Halls Road Sidewalk Committee - Regular Meeting

Okay. So, thank you all so much for coming to the uh first initial Halls Road Sidewalk Committee meeting at April 8th at 5:30 p.m. I'm going to start to chair this meeting. Um but then you're going to choose a chair later in the meeting. Um so, I did prepare packets for you and we'll walk through that as we go. Um why don't we just go around and introduce ourselves um so that everybody knows. You may all know each other but maybe not. and um why you're interested in construction of sidewalks. So I'm Martha Shoemaker for select woman

uh Tim Grizzle prior for selectman board of finance and uh recently worked on the ferry road sidewalk committee and various other things. So, yep. Hi, good afternoon. I'm James Glenn. Um, it's my first time serving on a committee and that's really why I was interested in serving on this one is to be able to find a way to help and um seem like a good start. Great. Frank Morelli. Um, just uh have a lot of lot of years of uh work in projects like this uh large and small and like to help out if I can.

Great. Bob Antoniac. Um, again, first time on a committee, uh, construction management from Syracuse University. I did the sidewalks in Sabbrook with my father for 30 years. So, all right. Uh, Brett Edmond, uh, resident of Neckro and business owner on Halls Road. Robin breeding and I'm a person who really cares about the town and I really would like to help make this a project that fits old lime in particular and just

Mark comtock owner of hydranger glor 99 road bureau a resident here online for the past 40 plus years I worked in structure all my life and it's first time on the committee and I'd like to lend my hand in making sure we get a good product for a good choice.

All right. Thank you. Okay. So, um basically in your packet you'll see your charge or admission that basically we have a community connectivity grant what we applied for. We got the most that you could get 800,000. Um and we and it is for construction only. So, we have in our next year's budget $173,000 for our engineering firm um who's the town engineer. Nathan Jacobson out of Chester and Aaron Mortonson is our town engineer. He's our lead and he will be with you in the May meeting. Um and he'll walk you through this process. Aaron has worked a lot on this connectivity grant for other towns, so he knows the ins and outs of what we have to do requirements for the state. Um, he's also extremely familiar with DOT and because Hall's Road is a state highway, we they are going to be playing a major role in this process as well because they have requirements. So, we're going to Aaron will walk you through those and explain what we can and cannot do. I already made a phone call to Brett because Aaron was in shortly after we got the grant and um went through about how the state requires some type of a little island and Brett had already done his homework and had gone over to Formage in Sabbrook to see how they had handled it and that was great and then I sent Aaron over to look at that. So those are the types of things that you're going to be challenged with because there is a state road and what are their requirements and there will be something there'll be some give from them but not everything. Our project manager for um the state and the connectivity grant will be Colin Horin. Colin will be joining us um at a certain

point in time but right now he just wants you all to get familiar and get settled. but he'll come in as well more closely when we get to the point where we actually have a design and we're ready to start coming out to bid and things like that. Um, so the next thing in your packet you'll find is the proposal from Jacobson and kind of what they're walking through. Um, and I'm not going to delete it through with you, but um, this basically gives you um, some of the uh, ins and outs of what they're going to be charged. And if you get to the page four, I believe it starts with what is the task that are going to be done just to get it to the bid process. So, one of the things is the land surveying and that has to be done and Erin and I have already talked I'm going to start that process because before you can really put a permanent plan on place all the surveying has to be done in the soil testing. So, he's going to get started on that and he'll walk me through it when he but he wants to get the surveyor in line so that his service he knows his services will be used. So that will be starting and I know that Tim you probably had some of that with Fairy Road. I know you were replacing existing but

one of the other things that you'll have to work through on this is easements because every business owner etc will have some places will have easements and those are the most timeconsuming things to take place. I've been working on that for the Grassland Road bridge project for the last six months and we just have two pieces of paper left to sign, but getting it taken care of is sometimes tracking down the owner, getting the owner to come in um to get things done is time consuming and they don't always have the same schedule we do. So, we had to put the Grassi Hill Bridge project off another year because to go out to bid for the best pricing for that, we needed to be ready in January and we weren't finished with the paperwork for the legal side and they won't let you go out to bid for that project until it's all all the easements are tidied up. And I'm sure the connectivity grant has the same requirement. So, luckily, you're only dealing with those property owners on the north side of the street.

So, you're not doing everyone. Um, so you can review um the proposal from Aaron and then if you have questions for him in May, you'll be able to answer them. Any questions for me so far? Has anything been signed visa v Jacobson like a document or is this it? This is the document and I will sign it because last night well we really and truly because of our budget constraints. We did talk about how we're going to do it, but they're going to start the process and not bill us till July 1st because they are built into the budget for 200. You have 200,000 for engineering in next year's capital budget. Oh, 200.

Yeah, we Anita went a little over in case something happened. Oh, you mentioned 173 is right. That's the proposal price, but Anita, but the budget contains 200. That doesn't mean you need to spend it though. No, no, of course. Okay. I was going to tell you that it was 200. so that you could just stick to the 17.

But I know that Tim has a very uh sharp pencil. We'll get through this. As far as criteria review, um there are some standards that are in our ordinances and I just I put these together. Um they're a little contradictory on closes. So I'm going to pass these out. I'm sorry that I didn't have these um in your packets, but I was highlighting deployed. Thanks. I'll take the last one because it's just a lousy stagle. So, basically, these are ordinances that are town ordinances. And the last ordinance I just want to show you because there is

some contradictory and I'm going to talk to Eric Nap about this as well, but you'll notice that it says that sidewalks have to be a minimum of five feet in width. And I'm quite sure that is the ADA requirement now as well. So, we do have that in our ordinance in two of them. But our third one, which talks more about sub um more subdivision design, and I just don't want people to get confused, says it could be 4 feet in width, but we're not doing a subdivision if we're doing a major walkway. And the state will have those same necessarily requirements, but Aaron will bring you up to date if anything has changed from the um date. the next thing and then they're talk it talks about in these what it has to be made of things like that and how depth the depth of it etc

and I think any questions on criteria okay are there differences between the uh requirements for a sidewalk on a state road versus a non-state road well that is a good question and I'll have Erin answer that for you and may I'm sure that the state has some requirements the nicest. Well, as always with the state, they'll have requirements, but they're not going to take care of them. I guess I mean like all the sidewalks on Lime Street are not in compliance with this. So, is everything grandfathered or I mean is this obviously has to apply to new construction, but

this when was Let's just look at the date that this was amended and it's not on here for some reason. Usually it has the date that it was accepted. I'd have to go back and see what days these were approved, but I also know that zoning is of course is doing their rewrites as well. Um, and I would make sure that Eric puts all that Eric Knap gets all that information to Aaron so that we're in compliance. Um in sound view we had to have in in front of businesses there might have to be an island or something if it like in front of treasures it's so will the state likely want to have um entry and exit as opposed to just an wide open stretch

they are going to require something like that but I think from has it so that it's sort of a drive it's sort of more imprinted into the ground. It's very lowlying. But that's one of the reasons I called Brett that day because the initial um designs, which I'll share with you in a minute, um have what they would consider to be an island. And there's a requirement for it. But there's also a requirement for the for the reversing of a car, right? And the 24 ft behind that, which doesn't exist at my location. So I imagine uh I there I imagine we'll have rules buting against rules for there will what's going to be possible

and your needs versus what they have and how can we work around that and that's going to how did we choose the north side of the road versus the south side of the road. Um I chose to put the grant for the north side of the road because I knew that there was a big Y was possibly being sold at the time. There were two people interested in it at the time I wrote the grant. So I decided I was going to stick to the side that I knew was ours or that was more and we started we'll start there and then our hope is that that we'll apply for another grant for the uh southside. Do we anticipate crosswalks at some point in the future beyond the one that's at the traffic light

which could use some updating? Um you will have you have crosswalks at the end of Halls Road on both ends. Um new lights will probably new types of crosswalk um signal lights are going to probably be going in. The state is doing that project as far as the requirements for what's in the middle. you can request crosswalks and those are things that you can discuss with Aaron

when when the state decides perhaps to say if there were to be a traffic light red light green light at the post office crossing to the hideway does when this I mean obviously it's the state's perview to do that do they necessarily interface with you before they undertake something like that I mean does it come is it at their behest or yours

actually usually when the state project is project put out. The first thing that happens is we learn about it at a rivercog meeting that it becomes that it's a transportation project and we are shown it and if we have any comments we can comment on it and we can call them and say whoa you got this wrong. They have not put anything out there. They know that we have this grant. They know that we're working on this. So I think for right now they're pretty going to stay pretty quiet for Halls Road area. As you know, they're putting in the mast arms going across and that's basically more for safety and cleanup because they don't really want those lights swinging in the winds anymore. So

I think in that Hall's Road at the very beginning, the state made it known that they weren't interested in a sidewalk crossing at the post office, but you know, things could change. It would make something like six lights to get from the Bowen Bridge to Sill Lane. Well, you could do it without a without a traffic light, similar to like they just did on Main Street in Saburn. We have one at the academy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

If there will be options presented and there's things changing every day. There's always something new. Um the T2 school at Yukon which does transportation um provides information for transportation and some of the various elements that you can add to designs, things that you can use. They're always available to to give us the updates to that they see coming down the pike in case the state is making changes and they let us know. But as of right now, I would you're starting with a basic design concept. From there, you're going to be making changes and suggestions and working with Aaron as to what and what is not allowed. And then the and he'll pull in the state when we need to. But we had our initial meeting with the state. They went through it. They talked to Aaron and I about how they're so willing to work with us on this. I mean, they're excited about it that it's going in. So, um, when I started the meeting, I my biggest concern was the Lieutenant River Bridge and the fact that I know that I didn't want to put in sidewalks going over that bridge and then tell have them tell me they're going to change it in three years, five years. I don't want to spend our money on construction of something that's going to get ripped up when they decide to change that bridge because bridge repair is a big thing right now in the state. So they told me at first that it was 20 years before they'd touched that bridge. By the end of the day it was three to five years. So by the end of the conversation they had gone in and one of the engineers had started scoping out when the last time it was checked, when was this, when was the last, you know, inspection. And he said, he goes, "We might be doing that in five years." I said, 'Okay, then I'm not going to pay to pave that section

because when they do that, they're saying that they're going to widen and they're going to add not necessarily another walkway, but they're going to enhance where that walkway is that they put in originally. It's the only concrete part of the sidewalk going over that area. um they are going to change it to become more of what their standards are now. It will be wider. There will be a guard rail on the traffic side. There will be another guardrail on the river side and they will put that in. And we can also have a play in what type of guardrail is put up aesthetically for that area. So I mean because I don't really want to see a silver guard rail. If you thought of a south sidewalk, might they have a pedestrian way on the both sides of the bridge for that ultimate possibility? It's not necessary.

I don't think they want to widen on the south side because there's so much the land slopes so much. They'd have to fill more

and they'd have to build up the embankments. So, I think everything is going to go more towards the north if they widen. So, you can ask those questions to the state when they come in like what will your plans be and how will this interfere with what we create. Um, but if I think that once we get our project rolling, what I've seen is they will jump in because now everything's going to be in construction mode, they'll want to be in the construction mode, too. They don't really want to come in and change things after you've done a huge project that they helped pay for.

To the point of ripping up what you build. Um, has there ever been any discussion of putting the utilities underground on Holes Road? Not in my term. What about yours?

We thought about it on Lime Street and it was just just church corner was going to be like a million dollars because you have to have these concrete vaults. Now that's a corner. So it just was prohibitive. Now I don't know. You see those wires that emanate across near Hangry Goose and all they go to those huge towers that cross the Ballwin bridge. So those are big big you know it's not just your standard 240 volts or something. It's huge. So, I would be very surprised if uh that that the the state or somebody would pay to bury that stuff. I just don't know. We could ask, but it's and then you have to have laterals going to all the properties, too. So, that would be another thing. Yeah. Be nice. But,

okay. So I think you'll have a lot of qu in the next weeks. You'll probably formulate a lot of questions for Aaron. If you want to, you can send them to whoever your chair will be and then we can forward those on to Aaron so that he can prepare appropriately for the meeting and not waste time and having to come back again in June to get give more information. So any questions that you have once you'll choose a chair today, you can also email me. I'm happy to email Aaron and say these are questions that they're going to have for you. So if you can have answers it would be great. Has there been discussion about trees and shrubs and stuff along other sidewalk?

Well, I know that trees trees are in part of the the design concept and that is why Mark wants to be on this committee because he wants to play a hand in that. The only thing I will say about trees is that we must consult with our tree commission. We have a new chair. Her name is Emily Griswalt. Who's that?

And um and also our tree warden Tom Degen. I think they should be considered um consulted invited to a meeting when you get into trees. Um I know that Tom is very conscious of he doesn't want us to be planting things that are going to take a lot of maintenance. He doesn't want to see us using things that could be easily come become diseased because of the pest that we have around here. And they always would like to have things that are native to the

environment. So that's a little future. Let's get the sidewalk plan first. We spent a lot of time on trees on ferry road, didn't we? Not Tim. A lot of time on trees ferry road. It was the other way around. Getting rid of trees. I do. I helped you do that, too.

All right. Now, I think the biggest thing that you're going to be tasked with is snow removal. So, this morning, public works was here for another meeting and we were talking about this. And Tim, I don't know how this came about, but nowhere in the history of time can we find any written document that says that the town is responsible for plowing all these sidewalks on.

I don't think it was ever stated that the town is responsible, but I think from the long long time ago, the town did Lime Street and that was pretty much it. And even the extent of where it went, it might not have gone as f from the bridge to the congregational church. Um, well, they're now going up Ferry Road, too. So,

yeah. So, and and not only are we talking about Halls, I mean Lime Street and Ferry Road, but we have Sound View, we have um Cross Lane, Cross Road there. and uh you know every time you put a sidewalk in that that would be an additional burden. So uh I don't think it's it's a policy that the town is and will be responsible. I think it's just not been decided upon and the town just said okay we'll make it simple and just do it. So this is the snow plowing policy for the town that is on our website and I highlighted the area but the crews are assigned their sidewalks at town hall senior center and other town facilities

but we have we have to start to think about this because this year's winter we know is hard. We had two big storms and is this is this stuffy new or is this No, it's been it's been on the website for years. Okay. which hosted during your time, Michelle. Is it um but they drew it to my attention today. So, the town crew doesn't know why we do all the sidewalks on M Street. I'm a New London girl. I was raised you had to have your snow. You see how we move in front of your house? Me, too.

And like whenever the snow stops, start shoveling. So, this might be something that we might have to change because our town um we have a public works department with six men. We're adding one this year. We're bringing one new person on if the budget passes because we have to start continually plan for you know if somebody's we've had some illnesses we have some FMLA people we need that sixth person when necessary. Do you have a meeting here? Are you scheduled for this room? Are you scheduled for this room?

Uh six o'clock. It wasn't on my calendar. Oh, okay. Maybe I Peter, talk to Katie. I think she's Katie's there. Find out from Katie. I'm sorry if we stole your room, but it was on the calendar for here for this. Oh, I know that. This This policy doesn't specifically say Lime Street and Ferry Road or that sort of thing. this town. I know. But I wasn't Look, this is before me. Yeah. Way before me. Yeah. You I mean, you when they bought that, they said they bought that machine. Yeah. For

after the blizzard. The blizzard. I think it was either the blizzard of 78 that they bought that machine ago. Okay. So, another blizzard. But they bought the machine that we have downstairs. It's a like I don't it's like a job deer of some sort that but it's not I mean they had a hard time with it this year with the 18 24 inches. It's not meant to do that type of improvement

and it's time consuming. It's not like oh we just whiz down the street and do it. Um so we have to come up this part of this is how do we care for those sidewalks and um you know as we know the business the people who own the property are not necessarily there like where the hideway plaza is those two owners are in New York they have a property management team which by the way just recently changed and according to Northeast Capital Realy it is under contract but nobody's told us anything except that on on the website it says under contract. Um so we we need to take those things into consideration and some of your research is going to have to be well how do other towns do that and who's responsible for it? Does the property management team or something like where Ocean State job lot is in Sabbrook? Do they do the sidewalks out there? Does Carl Fortuna pay? I don't think Carl's paying to have all these done. Do we have a breakdown of what the cost is to run the plows for those, you know, like what's the town spending to actually plow those sidewalks?

No, but I can probably get it for you. Just be interesting to see what we're spending on it.

I know that it died over on Ferry Road during one of the storms and they had to let it rest. It was just so overworked and I think they sort of pushed it back here or well, I guess it worked as far as driving, but you couldn't plow with it. So, they brought it back here and let it rest for a few hours, tinkered with it, but it's getting older. It's an older machine and they take really good care of it, but I don't have the manpower. We do not in this town have the manpower to have somebody out doing that full-time plus plowing roads. So, we have to think about that.

So, who plows the sidewalk on the north side that exists now? I think it's asphalt. Um, from the bridge up to past uh well up to Andes. I think

the past two years it's was the state kind of does that one little area that they're responsible for. But there was so much snow this year that I sent the guys over because we had people complaining about the students walking to um dance studio um part-time jobs when you're going to get the snow off. But again, if you look at the list of all the things we have to do, that becomes the second third ring of priorities for safety reasons. So they'll be they'll be responsible though for that whole sidewalk. The state will since it's a state road.

No, they only do that little concrete section. But when when we get new sidewalks, they won't be responsible for this. But you can if you can charm them into doing it. Well, it is Route One though, right? Halls Road. Yeah. Carries Route One, which is State Road, but it's Route One over in St. Brook 2. and they don't do them there. Okay. I believe in Sabbrook if it's residential, you're responsible. If it's commercial, I think the town is doing it. So, you think he's doing all the way down through all those areas through one through Route One, I believe. So, I'd like to know. I can find out.

I want to know what his machine is, too. He uses because they're doing it pretty fast. Yeah. Yeah, I think they have a snowblower on a machine, but they probably have a couple of guys on it and that's their job to do it. And even if we hired somebody part-time for just the seasonal stuff, we could do that, too, if we could train them on whatever machinery we have and just bring them in for the big storms. But we had to close town hall for two days because we couldn't get in. There was I mean, you couldn't get in. There was no parking lot. Parking lot's the last thing that they do. Um, so I had to wait until we could plow through here. Do we have a list of all the sidewalks in town and whether we plow them?

We don't plow. We We only plow sound the couple of things that we do. We did do the sidewalks that are near the transit station over on Shore Road this year. And the state called us, the River um, Valley Transit called us and asked us to do the bus stop there.

So, we did plow that out. We also went down and did plow the the sidewalk area near the shoreline gate uh community center because the mailboxes are there for the those people that received their mail at those common mailboxes. And so those that was we did do that, but it was like day three of cleanup, not day one. And somebody made us aware of it, you know, it needed to get taken care of. Cross lane by up by Shippy. I did have them go to do that because the kids are walking to school now. Oh, cross lane. But again, well, we didn't have school for two days either. So, that was What about does the school plow their side?

They plow over here and they do in front of center school and they have their team that comes in and does everything. Do we do anything uh on Harford Avenue? Just the area near the Shoreline Community Center where the mailboxes are. Okay. But for safety, and I did learn this too during a blizzard, something new every day um in this job, but if there's a 911 call in a storm, the first thing that goes is a plow. Yeah.

Plows go first and then the they'll meet the emergency equipment at the end of the road and they'll plow them way in. They'll plow someone's driveway if they have to to get to whatever type and they did. We had a shed fire, a really bad shed fire where we had to go into and they allowed so that the fire trucks could get there. So that is one of our policies during storms, but that's all manned through Jrobe Bears at emergency operations. So if they get one call for 911, the next call goes out to Ed and the guys that somebody needs to get to this address. Is there any value in obtaining a a contract for a commercial plowing contractor to find a swabborg and have them be responsible for these areas in the event of a storm and have them plow it?

We could do that. We do use Nickerson's. We did go out to bid this year and um Nickerson's came back with still the lowest bid. They've been doing all the fire they do all the firehouses for us and the police station. Um, I would think just for liability reasons it'd be prudent to do that and have somebody lined up to do that every year. Well, maybe that's what Sabbrook does, but maybe Bob, if you can look into Yeah, I can look into find out how they handle it. If they I think they have park and wrecks. There's so many do. Yeah. Well, we don't have Yeah, two people in parks and wreck. Yeah. And Don Bugby is not gonna Yeah, we can check Essex because they install a lot of new sidewalks. Okay.

Um, I can check with Norm who does it. Yeah, I can reach out to Norm. So I think that those are just things that to keep in the back of your mind as we enhance the town we also have to enhance the maintenance and how are we going to do this um what happened right are you open on Mondays and Tuesdays when that during that storm so you didn't have to worry

and uh private plowing but we again with 18 and 20 in we let him uh use his discretion as to when he can get to it because I don't need it on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Okay. Um, we have a a beautiful uh southern exposure, so the meltoff is terrific. If he gets to it Monday morning, it's dry pavement by Wednesday, regardless of how cold it is. Um, and so there's a benefit to that, but to not bust his chucks, um, we generally offer to be last. Um, and so there's an implication for that. Um, would it be a true statement that we are not under any obligation to provide sidewalks everywhere, but once a sidewalk is provided, it needs to be made passable pretty much at all times?

Well, I think that ADA, American Disabilities Act, probably has a few rules that we'll have to follow of how it's accessible. But I think that in any any rules, I mean, if we look at major cities, come on, we've seen New York, they took forever to clean up, they do their best. And when it's a substantial snowstorm, it's not like we have to have it done in six hours. But and most people like to just stay home and enjoy the fact that it's sort of a day to except for my neighbors who like to go out and snow. All right. So, those are things that I you can think about. You can also have questions for me. I will try to come to as many meetings as possible. Um, and we'll keep you informed of any changes from the the state that I hear about. But that's that. And so now it comes to time that we need an appointment of a chairperson for this committee. So, do we have any nominations from the floor?

I'd like to nominate Tim Grizzl. How about you, Jim? Robin, you don't mind you, Jim? Will you accept that? And will you? I will. Thank you. The pay is pretty good actually. Okay. So, are there any other nominations for chair? Hearing none, call for a vote. All those in favor of having Tim become the chair of the Halls Road Sidewalk Committee, please signify by saying I. I unanim anyone abstain. Okay. No,

I probably have to abstain, right? You can vote for yourself. I'll Tim. I'll say I have to do I'll do the minutes for you this time, Tim. All right. Um, and Chris was not here, so he'll be here next time. He was in earlier today, though. Okay. So, Tim, um, we just need to set future M meeting dates. Yeah. And the only thing that Chris said is that he would like to stay away from Thursday nights because that's planning night and he's on the planning commission. So, so Wednesdays are good for him if he wants to speak to Wednesdays. I don't know what everybody else's schedule is like.

I'd like to avoid with our with our group. I guess we could be in the mezzanine if need be. It's nicer to be in here. Um well what happens is if you just give us the day then we'll figure out when where we can do the first two weeks of are the craziest saying u the 5:30 might be tough for people so we could consider a later time u I suppose if it gets to be six o'clock or something it's dinner time so I I don't know whether you can default to 6:30 or 7 does that matter on your side.

Yeah, 6:30 would be great. I mean, dinner doesn't matter. 6:30. Anybody have problem with say 6:30? Nope. Yes. Okay. Then what day of the weeks do you want? Um, is Wednesday good or we'd like to kind of keep you helps us if it's the same day. Wednesdays are good for me. Thursdays or not? Wednesday. Yeah, Wednesday.

I Do you think we should um It's hard to anticipate how quickly things need attention. We could say monthly, but it might be that if there's not much going on, I guess you could always cancel a meeting if there was nothing. So, I've got to talk about

I've got Aaron going. Um I mean he's going to put the survey or on alert that this is starting um because you can't really do anything. Oh, look at these too. I'll pull these out. Brett, can I ask you mind rolling these out? These are the sheets from VSC that did the initial concept design. And so we're using these to work off of just but there'll be changes made. There's like five. Are these available digitally?

Um, we can put them up digitally tomorrow. I just, you know, I don't I'll say Robin, I don't want to really I can send them to you, but I don't want to put them up because I don't want people to think this is the plan. Okay. So, this is just this is what we are starting with. This is they were done paid for already by the town. So this is what we started with and this is what we sent off as a concept design concept design that's big and that is

so they have three I think this is got to Right here is these are just side side panels like what it would look like when they thought about possibly adding a lane having trees. This is just what they had talked about as far as travel. This has to be done too. This sheet two really looks like sheet one. This says sheet two and sheet four. So Oh, it matches. That's what you do. Oh, that's what you do. Sheet three has to match with another one on

three. So, here's All right. So, this has to match this three. Sheet three. They don't always just because they match, they don't match up directly. What's that? This is the beginning right here at Ne. This is Huntley. So, this Y and then this would go Oh, and this is the last one. Yeah.

Is this a bus stop with a Yes. That they thought about putting in. It's not. Okay. And that is the end of the road where it comes. So I think that that sheet comes over here, right? So if you see the sheets have different sheet numbers on each side, right? So that one says sheet two. It says sheet two here. But this is this is the the post office, but Huntley Huntley Road would fit logically. Yeah. Right. This is correct. So then it's probably mislabeled. Yeah, possibly. doesn't show the

or just darn confusing your bank. Yeah. And all the blank space for the gender and post office. Yep. It's not perfect. Yeah, but it gives um a little bit of what? So, would Katie uh getting back to the thing, would Katie look for Wednesdays at 6:30 and maybe find a clear path? That might guide us as a I'll I'll do that. We'll figure out if there's Wednesday, whether it's the third Wednesday of the month.

And I suppose we could go upstairs if need be if somebody was here, but we'll find a room. We'll find some vacant space for you. I can send them to you, Robin. I do have them. They Aaron sent them to me, so I can send them to you. That'd be great. Yeah, that's fine. Much better than playing with your phone. I don't know. Um, I'll send them. Um, so that next meeting we might try to get Mortonson to show up. So, this is BS. He will come. Okay.

Um, the only thing that Aaron wanted the there is um they have some his in-laws are under poor health at the moment up in New Hampshire, but his wife and he have been trying to judge that parent thing. So he said if and I said look Erin you can dial in if you need to you can always dial in. So um if he's not here in person next time if something happens in an emergency he'll still dial in and at least get you started so that you can meet you've met Erin. I might have you know Howard? Yeah. But so he'll walk you through this, but you're in good hands with it.

This a two-year grant for us to get it done. Um I think initially it says that we have to be out to bid by a certain date and Aaron and I talked about that a little bit because that was true over on Ferry Road, right? So basically you're a two-year type thing. You got to show that you're making progress and um you can always ask for extensions if needed. We did get an extension, right? And we just got another extension for Grassy Hill.

Um so we want it done right and um I think that's the most important thing. But what Erin and I talked about as a possible timeline is that I would like to have you um and he can get this done. He will have probable construction cost ready for us um by February of next year and that way um we can budget accordingly if what we'll need above the 800,000. Um, we'll also continue to look for any type of grants that we could still get as an add-on to this. And the other, um, so that way we can get the money into a budget cycle for con additional construction funds. So, we'll work on that and I'll be more than happy to send all of you these, but I just would appreciate there's nowhere on here it says draft. So, I just don't want people to think this is a finished product because it's just what we started with.

In the in the Jacobson thing, there's talk about a survey. Do we not have a survey from DOT? No, he's going to get that started for us. That's the first step, phase one. And these guys didn't do any survey work. I don't think they did, but I can go back and look in 22 if uh they did. I don't think they did. Was pretty official. Well, if it was really official, they'd all match up completely so that you put them together correctly. Yeah.

And I know that there's going to have to be and Tim and I talked about this too, but there's going to have to be some fill that'll have to come in near the um Lime Art Association over here. um because you're going to have to raise the the land up to meet the requirements for the sidewalk because it slopes very quickly off the side of the road and um it's you know it's very interesting because when you live here all the time you don't see things. So I was walked it one day and like I don't even realize that there's a guardrail that goes to the end of the street. I was like I never see this guardrail when I'm driving. Um, I suppose I've been I'm off the road, but I think I don't see it. It's not in my sightelines.

Doesn't mean I'm a bad driver. It's just that it becomes so much of our surroundings that we don't pay attention. So, walking it was a totally different experience to walk down the street and see what people see. So, here they have a 10 wide multi-use path. The sidewalk doesn't over here. It only starts over here. This is a sidewalk here, right? It's just white floor. But we are planning to do sidewalks. Okay.

Railings

relocate utilities. This is, you know, this is things that big time coordination. So with Grassyh Hill Bridge, I think one of the greatest things that Jacobson's did is we pulled in all the utilities on one day and we walked the project with them and we said, "What do you need to do?" So Frontier was there, Comcast, um, uh, Eversource, uh, they were all there and they all worked together to say this is what I need to do. Where does that transformer going to go to? we'd have to move that poll. They had it all coordinated. They wrote it all down. They gave a plan. They gave it to Howard and they said, "You tell us when. We need this many weeks to schedule so they're all here on the same time period." And they got it done. And that's the glory of starting a project so far out because you can get all that coordinated ahead of time.

When did you say the the state is doing the bridge work here with a river? Because Well, they haven't given us a date. They just said it to me at first 20 years and then she said something between three to five. Here it says spot repairs of existing sidewalk on a bridge. Bridge decks are serious business. So you got to really be careful with bridge decks and how you do repairs or work on them. So Well, that's for them. This this part is theirs. Yeah. Okay. Not not ours. But I've already put in a request that they fix it because there's a big pot holding. Yeah. But that doesn't mean they'll do it. Coordination. My point. Right. So, that's where we are.

How many bus stops do we have on Paul's Road? Now, I'm actually will give you the updated list because Tim is my um go-to person. He still sits on the River Valley Transit Board for us

and they just went around town and changed some of the stops and they're going to be putting up new signs this year, but I will get you the list of them. And we have about 180 riders from Albine per month that use this the transit services. They also and then there's a their dialer ride is also sometimes used. That's not the same bus. It's a different it's a van. Um, and some people like to use it, but other people don't because you're in the band with six people. And if there's you're health compromised, they don't like to be in close quarters.

But that's that's total rider. So if it's 30 days, you could divide by some factor. Well, yeah, I think that too. It depends on time of year. When I asked for that, it was winter. So I said, "What is our writership last month?" So in the summer we may pick up a few more um the um transit. Does that show exactly where they are getting the bus or I don't know if they have that information

right now. It's it's a flag type of thing meaning you just say stop. So they they go the district is putting in proper signage. So ultimately like a year from now uh the bus would stop at designated particularly in Middletown where there's traffic and all that down here it's not quite as bad. They would probably not just pass somebody by if they were out there waving but you know you want to have people go to a safe spot. Uh we don't I don't think we have evening bus rides here. There they are evening rides elsewhere. So lighting is important, not so much for us, but it's a like the dialeride and that it's a it's a good service and you do see people getting on and probably kids going to park and wreck might use it. Now whether you could go to Town Woods, you know, that's the bus does go up there to drop people to the senior center uh does cater to that. So it there'll be some there'll be some stop you'll see new signs.

It does mostly Boston Host Road and has this the thing that I've gotten from a lot of the seniors. They wish it would go into Niantic because Niantic is walkable and it has restaurants. They said it would be so nice if we could get it to go into Niantic and they drop you off at Costco. There's not exactly what you want to do. And that's what they do. Well, they dropped them off in that Flanders four corners area because what they consider those as shopping centers, but it's not. They make so much more sun. Niantic would be so much nicer. They could do the boardwalk walk. I mean, but

I I've mentioned it to Brendan a number of times. I said, "You really should be expanding and not doing that." But of course, they look at it from fuel and because you can get into New London that way, too. And that's what they do. They use blenders four corners because it's a more direct route onto to get them into New London. Well, Stabbrook is sort of a hub to go north and west and all over. So, you have to be careful on where the bus goes. So, it should get to the hub so that people can make a transfer without having to wait 30 minutes for the next bus or something. It's not like the the city buses are milling around. Uh so, it's a little tricky to schedule. It would be nice though

if you could get down to that main drag in Niatic and just a thought. Yeah. Okay. So, I will have Katie mail out these plans to you tomorrow. And um anything else? And I think one other thing is that committees don't have secretaries, right? No.

So, we may have to either Ron Robin taking notes or did I say Robin? I will tell you that the greatest thing about this is that Teams sends us a transcript. And so if the only thing is is it doesn't identify the speaker. If you get into the habit of saying this is Brett and then talk or this is Robin, then it's easier for somebody to use the transcription because they can literally lift right from the transcription into notes. And just remember, don't go granular, go basic. It's just I mean unless you're making some major discussion that you're going round about for hours if you make a quick motion it's the motion who made it how many abstained etc. you are supposed to list and by the way there's supposed to be Robert's rules order booked on this table but I don't see it.

Um anyway but technically it's only at the bare minimum they had to record the motions. Yes, but obviously you'd like to have a little more meat on the bones, but I tried to put a little blurb in of what we discussed. Yeah, but it doesn't have to be right specific. Frankly, these days Chad GPT could do it in a second, I think. So, well, that's why I mean it's really the transcription the transcription comes back up in like 15 minutes. 15 minutes. 15 minutes. They're not always right though. No, we have to check. I have to check. have to get so you can get cleared on how to operate this thing.

I'll be here for a while to check you in, make sure that you're going. Okay. Okay. One final question uh for me. U Brett um M BSC group prepared these in 2022 and their relationship to Jacobson is there is no relationship. So this the BSC was the group one of the groups consulted after the Yale urban education group school did and then BSC came in after that to work on all road sidewalks and plans.

Um so that's how we had these and um like I said they were paid for so these are a good starting point and um yeah thank you. So what was the project budget? What was that based based upon a preliminary drawing or or because I'm I'm seeing things here like pedestrian lighting every 50 ft. That that alone is quite a bit of scope or as cost. Okay. And as you mentioned the budget is less than a million. But this isn't this this budget doesn't include that. Okay. This is only construction of the sidewalks.

Sidewalk. If you want when you start to get to the amenities and the lighting, those trees, those are not considered construction, but you will put those, but those are things that we can apply for other grants for.

Okay. for um townwide enhancement. You there are grants all the time that come up and when I see something I will forward it to the group and say here's something that you could apply for which will go on top of what we already have. There are um there are things for landscaping. There are things for lighting um especially down lighting. We don't want I'd love to we have 391 um street lightss in this town if you'd like to know. Good trivia question. 391.

So at this point the the bow bridge and just coming over the Route One bridge. Is there any that's kind of a a choice at this point or is the bow bridge off the table?

Well, I bet we could probably take a show of hands here. Um we asked for input. We only got about 24 responses from people just to say what do you think. Um we have preliminary designs for that the bridge that concept that they chose through AI uh AI engineers. Um there are people who want the bridge. There are people who don't want the bridge. There are people who know we all know let's say one thing we all agree on. We cannot afford $2.5 million right now. We all agree on that. So, as far as the walking bridge is concerned, the biggest thing is is that the state said you got to put in a fishing pier. Now,

yesterday somebody said this deed says we have to put in the fishing pier. But I don't have it on the deed. It's not on the deed. It was on something else that I sent to them and said if we do it, we'll do it. We'll do a fishing pier, but only in an email because I didn't sign anything on a deed. They put the deed in. All it says is that you provide recreation. So, I have to find the copy of the deed that they brought me because I don't think it's the deed that they actually filed for this particular hasn't property been uh transferred to the town on the east side. Both sides. Yeah. Over a year ago, Jamie G.

But then that piece is somewhat contingent on whatever this wimblewamble stuff is right about whether the fishing it is actually and I think required and there are fish people who fish in this town who say I don't really want the pier I wouldn't use the pier I like just going down there a lot of people like to go under the yeah people totally go under the bridge

and so John Misha asked he goes do you think we could get out of the fishing pier I said well I don't know but I could try so I did reach out to my contact there and I asked asked her two questions. One was about to please call me because I wanted her to give me a call so I could talk it through with her. Um, and she was disappointed a while back when I said to her, "I don't think this is going to apply." And she's like, "Why not?" And I said, "Because because of your requirement for a fishing pier." I said, "We can't afford another $500,000." Said, "If we did the walking bridge, it would be so I don't know. I mean, show you here." Well, it's it's a much bigger scope because you have the asphalt road leading up to Teddy's which would have to be fixed up.

Teddy's. Um, yeah. Andies. Andes? No, actually I don't think it was really supposed to be fixed up that much. It was just a walk.

Well, it would have writt I'll I'll just tell you I'm a fan of walking bridges in other towns. I think that the most recent one that I saw, Manchester, Vermont, just did an absolutely beautiful walking bridge. The town was sort of at upper arms about the cost of it. They turned it over to a nonprofit group, a group that create was created especially for this. It's they have two roads that come to a V and about quarter of a mile down they have this little park and they said why do we have make people walk all the way up and all the way back down to get to the other road to go to the other shopping. So what they did is they said, "Let's do a bridge over the V and there's a beautiful waterfall and a that runs through and we'll connect one street to the other, back of the buildings to this little park." I guess the select people turned it over to the nonprofit group. Not that they took away the land, they still own it, but they said, "You come up with the project." They got grants. The bridge was built off site and it was brought in with a crane and dropped and it's like a TX foundation slats and you can look it up. Manchester uh Village Center bridge walking bridge and it's beautiful. It's huge

Vermont. It's absolutely It's not fancy. It's just a nice bridge and you walk over. you need to have handicap parking for fishing people. And so depending on how you situate that because the road is somewhat narrow and you probably don't want

you don't have to have it as close as you think it is. So let's think about it. Park is a state park. They don't have their handicap parking anywhere near the mansion. You have to walk or get a or put your wheelchair out and use it. and they haven't made any special paths to get to the Eoli mansion. It's just a walkway and it's been there since I was a child.

Nothing has changed. Um there are rules of what you can and cannot do, but I think from the initial plans for the the walking bridge, I mean that was taken into consideration. We don't need to. Um I mean the plan had always been that the parking spaces were supposed to be down by Andes, right? And that seemed to suffice with the plans. So I don't know. I think it's an enhancement. I don't know. Are you you're not a fan or you are a your business? Your business. What do you think? You don't want to say no.

Okay. But I mean, so it's not going to kill me if we don't ever do it. But would I be game to start going for grants? Yeah. I'm always a fan of like, oh, if we can get the money or and I have I would love to have like you say there was outreach done and that you only got a few responses. I'm always wondering how what outreach means. It's like I bet we could get more responses if you really did outreach to the town to find out if they want this if they want to spend that money on the money attached to it too though.

Well, I don't even think I would say would you want to do it? Would you want to do it if we had the money? Not if we don't have the money, but would you want to do it if we could get the money? I've had some private donors come to me and said, "I'll give you money for it." I mean, they haven't said how much, but I know it's a considerable amount, but I'm like, well, until you get 200, when I get two million, I'll let you know. Doesn't the fire company require They've already signed up on all that. All of that's been approved. Two two two engines, though.

It's It's all been approved by by Rob McCarthy, Mike McCarthy, Jay Bears, everything was approved. But doesn't it have to accommodate two trucks to stop at the end to get water? Something like that?

Well, I've heard somebody say that, but I think that they have their they've gone down. They've approved it. I'm that's all I'm going to say. I'm not a fireman, but I know that that was approved. All of that was approved by them prior to, but I'm not getting into that. We're not and that's not your charge, okay? That has three components and you guys are only working on sidewalks. That's it. It's all we're doing. And some landscaping. Well, is our scope going to the Halls Road Bridge and on the other side going down to Essex Bank and and not through Greyville and all that?

Yeah, you're not doing that right now. But I think, you know, because if you ever went back to do it, there'd have to be a way to connect it. And of course, we could. Well, you But we need the sidewalks either way on this on the roadside. It doesn't matter. But and the other trick will be near you the Lime Art Association. How do you get behind the guard rail with that very steep embankment there? Well, that that's where Don was saying that they didn't expect they did more of a walk a boardwalk on this particular plan so that they didn't have the expense. I don't know if that's still something that's viable. Yeah, that was 22 rules change.

Okay. So, in addition to the $800,000 grant, uh do you have a number you anticipate adding to that number for full execution of sidewalks alone? That's what I said. Will um Aaron won't put together a cost projection? I mean, in just in casual conversation, has that projection ever come to a number? No, we tried to

avoid that. We know it's more than 800,000 probably most likely for construction. So, um, but like I said, there's always another grant. This one was a state grant. Can I find a federal grant for infrastructure changes to the town? I'm sure I can. We just put in money. We put in three grants for the congressionally directed spending. We didn't do it for the sidewalks because didn't until we had this really moving. They didn't want to put in anything. But once we have a better plan and said, "Hey, we have 800, but we need more," then I'll reach out to Murphy's office or Blumenthal's office or coordinates and say what's out there, what's available to us from federal level. Um, so Aaron will be able to give us a pretty good scope once you guys nail down what you think has to be he's going to tell you what has to be looked at and you're going to have to tell him what you like and you don't like and what he'll do before he finalizes plans. So, whatever.

Yeah. Anything else? I guess we'll get the meeting dates and get that out to folks. And did we say set Wednesday? Is that the I guess Wednesday at 6:30 is seems to be what people would prefer. So, we'll have Katie Balaka kind of check see where we can be. And I guess we could think about a monthly uh

we'll try to do it the beginning of the month. Like this is April 8th, but maybe our next meeting date should be was May 13th would be the second I'm thinking second Wednesday of the month. That's kind of um that'll So, we'll try aim for that. We'll just look at the schedule tomorrow and I'll make sure that that's Okay. So, we need a motion to adjurnn. Who wants to make motion to adjourn? Who's going to make the motion? Make the motion. Second. Second.

Okay. All in favor of a German say I. Opposed. 638. Okay. Right. Thank you.