Ordinance & License Committee - Regular Meeting

Hello, everybody. We'll call the Monday, June 1st Building and Grounds Committee to order. I'm joined by Alders Miklitz, Helga Stad, Van Trieste, and Evert. Is that right?

Yes.

Okay, thank you. So we've got a quorum. If you'd join me for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. Thank you. Next, we've got public comment. I see no members of the public here, so we'll move on. Does anybody have any changes to the minutes for the meeting of May 4th? Any changes? Changes, anybody? Okay, we'll pass those minutes by unanimous consent. Next up, 5A. Please have the City Engineering Department investigate marking potential improvements to enhance the existing crosswalk located on Hoover Avenue that serves and connects the Mendiola Park parking lot to the playing fields across the street.

All right.

Yep.

Approval of... Sorry, to back up a moment. Did we... Who was the first? Who was the first and who was the second? Oliver and Everett.

Oh, she she wants to show us the vote gotcha.

Yep All good, yep, all right on to 5A. So as you may have mentioned, this item was brought forth by Alderman Mannion to investigate the pedestrian crossing that crosses the from the Mendiola Park parking lot on the north side of Hoover Avenue down to the south side down to Mendiola Park itself. If you're unaware of the actual location itself, the crossing is there highlighted in the red box there on Hoover Avenue. Hoover Avenue runs east-west, and to have a little extra context, there's Sunset Drive a little further to the south that runs east-west, West Avenue to the west of that location, and Grand Avenue, both of which are running north-south. on both sides. So Mendiola Park, you can see, is on the south side there with the two newer soccer fields that were recently installed, and then that parking lot in which kind of services those soccer fields in conjunction with the other parking lot to the south. And then to kind of highlight more closely the location itself and the proposed improvements, as there is no signing and marking for the crossing itself, and the crossing itself is a mid-block crossing. The proposed improvement, as I had discussed with Alderman Mannion, Ron Grohl from Park Rec, and others from park rack is to put static pedestrian crossing signage as well as the city's enhanced crosswalk detail to further highlight the mid block crossing itself and with how we have some of the signs situated is to have better sight lines. So as you can see, even from this aerial, there's quite a few vehicles that even park on the street itself. there are some no parking kind of in the area or using of like the driveway on the east side to have decent sight lines for those signs for westbound traffic or eastbound traffic to make sure that they can see the signs appropriately as they're approaching the mid block crossing. And then I'll pass it off to Alderman Mannion if he has any further comments for the crossing itself.

Yeah, I don't have a lot to add. Darren did a good job of explaining what we're trying to accomplish here. I made this referral kind of on behalf of the park rec department who wants to see this move forward. It's been talked about for a while and kind of been on the back burner, and I actually got a constituent reach out to me about it as well and since making the referral i've had a couple of other alders ping me about it saying constituents had contacted them about potentially getting a crosswalk put in here so it's definitely something that Residents are interested in seeing implemented. It's something that the department is interested in seeing implemented. So I'm I'm in favor of seeing what the staff has proposed tonight getting put in. I've talked to Ron as well about it, the park rec director, Ron Grawl. And I know he, via email, did let us know that he was in favor or approving of this plan, as well as Greg Wilcox, who's the recreation facilities coordinator for park rec department. So both of them gave their blessing. And I give my blessing as well. I did want to share one comment tonight. I had talked to Alderman Wells about this because this used to be his district, and he's also on the park rec board, just to get some background if this had been an area of concern. He had intended to be here tonight to speak to it as well, but apparently he was unable to make it, and I wanted to share just something that he said brought up in an email to me that I received just before the meeting so He said my one concern Actually, let me back up. He said I'm broadly in support of whatever Staff feels makes for a safer pedestrian a vehicle interaction my one concern is that more explicit crossing area is going to provide a rationale for drivers and not to yield to pedestrians crossing outside of marked locations, which of course they shouldn't. Granted, people shouldn't jaywalk, but that's not licensed to run them over. He said, my one suggestion would be painting parking lines at each shoulder to narrow the available drive lane and therefore slow traffic. So I know Darren's just hearing that now, but I don't know if that's something that is up for discussion or something that could be done maybe in the future when we do striping in this area. But I did want to share that. Again, I'm in favor of what staff is proposing. Park Rec Department's in favor of what staff is proposing. Anything is better than the nothing that's there now in terms of marking and signage. So I'd appreciate your support tonight. Thank you.

Thank you. And I'm also in favor of this proposal that's before us, partly because the crossing is mid-block and partly because of the greatly increased number of persons around with those two new fields, particularly on the weekends. So does anybody else have any questions or comments? I have one.

I have two questions. First, was a traffic study done on this or no?

We did not do a full traffic study. The only thing that we did do was just gain some vehicle information on the roadway to understand how many vehicles traverse at the mid block crossing and at the ends. We did it on Two weeks ago when they had their last big Saturday event because we want to make sure we lined up with that. I can't remember what it is explicitly called. But on the Friday prior at this mid block location in a 24 hour period. There were only 673 vehicles that crossed this point. On Saturday, there were only 790, and then on Sunday, there were only 577 vehicles that crossed at this mid-block. I think a lot of times what's happening is vehicles are coming over from Grand, coming into the parking lot, leaving from that same side and going back to Grand, and vice versa. Coming up from West, coming in on that side into the parking lot, and leaving and going back. Very... not a lot of cross through across the crosswalk itself.

Okay. Then the other question I had was where this crosswalk is going, do we put up like no parking signs a certain distance from that so people can't park up to that so you can see the people that want to cross?

So at this location right now, on the north side and to the east of the crossing, there is already a fire hydrant. And per state statute, I believe it's no vehicle can park within 15 feet of a hydrant anyways. If we find that at some point in time that It needs to be expanded further. I think that can be explored at a later date. And then on the south side, as you can kind of see from the picture, it's a bit wider. The ramp itself, a little more accessible, obviously, and the path itself is wider. It is signed as a loading zone only. So I don't know the exact... distance but i would roughly say probably 30 feet to the west and 30 feet to the east is approximate distance of the loading zone itself from the crosswalk okay anybody else i'd entertain a motion oh go ahead

you think about this as this park has evolved um... i know in other and not just park products for other city projects there's been a valuation of you know things like this um... as they've come forward I think it might be just a good idea. I don't know if this is something that has to be a referral, but I'm just asking the question, should we think about how we do this larger scale? Like maybe as different phases of these projects go forward that we're including things like this in those projects. Does that make sense?

Yeah.

So I don't know if that's a question that could be proposed to, I can ask that of the Parks Director, but I don't know if Public Works, do you have any thoughts about that?

i would think that would be an appropriate ask of anytime we are putting in a crossing facility in which it's recognized that it's going to be especially a heavily traversed location where we'll be a little more preemptive to to it that that discussion happened a little earlier. So that happens there instead of possibly in this forum and handled in with that project. I think that would be appropriate. Okay.

With that, I'll make a motion then. I'll use the suggested language. So I recommend approval of the installation of the pedestrian warning signs and enhanced crosswalk pavement marking for the pedestrian crossing on Hoover Avenue between the Hoover parking lot and Mendiola Park.

All right, is there a second?

I second.

Thank you. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. Thank you. Moving on to 6A, review and possible action on modifying City Ordinance 7.04.6.D, traffic parking restrictions, overnight parking, even odd days, to only be enforced starting November 1st through April 1st. Before we go to you, Darren, would Alderman Van Traste brought this forward, would you tell us what was your reasoning for bringing this forward?

Thank you, Chair. The reason for this was in my district, I have a lot of townhouses and single-family homes, and it was brought to my attention that the single-family homes don't necessarily like all the hardware, cars in particular, trucks in particular, on their side of the street. They've got parking. When it goes odd and even, it just... It puts a lot of, there's no curb being left at all on the single family side, and if they have events and everything, you know, parties and that sort of thing, there isn't any parking available until you get around the corner and head towards the park. So the reason for it is it just, it would be more convenient for the residents of both the townhouses and the single family.

Thank you. Darren, did you look into that?

I guess from just to have the discussion on this is to know and understand from the Building and Grounds Committee if this is an item that the committee deems appropriate for engineering staff to review as to it being appropriate to study this and understand if this ordinance is appropriate to update and modify as this is a I mean, it's not a traffic study, but it is certainly going to be a study that many parties are going to have to be involved. And it's not just going to be engineering. It'll be fire, PD, park rec, transit, and patrol to understand the... possible full ramifications that we can understand at least from internal discussions of the pros and cons of the alteration of this ordinance in which it might take place and and just some um initial discussions that we have we have had with this is i reached out to patrol uh... michelle gross next to understand if we if we have this ordinance in place what the ramifications might be for citation review iraq citation revenue see me uh... it was her estimate that there would be about a ten percent decrease in in revenue which would be a decrease in about twelve thousand dollars Revenue that would have came in and that was using information from. Calendar year 25. Or just. The last calendar, you know, calendar year, whatever it might be. And then just some of the other things. That we'd have to understand and take into consideration is some of our narrower streets that this would not be feasible in and try and understand where. what those minimum width streets might be that we would have to look at and evaluate. So we'd probably have to have a sweeping review of all of our street widths, all the cross sections that this may be involved. And then with that, and understanding some of that information is how do we then with some of those streets, because now it's a global thing, how do we give out that message to the citizens to let them know that this street, because of it being narrow, is exempt from that odd even restriction? Are we gonna have to put in signs then on those particular streets, on both sides of the street to say, no parking on the odd sides on this day and no parking on the even sides on on this day because then we have to keep even odd parking in order to allow two-way traffic during the nighttime hours especially for emergency services to make sure that they can get through safely if they need to you know, if emergency comes through and takes place. So that's just one of the things and the facets that we've had some internal discussions and thoughts about for this item in particular.

Thank you. Alderman Van Traste.

Darren, we had talked about the signage and that we could do overlays on those signs, just print new information on the current signage so that it could reflect the ordinance change if that happens. And also I wanted to mention to the board that Alex Damien has endorsed this. He said he wouldn't do it if it was year round, but if it starts November 1st through April 1st, that Alex is in favor of it, so.

Is he in favor or is he not opposed?

Well.

Talking into the microphone.

I can't recall if he said in favor or not opposed, but he didn't have any problems with it. As long as it had the winter provision on there, November 1 to April 1.

Okay, does anybody else have a comment? Alderman Ebert.

Yeah, my question is, even if we got the evens and the odds, people that are parking on the street, they still have to have parking permit or something like that, correct? Correct. You just can't park willy-nilly? Correct.

A permit will still be required.

For any car on the street?

Correct.

Alderman Ben Trasty? Thank you.

With that, Darren, the way I understand it with the police chief is we permit now seven days a week versus what used to be five days a week for on-street parking. It's now seven days a week. Is that correct? Because that's what I heard from the chief anyway. Yes. Okay.

Go ahead.

So with that, the revenue difference, the 10%, I'm sure now that it's seven will be made up for that $12,000 deficit, so to speak. And the additional two-day a week permitting.

Yeah, I guess I'm just not sure when that transition took place.

Okay. Alderman Helgestad?

Thank you. I know I've had similar discussions about this in the past, and I know a concern that came from Public Works was about street sweeping, because the even-odd parking allowed them to plan routes for the street sweepers to street sweep. So I imagine this would potentially then affect that and the quality of being able to get in on all the cut-ins and cut-outs and such. Has that been thought or discussed with

That is another item that'll have to come under review as well if we're to evaluate it further and understand the ramifications of that and try and understand that similarly.

You know, just because, I mean, in my past experience, I've fielded comments from residents in the past, not on this tonight, but in the past of, you know, hey, my street, you know, there were four cars parked and they couldn't street sweep. And now there's a bunch of leaves or whatever, you know, in the gutters. And that was a complaint I had fielded more than once. So that would be something just to think about as we discuss this.

Go ahead. So I guess I'm still trying to wrap my head around why it was brought up. So people in your neighborhood don't want the townhouse people parking on their side of the street?

It's actually people in my district.

It's what?

How many?

I've got 47.

And they all called you?

No.

No, I know, but... So if I got a complaint from one person or I got a complaint from 50 people, I would feel differently about it. I guess I'm fairly strongly opposed to this. For the convenience of a few people, we're going to change the rules for 72,000 people. And Darren has described that we're going to have to do a citywide monitoring of all these streets to determine what the impact of this is before we go ahead and do it. I think it's too much work. I think this rule has been in place for many, many years, and I think people have accommodated it. And I think easier rules, like simple rules, are easier to follow than complicated rules. And I think this easy rule has been in place, and most of our residents know what it is, so they know what's expected of them. Re-educating the public is complicated. I think there's a concept of settled law. Now that we've had this rule in place for a long time, there needs to be a compelling reason to change it, not just a reason. When the rules are established, I think it rises to a bigger issue before we try and change these rules. And the residents don't, I'm not finished. When the residents know what the rules are, they know what kind of parking they need, they can buy property appropriately, they can store their cars on private property or in storage locations or any other location. We don't require people to store their cars on the public street. So when they know what the rules are and they buy their property, they know what inconveniences they're giving to themselves. So I just don't see where this rises to the level of changing the law over. And I live on one of the more narrow streets, and I don't think we should have rules that apply to streets that are 35 feet wide that would not apply for roads that are 32 feet wide, because most people don't know how wide their road is. So I'm sorry. I just oppose. Alderman Van Traste, you can go.

At one time in the city of Waukesha, one-way streets were quite popular, and now we have very little of that, and the residents are much happier with two-way streets. Thank you.

Okay, so this is on the, does anybody else have a comment on this topic?

Yeah.

Alderman Helgastead.

I mean, I get, it's a good topic for discussion. I just, Lack of a better term to use a phrase, I don't know the juice is worth the squeeze at the moment. I'm just not seeing the overall benefit to use all that staff time. And yes, I understand we can re-skin the signs. We've done that as a city for a very long time. It saves a lot of money, but it's still, again, staff time then to go out, pull a sign down, reprint it, put it back up, inventory everything. It's... you know, again, I just don't know that we're gonna see the overall benefits that's worth it, I guess. Especially in my district, I mean, we've got, so many of my streets are narrow with its one-side parking anyways, and downtown has got a very different parking overlay anyways for the Central City Business District. But for other neighborhoods, I think folks, like you said, are very used to this. And I even, I know my friends out in Milwaukee where their rules change seasonally like this, and it's a pain for them as it is to know what day it is and make sure that you're on the right side and all that jazz when it changes from season to season. So just keeping us simple and consistent I think is a benefit.

thank you and just because i did fail to mention it before uh i was contacted by the fire chief and he is opposed uh alderman manion i was just curious darren or alderman van trieste where where did the idea of the i guess november through april date restriction or date specification come from? And the reason I ask is I've always heard that this was a big benefit for snow removal. And I'm guessing that it's from that, but I would just point out that winter in Wisconsin spring and fall in wisconsin are very unpredictable and it is not unheard of to have significant snowfall in october and significant snowfall in april so i'm just curious about that date restriction and if that was part of the reason for it alderman van trasty

Thank you. I think it comes from, what was it, three weeks ago, we had a little bit of snow falling. It didn't stick. So, I mean, it could happen in May as well. I've seen it here myself in 1990 with eight inches of snow and ice. But the general consensus is in the communities that it goes from November 1st to April 1st. And that's where that came from.

We also have other signage within the city that is parking restrictive from November 1st to April 1st, specifically for snow plowing efforts in various cul-de-sacs or very sharp curves throughout the city because of snow plowing efforts that To to make it easier obviously and and so is a bit to kind of overlay on top of that so to speak.

All the person that that's yeah, I'm opposed to it as well. I I don't it's for overnight parking. It's not for like during the day parking so there's not that many cars on the street or it's not prohibiting anybody from. You know having their party or whatever and not letting people People park there because it's it's overnight parking. It's you know midnight to 6 a.m. So I don't understand again.

I'm trying to understand why You know the people don't want people parking in front of their house Okay, so obviously to change a city ordinance we would need a new ordinance right so have you talked to the attorneys office I

I haven't talked to running this office about this. I was letting the process work its way out, because I did talk to Darren about it at length. And he told me the ins and outs of what it would take to do this. And I figured I'd let it play out until we got to a point where we were stuck on something. And then we'd go from there and confer with the appropriate people.

OK, that makes sense to me.

and i did speak with attorney brian running and he said the appropriate avenue was it first to come through building and grounds and then if it was to continue forth then it would go to onl for its approval there then to okay so would it go from building and grounds to the common council correct okay or it would go from building and grounds if it was to be approved at building and grounds the referral would then go to onl for onl's approval and then if it was approved at onl then it would go to council for their approval okay so is there a motion okay

We'll move on then to item 6B. So item A fails for lack of motion. 6B, please investigate possible pedestrian accommodations and speed-reducing measures on Michigan Avenue between McKenzie Drive and Green Meadow Drive. And as a correction to something I'd said to Alderperson Mikulich before, I didn't understand that there was different strategies for reviewing crosswalks, so maybe there is a more streamlined, not a full traffic study to look at a crosswalk, but we'll ask you those questions after you've given the presentation.

Sure, I'll make this brief and then I can pass it off. But as you mentioned, the referral is to review Michigan Avenue between McKenzie Drive to Green Meadow Drive. And as you may know, it's right in the heart of the area where North High School is on the north side of Michigan Avenue there. And... lowell park on the south side so there certainly is a good amount of pedestrian foot traffic whether it be just from the high school connecting to the park from the north to the south or individuals parking on the road and and crossing the street and a bit of the concern is that the only uh... available crossings between the high school on the north side to the park on the south side is all the way to the west at McKenzie or all the way to the east at Green Meadow, which spans a distance of approximately 1,000 feet with no pedestrian crossing. In between. And then that I'll hand it off to Alderman Miklitz.

Can I ask if you had a picture of that occasion? Because I can't see them. Mine doesn't have them.

So actually, there is no crosswalk at McKenzie either. It goes all the way from Green Meadow to University before there's any crosswalk.

So there's one on the west side of the intersection of McKenzie. So if I grab a little further.

I don't think there's one there. Where? Well, there's no, okay, there's no hash marks that go across the street.

Correct.

Okay, gotcha.

Okay.

So yeah, so in this parking lot that you're showing over here on the left side of the of the of North High School is no longer there. So kids don't park there. Yeah, that's gone. Okay. The only parking lot now where everybody utilizes is North High School's parking lot, and then the students all come out the sidewalk there, and then they go to their cars, which are all parked on the street, and then they cross all willy nilly, to get to their car wherever their car may be parked. So there is high traffic that crosses that street to get to where their cars are parked. The other issue is they've opened up this, to the right of North High School or to the east of North High School, they opened up that roadway now so people can go from Michigan Avenue down that road and then to park in the back of the In the back of the high school then as well So if there's you know a large event going on at Lowell everybody parks in North High School Like the fireworks winter jamboree, you know tennis matches that kind of stuff That's where everybody parks and then they all have to cross the street at no crosswalk area. So that's why my referral is Thank you.

Oh So does her suggestion require a traffic study I

It would require a greater traffic study just because of internal discussions there would be likely a greater dollar amount associated with the possible improvements that would take place in order to what would likely be a mid block crossing that would have to be created for this type of improvement that would take place.

Okay, so now you think is appropriate time for me to talk about traffic studies. Yeah. Okay. So one of the, this committee is most of you know, was chaired by Eric Payne for 18 years. So just because we have a new committee and some new voices, I just wanted to have a conversation and to just talk about some of my thoughts on traffic studies and see where all of you are so that we can give direction to staff and I want staff's opinion too and I want everybody to be happy with the product should we go forward with this. So one of the things I've noticed over the years is The prior procedure was an Alderman could just insist on a traffic study. And what I'd like there to be is a little bit of a standard in there where we don't do traffic studies if we've done one in the last, say, five years. So we don't study the same area over and over. And then the second like one of the strategies would be like Mendiola Park is a good example because there's new facilities there which changes the traffic patterns, which makes it more like a reason to do this. So if there's no reason to do it and we've done it three years ago, And then the one other thought I had, and I'm still thinking though, I'm not advocating a position right now, I'm just thinking out loud. Sometimes we do traffic studies and nothing happens. And so if it's really likely that we're going to do something or unlikely we're going to do something, changes how much I value a traffic study. And then one of the thoughts I had was to establish a form that had some of these criteria on it that aldermen that want a traffic study would complete this partly to gather their thoughts and present this all in a comprehensive way so that you could see what the thinking was when they asked for the study. And then at this committee would give the yes or no to go forward with the study. So it's not one person, gets to use up staff time because these cost thousands of dollars. but as a group the five of us would if you can convince two other people or three people if you don't have a seat on this committee to go forward then we would go forward with whatever and i would imagine that most of us would be because all these requests are referrals from other older people so i'd imagine we would you know prefer to say yes you know and let certain studies go through but if it doesn't meet even the minimum standard i'm thinking of just not saying yes automatically but having to have a reasonable argument that we would want to do that so i was thinking at this point just to talk to you about it and then ask staff to um you know use this discussion to come up with what type of form would it be and we would look at this form and decide if we're going to go forward

I mean, this makes a lot of sense, just being more efficient and being more mindful with how we move forward with things and how we spend money, of course. So I think this item is a good example, where we have a motion, we've had a referral, we have an intended result or project, however you want to call that, tied to that study. So I think that's probably a good idea, to be honest. And tying it to an actual request or a need or something, you know, just again brings that, you know, full accountability, full circle, that we're not, again, spending money unnecessarily. We're spending staff time, I should say.

Alderperson Miklash.

I agree. I don't have a problem having a traffic study done on it just to see where we're at. The only problem with that is school's out at the end of this week.

We thought of that. They put the things out before school's out to counter traffic before that happened. Oh, okay. All right, then. No, we weren't going to make you wait until fall. Because of the school situation, they did put the counters out in time so that this would not be held for months.

Thank you.

So I know this process is making it change, so I don't want to hold your item up because we're thinking about this. I'm just using this as an example of how, and I'm not opposed to having crosswalks to parks. I think parks in particular is, you know, we expect people to walk to parks, so it gets much greater use in other locations. So what did you have any thoughts on the form or the that having to have some standard to get one?

No, I I think that's a great idea, especially being a new older person that kind of gives me a better idea of what is what are the check boxes I need to check, you know, and and does it does it meet all those all those things? So I I'm I'm for that.

Thank you. Alderman Ben Tracy.

So recently I had an experience of 6 tenths of a mile. Silver Nile Road was repaved in concrete. And we had a traffic study done, and it was why we still had orange cones to pick up. So typically people, when they see orange cones, they don't go as fast as they normally would. And within that traffic study that we did through Public Works, what happened was the separation between the two trip points. One of the trip points, I don't know if it was a fore or aft one, but it was it was damaged and it wasn't even collecting data so we got to make sure going forward i think this is important if a road's been repaved we should wait a couple months and let everybody re return to the normal traffic patterns and see from there what the speeds look like and and uh and make a decision after that so that's my opinion

Okay. Alderman Ebert, you're good? Okay, is that enough to start the form process and whatever, and then we'll bring back Alderman Miklich's item next week for possible action?

Yes. Okay. I think that that should work and that would be appropriate.

Thank you. Anybody else on that topic?

Thank you.

All right, so that was a discussion item only. 6C, current building and grounds budget.

Alright. And there was no change from the last meeting as there were no items that were hitting the building and grounds budget. So beginning balance was for the year $17,126.78. Spent to date $5,392.48 with a remaining budget for 2026 being $11,734.30.

Thank you. Just because we've got some new people, how much does a stop sign cost? A stop sign?

Roughly? About $225 just for the sign and about $75 for the pole itself.

Thank you.

How about a crosswalk? I'm curious. How much is a crosswalk? What part? The painting part.

The painting, about $300.

Okay. Anybody else? Yeah.

How much does the study cost? Yeah.

Go ahead, staff, traffic staff.

Sure. It can vary from the level of 3,000 to $5,000, depending on the number of staff that have to be involved to

fulfilled the the full allotment for the study because for instance deploying of tube counters or a camera to monitor one location two locations and then reviewing of the footage to do the count for the intersection and then additional Review if we're also needing to know the amount of pedestrians Crossing at the location as well if we're not just looking at vehicles if we're also looking at pedestrians as well doing that analysis and and also doing the speed yep as well and May also have to get into contact with PD and have them do additional if they have history on the location as well and and then determining if if greater level and effort is needed, if something at a future CIP needs to be programmed possibly for the improvement because the building and grounds budget may not have enough funding associated for whatever improvement may possibly be needed.

All right, anybody else? All right, if there are no objections, we're adjourned.