Public Utilities and Public Works Committee - Regular Meeting

Hello, everyone. My name is Naima Syed. I use she, her pronouns with five city councilor, a new traffic parking chair. I would like to order to call to order today's traffic and committee meeting of the city council. First, they will read the legal notice that allows us to do to have this meeting on Zoom.

Pursuant to chapter two of the acts of 2023, this meeting of the city council committee would be conducted via remote participation. We'll post an audio video recording, transcript, or other comprehensive record of these proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting on the City Of Samurai website and on local cable access government channels. Clerk, could you please call the role to establish quorum? Clerk? Clerk, you're muted.

Clerk, would you try again? We heard something and then I'm just waiting here for the clerk.

I am here.

I just wanna make sure this is we're just waiting for the clerk right now. Can everyone hear me? Okay. So just waiting for the clerk.

Or perhaps you can leave and then come back.

You know, if we're still recording still recording? Or

Yeah. I think we're still recording, but Peter just reconnected. So, hopefully

Okay.

It'll work now. We're just waiting here for the clerk to reconnect. Try the audio again. Yep. The community clerks just reconnected.

Looks like community clerks is unmuted. Just to get here. Anything? Clerk, if you could tell me by email, would it be helpful if we stop the recording and try to all join again? Me know by email because we can't hear anything.

Yeah. Still no audio. Yeah. I say let me see. Yeah. I'm not seeing any email. I think let's leave and try to reconnect because having an audio let me see. Maybe text message. Yeah. I'm working on my audio. I just think, yeah, having

Maybe the clerk can call in too. I mean, if if they're if they try again and it still doesn't work, it's a Zoom. Yeah. So there should be a way to call in just to have audio. And then one of us can share in the materials if that if it comes to that, but seems like a good plan to try to come back, I guess.

Yeah. Let's see. Okay. We'll give it a couple more minutes. I just wanna say that if we disconnect members of the public, please try to reconnect again.

We'll all do the same. Okay. I say, yeah, let's leave and come back. Members of the public, apologies. We're gonna have to leave the meeting for a minute.

Okay. Okay. Let's see if it works now before we go live. Peter, you can use text. Okay.

So Peter says she's trying. Okay. I think yeah. Peter is saying now to put the meeting in recess. So we end meeting and restart.

K. I thought that was that was what happened just now. But okay. Let's wait for Peter to end it. Peter, if you can hear me, just end it.

Yeah. I'm not sure what's happening here. Yeah. I'm not really understanding this. Yeah. Let me just call Peter.

Neema, are you the chair? Okay.

Okay.

Okay. Madam, I'm sure there's there there seem to be two meetings because Meredith Stivers from our office

Let me

just in another meeting, and she sees you. I don't we don't see her in this screen.

So he's joining using the phone now.

Okay. Good.

Just switch my Catherine, can you say something to make sure I can Catherine, can you hear me?

I can hear you.

Okay. Perfect. Okay. Peter, we still cannot hear you using the phone. Peter, since you can hear me, can you make me the host?

Imagine even if he makes me the host, we still need the clerk. And now we don't have counselor Burnley. Okay. Okay. Alright.

It's one of those nights. Yeah. This is the first time it happens. When do we call it? Like,

this Yeah. Yeah. Never had this happen either. This is it's unfortunate. I I see that Peter is still the host.

Yeah. Yeah. I texted him, but I think he keeps trying. I think he is not able to make any changes to the accounts.

Okay. I'm texting with Yasmin, and she may be able to help.

Let me see. And we're gonna have quorum, which is sorry. I'm just here.

Can you hear me now? Yes.

Yes.

Okay.

There is a really bad.

Yeah. Give me a minute. I'll fix that. Okay. Alright.

How are we doing now? Yeah.

Still. We can still hear the echo.

How about now? How now? How now? How How about now?

An issue.

And now?

Okay. No. It's good. Okay. I don't have counselor Brundley.

Alright.

I just texted him.

Okay. Yasmin's trying to help.

We're all set now.

We're all set now? Okay. Figured out what

it was.

Sound Peter now. Okay.

Counselor Burnley is not here, though.

Counselor Burnley isn't here. So we don't have quorum. Right?

We don't have quorum. Let me let me just call him.

Okay. We may be all set, Yasmeen. I don't know if you're seeing anything on your end.

Yeah. Sorry, everyone. Is not picking up. He's not texting back. We don't have quorum.

I don't think also joined after we disconnected. Right?

I'm sorry. Who?

Counselor.

Yeah. I don't think I've seen him either.

Yeah. I have he has never joined after we disconnected. They texted. They called. Okay.

It is 06:30 already. I think I'm inclined to just not have the meeting between the technical difficulties and councilor Burnley not getting back to me. I was like, we can have this meeting. Catherine,

ask Brad? Brad, you're seeing an alternate meeting room. That's where who else is there? Is councilor Burnley there per chance?

No? Yeah. You mentioned your colleague, Meredith, may be in a different account, and I was just wondering if some attending

Oh, here it comes.

Out of there.

Here comes counselor Burnley. Yeah.

Sorry. There's a community meeting at the same exact time. I Was trying to do both, and then thought I got a little bit more leeway because of the technical difficulties, but I am back.

Okay. Kurt, you want a roll call?

Okay. So, just give me a moment now. I was using my phone. Just wanna make sure. Okay. Before we go live, can everyone hear me?

Yes.

Okay. Peter, we can hear you. Constable Billy, just okay. So we can hear all three of us. Perfect. We are going to we can go live now.

Which is live.

We're live.

The whole

thing whole thing was live.

Okay. Do we just keep it that way?

Yep. Yep.

Okay. I had no idea. Okay. Well, I'm sorry about that because I really thought we were not live. So, yeah, clerk, could you please call the roll?

This is roll call. Councilor Burnley.

Present.

Councilor Wilson and councilor Saeed?

Present.

Madam chair, two members are present. One is absent. We have a quorum. Okay.

Great. First, let's begin with approval of the minutes from the previous meeting.

On approval of those minutes, there is a scrimmage error. It reads that the minutes are from legislative matters meeting, but they're actually from traffic and parking. The item number two five one five one nine is for the traffic and parking. So we can't approve those. So in all in favor, councilor Burnley?

Aye.

Council Wilson and councilor Saeed?

Yes.

Madam Chair, those items those minutes have been approved.

Great. Clerk, could you please read the first item?

Item two by council Burnley that the director of parking place no parking here to corner signs on Walnut Street at Sunnyside Avenue.

And the item, we have director Renfred.

Good evening. Thank you. Suzanne Renfred, director parking. So we started a service request, which is a a work order when we got this this request from from the city council when I first came in on the tenth. And since then, we've had the area checked twice a day, and it appears that there's been three tickets since the twenty fourth, and we've been checking it a minimum of twice a day.

So, typically, we don't add signs for 20 feet from an intersection unless we see a a big problem because once you start adding these signs, it could re require signs all over the city. So there's there's no sign required for this type of violation. According to mass general laws, you're not supposed to park within 20 feet of any intersection. So first our first role is our first what we like to do first is make sure that we enforce it more often so that people will get used to, hey, I can't park here, and they see that they're getting tickets and the behavior will change. So we would like to continue with that.

And if we don't see a change in behavior or we see the situation getting any worse, we can certainly add a sign. But again, you know, this this could lead to many, many signs, many more signs throughout the city. Think we have enough signs throughout the city as it stands. So that's it. Thank you.

Any questions from colleagues? There are no questions. We'll mark this item as we're completed. Next item.

Item three is an audit by counsel Saeed that the director of mobility install and I was muted again. That's the director of mobility and solar speed bump on Ashland Street.

Director Rawson.

Good evening, chair. Brad Rawson. I serve as director of mobility in OSBCD. Thank you for submitting this order, chair. I know that you have been working with local residents around the Kennedy School neighborhood and specifically on Ashland Street.

City staff are aware of this traffic calming request, and we have been in touch with a local resident who had organized a petition of neighbors to sign one of the city's traffic calming petition documents. As we were in contact with that resident chair, we learned about a terrible crash in which a beloved pet was run over and killed by a speeding motorist, and we extended our sincere sympathies to that resident. This is a terrible, terrible experience. We also communicated to that resident the standard operating procedures that the city uses to evaluate traffic calming requests like this one. So we connected this resident and hopefully the entire neighborhood network to the online materials that the city uses to communicate how we evaluate traffic calming requests, whether they come in from direct counsel orders, from resident petitions, from three one one work orders, or from street outreach that our staff do on twelve months a year.

So, hopefully, folks have had a chance to see some of these great materials online. Our standard process, as you know, Chair, involves collecting data on the number and speed of motor vehicles on a given street. It's really important for us to be able to benchmark conditions, and often we find that residents' lived experience matches up with speeding percentages, pop in speeds. But as you know, we have many more requests than staff are able to fill every given year or even in multiple year periods. So it's important for us to have data to be able to compare apples to apples across all the Somerville neighborhoods that are asking for traffic calming treatments.

So, chair, we have scheduled data collection for Ashland Street in spring twenty twenty six. As you'll probably remember, we collect data in the spring and in the fall, but not in the summer and winter. It's important for us to get representative conditions, and conditions do tend to be different in summer and in winter. So Ashland will be prioritized in spring calendar twenty six. Once we have the data chair, our staff go through the next step in our standard process and communicate in writing with petitioners and neighborhood residents.

We've done this for several years in a row now. And, again, on the city's traffic calming web page, folks can find written responses, technical memoranda that we rely to petitioners so they can see how their street stacks up against other candidates and all the different inputs to our decision making and prioritization that we use. So to conclude, chair, I wanna definitely thank and appreciate everybody who has spent time volunteering, door knocking, speaking with neighbors. I wanna express gratitude to you as ward counselor and all at large counselors who do this kind of work, escalate these issues on our radar screen. If anybody is if you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer them, but I hope that's a helpful brief summary. Thank you.

Thank you, director. Thank you for the summary and reminding everyone of the process. And for think I wanna thank your staff for taking the time to get back to the the constituent and all the neighbors who were who were being impacted by this. As I shared with you offline, this is a street that's very close to a school. So I I you know, I understand, like, you need to collect data in the spring, but I'm really hoping that this will be prioritized for next fall.

Yeah. But as you said, it is terrible that we lost the the the neighbor lost, you know, his pet. So we want to make sure, you know, this doesn't happen to, god forbid, children. So, yeah, I will make sure to reach out to you at the end of the spring to so we can discuss the data, and go from there. But I just wanna say, like, for the record, also by putting in a cancel order, it does count as a way to for you to start considering that street for data collection.

And I wanna thank the neighbor or the neighbors who have signed the petition and submitted the petition to the mobility department. If there are no questions regarding this item, I would like to place it to mark it as we're completed. Next item. Actually, I see councilor Brundley. Hand raised.

Thank you, Pierre. Can we take the next four up items up together?

I think we have one more item before we take all the rest of the items together. Am I correct? Let me just check. Yes. We have we councilor Bernie, we have one more item, and then we have we'll take item four, and then we'll take all the rest of the items together.

Thank you.

Clerk, could you please read, item four?

Item four is an order that's the director of mobility install a solar powered digital. Your speed is display sign on Shore Drive westbound?

Councilor, director Rossi.

Thank you, chair. Our response to this will have some similarity to the last item, chair. So, again, staff always appreciate ward counselors and counselors at large helping amplify resident requests for speed management and traffic calming. City staff have been working with the ward four counselor and with local presidents on Shore Drive and speeding issues, particularly in that westbound direction for many, many years. We know what a common cut through route it is.

Staff have collected data on a number of occasions. And although there are some raised intersections on Shore Drive, there are other longer sections of Shore Drive that do not have physical traffic calming. And as a result, motorists are able to get up to dangerous speeds quite frequently. Chair, we will communicate with counselor Klingen. I think it's important to remind constituents and counselors that a speed feedback sign, like the one referenced in this order, can be a helpful intervention.

But, typically, they are less helpful than physical traffic calming, like raised table intersections, like the one that exists at Shore Drive in Putnam today. City staff have been working in partnership with Mystic River Watershed Association on a large scale capital project chair that will rebuild elements of Shore Drive, ideally starting construction in calendar year 2026. We've had a good community process, great partnership with councilor Klingon and his constituents, as well as with our nonprofit partner at Mystic River Watershed Association. And there are elements of traffic calming that can be included in that final design. So, for example, curb of Shore Drive on the west side near the boathouse will actually be moved into the street to create more room for green storm water inter infrastructure.

So I think it's important to note that we have a capital construction project coming that we think will offer many benefits, including speed attenuation. We're happy to discuss in more detail or answer any questions. Do not want to minimize the importance of this sign request. But the last thing I will note is the sign that would be placed typically would be placed along the back of curb in the southbound direction. That is exactly where the row of green storm water planters and new trees is designed to be sited as part of that project. So I think we've got some work to do, chair, here. I will follow-up with the ward four counselor, and I'm happy to answer any questions you may have at this time. Thank

you, director. I have no questions, counselor Brundley.

Alright. Thank you through the chair. Just really quickly, I'm curious. I know that the city has an inventory of certain signs, stop signs, yield signs, street signs, but this is a highly specific kind of sign, that I imagine is more, capital intensive as well. Could the director just speak, to the best of his knowledge at this moment about what inventory we have around solar panel signs speed signs or if the additional excuse me.

I'm I'm out in a little bit of a noisy place, so you can hear any potential speeding around me. But could the director just speak to our current inventory as he understands it and if the installation of such a sign would require, you know, additional purchases?

Jared, through you. Thanks for the question, counselor. Our parking department led by Suzanne Renfred actually maintains that inventory, counselor. So I don't have the numbers at the top of my head. However, they're easy to get, we can do a couple of things that I think are responsive to your question. One is document the existing inventory of radar feedback signs that exist citywide. Most of them are solar powered chair. A couple of them are hardwired, but most are solar powered. But then the councilor also asked about whether any signs exist kind of in storage ready to deploy. Don't know the answer off the top of my head.

I can ask Suzanne that we can communicate back with the committee. I believe the answer is no, but let us double check that if that's okay. City staff have been working to determine priorities and criteria for use of this specific tool. In our experience, when we install them, they tend to be effective for a certain amount of time, often six or twelve months, and then they kinda fade into the background for a lot of drivers. So we see decreasing compliance and increasing speeding. So I think we've got some work to do in terms of figuring out when and where radar feedback signs are best suited given our narrow sidewalks, ADA clearance is required, solar power limitations with tree canopy, etcetera. So I hope that's responsive to the question, chair.

Certainly. Just as a follow-up, yes, it is responsive to the question through the chair. I appreciate that answer also because I think it is tempting for, the public and sometimes even counselors to to believe that we can solve this by just throwing something on the street or installing a new sign. But that leaves out a number of factors, including whether we have the signs in storage, you know, how much the it costs and the lead time to actually get them, And, also, you know, the the kind of psychology of driver behavior, which is certainly as much an an art as a science at this point. So I just I think it's worth always bringing up that complexity because it it is more complicated than it often seems on the surface.

And and, frankly, I I agree with the director that the structural changes are the most impactful here. And thank you, Yep. That's all I'll say. Okay.

Thank you, counselor. We'll mark this item as were completed, and we will take up the rest of the items together. So from item number five to item item number eight, Clerk, could you please read those items?

Item five is a resolution by council of Burnley that this council consider whether to ban or restrict autonomous vehicle testing globally if permitted by law. Item six is an order by councilor Burnley and councilor Scott that the city solicitor provide an opinion on whether an individual within a vehicle or the autonomous vehicle company will be responsible if issued a citation during autonomous driving testing. Item seven is an order by council Burnley and councilor Scott that the city solicitor provide an opinion on whether this council can restrict the use of autonomous driving testing within city limits either through an outright ban or through requirement of a special permit. And item eight is a resolution by council, Glenn Lee, that the mayor disclose to this council any communication with Waymo or its parent company Google regarding autonomous driving tests within city limits.

Thank you, clerk. So we have here doctor Rawson,

but

also staff from the law department who would like to get get us started on these items.

And, Chair, if it's okay, may I just ask that assistant chief Sean Tierney from Somerville Fire also be recognized? So there's been an interdepartmental group working together to try to be responsive to the council's inquiries and orders. We're happy to spend our discussion time with you in any way that you see fit, but I also wanna give a shout out to Kathy Salkert, special counsel, and Meredith Stevers, assistant city solicitor, who prepared a technical memorandum that was communicated to this committee that hopefully can provide a bit of a framework for this portion of this discussion. Right.

So good evening, madam chair. I guess I'll get started. I hope everyone had a chance to at least receive the memo, maybe not have a chance even if you didn't have a chance to read it all. As far as the questions, I did try to give answers that are that are based on the research that we've done. I don't have the there it is.

Okay. Whether, whether we can so the first the first question that I have, if I'm taking this up in the proper order, is that the city solicitor provide an opinion on whether we can restrict the use of autonomous driving within city limits. At the present time, the city can restrict autonomous driving within city limits. However, it's important to note that there are several state and state bills pending that would prohibit municipal regulation, preempt municipal regulation in this area, and there are also federal there's a federal law or bill pending that would also prevent the city from regulating at all. The brief memo or letter that we provided walks through how things were handled since 2018.

There was an executive order that established autonomous the authority for autonomous testing and set up a process that's followed through DOT. And in that process, there was also a memorandum of agreement where the municipalities were able to say whether they wanted the testing. And if so, it allowed them to specify the the streets and the time and the dates and things of that nature. So we have this ability right now. It could go away.

And a ban, as we pointed out, would most likely be challenged. Even though it hasn't been banned yet, there is the state has, in a in a sense, also occupied the field. They're there's they're handling it on a state level, and they're allowing a little bit of room for municipalities to be involved knowing that every city is different and knowing that, you know, they're out right now getting the data collection to try to understand what the lay of the land is in each of the cities where there's been data collection happening. But they but I think, you know, we have to and I'm hoping that that that the state will decide keep that role for municipalities. But, again, it could be preempted at the federal level.

I don't know if Meredith has anything to add, but I'll pause for right now because I tend to keep talking if you don't stop me. Any any questions or councilor Burn?

Councilor Byrnely. Thank

you. No questions through you. It's just it's good information for us to have. And just for a little context for members of the public who might be wondering why I submitted four different items on autonomous driving. As referenced in one of the items, Wemo, a company owned by Google, recently was doing some autonomous testing within the Greater Boston area, including Boston, Cambridge, some and Somerville.

There are plenty of reasons to believe that this economist driving is not dangerous. There's some good data that's come out of these companies, but there's also plenty of concerns about anyone or anything driving in the Greater Boston region based on the ways that our roads are constructed historically, based on driver behavior. And the fact that, we may not have accountability measures in place was greatly concerning to me in particular. And so I wanted us to to look into the legal capacity that we had in order to, for example, see if we wanted to implement restrictions. You can do autonomous driving if you get a special permit or if if data started to sour on this in general, if the council would want to move forward with a more restrictive approach.

Just knowing where the legal landscape is, that is, hey. It's helpful. And I I'll just bring this back to our colleagues to say, if we want to move forward with, some specific restrictions, based on the attorney's input, I would say we should move quickly to do so.

Sure. If I may, I just wanna thank you and the council for raising up these issues, Scott. We've been working on them for many years, being in contact with peer cities around North America to just try to understand new technologies, their benefits, and their potential drawbacks, their potential applicability in the Northeast versus in other parts of the country. Everybody around North America and and even around the world is working through these processes. And done right, they can definitely improve many of the key outcomes that we are all interested in in our transportation system.

But, Cher, that said, some of the things that we've learned from early adopter peer cities is that we have many reasons to be concerned just like we were rightly concerned when the ride hailing industry was brought into Massachusetts in 2016, 2018. These industries tend to result in net increases in vehicle miles traveled, And so congested narrow streets in places like Metropolitan Boston can become that much trickier for many of our day to day requirements realities, whether it's bus transit, urban deliveries, and freight, emergency response. We spent time with peers from around the country to make sure that assistant chief Tierney's peers are communicating their stories about how to interact with new technologies, new sensors, new vehicle types, weights to have fail safes in place, training that is, you know, culturally rooted in cultural context of individual departments and regions. And response and mobility for first responders is one thing. Scene management is another thing that has emerged from these early adopter communities.

How can first responders on scene interact with robotaxis and other forms of autonomous mobility? We know that our peers in the city of Boston have worked really hard to begin understanding potential labor impacts. National peers have talked a lot about the importance of transparency and data sharing and ensuring that intellectual property can be honored on the one hand, but that public officials have access to lifetime data on crashes, on disengagements, on other issues that are, you know, part and parcel of autonomous ride hailing. So there's a lot of work to be done. A lot of cities around the country are working together to try to share best practices.

We have a long way to go, I believe, and I think there's a real alignment between city staff, city council, as well as even the private industries. Everybody wants a level playing field, safe operations, net reductions in driving, and smooth interactions between traditional mass transit like buses, traditional first response like fire departments and ambulance companies. So I think that it's important that we continue to do this work together.

Yeah. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, Kosta Brinley, for, submitting these, items. I constituents have been reaching out to me about this, just so we can have the conversation and know just get to know what our options are. So this is certainly very, very helpful.

And thank you, director Rossin, for giving us the big picture and, you know, like, yeah, all, like, the things that could get impacted that we should start thinking about, you know, as we try as a council as a city to decide what's best. Councilor Braley, any further questions? Director Ross, did you wanna add something?

Sherry, thanks for your patience. One more thing I would like to flag. Attorney mentioned this, but one of the things that we hear on the national scene is that the Massachusetts regulatory framework strikes a really good balance between protecting the public interest and fostering innovation and allowing for private investments and scaling with really, really appropriate guardrails. So I think this is another great example where Massachusetts is leading the way, and it's gonna be important for Summerville and for many other cities and towns in the Commonwealth to continue to have access through that regulatory framework that's been in place since about 2017, 2018.

K. Great.

Thank you to the director, to our attorneys, and to you, chair, for taking up all these items together. I did wanna just hone in on one of them given the director's point around transparency here.

I

I had an item in there about specifically whether the city had any contact with Waymo prior to this announcement or any communications. And I'm curious if, one, to that question, which I have some insight into. But, also, in terms of the administration's protocol or process around disclosure to the public when we know that there may be this this kind of testing on our streets, I think it's important that not only the folks who are paying attention to the local news or who might have some insights into these processes are made aware, but that everyone generally has some sense when there might be, you know, a car next to them with no driver or which, to be clear, in the case of the Waymo testing, so it's test not being the It's really important that we not be shocked moving forward.

Chair, I'm happy to respond, but Kathy may want to do that first here.

Okay. Yes. To you, madam chair, just wanted to point out to councilor Burnley. He probably does know this, but because I I don't think we've said it out loud. Right now, there are no vehicles that can operate without a driver present. And the Waymo when Waymo was in the city, my understanding is they were not doing autonomous vehicle testing at all. They were gathering data. It was just a data collection exercise.

Jared, that's correct. And if I may add to Kathy's response, again, I really appreciate the framing that councilor Burnley has offered here. So you'll notice in the written memo that the solicitor's office provided for the committee that we described some of the outreach from the corporate groups as they were notifying local jurisdictions of their human powered video data collection effort in spring twenty twenty five. So courtesy emails were sent to multiple cities, the multiple city departments within the city of Summerville, and that is most certainly appreciated. I think it is important to note, chair, that city staff did not respond to any of these inquiries.

We are a busy city with many competing demands for our time. We do not have a regulatory framework that prohibits standard Street View video collection or the existing technologies that Google or competitors are using, and we were not able to allocate any staff time to dig deeper into these issues even though we appreciated knowing that things were coming. But another one of the counselor's points that I'd like to respond to and acknowledge is the importance of transparent communication to the public because I think that there can be misunderstandings. Is this consistent with our best practices in surveillance management? Is this vehicle being driven by an active human operator versus a passive human safety operator versus no human at all?

And so one of the things that the industry around the country has really started to articulate is the importance of those kind of communication strategies that councilor Burnley acknowledged acknowledged a moment ago. So I'm taking this note share. And if this conversation continues and we anticipate any additional steps in the future, Somerville staff, be sure to to follow-up and make sure that we've got communications protocols for the city council for the public at large on that topic. So thank you very much.

Thank you, director. Any follow-up questions?

No. No follow-up questions through you, chair. I'm I'm satisfied with these responses and happy to mark these items as work complete. Just with the the note and caveat that the first item about the council's considerations regarding restrictions or bans, obviously, it's most appropriately in action taken up in legislative matters. So I just wanna be clear that, marking this as work complete is not a a sign of no future actions, but instead that if we were to take a, that, it would be in a separate committee. Thank you.

Yeah. That's correct. Yeah. Thank you for adding that, counselor.

And, sure, if I can offer one more con comment and and kinda validate the discussion that the committee is having this evening. With the benefit of hindsight, it is perfectly conceivable that the city of Summerville and cities like Summerville could have done a better job of planning for the ride hailing revolution in 2015, 2016, 2017. Yes. We had a state regulatory framework at that time. But, again, I'm really thinking about this current conversation and this current technological innovation through that lens of what we learned a decade ago, the last time a big disruptive ride hailing and taxi service was brought to market.

We've learned so much in the last decade. So we look forward to continuing working with the council, with our interdepartmental group, with our state delegation, our federal delegation, and cities around North America to make sure the cities continue to have a seat at the table that is of critical importance, and it cannot be said enough.

Thank you, director. Okay. If we have no further questions, we will mark items from item five to item eight as were completed. And, yep, clerk, if you could please, call the roll for adjournment.

On adjournment, councilor Burnley. Aye. Council Wilson. Councillor Saeed.

Yes.

Madam chair, two members have voted to adjourn. One is absent. We are adjourned.

Have a good evening, everyone. Thank you. You too.