City Council - Regular Meeting

All right, we will call the meeting to order of uh Ripen City Council on February 10th, 2026. Um let's stand for pledge of allegiance. Remain standing. Just a read out. Oh, excuse me. Apologize. A readout of our close session. There was no reportable action out of close session. Thank you.

Now, we'll go to the pledge of allegiance. Remain standing for the invocation. Good evening. My name is Pastor Mark Van Djk of Ammon Valley CRC and I'm actually also a cadet leader for these boys who are here getting their citizenship badges today. And so, uh, let's pray to begin the meeting. Oh Lord, you are so good to us, sending the rain on the earth to make plants grow so that there would be uh a harvest to bring in in the coming months. You send the rain on the just and the unjust. You are faithful to care for your creation. You have given peace and prosperity to this city, Rien. And God, we pray that you will richly bless the leaders of this city. Give them wisdom. Give them understanding of your way. Help them to do what is right and just and good. Lord, we pray not only for council members, but for first responders that you would give safety in their work as they do the important task of keeping the city safe. Lord, we pray that you will now bless this meeting, that you would give wisdom to each person who speaks, that you would guide us in your perfect will in Jesus name. Amen.

All right, Lisa, roll call, please. Council member Daniel Degraphth, Leo Zuber, Mikea, present. Vice Mayor Dean Uker, here. Mayor Gary Burton

present. At this time, um, if there's anyone with us who would like to discuss something that is not on the agenda, this time is afforded to you. Our poet laurate approaches. Hello everyone. Um, I got my citizenship badge already. So, I'll just read some poetry tonight. Uh, I got to get to the right one though. Here it is. My name is Emil Galermo, first poet laurate of Ripen. Our next poetry share is on the 18th, Wednesday, at 4 p.m. at the Ripen Public Library. Tonight, two short poems. Missing Ripen, I'm drawn to the Ammons. I was born in San Francisco when it had no hat, no skyscrapers, just blue skies and short buildings. No more Manhattanization won out. I was just a kid when voters decided what did it mean San Francisco would no longer feel like a small town. Let not like a ripen and without the Ammons. Some real nuts, yes, but no Ammons. And now I live in the city of the Ammons and I miss that quality. I am in Manhattan. The sound of that middle a reminds me of the sound of Ammons. But the apple is not the big Ammon. NYC is colder than winter should be anywhere. Too cold for the groundhog or the Ammons. I'm performing in a play off Broadway off off Broadway wearing a sequin jacket. I play a Liberace inspired blowhard character. Not typ casting. Am I good? The jacket looks great. I'm ready to go home. But I have to beat the storm of 2026. The one that

stretches from New Mexico to Maine, dumping snow, leaving ice. It's coming straight at me. I rebooked to the earliest possible flight. My strategy to ride into the face of the storm, into its leading edge to beat mother nature. At 3:00 a.m., it takes just 15 minutes to get to JFK. A miracle. The departure board says canceled, cancelled, cancelled. But I am uncancellable. The only flight leaving is mine. The airport is deserted. At TSA, I still get patted down. I should have told them, I'm just going to Ribbon. Or are we? The airport is so empty. Is this the rapture plane to the heavens? We beat the elements and our flight is full and soon airborne. We fly over the country all covered in white. I sleep through the flight and wake up at Harvey Milk, the terminal. But the trip does not end there. My wife gets me and we continue to drive over the Altimont's green hills down into the reassuring flatness of the valley. We turn on Jack Tone, pass all the fast food in our slow town. It's so quiet on my street I can't hear 99. As I pull into my driveway, I'm home in time for the Ammons. I made it home. I made it home. The second poem, Ripen, when the Ammons proclaim themselves. In Ripen, the trees are always with purpose, quiet, workmanlike. They do without fanfare the money part. There's some knocking required, but it's all business. Then after the harvest in the cold, then wet, they cycle back to their glory time. In February, the trees know who they are. They aren't grapes nor peaches. related to peaches. If you look at the pit, the stone, the family stones, and when the trees celebrate, their small white

flowers explode, crown the skies, and blanket the fields, declare from orchards, row after row, every last one, a gauntlet of blossoms, proclaiming aloud, excitedly, "Hey, we're here. We're here and ready to go nuts." Thank you very much. Emil, a Liberace suit for the next reading would be pretty terrific.

All right. Is there anyone else who would like to address the council? If not, uh, let's move to approval of the minutes. Second. And Lisa, is that that's two sets of minutes. Is that right? Very good. Uh that

not registering There we go. Okay. Um, are there motion for approval of the agenda is posted? Are there any items that anyone would wish to pull? I have one item 1.4B. I'll move to approve the agenda as amended. Second

motion second. All right, our amended agenda is approved and uh see we go now to the item that's older, the consent calendar. Consent calendar.

Okay. So, we will now uh move to approve the consent calendar with the amendment of the item that has been pulled. So, a motion to that. All right. So, let's go to item that was pulled. I asked to pull item 1.4B, uh, the, uh, quarterly financial analysis. And there was a part of this that Lisa can explain that um uh I guess the numbers didn't quite add up to me. She explained why and I thought it would be appropriate for those uh in our city to be able to understand what I was confused by. Lisa,

thank you, Mr. Mayor. On page two of the staff report, um Mayor Barton pointed out that the total on the bottom for the estimated annual rate of return that I have noted is 3.81% 81% is actually lower than all the estimated annual rates of return that we get from um our various investments. That is actually just the interest that we earn for the quarter divided by whatever the balance is at the end of the quarter. So technically that's not really a rate of return and I will be taking that off of um future um reports because it was a little bit misleading since that 3.81% was lower than the actual returns that we are getting from our investments. Great. Thank you, Lisa. Okay. Um, so, uh, let's see. We need a motion now to approve that item.

Move. Second.

All right. quarterly investment report has been approved. That concludes our consent calendar. Let's move to uh ordinances. And again, uh Lisa, this is not me, but thank you very much. Oh, it's not Oh, it's Chief. I I could take this one, M. M.

It's Kevin. Okay. Uh the last time um I believe it was at the January city council meeting uh engineering staff went through the overall engineering and traffic survey that was recently completed and uh through that analysis there were five roads that were identified for speed limit changes. Um so we went through those last time but some of the discussion uh was around Hoff Drive between Colony Road and Santos Avenue. Uh the initial recommendation from staff was to increase that from 25 to 35 miles per hour. Um after taking consideration of council's comments and going back and looking at the data a second time, uh engineering staff did change the recommendation to uh 30 miles per hour. So So that's what's included in this first reading and introduction. So happy to answer any any questions. Everybody does.

Yeah, you are. Okay. Very good. Thanks, Kevin. Are there any questions for staff? Do we have it right? Um, if if not, is there a motion to I'll move to wave the first reading and adopt the res the ordinance and introduce introduce. Motion in a second. Got to get my thing here. The upside down one.

All right. Uh and next ordinance uh regarding u uh city. Let's see. We did that. No, just a discussion item. Yeah, correct. Yeah, we're done with ordinances. All right, so our next item is uh discussion on our short short range transit plan. Kevin,

thanks, Mr. Mayor. Um the the city does operate a a transit service here in Ripen. Um it's the Blossom Express. We run that um Tuesdays and Thursdays from close to 9:00 a.m. to to 2 pm. Uh what we did was take an opportunity to retain a consultant. It's LSC Transportation Consultants uh to come in and evaluate our our service and look for ways to make it more efficient or to um to improve it uh within the the funds that we have available to to do that service. So Genevie Evans is is here. She's with LSC Consultants and we've been working with her um to go through this process. This is um right now it's a draft of the short range transit plan. Tonight we're looking for input of the city council on on this draft. Once we receive that input, we'll send it out for comments to our partner agencies um and bring back a final version for for council action. So, Genevie, thank you for for coming and um uh looking forward to your presentation. Um, again, my name is Genevie Evans and I'm a principal with LSC Transportation Consultants. We are a small transportation planning and engineering firm located in Tahoe City and I think this is mine to does that work? Ah, excellent. Okay. As Kevin mentioned, we have been working with uh Kevin and staff for the last year or so updating the short-range transit plan for the city of Ripen. We think of a short race transit plan as a type of business plan for the transit agency. Um we first we usually they're updated every five years or so. So the first component is evaluating existing conditions. This is where we look to see what's changed um what's new in any new development. We look at demographics. We look at the performance metrics for the transit

service. Uh see how productive and costefficient it is. Uh we also conducted a couple different survey efforts, spoke with stakeholders and staff, gathered input and that gave us information to come up with a list of different options or alternatives we call them to evaluate that will improve mobility for folks in the city of Ripen and make the transit service more effective. And from that we have had discussions with staff and we're at the phase now we have some initial draft recommendations for you to consider but not to adopt today. So we always start off looking at demographics. Uh transit planners tend to look at look for areas of high concentration of folks who are typically transit dependent. people who can't drive for one reason or another or choose not to. Um, and as you see from the numbers there, the city of Rippens, the proportion of folks who are typically transit dependent, that's lower than the statewide average. So, this makes it difficult to in um it makes your writership potentially lower. Uh, however, Sanwaqin County's population is expected to grow. It's one of the places in the state that is growing. We work in a lot of areas where that's not the case. So, we need to consider that that there will be more seniors in the area and they may have a greater need for transit going forward. As Kevin mentioned, here in the city of Ripen, we have the Blossom Express, which is a fixed route bus, but it does deviate 3/4 of a mile from the fixed route if you um you particularly need a deviation. It only operates right now on Tuesdays and Thursdays. essentially between Ripen and Modesto. Uh two trips in the morning and two trips in the

afternoon, you know, between the hours of say 9:30 and 2:30. And it's about a $2 fair for the general public and a dollar for discounted passengers. There's a little map. You can see we do a a circle hitting all the main points in Ripen. And with that 3/4 mile deviation area, you serve most of the city, but not quite technically. Um and then we go down to Modesto where we serve the Vintage Fair Mall which is a popular stop. Um and some healthc care services and Target which are important connections for seniors. Uh this service was originally started or the idea of it um in coordination and thinking of Bethany Holmes the senior population there to get folks to u medical services and shopping in Modesto. As you know, um there is the and we'll talk a little bit more about it, the Van Go microtransit service that's operated by Sanwaqen RTD. So Ripen residents can get rides on the Van Go service but within Sanwaqin County. So Wendesto as you know is in um Sus County. So that's why this service is beneficial. Uh there's also a dialeride service. Uh this is operated in coordination with Bethany Homes. It's using a small bus and it's a demand response. So, you have to call in advance uh to schedule a ride, but your radius is larger. You can go within 15 miles of the city. It also costs more. And this is reserved for senior and disabled residents. And technically, you can get a ride, you know, between 8 and 5 during the week. This is not, as you'll see in the numbers, it's not hasn't gotten much ridership recently. But here are the numbers for Blossom Express, the fixed route. So this isn't unlike a lot of areas in the sense where you see the big dip there for COVID in 2021. We do have a rebound, but not to those pre-COVID

levels, but we seem to be hanging pretty steady around, you know, almost 700 passenger trips uh per year. We like to look at monthly trends. Uh, as you can see here, you know, January and April are a little more popular, but overall, I'm not can't not really coming up with any major reasons or trends as to why it's more popular one month or another. Okay, now here's the dialeride. So, you can see we had, you know, definitely less passengers, but 200 or so passengers precoid, and since then we're only getting maybe as many as 30. Um what we found out from surveys and talking with folks, it's not very well advertised, even um you know, folks at Bethany Homes may not be as aware of it. So that's part of the reason it has a lower writership. Okay, here's where transit planners, excuse me, like to get into the numbers and our little performance metrics. So you can see the stats for both the fixed route and dialeride. We're carrying close to 700 trips on the fixed route. Um fair revenue is quite low because your passengers your wrership is fairly low. Productivity is passenger trips per vehicle hour. So that's for hours that the vehicle actually operates is 1.5 trips per vehicle hour which is really more similar to a demand response type of service which is kind of what this is in a way. Uh so that's that's low productivity. Our operating cost per trip is relatively high compared to some systems um 105. Um however, you do have to think that you are providing an important connection and again considering that we're serving a a market who generally have vehicles uh dialide there again 30 trips uh annually and the cost for dialide

particularly in this year was quite low. It's only about $2,500. So, um it it is an interesting service that can provide a great benefit having being able to go a little bit farther. Um but it's not carrying many passengers, but it's not also costing too much. Okay, here's some responses from our survey. So, we had somebody ride the Blossom Express bus for a couple days and pass out um surveys, but we only get about six or seven people riding the bus a day. So, the number of responses is a little bit low, but we got some input. Um let's see. Most people were relying on the bus to get around and most people were going to a medical appointment, shopping, and some school. Um, here is where we got the information about the Blossom Express is not well known, but those who do ride it do enjoy it. We also reach did a wider reaching survey um online and this was available for a longer period of time. Um, and as is typical for an online survey, you get mostly folks who don't ride the bus, but it it is good to get their opinion. Um but and let's see and of those who do use transit um they use it for mostly recreational and social purposes which is consistent with the onboard surveys but and again the last bullet there most people do agree that public transit is an important community service for folks in Rippen. Okay, so we did analyze a wide variety of options and I'll show you that on one of the last slides, but um here we have our draft plan recommendations. So remember that right now we operate two days a week between about 9:30 and 2:30. So given, you know, we analyze how many trips and the cost per hour and all that

um cost per trip of these different options and we've landed on expanding service on our days of service that we have right now. Another trip in the morning and another trip in the afternoon. This gives people a little bit longer in Modesto to go to a medical appointment, go shopping. They could connect to the transit down there. It just gives you a few more options um for not too excessive of a cost. That alternative there is about $36,000 a year. Um we also recommend might as well expand the deviation area to include all of the city of Ripen. It's actually not deviations are not requested very often. We couldn't actually get much data on that. So, our understanding is that it doesn't happen too often, but it it could make it um easier to understand and it wouldn't really cost you anymore. However, since we are using a 30 passenger bus for the Blossom Express, there may be parts of the city that would be difficult to access with a larger bus. And then we get to microtransit. So remember I brought up Van Go which is the microtransit service operated by Sanwalkin RTD where people in Ripen can get a ride to Mantika or to Stockton or within Ripen um Monday through Friday during the week from 8 to 5. So our thought here is why don't we have an evening microransit service just within Ripen. So this could help out first of all seniors who maybe want to go to an evening social event who don't who can't drive as well as regular residents it might be attractive to go out to dinner or some evening event and not have to drive. I have on their hours 6 to 10 and as I was kind of preparing for this I realized that Van Go ends at 5:00 p.m. So it probably best to just to start when Van Go ends so there isn't that gap in service. But regardless, for 4 hours of service on Friday and Saturday

nights, we're estimating it would cost about $60,000 a year. And this came from, and what we're recommending is we reached out to both, you know, RTD provides the driver for the Blossom Express. Currently, right now, there's a contract that was just uh renegotiated. Um, we also reached out to Ley and another community. They have different types of I'm forgetting now microtransit services and we came up with that extending or expanding the current contract with RTD to expand their van go service to serve Ripen in the evenings would be the most cost-effective and it's essentially a turnkey process. You wouldn't have to because right now Ripen doesn't provide they provide a vehicle but they don't provide drivers or too much in the way of management. Obviously Kevin does some, but there is no direct transit manager. So, working with RTD we think would be the best option. Um, it should be a pilot program if you decide to go ahead with this. And that cost estimate I think we're we're in the in the ballpark. It's a little bit conservative over what RTD gave us as a quote, but you know, there's a lot of a lot of things that can happen as you know. Um in terms of wrership, we see this being uh more productive. So carrying an additional 720 trips a year with just this trip this service that operates a couple days a week. This is based on microtransit services in other areas estimating that on average you could carry two and a half passenger trips per year which is greater than what Blossom Express is currently carrying. But again, as a pilot program should probably operate it for at least a year to give it a chance to be successful. Make sure and market it. That will be a big component. Um that would be the part the city of Ripen would need to do. You don't have to supply the technology or

the vehicle or anything like that. That can go through RTD. Um but you would have to market it and if it's not successful and it doesn't meet the goals of the city council, then you could discontinue it. So, as city council members, you're probably wanting to know how do we fund all this? Is this feasible with the sources that we have? And gosh, I wish I could see better. Um, yeah, I think I can see a little bit there. This is our financial plan that's in our draft report. So, I put some arrows there as to Oh, great. There's another one back there. Um, you can see the first arrow there is total operating revenue. This is including all sources that come from the federal government FTA funds. Uh transportation development act funds which stem from our state sales tax and according to SJ Cog now you're supposed to use or you're required to use 25% of that money for transit purposes. So that is including that proportion. Um and then also a little bit of money that Bethany home provides for the dollar. That's that's pretty small measure K funds that go to transit. We're assuming that stays flat over the year and we come up with projections of you know FTA funds will increase about 2% annually and lastly the carryover balance there you have a good healthy balance of funds available for transit now so if you fold all those together you know we have in that first year about 1.6 6 million and it's costing us and these numbers by the way I did just change some of these. I think the estimates we had in our draft report were a little high for operating costs. So let's say 146 150,000 to operate asis and then you add in our um short-range transit plan recommendations that I just

mentioned and that's another 60,000 or so. Um, so you can see at the bottom line, oh, one more thing. There are some capital elements that I'm going to get to on the next slide that we can fund with these funding sources here. But considering all that, we have sufficient money to implement these draft recommendations, the capital plan. Um, so you can go out to for apply for a grant for FDA 5339 funds to purchase vehicles. They fund about 80% of your vehicle. Uh, this has been done recently to replace the dialeride bus. But since you have such low annual mileage for your vehicles, you have two uh 30 passenger Gilligs that operate the Blossom Express, you don't need to replace them for quite some time. So, uh, 2037 is what we're saying is the earliest. And at that point, in terms of zero emission vehicle requirements, who knows what would be going on. As you're probably aware, um, the ARB is requiring that transit agencies transition to zero emission vehicles. Uh, but you're not going to have to worry about that for a while. And hopefully technology will be better and we don't know how the rules will change. But at the end of this 10-year planning period, you should consider what what kind of vehicle and what kind of fueling and infrastructure you might need for that vehicle. We're also recommending that unless things change drastically um in terms of the number of people you're carrying, you could probably go with a smaller vehicle. You could probably have a 15 passenger vehicle. And you know, I think I just I may have missed something. We also had a recommendation for uh special event shuttles, say for the Blossom Festival. Um that's kind of a side note. You can

determine on a case- by case basis as long as it doesn't um it's not a charter service. So you have to make it open to the public and either make it free to everybody or charge a fair. So, uh, why that triggered my memory is even if you had a special event shuttle, you could probably get away with a 15 passenger vehicle at least to to start with. Uh, let's see. Bus stop improvements. Over time, you know, it's just good to throw some money aside for bus stop improvements. We put in $1,000 every other year just to upgrade your stops and schedules. And if you need a bench or or a shelter anywhere, that's always good to have in your plan. Also in here is something that Kevin mentioned, uh the CNG fueling facility that's will be shared with city vehicles and transit will be paying for a portion of that. So that's in the capital plan and is funded. And that is it in terms of capital projects. I just threw on there, there is another operating revenue source that the city of Ripen does not collect, the lowcarbon transit operations program. Um, it's not I I don't know how much money you could receive, but it it could supplement any projects that you might need. Okay, my last slide here, just letting you know if you want to go through the report and there's a whole chapter on all the alternatives we evaluated that we did look at these other options and that's basically expanding Blossom Express service further since you do have this surplus of money um currently. So looking at 5day a week service for the existing hours, five day a week service for expanded hours or even more expanded hours. Uh we looked at adding just another day a week, so Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. We looked at weekends and we also looked at uh

deviating to serve one of the junior colleges. Um but we think the but we landed on the recommendations of the expanded hours for the two days a week and the microtransit. Okay. Well, that concludes my presentation. I would be happy to answer any questions. Thank you. Are there any questions? Yes.

And I don't know if you can answer, but they came occurred to me. With regard to the stops in Modesto, do we know if those stops are tied to the transit system in Modesto? In other words, if I get on the bus here and go to one of those places, can I catch a bus in Modesto and go someplace else?

Yes. At the Vintage Fair Mall is a big transfer point where you can catch several of the S routes. And there's actually a table in here that shows you a lot of the um a few of the times that Blossom Express stops there, it's maybe 15 minute wait or something that sometimes it's more, sometimes it's 15 minutes. And the other question I had relative to the dialeride system, what about reducing the price of the dialeride? I mean, $15 is a chunk of change. It is.

And if I'm looking at trying to catch a bus because my grandson is playing football at Ripen Christian tonight and I'd like to get there and I don't have a car. $15 is a lot of money. That's definitely something that you could consider. Yeah, since it's such a low cost and yeah, as long as you're not increasing it to the point that it's, you know, too many people are demanding it. But I have a sense that if you made it maybe $10,5 to$10 would be So it's we could do that. Yeah. You're not you're not set to Yeah.

Right. No, that's I just wanted to make sure because I Personally, after looking at this and listening to you, I think there are some underutilized things in this town relative to transit that we need to look at. But I don't want to make them so expensive that in spite of all of our good intentions, we're pricing people out of their ability to use it.

Yes. And you you reminded me of one more thing that I don't know if it was on there. Sometimes I can't see very well, but um we do recommend setting aside a little bit of extra money for marketing and extra support for right now you have a consultant who helps with grants and all that, but maybe adding a little bit to that pot. And that could whether it's that consultant or somebody else, it doesn't matter. Um help with the marketing and you know looking at the dialeride more and trying to increase writership there. Yeah. Any other questions?

Well, just a comment. So, you were and I I agree with Leo about the pricing, but you said you don't want to be too low. You may get too many people using it. Well, it' be fine if we filled up the bus because there's buses driving around all the time that and then the cost per hour on those things go skyhigh when you have one person taking it. So, I think I don't know what that median is, but there's some probably some point to where it makes sense. I just had a friend come back from I think Las Vegas. Uber is 10 bucks wherever you want to go in Las Vegas. It's just 10 bucks, you know, and that's something to consider with the microransit program is what you want that fair to be. I I we recommend about $4 seems to be standard. Okay.

Thank you. Uh I have a question. You mentioned that um you had a number of comments that there was people found there it was difficult to find information. I think in your slide it said the information was difficult to understand. Those are kind of two different things but maybe they're related. Uh could you describe that and then do you have a way to uh to improve that?

Yes. Uh it's probably both. Um when we think there wasn't much awareness was our understanding of both Blossom Express and the Dialeride service except for maybe folks at Bethany Homes um more in like the general community and the website. We do have some some marketing suggestions in here. Um that would be one. a little bit sometimes a little bit trickier to find the schedule and um having a map very front and center a route map would be beneficial. Uh the thing that a lot of transit agencies do now but would would require staff time and that extra money that you set aside could be used for this is you familiar with the GTFS feed. So when you look on Google Maps, you know, you can see the bus stops there for RTD um and you could, you know, go through Google Maps and say, "I want to get from here to here. I'm going to give you Blossom Express as an option and tell you how long it would take to get there." So that's something that most transit agencies are trying to implement. I know you're so small, but all the larger ones do. So that would that could help and that's a suggestion.

Okay. And then with your recommendation regarding uh did you call them microtransit? Mhm. Um yeah, I guess the numbers that you've described, particularly in terms of use and writership, uh to me that does not describe a compelling reason for us to add $60,000 to our budget every year to expand service into the evening hours as you suggest. Uh, so maybe it maybe it goes handinhand with what you just talked about about information and people understanding how to use this, but

um I' I'd not be interested in spending 60,000 a year to see a bus driving in Modesto or Antika with one or two passengers uh a couple of times a week. And that this would the microtransit would just be within Ripen and Friday and Saturday evenings. But I I understand your point and you have a valid point. You have it's it's your decision how to spend money. But I would point out that we do receive a significant amount of money that can only be spent on transit. If we don't spend it, we send it back. And right now we're sending it back.

So we have a pool of money available to do some of this that would not impact our budget at all. Yeah, I think I mean when you look at it, I mean you're talking either way, you know, none of this makes financial sense, but you're providing a service to people that can't afford it. And I mean, it's a math never works.

Yeah. I mean, you're charging $2 a ride and it costs a hundred to provide it. It doesn't make financial sense. But I mean, you got to balance that with, you know, how much do you do, right, to provide the service? I mean, I think, you know, you look at a, okay, you can provide going to a doctor's office or maybe do some shopping two days a week currently, but those same people probably wouldn't mind going out to dinner on a, you know, an evening ride, maybe don't have that and be able to do that, support businesses downtown. So, I mean, I think there's benefit to it beyond just the ride the people get as well. So, I mean, is it ever going to pay for the $60,000 additional cost? Probably not. But I guess you know what's that level of how much do we want to spend on these things to provide those services to people otherwise wouldn't have them

the other thing about exposure you know RTD has an app and everybody's got a phone if they somehow you you were able to piggyback on that or we were able to piggyback on that and let people know the apps in place then the education and everything and it tells you about the bus routes and the price and everything else be pretty simple.

Yes. I I the part of the contract would include using the Van Go app technology. So it would just be making people aware that they can do that. Miss Donahghue just reminded me, she waved her hand and that one of the things that we have in Ripen every a lot of Wednesday nights is the farmers market. And there are people in town who are complaining that they can't get there because they have to park four miles away because there's so many people. If we had a transit system in place, now you got one bus driving around town picking people up and then two hours later driving around town and taking them home and they don't have to park. So, I mean, there are options or things available or that we offer in town that transit would, I think, offer an honest way for people to be better a part of it than driving their own vehicle down there.

Yeah. Well, you're right. Including our baseball. So, I was just going to say, yeah, when I experience that is when we have football games are RC and ripping and it's tough to find a parking spot. So, yeah, something like that on a Friday night.

And if you had if you had a a schedule like that that was based around events or things new, you know, the farmers market's a good example of one where it's something that every Thursday night or whatever for several months, right? Um, that's a good one. I I think um I maybe it's because I was just in Hawaii, but Kopali Trolley is a fun little uh it's a fun little ride, but uh it brings you to the different restaurants. It has I don't know a dozen stops on it. You hop on, it's got a set schedule and it takes you around places. Really nice not to have to drive. I mean, I know it's maybe a little bit different in a vacation location versus the city of Ripen, but if there are things events that we could get more people to and make it easier, probably not a bad thing.

Very good. Thanks, Councilman Degraphth, for letting us know you were in Hawaii recently. You're welcome. And thank you, Miss Evans, for your presentation. Thank you. All right. Uh, reports, Chief Sour, u, Mr. Mayor, all I have to report is tomorrow night at 700 p.m. we will host our first quarter community meeting. Uh it's a great time to engage with officers, get crime trends, stats, and just ask any questions about public safety. And the location of that is is at the police department. Yes, we will be hosting it. Very good.

Yes, sir. 7 o'clock. Thank you, Mr. Stevens. Mr. Zervart. Uh nothing to report. No planning commission meeting. What am I going to do on that Monday night? Thank you. Uh, Mr. Peace. Yes, Mr. Mayor. Two quick things. Um, first, our water usage for the month of January. We were 9% lower than we were where we were at last year. Um, and then our recycling center will be closed on Saturday, February 21st during the Alma Festival. Heads up.

Very good, Mr. Turstra. All right. Uh Kevin Werner,

I just passed out the um an update on the various engineering projects that they're working on right now. Um I'll just hit on a couple of the highlights. Uh construction has started on Fulton Avenue. These are the pedestrian improvements at some of the key intersections uh along Fulton between River Road and uh the Fulton overpass. And it also includes widening Fulton Avenue from two lanes to four lanes um between Colony Road and uh pretty close to the Fton overpass. Uh as far as design projects, uh one of the priorities that the council recently has mentioned was the West Ripen Road uh resurfacing from Jack Tone to the city limits. Uh so engineering has started that project. is a fairly small project. So, they're anticipating that uh going out to bid likely in April. Um they're also working on the resurfacing of River Road between Jack North Ripen. Also an April time frame to to go out to bid. Um and then the project that's uh another project getting ready to go out to bid is a community center uh parking lot and baseball fields. That that one's getting getting close. So, just a quick update. If you have any other questions on any other projects on that list, uh happy to answer those questions.

I just tell you the senior center. Very happy to hear about the improvement to the West Ripen Road. That's very much needed. Thank you. Uh Councilman Degraphth. Yeah, not much to uh report. Thank you all for being here. I know some of the youngsters maybe don't hear this all the time, but um we appreciate you being here. You're welcome back any other time. You know, you tonight doesn't have to be the only night. Uh but encourage you to get involved and uh you know get engaged in what we do and thank you to everybody else who is here tonight and yeah that's it. Very good. Councilman Zuber nothing

Mr. Rusha only that in two weeks we have a parade we do coming up and I'm blossom what's that? 10 days 10 days. 10 days. Yeah. You're not counting though are you? That's it. Councilman Uker.

All right. And I will just say uh echoing Councilman Degraph, thank you to Boy Scout troop uh Herman Dross for bringing these fine young men out this evening. Had a great discussion before the meeting and uh really enjoyed that. Thank you to everyone else for your attendance. Great time of year for our town. Um our major celebration of not just life in Ripen, but the surrounding community. Um, and so, uh, yeah, be active in that. We, uh, grateful there's some rain in the forecast. Wouldn't you know, it would come now, but it's going to be clear for Almond Blossom Parade according to Yeah. my forecaster. Right, Kelly?

Very good. All right. This meeting is a journal.