City Council - Regular Meeting

all right good afternoon everybody uh this will be a joint meeting for the um

public safety and maintenance and development subcommittees joint meeting i am joined by uh counselor santanello who is a member of public safety committee as well as the chair of the maintenance and development committee lamar quill bruce director signoli thank you for joining us you can hear us can you hear us director he's on me yes i can yeah okay Um, so, yeah, so we have 1 big item on the agenda, but really should be split up into 2. so. Just bear with us. Something that I had brought to the floor of the council a couple weeks ago was a resolution to really prioritize streets in East Forest Park that were still affected from the tornado and could still use some repairs. Some of them, for example, are Surrey Road, Kipling Street, Wayside Avenue, Roosevelt Avenue. Um, and you know, I do want to start by saying too, I know DPW has done a great job in terms of maintaining and cleaning and regulating a lot of those streets and, um, You know, it's been right on top of it. But again, like some things slip through the cracks and I just want to make sure that we can prioritize those streets. So it was sent to committee with the idea of incorporating other streets from other neighborhoods. You know, I did put the letter out there to some of our other colleagues. Fortunately, nobody really came out and suggested anything else different. But I just wanted to see if there's a plan in place, what prioritizing those streets will look like on your end, Director Signoli, and just seeing if that's something we can feasibly do. So I want to hear your thoughts on that resolution and go from there.

Well, we have on our paving list for this year, we are doing Surrey Road.

Yes.

And I don't know why I keep getting calls from certain people saying it's not on the paving list. It is on the paving list. It's going to be done this summer. So it is getting done. In East Forest Park... Since the tornado, I went back and look, we've probably spent two and a half million dollars working on paving various streets, roads, sidewalks. And that does not include the improvements that we did at Sumner Allen Abbott Harkness as a state project that was done during that, after that period as well. So and just when we go through our chapter 90 process every year, what we do from a paving standpoint is we prioritize based upon condition, based upon poor condition. And the list that we put together this year, we did a brand new pavement rating through the PVPC that was completed last year. end of last year that we have that we used for paving for this year on that. So what we do is I look at the page just to let everybody know how I do my paving list. I look at the paving list. And if we're gonna roughly spend about $5 million, my long list that I put together is probably worth about 25 million. I give that to all the utility companies and figure out where we need to stay away from. and then based upon where they're gonna be doing their work, we then go in reverse order of condition through the neighborhoods. What I also do is I then attempt to distribute them to all of the neighborhoods in the city to make sure when we're doing paving projects, And if I'm doing 25 or 30 streets, I'm trying to make sure that I'm spreading them out around the city to make sure that I'm hitting every neighborhood. Because if I started to look at paving conditions, there's certain areas of the city that I know that I would be working on a lot longer and not get to other areas of the city. The other difficult thing that has always plagued East Forest Park and will continue to plague East Forest Park and uh certain sections especially 16 acres and certain sections of forest park they are not cdbg eligible so all of the sidewalk funding virtually that we get is cdbg so unless there is an appropriation of funds through the mayor's office to do sidewalk work areas that are non-CDBG eligible, we can't work on. There's not funding in place to be able to do that. We've used neighborhood, Forest Park right now, last year and this year, we're using neighborhood enhancement funds. That's what they wanted to use the funds for. uh in in east forest park uh over the last couple years the neighborhood enhancements fund we've done crosswalks on on plum tree uh and crosswalks on on island pond road and also did new paving on island pond road as well uh on that as well so that's kind of an overview of where we um just our process and things that we're working on. With regards to these streets in particular, obviously we're doing Surry Road. We've done a section of Roosevelt Avenue. We've done all of um i'm going to say south branch parkway in that section i know the the other section is um i'm more worried about this the section closest to roosevelt that one's been repaved uh and a number of the side streets have been repaved with regard to these the uh you know we're talking about wayside kipling the other portion of roosevelt i think is on the list i'm going to say one possibly two years out depending upon what we have to do. Wayside and Kipling is farther down on the list simply because they're not in horrible shape from a paving perspective in comparison to other sections of the city. Sidewalk locations, what I would tell residents is that if there are spots that need to be address, get them into us so that we can go out there, get them on our list of our crews to be able to do that work, to get them temporarily repaired, then full repaired. on there. I went back and I saw some applications that we have on those streets, but those are just general sidewalk replacement applications on that. So if there are specific homes addresses on any of those streets, Councilor Martin, that you have, if you could get those to me, I can have my guys go look at them and make any sort of temporary repairs and then get them on the permanent repair list as well. Just to go back from talking about the tornado, when damage was done, you know, trees came up, obviously, sidewalks were damaged. Through MEMA and FEMA, specific locations were identified, and all that work was completed. That was a little bit over $2 million throughout the, I'm going to say, the corridor of the tornado. So... All of those areas. We were not allowed to do addresses. We were basically doing slabs, one, two, three at a time, wherever that were damaged through trees or any of that sort of stuff. And so we have that. But with regard to the paving that we're doing this year, Surrey's going to get done this summer. Worthington's going to get some this summer, Parker Street and Sumner Avenue Extension, which is in bad condition. So what we did this year is we did a lot more, I'm going to use the word arterial streets because those are the ones that seem to be falling apart at a much quicker pace than some of the residential streets. So We actually, instead of just using $5 million, we dipped into our reserves and the additional funding the state gave us to get up to a $6.5 million paving contract. All that work will start right after July 1st. The funds we get from the state are fiscal year funds. So some of the money that we need, we're going to be signing a contract basically for July 1st to have all the work started probably right after the week of the 4th of July for that. I do not have a schedule yet of exactly what's going to be started first. When I get that, we post that on our Facebook page because we obviously need to let people know we're going to be working on their streets. So That's kind of a general overview of our process and how we've done it in the past. And, you know, obviously some of the work that we've done in East Forest Park as well.

Okay, great. I just have two quick questions for you, Director, then I'll open it up to the floor for anybody else. So you mentioned, was it that CDBG? Yes. Can you just further elaborate on what that is and what that... Sure. What advice for that? Like what neighborhoods or what streets or what have you?

And I'm going to probably say, I know it's done through community development, economic development, and through the federal government. Every, I'm going to say one, two, three, four years. I'm not involved with it, so I'm not sure. But based upon census tracts in the state, in the city of Springfield, census tracts are identified and it's based upon employment, income, and it's not my area of expertise, but items like that that determine that they are CDBG eligible areas in the city of Springfield. And when you get to areas like certain areas of, as I said, 16 acres, East Forest Park, Forest Park, certain areas of East Springfield, where you are dealing with a little bit higher level of income of people there, those become non-CDBG eligible. And I'm going to see if I can pull it up on my other computer here. There's mapping that's put together, and every year we review that. We then look at the funding through community development, economic development, We get anywhere between $300,000 and $500,000 every year from CDBG. I work at it through Amanda Pham now and Tim Sheehan. To give us the money, they provide us the general locations in the city where we can be, and then we identify it based upon either applications or condition requirements. that we have where we've done temporary repairs to get that work. And it's always been an issue with, I'm going to say East Forest Park, certain sections of Forest Park and other areas of the city where none of that funding is available to be able to be spent. When we do paving contracts, We can spend, I'm going to say, some money on sidewalks, but the state doesn't allow us to do like a whole street. But we're able to knock off a number of addresses, which we'll be doing on Surrey Road when we do that, a number of the locations out there. And when we do that, we do addresses. We don't do slabs. We'll do an entire frontage of somebody's property. to get that done. So the CDBG eligible map is what we're given to work off of and based on those locations. Okay. Is that a map on the GSI? You know what? I was going to... I got my other computer working here. And... Perry Kivolowitz, I don't see that list did Perry Kivolowitz, Hold on.

Yeah, I'm looking here. I don't know.

street sweeping wetlands trash the historic zoning i don't think i see it on there but what i know i have the map i can forward it to everybody thank you thank you that'd be that'd be great um i think it's buried on the gis somewhere i'm just looking at it real quick and if i find it on there i can send you the map and i can also send you a link

Yeah, that'd be great. That'd be great to hear. Thank you. And the other question I do have for you, too, is you mentioned that section of Roosevelt you said might be a year or two out or streets like Kipling and Wayside. I understand that just given the nature of what some of those side streets look like. My question to you is if it's like the will of the council and I bring this resolution back to the floor and a majority of the councilors vote on it, And again, maybe after a conversation with the mayor and to see if he would be on board with it too, would you prioritize those streets? That is in essence like the spirit of me doing that and saying, Ken, I know these are, you know, maybe not as high a priority as some of the other streets or some of the other side streets that are on the list. But due to, again, the anniversary of the tornado and whatnot, just having them kind of just jump to the top and prioritizing them this year is essentially the goal there. So is that something you're amenable to?

Well, I'm going to say yes and no. No, the reason why I say no, I do not like doing streets simply, I'm going to use the word referendum, because we want to get them done. because that would mean that a street that is in worse condition is not going to get done over somebody else. And East Forest Park getting something done and I'm going to deal with LeVar in 16 acres and go, how come you're not paving my street? It's in horrible condition or Zyda or Maria or anything like that. From the yes side of it is if we are trying, you know, for example, if I'm doing, I'm going to say Roosevelt Avenue. If I'm doing Roosevelt Avenue, I like to bundle one or two streets together. That may not necessarily be the worst, but getting work done in a particular area to get some streets completed is, and not like do street A, then go back the next year, do street B, the year after do street C. So when I look at it that way, I'd rather have a contractor working an area, knocking out two or three streets at a time, then moving on to another area on that. So one of the things that I will also send you and I'll send all the counselors is we just received the electronic version of the street ratings that were done by the PVPC. So you can kind of see, all the councilors there can kind of see where their streets land in comparison to other streets in the city. A lot of the real crappy ones that you see on there are meaningless. You know, there's a lot of little, little, little streets around the city that are, you know, 50 feet long, 100 feet long, and I'm not worried about those streets. So that's what I look at is that if I'm doing a particular street, for example, you know, Surrey Road, when I wanted to do Surrey Road last year, there wasn't enough money in it. I was going to do Surrey and Balfour together rather than coming back later and doing Balfour. But I ran out of, you know, we didn't have enough money to do Surrey because Surrey needs to be milled. It needs, you know, it's not just an overlay. So I said, well, I want to do both of them at the same time. I pulled that out. I did Balfour first. You know, Balfour wasn't in great condition, but it was by no means the worst thing. in the area, but I want to be able to knock out that area. So I kind of look at it in two different ways of being able to get streets complete in a particular area where number one, I think we as a department can justify it to all of the other sections in the city. What I do not want to have happen, and this is Chris being a little bit of a pain in the ass, What's going to happen is next week it's going to be Forest Park, then it's going to be Indian Orchard, then it's going to be 16 Acres, then it's going to be the North End, and everybody's going to say the same thing, that we're going to go to the council, get it approved this way, and make sure my street gets paved next year. So I don't like doing it that way, because then we're just basically doing it on politics. and not getting to the right streets in the right way. I'm very comfortable now defending how we do things when we're doing it by politics. I can't, you know, when some parent or one resident asked me about, how come my street's horrible? How come you're not doing it? And I'm going to say, go talk to a city councilor. You know, I can defend this, you know, of what we're doing. And we get requests, you know, constantly all the time on that. So, you know, that's kind of the two ways that I look at it. You know, I always, you know, from, I use the word referendum that, you know, we try to use as much empirical data that we have to be able to do these streets.

Yeah. And I do understand where you're coming from in that respect. But again, that's why I put it on the focus of that, you know, the anniversary date, those particular streets by the tornado. Like this is like a one time deal. And that's why I did, you know, want to bring it to the committee to open it up to other neighborhoods.

You know, as I said before, Jerry, you know, you get in a meeting, when I say you, whether any counselor, and I know LaVar's done it a million times, you know, you go sit down with the mayor and, you know, try to prioritize some things a little better. The mayor can come back to me tomorrow and say, outside of... I don't want to put the mayor under the bus here, but the mayor every so often comes back to me and says, here's $2 million. Here's a list of 20 streets that we've gotten complaints about. They may not necessarily be the worst in the city, but this is what we want to prioritize. We haven't done bonding. And we use the word bonding or free cash, whatever you want to use, but non... Chapter 90 money that, you know, he's always put together a list of with us and said, you know, hey, these are the ones that we want to look at. We did about two years ago, we did about five or six major projects. dirt roads, built them back up to city streets. And those were all kind of, hey, we got X amount of millions of dollars. I met with various neighborhood groups and said, hey, in your neighborhood, East Forest Park doesn't have a lot of those. But in other areas of the city where we have a lot of lots on dirt roads, those were kind of prioritized based upon city funding. with that. So, you know, I always, you know, talk to the counselors and say, hey, you know, if you get the mayor on that, And he wants to provide my mantra back to you and LaVar's heard it a million times. You give me the money, I'll build it and we'll get it done. So a lot of those, I think, have to kind of, you know, from that perspective, you know, if we get it done that way, I really don't care, you know, on that. But when we're using our Chapter 90 money, I also have to identify that list with the state and show that we're spending the money on the correct streets at the correct time as well.

All right. Dr. Centinello, did you want to make a point?

Yeah. A question? Yeah. To the chair and LeVar Cliff Bruce, thank you very much. Chris, some of the sidewalks, I don't know how many, but some of the sidewalks in the past were made with tar. Yes.

Are we still doing that? We're doing temporary repairs with asphalt. And then what we're doing is we're going back whenever later in replacing those. We are, and some of those are with our crews doing those, some of those with our crews, but when we are doing those CDBG areas, we are going in and the priority that we're looking at in those areas is getting rid of the streets with asphalt. And using Forest Park as an example, when Forest Park used their neighborhood enhancement funds, you know, I work with Beattable and Harry Seymour and a few others. And basically the entire target list was getting rid of the street, getting rid of the locations where we have temporary asphalt. And that's what our goal is, is trying to get rid of as many of those as possible every year, either through our crews or through the contracts that we're doing.

Um, because in my opinion, uh, they look horrible. I agree. They look horrible. They look absolutely terrible. Yep. And, um, how do we, why, why is that to save money in the beginning? And then when you have money, you'll put cement down.

Is that, well, you know, as an example, you know, I'm going to say you call me today and I go out and look at, or we go out and look at your sidewalk and it's horrible. Um, I already have contracts out, done. We go out there, we rip it out, we make it safe so that it can be used, meets ADA and all that good stuff. Then we put it on the list for when we're doing the work there, I'm going to say either next year or the year after, to be able to come out to do it. Because we're working on stuff now, so... Somebody coming to me today saying, hey, come fix my sidewalk. I don't have a contract. I don't have the money. I don't have anything set up. We do it temporarily to make it safe so the homeowner is safe. People walking there are safe. The city's covered from an insurance standpoint. We get it done, and then we go back and get it taken care of within a year or so.

Now, you mentioned that you have a private contractor that does that tarring.

No, we're doing that ourselves. We're doing the asphalt that you see out there. That's our crews doing that.

Could you explain to the public during this meeting how the homeowner, does the homeowner have to come up with any costs on these sidewalks?

No, not at all. Going back in time, and I want to mention this because we have an application for residents that they fill out for sidewalk repair. I'm not going to say repair, excuse me, replacement. On that application that was put together by us, the state and the federal government, there's an item in there that talks about the resident possibly having to pay it, pay a portion of it, if it falls under a certain category of federal funding that we've received. In my 17 years with the city, we've never had a resident pay for a penny of anything. You call me today and your sidewalk's in horrible condition. We go out, we rip it out. We put asphalt down. and we come back in eight months or one year and repair it, the homeowner pays nothing. There's no assessment, there's no nothing. In all my years with the city, we have never requested the homeowner pay uh pay for anything the one thing i will say is we have had a number of homeowners who have come to us and said hey i'm doing my driveway can i build my own sidewalk sure knock yourself out you know you get the approval they go ahead and do it but homeowners do not have to pay uh anything to the city my last question all the sidewalks you put in with the asphalt yep

How is that time framed on, do you go back to the ones you put in first?

Yeah. And it's, it's yes on that. And it's by, I'm going to use word by neighborhood because we're working in, you know, a contractor will be working in a particular, you know, in a contract that we put out this year, for example, it might have five neighborhoods and he's going to start in, He's going to be working over a year. They usually start April or say May and they work till the next May or even into the next June. So they're going to jump around a little bit into the different neighborhoods. And what we're trying to do is prioritizing the asphalt locations as part of his work. So we may have a contractor who's been on work right now. And in his contract, he's doing 20 of those locations. He may, you know, he may do five of them the first month and may not do 10 of them until the last month based upon where he's working in the city. But we add those, we put, I'm going to use the word prioritize from those because I want to get rid of those, you know, that having those out there obviously are ugly and, you know, a little bit more susceptible. The issue though, that we have in a lot of locations is, in the city is that the reason why a lot of sidewalks are in bad condition are because of trees. We will go out in certain areas and take a sidewalk out, put asphalt down, make it safe, but we cannot go back there and put a sidewalk in because the forestry department will not let us touch the tree. So in a lot of cases, residents will come to us and say, hey, it's been this way for two years. And I'm like, well, the forestry department will not take that tree out. They won't let me do any work around it. So it's got to stay there until the tree comes out. So that's one of the things that I'm going to say I don't like, but I understand. through the forestry department. And especially, you know, one of the streets that I have three or four of those is, I think, Manchester Terrace. And, you know, the oak trees out there have heaved virtually every sidewalk, but I can't replace it because I can't touch, I'm barred from coming close and touching the root system to repair it. So that's kind of a little thing. And what we do when we get those is we then notify forestry and we say, can you please go out, take a look at it and let us know if the tree need can or should come down. If it gets taken care of, we then go out We've been notified this spring by Forestry. They've been taking a bunch of trees down and going out and grinding stumps. And we get the notification from them that says, hey, you're good to go back to this location and do the sidewalks. So we're kind of working hand in hand with them. But I'm going to say a bigger part of the problem is mostly the trees and the tree roots associated in the city, especially on smaller tree belts. And I'm just looking out a window here at one that's on our street that they just... took the tree down ground it down and i know that sidewalk needs to be replaced you know we've been they've been notified and it'll be added to our list when we get it put the list together for next year um chris lavar jerry thank you for giving me the floor um do you have any questions regarding this topic yeah real real quick uh chris uh thank you

Chairman Martin for hosting this meeting. Real quick, because I got a run out. I got another meeting at 5.30. Chris, because we have a situation where sidewalk is being put in on Ward 5 over there by Robam Road, Adams Park. I'm drawing a blank name on that street right now. But we're putting in a new sidewalk across the road.

Roosevelt?

Yes, Roosevelt. OK. So I guess, you know, that is being paved over there, which is fine. We got a grant. I guess I'm going back to like the residents walkway or driveways that they're having some issues over there. So I guess I don't like what is the. So were residents notified in that area about the sidewalk going over there? Do they have to be notified? Just out of curiosity. I don't remember it coming before the council, but it may have.

We had to accept the grant, yeah.

Right, but just how... I know we use the neighborhood. Did that go to the neighborhood council, Upper Hill?

It was an application that was submitted through MassDOT, through their portal, as part of Safe Routes to School. And as part of the Safe Routes to School program citywide, they identified certain areas in the city that were deficient uh for sidewalks and that was one of the areas we actually made a submission one year they denied it we came back with this one uh and the neighborhoods were were involved with that and when we started that work um we received some complaints and i I can't remember, Counselor, if it was through you, or I know it was a couple other counselors, that on the opposite side of the street, that there's, I think there's going to be three locations. They did one side of the street. They're almost done down to Wilbraham Road. they are going to be coming back and doing two or three addresses on the opposite side of the street as well. I can't remember the numbers off the top of my head. If I can get those house numbers, because we were talking about it yesterday with regard to the funding on that. So when we identify that, you know, with the state and everything, and we say we want to do this here. And I know, you know, the email that I saw on that was, you know, and I agree with it. Hey, my sidewalk stinks. The other side doesn't have one. Now they're getting one, but mine still stinks. So I know we're going to be doing a couple over there, and I'll get you the addresses there as well.

All right. Sounds good. Yeah, thanks for all the work that you do. I was more so... We don't have to get into it now. It was a question like the notification process. Like, again, I know it more than likely can't be for us, but just it would be nice to get like butters, letters out to those residents to let them know kind of what's going on. Because what I hear all the time is we didn't know about it. So I think it would be helpful for us to work together, not necessarily individually. you know blaming one or the other but work together to have a better process uh so that way they can't they can't use a card well we didn't know like no a letter did go on whether you open it or not that's a different story but for them to say you know nothing we didn't know about it where it just come from um because as you know things happen but i think if we have a process set in place yep uh simply especially something that's happened like that where it's a big a FYI heads up, hey, this is what's going on. And or even we went with the neighborhood council and say, no, we went to the neighborhood council and told them. So that way I can have that as a comeback to be helpful for myself and also for the city. But it's just like a difficult conversation when, you know, when they say, I don't know, I don't really have a comeback. Well, I'm sorry. Right. So just to let you know on that one, counselor, when

We are submitting an application for a grant. Regardless of the work that we're doing, we always go to the neighborhood councils and ask for a letter of support.

Gotcha.

So we do that. I'm going to say virtually every one of them.

Yep.

What we do run into in the city is when we do notifications, we usually send out letters to property owners. When we're getting ready to start, usually one of our inspectors or the contractor, we will then go put... Before we're ready to start, go put notices out in... You know, not necessarily mailboxes, but indoors and things like that. So we try to notify everybody that we can on that. And, you know, a lot of times, you know, on this particular one, that notice may have gone out in March because the contractor was selected. He was ready to go. and he waited for it. And of course he starts later in May and people forget about it and stuff like that.

So that's good to know. So again, thank you for all the work that you do, Chris. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you. We appreciate it. Thank you.

Counselor Davila, so you have your hand up.

I got it. I'll probably hop on, but I got to run to the graduation. Okay. I'll hop on online.

Okay. Thanks for coming.

Council Davila, you could go ahead. You have. Oh, thank you, Mr. Chair. Good afternoon, everybody. A fascinating discussion. Chris, I just want to be clear. I've been listening to what you're saying. So what you're saying is that, well, first of all, before I ask my question, can you give us a little bit of background? I know Councilor Martin has some concerns as to why this particular street that he stated on the resolution has not been done since the tornado sidewalks or street and or streets um can you give us a little bit of background how the loophole fell through what what what the issue is well basically if we're we're talking about paving um on the list that counselor martin had provided we are doing surrey road

Yeah. Surrey Road is being done. And basically it comes down to condition. You know, if we're talking about roadway stuff, you know, it's going to be based upon condition and the rating that we have for those roadways. From a sidewalk perspective, All the repairs during, I'm going to say after the tornado, we spent roughly a little bit over $2 million doing sidewalk repair and replacement throughout all of East Forest Park because that was the primary area that we dealt with with sidewalks. Other areas, Old Hill, Upper Hill, we didn't have as much. 16 acres, very minimal, simply because a lot of places out there don't have sidewalks. but areas that were impacted as part of the tornado itself were repaired uh individual locations if there are still issues there that we need to know about i mentioned to counselor martin have those residents get that information to us so we can go out and take a look at them uh to see if there's uh it truly is their damage and it needs to be done uh you know we will get it on our list for repair and replacement

Okay, so basically, if I understood you correctly, you're saying is that after the tornado, the roads were examined, it was determined that they don't need to be repaired right now due to the conditions, correct?

Yeah, and after the tornado, we did part of Roosevelt, a small part of Roosevelt, we did South Branch Parkway, Plum Tree Road, And I'm drawing a blank on the other major one that we did. And in the past couple of years, we've obviously done Island Pond Road, sections of Allen Street. And I'm drawing a blank. I'm just drawing a blank off the top of my head on the other roads that we did. Part of Abbott Street and Sumner, Allen, Abbott and Harkness intersection. So, you know, there's there's been, you know, parts of work done all over the place in that area.

And so I want you to see correctly. So are you saying that if some of those streets were to be done, some other street in some other neighborhood is not going to get done?

Well, you know, with we have a certain amount of money. So if I'm doing a street, if I'm doing I'm going to pick Kipling. If I'm doing Kipling and I'm not doing a street in somewhere, I'm not doing Ferglade. How's that? I'm not doing something in Forest Park that is in worse condition. You yourself as a counselor are going to get upset. So I want to make sure that from a standpoint of we are hitting citywide the worst streets that we're doing. So that's what I try to make sure of is that with a straight face, I can look at somebody and say, hey, the street's in bad condition. Look at it. We're doing it. And I'd have to say, hey, we're doing this other street, you know, just because, you know, because, yeah.

No, I think, I think Councilor Martin is very noble in his attempt to fight it for his word. And my compliments to my heart off to you, but you're right. I think that I cannot, you know, how can I justify other streets being done when I got streets here that needs to be done as well. Right. It will create a headache, unintended headache, I have to say. With that being said, Chris, I do think that what my colleagues were saying a little while ago, that we need to continue to identify more money to get this road repaired. So I think we're only doing like 2%, if I'm not mistaken, of streets throughout the city. I know that we increased from like $2. something to $6 million this year. Chapter 90, more money that came in. I think you spoke about that a little while ago. So one, I think there's two parts to this solution. One is to continue to identify money that we can aggressively go after because we do need to improve our infrastructure. Yes, including Fergley Street because it's an important situation. And I have to say- Don't say Magnolia Terrace. And Mike Doletero's too. And I also have to say that, you know, you talked about making the process apolitical, which I agree with you because I'm not, look, I'm not the DPW director. I don't know how to grade a street. All I can tell you is how bumpy it is when I drive through it. That's all I can tell you. I'm sure you look at more than that when you decide. about street, but that there's communication, good open communication from the council, the neighborhood councils, the city council, and you guys. So I think that I take that, that there could be a little bit of better communication, Chris. But thank you, and thank you for the explanation. And so, but as I understand it, the paving sidewalk plan is going to go forward as stated before, correct?

Right, yeah. We have three contracts this year. We have our paving program, which is out to bid right now and is going to be opening. We have a... Crosswalk, I'm using the word crosswalk. We have like four or five major crosswalk projects that are being done right now. And one of them includes the work that we were just talking about on Roosevelt Avenue. We're on Berkshire Ave, Holly Street, that area, and a couple others. Then we have nothing that is just sidewalks that is out to bid right now as well.

I will end with this, Chris, that the only thing I will ask, and I know you and I have spoken about this several times before, so has the Forest Park Civic Association, is not to use the black tar in the historic district. It is awful and it's cheaper right now, you know, I know it's used as a temporary measure, but 10 years is not temporary. And so I have to bring that up, Chris. You know how to bring it up. So we need to put an end to that.

I hear it from Harry every day.

From who?

Harry Seymour.

Yes, yes, yes. So that's something we need to stop doing that in the historic district. I know it's cheaper, but, you know.

i know you it's it's it's robin peter to pay paul i get it but you know uh we need to stop doing that but uh thank you thank you chris uh thank you one of the other things that i'll do counselors is i will send you out um i'm going to send you a copy of the gi or the uh i want to make sure i got it right here the uh cdbg map yeah Um, a, the listing that we have of street ratings. Um, and I'll, I know you guys have it, but I'll resend the list of stuff that we're paving for this year. The paving list is up on our Facebook page right now. So, um, and the one from last year, we are on the last street. right now that we're doing, which I think is Locust. Yeah, we're doing a section of Locust Street. That's the last one for our current contract. And then we start in two weeks with the new contract.

Yeah, Mr. Chair, if you allow me, just quick follow-up, Chris. Talking about some of the revenue I know with X Project, I noticed that the low, like this side to my side, the X, where the four-spike, I care about that. Like the road has been stripped almost to the sidewalk. Is that where it's going to be expanded? Or is that going to be sidewalk?

No, what they're doing there now is they're going back. They're ripping out the area there. They're going to be setting new curb. And the new curb is about... I'm going to say it's about a foot back from where the old curb was. It's not much, but they're putting that curb in. The project itself, the entire project this fall is going to be temporarily paved. They're going to pave the whole thing. So we're not going to go through another winter or X amount of time while they're doing the work. So they're working up that corridor to set the new curb line throughout the whole project area. That's what they're doing now. And then they're going to pave everything out there while they're doing the work because most of the in-road work will be complete. for the most part, a lot of it this year. So the curb line is only, and you can see it in certain areas where you see the catch basins that are in there. You can see some cases they're moving six inches or a foot. So it's not really being widened that far. But in the Forest Park eye care area, the sidewalks there are getting widened there. So they're kind of doing all that excavation at the same time.

All right, thank you, Chris. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Council.

Yeah, just real quick. I know that Councilor Justin Hurst, Councilor of our groups and also chairman Jerry Martin. Brought up some concerns about the state street corridor and the fatalities we've had in that area. Can you tell us Chris what you've done to address that and reduce the mortality or fatalities in those areas? Well, there's been a couple things.

Number one, we got with Eversource to get their lights fixed. That was one of the big problems that we had out there. Number two, throughout most of the State Street corridor, we're going to be implementing a... We received a grant for what's called Safe Streets for All. So along the entire, I'm going to say most of the corridor, I want to say it starts at School Street, not into downtown, but moving up. Throughout the entire corridor, we're going to be doing safety improvements. That's probably a year plus out. crosswalks, buttons, better pedestrian crossings along the corridor, improve traffic signals, improve visibility. And that's going to happen all the way up to basically Mass Mutual throughout that corridor. And that's part of the grant that we received through the Safe Streets for All. That design is being done right now. And once we get the approval from the Federal Highway to go out to bid, we're going to be doing that. So the State Street corridor for various safety improvements is going to get done, like I said, in the next year, year and a half for all sorts of pedestrian improvements, mostly pedestrian, but traffic signals, visibility, and obviously lighting is one of the things that we're looking at as well. All those implemented safety things are going to be addressed as part of the big project that we do out there.

I just want to go on the record, Mr. Chairman. I want to commend you, Chris, for the hard work you're doing to address these issues.

I appreciate it. Thank you, Counselor. Thank you. All right. No other questions or comments. I think we're ready to adjourn. So, again, Director, thank you for your time. You're very, very welcome.

Thank you again for all your hard work on this. I'm looking out the window. The sun's coming in.

It's pouring. It can't make up its mind. Okay. All right, and thank you all for your comments. And thank you also, Chairman Cliff Bruce, for joining us this meeting. So do I have a motion to adjourn the meeting? I make a motion. Seconded. All right. Thank you. Oh, yeah, right. Okay, yeah.

So do I second it or not? I second it. I made the motion. You second it.

All those in favor, say aye. All those in favor, aye. Aye. Thank you. All right, being adjourned at 519. Thank you, Councilor. Bye-bye. Thank you.