City Council - Regular Meeting

Thank you, everybody.

I didn't want to blow it up. conversation that was happening because it's like that i was waiting for the moment in the theater but i'm like it's gonna quiet down but no longer so thank you everybody for coming tonight um hey everybody my name is nate i am one of the steering committee members for the ward 5 neighborhood planning assembly um i'm so glad to see uh some folks that i know but a lot of folks that i don't uh here tonight uh for our september meeting um so we got a couple pretty interesting items uh on tap uh And one of the first ones was, as some of you might have been noticing, this footage that I took from the last week. That was some footage that I had gotten of the South End. So definitely some different perspectives. There's more to it. And if you would like to see more or talk about getting some footage of your own, talk to me about it later. But that was really just kind of for the South End side of things to show you all what was going on there. Just grab my slideshow. Right. And folks online, how does the room sound? Are you able to hear us? All right. Thank you, Ben. And so this is the five participants. All right. It's a minute to get the screen share. All right. There we go. So welcome. This is the, as I said before, Ward 5 NPA. This is our agenda for the evening. We are getting into the second item. I want to say thank you to Fareed. He's not in the room, but if you have not said thank you to Fareed, please do so. He is a Ward 5 resident and a phenomenal cook, and he does a lot of great work. community-oriented meals for folks through his pricing group, equals with him. So give him a shout, and it's great that he's also local too. But other than that, the first step is our public forum. This is the standard of the MPA, where this is an opportunity for community members to just really say anything that's on their mind. There are a few kind of community expectations about how we're going to be approaching the conversation, which I'll get to. Oh, yeah, right. So if this is your first NPA, we'll get to the first agenda. If this is your first NPA, welcome. The real purpose of the NPA is for this to be a place in between, to open communication in between residents and city officials of kind of all stripes of what city officials means and all sorts of residents as well. So that's kind of it's nuts and bolts. And one way we do that is through these meetings. And then there's some other stuff outside that we'll talk about as well. Those are some of the things that are often talked about here. Ballot items, candidate forums. That we'll definitely be talking about next month at the upcoming election. So stay tuned for that. Updates and communities with elected officials. That's what we have tonight. Presentations from city departments and organizations. We also have a lot on tap. Development projects. Not tonight, but we will eventually. And volunteer opportunities. If you're not sure if you're from Ward 5 or if you live in Ward 5 now, that is the map of it. It's zoomed out, but what's great is that these resources are all going to be available on a couple of different places. The city civic clerk website, which is where you can find all kinds of public meeting information, as well as our own website at PA5.org. And so, yeah, that's a way to both get this information and double check if you are a Ward 5 resident. So as we're going into this open forum, these are some community expectations that this group put together within the last five years. Not sure exactly when it was, but these guiding principles are that the Board 5 MPA will be a safe space, providing a welcoming forum, It'll be accessible, reducing barriers to participation and engaging with all community members. It'll be respectful, respecting cultural and economic differences, valuing diverse perspectives. It'll be vital, hopefully relevant, creative, and fun. And we'll also be nonpartisan, though we don't endorse any political candidates. So that's kind of the big picture. And then actually, as we're getting into public forum here, these are the ways for that. Please just... Take your name, first and last name. If you're a Word5 resident, if you want to provide any additional information, like your specific kind of neighborhood or street, that's great too. And if you are here on behalf of an organization, please just say that. There's sign limit, four minutes, but it's really kind of discretion. I'll prompt you at three, four, four minutes would feel like a long time, but that is kind of what the standard is. I'll also just as a note say that as we look at our full agenda for the evening, if you're here specifically to talk about transportation or you were activated by some organizing around Callaghan Park transportation and bike and pedestrian safety, we will be having an item specifically for that at the end of the time. So if that's where your public comments are, you can save them for then. If you want to say anything else, you're welcome to do so. in the public forum. And so, would anybody like to speak in public forum? Yeah, welcome. And why don't you just come over to... Yeah.

Next to Bram here. I've known Bram for a long time. My name is Bob Wolfe. I live on Caroline Street in Ward 5. And I'm down here on behalf of Margaret Skinner from Branch Out Burlington.

Hopefully everybody can hear me.

A few weeks ago, there was a post on Front Porch Forum about the condition of City Hall Park Garden on the Church Street side. We were all concerned about its condition this year and because of the cuts to parks and rec, the garden hadn't been maintained as we had hoped this year. A number of residents contacted Margaret Skinner with Branch Out Burlington and we wanted to do something about it. We quickly raised $600. We went to Clausen's Greenhouse and bought 140 mums. And we went down last Saturday morning and planted them in an hour and a half. We had 12 volunteers. So if you happen to go down there, They're starting to bloom all different colors, and it's going to look really nice. We also weeded the garden. And I'm happy to say the garden was in good condition. We only found two needles, and we quickly disposed of those. So it looked really good. I just wanted to say that there is community interest in this beautifying the city. We got a total of 28 people responding quickly, and they want to do more projects. So I understand that there is a community interest in doing that. We're coming to the end of the year, so clearly it's going to be a winter organizing thing. But if you're interested in it, please contact Branch Out Burlington, and we'll get some ideas going for maybe Adopt-A-Garden. We talked about the rotary, but that's a complicated thing. But it is a gateway to the city. So That's what I have to say. And thank you very much.

Thank you, Bob.

I'm Jason Van Dreyche. I live on Caroline Street. I'm actually speaking on behalf of Old Spokes Home right now. I'm on the board of directors of Old Spokes Home, Burlington's nonprofit, I don't know, community bike shop. And just wanted to make a pitch for the Fall Fundo, which is Old Spokes Home's biggest annual fundraiser and a super fun ride. It's on Saturday, September 26th. All the rides start and end at Old Spokes Homes shop and there's four different lengths from six miles up to I think 60 miles. And there's a great party afterward and all the money raised goes to support Old Spokes Homes work to remove barriers for people using bikes for transportation and for fun. So Old Spokes gets tons of people on bikes, including a whole lot of kids. And this money that's raised in Fundo is essential to making that happen. So if you want to ride, you can register at OldSpokesHome.com. And yeah, I'll be there and would love to see many folks there. Thanks.

Anybody else here from the forums?

I'll introduce myself since there are lots of people who we haven't seen before. My name is Bram Kleppner and I represent this ward and ward six where I live in the state legislature. I'm one of your two state reps and would be happy to hear from any of you about what is on your mind. Bram? A lot is not required. I was going to say, it was the easiest applause of the week.

It's a welcoming community. Anybody else?

Can I go next?

Yeah, sure thing. Of course. Yeah, come on up to... Yeah.

Hi everyone, my name is Trang Do.

I use she, they pronouns. I live in the Old North End on Hyde Street. I grew up in Vermont, but I am the

candidate for Chittenden 16 for the House. And Ward 5, there is a very small block that is part of my district. It includes Ward 2, 3, 5, 6, and 8. So I wanted to come here and say hi. Please talk to me about your concerns and what you'd like to see change. Thanks.

Hello, I'm Adam. I live in Ward 8. I'm also running for the State House, but this time in the Shitton 14. Unfortunately, there's no part of Ward 5 that is in Shitton 14, but I'm also happy to talk to anybody, even if you don't live in my district. Yeah, thank you.

Anybody else for public forum?

Sorry. Charlie. You know how the mics work.

So I'm Charlie G. So I'm Charlie G. I live in Ward 2, actually. I just wanted to mention one thing. I feel compelled to say that this is the lowest average age attendance at an MPA meeting in 40 years of history of the MPAs. Okay? I'm serious when I say that.

Fantastic. Thank you, Charlie.

And to be clear, I was yelling at Charlie because he's the one who usually tells us to switch.

He's very good. Anybody else for public forum? All right. And the only other item that we have on this part of the agenda is that we have an open item for steering committee nominations and election. We have our bylaws, so every ward has different bylaws. The Ward 5 MPA has the ability to take up to nine members. So, you know, we are a small but mighty team, a relatively new team, five, and sounds like and feels like there's a lot of great energy in the neighborhood. So we are always open to nominations for new steering committee members. You can self-nominate, you can nominate a friend. Hopefully the friend wants to be nominated. They could decline. I think they could decline.

Can you tell us who the current?

Yeah, sure thing. Thank you. So, yeah, let me. That's a great note. I forgot to actually mention that. So you can actually see it on the back of your agenda as well. Those are our five steering committee members. Fareed is the only member that's been here longer than this year, but I'm actually a returning member. I stepped off for a couple of years and came back around. But we also are joined by Laura and Anya, who are online tonight. They both couldn't be in person. But we got our quorum. We got them all. And then Gary as well. It's after steering committee. And thanks for being here tonight. If tonight's not the night, we're going to keep it open until we get that number up to the top. So this is a cool body to work with. It has potential to be very dynamic. So I'll stop talking when I'm letting you. All right, and that's 7.15 on the dot. So please, if you're thinking about it, reach out. Word5, NPA, Google Group is part of it as well.

three years down the spring, not volunteering again at this point, but it was super fun. I learned a ton. It was not hard. It was way more fun than hard and really good way to meet people and just be involved in a lovely way and some interesting stuff. So, and like, there is no, the only qualification for doing it is wanting to do it. That too. And so as a former steering committee member, I just wanted to encourage folks to do it. It really was very interesting and a lot of fun.

Thank you, Jason. Yeah.

Okay, I'm up. I'm also, again, Charlie G. for more, too. And this person over here did not use the microphone, but he just spoke.

So there's... It's a good joke that comes back to me.

Okay, but I did want to say something about the steering committee. So you don't necessarily have to jump on the steering committee. You can actually go to steering committee meetings.

Sure.

Like next week or the week after they'll start planning their next meeting. Yeah, honestly. And so what a lot of the wards do is the steering committee invites people to come to a steering committee meeting to see what it's all about and to get to know the people who are on the committee. And usually that can be very helpful for getting people interested in the steering committee. Thank you.

Great plug. We'll be available. Yeah, we'll be available after the meeting. We have low expectation. We got to clean up anyway. So, you know, if you want to give a hand in all our cleaning up, we're happy to have you. All right. So we're getting into this is our agenda. I want to shout out. You'll see some art throughout this presentation. There's two sources that we have for that. If you've seen the Ward 5 logo, that's from. Oh, gee, it's Amy. Brad Cliff at Gotham City Graphics. We commissioned that back in 2020. And then all of the block print style art is from Christine Tyler Hill from the great NPA guidebook that she put together a couple of years ago. So it's like, hey, we're the NPA. We can use some of this imaging. So that was me this afternoon. But me earlier than this afternoon was a resolution. So one of the things that the NPA can do is adopt resolutions. It's kind of the official way that we as a community are able to vote on an item and say, this is something that we want to basically have circulated with other city officials. So then if there's a process that the community wants to see a resolution on, then pass it back to the steering committee to figure out how to do that. Drafting, talking about it, and then ultimately bringing it to one of these meetings to vote. Every resident of Ward 5 is eligible to vote. And the one note about voting items for the NPA is that they have to be warned on the agenda, meaning that you can't bring an item up that day and then vote on it the same day. So since agenda came from the steering committee. We got it on the agenda when we so dutifully got it to Barbara earlier last week. We're able to vote on it. So as you may have seen, the other piece of paper behind the agenda, this is a resolution supporting neighborhood level community stewardship. And I can just tell you a little bit where this came from. It came from a couple different sources. Last month, we had a community barbecue at Oakledge and we had a reflective activity where basically we said, we have a small but usable budget. What are some things that you would like to see done with it? And then also we said, what are some things that you would like to see if we had a larger budget? And then also, what are some things that you'd like to see if money wasn't a matter of the question? And one of the things that kind of consistently came up from that were some of these activities that have fallen into this concept before that called community stewardship, which is the management, cleanup, and protection of public spaces by members of the community working as a formal or informal group. Part of where that concept of stewardship comes from is Burlington's open space plan, which we will have a presentation about actually next month from the Parks and Rec Department. The land steward and engagement specialist from that department, we actually have a presentation from Parks and Rec tonight as well. Part of this building has their offices as well as DPW. But some of those actual specific items were this idea of expanding community gardens, doing a green-up day every month, fixing the bike pump at Oakledge, a community tool garden, sponsoring a bench in a park. And so that kind of got me thinking, okay, so this is the input that we got. This is the tools that we have available as the NPA. Let's write a resolution. And so I kind of looked at a couple of different sources, really the past resolutions that had been written both by the city council and by this NPA to put this together. And so I know it's challenging sometimes to really have like thought deeply through an item as you're reading it for the first time, but here we go. We have it available. And, you know, I am ultimately today as a member of this hearing committee, hoping that we are able to pass this resolution. I think that where my, so that's kind of from a process standpoint, how we got here from where like my heart and soul come from in this is that I've been feeling and hearing a lot of a changing attitude about how people want to respond to the challenges of the city. Um, there are certainly challenges in the city and many of them are above, you know, what we can do as individual members of the community. Um, but that doesn't mean we can't do anything. Um, and a lot of people recently have been realizing that it's like, wait, we want someone to do something. We have to do something. Um, so, you know, as Bob and Margaret share their instance at city hall park, um, I've been organizing cleanups down in the urban reserve. There's groups like the BTP Cleanup Crew and others who are just kind of taking up these steps to say like, all right, we as members of the public, what can we do to try to help shape the city into the community that we want it to be? And so that's how we got here. And so my proposal is ultimately in here to support stewardship as a key priority in the fiscal year, to work with city staff, other community groups and volunteers, to organize two, that's a nice... a reasonable number to confirm stewardship events in the South End from the NPA, find some ways to support some kind of day-to-day neighborhood activities, the kind of thing of Adopt-a-Block or, you know, those kinds of activities with some specifics to be determined based on what's viable and what the actual community members want to do. And then they will also share this resolution with other NPAs. and with city officials and to just basically say, hey, can we kind of spread this grassroots idea? So now is a lot of talking. I would really love to open it up to the floor for anybody that would like to discuss and see if this is something that we can move forward with.

One channel. There's one channel in these.

I support this. Great. That's awesome.

Could you introduce yourself?

Oh, yes. My name is Isabel. Thank you. Thank you.

My name is Isabel.

I live in the Five Sisters neighborhood alongside these people next to me. And I love Green Up Day. That's so fun. I would love to see more events like that for our ward specifically.

Thank you. And thank you for also bringing silence. Does anybody have another way? Does anybody have any reservations about pursuing this kind of resolution? Sure thing.

No reservations.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Hi, my name is Ed Harvey. I live just up the street in the corner of Charlotte and Locust Streets. I worked for a company called Associates in Rural Development, ARD. It turned into Tetra Tech. It did USAID projects for 40 years or so in Vermont. I organized the cleanup day for ARD for about 30 years, I guess, maybe something like that. And as a result, I have four of those grabbers in my in my shed and a stash of some old green update bags that we didn't use the last time around. And this year I was going to be around for when my colleagues held it after the company was decimated.

But I went out on Earth Day with a grabber and a bag and cleaned up the entire block along Jackson Terrace there down Pine Street, which was quite a mess.

But I'd be very interested in helping out with that.

Thank you so much. You're welcome. Any comments or questions? Yeah.

Yeah, but I'll go ahead. Of course. Good morning.

I just wanted to follow up on the city hall. There was a tremendous amount of energy that came together quickly, and even funds. And I understand the city's under stress budget-wise, and particularly Parks and Rec. And we do enjoy our green spaces and all the planters that are around the city, but the staff just can't do it. And so I think this winter would be a good time to talk about adopt a planter, adopt a garden, you know, things like that. But we don't know how to do it. And the rotary is particularly one, it's a very visible spot coming into town, but that's owned by the state, I think. It's not a city thing. So I think what... I do support this, but I would like some type of organizational, where do we go to sign up to do that or if we have an idea. So I do think there's a rising amount of downtown. All the construction is done. It's great. The high school is fabulous. I mean, there's a lot of good energy in the city, and I think this would probably fit well within that.

Oh, yeah. Ben, go ahead. Welcome.

Yeah, thanks, Nate. Ben Travers. I live on South Crest Drive. I also serve Ward 5 on the City Council. I'm hoping to be able to join you there in person for the tail end of the meeting. I'm waiting for my wife to return home from our daughter's first Edmonds Middle School open house. So hopefully that works out and I can join you for the tail end of the meeting there in person. But I want to take an opportunity, Nate, to say, you know, both as a resident here in Ward 5, as well as in my capacity on the City Council, deeply supportive of this resolution as you presented it. You've done some really amazing volunteer work and to the extent the city can further support you and similarly minded community members and being able to lean into this space. I think that's a great idea. I served with you on the Ward 5 NPA steering committee back in the day when we pushed to increase the NPA budgets from $2,500, I think $5,000 now. But yes, notwithstanding a strapped city budget, something like another $2,500 went a long way towards our being able to do cleanups in Oakledge Park, to our being able to do an outdoor movie, and to this MPA being able to do other community events. So whether through financial resources or whether through people resources, Bronson is very much, especially the South End here, a lean in community where we should be supporting folks like you and other people who have raised their hand there here this evening with their community stewardship projects. I'm very happy to support this resolution this evening. And again, in my role on the council, uh, very happy to, to do the work there as well.

I love this.

Thank you for leaving this. I will happily pitch in and, uh, I would be very interested in opportunities to ask forgiveness rather than permission. Because asking permission can sometimes use up a whole lot of time and energy. And nobody's gonna mind if we pull some weeds and clean up some trash. So I don't know how it's been done so far. I mean, I suppose in front of City Hall Park, you probably want permission to be planting flowers, but in slightly less visible locations, let's just do it. And I'm all in, thank you. Thank you, Jason.

And there are certain things that we can do as an official city group. Well, thank you all. And this is really just the beginning of a conversation. And this is basically a, this is kind of the point of why I wanted to do this resolution too. It actually played out very nicely where we went through the process of reading this, whereas, and therefore it be resolved as a way of kind of saying like, You know, if you're ever reading a city council resolution, it's, it's just, it's just form, you know, it's just says, whereas at the beginning, and then after that, just read everything after that, then you're good. And then where it says be, therefore be resolved. That's kind of the, whereas it's the setup, therefore be resolved is the action that we're going to take. So everything that is in this resolution, that's in, that's in that part and everything before that's the preamble. So, If anybody would like to make a motion regarding it. Motion to vote on the... Yeah. I move. All right. Don't move. And is there a second?

Sure.

Yeah. And so first was from Gary Myers and second was from... Could you say your name again? Or second was from... Me?

Yeah. Isabel.

Isabel.

Yeah.

Perfect.

All right.

Would it be possible to make a comment after the motion has been moved?

yeah, because you make the motion and then is there any additional comments? Yeah, sure. Yeah.

I'm just seeing that this is the second bulletin board working on the initiative in collaboration with other community groups and volunteers. Nate mentioned the Burlington cleanup crew that's been running many years. Jason is a friend of mine. He's also the director of Houston Justice Center. They've been doing this every Thursday for many years. And I'm thinking that's a great place to... centralize a lot of equipment. And they also have a framework that they've been using for many years. So in this initiative, you wouldn't have to start from something cobbled together. There are groups that have been doing this for a long time. And they just moved into a building by, in the Old North End, in the One Love building by 802 Credit Union. And I'm thinking it would be a great place to have like the grabbers accessible trash bags, gloves, asking community members to donate empty laundry containers because they make for really good sharps containers. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks. Yeah.

All right. All right. So the motion on the floor has been, has moved. All in favor of the resolution, ultimately what we'll do is Gary and I will, Just keep your hands raised. You don't have to say aye. Keep your hands raised, thumb, and we'll count you. And you can only vote if you're a Ward 5 resident, as we saw through the bylaws. It's on our system, so we're not checking your ID on the way out of here. But please try it. And if you're not sure, it's okay to abstain. Yeah.

Could we just clarify the northern border?

Yeah, sure thing. Yeah. It is King Street. Yeah, it's King Street. It's the north-south edge of King Street. It's a little tiny chunk north of. Yeah, right. Which side are you on?

I'm on the south side of Maple.

Yeah, we do. If you're on the south side.

Sorry, the north side of Maple.

Yeah, then you're good. All right. All in favor of the resolution, please raise your hand.

All right. All right. Any opposed? Laura? There is two. Yes, so it's online. Okay.

Or it's the steering committee members. Hopefully this communication. So does anybody oppose? It's OK if you are. All right. Well, with that, our motion passes. Thank you all. This is fine. So this is just an example. This is something that the NBA can do. And we're going to try to do this a little differently. We haven't done it quite in this way before. priorities. So here's the way to do it. And, you know, if there are other priorities that you really care about or that you think your neighborhood cares about or your neighbors care about and you hear them talking about it, this is a place to kind of start it up the ladder. And that will ultimately be one of the items that we have. Today came from a community request where there was some significant organizing. So thank you. I'll stop talking. This is, I'm not going to say anything for a while. Because we are getting to our, really our nuts and bolts part of the night. We are going to welcome Max Van Alensky. He's with the Parks Planning Team of the Brent and Park Strike and Waterfront Department. And he's here to talk about Callahan Park. So, Max, could you come to one of the microphones? Yeah. And do you want to share your screen?

Yes.

Hi, everybody. I'm Max Matalinski. For anybody who doesn't know me, I'm a project manager with the Burlington Varsity Planning Department. I'm here today primarily to talk about a project that's currently in design.

which is to renovate the basketball and tennis courts in Callahan Park.

So without further ado, I'll just jump right into kind of what we're working on and give you an overview of what we're looking to do. Oh. what we've been working on designing. So we are looking, just to orient everybody here, up at the top where, can you see my cursor on there? I actually can't. Yes. The top is Locust Street. So at the top of the graphic is Locust Street oriented northward. We are Getting an ad alternate in our documents to potentially pave the existing gravel path through the park just to make access a little bit easier. And then looking at reconstructing the tennis courts here and the basketball courts, which we would be actually reducing from its really large footprint down to one basketball court, primarily for budget reasons. On the tennis courts, we would be taking one tennis court and converting it into four pickleball courts due to the demand we've seen for that sport, as well as during the comp plan, we heard a high demand for people who wanted to see additional pickleball here. We then just have three tennis courts roughly in the same place. This actually, you can't really see it on this graphic, but does go a little bit wider this way, but only about like eight feet or so on that eastern edge. We'd be adding an accessible pathway just to connect everything kind of between the two, some benches and not yet shown, but we're trying to work with our designer to find a place to put some bleachers specifically for tennis, which draws high school sports. So there's a place for people to watch from. We also have partially completed design for a bioretention basin, not looking exactly like this. This is the conceptual rendering from the comp plan. That would be aimed at addressing some of the stormwater challenges we've had in the park that come from combined sewer overflows related to the go-ahead sewer system that goes into the pipe that runs through the park. Currently, that is not funded, but we are holding this design where it's at and continuing to pursue different grants. We are working really hard on a Lake Champlain Basin program to hopefully get that funded and hoping that all of that will come together so that we could just do everything in one construction phase rather than having to have multiple construction phases here in the park. And then the last thing I wanted to talk about that you can't see just on this graphic is we are planning to add lighting to both the tennis and the basketball courts. So historically, there was lighting at the basketball court, but that was taken down as the poles kind of became deteriorated and either had to be removed or one which actually collapsed. So we would just be restoring that level of service at the basketball court. Whereas for the tennis courts, it would be totally new to be lighting those. And so a big part of what I wanted to hear any feedback from anybody in the room on is how you would feel about that, concerns if there's neighbors you'd particularly like us to talk to. And we have also had multiple community requests to add lighting there, as well as other places in the park, just thinking about us being a winter city and you know, needing to provide additional opportunities for recreation in the winter and in the shoulder seasons. So that is my brief spiel on project overview. The last bit I'll say is we're currently in design, hoping to finalize design sometime this fall winter to get this project out sometime in the forbid sometime in that timeframe instruction in the next spring, summer, fall season. And questions, comments, feedback?

Yeah, thanks. I'm Tom Visser. I live on Charlotte Street. And I just hope as far as the plan is concerned that there'd be recognition given to the huge amount of pedestrian traffic that's going between the Five Sisters neighborhood, cutting through there over to the Birchcliff neighborhood to go shopping, to go to Kenny's house. It really is the easiest way to get from the Five Sisters to get food, quite literally for many of us. And this is summer, winter, day and night. And it's becoming, it seems like there are always a number of something in the way. I mean, last year we had these massive gravel piles there on the other side of the tennis courts we had to navigate. There are always puddles there along the way. It gets way too dark and creepy, quite frankly, behind the tennis courts. So I just think, as part of this planning, to include on this plan a safe and effective way to promote that pedestrian connection between these two neighborhoods.

I'd like to pick on that.

Hi, my name's Todd Rangel. I live at 46 Charlotte Street. Down at the bottom, there is that pass through, right? And from what I understand, it's kind of been no man's land from a possession perspective. And it would be really great if you were, if part of this whole planning thing was to actually use whatever MNF domain or whatever to take possession of that and make it more formal. And actually open that up, expand it, make it a nice path through, connect the path. And that would be really interesting. The second question I have is on the lights for the tennis court and the basketball courts. How are you envisioning that operating? Is that going to be like motion activated? So if somebody's playing, it'll be on, but then it shuts down? you know, is it timed? You know, different seasons might have real different needs.

Yeah, so currently the only lit tennis courts we have are out at Lighting Park. Yeah. And the way we have them set up is so that there's a timer where when you want the lights on, you come and you press a button in the evening hours and it's basically set up with like 15, 30 minutes, one hour, two hours kind of toggle switch on it.

Yeah.

And then at 10 p.m., whether you press the button or not, boom, it's out. Yeah, so that is on our hours. Cool. And believe in the winter, they don't turn small, right? You know, that's a good question. I don't know that for sure. It is possible that after we redid it, but I'd have to look into that actually. Yeah, it's just a dial. And are you willing to look into that? Yes, I definitely can look into it. The hard part for me is that I really have to pass it to our city attorney's office. So my understanding is that Your understanding is what I heard, basically, is that with that paved pathway that kind of goes in between the garage and the fence there, that there used to be a condo, not condo association, a homeowners association for the neighborhood when it was first being developed. And that path was sort of put in with the intention of eventually deeding it over to the city. But then the deed never came through and the association was disbanded. And now you have all these individual properties. houses. And so the ownership of it is unclear. And I'm not a legal expert. I don't know what the process would look like for the city to acquire it. I know our department has in the past pushed to try to get some motion on there because it is not the first time we have heard this concern and wanting to see that be formalized. But it does have to go through the city's attorney's office and I can't directly just pave it, all right?

Yeah.

I find myself in pretty big trouble for doing that.

So that's something I'll do a little redirect in relation to that, and then in terms of stack, we'll go there, and then Jason, and then you.

Sorry, go ahead.

Just that... People with special technical skills are very great volunteers. So if anybody knows of anybody that knows how to read legal and wants to see a community project move forward, sometimes it's as simple as that, as someone that just has time and willing to do it for free.

There we go.

All right. So that was my, yeah.

I just wanted to let you know, I will pass your comment directly on to our Grounds Manager about files and make sure we're not storing stuff there. I mean, it's okay this year, but last year was, you know. He has asked me as part of this project, like they have this really messy storage area here to potentially, if we can afford it as an adult, get that cleaned out so that things can actually be stored in a nice way. Yes.

Yeah, go ahead. Just introduce yourself.

Sure. I'm Susan Monkress. I live on Caroline Street. And I wanted to say that I really appreciate the lighting, particularly on the basketball court, the hockey rink, and that that lighting be available in the winter when it gets flooded for ice hockey. It's an incredible addition to the neighborhood. And it has really been a bummer to not have the lights because I think it draws fewer hockey players and skaters at night.

Jason Van Dyche, also Caroline Street. I love this plan. Really glad to see this investment and also to hear about the really snappy timelines. Amazing. Thank you. I also would love to see lighting. And I'm curious if the smaller basketball court has been designed with hockey in mind. Like, will it still work for hockey?

It will still work for hockey. Basically, we definitely would need community volunteers who are willing, because we're putting on a pavement surface and we just want to make sure the pavement doesn't degrade, it means to have a liner, right? So that's really, that would be the driver for that. Knowing that we have dedicated volunteers, we're going to be able to put up the perfect liner now.

I think the thing that I would ask for at this stage is to make sure that the reconfigured basketball court is sized large enough that it can be used for hockey. Because if it isn't, then volunteers is a moot point. So if you can kind of just do that cross research and make sure it can do double duty. I live just a little bit in from there. And like Susan, who's my wife, I love the sound in the evening of the shakwak. shuck whack of hockey being played it's just I don't play hockey I love it that it's there and I know a lot of people love to play hockey so preserving the ability for that to be a hockey resource would be awesome I can say it definitely is smaller than the current one another thing that I realize isn't on the plan is we are planning to add fencing around it because we heard from

We'll play basketball, but sometimes all of us flying down the hill, which also would help with hockey pucks, but it would be smaller. We're trying to think. Our small rink actually is about the same size. That would be the size for like a 3v3 pickup game. Great.

Yeah, just whatever that cross-check is. I mean, you know the standards for these things just to make sure. I mean, it might be that like six more feet makes all the difference or something. Yeah. And then second thing, just to echo several comments about the path, I would love to see as part of this project the paved part extend around for the full extent of Park's property all the way to the opening of the pass-through. And even if you can't tackle the pass-through as part of this project because of the legal complications, it'd be really great to get a paved path clear to there because then that part's done. And then... If possible, lighting along that path would be really great for being able to use it with more confidence at night.

I think adding this on should be pretty easy.

Great. That'd be amazing.

I do have to caveat that currently the paving along the path isn't an alternate for the big package, just because we're concerned we're not going to have enough budget. But if budget allows, yeah, that would be a simple add-on.

So if you're here, just introduce yourself.

Dominique Danko. I live on Chauvin Road. A couple things. First, I just want to say maybe this is a little too paranoid. I love the pass-through, and I just want to keep in mind, I wonder if there's any possibility that if we bring up the legal stuff, that the answer will be... Actually, we shouldn't have this at all and close it off. So I don't know what the kind of tactics are there, like treading lightly to avoid the version where we don't get the pass-through at all. Because if we could get it official, that's awesome. But if the other version is that we get it taken away, that's much worse than having an unofficial version. Yeah. And my other question was I was wondering if you could talk a little more about the bioretention basin, because I'm curious how that works.

Sure. I will say, having a takeaway, I mean, I don't know. I shouldn't speak. Yeah, right. I'd be surprised. In my personal opinion, I'd be surprised. It's not the first time this has happened. I'm sure many people in this room are aware. I don't believe our department would do anything, and I'd be very surprised if anything changed. That is just my personal opinion, though, so take that as you will. On the bioretention basin, The design would essentially be to create a basin Like currently, it's not super easy to show on this drawing because it's not in that level of detail. But coming down Govecourt, you know, basically all of the stormwater that's coming off of those sidewalks and that street are going onto curbs. And then there is just one catch basin right here at the bottom that all of that water goes into. And then that all goes into a combined sewer pipe. So a pipe that actually shares stormwater and sewer water from people's houses. And what that causes is all kinds of problems further down the line. So some people may be aware we've had a top pop off of a cap on the other side of the soccer field, like over in this area, slightly off the map. and overflow in the park and then our crews have to come out and treat it with lime and it's been a recurring thing that's happened several times over the past five or six years. So this would take some of that water and instead of just funneling it all right into that sewer pipe right away, would create a big basin that would be designed to capture and hold a large amount of that. It would be lined with different plants and vegetation. you know, sedges, shrubs, things like that, things that like to have periodically be inundated with water. And then if it got filled to capacity, it would still have to overflow into that pipe, but it would take some of that load off and also filter out different things that are kind of running off the road, like sediment, you know, things that come off cars, asbestos, mineral oil, all that kind of stuff, and get it into the ground, filter it out, and have those plants kind of treat some of that instead of it all just going into our city's sewer and storm system. That's roughly how it would work. It would be a dug-in depression there, and we would work to create some connecting paths here over to the Gulf Court sidewalks as part of that as well.

Thanks, Steve, and then you after it.

Yeah. Hi, Steve Levy. I live on Locust Street, right across from the park, actually. And I wanted to speak about the pass-through and just make people aware. We've talked about this for 10 years. There's no incentive, I think, to the city to get it done. There's certainly no incentive for that neighborhood to get it done. I've I've had experience with these kind of things in South Burlington. It seems to me what happened was the developers, when they proposed the neighborhood, put this easement in. The homeowners association never happened. The easement has gotten smaller and smaller over the years with the neighbors building fences more and more in. The path right now is, for me, I ride a recumbent bike. It's pretty much unusable. And I agree, it's a great way to go through and access Shelburne Road. So from a personal standpoint, I'd like to say that I really respect everything that's being done here, and it's a great plan. And I think the pass-through is my highest priority, other than, you know, over and above all this basketball, tennis court, and stuff like that. I don't know how we can persuade the city or the legal... people to look into this. As I said, if anybody has any ideas, please say something, but I don't see it going forward at all other than a question and a reply that, oh, this is really difficult and we don't want to annoy the neighbors by doing eminent domain.

Yeah. Yeah, I think it would need to be someone that knows how to do the legal combined with some community organizing. Combined with what? Community organizing, doing the kind of canvassing, doing the Hey, neighbors, this is something we're trying to do. Let's get on board if we can.

Or maybe, as Jason suggested, just appear with a jackhammer. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Jason. I thought you did.

Ed Harvey again. Steve, if that path was repaved nicely, is it wide enough for you to ride your government bike through?

It's wide enough for my recumbent, and I hesitate to say this in a crowd, but it's wide enough for my motorcycle as well. And I've seen motorcycles and Emotos using that pad.

So maybe just if it was smoother.

Yeah, there's rocks poking up there now. It's really getting bad. And, you know, we could do the sob story for women, or I shouldn't say women, for people with small kids in strollers, Right. They have a very difficult time going through that path, you know, and if you're trying to get down to Pine Street and visit the breweries, you might even have more trouble.

I was just going to ask one quick question. Is there a plan for the space where the basketball court used to be?

So currently we're just going to be, I actually have this mic over here. Currently, it'll just be demolished and left open. During the comprehensive plan process, we identified this location to add a big pavilion. We looked at the scale of that as we were getting into this project and what would be needed to make that happen. First, we'd have to take it down like a big oak tree and multiple crab apples and impacts and pines and other things to slide the basketballs even further over to do that really large pavilion. And then the scale for it was roughly 80 feet wide by 140 feet long, with the idea that we would keep essentially the same size pavement as what currently exists underneath. And just in our current budget situation, that seems infeasible. That's four times the size of a larger shelter at Oakledge. So what we are planning to do in the short term is to demolish that and then we are looking at LWCF grants down the line to fund doing a smaller pavilion kind of on scale with the upper one at Oakledge. That's the in-term what we've been talking about, basically. Thank you.

Yes, a small pavilion would be so much nicer than a pavilion. Yeah.

Any other comments, questions for Max? Raise your hand. Awesome. Max, thank you so much.

A totally different topic since we are still here in the South End. We are also planning for playground replacements at three different parks, two of which are in the South End. We are working on Baird Park's playground that needs to be replaced, Smalley Park, which if you've been there is almost non-existent at this point and desperately needs to be replaced, and then the new North End at Ethan Allen Park. We have some engagement opportunities coming up for each of those. And hang on, let me just look. Coming up like next week, I think is the first one. Smalley Park is adjacent to Decker Towers. So on Adams Street and St. Paul. Yeah, exactly.

Like 15 years ago.

Yes, it was redone before I started here. I think it was 2013. Yeah.

It's not football, but it had a playground in front of me. It was really good.

No, we redid the softball field, but there was, it was before I got here, so I don't know the exact year, but it was, yeah, exactly. It was a natural playground. There was like some logs. Yeah, the wood, the lumber just was standard cedar and it just degraded really prematurely. We had hoped that would last much longer is my understanding. And so, yeah, within 10 years, we were removing Whitman because it was about to tip over. Yeah. So yeah, we really want to get that one redone. So anyway, those opportunities are Baird Park. We'll be tabling in the park on September 24th from 3 6 p.m. Please tell anybody who's interested in Baird to drop on by. And then at Smalley, we will be there on October 8th on Thursday. And we'll also have a survey kind of going out online about each of these for people to participate in. Well, thank you. Yeah, thank you, Max.

The opportunities are rich.

Yeah.

This is great. My other hat that I wear for the city is that I am a volunteer on the Parks Commission. So Max and I, I see these plans and it's great to kind of see the neighborhood be able to engage with the planning process for these parks and see, okay, here's the plan. Now let's chunk it down to work and the budget and the trade-offs and the timeline and everything. So thank you. And, yeah, go stop by one of these parks.

Have a good night.

Take care, everyone. All right. So we are at our last item tonight, and I will pull back up my screen. And I wanted to share kind of how we got here from the MPA perspective and then how we are going to go kind of move forward. So part of the MPA rules are also that – with if a group of residents petitions with, I'm not sure actually what the number of signatures are, our steering committee is compelled to add an item to the agenda. This wasn't that situation. This was a situation where a former steering committee member knew kind of what the process was to start the request process for a group of community members that had been organizing. And it sounds like from my plugging in a little bit late in this process, this has been some conversations that have been going on for the past several years. And so, you know, kind of in this new iteration of the NPA, I figured it was time to you know, from this community request, from just the kind of state of where everybody's mind is at, we might as well move this forward. And so really the idea today is that this is going to be a community forum where we're not going to be focused on action today. We're not necessarily going to have answers today. This is more a state of let's see kind of what the community brings to the table. I want to just also say we're joined by a few different kinds of city officials. We have Max, who just left from Parks Department, but from DPW, we have Chapin Spencer and Phil Peterson, and we have our counselor, Ben Travers. He was able to make it in person, and I think those are the only officials online. But this is a public meeting, and so this will be recorded. It's part of the process, and really, like, at the end of this conversation, I'm hoping that we can kind of point towards some action items. But to start, since... Goodness, I'm turning this gray. Todd. So Todd was kind of the key organizer with this effort. And from talking to a lot of neighbors, this is a project that he put together, this presentation. So I'm going to give the floor to Todd first and basically run through the slides, then open it up to thoughts, reflections from the community and from staff as well. But just to note... Ah, yeah, for the sake of the screen, why don't you come on over. Let me get your slides at the same time.

Thank you.

Oh yeah, and then this is the last kind of piece of preamble that I have, which is, Is there some kind of community expectations that were built off of the previous presentation that we'd done about housing? I added a few more bullets, just kind of with the state of where this is coming in from, that this is a potentially challenging topic with potential for high emotions. So just name that, recognize it right here. There's many things going on behind the scenes. We can't, as I said before, we can't expect answers tonight, but we can talk at least about opportunities Void silver bullet framing, you know, one solution will solve the problems. Don't read any intent into anybody's actions. Start from the baseline assumption that all of us here in this room are working in good faith for the sake of our community. And if we can do it together, we'll be doing it better. All right. I agree wholeheartedly. Yeah.

Let's go.

All right. So you can go to the top. All right. All right. Well, I wanted to reiterate before I start. Thank you, Chapin and Bill, for showing up and listening to this. It's been really good to communicate with you so far. And I want this to be very open and transparent and cooperative. This is not a conflict.

This is us moving forward together as a community.

And to just backtrack a little bit, you know, Phil, I after Shiloh's death, we were all, you know, quite devastated. And there was a bike walk meeting and I came to that. And I had been thinking about the Locust Street corridor and how busy it is. And and I've got two kids, you know, that lower the demographic, you know, age quite a bit. And ever since we moved here, I was like, the traffic is just crazy on this street. And it stirred for a long time. And at that meeting, I wrote up kind of some thoughts and concerns and whatnot. And I gave that to Phil at the meeting. Then I followed up with an email. And the response back was, we have 2023 data. And we... And that data doesn't show that there's the ability or the need for us at this point to do anything about traffic coming along Locust Street. That the parkway had just gone in. You can stay on the front. Yeah, stay there. That the Champlain Parkway just opened and we would need that to be open for six months before we get, you know, a traffic study done because then traffic will normalize and so on and so forth. And all that seemed fine. And I think we all agree that more data is good, right? We want the data. And we support that, but we don't think that the current conditions should remain unchanged for months. So our position is that there should be some temporary traffic calming now, followed by permanent solutions that can be measured and shown to work. Right. So it's like, yes, let's study this, but let's also do something now because you can visibly see things have changed. Right. It's just quite clear. You can go to the second. All right. So why we're here. Locust Street separates a residential neighborhood from Callahan Park. Kids, families, cyclists, and pedestrians cross it every day. Residents have long felt that the existing race intersections do not slow traffic enough. Morning commute speeds are particularly a concern because they overlap with school travel. Shiloh Scalco was killed crossing Pine at Locust in July. DPW says they need more data. We completely agree. The question is what happens while we wait. And just to underscore this, yesterday my wife Judith with my two kids was walking a group of kids home from Champlain Elementary and a car barely stopped in time. This morning I was talking to Joe, I hope I pronounced his name right. Reston Nagy, Mr. R, the principal of Champlain Elementary, and he said that a car speeding on Pine almost hit the crossing guard who had to literally jump out of the way. Near misses are happening all the time. This is real. And that's why we're here. Right. Slide three, please. On the map, you can see there's two related problems, Pine Street and Locust. Southbound traffic approaches the crossing and there's no speed table. The traffic has picked up speed after crossing Howard and is trying to make the light at Lakeside. Second one on the right, we've got the Locust Street corridor. There are repeated crossings between the neighborhood and Callahan Park. Caroline and Charlotte have slightly raised intersections that don't truly slow traffic. As a point of contrast, the next street that connects St. Paul to Pine is Howard. Howard Street has two large speed humps and a four-way stop sign. In addition to Callahan Park, Locust Street also has a church and a middle school just west of the circle. So the issue isn't just one intersection. It's the relationship between Pine, Locust, the park, the neighborhood, the roundabout, and the crossings along the whole corridor. We can go to the slide. What we've been doing as the neighborhood, we're trying to build evidence, not just rely on anecdotes. We've taken radar observations. We've documented actual speeding instances, noted time of day and direction. We've taken photos, videos, resident observations. We requested the 2023 data set. And we're doing outreach to schools, businesses, parks. Park users and neighbors. Our goal is to create a current record that can be evaluated alongside the city's data. Their data is much better than ours. It was, you know, better than anecdotal, but it certainly wasn't a traffic study, right? It was Ruby firing a radar gun at traffic as it came by and recording that on sheet paper. And it was great. We can go to slide five. Why the 2023 data cannot answer today's questions. It still has value. Don't get us wrong. But conditions have changed. The Champlain Parkway is now open. Pine Street traffic patterns have changed. The fatal crash in July, of course. There's significant south end development planned. So this isn't going away, right? This is only going to get worse. And we don't know actually whether the study measured speeds at the raised intersections themselves. And that's something that is empirical and you guys can tell us, of course. So slide six, please. So with that recent radar sample, this is obviously, as I said, a small sample, but it's current and we didn't cherry pick data. It's a random Tuesday and Thursday earlier in September. And the data is consecutive. We measured all cars, not just the fast ones. There were 271 total observations. The morning sample, 73.5 exceeded 25 miles an hour. 22.4% exceeded 30 miles an hour. The 85th percentile is about 32 miles an hour. My afternoon sample, 20.7% exceeded 25 miles per hour, 2.7% exceeded 30 miles an hour, 85 percentile on that was about 26 miles an hour, and the maximum speed that we observed was 44 miles an hour. The data suggests a morning commute travel problem that an all-day average might obscure. This should be really looked into further. Are there specific times of day where people are speeding and does that correspond with kids using the park or the rest of us for that matter? Slide seven, please. What we're asking for, Fall of 2026, basically now. A temporary rubber speed hump or speed cushion on the southbound pine approaching locust. Installed by October 1, removed by November 1, which is what I believe is when they have to be removed for plows. Right. If that exact treatment is infeasible, explain why and provide an equivalent temporary treatment. Starting next spring, seasonal temporary traffic coming along the entire Locust Street corridor. Focus on Caroline, Charlotte and Locust Terrace. Target approximately 15 miles an hour at the crossing. If you watch traffic going by, as we looked at the speed coming by, anything more than that is really fast, right? And even 20 miles an hour is fast. Permanent solutions, pass that, redesign the existing raised intersections at Caroline and Charlotte, develop permanent treatments at Locust Street and Pine Street, publish a funding and construction schedule, target completion by November 2028, or provide a realistic alternative timeframe. Overall, we want a defined timeline, not an open-ended process, and we'd love a written decision by September 25th if possible. Or at least, hey, we'll look into this further, but it'd be nice to go, we can do something, right? Slide eight, please. Why this is a reasonable ask. DPW's own criteria make the fatal crash relevant to the safety warrant. Burlington already uses temporary rubber speed humps and quick build treatments. They're seasonal, removable, and comparatively inexpensive. The city already uses them near parks and pedestrian heavy areas. DPW said the Locust Street raised intersections were intended to produce roughly 15 to 20 mile an hour speeds at the devices. It's clear to us that that hasn't been achieved. We can see it. It also seems like 20 miles per hour, as I said before, was too fast considering the heavy use the park has and how aggressive many drivers are. There are just stories after stories of near misses. We're not asking the city to abandon its process. We're asking it to use the tools it already has in place while the process continues. Slide nine, please. Some questions that seem to be dangling out there. We'd like clear documented answers. How does a fatal crash affect Locust Street safety priority? Were speeds ever measured right at Charlotte and Caroline after the 2020 construction? Did those installations achieve the target? Can DPW release the full data set so we can kind of independently review that? What temporary treatments can be installed now? When and where will the post-parkway study occur? When will those results be public? These are factual questions and we'd like factual answers and for those to be on the record. Slide 10, please. What we're asking of Ward 5, we're asking this body here to endorse an immediate temporary traffic calming intervention, asking DPW to respond by 9-25, support release of the underlying traffic data, support a defined timeline for permanent improvements, and keep Pine Street, Locust Street, and Callahan Park Safety an active Ward 5 priority. That's what we're asking this body. Bottom line, install an interim safety treatment now, study the corridor properly, and build permanent solutions that demonstrably show vehicles, slow vehicles at the crossings. Slide 11 is just, if you want, you can get to the underlying data. This presentation is public record. I put everything on a Dropbox, all of our raw data, everything we've found. All the supporting documentation is there. And anything we gather further will be there. So you can go there, look through it, and go from there. That's what I've got. I'd love to hear what other people have to say.

Nice work. Thank you.

Yeah, let me just preface it as we go into this kind of next session. So, you know, from a broader perspective, I think this is kind of an opportunity to talk about really like transportation kind of broadly in our South End area too, while we have TPW here. So not everybody maybe has this exact Callahan Park spot as the spot. But I'm glad that Ton does and that we have this space to talk about it. So if anybody has thoughts directly about the presentation or any thoughts on transportation in general. But I saw you first. And then in terms of the stack, when I point at you with my pen, that's when I've acknowledged that. I see that you have your hand raised. So go ahead and just introduce yourself.

This is incredibly timely that this is happening. And as a resident, I'm Tom Visser and I live on Charlotte Street. And I'm involved with the increase in traffic. A critical issue is the sight lines at the corner of Charlotte Street and Locust Street. And the way the traffic is coming through there, the big trucks that are coming through there, I hold my breath every morning when I try to go out there. I think we need to have a stop sign, a three-way stop sign, just as we have on Howard Street. And that will slow things down. It's halfway through. And then I think that should be something on the list. So I will add these two photos that I took right at the stop line there. Just walking down here, I also observed that about a third of the cars that are headed north on Pine Street turned right to go up Locust Street. About a third. Just this evening. And as I tried to cross at the intersection with the flashing yellow light... Nobody stops. Finally, one car. But one car, as I start, I was there already in the road, and one car just zoomed right in front of me. It was shocking. And with what happened there recently, something needs to be done there, and it should be serious, like a stoplight, at least. Time has come.

Tom and Seth here first, but I saw you had your hand, so you'll be next, and then Susan, and then you. We'll move on one thing. Thank you all for speaking.

First of all, a huge thank you to Todd and to everybody who was involved in putting this together. It's so heartening to see neighbors come together and do such good work to improve a critical safety issue in the neighborhood. I've been paying attention to these intersections for a long time. I live one house in from Caroline and Locust. And back in 2019 and 2020, when this project was being planned and built, I had a lot of communication with DPW about it because I started to look at the plans. And I'm an urban planner by training. And I looked at those plans and I said, these are not going to slow down traffic. And I had those conversations repeatedly with DPW and I eventually got something specific from the city engineer at the time, Norm Baldwin. He said, as Todd has referenced, that the goal of the project was to reduce traffic speeds to 15 to 20 miles an hour at the crosswalks. And what we see from the data that's been collected is that very clearly didn't happen. So this is not a case of a location that needs improvement. It's a case of a project that failed to meet its stated goals and needs to be corrected. And the other piece of why it needs to be corrected, unfortunately, is anybody who's gone through there and has looked at the ground may have noticed that the concrete is basically disintegrating. A lot of those brown cast iron sort of textured ADA pads have gotten scooped up by the snowplows in the winter and completely destroyed. Yeah, a lot of them are gone. And the reason is that the concrete is failing. It in some way wasn't cured properly, and it's just turning to rubble. So on two fronts, this project unfortunately has failed. And it's just really exciting to see a solution being proposed. But I just wanted to emphasize that it's not in the context of something that's already working. We just want to improve it. It's in the context of something that fundamentally failed to meet its goals.

Yeah, this here, and then Sue, and then Steve.

My name's Katie. I live on Maple Street. What is the speed limit on Pine? Is it 25?

I believe it's 25 citywide.

I wonder if this is also part of the problem, because we're talking about how fast it feels when cars are going 25 in a place where they're legally permitted to do so, and I think that You know, most people I know speed a couple miles per hour over the speed limit. So I wonder if a street-wide reduction in the speed limit would help at least partially achieve the goals of getting people to slow down in that area.

From what I understand, and I'm not a city planner, is that the speed limit, even if it was reduced, it's the physical limitations that affect behavior. And that's my understanding, but I don't.

And there's also limits in state law on how much you can lower the speed limit.

And I think it's a main thoroughfare. I don't know. Yeah, I'll pass it over to Phil. So Phil is the city engineer. And I want to be really clear. We're not trying to prescribe exact remedies. No, it's OK.

This is fine. You don't have to qualify anything. And by the way, when Chapin and I had a chance to look at the presentation earlier, he looked at me and he said, did we put this together? I had the same. Together. I mean, you want a job? It was great. Yeah. So to answer your question about speed, state law. Anything that's outside of a designated downtown district, 25 miles per hour is like the minimum. And we can't go any lower. We did reduce speed in the downtown core. We had a campaign probably two and a half years ago, 20 is plenty, where we reduced speed. But to your point, you know, it's not necessarily the speed. It's the design of the streets. And I do have updated data to share when folks are ready to hear that.

Cool. So we'll go Sue. And then before you go, Steve, there's actually a stack of three over here.

Okay. I just wanted to say my appreciation to Todd as someone who, like Jason said, lives at that corner and goes across there every day. I will say it appears people have been really impacted by Shiloh's death. My experience at Locust and Pine has been dramatically different in the last decade. two months with occasional people really blowing through around Arthop when I assume people were from out of town. But like I really noticed the arrival of the students because they didn't know Shiloh and they weren't impacted. And suddenly there was that kind of rushing the lights and ignoring things. But I feel like the town has been, Burlington has been seriously impacted by this. When you're on a bike at that intersection, but it's not showing up at Locust. Like people are only affected in that spot. It's just the same to cross Locust. And in addition, just let me just say this. The people coming to Christ the King come down and they pull a wicked fast U-ey. in the parking because no one's there because it's early and they don't even look they're like whipping through it whipping around and whipping back across you wouldn't know there's a speed table there it is not a speed table so thank you for bringing this um

Patrick Halliday, I'm in Hayward Street. Todd, that was great. And I really appreciate your equanimity in that. I'm probably going to be a fear a little bit more in politic than you were. And because I think that we shouldn't be having a conversation about politics. Cars and bikes and pedestrians coexisting because it's not a fair fight. I don't weigh 3,500 pounds. If I hit a car, it does a lot less damage than if the car hits me. So I ask us to change the entire conversation to say, how are we going to make space for all of us? We should make it really hard for cars to get around. We really need to make it in these neighborhoods. It needs to be hard, difficult for cars to get around. I'm an infederate walker. I'm an infederate runner. I'm on the streets all over. This week, after I saw Todd's post in the Front Porch Forum yesterday, two days ago, I started counting. There have been six times that I've had a car come within three feet of hitting me this week, every single time on a flashing light, in broad daylight, not in dark, anything. Cars aren't stopping. It's an incredibly dangerous. Four of those were on Pine Street. One of those was on Locust Street. And just tonight, kind of cutting into Lakeside. I guess I wasn't a flashing light, but off of Sears Lane. Again, on a crosswalk with a car just coming through. And I just ask us to think that... The flashing lights aren't sufficient. The yellow lights, I think I will defer to the experts on this. I suggest we get rid of the yellow lights and change them red because yellow just says, oh, caution, you know, maybe, or you don't pay attention to it. Red means stop. And folks need to stop at that. And that's just one small change. And I just really encourage us to make it inconvenient to drive on Pine Street and Locust Street. Those are not roads that are designed for as thoroughfares as the way that they currently exist.

Hi, everyone. I'm Nancy Stetson. I know a lot of you in this room. I live right on Locust Street, right at Locust and Charlotte, and I have four kids. And I love living in this neighborhood. It's a dream. And one thing that I love about the neighborhood is that my kids can be really independent in a way that I couldn't when I was a kid. I grew up in the country. Had to wait till I could drive. And they can explore the neighborhood. They can go to the park. They can go to the playground. But I'm terrified of the cars in the neighborhood. What happened to Shiloh is my nightmare. And I agree with everything that's been said, that I think we should make it impossible to speed on Locust Street. Just today, I was crossing the street with them, thankfully, and a car just did not see us at all. We were right there. I was waving my hands at them through the window, and I could just tell they just didn't even see us about to cross the street. And if I hadn't been there, I mean, my kids are so careful about crossing the street. If you've ever seen them, you know, they wait for the cars to come to a complete stop. But I have to trust that my eight-year-old will do that every time. And I do that because I want her to be independent, but it is truly terrifying. And I just I want the city to do whatever it can to make the street, which truly has hundreds of kids playing at it all the time, to make it as safe as possible.

One more. The mic reach here. Let's see. Hi, my name is Alec.

I live on Locust Street. We're actually the first house going up from Pine. We're pretty close to this intersection here at Pine. I live in the house, of course. I work in the house. I have a dog. I spend a lot of time in and around the park. I'd say I'm definitely a power user. of the of the park in our locust street corridor i also ride a bike a lot i ride downtown a lot i ride further into the south end a lot i would say it's no exaggeration to suggest that i cross this intersection right here at pine and locust six or ten times a day and i will say a couple things one It's an epidemic of distracted driving. We're all guilty of it, even if we think we're not. It definitely happens. The requirement for every single one of us to be unbelievably vigilant when we're crossing. Like when I go out in the crosswalk, I don't care if I've hit the thing and the lights are on. I'm waiting until I get eye contact from somebody. Make sure they are slowing down. I think we all... unfortunately, really need to sort of reframe our expectation on what drivers are going to do. That doesn't mean we shouldn't do all of these things to make it harder for the unthinkable to happen. And there are a lot of people who stop. I'd say far more often than not, people want to stop. Nobody wants to have an accident. One specific thing, though, about that intersection that I think is really challenging When you are coming from the west side, coming from either the BED parking lots or you're coming from over here, especially if you're on a bike, it's not clear where the bikes are supposed to go. Are we supposed to be on the multimodal path or are we supposed to be using the entire lane of Pine Street? There are signs up Pine Street that say bikes have the whole lane. I have an e-bike, and so I ride right on Pine Street. And I'll be right in front of cars because from my perspective, aggressive defensiveness is the way to go. Make sure people see you. Get out in front. I don't know whether I'm supposed to be on the multimodal path or not. And if I am on the path and I want to use the crosswalk and I'm on a bike, I cross the street and what do I hit? A sidewalk. I'm trying to go east on Locust to go up the hill and I'm on a sidewalk. So I need to make the constantly awkward decision at the last minute whether to go southeast towards the park and then come up on the parking side. And one thing to go back to what Max was talking about before with the park, there's a lot of holistic issues that are going on here relative to master planning for the park. Chapin, we talked many, many, many years ago about the safe routes to school that included the path in the southeast corner by the tennis courts that we were talking about earlier that included the itinerant, you know, neighbor-allowed path that's just behind the batting cage on the center east-west. on the south side of the batting cage, but there's no walking path on the south side of the park. And so everything goes down on the north side of Locust Street to get to and from Pine. So if you're coming up on a bike, it's just extra challenging at that location in particular. But thanks, Todd. I appreciate your effort. It's definitely been a conversation going on for a long time. And when we talked about the parkway, for so many years. Some of the unintended consequences that we were concerned about were traffic flow on Locust. At the time, there was some argument that Locust is a feeder street as compared to Howard. Howard was always considered more of a residential street to put the traffic calming measures there, the speed humps and whatnot, was a no problem. But there was some belief at the time, 10, 12 years ago, that Locust needed to maintain more traffic. And then the speed tables went in. Things got a little bit better. I don't know that things have changed in the last two months. You know, your observation notwithstanding, every single day I got people flying past my house. I'm surprised that the only thing you caught was 44 miles an hour. I guarantee you there are motorcycles going up faster than that. There are cars going up faster than that on occasion.

There were just, you know, a few hours. Yeah, of course.

We should get that on a Friday night at about 11 p.m. Yeah. Thank you so much.

Uh, Steve, and then you, uh, uh, yeah, I got to go to the bottom. Sorry. So Steve and then you, and then you, and then you'll be after.

Yeah. Two things. One, uh, hasn't been, well, first of all, I'd like to compliment the street department on finishing the Southern connector and the rotary. Both things made travel a lot easier. I think that cars and motorcycles and pedestrians and bicycles could coexist. Uh, I think that it's anecdotal that there's a huge amount of increased traffic. I mean, you don't have to do a survey to see that it's bumper to bumper on the Southern Connector in the afternoons and the mornings, and people are coming off the Southern Connector and trying to get down Pine Street quickly to their jobs. But what I wanted to talk about was two things. One is it's become impossible to turn left on Locust Street at heavy hours. I mean... There's so much traffic coming from Locust to Pine. There's so much traffic coming in both directions on Pine because of the opening of the Southern Connector that the traffic is just backing up. I mean, hey, on my motorcycle, I can get around that, but the cars are stacked 12 deep now. I'm not sure that we want to fix that. I'd like it to be fixed. It's just going to increase the amount of traffic on Locust Street. But that is a problem now. And the second thing I wanted to echo the last speaker, I've driven on the Southern Connector and bicyclists, you know, they're on the side of the road in the six inch space between the curb and the traffic. And they're not sure. I've talked to these people and same same thing. They're not sure. Should I be on the multimodal path? Should I be in the middle of the street? Right. It seems to me that with traffic going at 40 and 50 miles an hour on the Southern Connector in the 25 mile an hour zone, that, you know, these e-bikes can't be in the middle of the road, right? They're just going to get hit. It's a safety problem. OK, that's all.

Hi, Ed Harvey again. I live on the corner where you took those photographs. I'm sure on the longest streets since 1988 with my wife, Marty Mutz. And we were very hopeful when those speed tables were going in, which... on the traffic here, but before they were in, there were actually a couple of pretty sizable potholes just above that one. And the speed tables actually increased the speed on the street after they were installed. And I'm not lying.

Relative to the potholes?

No, you had to slow down because the potholes were there, right? Now he's saying pickaxe. Everything that Alex said, I want to support that too. And I just want to say Marty and I were trying to cross at the blinking light down by Pizza 44 last winter one time when a lights flash and Marty's a little more aggressive about me than this stuff. And she started to go across and get her dog with us and she stopped and I went in this pickup truck, went flying in between us, right past us. And the guy on the other side of the street who saw us said, never trust, never trust. Those of you who are having really close encounters with these cars, I think that's something that has stuck in my mind because that truck came about three feet from me. as I went across without them. And I have seen, just one other comment, I've seen DPW dump trucks and front-end loaders fly through the intersection at Charlotte and Locust Street at at least 25 miles an hour. You know, big honking front-end loader, just maybe it's quitting time or something, I don't know what, but I've observed that on multiple occasions.

we value you more than them.

Well, they're bigger than you. They're going to kill you, right? So you've got to stay alive.

Dominique Danko again, Shubham Road. I, you know, definitely pedestrian first, biking, walking, whatever, try to be that kind of focus. So all the things that happen with Shiloh and with all these other close, other, you know, close calls going on all the time, I'm generally very like car angry. But I was recently sharing what happened with my parents. And I Sort of surprisingly to me, though, an interesting new perspective, their response when I said, it was in the crosswalk at Locust Street with the flashing lights, their response instead of like, what? It was in the crosswalk. Horrible driver was, I hate those crosswalks. And my parents are 70 years old. Probably like these crosswalks, the style is somewhat newer, especially in being common. I think, you know, especially Burlington or Vermont with an aging population, a lot of people just aren't used to them and won't get used to them for still a lot longer. In comparison, I moved back to Burlington. I grew up here, but moved back to Burlington from three years in Amsterdam. And there, I think there's this, you know, idea of, oh, so bike friendly. And it is. But one of the differences there is that generally, except on very small streets, bikes and cars are not expected to coexist in the road. And actually, I remember when I first moved there, one time I ended up in a busy road. and felt very unsafe. And the whole point is, yes, this is not the place for you and never there will you have a situation where a car, a bicyclist has to just hope that a car is going to choose to stop because they saw a light flashing. It is always very explicit whose right of way it is. And I don't know, I just think that these sort of like these ideas of wish for the best, oh, look, we're going to flash and the cars might see it or they might not see it is just recipe for disaster.

Oh, it goes into the, yeah.

My name is Rob Costello. I'm at 44 Catherine Street, and I also do have two young kids, relatively new to the neighborhood, moved about a year ago. And as Nancy was saying, when you cross Locust and you hope your kids know what they're doing, it's probably like the biggest chill that you get. And from a driver's perspective, too, and we're talking about there's a lot of good points, and what we're talking about is trying to change behavior at the end of the day. And when a driver is looking on a bright sunny day they're not going to see you and that's where we're talking about a stop sign or something like that because there's a crosswalk there but they're just not going to see you there so i think at the end of the day when we talk about this it's really about changing behavior and what can we do and what can we do uh because realistically speaking We can do tactics, and that's where I think city planners and I forgot your name. You mentioned it was a failed. Jason, it was a failed experiment. It was like we tried, but it didn't work. And that's what we're trying to do today is actually get to a place where it is explicit, where we can actually have a good flow of traffic. because I was also driving, going to the mayor's meetup Wednesday morning, and the bus was literally honking at me to say, make your left-hand turn, because I've got to go to my next thing. And someone hit the crosser, and traffic was backed up two blocks away. So there's this whole connection of the city trying to flow to a certain degree, people trying to walk, people trying to bike, people trying to drive. And it is a complicated process. puzzle to solve. But at the end of the day, I think we're talking about behavior and how we can create the best behaviors of all of us to coexist. And there's some hard decisions to make.

Any other comments? Yeah, so we have Sue and then Todd. And I just want to be cognizant of time. It's 840. We had on our sign that we went until 845. So we're getting kind of close up to that. And ultimately, we'll give some time for Phil. And so Sue and Todd and then Phil.

Sure. I just, Susan McGrath, Caroline Street. I guess I want to circle back to the point that was made. The speed tables that were put in at Locust were the result of years of planning and decision and study that indicated that something physical was needed to slow people down to make crossing to the park safe. Those did not achieve the goals. Jason's been very polite, but they failed. The design was wrong or the engineer fucked up or the builders didn't install what was supposed to be installed. Can we just spell it out? So we don't have what the city agreed we were supposed to have probably 15 years ago. Can't remember exactly when they were put in. You were yelling about this. Okay, so 10 years ago was when it got established that we deserved to have these things under whatever the plan was, and then they got put in and they didn't work, and we know they don't work, and now what I understand we're saying is since they don't work but we deserve them, under how many years ago planning can we put in some temporary measures that will actually slow people down now, right? I'm in favor of that.

And the last thing that I wanted to say is the priority has to be the kids. It has to be the people. It has to be the humans and not the cars, right? Because we're talking about lives here. We're not talking about, who gives a shit if we're inconveniencing somebody, driving a little slower, you know, or making them stop if it's going to prevent someone from getting hurt or killed. And that's, at the end of the day, what my goal is, is to make it safer.

You know, one bit of history that connects right to that is that the grant that funded those speed tables on Locust Street was a safe routes to school grant, literally. That's the pot of state money that was used. So the literal premise of the money that was used to rebuild those intersections has not been achieved. There is not a safe route to school. So with all that, I would love to hear from you guys.

Sure, great. So do you want to start? Yeah, for sure.

Why don't you guys sit right up at the front? Oh, yeah, sure.

Here you go. Thank you. Thank you, Steve. Go for it, Steve.

Thank you all. This was really powerful and helpful to hear from you all directly. And I do want to say, Todd, you've been really a good neighbor to work with and communicate with. And our department will continue to be engaged in this process. Traffic safety is absolutely key. And when I first moved to town 30 years ago, there were no bike lanes striped. There were no mid-block crossings with RFBs. The speed limits were variable and high. Collectively, we have made progress. We have traffic calmed a whole number of streets in the city. We have 70 streets in queue right now. And with the constrained budget, we have $120,000 a year that Phillip is trying to tackle projects with money that can do basically one traffic calming project a year. So your support, for our mission is appreciated. I think we are all trying to swim the same direction here. A number of people have asked about data, and Act 250 and our permit conditions for the parkway requires data collection, including at the Locust and Pine Street intersection. And that will be of special focus, and we will have data for the six-month review in early 2027. and happy to come back to this group. Philip can talk a little bit about projects. I will say one of the policy things we're looking at, what you've talked about tonight is need for engineering. You've also talked about need for education and enforcement. We know that on the education enforcement side, there's a lot of opportunity. We have spent a lot of money on engineering. We have struggled to find ways to do enforcement, meaningful enforcement. One of the concepts we're starting to explore is whether automated traffic law enforcement is something this community would like to evaluate. There is a real opportunity as we talk about bias-free enforcement. The major problem we have with police officers doing enforcement is concern about who the police officers are pulling over disproportionately. Cameras are a bias-free tool. We know that one of the major issues is privacy, and we look forward to being engaged in that conversation to see if we can resolve that issue. So there's a whole host of things I look forward to partnering with you all on. This is... a very special neighborhood for me. I live, work, and play in this neighborhood and have seen a lot of the things you all have seen and look forward to be a partner in moving forward. So, Philip.

Okay. Stole a lot of the things I was going to say. Thanks for letting me share, Philip Peterson with Public Works. I do have data to share. It was a bit of a Herculean effort. My staff have been extremely busy with construction, inspection, sidewalks, paving, but we prioritized getting some data collected. Y'all aren't too far off. The data we collected along Locust, the average speed, mean speeds, 21.7, medians, 21.7, modes, 24.9, 85th percentile is 26 miles per hour. So not that it's good news that we find there's a speeding condition, but it does justify your concerns. As Chapin already mentioned, across the city of Burlington, there's over 70 traffic calming requests. And of those, 31 streets qualify for traffic calming. And I have these conversations a lot. There are kids and families all over the city. I myself live in the New North End. I have young children. I have a 12-year-old daughter. I have a 16-year-old daughter, not unlike Shiloh. And I think about that a lot as well. You know, the North Ave drivers, they get pretty aggressive too. And we're bikers and walkers. So We live in this city and experience the same things that you do. So it's not that we don't agree. We totally do. But we do have limited funds. So what are we committing to doing? Chapin and I spoke to the traffic department today, and they're going to move to speed indicator signs to Locust Street immediately. So hopefully by tomorrow. So that's something. Um, right away. So that's the thing that shows shows your speed, but it also collects data.

Just last or it's at the very top and the very bottom of the street.

Yeah, we're not going to do that.

Okay, we're going to want them, you know, where the way I was the, where they're going to be right in front of me. Yeah. Well, I'll call.

I think I'll rent you some space. Where we did collect the data was not at the top or the bottom either. We did collect it closer to the middle where the raised intersections are. And I'll acknowledge... They're not effective. They're not effective. The curb extensions are effective in terms of narrowing the visual acuity of the road, but the vertical element, it's not effective. And hopefully we'll have other things to come. We can't commit to any temporary installations. At this time of the season, our streets team, you know, they're going to have a hard enough time with the amount of staff that they have taking care of the things that they do. As far as a redesign timeline or construction dates, I think we have to do a lot of internal coordination. I can tell you candidly that I had a solid conversation with my designer and my associate engineer, Calvin Wietrich, and we started talking about some stuff. And hopefully we have things to share. So ultimately... You know, our goal is the same as yours. We want a safe corridor for your families, for you, and for anybody traveling through the city of Burlington.

So where are those speed indicators going to be put?

We'll probably put them near the middle of the streets.

Like one before Caroline, one before Charlotte kind of thing?

I'm not sure if that was one each direction, but if there's a desire to reference, feel free to share that with us now.

I would add that the quick U-turns by Christ the King notwithstanding, the speed right in front of my house is probably some of the fastest because folks are speeding down the hill to get to Pine, and then they are speeding up the hill. I don't remember why we did not wind up with a raised speed table at Locust and Locust.

And out of money.

Was it was a straight money? Because I know for a while we didn't have a crosswalk. That was because there was no ADA access to receive a crosswalk on the park side. Obviously, some guerrilla activity on part of the neighborhood got accomplished.

How could I forget? Yeah, how could you forget?

I had nothing to do with that. Yeah, I would definitely not repaint it. I wouldn't be out there. But that section of Locust is quite fast. The challenge there is that you either put one in my front yard or you have one on the south side for people who are going east. But on the days when it's the most concerning, which is on Saturdays and Sundays when the park is full of people, that whole side of the road is full of park bars. So I don't know how you work around that. I'm sure that that's not a new problem for speed indicators. Right. Yeah, there are cars on that side.

What's your address, sir? 36.

If you have a question or comment, raise your hand. No, you're good. So Jason.

So, Philip, I have to disagree. Our goals are actually not the same because time matters. And if there's 30 qualifying projects in the queue, it is not the same to say, yes, we're going to build this in the next two years. And yes, we're going to build it 30 years from now. Those are not the same goals. So I appreciate the constraints you have to work within. I want to push back on the temporary measures. And I'd actually like to ask Councilor Travers, do city councilors still have discretionary funds that can be used for various purposes, or has that been axed?

to the full group but you since you brought it up i did i did intend on following up with champion and phillip after this meeting to see whether or not if uh you know finances are a hurdle for this whether or not the council initiative plans i was actually going to raise it with me as well for the item that you were talking about earlier because it's i mean it's 50 000 for the entire city not each council uh but yes yes so um

temporary rubber speed humps are within reach. This is a matter of priorities. And if we need to take it to the level of the council and the mayor in order to get you the resources to put them in, I think what you're going to find is that this is a... I am very heartened to be part of an extremely determined group of people. And if... If the answer is no, we can't do this, then what you're going to find is that we're going to figure out ways to both bring more resources to bear and up the ante.

Well, I think what I've heard you gentlemen say on multiple occasions is help make us do this. We want to do things for you guys.

We want to do things, but I would also say that I haven't looked at all the data, but locusts in comparison to the other trees that do qualify, it probably hovers around the 25th out of 31 that qualifies.

That's preliminary. That's not a... Understood. But are we comparing apples to apples? Because there's a park here. And are these corridors across from parks where you've got a neighborhood and a park?

Sure. And then I have projects on Elmwood and Intervale where I have two schools where students are commuting. And then I have... So each neighborhood... Has its own. And then I have Grove Street where I have families and you got Schmanska Park and you got folks that live in Bayberry Commons. And so I get it. And we are pulling in the same direction. But I would also say at this stage of the game, in terms of temporary installations, whether we found funds or not, just from a construction management standpoint, folks, we're going to find to do it.

Is it possible to commit to spring?

I am very interested in looking at spring. I think trying to rush something for five weeks is a heavy lift. I would like something to... There is interest across the community to do more work than we have money to do. As a result, these temporary speed humps are a lower cost way to give people something while they're waiting. And I'm not... deaf to the request to see more done faster. As a result, I will work with the team here to see if I can bring you a proposal for spring that will, you know, meet the need, or at least temporarily.

That's a great question. Probably about $4,000. They're not that expensive. I got $4,000.

Feel that, man.

So the other issue, of course, is we have to work with our streets department, and we have to work with the fire department. Fire department's not too keen on these either. Emergency services, they have to have a seat at the table when we're talking about this stuff. We don't work in a vacuum. And getting our streets team to do this work when they have all the other lists of things that they're doing is challenging.

Do you think that you all have the expertise in-house to install a rubber speed dump?

Absolutely, yes.

Great. So we're not talking outside contract.

No, and there's still rubber speed dumps that are out there if you go to Oakledge Park.

Oakledge is great, and that was relatively new. I went down there and, oh, holy cow, and you have to almost stop.

Right. the piece about the the fire department coordination the speed hump profiles on locust were after working with the fire department additional work needs to be done with the fire department to see if there is willingness this is a major response well if the if the precedent is the speed tables on pine street

if those were on Locust Street, they would be more effective.

Hold on, Jason. I just want to be cognizant of time. We're just about at 9. I'm going to call this item at 9. I'm not going to cut anybody off, but I want to just make a note to say that the speed at which you can turn the city apparatus is never going to be as fast as we want it to be. Never. And so I think as long as we as the community are working in good faith with parks and we are, I'm sorry, DPW, my brain, you know, this seems to be working in good faith and true care from, you know, not just people in the abstract, but an actual resident. So I think that, you know, I just want to make sure that we're all in alignment there, that like speed and real work can, you know, maybe seem like they're not aligned, but something on a spring timeline is very fast by the speed of public process.

And with our quick builds, we can do that. So just to get this piece of information out there, if you didn't get a question answered, if you didn't feel like you had a comment that you needed to get in there you can send us an email at dpwplanning at burlingtonvt.gov dpwplanning at burlingtonvt.gov well we'll take the last science here so one here one here okay yeah and just quickly uh you know uh

It really does seem that the quickest, most effective, by far the cheapest solution is a stop sign or a few stop signs. And maybe that's complicated, but we see stop signs going up all the time for special events. And so anyway, just putting that back on the table.

Understood a stop sign is not a traffic calming device.

But we can have that conversation.

But the geometry of that intersection I'm talking about, it's just a matter of time before there's going to be another very serious incident there. And that would be a very quick delusion. We can talk after a second.

The lodestar, I think, is that we should be following this up on prospect. You go over one of those wrong, you've bottomed out your car and you learned your lesson. And I'd love to see something like that. I want to go back. I'm sorry, I didn't get your name. Oh, Rob. Rob. We've gotten away from the education side of it, too. And I don't know how we do it. Because no matter what you do, and I appreciate the work you're doing, whatever way to do, people are going to be stupid. And we need to stop them from being stupid. And we need to come up with ways like bottoming out on Prospect so that they are going to learn the lesson and really make it hard to drive. It's got to be hard to drive. If you lose 12 seconds, you gain 12 seconds coming down the road. And then you wait for 45 seconds or two minutes to make a left-hand turn onto Pine Street. It doesn't do you any good to go 12 seconds faster.

Your comment had me thinking in terms of like, OK, we've been asking DPW to do work. What can we continue to do as members of the public? And that is education. We have a role in explaining to our neighbors that if you care about this we all gotta do it you know we can't just magically say they're gonna stop like there are some things that we can continue to do to keep our nose on this issue um and uh i think that you know it seems like there's obviously some pretty significant neighborhood interest in this that this is something that you know as we're went through the process of doing resolutions this seems like something that would kind of fall in line with it and and that will basically commit to work with dpw in good faith over the next year and just See what we can do.

I love it. One potential idea is we used to have slow down for livable town signs, coroplast signs. Could employ a neighbor to develop that. And we can get those out to folks. So, you know, it's part of the education process. Open to other ideas. But thank you so much for the time tonight.

Thank you, everybody, for being here. It's nine o'clock. That was an impact.