Public Safety Committee - Regular Meeting

It is 05:30. We will call the February Public Safety Committee to order. Roll call. Everyone is present. Public comment is there anyone here for public comment? Second call for public comment. Third call for public comment.

Oh that's me.

Nope. See, this is if you were listen before, you'd know.

Probably pays attention like her kids.

Public comments closed. Consent agenda. Is there anybody that wants anything removed from the consent agenda?

No. Mister chairman hearing none I move to approve the agenda.

Second. Motion and a second. Any discussion? Any discussion? No. No? Okay. Consent agenda. Closed. All those in favor? All those in favor? Aye. Okay. Hold on. I'm lost here.

Discussion and action items. First item on the agenda is 26Dash0106, request for rectangular rapid flashing beacon pedestrian sign at South 14th And Division Street.

Come on. Let's go.

Now you're coming.

Now I'm bring it here over here. I don't you're crazy. I don't need to be on mute.

Why are

you? Fine. I didn't hear you. They can hear me just fine.

I'll record it. Hold on. Okay.

Go ahead. I'm gonna let Lisa go first. Okay.

Alright. Lisa Delzman, principal of Jefferson Elementary School, which is primarily a walking school. So we have 14th in Manila and 14th In Division where primarily our kids walk on those two crosswalks, which are uncontrolled. We have a city crossing guard at 14th And Division, which is very much appreciated, but the traffic does not stop on 14th Street by any means. We have a Jefferson employee that goes out to 14th And Middle just to try to help with the kids crossing.

There's been a number of times where our employees have to yell at cars to try to stop because they're not stopping. And quite honestly, like, I don't understand why we don't have anything controlling the car, the driving around a school facility, especially a walk in school, to know that, like, to come and say it's because of an accident, that accident is going to be a child in the hospital, and I'm just not here for that. So my ask is 14th and division would be the primary four way stop where we have traffic for Jefferson. We also have the Washington kids that use that. And so there's a at any point in time, you can go out there and see the number of children that walk.

I have a tier to ask. I can I'm gonna start high. Like, I would like the flashing cross walk for the kids so that it is, like Mike can speak to the this is Mike Shores. He's our buildings and grounds director. Coming up the hill, he can speak more to the driving.

Heading south on there, coming up the hill. I've always been nervous since I've been working for the district when it's pickup time at after school and that cars are parked on both sides of the road. And I'm like, you'll never notice a kid taking off between the cars or something like that. You know? So I always said, why isn't there something up here to just to slow the traffic? I mean, that that one at Wilson gets my attention every time. Like, just be looking around and be careful on all of that stuff. So

It's just to slow the traffic to say, hey. We're putting something out here to cause your attention to slow your car down. I understand that it's a school. Right? And we we all know that, but we all know that there are drivers out there that just they're in a rush or whatever, and I am not here to have a child get injured. So would love a flashing something that says, hey. Slow down. If I can't get that, I'm gonna go all the way down to a stop sign. I would love the traffic to stop on Grand And Division. So we could get a four way stop very much like you have on 14th And Grand where there's a church and a school.

Let's slow the traffic down where we have Jefferson, Washington, and Lincoln kids in a four way stop there. That's my ask. What's more do you need?

Discussion. Discussion.

Uh-huh. Recommendation.

Oh, I'd like to hear from our engineer and our police chief.

Right. So I'll let him talk more about the stop sign, but I'll talk more about the RFPs and the crossing guard, that's been discussed. So that 14th And Division is a very busy intersection. We feel like even if you put an RFP there, we still need a crossing guard there. Unfortunately, I don't think we will be able to move that person and put them at at 14th Of Manila, and leave that intersection without a crossing guard no matter what you do. It's it's pretty much that busy of an intersection. Spoke with the finance director. Obviously, there's nothing in the budget for an RFP there. So if the school would be willing to pay for that, we would we could we could install it. We could pay for the install.

Mark could put it there. But our recommendation for the police department, talked to my command staff. This is just my opinion because I thought we could go without a crossing guard. They did not think so. Would be that we would still have a crossing guard there. Next year, obviously, there's a lot of changes with the school system, the Manitoba Public School District anyway, with different crossing guards being freed up from Jackson School, different areas like that, that we could look at, where to use those crossing guards. We don't plan on letting any crossing guards go. They're very hard to find. And once you start letting them go, you're probably not gonna be able to replace them. So we would rather redirect our crossing guards to newly found areas with the new schools.

We'll probably possibly need one up over at, Stengel. But we'll kinda talk we'll crossing guards more so next year when we kinda figure out where, where they're needed. But that's that's my take on the RFPs there. I think it's good intersection to have it at, if we can get it done. You wanna talk about the stop sign?

Yeah. I suppose you we have our committee that's talking about stop signs in general or controlled or uncontrolled intersections in the city. So I don't know if there's one we should be talking about at that group as well. But my initial thought oh, certainly, we don't want anybody get hit. Yeah. But to me, it seems like there's a pedestrian crossing issue so that the RFP would be more the right solution. You put up a stop sign. DOT traffic counts as there's about 2,000 cars a day on 14th and about 900 on Division. This may have been in summer. Those could be different, but they'd probably be similar.

You know what I mean? So if it's 3,000 on 14th, maybe it's 1,500 or 1,800 on you know what I mean? That they go up similar amounts, but you're gonna be stopping that traffic twenty four seven, three sixty five. And pretend not to put up stop signs to, like, control speeding to get the people slow down because it just the back people have blow through them, then there's possible they're gonna roll through them, blow through them, or and then noise, they're gonna accelerate. When the kids aren't there at nighttime, they're gonna stop, and they're gonna give her and then, you know, excess noise and acceleration and stuff.

So it's like, my initial thought was not supporting the stop sign, and they kinda like the idea of the RFP a lot better. And then and you would never do both. I don't think they allow you to have a Mhmm. RFP at a controlled intersection. And just so the committee is aware, it's not a four way. It's a it would be an all way stop, but division east of there is one way. So you'd be stopping three directions just so it's clear, but it'd be an all way stop. But

Although some people So

I don't know. Well, it's possible. We're promoting it.

We're promoting it.

So when you're can I ask questions?

Sure. Yeah?

Go ahead.

The RFP you're talking about the flashing? Yeah. So you're saying you would put it three way stop. You put it on fourteenth both ways in

division? Or

just on fourteenth?

If we did the fourteenth. If we did the RFP, it would only be probably just the south the south leg of the Just across 14th. Yeah. On just the one side.

This way this way, and we wouldn't do anything this way.

No. Because it's at a stop sign

Mhmm.

Already. You don't

You do it for when there is no Yeah.

Right. Chairman. Mhmm. You could

And you keep the crossing guard there.

I've got We would initially at least do that. I think Oh. We did just have concerns.

I mean, I'm for keeping the crossing guard a 100% because

decided for

Like, I guess, like, I am in the yeah. You know what? If you put a four way stop, like, the stop signs or whatever, yes, cars will blow by. They're gonna do that if they're gonna do that anywhere else. But, like, for me, why is the city of Manitowoc not saying priority number one? We're in a school area. Why is priority number one not safety of kids and doing everything possible to make sure that we're doing our job to make sure we're trying, right, to keep kids safe versus something else. So if you're saying crossing guard and the lighting to cross 14th Street both ways

Yeah.

The problem, Lisa, if I can just

Yeah, please.

So we are trying to do everything that's safely as safe as possible. So what the point is is when the we put stop signs up where they really shouldn't be, people have that false sense of security saying they're going to stop and they may not. So it could actually make it more dangerous. That's the concern. We're not we're not ready about putting stop signs up.

Like, there's a cost really associated where or not much, but we're trying to do what makes the most sense, generally speaking. Could it possibly help in some cases? Possibly. But what we found out and what the research shows is when you put up stop signs, there's thousands of vehicles coming through here, people are going think they're going to stop when they're going through this crosswalk, and they're not. Some of them aren't, and it's gonna make it potentially more dangerous.

Another instance is it could make it safer. You're correct. Maybe it could slow traffic down because they gotta stop for it and law abiding citizens and Mhmm. That are paying attention and not on their cell phones and different things like that will stop. But we don't want that false of security that, in this situation where normally you wouldn't put a stop sign there because this traffic, there's so much more traffic going north and south Yeah. That it just causes more problems than Mhmm. Than than it helps.

Mhmm.

I would have to back him up on that because division and 21st, we watch them blow through it all day long Mhmm. Every day. They don't even pay attention to the stop sign.

Mhmm.

Now flashers, I think, would be great right there going north and south. Mhmm. Because you see that coming I mean, you know there's a reason you're slowing down up there. You know?

Because of the flashers. Yeah. Mhmm.

Discussion? Alder Rettleberg?

Yeah. I got a question of the engineer. I know his and the police chief is on our sign committee that we're a subgroup of this. And next assignment that's coming up that we're going to look at at the end of, what, this month or maybe beginning of next month. Or

in March, yeah.

Yeah. It was to particularly look at that whole section over there, which is where a lot of complaints came from. We had a one particular household that luckily the car ended up on a kiddie corner from them in their property, but got our attention to study all of the city again. And we're starting out with your area up there. And one of the things we noticed, we're trying to come up with a policy that you read the policy, you apply the things, and you get it or you don't, or close to that anyway.

And one of the things we noted is like 14th Street, not very many control signs. Like you said, I think the first stop sign after

14th And Grand has Whatever.

Yeah. It's Grand where the church heart of Washington and then And so since you were working on your assignment, I am assuming and you hopefully saw this coming up, is there anything in your plan that you're going to present to us that calls for a stop sign, a yield sign, know what I mean, is we're going to be looking and reviewing that at the March meeting and start honing in on I

think to answer your question, and I I'm sure you recall us, is we were looking at having, like, directing traffic elsewhere, if you will. So that would be by by using some stop signs, not on fourteenth, but on I believe it was twelfth or something like that. Right. Something similar. Yep. So that would possibly help with some traffic flow lessening for fourteenth division. But, like, off the top of my head, I'm not exactly sure how that would work, but that's I know that's something that we talked about.

Yeah. Because we want when you go to other places, you know, Green Bay or Sheboygan, almost all their streets have something, a yield sign, a stop sign, or lights. And we noticed that a fair portion of our especially in your area, whatever happened, happened. And we're going to try to address that. And one of, like the chief says, is certain streets are pretty much your thoroughfare.

You know what I mean? And others then have to yield or stop for that thoroughfare. And we've asked the engineer to look because we've got those at certain sections of the town, and we've asked him to put together along with the chief. How would we do your area out there? Which streets would become thoroughfares and which ones would be, oh, crap, we've to stop at every other block or every block or whatever.

And when I saw this on the agenda, I didn't know if he had gotten to that area yet for a recommendation to our sub group. But I don't mind acting on this independently because if something's wrong, you fix it. You don't wait until a group because we said it might be the end of the summer, fall, or winter before our group actually puts everything together. But we should act on those that are important for safety. I think the other thing was I think that we put a flasher up over here on the corner of the Courtauld's property where that school is.

School First German, yeah.

And the school paid for that, though, I believe. Right? I think that's one of the questions that would Director, come up

member of director? That's why he's here.

And we paid for the install. Paid for the actual

We I don't mind sharing in the cluster, you know, but if we're out of budget cycle, I mean, we adopted a budget and we barely started spending money that we've approved. You know, this is an item isn't there. And

If money were not a factor, once you would make a decision on this, how long does it take to get a sign like that up?

Hopefully, it doesn't take terribly long. I'm just thinking with the conditions, you know, with Frost, we might have to wait. Oh. I don't know exactly which signs post, you know, if we're gonna use the, like, rectangular aluminum post for that.

Okay. But it would be happening relatively soon? Yeah.

Okay. The supply company calls

and they got a these are solar operators too. So what they have to do a little study and figure out where to put the solar panels. Yeah. Okay. Just Yeah.

And, Greg, I saw a memo about the cost on a sign like that. Do you have an idea, like, around 2,000

or $2,500? RFPs are more the one that we did on Huron and Maritime in 2024 was about $6,500 So I don't know over the last two years how much they've gone up, but guessing, say, dollars 7,000. But the flashing stop signs, too, are like $2 a piece or more. So if you put up two of those, that's 5,000 right there. So it's not a whole lot more. And I think they're probably more effective than or at least for the crossing because they have to be the same one like you have at First German or tenth division. Yeah.

I know when I looked them up 6,500 to 7,000 depending on company and this is government, so figure about 15 or 20.

Yeah.

What about flashing pedestrian signs?

It won't be as effective. Yeah.

I I I know that'll be a lot cheaper, but so he's talking maybe more so, like, you guys familiar with Jackson School, Menachem Avenue. Have the flashing pedestrian. And that's just not very it's good for that, but I think 14th Street is too busy for that. And I feel like the RFPs are the best

of the

best. So those will be the ones that you have at Wilson School. Those will be the ones that you have on Quake. And they're really, really seen well. Mean

They have much more attention than the LED with the ringer on.

It's better than nothing. It's a cheaper alternative. And it's certainly a possibility we could we could do that as well. But I'm sure doesn't mean crossing guard.

The reason I brought it up is because I drove over there after we talked, and I didn't even realize there was pedestrian crossing signs there. I drive there every day. Oh, yeah. So they're flashing. I just figured it would draw attention to better. Yeah.

Yes. And the cheaper alternative.

And is one flashing sign do you see that from

to to then see that.

And and here, and here?

No. Just on that south. There'd be one

both ways here and flashing

both ways there. So when you're coming up the road, you see flashers here. When you're coming up here, you see flashers.

There. Okay. Good. Does that make sense?

Yep. And it would be 7,000 for each side total. Total?

You basically get one side. It's just double faced. And it's around, 7 And if you're prepared to say, yeah, the school will pick up the fee, or are you not prepared to

We're prepared to say that,

yes.

Okay. Well then, Mr. Chairman, I would move that if the school district will pay for that, I would recommend that we do that. Second. Is that a motion?

You say second?

Yeah, somebody down there said second. Okay.

I have a motion and a second. All in favor? You gotta open up for discussion. Oh yeah. Discussion?

Yeah, I

always like to say something, so. But first off, thank you for bringing that to the committee for something to improve the safety around the schools. I've been on this committee for a long time at this point. And I think I've been denied more of these RFPs than I have been approved them. So like I said, I saw that. And I was just like, great. Another one, which is great. Because I think schools, especially with our children, are unique and special. And I know that the police chief said the crossing guard's gonna be there, but they're not there twenty four seven. I have five kids in the school district, and there's times where, you know, crossing guards are sick or there's something where they're just not there.

Right? And and so having this to go and help protect the kids to get across safely is not only comforting from a parent perspective, but I think also the right thing to do. And thank you for being prepared to go and pay for it. Otherwise, my fear was this is gonna have to wait until next year, you know, and we could budget it and go from there. And like you said, you don't wanna wait until something happened. You're like, nobody wants to be the statistic. Statistic. And and the reason why I got on there. So thanks for being proactive. Thanks for bringing it. And I fully support it.

Any further discussion? If none, all in favor? Aye. All opposed? Motion passes unanimously. Dana, what

was to be worried about?

It's a big ask. Can I speak for me, say thank you? And then can I make a suggestion? If we're doing this audit, you guys are doing this to maybe look at the four elementaries in Wilson and Washington to ensure safety for next year, whatever that looks like, I think it would be super important.

That's one of the things we highlighted is there are certain areas schools, churches, and other things that may not fit what we would say in our policy, they would be handled special. Yeah.

I like it. Like you said, stay goes

on And the the chief is on there. And if I were lying, he would put handcuffs on me and tell you.

I don't know if you do that.

Oh, no.

He's too good of a guy.

I don't.

Yeah.

Thank you for coming in.

Yep.

Perfect. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you for your time. Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Hope you want that. Okay.

Next item on the agenda is 26Dash0107, out of state travel request for detective Rebecca Schuettepels. Say that right?

Schuettepels. Schuettepels? Yeah. That's a hard one for anyone. It's taking me many years to figure that one out.

Training conference in Orlando, Florida.

K. So this is within our budget. However, at the end of last year, we were told any out of state travel requests. The finance director wanted them ahead of time to know which ones they were. This was not on the list, because it came up after the the budget cycle. However, we do have enough to cover this in our training budget. This is only offered at this location. Unfortunately, there's nothing closer. And this is for our forensic, lab to have detective Shutpels actually get up to speed, in all things forensics. It's amazing, what we can all do with this information.

And this training is actually gonna make her be able to do almost anything that we are currently doing with detective Lecker, who has got a ton of experience in training if you've ever got a chance to speak with him, in the world of forensics, analyzing phones, doing different things that we can do to help solve crime. It's definitely a need and not a want as far as training is concerned. The thing that stinks, of course, it's only offered in Florida, because it's very specialized, but it's something that, detective Schuppelts is willing to go to and help out in our forensic lab.

Discussion? Alder Riekelberg? You can have your discussion after I make my motion to approve the out of state travel.

I'll second it.

Motion and a second. Discussion? If none, all in favor?

Aye.

Aye. All opposed? Motion passes unanimously.

Thank you.

I'm sure she's disappointed she's gotta go to Orlando, Florida.

At least it wasn't like in January. Right. April. Spring break.

That's a perfect time to go.

Next item on the agenda, we will be convening in closed session. Notice is hereby given that the above governmental body may adjourn into closed session during the meeting as authorized by section 19.51 f of Wisconsin statutes, which authorizes the governmental body to convene in closed session for the purpose of considering financial, medical, social, or personal histories or disciplinary data of specific persons, preliminary consideration of specific personal problems, or the investigation of charges against specific persons except where paragraph b applies, which if discussed in public would be likely to have substantial adverse effect upon the reputation of any person referred to in such histories or data or involved in such problems or investigations. The specific subject matter that may be considered in closed session is 26Dash0108 Manitowoc fire rescue billing dispute incident number 25Dash4325. Motion to go in the closed session was made by. So moved.

Second. We are in close Nope.

You have to do a roll call.

Roll call? Oh, yeah.

Are we at here? Reckleburg, yes.

Kidd. Yes. Aye. Reckleburg?

Aye.

Cummings. Aye. Debates. Aye. Anderson.

Aye. Aye.

We are in closed set. Okay. We are back from closed session.

260108. Then

260108 Manitowoc fire rescue billing dispute incident number 25Dash4325.

Mister chairman, I move to deny the request.

Second. Motion and a second. Discussion? None. All in favor? Aye. Aye. All opposed? Motion passes unanimously. Yep. Looking for a motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn. Second. We are adjourned. Got you on that.

Now I gotta get my paper paperwork together. You got anything we need to sign? Yeah.