Music Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And I'd like to call our meeting to order since it's one o'clock. I will now call to order the September 12, 2023 meeting of the Environmental Quality and Public Works Committee. The first thing on our agenda is the approval of the July 11, 2023 committee summary. Are there any additions or corrections that anyone would like to make to that meeting summary? Okay, seeing none, can I have a motion to approve? So moved. Second. I have a motion from Councilwoman Gray and a second from Councilmember Civigni. Any discussion on the motion? Hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That motion passes. The next item that we have on our agenda today is the annual stormwater priority list update. This is an annual update that will be presented by Mark Sanders, our engineering section manager in division of water quality. Thank you, Mr. Sanders, for being with us today. I'm going to turn it over to you. Good afternoon. I think I've met just about everybody. I don't know if I've met Vice Mayor Wu yet, but we've either talked in person, phone, but I'm Mark Sanders, Engineering Section Manager for the Stormwater Group for Division of Water Quality. Today I'm just going to give an overview of the stormwater section for the past year. So talk about the stormwater priority list overview, kind of a high level, do positive efforts and outcomes, challenges that we kind of see in the future, some upcoming studies that's going on, and then have some time for some questions. The severity score, this is a priority list. For those new members, the priority list is multiple years ago, the city developed a list of about 100 plus locations across the city that had severe flooding, either flooding through structures or road flooding. These locations were given a score and ranked on a list. This is the process. I won't go through the read everything, but we evaluate them to see if the issue is a city issue. If it is a city issue, can we fix the issue? If we can't fix the issue, then it turns into what you heard as a preliminary engineering report. And then from that, it can get ranked and scored and added to the priority list if it meets that criteria. The two big factors are the two criteria that it has to meet. It has to be a structural flooding or a road flooding. It has to be one of those two to be added to that list. Can't see. Zoom in here. There we go. On the left, can't see it real good. These are the projects remaining on the priority list. that you'll see some of them. East Thurden, Ohio, Line Drive, Tucson Drive, which is our Southland Park project. Joyland. I don't know why it's blurry. But we've made it down to about number 85. Like I said, the project started at number one. That was the low-hanging fruit. Now we're at the bottom. Now these projects are a lot more challenging as we get into design. Now, this is the stormwater priority list is maintained on the stormwater webpage. You can locate it on the webpage where the red arrow is. The link's there if you want to get it. Again, this is an extremely high level of the priority list. If anybody wants more information, just let me know and I can come down and go through a little into the weeds. Now we get into some positive efforts and outcomes from 2022-2023. This is just a picture of a project we did over at Kearney Ridge at Detention Basin. Over to Kearney Ridge Basin, just improved the outlet and redid the embankment. Our stormwater section is at 4 Strength. We've got three professional engineers, municipal senior engineers. We've got a full group for the Infrastructure Rehabilitation Program. I'll talk about those three a little bit later on. then we've got a municipal associate engineer that kind of helps with the group but those seven all seven are rock stars capital improvement project over at south and will front this involves capital district 10 and 11. south and is the stormwater improvements within the park phase one's broken in two phases phase one is where we did the four detention basins within the park just completed that last year we had the one year warranty on it came in a little over a million Phase 2 is in construction right now. It's also kind of got two parts to it. One is going up Tulsa, Topeka to Pasadena. That section is complete and should be paved in this week is what they're shooting for if we have good weather. And then for Council District 11, we're looking, we've been working on a detention basin over at Allendale. We finally got the last piece of property that we need to get that underway. So that'll be an upcoming water quality design in the future that we'll work with her office on. Here's some photos over at Southland. The picture on the right is the lower basin in the park. You see it's a lot more greener. It's lower in the parks with a little more water. Grass is greened up. The photos on the left, trees have turned out super good, but the grass hasn't come in yet. But a lot of that is due to this project. Phase one has to be the basins that receives the water. Phase two is the infrastructure that sends the water to the basins. So once we get the Phase 2 section done, this area will green up. Here's some photos from Phase 2 that's in construction. This is actually the part that's going to be paid later this week. Weather pending. Joyland, this is Council District 1 and 6. Very similar to Southland. Phase 1 is three detention basins at Cabot Shandon and then also up at Lisa Drive. The contractors around 75-80% complete on the basins at Cabot and Shandon. Once those get complete, they'll move up to Lisa. We hope to have everything done by January 1st, but that's what we're pushing for before the asphalt plates close. Phase 2 is the infrastructure between the basins. just to remind council we applied for a FEMA hazard mitigation HMGP grant back in January that would cover I think it's 95% of phase 2 so it would be 1.1 million the city's obligation would be about 50,000 so we're working with FEMA they've not told us no yet so we're all still optimistic on that but that's still in the works. Some photos out at Joyland. Construction is going really good. I said that contractors doing real good on erosion control. This one, line drives from our improvement project. This is Council District 10. We received the bids. Construction is slated for 2023 or late this year. We actually have a pre-construction meeting tomorrow to kind of get the schedule of the contractor. I love this map. This is a line drive. This is Fort Herod. Issue is here. Basin is here. In between those two spots, multiple trees, townhomes, swimming pool, tennis court, a shed, parking lot, more townhomes. so a lot of times on school more capital projects rarely do we have an open field where we're just building something straight we have to kind of sneak through and find the best way we can to get where the problem is to a detention basin so I love that picture East 3rd and Ohio Council District 1 this one photo down in the lower right has kind of been circulated for a while these plans have actually reached the 100% We're looking to advertise this actually in about two or three weeks. So it's coming up. This is another good photo that I like. The yellow line is the stormwater line that's going, that's being upsized. The sanitary, because whenever we go through the design, we talk one in-house with monster sales, but then we also work with outside utilities. because we're blowing up the street when we're doing the storm line we're also going to replace a sanitary line at the same time so we don't have to be in there once when i'm talking with kentucky american they realize hey you guys are doing this let's go ahead and upsize our water line when we're there so we're kind of knocking three birds out with one so but i love that just with the communication that's going on uh cooper drive this is one it's about 30 percent in design. We should have 30% full, 30% plans end of the month. Project was about 3.2, 3.1, and we did some value engineering, got it down to 2.4, so we've been tickled with that, just doing some different line alignments. This, you can see it real good, but this is Romney, and this is Cooper, so on those two location that's the intent of the cooper drive project is fixing those two locations the red line is where the new alignments are going so it'll be a north section and the south section but we're going to try and do this as one one project it'll go sometime next year minor projects these are small projects kind of nuisance projects they don't really meet the the level of the full capital project and these are some of the ones that we've kind of been working on or working with. The Bobble Link, Campbell Lane one is one that just completed this past year. Meadow Thorpe, we actually just got bids in yesterday, super bids. We're going to start looking at, we're right now reviewing those documents, be sure everything's in place, but I think we're ready to move forward. We're going to be looking to move forward with that one this week, maybe this week or next week. New Bernard Drive, we're kind of looking in October, November to get it going sorry and to get it going Bernard Drive is about 95% complete the hang up is a couple easements and that's what we run into a lot on challenges is just easements will get so far and just get hung up but project managers doing super job I'm trying to track those down and then some future ones that were kind of in the middle of early design is Valley Road Savannah Guilford, Dogwood Park, Birkwood Basin, and Haggard Court. So this is over at Campbell Lane. This is one of the ones we just completed. You can kind of see the issue going on on the left-hand side. It's just a low spot in the road, just nowhere for water to go. And on the right side, we were able to work with a consultant to develop a storm mill in the road and repave that section. same issue over in bobble ink you can kind of see it on the left hand side the ponding on the street just a low spot just we couldn't fix with paving so we was able to work with a consultant to do the put a couple of emlets in and since these two have been complete we've not had any calls or complaints knock on wood stormwater infrastructure program this is one I was telling you about earlier, we've got three, four-time employees that manage a stormwater repair contract of a million dollars. Our contractors, leak eliminators, I think does a really, really good job. Just good communication back and forth between both groups. This is down at the Phoenix building. It happened about, now I think it's been about two months. We had a stormwater line collapse. and this is just some photos of them doing the repair on it. Some of the other issues or some of the other things that a contractor does, just I think I took for granted that I just don't know if a lot of people know about it, like they'll clean the trash out of the inlets. We get so much trash in the inlets that get blocked. Then they clean concrete flumes, work at night. We've actually got them working, I think, later this week, doing some night work. Can't see the middle picture. We're out, but we see on occasion the big plastic coolers get stuck in storm pipes. They have to get blasted out. In the end, completely broken inlets. We see those happen across town. Trucks will run over them or hit them or something. But they're responsible for going in, finding them, and fixing them. So their work orders, this is kind of the project. The program was, inception was in 2018. we had 87 work orders 19 you kind of see it ramping up people starting to find out about it calling and say hey you know we see this 2020 covid drop down 2021 ramping back up 2022 ramped up more 2023 we kind of see the same thing so like i said i think it's going to continue to grow one thing that i guess a jeopardy or or party note there is about 700 to 750 miles of storm line in in lexington that we oversee and there's about 50 000 structures that they oversee so a lot of it it's it's so massive it's just a reactive group and what they do again i i can't give this group enough gold stars on on what they do with the contractor uh frustrating outcomes hey we uh barclay southgate uh council members of igne myself and our deputy director we tried a couple things we think we've got a solution but not every time we do something it's always perfect but we don't quit we try and try again until you get it right the one on the right over at loud industrial road there was a low spot i had an inlet set didn't set it low enough water will let you know if you don't set something low enough so we went back and got that one fixed some upcoming uh preliminary or some upcoming studies we've got two studies going on right now mintel park council district three marshall station council district two uh future studies looming um idle hour that's on the priority list gainsway drive uh council district date that one's also on the priority list walnut grove and table lake country was 12 and 5 those are kind of falling at my minor so there are studies but they're just not on their priorities main challenges for next year um we've got a lot of work upcoming but we also got work on the plate so it's clear network off to be able to get to the new work and i think keeping the uh the groups uh overall level of focus high We've had a super year and then to keep the year going, it's my job to be sure they're motivated and stay focused on upcoming projects. And then lastly is assist with updating a web-based project. This is the link. About two years ago, the city created a construction website that shows all of the engineering's projects, our sanitary or remedial measures program, their projects, and then also the stormwater projects. So you can go there and kind of see, and it's for citizens and council members and whoever to kind of see what's going on around town without having to call everybody. And I think with that, questions. I know I talked extremely quickly there. Thank you. Colleagues, if you have questions or comments, please log in. Council member Brown. Thank you, Chair. Do you run into any problems with utility companies or utility cuts when you're doing some of these repairs? Not directly, because through the design we work with them pretty closely and we have kind of a bi-monthly meeting with them to just go over upcoming projects. So we all try to stay on the same page. If we do get into an issue, they're pretty responsive on coming out. If we hit a water line or we hit a gas line or something and it wasn't on the plans, they're pretty quick on coming out and helping and working with us. Yeah, that would be probably important, especially if you were paving, repaving some streets. Yeah. Of that nature there. When I'm looking at your priority list. Yep. How many do you, what is it, is 99 the last one? I think 99 is the last one. We're up to number 85. 85 was at Gainesway Drive. And once we get, I think, out of our and then Gainesway is the last two on the priority list that we need to study. And then once we get through those, we'll start looking at the next four. Yeah, well I guess my question, well Gainesway Drive is in my district. But that's a long road. Yeah. You just say Gainesway Drive. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Well, there's three areas, and I can go to show you later on, but there's three areas within Gainesway that's going to be looked at. Okay. We're just talking. Yeah, I'll get a meeting with you then, and we can get an update there. But are you telling me that 1 through 84 is no longer, it's all been solved? Well, like the 70 through 85, they're kind of in the mix, either in design, construction, or design, or, yeah, that, go to the next, oh, my bad. So, like, this is the remaining list over here on the left. I know we can't see it real good at all, but the top 10 or 15 is either in some phase of construction, design, or pending design, or pending study. so we're not completely ready to move down to the next group yet. We've still got to go through those, but they're in the works. So they're not completely finished, but they're getting finished, I guess, is the way. So how are you adding on to that past 99? We've not. I think the last one was Cooper Drive. Or not Cooper. Was it Cooper? Yeah, I think it was. I think Cooper Drive was the last one. Yeah, I think we've talked about this before, that there wasn't any new projects that you were covering the city pretty well, but I'm sure there's been some new flooding areas and some new problems that need to be put on this list. There has, but it's kind of filling that minor category that it's not met the criteria for a priority to be added to the... So, talking about minority or minor items, are we doing some of this in-house? Or is it all contractual? No. Yeah, the design is all. It's all contract. The design is and construction. It's either putting it out for bid or having leak eliminators do it. So, there's nothing in-house that you're using? Yeah, our project managers that we have oversee the consultants to make sure they stay on task and stuff. The other question I have is, I don't know if you can answer this, but is there any parallel or anything going on with sanitary sewers along with storm waters in the same area? Yeah, that's where whenever we go through the design, both on the sanitary side and on the storm side, We try and talk just so kind of like on East 3rd, if we see they're going to be in the street and they're kind of blowing up the street, you know, going to make a mess, we'll try and say, okay, well, does our line need to be replaced as well in that section? So we try and work best we can just so there's, we only have to be in there once. Thank you. Vice Mayor Wu. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for this report and thank you for your work. If you can go to the slide that says completed work orders, there's a chart that's kind of towards the end, I think. So I'm curious. 2021 and 2022 were a huge jump from previous years, and I assume a lot of that was catching up from all the stuff we didn't do in 2020. Yep. Are we still in that sort of catch-up phase? do you expect these work order total numbers to drop or plateau at any point? I would, I think 2021, 2022, I think we will see the same numbers in 2023, just because this program, even though it's 2018, is still relatively new, and a lot of citizens don't know to call in. And the way stormwater is, is we're a reactive group that we don't know there's a problem until somebody tells us there's a problem. So it could be a fluke year where one could be down a little bit and another one could be up, but I expect the numbers to be about the same. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you, Chair. Council Member Lynch. Thank you, Chair. Hello, and thank you for your presentation. My only question is on the challenges slide and tasks for 2023-24. Yeah. i guess my question is just by the nature of this what you all do do you anticipate we'll always have a backlog or do you think that we'll eventually catch up on the projects or uh i think it's the uh i think it's the nature of design i think you'll have a roller coaster almost that you know you'll you'll catch up some and then in in the lag you'll do something with design that you know new projects will come up and with the priority list still in the future we're always going to have something to do so even if we catch up there's still work out there looming so it's it's one clear and it's played out you know next year we'll have another full plate okay thank you so much thank you for your work council member fogel Thank you, Chair. So the first thing I would like to call your attention to is Shannon Drive. So I've been getting calls because there's a big hole where we started some work. And now when it rains, it fills up like it's a swimming pool, which causes mosquitoes. And so when will that get leveled off for the community that lives out in that area so that that water doesn't flow over into the street and the mosquitoes? Where is this one at, Shandon? Shandon, it's at Shandon and Parkside. Yeah, that's where they're at right now. Councilmember Gray and I share that area. Yeah, that's where they're doing the two detention basins and Contractors about 75% complete with those fully finishing those. And I think they're hoping, I'll say mid-October, hoping to be fully finished with that area and have that area paved. So next three or four weeks, five weeks, that area will be finished. So somewhere about five weeks, that's what we'll report. And thank you all for your work, by the way. The other, call your attention to Ohio and Third. Yep. And so, how do we better get the information out to our constituents as to how to inform you all in your office? How can we work better with that? Like, I heard you just make the statement, they don't know to call in and we don't know if it's a problem until they complain. How can we do better with informing the community how to get in touch with you all? I think either through newsletters. Well, Lex Call is probably the best way to get to us. It'll get to us if they call in through 311. It'll pop up in our cell system, so that way we'll know there's something there. So we can, in our neighborhood association meetings, just say, hey, If you're having this issue, call 311 and it'll get directly to this department. Okay, that's pretty much all I had. And I think Council Member Brown helped me with the rest of the questions that I had with his questions that he posed to you all. So thank you. Councilwoman Gray. Thank you, Chair. It's great to see you all. We have a close relationship. First of all, what is the typical timeline for stormwater work? You mean the design or just the construction? The entire process. It varies wildly. Yeah. Depending on what the size and scope of the project is. Then you heard him talk about right away an easement acquisition. You know, some of them we've kind of had on the books for two or three more years, just working through design issues and right-of-way issues. So, unfortunately, it's a lengthy process. For example, the work being done in Joyland area, which is Lisa Drive in Shenanon. Yep. That process, I know it began several years before we've been here, and we're finally coming up on the ending, which is a blessing. I think that one's four years. We talked about it in 2019 in this meeting. Yeah. And one thing we do or try to do as best we can is once a project starts is one get involved with council members that's involved in the district and then come out to HOA meetings as needed, especially either once the project reaches design to kind of communicate what's being impacted and kind of just get feedback from citizens. because the more we have buy-in early on in the project the the easier the project goes along so that's why we try and involve me and you as much as we can and speaking specifically about a particular work that's being done in the sixth district barnard drive i know that i will you invited me to the initial meeting to show the design to the individuals that live on that road. Flooding, although we have not had a great amount of rain this year, as the three of us know and maybe individuals out there know, that it's like water rafting. We could in that area. How soon will we begin to actually get into work? I know it says October for a project to be advertised for construction. We've got funds are in place to go ahead and advertise the project. And once we get those final easements in place, we'll be ready to go. But it's one of those, you hate to give a date until those easements are secured just because sometimes it can drag on until, so you don't know if it's October, November, or December. Yeah, it gets back to the easement things. The easement work. Two pieces of property. They seem to be willing to talk, but we can't quite get them over the hump to sign the MOU for us. Yeah. Okay, let's talk. Well, thank you all for the update. I truly do appreciate it. Thank you. So thank you again for the update for today. A couple quick things that I just want to comment on. Is there anyone else here from Water Quality that you'd like to introduce? It's always good for us to put names and faces together. Just two of us. And then I want to commend you for the construction project information, because I know that is helpful for me. We use that and we send that link out to our residents. And I also really appreciate the communication that you set up with us and with the neighbors. And I know we've had several meetings about Cooper Drive and some other projects in my district where you bring nice maps and we talk about all the things and we hold neighborhood meetings. And so I really do think you work very hard to keep the community engaged in this process. And so I just want to highlight that and encourage you to continue working with us on the neighborhood meetings and those communications. So thank you. Thank you. Our next item on our agenda today is the process for road closures. This item is sponsored by Council Member Savigny. Would you like to make any remarks to start this presentation? Yeah, thank you, Chair. I wanted to thank Commissioner Albright and her team for putting this next presentation together. We met last week or the week before and we looked at it. And I'm kind of excited of what they're sharing. And I picked this up after my predecessor, the former council member, Amanda Mays Bledsoe, put this item into committee after a somewhat unfortunate event of a Clay's Mill Road closure during the first day of school, which created a lot of chaos in the 10th district. So I'm excited to see this and then put this to bed. So thank you very much. All right, thank you sir, thank you. With that, I will say thank you for the opportunity for allowing us to kind of all come together as a department. And try to put some structure around what had been a kind of an ad hoc process before this. I hope I'm doing this right. This is my first time. Yay. Okay. So as opposed to, again, the kind of what are we going to talk about today, those are the questions that we tried to answer as a part of outlining our process. And I don't know about you guys, but my general experience is when you ask an engineer a question, most of the time the first answer you get back is, well, it depends. So the first question up there, what is a major road impact? Well, it depends. So there's a lot of factors that we kind of all take in together as a part of figuring out whether or not this is going to, we think this is going to have a major impact to the community, and therefore we need to put additional measures in place beyond some of our just traditional signage and postings. So some of them might be kind of obvious about the kind of geography of the road and the area, about whether or not it's near a school or whether or not it's a major highway or a thoroughfare for us, whether or not it's a one-lane closure or a one-directional closure or a full closure. I will tell you that I do think that I aggravate my team more than most others about trying to close the whole roadway because we do not do that unless we cannot figure out another way to keep everyone safe. So full roadway closures are a big, big deal. no matter where they are. But regardless, all these other factors, if you have a two lane road and you're closing one lane, obviously that could still be a really big deal. So these are the part of the ones we look through. And then other factors about the project itself that kind of come into play. Do they, for whatever reason, need to keep it closed during rush hour? Do they need weeks or months instead of days? Do they need, how close to an intersection is it? Because that can create, as I'm sure all of you all know, both as drivers and council members, a whole other level of confusion and chaos if it's close to an intersection versus in the middle of the block. And then how much do we, as some of the things we just talked about in the last presentation, how much are we working near other work? So then that may lead to other confusion. So those are the things that we look at, and if enough of them are kind of yes-no answers to where we think we've crossed that threshold into a major roadway, then we're going to hopefully start to put forward what we're talking about today. And just as a caveat before we dive into the next couple of slides, I want to just make sure that this is LFUCG-based projects. So these are things that for the most part come out of water quality or engineering. There may be one every once in a while on streets and roads or traffic engineering. These are not utility projects per se. We do not handle their communication. We do share that some information, and I'll get into that at the end. And then, again, we don't tend to put out information about development work unless, again, we will do a limited share. But we rely on those companies to do a lot of the heavy lifting on reaching out to the neighborhoods or the stakeholders nearby. And then again, if there's a true emergency, and I use true kind of with air quotes a little bit of everything changes if we have a water line break in the middle of the night. Or one of our roadway projects has a snafu like, oh, let's say a water pipe burst in the middle of an intersection. Then we might have to put special measures into place. But otherwise, but a lot of times you'll hear from utilities, it's an emergency that we're going to repair in two weeks. Well, if you have two weeks to schedule the repair of the emergency, you also have two weeks to tell everybody about it. So we're going to try and not call that everything an emergency. And again, not to pick on engineers, I do feel a little bit entitled to get to do that since I am one. We like flowcharts, so here we are. That's the beautiful thing that you get to see for the next few slides. And I'll break that down a little bit more so you can actually read the words on the flow chart there. So again, most of the time, hopefully, these are all planned work that everybody already knows about. We've already spoken with all of you and your aides. We've been to neighborhood meetings. We've already had a certain amount of interaction with stakeholders about the project. What isn't known at that point is the definite traffic plan and the timing of it. So what we did as a group, thanks to Councilmember Savignies adding this to the agenda, is it forced us to kind of sit down and walk backwards from when we want a contract to start, how far back do we need to start all these other things so that we're ready to go? So we started as we walked back, once we have the contract awarded and we know kind of within a measure, a couple of days maybe, when we're going to start. Now sometimes what you'll find, contractors are pretty inventive, and they will maybe come up with a way to improve what we think is already a good idea on how to maintain traffic. And so they'll pitch an idea to make a change that will impact the project. So if we have a little bit of a back and forth, we'll ask for an extension on all of that. But otherwise, two weeks out is when we really start to say, this is where we're going. So at that time, this slide and the next one will be where we will start. We've got the maintenance of traffic kind of outlined. We've got a contract underway. And this is where we start kind of talking about, okay, now we know. This is the plan and it's going to, this is what we think the plan is and it's going to start in two weeks. All these start at two weeks. And then we start talking to traffic engineering, our PI team, and you guys. About now we know in two weeks we're going to be out on the road somewhere. And again, we also will start talking with our stakeholders, whether it's Lex Tran, public schools, private schools, things like that. We'll also start talking the outreach team, what we call the PI team. We'll start working on a draft press release and a map so that we can get all of this lined out. and then traffic engineering reviews the maintenance traffic plan one more time. If there's a little back and forth, one of the things I want to make sure I say here is we reset the clock. So if it takes us a week to figure out what's been proposed and how it's really going to work, then we push the start date of the contract back so that we still have time to communicate the plan. So at that point, yes, everybody's kind of agreed. It meets MUTCD requirements. It makes sense. We know what we're doing, theoretically. Then all of these other things start to come into play. And so at eight business days, we will start to do things like make sure the contractor knows the start date. Make sure that water quality and engineering and the PI team all know exactly. We kind of reconnect. And then we start getting together what we're going to communicate with Waze and the traffic ticker and Lex Rex and all those things that get picked up by our partners that help communicate all this out. And then at a week out, we will start worrying about things like getting the map finalized and getting it ready to be shared with everybody. The Pi team will put it where on their posts, they'll let you all know that it's out there. They'll send it to you in whatever way you want to share, if it's sharing one of their posts, if it's posting it yourself. However it works for you, we'll work with you, as you all know, on a lot of that. And then we'll obviously also give you things that you can share with stakeholders, neighborhood associations, things like that. And then we get down to one week out, we'll make sure the variable message signs are up whenever they're called for. And we have had to make a change to some of our contracts here lately to make sure that that five days is out, that everybody's got a week to kind of reset their mental drive in. A lot of us are on autopilot, and it may take us a few days to go, hey, there's a sign over there. And so we'll make sure we have that up, hopefully in enough time to start catching everybody to make changes to their plans. And then we'll be ready to go. And then once the traffic control plan is in place and the work starts, It falls to our inspectors and the contractor to work together to make sure everything stays where it's supposed to stay. All the orange barrels are where they're supposed to be. The variable message sign didn't get hacked or whatever. So those are the things that we actually will do all throughout the project. And then this is probably a little bit of a curious title for this. But again, it's just to say when we have outside people working on our streets, by that I mean utilities and developers primarily. If one of them are doing work on our street, sometimes the state will still share this. We rely on them to do the heavy lift of talking to stakeholders, talking with you. But we will definitely share however we can. So if we need to backfill on anything, we will make sure that we're working with them and with you to provide additional information. And then we do put a lot of the same information on the map that Mr. Sanders mentioned in his presentation so that it's also out there. We'll try and give you more information. That's kind of a snapshot. If you haven't had a chance to look at that map yet, it's great. But it's kind of very bullet points. So it is, but it is a good resource. And then again, if there's an emergency, we do the best we can at the time the emergency happens, and we try to follow that up the next day. So if we have, again, not to continue to pick on Clay's Mill, but if we have a water line that blows up a church in the middle of the night, then we'll have to circle back and make sure at 5 o'clock in the morning we start making sure everybody has the word. So as much as we can, when we can. And just to summarize, a lot of it kicks into high gear, two weeks out, ten business days, two weeks. And then we will definitely make sure that we loop in with all of you all and work with you as hand in hand as you want us to, however you want to lead. I know in some cases, some council members prefer to be a strong point of communication and some prefer us to. We're flexible, we'll support you whichever way you need us to. So with that, I'm happy to, and I want to make sure I'm going to follow the point that Councilmember Sheehan made in the last presentation and point out the members of my team who helped put all of this together and are here today to help answer questions that go beyond me, which might not take very long. We have Danny Wood and David Filiatru, if you have not met them, they are key players in a lot of our traffic engineering conversations. Doug Burton is in the back in engineering, does a lot of the capital projects. And Angela Poe is over off to the side that also does a lot of our communication about all of us. Every time you see anything green on the flow chart, that's her group. So with that, what questions can we answer? Thank you. you colleagues go ahead and sign in and thank you for going ahead and introducing your team commissioner because i was going to ask you for that i'm council member fred brown thank you chair i didn't i don't think you mentioned it but maybe you did in in when we're talking talking about road closures i want to just hone in on paving the contractor for the paving i guess it's their they have to do the put the signs up and make sure that there's no traffic or no parking on those roads. But when they're paving for it could be, well, it could be depending on the size of the road or the length. And if they are milling, you know, it could be two, three, four days there. That road is not necessarily closed, but it is under active. active. So you didn't mention that too much as far as are we updating anything on that as to notification or getting that out to the public? I'd be happy to explore if that's something that we need to grow. At this point we were really focusing on the capital side of the house that tends to be there for a much longer time than a paving project. I understand that but I think this is an integral part is paving streets and making sure that the people that live on those streets have some advance warning to some extent. And I don't know that we're doing as much as we should, having gotten involved in a lot of the paving process. So I wanted to bring that. Yes, and I will agree that is one thing. I think if you asked everybody in the room with me, they would all nod their heads if they're not already, Only because that is something that is a continual ebb and flow kind of challenge with our contractor and our process of how much advance notice are we comfortable sharing that they think they'll be there next week. We can get the season out, we can sometimes get a month out, we definitely can get 24 hours out. But that gap in between four weeks and one day is where we still tend to really struggle. It's more informative to the neighbors and to the people who live on those streets, the information we can get to them as quick as possible. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Council Member Legree. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Commissioner Albright, for this presentation. As you know, we've had some big projects in my district, including Lansdowne. So if you don't mind, I just want to ask a couple of questions about communication and expectation setting with our residents, especially those as Councilmember Brown mentioned, who are very much impacted by paving or demolition or closures and then all of the process after that. So in the presentation, there's a slide about sharing the public map and compact details with council members and key stakeholders including the schools. When I look at this and I think about all these different streams of communication that are potentially reaching residents, what do you think is the main way that residents should expect to receive information about a road closure? Are there door hangers? Are there, what are your thoughts? I'm going to lean into Angela really quickly because one of the things we talk about all the time is how many different ways do we need to try to communicate with everybody in order to try to get to as many houses as possible. So that is, I don't know that we always tend to do door hangers, but anyway, I'll let her. Hi. So we have done door hangers. We don't do them very often. A lot of times with our projects, whether it's engineering or water quality, they're in the neighborhood and a lot of times we'll end up going door to door to talk to people in the residences anyway. And with that, that's more direct and gets questions answered immediately and is really a key piece of information. So if that can't be done or we can always add a door hanger to it if you've got an area that you feel like would particularly benefit from that, you can always request that. We can throw those together no problem. As long as we have time, the thing with door hangers is they take a long time to produce. So we do lean on the divisions that are managing the project to do a lot of that initial conversation with people. And they usually communicate, and you all can step in and correct me. But if basically you've got a driveway that is along the impacted area, a lot of time they have those initial conversations. That's probably the most direct and best way. But we also will post on next door and send it to council members. And if we have a good neighborhood contact, we will send it out. But we're hoping that you all have even better neighborhood, like more and better neighborhood contacts that you can share those maps and things with. So door hangers are on the table, it's not frequently used, but it's just certainly a thing that we can pull out more often if you would like. Okay, I guess a challenge that I'm seeing is that not all of our neighborhood associations are active and or you may have a couple of key contacts, but it doesn't mean that they're able to push that out to everybody in the neighborhood. And so when I see this council member piece, and it says on your last slide that everyone has a responsibility to communicate. I almost think about us as like a cushion, like that we're bonus. But what I want to understand is the relationship or the expectation of our communication in addition to all these other pieces. Because we certainly receive all of the complaints that may come if the schools aren't notified that they have to change their routes or if there are challenges within the project. But I want to make sure we understand what our goal should be and when we should share information out and then how all of the other ways that people are also getting that information. Yeah, so I really very deeply appreciate that question because We have had a lot of this conversation lately. Communication is increasingly difficult because where people are getting their information is continually split and split and split. And so one of the things that I have observed through my years of doing communication is, it's kind of pulling back into the best sources or those most direct contacts closest to them and their network. whether it's neighbors or family or friends or coworkers. So we give the information to you all knowing that you all have contacts in the community that we don't directly have. And a lot of those are the folks who are very active in your neighborhoods and who are very vocal about your neighborhoods and are very invested in their neighborhoods. So helping us connect with them by sharing the information that we give to you is really that key last piece because by the nature of your jobs, you all are focused on a very specific, those of you that are district level are focused on a very specific region. And so being able to use the context that you've developed as council member for that area can be very helpful. We certainly don't rely on that as the only way that we communicate. It is still, we always put it out through next door. If it's a major road closure, which is the context of this, we've got the press release, we'll put it out on social. If we do know of people in the neighborhood, we will contact them. It's just that we don't know as many people in your districts as you all know. Thank you for that. I know my time is up, if you don't mind. I just want to say one last thing. I do think that this makes sense to me. And in this particular case that I'm thinking of, the door hangers would make all the difference and when their place makes all the difference. So I do think that that other direct piece can really matter because we're only able to have so many bits of impact along one road as well. So thank you. I appreciate that. I feel that. I will say with the door hangers, one of the reasons that I really appreciate that Councilmember Civic Name brought this up is a lot of times when we get notice about closures, we aren't getting two weeks notice. And so again, like I said, there's a little bit of lead time with the door hangers, not so much us designing it, but us being able to get it printed and then get put in place. And we haven't always had that, but I'm hoping that now that this is kind of an official flow chart, is that a thing? Now that we have an official flow chart, if we can hold more firm, hold our contractors to better account for those deadlines and giving us adequate notice so that we can do a better job notifying the neighborhoods and absolutely door hangers. Again, it's not hard as long as we have the time. I think that having this conversation has been a really important piece of putting that in place. Thank you. Council Member Savigny. Thank you, Chair. I want to thank you guys for this presentation again. Just a few quick things because we talked about a variety. For me, it's all about the communication out there. And I think you guys also mentioned that do you do also, we have the ability to do like geospatial advertising or whatever on Facebook, isn't that right, or Instagram? We've done that in very limited circumstances when there's a major, major, major closure. We, for example, when we were getting ready to do the work along Euclid, that maybe the only good thing about COVID was that it made that project a lot easier to do for water quality. But major, major projects like that we do. Currently, there isn't generally a communication budget associated with the various road closures or construction projects. That's a rare instance where there's a budget with that and there is funding associated with that. But we certainly have the capability. We have done it for really big projects in the past. And as you know, it's not a big deal to do. We can do it, certainly. Yeah. And then the other thing is we funded a new position on council staff. I think it's the communications director or communications something or other. I don't know if the title has been defined yet. But I do see, because we are going to start with a new, we want a constituent management system, which I can see for, I mean, I love what I'm getting from you guys because I'm getting like a week or two notice, and I am sending it out to like I know my neighborhood people that know every other neighborhood person in their neighborhood, and it's really helpful. And I'm posting, and then I'm sending them a direct email, and it's really very helpful. But I can see us using the system that, and I think some of us will be using it, and some of us maybe won't be using it. But I do see our communications person that we have on staff as being probably in one of those boxes because they're going to know a little bit better how that system might work and how we might get the word out in another way. Yeah, you mentioned that in our meeting and I'm very excited about that piece because I think once that infrastructure is in place, I think there's a lot of positive uses for that. yeah thank you that's all I got chair councilmember focal thank you chair person so I look forward to the paving coming in our direction so I heard something mentioned about schools and I wanted to know about the communication with Lex Tran because people in the first district they ride the Lex Tran so if they have to be at work, how much notice do the folks have? Because they're going to be running behind on the usual transit lanes that they normally catch. If there's a closure, then that's going to take a detour, which will back them up. So they definitely will have to catch the bus earlier than usual in order to make it to school on time. So there is a system in place that we contact Lex Strand. Yes, ma'am. To make sure that they know. And also, with our contractors, who oversees these contractors? Because if they're not, case in point, Keys Road. I physically had to go to Keys Road one morning because the constituents was blowing my phone up. And there were no markings and so I talked to the contractor and he immediately told his crew to put the markings out. Like there was holes, sink holes in the road. They didn't have the proper markings and the constituents said there were no door hangers, no notification that the road was going to be placed. So who oversees the contractors that gets the bid in your department? At the end of the day, the buck stops with me. So if your constituent is complaining that they didn't get noticed, that they, because I think I happen to remember who owns that project. But it's hard for a constituent or a council member maybe on the fly to remember which division is leading which project and who the council member is and who should be the inspector out there that's overseeing the traffic control plan. So at the end of the day, if that's not something you readily know, send it to me and I will make sure it gets addressed. Okay, and can we maybe think about, here's the question. Is there a footage like before you even, and I've been a victim of this. I'll start up a road and there will be no markings down at the end saying road construction, road is closed, and I'll get midway up the road and all of a sudden I can't go any further. So is that like, should that be marked? Do we call you? You can always call me. Please know that. But if there's a specific situation, we have to kind of, I may lean into traffic engineering here a little bit for support quickly. But we have to weigh, at what point are we confusing more people than we're helping them? If we put a construction ahead sign too far ahead, And we may be scaring people that aren't affected by the project. So what's the good footage? I'm sorry, what's the footage? What would be, yeah, what would be like appropriate for a pedestrian, not a pedestrian, but someone who was driving a vehicle to know that if I'm coming down Limestone and I'm getting ready to turn on Locust, but the work is midway up the street. Where should that construction road close ahead? Where should that be at? I'm going to say at the decision point, but I'm going to let David. It depends. But mostly, especially in the downtown area, there's going to be detours typically, especially if it's a full closure. So you're going to want to catch people prior to, like Nancy mentioned, the decision point. So if there's not anything at that decision point, then something's wrong. So we want to keep people moving in the right direction, especially if we don't know where you're going or from the area. we want to get you back where the same path you were before. In some of the more suburban areas where it's usually based on speed, so like where the lane closure is based on the width that needs to be closed and the speed that people are going. So if it's 55 miles an hour, it's going to take a lot longer to close that lane than on a 25-mile-per-neighborhood. And then that speed also dictates the other preceding signs that let you know construction ahead. So the faster you're going, the more notice you need, things like that. Okay. And there are, I'm sorry, there are standard drawings associated with these types of setups. So ideally, a contractor would follow those because those are their kind of roadmap on what to do. And so thank you for all your hard work. And maybe if somebody can do a TikTok animation road closure, we probably can grab onto that over the first district. We're not allowed to do TikTok, but we would definitely provide something TikTok worthy, I'm sure, on Facebook or Instagram. Instagram, yeah. Lex Rex. Lex Rex what? Thank you. We also have X, formerly known as Twitter, that we post a lot of stuff on. So feel free to grab anything off of there. Yeah, I'll point them in that direction. Councilwoman Gray. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Commissioner Albright, thank you for your presentation. My question is regarding the franchises that do work, road work. In my district, 6th district, we have Brian Wood Parkway that has been worked on, or excuse me, work started in June, stopped in July and August. However, we have residents living there, and it's causing an undue burden on them, not only leaving the roadway unpaved with piping exposed, causing damage to vehicles. Who holds these franchises, I guess it's you, accountable? You said the buck stops with you. Well, franchises are a little bit harder for us to wrangle. So we do have a lot of rules that they have to go by as a part of our agreements with them and a part of them getting a permit to do that work. But we also have to stay on them all the time. And we have a team of inspectors that that's their primary job is to make sure that they're adhering to the terms of their permit. But it is hard to make sure we have compliance all the time, unfortunately. So how do we better have these franchises communicate with us? Because I'm easy to communicate with, at least in my mind. Evidently, some think otherwise. But how can we do a better job to ensure that they're actually communicating not only with you, but also those who represent that area? because at times the work, like I said, stopped. I'm the one that's reaching out like, if the job was supposed to be done by the end of July, hmm, it's still going on. So what can we do? Depending on the community, and I will definitely let Doug weigh in on this, but depending on the utility, they usually have a contact that you can work with pretty well. But Doug works with them on the regular, so I'm going to let him weigh in on that question. So the big reason you see work stop and then the paving doesn't get done for several months later, and I just met Council Member Brown on a site yesterday, is because they have effectively two different crews. They have the pipe crew, which is this Kentucky American sea gas, most of the folks that dig up the road, even our own DWQ folks. The folks who dig up the road and put the pipe in, that's not the same folks who are doing the restoration. So with Kentucky American, for instance, They have, Kentucky American hires one of their pipe crews to put in the pipe. And then they have their own, they brought in tri-state paving from West Virginia who's doing a lot of their restoration work. So the pipe crews, they try to, it's just the same way we do, we try to align it so that the gap between that stop work on the pipe work, complete that and then get the concrete cap and the paving done are as close of a gap as possible. but all of those companies I just mentioned are doing massive tens if not hundreds of million dollar capital improvement projects right now and frankly they're doing a lot of so much work that their restoration crews are having trouble keeping up. We do have a paving sharing agreement going through council at three o'clock where we'll hopefully be able to team up and that's why I'm asking this now. There you go and and help them fill some of those gaps where they don't have capacity if we were going to pave the road anyway or at least pave the other half because the paving rating was low then we can pick up that paving where they're they can do the other paving so hopefully we can shorten those gaps um because that's our biggest tool to to to force them to move ahead because we don't have our regulatory authority that's in 17c uh is limited on forcing their hand time-wise. In 2017-18, we changed it so that if they went past the 22 days, which is the standard cycle for right-of-way permit, they were hit with another $250 permit fee every time. A lot of times, it's cheaper for them to just take that $250 fee than it is to mobilize their restoration crews. And we've even talked about, can we crank that up to a higher amount? But at the end of the day they're just going to pass that along to their customers and everyone's water bill and gas bill is going to go up so it's a delicate balance in and getting that right thank you and one other thing back about this this one particular job since it's going on on month number on team whatever that means so the last excuse that i've heard is that they had to stop paving or completing the paving due to Shaftberry, which we just completed maybe two or three weeks ago at this point. The work has not restarted at this point. So I would like for you all just to follow up. I've been following up. They're my best friends now. I would like for you to follow up to see if we can just get them to start. Sure. We'll be happy to. Thank you so much. Yep. Council Member LeGree. Thank you, Chair, for the additional opportunity. I was just thinking about something that you all had mentioned previously, and I just want to make sure I understood. So there is not a communications budget, like there's not a lot of special funding. Only for really big ones. Other times, Angela's group has budget for lots of other opportunities, and we kind of carve out little bitty pieces for things like this. So unfortunately, that does tend to be something we do on a shoestring. Well, when I think about all of the challenges that can come with different types of outreach and the money that it costs to do successful outreach, I just wonder if maybe that's something we could explore in the future in terms of funding. I mean, I know that expectation management is a huge part of successful project management. And in my opinion, more that we can do on the front end to engage with residents, to set their expectations, to provide them with different types of communication in that process. And then, it is old fashioned, but maybe even to do mailers or door hangers, Because we know that there are people who maybe aren't on social media, who aren't subscribed to our newsletters, who aren't receiving other types of communication, and that reaching them could cost a little bit more money. So perhaps, Chair, that's something that we could explore in the future and talk to your all's team a little bit more about logistically and financially. That'd be great. Thank you, I appreciate that. And I don't know if you all were unfortunately not distracted, but This also happens every month when I'm on the radio. This team all kind of rallies and tells me what's going on as questions are asked in real time. So there is a door hanger for paving that is being developed or revamped right now. So we are in the works. And one thing that Danny pointed out is if you would like to receive the lane blockage report and you do not, I see Council Member Fogle nodding her head. That's something we send out both daily and weekly of what's coming up, either the next day. And it's defined by major roadways, minor neighborhood streets. And then it also, I think, is it in bold or italics or something? It just in order of street rent, major, significant, moderate, minor. Yeah, and then it highlights the new one. And so you'll see if Aylesford is new, because it didn't have a big hole in it yesterday, that might be a new thing. It'll also say extensions, so if the project has gone beyond its term limits, it will inform you of that. That can be a really good resource. If you don't have it and you're interested in it, I'd love to make sure you have it. If you don't have an issue, you can send it to the recycle bin every day. But if, I do try, they may not believe it, but I do try to look up something when I get a complaint, look it up and see if I can find out what's going on before I ask one of them. So it is a good resource. Thank you, that's really helpful. And thank you, Councilmember Civigni for this update. I think it's been really useful for me. Thank you, Chair, and thank you all for preparing this. Thank you, Commissioner. All right, thank you all. Thank you to everyone who helped with this presentation today. I would like to just make one quick comment that this is also part of the complete streets conversation that we're having, the road closure process and how we determine if a road or trail or path is closed. So I appreciate this kind of like start to that conversation as well. Moving on on our agenda, we have the items referred to committee. and I just want everyone to take a quick look to see if there's anything that you would like to update or remove we've gotten through most of our annual and periodic updates for the year there's one that's on recycling and general practices that I'll check in with council member Worley for and then Kendra I would like us to just touch base on the annual division and program reviews to see what we might need to do for that. Council member Sevigny, would you like to keep this item in committee or would you like to go ahead and remove it? I move to remove the item from committee. Okay, so this is item number one, the process for road closures. I have a motion from council member Sevigny and a second from vice mayor Wu. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, that motion passes. And then we've had this year on the referred items um presentations either happening or scheduled for our last meeting in december um october and december um wait yes october and december i'm like what month am i in and we've had a few that are new to the um committee um so i think um for those items that have recently been referred we could start looking at when those might fit in our schedule for next year so think about those if you have one quick thinking about the schedule for our october meeting um well actually let me pause is there any other item that anyone wants to make a a motion for to remove or to update. For our next meeting, October 24th, we have the plan currently is the annual snow removal update and the MS4 program update and then hoping to have a presentation on the digesters for waste management that we have talked about in the past. So those are for October. And then in your items for committee, you can see what is on the schedule for December as well. The last one that I want to draw your attention to is the Environmental Commission update to their ordinance. They have been going back and forth with law to get final approval on the wording that they would like to have changes for. So that's why they have kind of moved around in our agenda. But we're hoping to have them on the december at the december meeting with the finalized language um so if anybody has any other questions or updates on items okay seeing none oh wait council member lagree oh sorry sir um i i just have a um something i wanted to note um items number five and six um which are streets and roads fleet depreciation replacement and short-term rentals enforcement those came out of our cow about the budget and i want you to know that i've spoken to kendra about those items and where they might be an appropriate fit and i hope to update you about that soon that's it thank you thank you anything else okay with no other items on our agenda i will stand us adjourned thank you Thank you.