City Council - Regular Meeting

Well, good afternoon everybody. Welcome to the Visalia City Council work session. We're gonna go ahead and call this meeting to order. We will start off by opening up the public comments. This is the time for citizens. Citizens are now invited to comment on issues within the jurisdiction of the Visalia City Council and items listed on the closed session agenda. The council ask that you keep your comments concise and positive. Creative criticism presented with appropriate courtesy is welcome. Each speaker will be allowed three minutes, and a timer will notify you when your time's expired. Please begin your comments by stating and spelling your name and providing your city of residence.

Anybody wishing to speak at this time, please come forward. Seeing nobody, we'll close public comments and we'll go directly into our work session with item number one, which is a Downtown Visalia Property and Business Improvements District Annual Report.

Good evening mayor vice mayor when and members of city council. With me I have bill kitchen chairman of downtown by sale property owners association and Tom gave me the treasurer of downtown by sale property owners association and I'm Nicole Ritchie finance manager for city of I sell. And they will be presenting the Downtown Visalia Property and Business Improvement District annual report.

Alright. Well, thank you very much for that. Let me go ahead and just give you a little bit of a recap of who we are. This corporation, the Downtown Visalia Property Owners Association, is a nonprofit mutual benefit corporation. Our primary purpose is of this corporation is to recognize can you put up on the screens the the first screen item?

Boy, that is small. Okay. This corporation to recognize and fulfill the unique and varied economic interests and needs of Downtown Visalia property owners to accomplish the following specific purposes. Number one, in concert with the city of Visalia to provide management oversight, directives, setting up priorities for supplemental services and improvements for the Downtown Visalia Property And Business Improvement District, the PBID. Number two, provide economic enhancements via programs and incentives to attract, grow, and incubate new businesses.

We also paid for an in lieu parking program to removes barriers to Downtown Visalia development. Excuse me. We provide for continued investment in Downtown Visalia parking, marketing, and promotions, anything to improve Downtown Visalia's image and to invite the consumers to Downtown Visalia. Three, we provide for environmental enhancements to include public safety patrols to support crime prevention and, reduce the incidence of nuisance crimes. We provide for streetscape landscape enhancements to make Downtown Visalia more attractive.

We remove graffiti to provide a cleaner downtown Visalia and then also general maintenance, which includes sidewalk sweeping and steam cleaning. Furthermore, we seek matching funds and grants from various different governmental agencies. We encourage new development, revitalization, economic growth and improvement. We advanced remedies for property owners for conditions that are not considered beneficial to customers. We effectively develop market represent.

Downtown Visalia is a diverse business community. We receive and administer and disperse funds in connection with all of the activities stated above. And then we also work with government entities, civic bodies, community organizations, trade and commerce groups, local community and improvement associations in connection with any activities that are related to the above specific purposes as deemed beneficial to Downtown Phycellia. Next slide, please. The board consists of 16 board members, five positions within the executive board, namely myself as chairperson, Myron Sheklian as vice chairman of secretary position is currently vacant, Tom Gabey as treasurer, and Anil Shagan as our past chairman.

Of the elected board members, we have John Bianco, Mary Anne Cosenza, Kevin Fistolaric, Colin Franey, William Martin, Josh Miller, Justin Mosley, Janine Robins. And over the appointed board members we have Dwayne Rodriguez representing the Downtown Vicelians and Brett Taylor representing the city of Vicelians, Amy Shucklein representing the county of Tulare and Kevin representing health. So out of those 16 spots that we currently have positions, we are authorized for a maximum of 20 and we are always continually looking for good board members. Next page, please. Thank you.

The budget that you see before you is the budget that was approved in the January 27 meeting of this year. We are projecting assessments of $700,000 interest of 1,500 for total income for 2026 of $701,500 We'll spend that via environmental enhancements, which include primarily the public safety, that's 20 fourseven, that we pay for security downtown. We improve landscaping. We do graffiti removal. That's budgeted at $180,000 Streetlight maintenance, 10,000.

Security camera maintenance, $7,500. So for total environmental enhancements, $517,000. In addition to that, we have economic enhancements where we have budgeted $50,000 for infrastructure improvements, and then we paid the city of ISAIA in lieu parking fees of $45,000 or we have budgeted to pay that amount. So that's a total amount of $95,000 for total economic enhancements. And then lastly, we have administration.

And administration includes the $65,000 which we have budgeted to pay to downtown Vicilians, which they act as the administrator of the POA as none of the board members receive compensation. We have $10,000 set aside for a financial audit. We have $5,000 for legal fees, and then we have a sinking fund for our POA renewal fund, which is every ten years, and that's $5,000 for this year. And lastly we have $4,000 for insurance and miscellaneous expenses for a total of $89,000 This leaves us with total expenses of $701,500 and that effectively wipes out the amount of money that we have coming in. Next item.

It should be this copy. Okay, That's fine. What you see in front of you is the map, the district map. We have two districts, and we're basically bounded by the north on School Avenue to the South on Mineral Mineral King, to the East on Santa Fe, and in the West on Conyers Street. Next item, okay.

What you see in front of you is the on-site security survey. This is the report that they provide for us. They do this every month. And this is the accumulation of all of the hits that we've we've had in the in the course of twelve months. And primarily, you'll notice that most of this kind of focuses in on trespassing, loitering, vagrant contact.

So those are the significant hitters. But without going into much detail on this, you'll note that from 2024 to 2025, we noted a a decrease of 7.2% in criminal activity and we're continuing to hope for that as well. Next slide please. Okay, the next two slides are gonna be covered by my friend Tom here. He's gonna share with you the financial results. Oh,

we go. There we go. We are. Figure it out. Hold it close. How's that? That's better. Okay. What this slide shows. In every meeting of the POA every month we show an update of this financial record of what we spent the money on the funds on So this is a snapshot recap of the year 2025.

We started the year with a bank balance of 194,000. That does not include money that the city holds in reserve for us from prior collection. But have not been distributed yet. At the beginning of the year, that number totaled 617,000. So we had total assets at POA of 812,000 at the beginning of the year.

So then during the year, we draw down by arrangement from that city cash reserve. And during the year, we drew down $680,000 Last year, also had an arrangement with the city that they would reimburse us for some parking payments that we made on their behalf. That no longer is the case coming in 2026. So our total receipts coming in and this is into our operating account was $680,000 So then during the year, this is a recap of what we spent the money on. Paid to Downtown by saying for their support in landscaping, graffiti removal, 114,000.

Administration to DTV, paid them $660,009.11. The biggest cost we have is for security. That last year was $325,000 We also paid to the city in the parking fund 41,917. Our other big expenditures last year were accumulation and payment of various improvements for the downtown. As we kept here, we spent $118,000 on new security cameras installed for downtown.

We also spent another major item, dollars 38,000 for new tree lights in the downtown area. As Bill mentioned, we put 5,000 into our renewal fund so that we spent $718,000 leaving us with a bank balance of 171,000. We also had, with the city, in that reserve account, an amount that got us up to a total of 815,000 in total assets. So, started the year with 812,000 in total assets, ended the year with 815,000. What an accomplishment.

The next page, the slide shows our comparison of 2025 budget to actual. As I said, we present this at every meeting. This is accumulation of the year. So we drew from the city cash reserve fund June and that's what we had budgeted. We terminated the agreement with the city mid year, so we did not get reimbursement to where we pay for security for a portion of the year.

As mentioned in the front page before this, we spent $114,000 on landscape graffiti and removal And that was well under budget by $55,000 We also, because of that change in the public safety, spent $3.25, having budgeted $3.75. So we had a surplus in that area of 114,000. We use that up by this year spending 163,000 in infrastructure improvements. So when all was said and done for the year, we had budgeted $7.23, we spent $718,000 I also wanna bring to your attention a few of the facts about our current POA. We started in January '20 and after that first year, our budget annual was $500,000 As Bill says, it's up to $700,000 After that first year, we had in our reserve, including Citi and cash, 487,000.

Within two years, because we did not spend a lot of money on improvements, we mushroomed that number up to 716,000. As I said, this year, at the end of the year, we have 815,000. During the last three years, we have spent quite a bit on the improvements. As a recap, in the last three years, we spent 180,000 on security cameras, 72,000 on street lights, tree lights, 31,000 on new speaker system for downtown, 33,000 on new Christmas lights. We also contributed the produce of the service truck, new pressure washers, and the flock camera system now installed.

So that kind of recaps what we've been doing the last three years. And up where we are. Any questions?

All right. Thank you, Tom. And then so basically, next item. Yeah, that's basically the accomplishments for the year. And then Tom basically through all of those. But most important that we didn't we didn't mention that for the budget for 2026, we voted to not have any type of assessment increase. So we the amount that the our property owners will be paying in property taxes that will be the same that they paid last year. So this concludes our presentation and Tom and I will be more than happy to answer any questions.

Thank you very much. Councilman Patricket, any comments or questions?

You know, great presentation. You know, I think we have one of the best downtowns in the Central Valley. It's probably the work that your organization does. I get compliments all the time about the lights that you guys put up down there. I know that takes a lot of work to keep that going all year. And people don't realize the graffiti removal, how big that is and how quickly people come in and clean that. You guys keep our downtown clean. Like I said, I don't know where it would be without this organization. So thank you for everything that you guys do.

Thank you. Vice Mayor Wynn.

Yeah, I did owe Council member Pachigian's remarks. You guys have done an incredible job and even more so to come in under budget in this high inflationary times. You're doing great. So, thank you for all you do and for keeping our downtown vital clean and beautiful. I love those tree lights. Don't ever let those go.

Yeah, thank you very much for the report. I often get asked what Visalia does to make our downtown so special, right? And, the reality of it is that we assess ourselves as the property owners, you guys, almost $700,000 a year because you guys want to reinvest into our downtown. And, that goes into making it beautiful. It goes into giving it atmosphere with the lights. We were just meeting with our visitors out of town from Costco. Leslie and I were meeting with them and they said they loved the music. They said it was vibrant. They were looking around for a band because they actually thought a band was playing. And they just said we had the most charming downtown that they'd been to and that they loved our city.

And our downtown is the key to our city. It's the heart of our city. And so we appreciate what you guys do. We appreciate the investment you put into keeping it safe and beautiful and everything else for the Christmas tree parade and for everything else that you guys do to really make it a unique place that you just don't see very often. I've told this story multiple times, but I think the best compliment I've ever heard was someone told me that our downtown looked like a Hallmark movie.

That the lights were on, the music was playing, there's people everywhere, they're having a great time and they literally were like I didn't know this actually exists outside of the movies. And, so, in in our town, it does. And, so, that's to our amazing property owners and our business owners who truly care about our downtown. So, thank you guys. Let's go ahead and open this up to the public. Anybody wishing to speak on this item, please come forward.

Good evening. My name is Maria Guilen. That's G U I L L E N, accent over the E, and I live in Visalia. And I too want to applaud the downtown atmosphere, the lights, the music. I believe that it is a very good atmosphere, very charming, especially on a nice evening.

It's great to stroll. I do have some curiosity, though, in regards to some of the information you shared, especially when it comes to your chart talking about all the reasons why you have so much funds devoted to security, right? And one of the things that you kept mentioning several times was graffiti removal. And yet, on the chart, I looked throughout the year. I thought, well, maybe this is a constant problem throughout the year.

But I only saw there were 15 incidences in November, which is a lot, I will admit. But it wasn't like something that was like continual throughout the year. So I was curious about that. And I also noticed that for

a lot of

these infractions, they're very minimal. There's no urinating in public. There's no lewd acts. There's no a lot of these situations. But yet, you do talk about trespassing as a big issue, loitering, and also vagrant contact.

And I was just wondering if you could define what those categories are, what they include. If they're not people just causing a lot of trouble or being intoxicated or whatever, what does that constitute? And then I wanted to also know if, in fact, there's interface then with the city's police department as well. Or are these just situations that you're handling that the police department doesn't have to get involved with? That would be great.

But I was curious about that. Also, let's see. There was another point I wanted to make, and now I'm trying to remember what the question was. Well, anyway, again, had some. It's just about the curiosity of the situation. Oh, I think it had to do with the budget. But anyway, all in all, I do want to also compliment the organization and for what you do for our city. Thank you.

Jim Rees, And my compliments to the downtown organization as well. Visalia is beautiful. Looking through your documentation, it talks about the video cameras throughout downtown. FLAC was mentioned by name. And checking the police department's use of the FLAC system.

What I want to know is, does the police department have access to those cameras? And who else has access to that information? California law prohibits the police department from allowing out of state agencies or organizations from accessing their data streams and information. Is there similar restrictions on privately owned? I just did a quick check on AI, and it says there are some restrictions.

But I would like to know if the PD has access and if it's set up wanted to check on somebody running through downtown Visalia. They can't access the police department's cameras. Could they access the downtown association's cameras? And what kind of safeguards do you have on the data? And who has access to it? Thank you.

Anybody else wishing to speak?

Good afternoon. My name is Rosemary Garcia Ribeiro, City of Estella. Of also wanted to commend the great work you have done downtown. I have taken my nephews and nieces and family members downtown walking late at night thinking okay you always have to be aware of your surroundings and I appreciated a lot of the changes you have made have really presented a more safe environment for kids and the young and the youth. The only thing I wanted to kind of address was I've noticed a lot more presence of, of course, the youth, but making video downtown, kind of shooting little social media stuff downtown, which is, you know, we want to spread the news of all the businesses down there and everything.

But I did want to ask if there's anything enforcing that? Because I know that I've seen people doing videos in the middle of the street, you know, little TikToks or things like that. And that's pretty much it. But I did notice that the kids are more involved because you have little things like tricket boxes downtown that the kids love to go trade things and go into the little stores and they get excited. Oh, I want to go trade this or I want to go do this and that. And that's really positive to seeing that out there. Thank you.

Anybody else wishing to speak? Okay, seeing none we'll go ahead and close public comments. Probably could answer most of these questions, but as you guys are the official president, I'll let you guys answer them. If you could talk a little bit about the kind of graffiti and how that works.

Well, as I understand it, the graffiti is primarily when somebody notifies us that their their building or their fence has been been painted. So, I mean, it's, like anything else, it's just, we we're reactive to it. And so we have a a crew that has all of the equipment, and we have a a number that we you can call that we give this out to merchants and folks downtown that if they have a graffiti incident, they just have to give us a call. Usually by that afternoon, it's taken care of.

Yeah. Very few people actually see the graffiti. It's usually cleaned up pretty quickly. So can you talk a little bit about who has access to your ACES video camera system?

As I've been told, only the Visalia PD and the CHP have access to the flock cameras.

But you guys have to give them access, right? They don't

I don't that I'm not sure about, Brett.

We can probably ask our police here in a second. Can see them. And then we can also ask our police how often we have vagrants or loitering gets handled by the security on-site team compared to police. Dan, if you want to answer those two questions about how often the police has to interact compared to just the on-site security and then access to the cameras.

Okay. Captain Dan Ford on behalf of the police department. So we do have access to the cameras. That access is provided by Downtown POA and Downtown Visalians. One example is the Sebby's homicide. We actually use that to help solve the homicide in that case. So it has been very successful in helping public safety. As it relates to how many contacts we have had, we downtown security's purpose is to minimize how much time we have to spend downtown. So this way, we can be focused on citywide issues. Their primary goal is to observe report.

If there's something that they're not able to handle, then we'll come in and help take care of those issues as that occurs. I don't have data right off the top of my head, but I will tell you that they do have the ability to help minimize the amount of time that we have to do with enforcement stuff. Anything that's violent, we need to take over. Things like trespassing, I know that was one of the concerns. The trespassing and the loitering that they're enforcing often prevent the lewd acts from occurring. So you want to try and resolve those issues before they actually become a problem that elevates to that nature.

So just real quick, the access you have to the cameras, do you guys have twenty four hour a day access or do you guys have to get access from downtown if there's an incident?

So two points on that. The cameras themselves are different than the flock cameras. So the flock cameras, we have access to. Just a little bit of history because I was actually the district one commander when this happened, when we started moving to the or when the organization did. These are a result of the fire at Alejandro's that was a result of arson. And one of the things that we located or determined at that time was that we had a very large vulnerability downtown as far as cohesive camera stat strategy. And I believe that was the primary emphasis of Downtown Property Owners Association doing that. We do not have access to the cameras. We request permission to or through Downtown Visalians to get that. We've never had an issue doing it when we needed to.

And, actually, actually the downtown cameras helped us identify all the suspects and witnesses in the Hookah Lounge homicide that occurred, I believe, one year prior to the SEVIS.

Perfect. And then I guess the social media policy, you guys are aware of about a social media policy?

No, I'm not aware of anything and it sounds like that's a protected event anyway.

Okay. Any other questions? Luis? Okay. Wonderful. Well, thank you guys very much for your presentation. I'll go ahead and entertain a motion.

I move to accept the annual operations report for the Downtown Visalia Property And Business Improvement District and approve a 0% increase in assessments for the 2027 tax year.

I second.

First and second. All those in favor, vote. And the item passes three zero with council members Nelson and So to absent. Thank you guys very much. We appreciate your report.

Okay, we're gonna go ahead and adjourn into closed session, but we welcome everyone to come back at 07:00 for our regularly scheduled session. Good evening, everybody, and welcome to the Visalia City Council meeting. We're gonna go ahead and call to order the regular session. We'll start off by, saluting our nation's flag. We've asked vice mayor Wynn to go ahead and lead that and then please remain standed and standing and we will have pastor Austin Camerad from Visalia Christian Reformed Church offer our opening benediction.

Alright. Let's go to our god in prayer. Father, son, and holy spirit, thank you for this day, and and we thank you for the many gifts that you give. Whether seen or unseen, you are are lavishing gifts upon us, and we give you the glory for that. Help us to be a grateful people that we wouldn't take for granted the gifts you give or or your goodness to us, but that we would just simply receive them as acts of generosity.

Lord, in the scriptures, you command us to pray for our leaders. And I want to take a moment to do just that. We think of the leaders in Washington DC and all other cities and communities, but specifically for the leaders of Visalia. We pray for wisdom for the leaders, that they would serve humbly and that they would have genuine, clear, humble communication, and just that all all doings of the city of Visalia would be done in good order and in an effort to serve the people. We think about this meeting tonight, and we pray that the conversations that are going to be had would be filled with charity and grace.

And, Lord, we just pray for Visalia as a city that it would be a place where the hungry are fed, where the widows and the orphans are cared for, and, where the well-being of your people is is undertaken, and we pray that in Visalia as it is in heaven. And and, Lord, we know that we are in deep need of your grace, and so help us to come before you in our humbleness and our brokenness and know that in our thoughts, words, and deeds that we fall short, but we know that your grace is sufficient. And so we pray all this in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank

you, pastor. We appreciate that opening prayer. Alright. First, we're gonna go on to a special presentation and vice mayor Winn has asked if she could do this first one because a lot of these ladies are her friends and she wanted the honor. So, absolutely, we're gonna give her the opportunity.

Thank you. As former director of the foundation, I've worked with many of you, and what a group. These ladies volunteer all around the hospital. They make our patients feel safe and comfortable. They have killer purse and jewelry cells every year.

And it would be my honor to read this resolution for you. Afterwards, we will invite you to come up here behind us, and we'll take a picture. Whereas in May 1956, a group of local residents organized to support the creation of a municipal hospital guild to improve health care facilities for the citizens of Iselia, and whereas the Kaweah Delta Hospital Guild was officially established on 06/05/1956, beginning a partnership with the hospital district that has now lasted seven decades, and whereas since its founding, the Guild has raised over $3,000,000 to purchase patient care equipment, fund nursing scholarships, provide practical financial support to the medical center, and whereas the members of the Guild have contributed more than 1,000,000 service hours, including hands on work of sewing blankets and pillows for patients in the oncology, rehabilitation, and emergency departments, and whereas city of Iselia recognizes the long term impact this organization has had on the quality of local health care and the well-being of patients. Now therefore be it resolved that the city council of the city of Iselia formally recognizes the Quia Delta Healthcare District Guild for seventy years of service to the community and congratulates them on this anniversary and is signed by your council members.

Got a few more in the back there.

You guys can come closer if you want to take some pictures a little closer.

So I'm Kelly Pierce. I have the privilege of being the manager over all the volunteer programs at the hospital. And we want to thank the ladies for their seven decades of service. And thank you to the council for giving them this honor. They're greatly appreciated for all the work they do. Thank you.

Alright, what a fantastic group of of ladies. We appreciate all that you guys do for Alright. Next, we are gonna recognize our public works. It's not very often you recognize someone. They actually treat you to cookies.

So, I think we should recognize public works more often just so I can get more cookies every every Monday. So, we'd like to go ahead and read this proclamation for our public works. So it says, National Public Works Week, May 17 through the twenty third two thousand twenty six, rooted in service, powered by community. Whereas public works professionals focus on infrastructure, facilities, and service that are of the vital importance to sustainability and resilient communities and the public health, high quality of life, and well-being of the people of Isai. And whereas these infrastructure, facilities, and services could not be provided without the dedicated efforts of public work professionals who are employees at all levels of government and who are responsible for rebuilding, improving, and protecting roads, water supply, water treatment, and solid waste systems, and other infrastructures and facilities essential for our citizens.

And whereas, it is the public's it is in the public's interest for the citizens, civic leaders, and children of Isaiah to gain knowledge and of maintain an ongoing interest and understanding of the importance of public works and public works programs in their respective communities, and whereas the year 2026 marks the sixty sixth annual National Public Works Weeks sponsored by the American Public Works Association. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Visalia City Council that the week of May 2026 is recognized as National Public Work Week. So all those, members who are here, we just wanna say thank you for what you guys do. You guys truly are the unsung heroes of our community. People don't necessarily see you, but every single day, they're using, the facilities and the infrastructure that you guys work on.

And you guys really are, as important as our police and fire and everyone else to the well-being and, beautification and the smooth running of our city. So we wanna say thank you guys for what you do. We really appreciate you. You guys want to come on up? We'll take a quick photo of you guys also.

Okay. Now we'll go into our public comment portion. This is the time for the general public to comment on issues within the jurisdiction of the city council. Each speaker tonight may speak for up to three minutes during the general comment period on a matter that is not on the agenda. The public may also make one comment for up to three minutes prior to the consideration of the consent calendar and immediately before any regular agenda item is heard. The council ask that you keep your comments concise and positive, creative criticism presented with appropriate courtesy is welcome. Each speaker will be allowed three minutes and a timer will notify you when your time is expired. Please begin your comments by stating and spelling your name and providing your city of residence. Anybody wishing to speak at this time on an item not on the agenda? Come on up.

Good afternoon, council, vice mayor, and mayor. Just wanna say I'm here to say thank you to the vice mayor that attended the event few Can weeks

just state your name and city of residence

for the record, please? Efrain Becerra. I live on District 1. Vice mayor lives wins district. I just want to say thank you guys to those that attended the event, Vice President of the I couldn't have done it alone. The women of our city contributed to that, and I want to just acknowledge a few people that have been around like Ms. Rosado and Ms. Alvarado that were part of the construction of the exhibit. Also, again, the women in the city have contributed to the majority of what you guys saw. Again, thank you, vice mayor, for attending the event.

Thank you, mayor, for coming by and council member. For those that can't come, council member Puccigan, been giving out private tours to elected officials. They have contacted me, and I'll gladly meet them at the gallery and explain. Council member Nelson, I am more than happy to do that also. I will be having a family day on the twenty fifth for those that can't make it.

I'll leave it with Reyna, the pamphlet. And I just wanted to also say it's nice to see recognition. I myself wasn't looking forward to getting that many from our local officials, but that's great. There's a little concern I wanted to bring up. I don't like to bring the negativity, but I did receive a few phone calls from people that send an email out, people that I work with, I guess, from different volunteer communities concerned about those proclamations giving out.

That it's not very clear, and it's something that I think we should look into because I've requested some for other organizations. They've been concerned. The perception is not positive. It's kind of like, I understand, I'm not trying to hide, but I ran for city council. It's okay. We get along. So the perceptions coming out is because of that reason. So I just wanna clarify that it's not that. So if possible, we'll look into that. Just if you get an email from those people, just check into that. Again, thank you to the city and to those that came to the event. And let's also, the Tulare County Museum requested this exhibit in August to September. So it's a great thing. Thank you, guys.

Anybody else wishing to speak? Okay, seeing nobody else, we will go ahead and close public comment period. We'll be skipping items of interest tonight and we'll be going into consent calendar. Councilor Nelson, any items from the consent calendar you'd like to pull? I have no items to pull. Councilor Puchigian? No items. Vice Mayor Wynn?

No items.

And I have no items. I'll entertain a motion.

I'll make a motion to accept the consent calendar as presented. You know what, I apologize. I do need to open up

to public comments. We'll go ahead and open up the consent calendar item of this calendar to the consent calendar. This is the time for members of public to provide public comment on an item that is on the consent calendar. Comments will not be taken individually by the public. If an item is pulled by a council member, each speaker is allowed up to three minutes and a timer will notify you when your time's expired. Please begin your comments by stating and spelling your name and providing your city of residence. Anybody wishing to speak on an item that is on the consent calendar? Okay, seeing none, then I'll go ahead and go back to I'll make

a motion to accept the consent calendar as presented. I'll second.

We have first and second. Thank you. All those in favor, vote. Item passes four zero with Council Member So to absent. Thank you very much.

Alright, now we're gonna go on to our regular items of public hearing and we will go on to item number one which is the Tulare Avenue Paving Project Presentation. Staff report please.

Members of the council. I'm Jason Huckleberry, director of engineering and building for the city. I'll be joined tonight by our city engineer Chris Crawford and our project manager for this project Jonathan Frausto.

Good evening mayor, vice mayor, council members. For those of you that know me, my name is Jonathan Frostow and I am with the engineering and building department. I'm accompanied here by Chris Crawford, the city engineer, as well as Jason Huckleberry, the engineering and building department. Tonight, we have a special presentation for the Tulare Avenue project from Robyn to Demeris. A quick overview on this project, it will, this presentation will be going over public outreach that was recently done at the elementary school, Viva Blahn Elementary.

It will also go over the server results received from the public as well as the construction impacts, the phasing. And towards the end of the presentation Chris Crawford will take over to go over the pros and cons of the Class IV bike lane and why staff chose to implement this on the Tulare Avenue corridor. So some quick introductions into the teams that are going to work to ensure that this project is constructed in a timely manner. As you know, I am the project manager for the Tulare Avenue project. We do have a construction manager on the project.

We did hire Four Creek, so you will be seeing Dustin Smith, out on the project site, making sure everything is being constructed properly and per plans and spec. We also have teamed up with Four Creek's public outreach coordinator. His name is Eric Riley, and he will ensure text message updates get sent out to the public in a timely manner prior to major phases of construction and coordinating with Alice and Mackie as well from the communication team ensuring that social media updates and posts are pushed out to the public as well. The contractor on this project is Don Barry Construction. They've done various projects throughout the city of Visalia and Tulare and other governing jurisdictions as well.

So quick project overview. The Tularea Avenue project is mainly a rehabilitation effort from Robyn to Desmarie. It is a roadway rehabilitation, which mainly entails of a grinding overlay and also some areas of dig outs where pavement has seen a significant failing. There will be miscellaneous curb return improvements, some traffic signal upgrades, as well as the multimodal enhancement, which is the Class IV bike lane, pending council's decision tonight. The project goals with this is to improve the roadway condition, extend the pavement life, improve accessibility, as well as enhance multimodal connectivity.

And the tentative schedule is May 2026 to September 2026. So as stated, this project tenderly is broken down into three phases with anticipation from phase one being robe into acres. That is going to start in June 2026. There will be a restriction at Acres, and that is a east and westbound traffic restriction while they work through this intersection. Phase two will be Acres to Lynnwood.

That is anticipated to start in July 2026 with the restriction being at Lynnwood. Again, that is a actually, for Lynnwood, it is a north and southbound restriction, keeping traffic flowing east and west through this intersection. In phase three, this is tentative to begin in August 2026. This is in Lynnwood to Denmarie. So similarly to Lynnwood Chinnewick that is in between Lynnwood and Denmarie, there will be a north and southbound restriction here, maintaining east and westbound traffic through the intersection.

But at Denmarie, we do realize that traffic does take priority north and southbound for commuters, and there will not be an east and westbound or north and southbound restriction, rather an east and westbound to keep commuters going north and southbound through this intersection.

The only last thing to mention on this is that we're working with the contractor right now, seeing if there's any ways we can kind of speed up the scheduling to see if there's any way we can get this done before school starting back up. So this, while tentative, may change to try and speed things up a little bit, but there's a lot of public outreach things that we'll keep the public up to date on that Jonathan will talk a little bit more about at the end.

I'm sorry, but Chris, the phase three should almost be phase one because that's the part where Viva Blunt School is. We're gonna have that right during the opening of school.

That's one of the things that we're talking to the contractor in

order or something, yeah.

Yeah, so probably what in reality what's gonna end up happening is probably like the Robe into Acres parts and the Linwood to Demery parts are going to be more like pushed like end of the summer. And if we have like time left after school starts, might be that Acres to Linwood part. So that's what we're talking to him about right now. So a lot of this is we have to put something in the bid document so that way the contractor can bid it so all the contractors can bid it evenly across the board.

And to add on to Chris's point, Liz, we did work with the contractor with a preliminary schedule prior to starting construction, and those intersections will be taken care of prior to school starting or recommencing back in August.

So yeah, one the big things that we tried to do on this one was this bid was awarded a little while ago, but we tried to get the to order all the video detection signal equipment for the traffic signals. I can get that installed first before we start ripping a bunch of things out, like to try and keep the traffic moving a little bit more smoothly during construction. So it's just there's a long lead time on some of that stuff. So it kind of pushed us into starting here pretty soon. I think we're actually starting really soon on some Today? Of this Yeah. So we started. It's on none of the intersections that the traversal stuff is going to be damaged until we actually get it installed.

A quick overview of the bike lane classifications. What we have here presented on the screen is the four different classifications of the bike lanes that you will see throughout the city, with class one being a shared use path. It's typically a trail that's separate separated from the roadway. So think of Santa Fe Trail. Ultimately, the Sherk, Street, as it pushes north and south, there will be a class one trial designated on that as well.

For a class two, it's typically what you see on Tulare Avenue prior to construction work starting, where it is on street striped and is typically adjacent to vehicular traffic. With a class three being a shared roadway with a class three being a shared roadway where bikes and vehicles do share the same lane. And one thing to note on these class threes, and Chris will touch on it a little bit later, is the new California SB twelve sixteen bill that went into effect, where class threes are typically not allowed anymore with speed limits in excess of, like, 35 miles an hour. It's really just a part of California's policy to push class one and class four a higher level of protection for all users of the roadway, as well as class four being a protected bike lane on street with physical separation. So it's essentially what you see now on Tulare Avenue, where the bike lane is pushed up adjacent to the curb, where you do have a form of physical separation, in this case being the modular curbing, but also similar to what you see on County Center where they have those physical delineators, those posts rather, next to the bike lane as you go north and south from Reagan to Houston, Houston Avenue.

Yes, that would be the last classification we have for class four.

Just a couple of clarifications on that before you move on, John. Let's go to go back to that. Just some of the confusion on some of these. The class one shared use path, there's no real lanes designated bikers or pedestrians or anything. Like most of our Class I trails are just 10 foot wide asphalt path, and the pedestrian and cyclist can kind of just go wherever they need to on that trail.

So that's kind of one of the misperceptions we've kind of seen with some of the class one trails. The class two, it can be like what shown on that picture where there's the parking lane up against the curb, the bike lane and then the travel lane. But if you've driven down Caldwell from like in particular like Acres through Shady, those class two bike lanes can also be up against the curb. So where there's no parking like on Caldwell, those bike lanes are up against the curb and there's hatching between the bike lane and the travel lane. That's also considered a class two bike lane.

Like the really the only thing separating the class two from the class four in that situation was be the hard like modular curbs or some kind of physical delineation between the bike lane and the travel lane. One of the other things to just clarify real quick too, the class four protected bike lane, if any of you guys have gone out to the new Costco out there, like you'll kind of see that they've got the big 12 foot wide sidewalk that's behind the curb and gutter out there. Like that's actually considered a class four bike lane too, except for the difference out there is there's a delineation between where the people are supposed to be walking and where the bikes are supposed to be going. And it's like a one way bike lane out there. Like for the north side of the road, it goes along with traffic.

So that's also kind of a variation of class four also. So there's a lot of different things you can do with these. Sorry, one other thing too, just to remind everybody from the last Slurry Avenue presentation is that in 2014 they passed AB like eleven ninety three, which legalized the Class IV bike lanes. So now there's no more legal liability with a Class IV bike lane than a Class II or a Class I or anything like that. It's got the same amount of general liability as anything that we design on the engineering side.

And prior to getting into the public feedback and the survey as well as the construction impacts, I just wanted to remind counsel that the recommended motion is for counselors to authorize staff to proceed forward with the proposed class four bike lane configuration, with the alternative motion being the direct staff to return the roadway striving to its original class two bike lane configuration. This is after staff has reviewed all survey feedback, provided enhancements or implementations, and or responded to each comment that was generally received from the public. And so getting into the outreach efforts, during the construction award in January, we did mention to council that we were going to come back, we were going to host an outreach meeting, and be a little bit more proactive in our effort to make sure that all residents and or constituents that this affected, they had their voice. And as part of that outreach effort, we sent mailers within a quarter mile radius or half mile radius within the project limits. And that mailed on March And staff, it was an active survey with a questionnaire.

It did have tentative construction timelines and also information on the additional outreach meeting at Viva Blount Elementary. And the next slide is a sample of what the flyer looked like that was mailed out to residents, with the left side being the front of the flyer and the backside being the back. This did have a QR code where residents could just take picture and scan that QR code and it linked them right to the questionnaire. There's also information, as stated previously, the public outreach meeting and text message updates as well. And as stated, that outreach effort was on 04/16/2026.

We did host that meeting at Viva Blunt Elementary in which, Liz Winn was Liz Winn, you were president as well as Brian. We did present the temporary construction impacts and also presented the class four bike lanes. And it was really an opportunity for vocal feedback. And we also had a comment box set up for discretionary feedback in case any residents weren't open to speaking publicly with any of us that were there on the floor. They were more than welcome to discretionary feedback as well.

And as part of the outreach efforts, we did compile all the survey respondents we did get. It was a total of 81 responses with 41 living near Tulare Avenue, 23 traveling through the corridor, 11 living on Tulare Avenue, and six as other, listing themselves as other. One thing to note with these 81 responses, and just as a reminder to counsel, is there was over 5,000 mailers that were sent out within the project vicinity. So with that 81 responses, it did come down to 1% of the affected total users. Just kind of want to have a quick reminder out there of the total response we get to actually who's responding to the feedback and giving us quality feedback.

And as part of that survey, we did have a sentiment category where the residents had the option to be strongly opposed, opposed, neutral support, or strongly support the project, with 46 of the respondents being strongly opposed, 12 of them being opposed, nine being neutral or unsure, three being supportive, and 11 being strongly supportive. So with the total respondents we did get out of the 81 respondents, it was roughly 70% did not support the project. With all of the feedback we did get from the email respondents as well as a survey, there was a open text prompt at the end of it that allowed them to share whether it was concerns, their supports, things like that. It was all summarized and put in here with safety being the 43% of the results or of the survey response that you did get, 34% being related to parking, and 23% being related to bike lanes. From the safety concerns, it was really the reduced lane widths, a lot of comments on vehicle maneuverability through the corridor, a lot of comments on loading and unloading conflict points at parking areas.

So as you are parked out away from the curb, it's rather loading and unloading whether it was kids, items, or passengers into the car. It was vehicular speeds that residents are used to seeing out at Tulare Avenue, as well as a crosswalk at Crenshaw. For the parking, it was mainly the loss or reduction in parking, the impacts to the pickup and drop off zones, and then also due to the parking restrictions and the implementation on Tulare Avenue, some comments related to spillover parking to adjacent neighborhoods. And for the bike lane, summarizing the results that we got from the survey was what was the requirement for a class four? What were the other design options?

Why did the city choose to implement a class four on Tulare Avenue? So as part of this feedback, the review and considerations that staff had followed up with. For the lane widths on safety, this does follow national guidance with AASHTO and NACDO for urban environments with constrained roadways similar to Tulare Avenue. We have implemented as part of this project parking islands at key locations along the corridor. So almost near every major intersection, Robe and Demery, Lynnwood, Chinneweth, there are parking islands prior to the actual parking stalls themselves.

If you're traveling eastbound or westbound, that will, again, prohibit accidents on Tulare Avenue or any cars that are parked along the street. We did widen the parking stalls from the national guidance. I believe it was seven to seven and a half feet. We did widen those to nine feet along this segment. We also will be evaluating that crosswalk at Constitution Park. We did get quite a bit of feedback at the outreach meeting that there's a lot of kids crossing there, so that has been passed off to our traffic engineer and that is under evaluation.

Question on that. So you say you're evaluating. Does it need to hit some certain metrics before we put that in? That is correct. So what goes to the evaluation?

So part of that evaluation, there's pedestrian count requirement as well as a traffic requirement and vehicles going through that would warrant an actual crosswalk at that location.

Thank you.

For the parking, we do realize this was a major point of concern for residents and the community. The pre project inventory was found to be three thirty nine. This was done prior to the project initiating the design phase. And the pre outreach project inventory was 122. After we went back talking with the community, we looked at a couple other parking spots that were removed. We were able to increase that 122 pre outreach project inventory to 154. So we've evaluated key areas to provide additional parking for residents. We've also, in areas such as CVC and Viva Blunt Elementary, we took a high priority to maintain vehicle access and parking options and restrictions along both of those segments.

Real quick, I want to add a little bit more to that just from some of the past meetings we've had because I know this is a pretty big point for council and a pretty big point for the public. Of that 154, 49 of the spaces that we are providing are between Linwood to DeMarie. And I did just do like a quick look at Google Maps today, just as kind of a common sense check. And just looking at it today, there's about 27 to 28 cars parked there. So we're providing well over the parking spaces that it looks like are actually out there.

I counted it when I drove in. Besides the school event, there's probably 35 cars that are out there like right now. So, and back when, a lot of this public outreach was done originally in the original staff reports, it looks like back in 2122. I mean, they did like parking counts over a week period, different times of the day, that and was all the way from Robyn all the way to Cauda, which is twice this distance, and the most they had was 82, parked cars during that time period. So just in this segment, we're doing 154, and about twice this length, the most they had parked was like 82 back then.

So the amount of parking spaces being provided, like on this appears to be pretty consistent with the people that are parking there. And there's only about three blocks on this entire corridor like where there's a lot of residences on the roadway. So there's a big long block from Noyes to about Linwood and then that's on the north side of the road and on the south side of the road from Linwood to DeMarie, there's just two big blocks where the houses front. Those are the only three blocks on this entire segment where there's a significant amount of parking and residents that front. So I just wanna be clear with council, this whole road doesn't have a lot or a whole ton of residences fronting on it. It's just those three blocks.

And then one thing to note with the parking as well, the attachment was shared with the council report that does highlight all the parking along this corridor from Robyn all the way to Demery where most of the parking was kept in front of the residences as well. And the biggest question was why a class four bike lane? Again, Chris, towards the end of this we'll get more into the pros and cons, but just some quick highlights here. The class four bike lane does promote inexperienced end users to use the bike lane. So think of children going to school, commuters, families just wanting to take a nice stroll out through town and being able to go east and through the entire city.

It does promote more transportation options other than recreational. It does align with the adopted active transportation plan goals and policies. And, again, it does create an east to west connection to Santa Fe Trail and to the future Trail that will go north and south through the entire city as well. And the Tulare Avenue proposed cross street, street section, so this was shared at the public outreach meeting. And this does have a five foot bike lane, a two and a half foot buffer, nine foot parking, 10 and a half foot travel lane, and it's mirrored on the other side.

So as shown in the cross section here, trashes will be pushed out five feet past the curb up against that modular curb that's placed out there. And parking will remain just adjacent to that, so nine feet being wide.

Yeah, just for clarification, what you'll see out there on the first phase of Tulare Avenue, we actually had those at 10 feet, which seemed a little bit too wide. So we moved down to about nine, which she'll still give a lot of space for cars to park.

And just to touch on the upcoming street changes. There was you know, with this project, there is the parking shift where on street parking has moved from the adjacent curb to bike lane adjacent. Parking stalls are designated as 24 feet by nine feet, and there'll be raised modular curbing used throughout the project. And an example of that modular curbing, the previous project did use a different iteration of the modular curb. We realized, after installing this with a better product life expectancy, we we are opting to go with a Barco product.

It's a little bit more rigid. Can handle a little bit, or the life expectancy, we are expecting to get out of the roadway. We have also tested it, at the office. It it seems to hold up really well. It also has reflectors built into it, at the top and on the side. So as you're driving through the night, you also see like a reflection on these modular curvings as well. A little bit more visibility. That was another resident concern we did have as well. And as stated with the implementations from from here and feedback from the community is traffic island protection. It it won't look similar to this.

This is an example I I had found online. But it will be a raised curb, a raised island per se, at the beginning of the parking stalls at every major intersection. Just again, an added level of protection for anyone that's parked away from the curb and gutter and in the designated parking stalls. And just a quick overview of the Tulare Avenue proposed plan view. This area is at the intersection of Lynnwood and Tulare. And again, just showing how users may use this roadway once it's completely striped. It's a little hard to see, but on the westbound traffic on the north side you'll see Island

A

located right here. If cars are traveling westbound, that parking island will have reflectors on it as well as signage, again to divert traffic away from veering into those designated parking stalls.

And how wide is that right that narrow area there, it still

10 feet, 10 and

a half?

From the three lane? Yeah. Right here, about 10 and half feet.

You said 10 and a half?

10 and half feet.

Thank you. How wide is our city bus? 11.

No, it's probably like eight or nine I would say width wise. You got the mirrors, it's probably closer to 10 I would guess. I guess real quick on that too, with the median island that Jonathan's talking about that right there, one of the things we're thinking that's going to help the traffic a lot with is number one in the fog, like just to help people get straightened out with deflectors on it. Also if like the right turns, and this is coming off of Linwood right there, the right turn, like make sure they get straightened out and straightened out into that travel lane before they get to the parked cars. So we're thinking that's going to help a lot with just getting people used to the kind of configuration and just protecting the cars.

And again, the next slide here is just a blown up plan view of that parking island. So I do actually have a buffer space off that edge line. It's about one foot off that edge line. So it's a little bit more than that, I guess, from the center line of that through lane. It's still pushed out a little bit further off there as well.

Yeah. Real quick to Council Member Winn's question also. One of the things that's nicer about Tulare Avenue in this section is that we've got the double way left turn lane too. So when we have bigger vehicles like the buses or things like that, if the mirrors hang over a little bit on that double left turn lane, like most of the time there's not many cars in there so it's not really a huge deal for some of the kind of larger city vehicles. But 10 and a half feet should be and that's just striping to that 10 and a half feet mark. Most of the cars will probably be more like eight foot width in there instead of the nine. So there's a little bit extra room on that side also.

Vice Mayor, they're 8.5 standard.

And a quick overview with the Class IV bike lane on Tulare Avenue. We just kind of wanted to highlight the higher levels of protection and classifications of bike lanes offered throughout the city. In just this small area, that key east to west connection that I I keep mentioning is Tulare Avenue connecting the future Shirk Road class one trail going north and south, throughout the entire city as well as the Santa Fe Trail, going north and south throughout the throughout the entire city. Notable projects coming up because they are noted as future is I did, have some ATP projects highlighted in here, which would be a class four roadway. There's a future class four ATP project coming through on Santa Fe north of Tulare Avenue all the way to Houston.

So, again, offering the community opportunities to take a protected or more enhanced bike path from Tulare Avenue all the way to Santa Fe, then take that, again, class four protected bikeway all the way to downtown if they wanted to or to Houston, whereas another class four project with the Houston Houston and Highland Connectivity project going east and west from Santa Fe to, I believe that is, County Center. Sorry, guys, I have to show this right here.

Oh, that one goes to

To Mooney? Yeah. So again, the class four on on Houston Avenue, which is a higher level of protection, and then ultimately connecting to the class four rotor that you do see on County Center, and those are those post in the roadway. And that does sum up our survey results and feedback. Now we'll get into the construction impacts of the project.

I touched on them a little bit earlier, but just to kinda give the public a good idea of what to expect as we move through, the construction portion of this project. So phase one of this project, as we did talk about, there will be a partial road closure and a traffic detour at Acres. So this will be a traffic restriction east and westbound through this intersection, primarily focused on promoting north and southbound movements through here. It'll be a soft closure at the east side of Robyn and Tulare, hard closure at the east and west ends of Acres and Tulare Avenue with soft closure on the West Side of Lynnwood and Tulare. So again, we'll allow local traffic through to get to their homes and their residences, but anyone needing to get through Tulare Avenue will be detoured in and around to Walnut and or Cypress, rather than going north or south.

Real quick, just to make sure council's aware of something else going on kind of in this general area as it relates to kind of Tulare And Acres. The Shirk sewer project's going to be started by San Joaquin Valley Homes on Monday the twenty sixth. That's going to have to close Shirk from Walnut to Tulare. That's going to be going on the same time we have to rebuild that Tulare And Acres intersection. We've tried to time that the best we can but the best that everybody could do with that because they're running the same timelines, just get the Tulare And Acres thing done, like when school's out.

And we're trying to maintain the north south, at least one lane north and south on Acres at all times, like knowing that those two things are kind of timed up together, but kind of the Tulare And Acres rebuild will be a little bit relatively short, like part of that Tulare project. I don't know, it two weeks? Probably for the intersection rebuild? Yeah, about two weeks to rebuild that intersection, and then we'll be in decent shape after that. But just be aware when you get the calls, like city staff is aware of it, that's about the best we could do, like with that, because the sewer has to go in for a bunch of homes that need sewer on the East Side Of Sherritt.

And with phase two, we do have a partial road closure and traffic detour at North Linwood. Again, with Linwood, we are allowing east and westbound movements through intersection. We're doing half closures or partial closures on the north side of the street as and moving traffic to the south side that can flow east and west, and then ultimately moving traffic to the south side or to the north side of the street, closing down the south south half, and then finishing finishing the roadway reconstruction on on Lynnwood. At Chinua Street, we're following the same methodology here. We will be shutting down the north side of the street, moving traffic to the south, permitting east and westbound movements through the intersection, and and then switching traffic to the north side, shutting down the south side, permitting traffic east and west, and getting and finalizing the rebuild of intersection.

In phase three, which should be Demeris, this was the key one where we we are permitting north and southbound traffic through this intersection and not permitting east and westbound movement. So, again, it'll be kind of a stage closure on the east and west halves of the street, shifting traffic to the west and the east as construction progress goes through the intersection. And, again, so just to touch on this, it'll be soft closure at the south side soft closure at the East side of Chinooth and Tulare, hard closure at the West side of Demersey and Tulare, the soft closure at the West Side of County Center in Tulare, and a hard closure in the East Side of Demersey and Tulare. And the biggest thing here is the previous segment did not did not have any east and westbound restrictions through Tulare Avenue. We that traffic going.

I just wanna reiterate to the public as well as the council that this was posted at the public outreach meeting. This is also posted on the city website. We are urging residents to stay alert with text message updates. Don't hesitate to reach out to me if they have any questions regarding the construction impacts, and we'll do our best to to field those questions as they come and to ensure residents, expect minor delays throughout this construction progress. Thank you. And then Chris will take it from this point on.

I know a number of people from the public were a little bit frustrated with the Class IV bike lanes. I think counsel is a little bit unsure about where to probably go with the class four bike lanes, the class two bike lanes. You know, I struggled with it, contemplated it a lot. And, you know, until I put it all down on paper, like and I was pretty convinced of, you know, why we're making the recommendation to go with the class four bike lanes. So kinda what I wanna do real quick here, because my kids would say it's time to lock in for the next ten or fifteen minutes.

This is kinda the big, like, part that I I really wanna have a good discussion with counsel about and want you to understand why the engineering department is recommending the class four bike lanes. So I wanna do a little bit of a pros and cons. And you know, what I had to look at really as a city engineer is kind of the big picture of like what we've got going in the city, how we get funding, things of that sort. So a lot of that went into a lot of these pros and cons. Kind of the pros on the class four bike lanes, the physical separation and safety for younger riders.

When you talk to a number of bike, like people that ride bikes in town, or even the kids that are doing scooters or like e bikes, whatever they're doing, like what you'll hear is, you know, they get yelled out by the traffic when they're right next to traffic lanes. They get swerved out to see if they can get knocked over by cars. They get things thrown at them. They get bottles thrown at them. Stuff like that.

So the class two bike lanes, while okay, do have a lot of those issues, which are a little difficult for riders. So the class four bike lanes protects you a lot more from things like that, especially younger riders. There is less mixing and kind of exposure to through traffic. We're seeing a lot more e bikes, e scooters, things like that, and that's probably going to continue. Think, I mean, I'm driving around Littlewood, La Jolla, El Diamante a lot, I see a lot of kids when you come out of school, like either walking, doing e scooters, doing e bikes, some doing regular bikes.

And I would guess that that's probably pretty common around a lot of the rest of our schools. And the big thing with this class four stuff too, is that that's what the state's pushing right now and it's for biker safety, it's for mobility for all users. And it also gives us a lot of ability to get future grants when we have this interconnected system, is the big thing. And one of the things, just to put this in perspective, that with a lot of these ATP grants, we get a lot of other things, and we got a lot of funding for other things besides just the bike, the class four bike lanes or bike trails. For example, let me give you this example.

One of those curb ramps that we have for ADA curb ramps typically costs around 30 to $40, one of them. There's four of them per intersection, right? I mean it's a huge cost. Well, let's say the Houston Elementary ATP project that we're doing, we're replacing 23 ADA ramps with grant money to the tune of probably saving the city 600,000 and something that has really not a whole lot to do with just the bike lane stuff. And that's only a $2,500,000 project.

We've got a $5,000,000 ATP project, an $11,000,000 ATP project, a $34,000,000 ATP project. So when you do the ratios on that, we've got a whole bunch of other ramps on those projects. There's a huge cost savings to the city to get all these ramps done with parts of those projects. Anything we can do to bolster all our ability to get grants, I think it for itself, like in the long run, and it gives us the ability to get more money. One of the things too, I guess, just this class four bike lane, just looking at our larger ATP plan is that once we get this thing to Robyn, like we have new development from Robyn to Schirk.

It's gonna be really easy to just run the class fours all the way to Schirk because those subdivisions are being developed for our current standards, which are the block walls up against the Collector Road. Right? So I mean, it'll be a simple thing to run those class fours all the way to Shirk. Like, and also, like, East of Lovers Lane, you know, a lot of new development over there. Pretty pretty easy to run those class fours all the way from Lovers Lane all the way to the new Road 1488 interchange, the Greenway Trail, provide connectivity essentially all the way across town.

So it'll be a little bit more of a struggle with the narrower roads between Lovers Lane and Cada. But I mean, it's just things engineering will have to work out. And some of the other things with this too is that, you know, this is the state, like the general direction the state's trying to go for, I mean, just giving users options like for, you know, riding bikes or walking or doing cars. It's pretty consistent with a lot of our general plan policies, our ATP policies. We did go back and look up the general plan that was the 1991 general plan, just to see if Tulare was designated a collector back then.

It was. Our collector arterial roadways, the big things looking at them is it's meant to be safe use for all modes of travel. Our collector arterial streets are not meant to be used, or it's not, I guess, described as like one of the main things to be parking. It's for basically walking, biking, transit, like vehicles, intent being to try and give safe modes of travel for people to get one place for another. I wouldn't say parking is probably on the higher list for the collector arterial roadways.

This is kind of a little bit of a different thing, but I did like going to a lot looking at kind of the the gas and oil situation in California. That's been a big thing lately. I think probably some of the council members are aware, two of our major refineries, and we lost about two of our major oil refineries and about 20% of our oil refinery capacity in California got lost in the not too recent past year. That's affected gas prices. It's gonna continue affected gas prices.

We've only got several refineries left. I mean, predictions are that I mean, by the 2026, the gas average on California could be $7.30 to $8.40 a gallon. So kinda looking at a lot of that. You know, I don't know. I mean, it looks like it would be good to, like, give people options to do other modes of travel.

I mean, lot of the stuff I read said if one of our remaining seven refineries went down, it could go much higher than $8.4 a gallon. Whether or not that stuff happens, I don't know. That's a lot of the predictions they're talking about right now, but you know, I think there'd be a fair number of the public that would like to be the option to have safe bike paths. One of the other big things that I looked at was the Vivo Blunt School District boundary. And that is basically all along Tulare Avenue.

So the Viva Blunt boundary is from DeMarie all the way to the golf course out over kinda more towards Plaza West of Schirk, and it's on Walnut on the South, and it's 198 on the North. So Tulare Avenue is essentially smack in the middle of the Viva Blunt Elementary School District boundary. So I would think it'd probably be really good to give the kids options to have a safe path right there. And that's a lot of the pros that go along with this. And, you know, I'll go through some of the cons and talk about those too.

You know, the cons obviously that everybody a lot of the residents are not not happy with is a loss of street parking. For this segment, I've kind of mentioned it already, but there's three main blocks. Like that have streets that front on Tulare Avenue. McConnell mentioned where those are at already. The other cons are 70% of respondents were opposed.

We didn't get a huge turnout with the amount of mailers that we sent out. So Jonathan already talked about that a little bit. Reduced visibility, backing out of driveways is kind of one of the things that gets brought up by the residents. A lot of the parking that we've got on the Tulare Avenue design, there's hashed areas that you can park like back out of your driveway and get into those and kind of get lined up parallel with the roadway before you decide to go into the roadway. I mean, other things we've been seeing people do on the first phase of Cleary Avenue is they can back into your driveway also and go front face out.

So that's kind of couple of responses, I guess, to that. One of the big ones that seems to come up from a lot of the residents is getting out of parked cars, and basically you have to get out of your car right adjacent to the travel lane. You know, we have a lot of places around town where we already have existing situations like that. And I've lived in town for forty years and can't recall ever having heard of an accident with somebody getting out of a car and getting hit in the travel lane. I did call PD to talk to them a little bit about that, and they said that, you know, they don't have any significant records or anything of that sort of people getting hit, like getting out of cars.

So I would say, know, while it's a little bit while it is inconvenient for sure, it doesn't sound like really big safety problem or issue that we've got right now. Like, I guess on the flip turn of that, I mean the last three to four years, probably just between myself and my kids, I've known six people either walking, scootering, or biking, getting accidents, two of them are fatalities. So, and that's just in the last three to four years, directly people that either I or my kids know. So just to put it into a little bit of perspective there. Delivery landscape and visitor vehicles are definitely a little bit more challenging with the parking configuration on Tulare Avenue.

There's also been mentions of garbage trucks that have to stop in lanes to get the trash cans. I mean, that I think is kind of a little bit of a smaller issue. I mean, public works can do schedules, that way they're off peak hours. Also plenty of room to garbage trucks to pull over if they need to get, get out of the way of a line of cars. There's been a little bit of talk a fair amount of talk, I think, about the, these class four lanes reducing speeds.

We did do the speed study, like before and after. It was pretty similar to the speeds before, pretty similar to the speeds after, at least in the configuration on Tulare phase one. So that didn't seem to have a lot of effect on the speeds, but the speeds also weren't that much above or below the speed limit that's currently posted as well. Just as last couple of cons here, and then I'll kind of just summarize. You know, there is a higher initial in maintenance costs with these class four bike lanes for the Tulare Avenue project on this segment.

Probably those block modules are cost about $230,000 for the all the block modules on this project. There's more striping, so I would kind of guess there's probably like $25,000 of extra striping. So probably a cost extra initially of about, I would say, 250,000 on this segment of Tulare Avenue. Like a little bit higher maintenance costs with the blocks and the striping later for public works. But when you go back to the amount of money that I'm talking about getting with the ATP grants and other spots and everything, I mean it would appear that being able to have the ability to get the ATP grants outweighs some of the initial costs on some of the Tulare Avenue projects.

Just to summarize, I think that with all this being said, the way that I think we were kind of looking at it on the engineering side is that, you know, approval on these class four bike lanes is saying that, you know, yes, we want to prioritize bike safety. We want to be in compliance with our general plan and ATP like documents. And we want to maintain our ability to get future grants and be able to get more money for the city to make it better for all the residents and everything. We also wanna just be able to give residents options for biking or for or for vehicle travel. The last thing, the the vote no on this and going back to the class two bike lanes that we have out there.

I mean, engineering's prepared to do that. We can we're we can do that if the council wants to do that. But really, when it comes down to it, the main difference I see is that there's three blocks where we're either talking about doing parking up against the curb or having parking along the travel lane in the roadway. Like, it's kind of what we're talking about here with, you know, residents and the negativity with that. So I guess that's a general summary on why we're recommending the class four bike lanes and just kind of the we feel like the benefits outweighs the negatives on this as far as the overall big picture city concern.

And I guess we'll at this point go ahead and open it up to questions for council.

Perfect, thank you very much. We appreciate that thorough report. So, we'll start off with Council Member Nelson. Do you have any comments or questions? Is everyone okay with just waiting till public comments? Okay, wonderful. Let's go ahead and open this up to the public then. Read my little statement here. Alright. So, we'll go ahead and open up the this public hearing to comment. So, this is the time Comments related to items under public hearing items are limited to three minutes per speaker for a maximum of thirty minutes per item. The mayor may reasonably limit or extend the public comment period to preserve the council's interest in conducting efficient orderly meetings. So anyone wishing to speak on this item, please come forward to lecternate there and state your name and city of residence.

Greetings, Council. Lisa Alvarado, Vice City Vice City resident, LCI, ATP evaluator, and some who rode her bike here today. Really thankful to the engineering team. I have a lot of confidence in the intellect and the presentation today and I really want to echo the sentiments and maybe just be a little bit more pointed from a writer's perspective. We talked a little bit about ATP liquidity and how these grants, know, there's a $250,000 input but we get a lot of ADA accessibility and we're really looking at all wheels.

The reason why that's important for me is the reason why I was volunteering my time into some of these ACP projects is I really felt like in the place with the worst air quality in the world, 2.2 particulate matter, that we really need to be looking at things outside of just planting trees. And so what a beautiful way to reduce greenhouse gas by increasing cycle. What people don't realize is, I think the conundrum is ATP is a grant that the city applied engineering team is now in this planning conundrum. Nobody can do community engagement right because it's a difficult time. What I'm hearing is the community is upset because they weren't engaged properly and rather than doing education we went and did more surveys.

So maybe one, under the initial investment of trying to build culture, can we understand the premise of building culture must come with an education investment too? Now, we missed it. So do we need to punish the community and the cyclists who are working real hard to make the air a little bit better, make the roads a little bit safer? I don't know. I don't want to be mad at you, right, because this is a difficult problem that we're all in.

But what I really want to impart on you that you have free labor here that is working hard. So on top of the millions of dollars that we're getting in ADA, on top of the culture of investment that we're getting, you're getting other community members. This is inspirational is what I'm saying. Talking about why not class two over class four. Had 56, let me hurry that. I was riding along. I live off of Ferguson and Demory, so right where those deaths just happened. I'm more comfortable on the road. I rode on the road, and I got pepper sprayed. I rode on the sidewalk by two walkers with poles asked me to get off.

And of course, I'm gonna get off. I wanna I wanna honor them. So class four is really the best way to go. And I feel much safer up against a class four protected lane than up against the roadways because if we don't have that culture protecting me, tonight when I leave here, I don't have that protection. Right? So all I got is my blinking lights and me with looking both ways. So just please urging you to consider me and the other riders when you're looking at this policy. Thank you.

Good evening council members. My name is Kinetha, k I n e t h a. I'm from Visalia, I believe, Board 3. Good evening council members. I appreciate this opportunity to address council regarding the Tulare Avenue paving project. I would like to voice my strong opposition to the bike lane portion of this project. I live near Acres in Tulare and I work at COS, so I travel this road multiple times a day. The class four bike lanes are hazardous and unnecessary for this street. Tulare Avenue is a beautiful wide safe road to travel for both cyclists and vehicles. It is not congested or dangerous.

However, the new class four bike lanes now make this a dangerous road for everyone who uses it. Drivers must now dodge parked cars and the people trying to enter those cars. Residents backing out of their driveway cannot see oncoming traffic due to new parking layout. And when they enter the roadway, they're immediately entering oncoming traffic. There is no longer a buffer.

While the collision report tonight, which I don't think was actually shown but it was in the agenda packet, show that there was one accident due to the new bike lane configuration. It certainly does not show the near misses that I often see while driving. My biggest concern is now for the children and parents at Viva Blunt Elementary School and Central Valley Christian Schools. Have you ever driven by those schools during pickup and drop off? Probably not, but I have many, many times.

Cars line the streets with parents loading and unloading excited children into their cars or jaywalking with them across the street. Thankfully, Tulare is a wide road with plenty of room to park, safely enter and exit parked vehicles, and to see jaywalkers coming before they enter the road. The proposed class four bike lanes will make this area incredibly unsafe for children, cyclists, and drivers. There is no room for error. None.

If you have not yet heard from those parents, I am sure you soon will. Where am I supposed to pull over for emergency vehicles? That was a legit question that I had the other day while driving and dodging parked cars. Tulare Avenue is also a truck route for semis, semi trucks. Think about that as you next time you drive the rehab portion of Tulare.

Council members, why would you take something that is currently working for everyone and change it? Please use this money for road improvements that are actually needed, such as crosswalks for Constitution Park, Viva Blunt, and CVC. Tulare Avenue needs repaving, but the bike lanes are fine. I implore counsel to vote to direct staff to eliminate the class four bike lanes and instead keep the class two lanes on Tulare Avenue between Robyn Street and Demaree. Thank you for your time. Sincerely, a taxpayer and a voter.

Jim Marie Zveisaya. I live on Tulare Avenue, just west of Dim Rees. So in August, they will be working in front of my house. I support the project. I support the bike lanes. Right now, I can park two cars in front of my house. After the project, I'll only be able to park one car. That doesn't really affect me personally. I know there are some neighbors that are going to lose parking completely in front of their house. And I don't know how we deal with that.

But I think that the bike lanes I used to ride on bike around town quite a bit. I have in the last couple of years years for various reasons. But my mic is still in the garage, and I'm ready to get back out there and do some riding. Tulare Avenue, the section that has been completed, I think I'll enjoy riding over there. I know I'm going utilize it when it's in front of my house.

As for parking with people getting out of the car into a travel lane, as somebody else mentioned, that's quite prevalent throughout town as it is now, even just right around downtown here. There's many streets where there's not much space between your car and the travel lane. So I think that's just an adjustment that we can make. The other issues, I think it's just a learning curve. And once people get used to it, it'll be fine. Like I said, I completely support it. And I look forward to, after the work is done, having a nice Tulare Avenue. Thank you.

Hello. My name is Maria Guilen. That's G U I L L E N, accent over the E. I live in Visalia. And I, too, want to recommend and support the proposed project that is described by our department for the class four bike lanes.

Why? Safety is, in fact, the issue here. And there are lots and lots of ways that we ourselves, whether we're in a car, on a bike, walking, can be careless and be not concentrating. As somebody that drives for the most part in the city, I'm definitely afraid of the folks that run red lights. It's just something that's very, very frightening to me.

It's very prevalent. We have to be very, very defensive. I personally would hate to ever be involved in an accident where I would hit somebody on a bike, hit a child on a scooter. That I protection for them. I want that protection for me.

I believe that it's true that for environmental reasons, for the overall welfare of our city, that if we could learn to be more accommodating and think beyond some of our own discomfort that we might be better off. I actually spend a lot of time in small, uncorporated areas in Tulare County. And one in particular that I spend a lot of time in doesn't even have sidewalks, let alone the opportunity to have a class four bike lane and have some neighbors upset about it. I wish, with all my heart, that more people had have come out and given more testimony. There were several that were supportive or at least neutral, supportive, or strongly supportive.

And if we had, in fact, done the community education that was referred to earlier, had it done more of that kind of personal outreach, perhaps we could have gotten a lot more support expressed. This is difficult. It's hard. I believe that what's also been said is that it's going to take us some time. We're going to struggle with it for a little while.

But I'm used to struggle. That's how we get what we need ultimately in order to live a better quality of life here in town. So I really do hope that the council doesn't reject this plan based on 71 people being opposed. Thank you.

Coming from Bessera. I just have a question that I so I heard a lot of about grants, and I've seen some of the videos by the council, you know, regarding the projects and why we have to build. But my question is, have we so I saw 81 people, but I'm assuming there's more residents. And we haven't really asked this question. As a country, we're not used to being in bikes.

I'm open to learning more and educating myself, but the majority of the people let's be real here. The majority of the people in Visalia work out of Visalia, which is why we have traffic at 8AM and at 3PM. So we have not been asking the people why they work out of Visalia, a lot of people. I have family members that drive every morning to Fresno to work because there's no work here. We're gonna be honest.

So in my case, I'm considering working out of Visalia. I have to drive. I can't ride a bike to Hanford or Lemoore if I get a job offer for a school district. So how about we ask I think that we need to do something more educational to educate the community. I want to ask this gentleman that gave a great presentation, did they ride a bike here or did they drove a car here?

So that's what the community wants to know. How about we educate it more because a lot of people drive for because they have to work. So I just wanted to add that. I'm not saying it's bad to ride a bike, but the way the city is built, coming from a big city like Los Angeles, I think that it's not built to the changes that we're offering. So I just wanted to add that detail. I know there has to be other solutions. Thank you.

Hello, my name is Laura Anderson. I live here in Visalia. I use the current protected bike lanes on Tulare Avenue almost every day. I use them to go to work. So I leave my house.

I ride my bike with my daughter to school, drop her off at Mountain View where she goes to TK, and then I bike the rest of the way over to Cahuilla. My route that's on Tulare Avenue is the stretch where I feel the safest. I've had a lot of close run ins with cars, and that is the best street to ride on. We have been commuting and running errands more and more by bike, so I like the idea of having more protected bike lanes in town. It shouldn't be hard to get around town safely by bike, and, unfortunately, currently, it it it is.

It's a lot of looking at Google Maps and trying to find what's gonna be safe. I'm hoping the city will continue to invest in infrastructure that is not centered around cars, but centered around people. The more accessible and safe bike paths we have, the more people will continue to use them. Thank you.

My name is, Ellis Doyle. I'm from Visalia. Class four separated bikeways, in my opinion, have many drawbacks, and I feel that having the traffic lane and the bike lane separated by parking spaces creates many dangerous situations for both pedestrians, foot and wheelchair, and bikers, lower numerous scenarios. I used to drive down to Larry very often. I now avoid it because it's so confusing, so tight, parked cars right next to the traffic lane.

So I I just avoid it. Some of the, scenarios I have, the mail delivery, you know, they have to get out of their vehicle, walk across the bike lane, put the mail in the mailbox, walk back across the, bike lane to get in their vehicle. That's dangerous for the bikers, dangerous for the mailman. There's so many, delivery vehicles such as UPS, FedEx, Prime, food delivery, Walmart. Same thing.

These trucks have to park someplace. And if there's no parking space, they have to park in the lane the lane. They can't park in the bike lane. And there, again, they're walking through the bike lane to make their deliveries and then back to their trucks. Garbage trucks, I've wanted to walk over there.

I'm only two blocks off of Tulare, and I've wanted to go over and watch on a a garbage truck pickup day. I can imagine it's just traffic backed up because I don't know where the trucks get off to grab the can, dump it, and then go to the next can. So I think garbage trucks, and that's three runs, you know, for the the green waste, the trash, and the, recycle. And then the people putting their trash cans out, here again, they have to cross through the bike lane to put them out, cross back to go home, and at the end of the day, cross through the bike lane, bring their can back over to the house. You may think it's safe for the bicyclists, but they're gonna have so many people crossing back and forth through this bike lane that I just see it as being very dangerous.

I think the city of Iselia am I down in thirty three seconds? Wow. I have a whole lot more. But I think the and the grants. You know, do we complicate life just to get more grants? Whenever I get off Tulare, I avoid Tulare. I get over to Walnut. I get over to Whitendale. And it's like a fresh air because it's nice, wider lanes. There's the bike lane there. But you have a space to drive your car. And that's the main reason for roads.

Thank you, sir.

Hello. I'm Herb Simmons. I live in Visalia. We live a couple blocks south of Tulare between County Center and Woodland. So we're right on that first phase of this project. I've been a bicycle commuter for essentially my whole adult life. My office now is downtown. And I regularly use the newly configured Tulare Avenue to ride to work at home. I actually ride that road almost every day right now for errands and work. The new Class four bike lanes are fantastic.

They are safer for all users. Traffic appears slower to me. It sounds like it might not be as much as I thought. I've also noticed there's somewhat less traffic on Tulare, which I have liked. So there may be some people avoiding it.

And especially the different modes of transportation are really effectively separated, and that makes it safe for everybody. I'm asking you to please support your staff's recommendation and continue with Class IV bike lanes in this next phase. I've reviewed the project overview presentation prepared by city staff. And as a civil engineer myself, I'm impressed with city staff's research, design effort and recommendation. Continuing to rehab Tulare Avenue as they have designed and recommended will produce a safe and effective roadway for all users, cyclists, pedestrians, and cars.

The survey response was interesting. Much of the negative response was related to safety. But from all indications and research and current guidelines, the recommended design is safer for everyone, all three users of these roads. The design will slow, I believe, car speed somewhat and separate traffic flow from cyclists and pedestrians. Further study of car speed and other effects that appears is appropriate with the areas of private residences and the schools along Tulare in places that seems essentially to me a glorified residential street.

We should not want cars going 50 miles per hour past all those kids in houses. Regarding the fear of additional accidents, especially cars hitting parked cars, the current design with the two the class two bike path puts cyclists where those parked cars will be with the class four design. Now hitting a parked car would cause more property damage, but is far less likely to cause serious injury or death than if they had a bicyclist in the lane. Publicly funded roads are for all users, and they should be designed to be safe for all users. As part of an overall city transportation plan, city staff was directed to design Tulare Avenue as a type four bike lane.

In this plan, Tulare Avenue is a vital East West corridor across town for cyclists. It is a good plan.

Thank you, sir.

Oh, thank you very much.

Hello. Good evening. My name is Meesa Royster, r o y s t e r, and I live in Visalia. I'm speaking tonight in strong support of the Tulare Avenue project. I'd like to start by saying that I've heard the outreach data shared by the city, and what stood out to me is that nearly every listed concern centers on driver convenience, reduced lane widths, parking adjustments, vehicle maneuverability, and traffic flow.

While the survey captures the understandable friction that comes with changing our street designs, 81 total responses in a city of over a 140,000 people tells us that we're looking at a very tiny fraction of our community. A survey showing frustration with parking or lane reductions is not evidence that a project is failing or that it will not succeed. But what I keep noticing is a little concerning to me, and I'm concerned about it because it's missing a very important conversation, the actual toll that the streets take on the most vulnerable members of our community, which to me are our children. According to the Swartz database on the city of Visalia, an average of fourteen Visalia kids are hit while walking or biking every single year. That's more than one child struck every single month in our city.

This isn't an abstract debate on urban planning. These are our kids. They're your kids, and they're getting hurt on our watch. So every single day for the past year, my five year old son has commuted to school by bicycle to Mountain View Elementary School. He hasn't missed a single day.

Our experience gives us a firsthand understanding of what our family and other families on bikes face. We know exactly how vital physical separation is to keeping children alive on the streets here in Visalia. When you look at the current behavior on Tulare Avenue, drivers are parking away from the street as much as possible right up against the bike lane. It shows a deep concern for a scratched side mirror but less regard for a potential child riding on the bike riding on their bike on the other side of that line. If we cared about children's lives as much as we care about protecting our vehicles from a scratch, I think we would be having a very different conversation tonight.

I see one of the alternatives that are listed tonight as directing staff to return the roadway striping to its original class two format. I am urging you not to vote for that. If modifications must be made, please look at options that keep human lives safe, like a buffered bike lane, safety alternatives that naturally will reduce traffic speeds, and provide a truly safe corridor for our bikes and for our children. Going backwards to a standard class two line is failure of safety. And frankly, I feel like something needs to be said about how much this single project is being relitigated over and over.

We don't do this with roads. When the city repaves the street, changes the driving lane, or adjusts the signal, we don't bring it back to council every time a driver experiences a learning curve. Drivers adapt. Life moves on. I don't really understand why safety infrastructure has to fight this hard to it. Thank

you, ma'am. No. We we don't allow any extra time. Appreciate your comments.

Good evening. My name is Mark Wall. I live about two blocks off of DeMarie and Tulare. I am a vulnerable road user, according to that term that's being used in this report, which I hope you've all received. I want to give you some data. The toll in Visalia residents fifty seven serious injury or fatal crashes every year. These are the crashes that change lives permanently. Pedestrians are being hit. Eight children 18 hit while walking each year. Forty eight child pedestrians struck between 2019 and 2024.

Middle school aged children, 13 to 15, those that are most likely to be riding bikes or scooters, were the ones hit the most. Bicyclists are being hit. Six children 18 hit while biking each year. Combined, fourteen Visalia kids are being hit while walking or biking every year. There are 72 crashes per year from drivers running red lights.

It's another big concern. What's being done about that? Vulnerable road users, people walking and biking, make up thirty eight percent of all traffic deaths in Visalia, even though they're a much smaller group. Compare the number of bicycles and pedestrians you see to the number of cars. Thirty eight percent of the people that are seriously injured or killed are people walking and riding bicycles.

Speed is the single biggest predictor of whether someone walking or biking survives being hit. Pedestrian hit at 20 miles per hour has a roughly ninety percent chance of surviving. At 40 miles per hour, twenty percent. In response to the survey, safety issue of narrow lanes, we should be looking at that as an indicator that they're working. We want the narrower road to slow traffic down.

And if people are worried about them or concerned about them, we hope they'll start reducing their speed. The concern about cars crashing into parked vehicles, the space occupied by a parked vehicle is in the same space that a bicycle rider occupies in a class two lane. That was mentioned earlier by someone else. And the loss of parking I've got twenty seconds left. I did an inventory using Google.

Almost every house, all but one, has four parking places on the property. They have two in their garage and two in their driveway, every house on this stretch except one. So if you want to deny this project for that one person

Council members, mayor, and vice mayor, I'm Dale Simmons. S I m m o n s. I live in Visalia. And I'm just gonna say that I know you when we talked about this the last go around her mentioned that he had been in an accident Putting our kids in the trailer. That's the same trailer I used to take them to school in and I would love to have been able to take this trailer and the protective bike lanes and I hope that other people will Feel feel confident because if you can imagine going down the in the new lanes with the kid your kids in the trail you'd be far more convinced that how safe they are and I know you know I care about safety so I Hope that you stick with the new the plan Project presentation.

I hope that you stick with the class four lanes. Thank you

If anybody else wants to speak, go ahead and just, you want, sir, go ahead and take a seat right there. And if anyone else wants to speak, if you guys sit right there. Want to make sure we get a full count of how many more people are going to be speaking because I think we're already at 11 or 12 people who've already spoken.

And thank you. My name is Brian Patterson. I ride my bike a lot, not so much for commuting, but for sport. And I used to avoid Tulare Avenue. It was not fun to ride. It was rough. It was dangerous. And, I want to commend you for what you've done so far. The class four bike lane, the first time I went down it, yeah, I was a little confused. But then the second time I went down it, I suddenly the light went on.

I could finally imagine children riding their bikes to school and safely. Before, that wouldn't be possible. And, I think there's a reason why cycling is becoming more and more important. You've probably noticed since about the pandemic, there's been a big, big uptick in cycling and alternative forms of transportation around town. The reasons for it might be they can't afford to drive or maybe it's healthier or for whatever reasons.

But I think the important part of it is that there are far more cyclists now than there used to be. And I think that number is going to continue to grow. I want to commend you for beautiful design, great thoughts. I'm curious, are there national trends along this way? I think from what I've seen online and in videos, definitely is. There's been a movement towards more alternative forms of transportation. It does a lot more for a community than just make it safe to ride. Thank you.

Tom McGuigan, MC GUIGAN, Visalia resident. I live on the Southeast Corner of Crenshaw and Tulare, and that's where that park is over there on Tulare. So I see kids trying to run across Tulare. And by the way, the speed that went on Tulare that people actually drive is around 60 miles an hour because it's pretty quick. You've got to have a lot of space in between you.

So even as a parent getting a two and a five year old across that street, it's pretty difficult. And those kids are out there. So you may do a Google snapshot right now and not see a kid in the road, or you may drive by that right now. But if you go there on Saturday or you go there after school, then that's where you see those kids running back and forth, going home and getting water and coming back to the park. So we're talking about safety.

I'm hoping that we could get that crosswalk in there for the safety of the community that goes to that park. I think it's one of the only parks that doesn't have a crosswalk going to it. I think your flyer didn't work because it showed a bike and a car and a road. It didn't show a bike and a blank spot in a road. And so a lot of people didn't respond or come out because they saw that and thought, hey, we're going to have a parking spot in front of our house.

It's just not going be as good as the curb. And so I think a lot of people that I've talked to just were surprised that they lost their parking spot, or that they lost where they had maybe three in front of their home, now they're down to one. Or their one spot they're fighting with a neighbor next door for. So when Christmas comes along, or a funeral comes along, or a weekend birthday comes along, or a swim party comes along because you may not just always use them Monday through Friday during the middle of the day when a test is being done. But on the weekends, when they really need them, after dinner of events or such.

It just seems odd to me that you have this road there that you could park on, and you would just stripe it and just leave it blank. And so you've got people parking on like at CBC, you've got people parking on Robyn, and parking in the dirt with the trees, walking their kids into school. When you've got all this whole line painted red some of it's painted red, some of it's there's parking now, but it's apparently being eliminated. But get rid of that red curvy and let the let the people park there and get their kids into into school and walk them up. So that's that's what I'm thinking.

You just you you could I think the the the bike lane at the four is okay, but it just needs to be modified. Try to get some more parking in there. And I think that would make most people or a lot of people happy and get that crosswalk for the kids to go to the park. So thanks for the time.

Good evening, council. Kyle Glenn, familiar with a lot of the faces here. Vice president. With all due respect, I oppose the design of this project. My background, I'm a civil engineer, general building contractor, been a part of public works projects up and down the state of California.

I've been to Washington, been a part of multiple class bike lane projects, also a cyclist, also a parent. My concern is my children go to Central Valley Christian School. I don't think that this was piloted as part of the study. My concern comes from the fact that at the school drop off time, as was mentioned in the previous comments, there's traffic that will spill out. And if we remove areas for drop off and pick up, that will continue to spill out further into acres, which I don't see a plan to remedy that situation.

So I think we'll have traffic concern there. So my concern stems from a safety perspective. Again, done cycling most of my life, have four kids. My concern is for the safety of drop off of those times, and it appears that the study reflected the public school. I understand there's a public school system.

CBC is not part of that. However, that school is much larger than Viva Blunt, and it's in the area moving west where development is proposed in the future. So I'd like to make sure that that is considered as part of the project because those people are residents of this city, and their voice should be considered as part of that. So like I said, lot of experience with this in my my personal career as well as my my off hours time with my family. So we ride bikes to and from.

I've taken my kids to drop off on a bicycle previously. I've done the bike trailer thing. I've done some of those. So I'd just like to make sure that that voice is heard because I haven't seen that, and I would like to have seen that as part of this. Again, with all due respect, think a lot of these guys up here, and I think they did a good job presenting that. I feel like that may have been not considered as part of the look for this. So I would support the class two bikeway for that reason. Thank you.

All right, thank you. We're gonna go ahead and close public comments at this point and we're gonna turn the time back over to counsel with further questions and comments. We'll start off with council member Nelson.

First of all, I wanna thank everybody that made presentations tonight on public comments plus received quite a few emails from citizens on this project, which I really appreciate. I also want to thank staff. Tremendous outreach. I always say you can hold a meeting but you can't make people attend it and you can send out a survey, can't make people fill it out, but we try. Sometimes our outreach may not be perfect.

We strive for perfection. Sometimes we fall a little bit short. We learn from it and we improve the next time. I'm all for whether it be a vehicle, bicycle, an e bike or pedestrian for public safety. And I also have stated previously that if you do a class four bike lane on a brand new road project and the subdivision hasn't been built yet, people already know how to drive down the roadway.

It's tough to put a class four in an existing road with existing housing and make a change. People have a hard time accepting change. We do within a lot of the projects we do. We had a lot of outreach up on Reagan, on division up there, which is kind of different than we've ever done in the city. A lot of public comments that opposed it, and now it works. Gives people learned and they know how to navigate it. I'm in favor of the project. Like I said, I'm in favor of public safety. I'm in favor of protecting our children. I heard comments about what about delivery trucks, what about trash trucks?

Well, I'll challenge you to go down Locust or Court and watch how the trash truck picks up trash cans on Locust, for example. The trash cans are put out in the roadway. The trash truck stops in a travel lane and dumps the trash trash can. UPS trucks stops in the travel lane, gets out, delivers the package. It is possible it's doable. I think the biggest argument is probably, will I lose parking? I think it's kind of showing that, yes, we do lose a little bit of parking. I agree with you. Maybe on a special occasion, there's not a lot of parking around. But, again, people adjust.

Maybe they have to walk from one of those elementary schools to park their car there. But I think I sat in the general plan in '91, and part of the discussion there was connectivity, our trails. You know, you take the St. John's Trail from Cutler Park, and it's gonna go all the way down to Goshen. And that's part of the project.

You can go North South Santa Fe Trail. The idea is connectivity. I think this does create connectivity. I think the argument of, well, the cost of gasoline is gonna make people get in their bike guarantee you, I'm not gonna get on a bike at my age. But I think our youth can be educated and I think bicycle safety is a key component of teaching our kids how to ride a bike.

The argument of, will the school drop off CVC, I appreciate. I challenge you to go to any public, school here in the city of ISAIA during drop off and let me know if the roadway works because it doesn't. Parents jaywalk, they double park, they stop in the middle of the road, God forbid, they move until their kid gets in the car. And they're right in a public right of way. So again, I think it's adjustment.

I think it's a learning curve. But I think at the end of the day, what we will learn is we created a safe environment for anybody that wants to travel down Tulare Avenue, whether it be in a car, bicycle, e bike, or just walking. I would challenge our team to really look at putting in a crosswalk at the park. I think that is sorely needed. I think we need to do and I understand you go by statistics because God forbid we put something in that didn't meet those quotas. Let's look at how we put in a pedestrian crosswalk at the park, make that part of this project. And then I like I said I will

be voting in favor of it. Thank you Councilman Puchigan. Any questions or comments?

Yeah. I got a couple of comments. You know, I drive down to Larry and I don't like it. I'll be honest with you. I see why people are complaining. I am not a fan of it. You know, I I really I beg the question to ask, the state likes these class four bike lanes so much. Why don't we do it on Caldwell? Because Caldwell actually makes more sense because you have the bike lane coming from Exeter and Goshen. You have the protected bike lane right there.

It could came straight down Caldwell, connected all the way to Sherk. We're talking about connectivity. That truly is the most connective thing that could connect all of Tulare County. So I would be you know, at one point, be before I get I rode bikes a lot before I ran them all by time. And I would go down Walnut, holding my breath, driving to Exeter. And then I would come back down to Exeter and come back to Farmersville and feel a lot safer on that bike lane. So if we're talking about connectivity and the state that's really pushing these things, Caldwell makes the most sense to put it down there. I don't know why that didn't happen. That would've been more sense. Council member Nelson said it perfectly.

This works better on new roads instead of more developed roads. You know, rigging would've been another really good road to put this on. I saw you Parkway is another one we're looking at because you're really not impacting anybody else, and you're actually creating more connectivity off Santa Fe Trail or all these different trails. It makes more sense. I am in favor for the, crosswalk at Constitutional Park.

I think that makes sense. Looking at this, when we went to the public outreach meeting, it was my thought that on the north side of the road makes more sense for a class four bike lane more than the south side just because you're not really impacting more individuals on the north side. It gives you that class four going up there. But we said we couldn't do it. I don't like these bike lanes. Will support putting in a class two bike lane, but unless it's on new development, I don't see a class four, me voting for any more class four bike lanes.

Thank you. Vice Mayor Wynn.

I have some questions. But first off, I don't care what the study says. I think we need that crosswalk. I think you have three council members, probably four. I think we need that crosswalk there.

I too live in that area, and that section of Tulare between Acres and Linwood, it's field day. It's wide open. I think a crosswalk would at least bring a little bit of attention and maybe slow people down a little. You made a statement early on about the liability for class four bike lanes for the city, because I've received emails from people who are threatening litigation, class action lawsuits against the state, against the city because of the property tax impacts and safety impacts that the class 4s do. Is that I mean, we're not seeing that in our statistics, actually.

I don't think they are statewide either. But is the city at a higher risk of liability for class four? Because I think I heard you say no.

Yeah, basically what the assembly bill that was passed that like turned the class four bike lanes into kind of approved mechanism for biking. It's the same liability as if you did a class two bike lane or a class one shared use path or as long as you're sticking to generally accepted design standards and things like that. So as far as I'm aware, we don't have any claims right now related to the, but I don't know if a citizen manager or city manager or attorney know of any claims related to like the Tulare Avenue pass. But I mean, the city gets claims on a pretty regular basis. And I mean, it's really ridiculous stuff.

I mean, it's things people don't want to think that they should be able to look with their eyes and step over something and they decide to trip over it and file a claim. So I mean the city gets a lot of just claims like that on a pretty regular basis. But yeah, I guess that's, does that answer that question, Councilwoman?

Kind of, yeah, sort of. I'm just seeing, because again I'm getting a lot of feedback from the public. Most of it's negative. But I'm not seeing, I just wanna make sure that we're not putting ourselves at a higher risk, since this is a state mandate, I don't really feel that that would be the case. But like you said, people sue over everything these days anyway.

Yeah, I guess I could give you a little bit more on that. As far as the appraising thing that comes up pretty often is a common on a number of our projects, like an appraiser is generally appraise what's on the property, not what's on the road. So as far as property values going down, that's not really a true concern. You might have somebody that likes the bike lane buying a house just as much as somebody that doesn't like the bike lane. So it could go either way on those.

As far as the collisions that we've kind of been keeping track of on Tulare Avenue, The first four months it looks like there was definitely an adjustment period to like the new traffic striping. The last four months it looks like there might have been maybe one accident that may have been related to some of the striping but it seems like it's leveled off a little bit anyway. At least that's from the data that we've got from the police department. And yeah, that's just a little bit more on that.

With the previous Tulare construction and renewal, you had to design the road a certain fashion or there was like it was thicker somewhere, I can't exactly what it was, to accommodate the class four, there was a little bit of different design. Would that be the design and payment thickness on this part of Tulare? Because we had talked at one point about having to kind of adjust that for the class four. What I'm getting at

Oh, know exactly what you're getting at.

I appreciate that you're

paying attention to what we do. Like so, no, this section of the roadway we actually had to design. So yes, we do have the thicker pavement sections and the travel lanes, we designed them wide enough so it could accommodate the class four configuration or the class two configuration.

Okay, perfect. My other comment though, because I travel that road a lot and I did feel like it slowed traffic. Even though our speed study showed only a couple miles difference, I think that is slow because I think people were whipping through there forty, fifty miles an hour. And I do think that that has occurred. Whether our speed study shows it or not, I think if it had been before, I think it would have been much higher.

The other question I had was, and this might even be for the chief, is it safe for the e bikes, the e scooters, and the regular bikes to all be using those same bike lanes with the e bikes having so much speed and running, you know, where they seem to be getting in a lot of accidents? But they are allowed it's my understanding they are allowed to use the bike lanes. That's the proper place for them to do?

A legal e bike is allowed to use the bike lanes. I guess the chief can correct me if I'm wrong. But as far as my understanding is that regular bikes are acceptable in there, e scooters would be acceptable in there if they're under 20 miles an hour. E bikes that would be considered California legal, which are mostly the ones that are under 20 miles an hour would be considered acceptable. The problem right now is there's a lot of e bikes out there and there's also e dirt bikes out there that'll go well above 20 miles an hour up to 60 miles an hour.

And so in some of those incidents or from some of those faster e bikes, think that the police are having problems with, Where an e bike going 30 miles an hour, like a vehicle sees it, and it'll think it's coming at probably like 15 miles an hour like a normal bike. But by the time it gets to the vehicle, it gets there twice as fast because they're not used to that speed at 30, you know? So I think some of the accidents that we're having talking to our division at PD were kind of drivers adjusting to that. But that's the difference is there's legal e bikes and there's not legal e bikes. And unfortunately people can modify legal e bikes to be not illegal e bikes and we're kind of struggling with that a little bit I think from some of the public.

Okay. All right. That's all my questions. Mr. Mayer. Thank

you very much for your report. We appreciate it. I do have a few questions. Let's see the first one. Okay, so these funds are coming from the state. If we say, I know we've been planning for this for, I mean, five years or something like that. If we just say, hey, at this point we've decided to change our minds, we don't wanna move forward, do we still get the funding from the state to redo these roads?

On this project, yes, because this wasn't an ATP type grant fund. So the funds that we have for this project are not tied directly to that class four bike lane like a lot of our ATP projects.

Okay, so then if we were to not move forward with the class four bike lanes, we're still getting our funds back from the state that we paid for in taxes with every time we buy in a gallon of gas. But the additional improvements we won't be able to get such as like the class four bike lanes, ADA compliant ramp approaches on the sidewalks and different things like that, correct?

Well, me clarify. This whole Tulare Avenue project, like the funding that we have for that is not dependent on whether you do this class four bike lane or not. So what did happen is the city applied for the Santa Fe ATP project, which is about $11,000,000 something grant. Like in that project, was written in that Tulare Avenue would have class four bike lanes that connect to that Santa Fe bike path. Like so we're in a little bit of a strange situation on that one if we don't do the class four bike lanes.

Do I think that means we'll lose like the Santa Fe grant? No, I don't think so because it's not in the outcomes for the Santa Fe grant. It was just written in there and it kind of shows the ability to get these grant projects when you show that you're connecting like different parts of the city like together to improve other parts that are on the system. So does that answer that question clear?

Yeah. And it leads into my next one. So earlier you'd mentioned that there are other ATP, which is the active transportation projects that we're working on that we've received funding for that are on our books to move forward. Can you kind of talk briefly about those projects, how much they are and where they're located?

Sure. Do you wanna pull that back up on that map? The ATP map?

Because earlier you showed me, I received a map of all

the Yeah, ATP that. Okay, so if you look at this map, let me just point to the screen here. So, the first ATP project is on Houston, this is the Houston Elementary Project, It's from Mooney in Houston and goes to Dinuba Boulevard. That's was the one

approved last week because the parents came and asked for this.

Correct, yeah. And that's the project that has the class four bike lane on the south side of the road, like with parking, no parking on the north side of the road, but the bike lane on the north side of the road, like is up against the curb. So it's just one of those class twos that theoretically I guess we could make a class four if we wanted to, like, but that's that project. Like the Highland Elementary project, was, that project's about, I think, 2,500,000 grant for the Houston Elementary. The next project is the Highland Elementary project, and that one kind of continues that same approach with the class four bike lane on the South, the class two on the North from Dinuba Boulevard all the way to Houston.

But there's also like a lot of improvements like in this area like right in here as it relates to like intersections that Houston Elementary school kids will use and things like that as far as shortened crossings like improved ADA ramps, things like that. So, there's a lot of stuff in here besides just the class four and two bike lanes. And, that one I want to say off top of my head was about 5 something million dollar grant. And then there was the Santa Fe, that's the cycle track project which was planned to be from Houston and Santa Fe all the way down to Tulare in Santa Fe. And that's a little bit different than a lot of the projects we're talking about.

We don't have one of those in town yet. It's basically a cycle track that would be on the east side of the road. So like all the bikers would be, it'd be like a 10 or 12 foot wide path and it would be just for bikers. So you'd have a sidewalk and the cycle track. And that would be the East Side Of Santa Fe. And, the actually one more Goshen Huge Trail? Sorry, the Goshen Trail project. That one goes from about like Mooney all the way to the West edge of town and then into Goshen. And, that's essentially improving that Class I trail that we have on the North Side Of Goshen and then improving a lot of the ADA ramps like all along that roadway. There is some protected intersection stuff called out along that roadway.

But I guess what we're doing with all these ATP projects, we've heard counsel when you're saying things like, hey that wasn't clear to us what was happening with this, like we want to make sure we understand what we're doing so we know when we do the voting, we're voting for what our residents know that we're voting for. So what we're doing with all those ATP projects now is we're basically getting the design engineer on board, getting like a 10% or 15% schematic design stage so we can make sure we've got things worked out and then bringing that to you for review and approval to make sure it's what the city council wants to do. So that's what we're planning to do with all those ATP projects that we've got right now, and to kind of just make sure everybody's on the same page, I would say.

Okay, and so that one, that was $31,000,000 for the Goshen Trail project?

Yeah, I think that was 34, sorry. $34,000,000 I think that the Santa Fe one was about $11,300,000 grand, I want to say. And then the Goshen Trail, I think, was like a $34,000,000 I think. That included a good chunk of Goshen, too. That was kind of a teaming thing with Tulare County. So there's like a big chunk that's city all along Goshen. Then there's a part that goes through the Goshen community that was kind of done as a teaming partner with Tulare County.

Okay. And so if we, I'm sorry, go ahead.

Yeah, sorry.

I think it's a total of about 40 between the part and ours.

Okay. And that one is not going to be affecting lots of that's going be near the railroad track

where it's going

be affecting anyone.

Mean, are like the easy ones to approve. That's one everyone loves.

That's a class one.

Yeah. Okay. So let's say we move forward today and then the next one we say no to. How does that affect future projects? Projects?

Can we say no to this one?

Can we say no to this one or the next one? What happens if we start saying no to these projects? What happens to future applications when we're trying to get our money back from the government, from the state government?

So the way that the ATP grants work is there's actually multiple grant programs that got rolled into the ATP grants. One of the most well known ones with the Safe Route to Schools program is no longer on its own. It's rolled into the ATP grants. And what that's done is it's made that ATP grant thing extremely competitive. So it's a competitive grant, which means we get rated on like about a out of 100 points. And right now the winning projects are typically 98 and above. So unless you're really dialed in, your community's really into doing these projects. You've got proof you're doing these projects. There's lots of rating factors in there. I mean, anything can kind of get you rated down pretty easily.

So there's no black and white answer to if we don't do this one, will it affect a future one? Yeah, it's possible. It's also possible it might not. It's just It just gives us the more we do, like the more we can connect our entire city system. And the big thing honestly with a lot of these things is connecting to disadvantaged areas, right?

So it's like I mean if I've got like you know, if I've got over here, I've got this class four, then it connects to this class four, and I want to do something down here. Well, now I can say that connects all the way to the disadvantaged over here. Or I can get all these people from town to downtown to businesses. So there's a lot of things like that that go into the grant applications for rating, too. So the more connectivity you can have, like to get people to businesses from disadvantaged areas, things like that, it kind of helps with your scores.

And it's kind of like not a black and white rating thing, but I do think that some of these grant people definitely pay attention to what the cities are doing. And if they see a pullback, I definitely think nobody would tell you that you're rated down because of that. But I definitely think that that could definitely affect you negatively in the long run.

Right. Because I mean, in the state's plans to get people out of cars and walking and

Mr. Mayor, could you add just one point of clarification on that?

Yeah. Absolutely.

Thank you. On on this particular project, because it is not ATP, I think it could affect our future bill ratings in the future. But to not do one of the future ATP projects that we've also already been approved for would be, I'll say, more deadly because if you're not moving ahead with an ATP project that you've applied for and accepted, then that really begins to impact you. So there is a slight variation there that to not do a true ATP project that we've that we've already accepted would be more more difficult for the city going forward.

Okay.

Yeah, just to add to that too, Mayor, like the black and white of that is there's a question on the ATP grants that asks if you failed to complete an ATP project. And if there's some like dire reason that happened that wasn't in our control, we won't get rated down on that, but that's like a one to 10 question. So for some reason we decided like just, oh we don't wanna do this ATP grant anymore, you could eliminate the chances of getting ATP grant funding for I don't know how many years.

Okay, all right, well thank you for those questions. So me personally, I'm not a huge fan of what these look like. Know, when Tulare Avenue came out, was like, this is not what I thought I was approving. I wasn't a big fan. It's really frustrating that the state's kinda saying, or if you want your money back, you need to go ahead and do what we say. And the reality of it is, I mean, do people ride bikes to my site? Absolutely. I rode my bike to high school every single day. I got sodas thrown at me when I was riding my I have cars, you know, screaming and yelling. Got one guy smacked me one time.

Mean, it's obviously it's it's there's idiots anywhere you go. So, I'm kinda torn. Like, I can see the value in having bikes. Alternative methods of getting around town, but then the reality of it is these people who are making these laws, it's not 110 in San Francisco. We just don't see the amount of ridership that they're going to in other cities. You know? When I went to San Diego and I saw all these green lines that were all over their streets and all of a sudden the the streets are, you know, shrunken and I'm trying to figure out what to do. Was annoying. And then a couple years later, every time I go back, okay, I got used to it and it was a little frustrating, but you kinda got used to it and it's just the way it is now. So, know, now I'm kind of used to to seeing this.

So, I'm not a huge fan but at the same time, I also see the value of allowing this project and some of the other ones to move forward because especially along Tulare Avenue, I think there's seven or eight, maybe nine schools. Mean, depending if you count some of the private Christian schools that are there, there's two or three. Mean, and with that many schools, you know, I wanna be able to make sure that we're protecting kids and at least giving them a safe route. Now if you're gonna put this on other streets, I just don't see the value in it like on Walnut or Tulare because there's just not a lot of kids riding those bikes. I kind of agree with council member Puchigan.

I mean, I see a ton of people riding their bikes from Exeter all the way through Visalia. I mean, they're all dressed up in their their uniforms and they have their fancy bikes and they're they're riding their bikes and I I think it's fantastic that they're using those, you know, roadways but it would've been nice for the state and for the county and for us to have done that in that project. So, where I stand on this, I think I'm gonna be supporting this tonight because I wanna be able to protect the kids that are going to high school all the way down to elementary school, but I'm gonna be really, really weary about approving anything in the future unless it's an easy one like the Goshen Avenue project or ones where it's not taking away a bunch of parking because I mean I would guess that the studies weren't done at nighttime. I mean you go to my street in the middle of day, there's no one parking there. You go there at night, there's no parking anywhere because everyone's you know home at night parking.

And so, yeah, in the in the day, everyone's at work. I I there's not really a need to to park. I mean, unless you're in front of a school or something. So I think I'll be supportive of these because, you know, I I really wanna make sure that we're getting that huge trail out to Goshen. I think that'll be a great amenity for our community. I think our people are gonna be using it. It's gonna be well received. It doesn't affect everyone's life in anything but a positive way, but I'm gonna be really wary about approving anything past the ones that we currently have unless it's gonna be not affecting anyone or it's a class one type bike lane. That's my comments. Absolutely.

One more question because it has come up with the drop off and pick up at CVC, I've gotten several emails myself from that. I didn't see the redesign and I thought you were gonna add, I see you added 34 parking spaces. Is there any parking spaces in front of CVC? You know, it's already red curbed all the way and I know that was for a different reason, but where the elementary school and since it's red curbed already and you could put your bike lane there and put parking out there. I was uncomfortable with just zipping all that parking out of there too.

So to answer your question, Vice Mayor Liz, west of the ditch company at the elementary school, there is parking on the north side and the south side of the street. As you move east from the ditch, which would be in front of the high school, on the north and south side of CVC, in 2033, at a request of CVC staff at WORKS to actually remove a lot of the parking on the north and South Side due to jaywalking, incident with kids crossing the street. So that parking remains or that restriction remains the same prior to the project being implemented. Okay.

So they won't lose that parking in front of the elementary school?

They will not, no.

Okay. Thank you.

Any other questions or comments?

I move to authorize staff to proceed with proposed class four bike lane configuration.

I second.

We have first and second. All those in favor, please vote. I need to get back into iLegislative. I was looking at a map, I apologize. I vote yes.

All right, item passes three to one with council member So to absent. Thank you very much. Alright, we are gonna be adjourning our regular scheduled meeting. We are gonna go back into closed session. We were not able to finish our closed session earlier in the evening. We are not anticipating any type of comment or any type of report to come out of closed session. So our next meeting will be on June 1 and we welcome everyone to come back on June 1 at 07:00. Thank you very much.