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and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and nimble and can get approval from their commission to do things and allocate resources to address some things where it might be a little more cumbersome to do it through the division. Am I thinking about that right or wrong? I don't want to speak for the Corridors Commission, so I will not do that. Well, I think we've got the Chair, and she might answer what she thinks about that. Yeah, if you want to ask the Chair, but frequently those tasks end up being assigned, the maintenance of things ends up being assigned to either the Division of Environmental Services or one of the other divisions after construction is complete. Okay. And then, you know, and you might have touched on it, and I might have zoned out. Was there a lot of gray area in determining what responsibilities, because I'm thinking about trails, and there's some parts of the trails that I know Park and Recreation is in charge of, and then some that Streets and Roads or whoever else, Environmental Quality. How are you going to parse that out, and is there a formula about if it's not, if this trail is not leading to a park, then it's, you know, just this division, but once it gets to a park and a recreation area, it's Park and Recreation. It has been a little bit of a weave, for lack of a better word, I guess, that currently, if it's not on right-of-way frequently, parks will take care of it, but not always. So it doesn't have to be in or leading to a park, but it might be one of the trails that's way off of right-of-way, and therefore, there's not necessarily one of the Public Works divisions that's going to be responsible for it. But then the section of Town Branch Trail going out Manchester Street, it breaks at the railroad track. The first part's maintained by Environmental Services, and the part further away from the road is maintained by Parks. And then knowing who does what where is a part of the confusion, I think, that we're going to have to continue to kind of tweed out of what we want it to be instead of the hodgepodge that it can be sometimes. Yeah, please. If you don't mind, as trails have become more and more popular and an amenity our community desires and we rely upon, when they first started, it was on-road facilities, bike lanes, or very much just going within and to a park. That system is growing and changing, and it has highlighted the need for, I think, more dedicated review of what a trails program is, because so far it's been... We don't have someone who's fully dedicated to trails from start to finish. And so we are looking at that more broadly as we're talking complete streets, as we're talking expansion areas, we're talking comprehensive plan, there's a lot of that happening right now. And you've got a lot of good eyes on it in the upcoming year, but we don't have an answer yet. Okay. Yeah, no, I know it's a complicated thing and it gets kind of gray, but I think it would serve us well to at least have clear delineation between who's in charge of what and who's responsible for what. And I agree with Council Member Sheehan. I think that graph starts to do that. I think it really does a good job of pointing out who's responsible for what and who's doing what. That's a simplified graph. Yeah, yeah. It actually won't fit on an 11 by 17 sheet of paper right now. Let me ask this real quick. The typology study that the Corridors Commission did, is there a mechanism in there to determine about ongoing maintenance going forward, and maybe that's a tool that we can start using to help kind of line this out a little better? I probably should be more familiar with it than you, but I'm not. I cannot speak to if O&M is part of the typology study. I feel like it was only looking at the physical built environment and the recommendations for standards of when and where to use those. But O&M is why we're here trying to change that process to embed it more formally into that, our design and delivery. So I don't think it's part of the typology study. Okay. Councilmember Baxter. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Okay. She's shaking her head yes. Thank you. And Councilmember Brown, it seems like your remarks are well-timed because Councilmember Baxter is up next. Go ahead. Thank you, Chair, for the recognition. Thank you all for your work on this. I'll try to go quick because I feel like corridors was every other word. Okay. I'll have a wayfinding update for you this week. Okay. I really appreciate this map or the chart as well. I'm seeing that there are a few items that kind of like signage is in multiple places. So I guess my ask would be that as we continue working on this, that it's really clear like what part of signage each individual department is responsible for. But also, like I've got this issue on Wellington Way where the park is and there's residential and there's commercial and all this stuff, but we don't know even in writing who's responsible for what. So when you're talking about Town Branch Trail out Manchester, even mapping like this section to this section and using like our paving codes and stuff to say like this is the cities, this is the states, this is the neighbors, you know, whatever might be really helpful for us because it's proving difficult in this other scenario that I've got going on. I think that as we, you know, Council Member Brown made the remark that we use the term corridors interchangeably a lot. So I think just understanding what is fully expected of the Corridors Commission. I used the example the other day that we're just, we are literally just the star on top of the Christmas tree. Like we, you know, we're kind of putting the last finishing touches on stuff. And if that's where we're supposed to be, great. But if we are going to be looked at for maintenance items, then you all are going to have to give us more money. We just don't have the budget to do that. So if it is our, if you need our direction on, you know, where we think maintenance should live for certain projects, like that is, that's an expectation that I need to know for the Commission so that we can hold up our end of the bargain in this stuff. Outside of all of that, I get a lot of complaints about regular road striping maintenance. And I'm trying to figure out like where that goes in here. I know that it's kind of, it's not on a regular rotation. It's kind of complaint driven or, you know, when there's tickets. But is that something that you guys looked at at all in this? Yes, ma'am. It is something that we're going to make sure is included in here. I can't remember if it's already one of the rows or not. And that one, I was going to say, is also striping and marking is about as convoluted as signage. Because new things are one division, maintenance things are another division. So how we move things from one to the other, how we receive requests, review them, and hand them off based on the, for implementation based on the type of situation is still a little bit cloudy is a good word for the day. So yes, there are, we do not have a regular maintenance schedule at this time for regular striping. No, I think that would be really beneficial, especially just on those main corridors. Again, you know, over time they just get worn out. And then lastly, I would like to thank Council Member Reynolds for putting this into committee to begin with. We are really good at making plans in the government, but not always great at making sure our plans stay looking nice and well maintained. So I appreciate your all's work on this. Thank you. Thank you. Agreed, Council Member Reynolds, I think this was a much needed presentation and update and we're appreciative of all the work that you all have done to get us here and all the work that is yet to come to keep everything coordinated and supported. Excellent questions and discussion, colleagues. Council Member Reynolds, any closing remarks, and I assume you want to leave this in committee, or what would be best? Thank you once again. I think our conversation today kind of demonstrated that it can be really confusing as to who's in charge of what in regards to maintenance, so I think this is really helpful. And I know, I think their plan is to continue to work on it and come back before us in the summer. And like they said, for probably it to look more like a policy than an ordinance. And so, I'd like to keep it in committee for that reason. And just a real brief comment about the typology study. The typology study is great and it really helps inform us of what we have in terms of corridors. But I do not think that it speaks to maintenance at all. So, thank you. Thank you. We look forward to having you all back for an additional presentation. And Council Member Reynolds, I'll work with you to get that scheduled. Colleagues, finally, we have an update on the snow and ice removal plan for this winter season. I know a number of council members had questions about the plan and they're eager to learn more, especially after some of the major weather events we had last year and even in recent years prior to that. We look forward to this presentation and the questions that will follow. And I'd like to welcome Rob Allen, our Director of Streets and Roads, here to present this year's plan. Welcome. Thank you, Madam Chair and Council Members for the opportunity to present this update. So, we're going to talk about our goals, how expenses compared, how we look on salt, routes, service levels, some changes that we did, changes to the snow plan, how we're coordinating better, a little bit more about sidewalks, how we're staffed, and then the plan finalization. Snow plan, service level one, which is one to four inches of snow, we project to complete the plan within 48 hours of the precipitation ending. Same thing for the sidewalks, 96 hours after the precipitation ending. And then service levels two and three will require more time. For example, service level two is four to eight inches of snow, and we all know how it goes when we get snow lasagna or snowmageddon from recent examples. So we have to bring out more assets and things like that. Here's a comparison year to year on salt expenses. The price has held fairly steady, but you can see there's been an increase. There's also been an increase in mobilization last year because of the multiple events at once and the polar vortexes and things like that. So we went to, currently we have roughly 8,800 tons in both barns. We can hold 11 and a half, Old Frankfurt is completely stocked in the new dome, which actually has a 50% larger capacity than the previous barn. And the previous barn, if you remember, was condemned and we were limited to 1,800 tons. So we're looking pretty good at that location. We're short a few tons at West Hickman, but we feel pretty comfortable with what we have on hand. The rest is ordered. We have a budget, you can see there. We can order 11,000 more tons to go with what we already have and have on order. So we're set pretty good as far as that goes in supply. This is just an example of routes, of course with the primary one being arteries, followed by major connectors, collectors, and then of course, local streets. As I mentioned, the service levels, primarily most of our events are in service level one, one to four inches of accumulation. Service level two, five to eight, and then service level three, eight inches or more. And one of the things we actually ran into last year was if you get two inches of snow followed by three inches of snow, is that service level two, is that service level one for both events? And what it turned out to be, of course, was it service level two. Here's an example, well not an example, is the actual map of our snow zones. Each zone has four truck routes within it. We contracted with UK and redid these routes a couple years ago. They are now balanced for mileage and time. So they all get done roughly the same time, and they all have the same amount of mileage within the zone. Here's an example, just a breakdown of a zone, the four different truck routes within it. You can see just from the graphics how it rates road class or whatever. But we don't focus so much on route ranking as much as the whole route. And here's just a further example. And then each route is assigned a primary salt barn, whether it's Old Frankfurt or West Hickman. Here are the county roads. We have two routes in the North County and two routes in the South County. Changes for this year. We added three tanker trucks. We're going to up our pretreatment whenever possible. Sometimes this is not able to be done because of preceding rain. We did add a custom blender and truck fill at West Hickman. We have the ability, for example, if we're going to have sub-zero temperatures, we can adjust the amount of beet heat added to the brine and things like that as the event progresses or the temperature fluctuates. We added three new dump trucks, replacing older vehicles that were a maintenance nightmare or prone to breaking down. We added three additional contractor trucks, bringing us up to a total of eight. And that vendor is Red River Ranch that's been with us for several years that also contracts with the state. And then just a little, what it costs each year for the truck and then the hourly rate. We also added a landscape contractor who can provide up to eight trucks. Once we hit service levels two and three, we only had one bidder, but we're excited to have them. They do work with us already on some environmental services work, and pretty happy to have them. We've added some roads to address gaps in the new plan or growth. We have some newly added equipment for sidewalk snow removal. You can see a very significant investment in equipment. We also included, for the first time, Lexpark within our planning team. And we will continue to do so. That's been a very good resource so far. PIO, the big thing this year is managing expectations. And we hope to get some information out so folks could say, what does a treated road look like? Or what does a salted road look like? Things like that. So there's an example they can compare to. A lot of folks would say, our road hasn't been treated. And we go, look, it had been plowed, had been salted. It just takes a while for the chemical reaction to work. And then, of course, we're working with Fayette County schools pretty much consistently to adjust the routes according to how their current bus routes are, things like that. I do want to emphasize, we are not, nor do we plan to do every Fayette County school bus route unless we hit those service levels where we're trying to do all the streets. But we do have this, we do have plans in place to scale up if we need to when the service levels hit. And then in emergencies, we do have a gentleman's agreement with KYTC, our local district. If we need help or they need help, each agency will provide that as needed. We've already had a stakeholders meeting to update our contacts and internal communications. And then, of course, we work across divisions. For example, if we had an epidemic of flu, waste management could help us with support drivers, and the same vice versa. So we have that in place, which Commissioner Albright would coordinate all that. Sidewalk snow removal, it's primarily environmental services, but parks, fire, and facilities have a piece of it, especially for their own operations. There are over 84 miles of sidewalk that can be done. And the snow has to be more than an inch to roll out. And of course, reminding folks that it happens after the snow stops. And then we coordinate so we don't have them clear a sidewalk and then a plow truck comes by and covers it right back up with three feet of snow. So, Here's an example of the snow routes and how they're ranked. You can see the different main corridors and pieces of downtown, the facilities that are owned by LFUCG. Here is the map that says what ranks are done, how much mileage, how that shapes out, as far as very similar to the roads. As far as use and facilities and things like that. Staffing, we have 68 CDL positions. Currently, we have nine vacancies. We will fill those vacancies with supervisors or managers as needed. What happens with that, though, is we lose the QA, QC capability if we put them on a route. Water quality has 29 positions. They also have nine vacancies, and unfortunately, they have told us that it could go up to 12. Not all are available to drive at the same time, because if we have a sewer line break, they need to attend to the sewers versus the roads. But we have a white night. Parks maintenance is going to provide us seven full-time CDL drivers, and up to 11 can fill out on an as-needed basis. So that's really going to help us this year. They also have four, and this is an error, they're not dump trucks, but they're four plow trucks. They are smaller trucks that can't help. That was my fault for putting in dump trucks. Environmental services for sidewalk clearance has 14 positions, and you can see nine of those are part-time. And then within their division, there is one driver that does assist us on a regular basis. And then we also have, of course, the contract drivers and plows from Red River, the landscape trucks. There are employees from other divisions, waste management, code enforcement. We do have some retirees and former employees. We have a couple trades workers from parks, for example, that fill slots for us because they have CDLs and they're not required from parks maintenance, but without those folks, we couldn't pull this off. So what have we done? We had the stakeholder meeting September 10th, LexTran, Fayette County Schools, District 7, we're all invited. We're doing the update today, and then the end of the month we will publish the final plan to the city's website. And so communications is the big thing. I mentioned managing expectations. It's important for myself and Commissioner Albright to, well, for example, I do internal and external partners, informing them of the game plan. It could be as simple as we've got a supervisor and a couple trucks ready to spot treat as needed. The commissioner informs council and administration. PIO and PI inform the public and a lot of other folks from outside of Lexington that come with our socials. And then, of course, LexCall gives us the service requests and sends them to us, and we parse those out between ourselves and water quality. There's the link for the snow and ice control plan. And then, of course, thank you to the folks, all these divisions help or support us in one way or another, when I say us, I include streets and roads and, of course, the folks in sewer line maintenance and water quality. And here's a picture of what the old barn looked like and the new dome. And that concludes my presentation and I'm available for questions. Thank you, Director Allen, and thank you for your thematic tie, I appreciate that. Colleagues, it looks like a number of you all have signed in, which is great. We'll go ahead and get started with Council Member Beasley. Good afternoon, Director. Thanks for the presentation, and I love the snowflake tie. I just have a few questions, if you don't mind telling us how the Fay County Public School part works. So one, they were invited to the meeting, but did they come? And two, their systems cannot talk to our systems, is that right? And then how do we get that information from them? So we have had continuing meetings with them since the snow event last year. I could not speak to, because it was a virtual meeting, whether they attended or not. I know they're invited, I know they have representation here today, or supposed to. We used the data from the 24-25 bus routes for this year's planning, and we're continuing to adjust those. But yes, their GIS system, we're, I don't want to say struggling, we're working to integrate that with our system so we can fully understand where the new routes are and how they've changed. The Fay County School bus routes do change slightly from year to year, but we think the data that we acquired from them previously has the majority of what we need to help moving forward. Okay, so we based how we ranked the roads on their last year information, is that right? No, the roads are based upon road class and facilities. So we do have the information, for example, when we need to do additional school bus routes. Okay, thank you, and thanks for all your work during the snowmageddon. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Curtis. Thank you, Chair, and thank you all for the presentation. I really appreciate it, and I really appreciate you standing up here to take these questions and whatnot. First question I have isn't for you, I'm just curious. Is there a representative from FCPS in the building? Hi, awesome, thank you for being here. So, going back for my first question, early on you had the slide with the chart of salt prices over the years and the number of deployments, I was wondering if we could go back to that for a second. Do it now. Okay. There we go. Okay, so when we're looking at this chart of year over year mobilizations and whatnot, you can see that last year seems like it might have been an abortion in terms of how many times that's happened, but over the years we're also seeing an increase in these severe weather events that is whatever we want to believe causes those. That is a practical thing that is happening, whether that's tornadoes across the state or whether that is snow storms, snowpocalypse as you put it. So, when it comes to our process for creating the snow plan, what are we doing to take into account those larger changes to our weather patterns over a period of time rather than, is this just a what are we going to do this year, or is this a how are we going to address this problem long term? We actually started, the Gray administration started it and the Gorton administration carried it on. The salt barn at West Hickman was 20 years in the making and never got funded. The can always got kicked down to the road and then the Gray administration funded it. And you can see there, the 7500WH, that is actually where we took the new salt barn online and then filled it up. We have been increasing our fleet and looking at sustained operations because whatever you call it, there has been an uptick in weather events and severe temperature. And we wanted to plan for that, it's just so important for us to be able to execute the plan and have the right people and the right equipment. Wonderful, I appreciate that. And I was wondering, with regards to the personnel vacancies that you're speaking about, what's the issue in terms of filling those vacancies? because it seems that that's an ongoing problem that you all have had and I'm just wondering what is needed to fill those seats. Actually, we are in the best shape in, I don't know how many years as far as vacancies, but they still are a concern, hovering around that 20% mark. We've done a lot towards raising compensation to be competitive with the private industry. But what we're finding is even the private companies are struggling for CDL drivers as the federal agencies increase compliance and things like that and make it harder and harder. It's just a scarcity of drivers. I mean, things like, we've talked about getting retirees to drive snow plows. Well, what we found is 99% of them let their CDL license lapse because it is intrusive to keep one. And the things you have to do to maintain one. So it is a shortage of drivers within the industry. As I said, we've actually gotten better as far as our compensation and things like they do get extra compensation for having a commercial driver's license. They do get compensation for hazard pay, and those things weren't in before. But yeah, our turnover and vacancies always are a real concern. And if we didn't have these other folks stepping up, for example, the folks I mentioned from parks, they don't have to drive. It's not required as their job duty. They volunteer, they like the overtime. They've worked with us for years, and we're so grateful to have each and every one of those folks that do step up to help us. Awesome, thank you so much. I'm running a little short on time. I will probably have a couple more questions, but I'm going to go and let my colleagues go ahead. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Morton. Thank you. Thank you, Director Allen, for the presentation. I just had a couple questions. First, related to, you mentioned that I guess all the zones get done at the same time. Are the trucks equally distributed across all zones? So like, how many trucks are in each zone? Each zone has four trucks. So every zone has the same amount of trucks, roughly the same amount of mileage. And that mileage is also as balanced as we can do. For example, zone two doesn't have all rank one routes. It's been adjusted, trying to make those numbers equal out, both in time and roadway. Cool, cool, cool. And then, which departments, and this is just, I guess, which departments will be in charge of each zone? So do you have a list of what departments are going to take each zone? So I know you mentioned water quality helps out in certain areas, streets and roads, drivers might be in certain areas. Which departments, do zones have certain departments that have an area? We don't necessarily assign certain zones. Water quality is in the same department with us, and they are our sister division, our co-partner in this. Streets and Roads is more largely involved in snow removal, so they are the lead agency. But yes, water quality does do three of the 11 zones, and Streets and Roads does the remainder. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Council Member Boone. Thank you, sir. I guess my first question, we have the different ranks, one to four inches, five to eight, and beyond. Where does freezing rain and ice kind of fall into that equation, as far as what we're deploying, I suppose? Freezing rain and ice is a tough one. If you try to pre-treat with brine or beet heat, there's a good potential for it to be washed off. We can pre-treat with rock salt, but you probably lose 70%. But that is a real concern for us, is we don't want that ice to bond on the road. That was one of the reasons we went with the blender, so we can up our beet heat percentage. We were successful in treating roads down to 15 degrees last year. When we up that percentage from 25 to 50, that'll drop that effective treatment range. And also, it helps keep it from refreezing. And then another just quick question is the sidewalk snow removal. This rank two went from 36 down to 24 miles, and rank five went from one to 14 miles, roughly. Is that just a change of? Director Carey may want to address that. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. In rank two, it goes from 36 and a half miles down to 24, and rank five goes up about 12, 13 miles. The reason for that is, in previous years, we had cleared sidewalks on both sides of Man O' War. So when both sides of Man O' War are included, that's the 36.5 miles. It takes a really long time to do Man O' War. So we focused on getting just one side done and moved that other side so that if we were working all the way through all of the ranks, we would take care of that second side of Man O' War as a rank five. Great, that's good. Thank you. Thank you, Director. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Savigny. Thank you, Chair, and thanks again for this presentation, Director. I've got like three or four questions. CDL, what's the level of a truck for a CDL? because I think we have some, don't we have some smaller dump trucks that really are not, you don't need a CDL for? 26,000 pounds. Okay. We do employ what we call trades trucks, which are essentially three-quarter ton. Yeah. Supervisor trucks are half ton. Those are non-CDL vehicles, and typically we put newer employees in them. I get it. Okay, have you considered a way to attract more CDL drivers? because this is kind of one of those things that it's, to me, it's also, it's just a as needed kind of emergency type basis. And I'm just wondering if you considered some sort of program that they would be on a list, and you would pay them to be on the list, maybe 100 bucks or something. And then basically you engage them at a higher level per hour or something like that. Or like you work this 12 hour shift, you get big money. So what do you do with your regular drivers then? If you're paying outside folks a premium. So we've run into that. We've considered a lot, and we certainly offer, we have a few part time drivers. We offer a competitive rate to get them in. But we're not going to pay them more than our folks that are there day to day. Honestly, after this presentation, we'll get people calling in that say they can drive. They'll never follow through. So, I mean, I'd love it if I had 20 people that were qualified. For example, we have contacts, actually, with some Fayette County school bus drivers. That if school was canceled, they will come work for us for a competitive rate. And that's fantastic, because if school's out, that's when we need extra help. You just brought up schools. So, did the school, when I grew up, the school system had like a snow. Like a snow plan for changing bus stops, or whatever. You're talking about the infamous plan B? Yeah, infamous plan B, that's what it was. And you never really knew what it was, because you didn't use it that much. Right. But does the school system have a plan B? They do not currently have a plan B. Okay. At some point, it would be nice to know if they're considering it, but. Their explanation in the past, and I don't want to speak for Fayette County schools, has been that involves getting children to roads with higher traffic. Classification, and they feel it's a safety issue. Okay, and then, on your partner list, you didn't have emergency management. Does emergency management get involved? Yes, and that's a grievous error, because we do work with Director Franklin. He's here, yes. He helps us with a lot of the early weather stuff and predictions. And a lot of times, we actually put our heads together. Oversight on my part. No worries. No worries. Yeah. Director Larkin is more involved than the previous director, so that's kind of an addition. And I hate to say it, but I do recycle some of these slides. No worries, no worries. And then, one thing that Council Member Curtis talked about. I know we funded those temperature, like last year or the year before. And you bought some additional meters to place in different spots in the county, so that we could better predict ice events. Has that been working pretty well? Yes, that actually worked out really well for us. We had four weather stations. We continue to fund those. We're probably going to add some more. But not only do they give us the air temperature, but they give us the roadway temperature. We have one the state allowed us to put on the old Frankfurt overpass over New Circle Road. So that gives us a kind of a snapshot of what the bridges are doing. The state has brought, I think it's three or four stations online for Fayette County this year, so we get to add those. But Fayette County's 278 square miles, so we get a wide variation, especially in the county from what you got in the northwestern county when you get down to the Kentucky River. So that has been just a boon to us as far as preparation. We're running out of time, so I won't ask this last question, but I'll chime back in, okay? Thank you so much. Thank you. Council Member Hale. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Deputy, thank you, Commissioner Allen or Deputy, I'm sorry. But I got a couple of questions. Director Allen, yes, sorry about that. So what, and I want to add just with the GIS, because I remember you said something about our GIS systems aren't communicating with Fayette County's GIS systems. So what steps are we taking in bridging that gap? The two departments are actually working now, and they expect to deliver their finalized 25, 26 routes to us soon, is my understanding. It was just a software issue. They did change vendors from last year to this year, and that's all it was. It's operational. It's an ongoing process. And their routes can change because of where students move, especially students with special needs. So we try to address those as they come up. And once this happens, and say we're in this perfect world, and our GIS systems are communicating with each other. What are our next steps in ensuring that we're able to get to those bus routes? And I know you said something about we're not going to get to all the bus routes, but so we don't have to close school down due to we can't get to bus routes, so it's unsafe for buses. So schools close for a combination of things. It's not just snow on the road. It's temperature, type of precipitation, length, and things like that. We do have the maps of the routes that are not on a current snow plan. And we do have plans with parks maintenance and our contractors to address those additional school routes if needed. But if you want me to go in to do all of Fayette County bus routes, you would have to get 15 more trucks, 30 more drivers. And it would cost you over $20,000 in incident to just run those. Not including the capital investment, and plus I'm running 20% vacancy now. So finding 30 additional drivers would be really difficult. And let's go back to the driver question without this in mind. Are we, do we have a, is there a lack of CDO drivers just so I can- Yes, yes sir. It's industry wide, so. So for us, we have a lack of CDO drivers? Okay. Thank you. Thank you, I appreciate it, Director. Yes, sir. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Council Member Reynolds. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Director, for the presentation. I know that this is not an easy place to be in, taking all of our questions. For the longer storms, kind of like what we had last time, that just don't get cleared in several days. I know that there's kind of this idea that after we clear all of our ranked roads, that we should go back and start clearing ones that aren't ranked. Is that something that in your mind would take place if the snow or ice stayed on the ground and all of the ranked roads were cleared? Yes. Typically, most of our events are in the range of a little bit over two inches and within 72 hours are gone. And that was a topic of internal discussion when we have those extended sub-freezing temperatures that we then kick up our response a notch. Whether it's doing the additional bus routes, whether it's clearing the parking spaces downtown. The extended snow really is a burden to folks, especially pedestrians, and we are well aware of that. And as I said, we have the ability to scale up, we can add equipment and things like that, but it is very expensive, and it does take quite a bit of time. There are a lot of roads we can't treat, no matter if we wanted to, that, for example, tight cul-de-sacs where people park everywhere at the bottom of a hill. But we will do our best resources permitting when we get those large levels of snow and the extended sub-freezing temperatures. Thank you. And then our constituents, if they notice that there is a road that is ranked and it didn't get cleared, but they're past that ranking, or they have a concern about a specific road, they should call 311, correct? Correct. And report that. So we do, every call we get, we do inspect. And it might be that we only treat an intersection or a hill. We can't treat every road, because folks immediately, some of them, once it snows, they start calling and say, my road needs treated. The plan is in place to be the most efficient in clearing within our resources. So certainly, and of course, police and fire keep us notified. If there's a structure fire, they immediately call us and we treat the roads around there. Police, if they start to get accidents at a certain spot, we maintain on-call trucks 24-7 from November 1st to April 1st. Thank you. One last question. In terms of the sidewalks that we clear as a city, so I know there was some confusion about this last year. The sidewalks are the responsibility of the adjacent property owner, and they're responsible to clear their sidewalks. Yet, we clear certain sidewalks. How do we determine what sidewalks we clear? Ownership. If it's owned by us. Right away. Yeah, for example, we own Man O' Wars right away, and the 36 miles of sidewalk. Veterans Park next to the elementary school. Parks actually cleans that sidewalk. It's owned by us, and it's a major route to that elementary school. So that's what dictates it. I don't think, is there anything else that would have us doing? Are there some main corridors that the sidewalk would not be owned by us if it's a local road? Sure, main roads. So basically, it mirrors where we're doing turf mowing with our contractors. So a lot of times, and Man O' War is an exceptional example, they're considered double frontage lots. So the residents who have homes who back up to Man O' War, they're expected to shovel the sidewalk that's in front of their house. But getting easy access to take care of that sidewalk that's on the back of their house, where they might have to walk to the end of a street and out onto Man O' War, it's just not attainable. So those are typically the situations where we're taking care of that with our in-house crews. Okay, thank you for the explanation. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member Lynch. Thank you, Chair, for recognition, since I don't serve on this committee. Thank you, Director Allen, for the report, and I just want to thank you again and Commissioner Albright for meeting with me this summer to talk about District 2 roads and snow plan items. And I saw in the presentation that additional roads have been added to the plan to address gaps in growth, and I just wanted to ask about District 2 roads. And if you don't have a final list, you can email it to me, but I'm just curious about District 2. About District 2, since we're seeing a lot of growth in the second district. They actually were primarily in District 2. Kearney Ridge is a very good example of an existing neighborhood that we need to introduce service, and we've planned for that. Wonderful, do you mind to email me the full list for District 2? Thank you, thank you. Also, you said it in your presentation that the EQPWPIO is working on some things that can be shared with the public. And I just want to ask if they can loop in the city council PIO in that messaging, so that we can have access to that messaging to share with our neighbors, too. And so our awesome PIO, Layton Garlington, can jump on that. So, that responsibility is shared among a lot of the PIOs within the city. And there's a kickoff meeting every year, and the city council PIO was involved in that meeting. Wonderful. Yes. Wonderful, thank you. Thank you. And then, I think my last question is, It's actually for the representative from Fayette County Public Schools. Thank you, sir, for being here. And we've been talking about you, and I just wanted to give you an opportunity, if you want to give some remarks, and share anything with us if you wanted to. Thank you so much for being here, that your presence here is very important, and I appreciate it. Thank you, thanks for having me. What was the question you had for me? I just wanted to give you a moment, if you wanted to share anything with the council. We've asked a lot of questions about Fayette County Public Schools and bus routes, and I don't know if you wanted to just share anything with us. Sure, so one of the questions was about communication with the school system, and I just want to commend the city government for their communication and the invitations they've given to me to come and meet with them. We meet frequently, and I have all their cell phone numbers, and we chat and send messages when we need to, or whatever. And they have a ready time communications. Last year was my first year as the Director of Transportation with Fayette County Schools, and I was kind of looking at it from a different lens than what's been there in the past. And we had significant snow that occurred, and then it kind of compounded, and then we had this ice pack. And one of the things that we didn't really speak about in this meeting was the lack of sunshine during that period of time as well. It was really gloomy and gray, and so all the work that they were doing with the roads and how to get the roads clear depends upon sunlight getting to it as well. And it just wasn't getting there, so it caused us a lot of issues. But ultimately, I just want to say I appreciate working with them and working alongside of them. Another change that I made last year was to the emergency management system and the operation system that they have here. We made an adjustment in the school system where I put somebody in the terminal, and then when we go out and we check the roads for the school buses, we send the data back in. I have a team of people that do that, but we're sending it to our person who's communicating with them too. So we're letting them know about trouble spots that we potentially see when we're out looking at those roads too. So I just want to say thank you. It's great to be here and for the collaboration on all levels and across the board. The other piece is the GIS systems. You asked about those, and I want to say thank you, you drive for me, and I appreciate that. The GIS systems, they don't talk, it's two different technology systems, if you will. So that's the piece you're talking about here, but they do talk, it just takes a little bit of effort to make that happen. So what we're doing is working with our vendor to get shape files. And shape files are more or less, if you think back in years ago, and maybe to the classroom, when you had a school teacher and they wanted to show you a diagram of a heart and how the heart works, and they'd take a transparency and lay it out. And then when they take another transparency and lay on top of it. So when you take shape files, basically that's what you're doing. You're taking map overviews and you're laying them out piece by piece. So what we do is start taking the routes that we have for all of our school buses and piecing that together and creating this puzzle. So then when we get those files to the engineers with the city, then they can take that and put that into their system. And so I shared a few files with them this week that we acquired from our vendor. And I think that it's going to work out. Like they said, we made a change in our software from what we'd used previously in the years. But the software change is going to give us better data that we can share, so. Thank you so very much. And thank you, Chair. Thank you, Director Allen. Thank you, Council Member Lynch, and thank you so much. Council Member Baxter. Thank you, Chair, for the recognition. Mr. Morris, could you come back, please? Mr. Morris, would you do care? I just had one other just topic of discussion. I appreciate you being here as well. I know you rearranged your schedule to be with us, and I really, really appreciate that. I appreciate all the conversations and communication that you have had with our streets and roads. Council Member Savigny asked earlier about alternative bus routes, and we know what the answer has been in the past, but you're new here. So I want to ask you, has that come up anymore? Do we feel like it's a potential, because I think what a lot of people don't know is that all bus routes aren't a ranked road. Like the public may not understand that. So has that been a topic of conversation, or like we just need to stop asking about it because it's never going to happen? Well, it has come up, and it's something that we're reviewing. Always we want to look at what our available options are. At the current time, I don't see it as something that we're going to be able to pursue or even to be able to implement in this school year, just because of the logistical pieces of that. And you've got to imagine, we run a lot of buses through the level four roads, okay? Those are the last roads that are going to get treated. And typically, when we have issues and the frustrations that come from the issues, it's because we've had a significant snowstorm. And when those significant snowstorms happen, they're focusing on the level one and level two roads primarily, which are roads that get you to the hospital if you need to get there, or to other services that are available. So we don't necessarily get into the neighborhood pieces. Well, along with that comes, like you talked about, clearing of sidewalks. And the sidewalks don't always get cleared either, right? And so the school children either are going to have to walk on the sidewalks out to main roads, which is where the traffic is, or have a parent bring them there. And then they have to sit and wait with them, and then the temperatures are cold. And it just creates a lot of, for me, safety precautions that I'm not comfortable with. And one is leaving a child on the road, or if a child gets to the stop late and they're waiting on the bus and the bus has already come, it just creates a lot of issues for us. I understand that. I think my ask for Fayette County Public Schools is that as we kind of figure our way out through all of the snow events that will happen, that what is relayed to the parents is what's actually happening. And what relationship that we have together already, because as a school parent, I get differing views on what's happening from the school's point of view versus what's happening from the city. And I think we're working well together, and we need to really boast that relationship. So just take it on back to whomever. I appreciate that feedback. Thank you. I always, I'll take criticism and I'll take blame either way. And one of the pieces that I wanted to target as a director of transportation with the school system is a communication piece. And getting the accurate information to families and the community as quickly as possible, and making sure that the information is accurate. So I- I appreciate that. Thank you. I appreciate that. Director Allen, just real quick, I know Council Member Lynch mentioned making sure that our PIO is involved. And I think that is super, super important. But I also wanted to go back and make sure that I understood something that you said when we were talking about the ranks and the routes. I thought I heard you say that we don't focus on rank, just routes. And I want to make sure that I understood that appropriately and- You are correct. Ask you to explain it. Because that is some of the question that I received last winter, was I live on a rank two road and the rank four road was plowed before me. So, can you explain that just a little? That's a very good question. And a lot of it has to do with how the routes work. You may be on a rank two road and turn onto a rank four to loop back and get another piece of that road. All the streets on a route get treated. And we may start at the end and work backwards or forwards and work backwards. We're not as focused on the road ranking as we are the route itself. And there are four, essentially there are four trucks in that zone working at the same time, all going to clear the roads. The problem that we had a lot of times was the precipitation was continuing. And folks were wondering, why have we been up and down Clay's Mill Road five times and not gone on Merrimack or Cindy Blair? And it's because we have to treat those main roads first to get them passable and then work on the secondary roads. And I know there was a lot of question about that and communication is the big thing. But yeah, we're not so much focused on the numbers because people get upset and say, well, my road should be a three, a rank three between a four, the difference between a three and a four is a school bus route. So they're all important to us and as I said, we do have a plan to add those additional streets when we get those big snows or the extended snow. Thank you so much, appreciate it. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. I know we have one more person signed in for a question and I am going to adjourn the meeting at three o'clock when we have work session. But I have a couple of questions or points to make. Number one, I'm really glad that you all have been coordinating with Lex Park. One of the points of feedback that I heard from my constituents just had to do with ticketing and the snow emergency and some communication disconnects, so thank you all for that. I also had a conversation recently with a constituent who made a really good point about sidewalk accessibility. They said that they really struggled in terms of being able to navigate the sidewalks because of plowing that had pushed snow up onto the sidewalk space, even when some of those sidewalks have been cleared by the property owners. So I guess my point that I'd like to share is that I think it makes a really big difference if we can kind of work with our plowing practices to make sure that when we do plow the roads, they don't push that excess snow up onto the sidewalks. If we can help it, and I'd love to talk more about that, and I also know that my colleagues had some questions about communicating with other, with businesses who are both clearing sidewalks and clearing their parking lots to make sure that when they're plowing, again, they're not plowing their parking lots and then pushing that snow onto sidewalks. So I know that Angela Poe did a great presentation about communication, about EQPW initiatives, and I'm just wondering if some of those thoughts could maybe be integrated in. Sure, I'd be happy to answer those and address at a future time or whenever council desires. Okay, okay. I think that we have time for one more question. So if you'd like to ask a final round of questions, Council Member Curtis, you may go ahead. Oh, Council Member, okay, Council Member Curtis. Thank you, Chair, and I'll be brief. So as you may or may not be aware, I have another item in committee regarding the issuance of parking citations during a winter weather emergency. And I echo Chair Legree's comments on that regard. So I'm looking forward to having that conversation going forward to make sure that we're not penalizing people for staying off the roads during a winter weather emergency. But I don't have a question so much as I just wanted to say that at the end of a long round of questioning, I know I speak for all of us, thank you. Because this is a conversation that for most of our community happens only during the winter months. And I know it's a conversation that you, Commissioner Albright, and all of your partners and your teams are having year round. It's something that lives ever present. And so I just wanted to take a moment to tie this up and express our gratitude to you. So thank you very much. Appreciate that. Thank you so much, Director Allen. Do you have any closing remarks that you'd like to share or? I'm going to go off script and that'll make Nancy cringe. Just a comment. Okay. No, just a comment about the previous presentation that Commissioner Albright and Ms. Peacher did as a director of an operational and maintenance. If you assign a maintenance task, please assign funding. There's nothing worse than an unfunded mandate. And a good example, and Council Member Spigney and I have gone around, for example, bike lanes. We've assigned miles of bike lanes to street sweeping, but there has been no additional funding. And that's what we're trying to get to at the beginning is, this was the first time as an operational division I have ever been asked what needed to be done in the planning stage. So it's a breath of fresh air. Absolutely, a point taken and that's an excellent closing note as we think about what we could do in terms of policy and funding to set everybody up for success. Colleagues, unless there are any objections, we now stand adjourned.