Bangor Infrastructure Committee reviews parking feedback, DOT agreement, and retaining wall repair

[0:16] Carolyn Fish: Good evening everyone. Tonight is April 22nd, 2026. This is the regularly scheduled Infrastructure Committee meeting. I am Councillor Fish, chair of this committee. Also on this committee we have Councillor Walker, Council Leonard, and Councillor Deane. Absent tonight is Councillor Beck. So I would like to ask Councillor [0:45] Anya Collette: if you'd like to step in, please, thank you. [0:49] Carolyn Fish: And also around the table tonight, we have our engineer Jeff Davis joining us and Anya Collette. And the first thing on our agenda tonight is feedback from the Parking Advisory Committee meeting. And Anya, you wanna take it away? I will. [1:09] Anya Collette: So this is just providing an update on both public meeting we had on parking downtown as well as the follow-up meeting we had with the advisory committee to go over that and get their feedback too. So at that public meeting that we had, we asked people a series of questions and have them go around different tables and kind of give us feedback on those questions. Often, you know, the conversation would go in different places, but some of those conversations we got a lot of other feedback too, which was really great. But those questions really were geared around, you know, how do you move around downtown, do you find yourself making a loop a lot because we hear that sometimes from people, are you using the off-street parking areas, you know, where do you usually Park, things like that. So some of the, some of the main feedback that we got was people felt like we need to have more and better signage for the parking garage and places that people can park, because they feel like people, there isn't a really good way for people to know beforehand where to park, and it's not, they feel like it's not well advertised for people to park currently. They also had some issues with the two-hour parking on the street and not being able to remotely, you know, extend their parking time. They have to go out and move their car, not going to be a problem if somebody is like, you know, taking a longer dinner or getting their hair done for a long period of time or something like that. There were a lot of concerns about how We do snow removal downtown, some solutions, some proposed solutions to maybe change parking bans, also some, you know, feedback on our parking permits for residents and people who use our off-street parking lots, and also too, one of the main concerns addressed was perception of safety downtown, and people felt like they needed more lighting, maybe more security cameras in some places, and things like that, and the parking advisory committee pretty much agreed read on a lot of these things, especially on the signage and making people aware of the parking and how things work and things like that, and also that perception of safety. They also brought up the need for looking at our ticket pricing, how much are we charging for tickets, when was the last time that it was updated, maybe we need to increase that, because one of the concerns that was brought up with a need for better enforcement and turnover of parking spaces in front of businesses, sometimes that can pose a problem, so they wanted us to look at that, but also they wanted us overall to come up with a report that would include looking at that ticket pricing, but also looking at our off-street parking lots, do we need to update the prices for those, and then also how might paid street parking work, and how might that interact with these different things, because that was actually brought up as a potential solution for a member of the public actually, but you know, some of the ideas that were brought up related to that were maybe that would help improve the turnover in front of businesses, that would help people who are, you know, do want to extend their parking time from your app or whatever, and it would help, I think, you know, show where those available parking spots are, I think it might help with enforcement and things like that, but they want to know how would that, you know, interact with our off-street parking prices and stuff and change that, so along with our, contractor who does the parking in this in downtown, we'll be working on that report over the next few months, and of course you all will see that too, so that's the summary. Any [5:14] Carolyn Fish: questions? Thank you for that report. Thank you. Yeah, I think you're up with a D.O.T. [5:24] Joseph Leonard: agreement on our three green surface, surfaces, so this is a agreement for a locally administered [5:33] Jeff Davis: Projects through the DOT. It's an 80-20 project, so 80% of the funding is federal and 20% is local to share. Typically these run through BACS, which is our local MPO. We spend a lot of time with BACS scoring projects, roadway projects, site safety projects, that sort of thing. Typically, the way these are done, we score them and then DOT takes them and then hands out funded. DOT this year decided that I think they're just going to take over the scoring piece. So this is kind of an unusual project for us. This was on a low totem pole project for us. That's why it's just Howard Street if you're wondering, but again this agreement is just for a full amount of 205 000 and some change. The local match would be 41 000 and it's to pay street from Mount Hope to State, so we're just asking for authorization for [6:46] Joseph Leonard: the city managed to sign the agreement so we can move forward to the project I'll move it. I do have a question, actually not a major one, like why just the [7:04] Jeff Davis: this small of a project? They have different types of parameters for projects, so they have you know large scale preservation to rehab. This is the highway cyclical pavement resurfacing program, so in DOT world this program is to just kind of extend roadway links, our roadway pavement sorry, so well these type of small projects it's just a small bit just like a shim an overlay and then extends life of the pavement for another nine years or so. They do a lot of these little rules like this, typically we don't get those as LPA projects, that's just done, so it's just a little bit different process for us. And oh sorry I didn't, I didn't put in the memo and I sorry Wayne, I usually do this for you because I know you like funding, so this is this is funded since this was a little bit different project and process the way that DOT did this, was not an FY26 so it's an FY27, so but they would like to get the ball moving, we just won't be able to work on it until July 1. So it just seems funny that it's just it's such a small project that the federal [8:19] Joseph Leonard: government would, I mean I'm sure it's not, it could be determine that, but I just found curious that thank you did [8:28] Carolyn Fish: we get a second? I'll take it, so this will move on to council next week. Now we have the Kanduske Extreme Maintaining Law. [8:40] Jeff Davis: Yes. I'm going to ask a consultant from the Boyson K, Jeff Aceto, to come up to the table with me. And I'm going to grab the mouse that I forgot to bring. [8:52] Joseph Leonard: If I can pull up the keyboard, if [9:15] Anya Collette: I can. Too many mice. [9:33] Carolyn Fish: in front of [9:40] Jeff Davis: You on the screen is the Kineska extreme retainer wall evaluation recommendation letter report. This has been brought to you before. This is part of Hamlin, Hannibal Hamlin Parkway, which is, you know, you have Central Street, each State Street or Central, Franklin, and then State Street. We have Nolan Vega Parkway, and then Handle Him with Parkway, and this is the retainer wall between those parkways, which this was, these were built in the late 20s, early 30s, post the 1911 fire of course, and these were the number one purpose of these retainer walls and this, these parkways were to have a fire break between the east and west of Bangor, but of course now they're, you know, there's two statues out there and it says, you know, nice little parkways, but unfortunately the age that they're at, the walls are failing and they've been failing for quite a while. So the city hired the Voicing King in 2024 to do an evaluation and then to give recommendations for us to consider moving forward, so we can, this report is for about 100 linear foot of the wall on Hannibal Hamlin. There is a, in the appendix there is a site sketch that shows the location [11:19] Joseph Leonard: and I can move up here if I can, oh [11:26] Jeff Davis: this is just under the chair everybody [11:39] Joseph Leonard: know there's two or two PDFs that are like this shape. I think if you stop sharing it came right up, easy peasy [11:55] Jeff Davis: We'll go over some photos, but I just wanted to show you the location so you kind of idea where I'm talking about, but you can see my mouse, Central Street right here, this hundred feet off Central Street is the area that we're talking about, it's the worst part of this [12:18] Joseph Leonard: wall, and as we go back to the photos I can show you why you [12:27] Jeff Davis: can kind of see the area that we're talking about. You can see where the tide comes up most of the time, but you can see just the damage from the tidal effect and just the age of the wall itself. This is a granite stack that block wall that was watered at the beginning and actually it ends driven down into it, but now you can see that most of that water is gone. You can see just giant chunks of block missing and just freestanding block. So as part of this evaluation report, you know, they the consultant concluded that the safety factors fall significantly below the standard code prescribed for public infrastructure and that the existing conditions indicate that you know the full wall replacement is the only engineering solution that addresses our stability requirements and ensure public safety as we move forward so for that conclusion or this conclusion the consultant evaluated five conceptual alternatives the first is to repair in place the second would be to remove and rebuild with cast in place concrete, the third, remove and rebuild stone masonry block wall, the fourth, remove and replace with precast modular wall, and the fifth would be to remove and replace with vinyl sheet pile walls. All those alternatives were scored and given in a weighted score. The alternative four, which is the precast modular wall, was selected by the consultant and engineering staff with the cost of, you know, 2.8 million dollars to do that, and I do have, I'm just kind of giving a brief overview and then I have Jeff Decedo here, which I should have introduced, manages the Boysen King office here in Bangor, and he's the engineer that wrote the majority of this report. So the module block wall is a ready block system that's in the gravity type wall. They're big blocks and they just kind of stack on top of each other, and there's different colors and textures that you can get, you know. We think that, you know, removing and replacing the granite block wall, one, it's time consuming, it's, it is costly, it's labor intensive, and there's probably in this area one or two contractors that could even do that. So that's why, you know, that alternative number one, repair in place, scored slightly lower than, you know, this big modular block wall. So I can kind of pass these around if you want to, or it's not needed, you don't need to, but we got these from the supplier, and again, they just kind of stack onto each other. They're massive blocks, that's somewhat form of gravity wall, but we do reinforce it with geogrid and I guess with that, I'll pass our recommendation around, and if you have questions on why we chose this versus the other, or if you'd like to look at what the other options were, we do have plans of what the other options were and we can get into those too, and Jeff, please jump in [16:05] Joseph Leonard: If you want to discuss, perhaps the council consider that the scoring that Jeff mentioned for the five options staff asked us to weight more heavily constructability, aesthetics, and stability cost to the cost, aesthetics, and structurability to the highest. We also considered hydraulic performance, stability, and then permitting the monitor block, the chaining wall system recommend, and this is just an example, please. It's not a recommendation of certain product. This is one example. These are available in the state. There are other products, other systems that work for some of them. You may have seen these as DOT, again, used in a system about 30 years ago in a situation for retaining wall. They are easier to assemble than a cast concrete wall. They are stable, they're structural, and also allow you the opportunity to create different appearances. And in the brochure that's going around there, that brochure you have, you'll see some example of walls that are those are concrete precast units, so we understood the aesthetic concern. I understood that also in the short term to repair 100 feet of the wall, how does that appear aesthetically to the remaining areas that are not yet replaced? The manufacturers have the opportunity to create walls that could be any size block, any size color, texture, to more resemble what's actually out there. Also, the quality control effects factor to the speed. And then last, the assembly constructability. They use crane trucks to put these in, and if the crane truck can reach the site, the block just goes in once. It is very similar to a child's building blocks, just setting them all in place. A little more complicated than that, but the concept is direct. So the other systems had good advantages, had pros and not-so-pros. In this instance, this system is something that provides a public factor safety that reduces the city's liability. Secondly, it has the ability to create an aesthetic appearance that would be similar to what the stones are out there now. Third, establishes a system that has more portions of the wall are replaced to be built off of easily. We're going to establish a standard of what this is, and then in the future as you have other sections to replace, those standards are already in place, and given that the conditions are similar and the moment we expect they are, you could use the same system. Is there [18:44] Carolyn Fish: any questions or anything else about that? 's so deep are we replacing the [18:49] Anya Collette: entire height of that span it is not placed underneath where it's damaged as the whole [18:54] Joseph Leonard: Yes we are, thank you. The high wall height is approximately 26 to 28 feet ranging. The walls sitting on bedrock as Jeff described, they are large just with a piece of granite, large pieces of granite are just set in place with water and some hitting and they're bigger at the bottom, get smaller towards the top. It is just what's called a gravity wall in the sense that the weight of the stones and the soil behind it are holding in place, and with the removal of the mortar the civil use is gone. We evaluated only the hundred feet from Central Street along the wall in the South Channel. There's the opportunity to begin to evaluate other sections of the wall. Visually this section is the worst in terms of condition and the investigation we did very briefly used the ground penetrating radar to measure the density behind the wall. It's very similar to an x-ray, but in that sense we found voids behind the walls. The material was piping away and the walls began to lose the structure. We did geotech analysis that showed the soil behind the wall is loose-filled. It's not contributing to hold the wall in place either. And then the visual inspection we did with the photographs and such just revealed that is the worst section. There is probably other conditions like this along the walls speculate beyond the fact that if it's happening here it probably happened in other places that the conditions are worse than the sections with writers. If you look at the screen you can see [20:34] Jeff Davis: This is a detailed section of what that wall would look like in place so this is where my cursor is on the hand that's the finished grade now with the existing fence and then this is down at the bottom of the of the wall that we play so it is the full height of the wall you can see it has a slight batter to it but large blocks and they do get smaller as they get to the top and there's a cap a cap block that goes on to that so just this is related but not [21:03] Joseph Leonard: Really related to the discussion just because safety is always on my mind like what is how many years out are we from failure if we did nothing you know I think we still have some [21:15] Jeff Davis: Some time it's not, I mean, you looked at the blocks that are missing, I mean, the that's been like that for a few years now, but we the city has been screwing money away to move forward with this project, so the hope is, you know, after today's discussion that we have a path forward, a block that you want to go with, and then we would actually come up with a design and an actual cost and try to get that out to bit, you know, later in the fall at least, so as far as like an end date [21:48] Joseph Leonard: Of like end of life or for this for the worst wall in particular, are we like if we don't do anything like let's say within a decade catastrophic issues or something like that [22:02] Jeff Davis: Or I don't think we should wait a decade, I think we should afford now with that with this section at least, and then plan for the future, and that again as Jeff Cedar was saying, this type of block wall we can kind of piecemeal, you know, those sections, so we'll do this for a section now, and then we can plan for future sections to go all the way around, because we can actually tie these in to the existing wall, the existing creative block, what's the durability lifespan [22:32] Joseph Leonard: That's a fine question without with respect counselor, we don't know yet because we just started using the system about 30 years ago, and they're they're very durable in that way, they are, I mentioned the quality control earlier compared to a cast wall where you have to form it, bring the concrete multiple places over a number of days, that's a real challenge, in this instance, the system itself, just relies on the durability of the face of the wall. And the concrete is very dense, has treated treatment on the face of it to help make it more dense. And if the wall became damaged, can be disassembled and repaired more easily than a cast concrete or a rope wall like that. So these walls are designed to operate in a channel like this with the hydraulics that we're experiencing in the high and low tide ranges. And also in ice and snow condition, which probably the biggest and most significant risk would be ice strike to these walls. As long as the face stays true so that you have nothing protruding, which is another issue with the existing wall, the blocks are starting to pick up. The piano keys so to speak. The impact along the face of the walls is also low. [23:49] Jeff Davis: So these type of block walls, again you know these have been around for 30 years or so. The old style log wall, like the keystone walls, it's the smaller, you know, they look similar to that. The way that was pressed and made, those were failing within five years. The salt and everything just deteriorated though. So these are, you know, they learned a lot on how to create these in an enclosed environment. You know, they're not cast in place they're precast so we do you know we have been using these for quite a while and we're not seeing the structural issues that we've seen with other type of block walls so that's why we are you know pretty confident these will last you know the same you know 7 500 years we're hoping you know but again but I mean that's that's how I mean even the granite the granite's holding up but the way it's put together it's failed. [24:49] Carolyn Fish: And there is durability to salt water and ice? [24:53] Jeff Davis: Yes they do have yep they did they have water applications but they've used these quite a bit so that's that was part of Du Bois and King's process is to find out make sure that the products we are selecting can be used in this type of environment. [25:11] Carolyn Fish: You just had one question. Are they also fire resistant, as the original granite was, and [25:17] Joseph Leonard: is that a concern? I don't know. [25:22] Jeff Davis: I think they are to an extent, but I don't know. I don't think it's a concern anymore. [25:27] Carolyn Fish: My other question was, what are we doing with the beautiful granite that will be removing? [25:31] Joseph Leonard: Can we reuse that somewhere? [25:32] Jeff Davis: That would be the plan so when we were to go to bid for construction on our plans we would make sure that the stone is salvaged to the owner we would store that without public works and we've done that in the past you know with all the cobbles we've taken up and the granite we've taken up from our stone sewers we've used them throughout the area so that would be what we would do again. [25:58] Joseph Leonard: I also like to add to you that the most durable of the five options, what we call a vinyl sheet, vinyl piling system, you presently have a pond system down by your docks along the river's edge and that was chosen because it's very durable, it's watertight, it's basically a place and it has a very long life, a few hundred years perhaps. The aesthetics was lost there and so in this [26:23] Jeff Davis: Is since this was the choice from the veteran's point, and on top of that, is this area, there's no good place to sheet pile it into, so the soles behind that, the walls, they're no good. Plus it goes right to ledge, so that adds an extreme cost because you have to rock hammer that into it. [26:43] Joseph Leonard: So we thought that way, you know, I think we would often hear any other questions, just one. So when this project eventually does take off, that park, how much of it, if not all of it, is [27:01] Jeff Davis: going to be out of commission from the public? Certainly we would close that entire parkway off during the duration of this project. You know, there's a lot to think about when we, when we go to do this. We have, you know, beautiful mature trees there that would have to be removed. We, you know, my hope is that we can use a tree spade, and that's just a, it's a, it's a spade like a big shovel that comes in and picks that root ball up, sets it to the side, and we maintain that tree while we do this project. In the end, we get that tree spade back, pick it up, bring it back, and put it back in place, so we don't ruin that historic nature of that park. [27:42] Joseph Leonard: Yeah, and the, I know you guys won't know this until you actually get started with the project, that typically how long would a project like, and I know this is a very specific one because it's very awkward, but how long would these projects typically take, but minus the [28:00] Jeff Davis: awkwardness of this particular? So I think the longest part of this is to remove the existing wall and stabilize everything. I don't, I don't have it now. [28:13] Joseph Leonard: That's okay. There are complexities that you need to offer again based on the riverside isolate where you're going to pull the blocks out, protect it, but you also have to provide some kind of structure behind it to not undermine the park, put it in its work zone, and what might work well, and this is a means and message for the contractor though, for a hundred feet, is working 25, 30 foot sections, and be able to do it in three or four phases, and progressively build on what you have to put in place and move forward. So park being closed must have been an alter back, but as you put more of these systems in, they build up each other and get stronger because they're larger. I think you'd be able to use pretty, probably it could be a summer, it could be a summer product. Okay everyone, the block themselves go extremely fast once you have [29:07] Jeff Davis: A good base, right? It's picking them all, placing them down, and when they're designed, you know, when they're designed, they all get numbered. So you just go by the plan and numbers and just put it [29:18] Joseph Leonard: down. And we've used this type of block throughout Bangor too. So Jeff, do you need from us a [29:27] Carolyn Fish: motion to give you permission to pursue the precast modular? Do you need anything from us? Yes, [29:33] Jeff Davis: I would like some direction of which you would like to go, and then we would move forward with an actual design and pricing and bring that back. Okay, do I have a motion? So moved. Second. [29:47] Carolyn Fish: unless there's anything else i think our infrastructure meeting with the adjourn at 701. [30:02] Anya Collette: Thank you.