's also pushing out the curb. So that tree, we would like to see if we can remove that tree. And it would it wouldn't have any cost to you. We would have the contractor remove that tree It's I mean it's the best thing to do for safety concerns and all that if you're if you're okay with that Would there be a replacement tree planted on the property Currently the tree I believe is in our right-of-way

So that would be, it's kind of a, it's something that we're responsible for removing or trimming if it's causing problems. And so right now we see it as an issue because of the safety that he mentioned. I don't think we would be replacing the tree within our right-of-way. But you'd be free to plant a tree within, you know, where the right-of-way line is on your side of the property if you'd like to afterwards.

But you all would not replace that tree for me?

It is actually a Siberian elm, which is an invasive tree, so we don't typically replace Siberian elm trees with other trees. If it was kind of one that is covered by our tree, what is it called, our tree plan, then we have a requirement to replace them, but otherwise we wouldn't for this type of tree because it is invasive.

Thank you. Thank you.

Sharon Kappel, I have another question about what is going to be your main method of communication? Like you said, we're going to have one-on-one and I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to have one because my sewer line will be moved. So what is your method of communication to let us know when you're going to, what you're going to do when?

Okay, so we will have a 48-hour notice and also we can get everybody's email and we can send emails to To also that or for the whole community so that we can send an email to everybody and communicate that way as well, but we also use Press releases and then the cone zone will actually show where construction is moving on on the county website Thank you absolutely, thank you So I'm Dan Brewer from 4611 fairway and

And did you say at 4611 you're going to move the sewer line to the street from the back? You're on the south side of... We're on the canyon side of the street, yeah. And we're connected to that sewer line that goes in the back. Anyway, we not long ago spent about a gazillion dollars to replace the sewer line. And... And so, and it goes, I mean, I don't know what's involved, but it goes under our deck and it causes a big mess to try and change that. And I was wondering if there's a way to request that our sewer lines stay on that back one, if that back one's going to stay active.

Yeah. We're looking at the exact way that your sewer drains out of the home at the moment, but to make the whole, system work as an entity. Because it flows, as other residents have said, from your residence eastward through a various amount of backyards, it would need to be brought into the front. Of course, at no cost to you. We're also looking at the latest in trenchless technologies to avoid any kind of land disturbance and keep that as a minimum.

Okay. And then there was another issue when we did replace the, sorry, When we did replace the sewer line, they said our house was on a list of houses that if you do some of the sewer line, you have to put in a pump because the house is below the sewer line. They thought we were connected to the street. And they said because the house is below the street that we had to install this pump. And I was wondering if you're going to be doing that if we get moved to the street? And if that's your pump or my pump, how does that work?

Yeah, absolutely. Part of the reason we want to move your sewer into the front of the home, into the street, is because it will alleviate issues like that. You're not going to have to – you'll have positive drainage, and you won't have to be involved in any sort of pumping or low-flow scenarios like that. It would flow the way a home should.

Okay. Well, just to reiterate, where the house is below where you're going to move the sewer to – And it's above the sewer where it's connected now, right?

The new sewer line will be below where the existing one is significantly. Really?

Okay. Somebody's going to have to show me. Absolutely.

Okay. Are there any members of the public online who would like to make a comment? If so, unmute yourself. Is there any other members of the public who'd like to make public comment or ask questions? All right. Board questions?

Just one quick question. Hopefully it doesn't lead into my second question, but the presentation says that this is slated to begin February of 2027. However, in Eric's notes at the back of the packet, it says it's going to begin in late 2026. Can you clarify that, Eric?

Thank you, Board Member Chappell. I don't know which notes it is that you're speaking about, but Yeah, so we're going to bid at the end of this year, so maybe that's the confusion. We are going to get it advertised for construction now in the fall, but it would probably be a period of ramp-up time during the winter before they actually break ground in the spring.

Okay, and then just one quick, hopefully quick follow-up question. Because we're doing it in the spring, do we anticipate any major problems along that timeline of staying to that six months?

I'm sorry, I don't understand your question.

So according to the presentation, it's slated to begin in February and end in August. Do we foresee any major problems getting it completed in that six-month time frame?

No, that's, thank you, but yeah, that's a pretty typical construction time frame for a residential construction. I think we did Denver Steels in about that time, and it was much larger than this, so. on our last phase. So, yeah, we're confident we can do it. But, I mean, the only thing that could slow things down would be utilities issues, but I think ultimately, I think they have a pretty good game plan as to how they're going to tackle that. So, thank you. Thank you.

Thank you, Chair. I have a couple questions just to follow up on the timeline. It sounds like there will not be any breaking of ground until spring, but I know that... Just want to make sure that when there is peak usage at the ice rink, that that's not when you're doing that section. Because I know that we have some tournaments for hockey, should there be a good season, weather-wise. And then not long after that, I think within a couple of months, there's usually quite a lot of activity with the roller derby and whatnot. So just wasn't sure if you were already coordinating with CSD on all of that.

Good question. And no, we have not coordinated with the overflow parking lot at this point with CSD. So we will do that and work around their schedule and have the contractor kind of knowledgeable of that before we advertise for construction. So. Thank you for that notice. We appreciate that.

Sure. And then a couple other questions I had. I guess also related to that, I've seen quite a lot of pedestrian activity desired going down, I guess it's west, towards the rink. I didn't know if this was a time that you all are considering how to allow for that, if there's going to be significant enough improvements to kind of allow. And then likewise, I noticed that ADA, THINGS WILL BE ADDRESSED IN THAT INTERSECTION. I WAS THINKING A LOT ABOUT THE CROSSWALK FROM THIS INTERSECTION TO THE HOSPITAL. AND THERE'S JUST THAT IS KIND OF A WILD INTERSECTION AND ESPECIALLY FOR RESIDENTS THAT ARE MAYBE WALKING TOWARDS THAT AREA. SO I JUST WANTED TO BRING THAT UP. I WASN'T SURE IF YOU WERE ALREADY THINKING ABOUT THAT.

THANK YOU BOARD MEMBER CONLEY. THAT'S ONE OF THE ONES THAT WE'RE KIND OF LOOKING AT WITH KEITH ACTUALLY. Keith has a lot of plans for that intersection with bike boxes and whatnot. And we've looked at that intersection. So we'll try to tie in this project as best we can to any future. Actually, we've had presentations here, I think, on those bike boxes at that intersection. But yeah, try to tie this project in so that it all complements each other well.

That's great. And then I'm sorry, I have one other one. And this is just because I know there's been a lot of staff changes and whatnot. When I recall that there was a lot of sewer upgrades and changes done near Aspen Elementary maybe three or four years ago. And there were residents that experienced a variety of issues. Sometimes just the timing was happenstance. But do you all have a process that you'll be putting on the page for this project that if residents notice challenges or issues with the sewer or with the water pressure and it not resolving after air has moved through the system, that there is a process for them to document and notify you all? Because I know that there were some Pretty substantial issues for a couple of residents.

Sorry. Hi there. Those are very valid concerns. Thanks for bringing those up. Yeah, we will definitely work with the residents. I'll look into what you've talked about the past one and try and understand those past issues so we can try and make sure that we know those going forward. But as it is right now with the gravity system and with the water system, we're just transferring from one line to the other. It shouldn't be more than like a couple hours shut down as we transfer lines. So we don't anticipate anything significant with the transferring of lines. But I'll definitely look into the project you stated and try to make sure I understood the issues that happened. So thank you. Thank you.

I'm trying to put myself in the place of the residents that this is going to be affecting. And it seems to me that once you got the bids in, coming out with a place where each resident can see a reasonable schedule about when they're going to be affected would be very useful. Is there a way to do that?

Thank you, Board Member Lazowski. Yes, the cone zone is probably the best place. We do post the kind of overall schedule there. Not with real specifics, but we will at least give like about a one to two week look ahead as to what's coming up in the next, you know, couple weeks. If there's specific kind of broader range kind of questions, we're happy to work with any of the homeowners if they'd like to know those details as to what the contractor's proposing.

Yeah, I realize you won't know that until the bid's been let. So, but having a public access to that schedule would be very useful. And I have one other comment. How much of the time is the street actually going to be blocked so there's no access at all to the street?

So we're fortunate in this neighborhood because we do have a kind of a bisecting cross street. I forget what street number that is now. But it's the one that runs up between Trinity and it heads north and south. Yeah, so I think what the way we're kind of working still on the construction phasing and that'll be part of our construction contract in our IFB But the way I'm seeing this is that we would probably do one half at a time Either the west side of that cross section across second Street or the east side So we don't have all of it open at once and causing issues But residents will be able to get in and out of that other connecting street to Trinity And so that's kind of how I'm thinking we would phase it, but we're still working through those details. I

That would be good, and also it would be good to confirm that with emergency services and fire services to make sure they have access during the construction time.

And we will always have access of some kind, but it may be on base course or on dirt. They will never completely close access because we understand that residents need to access their driveways.

Any more questions from the board? Comments? All right. I have one. So the broadband project started in White Rock this week or last week. Excuse me. She has a question. You're not seeing her. Oh, yeah. If anybody has a question, please come to the microphone. State your name and.

Thank you. Jen Michelle, 4285 Fairway. I was wondering what end of the street you were anticipating starting at, 47th Street? And then coming down to West Road, are you going to start at West Road and go up the hill, or are you going to hopscotch up and down? You don't know?

Yeah, at this point we haven't decided, but the way the stations are laid out, they came from Trinity, but we haven't figured out how we're going to do that yet.

And one of the kind of deciding factors is going to be utilities. If something makes more sense for utilities to come in from one side or the other, that'll probably be the side we start on, just to make their tie-ins kind of more smooth. Okay.

And this is a question possibly more for the council than these guys, is that fairway is a direct route from top of the hill to the bridge, and it's pretty much a four-lane freeway. lot of the times and ignoring the stop sign is very common all three of them from any direction no matter who's there or who's not there once this is all done and beautiful and nice and flat and smooth and straight is there going to be any opportunity for some consideration of the speed that is going up and down that road speed bumps speed humps continued agree More police activity, something, anything?

Thank you.

In response to the public comment, we're happy to look at this with our traffic and streets folks who We do have cameras available at times, you know, for, I mean, they're oftentimes in different places doing things, but we can schedule those in the future after construction just to kind of keep an eye and see if there are some speeding issues there. I know we do have the three-way stop intersection in the middle, and the streets are pretty narrow, so we hope that those kinds of things calm traffic through there, but if we do see an ongoing issue through there, then we'll definitely, it's good that we're aware of it. So we can schedule that.

I have a comment in regards to the stop sign because it's in my yard. And it's a suggestion. It's not a stop sign. Nobody ever stops at that stop sign. I don't see you all going through there, but the people that I see going through there do not stop.

In response to that, we have noticed that there is a sight distance issue with that stop sign because of the tree. And that was one of the reasons we noticed that this tree probably needs to get removed because it isn't very visible because it's kind of hidden by it. So that was actually one of the reasons.

There's also two other stop signs there, too. That they're running. They're running, yeah. Just a comment.

Thank you.

Thank you. So broadband. Will we be able to coordinate with the broadband project? I know they have their schedule. They're starting in White Rock. It won't be until Los Alamos for another year.

Yes, thank you, Chair. We are coordinating with our broadband folks on all of our projects. So many of these already have a plan as to how they were going to approach them. But we've provided our five-year CIP so they can kind of plan around our projects. And as you know, leading up to our broadband award, we had been installing a lot of infrastructure. We're kind of in that interesting transition where they've already kind of set forth a plan on how they're going to install broadband in that area. So they may or may not want us to put the infrastructure in there for them, but we are coordinating with them and we'll make sure that whatever they need is put in there if we need to assist with this project.

Thank you.

This is a little bit off topic, but have you considered burying the power lines that run down the back of the houses on the canyon side?

We've been in communication with our staff from electrical distribution on exactly what they want from this project. But at the moment, all they're looking for is a conduit crossing the road for future use. So they may have something down, something in the plan.

Any other comments? I want to thank everybody who attended this public hearing, and I think it's a great chance to get comments and suggestions and questions out. So thank you very much. And thank you to staff for the presentation. Thank you, Mr. Roybal.

Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the board. Appreciate it.

All right, the next item on the agenda is the Canyon Road Median Design Standards.

good evening chair board members my name is wendy parker and i'm the park superintendent for community services and the parks and open space division and tonight i'm here to talk to you about the canyon median design standards that we have been working on since the pretty much the latter part of 2022 we've been on again off again on this project but we are now getting it moving forward again and hopefully We'll get construction moving in the next few months. So I won't read through all of the slides, but I will go through just a couple of things. All right, the background on this program. We originally talked about landscaping of public right-of-ways and medians to enhance the image of Los Alamos and White Rock as well. and just for a better quality of life for Los Alamos. As you all know, if you live here in Los Alamos and you go down Canyon Road, not real attractive, nor is Diamond Medians. And both of those sets of medians, along with State Road 4 and White Rock, are very difficult for staff to get on and to work on those. So really the main scope of the work was for us to create a landscape median that will reduce maintenance and also maintain and enhance the aesthetic character of both locations. We are starting in Los Alamos first, but this design will hopefully at some point go to White Rock and be on New Mexico Road 4. Design considerations. Landscaping with public medians contributes to the image and character. It'll provide year-round visual interest as well as appeal. It'll improve the microclimate where practical, demonstrate water conservation, minimize routine maintenance requirements and reduce the footprint of our IPM program. And we do have a lot of residents here that still, when we spray anything at all, get really upset with us. And we spend probably just as much time on the phone with residents explaining why we sprayed as we do staff actually out spraying. So we have really tried to reduce our footprint, which is one of the reasons you see all the weeds that you see. If we had 100 staff on board, that still wouldn't be enough to address all the weeds throughout both Los Alamos and White Rock. And then, of course, to improve staff safety by reducing the frequency and duration of maintenance. So background continued, just kind of the same on that project goal, so I won't read back through that. But just the median landscape design goal, these are kind of the same of what I just talked about. So, too, I won't go back through those again. But I do want to point out reducing water use and then also just eliminating some of the small, narrow medians while improving the overall appearance. And I want to make sure that everybody understands when we're talking about eliminating, we're talking about concrete stamping that median. It won't come out. So the medians that we have currently are the same medians that will stay in place. And I will talk about some of the surveys that we've received already. So I think that was a little, I don't know that people understood that when they were looking online at the survey. So I did want to make that statement that the current footprint of the medians will not change that will stay the same. So here's a lovely picture of Canyon road medians as they currently exist today. So not the most attractive thing in the world. Probably a little bit worse right now than what those photos are because they're a little old. But we do have a lot of weeds and craziness on Canyon. And then our next slide just shows the Canyon Road median. This is the plateau design. And the top little slide there is what the image of the median will look like. The two images below it are kind of the color schemes of what they pulled, the consultant used to kind of mimic what's around in Los Alamos as you look across all of the landscape and the mesas and all the different colors that we have. The second one is the bandolier option and this was taken from bandolier of course and you can see a couple of pictures there showing some stamped concrete and just different entry points to bandolier itself and kind of what that looks like. So before I go to our next steps, I'm just going to just quickly comment on a couple of the survey results that we received. I pulled the information about 420 this afternoon, and we have 78 responses at this point. Our survey started on August the 17th and runs through September the 13th. And really the bigger, well, right now, the plateau design is kind of coming in first place. So we have 47 people that have voted for this particular concept that they like at the best with the color schemes and just kind of what's going on. As far as some of the comments that have been made on that particular scheme, they feel like it's very neutral. It's focused on a nice appeal, a nice look for the county. It's simple, cleaner, and more visually interesting. We've had several people that have commented about the pesticide program that they would prefer that we not spray. We also had about the same amount that commented that the reason the median looks so bad along with things in the county is because we can't spray. So you kind of have those two balanced out in that area. As far as comments on the design itself, we have received some comments that residents would really like to see something that's low maintenance and drought tolerant. and just really emphasized a need for better weed and plant management and control and to make sure that the vegetation choices that are picked will be good ones and to really reduce our footprint of water usage. So quite a few of the medians on Canyon currently do not have water. That footprint, too, will stay the same. So, again, we're not adding any irrigation. We have a couple that do have it. We plan on leaving this couple with the irrigation, but for the rest of it, it will remain the same. Our last comment that was received was just the plant selection and so people so far of what we received has just really talked about just water conservation and making sure that we ease the maintenance of these medians and several of the residents that have taken the survey also commented about staff being on the medians and trying to maintain those and that that's very dangerous and I would certainly agree being in my position I've been on both of those medians on staff when they've been doing their job and it is quite frightening especially on diamond because even though we have our work zones set up people still fly through it we've had cones hit and everything else it's it's terrifying on days Canyon is very scary as well because you only have the one lane. So at least with Diamond, you have two, so you can kind of shut something off for maintenance. But on Canyon, you only have the one, and we do leave the bike lane open, so it limits staff even more so going down that median. We normally try to take 12 to 14 staff to do both of those meetings when we do them, as well as 502, just because in numbers, you can get it done a little bit quicker, and we're a lot more visible with our vests and hard hats and everything else that we have. So those are just some general comments from the public that's come in. And again, that's open through September 13th. So we're hoping that we'll receive several more comments from our public of what they would like to see. So our next steps is just continue collecting our survey information. We will be going to county council for a presentation. Then we'll finalize our median drawings. We'll create a task order for construction, and then we'll create the timeline and effectively communicate with the community. because that's going to be a real inconvenience as we start working on Canyon because that is one of the major roads to get through just like Trinity. And then just a timeline for our media to communicate and just make sure that everybody kind of knows what's going on. It'll be on the projects page. It'll be in the cone zone. So really as much as we can communicate it, we'll definitely do that so everybody knows that it's coming. And I'm hoping in the next few months once we get everything back We'll be able to kind of move forward and get the construction going on the medians. I have a projects page, but it doesn't have the amount of money on there right now. So to date, we've spent a little over $38,000 for meeting with consultants, going out and looking at the medians, both Diamond and Canyon, and coming up with what we're calling, it's a template, it's a footprint. So this is the same design that would basically be the template that we use for our medians in Los Alamos and White Rock. And it's not uncommon for counties and cities to do that, to give it a standard look and feel. We will have some rocks and stuff, just like 502, so you'll be able to incorporate the 502 look and feel just a little. But we also wanted it to be a little bit more colorful and represent a little bit more of our colors and schemes we have here. We have gone about this project a little bit differently as far as the community engagement, because we do have New Mexico DOT regulations that need to be followed as far as safety standards, height of shrubbery, and all of those kind of things. So here, as we get towards the end of what we're working with our consultants on, this is the two templates that we've come up with. And that's why now we're asking for some community feedback to see what everybody thinks about those choices. So with that information, I'll stand for questions if you have any.

Thank you, Ms. Parker.

Thank you, Chair. I have a comment. I just wanted to say I appreciate the duration that you're allowing for public comment. I think there's been sometimes some pretty hot topic issues where the public comment duration is not quite as long. So I appreciate that you're taking that time for something that for some might seem fairly simple, but it obviously has a lot of impact for everyone. So thank you. Thank you.

Just one quick question. Hopefully it's a quick one. Do we have a general cost of this project?

I do not. I would just totally be making a number up, and I'd rather not do that. But as we get moving forward with construction documents and moving that direction, then we will have some hard numbers that we can put up on the projects page. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome.

So my comment is on medians in general because As you can see in both of the renderings, the truck with the trailer is already on the bike path there. And this happens all the time, especially along the medians on Kenyon, because people shy away from the median. The last close call I had in that regard was coming here, a white Ford Raptor was passing me while his right tires were fully on the bike path. To me, the medians not only represent the danger to the people maintaining the median, but also to the cyclists using the bike path. So I... Somebody's angry with me.

Maybe they agree.

But I think what I would like to see is not having medians unless they're multi-lane roads or the bike paths are sufficiently separated from the car lanes. And I think that the people working on the medians are another consideration for danger for people not in car lanes. around the medians. I see the use of medians where you have pedestrian crossings because you can make refuge islands, but that is not true for most of the medians on, or most of the length of the medians on Canyon at least.

Correct, yes. Chair Hampton, board members, I do believe we have, I think there's two pedestrian walkways that crosses on Canyon, one up by the aquatic center and then one down just a little bit below it. So those are the two that I can recall straight off hand. But yes, it is a very tight fit when you only have a single lane roadway, but the medians do serve the purpose of should someone be on their phone or not paying attention and start going to cross traffic, they'll hit the median before they hit the car beside them. So That is the main purpose of having medians on just the one-lane highways like that. And I agree with you. I see people biking down Canyon all the time, and I've cringed and rattled my teeth a couple of times because you'll see somebody grabbing a cell phone and the car starts to drift, and I'm like, oh. So I understand what you're saying on that, and it is very scary.

I have actually three comments. The first is, I think these are great design goals. Have you set metrics for each one of these? For example, decreasing labor hours to maintain, reducing water use, so that you can use those metrics to choose a design that maximizes the benefit to the county. So that's the first question, so.

So first question, Chair Hampton, board members, we are talking with the consultants about those type metrics. So we will have those in place as we move forward.

The second question is, is it really necessary to have plant life in the median? I mean, sometimes the plants get big and you can't see across the median. Is it not possible to do a xeriscaping plan that has no maintenance?

Yes, we have looked at some xeriscape plans as we were going through this process. Our only concern with that is just the winds that we have in New Mexico. And having too much of an open space allows for a lot of seeds to blow in and a lot of weeds to, to pick up residency. So filling with the consultants that it would probably be in our best interest to plant some vegetation in there, but it won't be overwhelming. I know some of the plans look like it's a whole lot, but it's really not as much as what it looks like. And as we get moving forward on this plan, we can certainly get some additional drawings so people can see exactly what the vegetation is in each of those islands.

And then my third question is, you know, all of these medians have raised lips. So when you're driving down the road, if you veer into one of those things and hit that, you're going to be pushed off to the side into a bike path or in an unknown direction. If you look at the roundabout by North Mesa, you see that there is no raised lip. It's a smooth transition to the road. And I've seen many people going around the roundabout who would hit a raised area and deflect the car, but they just can easily go over that. Is it not possible to make the medians have that same transition to the road?

Yes, so the current median design will be in the same curbing structure that you see now. So the only difference will be as the existing curb is there, there's a little platform that's going to be 12 inches and then just what you're talking about. So if you hit that curb initially, you're going to hit the platform and then you'll go up and into the median. So unless you really hit it hard, I guess you could deflect back into the traffic, but it will have that give to where you will go up a little bit versus hitting it and constantly deflecting.

Yeah, I see that as a safety issue because if you have bicycles on one side and the bike lane, as he pointed out, and you hit that thing and you go to the bike lane, it's an uncontrolled situation.

Right. And we certainly can look at that. I know we really were just trying to do something with less cost to residents and leaving the current structure in place is one of the ways to really reduce the cost, but also adding something to help with that traffic should somebody hit that curbing. and go up, then they just continue to go up until they can hopefully get control and pull back down. Thank you. You're welcome.

Vice Chair Muck, go ahead and unmute yourself.

Yes. So with the plateau design, I saw the little rendering that you had in your slides. Is that also, you mentioned stamped concrete. Is that going to be a stamped and stained concrete design? Or how are you creating those designs there with the different layers of colors and textures and such?

Yes, Chair Hampton, board members, that is correct. It is a combination of stamped and colored concrete. along with islands of vegetation. And it really depends on which part of Canyon Road you're on. So if you're coming down out of town and right there by the Aquatic Center, that very first median would be a good example of a median that will be 100% stamped concrete and colored. It is a relatively small island, and it is not something we would try to put any type of vegetation into that area. As you come down Canyon and continue your route, you will see medians that will have stamped concrete on the ends of them, and then you'll have vegetation on the inside of it. So anywhere from 6 to 8 to 10 feet of each of the ends of the medians will be stamped concrete and colored and no vegetation. And also by the pedestrian walkways, that too is another area that we are keeping clear of any type vegetation. So folks coming across and crossing that section won't have to worry about you know, fighting site or anything else. And if you look at the plant selection that we have looked at with the consultant, we don't anticipate site being an issue with things getting too crazy on us. We specifically have chosen things that we know will stay relatively low in their growth pattern because visibility is not only an issue for staff when they're trying to maintain it, it's also an issue for residents as they're trying to drive and turn across roadways.

OK, thank you for that. I appreciate hearing that and I wanted to just echo a board member Lazowski was saying is you know the vegetation and everything I know at least on State Road 4 because I live down in White Rock that that's a big concern because some of that can overgrow relatively quickly, especially during monsoons and it makes it real hard to be able to see you know any cross traffic or whatnot, and especially if those medians are being used as an intermediate crossing area, you know it can make it real hard to see pedestrians. One other thing that might help, and you may have already looked into this, is just making the areas that you do plant smaller. So instead of having large rectangular areas where you plant stuff, if possible, maybe narrowing that down to just being 8 or 10 inch or 12 inch circles that is dedicated to just that plant. which could possibly help eliminate the possibility of weeds and other invasive species from wanting to get in there and overgrow.

Yes, absolutely. Thank you for that comment.

That's all I have, Chair. Thank you.

Any other comments or questions? Thank you, Ms. Parker. I know you've been working on this for years. It's nice to see it coming to fruition.

Yes. Thank you, Chair.

Next presentation is Diamond Drive Sycamore Street Pedestrian Crossing Evaluation.

Sorry, Chair. I don't know if there's anyone online other than Councilor and Member Muck to ask for comment.

Mr. Chair, Keith, there is nobody else online.

Okay, sorry. Thank you.

Just wanted to make sure. No worries.

Just wanted to delay starting my presentation. OK, good evening, Chair, board members. My name's Keith Wilson. I'm the deputy public works director. And I'm going to be discussing with you this evening the Diamond Drive at Sycamore Pedestrian Crossing evaluation. Next slide. So just some background. This is an existing pedestrian crossing, which has no pavement markings. There are some pedestrian crossing signage there right now, but just some background. We did previously look at this crossing back in 2023 when we were looking at the Diamond Drive corridor. with one of our consultants. We collected pedestrian crossing data, traffic data, ran it through our typical evaluations, and at that time the determination was there was no strong compelling reason to do any additional pedestrian measures at this location because actual pedestrians crossing the road were were very few and far between. I know it's a catch 22 without good facilities. It's hard to justify it, but just that was kind of the result of that evaluation. Then with the 2025 pedestrian master plan, this crossing came up again and recommended doing an engineering study for enhanced crosswalk markings and rectangular rapid flashing beacons. And then we've had some recent requests again for the smart crosswalk. So it wasn't a radar to reevaluate and then with the additional communications from some members of the public to look at this again, we kind of accelerated our schedule. We did do data collection back in April of 2026 to capture traffic during school time. We set up our cameras and collected data over three days at the end of April. Next slide. So just for reference, where is this crossing? So it's at the intersection of Sycamore and Diamond across from the Pueblo complex. It's about 0.4 of a mile from the Sandia traffic signal, 0.6 of a mile from the Arkansas traffic signal. And pretty much in this stretch, the only other uncontrolled crossing is by the golf course, which currently has rectangular rapid flashing beacons on it. The transit system does have stops adjacent to it. And the Route 56 and some of the afternoon school express routes do stop at those locations if there's passengers waiting to get off or on. The crossing does, as I said, is existing. It has curb ramps and a cut through the median. So it is currently a used crosswalk.

It just doesn't have any of the enhanced control measures in place or warning measures.

Next slide. So part of the evaluation was collecting pedestrian crossing data and traffic data through the intersection. The period we collected was over three days, Tuesday, April 26th through Thursday, April 30th. We collected data at 30 hours each of those days from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m., which is kind of like the prime traffic period. The chart on the screen, you can see the blue bars are the traffic volumes, and the red line is the pedestrian crossing volumes. Over the three days, there was an average of seven or eight pedestrians per day crossing at this crossing. On the Wednesday was kind of the peak day when 12 pedestrians crossed during that 13-hour time period. Approximately 15,000 vehicles go back and forward on Diamond Drive during that time period. Next slide So part of the evaluation if you all recall maybe a year or so ago we brought to you our mid block crossing policy So we ran this evaluation through this so that the kind of the flow chart on the left Kind of shows you the evaluation that we followed so the first up up on the top right the first Square on this side or diamond is the traffic volume greater than 15 vehicles per day. So that was a yes. The next box below that is does it meet pedestrian thresholds? That's a minimum of 20 pads per any one hour period. And then there is some flexibility in that. giving it some leeway, but we had 12 ped crossings in a day, so the peak hour was three pedestrians in any given hour, so we're nowhere near that. So that would be a no. Have I clicked one? Oh, one, the second box was the multi-use path. It's not a multi-use path, i.e. a bike ped path. Then the PED thresholds. The next one, does it serve transit? It does. So then we drop down to that yellow box, which is saying consider installing unmarked PED crossing, which is essentially what it is now. So that's just one criteria we're looking at, giving some of the factors about where it's located. Distances to adjacent things we said well if we are going to do something what what should we be looking at so that the table to the to the right can is the The the the guide box that directs us to what kind of treatments we should be looking at so if I kind of highlighted in the kind of the blue boxes is kind of what we're looking at and If we're thinking, this is kind of round about 15,000 a day. If we look at 15,000 vehicles per day or greater, it kind of leads us to looking at a pedestrian hybrid beacon. But if we're thinking that we're kind of on that cusp, we have some flexibility, we can also look at the rectangular rapid flashing beacons, which was one thing we were asked to look at through the pedestrian master plan, along with other features such as enhanced markings and signage. and things like that. Next slide. You beat me to it. So given that we should consider a pedestrian hybrid beacon in this location, we ran through what, and this is one of the things that's in the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices, and it has a number of criteria that you have to weigh this against. And one is, does it meet traffic signal warrants for pedestrian crossings? And to meet a traffic signal warrant for pedestrians, you're looking at 100 plus pedestrians per hour. So we're obviously nowhere near that. So a pedestrian hybrid beacon can't be justified based on meeting a traffic signal warrant. Then it talks about does it meet the threshold of pedestrian crossings for a hybrid beacon. And typically, so those red dots are basically the traffic volumes throughout the day. If we take the total crossing distance, it's 90 feet from one side to the other. even though the medians in the way is there as a we could split up into but Essentially where we get to is we need at least one hour in a day having 20 pedestrians per hour and crossing at that location. And as I say, we're not even meeting that in a whole day at this time. So just looking at pedestrian volumes, we're not meeting the thresholds for the hybrid beacon. The other criteria we can look at is gaps, number of gaps in traffic. Based on volumes, yeah, there's limited gaps, but from observations of Pedestrians who did cross the street, they were able to find gaps pretty regularly and easily. They weren't delayed excessive time frames. There was only a couple of times I actually saw the pedestrian pick up the pace to cross. And I think part of that is we get some decent gaps because of the traffic signals. So they create these kind of platoons. You get a platoon of traffic released from the Sandia traffic signal. And then when that's read, the traffic is held back, so it creates those gaps. And then we're trying really hard to see if we can make this justified. As I mentioned before, it's a Cache 22. We don't have what's perceived as a safe crossing, so the actual number of people who want to cross there is probably diminished. But is there really strong desires lines? We do have the Pueblo Complex there that has the... what's it called, High Flyer Gymnastics. There's a lot of lab or DOE field office staff in that location, but it's hard to justify there's a significant that we could actually meet that 20 pad in any given hour if we actually did that. So at this point, given that a pedestrian hybrid beacon can cost two to $250,000, we're not seeing strong justification that putting that in there will get us to the volumes that we need. And there may be other alternatives that we can look at. So next slide. So overall, we recognize we need to do something there more than that's there now. We're not satisfied that it's saying, yeah, it doesn't meet the thresholds. We're just going to walk away. So we feel like because of the distances to other crossing locations at Cindy and Arkansas, there's something in this location that's beefed up and is a has greater safety for the pedestrians crossing as needed. We have transit stops there that are used but minimally used right now. Average is one or two transit riders a day getting on or off at those stops. But we do see there's a neighborhood on the west side and the Pueblo complex on the east side. So there are some generators there. Plus with the high flyer gymnastics, we hear there's a lot of school kids who are going there who could potentially, instead of being driven there by parents, could take transit if we make improvements to the crossing. So we're seeing some potential demand there, but not significant. As I said, we are seeing some pedestrian usage. We are receiving repeated requests for this crossing. And we kind of have an example of what has been working successfully by the golf course, where it's a similar situation price, lower traffic volumes. That crossing sees no report of that. The wreckable city, rectangular southbound traffic, we just don't even need the pedestrian. And they didn't use a solution. So you mean going south?

Because... No, like when on this slide, they're coming out this way and they're going to go left.

Oh, Sycamore?

Yeah, because that's kind of an uphill. Am I right? It's kind of like a little bit blind there.

Someone who's at Sycamore will be able to see the flashing beacons.

But she's talking about urban, which is right after the curve.

So this is more...

But at urban, there's no crossing.

Yeah. Someone who... they're turning north at this as they will be able to see the flashing beacon they they says yield to in here let me do you want to go back to the diagram nope where is it so second to last slide yeah so so that's out the diagram on the right hand side that's sycamore right there so they'll be to the bottom of sycamore right in the right country here because of right and left. Yeah, you're driving the right here. Sorry. I had one of my Scottish moments here where I forget what side of the road I should be on. Yeah, so you're on the bottom of Sycamore. To make that left turn, you'll be turning out and you'll be behind those yield lines. So if they want to gun it... We can't stop anyone, but they will be able to see the flashing beacons if there is a pedestrian. And so if they do turn out, hopefully they've seen the beacons and seen the pedestrian and they won't be gunning it. Plus, if the lights are activated and there is a pedestrian, hopefully the traffic is all slowed down and stopped or whatever. Yeah, I'm not, I don't think that's, that was part, you know, trying to figure out where to place those yield lines. That was a consideration to ensure that we weren't putting the Sycamore traffic in front of those yield lines, if that makes sense. Mr. Chair, I know there was a member of public who wanted to make a comment.

Just a sec. Vice Chair Muck.

I think this is a fantastic idea. Just a couple of questions. So when you say that the actual light beacons, will there actually be beacons in the median or are they just going to be on the right and left hand sides of the road?

The beacons will be in the medians, both at the crosswalk and then also on the side of the road. At the crosswalk, each of the medians will essentially walk, you'll see.

Try to, you know, is that Sycamore and wants to make a left and head, what is that, north? They would have ample opportunity to see these beacons flashing.

Correct. Yes.

Okay. Another question.

No, carry on.

I was going to say... In terms of cost, how much would you say that this project would end up costing just in terms of compared to the, um, the other method, uh, that you said was $250,000. I would assume that this project is significantly less.

Yeah, depending. So what were beacons being sold?

Number of punches, the bulk of that cost would, you know, people that utilize school buses.

Murray was Jason. He crossed the recreational walk. It was very few. There was type age group. Hopefully with these improvements, we can...

The only... You know, slowly try... And then when you need to know that there is an...

The guidance is kind of an all or nothing. The reason there is no payment markings there now is because we don't want to create a potential, as Member Connolly was saying, that kind of perception that people are going to stop for me. So I would be reluctant to kind of piecemeal this. I really want to... hit it with everything rather than just putting some features in and giving the wrong impression. So, you know, these devices are pretty used. A long lead time on these is done sooner than later.

You get council support if that's where you're headed?

We don't need any actual, this is a traffic control device that we're able to put in. by ourselves without any additional authority. We have budget authority for the funding for safety improvements.

Okay, perfect. Thank you, Chair.

I just thought about it because I'm always crossing Diamond at Urban with my bicycle. And I was wondering, I mean, if I have a safer crossing here, I would utilize it with my bike. But with my cargo bike, I will not be able to reach a push button that's on the far side of the sidewalk. I was wondering if there would be a way to make it possible for a cyclist to activate the crossing from the bike path.

I don't know, but we can definitely... I'll talk to our traffic manager and see... if there's a way of doing that. It's a tough one. We may be able to set up some kind of detection, but it may be difficult. So I'm not going to make any promises, but that's an interesting thing that we can look at.

Thank you.

All right. Is there any public comment for this item? If there is, please come to the podium and state your name. And yeah, I'm not going to limit you.

Hello. I live on North Mesa, and I have a child going to Barranca, an elementary schooler. So I very much appreciate that this seems to be a done deal and that you expedited. looking into it, thank you. Because I wanted to add that the numbers might be a little screwed because he actually travels with a group of other kids. They either take the express bus or the normal five and they go to the high school. They then cross over the bridge and walk up. So I think a lot of the kids might not actually go over there just because it's too much traffic and if they're on the younger side, they cannot really handle it. So thanks a lot for looking into that. I appreciate it. And also, High Flyers is the only gymnastics place in Los Alamos. And they have been adding more classes. And they're extending the hours. So hopefully, you get more use out of it. So thank you.

Thank you.

I'm Georgia Strickfaden. And I live in that neighborhood, and I drive And I walk and I ride a bike. And I am really glad you're looking at this again, because when I was on T-Board several years ago, we couldn't get it going. So thank you very much for looking at it. Thank you, Mr. Wilson, for doing the work on it, because I think it'll get used a lot. I do have one comment about the rapidly flashing beacon at the golf course. When you're driving down Diamond Hill, towards it, it is hard to see. If it was a little higher, or if you could add one that's higher up, it would be easier to see coming down the hill because there's a lot of things you're looking at. But coming west on You can see that one at the golf course really well, but the downhill. So the height of it, I think, is what I was missing when it was new. But since I drive through there a couple of times every day, I've gotten used to it, and I've trained myself to pay attention. Thanks.

Thank you. Is there any other public comment? All right, thank you, Mr. Wilson. Next item is Council Liaison Report. Councilor Haveman.

Thank you, Chair and Transportation Board. And first I want to say thanks for hosting the public hearing tonight for the input on the improvements for Fairway Drive. I think that was really informative. I wanted to let you know about some highlights from the last couple of county council meetings. Two Tuesdays ago, August 18, something of interest to all of you is we received a presentation from our public works director and staff about street light maintenance. And so I just wanted to make sure that you all were aware of that. And if you're interested in the details, just look up the August 18th meeting. But they have a pretty big scope of work for an area that has been challenging to staff for various reasons. There's 12 signalized intersections, 24 solar school flashers, 11 rapid flashing beacons. And Keith, you can tell me if I have any of this wrong. 1,673 streetlights, about 300 of which are in White Rock. They have about, of all those streetlights, there are work orders active right now on about 3% of those. And 995, almost 1,000 of those streetlights are going to be replaced with LED lights to be dark sky compliant. I just wanted to make sure you all knew about that. At our meeting last Tuesday, we read a proclamation declaring September as National Suicide Prevention Month. I want to make sure everyone's aware of that. We then received a preliminary overview for the initial concepts for a community-wide health action center that will co-locate our health, wellness, social services, and crisis support services. Three locations, pardon me, are currently under consideration for this Health Action Center. One is at Sombrio Court, and that's on a county-owned vacant lot. One would be on Orange Street, an existing building on public school land. And then the building that we already have some social services in place on Diamond Drive across from the high school. And that's also county-owned. owned but currently unoccupied. That was super interesting and a really super exciting project that is a high priority for county council and staff. We then had a public hearing for the project in White Rock known as The Rock. You may have already read about it and heard all the details about it. Super exciting project that includes a bar, laundromat, yogurt shop, food trucks, EV charging, et cetera, a $2.1 million project. And the county will be participating through a LIDA loan of $868,000. That'll be a 0% interest rate loan over 10 years. It meets a lot of our county's goals for our community and for economic development. We then had a public hearing for the natural gas service rates. They will go into effect like two days ago. And I think everybody, if you have any questions, then let me know. But that's been kind of hashed out over several meetings. We also then approved a seven-year contract with Sangre Productions. in the tune of $1.37 million to provide our Friday night summer concerts. It will be 15 concerts per year. Costs are rising in one way because of the shared desired outcome for Sancre Productions to have to spend less time and effort soliciting sponsorships from our local businesses and then also to help take the pressure off of our local businesses to be sponsors and just decide this is a community benefit to provide these concerts so that we'll pay for it through our contract with Song Crate Productions. And finally we approved a renewed electric coordination agreement with the Department of Energy that went into effect September 1st. The prior electric Coordination agreement was a 30-year contract that had had a 10-year extension that was expired last year. After a lot of negotiations and back and forth, this new 10-year agreement is now in place where basically we are a vendor of electric supply to the laboratory. And there's lots of details about that that I left on my BPU notes on my iPad, so I don't have them with me. But if you have questions, I can look it up for you. Anything else? Any other questions or comments from any of you?

My only comment is, are you going to let me steal your thunder from yesterday?

Oh, that's an exciting one. Yeah, that, I could, I also wanted to make sure, I also, thank you, I also wanted to mention that at next Tuesday night's council meeting, which is September 8th, we are going, and this might be of interest to you board members, We're going to receive a presentation that summarizes the town hall that took place here last week regarding the automatic license plate reader cameras. There were about 100 people from the community who participated in that town hall with the police department staff. And we're going to have a summary of all the comments and answers to a lot of the questions that were asked at next Tuesday's council meeting. So look to that. But yesterday, Do you want to steal? Do you rather steal my thunder?

I could start, and you can correct me.

Okay, okay.

So yesterday, the Rio Riva County, the City of Española, and Los Alamos County unanimously, all the council's commission agreed on a memorandum of agreement for a new landfill. And it's at the end of 31 Mile Road, which is, if you go towards Chama, It just passed Fairview, right? You just make a left. And this is historic. I mean, they tried to do this 30 years ago, but no one had any money to do it, right? But this agreement, which is probably going to involve our county paying for the majority of it because we have money and no one else does. But we also, because of the lab, we're going to have half the capacity. So over a period of 25 to 33 years.

The lifespan of this landfill could be 33 to 55 years.

33 to 55, but it should create savings of $50 million, which means $25 million for us. Plus, we don't have to haul it all the way to Rio Rancho or Los Lunas. So this is, yeah, this is... Wow.

Which is not only, you know, first of all, it provides a solution because it's just inevitable that we're not have places to haul our trash to in the not too distant future. And that's the same for Rio Riba and Española as well. Secondly, it'll save us money because we spent about $6 million a year hauling all of the trash and recycling from Los Alamos down to Albuquerque, Berlioz, Los Lunas. And third, it will reduce our carbon footprint and greenhouse gas emissions because we won't be hauling that far. We'll be just taking it to 31 Mile Road. It's a 61-ish acre site where the pumice mines, a couple of them are still active, but a lot of them have already been retired. So it's just an MOU that was signed. It would be about a, I think it's a $40 million project over about five years. But the hope is to have it up and running by about 2031. So thank you for reminding me. That was just yesterday.

And the unspoken part is it's a $40 million five-year project. But with the different entities involved, underserved counties, the tribal entities, the grant writing potential should end very well. So yeah.

And Mr. Wilson was there yesterday as well and his team. We had good representation from all three jurisdictions, and it was pretty great. So, yeah, thank you.

Yeah, whenever you can get three entities in northern New Mexico to cooperate, it's time to celebrate.

Absolutely. Thank you.

Thank you. No chair's report tonight, or is there any member reports? Please. Oh, wait a minute. Is it going to be on the staff report, though? Yeah, do you wanna wait till after he does that or? All right. All right, staff report.

Thank you, Chair and members. I was just going to run through some quick highlights from the staff report. So if I miss anything, I'll have to scramble through the staff report again and figure it out. So on the airport front, just a reminder that the airport open house and the home business expo is scheduled for September 12th. September 19th, sorry. No. 12th, sorry. I'm losing track of September already and we just started. September 12th from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. at the airport. So I believe that was mentioned last month too. But just a reminder, they've got our information about the event on the webpage, county's webpage. So just search for airport open house and you'll get to that. The other big news at the airport is the T-hanger structure is... taking shape. The steel materials were delivered two or three weeks ago. The crew's been out there and if you drive by now you could actually recognize it as a the bones of a hanger structure. So we've been waiting a while for that. The biggest kind of delay was that it took a while for the materials to get manufactured, but they're kind of finishing up all the structural steel work. Then we'll do the paneling and the final piece will be wiring all the electrical stuff in. So they're working towards being complete by the end of October. on those hangar structures, so that's really exciting. It's been a little bit of a struggle to this point, but they seem to be flying now, so that's really good to see. On our capital project front, the Mesa Public Library EV chargers are nearing completion, so all the work has been done. Now they just need to be commissioned. So talking to the project manager, they're hoping by the early October they should be fully functional and ready for use. On our traffic and street side, sorry I missed the last meeting, but part of that presentation was discussing what we were planning to do on Central Avenue with crosswalk markings, the Greenbine Lane, Oppenheimer, Our traffic team, our markings and signage team are awesome. They came in at 2 o'clock in the morning to minimize traffic disruption and knocked those out over, I think it was like three or four separate times. Got in there, got the striping upgraded, got the green bike lanes at Oppenheimer installed. The only crosswalk that hasn't been done thus far between... Rose Street where we installed a new crosswalk all the way to and through the roundabout is just out here at 9th Street because you've noticed there's been a plate over a collapsed manhole for a while. We're working on getting that fixed and once that's done we'll get that painted too. Also, kudos to our traffic team at the Grand Canyon and Sherwood intersection. Following the completion of the slurry seal, we have installed, I guess, a quick curb to kind of create curb extensions at that intersection. We still need to move the school flasher from the west side of Sherwood to the east side. That's going to happen next week. I don't know if they got to striping the center line on Grand Canyon this week or not, but basically the – yeah, so we're finishing up that. I've got a couple ideas how to improve those curb extensions that we may be implementing in the next weeks, but it is something new. I've received one phone call from someone who – very happy about it but so from you guys if you have feedback or or anyone listening if they're listening or if people mentioned to you please send them our way and give us our feedback because you know is something that's somewhat new to the county especially in White Rock And then on the streetlight front, we now have fully staffed traffic signal, traffic streetlight and signal electricians. Two guys, one started about six, seven weeks ago. The second started about three weeks ago. They've hit the ground running. They're getting up to speed on how traffic signals work. They had to repair the signal at Parahito and NM4 last week when it got struck by lightning. And they're beginning to crank their way through the backlog of streetlights. They've already completed 21. street light fixes for the backlog. We had like 60-odd work orders for street lights to be repaired. So we're beginning to get on top of that. We're working on getting a subcontractor to assist us with almost 1,000 fixtures that we have to replace to bring everything into dark size. That's a very positive move on that front. On the transit side, we're progressing with our transit study, which is looking at service options and staffing options to see how we can increase the service times, including weekends, and we're planning on coming to the board whatever date we've determined for the October meeting. To give a presentation at that meeting, we'll also have a presentation on the My Commute app, which is kind of the next version of the transit app. This is a more regional one, but it's the same app that you use for scheduling your MyRides and stuff like that. So we'll have a presentation on that. On the engineering front, Trinity Drive is progressing well. They're working on the sidewalks and starting on the waterline work. So that's moving along. And then, I don't know if you want me to just touch on the other things. So the other item for the October meeting is the snow and ice plan, because... Who knew? We're getting close to what we hope is winter. So for the October meeting, it looks like we'll have the snow and ice and the transit presentations. I am working with the University of Nevada, and those are the guys that were doing some of the LIDAR testing. So we're pushing that presentation probably to the November meeting, just because we've got some more data analysis we want to do. before we come. And that's it for me. Hopefully I covered the highlights.

Thank you, Mr. Wilson. Member Connolly?

Thank you, Chair. I wanted to just to touch on the airport. I just attended the Governor's Conference of Economic Development, and there was a whole session from the group They're known as Golden Shovel, and they do a lot of research and study on economic development. And I was really impressed and will share with T-Board and Eric Martinez. I actually already sent it to Gary Goddard. But the impact that rural airports can have, even when they are private and not doing public or charter or, excuse me, commercial flights, and something really important to be thinking about in terms of our future, things that we might not be thinking about. I know I wasn't. The feedback on White Rock. So I saw the bump outs and knew that they were coming because of attending T-Board last couple months. And I really can say it's really neat to see those put at that intersection with Grand Canyon. And I don't know, I drive it all the time and I never remember. Longview, I think it is, Mr. Wilson. The one thing I did notice, and I'm wondering if the Sure, thank you. Because long be sealer, yeah. Was I watched a family that were on bikes try to figure out how to navigate because the way that the bump out comes out, they were riding really close to the sidewalk. And I think they had a little kid on a bike that was on the sidewalk. And so they were trying to navigate coming around outside the bump out because you can't actually ride your bike through it. So I don't know if that was feedback that you'd already received, Mr. Wilson. But that was the only thing I saw that seemed challenging for people to intersect with. And then I had a question on the staff report. Oh, for, I don't know if this is really for our board or whatnot, but the extra yard trimming pickup that we did last year, is that supposed to be continued this year as well? Because we did that for fire mitigation.

They were doing that back in the spring. I don't know for sure if there's a fall one.

I thought we collected longer, like maybe till December, maybe just because the weather was... Are you talking in the actual brush cans versus them coming without brush? Yes, because I've noticed a lot. I mean, I don't know. We've had a lot of dead brush and people will start clearing, but because of the heat, I'm just now starting to see people really... Having a lot of excess. Anyway, just something I noticed and then wanted to ask about. Oh, actually comment. So you all going through and painting all of those curbs and because I interact with a lot of businesses downtown and I'm walking through that area and knew that that was coming. I can visibly tell every day that I drive in the difference of awareness of like the autopilot I might've been on that I was kind of slowed down a little bit. And I mentioned this to a main street director that's in Farmington and because they've been dealing with some pretty substantial pedestrian concerns in their area. And it astonished me. It just didn't even realize she's like, yeah, I think it's been years since they've touched or repainted our all the yellow around our crosswalks. And I was like, yeah, well, I would recommend that you guys do that. So I just want to say it was really nice to be able to give that as an example and see the difference. So I wanted to share that.

Thank you.

Yeah, I just want to reiterate. I love the bulb outs at Grand Canyon Sherwood. I know that's a response to Mr. Skolnick's petition, and I think they're very effective, but I've heard the thing about the cyclists. They don't they don't like being forced what they call forced into traffic. Yeah, so I'm not sure quite where the fix is. I know that they put in some of the delineators like in so it makes it difficult like to get into the gutter even so maybe I don't know.

Yeah, the one comment I got was about that, you know, people do park their cars along Grand Canyon, so... they will encounter that along that slant. Not to say that it's not a concern, but whatever we do is like Herman was saying, the medians are a problem for a bicyclist. Well, they have other benefits for other reasons. We're always trying to balance things, but we can look at that. I'm not sure... We may be creating another problem if we create a channel for bicyclists to go through the curb extension, because then the drivers aren't expecting them to proceed. So we'll take on board that feedback. We are monitoring now that we're in it to say we welcome the feedback and observations. So if you see more, it's like, as I say, Whenever you create a solution, then for one thing, there's always an unintended thing. Sometimes they're bad enough that we need to rethink. Other times, there's a workaround or whatever else.

Overall, I think it's a substantial improvement because people have slowed down. They don't know it's new. They don't know what to do. It's narrow, so they slow down. I only heard the comment secondhand from one person. And when they brought up the comment on Fairview, right, about people not stopping at the stop sign, I'm just thinking that might be an option there too, to get people to slow down and stop. All right, any more?

No, for me.

All right, our next item is Members Chappell and myself will not be able to attend October 1st meeting. It's the League of Women Voters candidate forum. And so we're wondering if we could move the meeting into the next week. And unfortunately, if we do that, it would almost have to be on Monday night because council chambers, it goes council, BPU, parks and rec board between Tuesday and Thursday. That would be the 6th through the 8th. So we'd be trying to put it on Monday, October 5th.

Works for me.

I would be a remote, but I can do that.

October 5th.

Remember Mike, is that OK?

Have to be remote, but I think that would work fine.

All right, thanks. And Council Herman, could you call in remote later? All right, sorry. All right, so we'll check with everybody else, see if that works.

Yeah, we'll circle around on Tuesday when everyone gets back and make sure there's not something else going on that day, but I think it should work.

I do have two questions before we adjourn.

Go ahead.

He's like, of course you do. I wanted to know at what point we kind of check in with our work plan and begin that process because I know things just start to get really busy and it looks like we usually try to have this done at the beginning of the year.

That's a good point. Maybe we should add that to October's agenda also. You're right. We don't meet in a

December.

Are we, I think we do meet in December. We don't meet in January.

Okay.

Um, but yeah, same problem essentially.

Okay.

And, uh, if you guys want, you could send it to me and I'll take a cut at it or something and so we can have it for everybody to look at.

Yep. And then my only other one was, and I, I don't know if all of T Board has taken a look at, but I would recommend looking at the comp plan. And I believe the period for comment is ending tomorrow? September 9th. September 9th, OK. So there are a couple of key things that I think would interest this board. So you should give feedback at the minimum, but maybe if there's any particulars that bring up, I think it would be really great to hear from folks. One thing I would point out, there are three parcels that are identified by the consultant, I believe. I don't know if they had conversations with you all about before they identified these because they're really interesting areas for connecting with traffic, but for potential housing development on what is currently county land. So just wanted to bring that to your attention, because that would obviously impact traffic planning. And then the other thing that I noted was some areas where the consultant recommended and called out for kind of visual vernacular between the outdoor rec plan concepts and priorities with the key areas for redevelopment. So obviously, again, we intersect with all of that. And we've already talked about Longview. And that's been brought up. But I think, again, just so that it's not something that goes so far down the line that we weren't having any conversation about it, especially thinking about some of the presentations we heard tonight. And I'm assuming that they are looking at the bike plan and the other things that we carry forward in our work plan. But I don't always know. And I don't know if the consultants looked at all of those. So anyway, just wanted to bring that to mind.

Yeah, and thank you for that. That's a good point. And it's, I mean, that plan is something that's going to govern the whole development of the county for the next few years. So very important. Please get feedback in. All right. And with that, we're adjourned.

Thank you.

Thank you. Yeah.

Yeah.

So I had a lot of feelings about that.

But I started out. No, yeah. I remember, and I was like, I don't do something. I'm sorry. In all the conversations, I think I've asked this to you. I think it's probably the best. Because I think this was discussed two or three years ago. It's the last time I've heard it at all. Well, that took more than a second for it. Yeah. Thank you. Probably not, but, you know, whatever it is that I do.