City Council - Regular Meeting

you going home for your mom? No, I was home last Saturday.

Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to go ahead and uh get to moving. Um, congratulations to council for their um, renovation. Uh, we know that our air conditioner works in this building. We know that. Absolutely. Without a doubt. Uh, it works really, really well. Uh, Alman Perti, if you would, sir, please. Yeah, sure. If you would go to prayer with me. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day. We thank you that we're here as a family, as a team, as a community. We ask that you guide us in what we do here today in the decisions that we make. Lord, please help us be the voices for those that cannot speak. Lord, in a world that is hurting from violence, division, fear. Lord, we ask that you surround our community with love and hope and optimism. And keep our ears, our minds, and our hearts open as we make decisions in your name. The name of God the creator, Christ the redeemer, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Amen. Thank you so much. Uh so um I don't know if we have a need for exact session today. If you want to talk about one particular case if not I'll handle it next week.

All right. Let's see how we're running on time. All right. Um so today uh two important uh pieces of continuing work that uh team Savannah has um continue to work on. one deals with our parking matters um study and the second one deals with Savannah moves. Uh so both two very important things that we hear a lot about. Uh and I'm glad that uh staff in the midst of us dealing with them continue to uh evaluate where we are and continue to move us forward. So uh Mr. Manager, in any any um order you choose to proceed.

Thank you. Um so we're going to talk about um two pretty important topics today as it relates to transportation and mobility. Um the Savannah parking matters update um as well as the Savannah moves um plan discussion. Um so to put a little bit into contexts with you, I think we'll start with the parking matters update um which is about um uh parking and parking mostly in our more densely urbanized areas um which is really from uh River Street to Victory Drive where we have some of the most intense um parking needs. And then we'll also discuss Savannah moves which was um talked about in our last workshop uh regarding our tourism product development projects and River Street and some of the corridor um developments um that we're doing um along there. So we're going to get started with a parking matters um update and let's just talk a little bit about why parking matters, right? Um so parking matters because you want to create turnover where demand exceeds supply. Um and so that has been the work of the city to understand where um our parking capacity does not meet um demand. We did the first parking matter study several years ago that addressed um the historic district and downtown historic downtown areas. Um and now we have moved that study um further south to better understand what our parking demand and what our parking capacity is. um and other similarly density and urbanized um areas. Um and so I want to um invite up um the team to begin to talk about that and I think we'll hear from our senior director Sean Brandon um as well as some of the consultants that we have working on the parking matters um study. There's going to be a lot of information shared. There was a

tremendous amount of community um engagement as a part of this parking matter study. As you know, Alderman Dietri, um this is uh this work is is pretty squarely in the second district. Um parking is a third rail um as we know and sometimes there are not uh win-wins um for everybody who's um involved in a parking study. I think knowing the information and being able to see the recommendations that we have from professionals about how we can move forward to better manage our parking demand and our parking supply in these urbanized areas um will be very very beneficial to us as it has been in the historic district when we implemented um those strategies several years ago. So with that I'll turn it over to um senior director of mobility services. Thank you. Uh good afternoon.

Good afternoon.

I like to tell people that uh when you have a parking problem, you have in many ways actually a good problem. Uh if if this was not a vibrant community, if this if this was not a sought after community, if this was not a community that people wanted to be in and visit and experience, um there would be no need for party men. Uh but we are and a good problem is sometimes a problem nonetheless. I would like to talk a little bit in terms of where we fit in with uh GPS. Uh and I would say that that the the word balance is probably the most important term that we think through particularly when we're talking about on street parking. uh the curb, so to speak, uh is sought after by people who live on that block, visitors coming to that block, delivery services like FedEx and UPS, sometimes tour groups, tour buses, trolleys, ride share, taxis. All of these groups compete for some piece of the curve of where they want to be. And our job is to try to balance that as best as we can, understanding that in many cases, everyone has to give a little. Uh, and that balance is something we've worked hard at downtown to achieve. And as we've done our own studies and as you'll see from the consultant studies, uh, it's a balance that we now feel like we have to pay a lot more attention to. uh south of downtown. Uh and so I I I think in particular

improving neighborhood quality and livability, balancing resident and neighborhood needs, preservation of our rich culture and heritage, maintaining a place as a vibrant global um destination. I it I we could not fit into that any better. Um the consultant who will be talking to you today, Ralph Daesco, uh from Stantech was actually part of the team that did the original parking matter study. Um and it's been interesting to watch not not only doing a regular study, but part of the study was comparing what's happening now to what was happening uh when the first study was done. Uh and so as the city manager said, you're going to get a lot of information. Um our goal is to upload the full report online so that everyone will be able to digest it. Um and then at the end of the presentation, we've got some guide milestones to talk through and some guidance that we will need from you. Um so without further ado, Ralph Danesco. Good afternoon everybody.

Just make sure that works. Uh I'll start with introductions. I'll introduce myself uh in addition to Sean's introduction. My name is Ralph Dusco. I'm a senior principal at Stantech. We're a global architecture engineering planning firm. Um, as Sean said, uh, 10 years ago, was it that long ago when we I was the project manager for the original parking matters study, learned much about Savannah and really came to to know and love it. And I'm happy to be here to continue that work uh, and move many of the conclusions and the recommendations and the strategies that have been successfully adopted, you know, and think about how they may apply to the circumstances in the rest of the neighborhood. I come from Boston. Uh so don't hold that against me. All right. Um just in terms of objectives, when we started the study, what we were really asked to do, um many of these objectives are things that were adopted as part of the original parking matter study, but we're really applying them to a new geography here. and Sean and his department I think have been very good in the continued management and adaptation of you know all the things that are changing on a constant basis here in Savannah. you know as growth is going on they've made changes but I think in the area that we're talking about here the changes have happened so substantially that it was worth taking a bigger look and a more global look instead of a block byblock or neighborhood by neighborhood look at what was happening and try to put them within a certain context and you know thinking about how we prioritize the use of the curb continuing those practices of parking management and and as Sean said that word balance about vehicular parking demand with all the other things that are actually part and parcel of how a city works and operates. So those are the objectives and the great thing about a study like

this is it allows you to look more globally and come back and meet those questions with real data and observations and analysis. So, this is our study area, you know, from Liberty all the way down to to 45th. Um, and then from Broad to MLK on the east to west. And you see we've got all the streets labeled here. And I'll try my best to explain many of these maps uh as briefly as possible. This is an existing conditions map. So, it just shows in this case the on street regulations with the colors applying to what you know how any of those given curbs are regulated. And you see that light blue, the majority of the study area is free and unregulated. There are very few regulations in this entire study area. And we highlighted a few of them um where there are existing regulations and most of these are kind of up in the north or down by the library. Um and then you see we just have some summaries there of the on street by regulation and 80 plus percent are unregulated about 11% are metered and again most of those are up in the the northern part of the study area. And then we broke we also did uh off streetet parking analysis. So any of the garages that the city owns but also any private facilities whether they're open to the public or not. You might see some of that information come um as we go through the presentation. But then in order to discuss it and to understand what was happening at a more detailed level, we kind of chunked up this larger study area into four districts which you see on the map here. So Liberty to Gaston, then down to Anderson between Anderson and 37th and then the kind of Starland district down to the south. And there's overlap in terms of the areas of influence, but I think we spent some time through the study making sure we got these boundaries right so you can discuss sort of a commonality of issues between these these places. And then there there's obviously much

more data in the final report and in our online presentations and all that. So we're really summarizing it here. But one thing we did was go back and you know the inventory counts the spaces and the utilization counts how the spaces are being used. So how full are they at any particular time and we did this for you know the blocks that you see here. And the colors you go from kind of gray to light blue to green to red show increasing occupancy. And we did this at several times of the uh we did this in a weekday morning, an afternoon, and an evening, and then a Saturday morning, and a Saturday afternoon. See how busy they are. And and we're really fortunate that much of this area overlaps with the area from the original parking matter study. So, we were able to compare how much busier this parking is today compared to what it was in 2015. And I think what you see there is in almost every district in almost every time frame there are more cars parked on the street than there were 10 years ago which validates I think many of the concerns that were raised and probably led to the initiation of the study which is it's getting busier. You got to do something about it. Um and I think that's what we're seeing and you can look at it on a blockby-block basis and we did and that informs a lot of our recommendations. But in terms of just how you're seeing those areas, you know, especially the Starland district um seems to have the biggest change and increase in parking utilization. Just a quick summary of the existing conditions findings. U again the vast majority of the on street spaces are unregulated and one of the challenges of that is it offers no protection for residents. All right, anybody can park there at any time for essentially as long as they want. So many of the residents are getting continually squeezed out of their parking. And that's something that came up again and again and again. And

that's exacerbated in the busier areas. That's exacerbated around the commercial districts and it's exacerbated in the places where you've seen development happen. And there's been really substantive development happening in many of these in many of these areas. Um and then just to go over to the right side there, you know, in some of those key areas, the occupancy consistently exceeds the capacity. Not everywhere, right? Right? If you looked at it from a macro level, you can always find a spot. You just might have to go five, six, seven, eight blocks away. And that is not something that many people are willing to do. And you've also seen the market itself just responding to this. There are more and more parking facilities, private parking facilities that are just charging people to park and they're getting pretty good money doing it and they're pretty full, especially if you go there on a Friday night or Saturday afternoon. Um, so the market itself is responding to the fact that people are willing to pay a pretty significant amount to park even though there's on street parking that is currently free and unregulated right now. We also went through a fairly extensive public process and uh, unfortunately Denise Kowski from Symbiosity has been a an integral part of our team. She could not be here tonight. So I'm going to do my best to speak for her and hope Sean helps me um, with that. But as part of this overall process, which lasted a little over a year, um just a summary of engagement, we did initial stakeholder meetings. I've got a slide, I think, that talks about who we met with. Uh then we did follow-up meetings around the recommendations. There was an open house held in September of last year. And then that was augmented with an online survey where we got, you know, over 2,300 responses, which is a really high number. And we do a ton of parking studies. It's a great level of responsiveness. These are the folks we met with. I'm not going to read all the things that they said specifically. I'm not advancing that. How is that going? Um, but I'll leave this up there for for a second. But we met with many of the

neighborhood associations, some of the business groups, met with SCAD. Um, and you see some of the things that they were concerned about it. But I think primarily, especially the residents, it's wanting some form of protection uh for parking. This is the open house that we held uh back in September at the civic center. You know, we had all our recommendations on boards. We had the chance for people to come up and talk to us and ask really specific questions and we could explain things to them. And I and I'll just say this now. One of the things that was a result of that was looking at the data. We had recommended a certain area for um I should speed up. No, no, no.

I know. I'm gonna I can force it back. Um, one of one of the things that came up at the open house in some of these areas where we looked at the data and recommended a certain area for meters. Spoiler alert, we're going to talk about that. Folks wanted that to be larger, right? So, they actually wanted that those areas to expand a little bit and that was something that I think we adapted through the course of the study. Uh, community survey as well. Uh, that's, you know, almost half the responses were from people who identified as residents. you could also identify as other things. Um, and just some takeaways from the overall um, outreach. The cost of parking uh, was something folks really considered um, even though they have free parking today because they but what they what you're seeing again is that people are willing to pay for parking for a certain amount of convenience and really strong recommendations for expansion of the residential permit program. Um, also similar to what you have downtown, removal of time limits, um, expanded payment options, and really what you're seeing is because this area hasn't been looked at in a coordinated fashion, the rates and the time limits and the private parking that exists are really a malange of things that are not coordinated at all. So, you get these perverse things where parking on the street becomes today the easiest and most convenient because it's free and it's where people want to be anyway. you've got to pay somewhere else. So, it it intensifies that that competition. But I think one thing in this neighborhood is the really need to clearly communicate the combination of pricing and time limits and how that works with the city's existing uh resident exemption program. So, I'm going to get into the recommendations. Um, when we take all that information, our general approach, and the these apply everywhere, is to continue to do what the city's already doing, which is

monitor that activity to things are changing, they're changing constantly. If a place is getting busier, you should add meters and time limits and regulations or up the pricing. And if a place is getting less busy, you should take them away. Right? Those are those part of the ongoing monitoring. We have targets for that. the city's adopted those. Certainly the technology and the information which includes just the public information about how the system works are really critical especially as we're moving things out into newer areas. And then a whole bunch of I don't want to call them secondary things but establishing clear policies and optimizing programs. We heard things about you know when construction happens it takes out a huge chunk of parking in a certain area. you lose two, three, four block faces and that has a very localized impact and those those things are a real concern about development projects about wanting to get ahead of them. So when a development project comes before the city and you know it's going to have a certain parking impact, you can preemptively think about how you're going to regulate the street when that's done knowing those things are going to happen. And then there there's a few other things including coordination with the sort of things that Savannah Moves is going to talk about in a little bit. So those are general and then we've applied them area by area both looking at the data our observations and the community input. So if you take the first area which is just south of the historic district part of the historic district go back between Liberty and Gaston. So this area is already primarily metered. The meters are less expensive than they are just a couple of blocks away. that causes people in the no to sort of filter down here and overly impact this area. So, you know, you want to think about potentially raising that price. Um, certainly upgrade the equipment. You still have the old meters here, not always the pay stations on all these blocks. So, this is an opportunity to

rethink how that happens and to add meters in certain locations. And you see that in kind of the the sort of orangey color at the top. So, you know, down on the west side by MLK and in the area around St. Vincent where there aren't as many regulations, these are areas where in order to protect the residents and provide that availability, you know, we're suggesting that you make them more in line with the rest of the area. And then simplifying the regulations in many places in this part of the city, you know, block by block or even within a certain block, the regulations can vary significantly. So just cleaning that up and being consistent. So this side of the street is one thing and the other side of the street is also the same thing. So you don't create these little perverse incentives there. And then when you go down sort of south of Foresight Park uh between Gaston and Anderson and what you see here is a much larger area that's being recommended to add meters. Um you see the kind of purple just to the southwest of foresight parks where that new development is happening. Um that's already having some spillover effects. So this is an area there's been a bunch of other developments and the data really shows how busy these areas are is adding parking meters to a pretty significant area. And then just, you know, you see on the west side by Jefferson, you know, we're recommending meters and then there's a little adjacent time limited area that's maybe not quite ready for meters yet, but the time limits allow you to protect the residents because it gives you something to be exempt from and it governs how other people sort of use those spaces. So that's the recommendation here, including considering extending the period to evenings and Saturdays. I think especially Saturdays around the farmers market and other things is probably the busiest time in this area. So if you're going to do this, you know,

maximizing the potential of protection for that is really important. And the third area between Anderson and 37th, uh primarily that the busiest areas are around Bull Street. So, we're recommending Bull Street and sort of one block to either side between 31st and 37th and then another smaller area with some time limits. Today, there's actually a range of time limits on many of those blocks, you know, that look like they were put there in response to very specific things, but making those consistent um we think is really important here. And then the furthest south here by Starland where we've seen really the biggest change in how busy these areas are and how much this parking is utilized and you've seen a lot of those private spaces. Um you know sort of the market bringing them into into effect. Um adding parking meters in a pretty significant area here uh between 37th and almost down to victory and a couple of blocks on Bull. And this is again one of those areas where I think when we met with the residents they really wanted us to expand the area that we did this and then surrounding that by some time limited parking and thinking about when you're pricing this how does that compare to some of those private spaces because you still want you want people to actually park you want your visitors to use those private spaces um and to pay for them as much as possible so you're protecting the residents. Just a quick summary, you know, talk through many of these regulations quickly. Happy to go back and answer questions about what they mean or how they would be applied, but just we're showing kind of how they apply segment by segment the individual recommendations. And we've actually I don't have the actual capital number off the top of my head, but you know, I think Sean and team had asked us that if we were to move forward with this, what would that mean from a capital standpoint? How much new equipment would we need to buy? how many signs? There's certainly an

enforcement component of it as well. These areas are not heavily enforced today because there's not anything to enforce. So, might also need some some enforcement officers uh to make sure that whatever we put in is working appropriately. So, just a sort of sense of what those those numbers are. And then I think this is the discussion portion. Sean, if there's anything you would like to add or that I didn't quite hit appropriately. So the guidance that we're asking from council uh is eventually uh we will ask for the endorsement of the plan either in part in whole or there is a do nothing option. Um and that will lead us into the next steps which is if we're going to buy equipment there's a lead time of several months. There would also need to be time uh to start to talk to communities about implications and things like the residential permit program which would be featured prominently here uh for any area where meters um are approved. And so uh I think your guidance will dictate uh the next steps. Um, whatever we decide on, we will need to come back to you if there are any changes with a series of ordinances uh to formalize those changes.

Thank you, Sean. I know this is like the most exciting stuff um ever. Um, and it really kind of is. Um, and we do have a few little pickme up refreshments for council. I know this is a long council. Is it proof?

Um the So I want to I want to key in on a few things that we've been working on for a few years. Um parking and a residential parking program is something that that council and specifically um Autumn Leget has been talking about in this area for um a couple of years um after visiting other jurisdictions that had residential parking programs. um and we we needed to go through this study um to better understand um kind of those impacts. There's also kind of the question that's going to come around why are we talking about this particular part of the city and not other parts of the city? Um this is the part of the city where we're seeing um outpaced um parking demand versus supply. There will be others as the city continues um to grow. Um and we'll be continuing these parking matters um studies and uh recommendations to council parking meters. Um while um I know can sometimes be a frustration for people um who are looking for places to park in front of the businesses that they want to visit downtown um is a tool to protect residential parking. It's a tool to protect residential parking. It's also a tool to incentivize parking in our parking garages um which are built specifically for the purpose of um collecting that parking volume. um and uh uh so that it does not so all of that demand does not fall on um street parking. Um so there are um some really good policy recommendations. I want to thank the team at Stantech. Uh we had really really good community engagement around these issues over the last several months. Um and there um I think the the policy recommendations are

sound. Um though there they are tradeoffs um in some cases instead of win-wins. Um I know that many of you uh will be focusing in on the St. Vincent's um area as in the last parking matters study. It was an area where we made a few um a few different policy decisions to continue to um work with St. Vincent's uh high school downtown to be able to continue to park their students. We've heard from several residents that they really enjoy having those students um park downtown. And so I think we'll be continuing to work with um St. Vincent's um uh to to make sure that they've got the parking that they need um albe it perhaps in a different um way in a different solution that we're working closely with their board and their leadership um on addressing. I'm just pointing that out because I know that will be a specific topic that comes up this this time as it did the last time we did a parking matters study. Um so that's kind of um the the points that I wanted to emphasize after the presentation. Happy to to go into the questions of discussion.

Let me start. Um thank you for the presentation. I had to step outside to throw out a little bit. I had icicles growing on my ears. But

um Sean, I think you remember this because this is probably two or three councils ago. Um particularly with the parking matter study as it related to north of um that there was some issue about and I think council at the time adopted half of what the recommendation was which I'm not sure that that really that what ended up happening was what we predicted to happen. People just went people just figured it out. and never really fixed it. I guess whatever my concern is is that whatever ultimately council does is ecosystem and so if we adopt half that we kind of inadvertently create issues on on the other end of the spectrum. So I kind of want to just throw that out to council. I forgot where it was. I don't know if it was was north of Agatha.

The the boundary was Liberty. Thank you. And we the recommendation was both and we did half and it created issues on the other end because people just wised up and you know figured it out and so I just want to make sure that we don't make that same error again.

I I do want to mention that in that area specifically um don't really want to I don't want to single out St. There are really three groups that are causing uh the pressures there for residents. Students are certainly one of those groups, but workers who figured out, oh, I can just go south of Liberty by a block and and run into free unregulated parking would be the second group. And the third group who who have joined in this relatively recently are short-term vacation rental guests.

Uh now they are uh they tend to pay at the meter where a meter exists but if they have the availability of free parking they are certainly going to take it. which creates a whole another issue for us and even some of those short-term folks saying parking go here and that's where you can park you know and those cars stay I mean to to city manager's point um meters help people move we don't like meters we don't like meters though but meters make you move otherwise you have folks who will come and they'll park there and they'll be there literally all weekend long and won't won't come back to their cars because we can you can get around other ways uh Alman Palumbo was first

oh thank you Mr. mayor, and I I completely agree with the mayor. Uh, hey, I'm excited. Um, for one, um, I think it's a massively undervalued tool with the movement of people. That's what we're really talking about here is the movement of people, the regulation of people, and how they interact with our built environment, how they interact with our city. We're the blood, the streets are the bones, the buildings. Well, you play it out. Maybe we're the head or the heart right here at city hall. Uh, but how they park, how they move, how they access it really does matter. So, my first question, I got a couple, is um what's your operating goal or objective in the update? I know we're here to update after a decade, but have we uh achieved or set an objective for what we want to achieve with parking? I' I've heard protecting residents. Uh, but there's, you know, there's more to it than that. Or do we have an operational metric that we're going by, a mantra? So there's a there's a macro way to look at it um which is I want a block to be used but not beyond its capacity. And generally speaking that's going to be in the 80% occupancy range. at 80% that is a used block but if you go down the street you probably find the space may not be exactly in front of where you want but it'll be on that block and so when we look space to space um and often we talk about blocks that are well exceeding 100% which is physically possible that's when you're creating spaces where you shouldn't be um there is a flip side to it also that we try to track which is well if a block is massively underutilized are we doing something to cause that?

Well, I think that that's important too that we're looking at we're looking at this sleeve of the portfolio. We're going to be looking at Savannah moves and how that interacts. I I really love that macro view. What are we trying to achieve, you know, in the movement of people to make it easier to access the businesses, protecting residents, and then we've talked a lot about what we're doing and in the study itself. uh before we make a decision, I I want us to all to understand what it's going to strategically achieve. What are the what are the not the unintended consequences but the intended ones uh that updating it and providing meters or access points or you know as they shift eb and flow what is it what is it designed to do uh how does it align with our strategic GPS goals and objectives for the city itself because we know that it's a problem that needs to be addressed uh there's more demand than ever before it cities change uh but how how can we channel that to the best result uh and and I I wanted to point out too. You know, I know that we have to talk about parking matters and just parking and parking only maybe this time around, but I did want to point out, you know, that I was fascinated in the slides as they moved through in talking with the stakeholder groups, I noticed a pattern where they're not necessarily talking about just parking themselves, they highlighted one key thing. The Victorian Neighborhood Association, major changes to Drayton Whitaker, Whitaker, Thomas Square, changes to Drayton and Whitaker. Foresight Park Community Alliance, Whitaker and Drayton. Uh Park Avenue businesses slow down traffic on Whitaker and Drayton. Uh Downtown Neighborhood Association supports trafficcoming on Whitaker and Drayton. Uh and then finally even, you know, even SCAD encourage walking and biking, which certainly could apply to. So I I think that these constituents groups are really using this as the opportunity to say what they really want. and I want that to come back in some other capacity so that we can really address that to meet them where they are.

You're absolutely right. Um those picked up on those as well and um have heard that in my four years here. The macro goal for us as these these neighborhoods specifically have changed over the decades from um uh from places that you drove through um for and or at least how the city catered to that. They've built two highways on Whitaker and Drayton to get from Victory Drive to downtown. Um we now have, you know, these are um and have always been dense urban areas where people want walkability, livability, bikeability. We see the difference in the way that um downtown operates um as a result of some of the parking and mobility infrastructure that we have here. that should be the same way that um people are moved around in these districts as well. Well, because the the character and the DNA is very much the same. So, I think it's Yeah, we're talking specifically about parking here, but you're absolutely right. This is uh this is a part of the toolbox in increasing mobility options um for people in creating more walkable livable environments um in all of our well and I'll close it with this that you know clearly they're they're looking for that macro approach you know and kind of the systems approach which I know is bigger and more nebulous and complicated uh but they're they're searching for solutions this is one element in it uh and I I look forward to the Savannah Moves workshop It's going to be in there, too. Uh, but I know that it's not our primary focus in our wheelhouse, but we do have the chairman of Chattam Maria Transit here, too. And I I know that that's a big element uh and and giving folks that option, that reliable option to get where they need to be uh as neighborhoods grow and shift and change

and breathe. So, thank you. Um very quickly I will just note uh one of the things that we talk about is that in many cases uh we're not going to be able to build our way out of this problem. Uh I I I can't buy up two blocks nor would I want to of where people live and work just to drop a parking garage. We're going to have to use other means. And so we've reinvested in things like DOT. We've provided local match for uh pedestrian bicycle infrastructure pro pro uh pro programs and we'll continue to do that on a larger scale uh now with these areas.

Anyone else? Yes sir. Uh we'll start with ladies first. I'll do one lane. Thank you. Thank you all for the presentation. So we we're experiencing growing pains and and that's why we have this issue these issues. But there was a time when local people converged on downtown.

Everyone went downtown. That was the place to go. It was uh very dense. There was a lot of walking traffic. And at the point where the buses were removed from Broaden Street and in certain areas um then that took local people from downtown. I don't believe the local people outside of downtown feel as comfortable going downtown as once they did. Um and and to avoid shopping. They used to go downtown to pay bills, shop, hang out, go to you know And this was just a a way of life. Things have changed. Demographics are changing. Um patterns are changing. But what we see now is is that uh to move people around north and south, Drayton, Whitaker, and even Price Street used to be those streets that people used to get across town when they didn't want to take the highway. Um, so there's some friction there and and with folks trying to slow that traffic down, then those commuters will be looking for other ways to um conveniently move to the other quadrants uh in town. Now, I think to take the pressure off of downtown, then we've got to start thinking about hubs. We have to start thinking about putting more resources in areas where people don't have to drive so far to go to the grocery store or to do whatever, run their errands or to to go to the drugstore or the cleaners, things that people ordinarily do. And and and thinking about the west side, that's not uh in place. That

infrastructure is not there. Um but I think that would be a benefit to the growing as we move forward um into the next decade. We're looking at the south side. We're looking at those um those projects, new home heritage projects or or those projects around uh these um opportunity zones and and and these are good because that in itself would give people an opportunity to live, work, play in the areas where where they live. Um and I think that'll take some of the pressure off downtown. Um, something else I wanted to mention. Yeah, we removed the buses. That that had an impact. And so then you see Christmas come around the holidays where local vendors, the mom and pops, the local shops, small businesses, they want people to come downtown. So they do these large campaigns and folks are conditioned then to going downtown to spend money because they've been sort of not feeling welcome going downtown, driving downtown to actually shop. um more geared towards tourists and and maybe some people who live downtown. Um then I wanted to ask a question about the downtown. You talked about the workers that will park a block further so they could park free and and walk to work. But I thought that the reason we invested in the downtowner was to be able to assist those people and getting closer to their jobs. I don't know how that is working. I don't think observation. So the downtowner is meant to address a pretty specific group of workers and those working afternoons and late evening.

Um that service moves between two and 300 people a day. Um which accounts for the fact that what we now need to address with it is it is almost too successful. Its weight times at points can go to 15 or 20 minutes. Is it just for workers or anyone can use it? anyone can use it and and and what we've what the drivers have told us is that there are specific times in which they know it seems to be a majority of workers and then there are times in which it seems to be residents using it. Yes.

Uh, one of the one of the things we need to commit to as a part of all of this is we want to get those weight times down eventually, which is going to mean you just got to add vehicles um to the system. And so that getting that weight time down allows more capacity and usage. Um there has been some discussion about well maybe it should be not just an afternoon late night service and that's something that we certainly could entertain. We would just want to make sure that we're not cannibalizing other services and trying to do that. Is there a fee for you? No, it is free and and that and the dot is free.

Yes. and and and that's a problem for people that do not live downtown or downtown that all of that free availability when uh taxpayer dollars are moving people with affluent people and tourists around free when the people who are more marginalized they're paying to for that service and it's like the the poor are subsidizing rise for the more poor and And that's a problem. I I would say that the the last rider survey we did on DOT, the majority were workers.

Uh there were folks going to and from their job, they would usually park somewhere near where DOT uh uh picked up and then take it in or if they were close enough to walk over from three, four, five blocks, um they would do that. And that's important and that's good. But how are we measuring that? How are we able to gauge that that we are assisting that population the workers and is there something in place that allow us to measure other than the drivers estimates?

Well, I think we on in the case of DOT, we actually did rider surveys uh to confirm that. U I think we've got to continue to measure and take surveys to make sure that we aren't skewing in one direction too much. And the last thing I want to ask you about, what did you all determine about 37th Street and the parking on 37th Street? That is still ongoing and I suspect that will come up uh uh in in the next presentation. Thank you.

I do want to congratulate this council. A matter of fact, we wanted to make sure that we were not just shelling around tourists since we extended our services into neighborhoods uh in which I know personally seniors who um consider that a lifeline is free of charge um because council subsidize um that that that travel particularly people who are in the service industry who may not make as much. The last thing they need to do is to be able to have to pay a significant amount of their salary uh for parking,

right? And so for this this creates an alternative means and I think you know I think the ride shipper has been good. Um I've gotten very good um compliments for it. Um and those are not tourists. Those are not vis those are citizens. Um sophisticated cities have sophisticated transportation systems

period. Um, and I say that being a New Yorker, being that um, there people who, you know, who never have a vehicle at all. Uh, everything they do is on public transportation um, and other mobility needs. And so, um, you know, in order to keep up with it, cars are just not the answer. Their cars are not the answer, uh, for a variety of reasons. Um, and I saw Alderman Le and Alderman Middle all the women and all the women. Y'all keep up with that. All right. Okay.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Uh but first, I would like to make mention that uh the dock shuttle, we did move west and we started the dock going into uh Clodale and uh Carver Village to address a lot of those uh individuals who needed to go downtown in certain places. We wanted to make sure that that was out there. But um Harris Street um we always had an issue with Harris Street and to try to address the issues on Harris Street because there's a large number of Airbnbs and short-term vacation rentals over there. And a lot of those uh individuals that live over there are seniors, but the issue that they've had is if someone moves into a Airbnb on Thursday, they might bring 14 cars. and those 14 cars become a issue and a hazard when someone go to work on Thursday and by the time they come back home there's no place to park two three blocks in in in a radius you can't park anywhere and some of those folks are challenged because they don't have they have walkers or they're up in age and they have issues but we want to continue to find out if it's a way because when we go to these conferences and I've seen in DC and Jay if I spoke about about it. The residents have placers on their cars that allow them to park in some of the spaces that uh uh that may have uh meters. So, are we going to do that soon just to see or just do a test with the residents starting to um in our areas that are really pressured like Harris Street or the areas that we have the meters. So we had um we stumbled into an experiment on Harris Street uh whereby half of the block is metered, one half and one half of the block is not metered.

And the result of that is that the the and then for for for residents on that block we said we will give you residential decals um which gives you the right to park on the meters without charge. What we discovered was the part of the block that wasn't metered was always full. The part of the block that wasn't hit that 70 80% mark that we really really liked to see and and mostly residents uh were parking there. And that kind of confirmed to us that uh if you're trying to create turnover, if you're trying to take the scarce resource of the curve and and create enough turnover that people can get to it, you do it through one of two ways. You you either restrict the time that people can be there or you charge enough so that someone is not going to sit there all day,

right? That they're going to do what they need to do and move on. And in the case of Harris Street, that experiment we stumbled into confirmed uh that that one of the recommendations is that that whole block just become metered and we issue residential decals to everyone in that area. Okay. So, are we even looking at the the high construction areas that we have throughout the city? And in those areas, the uh the construction sites have dumpsters that take four parking spaces away from the residents. Are we looking at that also? How are we going to meter those dumpsters that are parked in front of all?

Uh I'm going to say right up front that has been a significant challenge. Um and this goes back to the balance. So, we have a project that's eventually going to create a business or something uh that will contribute to downtown that needs enough space to be able to do their work. Uh balance with residents just they want to be able to park generally near where they need to go and and we that has been a struggle. I don't think we have uh a a great solution yet for that. Uh but it's something that we've continually been trying to research into what can we do to better maintain that balance.

And and I'll interject. It's a it's definitely an issue and an issue caused by the development that we have here, which is on one hand, you know, is very good that there's investment happening. Um, and I know that you're aware and we're going to continue to work with the downtown business association, with the neighborhood associations to try to continue to tweak our right of way permitting processes for these construction projects so that we um have the room for the the construction that to to to take place. Um, but that we don't have to over prescribe it there. We can keep our roads open. We can keep our sidewalks open. we can protect um that that curb and I I think Sean said it best that it's a a really um precious commodity that curbside space. So, what do we do uh south of Gatson Street when we have uh entities like uh the mansion who use the primarily all of the parking spaces for their guests and take away from all of the residents that live uh Gwynette Street, Hall Street, U Whitaker Street,

and I think this is this is the exact area where the parking matters. They're guests and

they're employees and employees. Well, I I if I make a mention that we do have the president of the East um forite park neighborhood association over here. So, with all of that being said, I I just don't want us to put oursel in a position where we really don't address what the what the elephant in the room is, which would be the scad children that take over a lot of the parking. They just parked there for months at a time. Then we have our St. Vincent issue that's going to always be on the table. And we also have Savannah Classical issue now that is uh becoming an issue at Anderson Street is now become a bottleneck because we have a lot of residents who are saying I can't get out to go to work. I can't go home. I mean now we have a rightway issue because uh emergency vehicles can't go down Atlantic to 37th 37th all the way to Paulson. Those are the things that happen. And then when we on 37th Street, 37th Street is so narrow that when those uh uh family members are picking up those children that are going to St. Savannah Classical, it turns into a oneway.

Well, that's where I would point to the to the map on the screen where I think you see the the orange um block that's kind of wrapped around uh the south and the east side of Foresight Park, which is recommending to be metered. Um and that that meter recommendation is the tool that helps to solve that issue where the meter married with the residential tag, right? So that our residents who live on the east side of Foresight Park, they've got a a residential um parking tag. They can park in metered um spaces or they will have residential parking meters. That's the goal here. uh residential um tags that they can park in metered spaces when the meters come. And then for the rest of the folks who are not residents um then they have to pay for that meter and that's where the the paying for the parking is the incentive to leave. Um and uh that's that's those are really the tools in the toolboxes those two programs kind of married together.

I want to I'm sorry. I want to go back to the uh what the mayor says earlier when we said we have to enforce. We really have to enforce and if that means we have to hire more people and incentivize people who want to work those shifts. A lot of this stuff um we can address because a lot of people park there and say, "Oh, the city's shut down at 6:00." You know, it's not nobody's coming to do anything.

Um Sean, you want to talk about what we're working on in terms of uh technology and enforcement that we're working towards next? I I will I will also mention uh there is a personnel component as a part of these recommendations. Uh and so we know what the number we're going to have to hit on personnel, but it can't entirely be personnel. Uh so we've run experiments uh primarily we started at uh tour bus zones um where we have a video integrated enforcement solution. In other words, the moment a bus pulls in, there's a camera that takes the tag and starts a clock because tour bus zones, you're only allowed to be there so long.

Michelle, what about on uh an on Abberorn Street when people are pulling up with campers and they just leave it there. I mean, and that the ordinance allow them by right to be there to a certain length. I mean, to to how large it is, smaller than a certain amount of people. So I think the issue is that all the parking there is free and unregulated

for free unregulated parking. If we go to metering which then will have to size the spaces that they're parking there because it's free. They know no one can really bother them there unless they reach a certain point. Um metering as we've seen in other areas really starts to address those issues. But there's nothing in our ordinance that says that somebody couldn't park a travel trailer for a certain amount of time and just leave it there. That's good parking space. Move to the other side.

So there there is a time limit which I'm I can go back and look up. I'm not going to try to take it from memory. Um but but there is for a true RV there is a specific time limit sitting out there. Um, now where it gets tricky is when you have these smaller RVs that can actually just go anywhere. They're they're essentially the size of a van or maybe slightly bigger. And the rules at that point essentially say you can't live in the vehicle while you're parked on the street.

And I'm glad you said that because that's what we've been dealing with over in that area. People have been living in them, but they've been using it and said, "This is my parking space." But in the days and time and what we live in now, we have people that are sex trafficking and things like that. We have to make sure we identify how long you've been there and uh what's your actual intention parking right there in the neighborhood. Those are the walkways that the kids use to go to school. And some of our seniors and people like me just might try to take me. But those are the things that actually

they are those are the type of things that's actually happening. I I just want to look at the whole picture of what possibilities can happen when we address uh parking and parking challenges within the district. Are you if I could ask a question of you are you concerned about the the metering recommendations in in these areas? I'm not concerned at all. I think we nobody here would be concerned about the metering. We just want to make sure that the residents that live there, they're going to be uh considered when we put the placers out and we give enough information to the neighborhood association so that everybody, even some of our seniors that drive, we may not know will be able to have a placer or some type of sticker, some type of identification

that they won't be.

Sean, could you ex could you go into the detail of how a residential sticker program works in conjunction with metered spaces? So the residential decal program uh comes in two levels. The first is you are this is your primary residence. You live there. Your car is uh your your tag is within the county and at that point we can give you a residential decal for free. Um and those decals generally last about five years. Um, if you have guests, we can issue a guest pass so that you know if you've got a guest coming for two or three weeks, they can also be covered by it.

But they will be limited, won't they? I don't think there's a li I think there's a limit on the number, but but I but there's not a limit on the on the length that they can be there. Now, I think we've worked with folks before if they have say a large family uh event in their area where we issue more than the usual number if we know that and it's explained to us. So, that's the same thing that we have for our partners available. So, we stick those doors on the card or something that's laminated that we can give to another family member.

Right. And and so there's the first level. Then there's the second level that you it's a it's a decal you actually have to pay for because though this is your property, it is not your primary residence. And so there's a cost for that. It operates the same way, but it is an acknowledgment that rather than you maybe you have your primary home in New Hampshire and your secondary home here. Um

I mean that's what we dealing with with short-term and and I mean we have people who own short-term a whole block but they live in in Maine or somewhere in Seattle. you're dealing with that too. That's all I have. I'm sorry.

And I think that but I think that the the the policy solution lives within these two strategies. Meter parking and a residential decal program that's designed specifically to meet the needs of those neighborhoods. So we've got you've got Jim who lives in on the east side of Foresight Park, lives there year round. Jim's gonna get a decal for his car. That's, as I said, that's a Cadam plate. We know what the plates registered to. A decal is uh free to be able to park in any metered spot, you know, in that zone, right? Then perhaps we we recognize that there's short-term vacation rentals that can't have 14 guest passes, right? That doesn't work. Um, so we've got to limit the number of guests. We've got to we've got to create and tailor a decal program that meets the needs of that neighborhood. So I think that while there may be details to work out in that in that um resident decal program, I think we know what the issues are and I think we um have some thought about what the solutions are to those. But they would be tailored um to those specific zones so that we could and the goal, one of the goals here is to protect that residential parking and to keep people moving. I I will say we have had cases where someone's walked in to get a residential decal and we will actually check the short-term vacation rental registry and it comes back as a not a owner occupied short-term rental and we basically say we can't give you residential detail.

Oh, so they were just I guess in the shortterm vacation room and not an owner of the property, right?

Yeah. So one thing you didn't mention which only exacerbates the problem is what happens to those residents who live around surrounding foresight park when not only when their activities or special events in for sight but on the beautiful weekend when we want people from all over the city to come to the park but they have to park somewhere so they spill over into the neighborhood and that's a promise. I welcome I welcome the program. So, one one of the reasons uh that we recommended this is also in conjunction with the garage that's going to be there. Um, if we have a bank of parking in a garage, we ideally want to move people to that garage and not try to m park in mass in one specific area. But if all of the parking around said garage is free and unregulated, then there is no incentive to park there. All right, we we have a minute. So, um

thank you, Sean. Thank you for your presentation. Um I can remember growing up here in Savannah. We had a transit system that was so awesome. A lot of people didn't own a lot of cars back then. and our transit system, which was Chattam Area Transit, uh, got people from point A to point B. I look around our city now and I see more SCAD buses than I do uh, Cadam area transit buses. So, my question is, what's what's happening with our transit system? I mean, we as a city, we ping into this organization, this entity, and we look at the news and we see that there are issues with our transit system. I think that if our system, our transit system was up to par like it should be, we wouldn't have a lot of these uh parking issues because people would want to ride the bus. It's fun to ride the bus. I've rode it many times. So, what what are we going to do to address that issue which will eventually alleviate some of the problems with parking?

Let me go ahead and answer that because um a it's out of our purview. Secondly, Chattam Transit is um rebuilding um after some some challenges and I think those questions are best addressed by them that this is just not the purview for us to talk about. The reason I ask is because understand we we are paying into we all pay into I mean everybody and and we need to be asking those questions but but I also tell you people different now. I mean, you know, I work with a lot of young people and you know, though where I expected to ride public transportation, these kids expect to be driven to where they are. They just they're just not feeling that. A lot of them want to ride, too. Well, I mean, it is. I mean,

I definitely want to ride. I think we just have to continue to support our system because it's a system that we have. Um, but I just I don't, you know, I think it'd be unfair for us to be asking our staff about questions about a system that's out of our jurisdiction or our control. Well, Mr. Mayor, if I may, um, it basically Sure. But I want to live

I don't want it to be a thing, but I just ask everybody and also Alicia, you know, we all can if I young people have an issue with with the bus, I just ask them to download the CAT app. if it's not an issue, if they having an issue with uh transportation, they can call myself or they can call someone from uh Chattam Transit and we'll address it in real time. You can give me a call and I definitely have somebody from staff to address their issues cuz we're trying to make sure our kids get to all the specialy programs that we have. But I do for free

for free. But I'm asking them to ask everyone please even to everybody on the council if you have to help a visitor or somebody with our young people download the CAT app. They've been tweaking it for the past six months and now I think that we we've got a handle on it and to and and I wish that we could have all that business from uh from SCAD to utilize uh Chattamberry Transit to move our kids and our young people around, but I think that uh we getting a handle on that. I didn't say that to step on anybody's toes. No. I said that because we're talking about parking. Mhm. And to alleviate the issue some of the issue with parking, we need to have our

transit system mobile and and what's been Go ahead.

Well, I was saying that's absolutely accurate. It goes back to something that Alderman Palumbo said earlier, too. This is all part of an ecosystem and you have to have strong transit um as a component and when you have strong transit and you have reliable transit options then um public transit becomes a really viable um and and a really efficient way to move. So from a from an administrative perspective, um the the support that we want to continue to to give to build for CAT to um to continue to grow and be the transit service that we need for the future. Um this is why we support um fully funding the expansion of fair free services for DOT. We continue to support um 100% funding for fair free services for the downtowner um and those other transit opportunities that are that are going to um try to create that system that um that you want to see and I think it's the right thing to see. Now, at one time to incentivize city employees, um I don't know if we still do it, but at one point, u any city employee that wanted to ride CAT uh could ride CAT just by showing their ID.

And the purpose of that was to help to alleviate um those parking challenges. Are we still doing that, Sean? We still do that. Uh we send a flat amount every year. So, I I would be interested, Mr. Manager, on some status report of that usage. I mean, I know we don't advertise it as well as we should. Um, but again, I think the goal of this is um, you know, if we're investing in this, it' be a good opportunity for people to take advantage of the services available to them. Yeah, absolutely. And we'll we'll we every now and then I will jump on the bus. Sure. The bus is a great option. Okay. Mayor Johnson, I didn't know that, and I'm saying this so that the public could hear, that if employees,

city employees, city employees show their badges, they can ride the bus for free. Yes. All right. I just want to say that so that our No, we just need our employees. We don't need the public though. We need our city employees. Employees city employee can ride the bus for free. That was one of the perks incentives of being a city of Savannah. Now, let me ask you this. If a mother who is an employee of the city has a child that they have to take to drop off the school or something like that, how does that work? I think that is handled on a case by case. Case by case. Okay. Got

um I think we were coming over here and then I think over here and then we'll go around the woman. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just want to uh commend uh the work that uh Mr. Brennan and your staff have been doing over the years, especially with um the downtowner uh when that was talked about some years and years ago and the results are are positive. I see uh the the the residents leaving their homes and and especially when we were talking about it years ago, it was a concern and a problem about our um our citizens who were working late and who needed um a ride either from downtown to the parking garages or wherever their destinations are. So I just want to commend you all for being successful in in this present day on that particular program. The other thing is um in reference to to parking and I'm going past going south past Victory Drive. So in our um residents uh for an example at Can Park, what we are seeing um over there and it's been talked about on the table already is that some folks who have these campers are some folks who are just um you know living in their in their vehicles, they're parking um in the residential areas. So you know I just wanted to put that on the table. that we can keep our eyes on and keep enforcement uh uh you know

reg regular with uh paying attention to those vehicles that are parked there for a certain amount of long time. Um and to to ask questions of of those people who are driving those vehicles why are they there and and just enforcement to to to be brought up. The other thing um is that past Victory Drive going south is Bangville um community and and what we find there is um SCAD the Montgomery Montgomery Hall I believe uh is what the name of the building is. And there are several of u my constituents who have been calling over a period of time. It's kind of slackening up now um because the students have been parking and where the residents are and they can't, you know, they don't have their parking spaces. I I think we need to to go past a little bit of in that area past Victory Drive going south, especially in that area when we're talking about um decals for um residents. I know you all are not clocking those folks, but it's a it's a it's a concern, a little of of a concern just in that space, but um some of the alleviation of that particular issue has been let up because SCAD has now purchased on on a Montgomery Street um properties and parcels and have made those uh since that time parking and has made um some surface parking lots. Um, but I just want you all to to um also I know we'll be talking about Victory Drive going north, but there's just some issues. Um, just some some minor issues up in in that area. So,

that's all I wanted to say. Um, I will say that we do have watch areas. These are areas where we haven't they're not part of the study, but we know we're starting to get calls and we're starting to occasionally have to send someone out to address specific issues. Being built is one of those and it's areas that you can probably already predict. Daffen Park, Parkside, um some areas around where Havsham villages, uh areas around the arena, um where we've started to just watch. We're not recommending anything, but we we're we're noting that we're we're starting to see an uptick potentially. Okay. Thank you. All right. Miss Alwoman,

I just have thank you for your presentation. I just have one question for you and then I have a couple for you Sean. Um 10 years ago you did this study and so what is the significance different and what are you trying to do now that you didn't and wasn't able to do 10 years ago? What's going to be different? What is your battlecry that we do different so that we can eliminate the problems that are over here? trying to find the slide that shows the difference in there. I I would say this as a consultant who does parking studies around the country, I think Savannah's done a remarkable job, not just because you've adopted the recommendations from the previous study, but even before that in establishing your approach to parking. Right. So, it's it's very much what Sean had said. you're regulating for availability is the way I would describe it. So that 80 to 90% so that the curbside is used, but if I show up as a shopper, a visitor, a resident, I can typically find a space approximate to where I'm going. That's why you regulate and manage to that. And what Savannah's done is raise the prices in the places where it's busiest until you hit that number. and you know consequently lower prices in other places. Savannah is a really unique place in that you have so much of your area that's a mix of uses, right? You've got this what makes it beautiful. It's what makes it special is you've got business districts and the downtown district and historic district and beautiful parks and things that are right up against residents. And that kind of friction is a very very tough thing to manage. And I think the approach that Savannah is taking is correct where you're regulating the

curb, but you are exempting the people that live there from those regulations. And and that balance has been working pretty well. I think the real challenge and the purpose of this study and why we were asked to do it is and it was said earlier, everything north of Liberty was adopted and it's been working pretty well. the things south of Liberty, you know, were adopted at a smaller level. So, it's time to revisit that and then to look at the rest of the area all the way down to Victory and 45th and see like you're feeling those pressures on a blockby-block basis. We've heard a lot about that here today. There's new development. They're becoming more popular. Um, you know, as somebody had said it too, those neighborhood business districts are becoming more popular in the sense like there's more shops and more restaurants and more cafes and more things to do locally within these areas and that's bringing parking pressure. So, this allowed us or allowed you to look at it much more comprehensively and revisit it. And I'm glad somebody brought this up. This graphic shows how much busier many of those places have gotten in the last 10 years. You know, you're seeing 10 to 15 to 20% in the larger area that's that sees more cars. But I would say if you looked at it in the concentrated places right around those business districts where the hotels have come in where you know things have grown more like it's even higher. So basically I think our charge was to come in and look at where has that risen to the place that it is time to do something about it.

Okay? Right? And I think that's what we're showing here is based on our observations these are the places where we think you should do something about it. And I'll I'll say it again. And when we presented that to the public they said yeah but go further like our evidence says you I'm going to make this up. our evidence. In fact, if I can find it,

like here, if you see those dash lines, those dash lines, I think, were where we had originally recommended we should put in time limits and meters. And I think we were asked, the study was asked by the public to expand those areas and to actually make them larger that there's more area that wanted protection because the challenge today is you want somebody to come out and enforce something, but there's nothing to enforce because the regulation there is no regulation. It allows you to park there, you know, all day within, you know, sort of public safety limits. this would allow all those things to happen. So, sorry for the long-winded answer, but I think that that was really what the request was was to bring that thinking and refresh it over a larger geography.

Okay. So, um Sean, just a quick question. I actually 16 years of my life, uh my kids, uh all three of them attended Notre Dame Academy and then they girls went to St. Vincent. So, we're going to stop talking about St. Vincent's,

right? I say that because most of the kids and one of my daughters, they drove, they're out of there by 3:30. So, they're not really worrying about the children who park over there because by the time people get home, right, they're gone. And so, it's just not, you know, we can push the blame on that. But the problem that I have right now is that I have Herd Elementary, you know, that's right off of Delesups that is having the same problem. And then I have Jenkins in Forest Hill that's having the same problem with parking and blocking in the school over there. So, we want to always um incorporate other parts of the city. Thank you for what you do. I know it's an awesome task, but when you talk about personnel, y'all are enterprise, right? So, we're not really having to worry about pulling money for our budget to employ other people. Would that be a fair um

that it is to to the degree? I'm asking that the things that you need come directly from your budget. Yes. Would that is that correct assump? Well, it has to it has to get there. So, so yes, in theor we want the enterprise to support itself, but sometimes you've got to uh make an investment to get an investment. And so that's what we're working through now in terms of the capital investments for the actual parking meters. I'm not talking about the meters,

the operating investment for the additional staff. Um th those we'll I I'll have to come back to council with what the plan is to fund it. But in the long term, yes, the enterprise would continue to support that function. We'd need the enterprise to grow in order to do so.

Okay. So So my thank you. My other question is the mayor alluded to it. Uh I know different administrations they take on different jobs, right? And so the discussion here I would want to see uh it says the approval of the development of associated ordinances. I would want to see what those were right before we vote on that. And the the the other thing is when we go back to your strategy and your recommendations, I don't want to I I want to be clear on what your strategy is because back here in your um the generic strategic approach, most of the census that are recommendations, it's they start off with um consider. And so I don't want to sign off of something that y'all considering. And so in your recommendations, I would want to know what you're actually going to do to remedy these these solutions because in all of the recommendations in all of the uh points there is consider extending the the typical enforcement considering extending that. Are y'all going to consider it or y'all going to do it?

Is for you. I understand that. But I'm I'm just asking.

I mean, you're the guru and so I want to know what's going to work before we consider all of this, but I want to consider the other piece that you said that you had to come back because you left a piece off. And that's what we do. We leave pieces off. The cogs in this wheel that we we need to make sure all the cars are fitting. And if we keep losing and not incorporating those pieces, then 10 years or 15 years, we'll have to come and start off. the residents everywhere in every district, they they need to understand and they're watching. The public is watching. And so, we're focusing on downtown, but again, we mentioned that earlier. We want to make sure that we incorporate this these other pieces that have directly negative impacts on other people. Thank you for your your job and thank you for your state. Just wanted to add

all of the recommendations are recommendations that we want to move forward with. And so when we're when we're at when we're saying the word consider, we're asking council to consider allowing us through the adoption of this plan and through the adoption of the associated ordinances to be able to execute on those recommendations. So, um, for the the question about the associated ordinances, the majority of those are defining in our ordinance where the metered parking is and what those time limits and um, and associated parking fees would be similar to the um, ordinance amendment that council passed two weeks ago, which um, set forth more no parking limits, you know. So, those are the associated ordinances for the most part that we would share with council. The the the question that we really would like council to give us direction on today is whether or not they want us to whether or not you want us to move forward with all of these recommendations and bring forward um those associated ordinances, bring forward those associated budget implications so that we can implement the full set of recommendations or some portion of them.

Okay. So, I'm glad you said that, right? Because I can tell you by the time we get home, each and every one of us is going to have a question about did those associated ordinances encompass the other districts. And that is my point, sir. So, for for this specific I know we're talking about this specific plan. This specific plan is focused on on this specific plan area. We can go back to the map, but generally it is Victory Drive um north to um Liberty. That is not my takeaway. From Stop you right there, please. Please. I I can see what this is saying for this particular area. Yes, ma'am.

I'm just saying moving forward, what does the city ordinance and what will the city ordinance say about my particular district when I'm talking about her? Because everybody at this table is going to want the same thing. That is what I'm saying. I know that for this particular work studies about this. I was just interjecting that.

I I understand and agree and that goes back to those places of interest that Sean was talking about where we're keeping an eye on the changing nature of parking demand, mobility demand, transportation demand in all of those areas. And I think that that point actually is going to tie into our next conversation very well where we're looking specifically at the east side. We're looking at the west side and we're looking at the south side in terms of comprehensive transportation and mobility planning. Thank you so much. I appreciate last two points all the way to the mayor. Alvin Palumbo, we're going to go yes and no and then we need to move on because we have a meeting in less than an hour.

So um question about Forsat Park. Will the covered spaces on the park be Are you referring to the ones in the parking lot? over there by the restaurant. Those would potentially be metered, but not the ones in the parking lot at this point. Yeah, that's the one I ask about.

Okay. And um you said that I think maybe Jav said that we're looking into the downtowner and into the dot so we could primarily uh assist the workforce and move folks around and help out that population. Well, it it's well, it's the workforce and then and then expanding the the DOT into our westside neighborhoods where to support the residents there as well.

Okay, that's that's what I wanted to make mention to because we went with Clodale and Carver Village which encompasses the arena because of course I know that was a big part of the consideration with people there. um back and forth, but there is quite a few residents in West Savannah that they view Westside area that walk downtown early in the morning, probably have to do work a certain time, uh all times of day. So, they're maybe a mile and a half to two miles away from downtown. So, how do we bring that into the conversation and and let them ride free? I mean, help these people who are walking past the people they're going to serve and and trying to get to their jobs and these people on the bus riding free and and so that that's something that we need to consider as we try to solve some of these issues. I think when we talked about it initially although a million there um we agreed to pilot it see how it went and that we would reserve the ability to expand um and again I have not heard any data that it wasn't I'm sure we probably need some more specific data but I think the council should look at and creating opportunities for um the individuals you know within a radius to be able to um enjoy that that possibility I I think I think it's still on the table. I just

about that radius. Good point. Uh because I've gotten some feedback, a lots of feedback from the people in those areas and they feel like that ridership is low. We don't want to take it away, but we want to make sure that where the need is maybe a little bit more urgent that we're able to to do something about that. So, I just wanted to mention that now. No, you know, answers or solutions, but so we could make that a part of the conversation as we in this pilot. Thank you. All right, last one.

Uh, thank you, Mr. Mayor. Mr. City Manager, as we've seen, you pull on the thread of the parking sweater and the whole city, you know, we get encompasses and pulls it in there. It's deeply technical. It's complicated. People complain. It's deeply personal. You got to manage the the macro and the micro. So, I wanted to really publicly commend Mr. Shawn Brandon. He is UH he is truly one of one of our city's finest public servants. I I trusted judgment in bringing this forward and what he's done because I know how diligent he is, the pride that he takes in his work. I don't think in six years I've forwarded a constituent complaint to him that that he hasn't been on top of already and beaten me to the punch. It's uncanny. Uh, and with that, I want you to know that I I support if if he's bringing this forward, he believes that it's the right thing to do and it's a great thing, I'm ready to bring it forward uh and see the ordinances as is as I know that he studies this every single day. He lives it every single day.

Uh, and let's bring it on. Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, the word the word consider is a very interesting thing in public administration. uh it is something that scientists and administrators place before elected bodies uh to CYA because one day when it doesn't work they say well we told you to consider um I think it behooves us to follow the recommendations to its natural conclusion

um and you know again this this is this is science and so let us I think we should at least follow it through and then you know where we have to make those hard decisions we make them. But um again, I think uh what they what they put forward, as you could tell, has been, as Alderman Palumbo said, really well thought out. Um encompasses the science as as opposed to um how people feel about it. And I just think we have to u you know, follow that science. So I don't know where y'all are ready. Any objections?

No, sir. No, but I would like to to know when they're going to talk about including other areas of the city. That's what I would like.

Yes, ma'am. And as I we're going to continue to do these studies and you know, I think um Sean gave some indications about the next areas where we're going to be looking at these studies and and where we need to be implementing some new policies there. So, um, like, uh, you know, um, so we we're going to continue to be doing these. So, and if there are areas where you want us to, you know, put on our list to keep looking at, we will. Um, but we also don't want to we don't want to put um policies in places where they're not needed. And we'll uh and so we want to be able to put our efforts where we know they're going to be um they're going to be the most needed. So, um, we'll we'll take those recommendations and continue to work with professionals to be able to have those.

There are some communities and neighborhoods don't want to see Sha Brandon. Nowhere near them. No, no, no. I'm talking about Bull Street. Bull Street is expanding. This is Bull Street, right? But I'm saying past like uh Mayor Pro Tim said, past Victory Drive and that's where because it's going to get real busy over there. And I know we've got it included for a few blocks here. Um just past Victory, but Bingville is Yeah. It's spread up in here. Yeah. So, so we that is included in the study area, but Bingville is as Sean said um where we are looking very closely at. Mr. Mayor, sorry.

Um could we give a timeline? Yeah, I was going to ask

if if council gives a direction to us, we will move forward with with putting a resolution that the council supports this plan and then work to bring forward a um if we're a u what what the cost implications are going to be and the timeline for installing um the meters. Um and as Sean said earlier, it's a there's a several month lead time in procuring those meters and then having them installed. So, um it's not going to be an overnight fix, but the sooner that we can get the plan in front of council to formally adopt as well as those associated um ordinance changes specific to this plan, um then we can move forward with the execution of purchasing those meters, having them installed, and increasing our capacity for enforcement.

Okay, Mr. Mayor, I just wanted to say this is good government and anything that we can do to change the quality of life for our citizens, we need to move forward on it. To that end, where is parking matters in terms of Savannah GPS? Well, can we go back to our Savannah GPS slide on the very front? Um, so this rep, this supports very specifically goal one, objective one, strategy one, 5.1.1. It also um uh supports 5.1.6. Come on, stick your chest out. I think you have your you think we're we're unanimously clear in where we should move forward. So,

and there's money in that process to for notices and and um learning. Yes, ma'am. Public engagement and public awareness is is going to h is a key part of rolling out any new policy. Yes. Thank you, gentlemen. Appreciate you. Um, thank you for that very productive um, uh, workshop and echo all of the praise for Sean Brandon. He is GPS. So, as we transition now, we're going to be thinking a bit broader um, and a bit more comprehensive when it turns into transportation mobility planning and learning more about our Savannah Moves.

Good job, plan. Savannah moves plan. So today's presentation will provide you with an update on overall citywide progress in the schedule leading up to council's consideration um of uh moves later this year. So let me turn it over to our chief of planning and economic development and uh city staff and our consultancy team to talk through Savannah Moves. And we will begin with where Savannah Moves fits in with Savannah GPS.

And any praise council wants to give me for adjusting the temperature in this room would be Thank you, city manager. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, city manager. We can we can we can sit in here. Thank you, Dafany. Great job. student right here. Well, nothing gets done without Steven Maxwell. That's Oh, yes. That's right. Don't tell him. Don't tell us. Don't tell him that. Oh, boy. Put his head back on his body now. We needed that.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Council, and City Manager. We are delighted to be with you this afternoon um to give you an update on the progress on Savannah Moves. Um I'm joined today by our team um both Bridget Ludy and Steve. Steve is actually uh pinch hitting for Harold Taylor. Harold is um a little under the weather today and so we're we're missing him. Um but Steve's gonna I know do a fine job of of serving in hisstead. And then additionally, Chris Marsonill is joining us who's the project manager with Kimley Horn um who is our consultant that's working with us on this effort. So, a quick overview and a reminder about Savannah Moves. It is our overall multimodal transportation plan for the city. Um we're going to talk a little bit about the GPS alignment. I'm glad that comes up every time um so that we can continue to anchor ourselves back in that important work. And then we're going to have an overview. We are marrying the work of Savannah moves into the small area approach that is occurring with regard to planning and urban design and development activities, economic development activities throughout the city. So, at the last meeting, you heard a bit about the Savannah's waterfront CI and you also heard some about the development of the River Street um improvements that will go along and accompany that Hutcherson Island evacuation plan, which is really important for our not only our um visitors and so forth, but those who work on Hutcherson Island, our residents who work there, workers who are over there, and the kinds of things that can occur that are outside of the things like hurricanes and tornadoes, but other kinds of things that could occur that would require that. So, we're deep into that process as well as a part of this. Then the westside area, the southside area, the east side area, and then we're going to overview the process and engagement. So, what's the why? Why are

we doing this? It's really important for the city to have a multimodal connectivity strategy. And I think the conversation that you had just prior to this with regard to parking matters really began to bring forward those themes of why it's so important. It's important to be able to connect um our residents um to the places that they need and want to go. Um it's and it to give them a variety of options in how they do that. It's important for the growth of our small businesses and our other industry. And it's important also um for those who visit us and want to be able to enjoy us safely and effectively. So strategic infrastructure paired with development that goes back to that marriage with the small area development that we're going to be talking through. Funding and implementation strategy that'll be an important and key part of this um effort. And the infrastructure investment is efficient well planned use of local funds because we are uh fortunate that we have spliced funds. We have other types of local funding measures including the hotel motel tax that was discussed at the last meeting. Um and what is the business case then for partner investment? A tool a a plan like this gives us the opportunity to be able to go to federal partners, state partners, other public partners, private partners, and be able to show that we've got a business case for investing with us in the kind of infrastructure we need for the city of Savannah and um our our residents. and so forth to continue to thrive. So, we'll talk about private investment grant opportunity, state funding, and then of course, um, in addition to everything being anchored in GPS, we also anchor everything in the heart and soul of equity. So, we'll talk about how we're weaving that into all of the work that we do as well. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Steve Henry, pinch hitting for Harold, to talk a little bit about GPS, but then also vision zero component of this.

Hey, good afternoon. I'm Steve Henry. I'm the senior director for Savannah Department of Transportation. He wants something.

So, uh, Savannah Moves will align with and incorporate Savannah GPS strategies and vision zero initiatives. Uh, for example, GPS goal one to increase public safety. uh the objective to focus on public safety, specifically ending preventable deaths, which is the driving force behind our citywide vision zero efforts. Additionally, goal four, worldclass infrastructure. uh the objective to focus on enhancing the city's transportation system through datadriven strategies aligning with our action plan currently under review to modernize infrastructure and streng strengthen multiple modes of transit.

Next slide is that is So, Savannah's Vision Zero program aims to eliminate traffic deaths and serious injuries through safer infrastructure, smarter operations, targeted enforcement, and public education guided regularly uh regularly updated data-driven action plans align with best practices. And next, Chris Marson to explain how he's going to do all that. Anything else?

Thank you, Mr. Henry. I think u Mr. Henry would probably agree with me that the only thing better than one transportation nerd on the agenda is two. I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you today. I am Chris Marson again with Horn and Associates. I'm part a small part of a much broader uh and diverse team of folks that are actively working on this plan for you right now. And I'm happy to be here today to give you a brief briefing. Brief being the root word of briefing. Okay,

first of all, um I want to run through this acronym that we keep calling calling out or speaking to Savannah Moves. This is in fact a multimodal strategy and plan for the city of Savannah. Uh and it considers all transportation modes and we have to keep in mind as we're talking about transportation trips, most of those trips start as a pedestrian. All of them I would argue start as a pedestrian. So first and foremost, it is a multimodal plan. We're with the goal of developing a network that recognizes a multimodal need. Um, as Chief Deasimbo mentioned, we have to develop a plan that optimizes opportunity,

right? So, we have to capitalize on the local uh investment. We also have to capitalize on the potential for private investment as developments are coming online and are making investments in the system to improve make off-site improvements away from uh their their developments. We have to have a plan in place such that we know how to efficiently uh spend that investment uh and keep a focus on the fish efficient use of those resources to to enhance our mobility and accessibility. Uh again, in a very efficient manner. We have to recognize the city's visions and values and be certain that the plan, the multimotal plan that we develop recognizes those uh and does nothing to hurt the the the the network of our city or the fabric of our city which is is a special place and I think we could all agree to that. Our plan has to address equity and efficiency. uh we have introduced several opportunities to meet with the city's DEIA officer throughout the process to uh make sure that we are meeting these tenants to the to their greatest uh uh potential. Um and the plan has to be efficient also from an operations perspective. At the end of the day, we have to keep in mind that we are moving people, right? whether they're walking or on bicycles or using transit or are in cars, we are moving people and we want to do that in an efficient manner. Um, and last but not least, our plan must recognize the need to be sustainable and enhance the safety for all users in the system. So, I want to talk a little bit now about what we've done to date uh and then we'll get into where we're going. Um the the first order of business that

we tackled was Savannah's waterfront CI. As you all know, I'm sure the Senate Savannah water the Savannah waterfront C developed a vision plan with some 48 different projects. Uh as part of that vision plan, we extracted from that plan the transportation related components and we developed an optimization uh of those transportation plans uh and paired those projects with an implementation strategy such that those projects and that investment that goes along with those projects contributes to the overall transportation network in the city. So there's a lot of work that's going on in that district. uh and we want to make sure that that work contributes to the overall uh quality of life uh and transportation network uh in the city. So the deliverables that we um had for that component of the project is kind of ghosted out in the screen there. It's the city of Savannah's multimmodal transportation strategy for the Savannah waterfront community improvement district and uh we developed design strategies and recommended those as part of that deliverable and then again we paired those with a funding and implementation strategy. Next on the agenda is Hutchson Island. Chief Deasimo mentioned this briefly uh at the beginning of the presentation. We are studying now uh development, potential development uh for two sectors of Hutcherson Island. You can see we've broken that into an industrial sector and a residential convention sector. And we're developing a plan for emergency evacuation of the island. Um there's obviously one way in and one way out as we all know. Uh if something catastrophic were to happen, we need a plan in place for getting people on and off. I'm sorry. Keep getting people off of the island uh and considering whether they are in cars or they are there uh

for convention. They don't have a car and they need to be evacuated from the island. Another method. So, that's one of the components that we're currently studying. Uh and then there's a lot of text on this slide. Um, and I included that just so that you all understand and and and see all of the different components that are going into these uh individual small area studies. We talked about the waterfront, we talked about Hutcherson Island, but at the same time, we're studying the westside area, we're studying the southside area, and we're studying the east side area. And all of these projects, components, and studies, and things that are going on in these areas, we are collecting data from. We're not starting from scratch. Um, from the conversation earlier, you we demonstrated how important parking is and and that's just one study. So, you know, that that one study informs an overall plan for um uh transportation uh implementation as do all of these. Uh so we're in the process now of collecting data from all of these different studies determining what has maybe sunset uh and then what things need to be pulled forward uh and then uh and at the end of the study we'll develop a list of projects based off of the input of all of these these other studies. Uh this is another list of of projects that we're considering in studies in the southside area. Um then finally there's another list from the east side area. Again, lots of information and data that we're pulling together, mapping, uh, making sure that the connected tissues between these areas all align and we're contributing to an overall plan that truly benefits the city.

That's a lot. I think it was it started dropping. I thought it was handles. Stephen, I mean, it's snowing. You took it away from me. Go ahead and continue. I just feel the temperature dropping again, Stephen. So, at the end of the day, it energy savings. Oh, okay. Thank you. Apparently, it goes back a deep. Let's quickly get over. Come on. Maybe some of that heat from out there can come in here. Keep moving. Come on, SP. Move.

Move. We've talked a lot about the data collection so far and and the other projects that are going on and how they're all informing this overall plan. I want to talk a little bit now about the process. Again, there's lots of words on this slide, but I just want to show you the architecture first and then we'll get into each of these phases a little bit. Uh the first phase is a small area plan um phase and that's where we are now. The result of that phase is that we will recommend catalyst projects that we know are are sure thing projects that have to come forward and be acted on uh early or immediately. Um that will conclude uh in the May time frame phase one. Phase two is the plan development where we further develop projects and again these connected tissues between projects throughout the area. Uh and then this is where the the proving grounds if you will and then phase three is the implementation where we document all the findings and then ultimately present those findings to council for action. So no action today but there will be action of course when we get to phase three. Um, now the bar across the bottom is intended to demonstrate the opportunities for community engagement and I'm going to talk about that a little bit more in a moment, but I wanted you to see how that that community ga engagement stretches throughout all three phases. So, lots of opportunity for engagement from the community as a whole and then also the coordination committee, the policy committee uh and the technical committee that we have have established. Um, zooming in a little bit. Um, I don't think there's a lot more to cover here than than what we've already discussed other than we are in this phase one and we're studying the small areas. uh we're refining the existing project inventory and we're developing a methodology for identifying these catalyst projects that I mentioned a moment ago so that at the end of the day we can make recommendations for three to five

projects per mode which is sort of a goal for vehicular bicycle pedestrian and transit projects that come out as the initial catalyst projects um it is important to mention that the lens through which we're evaluating projects is vision zero and GPS Yes, those are the two guiding principles for developing projects in this this plan. Um again the timeline for this piece of the this phase of the project will conclude in May. Uh and there are many opportunities for public engagement throughout this phase. The policy committee meets, the coordination committee meets. Uh there is a digital survey that will go out to the public. uh we will be meeting with focusing groups uh and then we will conclude with another meeting of the policy committee. I'll talk I'll speak to these individual committees just briefly in a moment. Uh but I wanted to to remind you that the policy committee is the committee that was established by appointees from council. So these are your eyes and ears in the process. These are the folks from your communities that know the most about the communities in which they live and and that they were um appointed to represent. Hugely important uh piece of this this um overall plan. Phase two is our plan development. This is the broader analysis section where we're making those connections again between the different sub areas um and identifying projects that have a contribution to the overall transportation network. Um we will be resolving any conflicts in in this phase. Uh and we'll also be identifying new projects that weren't established in the initial phase of the project. And we'll also be prioritizing projects uh by mode.

Um the engagement process through phase two is similar. As you can see, there's two meetings of the policy committee and two meetings of the coordination meeting and also a meeting of the a series of meetings with the the general public. So pretty extensive engagement during phase two as well. Finally, phase three is where it all comes together in the form of a plan and a goal statement and the documentation for the overall implementation plan. And then that point the the final plan is communicated to council and submitted for action. All right, that was really fast and I know you all are up against a time crunch. So, I'm I'm trying to be brief and I respect your time and I respect the temperature.

So, next steps. You're welcome to be chilling things off after it got a little toasty.

So, this summer again that we'll have the catalyst projects memo available uh and that will be first submitted to the technical committee for review. That is a committee of city staff. Um, all of which are here I believe. No, Sean left. No, there you go. So, that's the the technical committee. Uh, and then the the policy committee again is the committee that's appointed by council and then ultimately that list comes to council after getting over those hurdles uh of engagement. The next major step uh is October of 2026 when we will be back to update council uh with a report at a work session uh on a a status of our phase two. Uh and then finally we will present Savannah moves to council for adoption at the end of this year in December. All right. I promised I'd come back to the the committees, right? There's a lot of slides related to these committees, but I think it's worth spending a couple of minutes going through them. Again, the policy committee is appoint or appointees from council. All right. So th those are the the folks that have been nominated by you all and have accepted that responsibility and we're happy to be working uh with them. and there will be a number of opportunities throughout the the engagement process for them to engage. The coordination committee is a little more extensive. It reaches out it reaches out to um other agencies um businesses um and and other organizations that can contribute to our goal of developing an equitable and efficient plan. I'll just flip through a couple of those.

Healthy Savannah uh is an important one. Of course, the Savannah Area Chamber has a representative just included. I don't see enough West Side representation over here. I'll get with you on that. I'm sorry I didn't catch that, but I I I'll wait to the question. Okay. Okay. But this just gives you an idea of the representation that's included on the coordination committee. Now again this is beyond uh the appointees from from council

Mr. Mayor. Yes. Uh thank you Mr. Mayor. Thank you so much. Oh let make sure you finish and Jay I don't know if you want to you want to tee up anything. Um thank no thank you. This is we want to give you an update on where this plan is to see where the engagement's going to be coming forward and what's the process for uh for council to understand where they're going to start seeing the iterations of this plan come forward. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you so much for the presentation. In the interest of time, I know that we've got to be expedient. So, I'll tell you exactly what we need to do. Uh the area between Stevenson, Montgomery Crossroads, White Bluff, and Waters Avenue is like walking on the moon.

It is the It is the It is a place where people go. It's our heaviest commercial and office district. There are people who live there, but there are transient people who live there. There's soldiers who live there. There's multif family housing that lives there. Uh and all of us at the table have seen somebody have to dart across traffic to get where they need to be. Uh I know it's the most challenging one uh that's out there, but that's it's got to be in there. And and we just begin the journey one step at a time and uh and we'll have some fun. We'll get we'll get to play with our friends at G do too. So, thank you. Thank you, Alderwoman Laneir. I mean, uh, sorry, Wilder.

I'm just, you know, we have a master plan and I'm glad that the ground zero and the GPS is in sync with our master plan, but we're always trying to tweak stuff. Is there something that we miss that we didn't capture with GPS in in order for us to move forward on this? You know, sometimes we catch stuff. I know we beat it up. We went through all the district, but what is the missing part? If there's any that we didn't capture that's going to make this move, is there anything? And it's a good thing if we didn't find anything, but usually sometimes when we go through these things, we find something that wasn't captured. And for GPS specifically, well, for for GPS and ground zero to

vision zero, both of them to be u in sync with our master plan because that's the whole idea. That's what we did. Yeah, great question. I think both vision zero, which is a value plan and like about tools and strategies that we use to try to reduce deaths, right?

Um is more of like the values and the toolbox and can be applied to different places, but leave some open opportunities for us to try new things certainly. and GPS as well um is um there are levels of it that are broad enough to make sure that we're not shoehorning ourselves into a corner on specific strategies that don't allow us to so I think what the what this plan allows us to do this planning process is allows us to take GPS allows us to take vision zero and go very very macro into these small area plans and understand the mobility infrastructure the mobility challen challenges, what opportunities are there, specifically using the values of both of those plans to try to um create plans and then start to program infrastructure projects to be able to build there.

One thing I would add to what the city manager just said that I think is really important and is a difference maker in this particular plan is oftentimes we have great plans that are done. They have great visions in them. They have great projects in them. All those things. One of the things that you're going to see in the final deliverable, the final plan for this is we called it Savannah Moves for a lot of reason. That acronym was great. It represented a lot of things, but we are in action. And so, you're going to see one of the most detailed and strongest implementation strategies that go along with the projects and the programs that are in here. We're going to be on the move with this for real. So I think that's the big difference maker is how we're constructing this to be an implementation plan not a look good on the shelf plan.

We don't need no more studies and stuff on the shelves. But the what we do need on the shelf and what this is we need shovel ready projects. Yes sir. On the right. So that's how that's how these infrastructure projects gets funded as they're ready. We've got a list. We know what's the next sequence of prioritization. We've got that project designed out. we know exactly how much it's going to cost. We're ready to get federal and state dollars to do it and we're ready to break ground tomorrow. That's the whole goal of all this work. And then sometimes money will appear like you know and it's really just those who are ready to be able to do it and you know you just don't have the time to do all of the research and everything. So you got to be prepared for those opportunities to come forward. Uh all the Shabbass.

Thank you Mr. Mayor. I just want to commend everyone everybody for the work that has been done to get us to this point. Let's go. Are you um the city manager doing the same thing seeking um consensus to move forward or this is the council has approved us moving forward with this plan. This is a checkin for us to let you know where the process is, where these public engagements are, the policy committees, etc., so you know what the plan is and what to expect throughout the year. I don't know what Stephen did, but all of a sudden the air is off.

Thank you. I mean, seriously, y'all y'all feel that I mean, it's comfortable, man. I'm a little warm. That's cuz you in the hot seat. All right. So, um, Mr. Manager, is there anything else? Yes. Okay.

So, I appreciate you all hearing me and adding the bypass rules in Wooddale to this study so we can get something done that moving along because that's a critical piece for the Woodville community. Um, they can't continue to exist with that crossroad in there with that industrial traffic coming through there. and and so so something's being discussed about bypassing that and I appreciate that. Um I didn't get my question answered about 37th Street and the parking and and what is the plan for are we going to have parking on 37th and two lanes or one lane and parking

you mean 37 between MLK and the inter interchange the uh that um all the way well let me see how far it goes. I don't think it's really going all the way back to you our grant that we received the safe street safer streets for all addressing the 37th street corridor.

Yes. So where we are on that project right now is we have on the on 37th street we have um done the first round of public engagement. I will tell you that the strong feedback from both the public meetings and also from the stakeholder groups is a desire for uh bike lanes and bike facilities on 37th. So where we are now is we and we've published those results. It's available on the website. Um and we've also corresponded back with the stakeholders to just reconfirm some some of the uh design aspirations that they have. And the project is now currently in concept and design development. So we'll be bringing something forward to council to show how we can make um Shan is an an active participant in this process as well. And in that design, we'll be looking at parking. We'll be looking at sidewalks. We'll be looking at the bike lanes. We'll be looking at all those things and how do they how does that work in what areas end to end on the corer and the safe streets for all ground.

So, it hasn't been decided yet. It's still it's in a question. So, to add bike lanes to eliminate parking. Well, I think that that's a question again to be deter to be determined yet. And it might not be that things go into end the entire carter. may be that there's still some things preserved in certain areas, but again, it's in design now based upon all of the public and stakeholder input we've received. Okay.

Okay. Since vision zero is now included in this uh Savannah moves, the large problem of concern that residents have on slowing down traffic in neighborhoods, speed bumps, speed dissipators, signage and all of that. How what type of priority is that getting? because I'm continuing I have I have neighborhoods that have been requesting some of these measures for many years and they have zero they have nothing they have vision zero in and in in as far as traffic calming. So is that process the same or do they need to edit the process?

I'm going to let Steve come up and talk a little bit about the process and the process has been accelerated but I would tell you that the other thing that is happening right now is we are working on a partnership with the Savannah Police Department. Our data collection in the past in these neighborhoods that have made those requests um Alderwoman has been manual collection. We have an opportunity working with SPD to utilize some tools that they have to speed up that data collection process so we can act on these project and request sooner. Steve

yes we've been accelerating our processes uh as the poly policy will allow. Uh last year we did 56 uh safety measures uh trafficcoming devices throughout the city. Uh which is the most we ever done in one year and we expect to continue to accelerate the request. Get a lot of requests. Uh the requests are investigated. Studies are done to to support uh or find what the speeds are and that data is presented to the committee and the committee decides whether it moves forward with safety measures or not. But if you have specific locations, I'm happy to talk to you directly about those locations, work with those residents directly. Harold, who's hopefully feeling better, does a fantastic job with managing vision zero

applied process, a challenging job. He does a terrific job of managing those uh processes and those requests, but specific requests you feel like maybe not being addressed were happen because I really do think we need to pay more attention to the neighborhoods that have no zero traffic calming measures in but I should point out it's resident driven. So so make sure those residents are reaching out to our department. We're happy to direct them through the process. Thank you. Uh priorities, one of the priorities here is

it drives economic growth. um to to move this plan along um to drive economic growth and and you know on the west side that is a critical consideration and I see we have CEDA and we have all of these coordination uh organizations and I don't see anyone over there that can adequately speak to the situation and and some of the work u problems on the west side and I want to add the Ivory Bay Community Development Corporation to these um coordinating coordination committees so we could have some people there that have been working with the issues in these communities for quite some time and could bring that voice to this because I'm looking at this and the concerns that I don't really see that type of organization right here. Um

Alderwoman, we're glad to add them. we'll reach out and add them to the uh committee and make sure we catch them up on anything that's been done to date and then they'll think they can be involved of course actively moving forward. There's other voice I like to add as well. I I'll get those to you. Okay. Okay. Thank um mayor and council as we transition back to our special call meeting. We I do have one more. I'm sorry. Uh you had Highway 80, State Road 2680. I need to get it out. Um I missed that. And is that West Bay Street? I know we talking beautifification. No, ma'am. State Route 26 US80 study ends at I 516.

So it's it did the 516 and went to the county line in in Chattam County. That's just one of the many studies that help me on that now. So USAD from um Burnsid where I where Burns goes under I 516. Okay. We talked about southwest just west of West Bay Street. Um, your beautifification plan wouldn't be a part of moves, but we're but we're that's a different it's a different Okay. part of a different program. Thank you. All the negative

quickly faith uh within the moves conversation. Uh we uh thinking about what's going to happen with the fairies and the ferry expansion as the bridge is going through its transformation in the next couple of months. We are s and so chattamaria transit is one of our uh stakeholder partners on this project and the master transit plan that they already have that they put in place just a few years ago um is also one of those points of coordination on this. We're working actively with G dot in terms of the um and all the partners including CAT about how that um area how that how the construction time frame is going to be managed. It's a four-year long or so project. Um and um definitely will have an impact. And that's also where that evacuation plan that we mentioned also becomes really important in terms of how we get people off the island if we're um if they're isolated and something really happens like the bridge is closed.

And also may mention that we have two new fairies coming online in the next couple of months that'll help with the uh evacuation if need be. Thank you, sir. All right, ladies and gentlemen. Can we eat now? No, we got nine minutes. Mr. Mayor, just one other question. Mr. Henry, Mr. City Manager, I see we at the end of the lesson. Can you give me a time frame for our people who were on when is the completion date for that? Great job. I've got that in my sir. Thank you so much.

Before we wrap, there might be some uh leftover lunch which we did serve for council. We do need to as we transition to special call meeting, we do need to restart our broadcasting system which is about 10 minutes. So I will let you know mayor when we are ready to begin our council. We're at 10 minutes now. So we we stand in recess uh until after 6:01 our brush or ishar shar. Oh, thank you. It's just I shared my drive with you.

You haven't those are very great pictures. I'm like I mean you look tall. They they brought it all the way down. So you said yeah. I mean I