Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Say engineering 1500

500 engineers. All right. So, I am calling to order the October 14th meeting of the Sale and Planning Commission. I'd ask our clerk to please call the role. Commissioner F. Commissioner Fryback here. Commissioner Heler

here. Commissioner Levin here. Commissioner Rhodess is absent. President Slater here. Commissioner Tev here. Commissioner Vier Brendell is absent. And we have quorum. All right. Thank you. And I think uh both Commissioner uh Vera Brenell and Commissioner Rhodess is are excused. Okay, perfect. Um is there anyone here to make a comment uh public comment to the commission? Looking around. We don't have anyone online, do we? Okay. Can we do that anymore? Do we do that now? We do. Okay, so that was the right question. All right, good. I don't always don't always do that. Okay, moving on then to the consent calendar. Commissioner Tab, do you have a motion for us?

I move we approve the minutes as they are written. All right. Thank you, Megan. A second. Second. Thank you, Commissioner Font. Are there any questions or corrections related to the minutes? Commissioner Frybeck. Correct. Commissioner would like the city council to clarify their interview. We're adding the word clarify. Streamline.

Clarify. Just ironic since you're clarifying your comment. Okay. Does any any objections? No. All right. Do we need do we need an actual motion on the amendment? No. Okay. But we do need a motion. We have the motion. All right. Let's call the role then. Commissioner F. I. Commissioner Fryback. Commissioner Heler. Hi. Commissioner Levin. Hi. President Slater. Hi. Commissioner Tev. I.

All right. We have a whole lot of nothings ahead of us. We have no resolutions, no action items, no public hearings, no special orders of business, and now write informational reports. Mr. Beel, welcome back. It's been a while.

Yes, it has. You'll have to forgive me here while I get situated. So, are we speaking into the the mic and not into the computer? Okay. All right. Commissioners, can you uh can you see that? All right. Thank you. All right. Old dogs can survive new tricks. Good evening, uh, commissioners. Uh, my name is Mark Becttel. I'm the assistant public works director uh for operations at the city of Salem. Um, I recognize some of you. Uh, I think Commissioner Levin, I think you were on the planning commission years ago when I was a transportation planner. So, it's it's nice to see everything back again. So, um, my job in the public works department is to run the day-to-day operations of the the different infrastructures, water, uh, wastewater, storm water, uh, streets, and the airport. Uh so uh public works used to have parks and then several years ago uh parks uh branched off into the community services department. So what I've been asked to share with you tonight is u just a kind of a little bit of a

primer or or a review of of how we uh handle funding for transportation here in sale. And so I'm going to cover a couple things. is going to cover a little bit about capital construction funding but mostly uh my remarks will be uh involving uh the operating fund which is a lot of of uh there's been a lot more drama with that I would guess I would say uh given with the legislature and everything so so with your permission I'll dive right in. Uh there's really three funds that fund transportation services here in in Salem. Uh our operating fund is called the transportation services fund. Uh and uh the capital construction fund uh which you would normally see related to the CIP, the capital improvement plan uh is where we do our project funding from. We have a small little fund called the street light fund. And you probably noticed that on your utility bill there's a little line item for street lights. Uh that was established a number of years ago. Uh we call it the little fund that could uh because we've only had to increase it once in eight years. And uh it funds it pays for the electricity of the street lights of the city uh and then also funds installation of new street lights and replacement of old poles. So it's a it's a good little fund and I wish every fund performed as well as as it does. Uh cap let's talk about capital construction funding first. Uh a capital construction project is any project that costs over $100,000. Um and the funding for those projects can come from a variety of funds. Uh the largest generally is when we pass a general obligation bond uh which uh the

2022 safety and livability bond is an example of that. Uh there's $157 million available for uh transportation projects in that bond measure. Uh and it's a 10-year construction timeline to to get all those projects done. Uh there's a variety of projects everything from street uh pavement uh we call RNR or rehabilitation and replacement projects to strengthening bridges uh building missing sidewalks uh repairing sidewalks uh some some public safety uh projects uh and then there are some uh street improvement projects uh that completely rebuild streets. For example, Fischer Road is one of those where it'll bring a less than standard street up to a full standard for urban for urban use. Um, transportation system development charges provide money for growth related projects when there's growth uh impacts on the transportation system. uh development districts. Uh that's where you're in a situation either where you're outside of where the TSDC funds are collected or um if you are developing property and you're you want to pay money in lie of doing the construction because maybe your share of the project is a portion and not the whole and so you pay into a development district. Uh so at some point future time when other people develop around you that piece of infrastructure gets done. Uh urban renewal funds are a constant and and welcome fund of uh source of funding. Uh we are the recipient of both state and federal grants. Uh and then we do transfer a small amount of money from the transportation services fund operating funds into the capital fund to do small projects. Uh a lot of times capital projects begin as an idea or a need in

one of the master plans, in this case the transportation system plan. Uh when it is able to when we're able to show that there's a reasonable prospect that it'll be funded within five years, it then enters the capital improvement plan, the CIP, uh and works its way through. Sometimes it circle backs around, gets rearranged a little bit. Uh but eventually most projects do work their way up to year one. And if you make it to year one in the CIP, uh you make it to the construction budget for that that year. So that that's really how capital projects are funded. Uh here's just a a table that shows you the different uh funding source amounts in the current CIP as it was adopted. And if you look at that, you can see there is about $161 million in capital construction projects for transportation when you combine all those different funding sources u for the city over the next next five years. Uh the geo bond is actually you know obviously the biggest biggest portion of that. Um, but is normally the case with almost anything here in the city, um, it's it's easier to get capital construction funding for something than it is to get operating funding for something. Uh, and that's certainly the case for the transportation fund where um we don't seem to have a lot of problems getting money to build things, but we have a lot of problems getting money to maintain them and operate them. Uh but some of the things that the transportation service fund funds uh and people tend to focus just on pavement and sidewalks. There's a whole array of things that this fund pays for. Uh it pays for our traffic signal system and we have one of the best traffic signal systems in Oregon. Uh it's cutting cutting edge state-of-the-art. Uh but it's expensive

to operate and maintain. Um most people don't realize that uh uh we have you know 185 signalized intersections here in in Salem that are just the cities. We also maintain on behalf of the county and the state uh 84 more signalized intersections almost 200 school zone beacons crossing beacons for peds. uh all those observation cameras that you see uh and the signal cameras um all that helps us regulate traffic on 1,250 lane miles of streets u and 57 br vehicle bridges. Uh we have a bicycle system of bike lanes that is uh almost 170 miles. Uh we have uh a huge number of signs that we have to maintain and they only last a certain number of years and then they have to be replaced. Uh but really nearly almost 40,000 signs uh with the sign posts and everything else that go with it. Uh you'll see striping on streets. Uh some of the striping is a little more permanent. It's like a thermoplastic uh or methylmethaculate. Uh but we still do a lot of good old-fashioned paint striping uh on the street system that costs money. Uh we have over 70,000 street trees that we pay the parks department to maintain. Uh and we do a lot of right ofway mowing and maintenance. Uh our traffic engineering and transportation planning gets paid out of it. Uh our our sidewalk system over 800 miles of sidewalks. Uh and then we the the street sweeping is actually paid for by the utility fund uh because that is tied to water quality going into our storm water system. Um uh and then we do winter storm response. Some winters we do a little bit or none

and some winters we're really busy. Uh by the way, we're supposed to have a a pretty wet and cold winter this year, so brace yourselves. Uh if you look at how that's all, you know, worked through the budget, uh you can see there is a lot of slices to this pie. Um and it's not just pavement, it's not just sidewalks. It's a, like I said, it's a whole array of needs. If you break that down into the typical funding categories of personnel services and materials and services and capital outlay, uh you can see that it takes people to maintain the streets and operate them. Uh and it takes a lot of materials as well. So where do we get the money for? Uh where to get the money from in order to u maintain and operate the street system? uh nearly 3/4 of our operating revenues uh come from the city's allocation of the state highway fund. Uh the when you fill up your vehicle with gasoline or diesel passenger vehicles, you're paying so many cents per gallon, uh some of it goes to the federal government and most of it goes to the state government. Um that money is then uh finds its way back to the city through an allocation process that I'll show you later. Um, but that's that's how most cities that's the primary source of funding that they that they use uh for their transportation programs. Uh, other city departments pay us to do things for them. That's where you see transfers. Uh, and we do get a little bit of federal grant money to run the traffic control center for the city. Uh, and some permits. Uh, but again, the state highway fund is the primary source. And you'll notice there was no local gas tax there. There

was no local fee. Uh we do not have any local option gas tax here in Salem and we don't have anything like a trip generation fee or anything like that. Um so we do get it from the state. The way that works is uh the state highway fund uh gathers uh revenue from your fuel taxes, the commercial vehicle weight, mile taxes, uh and then a whole range of DMV fees, vehicle registration, vehicle titles, special permits, driver's licenses, all those things. Uh all that funding is gathered at the state level. uh the state takes a cut for administration of the fund and some other special provisions and some special debt service uh and then it allocates the remainder 50% to ODOT uh 30% to counties and 20% to cities um and it's not a clean 5020 it it varies uh but basically um the cities and counties split you know split the other half that ODOT takes So uh counties are aortioned by road miles uh and cities are aortioned by population. So uh we our allocation is based on the number of of the population we have. The Portland State population center is the number they use and u and that determines how much we get every every year in an allocation. We get it monthly uh and we're pretty good at forecasting it. Um, but what I can tell you is that it is not keeping up with inflation. um for a number of reasons. The the the vehicle fleet in the state of Oregon, uh the passenger vehicle fleet, uh as we buy more and more fuel efficient vehicles, uh as hybrid vehicles become popular, as uh EVs become more popular, more numerous, um the revenue that goes

to the state from gas taxes is at best flat and and starting to decline. So, um, EVs do pay a registration fee, but they are not charged for the miles they drive or or the consumption of watts or volts or anything and all that matters. So, um, the legislature was trying to address that and, uh, they partially did with House Bill 3991. Uh but uh just give you an idea of where we're at with our our five-year forecast for the city's transportation services fund. Um we're we're eating into our ending fund balance. This is probably a very similar story than you see with the general fund of the city. Um each year over that five-year forecast, uh our expenditures are outpacing revenue. uh and by year years four and five of the of the forecast uh we have eaten through the ending fund balance and and we're in in a deficit. Um and actually with the with the rate of inflation we've had especially with materials and especially with our personnel costs PERS cost and all the other costs associated with personnel. uh it's it's even outpacing this forecast which was done uh in January of earlier this year. Uh so the forecast is actually getting worse and I kind of annotated that at the bottom there so you could see that it's actually getting worse than than what we originally had. So what does that mean? Well um means we tighten our belts. But what are some of our needs? Uh clearly one of the largest needs we have is our pavements. Um pavements are what we carry our traffic on our bicycles. Um freight transit buses use the pavements. Uh they're not

just for single passenger vehicles. All vehicles use use the pavements. Um, based on a 2022 pavement condition assessment for all city streets, about a little over half of our streets are in good condition. Um, about 30% are fair and about 16% are poor. Um, so that right in there, you got to realize that represents about a $2.3 billion investment in this community as our in our pavements. So, how we maintain that asset is uh is important. It's important for our local economy and help people have mobility and accessibility. When you break that down by street type, by uh classification type, uh you'll notice that our arterial streets and our collector streets are uh in much better shape than our local streets. Um, so a lot of that is because we have been the beneficiaries of some bond measures over the last two decades and that's been allowing us to uh pave and rehabilitate the pavements on our larger arterial streets. The uh the largest number of streets, the most mileage of streets are our local residential streets. Um, and they are in in worse worst shape. Uh, another thing is we we take these pavement assessments every two years. uh we take them on even numbered years uh and then we we date the report on the odd number year and send it to ODOT. Uh 2022 is rare because we did all streets. Normally we just do arterials and collectors. Uh so that's what gave us our best picture was in 2022. Uh but if you look at this bar graph, you can see that the the lane the the center line miles of streets in poor condition is growing and the centerline miles of streets in fair condition is

growing. Uh but the opposite is true of streets in in good condition. So our street pavement system is degrading over time. That plays into a a fact of life when it comes to asphalt. Uh here's a picture of what we call the asphalt pavement life curve. Um asphalt is is a good material, but it reaches a point in its life where especially if you have cracks and you have water intruding into the pavement, um it begins to degrade quickly. And as you can see there, it literally just goes falls off the curve. when you're trying to maintain your your pavement system, you're trying to apply maintenance measures and techniques to that pavement before it starts that rapid curve of of degradation. Uh the cheapest way to do that is to crack seal those cracks with rubberized sealant uh and put a thin layer of slurry over your pavement. Uh it's relatively cheap. It's uh you know 26 cents per square foot. Um, and it buys you a lot of life in the pavement. Um, if you don't do that, uh, then if you don't do it regularly, then you got to start doing corrective maintenance. You got to start filling the potholes and milling out bad sections of pavement, uh, correcting where the pavement base is starting to fail. Uh, to the point where you're now getting into larger and larger paving projects. Uh and of course as you get into those larger and more depth to the pavement reconstruction uh the more it costs. Uh so ideally if you could do those preventative and corrective measures you could extend uh your pavement life a long time. In fact, there's a term called perpetual life maintenance where if you are able to fund that preventative and corrective

maintenance, you in theory don't get to the to the big paving paving projects. Uh now, no city in this world has ever achieved that. So, you know, we shouldn't feel bad. Um but uh I will tell you we spend most of our money uh in the corrective and and rehab area of pavement and not nearly enough in preventative. Uh we do do preventative maintenance but not nearly enough because we're always having to prioritize the worst case streets first. If you um if you look at the entire system and we we did a pretty in-depth analysis and and these numbers kind of become staggering but just it's just for a matter of of of u scope. Um, if you were to today go and and apply all the measures needed to bring uh our street system up to an optimal level of condition, you know, near perfect condition of pavement. Uh, we would have to spend over $364 million. And if you did that over 15 years, you broke that out over 15 years, it would cost you a little over $24 million a year. If you're just trying to keep those pavements in in good condition, u it cost you about $314 million or about 21 million a year. Uh if you're just trying to hold the thing together and keep everything in fair condition, it would cost about $158 million or about $10.5 million a year. That gives you a sense of of the entire system. Um you want to switch gears and go to sidewalks. um the way we look at sidewalk maintenance and we we are an absolutely unique city when it comes to sidewalk maintenance and the vast majority of cities in this country. Uh the ab budding property owner is responsible

for maintaining the sidewalk on their frontage. Um it doesn't belong to them. It belongs to the public. It's in it's inside the public right ofway. this almost everybody's city code assign assigns the maintenance of that that sidewalk to the abuing property owner. Uh we've tried that in Salem. We've tried it a number of ways. Um and what what complicates it is the city-owned street tree. Um you know unlike you know Kansas where they don't worry about trees too much. Uh we have trees everywhere and we love our trees and we love our treeline streets. Uh and those tree roots and sidewalks do not get along. Uh the biggest cause of sidewalk failure is our tree roots. Uh and so the city for decades struggled over how to deal with tree roots or for street trees that are owned by the city and we don't let property owners, you know, root prune or or take down street trees or or or trim them without city permission. Uh so what do you do when you got the city street tree versus the sidewalk? Uh what city council came up with in in 2007 uh was a a sidewalk code that basically said uh if your if the sidewalk that abuts your property is older than September of 1991 um then the city will pay to to repair it uh and will continue to maintain it uh if the damage is caused by a street tree. Otherwise, once it's brought up to standards, you receive a letter that says, "Congratulations, your sidewalk is up to standard and um you need to maintain it from now on, unless the damage is caused by a street tree." If your sidewalk is newer than that date of 1991, uh then that sidewalk is your uh

responsibility to maintain unless the damage is caused by a street tree. Um what that has ended up doing to us is u you know basically we've been trying to we've been trying to repair the entire street sidewalk system and uh we've been making a lot of progress. We spend about $2 to $3 million a year. Um, and about 43% of the sidewalk frontages, property frontages with sidewalks, uh, are now the property owner's responsibility, except that most likely future repairs will be because of trees, in which case it would be back on us again. But because we haven't found a better way to deal with that with the city council, uh that is the that is the system we have. Uh we may get to a point though where the city can't continue to fund u2 to $3 million a year in in sidewalk repair. So So that's something we need to keep in mind. Uh our city crews are very efficient. we uh we're doing just about just under two miles of sidewalk um a year that we replace. Uh then if you look at the next slide, there's just a whole range of of city services that that the fund provides. Um what an optimal level of service would be, what an adequate level would be. Um, we've coined a phrase here called moving towards adequate, which I hope none of my grandkids ever use that as excuse for their studies. But, uh, um, basically uh, it doesn't even mean we're adequate, means we're moving towards adequate. And that is really the goal that we shoot for is moving towards adequate. Uh, and then we have what our current budget is. And you can see the differences there. Um the funding gap is such that um if you again tried to shoot for

optimal uh we would need to be spending you know that that uh to if you looked at total on& and m for not just pavement and sidewalks but everything we do we would need about $58 million a year adequate 41 moving towards adequate 29 uh right now Um, we're at about 28 million if you if you everything together or well, we're at 23 million, I'm sorry. And we have a $5 million gap. So, we really need about $5 million a year more than we're getting now to to keep us on that path of moving towards moving towards adequate. So, um, without a local funding source, we're totally dependent on the state. Uh and luckily the legislature about every 5 to 7 years uh creates a funding package and it usually arrives just in the nick of time to keep us from becoming insolvent in the transportation fund. Uh and that was supposed to be the case this year. Um and so um there was a big package that was um probably too good to be true. Uh the original package was enormous. Um and it would have been uh a real windfall for every city, every county, and certainly for the state. Um but uh it didn't pass. Uh the session ended and and it did not pass. Uh that created a situation where ODOT was going to be in uh seriously underfunded uh and a number of projects would be left stranded and and you probably heard they're short 200 snowplow operators because they couldn't hire them. And uh so it it's created a big problem for ODOT. It puts us in a in a status quo

situation. So the the governor called a special session uh and they went to work. uh it got delayed because the the key vote depended on one senator who was recovering from surgery and they had to wait for him to recover. Uh but eventually the legislature did vote uh and they did pass a what they consider a stop gap measure uh which is House Bill 3991- A. Uh, and what that does is um it it creates about $350 million in additional revenue um for the state highway fund. Uh so if you think about how that filters down to us, you know, subtract some of the stuff off the top, go 50 3020 allocated by population and that's what we get. Um but in order to get that, you're we will all be paying 6 cents a gallon more for fuel. uh and there's uh some very high uh increases in uh some of the fees and the DMV fees uh pretty much doubling DMV fees uh in many cases. Uh so uh you'll notice I haven't been talking about transit funding because the city of Salem does not fund transit uh directly. Uh but we certainly do benefit from transit and the the House bill did have a provision that would uh double the percentage uh of the the payroll tax to increase transit funding. Uh the future of this seemed bright. Uh the governor as as of me checking my cell phone, the governor had not signed it as of Friday. So I don't know if anything happened yesterday or today. Um, but the Republican party has now announced that they plan to try to send this bill uh to a referral to the voters for November of 2026. Um, if they are able to gather 78,000

signatures between now and the end of December, uh that would put the entire measure in limbo uh for an entire calendar year. Um so um if if they do not gather the necessary signatures, the uh the the bill would take effect January 1 and they would start collecting the additional funding and then we would start seeing additional funding as it probably in February or March. Um so we'll see. Uh it it you know it creates a real problem for ODOT. What do you do when you uh you almost laid people off? You've kind of laid people off. you haven't hired people. What do you do for a year? They have a bianual budget which is even more difficult. Do you frontload your budget and hope everything happens or not? So, it it creates some issues. Um, for us, it's it's a little more straightforward. Um, based on this slide here, uh, the the box on the left shows you what our allocation of state highway funds would be for the for this year and the next five years. And you'll notice we never climb out of 14 million. Uh and that is just that is just not sustainable uh with the kinds of inflationary costs that we've been experiencing. Um if the ballot measure is not I mean if the if the House bill is not referred or doesn't get the the necessary signatures uh or if the voters repeal the uh or I'm sorry, let me say this again. If the voters fail to support repealing HB3991, uh then you can see the kind of increases that we would be looking at in funding in the transportation services fund. Uh uh you'd only get half a year, half a fiscal year's worth of funding

the first year, but then you would uh you get as much as in the 30% range uh for a year after that. That would make um that would help us. Uh it did not it does not make us rich. It does not mean that we can go and and do all the things we've ever wanted to do to fix the transportation system. Um but it would create an additional $25 million a year spread over six years. And it would certainly get us on that path, keep us on that path of moving towards adequate and and trying to to reverse that degradation of our pavements, uh making progress on sidewalks and all those other areas of service that the fund uh the fund provides for. So, um, another aspect we need to keep in mind is if if the state does not come through for us, um, because of the voters or the state or whatever, um, at some point the city council may need to consider not being so dependent on the state for transportation funding. Uh, there are options the council could consider. uh a local option fuel tax uh where the city charges its own fuel tax in addition to the federal and state taxes. That does that does by state law require a vote uh to for that to be put into effect. Um, another uh measure that you could use to uh to create revenue is called a street utility fee where um it would it'd be another line on your utility bill that basically said uh based on the number of vehicle trips that your your uh household generates uh you pay a fee. So, for example, a single family home, if they generate 10 vehicle trips a day, there would be some fee, you know, for that level of trip generation. If you were a Walmart with the thousands of trips a day that they

generate, that would be a different fee. So, um that's what some cities do. U there is a a method for a county to have a vehicle registration fee. uh then they can choose to keep it for themselves or aortion it to the cities within their county. That is an option. Um and then there's some internal things that we could do uh as a stop gap measure if things start to get uh like you saw in that forecast where we're getting close to being in the red. Uh, one of the things we could do is, uh, look at street tree maintenance and rightway maintenance as yet another form of benefiting water quality for storm water and the city's utility uh, could pay for the street tree care and and the uh, the right of way landscaping. Uh, but keep in mind that this the city's utility does not have deep pockets either. uh and so that would be reflected in in some manner in your utility rates for your water and sewer bill. Uh the other thing that we could consider is uh transitioning the sidewalk repair and replacement responsibility entirely to the abuing property owners and the city would only take care of the corners instead of the sidewalks in between the corners. Uh so those those are some things that the the council could consider either now or in the future. And that is a uh blistering fast um presentation on on our transportation funding. Do you have any questions?

Yeah. Commissioner Frybeck, go ahead. So on the sheet where we talked about the legislative session, clarify the payroll tax amount. I thought it was onetenth of 1%. Here you got it.

Yeah, I may have. That may be wrong. I think you are correct. It is it is onetenth of 1% and one it would increase to 210 of 1%. So that's that is a typo. I probably apologize for that. And then for see your operating funds are the personal services for those capital projects like a I think Chris is the are the project managers on the project being paid for?

Yeah, they are the our engineering division uh runs itself like a consulting firm like an engineering consulting firm. So we only hire enough engineers uh to match up to the number of projects we have um on our slate for for the city. So all every every construction project the city undertakes not just in streets but water sewer storm parks um airport uh facilities all those go through our engineering division and they charge their design and and uh inspection and and uh project delivery uh costs to that project. Yeah.

Other questions? Yeah, please. Commissioner living

um going back to funded transportation projects and the uh general obligation bond down to the transportation SDC's. Um there is a substantial drop in systems development charges uh from 3.4 million down to 1.6 etc. Um What is causing that substantial reduction? Is that a anticipated reduction in construction or what is the

I I believe so. And and unfortunately when you're in operations, you're not dealing with development as much. And and uh I could turn around and ask our city traffic engineer if he has a better answer than me. Uh but uh uh I as is typically the case with with construction budgets, your your first year budgets are always bigger because these are projects you know for sure are funded. Um and as you get further out in your five-year CIP, you're only hoping those projects are funded based on what you you know or what you think you know. So um when it comes to SDC funding, you're looking at growth estimates, growth predictions. Uh, as you well know, you can have a few large projects come in that you weren't anticipating and you have a nice bump in in in STC revenue. Uh, or if uh your permitting uh starts to slow down, then then you're going to have a drop in that revenue. Um, Kevin.

All right. Yes. Any other questions? Yes. Then could you make sure your mic is on and speak into it, please?

Yes. Um I had a question related to the um operation and maintenance budget for traffic signals. Um it seems like it's substantial and we do have quite a few certainly. Um I'm curious about you know since this is based on operations if for future projects how much consideration there is into traffic circles which would not have that type of an impact on our on the operation and maintenance of systems that can go down and cause other you know domino effect problems. So, as we continue to grow, you know, our city, are those considered?

Uh, yeah, I believe so. Um, traffic circles or roundabouts, uh, are amazingly efficient. Um, and they do really well when you have a traditional perpendicular or near perpendicular kind of intersection. Uh, the only drawback to roundabouts, uh, is they take up more more space than a signalized intersection. Uh and so they're hard to retrofit into an existing developed area uh because now you're you're buying a lot of property uh to to retrofit that roundabout in. Uh but they are certainly a a tool uh that is in the tool in the toolbox for new areas of growth, you know, on the perimeter of the city or areas that are just not as well developed. Um and again I I look over my shoulder and Kevin is that kind of our policy?

Yeah. The requirement is is that there's a capacity issue does encourage developers to It seems like, you know, as we're trying to look at ways to uh reduce our operations budget that, you know, I don't know what the process would be for encouraging that with a little bit more teeth, but it seems like it would be worth it. Um, you know, and it certainly aids in the beautifification of the city as well. you know, they're they're a good thing. Um, I would say drivers in Salem are not used to them. Um, there's one in Kaiser and I still hold my breath every time I drive through it. Uh, and of course there's the one there, there's the one there down at the Costco down in South Salem, too. So, um, but, uh, if you go to Bend, if you go out, especially the state of Washington, they're everywhere and they really are efficient. Uh, and once people understand them, they're a great way to to they don't cost a lot of money other than the landscaping.

Mr. Fe, as I understand it, the capital construction for a roundabout even in a green field area is generally higher than a installation of a signal. I don't know. I don't Kevin again.

Yeah. the years ago the city looked at by booms treasury were high and Broadway. We actually looked at trying to put a roundabout in before we was development can condemn property. So it's sold you know, out in the fringes, there's a lot more land and things are kind of prior to this meeting, I looked has a lot of them and I looked at, you know, That would require a circuit. They have been able to get more right away. And I will say traffic signals are are easier to maintain now than they used to be because uh um we no longer use incandescent uh bulbs. We use LEDs. They last longer. Uh they're brighter. They they use much less electricity. Um and so there that's a positive with the existing signal system that we have. Um but we also put more things on the poles now. All the traffic signal intersections talk to each other uh through the traffic control center. Uh we have cameras on them uh that that help with the timing and trigger the timing. Uh so uh we do spend more money

on the technology part of it, but the electricity part has has gotten more affordable. So from a climate friendly standpoint though as well it and just a life cycle of these projects. Um I'm sure that you do life cycle studies when you're going through construction projects but um I think I would love to see that you know maybe with greater consideration as we um expand out into areas where we where there is room. Um I think that would be a worthwhile endeavor. Other question? Yeah please. Commissioner Tev.

Hi, thanks. Um, so I had the question about the 1% of the budget that goes to alley maintenance. What what is that? Is that does that work similar to sidewalks as far as like Yeah, just go ahead.

Well, um, we, uh, we actually are funded for alley maintenance is funded. Uh, it actually comes from the city's general fund. Um, and the garbage haulers, the franchise garbage haul garbage haulers pay a franchise fee to the general fund. And that general fund uh then pays the transportation services fund to do alley maintenance uh and uh to clean up spills and hazardous uh events in the riderway. Um, so, um, a lot of that alley maintenance, uh, if it's if it's a paved alley, um, they do get swept occasionally. There's a little bit of of maintenance that goes to those. Most of our alley maintenance is for the gravel alleys uh where every year they have to be uh cleaned which means the vegetation has to be ripped out of it and then you know graded and we call it rocked you know new rock put in uh holes holes smoothed out everything smoothed out. Uh property owners are responsible for the vegetation on both sides to keep the alley clear. Uh but u uh and then there are some alleys that exist on paper only. uh they're not improved and they're just somebody's backyard. U so we don't do any maintenance on on those. Uh but um uh yeah, every year we try to convert about one or two gravel alleys to pavement uh because uh it costs less to maintain the hard surface alley than it does a gravel alley.

Yes. So, something I didn't hear um in your presentation as like a savings opportunity would be uh like unpaving some stuff. Like, is there any opportunity for that in our system? And I'm thinking specifically alleys that are effectively, you know, could be someone's backyard but aren't like do we need every single alley for trash pickup?

Well, alleys serve multiple purposes. um depending on on what level they've been developed, you know, either they're not there at all or they're gravel alleys or they're paved. Um uh property owners, uh sometimes take their access for their their garages to the alley or they have parking. Um their garbage pickup could be on the alley. Uh and a lot of places in the city where we have alleys, that's where a lot of your underground infrastructure is,

uh especially your sewers. Uh so uh water lines, sewers, storm drains, uh there's a lot going under going on the gas lines in those areas, too. So um they're like little mini streets as far as what goes under them. So uh but that's not the case in every alley. Uh and then in downtown, they're an integral part of how people get around and how the businesses get their uh goods delivered to them and things like that. So, uh, you know, every alley is a little different, but, uh, it's it is cheaper to to maintain a paved alley than than a a gravel alley.

Yeah, sure. No, I agree with that. I live on an alley. I was I like I was just curious what you were going to say. Um, yeah. No, I acknowledge that. But it sounds like it would take some soouththing to figure out if there were any unneeded pieces in the like we wouldn't give up any like already paved even poor condition roads perhaps. Um but maybe there are pieces of our transportation system that we could decommission. I guess I'm just in the idea.

Well, there there there are and u again I I don't I don't do this part of the of this job anymore. I used to years ago. Uh but we either in response to private property owners requesting it uh or through development uh or just the city looking through its inventory of property and rights away. We would we would deal with uh rights of way that are not needed. Uh and alleys were certainly candidates for that sometimes uh for vacation where you actually vacate the the right of way. Uh and and that's just on a case-byase basis. uh there are all sorts of little stubs of alleys around the city that uh you know an alley doesn't go the doesn't go all the way through is not as useful. So that begs the question does it need to be there? Uh and again we look at things like are there utilities in that alley or not? Um are there easements? Uh so um but believe me you know we're always looking for things to not maintain. So if there's a rightway out there that nobody needs, nobody wants, we don't want to maintain it.

All right. Right. But it sounds like the process right now is it would be initiated by the land owner. Most of most of the time it is. Uh we keep saying when we're not so busy, we'll start looking for these things and but we rarely are not so busy. Yeah. Thank you, Commissioner Frybeck. Um, so I, as I understand it, there's a there's a threshold for a certain amount of vehicle volume a street has to has before you have to put a center line on it. Correct. Put a what on it? A center line like uh, you know, at a certain amount of vehicle traffic, then you have to paint a center line on that street.

Well, there's there are certain guides that our traffic engineers would use to determine that. Uh so uh it could be the tight radius of a curve uh where you don't want traffic to to go into the other side of the curve. Um it could be based on traffic volumes. U it could be based on the classification of the street. Um you know a lot of our you know very few of our residential local streets have striping. Uh only if they have like I said a severe curve or something where it's a safety measure. Um, but once you get into the even a lot of our collector streets are not necessarily striped. Uh, but certainly arterial streets are always striped. Uh, and some collectors.

Okay. I've traveled to a few locations around the country and they, uh, some of their even rural collectors and local streets, they only occasionally just stripe the corners or the uh, vertical crests. I've just noticed in parts of South Salem and other areas of Salem, they're pretty lower traffic streets that have center lines the whole way through. And it seems like that could be a good opportunity to see some change. It could be sight distance issues. Like you said, it could be vertical curve or horizontal curve. Again, the guy behind me is better to ask that question. So, yeah.

Well, I have one question if I could. So, I was unclear about the sidewalk tree issue. Um, I heard that to say that Salem is the only city that has city trees that intrude on sidewalks, and I know that's not the case. So, when you're saying Salem's unique, what what are we unique about? Yeah, I apologize if I was confusing. Um, no, you know, any any city has trees and and and universally tree tree roots and sidewalks don't get along. It's not just Salem, but uh um what's unique about Salem is we actually have a sidewalk ordinance where the city takes on so much responsibility for the repair.

So So you're saying in other cities if a street tree intrudes and damages a sidewalk, the homeowner actually pays for that? Yeah. Oh, okay. Oh, that Okay, that's surprising me. That's okay. Thank you. Um and that and and now that creates issues um because some cities are are very lax and they'll let the property owner kind of do what they will with the street tree, but not Salem. Uh but not Salem. Um other cities are very strict about their trees and they still make the property owner fix the sidewalk, but they've got to get a series of permits and inspections and and the the the city arborist will tell them what things they can and can't do to the roots. So it it it varies.

Yeah. Do we now as a practice install uh root barriers in the side for the sidewalks? That is a tool that's available. Yeah. And do we use it regularly? We do. Okay. All right. Thank you. That's all for me. Anything? Oh, one more followup. Kind of on the same topic. Um is there a place to look up who is responsible? like you keep adding, you know, miles or whatever each year that um the city is no longer responsible for maintaining the sidewalks. How does and you sent a letter like it sounds like once to some land owner, but what if they sell the house the next year? How would that we we maintain a GIS layer?

Okay. That geographic information system uh No, it it really isn't. Um it's it's available. I mean it's it's public record. I mean anybody could ask you know what's the status of my property and we just look it up. Um but uh it's not really on the web because it it it's for one thing it's kind of a working layer in the GIS system and it it tells everybody this you know the kind of the status of your sidewalk in front of your home. So um we decided not to make that public facing. I I guess we could, but um you know, you get your letter. Um if you're smart, you keep hold of it. Um otherwise, we can

199 What was it?

Yeah. 19 19 September 1991. Yeah. Yeah. But but as we do the sidewalk repairs, um about every three months, we send out a batch of letters uh and say, "Hey, it's yours now." Um, but we don't have we only have one sidewalk inspector for the whole city and and he is not walking around enforcing sidewalk issues uh very much. Uh he's trying to decide what are the next areas our crews go to to work on. So we're not an enforcementbased city. uh other cities where the property owners are responsible for that maintenance. Um many cities do have sidewalk inspectors with enforcement, you know, duties and you would get a letter saying, "Hey, you have 90 days to fix your sidewalk." Um or the city will do it and and charge you for it. Um so that you know, some cities do that. I guess I'm frustrated more that we're treating this public good like like it's at the whim of the property owner behind it. And that frustrates me because the result is you could get very bad sidewalks and I see them. And I know there's a whole bigger picture here with maintenance, but um I just wanted to express that it's a little

frustrating um to have your uh potential if you're walk if walking is your primary mode of transportation to be at the whim of the people who you know live behind or own that property. So, I I will tell you though, and I know your hands up, but I will tell you that u um we we attack the sidewalk issues in three ways with our city crews. Um because we we are under the watchful eye of of several advocacy groups uh for ADA compliance. Um we have a large sidewalk repair crew that will take on uh an area of town and go after the arterial and collector streets uh work around schools, work around shopping districts, institutions, things like that. uh and they focus on the we call the the critical uh pedestrian routes or the critical transit routes. Uh and that's kind of what they focus on are those those larger areas and those those more heavily traveled streets. Uh then you get into the neighborhood streets and frankly that's where most of our sidewalk problems are are deep in the neighborhoods where the big beautiful trees are. Uh unfortunately when you look at federal regulations and you look at how the advocacy groups litigate um they are more concerned about access to transit and all these shopping all those areas I just mentioned uh and so it's very hard to prioritize the neighborhood streets. So what we do is you know our largest crew is out there working in those those critical areas. Uh we have another crew we call our spot repair crew uh or the flying crew and they will work on each neighborhood association's kind of top five hit list. Um and we kind of determine what those top five are. But we let the neighborhood associations know, hey, the the crew is

going to be in your neighbor association for the next couple months uh working on these different locations. Um and we kind of try to hit the worst ones. Uh if you file an ADA complaint with the city, you go to the top of the list. So if you are if you're wheelchair bound or you have a mobility issue, uh you can file a inquiry with the city uh and then we go out and look and see if that puts you to the top of the list. Then we have a patch and grind crew that does nothing but go out and just try to patch and grind and smooth out and things like that. Thank you. Yeah. Wasn't just to be clear, I'm not criticizing your team or anything. just the system in general is a little there's never enough resources for the problem. That's I think that's the biggest problem. Yeah.

Thank you. Sure. If I um one more question. So is I guess maybe two. Um, is that 1991 date um because of the ADA act that

it's to be honest with you, it was uh this was this was a sidewalk ordinance that that we promulgated in 2007 and 1991 was based on how old we felt a sidewalk was in 2007. A sidewalk that was installed in 1991 was probably in really good shape still. And so, uh, if it was pretty much in pretty good shape, then we could with confidence turn that over to the property owner and say, "You're looking at future repairs." And so, those future repairs are on you, except for the tree roots. Uh, so 1991, there's there's nothing magical about it. It was, hey, the sidewalk is probably still good if it was built in ' 91. Um, anything older than that, it may be starting to have problems. And then the property owners will say, well, that's not fair. it's already defective and now you're making me fix it.

And then my second question was just pertaining to the city's exposure to like an ADA related suit, but it sounds like you kind of already touched on that a little bit.

Yeah, we we have we we actually have really good standing with uh like one advocacy group is uh u disability rights Oregon. Um, and we've had, you know, two different times where they've come in and pointed out to us where they would like us to concentrate our resources uh in order to avoid litigation and we've been more than happy to to do that. Um, and it's worked out well. Um, other cities that resist that can end up under a court order. Uh there's cities in Oregon that resisted that persuasion and now the judge has said you must spend a certain percentage of your transportation funds on sidewalk repair uh with very little flexibility. We we try to stay ahead of that and and be proactive and if they say hey we want you to concentrate here that's where we'll go. So

as someone who used to do that kind of work but not for ADA I applaud you. Commissioner Heler, do you have a question? You're the only one who's not asked one. Okay. All right. I just wanted to give you a chance. If there are no further questions, we'll let you go and thank you for this uh detailed and not necessarily uplifting report. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. All right. Thank you. And I believe we have one more report. Is that correct? The WSNA I'm not of course it is transportation impact analysis presentation by Mr. Nick Forte.

Yes. Thank you very much. Are you okay to advance the slides? Okay. Sure. So thanks for the opportunity. I appreciate being put on the agenda. So I'm the um transportation chair for Westale Neighborhood Association. So just as a background, this is these are some of the issues that I guess have permeated up through our organization over many years and we thought it might be advantageous for us to kind of um just use this as a forum for some ideas and and let me stop you for just a moment and say I apologize. I did not realize that you were at the neighborhood group. I would have switched the order here. Sorry. An interesting presentation. So you learned a few things. So that's always always good.

I'm very excited that you're here to give us a presentation. not get many neighborhood presentations, so this is really beneficial to all of us. Okay, great. Thank you.

All right, thank you. Um, so let me just start out here again. Thanks for the opportunity and this is just kind of these are some ideas. I want to put this up as that's we're not trying to say do this. We just wanted to use this as an opportunity to kind of establish some dialogue and just put some ideas forward. So if you can change the next slide.

Yeah, that's this is great. Thank you. So I just want to start out with this as kind of an outline so you can kind of get a sense of kind of where the direction where we're going here. So the real the themes are some some opportunities. So there's three real areas that we're kind of focused in on. The first of those is um increased opportunity consider traffic coming. The second is to look at multimodal solutions and the third is the increased consideration of transportation safety. And so really kind of to ground this out, it's kind of looking at some examples of kind of where we are, where we could be, and just kind of really leaving you with some suggestions about some ideas. And we're drawing some ideas from what our experiences are and some as well as some practices elsewhere. Again, just suggestions. So, next slide, please. So, to start out with, um, trafficcoming. Um, so this is a an issue that I'm sure all neighborhoods have some, um, affectation with, and certainly we experience this. If you're familiar with this area here on Rogers Lane, um some neighbors came to us as the neighborhood association as well as to the city. So there's concerns with traffic coming up through Rogers Lane. That's the main connection to the arterial and then spreads out through the rest of the neighborhood there. So there were concerns about speeding traffic going through there. What could be done to um kind of reduce those impacts? So the city has that trafficcoming program and this a great it's a great process, but it's requires obviously neighborhood approval. people have got to buy into it and then they've got to have it's a competitive process. So just because neighbors want this to happen, there's a pool of money that the city has that's got to it's got to compete, you know, legitimately enough against other competing needs that are out there in the city. So our concern is that the process is somewhat reactive. So we can go to the next slide. Um this is the this is the city traffic coming um website just to show you some of the um criteria that's used to determine you know what's needed what are the criteria that's used to prioritize that and then some examples that you know you could probably seen those speed feedback signs

around the speed bumps which is what the um neighbors were calling for on Rogers Lane. So those are some of the the the things in the toolbox and if you can go to the next slide. Um, so what we're trying to do is look at really moving to a a proactive process and really expanding that from what we see is primarily a reactive process and kind of looking at that toolbox, expanding that and saying what can we do when we're starting looking at, you know, new developments. Obviously, you know, West Salem, we've got a lot of new development going on there. So, we're really attuned to this opport what we see as an opportunity space. So, what we think is some benefits here, you know, you can do it on a much wider scale. So, we're not look, you know, we're looking at a Rogers Lane. it's, you know, it's one point here. We're looking at a whole development. So, there's a lot of opportunities that you can put out traffic coming through that whole development as, you know, as a developer proposing different phases to be improved.

And the the advantage also is that neighbors are buying in when they're literally buying into the neighborhood. So, they know they know what they're getting when they're going there versus what we have to do now. You know, people have to people have to sign in. Maybe they're concerned about, well, do I really want to have a you know, am I going to go over this speed hump every day? Hey, is this is this going to affect me? You know, is this going to negatively affect me? So, it's a it's a people got to go work through that thing. If they if there was a development that's there, then it's much more it's a it's a cleaner process. We think that they're buying into that. And again, you know, that whole opportunity um that that comprehensive nature there also um advances the ability to kind of integrate that with transit, bicycle, pedestrian. So, there's a lot of uh spillover benefits that I think they're important to consider. So, if you can go to the next slide. And so again um just I want to talk point through a couple of ideas here and then I'll show you some examples that we've drawn from around um so again the opportunity here again that kind of that broader theme we can talk about roundabouts here that roundabouts can be that kind of that focal center for the community it can be a kind of a

Yes. So are you suggest I'm understanding this is suggestions for new subdevelopments that these would be standard features in new subdevelopments rather than retrofits to what's happening right now. These would be in addition. So we're talking about you keep the traffic coming program but is more expansive. So it's just a to expand for so developers could for draw. It's just an opportunity. So we're not future developments.

Yes. We're not and we're not saying developers have to do this. It's just that is there a way to encourage developers to you know institute this as a development is going you know going on and being being put forward through the planning process. So some other things are you know again and the idea here is that we can we can broaden that pool of things that we might be able to consider. So like chicane so as the chicanees like it's like a slalom. So you think you know a winter going back and forth. So it can kind of help slow the traffic there. Again mini roundabouts. It's a great idea for small areas. You can put in street art. We've got a number of those. You know we've got West Salem. We got other places around that have got that the city's been very kind. You know we designated those areas where we've been able to put some, you know, street art. Again, it creates an opportunity to kind of bring the neighborhood together, but it also provides a, you know, a traffic comic. Um, and again, just kind of a a neighborhood entry or kind of a gateway treatment. So, if you can go to go next slide and I'll just show some examples here. So, this is a example from San Francisco just to tell you what that what a chicane looks like. But again, um, it gives you that opportunity there for having that, you know, wider sidewalks on one side. So, again, you can put in some sort of street amenities. You can put in kiosk, you can put this, you know, wider sidewalk area. Again, the idea here is just some just some suggestions for consideration, but just just an example. You can go to the next slide, please. And so, here's an example again from San Francisco seeing some of these bulb outs. So, you know, the idea of the bulb outs obviously they provide, you're all familiar with that thing provided, you know, reduced crossing provides a little bit more clarity for the pedestrian when they're being seen there. But, you know, again, the opportunity here, it's it's a trafficcoming thing is also kind of a beautifification thing. If you if you go to the next slide, here's an example from Monmouth here. much smaller scale but again the sort of example here is you can provide that sort of street beautifification as well as providing those benefits to the pedestrians. Uh and then the next slide please. So here's an example from Huntersville and North Carolina. So I wanted to show a larger scale development here to kind of see how that interplay might work when you're looking at several of these large

features here. So if you can see this is from the I want to show this overhead view here but you can see that that the brick paving there. So that's the entryway to this large development uh here. But it really it really kind of provides that important transition for vehicles coming in there. And I think it that helps you know you don't have a physical, you know, hump or something in the pavement there. But I think it provides that clarity. Here's a gateway. You're coming into a different area. You can it can help do something to, you know, change driver behavior, anticipate what's going on there. And and I'll show some more here. So just so this next one shows an actual kind of a street view. This is what this looks like. So to me, it's a it provides a very it's that discontinuous, right? So you're providing something that's not necessarily a paved street. Well, it's a paved street surface, but it's a different, you know, material there. So, you know, obviously some sort of visual appeal, I think, to drivers makes them aware what's going on. So, you can go to the next slide. So, here's this continuing on further. Um, and you can see at the at the kind of the end of the photo there, there's this semi- roundabout. Um, so this center area here that's developed here. So it's got some stores and some shops, but you see that green kind of 3/4 of the way into the thing, that kind of green area is a common area that's been developed. So again, the idea here is here's some opportunities. Again, larger scale. So you got this semicircle development here. And if you and if I go to the next slide again, just to get kind of get a street view here. But if you'll see, you know, that it provides to me a very appealing aesthetic because you can kind of see so if you're in some of these businesses here. So it's retail on the ground floor and you've got kind of residential on those upper floors. So it provides you some sort of a visual lookout over both the kind of the green common area as well as on the the street uh round the semic-ircular roundabout as well. If you'll go to the next slide. And so I want to turn now to some multimodal considerations um that I think we'd also like to see um move more to the forefront um in some of the um

kind of the planning language and some some opportunities we we think we can advance. So we go to the next slide. So again we don't see any me there's no explicit multimodal analysis no sort of explicit process but there is certainly you know code language that talks about providing facilities that can be used for transit bus stops this sort of thing. So we get all that what we're trying to do is u you know what can we do you know again in the kind of the development code to encourage this. So if you go to the next slide. So part of that thing is um looking at what can we do in terms of maybe got a level of service measure. Can we look at um both level of service standards are specific to each mode, level of service standards that consider all modes and then other standards maybe that don't necessarily get to level of service but offer some other um I think compelling arguments for advancing transit. So, you know, what's the total demand, the number of vehicle miles traveled, how direct is it, what are the widths, just some just some things to consider in that code that I think expand, you know, kind of provide a little bit more expansiveness to help encourage some of these multimodal solutions. And if you if you go to the next slide, please. Um, again, the again the whole goal there is to really more explicitly recognize that. So, we also recognize that, you know, at the one hand, I'm I'm advocating for more uh standards, more criteria, but we also recognize that, you know, we're dealing with except for a few corridors, some pretty low levels of transit use. So, we may have to have something that's beyond just let's just not just have okay, here's a level of service standards. They may not they may not help us get there. We're trying to figure out what can we do to induce developers to help us get there beyond what we're doing right now. So, that's part of the thing. is like you know thinking about those some of those design those more I guess explicit design standards or you know inducements that we could provide to developers. So if you'll go to the next slide please. So here's just an example out of Northfor Virginia. And so they um deal with this kind of on a design concept approach. So the idea is I didn't I want to go in the details here. I just want

to show you an example of here it's it's something that can be done just an idea of you know here's a way to sit through it in sort of like here's some design templates. What can we do to you know look at how do we get to a system that's going to be more conducive to multimodal? So more transit, more bicycle, more pedestrian use, that sort of thing. You know what what are some opportunities we can create in the existing system. So the next slide please. So here's I wanted to draw some examples. We do have some examples in West Salem. So I don't want to want to leave those out. So here's an example. This is U 23rd Court in Barbberry. So the city's been able to put this in. So it basically it provides a path. So if you go outside the screen here, this goes into College Heights Park. So there's a connection to the park going through here. So it's a residential street. But this if you go down here, this goes into Tiola and just over to the left there's a transit stop. So we think this is a great opportunity. And there's obviously examples like this, you know, through Salem. But you know, just just some kind of smallcale things that we think these are these are um very more valuable than they might seem at first glance. So if you can go to the next slide, please. So here's, you know, here's an example and we recognize that this is the subject of an ongoing project right now, but this is just an example of providing, you know, park access. So this is going across Parkway, going across Orchard Heights into Orchard Heights Park. So this is will soon be a subject of a of a city project that's going to look at providing a rep rectangular flashing beacon to improve that crossing over there so people can get access to the park and then improving the sidewalk connectivity going down Orchard Heights. Again, I just want to show some examples of things that we see, you know, how can we create these pathways, these more connections.

So, my question, so in this example, I'm looking, we have a a kind of a typical like, what is that? A minor arterial major arterial street, minor arterial, and we've got some striping for the bike. We've got a sidewalk. Um, so is that like a sufficient level of infrastructure for bike and pedestrian? And the concern is that um we'd like some enhanced safe crossing. Uh

yeah, it's like it's yeah enhanced crossing. So so I just want to use this as an example of something that isn't but what I wanted to point to it is happening. But I guess the point is that if we could provide these inducements upfront, I guess that's the pain. You know, obviously this is an existing you know location here. But the idea is are there things we can do to encourage developers to can these be can these be installed or can create these connections um upfront in the planning process or provide some sort of you know inducement whether it's whether it's policy or whether it's criteria some some way to further enhance this I think would be helpful. I guess who I ask I'm just trying to understand if if some of what if you're suggesting that some of what our current standards are are inadequate and need to be changed or if some things are simply missing that you'd like to see. So for example, if we have sidewalks and a striped bike lane, is that enough or you want something different for pedestrian access or is it more like um we need some new things like the different pavement treatment going into neighborhoods. So that's I'm just trying to understand the difference between those two things. I think it's somewhat all the above. So I think it I think it's so I don't want I don't want to say the city is not responsive, but what we're what we're trying to say is that I think there's more proactive things that could be done. And I think part of that is trying to provide some inducement to developers rather than coming after. So like for the traffic calming, it's an after it's a so and I in part I get it, right? You want to see what the what the impacts are. Do you need to put these trafficcoming devices if if they're not really if they're not really needed? Do you have buyin? But if we're able to put that in upfront as a developer, you know, developer, you know, then it's built, it's built in. The developers paid for it. It's going to be passed on to, you know, the cost is going to be passed on to all the, you know, the homeowners that are in there. But they're going to they're going to know what they're getting into from the get-go. And I think we can help provide some of these, you know, these connections that what we see is we have to do a lot of, you know, retrofitting. So ideas provide, you know, kind of prevent that, minimize those opportunities, you know, in the future.

So you can go to the next the next slide. So here's just an again I just want to show some examples here. So here's a here here's a bike route um probably a little bit of an kind of antiquated design here. But again the idea is trying to create these connections um you know that are a little bit higher design standards that can be created for you know some sort of inducement to developers. So the next next slide. So here's that I want to go kind of go back to that North Carolina example here. So again, much larger scale development, understandable, but it's not um out of the realm of the possibility I think when you see some of the potential, you know, larger scale developments that you certainly see in West Salem, some of these larger apartment complexes and the on the larger, you know, size developments. But even in a smaller scale, these sort of things I think have value and can work. So again, this this central island here um that I showed that aerial view earlier on, this is it's a community space. So this they have in the summertime they have concerts, they show movies in the park, this sort of thing. So it creates that I think a greater sense of the you know community. So that's one of the things that we're really um keen on in West Salem is a I'm sure everybody else is too. How do you how do you create community? It's a very it's a great concept. It's nebulous but it's sometimes it's really hard to do. And we think one of the fundamental ways to do this is creating more connections, more opportunities for people to come together. And that's coming together through biking, walking, taking transit, making those making those connections work. So, you know, and and using these sort of tools or these inducements, I think, to create more of a sense of community. So, if you can go to the next slide, please. So, here's a, you know, I argued a little bit against this here, but just an example of, you know, how you can kind of multimodal level of service standards. So, they exist. They're used elsewhere. Again, obviously we're draw, you know, we're drawing from Florida here, so there's, you know, lots of opportunities to draw from thing, but I just the idea part of the thing is just to kind of put a lot of ideas out there and then you're the expert. You

kind of go through this stuff and say, hm, this maybe this makes sense, maybe this doesn't make sense. But we think there's some some things out there to be considered. Maybe maybe they work in the Salem context, maybe they don't. But I think there's it's worth considering to figure out what are the most um opportune ways to move some of these ideas forward. And we don't want to be the ones saying you got to do XY, you know, you got to take this path. What we're trying to say is there's an issue. We think there's some potential solutions, pathways, and we're just trying to provide a bevy of some options you can kind of maybe sample from, consider, think through. So if you go to the next slide. So the final thing is um safety. So if we go go to the next slide and I'll just talk about some ideas here. So there's no explicit mention of um safety in the standards for um the TIA. So it talks about you know looking at other intersections outside and obviously the city has there's a big focus on safety. So we recognize that you got a transportation system plan. So there's a you know it's ground it's ground in but it's not necessarily we don't have any sort of specific criteria. What do you look at when a developer comes forward and they're doing an impact analysis? What are the sort of criteria? So if you if you can go to the next slide. So here's some ideas. The idea is that we're trying to look at some cost-effective things. So some ideas might be is this on the city's you know high injury network or crash network or however you want to define it. Where are the where are the major you know where's there an over representation of severe and fatal crashes and are there some opportunities for doing some improvements. So some kind of you know criteria you might consider looking at you know where are the existing crash locations or the you know look over the last five years there's a high type based on you know whether it's severity crash types whatever um and then coming up with um you know identifying any sort of improvements that can mitigate those crash hotspots. So the idea again trying to trying to um bake that into the process. So when the you know impact study is done that's specifically

considered and there've got to be some criteria looking at those crash hotspots but not just what's there. Obviously when we're talking about a new development there's nothing there's nothing there. So we're creating something. So, but the idea is we can look at some ideas that might say this type of treatment or this type of pedestrian crossing is going to be safer than this. Can we can we kind of come up some sort of rank or what's the risk that pedestrians or vehicle drivers are going to face going through here? What can be done to reduce that? So, it just it's just kind of, you know, more in-depth stepping through the process. If we can go to that the next slide. So, I'm I'm getting towards the end here. Just a couple more slides here to wrap it up here, but go to the next slide. Um, so again, I just wanted to kind of reiterate what we talked about. So the idea is just it's somewhat of a critique of what the current practice is, but really wanted to kind of look at some expansive options. So again, the idea is just to look at um some proposals, some different things to study, see what would be done to extend the current practice. Um, and then just the finally, so the idea is maybe some ideas, create a study, maybe it's sending this to the city staff to take a look at, maybe it's you, you know, as a planning commission winding through some different ideas and, you know, sorting through, but really it's it's to you. We just wanted we wanted to use this as an establishment, you know, um, oftentimes we're as a neighborhood association, we're always kind of on the receiving end. We wanted to do something that says, hey, we really want to be forward-looking and not just pick on this development as it comes in and saying, you know, don't do this here, don't do that here. We wanted to kind of come up with let's be try to be we're talking about being proactive. So, we wanted to be as a neighbor association, let's be let's ourselves be proactive and come out before the planning commission and say here's some ideas. There's some things we thought about we want to get engaged. So, there's my final slide, the uh sunset as we go into West Salem. I have had to end with a West Salem slide, obviously. So, So, thank you very much. I think it's extremely helpful that the West Salem uh neighborhood association came before us.

I think many of the things that you are talking about have been topics of conversation here and I expect that we will have some questions maybe. Um

uh so let me just start out with with thank you. Um I think there's probably a couple opportunities to answer some questions that I think were raised in your presentation. I again I was really focused on um what are our current standards and what are acceptable and what maybe need to be added because I think our current standards at least in my opinion do address some of the things that you raised and I think you know like every part of Salem we're all dealing with um we've inherited a built environment that was not very amendable to things like connectivity and biking and pedestrian safety and we're kind of it's and it's expensive to fix those. So, I'm very interested in having the conversation about what we have now, how adequate is that, and how we move forward. And I'm going to turn to Lisa and just ask a couple questions. She enjoys it when I do this. Lisa, like if I remember now, like if if we have a like a culde-sac and there's another culde-sac and people can't get through, we usually have like a bike pedestrian connection requirement. Yes.

Is that right? Absolutely. So I think of you know culdeacs kind of a suburban phenomena but here now in our current standards you'd have to be able to walk through those. So I know that that's an issue that comes up. Um I know that now typically we require pedestrian connections to parks and sidewalks. Yes. If we don't So that's that's an issue that we've addressed in the past. Um our current local streets do not require bike lanes though striped bike lanes. Correct. But our arterial and minor collectors collectors and arterials do. Yes. I'm going to look at Brian because we have both the planner here and the traffic engineer. So you picked the perfect night. You should just nod when I Yes. Right.

Okay. So minor arterials. No minor materials collectors. Well, we we have in our transportation system what we require. So not I would say all arterial streets are going to have bike facilities. Okay. Okay. Right. And every every street now requires sidewalks on both sides. Right. So we have kind of the sidewalks. We have uh arterial streets. We have some of the park connections. We have the culde-sac connections. I know I know those are there. Do we have the ability to require roundabouts

as a design standard? I don't know that we have the ability to require it because generally we don't have that as like a requirement in our TSP. So if they're just doing a two streets that intersect, you know, and they're both meet the street standards, then we don't have an ability to tell them to do something over and beyond that. But maybe Kevin will come forward. And so so that's an interesting that that's our choice in our design stand there. Although it's weird, but the mic works. Does it? Does it? Does maybe it doesn't. Oh, okay. Does work.

Um, so yeah, one of the things that the city is is needing to do is upgrade our transportation system plan. A lot of uh that um those planning efforts were done quite a few years ago. And you know even the transport the traffic impact studies that we use now were developed in the late 90s. So um we are working towards that. Um we are going to be starting a big effort with our uh transportation system plan update.

Um we're also uh working on vision zero. uh the state is requiring a lot of things that are coming out that are triggering um some improvements that we need to do and some planning efforts that we need to do. So um we are going to be considering all these things so we can um as we move forward with these these efforts to update the those planning efforts, we're going to be reaching out to to people and talking about, you know, how do we require it? But we're also going to need to have the development community involved because they're going to be looking at costs and uh you know there's a big effort for housing right now and I know that a couple times we've tried to get some um crossing improvements and got push back over you know you're you're making our affordable housing not so affordable by requiring this. So whether they're correct or not is is a different story, but but there are a lot of uh fingers in the pie right now. And so we'll be coming out to everybody as we move forward with those those uh planning efforts.

And how will the West Salem Neighborhood Association be involved in the TSP update?

I think we're going to be going out to all of the neighborhood associations and talking to them about the efforts and the things that we're looking at. Um and that includes not only just the planning efforts but the design efforts as well. Um we're looking at lane reductions. Um you know five years ago um buffered bike lanes was the big thing and it was an oo and a type of thing and that's not really uh the direction we're hearing anymore. So, we're we're starting to try to to see how we can, you know, make improvements to better design standards. Things are changing and we're we're we're a big ship and trying to move with it is it can be hard. Um, but, you know, we will be looking at uh the latest. Uh, we will be looking at other jurisdictions efforts. We'll be relying on Oregon Department of Transportation and their efforts as they look at design standards as well. Um, so, you know, I think Nick did a great job. I didn't uh really see anything there that caused me heartburn or the city heartburn because I think we are trying to do it, you know. Um and uh um you know for example we we we have two development options. I mean we have projects that are privately developed. Um those we have to rely on our design standards and our and our planning efforts and because that's what gives us the authority to require things with um public projects like bond projects and grants and stuff. we have more flexibility to do things and so those are a little bit easier to to uh make changes. Um and you know we can take a look at easier to look at

roundabouts or whatever. Um but for instance um Costco we they set money aside for um speed bumps if there if we did measure a problem in the neighborhood and we never got a complaint in the neighborhood. We've had complaints on Boone Road, but um it's never So, there was money set aside there. FredMyer gas station, there was concern about crashes at their driveway on commercial, and so we had them project set money aside for Meeting Island if we needed to block that off. Uh South Sam High School, we got uh money to do some speed bumps on rural and we're going to be doing that uh this next summer. Um, so, uh, Gussy Bell, which is a a big, um, uh, low-income housing on center in 23rd, you know, we were working with them to try to get some pedestrian crossings. And the city actually, because they were concerned about cost, the city actually um, lowered the sale price of the land so that we could do a pedestrian crossing on D Street and connect to the schools. So, there there are things that we're doing. Could it be more? probably. Um, but I know that we do consider it and so we're not trying to be blind to it. Um, but we do see what we can and and try to get what we can.

Great. Thank and do you two have each other's numbers? Yeah, we're we assume I assume so, but it was a legitimate question. Okay. So, let's start with questions starting with Commissioner Heler. Um, may I see the slide with the calming that you put in with the different ways to calm traffic? Is that possible?

Give us just one sec. page uh six.

Thank Thank you. I I was interested in actually all of them but particularly the road winds wines or whatever it is uh to slow traffic. What what's the criteria as far as in in your view as far as speed or is it uh certain distances for straight where normally would a straight would go?

I think it's p primarily um probably it's a distance thing where you have you know long those kind of those longer straightaways where there's more likelihood of vehicles being being able to get up to speed in that thing. So, you know, yeah, the idea was again, it's just to to widen out some. So, I think it's good that we're talking about the, you know, transportation system plan. So, we're hoping some of this can be a precursor, you know, to some of that, but it's really it's so part of it is yes to try to infuse some of that discussion about what's going on, but then it's maybe it's like looking at some of the development code, but it's it's trying to get some of those things Yeah.

moving. I guess that's the that's the thing. And and try to plant some of the seeds for these ideas. We've had similar conversations on this board and you know the the direction that we're wind up going is to take all this concern the same that you do and put it into the transportation system plan because I don't think this is my personal opinion. I don't think we're going to get a lot of changes now between now and when the transportation system plan changes just because the feedback I get is well we're going to change the transportation system plan. So, I'll just share what I I received from uh the feedback that I received. Um but I I assume this will be kind of part of the whole background conversation. I'm going to go through everybody here. Lisa, do you have another question?

No. Thank you. Okay. Okay. Commissioner Lavine, I'm going to hold off till the end because I know you have six. Go ahead, Commissioner Lavine. And can you be sure to speak into the microphone? Yes. Turn the light on.

Okay. So, one of the conversations that occurred some decades ago um was regarding the traffic calming and and the issue from the neighborhood perspective was the traffic on this street is going too fast. part of the conversation, the meeting that was held or the gathering that was held at will and discussed a lot of alternatives and variables had to do with creating alternatives to that particular traffic flow, street usage, whatever. So, so the question about calming on this particular street may be a situation of slowing down that traffic. But if alternative routes are not provided, the consequences of that proposal will not be satisfactory. So it is imperative as you take a look at a particular problem area is to step back and look at a little larger area and alternatives to access and egress to that section of the community so that it is not a narrowed perspective. One of the things that happened about that same time was the neighbors on Vista got that particular street closed except to

fire trucks um coming um eastward off of South Commercial. So that by what was lost by and uh there's a little u commercial project there. So over the years um that has changed dramatically and even though people have now established other routes that street is still closed for no benefit to anyone. Now, you can go westbound on the street through the intersection, but you can't go eastbound. and and I don't understand why it hasn't been opened up because the entire traffic area and usage for that thing that one bottleneck was created to push people onto other streets and and um and the volume of traffic on Vista is completely changed now. uh it it people just don't go back around to Vista a block or two down or alternatives. So, so as you consider what you'd like to accomplish, take please take a look at the greater area and also work with traffic engineers and design to to look for a solution that's not not going to be specifically focused to three blocks of one street.

Okay. No, that's that's well that's well said. That's that's one of the reasons why We think there's because oftentimes when we're doing it that that point location, the difficulty is on the current thing, it's it's difficult to say where's that traffic going to go to some other location. That's why we think again, notwithstanding what you're saying, but looking at those larger scale developments, I think there's some opportunities we can start saying if you if you do put a speed bump here, if you put a chicane here, that's going to move traffic, but ideally that's going to move traffic somewhere else in devel. So we can it's we can kind of we got a bigger landscape. It's not the full-size landscape. So it obviously we got to be, you know, attuned to what's going to happen on some other neighborhood streets, but it gives us a little bit more some of the devel I'm sure you're well aware some of those developments that we get in West Salem, there's a there's some room to look at the a larger network. So that's what we think some opportunities are saying, okay, we can do this type of treatment here. It's it's gonna it's going to have some spillover effects on some of these neighborhood streets, but we can also we can design those so they can accommodate what's g you know what's going to h that's that's the thinking behind it. I mean, is it going to happen? Well, you know, obviously we got to wait to see, you know, the proofs in the pudding sort of thing. But we think there's there's a there's just an opportunity to do that in that larger scale and looking at some more, you know, that broader set of some standards that are probably not applic, you know, an ex going back and retrofitting are probably not the right, you know, it's not the right tool to go back and do. It's it's just too large a scale to get the to get the benefits out of it. But when you start talking about new development, I think there's I think there's a lot it's a wider it's a wider sphere that we can look at. And I think people might might say, "Hey, I'm kind of attracted to living on this street. It's yeah, it's going to be more windy here, but the kids have a there's a little bit more, you know, sidewalk area in which they can, you know, do I think there's again, you got to the developers got to think through it and say, is this

going to attract the people that I want to attract? Is it going to get me the return on the investment?" But maybe it does. I just I just think putting that out there and creating that that atmosphere, that opportunity, you know, is just it's just something to consider. Yeah. Do you have any questions?

Not a question really, but um I did want to thank you for your time and the efforts put into this presentation. It's very thoughtful. Um and just say I I'm fully in support of this approach where we look at it from multiple perspectives. we have uh less of a prescriptive path and more of a performancedriven approach where there are different um methods and ways of achieving traffic calming. Um in addition to just the obvious benefits of traffic calming, there's also a livability and quality of life uh benefit that we gain from creating more organically feeling city streets and and residential areas. Um certainly improved and expanded landscaping areas. Um you know those uh ballouts that that you can kind of add into a streetcape and um a street section that create shorter walks for pedestrians uh pedestrian crossings. Um all of those are just great opportunities and uh yeah just wanted to say thank you and very very supportive of of the work you've put into this.

All right. Thank you. And before we go to Commissioner Frybeck, I'm going to turn over. Commissioner Tav, do you have any questions? Uh, not really. Just thank you. Um, and I'm sure Ben will talk about We have a transportation subcommittee on the planning commission. So, we also have a vacancy on the planning commission with that. Well, there we go. How about that? Well, well thought about. You come to make a complaint, you get a committee assigned. That's a Thank you, Commissioner Frybeck. You have the mic. do. Um, so yeah, I just wanted to thank you for coming in and talking to us about transportation. Um, I guess for starters, you seem like you know a lot about the topic. Can you share a little bit about your background?

Well, I'm a transportation engineer, civil engineer, but I've been work for the neighborhood association for a number of years. So, it's I guess there's a lot of experience that we've had as a neighbor association dealing with um kind of various iterations. So the ver you know an earlier iteration of the you know trafficcomi thing and this new version. So I think we've seen a lot of um developments and actually we've been you know most of the time we have the develop oftentimes the developers will come to us as a neighbor and talk through the process. So it gives us an opportunity sometimes to um even if something's not in the code to say here's what we're here's what we're looking for just kind of like we like to see this is this something that could be done. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. So that's I think part of the reason for coming here is just kind of like it's it's more like coming up with ideas and trying to um see things that could be advanced, but I want to do in the context of, you know, not just here's some ideas from elsewhere, but these are things that we s you know, as a does it work in the Salem context or what are the issues that we see that work or maybe that don't work or maybe could be adjusted a little bit. So that's kind of the the background a little bit. Kind of long-winded, but

Okay. Yeah, I mean I generally um agree with pretty much everything that was in that um presentation and you know we've we've talked about this stuff at length. We kind of actually ran headlong into it when um Fair View came to planning commission for a hearing and I had actually drawn up a um like a purple because we had got so many complaints from people living on um Battle Creek Road I think about um you know people speeding crashes all kinds of different stuff. And you know, we've FHWA has some uh traffic calming primers and I think ODAT has their highway design manual and different prescriptive ways to design streets that don't you know result in speeding. And ultimately what um I heard from staff is that we can't necessarily require that uh of developers just be based on what's in our code. and the opportunity that would come up to change that would happen during the transportation system plan. Um and uh you know that frustrated me a little bit. Um actually pretty frustrating. Um because you know I look around even Oregon and I'm seeing cities like I don't know Woodburn, Wilsonville, Medford. I could just start rattling them off. Oregon City, Westland, Portland, Hillsboro, Beaverton, Bend, um, Hood River. Um, all these other cities have seemed like that they've, you know, they've been, um, almost pioneering or leading the change when it comes to transportation. Um, I know there's a few individuals in Hood River. They've got their own u, they're doing like quick build bikeway projects to schools in Hood River. Um the city of Corvalis has its neighborhood cutthrough program where their active

transportation manager had inventoried and signed up routes to every single cut through in the city of Corvalis. You can actually go on uh the city's website. They have a GIS portal and you can go in and you can view where these cutthroughs are. And the city did this by a process of they had a survey and then people that lived in a neighborhood drop a little ma pin or draw a line on a cutthrough that they know about and then it could appear in a printed city map. And a lot of these things that I've seen um are things that didn't have to wait for the transportation system plan update. um like the city of Corvalis didn't have to update their TSP to realize that they should inventory their bike cutthroughs or um the city of Hood River didn't update their TSP to um you know decide that they want to quick build um projects near schools. Um so I I think um a conversation needs to happen. Um and I guess buffered bike lanes were they were the new thing five years ago and um since then that's changed. You know, Ashtto has come out with their bike guide like last year and now it's saying that we should be building protected bike lanes on um higher speed arterials with more traffic and we didn't know that. Maybe we did um 10 years ago, but that's just not what our what our guide said. So, I I feel like there needs to be a conversation about how we can allow our transportation standards and um how we view the system to evolve outside of whatever 10-year cycle the TSP is on. Um and then figure a way how to fund it. I know our um current TSP has goals um like I think we have a goal for like I

think 30% of commuters to be riding transit by a specific date. We don't have a goal to fund that. Um we have a you know active transportation goals in our TSP. Those projects um that have been identified um to accomplish those goals um don't have like a dedicated funding source in that TSP. Um, so I think the new transportation system plan is supposed to be cost constrained. Um, so the city is supposed to be able to identify a source for a project in order for it to be on the TSP. Um, but yeah, I I do think there's a serious need to happen for some conversation so we get a more fluid and u transportation system that works for the city. So um, I've got probably a million other thoughts. Um,

do you have any questions, Commissioner Frybeck? Uh yeah, actually I did. Um I think I wrote them down. Um yeah. Were there any um like specific changes to the SRC that you would think could be helpful like in the near term and between now and when we do the TSP? Yeah, I think that the difficult thing is trying to like parse out between do it now and wig to the TSP thing. So that's that one I feel uh not in a position to be able to because I don't know where the I don't know where the TSP is. I don't know what this how big an effort that is, how long that's going to take. But I I do think there's some things I mean I think that's probably up to the planning commission or others to decide what's the what's the best way to kind of parse this out. But I mean, I think there are some things we'd like to see like I think we would like to see something and like in some of the development codes that looked at more explicitly recognizing safety or something like that. I think that would be that would be something we could do right now. I think you've got some things in there that you're looking at in terms of um you know design standards for you know by are there things we could do to that's always an issue that comes up when we have you know the level of service. It's always an issue that comes up with um in West Salem certainly because we have a lot of you know the impacts spill out from the development they're going onto the you know arterial network. So we have issues there about what are the you know what are the improvements are being made there. Again the concern is that if we start looking at you know what are we going to do for transit it's except for a few pl you know Wallace road and kind of in edgewater there we're kind of limited and what are so it's again that was where I wanted to put that thing it's unlikely to move that you know if we put something in there that says okay put these all this analysis I'm not sure we get a

lot out of the you know the analysis in terms of is it going to move anything in terms of are we going to are we going to manifestly change what's happening with you know the transit route there. I mean, those there's other things that are going to drive that. So, notwithstanding that, I think I think there's some maybe some tweaks or some improvements that can be made, but I just don't I just don't have a sense of what the you know, do you wait and you bundle that all in the TSP because that's that's coming. I mean, I don't know. I think some of these things we would like to see. Um I guess the particular I mean the main one I'm kind of bending more on is kind of the safety area because I think that's an area that we we'd like to see something done on maybe you know on the trap again maybe that's some sort of inducement. I don't know I don't I don't know what that what you put in the inducement if you put something again someone's got to figure that out. Is that's done like okay do we do somewhere like a trip do we provide some sort of you know you know something that takes off the number of trips based on you do this type of traffic come I don't I don't have the you got to do this it's just an idea some I was trying to figure out something that say you don't say it's like yeah that going and telling a develop you got to put a you know traffic circle in there but if you find if you put a traffic circle in here you get I don't know what what you get but you get something so they're like oh well I weren't we weren't really thinking through this thing, but hey, this is this is enough of an inducement for us to say we're going to do it. That that's that's the sort of thought process because I didn't what I didn't want to come and say is you got to change the specific code to do this this this and it's got to be this because I don't think that that's necessarily what's going to work. So that was just to show some ideas about here's some ideas what's worked elsewhere. Maybe it works in the Salem context. Maybe it maybe there's just maybe it's not enough and maybe we need to have some other thing. But it was a lot of things that was trying to provide some sort of in just a wider span, you know, span of things that a developer could look at and maybe some sort of way to induce them to, you know, we weren't thinking about this

thing. Hey, we, you know, but if you're encouraging us to do it and you'll do this to get us to get us there, we'll give it a we'll give it a try. And maybe some of it is also doing some of these things more like a you give it a pilot, this sort of thing. Let's say let's just try this out. See if it works. does it, you know, manifestly get something. But I think what we wanted to do is get away from the let's go and do this thing and then we got to have to come back years later and do a retrofit. And whether that retrofit is doing some pedestrian safety improvement or something, it's really it's trying to get because we know that that's it takes a long time to get some of that the the traffic data, the safety data. A lot of those things when you're dealing with vulnerable road users are not apparent in the data itself and it and it's got to compete against things. So the idea was if we could put some of those things up front in the in the development, you know, adding those things in, creating an enducement to put those in, that would be that would be in itself a benefit.

Well, thank you. Um, I think we're probably at the end of this conversation, so I will talk with my colleagues about how we can best follow up on this. Um, and as uh, Commissioner Tav pointed out, we do have a transportation subcommittee. uh they might have an interest in following up on this, but I know that we will we will do some sort of followup with you on this. So, thank you very much. I appreciate your time. So, thank you again for the planning commission. I also want to thank city staff for doing for giving me the time on the agenda and also going through the whole presentation. So, thanks. Thank you very much. So, we will go on to Yes, absolutely. Um Lisa, can you share the presentation with all of us?

Information reports. It's you Mr. Frybeck. Um yeah. So um information report. So the transportation subcommittee meeting for uh I think it's next week um is planned. Um I will have to cancel on that. Um because I've got somewhere I need to be on that day. Um but uh yeah, I think uh I'm definitely going to be reaching out to Mr. 40 about this and hopefully we'll um you guys will hear more. I don't know what kind of um response you guys might be interested in hearing. Are you you know what you need from us?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let's let's talk and lay out a little plan and share it with the rest of our colleagues here and see if they have any thoughts. We are on the planning commission after all. So we are I've been told uh the wetlands committee has been moving forward with an aggressive meeting agenda um and we look to have um a report and kind of a first round of recommendations out in the first meeting of December. So hopefully we'll have a product there and you'll be happy with it. That's it for me on this one. The planning administrators report everyone's favorite time.

Yeah. Um, thank you. Uh, just pointing out we don't have any items scheduled right now for the next meeting which is October 28th. Um, and then we do have two public hearings coming up on November 4th. So, comp plan zone changes associated with annexations where the planning commission makes a recommendation on the zoning and then the council decides to annex the property or not. Um, and just a reminder, planner pulooas tomorrow um, 4:30 to 6:30 at 440 food hall. So, we hope you will join us or anybody watching will come. There's some prizes, there's food, there's planners, there's posters, everything you could want. Yeah, it's always fun. So,

all right. Any questions for Lisa? Any comments for the good of the order? Any remaining comments? All right, bridge earned.