Bangor Infrastructure Committee reviews urban forest plan, stormwater training, and snow removal

[1:01] Michael Beck: We are live. Good [1:03] Carolyn Fish: evening everyone today is january 21st 2026 and this is our regularly scheduled infrastructure committee meeting it is 6 13 and on our committee we have counselor dean counselor beck counselor carson counselor balloon counselor mallor and myself yourself as chair we have other counselors joining us tonight as well counselor Leonard counselor Walker and we have our chair joining us as well counselor Hawes I'm sorry counselor Hawes is here as well and Jeff Davis has joined us at the table the first thing we have on our agenda tonight, Davis, and first thing we have on our agenda tonight is the [2:03] Carollynn Lear: Urban Forest Management Plan. So the next three items are for forestry. Someone have been, we're gonna come up and do this thing. Sophie, if you can take my spot if you want to. Okay, [2:24] Unidentified speaker (City Staff/Forestry): so part of a urban canopy grant that was received through IRA funds was to develop a urban forest management plan as well as an operations plan. We are in the beginning stages of that plan. Part of that was creating a survey that will be getting passed out to residents both digitally and hard copies. We've teamed up with EOE Environmental and begun the beginning stages of that project. And so we've had a public meeting on January 7th where we look at that community survey recommendations from both tree board members and interested members of the public, made modifications to the survey. The survey is available in your agenda in full. I believe that is the revised version of the survey. This survey will be a Microsoft Form style survey, so for the virtual version, and it's a pretty standard survey. It should take five, ten minutes tops, asking residents on their opinions of trees, tree care, operational efficiencies, deficiencies within the city, how could we do better, to do worse, things of that nature. So that's one of the sections. Another section that we are working on is the website development for the Urban Forest Management Plan. Part of that budget is public outreach and having residents be informed formed of the Urban Forest Management Plan. So we are going to make additions with David Warren and the communications team to the forestry division website, and all the forest management plan happening and everything is going to be linked directly through forestry division website, which is a sub page of public works, and a rough outline is also included in your agenda. [4:58] Carollynn Lear: The survey is page six of the PDF. [5:07] Carolyn Fish: We have any questions? [5:11] Michael Beck: Mr. Beck. This is more of a curiosity, but on the survey, one of the questions asked about rating the importance of the following economic, social, and environmental benefits provided by public trees. And one of the options that people can answer is it can reduce crime levels as much done as possible. That's not something I would have thought of. Yes. [5:30] Unidentified speaker (City Staff/Forestry): Through research it's been shown that increased canopy coverage improves mood and then through a certain scientific research reduces crime rates and something thank you any [5:46] Carolyn Fish: Other questions I have a question sometimes when you have a [5:51] Susan Deane: Branch that is you know not conducive to your home but maybe not on the wires and you call for to be trimmed and they come and they trim it but maybe it's not the branch that you think it is if an individual was to cut a branch off a city tree I don't know who this question is for this is more personal question but is that allowed or no you always have to go through the city [6:12] Unidentified speaker (City Staff/Forestry): Even if it's on your property correct they are considered a public asset their public property which we are the four or three division forecast with the maintenance of that public infrastructure So any pruning, maintenance, you're not allowed to do without prior approval through Forestry Division or the Public Works Director. You're also not allowed to attach anything to trees. We see it all the time. It's tough to enforce. Bird feeders, signs, things of that nature are placed on public trees when they should not. [6:52] Susan Deane: So if you live in a very small lot in town and your trees are pretty much city property can you get can you get some sort of a stipulation that you can have a bird feeder so I mean people love to have bird feeders that seems like a little excessive variance [7:07] Unidentified speaker (City Staff/Forestry): I would I would assume so I'm not opposed to you know soft attachments using ropes or hangings, but as far as attaching hardware to a tree, the tree ends up growing over that hardware and consuming it. [7:24] Susan Faloon: Okay, thank you. Councilman Pallone? Your question kind of prompted my question, but when I was out campaigning, actually a couple of houses had trees marked to be either cut down or trimmed that were city trees, but it had been some time since they've been marked and that was a concern so I'm curious like once they've been identified kind of what's the time frame how do you prioritize that [7:57] Unidentified speaker (City Staff/Forestry): The timeline, if it is contracted, my contractor has a contractual agreement that is done within 30 days of me notifying them individual removals that I believe my crew through can complete. We typically try to keep to that 30 day timeline. We've had some staff overturn and right now just myself and one heavy equipment operator for the entire forestry division, so we have a backlog of storm cleanups, tree removals, preventive maintenance, so things move sometimes slower than they should. Thank you. Any [8:42] Carolyn Fish: other questions? And is this just [8:45] Carollynn Lear: an update? We don't need it. Yes, yep, just an update for informational purposes, the red pine scale [8:52] Wayne Mallar: response plan as well. I have a pretty easy to me. Yeah, you do. That's not it. All right, so the [9:01] Unidentified speaker (City Staff/Forestry): City of Bangor Public Works has teamed up with Recreation. We have created a new shared position within the two departments. That is the position of forestry technician. This forestry technician, Perpia Cameron, some of you may remember, wrote the Emerald Ash Forest response plan. Part of her position now is to look at parks and certain other invasive species that urban forests are getting threatened by. And one of those most notably now is red pine scale. Red pine scale is a minute insect that is very hard to see and targets only red pine trees. A red pine tree can be identified as something that's planted in your plantation throughout the city. Some of the most known ones are apprentice woods adjacent to the high school, the upper half of Cascade Park, all the softwood trees that are in perfectly straight lines. Part of this project was for Sophie and myself to identify cure stands of the red pine trees because this insect within a year or two of region of trees causes complete dieback and tree death. If you've been out to Mount Desert Island, red pine scale got out there, I believe in 2012. There was not one single living red pine tree on all of Mount Desert Island. So we're looking to target and implement a plan to manage the city's pure red pine plantations. We have identified five city-owned parcels totaling 36 acres of just pure red pine plantations. This also includes a city-owned parcel in the town of Winterport, a former gravel pit full sand from back in the 80s and 90s, and that was planted in pure red pine. [11:28] Carolyn Fish: Questions? Is there any, I know with the emerald, is it a beetle, or we've talked about having sort of an injection, I think, that we could put in the trees to try to limit that. Is there any remedy or solution or anything to do that? [11:49] Unidentified speaker (City Staff/Forestry): There is not no commercially viable remedy. If you have choice trees that are small enough for the tree, I believe a horticultural oil can be applied to the tree to prevent that insect, but from a forest standpoint, there's no feasible treatment option to prevent insect damage from this particular plant. [12:15] Carolyn Fish: And would you say there's evidence that it's here in Bangor? [12:19] Unidentified speaker (City Staff/Forestry): There is not currently any evidence. We're teaming up with the main board service to set out that as a preventive measure so that way if they are found here we're the first to know and can take those questions. [12:37] Carolyn Fish: Yeah, I think then [12:42] Wayne Mallar: you're still up on the timber harvesting, I'm sorry, the costs of implementing what's in this [12:50] Michael Beck: plan that's already in the budget for forestry. Yes, yep, we're not looking to make any capital [12:56] Unidentified speaker (City Staff/Forestry): investments outside of already pre-existing budget parameters, be it subcontracted costs or, you know, individual labor accounts within forestry. Okay. [13:13] Carolyn Fish: We don't have a state contractor [13:16] Unidentified speaker (City Staff/Forestry): and part of this plan, and leaning into your question, is sourcing out a timber harvesting, being contractor timber harvesting and stand management can be classified into two different categories: expense-based management, where no products are yielded and it comes to an expense for a landowner, and then income activities, harvests on a larger scale, where it yields a positive income for a landowner. And what we are looking to do is source a timber harvesting contractor to both implement plan recommendations from the Red Pine Management Plan, as well as previously accepted management plans for city parks, such as the Roland Prairie City Forest. And we would like to start with the larger harvesting recommendation, which would be at a positive income to the city, and then see where we are as far as cash flow based on those activities to then go out and do an expense-based management, and the expense-based management is still, even if we do not have an income, the expense-based management will still be kept below my budgeted amount for subcontractors to maintain that balance with our existing tree removal contractors and then stump grinding contractors. Do [15:09] Carolyn Fish: you have any questions? Do you need anything from us? Okay. All right. I think, I think [15:25] Unidentified speaker (City Staff/Forestry): Jesse might come up now. [15:27] Carollynn Lear: Yeah. So the next, two items, deal with stormwater. We have, Conjuncto Extreme Watershed Planning. We'll bring Rick up. Oh, there he is. Richard Mayer, stormwater manager. We're going to talk about, the plan and then the next item, he's going to do some stormwater training for our ms4 permit exciting stuff [15:48] Unidentified speaker (City Staff/Engineering): hello again from our manager engineering department so the first item here is to start the process to submit a watershed the watershed based plan for conjecture walk screen [16:03] Unidentified speaker (City Staff/Forestry): we contracted a rewrite of this plan starting in 2023 contractors finished the plan [16:10] Unidentified speaker (City Staff/Engineering): So the next step in implementing this is start taking some actions and by getting this plan submitted and approved by the Maine DEP that allows us to apply for 319 funding as part [16:23] Unidentified speaker (City Staff/Forestry): of the Clean Water Act funding. [16:25] Unidentified speaker (City Staff/Engineering): Unfortunately they are not funded this year and they're not going to have an RFP out this spring as they typically do, but we're hoping to get the plan submitted and get the process going. one so hopefully in the next year 2027 they'll they'll have some funding available and we can we [16:43] Unidentified speaker (City Staff/Forestry): can take on a project at that time with great funding [16:48] Carolyn Fish: any questions council back so just look [16:52] Michael Beck: at the memo here let's talk about the last plan that expired in 2018 so i guess did we apply so we couldn't apply for any funds from the last one subscribe but there wasn't any projects i'm assuming that we're on the radar for that funding i mean so we do have six compared streams and [17:11] Unidentified speaker (City Staff/Engineering): that kind of creates a larger workload we've been focusing our efforts on some of the other streams in town well the office sort of on the background [17:22] Carolyn Fish: any other questions so you need a motion by us to be able to submit the plan for the stream yes yeah it's submitted to may dep for acceptance do i have a motion so moved this order will be up on the next council meeting [17:51] Unidentified speaker (City Staff/Engineering): so i'm going to do some stormwater training as the next item here i'll be following the coordinates on the page if i move the slides ahead if you can take like the screens we're trying to keep this moving pretty well i know we have a lot of folks in the room waiting for the next meeting as well many of you counselors have seen this before some have not but this is sort of just to give you an idea of what we're up against with our permitting and sort of some of the general things that we do to Manage stormwater in the city. Next slide, please. So the permit we have is from Maine DEP, and it's part of the Clean Water Act. Maine DEP administers the permit through their power given to them from the USCPA. So it comes in cycles with these permits, typically five years. The last one was nine years because it was administratively continued. I wouldn't be surprised if that happens again with how DEP is moving right now. So this basically kind of ups the ante for us, you know, we have to make sure we're we're doing the right stormwater management, you know, that other communities in the state might not have to that don't have this permit. I think there's 30 municipalities. Next slide. So we talked a little bit about this earlier in the Finance Committee meeting, but we, you know, I'm just going to kind of remind you of the terminology that might be used. Storm sewer is what this permit is regulating. That's a storm sewer that just takes pure stormwater, collects off the street or other drainage, and takes it to the nearest water body, usually doesn't get treated. In our case, that could be an urban impaired stream because we have six of them in town. And then we have sanitary sewers, they collect the interior plumbing from houses, buildings, businesses, and then we sort of have a third category that's a combination of both. It takes the interior plumbing, it also takes storm water, and that's what gives us our CSO issues. So this permit just regulates the separate storm sewers, but just wanted to kind of give you a little recap on what we have in town. Next slide. So the urban impaired streams, these are classified by DEP. They go out and they take samples in streams throughout the state, and if they're not finding the bugs in the stream basically that indicate a healthy stream, it can end up being classified as impaired. We're working to improve the water quality to try and get, you know, the bugs that should be in there and get things to their status where they're no longer impaired. This tends to be a long process. Took a long time to degrade the streams, it's not going to be restored overnight. So as you can see the map of the city, there's, there's a fair amount of area [20:46] Unidentified speaker (City Staff/Forestry): that is covered with these drainages that are urban impaired streamers. Next slide. The [20:55] Unidentified speaker (City Staff/Engineering): Permit is broken up into six major sections, which are called minimum control measures, or MCMs. So we'll go into those in a little bit more detail in the next slides. So MCM one and two are pretty interrelated, public education and outreach and participation. A lot of this work is done through a collaboration between the city and the other municipalities and organizations that are regulated through the same permit in the Bangor area. So we're one of four clusters throughout the state, the Bangor area. Is an urban area, we have Portland, Lewis and Auburn, and then Southern Maine in the Portsmouth, New Hampshire area is also a urban area, and they have similar groups that do the same thing. So we're trying to get people involved and get them educated. We're an example of something that we worked to get in the Children's Museum in town, the main Discovery Museum. They were updating their river exhibit, and what better way to kind of get people involved when there's already a water feature to teach them about stormwater. And the biggest thing we want to teach them is it goes right to the river. It doesn't go to the treatment plant most of the time. So happy to be in there and part of that new exhibit. Next slide. MCM 3, elicit discharge detection and elimination. A long way of saying we're going to look for pollution sources and we're going to try and get rid of them. And we take a couple different approaches here. You know, the permit prescribes a systematic approach to find pollution sources through testing and outfalls. So an outfall is kind of the last point of the pipe before. [22:44] Unidentified speaker (City Staff/Forestry): Before it goes into the water body. [22:47] Unidentified speaker (City Staff/Engineering): So we test each outfall that is regulated throughout a permanent cycle and follow up on what we would call a bad result where there's an indication of pollution and try and trace that upstream. So that's kind of labor intense at times, old infrastructure, old city, and we find that there is cross connections where they where they should exist at times. The other part of that is like, you know, just educating people that know you can't wash a paintbrush in a bucket and dump it down the storm drain, you know, that's, they think it goes to the treatment plant, but they're they're mistaken there. So next slide please. So here's an example of an illicit connection we had where, you know, where the. interior plumbing of a house was actually plumbed to the storm sewer rather than the sanitary sewer and we've had this many times in my tenure here in 10 years this is the most recent example this is a house on pine street and it was a vacant lot and somebody moved a historic home to the lot so while the lot was vacant there was a sewer separation project and so when they went to go look up the new house they found where there was an existing service on the property you know an existing pipe we said, "Great." They said, "Great, nobody's digging up the street, everybody's happy." 32 years later, we find that, you know, they've been flushing to the wrong place for all that time. So move on to the next slide. I'll show you a few pictures of what that repair entails and kind of what we do to make sure we're doing the right thing. So on the bottom left there, you can see the red water coming out of that service into the storm sewer. That's, you know, a direct connection. We go into the house and put the dye packet in, flush it, then you know for sure you definitely have a cross connection at that location. So we put the bill for this, we hire our sewer repairs contractor to do this work, hook it up to the sewer, make it right. Expensive, it's time consuming, but it's that's part of the permit, and it's honestly, you know, one of the more satisfying portions of the permit. You know, you've done something good when you find something like. Next slide, please. Construction site runoff control. So this is generally speaking, we're talking about erosion and sedimentation control on construction sites. We're also talking about things like, you know, we're not fueling equipment over a catch base and that kind of thing. So I'll show you a few pictures of kind of the examples of typical controls we might see. I'm sure you've seen them in your travels, but go to the next slide, please. So when there's construction going on, there's heavy equipment, there's dump trucks, they're moving earth, they're bringing materials into the site, bringing materials out of the site. Those trucks, as they're moving through the site, you can sometimes pick up mud on the tires, and so we would like to see a construction entrance at a site with significant trucking so that those rocks sort of flex the tires and force that mud to come off to some extent. It's never perfect, but we're, we want to see if They're making that effort so it's not getting on the city street and then washing into the storm drain, as well as causing other issues like dust and things that can be a safety issue as well. But most typically we see a rock entrance at the top right photo. There is something that I actually hadn't seen before, YMCA's using that like a plastic grid map to try and capture some of that sediment as trucks moving in and out of the site. Next slide. Tilt fence, very common to see the black fencing around a site. Most of the time, or I shouldn't say most of the time, sometimes it's not installed correctly. You know, that has to be buried in the ground so that when water moves towards it, pools up, stays there for a period of time, that sediment drops out and then the water slowly goes through the fence cleaner on the other side. So a lot of times, you know, if you see that flap flowing in the wind on the bottom that they haven't, they're putting up a showpiece I guess we'll call it. And the other way you can do that is through a bark mulch firm, which is in the center of the photo, not the orange fencing, but there's a ground up tree stumps is typically what that is, and it functions the same way. It isn't recognizable by the public. Sometimes public will get excited, hey there's no silt fence on this site, but they do have a bark mulch berm which is equally if not [27:22] Michael Beck: more effective. Yes, just a quick question. So when that happened they didn't install properly, is there some kind of enforcement for that? Yeah, so there is inspections that I'll do free per site [27:34] Unidentified speaker (City Staff/Engineering): you know while it's under construction. So if I see something like that I'll definitely bring it up with the contractor and hopefully they respond well. Generally they do. If we see tracking [27:45] Carollynn Lear: and stuff we call them, we, you know, we all, we know who's building who's not building, so if we see something we tell them clean it up. Next slide please. [27:59] Unidentified speaker (City Staff/Engineering): So a couple different things going on here also related to sedimentation control. That catch basin on the left, it's got a insert underneath it to help catch sediment as it flows towards it. This is kind of a double barrier. They've got some clean stone around that catch basin as well as sort of a primary way to stop sediment and then secondarily they have the insert. On the right you see, you know, what will be a stormwater treatment area in the future. What the contractor has done is dug that out. Ahead of time, they haven't put filter media and piping that will go in there later, and they're just using that as a sedimentation area during construction. Just sort of is a good way to get a little bit more out of the work that you're gonna have to do in future by also allowing some sedimentation. Next slide. So at the end of all this, we really want to see that the site is stabilized, we no longer have any erosion sedimentation issues. You know, on the right side, that's the money moose parking lot that was mentioned earlier. Everything's all green, soil is not going to erode anymore, it's all stabilized. And then, you know, on the bottom right, there's another site where, you know, we don't always finish construction at a time where you can make things green, so there is a good coating of hay mulch there, and that will protect the site from erosion throughout the winter until it will green up in the in the spring. They should have dormant seed there as well, so it should grow in the spring and be all done. So those are the things we look for kind of at the end of a project. Next slide. So post construction storm water management, this is having to do with, you know, like the pond that was being used for sedimentation control. They've got to put that in as part of their stormwater permitting to treat the water on site, and not only do they have to build it, they have to maintain it. So there's an annual requirement in the permit and also in city ordinance, or each landlord has one of those to submit annual certification to the city, you know. So when things don't get maintained, we can see, you know, catastrophes like we saw over at the bangor mall, where, you know, things don't go well when they're not maintained, and then you really end up with a bigger headache than if you maintained along the way. Next slide please. So mcm5, which is the post construction and updated in this permit, part of what it is, you know, it has to do with not only post construction but also sort of the planning portion getting things to the planning board, doing site development, and they're trying to implement what's called low impact development techniques. So it's kind of going like one step further from just a stormwater treatment, it's you're thinking about the whole site and designing it to have the least impact as possible. It's it's not as easy to define for that reason. The permit as it was first written and has since been modified have been contested by interest groups, and you know, so that portion of the Permit is currently being appealed again. We should be implementing that at some point. I don't know what's going to happen before the end of the permit cycle, so we'll wait and see you there. Next slide, please. And MCM 6 is the last one. It's pollution prevention and good housekeeping for municipal operations. We're trying to make sure that, you know, we're setting a good example as municipal operation with public works, and, you know, they're kind of the ones that are in the spotlight here. They're doing most earth moving maintenance kind of work that has potential to impact stormwater. They're also maintaining the stormwater system, so we're just trying to do as well as everybody else. A couple other facilities too that sort of have potential to have more impact, and we're taking care of them as well. Next slide. Oh, and also trainings like this training public works to look out for the things that might indicate pollution sources too. That can really help, you know, bring them to our attention, so we can address them. Now here's some recent stormwater projects that, you know, we've been doing. This is sort of beyond the permanent training portion of this, but just wanted to get these in front of you too. Hammond Street was completed last summer just to help address flooding that we've seen out there during heavy rains in Hammond Street and other side streets there. Mount Hope sidewalk that's going to have some significant storm drainage as well. That'll be between almost a Hogan Road where there's some sidewalk constructed and Saratoga Avenue. There's a gap there. [32:47] Unidentified speaker (City Staff/Forestry): We're looking to fill that. [32:50] Unidentified speaker (City Staff/Engineering): We're getting some MDOT grant funds for that. Broadway culvert repair, it's a short little section of culvert repairing up by Judson [Carolyn Fish: and Heights. See] Sucker Brook geomorphic improvements. That's one of those urban affairs stream projects. This is where we're looking directly at the stream and we're saying, what can we do to make this actual dream better? So that's a little bit more permitting and planning to do a project like that, but eventually has, you know, a bigger impact where you can get those bugs and get the habitat that MDAC is looking for to declassify that stream as impaired. And then we, of, you know, ongoing small repairs that, you know, maybe public works isn't available to do so, or it's just a longer stretch of pipe that needs to be repaired, and we'll have that done through our repairs contract as well. So we had some at Hogan Room, Glenwood Ave, Ohio Street, and [33:44] Unidentified speaker (City Staff/Forestry): then Godfrey Boulevard idea for this year any [33:49] Unidentified speaker (City Staff/Engineering): Questions on the next slide, so we, you know, basically the permit means we got to be a little bit better than some of the other communities. Unfortunately, that means it might cost both us and people doing business here a little bit more to operate. We try and work with them as best as we can. [34:10] Unidentified speaker (City Staff/Forestry): We've got one more slide with us, that's really it. Any questions? Hey. [34:21] Wayne Mallar: Thank you very much. Thanks for the feedback. Next. [34:28] Carolyn Fish: We have the sidewalk snowplow. [34:33] Carollynn Lear: Yeah, and that's going to be our new fellow instructor, David. Nice. [34:39] Unidentified speaker (City Staff/Forestry): To. [34:47] Carolyn Fish: Meet you. Nice to see you here tonight, and we're going to knock out the sidewalks. [34:53] Carollynn Lear: Answer whatever questions you guys have, hopefully my ability. [35:02] Carolyn Fish: Sorry, Dave, could you just, I think when we had chatted about this, I was hoping you could just. [35:06] Susan Deane: Run through the, like, priority system that applies to the streets and the sidewalks, because I know we've gotten a lot of reach-ins about that recently, so I thought it would benefit us all. [35:17] Wayne Mallar: To sort of understand how that works, and, you know, I'm new to the position, I'm still making. [35:21] Carollynn Lear: My assessment, and I truly don't know how it totally works. I understand what priority one, priority two, and not specified means. How we arrived and declared priority ones, priority ones, priority twos, priority twos. I haven't got a good answer on that and where we're at. So I can tell you though that we have all the maps are in the gift system. So we have differentiate between road plowing. It's 400 lane miles of roads that we plow, and then broke down into sectors and sections, and then there's color breakdowns on this for what's a priority one and a priority two. Same concept falls to the sidewalks. Impacts our ability to perform the mission, obviously, is the amount of weather we get, the sustained weather we get. So we work Christmas Day, we work New Year's Day, we've worked the last two weekends, and so as the team is briefed at whatever time they come in or sent out, priority ones. Obviously are what they go to clear. If the snowstorm continues, they'll start over on priority one before they go to a priority two. And then they'll go back to it a third time again if it can snow before they'll even get to a priority two. While we're in the middle of a snowstorm, while they're plowing, whether it's a sidewalk or a road, they do their best to open a lane. So it's not going to be the left or right clearance. It's going to be enough for traffic to pass through and or foot traffic to move out on the sidewalks. Things that impact our ability to do this obviously is our equipment capabilities and readiness, and by capabilities it's the different sizes of what we have, whether it's the larger trucks with wing plow or straight blade or pickup trucks. The other requirements that task us away from all the school activities that we do, we clear all the schools and the different places is that we have to clear take priority over streets and roads if they're in session or if that's what they're tasked to do so. And then personnel availability and capabilities also are taken into consideration. So we have a lot of new personnel that are still working to obtain their CDL license so they can't drive some of the larger equipment. They're put into the smaller or equipment and or they're used as a side person so they're not even operating the equipment so [37:55] Susan Deane: Council Dean, I think a lot of people are confused as to when their sidewalk gets cloud. So it's not one storm, it's you're the first one it seems like, and then the next storm it might be a couple days. So even if you're priority one, you don't necessarily go on the same [38:11] Wayne Mallar: order per street. It's sort of where they are, they well there's different sections so [38:18] Carollynn Lear: different quadrants of the city, so different sidewalks in those quadrants are different priority levels. So like I said, we can look at the maps, we can look specific at it, but no, if a operator is tasked for downtown, you should start at the first road in his priority and complete his priority one path, and then if it hasn't continued to snow or he's not redirected, it will go to priority two at that point. Priority one could be the odd side of a street and the even side of the street could be priority two, or it could be a not specified. How we arrived at that I'm still working on so, and I'm still working on, we're working on making these maps flat and renaming them layman terms, and then we're going to put them on a website so that every resident will have the ability to open up a map and see when we're coming. It's not exactly when we're coming, but where they fall in priority. That'd be nice, thank you. Breakdowns and staffing could affect all of that too. [39:23] Unidentified speaker (City Staff/Engineering): So, throw that out there. [39:29] Carolyn Fish: And. Oh, I'm sorry. Councilman Allen. [39:33] Public commenter: I'm basically happy with what you do as far as allowing the streets and sidewalks. The only comment I would make is, I really don't appreciate when you're blowing the snow, that you dump it on my side of the sidewalk log and on my stand, so I have to shovel it up and you have them, you have an S1 on that's where you should be putting this now. [39:58] Carollynn Lear: Yes, sir. Again, I'm still looking at the processes and I'm getting out looking at this stuff. So all that's going to be attended to obviously most of this will go into effect for next snow season, but they can immediately affect a lot of changes in here, right down from the brief they received in the morning needs to be changed and how that's delivered and how they're told what they're going to do to I'm looking to change our monitoring and tracking system and put more cameras in there with a in-cab monitor so they can monitor their own routes and see where they're at in their route. My dispatch can see where they're at in the routes. My foreman can see where they're at in the route to make sure that they're doing what they're supposed to be doing. We spend a lot of time chasing the guys around, getting them reoriented in the right place, doing the right thing. [40:48] Susan Faloon: Thank you. How long does it typically take? I mean, do you get through all the sidewalks after a storm or does it sometimes take a couple of days and will they keep working on that even, you know, like a day or two after the storm? How does that? Absolutely. I mean there's parking [41:07] Carollynn Lear: ban in effect now through Friday, I believe, so we're continuing to clear snow and push snow. It depends on the amount of snow we're getting it depends on again the equipment readiness whether we have multiple pieces down at any one time and the time it takes to service that equipment but on a you know a couple inches of snow they should be able to clear their priority ones without a problem and start attending to the priority twos in the same day [41:32] Susan Faloon: and then if not they would continue kind of the next day I think the priority two unless we get more snow and then they sort of start over again they never stop [41:42] Carollynn Lear: Well, we've had a lot of overtime hours already just in the last month, so. Mr. Carson? [41:47] Joseph Leonard: This might not be for you, but outside of downtown, do we have any ordinances that compel participation in snow removal? I ask because it's concerning to me. Like, I've, you know, eight, ten years of experiencing snow removal on sidewalks. And what I watch every day is children in the street walking to school because the sidewalks are very seldomly cleared. And it I've lived other places that have winter environments and this is the first place that I've ever lived where people are not compelled to participate in snow removal. And so our only snow removal opportunity is the very limited equipment and staff that we have. And then in the interim we have a lot of things that go on that I don't find to be acceptable outcomes with children walking in the street to school is I think the top of my [42:46] Carollynn Lear: list of that. So I'm just angry. I've driven around I look at our sidewalks I don't think they're in the best condition. You know last time I was down a week ago I looked and part of the sidewalk out here is clear part of it's not just where the priority one and priority two ended. We have four sidewalk machines we're covering almost 70 miles of sidewalks. Yeah so they don't move very fast so we need more equipment obviously that equipment's very expensive so and with more equipment comes more personnel to operate it. What's the matter we used to just odd and even [43:22] Public commenter: if it was an idea you played the odds sidewalk satin street it was an even you above the evens [43:28] Carollynn Lear: and we considered going back to that. I'm considering a lot of different things. Let's figure out why we're at where we're at now who dictated why different neighborhoods different sidewalks or different roads are priority one and to find out where we're going from there. So I'll consider looking at the way we do it you know do we just make left turns we just make right turns we you know there's a lot of things that are being considered right now as I'm trying to develop and make it more productive for the team. [43:59] Susan Deane: I thought we did have laws in effect that stipulated that the homeowner did have to keep the sidewalks clear. In fact I thought it also included the end of a sidewalk saying either you or the snow plow had cleared the sidewalk and then the city plow comes and makes a bank. I thought we also had to clear that or pass it that's not that not an engineer in [44:25] Carollynn Lear: real house if that sidewalk comes out of the house up to the main sidewalk this is right away that's us. So they whatever the step is from their house to that front sidewalk downtown residents aren't required to clear their snow if we take care of them [44:41] Carolyn Fish: I think with commercial businesses though commercial businesses will take care of some [44:45] Wayne Mallar: of their responsibilities. Yeah so [44:52] Susan Deane: some of us have been working harder than we need to [45:06] Carolyn Fish: Any other questions? Thank you for your reporting. [45:13] Carollynn Lear: Thanks. Yep, I'll have better information next time. Well, thank you. Thank you, David. Thanks, Jack. Do you have anything else for me? That is it. Thank you. I know that was long, but with Rich being here for some other things, I thought it may tend to happen to the training.