Springfield City Council — June 13, 2022

0:08 i'm going to call the springfield city council work session to order with roll call mayor van gorden here councillor pitts counselor mo here councillor bradley here councillor stare here councillor woodrow and counselor petitionery here thank you um and i will note councillor pitts is excused for the evening they have still ufo commencement going on and we are working on counselor wardrobe right now she should be joining us shortly all right we have two items tonight uh the first one is the city of springfield standard construction specifications with jeff pascal and i think he brought all 1400 pages with him i did good evening mayor councillors um sorry about that yeah that's a lot i i hope

0:53 you didn't feel like you needed to read all these pages um yeah i'm here i have the pleasure bringing the construction specifications this was the version i was given when i first got hired at the city of springfield so this is like the with the 2006 updates um what i tried to do in the material i as brief as possible kind of outlay a little bit of a historical context for you about where we're at how we're using the construction and specs construction specifications um for council this is kind of a housekeeping item to review update it's based on the what's required in the municipal code but that kind of discredits a lot of background that went into this with staff of reviewing and getting us here with the help of our procurement staff on the part 100 which

1:39 is the solicitation part which is a separate addenda because we've gone and put some special springfield things in there redacted some things and really what we used was a model that eugene had already gone and edited because one of the things that we need to do is get we're working as you've heard many times to get federally certified to deliver transportation projects and one of the things is odot's going to require us to be using this book anyway as well as the solicitation part and so but we just didn't want to adopt their what was in here and so since eugene's already been approved with it we just thought why reinvent the wheel we're just going to copy and replace eugene with springfield so that's where we're at i know we have a short time so i just wanted to leave it if anybody did have questions or anything like that a staff

2:24 recommendation is we're we've been using this for our capital projects as far as the technical specs because ours are out of date um we haven't transitioned all of the private improvement projects to this yet and it will be a process so anything that's currently under a permit will be the way it's been and as new permits come in will require them to start using this book for their construction and design leonard i um really just wanted to ask if there was going to be any kind of need or effort to uh streamline the statewide construction specifications in the eugene's construction specifications to to our code or our zoning i mean like uh for instance the height of buildings

3:09 or something like that no that that's not in here it's not coming it's really for construction in the right-of-way anything that's publicly owned infrastructure there are times we use some of these on the private but it's like okay if you're designing a swale or you're designing you know an alley or something that might be public private streets even though we have some lesser standards for that but as far as buildings and things like that that's not covered in here got it thank you and if if you see the way it's referenced is the code just references our construction specifications that construct the construction specifications are a separate document from the development code counselor pictionary thank you i just wanted to uh confirm with you that it's it's specifically construction

3:55 and i in going through this i'm not seeing a lot of reference action not seeing much reference at all of to the striping of those constructed projects and traffic control on top of the surfaces this is just specifically how the surfaces are constructed and am i correct yes but there is traffic stuff in here so in the back pages there is striping it's usually at the back and i believe part 900 gets into that's electrical systems so that gets into like the rfps things like that um signage um i i will tell you you see how thick it is i don't have every part memorized i will tell you that that's that's one reason i do love this book is because if somebody asked me a question i can go to

4:40 the index and look it up so i can go look up striping right now and find out what part it is but that is covered in here so so when you say when you say that it is you you grab your jeans as a cookie cutter which is fine i don't have a problem with saving time and energy but when it comes to striping does it include the the type of strife stripe striping that controls bicycles so it covers everything that's the one thing about this book it's comprehensive and so when we do our designs we pick what what specification for our projects we want to use out of this book so there's a lot of different ways of

5:26 doing it this kind of comprehensively covers that now i should go back what we copied from eugene was part 100 which just covers how the contract is executed so solicitation how disputes are resolved that sort of thing payment dates times things like that not the technical specifications we participate on committees so back in 2008 we participate because this book didn't comprehensively cover drainage and sanitary that's one reason why a lot of music municipalities didn't use this but there are a lot of municipalities across the state that now use this because those things have been updated um so i hope that answers your question well sort of i'm just trying to

6:14 when you it causes pause for me when you say that we're taken from another entity and and going to go ahead and use it as ours when there's some things with other entities that i strongly disagree with in regards to for example committing entire lanes for bicycle travel around like the university and painting them green or blue or whatnot when i disagree with that type of usage for streets so is this in any way locking us into anything that the city of eugene is doing and now springfield has to do it so i think where you're getting into a scope so if we decided to do that then this book would tell us how to build that but then we would have to go and scope the project for that if we just scoped the

6:59 project with our traditional bike lanes it tells us this book governs how we construct and strike those so that's part of the decision process on policy on how do we how do we treat bicycle facilities bike ped facilities what is springfield's policy around what we want those facilities to look like this book then just tells us what materials we're going to put down how we build it how we measure it how we pay for it not necessarily how we design it okay so i mean i guess i'm i'm trying to get specific and i'm having a hard time here so will this book be used by staff to say okay hey look we have this standard so now we're going to implement

7:45 it here in springfield and in this book we have this standard so now we we intend to go that direction is it is going to be looked at as something we're mandated for or is it just something that as you're inferring going to be like a guideline for us and not uh boxes into the corner of saying okay this is how we are compelled to do it okay so what we're so no indesign in design no we're talking now you're talking a policy so our development code in the engineering design manual which the council sees and approves that's where we set our policies for how we want to see things constructed i'm going to use an example that's not transportation because i'm not the traffic engineer so this is more my field of expertise

8:31 i see brian behind you smiling yes because he's probably sitting there waiting to poke me if i say something um contrary uh so that's what we use the example i think he has a slingshot yeah so let's take storm drainage facilities in our engineering design manual do not allow corrugated metal pipe because our soils that we have eat metal pipe they say oh it's a 35-year project our product our soils will eat it in 10 years and destroy it i mean thus the over under channel and having to replace that because it was failing so this book still has corrugated metal pipe in it has standards for what the material looks like and everything else because in eastern oregon they can use corrugated metal pipe with no problems

9:17 and it lasts and so this book kind of covers the whole state but what we've done in our engineering design manual is we've said in the city of springfield we don't allow the use of corrugated metal pipes so that kind of takes that out of here so that's where the council's opportunity is is when we bring those updates which we've already done because we've tried to pull out and align what was in the development code as that was redeveloped redone with our engineering design manual so what you're asking is no this will not be suddenly staffed going and saying well this book says we have to design it this way no those are different decisions this is once we have a concept or a scope this book then and we have that design done this is what they use in the field to go okay okay we're constructing a street what kind of rock do we need to put down how's that rock

10:03 compacted what's the test for that compaction okay all right i just want to make sure we weren't locked into something that we didn't have a full explanation of thank you very much appreciate it council rodney yeah i just wanted to take him because i was the one who was picking on you for being so many pages um but i do just want to call out that i appreciate how much work goes into this and i always appreciate when we're like getting ahead of things and doing things properly so that we are ahead of the game so i just appreciate all the work and i appreciate you all paying attention to this so thank you thank you all right any other questions it's a document i'm familiar with and i did scan the whole thing by the way it's certainly different than what it used to be

10:48 it covers everything joe believe me it's very comprehensive uh so this was just the review will be next week we'll have i'll just have it on consent calendar all right perfect we appreciate it and i before we go to the next item i want to note that counselor woodrow has joined us and then our next item's the main street safety and i think it's tom that's presenting it yeah apologies for the miscue um what was in your packet was where we were about a week and a half ago and what we've handed out is what we wanted to place in your packet and

11:33 didn't quite get it there so um what i'd really like to do tonight is um not really take a step back but but take a step to the side and as we've been talking about this and thinking about it um talking with the city manager's office and with council leadership and thinking about it as a project team given that there's just not a lot of time between now and recess and as we move forward we want to make the best use of council's time we'd like to adapt this work session and use our time here um and follow on work sessions if needed to explore you know what is really going to

12:18 be useful uh for the council in the fall and winter when you consider this draft plan and you look at potential plan modifications or different alternatives of of how the plan is presented and that's really the bulk of what i do want to talk about but before i get there i'd like to just cover a couple of things um the first is that you know we're all still hoping that the council will have the time to take a look at the plan and potentially the technical memoranda which are all available at the project website

13:03 over the summer but towards that end if it's at all helpful for us to put the draft plan and the technical memoranda and three ring binders and get those to you um i'm still a paper guy so i have that value and and you you can think about it and mayor looks like oh i'm seeing some head nods so i think counselor patient area is a yes i see councilor woodrow's being a yes anybody else ready to yeah so that sounds like it is a good idea okay it's it's old school but if the homework's sitting on the on the dining room table you know maybe i'm more apt to do it um and that way you can kind of flip back and forth and

13:48 you know put your page markers in and and whatever else so that's great we'll we'll do that um i also wanted to just talk briefly about what the role of a plan is that came up at the last work session and i'd like to kind of put the plan and planning kind of in context of a multi-step process which could start with visioning in this case it's it's planning and it's in a plan a project has to be in so so this type of facility plan would be a refinement to our transportation system plan which is an element of our state mandated comprehensive plan and basically in order to build a project

14:33 to fund and build a project it's got to be in your comp plan which this facility plan sort of roll would roll up into or any facility plan but the plan is really just the plan and i know you know winston churchill and dwight eisenhower had different things to say around plans which was you know plans are always going to change but planning is essential and that's kind of how i look at this um we put things into or you adopt things into a plan and let's say there's a project in there and it gets legs well that's got to go through project development which is a design phase and then that design always comes back to council for another look um and you've provided us guidance on

15:18 multiple designs some of those interesting meetings were the hayden harlow roundabout and and a little bit in the franklin area but so that's planning leads to project development and then project delivery is really when the council has signed off on what to build and the funds are there and then our engineering group um using that giant book in part goes out and bids a project and constructs and and and the private side typically will construct it then then uh engineering inspectors will inspect it and it'll be deemed appropriate and taken into the city's inventory so i just wanted to kind of stretch that out a little bit that the plan is just the beginning it's not the ending it's required but there are multiple

16:04 gates along the way for the city council to look at um what you would like to see built in springfield and so um planning engineering construction uh so here we are in the planning phase and to get back to that you know what would really be helpful for for all of you you know fast forward to you you've looked at the draft and you're thinking about alternatives what's going to help you move your conversations and your deliberations along and i have multiple just ideas and concepts here to kick around

16:50 to help with the thinking of this and i'm all right hang on tom why don't you have a question he's got some willer are you i i mean was was that more or less what you had as breakfast to this or were you going to go through the thing one one aspect at a time i'm going to list some ideas that we've had that might be helpful which the council can respond to or or provide your own um yeah so they pre-populated a list based on we hear in our our conversations the last couple of weeks to kind of get us started all right back to you tom all right so you know one thing that might be helpful is um specific information on where what we call counter measures and these are the tools in the toolbox in the

17:36 draft plan specific information on where counter measures or changes in the quarter would be most effective so where is the highest need and what would it where would a change bring the highest impact that's a focused look um you know if any of the counselors wanted to sit down with staff and say what does this tech memo really mean that's something that that our traffic engineer you know could easily do um i read those sometimes and i call brian and say well what does this really say so potentially information um

18:21 about why roundabouts in the corridor that might be useful or you know why medians are um being shown as as one of the most effective count you know countermeasures in that court why is that you know um and maybe even diagrammatically so we can look at a picture why does it help and why does it help here um you know we we thought a lot about and and uh brian used to do this in the past kind of a setup set up the cones you know call call roseburg and see if they've got a big enough gravel field and would set up the cones and

19:06 run some trucks through them and find out what the issues are from that perspective again just just ideas kind of a feel to it okay now now i do have a question um so on on the counter measures i'm thinking specifically in terms of the roundabouts and the medians i there were i i think there were some erroneous pictures that we were sort of painting in our own heads of this project i mean for instance the fact that there was going to be breaks in the media in every block instead of every 10 blocks or so and you know in a lot of cases a picture is worth a thousand words and i think uh you know as many diagrams and as many visual representations as we can get in this loose leaf binder i think would be

19:52 helpful to just about everybody especially the more visually oriented of us thank you for that and i do you know at the end of this presentation we're going to um revisit that that the street opening um comment that was made last last week merely um yeah just a couple questions so far i'm following you really well um a couple questions in previous and previous information has been been provided there are times even even in what you ended up not using tonight um there was information that said that a certain number of accidents had occurred and

20:38 because of that specific references there were certain number of accidents that occurred in 2020 that indicated that the trend was still continuing but there was no references to what that data was related to but then it moved on then it moved on to talk about main street and why main street needed certain safety measures but in looking at the two things they didn't they didn't connect because we haven't had 386 accidents on main street or however many that number was so i the reason i'm citing that is not necessarily to get into conversation about that but part of what i'm getting from the community is the disconnect um

21:23 trying to make it relevant to main street i mean that's that's where people are coming from if uh if where i live or if my business or how i travel back and forth to work is is relevant then i want to know the relevant data to what's good what is being planned or what's being being put in the toolbox and as much as other information might uh be available they're looking for relevance to main street and relevance to how how it's going to affect where where they're at and um to me that's really important if we're talking about setting up

22:09 different safety measures or different options of safety measures in the toolbox and picking and choosing or picking and choosing all or nothing or anywhere in between i think it needs to be in us in a status of relevancy uh to main street and may and the use of me our main street um as opposed to pulling out all kinds of you know roundabouts may work really well in arizona or they may really work well somewhere else but how are they are they relevant to working well here i don't know the answer to that but i think the community that that i've been listening to i've been hearing from wants wants the relevance right i i kind of i have that in two places in

22:54 in my mind one is how the data is displayed so you know sometimes displaying the data geographically or in other ways can maybe give you more of that picture that is on the ground specific but also you know a couple of examples on how the counter measures could be applied i think is going to create a graphic where you know brian can come up here and talk about in this block this pretend project block you know these were the crashes and these were the issues and out of the toolbox you know we took these things and we put them in here

23:39 for the reason of addressing these crashes right here in this block and um this is what it could look like so um that that gets it pretty grounded i think um is that along the lines of what you're thinking yeah i think i go back to when we put the pedestrian crossings in and the first meetings we had at each site we talked to the immediate businesses and they immediately immediate uh entities that were involved in that particular site and there were times when we changed it where it was going to be we moved it forward moved it back um we changed

24:24 maybe we changed the fence on somebody's property i mean there were different things that were part of the conversation and in order to accommodate the safety measure as well as the immediate surrounding to be the least impactful uh to the businesses and the entities around it i think what has been missing so far in this presentation is that kind of relevance yes the businesses don't have that sense of trust that that's going to happen with this plan or what with what's in the toolbox so i think that's exactly why i um brought up that distinction between planning and and project development and delivery because

25:09 uh we're not at the project level yet and so it's very difficult you know unless you guys want to sign off on projects or in the future which i'm not suggesting that either but it but it is you know the plan guides the project the design of the project comes back to council cancel thumbs up or thumbs down or or says fix that or get back on site and work with them they have an issue or whatever direction you provide that's how we're going to build design for an actual project but the plan isn't design level so it doesn't have that in it and that i think is is a significant

25:54 point of confusion the flip side is if you adopt a plan then it is the kind of document and that may be a cause for concern so right um i think you've got a pull on that for like there's a lot in that sentence that you just said right so um you know explicitly i would be interested in you know what can we put in the plan that sort of makes it into an artifact that the council gets a vote on a design before anything gets built as well as if we want out of this thing right what is it what does that potentially look like because i think some of this is driven by sort of process right but the only document that people have to go on is the 1800 pages and if it's not specifically spelled out

26:40 it will we won't get the clarity that we're looking for so um thank you for reading my notes on part three yes i must jump ahead then well a couple of things that we are planning on is revising the plan to be a lot more clear about what a plan is and what project development is and um where those dividing lines are so that's in the works you know the plans roll what decisions the design decisions the council will hold and when and getting that written down in the plan i think is a really good idea yeah and one thing i would like to see more information on is i know that you have the well what how do we end up with roundabouts right and i would love to see more information

27:25 about that question as well as what's an alternative choice that we can make to roundabouts and then right we we talk about flexibility being in the plan but it's not clear to me if we walk through design through design at what point do we drop out of the roundabouts into maybe an alternative path is this written today right so like that's one of the i think the one of the big choices the council is going to face is this question about well is it zero roundabouts is it nine roundabouts right and then how do we make like how is that decision actually made yeah what what are the the choices and the trade-offs and the variance yeah because that that's going to be key for uh to get to an alternative that's going to be workable

28:11 counselor rodney um yeah i appreciate that because i think that sort of moves into what i've been thinking about since last week which is um i think part of the either the confusion or the the panic around it is that when you look at the plan it feels like everything's gonna happen at once so some deeper understanding a potential phasing of this project because i mean i think like the mayor says it's possible that we have a couple of roundabouts and this or that i mean that there's ways for us to put this together and so to think about the phasing of it is one of the things that i'm like i think if we if we have a better understanding of that and that feeds into like what are the touch points where we get to regroup and make decisions and that is really helpful um

28:58 the other thing that i other than i'm like thinking of some of the drawings i would like to just have a better understanding of how different use will experience the plan because we have people talking about you know how trucks are gonna experience this and how you know bicycles are gonna so i just need a better understanding of that um and i think we could probably get that from some of you know how people are experiencing glenwood you know how they're experiencing that and how different places are using it just a better understanding of that because i think it's gonna and what the the traffic looks like which is asking a lot but it's just like what does that look like and how is it being experienced so we're not elevating voices that are using it less than others if that makes sense

29:49 it does i um uh yeah the the uh how will the different modes of travel experience it and why mm-hmm um is is pretty important um so yes the uh you know the i just have to comment the um the plan typically in oregon's mandated planning system we have to plan for 20 years out if you crack the cover of this draft that's more than 20 years of work in that plan so it kind of it's it's a it's more like a vision slash a plan and probably one of the alternatives that we will bring back for council

30:34 consideration is you know is is this universe of main street just way too big for a 20-year look and is there something more refined or or shorter or in a different place that makes sense because it's it is you know um i've worked pretty hard over the last 15 years to bring money to springfield and uh there's no way we could build nine roundabouts in 20 years i just can't see it so you know how do we right size our planning effort for the time scale that we're dealing with and then talk about what could come next you know in the plan i think all of that merits a lot of exploration

31:20 joe thanks tom so i i understand what you're saying um but my concern of of several concerns but one concern i i have the way it's written and i think actually merely hit on it just a little bit last time too is that um this plan has it infers that it's got flexibility but when i read it it doesn't have a wisp of that in my mind at least a strong enough wisp to make me feel comfortable that there's

32:05 flexibility when we're using finite terms such as even the meridians the description of the meridian the median i'm sorry i'm reading the medians down main street um i keep going back and forth trying to say okay i'm trying to see the flexibility and i saw and i listened asking several questions with brian and uh molly this in the past meetings that now the the median is broken at every every street i look at the plan that shows intermittent and it says intermittent so i'm trying to get my arms around what really is there and what has changed since we originally heard it and then i i look at it even further and it looks like at the moment we say yes to this

32:51 plan we're locked is it it is it is set in stone and therefore it's going to we are going to as a city going to be required to follow through with it as written and i just um i i'm lacking confidence as to the identification of where our off-ramps are when you know at what point do we say okay this this isn't going so well we need to bail on this that or the other thing a part of the plan learning as we go because i can tell you that i may go out fishing one day but next week i'm gonna be fishing a whole different way and and this is this is a very flexible malleable thing and it's being treated

33:36 as if we're chiseling it out of marble and i'm i'm very skeptical as to whether or not it's any kind of project like that can be successful especially getting us boxed into mandating our own selves making some legal agreement with these different agencies saying hey this is how we're going to do it i mean i'm looking at some of these crops cross sections that imply that the select elements for toolbox for example and we're talking about some some you know intersection control raised median framework and street cross sections and even in the street cross sections it's talking about constrained width balanced street width and active transportation and enhanced cross sections etcetera

34:22 those are all they all sound great but i haven't it's um like uh leonard was counselor steer was talking about you know diagrams i want to see what what is there what is proposed and and going from there because i look at i look at these and they're they're going i got diagrams and everything from 96 feet across to where our present is at 80. and so there's 16 feet that we're talking about that literally is about a lane and a half worth of space that is being proposed well that space comes from somewhere and we don't own that much property along main street as far as right away if i'm if i'm

35:07 if i'm not correct is that correct we don't own that much street well it's it varies out on the east it's as much as a hundred feet the closer you get to bob straub right but and then there there's some accordions and there's some places where it's wider and less wide but i totally hear you you know what what can you read in the plan which convinces you i guess that it's not set in stone that it can be amended that there's a follow-on project delivery gate you know a council and those kinds of things another suggestion on here was you know refreshing the data coming up with some either policy or some language in there that says if this amount of time has gone by before the next project development

35:53 effort and that's its own whole project then you know the data must be refreshed and updated so that like you said no which oh we're going fishing yeah so that you know we have a good day and well we got to be able to switch up immediately not not 10 years and and again you know one of my biggest concerns is that median going down the road and eliminating the possibility of turning left onto main street coming out and if there's going to be a break at every street which already there's a median that violates that standard already on main street um it it'll let it requires a person to come out and turn left

36:38 and or if they're uncomfortable doing that then they have to turn right and find it find some roundabout which you and i both know that it's not going to happen for a while so what's going to be what's going to be constructed first the medians or the roundabouts and both of them come with some some very dangerous consequences in my mind and this is supposed to be a safety project but i can tell you coming out onto main street past a median and turning left you're going to be you're probably going to have some higher frequency of accidents of greater of greater damage because of that t-bone effect you know someone coming out has got a greater greater chance of being t-boned by by traffic coming towards them and and i i don't know i just haven't been

37:24 convinced this is safe well we'll we'll see what we can do you know order of construction is important obviously not all gonna get built at once i you know you asked about papa's pizza i'll just come clean i go there for lunch sometimes when i get the buffet text and and when emma and i were out walking the corridor about seven years ago somebody pulled out of the restaurant that's across the side street from papa's and their truck was big enough they didn't bother going around that meeting and went right over it yeah so um but mom and mom and pop aren't gonna do that and and well we don't really want anyone per se but yeah this whole you know um

38:10 the how why and where and being accurate and we are going to circle back on those uh median openings uh brian's got some more to talk about there and the order of construction you know those are all things that that we think about and we talk about you can't just build something that that dangles there you know in space and then uh doesn't happen if it has the wrong effect in fact right you know that's all a little bit the idea of the pilot concept is you know what what what would a package look like that was reasonable and and to bring that back and show you yeah and and i would like i would like to definitely very bold and italicize and underline where where the possible

38:55 off-ramps are where you know are you going to have you know create packages as to phase so people know in their head that including council know in our heads that this one part is what we're looking at and yes it's a 20-year plan um 20-year safety plan but but when are these what part you know between 31st and 40th when is that going to happen or when is that you know what part is going to be the experimental part what part are we going to see whether it's a failure and not get so deep into it that we can't recover right those are all exactly the the kinds of conversations that we're hearing that council would like to have in the fall and so getting this

39:41 input ahead of time will allow us to prepare for that i appreciate it and it's not just safety in my mind too i'm thinking twos is at what point you know i'm not interested in negatively affecting businesses because businesses it's hard enough for them to survive and i don't know what's going to happen to our to our society in the next six years i mean business-wise there's so many different challenges and i don't want to be part of throwing up some challenges with businesses that will that will cost them their business i just can't be part of that so before we call on um counselor wardrobe i think this i think there's a good sort of a good point that is made around economic development right just getting clear in the purpose statement

40:27 you know it's a safety and economic development plan and getting clearer about well where like what are we doing that is going to drive economic benefit acro you know across the corridor and i think there's a there there's another piece that is really interesting because you talked about how long the corridor is right like to me it would make more sense you know how how granular can we sort of slice it up into sort of districts that sort of make some sort of sense along the corridor and identify them in a way that makes some sort of sense to the uh to the public right because we think about them as a community you know about you know where the shopping centers are and you know when you when you get out out to thurston and really the plans kind of divide it up into three big chunks

41:12 and the question i have is can we can we get a little bit more granular and deal with it sort of in sections yeah councilor woodrow well that kind of segues right into what my question was um that if we do have any chunks like that um i think what would be helpful to get to the point of where council puts their approval on whatever it turns out to be would be to actually have alternative alternative ideas i mean we kind of got this handed to us with nine roundabouts being the all being the option and there really wasn't a whole lot of

41:57 in between you know um uh well if we have one big roundabout here and maybe one over here and we do something in between maybe that would work but i think that i think it would help to have some of those options or alternatives as part of the toolbox to be able to go okay that option number one here's option number two not not with the idea that those are the only options but i think part of the reaction to what was in front of us now is that this is the plan nine roundabouts as opposed to this is an option what other options are there that could conceivably offer safety enhancements that we're looking

42:42 for um especially since if you're if you're looking at um uh what's the word i want if you're looking at taking taking away the 20-year concept and coming back down coming back to a more realistic uh conceivable approach i think having options that would fit into those elements as well as the segments that the mayor mentioned i think the combination of those would make it a lot easier to to look at and to to understand from that from that standpoint okay got it

43:28 want me to read off a few more and see if that sparks anything or you can think we got the flavor here well you could read off a few more but i'm going to add one more to your list can we get some sort of issue log about stuff we've heard from the community right is it still open or do we think we've addressed it um and if we think we've addressed it like how do we know that you know it's been addressed because i know there's a lot of public feedback coming out and there's a lot of good stuff there's people that saying hey we need a pedestrian crosswalk all the way through you know hey people say we need more lights but you know we've got to get our arm around the breath of public input that we've got great yeah we um you know we may have to sort of catalog that a little bit and group up

44:14 similar things and you know but but bring it straight yep you bet right i know you've got more if you want to keep firing him at us because i think it's sparking the conversation that we need um so let's see um this was responses to public comments so that was there talked a little bit about uh really just sitting down you know outside of the plan with select businesses and and hearing their concerns you know going out to the curb and looking at it and kind of capturing that documenting that um you know not judging it really but but hearing it and

44:59 and documenting it and then looking for a way to um roll that in most likely at the at the project design level but capturing that direction in the plan that kind of thing uh hang on a second merrily did you leave your hand up or do you have another okay go ahead one more that hasn't it's kind of been glossed over the last couple weeks but it's like i think it's a critical part and that is how the first responders get involved and included in all this um it was on one of the pages from the powerpoint last week but it wasn't really mentioned but i think it's really important because if you start putting roundabouts in

45:44 if they need to change the lights they can't change the lights anymore so so they're an important element to this great got it um yeah so let's see sit downs uh site specific concerns you know that's you know is it freight is it a destination business is it passed by business what's the economic hook for that business and how would the project um impact that um you know this came up actually in a conversation with the mayor how are we going to know that we've been successful right so if if something gets green

46:29 lighted and then there's money and then it gets designed and it gets through all those gates and it's built how can we measure the success and so that's something that we're thinking about um you know the whole whack-a-mole i think it was counselor woodrow who talked about whack-a-mole and um it's an interesting it's an interesting concept i think over time we want to whack as many moles as we can without doing harm to the community but um uh yeah you know just um what different needs are at different locations uh on the business side of the line leonardo is is success in this context kind of a

47:16 moving target i mean it seems like the conditions in and around main street are going to be changing along with the city and so the best that we can really do is take one phase at a time you know and i i think what counselor pictionary was suggesting is just taking this in bites is probably the best idea i mean just finding the finding the right sort of uh experiment um to to run on certain things and then just see if it works there at that time and it's not going to be a perfect process right but well it's it's uh you know um for better for worse it's really not like fluid mechanics or you know um tensile shear strength of steel you got

48:02 a little human head behind that wheel right and what we're trying to do um is is and you're never gonna people are just going to drive the way they want to or need to or have to or just do drive um you know something bad's gonna happen to somebody else so it's traffic engineering and design is a particularly difficult challenge because of that human element so um you know the state of the practice does the best it can it's constantly reviewing data doing case studies trying to just to keep up but uh certainly if

48:49 you know if we had to undo something for a very good reason i would expect that we would do that or at least what we've done with our roundabouts over time is we keep refining the next application so you put one in and you learn and they're okay that corner that needs more space or a mountable curb or whatever and we we keep improving so bites is really something we're thinking a lot about um yeah so that's that's just my you know this idea of of uh what would be helpful and if there's anything else that that you all can think of you know and i mean maybe just send it to the mayor after the meeting or whatever and he can conduit to us

49:38 tom i think other other treatments would be would be good right because the the uh are other options right because the plan itself says essentially roundabouts and medians right but when you hear us talk as a community people are saying lights they're saying some people are saying slow down the speed limit again some people are saying um you know like at some point we talked about sort of bus turnouts right like more pedestrian crossings i'm sure there's other things that we also could do right so i don't know that we necessarily want to limit ourselves to these two specific things in all cases

50:25 and i think at some point or somewhere along the line it's important to recognize that there are times when infrastructure is not the issue it's not the cause it's not it's not gonna it's not gonna be the golden the golden arm that it takes everything away it takes every bad thing away and i think there are times when it's when it's important to recognize that um that it's not necessarily a change in infrastructure that it's going to make anything any different in in you know in certain elements there are and i think it's important just along the way as as this gets progressed um it's just important that every once in a while when we see someone go well you know what that's just the way people drive in that particular area and i don't know if there's much that i mean

51:12 you drive 126 nowadays and you got people flying by you at 80 miles an hour and it's not 126's fault you know if there's an accident three blocks ahead or three exits ahead of you it's not the infrastructure that's causing the issue and what i'm saying is i think there are points on main street where that can can be uh uh a part of the concept that says okay you know this this is not infrastructure this is this this is just what's gonna happen or this is some can be a situation where it's gonna happen no matter what we do and i think those i think just being realistic i think recognizing that that can be a part of it is also important nancy thank you mayor i think one of the

51:58 challenges of this particular project is just the enormity of the project for one right and so when staff come before you and before the community and discuss the project naturally there are a lot of questions that come back and it requires a high degree of analysis and response and reporting back to the public that's that's appropriate that's what we would expect from a project of this nature where it gets tricky is the timing of getting materials out to the public in order to be ready for another session the very following week so when we decided to pull back a little bit and just do a check in with you and say where are we right now what are the things that you really want to see you know we may not have a fully fleshed

52:43 out rendering or design or sketch before you go on uh your break but what i would like to do over the next couple of weeks before you go on recess is get kind of a if you will homework assignment for staff over the break that we can work on where you can feel a higher degree of confidence going into looking at planning to engineer if that makes sense so including other options corey i appreciate that because one of the things that i've been sort of saying along that may or may not be true um is that you know my my concerns around this project are sort of access to funding and how we tie that phasing to that and

53:28 if we sort of dilly dally around or we don't whatev whatever we might do um could affect the ability for us to actually like do any of it and fund it and so i think that's part of it for us to keep in mind that you know if we're trying to get to some sort of moment of perfection we might not get that and also not to just like make staff have to come up with 25 different plans so i kind of appreciate that reminder well and i guess i the way i think about this is this plan is a long way from being being ready for us to get into a serious conversation with the with the community again and it's really going to take if i if i listen to the work that tom and nancy describe it's really going to take us into the fall to get you know get through this enough to give some concrete direction about what do we want

54:14 that alternative to look like and you know i think we just have to give ourselves the space to do that because that is a long list that we've given tom i i really appreciate that mayor i was gonna try to say that without saying too whiny but you know we're we're in a staff deficit we've got state mandates flying at us from every direction you know we want to do it right we want to do it in partnership obviously with the council so that you have something that you know you can feel good about and taking the appropriate amount of time to do that while managing other priorities i think is going to be key is it realistic um because we have more time scheduled so i think shifting into

55:00 what are we going to talk like dive into next week one thing i would like to talk about next week is what's what's the summer public outreach plan right because there's an opportunity to go talk to more businesses get additional feedback talk to users to sort of inform and get more information in a way that you know take advantage of the time that we're going to all be at home with our latest summer novel america i would suggest i i think that's a good idea i think as far as materials for the next couple of weeks we're going to have to be a little bit uh twigging the screen stream so to speak um talking about here's some concepts because what we're really trying to do is get some we're hashing through some of this in real time so i

55:45 don't want to give the impression that we've already had this figured out and we're going to just tell you what it is we really want to hear from you respond to it and then plan okay anybody else have questions or comments what other directions you guys need tonight i know we want to talk about come back and talk about the cuts in the media joe we we could we're we're prepared to talk about that tonight okay let's see what uh joe yeah just a little bit off topic um tom when i when we put those um when you put those three ring binders together with the you may have to find a six inch binder somewhere but uh no but it i don't know about anybody else on the council

56:30 i that function of track changes um i know it's into the into this quite a ways but it would be great if we had the ability to you know like when you get a 1500 page document you can flip through it fairly quickly if we're comfortable with the first 400 pages or whatever and then after that we made some changes but when you're flipping through it you don't know where those changes are we're at where they can be delineated easily and seen okay that change has been made and we're going along so even people can see uh chronologically how how things are getting changed or modified or you know edified where it can show

57:15 from somebody just walking up where okay this is where we were at and this is where we're landing now or this is where we're we see a landing strip ahead of us and this is kind of what we're shooting for um am i making any sense you know i mean it's it's like uh because i'm visual i'm a page person totally like you and like steve is and and but what that really is helpful to me to see what changes have been made after that last conversation that's a tough one that's a tough ask and i know that it is uh you know we'll we'll do our best but um if if we're just gonna take out 400 pages and give you 150 different pages

58:00 right there might be a different way to manage that and and track it yeah it just i'm not you know and i try to i gotta i've over the years i've worn out a lot of highlighters but it's it's that's you know been my go-to is is highlighting areas that we address and then or even putting those little sticky tabs up top but just something to where we have some sort of system too uh even for citizens if they can electronically look i know that on pdf files you can insert yellow notes you know the the yellow pull off tab of course the name of those were post-it notes on on pdf files to where if people can potentially even do that download those pdfs and and i can

58:45 download the pdf and just create notes in that pdf file to easily jump to and either tear off or add to or whatever but i'm thinking out loud show the work as we make changes is what i wrote down and i um but i think there's you know um there's a lot more sort of dialogue and review of the pieces before yeah get in it's just because we're we're not we're just not going to go start changing the plan and bring it back that's a little fetcher rock we really want to know right and and have some good direction something we can also something the city

59:31 can show the citizens the citizens too okay this is where we started with and we heard you and these are the changes we made in response to your your inquiries and your suggestions and some of your uh frustrations something that shows that the city and staff and the counselors are are responsive to to them because frankly this this i've been on i've been on the council a long time um since before and this one topic has uh this one plan has has not has there's nothing been close to how impactful this has been and how much energy our citizens are are putting into this and so i want to make sure that that at some

1:00:18 point when i leave the council that we that i was part of something that was done right you still have to go back to gateway beltline counselor but other than i don't yeah oh yeah don't remind don't remind me don't remind me of that merely yes as joe was talking i happen to think that one of the one of the basic questions that has come to me um over over the last several months is how did we get from needing how do we get from main street as is at the moment to nine roundabouts how and why and what the process was and that's that kind of envelops what you guys were just talking about and that was just a basic question how

1:01:04 how in recognizing main street as it is today how did we get to the point of where we're looking at a plan that calls for nine roundabouts and what data was used to get there and and was there were there alternatives along the way so just just in a nutshell that that's been a lot of the consternation on the part of members of the community that i've talked to okay should we invite brian barnett up to yes i think we're ready for that okay good evening mayor and counselors last week i stated something that is an error and

1:01:50 it relates to the number of access points on the corridor i would point the council to pages 72 through 74 inclusive and that is the discussion about when and why there would be median breaks and the design principles that would be utilized in that so i won't try to summarize that because there's half a dozen well there's a dozen bullet points that are related to that so i can simply say that last week i was wrong in how i stated it and the plan as written will be adjusted as we've discussed throughout this evening's conversation

1:02:35 with those good questions so i don't know that i can do anything other than answer your questions at this point trying to go through this point by point when there's a high probability that some of this will change may or may not be productive but i'll leave that to your discretion joe hi brian thanks hey could you tell me i'm trying to find the pages so was that attachment what attachment is that the the facility plan is 107 pages in total length it's on pages starting on page 72 and runs through page 74. i don't think i think there was a mistake in our packet so i don't think we've got that right now so maybe we can just you can just communicate that that's

1:03:20 correct it is not part of tonight's packet yeah okay it is the actual plan document okay so leave you've all received previously so could you read us the page numbers again 72 73 74. and that covers sort of the the principles behind where that were yeah actually let me start you on page 71 where the section title is called raised median framework okay leonard i i know there's a certain amount of curiosity here in the gallery about what that says so could you summarize it i mean is is it possible to summarize the three pages and the time allotted to us here yes um i'll just hit the bullet titles and i think

1:04:05 that might um touch upon what your request is one keep full access at all arterial and collector streets two limit outer direction travel to thirty to sixty ninety seconds on average pair uh raised medians with roundabouts that facilitates the u-turns uh next bullet u-turns major intersections i.e roundabouts uh u-turns at unsignalized intersections uh avoid overlapping turn lanes that references part of the discussion counselor patientarian i had last week consider left in access to properties on main street that generate large volumes of traffic i think i mentioned that last week as well emergency vehicle access raised medians

1:04:51 should not limit access to fire vehicles departing fire stations along main street there's more there mountable medians in certain specific locations also fire hydrants on main street are currently located on one side of the street and would need to be extended so they're on both sides of the street so a median isn't preventing fire access to water another bullet access to streets with no other outlets some of our streets don't have another way to get into the community other than via main street so that would be a place where we would want to provide full access consider crossing locations for people walking and biking that goes to an earlier comment that we would want to consider access in

1:05:36 those situations and also provide pedestrian access and then pro provide two stage left turns from side streets again back to last week's conversation with counselor patinary and then phase improvements to avoid freight rerouting through residential neighborhoods that goes back to a median paired with a roundabout on each end allows freight to make u-turns and stay on corridor okay those are the major bullet points leonard so uh it it said uh keep uh full access to uh the arterials would that be pioneer 14th 28th 42nd oh it'd be every uh traffic signal from 21st to 69th it would also be other locations that

1:06:22 are designated as arterial streets but do not currently have traffic signals but potentially that could mean medians between those depending on whether you had full access yes and and i think that's the that that's the discussion point we're gonna end up in because i don't know that we're all gonna you know that we're all gonna agree to having seven miles of continuous median but that that's actually one of the details we've got to get into in the fall is once everybody's read it it's like well okay where do we want the cuts if we go that way right like what does that actually look like okay any other questions about this sean i got a brian if i can please go

1:07:07 ahead i couldn't find my darn raise the hand thing so um yeah i would like it broken down as far as immediate if if there's even just notations of okay we're you know this is a safety thing so i want to know okay if this median exists on this part of the roadway i want to know why it does i mean what can you i need it to be justified engineering wise traffic engineering wise why is that section there specifically as opposed to being part of a grander plan you know you know what i'm saying is every single piece every foot i want to see a justification as to every foot how it's designed into why so we can say something to anybody that

1:07:53 says why did someone put a curve right there where i can't and well let me tell you why we have that it's a it's that's an articulable fact and and if we can i mean this i'm just scratching out here trying to be able to find answers for people and it's and that's why i'm throwing so many at you is that you know those questions you know people have a right to know and i i want to know i want to be able to know and be knowledgeable this project and be comfortable by saying by hitting that green button so i do and i respect these questions from both the community and from the council yeah thank you brian appreciate deserving of of good solid answers and a rationale for the decisions that we're asking you to make yeah i appreciate it

1:08:38 very much all right i think we're all we're almost we're almost to the finish line so thank you for everybody uh sort of sticking into a kind of a long conversation one of the things nancy and tom that i also think would help us is right now everybody's going to the plan for the answers right so we're having conversations and then they're looking for answers sort of in the plan and i don't know if what kind of how we uh sort of uh put out there the uh the summary of the conversations that we're having and what direction we have and i don't know if it's a running document but at least that way we're we're pairing for the public the plan as it's written today and the the conversations and how kind of what where

1:09:23 we're at with it because it's just that that plan is too cumbersome for us to edit it until we kind of figure out what we think is a body and then i have one more good well um i was going to ask about next week so do we want to come back next week and have a further conversation about public involvement or do you feel like you know um i i'd like to and i'll look around for the council i'd like to have a further conversation about public involvement through the summer because that way um you know i know we're missing some people that the week after including myself that way we're that way we're having um giving some direction about okay how do we start forming up the fall and then

1:10:08 while we're reading this and talking to the public you know do we want the staff doing more or you know do we want to host meetings do we want to do town like what what does that over the summer look like okay and i'll and i'll kind of pause here to look for head nods and or anybody on the councils that's got a kind of a different opinion um yeah so if and maybe we can shorten the amount of time that we've got because i don't think we'll need it we'll need an hour for that and it'll be another pretty sparse ais that says tell us what you think well and i think that's actually perfect for right now right as long as we're sort of capturing the conversation someplace so that people can start saying hey it's going to start working its way towards the plan i think we're i think we're good with that

1:10:54 um one common question i do get is when we go to the website is is all the work product all the design diagrams everything that we own is it on that website i need to verify that the draft plan is on the website and all the technical memoranda are on the website um so i think all the work product that has been delivered to springfield is on the website okay but i do want to verify okay yeah because i've gotten some questions about there being other diagrams that are out there and even if we have if there's some conceptual documents for different alternatives right it might you know it might be good to get just clarification if if we're saying it's all up there or just the formula formalized plan or just the

1:11:40 you know or just the technical memos great okay really appreciate it um i think that is it until seven o'clock so i'm going to join us for the next 15 minutes and then we'll reconvene on this link for ceta well no wait hang on i'm getting waved off here we are in a different lane for ceta