Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Everybody wants you Everybody wants your love I'd just like to make you mine of mine Now, baby, give it up Give it up, baby, give it up Now, baby, give it up, give it up, baby, give it up. Everybody sees you. Everybody looks and stares. I'd just like to make you mine of mine. Thank you. Thank you. Give it up, give it up Baby, give it up Everybody wants you Everybody wants your love I'd just like to make you mine of mine Thank you. I gave up love. Hey, baby. Give it up. Everybody is at me. Give it up. Come on, baby. I need your love. Hey, baby. Give it up. Can I touch it? Can I love it? Come on, baby. Come on. Thank you. Thank you. ¶¶ ¶¶ Thank you. Thank you. ¶¶ Thank you. ¶¶ I want to welcome you to our August 18th Environmental Equality and Public Works Committee meeting. I have a couple things on the agenda. I have, today I am wearing a ribbon in honor of a fraternity brother of mine, actually a year younger than me, that died this weekend of cancer. And when people are younger and you start dying, you think about things. But I brought my picture of Ed because we had the, many of us were honored to go to the service for him over the weekend. And I think if you're familiar with this picture of him that they used, I think he is very smart, very much like Johnny Carson or Jack Lord. You never saw them again, kind of. They looked that way forever. This is the way Ed will look for us forever. He was an accomplished individual and one we will all miss and continue to miss today. I had not really spoken to him and his passing in public, but I feel the loss of a dear friend and a great council member. having said that let's move on to our business for today which first up is our uh our minutes from the meeting in june which council member senate was kind enough to uh share for me in my absence did you want to have any comments on these or we just take them all right they are in our packet the first three four five pages really the the bulk of the work here was removing items from a committee that we've dealt with. Are there any additions or corrections to the minutes as they've been submitted? That asks for a motion. Motion to accept and second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed like sign. Thank you very much. Next up is our snow plan update, something we have planned on for the length of the year, literally. We took this committee, or we took this item in committee earlier this year, gave some direction, and set the staff loose. And the commissioners come back. Thank you, Chair. You asked us to go back and look at a couple things and see what we could do in terms of enhancing the snow plan and also specifically to look at city-owned sidewalks and what could be done in terms of doing them. And so what we want to report to you today on is a little bit about the new snow removal map that we have and provided to all the council members the new map by district and also by the city. We wanted to give you some options that you all could consider for enhancing our snow plan and give you some cost-benefit analysis in that so that you could look at that and determine where at all you wanted us to go. I wanted to give you an update on where the route wear implementation is for our snow removal. Susan Pluger is going to talk to you about sidewalk clearance during snow events, and we're going to update you a little bit on the communications plan we've been working with, Pat, and 311 on trying to enhance that during snow events, and then just give you a little bit of next steps and answer any questions that you all might have. So, as you all know previously, we've had rank 1 through 4 in the city snow plan. This is the latest map, the 2014-2015 map, and it shows 1 through 4. The areas that are not colored that would be white in this one, it looks like, you probably We can't see that, but I think on the map that you all have, you can. Those would be rank fives, which would be unprioritized currently, and rank six would be cul-de-sacs, short dead-end streets and cul-de-sacs. And we wanted to look at what total coverage would be like, and that's where we kind of did the cost analysis that we'll do. I wanted to remind you all what lane miles means in terms of snow plan. It's different than how we categorize road miles. Lane miles would be what you have to plow to clear the road. So this would be an example of man of war. So we have four lanes, and in a mile section, we would have four lane miles for snow removal. It wouldn't be one mile. Yes, sir. Can you back up just for a moment? Yes, sir. We'll not penalize you in your time box, because I'm sure plenty of people have comments and conversation. So in relation to the previous snow plan map, how different is this? Is it 20% different, 30% different? I'm going to get to that just in the next slide. Thank you. It's actually sort of astounding what we found out from GIS doing this. And so one mile of a four-lane road is four lane miles for snow removal because you have to make four passes to cover that area. So we looked at several different kinds of enhancements, and we kind of categorized them in different kinds of ways in discussing it. And the first capacity enhancement we looked at was what would it take and what would it cost for the city to go into what theoretically would be rank 5 and rank 6. In other words, the unranked streets currently and the cul-de-sacs. GIS provided us after some extensive work on their behalf that currently our current maps of one through four come to 1,246 lane miles. If you added in rank five, and there's a little bit of a typo on this, it would also include the cul-de-sacs. That would be an additional 1,025 lane miles. So not quite double what we are currently plowing, but a significant increase, meaning that if we were to do what we currently do, one through four, and the unranked streets plus cul-de-sacs, that represents 2,271 lane miles. So we looked at what we could do with that and what it would—I'm sorry. That's all right. Council Member Mazzotti has a question. In reference to the lane miles, you're saying, I guess it was on page 9, you pass this same street four times for two lanes on one side, two lanes on the other, and that's considered four lane miles. Yes. Now, when you go over it again, because many times you go over the collectors again and the priorities, is that in this formula as well? No. Because I'm trying to understand how this formula works. We had to take kind of a model to be able to make this work because there's so many permutations and combinations of it. So what we're looking at to try to give you an estimate of what the cost-benefit would be is a three-inch snow fall that has stopped snowing. And what we can do after. One-time pass only. So it's a one-time pass only. Excellent question. Excellent question. Otherwise, you really can't get into a dialogue of what cost-benefit is to you, because weather is the key thing to us. The amount of snow, the temperatures that we end up having, whether there's an ice event prior or during the snowfall, there's lots of combinations to that. So we were taking a three-inch snowfall after it had finished snowing and what we could do with that. Thank you, Chair. Yes, ma'am. So we did a cost analysis of what it would be costing-wise if we added the unranked streets and the cul-de-sacs to our current plan, what it would cost us to do everything in the city. Albert thinks it would take approximately 72 hours to do all this. We have averaged every winter, historically, about 22 mobilizations. To do all of the rest of the 1,025 miles, we estimated it would be $3.9 million, and that entails additional expenses that are currently unbudgeted, and that would be additional overtime, additional salt and brine, and additional fuel for our vehicles. We're not adding any additional vehicles in this. We're not adding any additional people power to this. This is with the existing 46 vehicles we have and the 100-plus workers that we use in a typical mobilization. If we were just going to do the unranked streets and not do the cul-de-sacs, that figure, which is not represented on the slide, and I apologize for that, is 2.5 million for the 22 mobilizations. If we had an easier winter than we've had it, like in the past winter, if we assumed that we would only have 11 mobilizations, then it cuts down to 3.9 to a little less than 2 million, and it would cut the 2.5 million and a half to 1.25 million. The benefits, of course, to the city would be this approach would remove all the snow on all of the streets and try to get us into the cul-de-sacs. The challenge is the operational expense that we're laying out to you. Thank you. Just pause for a moment. Council Member Evans has a question. Okay, so I just want to make sure I'm following you. That to do the 2,200 miles would be an additional, you kind of lost me with the, what's the 180,000 on page 11? That's per mobilization. That's the additional overtime and fuel costs and salt costs we normally end up running per mobilization. Okay. And that's where the 22 mobilizations times that figure comes into play. Okay, so it costs $180,000 to do the 2,271 miles or just what we're doing now? For one event. We had 22 times that we mobilized. I guess, but how many lane miles? I guess I'm trying to figure out. The 22 figure that you had up there. You were right. Correct. The 2271. So doing the total city would cost that much money. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Including cul-de-sacs. And the absolutely amazing thing that GIS told us was in looking at, trying to figure out how many cul-de-sacs the city has. They can't do it exactly by a cul-de-sac. They have to do it by a dead-end street, because not all cul-de-sacs are the same, and they don't appear that way. But they calculated dead-end streets and cul-de-sacs number 2,200 in the city, 2,200 dead-end streets and cul-de-sacs. And a dead-end street is just as much of a problem if there's a house on it as a cul-de-sac is in terms of removing the snow. So you all can understand when Albert is telling you that cul-de-sacs create quite a challenge for snow removal, what he's referring to. So then we said, how about another option where we weren't trying to do all the streets, but we were trying to do what we currently do, but do them faster. And we discussed that at length, and knowing that to add one snowplow with two crews, because we run them 24-7, costs about $350,000. We thought rather than trying to add capacity internally, we should look to add capacity contractually. So Albert got with the state and studied what their current method of bringing contractors on, and we concluded that one possible way to do this, and this is the option that we're presenting to you, would be to contractually hire out Man of War, Citation Boulevard, Polo Club, and Coal Stream because they're non-residential areas. One of the issues that we had when we had the contractors come in and help us in the big snow events was they were unfamiliar with the residential areas. And we thought maybe this is better to have something that every time they would know what they were doing rather than being sent out to different areas in responsive. We concluded that by doing those four dedicated major thoroughfares contractually would free up five LFUCG trucks running 12-hour shifts, two 12-hour shifts. and it would allow us to service 300 additional lane miles in one 24-hour period of time. The issue with that is looking at the way the state contracts with them is they would be wanting a long-term contract because the contractors would have to get specialized equipment that they might not currently have, and they would want to factor that into the contract. So they would want a fit-up cost, and then they would want a pre-mobilization cost in terms of it. So as we went through looking at what the state had done to make an estimate of this, it looks like it would be $185,000, this is again estimates, plus $10,800 per mobilization. So if you took the fit-up cost and the mobilization cost, it's a little over $400,000 per year. this would allow us to do the current ranks streets faster. It would guarantee us that we would have the snow removal assistance when we needed it, because there's no guarantee when you have an emergency and you ask people to help you whether they would come on. These people would be contractually obligated for every snow event to show up and do those four dedicated streets that we had mentioned. The challenge is the cost and the fact that they would want a lengthy contract. I believe the state's contract currently is a seven-year one, if I'm not mistaken. We also wanted to mention for you a third option, which we hope that you would approve just as a regular concept, and that is that when we have serious snow events in the future, major snow events in the future, that we should be directed to hire private contractors as we did this last winter. The benefit is that we would have these people there to help us. The challenge is if we don't try to do that, or even when we do try to do that by a major event where we don't have a contractual relationship with them, the contractors may or may not be available when we want them to be available, and they may take a little bit longer to mobilize. By doing it under the state's method where we have a contractual relationship, They're already planned to have mobilized, have their equipment ready, and they're contractually obligated whenever it snows to go out and do those four areas that we mentioned. I'm going to talk briefly about route wear, and then I'm going to let Susan talk about snow on sidewalks. As you all know, we have route wear now being installed in all our snow removal vehicles, so that would be streets and roads and water quality. This will allow us, from a management standpoint, to know where exactly in real time our snow plows are and be able to better inform the public where they are and where, therefore, they will be in the future. We would hope that we would be able to have something similar to a map online showing where the current snow removal operations are going to be, are and where they were going to be. It probably will not be as sophisticated as the current leaf collection where you can go online and put your street in and they can tell you where that is. That won't happen in this physical year, but by the time we totally have the routeware implemented, we hope to be able to have an online version of showing where they are. It's just going to take a while for us to get that done. Ultimately, in 2017, when we have a new salt barn, we will be able to use route wear to analyze and help us determine where the optimal routes will be where we have the two different salt barns, and that should improve efficiency dramatically. Yes, sir. Council Member Maloney has a question. Yes, sir. You're talking about favorite subject, the salt barn, the second one. Are we on track? Is that going to happen hopefully this time next year, or when do you all plan to have this thing built? The budget has funds in it for us to design the salt barn. Mr. Martin needs to close out and fill in the Blue Sky operation out there. That has not gone as well as planned because of the wet weather events that have occurred this summer. But we will have a design and be able to start construction in 217 of the new salt barn. Okay, that's going to be a big help for all these council members. And throughout this city, it's going to be a big plus. I just want to be sure we keep that as a top priority to get that. That is a priority for us, yes, sir. It saves you a lot of money in the long run if you build that. Thank you. All right, and then Council Member Mazzotti. Thank you, Chair. David, you caught my attention when you said that we had a system for route optimization for leaf collection, but we don't have for snow removal. No, what I meant, I didn't mean that. What I meant was that the map that we have been using online for leaf collection allowed you to know by your street address where the leaf collection was likely to be. and we're not going to be that sophisticated this fall in being able to do that. We hope in years to come we will be that sophisticated. Yeah, because in my mind, snow removal is a priority over leaf collection, and when you said that, my red flag went up, and I said, why would they do that? IT can only move as fast as the implementation phases go, and they hope that we will be able to inform the public better this fall as to where things are from a management standpoint, but not sure we will be able to totally map it like we've done in some of the other understand but again like I said that kind of caught me and said yeah I would think this is a priority understand thank you you all the last time we were before yes sir so we move on so the next part of this is about sidewalks right yes sir so are you going to want to come back and have us make policy on among the first three options about the roads or what is your critical path here What we would like is some direction from the council as to where you would like us to go. We always present the snow plan to you in October or early November, however the committee wants it to do. What we're hoping out of this is you all say, we like this option, we don't like this option, we're only willing to invest this much money in it, if any, or we want you to do something different. and we will then come back and work on that and consult with you for the rest of the time and then come back with the snow plan in the fall. Let's look at the rest of the buffet, then we'll choose. So you did say that you wanted us to come up with a plan for the sidewalks and Susan Pluger has been working on that and I'd like to turn the mic over to her at this time. Thank you. Welcome. I'm going to continue on talking about sidewalk clearance of snow. We currently clear viaducts, snow on sidewalks along our viaducts downtown and along our facilities and a couple of parks locations where the sidewalks along the road are heavily traveled. Other than that, though, we do not have a sidewalk snow removal program. So what we looked at was if we wanted to expand that operation, how would we do it? and how much would it cost? So my first bullet there is an important one. We looked at doing full implementation, if you also chose, that we would go this way, to do it over a three-year period. And I learned from taking over mowing of corridors and right-of-ways that until you're actually there on the ground, every site is different. It's different. It's hard. And you've got to do it once to really understand the constraints that you have. Some sidewalks have power poles in the middle of them. Some are right next to the roadway. So when they plow the road, the snow goes under the sidewalk, and so on and so forth. So they all are different. So we were looking at a three-year period to implement this program. We have over 67 miles of sidewalk that we would consider either LFUC-owned or maybe LFUC-G-maintained might be a better word for that. And I will explain a little bit more about how we got there in just a minute. And the entities that would be involved in this operation are facilities. They currently do this now. Parks and Recreation and then Environmental Services. stop for a second are you all right going with them going another 15 minutes oh is it committee got a motion from angela evans a second hold in favor another 15 please roll on all right the city's area is a responsibility when we started looking at where will be responsible to remove snow on sidewalks we have facilities we have those that border our parks we have state corridors within new circle road where we currently mow the right of way So if we're mowing the right-of-way, that means that there's no one responsible for that mowing. That means there's also no one responsible for sidewalk snow removal other than the city. City thoroughfares, other roads other than the state corridors where the same situation applies where we mow the right-of-way. And then other parcels that we own that abut sidewalk, greenways, product quality lots, vacant lots, et cetera. So with that, I'm going to talk about levels of service, responsible divisions, proposed equipment needs, and then new equipment costs and the speed of service that we could expect to get from that. So we're looking at level of service. We were trying to determine how would we rank our areas as well, just like with roads. So where we owned it, where we maintained it, obviously that's the first thing. Then population density, where we had high pedestrian traffic, we saw that this last winter, where we have people walking down the middle of the road in certain places in town. Public safety, efficiency of operations, health facilities, budgetary impacts. We're looking at needing new equipment and additional personnel and overtime costs. We're all part of our review of this. As far as protocols related to sidewalk snow removal, we're looking at brooming on a heavy event, plowing, and or salting sidewalks. We would always salt if we were brooming or plowing. In some cases, if it's more of an ice event, we would just salt only. We would be mobilizing concurrently with streets and roads, and we have three ranks areas that we'll show you. We would also plan our work to come after streets and roads crews in certain places where the plowing is going to cause the snow to go onto the sidewalk. So for our ranking, we have rank one, we had facilities, and then we have a downtown or what I call an inner core area, and then state corridors we all listed as our rank one. In rank two, we have more thoroughfares and connectors in high-density areas, and then rank three is our lower-density areas, and you're going to see this on the map and see how it works together with the equipment because those different areas use somewhat different equipment. So this is just a summary, more detail on those rankings where we have this intercore. It's not just downtown. It extends beyond that, actually, to, say, Red Mile area in a circumference around downtown. And then rank two, we're looking at Man of War, Cetation, Alumni, Clay's Mill, Wilson Downing, et cetera. And then rank three are our lower vacant lots and other lots in residential areas. But you see the length there, 11.5 sidewalk miles in rank one. That's about 60 different segments that we would have to mobilize to. And then 43.5 miles in rank 2, which actually, from an operational standpoint, is a quicker job than rank 1 or rank 3. And then 12.5 miles, but 186 different mobilizations in our rank 3. So this map that you have, the colors, red designates rank 1, blue designates rank 2. You can see Man of War in citation there in blue, alumni. And then green, which you can't really see because they're so small, are the small little segments that are dotted all around town. There's also a yellow there in the middle, in the center. That's a viaduct as well. You want to stop? I got a couple of questions. Oh, sure. Several. Pardon me. First, Council Member Maloney. I did get clarification on downtown. We just got through passing a management fee or whatever where I thought this was going to be where they have to be responsible for a lot of stuff that goes on downtown. I don't understand. Are we just going to do our property downtown? We're not doing anybody else's businesses downtown. Right. And I really should have said inter-core because if you see it goes all the way out, you see Red Mile, you see their section on for sales. so they're dotted areas around that are in front of our facilities or are just like areas where there's large medians and intersections. But if someone else is responsible for the sidewalk snow removal, that would not be on our list. So what about the library? Who would be responsible for doing the library? I think the library would be. So when we're talking downtown, you're talking about this government building, what's behind us and on Vine Street, all the way from Vine to whatever, to KU, whatever they own. And that's the only part other than, I'm trying to think of what else we have downtown, which would probably be on Martin Luther King. The viaducts. We own the property out that way. Well, the viaducts. The viaduct would be? Right. Okay, we do that, and we've done those. I just want to be sure we're not going to be doing businesses when we already passed the plan. Okay, thank you. Yes, and we can get you a more detailed map, and I will say that we need to do some, we'll work on this map to refine it as we go forward. I think the numbers are pretty good. Council Member Stenet. Thank you, Chair. Susan, talk about, are walking trails included in this, in our trail system? Not on these numbers. They are not. So Parks and Rec will be asked to come over and mobilize as soon as we mobilize the streets and roads crews for a snow event? Are you talking about like, I'm sorry, can you clarify, like Legacy Trail? Any trail we own, yeah, all the trails. Brighton Trail, Legacy. I'm going to need to get some more information on that. Because last year during the snow event, we had trails being cleared before we had roads being cleared and sidewalks. And a lot of citizens have an issue with that, and I agree. There's no reason to clear a walking trail and not clear a main sidewalk that people use to get to and from work. So I just want to understand what the commitment level is going to be from parks and make sure we get these priorities done first before we go and experience a situation like we had last year where a walking trail was cleared before a public sidewalk downtown or road. So that's why I want to understand what is the commitment from Park and Rec, Has that conversation already been had with them? Yes, we've been meeting with them, and so this plan is really about the areas that we haven't been doing sidewalk snow removal on. So I don't know as much about the areas that they already do, and I do know they have reasons why they do certain parks and then others later, but that all needs to be brought into the plan so that it does make sense from a ranking standpoint. Yeah, once the priorities are taken care of, I agree, go do what else they can do, but let's make sure this newly added sidewalk priority is taken care of. I just want to make sure that commitment is there. Yes, and they would be responsible for the sidewalks abutting parks. Like Woodland was an issue last year? Right. Okay. We specifically covered that, yes, we would take care of those sidewalks adjacent to a park, and then we would get trails would come after that. So priorities would be sidewalks and then trails would be secondary. So I assume the park sidewalks themselves are level three on this list? Yes. Okay. All right. Very good. Thank you. Thank you, sir. You're getting a good vetting and some nuance, so welcome. And there's a little bit more. Council Member Brown. Fred Brown. Thank you, Chair. I've really got some general questions, so I'll wait until the presentation's over. Pretty good. I'm just jotting those type of questions. We'll put you at the head of the list when she completes. Thank you. Please proceed. I'm talking about responsible divisions. Again, facilities and fleet management are responsible for the facilities. They typically contract that work out. And Parks and Recreation would be responsible for the sidewalks in front of parks, as well as maybe some of the sidewalks really adjacent to them, say a greenway that's just adjacent to that. That's something we'd work out internally. But they would have a big part to play because there's actually quite a few miles in front of parks. And then corridors, viaducts, and thoroughfares would be done through environmental services. If we had a really deep snow event like we had last winter, we would contract out the snow on the viaducts in particular for hauling. That's an important operation. We have to get the snow off and out. And greenways, water quality, and vacant lots, again, parks and recreation adjacent to parks, and then we would handle the rest of those. So with that, we get to the fun part, which is how we actually get it done. This is a very equipment-intensive operation. If you have one piece of equipment and it breaks down, you've gone down to zero. If you have two-piece equipment, we've dropped by 50%, and we realize that. And so redundancy is required in the equipment. So walk-behind snow brooms, blowers, salt spreaders would be things that my division would need to have in order to begin this operation. Parks obviously has some. They may need to have some more. But from a riding perspective, when we talk about rank one, we typically would be using these walk-behind types of equipment. But when we talk about rank two, man of war, citation, alumni, et cetera, the writing equipment is by far the best way to go. And we actually just received yesterday our first Vintrac, which is what that picture is of. We actually purchased it not for snow, but for bush hog mowing. We don't have the cab on it. We don't have any snow equipment that goes with it, but we could add that. so we actually have one of these machines already so it's a dual purpose machine, it can be used in the winter for snow, it can be used in the summer for bush hog mowing and all kinds of different activities and it will go five miles an hour so we accounted for that in our calculations, you put the salt on the back and the plow on the front and off you go, we could do all the man of war in one day so this is my final slide and probably the most important one And that's how would the operations actually look from a timing perspective. So this is an estimate, but based upon our best estimates, rank one, 11.5 miles. Again, we're looking at using the snowblowers, the walk-behind equipment. We estimate it would take us 48 hours to complete that operation, and we estimate a needed equipment cost of $48,000. Again, that's a lot of segments that we have to mobilize to. That's why it takes so long. Then for rank two, if we had three of the Vintraks, and in order to upgrade the one that we currently have, it's $28,000 for snow, and then at $50,000 for each additional Vintrake suited for snow. So that would come out to $128,000. That's where I got that figure. We estimate we could do all of rank 2 in 24 hours with three operational vent tracks. And then for rank 3, we would go back to the walk-behinds, and we're looking at another 48 hours after that to do this different 186 locations. So you're looking at five days to do all the sidewalks. Of course, if we had multiple snows, we would follow the same protocol, streets and roads, where we would go back to rank 1 and continue down. But that was our current estimate. based upon these expected costs. Do you want to go now, Fred? Council Member? All right. Richard, can we let them get done first? I've got Mr. Fred Brown waiting, too. Is that all right? Ask for what? All right. Well, we can provide that. We have it all on GIS mapping. Very good. Yeah, I need, like, Loudon and places like that. I want to make sure we see that list. They are on the priority. Thank you. Your communications plan. What's next? So, lastly, you all asked us to try to come up with a better communications plan for the public to deal with big snow events. In the past, what's happened is 311 has been our point of contact, but they have only worked one shift. during snow events, and that after the shift is over at 6 or 7, they've switched to the police administrative number for the public to call in on and say, hey, we're having a problem out in this area. To establish better coordinations, 311 and Pat's crew has really stepped up and said, whenever there is a snow event, we will mobilize 24-7, and we will have a continuous operation. And then after talking about it even more, they said, what if we embedded ourselves at streets and roads? So as the calls come in, we're better able to communicate with streets and roads immediately to get the work orders out. So the plan is, whenever we mobilize for a snow event and are out there doing it, 3-1-1 will have operators at streets and roads taking the public's calls and getting them right to the work orders to be done in terms of that. Last, sorry, there it is. Lastly, once the emergency operations center becomes active again, the new one, we will integrate our operations with them and communications will be even further enhanced citywide. Last, that we haven't gotten to but will continue to work on for you for the fall's presentation, is to work on how to improve social media integration within the government. That means Mayor's Office 311, Council's offices, and emergency management. We want to develop a better fact sheet explaining how we've come up with the ranking system. I think that that's not being communicated well enough to the public, and that's been our obligation to do that. So we will present to you a better description of how, in fact, we do that. And lastly, to bring before you the draft of the 215 snow plan for the fall. And with that... Well done. Thank you, sir. First up, Council Member Fred Brown. Thank you, Chair. I looked at this presentation. It's a good presentation, but there's really three elements, it seems to be, although they're integrated in the snow plan. There's three elements here, and I'd like for us to be able to deal with the elements separately. The question on communications, I think that's administrative in your department. I don't know that that needs to be in the committee other than for presentation. That's for informational purposes for you, but, of course, if Council said, no, we don't think that'll work very well, we would like your input on that. Well, that's my feelings now. I don't know how that, but I don't think we need to dwell on that particular thing. Now that you've presented it, to me, that's an administration thing that you need to do in communications, although it can be part of the snow plan when we get the overall snow plan built. The other thing is when I introduced this or put it in committee, I basically was just talking about streets and roads, snow plan. Then we got the sidewalks in there some way got in there from maybe your division. But I'd like to see those as separate issues. I think those are two separate issues. I think priority-wise, the streets and roads, getting the roads cleared would be our number one, although we should have a plan for sidewalks also. We've never had that. But I think these are serious enough and big enough items that I believe we ought to separate that. And I don't know if you need a motion on that or whether you as chair can do it any way you want. You can lace back to it. You can make a motion if you want to. There's four other people signed up with comments. Let's kind of find our depth and come back to the decision. Okay, let me get my other questions here. Yes, sir, please. Okay. The ranking system you're talking about on streets and roads, you met with most of the council members. I've met with over half of them. I haven't met with all of them yet because of my surgery. But I took the liberty of putting my streets in. I had a list of them and updating some of my ranking. And I hope that that'll be considered when you do the ranking, because the change has been so long since we'd had the ranking system that we had several streets that were not even in the ranking that I felt like in my district needed to be at least four or maybe a three. So it wasn't all that many, but I'm sure every district probably has some streets along that line. And so that may change your lane miles to some degree. Yes, sir. That's likely, and I think that's something we would report on when we come back in the fall. We agree with counsel that this is an appropriate time for us to evaluate the entire snow plan. And what needs to be upgraded and changed is the right time to have this conversation. And on the cul-de-sacs, that question there, I think, needs to be probably reviewed quite a bit because when I view cul-de-sacs, especially in my district, I've got several, not all of them, that are on a hill. And people cannot absolutely get up or out without snow plowing. And I've got several of those that are in there. I don't know that they're ranked four, but they get done in that same area of ranking because Albert and Streets and Roads knows pretty much which ones those are. And I think we need to rank them some way, and I'm not, I don't know cost-wise or what we're dealing with, but I think we ought to consider the fact that we may not be able to get to all cul-de-sacs, especially level ones, but I think we should absolutely look at the ones that are on hills and have some inclines to them. Those are the ones that I get calls on where they can't get out to the main road. And the other question I've got, you talked about costs coming up. What fund would this come out of, or can we separate it? Can we put it into another fund besides a general fund? I know we've got map monies that we can... I'm going to have to consult with some people on that. I'm not sure map money can be used for snow removal, but we'll explore what other funds can be used. Pardon? We will explore what other funds can be used. I would like to see, well, full of the urban services fund that we put all of our, I guess our garbage collection is in a fund. Snow removal is not a listed urban service. I know it's not. And that's part of the issue that we've had. I know it's not, but can we explore that to see if we can do that and then not have to spend or come up with funds out of general? That's where it's tied a little bit. I think we've got some monies in those other funds that could be used, but we certainly need to know what we can do legally. That's all I have right now, Chair. Thank you, sir. Commissioner, I think you're going to get at least a series of study questions out of this conversation. And while we may or may not take official action today or begin it, what I see you doing is coming back next month with an update based on your Q&A today so that we could try the plan out, so to speak, to take action on it then to be implementable in October. But we'll wait and see how the conversation goes. All right. Council Member Maloney. Thank you. I've got a lot of good reports on the mapping that you all did for each council member for the roads. Can we do the same thing for the sidewalks? Sure. But it helps the council members know what in their areas they're getting to. Yeah, certainly. I mean, I'm not trying. I mean, I think it's a good idea that we know to tell the difference where we go and where the public comes. Because it goes back to my next question, and I don't think you're going to be able to answer it. I think the administration may have to get up and answer it. When we had the snowstorm last year on Vassales Road, which is probably one of the top areas where we used the black trend. Most, well, I heard the electric train say it's the most use anywhere other than the University of Kentucky. It's Vassels Road. You've got people that live there that cannot walk down the sidewalk. They have to walk in the middle of the road or on the side of the road. And when you've got just two lanes and you've got cars going, what they're supposed to be going by 25, 35, and when it snows like that, they're still going 45 miles an hour and they're going where there's no sidewalks. And that is where enforcement comes in. And I need to know what the administration and how they're going to fix these kind of problems. And that's the biggest complaint that I was getting last year is people walking in the middle of the road because they have no way to get to work or have no way to get to the bus stop. They have to stop there and not be able to get it. Are you all going to enforce? Since we're going to be cleaning these sidewalks, the city, our own sidewalks, and that was a lot of reasons why we didn't enforce. last year is because we weren't cleaning our own sidewalks. Now that we are, what kind of message are we going to send to the public, especially when we've got people who ride the buses and cannot get on the buses? And how are you all going to do it? Have you all looked into that? I mean, is that something you all plan on doing? Because I know it's not a fun thing to talk about, but also we've got a lot of people that have to ride that bus. And you're putting their lives in danger when you don't do the sidewalk in those major thoroughbreds everywhere across the town. They're out in the middle of the street. Well, I think where we're starting is that we're now starting to take care of ours, so now we need to start going back and having conversations with the enforcement side. So we will be having conversations with Commissioner Bastin and Chief Barnard as we move forward because that also has to be part of this plan as to how we would move forward with the enforcement part as well. So who will be then? Is it the police or will I call enforcement? Because they do, the code enforcement right now does sidewalks if there's a problem. No, it, but the police, and I don't mean to say it, but the police don't have a lot, they don't have a lot of men out there. We've got code enforcement at that time, if we have a major snowstorm, I don't think they're going to be very active looking at blighted properties. Not blighted properties. Because the grass isn't grown or nothing, and I thought maybe we could somehow partnership with them and see if they can go around and site these properties. We'll make them part of the conversation, but as we have heavy snow events, we also have buildings that collapses or we have problems with roofs, so there is some opportunity that code enforcement could be doing something else, but we will bring them to the table and have them be part of the conversation. Okay. Thank you. All right. Thank you, sir. Council Member Gibbs. Thank you, Chair. Yes, sir. Council Member Fred Brown, I'm the person who screwed up your thing by bringing in the sidewalks. And when I did bring in the sidewalks, like Councilmember Maloney, I was thinking about the privately. I was thinking about publicly owned ones, certainly. I had trouble with that, but I thought we were going to expand that to talk about the privately one. Then when I saw this presentation, I realized that was really beyond the scope of your job. And I think maybe we should refer that to the Planning and Public Safety Committee to try to find, you know, currently the police enforce that, and obviously they're not. And maybe we need to come up with it. We've talked a little bit about this before, finding some other enforcement mechanisms. So I think if no one objects, I'll probably at the work session refer that to planning of public works. Okay. Well, sir. A couple things. Director Pluger, just one comment. I'm really delighted that you don't have to get up. I'm really delighted with your sidewalk plan. just one thing that bothers me is the rank one requiring 48 hours to do it and I know cost a lot of work equipment and so on but you know we would never have a rank one road waiting to 48 hours to be cleared I think we need to get those rank ones in the downtown area they need to be cleared almost immediately and again I realize this cost money and so on one question for the commissioner I've I've had an idea, I don't know if this would be workable, but I was looking for the snow plowing option one. And we've got, you know, that would be going full force for every mobilization. And is it possible to have various levels of mobilization? You know, for example, I live in a residential neighborhood not too far away. You know, I don't expect or need a plow when there's three inches of snow. But when it hits maybe, I'm not sure where, you know, five, seven, eight, maybe we need to try to get the neighborhoods done. And I don't know if that's too complicated to work out or the neighborhoods would feel slighted. But I just wanted to throw that out to see if you guys can. I think we'd have to think about that a little bit. He raises a good question, and one that was part of the treatise when we gave you this project is measured response. And I think that's kind of what he's saying. At a certain level, the citizenry doesn't expect us to be down every street. At another level, they expect us to be down every street. So I think that this goes back to which option we pick and how much it costs based on the matrix here. So I think there's probably going to be other commentary to that end here in terms of one to three gets this, six plus gets that, and full on snow. What happens? I'm sorry, Council Member, I didn't mean to step in on you. No, please. No, that's perfect. That's exactly why we're wanting to have this dialogue with the Council because you need to tell us the policy that we need to try to implement. Yes, sir. But that's all my questions and comments, and I really appreciated the presentation. Thank you. Very good, sir. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, sir. Council Member Stennett. Thank you, Chair. Commissioner, I just want to go back to one point Council Member Brown was trying to make on the budgeting, where we pay it. We already pay for snow removal from the Urban Service Fund because we're using sanitary sewer personnel, correct? Yes. Who's paying those wages? The sewer fund. So we're already using money from the Urban Fund to pay for snow removal. And the equipment, I assume we're using sanitary sewer equipment as well? We are. And that was purchased with our sewer fund as well? Okay. I just want to make sure. On the options, option two is a speed option in terms of instead of doing every road, we're looking at doing the priority streets that we've identified as a group and as a city faster. Yes, sir. Is that within 24 hours fast, as Council Member Gibbs mentioned, for sidewalks? Because, well, so we do every priority within 24 hours? It was more like 48, wasn't it? 1,285 lane miles. I'm sorry. I'm going to bring Albert up and have him respond. Welcome, sir. 1,285 lane miles that we presently do, that's about 24 hours. That's what I'm asking. So you can currently do what we have now in 24 hours? Yes. Assuming no additional snow, and the snow has ended. It's not the beginning of the event. It's the end of the event that we begin to run the clock on. That's after the snow stops. So our current policy is within 24 hours of all the one through four to be done? Yes, sir. Should be able to. Now, that has a lot to do with temperatures. All right. I want to make sure I understand what you're saying and what you're explaining to us. So what would option two free up to do? 300 additional lane miles a day. So we're not talking about speed. We're just talking about capacity? No, that would be, well, that means that you have that much more to be able to be done that quickly. Well, if you do all, that's my point. If you do all through one through four, what else do you need to do? So basically the problem is we're really talking right now about a typical event. We haven't had typical events. We rarely have just a three-inch snowfall. It's usually we get some snow, it stops, it starts snowing again, we go back to the beginning. It's rare that we're able to have a three-inch snowfall, it stops, and we can do it in a 24-hour period of time. We're just saying hypothetically that's the way it is. That generally hadn't happened. We usually have an ice event or it gets colder again and it freezes on the roads. This is really a problematic discussion in terms of timing on this. It's difficult. It's not easy. No, it's not. And that's the point I was getting to. On the first option, you're talking about doing every road within 72 hours. Is that correct? We're trying to give ourselves a little time period. We think we can do it faster than 72, but that's what we were saying. So if we did that, pick that option, say we happen to like that, What would the personnel that we hire do the rest of the year? We would not be adding any additional personnel. Under option one? Under option one. Okay, earlier you said we would add people in different divisions. If I said that we didn't want to do that because it wasn't cost efficient to do that. So to do every, we'd be hiring part-time contractors outside? On option two, we'd be hiring contractors. Under option one, it would all be all internal city. We're just saying to go that much farther than we have in the past, it costs more salt, it costs more overtime, and it costs more fuel. And that's what makes up the $2.5 million to do rank five and the $3.9 million to do all the cul-de-sacs and rank fives. And that's just equipment. That's not personnel. It's the totality of both. It's not adding any equipment to it. It's just the additional budgetary costs that would be to the government for doing that. And that's every year? Assuming 22 mobilizations, that's the other historical number that we had to come up with. But if we only had 11, then it cuts it in half. Okay. And so what is your recommendation? What do you feel of the options you've shown us that you all feel meets our needs? We haven't come up with a consensus on that. We like option two because it gives us a set amount that we are contracting with each time, and we think it's an easier thing for contractors to do where they know this is your obligation to do. We think once they're trained on those four roads, our supervision of them would be not a whole lot. We would just spot check in terms of that. They would know what they were doing. The problem is, in theory, is that you're paying for them $185,000 each year that if we got no snow, we're still paying $185,000 a year. Well, to have access and to be on standby is important to a lot of systems. I don't think that's a huge price to pay versus $3.9 million. That's a big chunk of change to have on standby. There's a cost to that. My time's up, but I'll include, and option three is that event over six inches, would you say, that we have a major problem? When we have a major one, we'd like your stamp of approval of going out contractually, hiring people like we did in the two big events that we had, and bring them on board as quickly as we could. So you're looking for direction today, Chair, I assume, from which option we prefer to... I'm great with decision-making, yeah. There's a couple more counselors that want to speak, and I'll hold my comment for a second. We'll come back to you. Council Member Lamb. Thank you, Chair, for recognizing me. And thank you all for this great presentation today. Actually, my question is for Ms. Pfluger, please. I appreciate the in-depthness on the sidewalk. I think that's something that we really do need to, has been expressed here, show better faith and tending to our own so that others maybe can follow better cleaning our sidewalks. But I was curious, when you were doing all this work, did you investigate the effectiveness, the cost effectiveness, between buying the equipment and LFUCG man hours versus contracting the services? Did you look at any of that to see? Not particularly. One of the reasons for that was that the equipment, other than the walk-behind equipment, the larger equipment actually would provide a benefit to us throughout the entire year. So there's some cost savings associated with that. The other reason is that we have staff in the winter that do tree work, but during a snow event can't do as much tree work. So we had some staff available, our arborists, our seasonals that we have. So we started off looking at how can we use and be efficient while using what we already have. Sure. So I do think on heavier snows, we always, contractors on viaducts, we need. And it could be that as we work through this process, it makes more sense in some places to use contractors. The problem is having them on board ahead of the season because you have to pay up front to have their service. And if you don't need to use them, then we might lose some of that money. So I think that's why we have the three years in there is to try to hash this out and work through it in the most efficient way. Sure. Sure. Well, I just am pleased that we're even looking at it. So and perhaps maybe there are snow removal companies that do both streets and sidewalks. So I don't know. I mean, that's something else to take into consideration. The other thing, just a general comment, is that when there are parks, city parks that are connected to public schools, oftentimes i'm sure that children would like to continue to walk to school versus get down on a school bus when it could be dangerous with the snow and so i wondered if some of the parks and recreation people were going and having to treat some of these walkways because of school access and i wonder if we could coordinate some of that with fayette county schools maybe to you know i I still think their resources might be valuable to us as well for connectivity to some of the schools. And hopefully the way it would work would be that the city takes care of the sidewalks it's responsible for and everybody else, including Fayette County Public Schools, is taking care of their sidewalks. So you have that connectivity. That'd be very wonderful, wouldn't it? It'd be a good day, wouldn't it? All right. Thank you. And thank you, Chair. Thank you, ma'am. Thanks. Council Member Mazzotti. Thank you, Chair. I know, David, you said that we need to talk about each one of these options. Option number one is pretty heavy duty on the OT, in my estimation. You've got a 12-hour shift going in. You're going to ask these folks to go further, which is really, really difficult, I would assume, based upon everything we had to do last year. Did we lose any equipment last year? Did you lose any equipment last year? Yeah, we had one burn up, didn't we? We were getting it refitted. And I can't remember what happened to the other one. It seems like there were two. We had some computer issues with some of our older trucks and the fleets replaced them, and then the one that burned up, I think it's in the garage right now getting repaired. So we're good to go as far as starting out this coming year, as far as replacement on some of the things that we had lost last year? At the beginning of the season, yes, ma'am. Okay. And then on option two, pretty much what Council Member Lamb said in reference to sidewalks, have we done any kind of cost analysis about adding more staff and equipment rather than private contractors? So you're talking about on sidewalks? No, no. I said pretty much like what Council Member Lamb had said in reference to sidewalks. I'm asking about a cost analysis that we've done on the roads. Have we looked at, instead of private contractors, putting more of our staff in? So the problem that we have with that is to do streets, you need both a piece of equipment, an additional piece of equipment, because all of our equipment, we have a snow emergency, all 48 trucks that are operational go out. And to make them fit within our mode of 24-7, you need two employees working 12-hour shifts to do it. The cost of that is about, of the snow plow equipment and the two employees, is approximately $350,000. So it's more cost-effective than private contractors. That's why we looked at the private because of the bang for the buck. Okay. And if we looked at any other cities, comparable size and the comparable snow events, how they do it, or to kind of do a, you know, comparison. We can go and do that. You need not only to look at the comparable city, but you need to look at it in the same climate as ours. Sure, understandable. Because it's entirely different, you know, in the north versus Atlanta. Oh, you wouldn't compare us to Syracuse. I understand that. But I'm just saying, have you looked at it? We can certainly do that for you. Right. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, ma'am. Council Member Evans. I didn't say thank you for doing this since I was probably one that expressed some disappointment with the previous presentation. This actually did go beyond what I was really expecting or what I thought. So I kind of feel like I'm thinking small. Should we do more or less next time? Well, really what my concern or what my thought was, or what I think I heard from my constituents, was they just wanted to know where they were on the list. And when you had streets that weren't on anybody's list, I think that was the concern. I think most of my constituents were understandable. They just wanted to know where am I prioritized because my street's not even on here. So I think just the fact that you're ranking everything is effective in information that the public will be able to use and appreciate. We really appreciate that comment and understand that communications needs to be way up there in terms of discussion with the public in these kind of events. And I think 311 being a central point and them embedding with streets and roads will improve efficiency dramatically and getting work orders out quicker. I think with the route where we'll be able to tell the public where we are and where we're likely to be much better in real time. The way we currently do it is the snowplow person gets a listing of where that person is supposed to go. and at the end of that 12-hour shift, they put in a paper writing report where they've been. This route wear will tell us exactly where they've been and where they've done, and it will eliminate us having to go check and all that. So we'll know much better where our employees are and where they have been. So with that, I think I hear side conversations about concerned about the money and not expecting to see this much of a fiscal impact. So, yeah, I'm just wondering if we can, what is a less aggressive option? So, yeah, maybe I might be asking you to do less. And that's fine with the chairman saying he wants us to come back next month. You tell us what you want us to do. We'll game plan that out and come back and report to you next month. Well, and I'd say honestly, Chair, I'm satisfied with having each street ranked because that was the biggest concern, people just not knowing where they were. We've had discussions, and I've told you which streets for my district that I think need to be added and why. So I think if each council person does have that conversation with you, then it truly might ease and perhaps maybe even satisfy the constituents without trying to budget another $30 million for snow removal. So thank you. Thank you very much. Council Member Stenet, we'll come back to you, sir. Thank you, Chair. David, I did have one question before you leave. in terms of council members and council office staff and even the mayor staff and other administrative people, who do you want us to contact during a snow event for information or to report a situation? Because I know Albert, as much as he loves us, he doesn't want 15 council members calling him at once, or Sally or Glenn or anyone else, or you, for that point. What's our point of... We've internally discussed that, and we think it's inappropriate for us to tell you who not to contact. So for political reasons, we'd like to avoid answering that directly. I don't think it's fair to Albert for all of us while he's trying to get the job done. But we need to talk about that. Then call me. We need to talk about that so we can make sure the job gets done. Call me and I'll immediately call Albert. What I was going to get back to is, you know, it seems like we need a combination of all three options because going back to Councilman Gibbs' point is, you know, a normal snowfall option two would work, but if that snow gets iced over, then everyone's going to want their street cleaned off after five days if it's still there. So it seems like we need a natural progression that, given this happens, we do this, if it gets 21 inches in one day, we need option three for sure. But if the snow's there, three inches is still there five days later because it froze, that's a problem too. So I think, is there a way to go back and do it based on the amount or the event? We certainly will look at that and present that to you, keeping in mind that there is a budgetary cost for that different... Well, same as salt. We don't know exactly how much salt we're going to use, so we try to take a best estimate. I think, yeah, I understand. But we try to also do it this way. I mean, option two would be closer to just a three-inch snowfall, but if it stays there more than 72 hours, it becomes a problem for everybody. As long as you all think budgetary-wise, you need a contingency fund to be able to draw on those circumstances. Well, we just need a number to budget. as well. So I think if you can come back and give us, based on the event, what you would do, I think that would be more critical. I know every street wanted to be plowed last year when it was 15 inches, and that was a problem. I mean, and I understand that everyone wanted to be touched, and I think they probably should at some point if it's that many days under 15 inches of snow becomes a problem. We may have a problem with permanent contractors on the different level of snow because then we get into arguing, is it five inches or is it six? And our contract says you come out at six inches and not come out at five. How does the state do their contract? Albert, I have to answer that. They just hire the contractor based on XML? Yeah, and I think it starts at November 15th and goes through April 1st to the 15th or something like that. They pay them a flat fee for that time period? Well, there is a flat fee to do the fit-ups, and then there is another fee for having them available throughout that time. And then they get $90 an hour if they're mobilized. But wouldn't we just do the same thing? Two more. Yes. Okay. Yes. So we wouldn't have to guess five or inches or six. That would be a call by your department. Well, it would be every time it snows. They would be all ready to go if we need them. That's correct. Okay. Chair, I think we're comfortable with them coming back with maybe tightening it up a little bit and giving us that information. I think that's what we're after. I wanted to make sure he had the whole group of questions and I think there's still a couple of time to meet with the rest of the districts as well. I think that's good too. I mean, I think part of that needs to include the sidewalk component. All right. Next up, or back again to Councilmember Maloney. Just the salt we had, after I left, you all found another place to put the salt, additional salt. It was behind the old Frankfort Pike. I heard we got in a little trouble there with the compliance issue. We'll run off the salt going into the, has that been taken care of? Are we not having that problem anymore? It has been corrected, and we are in compliance. Did we get fined on that? I don't think so. I think we just got the warning, and they were impressed with how we worked with them to get it resolved. Okay, I'll take you a cue. Thank you. All right, sir, and then Council Member Fred Brown. You're good? Council Member Fred Brown. Thank you, Chair. I want to just clarify a little bit from what Council Member Evans had alluded to. I think the whole process, especially in my district, was similar, that people just wanted to know when can somebody come out. And based on our plan and our ranking, I think we'll be able to tell them that, but I know there's a lot of variables there. So what we want is a written snow plan that would tell us. Now, I think the sidewalk plan ought to be separate, a separate written plan. But we need a plan on the streets and roads. And if we do add, for instance, if Council Member Evans and I get our wishes, we'll have additional streets on your ranking. And so that lane mile is going to change. So once you get to that point, then until you get to the lane miles, you really can't put some costs in there. So I would think that we just need to continue this. It's early. It's August. But we certainly would like to have something in place by September, the end of September, and have a written plan. But that's my thoughts on clarifying, you know, what. And I think the whole purpose there is that I'm not so sure we can deal with everything in 24 hours, and I don't know that the public expects every street to be cleared in 24 hours. But I think the 72 hours is a good approach. How many streets can you get in these rankings? And then on a typical snow, and then from there, what happens? You know, you'll have some variables, and you say, well, this, this, and this. So if we could get one plan to say that, and I know you don't want to box yourself in when you're writing a plan, but you do want to be general enough or, you know, specific enough to say, hey, your street is ranked three. That means you'll be third in line or your cul-de-sac is ranked fifth or not ranked at all. Then at least you've told the people, then a lot of them get out there and get their own plow, get a private person to come and do their stuff. So that's all I have. Thank you. Commissioner, have you gotten a good feel? I mean, some of this really hasn't been at cross purposes. You get questions about essentially the same kind of things. Have you taken a – then let me ask you, was one of the council members you got to meet with about this Ed Lane? Yes. We had scheduled a time, and he had to cancel, and now we'll have to wait for the new council person. Would there have been, I mean, I just want to make sure that we have representation in this plan for 12th district folks. And I don't know how to. We have council people at large that I have spoken with. Okay, very good. I'm sure that they will be helpful in giving us some guidance on that. Or Alan might have met with a council member about it. You might get something good from him. He's here. I just want to make sure that all facets are covered. I appreciate that comment. We're trying to be cognizant of that. i think we'll just look forward unless there anyone else has any other suggested questions or areas of endeavor we'll just look forward to having you back next month for a follow-up and as council members said kind of a tightening up and hopefully we'll be good to go thank you yes sir is there any new equipment you have all the equipment replaced albert or anything new besides the routers which is new that you need i think i think we had and john she could probably answer this i think we had like four or five new trucks coming that's what i thought okay i just want to make sure that's still on the plane okay yeah it'll be for this winter i hope so right john she's the only all right maybe another event track that she spoke to i mean we have the body but i think the ability to sidewalk machines we still need to discuss very good anyone else can Can I follow? Yes, sir. Are those trucks C and G? No. There's no other. I don't believe so. Are they C and G? They're D's, though they're not C and G. How come we don't order C and G? How come we don't use, I thought the plan was that we were going to start buying all our trucks and using the national gas. I think that's true. Do all our trucks and big heavy equipment. One of the evaluation with it was obviously we're trying to expand the use of alternative energy with our fleet. The question is the availability of those specific units that we purchase, in this case will be dump trucks with the attachments and so forth that we need. Even if we have availability, we have to do a cost analysis in terms of the life cycle cost with each of these vehicles to make sure that the additional cost that is associated with the CNG units paid for itself over the life of that unit. So we're still not there yet, but I believe, if I'm not mistaken, this probably this will be the last year where we've been purchasing these units that are all on diesel and biodiesel. but I'm looking at possibly expanding our fleet to the CNG2 streets and roads, and then we will have some discussions with Charlie's group about some of his equipment that he has. Well, I just hope we do take all our vehicles to CNG because from what I've been hearing, the feedback, the trucks are a lot quieter. They are saving money, although gas has gone down a little bit, but water and cleaner and its energy. The cost of the gas. You all make that a top priority that we continue to order those vehicles. Absolutely. That's still our number one option when it comes to purchasing the heavy equipment. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Anyone else on this topic? All right. Thank you all for that excellent work. We appreciate it very, very much. All right. Then that brings us to our next item, which is the Division of Water Quality Projects Report. I think Director Martin is here and has given us both a large and a small version of his voluminous undertakings. How would you like to update us best, sir? Usually, thank you, I usually just go ahead and hit the highlights. If you'll indulge me for a second. We had mentioned Council Member Lane on a couple occasions today. And I always enjoy giving this presentation, but it'll be a little bit heavy-hearted today because I get used to looking across here because he was usually gearing up, ready to ask me questions about this. He was a big motivator in the development of this list several years ago, and so I'll think of him today as I go through that. I want to talk a little bit about number 30, Blue Sky. That was mentioned earlier as part of the whole snow plan. I met with a contractor today because we are behind schedule on that. One of the more difficult parts of that project is that they have to fill in the old lagoon, and the lagoon makes up probably two-thirds of the property that's out there. It was part of the treatment process, the lagoon was. Well, dial back, and you think about how much rain that we've had this year, filling in a lagoon with this amount of rain has just been a real challenge. So we're aggressively trying to work with our contractor to figure out how to be able to get this thing done And so public works can then transition into the design that's necessary to then construct this second salt barn. I've been a proponent of this thing since 2008 when I knew we were going to buy this facility and close it. So I'm as in as everybody else about trying to get this done. And so I just wanted to update you. Weather has not cooperated on that one. Number 31 is the West Hickman A trunk sewer. That's the trunk sewer that comes from the plant and goes through Veterans Park. I know several of the council members I've talked to about this before because there was a lot of the neighbors that were concerned about it. The contractor is back to work now. We have worked out an agreement in order to be able to resolve some of the deficiencies that were going on down there. They were, and I don't think it's going to cost us more money than what it did previously. So I think we're moving back ahead again, got things back on the rails without having enduring a change order because of it. So that was good news. Several of us did hear from folks. You're right. Yeah. There is still work that needs to be done. Several people have asked me about this. Is that there are holes or there are still disturbed areas in the park. The new pipe is dry. It basically is sitting there next to the old pipe. They still need to be connected together, and we're waiting for the delivery of better pipe, pipe that meets specifications, so we can tie them in together. Think about artery bypass or something like that because it's the same principle. We still need to make those connections to put it in service. That's one of the reasons why there is still equipment down there. But we've cleaned up that site, gave them back use of the trail, made it more accommodating for them than it was prior to the 4th of July. Very good. Thank you for that specific update. I appreciate it. Vernon is in close contact with the neighborhood president, and I think the level of communication has improved dramatically from what it was before. All right. Number 34, which is the Woodhill Pipeline Project, it is also related to number 106, which is on the second page. This is the work that we're doing in front of the Home Depot on Richmond Road. Many of you know that that will eventually is planned to be a site for a wet weather storage tank, but the work that's going on right there now is not the wet weather storage tank. It is a pipeline project, a precursor pipeline project. The reason why all that dirt is getting moved around so much is they have to dig a big pit and push a pipeline under Richmond Road over to the other side next to the Shell Station. You can't open cut a federal highway or a state highway, so you have to bore under it just like you would a railroad track or something else. So that's what all that activity you see going on there. The wet weather storage tank, the design of it won't begin until next year. So I just wanted to clarify. Many people have asked me about that. Is that the start of the tank? It is not. Have you begun boring, though? Yes. If you see all the dirt and you keep thinking, where's all this dirt coming from? If you got close enough to the edge of the road, you would see a huge hole that's roughly probably 30 by 30. That's the pit, and that's where all that dirt is coming from is that they're removing it from that. The irony of this is a lot of that dirt is going to be removed off-site, and guess where it goes? Blue sky. To your pit out there. To fill up the lake or fill up the lagoon. So another one of those challenges that we're going to have to work over. Some people might want that in the middle of downtown, but go ahead. Okay, number 36, which is also related to 97. This is the lower Cane Run wet weather storage tank. This is the tank that will be out by the Legacy Trail. We are on schedule to have a full council presentation on this for September 15th. I've got a draft presentation that I marked up yesterday from our consultant. Vernon has marked up likewise, so we're very close to having it finalized, and that will be, I guess, the full unveiling of what it is that we're recommending be done regarding the treatment, the architectural treatments associated with that storage tank. Wow. The technical component of it, the walls, the pumps, the pipes, and those things are already out on the street right now. We're actually soliciting bids for those. as you'll recall is that because we've got an EPA deadline and we don't want to get into fines and all the things that are related to the consent decree we uncoupled the purely sanitary sewer technical part of it from the architectural part of it that way we could stay on schedule to meet the obligation of eliminating overflows while still allowing a proper vetting of what the architectural treatments may or may not be so we're about one month out on it like I said it will be scheduled for a full council presentation. Remind me of the location of that tank, the lower Canerun tank. It is behind the hotel out at Coldstream. I can't remember which one that is. It's right along the Legacy Trail right before it goes under Interstate 75. Thank you very much. Perfect. I appreciate that. NBC Suites. Yes. Well done. Okay. It's quite a ways back from NBC Suites, but that's my point of reference. Okay, moving on. If you could bring up that map that I had mentioned before. Moving on to 99 through 101. I've got a map for this one that is somewhat challenging. This is the East Hickman system. There's an existing pump station at the very dead end of Alumni Drive. If you go all the way out of Alumni Drive, go across Manowar, eventually it dead ends into a street called Buckhorn. But there's a driveway right across it, and you keep driving down the driveway, and there is a pump station there. It was built in the late 70s as part of the Eastern Interceptor System, which led to Hamburg. But anyway, that pump station is slated to be redone, basically been rebuilt as part of the consent decree because it is a recurring sanitary sewer overflow. There's also a storage tank that is scheduled to be built there as well. And then finally is that the existing pipeline that comes from the pump station, it pumps over into somewhere around the Man of War and Crosby Drive area. It goes through existing neighborhoods. It goes right down the middle of Kennesaw Drive. I mean, basically replacing that pipeline in place right now would be virtually impossible. So one of the things that we're going to be trying to work with here is this. Right here is East Hickman Pump Station, right at the toe of Lake Ellerslie, right below the dam. Here is Alumni Drive, dead ending into it. We have got to figure out a way to be able to get a pipeline all the way across over here to the treatment plant located here in Judson County. Those of you who are familiar with maps, that is over Brook Farm. We have had at least one meeting with Mr. Young and his representatives, and we are continuing to have some dialogue about how we're going to be able to accomplish this project while also meeting their needs. As you recall, some of you may know this, they are in Expansion Area 1. That goes back to the Expansion Area Master Plan. And these other red lines here are what was shown in the master plan on how ultimately sewers would be built on that portion of the farm. So we're working very closely with them trying to basically coordinate our efforts here because obviously we don't want to create a hardship for them and we don't want vice versa. So I'm just briefing you about this because this is the one that's coming down the pike and it will be a very challenging project just because of the degree of complexity. I've got, hold on for a second. Council Member Fred Brown. Thank you, Chair. A question on this particular thing. You've only got three years to complete that. Is that correct? You design in the summer of 2015, and is it supposed to be EPA deadline? Yeah, we're a little bit behind. We'd like to have already started on the design in 2015. We have to have it operable by 2018, by December 31st of 2020. That's going to be a tall order, don't you think? Yes, we're going to have to get cranking here on this. It will be three different contractors because this wouldn't be something that one contractor would do. Well, I'm concerned about Kennesaw. When you mentioned Kennesaw, that's a very long road. In fact, most of it's my district. And you're going to try to avoid that, obviously, as much as you can based on some negotiations or whatever? You know, we obviously need to have some more discussion with you individually. This is a very preliminary layout. Okay, I appreciate it. But one thing that we're looking at is the existing bike path, which is the old railroad bed that goes through the neighborhood there, that that is probably a more likely route for the pipeline. Yeah, I think I need to be, you know, in the know on this. So we're focused over here on the farm right now because if we can't figure out how to get across here, all of this is kind of a mute point. So we started with what is the longest distance of it because this is one single property owner right there. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Could you send us this map via e-mail so we can bruise it ourselves? Okay. Can do. And then, you know, working with them, are you trying to obtain the best route across, the route that will provide for sewering later? What's your critical path in trying to get across that expanse? All of the above. Okay. I mean, you know, like I said, right now is that, you know, without any type of preliminary development plan, where we would like to be is we'd like to be along a roadway. Okay. I mean, that would make the most sense of where a roadway ultimately may bisect that property. don't know where that's going to be, and I'm not so sure that they have a good feel for that either because they're obviously still an agricultural operation there. Except we've opened that, you know, we basically have started that dialogue to try to find out, you know, where is there a middle ground here? The map that we have here, basically this is still a planning-level document. We just drew a line. And realizing now as we're trying to get ready to transit in a design, line on the map, there needs to be a whole lot more meat put on the bone, so to speak. Three different contractors at once, then. Yeah, and that's not unusual. A contractor who does pipelines pretty much does pipelines, where with a storage tank or a pump station, you've got electric, you've got mechanical, you've got kind of another different set of skills and trades. Not to say that some contractors don't do both, but in a lot of cases, when we've done pump stations and force mains what we call pressurized line it's almost always separate contracts and separate contractors very good thank you sir okay and then lastly you can go ahead and take this one back down the we have a similar project that is numbers 102 through 104 the the council district on this is incorrect that should be 12 not seven this is out in the Providence Place area out Newtown Pike on the other side of I-75. 102 through 104? Yeah, 102 through 104. Similarly, you know, putting the sewers in expansion areas, you know, you'd think it'd be really easy because it's a lot of open land and stuff like that, but because there hasn't been any sewers there before, it's actually sometimes it seems like it's harder than it would be otherwise. But anyway, we're in the process of getting ready to hire a design engineer for that. Because of its impact with the farming community, we have been working very closely with the Fayette Alliance to make sure that they're dialed in with what it is that we're planning to do out there. But I don't have a map for it right now, but basically we're following the 201 plan. But what it will allow us to do is eliminate four chronically overflowing pump stations that have been like this since I've been here since 1999, and we've really needed this infrastructure in place. So with that, I can answer whatever questions. Oh, you've done really good. You've got a lot going on. I have one sign-up so far. Council Member Stendon. Thank you, Chair. Charlie, on the green of completed projects, those were all done in the last six months. Is that correct? So what's our run-in total since we started the consent decree in terms of work? Do we know? I could not tell you as far as since we've started the consent decree. I have a scorecard that I keep for the remedial measures projects, the red, white, and blue ones based on what we projected the cost was going to be versus what the actual would be. And I don't count ones that are still in process because of change orders and the potential for that. But we were running about between $3 and $4 million on the good side as far as completed projects to this point. But you don't know a grand total of how much we spent on that list? On the RMP project, it's just somewhere close to $23 million that's gone out the door right now. Somebody asked me this the other day about some of the other costs, whether it be the stormwater program and all the things that we've had to do. I don't have a figure for that right now. I understand. On 66 Clarkdale Court FEMA grant, have we started that? Is that underway? The property owners are being contacted? To my knowledge, I think I saw some email traffic that maybe it might have involved you and others. Because we were on council break, and I didn't know if we'd actually started or not. Yeah, I know that we've hired the appraiser to do it. So, you know, the commitment was that we were supposed to have offers in their hands by the end of August. So I guess I'll be going back and checking that because I think that's what I told you. We've been on break, and I just haven't heard a word, so I didn't know if they actually got started or not. I will confirm that. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, sir. Anyone else? Director, you've done us a great job as usual. Thank you. We'll look forward to catching up with you again next month then. Let me ask you though, can you tell a difference in income based on the difference in the rate imposed upon the citizenry? Can you tell income is up in the first month so far? I haven't really noticed anything, but I'll have to admit that I have been largely on sabbatical for the last month it seems like. between my daughter's dancing and our other vacations and stuff. I have all my fun in about a four-week period, kind of like you guys do. We'll look for that as we move down the line. We have not noticed that there has been a significant change in there. It has been a mess of a year as far as number of overflows and the frequency of which they've happened because it's been rainstorm after rainstorm. We had invested in a web-based alarm system. We have alarms in certain key manholes that tell us whether or not those are overflowing because then that allows us to mobilize crews and go out and check the other ones that don't have them. And then also once we've checked and confirmed that they've overflowed, that we use a contractor to go out and do the post-event cleanup. up. We've had times to where it's like day after day, the alarms keep going off, going off, going off. And it has been, it's been challenging for that. I've noticed that a lot is that before I felt like in some cases we were seeing some improvements as far as reduction of overflows. I didn't see it this year. Okay. To follow up on that, Council Member Mazzotti. Thank you. Thank you, Charlie, for your real efficient report. In reference to overflows, are we still experiencing a lot of residential sewage backups? We did on April 2nd and 3rd because we had nearly five inches of rain in a 24-hour period. Those are the chronic ones or are they new? I would say the ones that I have gone back and looked at, and because they've obviously raised themselves, as you go back and look at the history, they've had that chronic problem in that similar type of rainfall. There was one I looked at the other day is that they have had, I could find four events in Lex call. Every one of them was more than three and a half inches of rain in a 24-hour period. So they don't have it when we have a normal rain, but when all you know what breaks loose, they do have an issue. So I guess my question is, are we making any headway with those that have the chronic events? We are. We have a program that came out in 2010, I believe, that is more focused on the individual property and not so much about trying to find out where the water comes from. And it started out over in the neighborhood behind Sullivan University. We had two or three properties that were just wearing us out. And so we sent a plumber in to make plumbing modifications in their house. They don't call us anymore. So we've used that in other places, and it has been successful because it has a more predictable outcome rather than us going out and doing a bunch of sump pump redirects, fixing a bunch of leaks. And then when it rains a monsoon again, it's negligible as far as the difference. You don't know for sure whether you're really getting the problem because there's a whole bunch of problems that are contributing to it. It's not one source. as opposed to when we get a little bit of rain, usually you can go out pretty quickly and figure out that's the problem because it's just a little bit of rain, if that makes any sense. That's the $10,000 match you're talking about, isn't it, as far as some of those homeowners that have had issues that way in their basements? I believe, isn't that the... Yes, that is the program. It is the Basement Flooding Prevention Program is what we call it. And do you think most of the constituency is aware of that? I mean, do you guys put that on their website at all? Because I imagine there may be some that are not sure what to do. I'd have to confess that I have not looked to see whether it's on, but I know Angela is sitting back there in the corner. I'm sure that she's writing that down right now and that it will be very soon. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Thank you, Charlie. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you, Chair. Anyone else? Mr. Martin, thank you. Okay. We could take a turn to the committee referral list, although the committee guarded it down fairly efficiently last time. Unless there's someone with a specific thought here, I'd stand as for adjournment. I'll move. A motion and a second all those in favor pose like sign. Thank you very much