Transportation Committee - Regular Meeting

Just getting to eating my lunch, but I'm here. I'll get on when I complete that. Thank you.

Alright. Thank you so much. Alderman Savage will be joining us shortly. And Carmen O'Neill. So we have quorum. I will take a motion for approval of the agenda. So move. Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Great. Alright. First item on our agenda is the approval of minutes from 12:11 twenty four. Is there a motion to approve those minutes? So move. Second. All in favor? Aye. Say aye. Aye. Thank you. I'm still reading. Alright. So those are approved.

Next up, we will go to our general discussion, which is ID 1625, transportation board update. Kirk Regal is with us.

Hello. I'm Kirk Regal. I have a very brief report on behalf of the transportation board. First of all, an emeritus member of the Transportation Board, John Purnell, who is a regular rider of the circulator, has developed a list of recommendations and also, well, a critique and recommendations which he forwarded to Marcus Moore. And I was delighted to see that even though he's left the committee, he continues in the spirit of the of the board.

And I think they were cogent comments. I hope Marcus can use them to good effect. The second thing the last thing that I wanted to report was personal experience in parking in the garages operated by two of your contractors. Premium parking for Hillman and SP Plus met Metropolis for the for the other garages. And this is just in the nature of reinforcement of knowledge that you already have.

And that is that the SP Plus Metropolis operation is super smooth. You scan one barcode, you enter no data whatsoever, and everything is taken care of automatically. If you go the, residence credit of two hours is applied automatically. If you go over, your card is charged automatically. It knows what garage you're in.

Everything is just perfect. The, premium parking Hillman difficulties, continued. I counted keystrokes and numbers that had to had to be added, and I think I quit at seven or eight different keystrokes and numbers that had to be entered surprisingly even including the garage. Their software is not smart enough to know what garage it's operating in which is really peculiar. So I just provide that reinforcing information that the operational characteristics of the Hillman garage setup really needs to be smoothed out.

It's just it's really inconvenient. And that's it. Thanks very much.

Tom, are you muted?

Sorry about that. I was saying thank you very much, Kurt. And I believe that we've had the final member of the transportation board sworn in that we were waiting on,

Madden.

Let's see this. Yes. He was there may be one other, actually. Okay. The other one has been pending for a year. And, parenthetically, let me just say that I forwarded not only to Gavin but also to Kate our recommendation that the mayor's swearing in be combined with the final approval by this the city council so that it all happens at one time and we don't sit around for months waiting for the swearing in.

Right. I know that I was a part of some of that asking what was the, delay and whatnot. So I was hoping that that was resolved. I'll double check on that, make sure that Mr. Madden is in there.

Great. Thanks.

Thank you so much. Next up on our agenda is ID1725, transportation department update. Director Moore?

Yeah. Good afternoon. Good evening, everyone. Yep. Excuse me. Mister Rigol, yeah, I am re in receipt of Mr. Purnell's email that was dated, early January, and I'm not sure how it got lost. And but it was around the snow time. So it was around January 4, but I did get it over the weekend. Responded back to him, and, you know, he offered any other help, suggestions he could give.

There were a few other things, not just the, circulator, or I should wanna call it what it is, the free downtown shuttle, the magenta shuttle. But his questions also were why were we having dinner on the stars? Why do we close down? Why you know, a lot of other whys for the city not understanding or just wanting to know, some of the reasons, rationale, because there is a a reroute when we do do things like that, of the Inner West Street. But we'll address them as best we can.

And, part of the budget cycle, we're looking at some other initiatives to kinda maybe even bring that back in house. But, yeah, good evening, good afternoon, madam chair and members of the, transportation committee, Alderwoman Pindell Charles and and Savage. I'd like to give you, a little update on some of the projects and things that we're we're working on, initiatives. First off, we keep, talking about something that's really good for us, you know, our micro transit. The growth is good.

Ridership continues to grow at approximately 9%, over January same time last year. Some months like November were as much as, like, 16%, over same period last year. The Android app issue has been resolved. Even though you could get the download from the website, now you can actually get it from the Play Store. So, Rob, I think you saw the response back. We're we're we're good to go. It used to be harder to do those kind of things with the what is it? The other one. Google. What's the other one?

Apple. Apple Store was really having you go through a lot of hoops, and Google was a lot easier. It just kind of flipped around. But they're both there, and they're both working. So we're continuing to, you know, market these, events to other, communities like we did, Karma over at the, Senior Center, Morris Bloom, and other.

So one of the big things that you'll see, is with the transit development plan that we talked we had the, KFH guys come in back in December. They're in their final phase of completing this plan for us in your review, which will probably be mid to late, March. And our 2019 TDP, one of them was the, micro transit. And, you know, it took us a few years to get it. Those things just have a cost associated with it.

But everything's on there, to for you to take a look at from they're free. How do we do a better connection with the county going to the high school without a transfer? But this whole report will be ready for your review and comment. And, of course, with the transit development plan, when you get federal funds, it's required that we do this every five years, to look at the health of our system. And, of course, this helps better shape the future of transit services and identify areas for improvement, efficiencies, and potential expansion.

So with this microtransit, you know, Jamar Parker, our transportation superintendent, has really been working closely with, IT Curves, the developer of the software, of what else we can do. So there's a lot of things we can do. The one really exciting thing is the county loves it too. We've been having meetings with Anne Arundel County Department of Transportation, mister Parker, mister Dua, and I, just to look at some of the efficiencies, of scale and what we could do. They really want to piggyback or partner with IT curves.

So we'll see that. You'll see that in the presentation, next month and how we go about it. They would pay us for it. So we gotta really look at how that all comes together to go outside of, you know, the route to quarter, and all. But there's some other unmet needs that we can really do, and they have a really, out of the box thinking of how we look at a spine and then off the spine of other services that go into the neighborhoods and things of that.

So I look forward to them coming out next month or, you know, towards the end, one one of the council meetings to share that, get a chance to digest that. It's in the middle of our budget season, and we can actually look at things that, may make sense, for us. That's all I really have as far as a formal presentation, but if you have any questions, I'd be very happy to answer as the best I can.

Great. Any questions, Alderman Pindell Charles?

Thank you, madam chair. And I I will say, anytime that alderman Savage can help us out on the county side, and can we give him credit for this? We can, maybe not, but it doesn't matter, then feel free to do so.

Yeah.

Anytime a partnership is always always a a plus. Thank you so much.

And, you know, I wanna go back to, the, the board with Kurt Regal and, you know, John Purnell. Those kind of things, we need to see what the pulse is. We know what we're looking for, but the everyday person, what what they actually see. Sometimes we, you know, we take things for granted. We're not operating in a vacuum and think that a ten minute trial is really ten minutes.

When we have that in the West Street, because we have a big way to bring people downtown to enjoy Dinner Under the Stars or anything else or traffic in Church Circle, it's not gonna be ten minutes. And there's only a ten minute trolley when we have both of them out there during peak times. It's really twenty minutes, or really can do it in, you know, sixteen or eighteen. But there's certain things we're we're trying to really connect the city as best we can, and that's really heavily used just like the, green route that goes dissects the city going from the mall straight down West to Duke Of Gloucester to Eastport. We wanna look at things like that that make sense, and we can kinda get into those other areas where we don't need to run a regular pattern, a pulse system.

And that's where the microtransit on demand really has done well for us. So, we appreciate all your support as we grow this and, you know, change things around a little bit. Everyone, thank you.

Director Moore, is there any move to, expand that service? I know we've talked about expanding into Eastport, Harbor House, Eastport Terrace area, and also out, in Ward 7 near the Giant? Is there Yeah. For the micromobility?

That's a good question. And and see, that's why we wanna get you out there more. Mr. Park and I will get you out there because we do serve those areas, but it is dwindle purple. So, like, tonight, it wouldn't be until after seven, Monday through Saturday, seven to 10:45. But all day Sunday, we hit Ward 7. We hit all of the places, like the purple did. It covers the whole city. So there are those gaps that, Mr. Park and I were looking at that we would like to do something during the day, during the week, or Saturday.

But we wanna kinda wait and see what the ATC I mean, excuse me, the ATDP, all these acronyms, will come up with for your review. And, that is something we'd like to do, but we just wanna, caution there because everything costs a little money, but it is a, you know, good bang for the buck, and you're absolutely right. Be it would be well received. So and, you know, you know, like, less than three hours, we will hit all those places you made mention to. And, you know, if we look at three quarters of a mile from our fixed route stop, which is at the Giant, I bet you we can pick up Rob or Burr Vogel in front of their home because that's about three quarter well, just close to three quarters of a mile.

So we look to do those kind of things, and where those unmet needs are would be let's look at Saturday. Saturday, there's nothing until 07:00 at night. Whereas right now, we have where the orange goes until seven, but it still doesn't hit Ward 7. It doesn't hit as much as the, territories of purple. So those are things that, we've identified. Mr. Park and I, Mr. Dua have all taken a look at. So those are things to look at, with a critical eye, for the TDP, and that's something we can definitely do. We can definitely make that happen.

Great. I appreciate that. Thank you so much. Mhmm. The last thing I want to say is hopefully in the TDP t TDDP. Mhmm. Is it two Ts or one T?

T a transit development plan.

Okay. TBP. As you and I had corresponded, in late January about the gentleman who decided that he wanted to start using public transit, but, the only way to do so currently is by cash. And, you know, I know that New York City is a far larger district than Annapolis, but it was pretty amazing on the subway to be able to use my Apple Wallet to scan on into the subway and out of the subway.

Yes.

If we could explore ways that either it could be, you know, you purchase tickets that are, you know, a QR code that you have on your store on your phone or something like that, I think that we could also help increase ridership, especially among people that don't normally do so. This particular gentleman lived in lives in Germantown Homewood. He works downtown. And because of the ice on the Poplar Trail, he didn't want to walk into town and wanted to take the bus and waited for the bus. He found out the bus schedule only to find out that he couldn't get on because he didn't have cash in his pocket.

You know, if there was a way that we could bank some tokens or, you know, have a have them on a wallet on a phone, something like that, that would be really amazing. I think it would expand our usage.

Totally agree. Everything just costs a little bit to make those things happen, but can definitely be explored. I was trying to save some of that for our next month because we got some exciting things that we're working on, like an AVL for all of our buses, not the just the Magenta shuttle. So what does that cost to do something like that would be the Wi Fi connection. So what does that lead to would be something like, onboard payments, of those kind of of that sort.

So that's definitely something that could be discussed. I gotta tell you, I've skimmed through most of these documents, the tech memo one, two, three, and four. They are online. After this, session, I will grab the link and email it to all of you so you can kinda skim through. That's what's going through now with the, stakeholders, shareholders, Mr. Parker. The last review is next week. Do I have that right?

Yes. Yes.

So you you had a meeting, what, like, two weeks ago in person? That was the last one?

Yeah. That was the last one. So once we've sent that comments back to them, they'll send it out to the, advisory committee. And then once they send their comments out, then it'll be posted.

And I think you guys are all steer yeah. Stakeholders. Stakeholders. We want you to hear your comments too. So you can definitely go online. I can, like I said, grab that piece so you don't have to go looking for it and send it, because we're gonna ask them to send it out by Friday or Monday, Monday well, maybe Tuesday the eighteenth, and give them about a week. Once we hear back, that's when they're gonna compile the the packet for delivery or presentation, common review for you, your review sometime in March. But let's take a look at that. That's a very good point. A lot of systems are going that way.

But just a point of interest that we talked about also, Chair O'Neil. In our office, we could accept everything from the, you know, checks and all the credit cards, and people can buy the the weekly, monthly. And we actually sell a couple annual. Is that correct, JP? A couple people buy annual pass?

Yes.

And, and I think that gentleman did come and see because I think Mr. Parker had his staff looking out for him. He just want to have a few. And just another point of interest, what we did before these electronic fare boxes, we sell a pass that was good for that calendar month. So somebody on a fixed income didn't get their money to the fifth or the sixth.

They bought it on the sixth and was only good to the end of the month. And think what that means like a month like February. These passes now, whether it's a daily pass or anything greater, weekly, monthly, semi annual, annual, it's the clock starts with the first ride. So you can buy these round trip passes and don't think because I bought it today, gotta use it today. So but when you buy it on board, that, you know, round trip or day pass, it is for that day. Whereas it comes out of the machine, it's gonna stamp. So you can buy them that way. And what we do for the other agencies that we have that like, Lighthouse Shelter, Arundel Lodge, Detention Center. Give me some more, JP. I think it's, like, five agencies that will come every other month and buy, like, a 100 of them.

Yeah. They so you got social service. Okay. What else?

So while you're thinking about that, what they do, for those that need it. So people will come in, you know, going out. One of the things we're working on, you know, with a a reciprocal type of environment for MTA. And, though that's what the gentleman kinda got confused. I don't confuse you too much, but we don't have a reciprocating or reciprocal environment with our passes going to NTA going to Baltimore.

Somebody buys a weekly a daily, weekly, monthly, whatever coming in, they show that pass getting off the number 70 bus, which is serviced in Annapolis at Church Circle, Calvert at West Street. They can get on our bus, show that pass. They can go into town, meaning into the mall, into the neighborhood. They can't go the other way. And I think that's what the gentleman was saying. Oh, it's only good for one direction. I wanna you know, that's where it got the the driver was trying to be helpful, the bus operator. It's that kind of a pass that we can't any of our riders buying a monthly per weekly pass, show it to Mr. MTA is no good. So we got a few work groups working on things like that, the connectivity.

And it was the same thing with, Anne Arundel Transportation because I don't know if they're gonna remain fear free forever and what happens when you connect at the mall because they have their other routes that go, other places that our riders like to go as well. But thank you for the reminder. We'll definitely look at it. And it might be maybe that's something you might remember, Jamar, if that was a discussion because you've gone to all those in person. I've only gone to two. Was that brought up as far as electronic payment?

No. I don't think that came up. The only thing that kept coming up was we was talking about FareFree, but that is something that we can look at Okay. Through through through, Tripsvap.

Thanks.

Thank you. I appreciate that. Are there any other questions for director Moore? Seeing none, we will move on. Thank you so much, Marcus.

Mhmm.

Next up on our agenda is ID 1925, which was the premium parking update, but I don't believe I see Jason. Is that correct?

Yeah. He was traveling. He was gonna try to get on. I talked to him earlier in the day. If he doesn't, you can still memorialize it, I guess, in here, he can get to it, or you can let me know. He can respond back, and we can have another call tomorrow. Okay.

We'll skip over that for now, and we'll go on to ID 2025, which is SPS Metropolis parking updates, with John Kemp, if John's there.

He's here.

There he is.

Just just muted and and on video. I don't have much of an update. We're, with respect to snow, we did, you know, have programming in there to accommodate the city's, notification to the public regarding getting vehicles off emergency routes. And, we will have an update for Department of Transportation, the director Moore and and his deputy, Benod, with volumes, so we can keep track of that and continue to try and work on how best to, help the city get vehicles off of, you know, those those routes that need to be plowed urgently. And as far as the technology, goes, which had been deployed at Knighton Garage, Gotts Garage, Gotts Court Garage in Park Place, it's going well.

And, you know, we continue to see expanded membership and and get receive positive feedback, particularly as we find more people who have been in other locations like Baltimore City or Washington DC, and they've had to interact with it, which, again, makes those subsequent visits after that first initial engagement with the system, just driving in and driving out. So exactly as, Mr. Regal described. So I was happy to hear that. Thanks.

Thank you. I have one quick question for you, John, and that is, have you seen, an uptick or a downslide of usage since we've gone gateless?

Usage of, question mark.

Of the garages. Are we seeing more people using it, less people using it?

Well, it's hard to you we have to we'd have to normalize the data for sessions. So I will come back with an update on that comparing it to prior sessions.

Okay. That would be great. And then my last question for you would be, in regards to if you could provide data eventually for any of the fines that you're giving, if you found that people are going into the garage and just not paying at all or just not having that initial contact. If you could give us an idea of how many people are

Will do.

How many of those we're doing per year? That would be good information for us to know, just to make sure that we are getting word out that, oh, by the way, you do have to have an interaction. You can't just drive in and expect it to not you know, nothing to happen Yep. On the very first time.

Yep. Understood. I will say there is a I don't know if trapdoor is the right that's probably a pernicious term. But, there is an there is an additional layer for when by by promulgating this platform, as well as we have, particularly in the Mid Atlantic, I will say that not only do you, of course, have we have enforcement tools that are, you know, as a result of part of being a partner of the city of Annapolis, not all locations have such stringent enforcement tools, you know, the weight of municipal authority behind them. And so but I will say that anyone who were to, say, engage with a location and and that wasn't gated and and then didn't pay.

And there's lots of those. They're not just the three garages in Minneapolis, but a smattering of other garages and many, many, many service lots. I will say that, if you, let's say, were to have exited, Night and Garage, not paid and, after having moved that session into the enforcement bucket, so to speak, visited a location in Washington DC that was gated. You would not be able to get out of that location in Washington DC without paying for your amount due at at night garage. And then through the through the banking, that revenue would flow over to the the night garage accounts, if you will.

So it's not as if that garage gets keep the night garage money. They just it's an extra layer of of clawback.

Okay. That's good to know. Do either of my colleagues have questions, Director Moore?

Oh, no. Stay on that same topic. Mine was a change, once we're finished here. That's something else to share.

Okay. Does anybody have any questions for John? No questions. Thank you. I appreciate your time today, John.

Yep. Thanks for having us.

Yeah. John, I need, you here a little bit. EVs EV chargers, if you can help us to understand what BG did. The app has changed, and we got a few questions as they upgraded the app. You wanna talk a little bit about that or Jackie Guild, if you have information you can share that Jason gave us at our parking meeting.

Yeah. I would need to lean on Jason for that one, unfortunately.

Okay.

And I know he's out he's out with his, he's got a doctor's appointment with his with his wife too.

Okay. We'll we'll circle back, and we'll send something out. But what it was, BGE just updated the app that they're using at most of our charging locations. I forgot even what the name was called, smart something or whatever. Jackie, are you with us? Do you remember what it was or is?

I am with you, and, I was not aware that they had updated their charging stations.

Yeah.

Jason really had a lot of the information. I know somebody came through. It was a concern that was sent to the city manager's office through Brian and kinda talked them back through how to how to use that. It should be new information at these stations, what it actually is. It's not like it's an increase or anything like that. I think it was just an upgrade, but we'll get that information to you.

K. And they use ChargePoint as their supplier, as the app that you use as ChargePoint. Great.

Is that

Thank you.

Is that new that they're using ChargePoint?

No.

At

least in Hillman, that's what they're using. K. Okay. I'm making a note of that because I'll just

Yeah. Yeah. I'll take a look.

Exactly from from BG and E? Because I I speak to them every week.

Well, let me find out. Let me fact check myself with Jason, because he reported to us at the last, parking meeting, and we'll find out what that is that we can just check. Because it might be at some of the other garages, maybe not Hillman. But I know for a fact it was Park Place because they were down and they were being replaced, and it was a different app.

Okay. And I did nudge and, Marcus, I did nudge BG and E about the wraps for the buses this just yesterday.

Okay. Great. Alright.

Alright. So no more questions? Alright. We're gonna move on to ID 3725, which is the electric mobility update by deputy city manager of resilience and sustainability, Jackie Gilpin.

It's quite a mouthful. Alright. I know. Alright. So the land and marine fleet electrification action plan was commissioned as part of meeting our resilience and sustainability goals with regard to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and getting following the Maryland Climate Solutions Now Act of 2021 of achieving 60% reductions in greenhouse gas emissions based on 2006 emissions and then getting to net zero by 2045.

And in Annapolis, it's no surprise that our largest source of greenhouse gas emissions is from the transportation sector, both city and residents and visitors, you know, all the transportation in the city. And then that's followed by emissions from our buildings, but by far, it's the transportation sector. So that's our low hanging fruit, and that's the best way and the most significant and effective way to start chipping away at greenhouse gas emissions in the city. I will say that the Department of Transportation has done a lot of the heavy lifting for the city. They are great about pursuing grants and successful in doing so, and they have the largest vehicles that are the biggest greenhouse gas emitters, and they have done a good job in replacing those vehicles.

You have the two new electric buses. They have the two GEM circulators, and they also have a Bolt and I think a Chevy vehicle that are also electric that they use. And they put in their two their charging stations for the two electric buses that will go into service very soon. So, transportation has done a really good job and continues to pursue funding. We also have the electric ferry.

We are going to select a vendor to build design and build that very, very soon, probably by the March, and that also falls under the Department of Transportation. So kudos to you guys, Marcus. So back to the the plan. The plan so we we embarked on this action plan to get a good idea of where we are in the city as far as going electric and other alternative fuel vehicles that are less polluting greenhouse gas emissions world. Inventory that, assess where we are by department, what the needs are of department, what the chat the needs, the challenges, and opportunities are for each department and for the city as a whole, and to look at what we need as far as training staff, education of staff, and residents, and look at some funding mechanisms.

We started this process with funding in my budget for contract services in 2023 and running through 2024. We contracted with an a consultant climate sorry. Climate Change Consulting LLC. The project manager there was Elvia Thompson, and she worked with us for a period of a year to complete this plan and issue the report. Unfortunately, twice during that period, she fell very seriously ill, so the plan was delayed.

And then during those periods, we had a lot of changes at NDE and MDOT with their policies, their plans, their programs, and funding. So I had her update some things in this. And as well, we had the comprehensive plan was delayed several times and revised, and there's a section in the transportation section and sustainability section about electrification of the fleet and reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector. So I wanted those changes also incorporated. We finally, near the end of this year, got this report and plan finalized, and that's when I released it to city council.

So at times, I think I should have done it before because in my realm of climate change, things change quite quickly in what the city is doing and implementing changes constantly. So not all not all of that was able to be captured, all those changes in this report. And so I have some updates today as well for the report. But, so that's the background on on why we started doing this and and how we came to where we are now with this report. I don't know if all of you had a chance to review all of it.

There's a lot of information there and some appendices that help you understand where the city is and how we go about electrification of our transit and our fleet that is used by staff, but it's worth a read. So, currently, I'll say there's no mandate in the city for purchasing electric vehicles or low emissions vehicles. The fleet manager in the Department of Public Works tries to purchase hybrid plug in electric vehicles and all electric vehicles per his cooperative purchasing agreements. He tries to piggyback on other jurisdictions, and he, for a while, had some supply chain challenges, especially during COVID and proceed and subsequently after COVID COVID. But that supply chain problem has pretty much rectified itself, and and vehicles are much more available, and the prices are coming down.

So he has, in the last year, has done quite a bit of purchasing in the low emissions and all electric realm. This report needs to be updated in that respect. We now as far as all electric vehicles in the city, we have two let's see. All electric. We have say we have about six all electric vehicles. No. No. No. That's that's incorrect. Six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen.

Probably 15 all all electric vehicles. We have several plug in electric vehicles, but most of what was been purchased since 2023 has have been hybrids. And that's because there's 20 police cruisers that fall in this category of low emissions vehicles, and those are all hybrids. The police department is much more open than they were when this report was first commissioned, and miss Thompson was interviewing staff. Chief Jackson understands that this is the way direction that police forces are going, including with their patrol cars.

And I'm working with him actively to seek grants that can get police cruisers. The biggest obstacle there was is that, our officers want to be able to bring these they do right now bring their police, cruisers home and in home charging. So I have explored with the, with MEA and the Maryland Clean Energy Center, potential for funding opportunities for chargers to be installed at police officers' homes. And, still looking into that. They are very interested.

They understand that is an obstacle for a lot of police forces. But, Anne Arundel County commissioned a plan, through the Resilience Authority that looked at the obstacles and how you overcome those four police officers and using electric vehicles, and that can be found on the Resilience Authority website. There's other police forces across the country who also have effectively and, implemented electric vehicles throughout their force, and it's working well. So we have other examples that we can explore and look at a little bit more deeply. The fire department also was not a big part of this study.

And since this was report was commissioned, chief of Malley and I have had several discussions. He has changed his mind about electric vehicles, especially as the technology gets better. And he just recently was interested in pursuing a grant for an electric fire truck, a pumper truck, but the fleet manager determined that the technology was not quite there where he wanted it to be for pursuing this grant. And, also, there was another department, rec and parks, that wanted to look at the same grant for an electric school bus. This was a heavy duty vehicle grant that we were exploring.

And so I think by this time next year, it will be everyone will be on board with pursuing more electric vehicles for the large trucks in the fire department. But things have been changing quite a bit with fire and police and their openness to embrace electric vehicles, which is all very good news. So going back to what I was going speaking about earlier about there's no mandate. So we have nothing in our code that is, and we have no policy as a city that mandates that we pursue low emissions vehicles. The county in, I believe, 2021 made a code change.

There's is, in my opinion, a little bit weak. It says that the procurement office must purchase hybrid or hybrid or zero emissions vehicles so long as the purchase is technologically, financially I have one other caveat in here. Financially, operationally, and technologically, it meets the needs of the using agencies. So there's quite a bit of wiggle room in that, and, also, they are not mandating electric or zero emission, whatever that may be. There's always hydrogen, but that's not a field that is ready.

So it just says low emissions or zero emissions. That's something the city could consider is whether we would make an actual code change requiring low emission and or zero emission vehicles to be purchased whenever possible. Let's see. Just wanna say that EV vehicles have about a longer life, and they require, of course, far less maintenance than other vehicles. So there's cost savings.

There's some initial upfront costlier purchases, but within three years, it has been shown those costs are recouped, and there's a great deal of cost savings as far as the maintenance of these vehicles as time goes on. So the city fleet manager has a schedule. This is it's an appendice to this to this report. It's also there's some discussion of his purchasing policy within the report. But most of the vehicles are replaced, depending on what type of vehicle between seven and fifteen years.

He did tell me that often our vehicles are used longer than that policy states, longer than the seven years, eleven or twelve or fifteen years because they just the maintenance crew just keeps making tweaks to them and to prolong their life. In part because consistently, the fleet manager, and this is also the report, has requested a certain amount of funding, to purchase new vehicles, to add to the fleet, and to replace aging vehicles, and he's been consistently not funded in his request. I believe you just provided me updated information. His request this year for funding is a bit over $5,000,000 with an emphasis on purchasing vehicles for police, fire, transit, and then there's an other category. He is right now focused mostly on hybrid for police and fire.

He did tell me that he could focus the other category on all electric. So we're working on doing that this year, but there is no schedule nor budget that is specifically dedicated to electric purchases in the fleet manager's schedule. That is something, again, I think we need to between him and I, we need to work on mapping that out going forward for at least the next ten years, how many vehicles based on the report we have here and his information as well that we should be purchasing yearly and what that allocated budget should be. Right now, it's not broken out at all in the budget request. It's just lumped in all vehicles kinda cost, whether they be regular internal combustion engine vehicles, ICE engines, or hybrid or plug in hybrid or all electric.

So that's something that, you know, council may wanna take up as well. Let's see. So I get there have been there are needs in every department and areas of opportunity in every department for electric vehicles, and especially as the technology advances. And one of the recommendations is in this report is, especially with regard to the department of public works and the department of rec recreation and parks, is that not only to look at your regular vehicles that you're using to get around sedans, smaller vehicles like the Chevy Bolts, your transit vans, but also to look at the landscaping equipment and some of the heavier construction equipment. I know that Rec and Parks was planning or already had someone demonstrate a I think it was a front end loader front front end loader or a backhoe that was all electric, and they're interested in those kinds of purchases.

As I said, fire is interested in transitioning as well as police. And we've already, because of the gas powered leaf blower ban, had to purchase electric leaf blowers. The Department of Public Works did so last July already because that legislation was passed in February. It went into effect 12/30/2024, but Public Works replaced the three lightweight hand blowers that they had with electric in July. And then Rec and Parks has they have more, obviously.

They have the handheld light duty handheld. They have the backpacks, and they have the ride on type of leaf blowers, the more heavy duty ones. Those don't get used near as often, so they have a longer life than backpacks and the handhelds. But Rec and Parks has already transitioned their backpacks and handhelds over to electric so that we are in compliance with our own law. Let's see.

Looking at other departments. Department of Public Works also has they have 28 vehicles in their fleet, light duty sedans, SUVs, but they also have some light duty trucks and some heavy duty trucks. They as well as their specialty vehicles such as they have a medic unit, a bucket truck. They have street sweepers. They have a refuse truck.

And then they have other equipment like compressors, signboards, light towers, forklifts, and their sewer rotors, which get clogs out of the drain pipes and sewers. Those types of equipment also have electric options, and we have not explored those for public works yet. But with regard to public works, rec and parks, and with the harbor master's office, they're all using light duty pickup trucks. And there are options for pickup trucks which have not been explored yet by the fleet manager, so that's an opportunity area we can look into this year. Planning and zoning has 10 sedans and three pickup trucks, so they have fewer in their fleet.

Most of those are used for on-site inspections and for the city arborist in his work. Transportation, obviously, has many. They have 28 vehicles, 15 of which are transit buses. You know, we have two electric buses there. They have SUVs, medium duty pickup trucks, and some other trucks, and they've had to transition their at least one SUV and a Chevy and also acquired a Chevy Bolt to electric.

Rec and Parks, 30 vehicles, SUVs, as I mentioned, pickup trucks, tractors, trailers, vans, backhoes, other landscaping equipment, and they also have an inflatable boat. And boats, which I'll get to, are another area we can go electric. As I already mentioned, we're purchasing our electric ferry and designing that as I speak. The Harbormaster has four boats. All of them are regular engines. No electric boats there. And they they have one pickup truck, and they are in need of another pickup truck. Police have a 141 patrol cars. We know that 20 of those are hybrid. And as I said, home charging and fast charging at the police station are issues to get them electric.

Fire has pumper trucks, ladder trucks, medic units, sedans, and SUVs. They do have an electric bolt, Chevy Bolt, all electric. So there are opportunities, but also challenges in all of these areas. A challenge we're facing right now for funding, grant funding that is, obviously, is coming from what's going on with the federal government. You know, EPA paused a lot of the grants, the Maryland Department of Environment, Maryland Department of Transportation, DNR, and some of the other agencies I work with have programs that are funded through the federal government, through the Department of Energy, through the Federal Transit Administration, through EPA, and NOAA.

And so some of the funding that we are looking to for infrastructure charging as well as fleet purchases, solar panels, are at risk right now. Fortunately, for two of the grants that I have for infrastructure to put in charging at city facilities such as department transportation, fire, police, OEM, recreation and parts at PIP, and DPW's maintenance facility, those should all be safe because those were funds that were already encumbered and appropriated. And, so I have two grants that I believe are safe. However, the one for, the infrastructure we are going to put at city facilities is we're pausing as a city right now on pursuing that until we get firm a confirmance from DOE about the funding on it because we don't wanna enter contracts to purchase equipment that we won't be able to pay for. So what's going on with the federal government is a little problematic for me with charging infrastructure and potentially some of the funding for purchasing the grants, some of the vehicles.

So that's kind of a broad overview of what is in this report and then my updates to it, what's going on with the city. So I was gonna pause there. I don't know which time you wanna spend on this anyway and take questions.

I appreciate all of that information, Jackie. As we were able to kind of start reading through it, my thought for this presentation today was really so that the public had access to that without reading the number of pages, you know, through the documents. So I appreciate the huge summary that you had. And it looks like my colleagues have some questions, and I'm gonna start with Alderman Pindel Charles.

Thank you, madam chair. Miss Gall, this was extraordinarily comprehensive. Thank you so very, very, very much. Two questions. Number one, did the fire department ever mention an issue regarding response times as far as these, vehicles? And number two, will there be required additional training for those who maintain our vehicles? Is that another cost that we will have to incur for them?

Good question. So with regards regard to response times, that's not so much of a concern for the fire department. They know that these vehicles are extremely quick, and so it it doesn't affect the response. Now the fight the larger vehicles like the pumper truck, those are usually a hybrid and that not true like a hybrid like you think of like a Prius. They are running they can run all electric, but they have diesel backup.

So if for some re and we have a very small radius as a city, so charging and running out of charge is really not an issue for Annapolis, especially since we would put, these types, especially that large of a vehicle, require a level three charger, the fast chargers, and that's the kind of thing I was going to put over at the fire department with my infrastructure money that's been kind of paused. So we would definitely support them with a level three charger so that when they come back in from a run or any of their other vehicles, even their smaller vehicles, they could charge very quickly. And we if they needed two of those, we would get them two of those. But they have that diesel backup. So if for some reason the vehicle had to be out of sight for a prolonged period of time unanticipated, the vehicle could go can go over to diesel and still keep running.

Recently, I I think it was two months ago, a company that the fire department purchases most of the vehicles from, it's called Pierce. They came to the fire department with one of their pumper trucks and spent time with the fire department there and the maintenance crew and the fleet manager and myself, explaining everything comprehensively about, their their vehicles. I think that truck came down from Frederick, Maryland, and they are the supplier to many of the jurisdictions that are purchasing these trucks now. And so they they talked a lot about maintenance and training our maintenance crew. Our maintenance crew is already up to speed on electric vehicles in general because we have about 15 of them now, and they're they're they don't need to work on them really because there's very little maintenance, but they have been trained.

And all of the suppliers, the manufacturers, and the dealers provide service and the training of of your maintenance crews. So that's something that is usually supplied gratis, and I'm not sure how we're dealing. I'd have to talk to Dan if we're actually paying anyone right now to train our maintenance crews. Dan Horvath, our fleet manager, that is. But they there's very little maintenance with any of these vehicles because they don't have the type of engines that a regular internal combustion engine would have.

Okay. Great. Thank you so much. Yep. Thank you're welcome.

Alderman Savage.

Thank you, madam chair. Yeah. And thank you, miss miss Giles. Great information, and I think really sets a good framework for, us trying to get our heads around this transition to, electric. And but have you sent out the report? Because I

Yes. I did.

Problems finding it in my email. If you could send it again.

Okay. Yeah. I sent it to the all the city council members.

Okay. Yeah. I'm not seeing that. But if you could send it again to me individually, K. Yeah. I can certainly follow-up with you one on one if we have questions or maybe bring them up at environmental matters.

And you can send it to me as well. Thank you.

Okay. You're welcome. But

this is good, and I think and I'll have to take a look at that, but I'm curious. Have you laid out It sounds like there's a lot to kind of consider before we set any kind of target. Do you recommend any kind of target dates in there for transitioning to a 100% electric?

Well, I will say that the there have been the recommendations by the you know, what the county is doing, I'll just reference that, and they're trying to transition completely let me see. I wanna find, like, where the county one was. I think they're trying to transition completely by 2035. Let's see. Anne Oh, yeah. Anne Arundel County. Let me find it.

I didn't even know they had that.

They have a they have a plan, and they are working with Resilience Authority on funding to they've applied for funding to the Resilience Authority for funding for purchasing vehicles. They the other thing I mentioned was they had they did, Resilience Authority did a study on, transitioning police department over in in the Anne Arundel County and made recommendations and noted challenges and opportunities there. But the second thing they are doing is the Resilience Authority is actually seeking funding to purchase vehicles and to put in infrastructure for the county. And Lost Point Place, I hadn't made a note of their date. So I I was thinking I was going to talk to folks over there, the Resilience Authority, about what is realistic for transitioning.

As I said, we're running into a little bit of a pause with some of our funding, so it might be slowing things down both at local jurisdictional level and the state level. Do you know the state had a goal of 300,000 electric vehicles registered in the state of Maryland by 2025, and they fell pretty significantly short of that number. So they may be changing their goals as well. But I know that the state is for their own fleets, they're trying to could be by mid twenty mid twenty thirties, like 2035, change all of their fleets over to electric.

I mean, the state's the state's not gonna be able to make their targets because they're refusing to fund they're refusing to fund the climate initiatives with the proposed revenue stream for the climate that is recommended by the the Maryland Climate Commission. So they're never gonna be able to make it, but it's it does bring up the point with us, like, that similar to what we did with the forest. The the forest canopy goal is is I think it's helpful to pick a goal and then figure out how we can what we actually need to do to to fund it. Because I I just find that adopting a goal alone often doesn't result in in the outcome unless we have an actual

So that was And

I think what what you've done helps, I think, identify some of these challenges and be a good part of that.

Yeah. So my next step with this plan was to take the recommendations, come and, you know, kind of break everything out of this plan and see set some goals with timelines and then work with Dan Horvath on what will we need to do to fund these goals. You know, what what kind of money do we need to put forward each year our budget request to get there? And then other things and other things that we need to do. Now there's you know, if you go through here, there's a lot of recommendations. Some of them that, I and Dylan have been addressing already. As as grants appear, we just grab them. So

We lost more than half of our equipment inside product. The revenue that we'll lose, it's looking like we could be closed a week, maybe two weeks. The you know, we've got employees, and I'm I'm speaking on behalf of all the small businesses downtown, just not mine. We've got employees that depend on us. And it's just we we put everything we have into these businesses.

It's just, again, bear with me. Just thank you very much, you know, to the mayor, to senator Alfred. Just this is it'll be a huge burden lifted off of us just knowing that this this financial aid is gonna be made available. It's just it's a lot it's a lot to deal with, and it's it's it's our entire lives. And, again, I speak on behalf of everybody here on Dock Street in the downtown area.

And, again, thank you to the community. There's been a lot of outreach. Just coming in saying, you know, just asking how we're doing. It means a lot. And, you know, again, just thank you very much. Greatly appreciate it.

And so if the City Dock had been complete on Tuesday, none of these businesses would have been flooded. So we are looking to make this happen sooner rather than later. So we start construction at City Dock. It's not a case of if there's gonna be the next Isabelle or will there be. It is gonna come. There's no question. We just had the hottest year on record for the planet. Catastrophic weather events are gonna be a way of life, and we have to deal with it. We want the state capital of Maryland. We want Annapolis to be the resilience capital of America.

We wanna lead the way on this project. So but we have to come up with a short term solutions. Another solution besides the the barrier that we deployed next week is we're gonna work with a a a delegate, Dana Jones, senator Alfred, on getting some money for an idea called these door dams, the Dutch door dams. For around $5,000, we could fit out a lot of these doorways, and they would have some protection up to a certain point. We have to sort of check, you know, the vulnerabilities of that, but we think we could probably provide 10 or 20 businesses with that kind of thing.

We could provide the the Maritime Museum with that kind of thing, and it might be, a way to get them to stay up longer. The barrier was great because we kept traffic flowing for four extra hours yesterday, the main artery into the city for Eastport. So for I would I wanna thank you for covering this because these businesses are so important to us. Pips is an institution. Everybody loves this man, and everybody loves that restaurant.

So I'm looking forward to getting in there and getting my my my next hot dog. We are open for questions. If you have any questions of any of us, there are people here from the county, state, city. Please go ahead. I will gonna ask you if you might know that. This is

thank you. This is Chris Jakubiak, Department of Planning and Zoning. 17 of her notices were posted. Roughly 13 are still posted. So we've worked at the department is working in coordination with the county department of health to move those forward.

Can you talk about what you're seeing in those buildings?

Some of the damage is extensive. Equipment failures, wet floors, obviously, wet carpets. The walls and foundations internal to the buildings are absorbing of water. Some water still standing in some structures. That's the typical set of damage we're seeing.

And I know that there's some work that needs to be done on the hill. So if you have any specific questions for senator alpha earth delegate