Public Works Committee - Regular Meeting

Okay, it is 5.31. I will call to order the Public Works Committee meeting of Monday, June 8th. Trustee Sarabin is on the road. Did she dial in? She said she was going to dial in. So maybe she's a participant? Well, we're going to try to manage without her. The first order of business is to review and approve the minutes of April 13th. Anyone like to make a comment or move to approve?

Move to approve the minutes of April 13th, 2026. Jacob, is there a second?

I'll second. Thank you.

James? Any further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. All right. Moving on to we have what four things today. The first is discussion recommendations for the lake drive traffic calming concepts. Draft number one.

1.0. So this is actually 2.0 as far as public works committee. And we took this up initially when we were made aware that there's eligible funding for the 2026 safe streets and roads for all grant funding opportunity. So we didn't want to miss out on any federal funding, especially if it's 80% funded and then 20% local match for especially traffic calming pedestrian bike safety features. So after we were made aware of that, we worked closely with Milwaukee County and they felt comfortable with that. out of the 25 million that they planned on applying for, that we put our hat into the ring with 2 million total for funding opportunities. And we leveraged that based on our adopted 2025 bicycle and pedestrian safety study, as well as our municipal safety action plan. That really is our roadmap for future traffic calming features throughout the village. So those templates have been very useful for village staff to try to use as guidelines of what's next as far as future projects or grant opportunities. So fast forward with that, we had a discussion with Public Works Committee and there was overall consensus that Lake Drive was the key area of focus for this grant opportunity. So from there, we contracted out with R.A. Smith, who is willing to give us not only conceptual renderings to see what they would look like on that conceptual level, but also to ensure that those guiding principles were integrated within budgets because we didn't want to just have pie in the sky with concepts without really backing into what we can truly afford based on eligible costs for these traffic calming features. We started out with three locations, but Public Works Committee said, well, why stop there? If there's available funding, let's do the additional Lake Drive corridor. So we leveraged R.A. Smith to do more of a complete analysis of Lake Drive and then integrated that within what was recommended within the Bicycle and Pedestrian Safety Study and really tried to target what was mentioned in the committee level is intersections as much as traffic calming within them. So we narrowed that down internally to Glendale Avenue, Hampton Avenue, Circle Drive, Monrovia, and School Road. So we successfully applied for that grant this last month, put our hat in the ring, and gave general just project descriptions, but not the concepts for the federal funding, because we all know that that could change through comments here at Public Works Committee and going through design. But this really helps us have these concepts ready for even our temporary traffic calming trial areas, maybe in the future, such as 2027, like we say, try before you buy mentality of making sure that what we have drafted actually works in the real world. So either way, this is a huge help for DPW staff, our police department, to have these comments ready, our concepts ready. And now we just wanted to go through each one of these just to gain feedback from the Public Works Committee or any of our audience members. So we can better finalize these concepts. And it's not our only chance to kick the can as far as what these will look like. It more is a check-in, a proper check-in to see if we're on that right path for these traffic calming features. So with that, John Brugman with RA Smith is here. I'm going to have him, I hope it's okay, John, go concept by concept. He's one of the main designers with RA Smith. He's a traffic engineer and designer. So him and his team really took this on and gave guidance to Village DPW staff on these five locations. John, if you wanted to maybe go each intersection and explain about the features, why it was designed the way it did, or was, and then we can offer feedback along the way.

I think there's a laser pointer either there or right on the table right next to you.

Oh, see it right there, that black. Yep.

There you go.

All right, yeah, thanks for having me here. I'll just, I guess, go through the designs south to north, if that works. So as Matt said, all of these were sort of inspired from the village head and bike study was kind of our basis to implement traffic calming improvements and pedestrian and bicycle improvements where we could. So here at Glendale, we're looking at implementing a, see we had a 10 foot median here. We're looking at a Danish offset, which you might be familiar Oh.

Give it a jiggle. There's other ones. Can I just see if I'm... What's that? Oh, yeah. Uh-oh. Oh, no.

I think I see it. There we go. Okay. Okay.

So we've got the Danish offset crossing here. You might recognize that similar to Lake Drive and Woodburn, Lake Drive and Palisades, similar concept where a pedestrian crosses. This would be west to east cross here, then look towards traffic, oncoming traffic, and then continue their crossing. So implemented that on the south leg and then we've got actually a raised crossing here on the Glendale Avenue approach. So basically traffic needs to slow down as they're approaching the crosswalk and as they're actually entering into the Lake Drive intersection. On the north side, we've got raised median shown here. And then you can kind of see that the red areas are traversable medians. So you can see we've got driveways here, here and here. So anybody trying to get in and out of these driveways can do so, but it's just a traversable median. So the cars can actually drive over it versus kind of the brownish green areas is a raised median that's not traversable. Um, we're generally showing, um, landscaping in the medians as options. These are just concepts. Um, and then I guess the other thing else I should note is this line here is, is the Shorewood, uh, Whitefish Bay line. So we'd be looking at, um, tapering in right at the, um, Shorewood line. So coming in a little curb bump out and then, um, narrowing that typical section and going back out as you approach the crossing on the south leg. Let's see, we are implementing, there's actually no curb ramps here at Glendale, so we'd be looking at adding in curb ramps on the south leg. There is a crosswalk, but no curb ramps. Let's see. We also noted it's a possible location for a gateway sign on the east side here as you're coming in from Shorewood.

If I remember correctly, the sign, the cost that you've put down there is $50,000, which that's a heck of a sign.

Yeah, and it was just kind of a ballpark figure. You can do a lot with different signage options, but

Yeah.

I guess, is there any questions before we get too far? Maybe we want to take these one at a time just to categorize each one of the five, or is there overall concepts and themes that are going to be more repetitious, John, to call out throughout all these?

Are there more repetitions?

Yeah, for instance, landscape was a theme, I think, that we wanted to ensure the integrity of the Lake Drive corridor when our project team was talking about these five locations that we wanted to Ensure that we try to take advantage of additional landscaping and green space, even if we have to do, you know, the traffic calming with a concrete median that we wanted to be sure we complement that late drive feel in that corridor. I think with all these features, I think was important as part of our discussion. We want it to be conscientious as far as the driveways and ensuring that we have both left and right turn movements out of our residents' driveways and understanding that there is an impact to these areas. Jacob, I think you mentioned earlier, several meetings ago, that you actually ran late drive in this area. And it was difficult because people are looking maybe left instead of right and having that raised awareness. medium, especially on Glendale and Hampton, which we'll talk about in a little bit, will bring more awareness, I'll call it. We didn't think it was appropriate, and I don't think WisDOT would allow for any raised crossing on Lake Drive, but especially traversing and going into that intersection, people are more focused on vehicle movements rather but less on pedestrians, runners, walkers, people with strollers. So that was one of the themes we talked about as well with these concepts.

well, you know, this isn't the only intersection that addresses it, but like this shape of intersection is problematic because it winds up being an extra long intersection. And it's kind of at a weird angle that if you're not very flexible, it's kind of tough to look left and get a full view. And so a lot of people just kind of look right, kind of glance that way and then just go. And so I think this is fantastic.

I should also note we did... Pass these designs along to WISDA, at least the first three I think we're going to go through. So Glendale, Hampton, and Monrovia. Just to kind of get their general blessing on the designs with this being Highway 32, we ran different design vehicles through here. We had to make some adjustments based on the design vehicles. We'll see that more at the Hampton intersection, but generally they were okay with the concepts that we had laid out here.

Is there, for raised sidewalks, is there like a minimum distance from a road? And what I mean by that is... While I understand it's not a speed bump, it is also something that is perhaps a surprise to people on Lake Drive who are taking a left or a right onto Glendale and suddenly would say, oh, no, here's this. It's not a speed bump. I mean, you have to slow down to go over them, yes.

yeah yeah um there's not a set distance but we could you know certainly put signage up as as you're making that turn to make that pedestrian crossing more visible you can also introduce things like colored concrete just to make it stand out more obviously it's more of a challenge in the winter but right That's one way you could make them more visible. I mean, instead of the raised. You could do both, actually.

Correct. This would be our first raised thing. And it is interesting to think of the plowing issues that it could have. I guess signage is a little bit tough in that if you're coming down Lake, which people are traveling at a good clip on Lake, that if they take a left, for example, I think they would be kind of surprised that suddenly they need to come to a slower turn. And I think signs are almost signs on a turn movement. Wouldn't that be... you're really hoping that they read the sign before they make the turn. And that's only, you know, 2% of the people who are going through that intersection. So not sure a sign is going to help that. And there's no question in there. It's more just, I'm a little nervous about it. Is there, is there anything also to be said for not, not just the raised sidewalk, but also the, the rest of the treatments that we're going to go through and any kind of consistency we have with existing traffic, refuge islands, you know, this would be one race crosswalk. Is it unusual to have one and then have five more intersections that don't have them? Like what's, what's the, what are best practices in terms of keeping things consistent on one particular road?

Yeah, I guess we did try to implement, you know, as I mentioned, the Danish offsets because there are some, you know, further to the north on Lake Drive. As far as raised crosswalks, I guess this is the first in the village. We don't have really anything to work with, but, you know, you can, I think you at least try to focus on kind of the problem areas and You know, I guess that's just kind of, you just have to start somewhere, I guess, is my best answer. But I wouldn't say you have to do it universally. I think it's just more about where do you think is the best spot to put these.

Perfect. Matt, do you have opinions on how this would impact plows and snow rule?

All of the plow blades float when you approach different features such as this. So it would be more in the elements of the nitty gritty design as far as how you do your setback with the taper in order for the plow blade to meet that incline. And I think that, correct me if I'm wrong, John, but like The table, as far as the raised crosswalk, I mean, that can be discussed as far as like what kind of elevation we're really talking about. There's no, maybe there is a standard, but we can have those discussions based on DPW needs or even maybe to what was discussed before, like maybe it's a sound and an issue with like the cars coming over there and you have a resident that you don't want like this thump like in the middle of the night. We want to make sure we get that right. Right. Because we do want to be conscientious of pedestrian crossings, but it's got to work for everyone. Motorists, neighbors, residents, vehicles.

Sure. And well, you know, the height will be based on the speed limit, too. I mean, get 25 miles per hour on Glendale. I think it's 30 on Lake Drive in that location. So we're not talking a significant elevation change to slow traffic down because in theory it's already fairly low.

Is there a similar location in the metro area that you could point folks to that maybe has this type of intersection that they could drive by and experience it?

Sure. I know ones that our firm worked on, it's actually on Watertown Blank Road and 118th, I believe, is the cross street. West of 41 there. So that's one recent one I can think of. City of Milwaukee is putting them in numerous locations as well. I can I can send Matt a few examples.

I think that would be helpful if you could send us a few examples and I can send that out.

Sure. All right, so if there's no other comments on this one, we can maybe jump to the next one. Sure. Hampton?

All right, so here at Hampton, similar concepts in terms of we've got... 10-foot median on both sides of Hampton. We've got the raised crosswalk on the west leg. And then here's what I was talking about. We had to look at the vehicle turning templates. So on that north leg, We've got a traversable median that runs kind of through the crosswalk area and further to the north. And that was to allow for eastbound trucks, because Hampton is a truck route, eastbound Hampton trucks going northbound on Lake Drive. So they can go over that median area. There's also a couple of driveways pretty close to the intersection. So again, not blocking those driveways. Let's see. We recommended an RRFB, rectangular rapid flashing beacon, on that north crosswalk. Just thinking this would be a more popular walking route with Hampton more of a major street.

I guess I would ask the question, do we actually have data on that? Like, we have plenty of traffic data, but I don't know if we have pedestrian. I mean, obviously, Hampton sounds like a major thoroughfare, but I... It would be interesting to know where do pedestrians cross? Is Hampton actually a place they do, like cars do? Or is Glendale? I really don't know the answer to that one.

You mean across Lake Drive?

Yeah. We're only doing one of those RRFBs? I can't remember if we had another one somewhere else.

Yeah, that was the only one we were proposing.

Well, I would have been that block between Hampton and Glendale. And I can tell you that for me and what I see most, people cross more at Hampton than they do at Glendale. Okay. Across Lake, that is.

Well, in comparison also to Monrovia and school and what's the other one? Circle. You know, like, I don't know the answer. Yeah. People crossing there.

And we didn't have data that we were working with. The DOT may have some counts that we could take a look at. I'm not aware of any counts that have been taken. We do know that that northbound to westbound movement is pretty heavy. So we didn't put the crosswalk on that south leg, just knowing how heavy that movement would be.

I asked Matt about this, just that there is a note here. It says relocate approximately 430 feet of sanitary sewer line. And that is to move the curb lane, the curb in probably north maybe?

Yeah. So we wanted to make that median a little wider. We had first, I think we had it as a six foot median. So in order to make that median area more substantial, we pushed the roadway out two feet, so that's gonna impact a number of utilities. We were looking at potential lighting impacts, storm sewer impacts or sanitary sewer impacts, trying to avoid trees as much as we can. We did throw some new trees into the design, not knowing exactly if trees would be impacted. It is gonna be fairly close in some spots by doing that widening.

Does anyone know the width of the medians on Silver Spring? Eight feet? I think it's eight.

I think it's eight.

Hey, still got it. I mean, so once I saw the sanitary sewer movement, I mean, that's an expensive little adventure. And if it's just to make a median 10 feet instead of eight feet... It seems like that's something that we could discuss when budget comes around and we look at priorities. Because that's a major disruption of Lake Drive to dig it up, move a sanitary line. And I guess it sounds like you could do it, you just would have a smaller median.

Yeah, we had started out with just a six-foot median. And then in talking with Matt and Maxine, they were more comfortable with a wider median. So that's kind of why we... that way.

I want to make sure. I think I know the answer. The green circles are trees, right? Correct. I see landscape items in the budget. I mean, has there been a lot of thought to what these trees would cost? And then I also want to ask, were these trees just plopped down because you think it would look nice and we might have to cut one or two trees down? Or do these trees serve a purpose beyond that?

They weren't placed really with any, we didn't talk to a landscape architect in terms of this tree needs to go exactly here. They were just kind of to understand the concept that we may need to add more trees. in this area.

And those were replacement trees because of the impact to the existing curb line, correct? Correct. Yeah.

Okay. I just was curious if the landscaping items had any sort of traffic calming or engineered purpose other than... Yeah.

Not really for this exercise. Yeah.

All right. Anything else for Hampton?

I would echo what you said, Kevin. I think we should talk about whether the juice is worth the squeeze on that. That is a big disruption. Maybe that's a topic for the broader board.

It should be stated in the memo, it talks about all of these projects costing $3.1 million. The maximum of the grant is $2 million. You know, if all of these get done, they will be done in multiple phases. Clearly, we are focused on phase one where we get grant money and we would need to optimize. We would need to choose intersections. We would need to choose features that are less expensive to get more out of the grant. Right. Okay, moving on to... Can I ask how that...

I wasn't quite sure on that grant. So it's an 80-20 split, right? And then we're saying $3,100,000? $2,000 for the cost of the five locations, but $764,000 is for public utilities. So would that come under the 20% R-split? Or how does that work?

It's a really good question. So backing into it, the reason why we had R.A. Smith look at more than just the three locations is to do exactly this exercise and see, like, How much is like a good estimate with each one of these features? And now we know beyond when we wrote the grant that there's more projects that we have available funding for. Right. So to Kevin's point, we're going to have to narrow that down for this one. But there will be another opportunity for federal or state funding in order to keep on going, whatever priority we choose for those five locations. So, yes, there's more more projects than we have funding for after we went through this exercise with R.A. Smith. To answer your question regarding the $764,000, non-participating costs is defined as things that are going to be outside of the grant. What would be qualified or eligible expenses? That wouldn't include it. It would not include the 20%. Those would be eligible cost match for the 20% within the $2 million.

And then $600,000, I guess, is what our costs would be. Okay.

it would be the 400,000, I believe for our cost. And then one point six.

That was since 3 million.

Correct. Yep. Yep. And then the utilities would be additional that would go on to the water utility bill or a sanitary sewer. If that, if, the board approved that. Those would be non-participating, so they would be absorbed through a public utility if we decided to do infrastructure improvements as part of that scope. So a lot of these DOT projects allow for you to do it to optimize construction costs because they're mobilized anyway. So it's still a good idea to do. But at the same time, the DOT has strict rules that they don't put money towards our utility fixes at the same time. So we have to split that when we go through our engineering process to put a separate basket off to the side and say, we want to do A through Z with utilities, but you have to pay for that B in the village. We're going to focus our efforts on the infrastructure of what you apply for. Okay, thanks.

All right, moving on to Circle.

Right. So Circle Drive, we focused on the south Circle Drive intersection, just kind of looked at where we had the most room to work with. And it seemed like the South was the better option in terms of driveway spacing and things like that. So similar concepts again, got the raised medians, 10 foot raised medians on either side. We've got the Danish crosswalk on the North side and see, just regular crossings to cross the West Lagos Circle Drive. I'll set my notes here.

And I think we narrowed as far as the circle drive in order to shorten that crossing as well, because that had a fairly large width to it. And for traffic calming purposes, making that turn, we didn't want vehicles to have as much movement if it wasn't really necessary in a local road.

It's a little hard to see in the diagram, but there's green shading and that's the southwest corner of the intersection where we kind of tightened that radius a

Can I ask, it's interesting to think of Circle as a major area. Like, you know, firstly, you're picking the South one instead of the North one, just because you have more room to, like, what was the point of picking Circle? Did we pick Circle?

It's part of the pedestrian bike study. So that was the area defined and evaluated by Taddy.

I would also say, just anecdotally, I think Circle gets a lot more foot traffic than its population would otherwise. Then the housing would suggest because it has that path that cuts through to the library. I know a lot of people move their dogs through there and that's a very common way for families and kids to get over to Lake Drive. Secret way.

Not anymore. When I ran once in the village, I went from Lexington to Circle and up to Lake Drive too. One time. One time when I ran in the village and it'll never happen again.

I caught that.

So it is, I do see a lot of movement beyond just the loop of the circle.

That makes sense. Like I, yeah, you're right about the cut through and like we do that. Okay. Any other comments about circle? And moving on to Monrovia.

Great. This one also fairly similar to circle in that. It's more of a minor intersection. We've got Danish offset crossings on both the north and south legs. This one, just so you know, it's flipped. So north is to the right in this exhibit. It's a little bit different than the other ones. And then we added a crosswalk to cross the Monrovia leg. And then there was a request. You can kind of see the sidewalk on Monrovia goes around kind of goes around the corner or future sidewalk along Lake Drive. It didn't sound like that was going anywhere. So we kind of cut that off and just focused on crossing Lake Drive itself rather than continuing north and south on Lake Drive. Here we had a little bit wider median, got 14 foot medians. We just got a wider typical section to work with See, that's about it.

Can I ask about the Danish, what do you call it, Danish?

Danish offset.

Offset, there you go. You know, it's interesting to think of how that's designed for pedestrians, you know, kind of forces them to look left and right as they go through it. It also, crosswalks are often used by bicyclists, and Danish offsets would be a challenge for that, particularly when you look and say, well, where would a bicyclist cross I don't know. I guess I wonder what do you think?

Well, they have a similar offset. If you take the Oak Leaf Trail past Mequon Road, they have the exact same offset system there, and it's plenty wide. It causes no issues.

That's for...

the path of bikes or well it's for yeah it's for for bikes but it's a crosswalk over mequon drive so you go then you can bend um and yeah i've never had an issue with it okay we and we don't forget we already have one on the end of fairmount and lake drive as well yeah right i will say glad we looked at this intersection. It was probably four years ago, three years ago, some families came and they wanted a sidewalk on that side of Lake Drive and they I'll never forget them describing playing Frogger with their children to get across Lake Drive. And we put in a crosswalk. And I think that did, or not a crosswalk, we striped the road. And I think that did help a bit. And this just feels like a natural progression of that effort.

Yep.

I agree. Also of note, there's a box at the bottom there, replace approximately 465 feet of water main. Matt?

So that's aging water mains. So that was my ask to calculate what that would be. So... When we actually do the remainder of Lake Drive, whenever that time comes, the last thing we want is to rip apart our new pedestrian and traffic calming safety features to get our water main done. So any aging infrastructure I wanted R.A. Smith to calculate, including our water main. So that's more on the north side. So from Silver Spring to our municipal boundary of School Road. is aging water main that we will have to replace over the next i don't 40 years i think is our plan sometime in that time i said that's that's the bulk of the non-participation cost i believe so that water main yes good thing i guess i failed to mention but in general all these intersections were calling for uh a mill and overlay of the roadway so we're gonna mill off

a couple inches of the roadway and put back new asphalt just so you get a clean, smooth surface to work with rather than scarring the pavement and trying to put down new markings.

Okay. And then finally, school road.

Right. This one we had a little trouble figuring out where the actual boundary is between fox point and whitefish bay but we think it's actually on the south curb line of school road is the official boundary so we kind of work from that point to the south um so that kind of limited us on on a few options but um we were looking at replacing that curb ramp in the southwest corner so north is to the right um and then I guess the biggest feature here with no real pedestrian crossings would be just the curb extensions on both sides of Lake Drive. And as you're coming southbound on Lake Drive, just for that traffic calming effect as you enter the village, opportunity for some gateway signage as well. So I guess that's kind of the main focus of this one.

I'm curious, on the southern end, we chose a rather much elongated median as kind of the gateway entry point. Why was the design choice made here to kind of do a, I don't know what you'd call it, but kind of a compression funnel system instead of making it match the other gateway that we did?

Yeah, that's a good question. One of the reasons was we didn't have that pedestrian element in here. So there was really, other than kind of the traffic deflection, there was really no reason to add the median. The other element was we didn't have buy-in from Fox Point in terms of we're going to have to make changes on the Fox Point side if we add a median to do that traffic deflection on the north side. leg of the intersection. So we were a little bit limited on what we could do there.

And just to clarify, it's not that we didn't get buy-in from FoxPoint, it's just I think the timing didn't work out where these were mainly hot off the press I'll call them as of like late last week where we modified this concept. So in the future, FoxPoint said they would be willing to take a look if there's pavement markings or anything else in order to integrate their municipal side versus ours. But for the time being, we don't want to put something out without having the respect of them internally evaluated before we made it public. So this just made sense to have everything within our side of Whitefish Bay. And I think another thing to point out as far as the difference is the driveways are more compact as far as like how many. And just from me driving locally over the last few years, there's a lot more parking, I'd say, on street on Lake Drive than more on the southern side of Whitefish Bay where they have longer driveways. So we didn't want to stretch that out with our traffic calling feature where we're trying to be conscientious of those neighbors as well. We just know that that's going to be a point of topic if we get funding, what that means for the residents.

Just to clarify what you meant, you said there's more parking on the north end. Did you mean there's more availability or there's more cars that are being parked?

There's more cars that are being parked on the north end versus what I personally observe on the south end. And I think it's because there's longer driveways. on the southern side of the village off of Lake Drive versus these are more shorter driveways and you do see more vehicles parked on the north side of Lake Drive.

So indeed like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, maybe 6 houses would kind of lose their parking ability for this particular treatment. They might have something to say about that.

I mean You shouldn't be. Ideally, you're not parking that close to an intersection to begin with. And, you know, it's not that far. It's 100 feet. I mean, if you have guests, they can probably make that trek.

So I think our point was just trying to balance that, right, where we're still modifying the geometry of the road in order to slow traffic down, especially going southbound into the village of Whitefish Bay. And then you have that hill going, you know, from there. So we did want to make a statement piece and try to enhance as far as that welcome statement with the signage and the landscaping, but also just being conscientious to the driveways at the same time.

Can I also ask, I think that homeowners are responsible for the landscaping, like cutting the grass of the right-of-way in front of their home. So we're kind of inventing new land for those neighbors to mow. Is that an accurate statement?

That would be accurate, yes.

Interesting. And it has replaced approximately 240 feet of water main land. So is that just this 240 feet? Is that that much?

I believe it's the footprint. I think it's marked on there from end to end where those project limits would be. So from the municipal boundary on School Road to where you see those markings.

Okay. Any comments about School Road? All right. So what do you need?

So I think that was the exercise right there. I personally don't see a need to bring this to a village board because these are just concepts. I wanted to put it out there for the Public Works Committee to give initial feedback. In fall, we will hear back if we are awarded any of these funds. And of course, that will be next steps and action items and village staff would be able to make more recommendations of how to further utilize the grant funding at that time. So I personally don't believe there would be a need for a village board, but maybe Kelsey.

I thought you have to submit for specific projects, though. So don't you need them to prioritize below that $2 million line?

I think at the time of grant award, I think that's when we would have to prioritize. So I don't think we would need any action as of now. I think it'd be good just to just think about it as far as a committee before we make any necessary actions to those concepts. And we'll see where the grant falls this fall and go from there.

Sounds good.

Matt and I had a conversation this morning about the next steps and particularly about prioritization because we will need to vote one or two of these off the island. And it's clear that it's hard to do in a committee. And so he has volunteered to create that prioritization for us. But this is an opportunity for anyone on this committee to share priorities you know how if you were going to influence matt on that list how would you influence him which which one of these is the most important which one is the least important which one of you you know is the one that makes you most excited or not um go just say one but i guess

I would prioritize the entry and exit to Whitefish Bay or but like so the one over by School Drive and the one over by Glendale I feel like that's when you enter Whitefish Bay that's when you leave Whitefish Bay I do feel like that kind of sets the tone for what to expect and I so I think those two are important um I'd love to see them as a pair so we could do them both but and then I'm not sure, but I like the idea that when you come into Whitefish Bay through Lake Drive, you do just get a sense of you're in a different space. We're going to slow down and we're going to just pay a little more attention.

Do you have a least favorite? Think about it. I love them all.

I don't know if I have an opinion right now.

Okay. I think the Monrovia and the Hampton, just because of the... I mean, I hear what Jacob's saying, and I don't disagree with that, but I think if we're really concerned about safety, I think those are the two places. I mean, the Monrovia, just because the people came and talked about wanting sidewalk, and I think that does help some of that. Hampton, there's so much traffic on that intersection there. I can't say that there's more people walking there than anywhere else, but there seems like there's more of an opportunity for something to happen just because there is so much traffic. And right now, my little neighborhood is really awful because of the construction that's going on on Oakland. So all the cars are coming through there now. And then... Before that, when they were working on Lake Drive south of us, all the traffic was coming through there. So it's been, I mean, I know we're about ready to come to the end of all that, but it seems like that has been a really high traffic area. And I always feel like that Hampton and Lake Drive, particularly in the morning, all the people that sort of live on that end of Whitefish Bay and are going downtown, that take, that don't go the interstate, they all come flying down Hampton and people are, I mean.

It's also the weirdest intersection on Lake.

It's, yeah.

Clearly the weirdest.

You can't see very well sometimes when you're trying to turn left, if you're going back into Whitefish Bay from Hampton and you got to get way out there. And I mean, yeah, it's kind of, so I guess those two, as far as looking at pedestrian safety and the amount of traffic, but I like the two. Those are the two. attractiveness as well.

Yeah, there's definitely a pull between, because I think that's how we started four months ago or whatever it was, where we're like, oh, they're going to be gateway treatments. Have a nice day. That's the beginning in the north and south. We're done. And then we're like, well, now, wait a minute. Shouldn't there be some analytical thinking about where are the pinch points? Where would we do the most good with the dollars that we have? And that's exactly, on the one hand, I like Jacob's idea of having great gateways on the other, spend the money where most of the people are and the most safety can be earned.

But I think both of those, the Hampton, I think the Hampton and the Monrovia are close enough to those two entrances that you would get benefit probably anyway. I mean, if you're, you know.

It is interesting to think of population-wise crossing Lake Drive, right? And the thoughts of what is behind Lake Drive. Like you get close to Clody and you've got blocks of shore and I can't remember the other roads back there, but there's a population that crosses the street. I don't know what it is at School Drive. I don't know what it is. I mean, I think it's pretty thin on the other side of Lake for those north and south entry points. Thanks to think about it.

If we wait a little bit on School Road, one option is to give us more time to work with Fox Point to see if there's opportunities there as well. Yeah, absolutely.

I think there'd be a willingness from a pavement marking standpoint. I don't know, from an infrastructure standpoint, if that would make sense for them to inherit maintenance on that.

I also think if you could do, I mean, visually, The Glendale and Hampton are similar. I think those are the two most striking improvements with the large mediums. I think, I mean, they're pretty close together. I think that'd be a pound for pound. I think those two together would pack a really good punch as far as getting people to slow down and just kind of feel like they're in a different space.

So what I heard, basically, the top four is everything but Circle Drive. It seemed like there was common. Circle Drive would be number five for me. I think so.

OK. Oh, I'm glad we had this talk. OK. I think you have what you need and some conversation about priorities. And we can bid you adieu.

Thank you, John. I appreciate it.

Would your assistant like to chime in with any observations? Do you have any recommendations? No? She should be very proud, though. Wow, you're dead. So smart. When he tells you to go to bed tonight, just go right to bed. That's how smart that guy is. All right. We're going to move on to discussion recommendations for Lake Drive Overhead School Zone Signage Upgrades. This will be on Maxine. Oh, Maxine. Thank goodness we got to your thing today. On page 22, if anybody cares. Oh, wait. No, it's not page 22. Yeah, it is page 22. The memo's 22. The map is 23.

Yeah. This works. It shows the location of the overhead full zone signs. And then here's some photos that I took. So this project was originally awarded as part of the WisDOT TAP grant, but after R.A. Smith's preliminary design and budgeting, it was determined that it wouldn't fit in part of the WisDOT TAP grant. But since the current overhead signs are non-functional and they're out of date, it's still... a priority to update these signs. So modernizing the Lake Drive overhead school zone signs was approved by the Village Board and the Public Works Committee as part of the five safe school zone project areas. And it will be utilizing part of the $200,000 pedestrian and bike safety improvement funds as part of the 2025 budget.

I asked a few questions of Matt today about the concepts of the electricity. Apparently one of them is working, the other one is not, and so we're going to remove the electric from both and make them solar, which seems counterintuitive since you have electricity at least to one of them, but is what it is. They are programmable, so they go on at the right times and off at the right times. I know there's one on Hampton and Ardmore? Just about, yes. That is done by hand and sometimes can be left on by the

safety patrol folks crossing guards and we've talked to the crossing guards about both those locations uh there's i believe two on hampton and two on santa monica so you reach east west north south traffic entering school zones and there's a willingness to turn those on going into next year we did a little bit of uh repairs and maintenance of those led existing school zone signs So our ultimate goal of these overhead signs that we're talking about this evening is a full integration of basically bringing more awareness of the school zones through these LED signs. So the other ones, for whatever reason, just were not being turned on. So the rec department is responsible for managing the crossing guards and there's a willingness there. for them to have their crossing guards, turn them on and off during peak school hours. And the importance of that within those existing areas is it brings more visibility and attention and awareness when they're not on all the time. I feel like there's like almost like either numbness to it if you always see flashing lights, but the same thing of the importance of the RRFBs is it's push button, so it's only engaged when people should really be aware, right? So we wanted to integrate that same philosophy with our overhead signs that are being proposed this evening, is that they would have the same schedule during the peak morning hours and then the pickup around 3 o'clock-ish when Richards, especially with overhead signs, are out of session. so it's more so just trying to again like we talked about the traffic comment on lake drive it feels like you're in whitefish bay you understand when a school zone is heavy in use and this will update our science because the ones that are out there right now have the wrong speed limits so after the village board back in the day before my time reduce the speed limit and approve that to go from 30 to 25 but the school zone speed limit sign has never changed So this goes now with what was out there to 20 miles an hour to now it should be 15.

Well, I know now it should be 15, but it actually took village board action to change the speed limit. Does it take village board action to change the school speed limit?

I think that's MUTCD guidelines that it brings it down. John, it's a good thing that you're in attendance because you're my traffic engineer subject matter expert on this stuff.

It's 15 plus otherwise stated by the municipality.

So it probably is 20 and remains 20 until we change it. Okay. So it's not wrong. It needs to be updated. In which case, what should it be? Regardless if 15 is lower and 20 is... higher, is there any math that says this is what it should be?

If you go to the Taddy study with all the different signs that were placed on there, Anna, they have an overview map. Yep, that exhibit. That's where those recommendations are with the school zone speed limits as well.

I get it. Again, I think from what this discussion has told us is that 20 miles an hour is the law of Whitefish Bay until we change it. I think that's what was spoken. And so if it is, then I don't want to just change it for the sake of lowering it to 15. I want to know what is the number that it should be? What is what is, you know, is best practice 15 is best practice 15 on side streets and 20 on Lake Drive, which is a much bigger volume of traffic. I mean, I get it. Lower is lower. But is there any math? Is there any... rules that we can point to the rationale for doing this other than we're supposed to divide it by two?

I would say from a consistency standpoint, the existing signage around school zones listed at 15 and all other areas of the school zones are 25 miles an hour. So the anomaly that exists today is the lake drive signage is not consistent with the rest of our school zone signs that are certainly out there.

There's 15 mile an hour signs around Cumberland.

I don't know if you have a picture of other existing school zones, the LEDs, Maxine. I don't think that was part of the packet. But the next time any committee member drives... It says 15.

Oh, we're back to number 15. Okay, and we're done. Then we should... It's pretty dark, but yes, that's what it looks like. It does say 15. There you go. In that case, let's figure out whether we need to have village board action to make that official.

It also would be weird if the state statute is 15, unless otherwise acted upon by the local municipality. If we were like, we're going to put all this traffic calming stuff in, but you know what? We want to go a bit faster by kids.

There's a community that did like 7.5. They did something like 12.5. Like they wanted to show something crazy that made people think of how slow they're supposed to go.

Until someone goes.

It was 125 miles an hour. Yeah.

I could go back to see if there's action needed by the village board in order to change it, but I...

I'm not seeing it called out separately from state statute, so that usually means it falls back to state statute, but we'll confirm with... Yeah, absolutely.

Maxine, did you want to explain what John brought up to us late Friday regarding updates to the MUTCD guidelines regarding our proposed sign and the wording choice that maybe we need to reevaluate?

Yes. So this wording on the sign was originally supposed to match and emulate the existing flashing school zone signs that we have. But I think that the current MUTCD guidelines might make us switch this language on the bottom to be, instead of when flashing, to be when children are present. And that would match the new signage in the area as well.

MUTC, Municipal Uniform Traffic Code something?

Very, very close. Manual for Uniform Traffic Control Devices. OK, thank you. Yes.

So probably most likely back in the day when the elementary school LED signs were put out there, that was part of those guidelines. And every so often they update those guidelines. And we were caught in the middle, I think, with Maxine and I not knowing that that change happened. had occurred and so we consulted with our police chief this morning and he said that makes sense from an enforcement perspective as well that all the signs would say when children are present so it doesn't matter if the lights are flashing or not for these overhead that the enforcement would be that it's 15 miles an hour when children are present and that helps our officers be consistent with how they're able to enforce those areas.

Can I ask a really persnickety question? I like it. It's very little to do with your presentation. I apologize. So this picture stood out to me because we have three poles all within a foot of each other. Is there any possibility that like you know, we could place this sign on one of our King Lumineers or like, it just feels like there's some redundancy there.

There's a lot of polls. I do agree with you on that. So one of them is WeEnergies. So we would have to ask for permission to adhere any type of signage for village signs on a WeEnergies poll. They have done in the past, but it depends on what we want out of this area. We wanted to repurpose the existing overhead mass to bring more awareness. And our street light would not allow for an overhead mast as well as the we energies poll probably wasn't rated for that overhead. So, if we were looking to do something smaller, like Cumberland elementary on Hampton Avenue, for instance, and it's just more of your standard street sign. then that would be a different discussion of removing the overhead signs completely and doing something smaller, but still consistent with those LED signs. So it was more so bringing more awareness with the overhead, especially on Lake Drive, as well as repurposing what's already there. Yeah, that makes total sense. I don't think that was a part of the community. I didn't think so either.

OK. Also, going back to what Matt had mentioned earlier, I did want to mention that the new LEDs around the signs will be programmed via Bluetooth on an app. So we won't have to rely on anyone to physically go and turn them on and off. We can just schedule it on the app. Wow.

All right. We need a recommendation. Ready to make that at the very bottom of the memo? Or I'll do it. You know, get it ready.

So this is what we're doing. I recommend to approve the proposed overhead school zone signage modernization on North Lake Drive in the amount of $19,057.28 as shown on the attached memo and exhibits. Thank you. Do I have a second? Second.

I'll second.

Give it to James. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Thank you.

Are you good with consent for that?

Yeah, I think consent. That's the second. That'll be at least the second time or the third time that it's been on there.

I can call it out as well.

Yeah. All right, last bigger item is recommendations on the MMSD green solutions funding for alley reconstruction projects.

All right, so this is another one that has been discussed at Public Works Committee, but I thought it was important to bring it back due to changes with what is our available balance from MMSD to do green solutions projects. So in that way, there's no surprises going into a village board as far as what our scope of service will look like. So there was an update given to us by MMSD because there was still, I'll call it, closed out documents that were necessary for them to give us an update on our available balance, which went from $347,000, some change, to $161,000, $274,000, and $0.21. So that did change where we initially wanted to do two alleys with reducing our green solutions funding balance to zero, because it just as a reminder, MMSD is changing over how they're managing their green solutions. And so we have to have a funding agreement by the end of this year, or else we would lose that funding balance and that would roll into their competitive fund. So moving backwards, we were able to reevaluate our priorities and focus all of our efforts of funding to work plan number one. That was part of the initial, but we had two work plans. So we just reduced it to one alley. That's north of Birch from Hollywood to Marlboro, as shown on those exhibits and maps. And so with that, we plan on designing this year and construction happening the following year in 2027. We have until, I believe, the end of 2028 to do our project if we have the funding agreement in hand. So with that, the village cost share as shown is $68,725.79. So it's about 30% of total cost to the village, given that we are able to leverage the Green Solutions MMSD funding. So within the packet, we just wanted to bring that back for more awareness. But also there are exhibits for the actual funding agreement with MMSD, as well as Clark Deets to assist with the design and construction oversight services with that. We should note that the initial memo explains that the design fee is $18,250, as well as construction observation of $26,500. I know the exhibit shows that that's approximately 20% for both, but when you actually add up the percentage of fee for construction, It is over what is more standard industry practice. So discussing that with CJ, we all recognize that that fee structure should come down. So we are going to make adjustments prior to the village board with that fee structure to be more aligned with industry standards of 20%. 10% approximately for design and then 10% for construction oversight to bring that down by about $8,000 or so. And that'll help on the village side of that cost equation. So basically our match would go from 30% down to 26% for the total project. So other than that, everything is as standard. So we're excited to continue on our alley reconstruction projects going into next year just to get more of those done.

So I know alleyways are different beasts, but is there any infrastructure under there that you would want to get at? I mean, are there any? laterals, you know, any piping, anything over there that we could...

I don't believe so. Alleys, I don't know of any communication lines that would have to be relocated on that, but from a public infrastructure as far as lead service lines, water main, those don't live in alleys. Yeah, so I don't know of any. That would be very abnormal, I'd say. I don't know if they exist in our village.

Some storm sewer, but it's been slushy for a while.

So there's not storm on this one? No.

Yeah, good point to that. So some of our pavers have settled over time. So we're trying a new strategy that I believe will work better and take more advantage of the green solutions funding is that we're going to have on the profile, like basically below the concrete will be all aggregate base where we're not just working on that four foot section of pavers that the reconstructions from end to end going to have I'd say like a consistent profile. So in that way, you don't settle differently in the middle with pavers versus your concrete structure on the aprons. So hopefully that helps out from an infrastructure standpoint that we reduce the amount of settling of those pavers with this program.

Okay. Any further questions on the alley? The one thing I did mention to Matt was simply the concept that This is pretty expensive for 320 feet of alley. And it's pretty expensive mainly due to the green solutions, right? Which they're basically paying for. So yeah, I mean, I guess I think it's like 800, 900 bucks a foot. um that's not what we're doing at all the other alleys unless we have you know grant funding for something like that because that is expensive i don't know if you priced out concrete recently it's the gap between the two is not that huge i mean just regular concrete's pretty pretty papers and yeah yeah Okay. All right. Did you need a motion or something?

Yes, there is a recommendation to the village board for this. Let's see. Where are we?

So many pages. Yeah, go for it.

I move to recommend to the village board to approve the MMSE 2027 Green Alley Reconstruction Project Funding Agreement in the amount of $161,274.21, and Clark-Geetz Professional Service Agreement in the amount of $44,750, as shown in the attached memo and exhibits. ending militia attorney repeating an approval. Thank you for that. Wrong.

That was a multiple. Sorry about that, Jim.

I think we can probably shorten those up. Yeah. Let's try doing that next time. Is there a second?

I'll second.

Thank you, paper. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries.

Consent for that one as well. And call it on an email.

Should that be consent? That's a pretty big one for consent. What do you think? I mean, that's a six-figure item. Not to the village. If you're good with consent, fine.

Yeah, I say as long as you call it out in the meeting.

I can call it out when I send the agenda out and reference the public works packet.

Yeah, and it's also, it's so standalone too. There isn't infrastructure. It really only impacts five or six houses. It's pretty discreet. Yeah, more than that, but okay.

Okay. Department status reports and project updates.

I'm here for any questions that the committee member has.

I have one that I don't think it's even on here. And I asked you this question and I've forgotten the answer. And that is library park. And we're going to have some kind of path and it's not going to be mulch anymore. It's going to be...

We came into about, I forget how many yards, but from our Big Bay Buckle Park, we inherited a lot of aggregate. So that would be a nice base course material. And then we're looking at how to dress that up. But that'll help on the maintenance side, then mulch where you got to keep on adding mulch and it gets soupy and nasty. But we still wanted to feel like it was off the beaten path from being concrete or asphalt going through that park-like setting. So we wanted to still have it more rustic with an aggregate versus asphalt or concrete. So, yeah, that's our ultimate goal. So right now with our DPW staff, we do want to tackle that, I'd say early summer for that project. But we just wanted to get all of our annual plants in and all of our other seasonal things off the list.

It's just one of those, at some point, that was a big project and it should have some kind of grand opening kind of thing. You know, it's a new park that we poured a lot of money into, or MMSD did anyways. You'd think they want to show up. Oh, I think they would have been.

Absolutely.

Any other items from the update that anyone would like to chat about?

Not chat about, but I know, I don't even know if it's in here. You know, the solar project on the roof was completed a couple months ago now. It's been up for a while. Maybe not now, but it'd be nice to just get an update after we've had a few months of it up and running over the summer to see just kind of where we're at, if our projections are close, if it's doing what it's supposed to do. Absolutely. We can provide that.

And just as a side note, we are having our solar panels at our DPW facility cleaned over the next week or two. And it'll be interesting because we're going to take, I forget the metrics, but they take a before and after to see like what that output is based on the cleaning. And they did that for the Capitol as well. And I think they saw like an improvement as far as how much solar capacity can be absorbed through the panels, about 17% or so. And I would like to get our staff on to more of a cleaning routine because of all the dust, pollen, that we want to optimize our panels. So this will be a good exercise for a demonstration that a local resident is willing to give us. And then hopefully we can have that as standard practice within our DPW just to try to make sure our solar panels are operating the way they should.

Yeah.

Pollen was bad this year. Every morning I went out and it was like this thick on my car. It seemed worse this year.

Okay. If that is it, then in motion to adjourn. Anybody? Move to adjourn. Thank you. Do I have a second? I'll second. Thank you, James. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. We are adjourned. Thank you so much, everybody.

Thank you.

Thanks, Tara.

Thank you. Thank you for running this for me.

You're welcome. Safe driving.

Three more hours. Take care.

North Dakota.