Public Safety Committee - Regular Meeting

It's on when you're ready.

Okay. Tomorrow,

you're gonna realize you forgot to take off the lens

cap. Oh, It's open.

Did you want the film?

Open. It's open. Promise. We just have to talk loud so I can hear you. Alright, it is 05:37. We will call the October public safety meeting to order. Roll call all our present. Public comment. Is there anybody here for public comment? There is nobody on Zoom either. Okay. Public comment going once. Public comment going twice. We will close public comment. Consent agenda. Is there anybody who wishes to remove any items from the consent agenda? Not, I will throw

Motion to approve the agenda as is. Second.

Alright. We'll move on to discussion and action items. First item on the agenda is 25Dash0739154

I suppose. I thought the guy from the school was gonna be here too, but the principal so I don't know. And we had met with him, and that was one of the things they talked about was a possible crosswalk by the JFK. You guys did a bunch of work there, right, you know, recently. So if we were to put a crosswalk there, it'd disturbing work you guys just did.

But I guess I kinda question if anybody would use it actually. Just from whenever I've been there, if you're on that west side of the road, tend to just walk down along part of the road and then cross over or maybe cross over to the east side right away. So I just I'm not sure how many people are gonna go and use that crosswalk personally. I mean, I don't know if anybody else disagrees, but I guess I'm kind of concerned. The cost probably isn't great, but you're gonna lose two parking stalls.

Know, you'll lose a parking stall on either side of the road. Because after looking at it again, I think I don't know if did you have a chance to upload those other photos I sent? Yeah. Going to the north would probably be the best option then, just north of that driveway. There's better visibility as you're coming southbound.

I should lose a parking spot on each side of the road, and I'm not sure. I know I thought we invited the property owner too. Right?

Yeah. The three that you sent me as as also the principal.

So I'm not sure how they feel, but if they're not here, they're not concerned. Cost wise, it's probably not tremendously big, you but would have to put you cut the curb, put in the ramp. So, I mean, there's concrete and probably 5,000, I would think, to to do the right sidewalk and paint it. And paint it, probably sign it typically. I mean, you know, I had the one incident where the coach got hit, which was, you know, kind of a I think a fluke because he ran out in front of the Yeah.

Boston. So that was kind of and Eric and a bunch of us, I guess. Yeah. Don't think it was ever really discussed then who was going to pay for it. It was just that was one that they had, like, three different things.

You know, one of them was painting the circle, which they took care of. And then they wanted the other stop sign, which we did at 9th And 30th in Columbus. And then this was the other thing. Yeah. There's really no discussion on who was paying for it.

You feel But that's fine.

I And the other thing is, I mean, I've been to the field house many times over the years and crosswalks never helped anybody because people have they're parking on one side of the street, they get out of their car and they go right straight between the cars and whatever.

I mean It's the same

at GIP or at Rubin's. You know, I And

the only time might be winter when there's windrows of snow, but then as a driver, you get out and you walk along your car probably and then cross at another driver.

For future for future reference, though, I noticed originally you had a the the house side of the street, you're hitting that person's driveway.

Yeah. Well, that's kinda what I was concerned with. It was really close to the driveway and the tree. I'm going on the angle, put it between the trees, if I remember right.

Because my I I would not have a problem if somebody came and says here's the layout and we don't lose any parking because, you know, parking is there is always a problem especially when you got tournaments going on.

Yeah. And that that would be an okay location. I know they recently redid a bunch of stuff. You know, the approach and asphalt. And in order to put in a ramp that's gonna meet the standards, we would probably be pulling some of that approach and sidewalk out. That's the only thing in that area. I think we'd be those other areas, I think, work grade wise okay. But right near near the driveway there, I think we're gonna have to go back, drop drop the mainline walk to get the ramp at the right grade.

Isn't there a fire hydrant there?

Right.

To on the GFK side?

Yep. Just south of the driveway.

Kinda where you see the one car parked almost on that one picture. That sounds better. Yeah. I would let's place this on file until the school district would like to bring this back up and then they should

Alright.

Next item on the agenda is 25 dash zero seven four zero review of city signage and controls at various intersections.

Perhaps. We and

Simultaneously, at that time, Alder Brett Vanderken acted as a chair of a kind of a subcommittee or working group of one of the committees. And I don't know if there was another alder on that committee or not, but then he and he got the police department, public works involved and had a couple meetings and they came back with a well laid out plan. They had a kind of a framework that says, here's how you work the speed limits. There was a bunch of criteria and they took that criteria that they worked on and agreed to and then applied it to all of our city streets. And I was sad to say that while I agreed with the framework and so did the people that were asking apply that framework to the streets and this is where it comes back at.

They go, you're right. But I still would have liked to have seen it five miles an hour faster. So that that plan went relatively well. And I think they did the same thing when we've got that had that monstrosity of the ordinance on our signed policy. There was a special group that was put together that went through it. They actually had a a couple minor changes a to

decision

I believe it was 12th Street in Columbus. A There was an accident and the neighbors were up in arms why there was not a yield sign or some other controlled intersection there. It was uncontrolled. And I don't know. I think there was probably 80 or 90 comments on it.

I read all of them. One of the comments was, you know, Sheboygan has no uncontrolled intersections, neither does Green Bay. And I found that hard to believe until I spent the whole Saturday afternoon in total about four or five hours on Google Maps looking at Sheboygan and Green Bay going street by street going, oh, we gotta find I could not find one. So I'm going, well, they may have a point there. So I thought I would ask that perhaps we could have a subgroup of our committee have some of our staff, whether it's the police department, public works, and whoever else, engineering or whoever else would be appropriate to review this thing, to have this committee study the situation and then either bring back a recommendation to this committee and about public infrastructure and just see where it goes.

So, that's why it's on the agenda and I hope the outcome is that our group approves a study committee, if you will, to to look into this and bring something we'll

do that. Own.

To Thank you Mr. Chairperson. First off, thank you for bringing this up on the agenda. So I did bring this up a couple of times already in my tenure on the city council every time it just got placed on file essentially so like I said I've left it it just kind of keeps on getting brought up. The research that I've done on and prior to this is uncontrolled inner whatever you choose whether it be controlled intersections or uncontrolled intersections.

If it's done consistently amongst the city, then that's the safest. When when it's not is when you have have inconsistencies and actually the studies that I read said the uncontrolled intersections are actually safer if completely uncontrolled as your main thing for the safe because then drivers are just more aware. But when you have it mixed and matched in between then then that's when it becomes unsafe realistically. So I would would be in favor of supporting a committee to look at it and regardless if you go with controlled or uncontrolled as long as it's consistent that's why I guess I would be kind of advocating for but I'll I would leave it up to the committee to figure out what what it is. I know personally like in my district, we have a mix of controlled and uncontrolled on the far side and you know, I've seen my fair share of near misses of accidents.

I've almost been in a couple of myself And so you're

like, oh, this one's

not controlled or this one is right. And it's just a matter of what direction you're traveling and you go from there. So, I would like I said, I would be I would be in support of that.

Anybody else?

I

mean, I'm thinking, this one won't be as quick as the speed study one or as the speed one because, I mean, probably almost 90% of the city is 25, so there wasn't a whole lot of areas to look at or address here. It's like we have probably at least a thousand intersections. We haven't really updated this map that well, but around a thousand intersections right now, 60 to 65% are controlled already. Yield, stop or signal. So we're pretty high already, but I guess we we know that like we went from yields to stop signs on Hamilton.

So you stop that whole corridor on the speeds you know are going up on Hamilton. And that's only thing we worry about too is that depending on how it's done or I get I get scared on, like, to be consistent. If we start taking out stop signs, I'm not sure. Although, when they say they take them out, you might be flipping the direction. But whether or not that's cause for concern.

I guess as long well, as long as you're not gonna try to make them go from stop sign now to uncontrolled. I'm not sure the public would like that. But yeah. I mean, I think I agree with us looking at it, that wouldn't be so quick to if I look at all these and because I guess I just worry too, like, oh, yeah. Say on the Northwest part, I mean, are we gonna put a stop sign in at every T intersection?

Because that's a lot of you you gotta call the sacks that here is asked about Kellner Street and that there's a bunch of yield signs there and personally, I don't think people drive yield signs correctly. Yield is really no different than uncontrolled. Ready to stop. Right? You're supposed to approach slow down, be ready to stop or yield the right way, which is really no different than uncontrolled.

So to me, in those situations for intersections, I think yields are most useless that then we're better off going to stop signs. They're obviously good for interstate than where there's, like, a merge lane, a narrow merge stuff is is fine. But for these t intersections or whatever across, it's not probably the way to go. But, yeah, I just worry on all of those and and then the cost too with all of a they start doing or trying to run some numbers quick which I have no idea but let's say there's oh we got 900,000 if we still got three or four say you got 300 intersections that you want to put on stop signs that means two way. Probably 600, 500, 600 signs that 300 signs, I mean we're talking pretty big impact financially to if you were to say let's stop every intersection That's a pretty big cost.

Dan has anything else to add? But yeah. Certainly, I'm not sure this one would be real quick because I think we gotta, you know, look at all these corridors and see what would make sense, I guess. It's always been that way. It seems like every time there's an accident, that's what happens when it comes to this committee and then we either do or we don't.

And I agree there's been a lot of hits and misses and, you know, that maybe they were put up in the wrong direction or it's hard, it's really hard because like some of the ones we put up to like the South Side we put up a certain way because of visibility where you just felt like, you know, it looks better one way versus another or do you wanna, you know, are you gonna start stopping every block like here on the streets kind of a you know, you stop twice in a row and there's no stop sign and you stop twice, I think, or, you know and so trying to figure out what kind of pattern you want, guess, could be a little lower of a challenge than certainly the speed limit thing was. Oh, yeah. I The time is gonna take quite a while to

Yeah. I don't know this could be a three month, six month Yeah. Project by any means. But I think, like you had mentioned, the starting point is probably gonna take more time, which is creating the framework, like you said. Because once you establish a framework that makes sense, then you just apply that to the map.

But I know I got a call email from the mayor too regarding Canal And Keller. And he says he went through there and he goes, that should be a stop sign. And he says, I can I damn near when to I said, there is a yield sign there? In fact, there's a yield sign on every one of the streets going south except for the next block, which is a stop sign that which is Fleetwood. And I said those people do yield.

It's more of a rolling stock, so to speak, because it is yield because people, you know, the view is there that you can roll up and see, hey, somebody coming, you know. But and that's not even a t. That's that is a cross street that the problem is we'll have to cross the street because there's only a couple 100 feet, but that's one thing in Green Bay and Sheboygan. When you have a true key intersection, they don't have anything because they assume you're gonna damn near come to a stop to see if somebody's coming. So, you know, that's one of the thing.

If it's a t intersection, probably no signage is necessary. But so but that's that's where the front end coming up with that framework to apply it, you know, and and you're you're right. And I know the police department brought up the well, you know, if you always know it, it's always gonna be yield signs. That cross street going the other way is gonna be a speed trap. Well, that's something now when we put the framework together to consider.

So I would even say stop signs because, like, we were talking before in Washington 21st in division. I bet you we see three to five a day. They'll slow down, but they never stop to go right to

and that's right in front of us. Yeah. And that's the other thing that I think I'd sent that I forget what it's called, but that that realistic speed limit stop signs, etcetera. Talks a lot about stuff and and, you know, if you start putting thing you know, stop signs where they're, you know, public drivers don't feel like it's warranted, then they're either gonna write blow through them, roll through them, which is maybe worse than, you know, having it uncontrolled. So I, you know, I guess we worry about that as an issue.

And then the studies show that if they're stopping, then there's more noise from acceleration for neighborhoods and going quicker in between them to try to make up you know, perceived lost time type of thing. And so I guess that's the only other, you know, some of those things to watch out for, you know, you know, watch that we're not just saying, yeah, let's stop everything and and then all of a sudden we got noise and higher speeds here and there. So I don't know. It's tricky. I I don't know the answer. Haven't thought a whole lot about it. I wouldn't look at this, but

The important thing is as Albert Cummings mentioned is to be consistent. And if we're consistent, well, we always catch up. But I mean, at least the the public will say, hey. You applied some fairly understandable rules. You applied it to the city. Maybe one budget year, we get some of the signs in. The next budget year, you get the rest of the but at least we're making progress as opposed to people out there doing I mean, they were collecting signatures on a petition because, you know, apparently, this has been brought up before. Nobody did anything.

What it like, where's your point in Green Bay? Like, have other cities converted from what we have to what we're going to? No. Because I feel like it could be a big mistake because what if we end up causing more accidents on these side streets by messing with it

at this point because it's been in

this way for so long. And most people that live here know if they are used to it, they don't like it, they avoid those streets. I just like, how would you

do that zigzag? And people are in the

people who have to zip through those areas to avoid all the stop signs.

Well, that's something to review in the so called structure that you're going to look at, And I police department will just say, you got a driver's license. You're supposed to know the rules of the road. And I think in the whoever's on this committee, one of the things we're probably going to ask is for Sheboygan and that and Green Bay. Our guys have some nice maps. They said it's maybe not updated all the way to where it needs to be, but I'm sure these other municipalities have maps that we can look at how they structured theirs. And, you know, it's not overnight. I mean, if if

we do do something and it gets all the

way through and approved, then there are changes made out there. You know, that'll be published. That'll be on the radio as far as, hey, you know, and it's know, not to say we're not going to not listen to the public during our review and, you know, coming up with a plan. I mean, that's all part of it.

So So it sounds like we're all on board with having a review. How do we go about directing that?

I would I talked to the city attorney to make sure everything was kosher legally, and I will offer up myself to chair that working group or subcommittee, however you wanna call that. And with that, I would call upon some of our staff to who they feel are the most active poll to sit in on those meetings and because, like I said, it's said to most people, you know, the elected officials can have some good ideas, but unfortunately, the people that do all the leg work and the majority of the lifting are the staff. And so I can appreciate that. And and the other thing was I I so I will offer myself up to chair that subcommittee. With that, I'll have some staff, whoever staff feels is the appropriate, I'll I'll discuss that with the mayor as well.

And there can be one other alder as on it and we don't have to worry about them quorums and or because it's a working group that it's not subject to open meeting laws and stuff.

Any comments?

The e plan schedule that is being revised, when we when we originally adopted it, didn't realize that we had discrepancies in between the fees that get charged between us being delegated with the state and what the state fee schedules are. So the schedule that is proposed pulls us into to be equal to the same proposed the same fees that the state currently charges. Before we were lesser on some, permits and more on other, you know, I can give you an example if you would like, you know, I mean, I worked at the bus or current fee schedule on a site plan that involved 15 fixtures or less for just the site work is $200 On a 7,500 square foot building, the fee for a total of $900 Now on the new fee schedule for the up to five acres of site work being involved is $400 And the, it's not based off the size of the building anymore. It's now based off of the number of fixtures, which is 15. So you would end up having a two fifty dollars fee plus $52.50.

So in reality, go from $900 currently with what we have to $702.50. So it is a saving to our customers. And right now we have a number of projects that have been requested to go back to DSPS for the review because our fees are higher. So this way they will stay with us if we gain income because we're getting the review fees. Well, no.

No. Okay. No. Because we we we weren't delegated before for plan review. So the only review fee that we had was for minor alterations.

Now that the city is delegated for review, the city itself can do plan review fees for alterations up to 10,000 square feet and new construction up to 5,000 square feet and stuff like this. We did not have review fees for those because we couldn't charge for them before. So this pulls into what we would currently do as like a building alteration. We see fee of $300 which we think was for alteration that we use for that. But this calls out specifically the new the alterations and stuff like this.

So that way, we're picking the correct feet to put in the spot.

So basically, I mean, it just brings that aspect of that construction into line with the previous one that we had just worked on. Mean granted it was a little different but now we're doing the reviews this is all state numbers and so if you're going to do the reviews and the state gives you the authorization and sort of like when I was at the county and they say how come the fines, fees and forfeitures are so high, it's real easy. The state statute, the state legislatures hand you the number, we don't have a say in it. Other than we've got to adopt it and approve it. Correct.

And so that's why I would make a move if I had a moment. They made a move to adopt this.

So we don't change the standard that we have right now and start messing with that phone?

Yeah. I guess I don't know what the I guess just looking at the emails that were going around and somebody said it was all stuff on social media and I didn't look at any of that. So don't know what's being said or what the Well, I guess she was.

From here. What's that? I grew up a block away from here and I drive this way to work and back every day. I have never had a close call at this intersection. Me neither. I work with stop signs there now. Yeah. Wrong way.

Yeah. Yeah. North

South Yes. Yes. Right.

Have So, like I said, I take I take this one quite a bit actually now.

My kids are in JFK, pretty much JFK going to Lincoln and play it obviously a lot of JFK.

Sorry.

Where I this people pulling out, I guess, is kinda goes to that consistency thing again where if they're if they're on the South Side of 9th Street, South 9th Street going north, I think they assume that that is on Columbus there than a four way stop versus on Columbus where you can just go straight through. And so I've noticed a lot of people pulling out so they realize this isn't a four way stop when the car comes. And then, you know, I've had it a couple of times where, you know, people pull out and walked up the brakes to go and stop from that. So that's, that's where I've noticed it firsthand. Now I haven't had an accident there yet, but they're they're having the calls.

And I'll if I'm a 100% honest, I even did that once after dropping my kids off at JFK. There was a car coming. I was like, it's 04:00. And I went out, and luckily, they stopped because I didn't. And then I realized real quick that it was not a 04:00. So so that that's at least where I know I know.

All their debates? That's the biggest issue. So we put two way stop signs underneath the stop sign.

I don't know if they allow that anymore. Okay. I mean, PC, it's either like all the way stop or nothing. I believe it's

where I'm also gonna sit down because I've never had to pick up from from Lincoln until this year. And I don't care if you park on if you pick up from a JFK entrance or you pick up on the 8th Street, like, it is it is insane in this And then for anybody that I I can talk for a little while.

That's why I'm kinda wondering if that shouldn't be a four way stop. It's all school related though. I mean, you go on a weekend when there's I mean, there's always something going on there, I mean, lost hours and there's not much going on in Lincoln. I don't think it's an issue, but man, I think when schools let out I

was gonna say, I think that would actually that would actually help traffic

because It might then

they know Then they know and then you

can actually get across. And so because I know we just did another stop sign at at 8th at Columbus. So basically, three legs that the t all three of those stops was that was a four way. But then I don't know. Well, the debate said whether or not we wait to do the study. I don't know. I guess that's what he's calling what they wanna do. But this would be one typically, a four way stop. You wanna use those only where traffic in both directions is nearly equal, which it probably is. I mean, it maybe peaks more on Columbus with stuff, but it's relatively equal at that. So that makes sense to probably be a four way stop there, but do that now or wait. I it's up to you guys. Well, I

think I think with the committee, like, we talked, like, that's not something that's gonna be anytime soon when we're coming up with a full resolution and action at that point. Like, we're probably looking at action for somewhere late twenty twenty six at the earliest if not 2027. Or a sign, you know, just take two sides. We can get that out next week. You know what I mean? And then if the committee decides, hey. We're gonna go all out of control, then we're gonna just take it down like that personally. But I would I would support making that a fully given given the person traversing it and see firsthand how that is.

Is 9th Street that busy? I mean, when I look at it, this is one block off from 8th Street. And when you talk about traffic signs, you wanna move traffic. I can see Columbus having a lot of traffic simply because everybody getting out of Lincoln might be shooting down that way. So now you've got a stop at 8th Street, and now you're gonna have to stop at 9th Street.

That's gonna slow up traffic and keep it from emptying out of Lincoln. So, I mean, I would I would at first blush, I would have closed that, I guess. Because you wanna get the traffic away from the high school. Columbus is the street, so why would you make them stop Columbus at night when they've already stopped at Columbus at night? Exactly.

Yep. Just to just to counteract that, part of it's because so when when school gets let out, then there's a lot of people that pick up on the 8th or on 8th Street and there's also because that is literally insane. A lot of people then that also then pick up their kids over at JFK on 9th Street and their kids come out through the JFK entrance and that's lined up on both ways as well. So anybody that comes out and wants to go north from the JFK is literally waiting a long time to cross Columbus from the traffic going all the Dallas. You're you're log jammed both ways that way.

Yep. And that's where that's where like I said, like, in the morning when people are dropping off and and wanna that's oh, actually, even when picking up from events, I've seen it. I've seen it on both. That's where people tend to pull out usually on South 9th thinking that that's a four way stop.

Yeah. And I mean,

9th Street's all night. That's where that's where JFK is. That's where that's the main hub for all your night activities. Yeah. So so it it does get a lot of traffic.

Yeah. It's really goofy, I would say, because, like, the school's not in session or nothing going on in Columbus Street. Between 8th And 9th, there's an outing. Right. And it's probably more on 9th at that point, but and usually in the morning, a little more random. Right? But coming to school Yep. Not not like but then at the end of the day when they're done, it's like, you know, chaos all over the place. Yeah. The students are parking lot coming out of there, and I guess they can go any of the three directions. They can go south or north on 9th or go up to Green to 10th, but you got that traffic, pickup traffic. And so, yeah, I mean, it's probably equal and schools will let know.

Yeah. It's it's pretty crazy. I mean,

it's I was just thinking too, you do the four way stop. We could start backing traffic up too much on Columbus, then it'll be back to 10th Street, but that'll be if people were you know, I don't think you'd be backing it up there don't school's out now. Everybody's kind of going the other way. It'll be really late coming up there. Yep. Backing it up. Then it could, I suppose, back up between ninth back to eighth, between eighth and ninth possibly. Yeah. Then

the majority of people still take 8th Street to drop off in the morning because that's backed up almost to the to Yaki U. Yeah. And I actually take Columbus because I I I I started when I dropped off doing the 8th and waiting line and I was like, wait a second. Why what if I go Columbus and then I can just take a right because there's no other cross street and then that bypassed the whole big line. So, hopefully, nobody is listening. But

but bypassed

but then but then like the people that drop off at JFK, that's where then, you know, then you get that. So, the Columbus isn't as busy as 8th So that's all I have for feedback. So I guess Anybody else for your discussion?

So we're just basically looking at clock I used to live in Columbus, Ohio, and you knew from February in the morning and two hours in the evening, there's your prime time rush hours. If you wanna get somewhere in the city, you better get there before there's two hours of rush hour. It's just the nature of the beast. So I don't know if you wanna mess with putting traffic signs up because if you look at the few hour you know, a couple of months during the summer, nothing going on. And then again, you know, calendar and clock when there are schools, nothing really going on.

There's not much problem there either.

They still have enough going on, but it's not like the end of the day during the But there is a lot of stuff going on, right, pretty much every day, much of the summer. Okay. I mean but it's still not like the end of the day. I don't know. It's school day.

Day. Over for discussion sake, I'll I'll make a motion to make that phone call stop. I know that's what I would prefer by tripping or singing.