Road and Public Safety Committee - Regular Meeting

Let me call the meeting to order and respond when it comes up. That's great. There's some things I hope we can discuss with her. So what time do you have, Cassidy?

6.04.

6.04, call the meeting to order. I hope features anybody online. Would you agree?

No, there's no one online.

Let's skip over the public comment. Would someone make a motion to approve the minutes of the last meeting? Second. Any discussion? Any corrections? Any thoughts?

I think Rosemary's name was spelled wrong.

Rosemary's name was spelled wrong? Yeah.

Okay.

I have done that. It's Rosemary. I'm Rosemary.

Yeah. I did that.

Thank you for touching that. Okay. Anything else? So we vote on accepting the minutes with that correction. All in favor? Aye.

Aye.

of Boas, of Saint, John Bull of Saint, because he wasn't a member.

Okay, what just happened? What's that?

Okay, so I want to start off the meeting by making a little housekeeping comment. There are, I would say off the top of my head, 25 or 30 ABCs in this town government. It's agencies, boards, and commissions. And I would guess there's probably 150 to 200 volunteers on each of those. And this is intended not to pick, not to single anybody out, not to single this board out because I think it's a discussion that all boards should have. But if you are a citizen of this town and you want to contact anybody in the Board of Selectmen, about a personal issue, that's your prerogative. Go ahead and contact them. But if you're a member of this committee, I would ask that you not contact the person directly, but come through me. And that's just a matter of government efficiency. So Martha, she's got a schedule I can't believe she was here. I talked to her at 8.30 this morning. She's going to be here till 9 o'clock at night. That's a pretty long day. And she doesn't need 200 people contacting her. So if we can go ahead with that, that would be terrific. Go ahead.

Just to add to that, there's certain things that I won't probably go through you to do that, being a chief at the firehouse. So I might have to, because it sounds like you want, basically anytime you want to talk to her, I go through you. Am I understanding that correctly?

Anytime that you want to talk to her regarding a point of committee business. If you're in a fire department, you've got a fire department. That's between you and me. That's nothing to do with me. Okay, we're good. Okay, so I wanted to start off a little bit, maybe John could tell us what he's been doing over the last month or so. He reached out to Derek McGregor, who's a resident trooper, John's been doing some research on our signage. Hi. Go ahead. Go ahead, John. Sure.

Okay. So, yeah, I did reach out to Derek, and he and I were able to borrow a set of keys for the existing graphic signs. Can you explain that? Excuse me, John. Can you explain what a key is? Sure. So there's the three signs that we now have installed. Yep. They each have, they use two different keys. One is the key to the sign itself to open it, to service it.

Okay.

And it also is required in mounting or moving the sign. And there's another key that's required for a back plate that the sign basically slides onto and locks in place to mount it.

Okay.

So we don't have those keys. The town hasn't been able to locate them, whether Public Works or Derek or any of the other police. No one seems to know the whereabouts.

Did you even touch Facebook John Adams?

Yes, and he doesn't have the old line keys. So he let us borrow some keys, but he needs them back because they're theirs.

Did his keys work in our machines?

The ones that he gave me did. I don't know that they're all keyed alike. For example, he tried the Yukon keys to see if those are suitable because of the same manufacturer. They're not. Okay. but they're slightly different model. They're not the same key.

I'm just interjected that I would like, I will track down as I will find there were people who went out in the field to put them up and I'm sure they had the keys then.

So, so Derek gave me like a small, you know, a pack of like five keys. But they're all to the other sign that's the portable battery, the all traffic to motion sign, not the ones that are installed.

He gave the keys to the two newer Yukon signs that have not been installed.

No, no, the other sign that's the one that uses it. So I was going to go through it, but you're here already. So first of all, there's the all traffic shield fitting sign. It's not in use. This is the sign we talked about. trailers or doing something with is supportive and use, I guess, more as a portable sign?

We were going, our expectation was to use the two newly provided UConn signs as the portable signs.

Okay, then that's my most understanding. So when I went to see Derek, he gave me a sign that's not the UConn sign, but for the other UConn devices.

So it's another sign. It's a sixth sign.

It is, there's three, four, five, six, right? It's the sixth sign. So this is the sign that has the keys that fit it. Okay.

So I thought that was the solar power, the battery operated.

It is battery operated. Yeah. It's not the Yukon signs. Yeah. So to clear that up, they're all battery powered, but the solar charges the batteries. So they will function through the night. This other sign doesn't have the solar as an option, but that's quite high. What's that glass job? What does it run on? It runs on rechargeable batteries, lithium batteries, and those are quite expensive. There's four of the batteries. Two are in the unit and two are spares that you mentioned so you can swap them out. We're talking about the first sign. Those are the batteries that you just provided a quote for?

Yes, just for this one second. Yes.

Okay. So there's two batteries. I believe the sign can function on one battery, but not very, you know, not as long, obviously. It can function on the two batteries, and then you can remove them and replace with the other two. But one of the other two I know is it won't take a charge. Okay. The other two, the main two seem to be okay. The third one, maybe a little questionable. Maybe it will work somewhat. Okay. So I did contact that company actually today again to ask them about an external 12-volt source besides the solar option. And they said that there is. You can use it with like an optional power cord. They think around $50 would come through today. Yeah. So that's just a picked up, you know, splice cord. You plug it in the back and you can connect some 12-volt source to it that's at least 3 amps of clean 12-volt DC power, right? So that's That's probably the best option, and they said so too, is to just connect it with an external battery and not even bother with buying all the other batteries for it.

John, do you or Martha, do you know, has that sign with the batteries ever been employed in town? Has it ever been used in town?

Yes, they took the newbie, whoever was the newest police officer, that was their job. every day to go replace the batteries and make sure the next ones are charged and then the next day. So the newbies were always in charge of that. That was like two summers ago. When was this? I want to say it was on McCurdy and then they replaced it on McCurdy with one of the solar powered ones. But I think that's where it was initially. Dominic or Steve Hackett would have a better remembrance of when they did.

So that sign, technically, excuse me for trying to interrupt you, Jim, but it's easier for me to ask questions that might not really remember what you said and go back at the end. That sign can be used, but it can also be kept kind of in advance until, we talk about budget issues, because you're talking roughly, did I say roughly $1,800 for batteries for that?

It's four batteries that it has. It only needs to operate with two or for normal use for two. So two are functioning. So if there were two more batteries, you could swap the two batteries that were in it with two new batteries. The batteries, I think, are $900 or something. We're getting a kit that has a charger included with it. It's around the same price. But again, the better option that I was going to get to all this is to just use an external source is what they're saying. You can't just use an external source such as just a solar power panel. Obviously, the sun goes down and the sun will go off. It won't function after hours. And I'm not sure if it's meant to work that way. We've got sun on and off on and off, right? So that's what they... recommend it now this is i'm not saying you're even going to use the sign at all but i was under the impression that that was the sign that was going to be made perhaps moved around because it has some type of pin on it and i don't know how it mounts i'm not familiar i've never installed it or i think i have some instructions on it but i don't know how that sign it was used before where it was mounted how it was mounted or what's on something portable or permanent i'm not familiar with frank i didn't even know we had it Sure. So I'm just trying to give you a sense of what I've done. So, so that, so we know about that sign. Basically, external power is the best, but then there would be some cost or something like that, too. And that can be, you know, table that, figure that out later. Anyways, you have the quote for the batteries, I'll get you the quote for the power cord, and whatever that is. I haven't had time to test it, but I did charge two of the batteries, and I can test it. So that's it for that sign, other than it can have cloud access as well, but that's quite expensive. It's $1,500, I think, a year for just the one sign. So I think you guys have a quote for that. The three installed signs are the traffic logic written they use a slide-on mounting bracket, as I mentioned, and I'm double-checking that the parts are all, the way they're installed is not really the recommended way. For instance, the one that's right up here, the solar panel's very low on, it should be like 12 to 14 feet, but depending on where you mount, if your tree canopy and, you know, what site is chosen, who knows if it lowers better in certain conditions or, you know, or you'd be better off installing the sign better location work, it will have the power. Because if it doesn't, it will go offline or lose communication. So speaking of that, so two of the three signs were offline. The only one that was working with the cloud once it was up is this one. The one on Sil Lane and the one on McCurdy were not functioning with the cloud. One of them needed to have the SIM card re-initialized. And the other one, I needed to physically move the whole SIM card out into another slot with the board that it's on. So that's where I'm needing the keys for that or, you know, if we move them or anything. So I also, so I have some, get you a quote for that for the piece we don't have unless we can turn it up somewhere. Some of them are blue. The handle on them is blue. I have a picture of them. And one of them's on, at least one of them is missing on the lock. Another lock didn't look too good on them. So I gave you a quote for that. I think it's like $147. There's a free charge. They're a Canadian company.

Per or total? Per total.

So when you ask me about if there's other hardware and such, I can check that from what's mounted now, if they're mounted incorrectly, if there's something else that should really be on there or not, or missing anything else, but I haven't had a chance to do that. The cloud access, I would be able to get them, up them into providing me access till the end of May only. And so I can get those reports if I had, another email address other than, you know, using mine. I could add, like, a report user so someone else can go in. I don't know whom I want to let me know. And they could run reports as well, or I could show them how to do what I know. I don't know everything about the reports, but they're, I mean, how to run, I know how to run them, but there's several, there's a lot of search criteria and data you can try to build what you want.

John Evans did a crash course for me on that he knows how to pull and how to pull that and i'm sure that he would train us maybe in the summer when his schedule lightens up a little bit he might be able to sit down with us yeah i mean i can certainly show how it's done what you can do with it but i mean there's even asking the support team about it

they kind of said, well, you know, you can poke around and you'll figure it out. You know, so they're actually very good support, but when it came time to ask them about, you know, some questions about the reports and, you know, best way to run certain things, do certain things, they just kind of gave a little bit of information and said, you know, and then you can kind of go on your own. And I mean, I'm familiar with how to do things like that anyway. It's not that big of a deal. I'm just saying, to choose the data you want to see from the report and get what you want. There's a lot of options in there on how to do that. For instance, if you run just a weekly report, you're gonna get certain report data out. If you say, I want a custom report, it may not give you that same result, even though you might choose the same. So I haven't had a lot of time to run, and I did do some reports that I could share around.

I would just suggest that the Romeo Public Safety Committee email, even other emails, because that will stay consistent, and then to develop a password for it.

That was going to be my next question as well, is if you wanted to use that for something else.

Let me interject here for a second, and let me give all of you a little bit of background. So when John started looking at this, I have been bugging Martha about getting data for some time. And I'm glad we're able to get it. However, it was unexpected that the operation and collection of data for those signs was going to fall to this committee rather than the police department. It was always my expectation that John Devon from Vermont, who had a little bit of a head start from us, was going to work with Corporal Solari. And Corporal Solari was going to provide that information to us. I'm fine with the committee, as Martha said. We can use that data for for what are we gonna potentially recommend for various programs and so forth. And eventually as we move on, maybe it'll stay with this committee, depending on how the committee goes or not. But one of the things I would like to do, and maybe John, you and I and Martha can sit down, and I think it would be also appropriate to have Derek or his deputy sit with us and find out what information would they like to see from those signs as well. I just looked at one of these quickly, John, and I was actually stunned by Lime Street.

Yeah, I have some newer and perhaps better.

In one day from 10 in the morning to 6 a.m., 90% of the drivers going by the sign were speeding, which is pretty extraordinary.

Yeah, so we can look at that if you want to use that. email address or some other group email address to be able to, whatever they want access to, to be able to, you know, they want to use the, it'll be a credentials, right, to sign on. It'll just use the, whatever, it'll have some login, some password, but they need some email address. That's not the login. You know what I mean? It's just, it just needs some email address associated to the report user. And then they log in with that. or I haven't built the user yet, but I don't expect it's going to be an email address. The one I'm using to log on is not for the administrator. So then you also have the quote for the subscription for the three existing signs. And those are, well, less than the first sign we talked about, but over there on $500 a sign for a year, and then some multi-year discounts and some other things. But I mean, that's all I have on that is.

So again, excuse me for interrupting again. So I have talked to Martha and I guess I said something I needed that kind of shocked her a little bit. So again, this was not a task I anticipated this committee would do. And consequently, we have nothing budgeted for that. So we need to talk about how we can pay for that.

Like I said, I'm just trying to get all the information. I just tried to learn as much as I could about all the designs. And then UConn is awaiting installation. So those signs, I checked with Public Works to try to see if those keys would fit and they don't. So those are signs I could install. I mean, I've been through and such and how they function. There are two signs that are boxed up. They're very similar, but you mentioned about they might be more portable or whatever the case may be. And that's fine too. So whatever the case is, those are just installed and then you kind of configure. They do all of what And then they provide the data, I guess, as you got over, unless you had another user way to get into UConn or someone.

And the two UConn signs, those ones don't have cloud subscriptions, right? The storage and access is free from traffic logic?

They do, but they're funded by the state or whomever through UConn, right?

Perpetuity or for a limited amount of time?

For a limited amount of time. You know how long? Seven years. they told me.

Let me ask you a quick question, John, in your background. I know that one of the quotes you had for three existing patents, those are seven years out. How much do you think technology could change in seven years? If we get a seven-year contract, are we going to be using obsolete machines in five years?

Well, I wouldn't say necessarily. I mean, I'd say they're fairly simple for what they do. We're not looking at you know, traffic cameras, I mean, that would be a different device, right? So if you were looking to have something that was a camera that also did this, then perhaps you'd be looking at, you know, buying additional units with both capabilities, but whether you still, depends on how many signs you need, right? If you have, the two that UConn supply, those are ours once we get them to town, owns them or will own them, and then the subscription after the seven years goes to the talent, like the other ones are. They're almost the same model, just they're called an EV12, and the EV12 FM is the one that we have installed, and that just means full message, so the message can be customized. For the other ones from UConn, you can't do that.

Is it seven years after receipt or seven years after installation?

I didn't get a chance to ask them, but I'm expecting because they can't do the cloud set up until the sign is up, right? So, I mean, unless that's something about the funding of it taking place with, you know, if you don't start after a certain period of time, then that would be.

I would mention a little unfortunate circumstance. In my discussion with Sean Bradley, who I think John has been dealing with as well, my understanding that UConn offered signs to the town in the past. The town passed on the signs and ended up buying the signs that were now paid for the cloud access for.

I was not under my administration.

I really believe that last year when they came down with those signs, they had just such a collection of people that had never taken them. They just wanted to get them out of their warehouse. He was like, would you like two sun? But I said, sure, I'll take two more sun. So he gave them to me. He just brought them down. And originally in the agreement, it said you have to have them up within three weeks or three months. I think it was three months. You have to have them up in three months. You have to get approval from us where you're going to put them. But when he brought them down, he was like, I don't care where you put them. And they don't have to get up in three months. If you can't get them up for six months, seven months, a year, He goes, but they're now yours. I was like, okay, well, thanks. And he didn't tell me anything about cloud service either. He just was happy to drop them off.

Let me talk. One of the things I like to do is try to think out of the box, if I may. And I would be willing to contact Sean Bradley and say, do you have more signs in a box somewhere? Could you give us more and we could retire the ones that we would need to pay for cloud access for as we can get pre-cloud access for counting more signs.

I did ask him if there was some things, as I asked him, is it possible to have our current signs on the safe? And they said, no, they can't do that. Unless, I don't know, time during the past. They asked him the same question. They didn't say anything could do that. So then they also have the other type, you know, the code of the model number, but the boxes that can be mounted that don't have a speed warning they're just a counter and a speed measuring device but they also either work with the cloud or they take the unit and take the data from that. So the batteries have to be replaced in those as well they told me but I have some information on what I've gone through or videos or whatever.

So

So yeah, they just seem like they wondered, you know, when those were going to be installed for the other Yukon, the two Yukon signs that we do have. And then not be my only certain that was, if I was going to put them up, I'd rather put them up where it's not a hundred degrees out. It could be permanently on and try to get them up sooner than later. Let's see what else do they have. This here, there. So then I also mentioned about my owner was Haunters Hollow with the straightaway and street signs.

Let's get into that a little later, John. Let's stick to the signs.

Okay, so there's that, and then I have the traffic data that you have some of it. I did rerun a couple of things, and I was going to make some copies, but that didn't work out very well. So this is, were you looking at Lyme Street on the report for that, right? So this is just, I ran this as a weekly report. The Lyme Street sign, when I ran a report from 5-5 to 5-19, it didn't capture anything from the first week in 5-5. And I called them today about it, and they said it's not from them either. For some reason, that data isn't there. So when I re-ran it online, So this is 511 to 517, but I ran this as a weekly report. I know you mentioned that John had run something like that. So this has shown here an average of 82%, but when I look at the other reports I ran for the other side, this average doesn't look correct to me. It has 15,167 vehicles in the period, 9,503 total violations, and then it shows speeds and counts over here so in other words like just for instance 51 to 55 miles an hour in 10 or during that period right and so it has 85 percent speed limit all the different things the time of the hour of the day and it shows here on the hour on this it's kind of like but this graph here has the hour of the day and the peak time like 9 to 11 and

9 to 11 at night?

It's showing starting, like everyone knows, in 2400 hours. So no, it's at the end of the day. And then it drops, we can see your traffic drop off. So it'd be midnight with nothing. And then it just builds up from here at 3, 4 a.m., 5 a.m. It goes up. This would be 9 a.m. here and spikes. And then it says 10. And then that's 11. And it starts dropping back down.

Is that on a specific date? That's a very weird time.

No, so this is the total number of them, but it's showing the time over that whole period. And then it has like, you know, it's showing 4,162.

So this is averaged every hour for every day of the week?

I think it's every 15 minutes or every hour.

How many vehicles did you say were driving?

18,000.

But in your two-week period, like this one.

No, no, this is different than that. There were reports from before I ran this as a weekly one, but this is for this sign. This came up and shows 15,167. I questioned the number of that, and they said that those numbers should be correct. So how would you determine? For a week? I'm just going to show you. Now, I'm getting to. I can get out to my morning and start counting myself. I'm getting there to the rest of it. So now I did speak to them, like I said, today. But this is a weekly report, daily values. So it shows 4,353 on the Monday. And then it drops down to like 800 or something, you know, or below the Monday through Saturday, the Tuesday through Saturday in the following. So this is what the chart shows from this data that I ran. So what dates were those? The same period, the 11th through the 17th. But you can take a look at this.

Is the number, the percent of violations on Monday lower than the rest of the days of the week?

Is the percentage of it lower on Monday?

The reason why I ask that is because the only reason why there would be so many more vehicles on a specific day is if there's an accident on 95 and people are cutting across to try and get to the post road from 156, in which case they're driving really slowly and there shouldn't be any violations.

I'm not done yet. Autographs. That's what the data shows, but I'm not done yet. John, please. That's what it shows. Yeah, I did speak to them, and they said there are things that can trigger the device that are not vehicles. And in those cases, you might be getting something going on with the sign, but that has to be troubleshot at the sign with them on the other end. So I don't know that that's 100% correct. They are saying the number of vehicles you're going to see is going to be quite high in most cases that most people don't expect. I don't know that that's right. I don't live right there.

Okay, we're doing too deep a dive into the data. This is an hour meeting. We've spent over half the meeting on this subject and we haven't gotten off of item one, John.

We just started with this, right? This is not your meeting. It's the committee's meeting. I understand that. So what I'm saying is we need to look at... I'm done with what I have. This was just in the on-campus. This is just the other two signs. These are for three weeks. But it has the same data. And I can give this to you or whatever you want to do.

I don't need it right now.

What I'd like to do is... Anyone who wants to look at it.

But I'm done. That's all I really have. Okay. But it's 6.30. So we're good. So, well, again, I don't mean to be rude, John, but I do need to move the meeting along. And Martha has to be at 7. I believe it's at...

I see. It's 6.35. I'm done. Okay, that's all I have. So I just wanted to let you know that's what the data says. And if it's inaccurate, that's not on me.

Yeah, so my conclusion to this part of the discussion would be that we need to consider data accuracy and credibility. And we also need to look at the data. What is most important from all this material that's being collected in the cloud to both this committee and possibly the police department and see if we can tailor reports to provide just that. And frankly, I think it's gonna be really helpful for everybody if we can coalesce that down into some more succinct reports. What I'm showing you here is this has 84% of the violations.

That one says P2, we'll check them up with 63 and the other one was... The other one was something else.

They were all high. So I have a question I think that's being discussed over here.

What's the threshold for speeding? What's the threshold for violation? Is it one mile per hour over the time limit?

I'm just curious as to what we're... Police departments can theoretically pick one mile over the speed limit, whether they practically choose to do that or not. I think that's probably a general rule of thumb from pretty much all the towns that are running APSCDs and talking to Eastline, that they're giving people a race period of about 10 miles per hour.

Is that reflected in the data that we have here? Yes.

When they say, when they're counting violations, these speed feedback signs, is the violation anything over the posted speed limit, or is it 10 miles an hour above the posted speed limit?

It's everything. Anything above the posted speed limit? 1 to 5 miles an hour, 27, 6 to 10, 21, 11 to 15, 62, and it just goes up.

So then in order for it to be useful data for us, we need to run it so that it's always 10 miles an hour above the speed limit.

Okay.

I would say that as soon as we begin giving the public statistics about speeding in the town of Old Lyme, we have to feel very confident that we understand the data that is being presented to us and that we can account for errors. So I think everyone doesn't believe that 15,000 vehicles pass Lyme Street in a week. So figuring out how to fiddle with the system and get it so that it's not counting bicycles or whatever it's doing, leaves falling, I don't know.

Sure. Yeah, so that's an excellent point. So I would say in John's benefit, we're brand new, we're just starting to work with this and we will get those kinks out of it. You do want to move along. So I sent everybody, I think I sent you all this image. This is the kind of, I talked to John Evans. I was under the impression that John built a trailer and actually had a Boy Scout who was going to build this one as part of his Eagle project. But in fact, John bought a trailer and had Public Works modify it to hold the sign in the solar panel out. He is not going to go that way again. He said it was, more of a headache than it was worth. And he's going to go ahead and buy one of these. He's got money, he's budgeted, that he's going to put in a purchase order in July. And our plan was always to have... I will send this out again. If you all haven't received it, I'll send that out again to everybody. So our plan was to have the two UConn signs be mobile. And again, I talked to Martha about that. We budgeted monies in the next fiscal year for that purpose. I actually contacted Traffic Logic, asking them for a quote on the thing. I was told that they needed to get the serial numbers of the devices to make sure the trailer will accommodate that. And I said, well, I don't have those and I'm not going to open a box. And she says, I know Sean Bradley from UConn. I'll call him. I'll get the serial numbers and I'll give you an exact quote. And I said, I'll get back to you by the afternoon. That was yesterday. I called her at 3.30 today. She hasn't called me back. So the other thing I wanted to talk about too is I think I sent you all information from UConn. John has alluded to these kind of stealth devices that UConn has available. These devices are, what's the word, completely anonymous. They collect no information on a vehicle. They just pick vehicle one going 50 miles an hour, and that's it, vehicle two, vehicle three. And interestingly, I think I sent you all the data, and I'm gonna see if I can send all the data to you, because I think you got about one of six pages for each thing. I do have difficulty sending, I do have difficulty attaching large files to the Tom email account. And we'll talk to Tom about that.

Even I do.

Okay.

So what I do is sometimes I say, I'm sending you three emails and there's three attachments on each one.

Okay.

And I send them out because sometimes it's the way you got to go.

Well, the interesting thing about this, Sophie and I wanted to particularly mention it is they show speeding with a enforcement tolerance of 11 miles per hour. So they are not, when they say they're speeding violations, they're not talking about what some police departments do when they're in wage disputes and start ticketing people one mile an hour with weapons. And I thought it, and we had talked to both Derek McGregor and Sean Bradley before he left on vacation. And the police department picked Sean's file Holden's officers, and they picked three locations. One was on Shore Road, roughly where the State Rest Area is. Another is on Route 1. And the third was on Townwoods Road. They thought those, subjectively, were going to be the most problematic. Interestingly, two of the three work. Townwoods Road and 156 were considered to have high speed problems. Route 1 was not surprising with what was much less speeding traffic there. I think that John has perhaps talked to you about employing those signs. I was told by Sean at one time thing, but I think it's probably contingent on how many other people are requesting those signs.

They said they had two available at the time I spoke, but I don't think you can find as many as you need.

I think it'll be helpful for those committees, certainly on Shore Road, is to redo that again post-Memorial Day when we start to get a lot of these traffic coming in on the road. And we can maybe think of one or two other locations to do that.

Can I ask a question?

Sure.

Would it be useful to ask for these types of devices to be placed and the places that we already have speed feedback signs to compare data to see if they are, in fact, counting the same number of vehicles?

No, that's not a bad idea. My first thought would be it's kind of a waste of resources, but on the second thought, to have kind of a data accuracy check is perhaps a good idea.

Maybe if you just picked one, start with one.

The thing I was trying to get to before is the signs have an installation requirement and the solar panels should be like 12 to 14 feet high. The signs should be at seven feet. Part of that is for tampering, but really, if you don't have the right distance from the ground and you can pick up different things, feedback, who knows? So that's why I said the one out here is very low. It's a bit... So you think it's installation may be compromising its accuracy? It's probably either a shorter pole or just the way they have them mounted. It's very low down and the solar panel is down very low. So it's nowhere near the height requirement that they recommend. They have to be in a straightaway. There could be other factors of buildings and things. It's just the way that they're configured. But they need to have the straightaway without the traffic on the other side in line with it so much.

Irrespective of the fact that we have an issue of how we're going to obtain the data via future cloud access after June 1st. Do you think it would be beneficial to reinstall those signs properly to make sure? And is that something that John could work with Public Works on with that?

Yeah, I'm surprised that they're installed improperly because it was like a huge deal, there were police officers there, there were public works, there were, I think John Evans might have been here for the first one, and then he left after that, I don't know, but there were, this was, I mean, I pushed and pushed to get them up, and, you know, finally Matt Weber, and they made a plan, and they went out, and they had to get the right polls, and they had to get, they had all these things done, and they Steve Hackett and Dominic, I'm pretty sure we're both on the team of installation. And it wasn't an easy process. They're heavy. They're very heavy. So it was a to-do. I mean, they were so proud of themselves when they came back to say, they're installed. I was like, that's great. I am going to be, I'm a little upset about the keys because somebody put them in their pocket and They went somewhere.

Yeah, they're not installed. Per the manufacturer's suggested installation requirements, right? So, I mean, they're on, they're working.

John, have you or can you talk to Trabic Logic and ask them explicitly, they are mounted at this height and whatever. Would that compromise their accuracy?

From what they told me today, that if you want to make sure the numbers are right, whatever, to get there with a sign and go through. And I don't know, I'll probably just send them pictures of here's where it's mounted. Here's the road location. This is what it looks like. Vehicles are parked here. It's just five off the ground. There's sidewalk, several buildings.

Most likely they haven't been able to get sales rep. The sales rep will come and analyze it for you. After what we paid for them.

Yeah.

They should be rolling out a red carpet for us.

They're just not. They're not installed the way the insulation structures are. And how much of the difference does that make? Well, for instance, if the solar is too low, like I said, or blocked by trees, too much foliage, then it's going to go offline. Someone will say, well, the battery, the power, you have to lose communication.

It just bounces on and off, on and off, on and off. I'll give you a little bargaining chip that you maybe could use to get somebody out here, John. You tell them that... We're using those signs preparatory to whether we want to make a recommendation at the time, considering ATSCD is where they sell.

They're in Canada, so yes, they might have a little support, but they're in Canada.

Yeah, they're also working with about eight different towns in Connecticut on ATSCD. I've seen them in the cold state of Brooklyn. I've seen some different in West Brooklyn.

Great. I would like to make a suggestion about the solar-powered signs. I think the solar-powered signs, should be mounted on one of the trailers. And I'm going to say this because we have events in town, you know, during the summer, even at school events, like when there's a big night where it's back to school night or something. I think it would be very nice because they're short-lived and battery is short-lived, easier to do the battery if the sun is lower. But that could be mounted on a trailer. And moved from event to event, kind of to just get the idea of what's happening on any given time. So I know we have Brighton Road. They're concerned. It could be down there on a given night. We could move it from place to place, but the battery would be easier to replace back and forth. I'm just saying that there are nights, midsummer festivals. How quite about when people are zooming around here to get to the flow grid.

You're referring to the non-solar power one. Right. All the rest are solar. I know.

Sorry, battery operated one. Right. Yeah. I'm just thinking that that's an idea to make use of something that is more difficult. It's not going to collect data for us, but it will help. to somewhat enforce the feed limit on any given.

I don't know if you've had that and the counter device from Yukon, if you can compare the two of them.

How about a cop nearby so when the sign flashes like five.

I had a nice conversation with John Evans. John Evans is strongly, strongly in favor of the portable trailers. He said that you get a better reading because people know where the signs are mounted permanently. And some people are not going to matter, but some people are going to react to that word. They're taken by surprise when you're noticing the signs around town and you're getting readings from different locations. It makes it much more comprehensive, effective.

I can just mention one thing before we forget that I didn't note down. So the signs that do communicate with the cloud, so they have the address, so like Lime Street, So if the signs have moved, the existing sign location, that stays, it stays on the cloud. You don't really have to change it or anything. You just move the sign, the batteries have to be taken out, or John told me the signs will be damaged. So to take the batteries out, uninstall a sign, move it, and then new location has to be built is what they say. So the other one stays with the cloud data, with everything that was there, and say you moved it from here to, you know, Route 1, and then it would go on Route 1, and Route 1 would have a new address, a new location that UConn would do. That's the way these signs are, and they're the same brand, same cloud as the others. So I believe that they would have to be notified. The signs then go from here to here. They do the same thing I just described.

Yeah, I mean, I move around on my phone and can tell the exact GPS where I am. I can't imagine it's going to be too.

I just mean, if you took the sign from here and moved it on another street, it's going to report the data that it's tonight. It's going to be wrong. All the data will say that.

So if you move the Lime Street sign to Ferry Road, it's going to show the data as Lime Street?

Yeah.

It's a location, right? The location, well, the location stays right where it is. So the signs are not smart enough to know where they are. They just collect data and then push the data out. Okay. So they are programmed, but the location is programmed to where it is, right? The cloud notes. So I have a couple of things.

Not going to drop it off, but I'll go on. The trailer thing, I like the idea of the trailers because like I said, you can move them more. you know, figuring out how to get the data. It does like date, right? From this date to this date. So you just write down the date that you have to move it, bypass location, and okay, this date, I know it was at McCurry-Verto. So if we have these signs, let's say, tentatively, like a tech school, like Grosso Tech, they have their, while they do department and things like that, they may be able to be like, hey, you know what? They, small fees, because they, you know, make a little bit of money off it, Just a thought, I mean, we could get prices on how much, hey, we can supply you with a trailer. Like, for instance, my neighbor actually has a trailer that's, I've been there for seven years, they've never used it. I'm like, hey, would you donate it to the town? Get a little letter for tax write-off. And then maybe we could get, like, a tax school to manufacture something similar to this. You know, fairly, I don't think it'd be, you know, crazy expensive compared to buying one if we already had it. So that part of it's done. So the sign nothing, the signposts are usually, I believe they're 10 feet. The only way you're going to get, I mean, that's 14 feet probably up there. You literally don't have to put it onto a telephone pole. You know? So to be realistic, when you drive to different towns, do you ever see a sign that high?

No. I would say Marshfield, Massachusetts, which is where the first time I ever saw them, they, what they do is they, um, put them up on a regular signpost, the actual, it's a more enhanced one, but a signpost, but then they take an extension of that and they move, they move it up. So the two posts, so you don't have to climb, but the solar power is above it. And they do this with their stop signs, speed signs, everything is all, the solar things are hooked above. Being saw, I know their stop signs are not that much higher because it, that is, it's further similar. That's only like two feet above the sign. But I don't know what it is for their state signs. I haven't like got a measure, but.

They're going to do something like that, or even the Yukon signs, if they're going to go on trailers and maybe could tell Yukon, then we're just going to want them to be named Yukon sign number one, Yukon sign number two, or whatever. Oh, lying. Yeah. Yukon something without a street address. And then the sign is never tied to a location that way. And then you.

So just a quick point on that. John Evans said it's really important that you make this as visible as possible beyond the sign with reflectors. You don't want anybody hitting this and causing an accident. And I talked to Yukon too about putting signs up on state highways. You said that John Evans had done that. I'm not going to lie. UConn says the state will let you put up a speed sign, but if you're using a post, it has to be a breakaway post. Right. Which is common. Yeah.

We just need to switch to all of those. So as we replace them, that's what we're going to make down.

I just wanted to jump in really quickly. I'm sorry that we're running low on time. Sophie sent out a memo I hope you all looked at, but she talked about the relationship between speed limits and speed fatalities, which is a pretty proven correlation. The one thing that issue that I have, and I remember Gerard Brumaci brought this up way back when, is when people ask us to lower the speed limit, like write notes, can we lower the speed limit to 15 miles per hour? I feel uncomfortable making that recommendation because I don't know what is an appropriate speed for a particular road. Did you receive training as the town's traffic authority on that? So if someone says a new road, how do you pick what the speed limit on a new road is going to be when it's opening?

Well, it'll tell you this, is that John Misham is against moving. He said the signs were not going to attention. They're driving a different speed. He said if it's a 20 mile an hour sign now and they're going 35 or 40 down the road, You move it to 15, they're still going to go 35 to 45 miles down the road. And he said, we're going to buy new signs that like $50 to $60 a pop, put them in. And then he said, he didn't see, I mean, he was a state policeman. And he said, the sign does not deter them from speeding. And 20 miles an hour, I mean, I think if you want to put the speed bumps in, That's fine. But I really think the most important thing for Brighton Road is we need to have a speed trap there for a couple of weeks. And once they know you're there and they get used to it, it's like three weeks. You do it. You catch them and you ticket them. That is the important thing. You ticket them. Then after about three weeks, You can go away, and they'll think, two weeks later, they'll be like, I'm not here. And then you just go back for one night.

I think what we were just saying, moving the trailer there for Thursday night, that was the issue with the members and their dinners. Right. And then having a police officer there with a sign to read the speeding infractions and then issue tickets.

Yeah. That's a nice segue into the Brighton Road issue. So I spoke before Boris Flagman, April 20th, in Brighton Road. And I was rather taken aback by the fact that we had two gentlemen that attended this committee who specifically asked that the speed limit be reduced. One of the two gentlemen spoke before the Board of Selectmen and says, I don't think we need to do that. After he had already recommended us to do, we recommended that we do just that. I have put together some rough information, not to the specificity that either would like, but roughly what it's going to cost for speed humps on that road We can talk about that in the other budget matters.

For any of you who love feed bumps, and I'm sure Ken, you've done, the other day, bumps, bumps, whatever they are. Well, there is, but when you're going over them, I don't know how much different the car takes over it. But I will say that White Sands has just added two more. White Sands has added two more. They have nine feed hump bumps. going down. And as I left the beach the other day, I thought, I'm going to go up Springfield. And you know what? There's nine coming down White Sand, and if you go up that way, there's nine going to back out.

So it doesn't matter. I think they're a little excessive, and they're also, and probably would be more familiar with us, they're also high enough and tight enough that they give you a good jolt. And those are the ones that I know Ed Adante was really

did not like at all i'm hoping we'll have something more graphic but i i will just say that the one thing that i was impressed with when i saw going to my friend's house in hartford was a traffic table and i loved that and as soon as i thought and we went over the first one i said to my husband i need these in online almost like this that this yeah seven or eight inches maybe it goes up and it's almost like a heavy duty it's not concrete it's like a heavy duty foam i mean almost like a foam cushion and you go up and you come down and so it's literally like and it's painted like with this intense like arrow and so you feel like you're taking off your breath where were these They were up in Hartford in the name of the road. But I did go on Google Earth the other day looking for them. And I wonder if they are portable because I didn't see them on the picture, which was taken not that many months ago. And we were out there last spring at his house for dinner. So I thought. I'll have to ask. I can text them and find out if they're still there.

Where I live in Cambridge, they would use speed tables for crosswalks. So the crosswalk would be over top of the speed table to encourage folks to sit down.

Moving on, we did have two questions. So John has said that there are speeding issues by his house on the road, but there are not signs that indicate what the speed limit is there. Not that area. Would you like to make a quick choice, quick appeal that the committee can vote to recommend you have signs put, John? Yes.

Wolf Law wrote that.

Saunders Hall. Saunders Hall is a bad speeding room that I've been in my high school as well.

Yeah. Martha, should we make a vote and make a recommendation to you or can I send you a memo to have?

You want new signs?

New signs. Yeah. Signs where there are no existing signs, correct?

Yeah. Both directions. Straight away and both directions. And then potentially we could use something else.

Speed limit signs or the trailer? Speed limit signs. These are actually posted as regular posts. 25 mile an hour sound. I think they said

I don't know, meaning we have to have a speed limit assigned here. They sort of need a counter or anything that has to be assigned to it to tell people what the speed is. So they're not just looking for the speed of the counter to flash or whatever.

Yeah, usually it's like mounted almost next to it.

Right, right. Yes. But we're not right on the same thing.

These are, I like these because they are removable. You can move them all the way around wherever you want.

That's the info?

It's look up rubber form recycled product.

What company is that?

Huh?

What company was that?

Is that?

Rubber Form. Rubber Form. That's what it's called.

Yeah, what I'm speaking of is if we could just have something in there that would be permanent because it's a restaurant.

That was one of the first things this committee did was to see. I think it looked like.

There are locations around town that should have a sign that didn't. Are there signs that no sign on light rail or stop sign? Better go. Because it's so much.

I like these because they're, you know, if the water traffic isn't going out, they get out of there and they just go.

This would be better for a fire truck. Yeah, yeah. I can't do that around my phone. No idea. Or you can all go shopping tonight.

I'll look it up. I'll look it up. We've got a call.

But I like these because, A, they're easily removed. They don't damage your tarmac. They cause little harm to your road. And that's what I just think. That's fine.

I had to kind of cue my research off of what Frank Peplaro was telling me.

I know. I just know that you haven't had enough sleep. I think we just have to make some decisions there. Whatever. Whatever. And we should just put balloons all over Brighton Road and they go over them.

I want to make one last quick point. This is kind of asking for a volunteer. If nobody wants to raise their hand now, please think about it. So one of the issues this committee should address is whether we're going to have automatic speed enforcement in this town. We did a survey and we talked to other towns. We have a sense of that the community definitely feels there's a speeding issue in town. And we've learned that other towns are successfully using the devices. We seem to be on the road now to determining is there an actual speeding problem in town that we can determine independently aside from a company that has invested in this intelligence there's a speeding problem. And the third kind of leg of a three-part stool is what's the accident data in town? And we've got, a lot of ad hoc information, but the Connecticut Crest repository and some other information can kind of help us do a fuller picture. If anybody would like to look into that and do some research, that would be terrific. And I can kind of talk with whoever would be at the service. And we can look at sources. And Rob Haraba from River Cod can help us too. So if someone would like to do that, let me know. Other than that, I think we're a little bit over time. I think we... Have a quick meeting. Are we all set to adjourn? Your recommendation. Your recommendation. Yes, I'm sorry. I will take a ride down Saunders Hollow with Ed, and we will determine.

where the signs were supposed to go. I think it's 20 feet from the corner you start. You can't start because you have to be able to turn and actually get the site very thin. And then you're supposed to be so many feet apart. But let me tell you how many there really are. And then what we would have to do to put them in. If I get the order for June, his budget, I'll just tell you, and he's always very proud of the way he budgets. I appreciate that, but he's way over budgeted this year because we had a lot of snow, more salt, and then he just, and the fuel tanks just had some cracks in them, so we just approved that to be done. So that's $11,000 that he didn't count on on his budget. So he gets a little leery, even though. So we'll figure out where he is in his budget, and if we're going to be able to, we do what we call a transfer out if we have to, so His budget was over, but another budget is.

There are a lot of signs maybe in the storage facility.

We don't buy them. He doesn't buy them in bulk.

Not really taking them down, right? They're always just up.

Yeah. And I have a different viewpoint in public works. We're always going to need signs. Why don't we just buy them in bulk? But he also gets, migrates from OSHA because his public works building is absolutely beautiful and there's no violations so he's like that's because they don't have a lot of time playing around so I will I will go do an inventory with him I have not been over there but I'm not doing it tomorrow because it's the one day I'm taking off I'd like to try to show you what what I'm thinking because if it's not

lead weight into it. Then if something was put, if you need so much in front of a sign, if some sign was put there near it, one of these other types, then they'd have that, whatever it is, 250 feet of... Do you feel that there's a time of day when it's worse? Some of it is traffic, I'm sure, getting out of school and probably going back and forth. You know, the higher traffic times. You know, it's not every single day all the time, you know. but you see that, but like I also walk and ride my bicycle and such, and I think vehicles just cut down it, go through some lane to try to get to the highway or go the other way, out where we want, and then come back and go up through.

Yeah, it's definitely when we've gone up there for incidents. Yeah.

They're like, I'm just trying to get through that area, and so I cut through.

Like, can't go that way.

Okay. Well, I'll take a ride with him next week, and we'll go count signs and what we'd need and what we've got. Because I've never seen the inventory over there at public works. So I don't know truly what he's got, but we'll figure that out.

Can someone make a motion to adjourn the meeting? Second? All in favor?