Lewiston Planning Board backs bridge bypass, reviews downtown street safety plans

[0:14] Shanna Cox: Good evening and welcome. My name is Shanna Cox. I'm calling tonight's planning board to order for Monday, July 27th. Can you please call the roll? [0:27] Unidentified speaker (Roll Call): Darren Galant present. Shanna Cox here. Zoe Lidstrom here. Lucy Bisson, Penthea Burns here. Michael Marcotte, and please let the record reflect that Alex Pine, Amy Smith, and Heidi Bertels are absent and excused. [0:44] Shanna Cox: Thanks. Please also let the record reflect that Darren, an associate member, will be a voting member throughout the evening tonight. Congratulations. Fun to have you. Are there any adjustments to the agenda? No, there are not. Is there correspondence? [1:01] Michael Marcotte: There has been quite a bit of correspondence since the last time we met, so I'm just going to briefly list out the topic areas where we've had correspondence by e-mail. So Member Marcotte e-mailed on July 6 asking about the CSO project and received a response from staff. He also e-mailed on the 6th asking about the red shop and playing bird recommendation. And then there was further correspondence from Member Lindstrom and then responses from staff. On July 7th members Smith, Fertles, Beeson, and Cox provided emails to council members and staff regarding the possible sale of the red shop at 38 Water Street. There were emails on July 13th from IT department staff at the city regarding whether the group emails were being received. There were emails regarding whether to hold an executive session as well as providing comment to the public on, I don't have the date, I'm sorry, about last week, I believe it was the day of the council meeting. Member Smith sent a letter on behalf of the Lewiston rowing regarding the item number 11 on the council agenda, and then there will be correspondence that will be handed out this evening by Director Connor regarding the development of a vacant building ordinance that was requested by member Gallant. [2:39] Shanna Cox: Thank you. This evening we don't have any public hearings, so we're going to move into other business starting with agenda item A, the planning board making a recommendation to the city council on the acquisition of a 1.44 acre portion of 9 Foss Road for the construction of a road to bypass the existing bridge on Jordan Road. This [3:01] Michael Marcotte: Item is Shelley's, okay, so this is a request from Public Works, and we do have city engineer Jeff Bowley here in the audience who'd be happy to answer questions on this project. It is a request for a recommendation to the council on the purchase of a portion of 9 Foss Road. You can see on the survey map that's on the screen that it is a triangular portion at the corner of Foss Road and Jordan Road, and so this would be divided out and sold to the city. It is 1.44 acres in size, and the reason for this is that the bridge on Jordan Road that crosses no-name Brooke is in, I'll just say, poor condition. Jeff can certainly get into more details if you're interested, and so the cost of doing a bypass road is, you know, significantly more cost efficient than replacing the bridge at this point in time. So this would be for the purpose of creating a road instead of repairing the bridge. So the property that is under consideration for purchase by the city has an assessed value of $27,000. The city has negotiated a purchase price of $35,000. The reason for that is that the current owner will need to redesign pathways from their parking lot and, you know, has other improvements that they'll have to do to adjust for the fact that land will no longer be useful to them. I should have said that the owner is Pathway Vineyard Church. So the funding for this project is coming from fiscal year 23 capital improvement plan funds that were allocated towards the bridge replacement, as well as subsequent fiscal year 26 capital improvement plans that were further allocated. The property itself certainly is, you know, the use of the roadway isn't allowed use, the public infrastructure. The size of the lot that would be created is conforming, frontage is conforming, and then the remaining land would be conforming. The staff review identifies the portions of a comprehensive plan that are relevant, and the use of public infrastructure is certainly consistent with the goals of a comprehensive plan. Thanks. [5:55] Shanna Cox: The only thing I would add before I hand it over to you, sir, is that as we've noted from time to time, as chair of the planning board, I reviewed de minimis request. There is one associated with this, which essentially looks at the entirety of the original subdivision, which is many lots from 19, I think, 80 something, 88 I believe it is, and so while what you're seeing on this graphic here represents two lots and then the little triangle being cut out of one of those lots, we did approve it as de minimis. Because it's a very small, structural change to a very large subdivision that was proved very long time ago and for the public good, with all parties being agreeable. So for what that's worth, sir, anything. [6:39] Speaker D (unidentified): You want to add to Shelley's overview? No, she covered most of it. I can get into more details. [6:46] Jeff Bowley: If you, if you care, but it's, yeah, it's been a five-year process here to get to this point where we were originally looking at doing some relatively minor repairs to the abutments, and it turned out that was not going to be worth our money to put much money into that abutment. That's all old granite blocks. The bridge itself was replaced about 25 years ago, but the abutments are in, are eroding, in rough shape, and the bridge needs to get be closed every time the water gets to a flood elevation so that. We can go out afterwards and check the abutments and make sure it's safe to reopen. That happened a couple times in 20, 24, 23, hasn't recently, but you should knock on wood. Yeah, so turned out this was a really, you know, we have a bridge or culverts right there on Foss Road. It's really doesn't make much sense to have two bridges 200 feet apart across the same stream, so we've been talking to the church for a couple of years now and trying to negotiate something that was agreeable to them without you. Know, really pressuring them or going to the eminent domain of that sort of thing. They've been really cooperative, and this is both seems to be the best solution for about half the price of what it would cost us for a new bridge. So any. [8:20] Darren Galant: Questions from the board? Mr. Marquardt, there is a question. Will there be a complete decommissioning and removal of the old bridge? That's, that's the plan. Yes. Well, right back to nature, right? Because it does have a little bit of. [8:37] Jeff Bowley: Flood impact. We're next down to get under the bridge and we remove the remaining portion of the road and turn that back into green space to. [8:50] Darren Galant: What's the bridge on Foster of like condition wise? It's for metal culverts. [8:58] Jeff Bowley: Right now that were installed, I think, in the late 80s when the, when that Foster Road subdivision went through. So but they're currently in decent shape, no. [9:08] Darren Galant: No need for any work anytime soon, and remembering that area before it was subdivided, it was a outdoor theater, Lewiston theater, if I remember right, Lisbon Road drive-in. Yeah, now Voss Road, I know not Voss Road, Jordan Road once upon a time went all the way out through to the next town over. Is that still the case? [9:42] Jeff Bowley: Or has it been ended? The last house is in Lisbon, yes, but it ends after that, and then it's [9:49] Darren Galant: farm fields for a ways. So because it used to be passable 40 years, 50 years ago, and I thought that it kind of degraded over the years, so it's, it's not a destination road [10:04] Jeff Bowley: to know there's only I think three houses on the road so it's there are some a few large developable lots potentially someday but it's such a low use right now main do T won't contribute any funds towards it because it's under [10:24] Darren Galant: 100 trips a day using the road. So yeah, I believe that there's some abutting properties to the left of Jordan Road that shows up on Lewiston's disposition list every so many years, and I'm trying to sell them off because they're undersized for development. And I was trying to understand the cost and figures, so is 370, or is it 372, or 370,000? It's available for the 2023 capital improvement item, right? The 26 is the 370,000, and then the [11:11] Shanna Cox: I think it was 1.5 million was the 2023, that was when they thought they'd have to replace [11:17] Jeff Bowley: the whole bridge. No, actually we got three six three, fifty three sixty approved in twenty. That was for the repairs to the current bridge that we originally thought we could do. Turned out you couldn't, we couldn't. So then in 26 we asked for another 370 to be able to build the bypass road. [11:39] Darren Galant: we never asked for the whole 1.5 million what I'm trying to understand here okay going back to the language there's 372 thousand remaining in the 2023 funds no which means that there's 370 in the 2026 funds combination of the two is 742 000 is that adequate for the project will there be residual money after that's that's pretty close to what we're estimating the project to be okay because i was thinking that the project was around 370 and trying to reconcile the two different amounts so it's closer to the 740. Yeah, okay, thank you. Thanks. Any other questions [12:26] Shanna Cox: from the board? Okay, then I'd be looking for a motion. I think, I just, a comment, I think this is an excellent use of funds instead of building a bridge that keeps deteriorating. I make a motion pursuant to article 7, section 4 H of the zoning and land use code to send a favorable recommendation to the City Council for the acquisition of a 1.4 acre portion of 9 Foss Road. Thank you. I was a very quiet second by Darren. Thanks. I would also just add one comment, which is I usually this board are shrewd critical as we should be about disposition costs, particularly when it's more than an assessed value. But the explanation you gave is great, and I think it is worth $7,000, $8,000 to be good neighbors and to find a workable solution for everyone. So yeah, that's appreciated. Any other discussion on the I am on the floor, okay. Can you call the roll? [13:37] Unidentified speaker (Roll Call): Darren Gallant? Yes. Shanna Cox? Yes. Zoe Lidstrom, yes. Lucy Bisson? Yes. Penthea Burns? [13:44] Shanna Cox: Yes. Michael Marcotte? Yes. Great, motion passes. Just a thank you, good luck with your knee. [13:52] Unidentified speaker (Roll Call): Yeah, good luck. Yeah, okay. [13:56] Shanna Cox: Just a note for our audience who's here tonight. Normally we do not allow public comment during other business, and it's both listed as and was promoted as a public forum, and so we will be offering public comment on item C, which might feel a little confusing to what item B is, and so we'll hear item B first, then we'll hear our presentation, and then we'll allow public comment, just in terms of how that lays out with the agenda item here, okay. So other a business be update on the status of safety and mobility study for Main Street Sabata Street Canal Street and downtown Lisbon Street by tool design, and I didn't know if there was anything staff wanted to do to preface this item or invite up our [14:43] Michael Marcotte: representative from tool. No, but we will pull up the presentation for them. Great [14:48] Shanna Cox: Thanks. I think the next two items are yours, sir, ma'am, both of you feel free to come on up. We'll allow public comment after your presentation for the lisbon street portion [15:02] Speaker D (unidentified): is that okay this [15:05] Michael Marcotte: is the first one no this is the second one okay do you want it as a slideshow version like that is that good you're [15:30] Shanna Cox: both welcome to sit up and would just ask that you introduce yourself, name, affiliation, before you get underway. Hi [15:37] Lucia Gibson: my name is lucia gibson i'm a principal traffic engineer with tool design group and we've been working with a committee i'll have a lot more details on it over the last almost two years now on the lewiston transportation [15:49] Carl Epic: master planning study and my name's sorry my name's carl epic i'm also with tool design and i've been working on a project that was funded through atrc to look at what we've been calling outer lisbon street basically from the end of the lisbon street portion that lucy's been working on out past alfred a floor Parkway and Westminster Street. Great [16:14] Lucia Gibson: Thank you, take it away. Great, so since the study that I've been working on, it's a little further along, really very close to the end. Carl's is more in the midstream. We thought I'd start off and then pass it over to Carl, and I have a lot, I think we both have a lot of material to show. My plan is to go through it kind of quickly, but if you either want to come back to things or pause for questions, I'd welcome you to do that, because I don't want to leave people behind if I'm using too much jargon or anything like that, I think. So then for the planning [16:45] Shanna Cox: board, a clarifying question before they move on, but if you're asking like a substantive question, write it down and we'll hold it. If you need to write the title of the slide so that you can [16:53] Lucia Gibson: remember which one to go back to, yeah, and we'll have as much time as you want to take at the end. So the project I've been working on with a number of wonderful people here at, and I jump over to here, with the city, we had Paul Niehoff, Kevin Gagne, Jeff Buehle, Shelly Norton and people from Maine DOT, Matt Drost and Claire Winter, our team at Tool Design plus a number of other people were contributing, but Carl and I were both involved. We had as a subcontractor Viewshed, they are a public engagement and landscape architect team and they had a big role in engagement. Engagement, we also had Jim Tassie Consulting and he worked specifically on the demonstration project component that we all got to see last summer. Let's get back to our agenda. I want to just give a quick overview about the study, some of the things that we learned about Lewiston streets today, some of the design goals and principles that we have been putting forward into our design recommendations, and probably focus more attention on the recommendations because that's kind of where we are in the study, but want to make sure everybody and comes along with how we got there. So our study area for this project included four corridors, Main Street from the bridge up to the Russell Street interchange, Canal and Lisbon Street between Main Street and where they come back down together, and then at some point that transitions into Carl's study going further out, and then Sabata Street from Main Street out to Grove Street. So it's a quite an extensive area and so it limited how much detail we got in any one place but we I think we got pretty far along so a little bit of background on this the this is from the city's initial framing of the project we want to identify short-term and potential transformative transportation recommendations to improve safety accessibility resiliency equity and economic development we're looking at lane use and layout of streets and intersections complete street design principles looking at traffic signals and whether we need new ones or are they outdated and other measures for access management, and where practical and appropriate, incorporate complete streets design standards and aesthetic updates to promote safety, beautification, and a sense of place. We did a lot. We focused a lot on building on past work. You've done so much great work here. The rimp update was one of the big factors, especially for the recommendations along Canal Street, just wrapping up as we were starting with the Safe Streets for All safety action plan. That was a regional effort of both Lewiston and Auburn, but it provided a lot of great data for us to work from. There's a bike network plan from ATRC that we definitely fed into our study. The heads of Lewiston, this was a street safety initiative that had a couple iterations in the last few years that provided a lot of good short-term recommendations, and the ATRC complete streets guide, which laid out some initial ideas for some of these corridors. So sorry the fonts are all different than we, but I think they're all working, so one of the things I'm, safety is obviously always one of the primary things we always look at, and we had a lot of great data from that Safe Streets for All action plan. We were able to parse out just the survey results from our corridors, and these are some of the things that were in most on people's mind as what make them feel unsafe. And I kind of color-coded them a little bit. Of the top three are really about driver behavior, speeding, distracted driving, and people not yielding to me. That's especially considering someone trying to cross the street, saying the next set of highly frequent comments were missing bike lanes, missing sidewalks, cracked an uneven street, and poor lighting. So a little more about the network and maintenance, and then finally a number of other areas to that all contribute to a lot of people feeling unsafe. What one of the things we took away from this was that safety and speeds are really the primary concerns that people had, and that's whether they're driving or Walking or biking, however you're getting around, and driver behavior was really considered one of the root causes of the unsafe conditions. So what that's indicated to us is we really need to focus on street designs that will reduce speeds and really get drivers attention on the people, other people using the road. And there are some techniques on to do that, basically slowing people down and making sure they can see all of the things going on in a, you know, a busy street network like many of these streets are in your city. This is just data coming in from the safety action plan again, but it really showed the big takeaways. Main Street between the bridge and Savannah Street was really one of the hot spots of like glowing and the yellow you can see on the upper map that really has a lot of crashes. So that's, but all of the corridors are showing up on the on the this heat map of crashes. So one of the big exciting parts of the project was the demonstration project, and it was great to see it back in the street this year. Would love to hear comments and questions on it. So the again coming into the project, we knew that a priority was to really take this project, testing it out on the ground was the big idea that we did not the whole corridor. A lot of people were concerned it's only, it's so short. The eventual plan is definitely for it to go all the way up and down, but extending it further had a lot of technical challenges which actually relate to the signal that will take a little more time to work through. But it really was, people seem to love it who are using it, and one of the really neat things that we learned about it was by collecting speed data. This is a little bit tricky to read, but I think the main thing to look at is that orange line, which is the percentage or number of people that were speeding. About midway through the chart where you see the big drop in the blue, that's when the project went in. So before the, before the demonstration project went in, about 48 of the people were observing a speed limit and a little more than half speeding. Afterwards, 85 percent of the drivers were driving within the speed limit and only 15 speeding, and that is just great data that contributes so much to safety because speed is really the number one thing that we have to concern. We had a really great public engagement event called Reimagining Our Streets, where we got a lot of people coming through different booths and questionnaires and activities that gave us a lot of great Feedback on what people think of the ideas we present, some initial ideas. One of the things that this was done just at near the end of the Canal Street demonstration project, and people gave us their ideas of what they liked about it. And when we asked if that should be extended the full length of Canal Street, we got a resounding yes, agreed with that. So again, the plan is to go further down the street, but we really got a really positive feedback, which I think has helped gave the public work staff the Initiative they needed to come put it back in this year. Okay. There we go. That's just some more photos from the event. Another bit of information, another thing in the scope of our study was to look at, Should any of these streets that are now one way be converted to two-way or what should that? That, you know, what should their future be. And we've done both technical analyses and looking at measurements, dimensions, but also wanted to get public feedback on the people that use these streets. And we got a pretty good set of results that showed both Lisbon and Canal and Park, people really shed to different degrees, but keep them one way as they are. And that kind of makes sense with the narrow width and the disruption of parking and other things that would be happened by converting them to two-way, but people like the idea of converting Bates Street, Hammond Street and Middle Street to two-way, and those are all shorter sections of one-way street that I'm sure had a good reason to do them well when they were done, but maybe no longer need to be one-way streets and will really help unlock some circulation. So those are recommendations as far as that goes, I already kind of jumped to the one I keep moving, so we had a lot of feedback study, I haven't, you know, it's all going to be more detailed in our report that's coming out, but I wanted to get focused more now on what are we doing with the information for recommendations. So a few things to review first is talking about some of the design principles and goals that we have been thinking about and looking at the streets. One is something that called a road diet, I don't know if that's a Familiar term, so it is okay. So there are a number of these corridors. Main Street and Sabata Street in particular are four lanes, and they the design of them, especially when there's no median and no left turn lane, really creates a lot of potential for conflicts and blocking visibility, blocking visibility of pedestrians and whatnot. So by considering a road diet, we can reduce speeds, conflicts, crashes, improve pedestrian safety, and essentially provide room for other modes of traffic. It's also very much main DOT is very much on board with looking, taking a really serious look at this, and they've been involved in the study the whole way. Speed and safety are really key elements of this, and the reduction of speed is one of the big reasons road diets do work well, and the speeds are really what have a huge outcome in crashes, especially with somebody walking or biking. The lower the speeds, the much more greater likelihood everybody walks away and gets home safely at the end of the day. We did have discussion about speed enforcement, and you know police enforcement is definitely can be a piece of street safety, but by creating street designs that really help reinforce the safe speeds is going to be more effective, not require so much time, and more proactive, and more kind of encouraging safe behavior. So those are some of the things that we really want to bring into our recommendations. We've also taken a real close look at congestion capacity, and the recommendations we have were all scrutinized and subject to a lot of traffic analysis. One of the things that we want to emphasize is that it's some of these intersections they're designed, they're really designed for much higher volumes than we see today, and whether those volumes were even here in the past or that was just what was planned when they were laid out, the results of that are higher speeds and passing and really a lot of the safety issues that you're seeing today. And one of the things that's going to be important to as these ideas work their way forward, and again Maine DOT will be involved, but it's like some of the recommendations are making might make things a little less free-flowing or a little more congested during a peak hour of the day. And I just showed that chart on the left to show a typical traffic pattern that you know one of your busy intersections, you can see the afternoon, that's a daily pattern from midnight to midnight, and then the afternoon peak out traffic is quite a bit higher, but if we're willing to tolerate a little congestion for that one hour you can have a safer street for the whole 24 hours and that's a you know decision that you'll consider and you know main dot and [29:04] Shanna Cox: whatever, this will be a discussion. Can you tell us, can you tell us what it says in the orange box at the bottom? I'm sorry, can you tell us what it says in the orange box at the bottom? The text is going [29:15] Lucia Gibson: outside and it's white. Yeah, I think that, yeah, sometimes the fonts, I think if we accept some additional congestion here, we can have a safer street for the entire day. I can't even quite read it all. Sorry. So anyway. And I want to talk a little bit about level of service, because one of the things I'll get to in a little bit is we did a big survey, and a lot of people really liked these ideas, but their main concern was traffic congestion, and when we did the survey, we didn't have the ability to get people completely up to date in the analysis, but we've done a lot of traffic modeling, and we feel very comfortable that the recommendations will not create any unreasonable congestion, and they're in line with what Maine DOT's done. So what I'm showing here is just a chart with all the different intersections we've looked at in a network, and then the level of service, which is a grade from A to F, with A being like free flow and F being gridlock, and, you know, we're kind of everything in between. What we really want to target, one of the problems with having this A through F scale is you think A is better, but in fact in an urban street you don't want it, you don't want to design for wide open roads at the peak hour, you want to have it filled up and maybe even a little congestion in the peak hour, and then that's a much more efficient plan, and it's actually much safer. So when we look at what we're designing for, we want to target something like the C and D level of service, and what you can see in the chart, I know it's a lot of detail, and there'll be time to peruse it on, over designed too much extra capacity, a lot of room for change, and so the ones that are green are kind of in a good target place and the ones that are only two that are E at this point are Spadison, Russell Street, where it's pretty congested in the afternoon peak hour, and then we've also looked out 20 years in the future, we're not looking just yet today, and sorry [31:21] Shanna Cox: Can I make you go back to that slide? Yep. It is a bit of a clarifying question, or even just a footnote for later, but we have reviewed on a number of occasions development that outputs onto East and drives traffic to East and Russell, as well as just beyond Grants Bakery on the other side, which I think is like the Russell connector. It's the connector that connects to Farwell. Yeah, essentially the Farwell Street neighborhood, but the Charles Street development, we're anticipating a number of new units of housing that were approved, and we heard quite a bit from residents in the neighborhood about this specific area, and they feel that congestion. Yeah, well, and so that's one question is it, does the, is the E actually the spot of which doesn't have an outlet, like goes into the bank? Yeah, so it doesn't count, like there, it doesn't count any additional. It's the dead end one that goes to the bank, and then there's the one that does go to Farwell. Even the one at the credit union. Yeah, I think the credit union one is the EE, which is essentially saying that there's- It says Russell and Sabatus. Sabatus and Russell, if you follow- [32:43] Lucia Gibson: That's the one that's in gray, yeah. [32:45] Shanna Cox: Yeah, and that's a horrible, corner. I live on [street]. I go by it. I don't know if it's the one that's in gray, umpteen times, and it's horrible. So what is E for a grade, that for E? Yeah, well [33:01] Lucia Gibson: that means it's getting close to F, which is more like where you'd have real, you know, waiting several times for lights to change, like throughout the hour, that happens now, I'm sure, you know, it's sometimes all over town, and so really getting where the volume there's, and this is looking at very detailed information about how the signals operate, so there's potentially a lot of efficiency can be gained by just, you know, retiming signals and that kind of thing, but it's, it's, you know, the pinch point in this whole network is what we have seen. Yeah, and these are all counts that were done 2024 and 2025 [33:44] Shanna Cox: which for our standards, that's pretty recent, right? So, and I can assume, I guess this is a question for staff as much as it is for you guys, but I can assume that the 20 45 data assumes the developments that have been approved and are in the pipeline. Obviously we can't know what we don't know, but we do know what we are. Yeah, so it's like looking at, yeah, some members of our board are newer since we approved that and heard that public comment, and so I did want to just flag it in the context. Thanks so [34:20] Lucia Gibson: Now getting into some of the recommendations. I'm going through by each corridor, Canal Street. This is going from Main Street to down back to where it meets Lisbon, from left to right. So some key things, we had the demonstration project going from Maine to Chestnut, and then the recommendation was to continue that demonstration project all the way down to where it rejoins Lisbon. That does require some signal work at Chestnut and at Cedar Street, so those would be things that would have a little more work to do before that could really happen. Some other things that we looked at were bike lane connections on Ash Street and Pine Street. It's a contraflow direction. We've shown them in all of them. They don't necessarily all need to be done, but they're a way to get it, you know, you're gonna have a wonderful bike facility on Canal Street just to make it easy to get up to Lisbon Street if you're on bike or on foot, and potentially it's sort of optional thing is looking at Cedar having a two-way operation is something that is feasible and might be beneficial again for circulation and getting people. So and then really reconstructing, you know, doing permanent in construction in a more white consistent with what you have in the riverfront island master plan, an example of what that might look like on the right, upper right photo, and here's again the rendering that's very much consistent with what we looked at, what you know works in the construction plans that we've drawn up. So Very, high-level cost estimates might be something like $6 million to get for each half of the project, and those are not engineered cost estimates yet, but can help for planning level purposes of trying to go on to implementation. And then here are some of the drilling into the design plans that the lower left shows the existing condition, and the main drawing there would be full implementation where you'd have a wider sidewalk with landscape along the edge of the canal, the two-way separated bike lanes, they're about five feet each total, and then separated from traffic, and then each intersection is really where the tricky parts get to make it easy and safer people bikes and cars to get back and on and off Canal Street. So This is what Pine Street looks like. Cedar Street's even a little more complicated, but again, having Canal Street is a one-lane Street. We'd have the Cedar Street sort of right turn ramp that comes, the curved ramp would be one lane, and that could then therefore have a nice wide sidewalk walkway promenade along the canal, which could be a nice public space. And Cedar Street we've sketched in here as two-way, which is possible within the geometry. It's not required by any means. And then again, the bike lanes coming through, and we have done some routing of large trucks, knowing the kind of traffic that has to get on and off the island, and that is considered in design. Those pinkish areas are what we call truck aprons. They'd be something that a truck can roll over, but a car would tend to go around. So Lisbon Street was the other big corridor downtown. In general, people liked it one way, so we haven't made any suggestions of major changes, except potentially south of Cedar Street. But one of the recommendations is to have it just be one lane going northbound of travel, that the volumes are very much within that range, and that would both allow us continuous bike lane and reduce speeds and increase the pedestrian visibility of crossings. And a couple things that we also gathered from both observing and public input was that as you're traveling north on Lisbon at Pine Street and Ash Street, there are turning lanes, and that requires cars to have to move around. The turning lanes really aren't necessary. There's not enough turning traffic, and it would allow removing those and just keeping one lane, of course allowing turns, but you don't need the separate lane, allows the bike lane to get come consistently all the way through. And a final thing that we did uncover in our work, and the city's also been looking at this, is this traffic signals that Ash, Pine, and Chestnut are all not really warranted by traffic, 's low enough, and because they're very simple intersections, those could be converted to always stop signs. And so I think at this point, the city's not moving rapidly towards doing that, but it would be an option in the in the future. And here's just a cross section. This is like a slice across the road showing the arrangement of between Spruce and Chestnut, where it's now two lanes, and we'd have it, we recommend it to be one travel lane for vehicles and one bike lane with enough room as a separation from the cars. There are different thoughts on whether we should have the bikes Against the curb and the parking out more in the street, that does bring maintenance issues, and the speeds here with this arrangement should be pretty low and comfortable for biking. So, and this is just showing where those turning lanes are, but I saw a lot of heads nodding, so I think you know what that them what's planned for that. So now looking at Main Street, here's a map of Main Street from the river going up to Sabata Street and on up towards Russell Street. We have it Lincoln Street that first red circle. We have some proposal to reconfigure the intersection, remove the slip lane again, that'll make things slower, better for pedestrians, and a more orderly flow. And then same thing at Sabata Street, kind of a major reconfiguration. And on the cross section below, generally speaking, we'd show have doing all the traffic modeling, having two lanes of through traffic coming in from Auburn going up Main Street is going to work at most of the intersections, but really we only need one lane in the opposite direction because at any point you only have one lane of traffic feeding into it. So that's a typical section would have two lanes northbound, which sort of going to the right on this drawing, and then one lane the other direction. Here's Maine and Lincoln again, for pedestrian safety, speeds and whatnot, tightening up the corner and making it more of a conventional intersection will make it safer for people to cross on all sides of the intersection. We'd have room for a median refuge in the crosswalk, some potential more public space. There's such nice features on the other corners, so that kind of could be continued all around. Bike lanes could then have be provided in both directions that are separated from traffic with the buffer and potentially flex post depending on the exact locations. We did take a quick peek at the idea of a roundabout. There was a lot of interest and one could potentially fit, but what we you know what the group that was looking at this carefully and for public input, we didn't see the reason to spend you know a lot of money, a lot of construction and areas that are already really nicely landscaped. So that isn't a recommendation that is promoted, but it is something that could, you know, if there's time in the future that wanted to be revisited, a roundabout could work really well in terms of handling the traffic and providing kind of a gateway and lower speeds. So going up to Maine and Sebastis, this was a intersection we you know observed and heard a lot About the slip lane, of particular concern, the lack of bike infrastructure, the having the two lanes kind of shooting north and then having to merge just north of the intersection, the high speeds and passing, and then the double left turn from Sabbatical to Maine is definitely a hot something that produces more crashes that may not be necessary. So here is the proposed design. So it has for Main Street there'd be two lanes approaching but one, we close the slip lane and make a right turn only lane. But from the main line of Main Street and one through lane in each direction, turning lanes would still be there. We would do one of the concerns that people had is about bike signals and the right turn lane and I'll show in the next slide how we'd be managing that to really keep it safe for bikes. So a single left turn lane from Sabata Street too because there's only one lane on the other spot and then really some nice opportunities for public space or landscaping there in front of the temple. So getting into some of the geeky traffic engineering, what I have in the bottom here is a phasing diagram and I did want to sort of emphasize this a bit because that was a concern when we showed the drawing. People worried about well all the right turning traffic from Main Street down to Sabatis is going to hit the bikes and that's definitely a concern and it is a really high movement. But what we have done the traffic modeling from and proposed for the intersection design would be a phasing system where if you go left to right on those boxes you'd first have, this is the sequence of the traffic light, you'd have the left turns going from Main Street in their own phase, then you'd have the through traffic on Main Street but the right turning traffic would be stopped, it would not have a green light, it'd be a red arrow, and that's when you'd have the bikes crossing, then you move on. So you have the right turning traffic so it has its own Lane so we'll have plenty of traffic stacked up ready to go at the same time Sabata Street goes so there's no conflicts and then you'd have the pedestrian crossing. So that's what we've assumed in our traffic model that does work with capacity and you know it'll be all these things will probably feel a little tighter and more congested but it's not any immediate and reasonable amount of congested all and really safer and more orderly and really more efficient designed in response to the volumes. So again it's that you know might feel a little pinch at The peak, but certainly it's well within the reasonable level, I think. Right now it's C and B in the a.m. and p.m. This would go to C and D, a little more of a hit in the afternoon, but D is a very reasonable in that level of service target for an urban street system in a downtown area like this, and it does meet Main DOT guidelines. They're very willing to accept level of service D is something they're, they find it typically, and we did look quickly at a roundabout here and really the other design we think will work really well, and the cost of a roundabout and impacts would be pretty high here because with, you know, accommodating the large trucks and it's kind of a tight spot, so that didn't really advance further. But all right, so Bata Street was then the next corridor, and one of the reasons this was really important is it's going to be resurfaced by Maine DOT in a couple years. Jeff, you know, the 2028, maybe potentially 27. So the recommendations that we come up with might potentially have a near-term implementation opportunity. So what we're calling inner Sabatis, which is from Main Street out to around East Avenue, where it's already two lanes in one direction, but we could reconfigure it to have the parkings not heavily utilized with some reconfiguration. You could have bike lanes in each side and parking on one side, which side of the road the parking could shift as you go down, depending on what the land uses are and the needs. And Sebastian College was a particularly focused because there's been several crashes there and it's a complicated intersection, and I'm sure you all know from trying to drive through. So and I don't know why my screen has a little animation, but after looking at a lot of different options we looked at mini roundabouts and lots of different ways to sort things out, but this is the recommendation that really garnered the most support of the city, Main DOT, and others that we heard, basically tightening up all the corners, and one of the big changes to circulation is that Horton Street would become one way northbound. You wouldn't be able to turn in on Horton Street, and that really helps alleviate congestion and kind of simplify all the different movements. So if you're in Horton you'd come up to the intersection to be able to turn right only, and you wouldn't have a signal, and it's a very low volume, so it's not really affecting a large number of people, and there's plenty of other ways to get over There, but basically we'd have a left turn lane from Sabatis on to College, which isn't there now, and that will actually help alleviate pedestrian crossings and kind of reduce pressure on people to feel like I have to turn left, I'm holding up traffic and everyone's behind me. If you get your own lane, you can kind of relax and wait till you're feel like you have the right opportunity, so we think that'll be helpful thing, and otherwise it's really tightening it up, slowing it down, and making sure pedestrians are more visible, and there's some nice opportunities then for public space on some of the wider sidewalks. Sebastis, Ashton, Central, there's just a brand new curb ramp project coming in, and with its already single lanes, which is not a really a road diet candidate, so no major changes, but we did come up with a long term scheme of a small roundabout could fit in there and really work well with the way the volumes are in circulation. The idea of this roundabout is you'd get the bikes could ride through it with traffic if they're more confident riders, but the route around would be wide enough for less confident riders to go around the roundabout and not have to go mixing with traffic. Can [49:17] Shanna Cox: ask a question on this line? Yeah, can I ask a question on this side, the right there by Central and Sabbatus is stationed a crosswalk guard in the mornings, and it's one of the few spots that gets a human and a stop sign to help manage traffic, and pretty much any middle schooler that lives in the tree streets is walking through this intersection to get to the middle school each day and then home, and it can be a little bit of mayhem. I live like a block from this intersection, drive through there regularly, and so would something like a roundabout provide more kind of pedestrians like a storage space for the people to be collecting and then to transition all at once to Central Ave where the middle school is? Would it create some additional kind of pedestrian opportunities? Because right now that's how it's used by the crossing guard, like they'll wait until the traffic has gone by mostly through a signal, then they'll just stop everything in all directions and folks kind of walk from whichever way down towards Central. Would that create a safe spot for that? [50:33] Lucia Gibson: So well, I mean, the way it should work is that every all the cars slow down quite a bit with the design, and so having to have people wait so long is probably not necessary. But you'd probably want to identify, you know, designate the main route for kids so you can't have, you probably don't want to have, you know, five crossing guards, right, and all of them. But I don't think it necessarily work terribly differently, but thanks. So now looking at the outer part of Sabbatis, which this is showing from Central to Grove is to, we looked at a road diet and did a pretty detailed analysis with all the signalized intersections there, and again informing the main DOT implementation, which might be as soon as next year. We did a level of service again, the same kind of using the 2024, 2025 counts. We found that most of the intersections are currently C or better, that means they might be potentially kind of over designed. The intersection with East is at level of service D, that's getting little congestion Again, the one with Russell is the most kind of critical one at level of service E, and I think that fits the people's expectations. So with the road diet we've got a few drops, so Russell would stay level service E, we're not trying to make it a better level of service, so it will still probably feel kind of congested, but it would be operating differently. We'll show the details, and then I think it's East and Old Randall and Old Green would drop down to level service D, again very acceptable for that peak hour traffic the others actually stay at sea or better there 's really ample capacity and those are really the only intersections that have much constraint so here's sebastis and russell i guess i don't have a existing diagram but what right now it's you know two through lanes in each direction and then a double turn lane from russell and what we would propose is one through lane in each direction on sebastis street and then one right turn lane that would extend up to Russell Street to, Again, and we'll look at the same kind of signal phasing as we saw in Savannah Street, and then bike lanes would fit through on each direction. The Russell Street approach coming southbound would have one left turn lane instead of two that it has today, and really no change on the other direction. Do you have a question? [53:12] Shanna Cox: Yeah, I do. I live just past Grove Street, so I go by this intersection all the time. The left turn now, are you going to add a left turn signal to that intersection? Yeah, at the Sabbatist going out, going out to get down to Russell, right? Yeah, because right now there is no left turn and it's it's a bottleneck because people want to turn on to Russell and the traffic's coming down town and it you know traffic's too fast and it's very dangerous intersection at this point. If it had a turn, you know, left turn signal there, that would alleviate it and that's yeah and that's [54:00] Lucia Gibson: Exactly, so when you and when you think of it 's right now two lanes but one lane gets blocked, mm-hmm, because and it's really only one lane, so this is sort of formalizing that and make it safer and more predictable and you can't have that left turn phase unless you have the left turn lane, so that is [54:15] Shanna Cox: Definitely something that one of the worst parts is that the left turn lane is actually also a straight lane and so not only do you get stuck but you have somebody two cars up or two cars behind You jamming into right trying to cut people off unexpectedly, it's a very dangerous and that's what [54:33] Lucia Gibson: Causes so many crashes is the weaving around on those kind of four-lane roads and that would really be go away and in this case we'd showing again for the concern again a bike can going westbound we would do the same kind of phasing as we talked about Sabbatist where the through phase on Sabbatist that would be bikes would cross with no conflicts and then the right turns from Sabbatist up to Russell would go during the same time as the Russell Street approach. This is like well I'm gonna skip Past this one just because we the other thing that we've looked in the long term what could work really well here is what we call a flared entry roundabout or hybrid roundabout, a single lane roundabout would be not provide enough capacity for the amount of traffic but something like this where you have one lane entering but it flares to two lane to get around the roundabout and then back to one lane, the example on the left is a actually in Wisconsin but it's designed by a roundabout designer Who's done other work in Maine and kind of so something that's just kind of an example and the diagram on the right is what we recommend for this particular location. So that's something that would take you know here I have a little diagram here. It would cut into the corners of the property. It would require some right-of-way. It would not need to cut into any buildings the up the northwest corner the gas pumps are gone so that could be maybe potentially so that's something to think about in the long term but they are big projects that take time to cost but you've got to start somewhere and a lot of money yeah and I think the main D.O.T. project's probably not going to come and do that next year but it might be something that can get onto their program and then the intersection of Randall and Old Green that was another one where we heard a lot of concerns and complaints. It kind of curved you have two lanes crossing at a curve through the middle of the intersection and a lot of crashes and kind of driver stress I guess I'd say and again the lack of left turn lanes especially for the ones for the westbound direction which has that same problem of weaving and stopping. So the recommendation here is left turn lanes in both directions on Sabatis and then a single through lane. We've also included a right lane from Sabatis coming eastbound because of the volume suggests that would work well and then bike lanes that then can fit through not really any changes to Randall and Old Green but the driving through should be less stressful and a lot safer and not having [57:31] Shanna Cox: those side-by-side curving road complex the problem with that intersection and it's the drivers there's you know the lines are there and everything it's the people taking a left onto to Old Green Road instead of stopping where the line says you should stop they go they continue right into the middle of the intersection so that the people coming down from going east end up don't have the room or even now there's two lanes on heading east and so the one in the middle lane gets cramped because this guy is way out where that right he doesn't belong yeah and so that causes issues at that intersection and if you've only got one lane being able to pass through I think that right yeah that there'd be more room and most definitely cannot [58:25] Lucia Gibson: Hurt, yeah, so very stressful. I think it's, I think it's great. I think it's great. And maybe in the long run, a roundabout might be something to consider here, and we just kind of sketched out what the diameter of it might look like. It wouldn't affect any buildings. It would require [58:42] Shanna Cox: property, but wait, can you go back one second? Sorry, this is for staff, because when we did the commercial corridor review in this area, and then we were like looking parcel by parcel, [59:04] Michael Marcotte: are you talking about rezoning review for rezoning? Okay, that little wedge was [59:12] Shanna Cox: like undevelopable and suggested to be held for something like this, and so we [59:16] Speaker J (unidentified): just wanna, yeah, it was recently sold and combined in two lots. Yeah, anyway, this is [59:25] Shanna Cox: the kind of thing we want to be thinking about though, right? Yeah, would have been, you know, would have been nice to have known. Yeah, crystal balls and all that jazz. Please carry on, [59:35] Lucia Gibson: and the circle we've drawn there's kind of conservative and maybe more generous that needs to, but you want to kind of know what it might need. That's kind of really, so we did a survey where we shared a lot of these design drawings that you just saw with the public. We got over 400 responses, which was really great, lots of great comments and feedback. Generally the areas support people like the pedestrian safety, to lower speeds, better bicycle accommodations, simplified attractive traffic movements, and being more attractive, and the concerns were traffic congestion due to travel lanes, and I know that's a, again, I think we will be able to dress that in a report that we don't expect unreasonable congestion, and that's something that is natural to be concerned about. Out a concern was low demand for the bicycle facilities, and you know what we see is when it's unsafe to bike, only if the people have no choice but to bike do it, and you could really build up, it's such a nice bikeable scale in Lewiston, things are kind of the right distance apart that you might really see a big growth once the network reaches kind of a critical point. Tax cost and taxpayer impacts, that's always going to be a concern, and parking loss and emergency vehicle access are all things that can be really addressed in the design, and I won't read all of these, but we got some really nice positive feedback and comments that just people seemed really excited about the design plans, and then whoops, a lot of concerns or Some negative, you know, there's always people, you're never going to get unanimous consent, but people thinking it's too bike, too much focused on bikes, they were concerned about that. Congestion were definitely a concern, and again, we'll be able to address this in the report in a little more detail. And a lot of concern about maintenance, like things aren't maintained well now, let's do that first before we build things. But really this study is, you know, looking forward and ahead, and you know, we have to streets get rebuilt every now and then, and that's what, you know, this is more focused on [1:01:44] Shanna Cox: Can I ask a question? Sure. One of the comments was about curb cuts and accessibility for people in chairs, and the plans and recommendations that you're making, is that accommodating for those kinds of things to be maintained? [1:01:58] Lucia Gibson: Mm-hmm, oh yeah, absolutely, yeah, and that's really required in design, and this is just a response to the question that we asked about each design, if you liked it, don't like it, or it needs work. And in all of them, that like it was sometimes a majority outright, or at least the plurality, what most people liked, and then you know, need some work, people kind of made suggestions of what to improve, which we've definitely taken into account, and so maybe a third, a quarter to a third don't like that, and that's that is sort of what people's reaction to change is so that's not surprising and it doesn't mean that they should happen but we do need to just pay attention to what people's concerns are and what they said as it goes forward and we've got a great basis of data on that now a quick table of the and i think things got a little off course but basically this is that same table showing as we go to the 2045 no bill to the proposed which is the third column and sixth column we have a little less purple, which is actually a good thing, or maybe less overbuilt. We don't really see any big congestion areas, and Russell Street again is the one that's of critical path, but nothing else really falls into that level, so we're pretty comfortable that the traffic congestion analysis shows that it would work and be reasonable. So, and that's it, sorry, that was a lot, a lot of material, but thanks for your patience, I'm [1:03:30] Shanna Cox: happy to answer questions. Thanks, Lucy. Well, I took notes, I didn't want to interrupt the flow, and then we started interrupting, so if you go back to the Lisbon Street slide, it's relatively early, let's see here, so [1:03:58] Lucia Gibson: we're just over a few, let's see, yeah [1:04:01] Shanna Cox: That one, so according to the, to this, in the orange, from Cedar Street to Canal Street, where Lisbon joins Canal, you're proposing to make it two-way. Well, so that's something that I mean, that's, that's what it says. Okay, that's your [1:04:20] Carl Epic: presentation well it's not just that but it's from there 's six okay [1:04:26] Shanna Cox: Well, we can, so I just wanted to make sure that I had to hear that up. Okay, [1:04:31] Lucia Gibson: because that's something that our study isn't kind of weighing in on a final way, [1:04:35] Shanna Cox: knowing that this other study was. Okay, all right, well I'll wait to see what you have to say. Yeah. Great, okay, other comments or questions from the board? Zoe? Yeah. [1:04:47] Unidentified speaker (Roll Call): Thank you for this presentation. I'll just say to start that I'm a huge proponent of anything that calms traffic. You kind of have to physically force people to drive the way that they should be driving, because clearly relying on people to follow the speed limit, etc., isn't working. So thank you for all that work. And I was just curious how a decision will be made vis-a-vis the bike lanes and whether or not to have them on, well, which side of parked cars to have them on. Like, how will that decision be made? Because I know that there's some, there's some question about which one you would do. [1:05:27] Lucia Gibson: So, well, that's something that can probably, on Sabata Street in particular, that section where [1:05:33] Shanna Cox: we're, is that what, by bike lanes and parking? I think I hear a question about process. Oh yeah, [1:05:40] Unidentified speaker (Roll Call): by, because there were a couple, I think it's actually just one slide after this one you showed a couple of, yeah, different options, and the bottom one. Okay, I'm sorry, let me go back. Like there you show buffers on all of the bike lanes, but, for instance, the Canal Street like study or demonstration area, the parking was actually between the road surface for cars and the surface for bikes. And you had mentioned at some point in your presentation that 's one way you can do it, but there's like a question about whether or not to do that where you have bike lanes. so i'm just wondering how will you make a decision or how will a decision be made as to where to put the bike lanes vis-a-vis the parking lanes so that's a great question there is a lot [1:06:36] Lucia Gibson: that goes into that. So, and honestly, Anise, it could go either way. We didn't get a strong [1:06:43] Shanna Cox: Read so can I ask a clarifying question? I'm sorry, just an update on it. I think inherently in there and I and I know Zoe for longer than you have. I think part of what she's asking is also a staff question, which is you will be making a recommendation and your recommendation might say parking should be on the exterior of the bike service or on the interior of the service and however you might reach that recommendation hopefully is great. I think the question is how will a decision be made that's at least part of it, which is a city that is part of my question. [1:07:17] Unidentified speaker (Roll Call): I also have an opinion on this, but yeah, I don't depending on how the process works, you know, whether my opinion makes a difference is also a question, so like the factors that go in are any place where [1:07:30] Lucia Gibson: we'd have a lot of driveways you'd want to have the parking along the curb because the parking can hide a bike traveling from somebody turning into a driveway, let's say, so that's one thing that comes into it. The other thing is maintenance. If it's really tight and you have a bike lane and not much room between the park cars, it's hard for the city to remove snow and maintain it, so and then think about how important it is for the bicycle comfort if it's you know the park cars do provide protection So if it's a higher speed corridor and more traffic you might want TO AIR MORE TO PUTTING PARKING PUTTING THE BIKES ON THE CURB AND PARKING IN THE MIDDLE THOSE BEING [1:08:13] Shanna Cox: SOME OF THE SIGNIFICANCE THOSE ARE ALL KIND OF CONSIDERATIONS WITH IT BEING ONE LANE IT SHOULD HAVE PRETTY LOW SPEEDS UM THANKS BUT WE'RE FINDING A PLACE I'M JUST GOING TO EXTEND THAT QUESTION TO JEFF BEHIND YOU AND ALSO TO JOHN WHICH IS WE UNDERSTAND THE FACTORS AND HOW THE CONSULTANTS MIGHT BE MAKING A RECOMMENDATION ON WHERE THOSE ARE BUT HOW ULTIMATELY WILL THE DECISION BE MADE about where to place bike service in each of these corridors? Feel free to grab a mic. Can you pass it to him so he doesn't have to get back up again? The one with yes that probably should get you pretty far. It's okay. Yeah, it's got [1:08:51] Speaker D (unidentified): like another, it's got a coil, so I'll just say on because this was proposed. [1:08:59] Jeff Bowley: Trash and pine where DOT is currently paving, so we did bring it up to them as far as restriping. I think that was one of Lucy's suggestions on that one too, was to move the parking, on the move the parking towards the travel lane there. Their main concern was not having a buffer where people are parking on both sides. They were concerned that if somebody opened their door, the car wouldn't have enough room to go around with parking on the other side. So I think if we could maintain some sort of a little bit more buffer between the traveling and the parking, that would be much more possible solution. There's also a lot of side streets on Ash and pine, or visibility is a concern, so all these streets would be in conjunction with dot, would have to get dot to sign off on those changes. I'm not sure if we would need to get to the council level, but engineering and public works would definitely provide their recommendation and admin Brian [1:10:22] Speaker D (unidentified): etc would have a say too. Would the complete streets committee be reviewing [1:10:28] Shanna Cox: AND WEIGHING IN ON A RECOMMENDATION, EVEN IF IT'S JUST TO YOU AND PUBLIC WORKS, BASED ON THE RECOMMENDATIONS [1:10:34] Jeff Bowley: FROM... YEAH, I WOULD SAY SO. DID [1:10:38] Shanna Cox: YOU WANT TO TAKE THIS OPPORTUNITY TO SHARE A LITTLE BIT ABOUT WHAT YOU HOPE THEY WOULD CONSIDER AS THEY MAKE THAT DECISION? [1:10:44] Unidentified speaker (Roll Call): WELL, IT SOUNDS LIKE, FIRST OFF, THERE ARE MORE CONSIDERATIONS THAN I HAD BEEN AWARE OF. I DON'T DO A LOT OF BICYCLING, PARTIALLY BECAUSE THERE ISN'T INFRASTRUCTURE FOR IT. BUT I DO HAPPEN TO KNOW SOMEONE who lived in San Francisco who was a bike commuter who died when she swerved to avoid someone opening their car door and was immediately hit by a box truck, so that's what informs my opinion about being in favor of having the parked lane in between the car traveling and the bike traveling. But I take your point, the point is well taken about if there are a lot of like driveways And so on that if it reduces visibility to do that, then that ends up working to counter purposes to keeping bicyclists safe. So but that's just Yeah, so there's space for a door to be opened there but not a physical protection, so yeah. But thanks for explaining the different factors that go into it. Thanks for sticking around hobbling back and forth [1:11:53] Carl Epic: Darren oh, yeah [1:11:56] Speaker K (unidentified): Clarifying question I think for you, Lucy. So in downtown Lisbon Street, you mentioned that the so there's currently turning lanes and no like single drive-through lane and use different terms and your suggest proposal would be to make it so that those turning lanes didn't shift. Was that my understanding? [1:12:15] Lucia Gibson: That correctly, yeah. Let me so would basically be you know you take the turn TRAFFIC IS FROM THE SAME LANE. YOU DON'T NEED TO HAVE, IF YOU HAD A REALLY HIGH VOLUME OF RIGHT TURNS, FOR EXAMPLE, YOU MIGHT WANT TO HAVE A SEPARATE LANE, BUT THE VOLUMES ARE NOT IN ANY WAY. [1:12:39] Speaker K (unidentified): I SORT OF MISUNDERSTOOD BEFORE. I ALWAYS ASSUME THOSE TURNING LANES WERE INTENDED TO SLOW DOWN TRAFFIC BECAUSE IT MAKES ME CONFUSED DRIVING THERE. [1:12:50] Shanna Cox: CONFUSION SLOWING DOWN PEOPLE IS NOT THE GOAL. [1:12:54] Speaker K (unidentified): And then on the Canal Street promenade demonstrations do you have a or since then do you have any data on like how much use or there has been for pedestrian or bicycle use there? [1:13:09] Lucia Gibson: There wasn't any data collected because it was only we had cars and speed data yeah so [1:13:31] Shanna Cox: because we don't have a microphone there's some data that might be available but it was at a [1:13:36] Lucia Gibson: different date in summary and my recollection is it may not have shown a huge increase. I mean there's definitely interest but until it's a bigger you know it goes further and it's more [1:13:48] Shanna Cox: connected we don't necessarily expect a big response. I think we have paint and bollards this year but we're missing some of the furniture in the so we're not using it where I mean while we're using it for through space but we're not using it as a public space to you rest or to pause on your walk or to enjoy the views of the future canals future views of the canals so I think that might also be contributing to how people are using it. Other questions or comments from the board? I have one which is just a consideration I think as you make your recommendations and a key stakeholder to engage with so that we don't get caught later with a surprise is the placement of the Walmart distribution center and the use of trailer trucks most of their traffic and there's been a lot of design work to get them to the interstate at exit 80 but some of those trucks are servicing the Walmart in Auburn and so I'm not sure that whether they're using Lincoln Street and coming down you know kind of around and Downriver to Lincoln, or if they're somehow managing to go Alford Lord to Russell, they'll kind of back way directly to the Walmart. But that treatment for the Lincoln Main Street intersection could be great for cars and pedestrians and get mangled by 18 wheelers. And I just, we've done a lot of design work in this city that has been intentional about a very high tax paying customer in our properties and how they use the road, and I would hate to make this investment and an 18 wheeler coming through is a really different impact for a pedestrian than a Corolla, just sites and sight lines. And so just to be mindful of that. And you, I think that there's previous history that they're a stakeholder who's happy to be engaged in my offer some insights about how they use it, and they have incredible data on their own fleet and use, so they could actually probably provide you with some information. So that's strongly encourage that. All right, we promise a public comment period on the next agenda item, but that is so much I don't want anyone to have to hold it, and so I'm going to open it up. Do I have to anyway? It's not public, it's not a public hearing. You get three minutes, ma'am. Please state your name and you know comment. Elizabeth Ames, I live right here [1:16:16] Elizabeth Eames: and I mean literally like right here. And I do want to mention that probably twice a month that I see, and it probably happens more often than that, an 18 wheeler gets stuck between Ash Street turning on to Lisbon. I don't know why some GPS's are sending them to that corner, but it's a terrible corner for them. They get stuck. It's terrible back and forth. The whole neighborhood gets in a kerfuffle about it every time. And so there was a picture of some truck slips or something, those pink triangles that you had in one of those diagrams. And I thought, if they're going to work on, they're currently working on Ash and Lisbon right now. They're tearing it up. They should, when they put it back together soon, they should include that improvement in it. That's one thing, they just tore out and replaced the traffic light right there, but you just said you're going to get hope hopefully get rid of all the traffic lights, so that's too bad. That's right hand left hand problems. And the other thing is on the corner of Sebattis and Maine, the school department just bought that building, 287 Me, yeah, 27 Main. So if you're designing the intersection, redesigning an Intersection, I don't know if you built into it that future use by the school. Yeah, so I should think about that. Those are the three things I had for this. Thank you. I thought this was a public forum. I didn't expect to be the [1:17:56] Shanna Cox: only person here. Well, we could see if either of these other two folks wanted to add anything, but I think ones with the consulting company and ones with the TV station. Do you want to weigh in at all? Okay, great, just checking. I think I heard that the removal of the final three signals and not all signals might make sense, and that it would be for a four-way, well, a three-way stop. Yeah, all stop, wait, stop. Yeah, I'd love to see that personally. Yeah, also I just for your own and we've got a later agenda item about like inter department communications, but I would strongly encourage you to say out loud somebody should sec with us, check with the school department about the future use of admin versus students, and the needs would be, I imagine, very different, particularly from a pedestrian use. And so that was an exciting update right here stuck into a transportation study. Okay, anything else? Did staff have any questions? You guys want to, you got plenty of opportunities. That's fantastic. Lucy, thank you so much. I don't know that you're gonna leave Carl or not, but our gratitude to you. Shouldn't let me. Yeah, we're taking notes [1:19:16] Carl Epic: for each other. Okay, I'm [1:19:19] Shanna Cox: tempted for us all to take a quick bio break. I appreciate Darren's reminder that we might need one soon. Well, can we take a minute while you keep up the other presentation? Our apologies to people waiting, but would you take a five-minute recess? Okay. [Lucia Gibson: We're] gonna adjourn our recess and jump back into other business. Item 5c, this is a presentation and public forum on the Outer Lisbon Street safety and mobility plan by ATRC and Tool Design. We've already had Carl introduced himself earlier as his colleague Lucy started her presentation, and so take it away, [1:25:36] Carl Epic: Carl. Thank you, Shanna. Again, yes, Carl Epic with Tool Design. So picking up where Lisbon Street ends with the section that Lucy spoke about, which is roughly at Adams Street. We're looking at the corridor. It's a little bit over two and a half miles long. It's four to five lanes and width, and that's just the through lanes and sometimes most points. Then we have a lot of turn lanes that gain access to the side streets. Some of them signalized, some of many of them unsignalized. We're going to talk mostly about the signalized intersections. We're going to be talking about access management throughout the corridor. It does extend out to Alfred a Florida Parkway goes one through six these segments we're going to talk about and actually links up at Westminster at that intersection way out where the rail the old rail corridor crosses that was extended Lewiston staff suggested that we look at that because that corridor is being considered for a rail trail so that further ado just a jump into it there's a survey that's active right now on ATR's website, it's been put out on Lewiston's Facebook page, but high level, just what the purpose of this study is, really to look at the existing transportation capacity, which is a lot, and to identify and recommend safety improvements for all users who use the corridor. It was included in the safety action plan. there are two or three high-impact you know areas that are really significant for crashes for both automobiles vehicles freight and mostly pedestrians because there's not a lot of cyclists here we've been charged with maintaining acceptable levels of service which Lucy's gotten into extensively now everybody knows a little bit about how that works the ABCDEF system and ultimately, supporting local economic activity, whether or not that's freight and the major freight providers and also the more small retail and smaller businesses that use the corridor as well. So there's a lot to balance here, and that's what we're attempting to do with these concepts. And I just want to emphasize that these are draft concepts and the way we'll go through them when we get into them is there's two alternatives and there's a short term and there's a long term, which we call quick build and full build. But first we'll just cover kind of what we've been looking at, safety, we're going to talk a little bit about crashes, speeding I highlighted in yellow because everybody is aware of the speeding challenges that we have here and everywhere. There's a lot of gaps and crosswalks, the importance of its connection between the downtown and the interstate, therefore its regional role. A lot of traffic goes through here to go north, south, east, and west. I already touched on freight, I already touched on the lower branch road rail as a multi-use trail potential. We won't get into that a lot, but it's just, it's something that looms because it's parallel, and as you'll see, we're going to be talking about a couple of different options within the existing right-of-way that are related to walking, biking, and really changing the of the lane configurations. Pedestrian bicycle crash overview, we looked at ten years of data that we've created these clusters, cluster maps where there's been pedestrian fatal crashes or severe injuries. This is all also in the in the plan, the safety action plan that was done for the region. We're looking at some key streets, Cedar Street, which is where again the study that Lucy worked on really ends and begins for our study, and Adams, and that's the really the first two segments near the downtown, and South Ave, which is more in the middle, a lot of crashes out that way, and that is really the only way to cross this portion of Lisbon Street north-south. There's really no other way to get across here between, let's just say, the river and the neighborhoods to the north. A lot about the regional role, we have to keep that in mind, and freight mobility, as I've already mentioned, we already touched on these, a lot of locations where there's crashes, they also correlate with access management, and where there's a lot of curb cuts, there's a high density of curb cuts. It's kind of the Wild West, that means people don't know, you don't know where somebody's going to turn to go into a parcel or where someone's going to come out of a parcel without something, improvements of access management, and although this study doesn't go in depth into parcel by parcel access management, it will touch on the need for it broadly, and you know, when a full-blown project develops, how to approach that [1:30:21] Shanna Cox: access management. Sorry, are those red numbers the number of curb cuts in that [1:30:25] Speaker J (unidentified): area, the red dots? Oh yeah, so yeah, so thank you. Yeah, those are the clusters [1:30:32] Carl Epic: And we've identified clustered areas where there's a lot of the high crash intersections and where there's incidents along those segments. See the red line, high crash segments, and that's the number of crashes over the 10-year period within just that segment. So you know as you get through the south on the corridor, you've got that cluster of 29 around South Ave, and then as you get closer to the neighbor on the hill before you go down 64 is near Olive Ave and the I think that's you know and get Into ideas of why this happens, but you know you've got acceleration going up that hill coming off of the parkway or coming off of the interstate, and then there's suddenly some signals and there's a lot of access management issues. So you get the way you get that 39 and that 64. It's important to note that public transit exists on the corridor and could be a you know if it was fortified on this corridor could really enable. It's a it's a quarter that's ripe for strong transit with because of the Number of commercial residential mixed-use along the whole corridor. We're going to talk a little about bus stops, configuration of bus stops and how that plays out with a redesign. The generally located at key intersections but sometimes they're nowhere near a crosswalk, so it makes it company if you want to have of course correlating bus stops on both sides. You know if you get up on the wrong side of the street you have to cross, you have to play Frogger with you know five six lanes of ongoing Traffic and yeah I mean it's it's some people I'm sure have done it and it's just it's one of the barriers to people using transit more seriously. And of course I've included the railroad that's parallel, truck volumes. I'm just highlighting the areas where there's the most truck activity, which are kind of in three logical places. One close to the downtown, there's a lot of freight operations right near here at the northern end, in the middle where the Lewiston Mall area is, and you know there's the Huge retail facility there, and then out by Alfred a plured which is where the trucks come in access go to and from the interstate. It put a bunch on here at VMT. I'm not sure we talked too much about that, vehicle miles traveled, just a metric of roadway usage captured by how these trucks move, how much they move, and this was just a way to it's a data that was available and where we were able to isolate areas where there's there's obviously trucks along the whole corridor but these three segments are where they're they're found most frequently. also important to talk about the overall traffic on the corridor and really what i want to point out here is that it's even though we have to put in growth factors which using atrc and dot data is around 0.4 on an annual increase looking over you know this is this is a past decade a snapshot of three four years it's been relatively flat. if we extended that forward into the 2020s during it decreased actually during covid and now it's kind of risen but it's generally the trend is flats. yes go ahead you might want to add some consideration [1:33:56] Shanna Cox: that the sheriff's department has just purchased what used to be wcbb their plant on the corner of westminster and lisbon. so the sheriff's going to be coming in and out not trucks though but not trucks but the sheriff's cars and absolutely you know emergency vehicles so you're saying that 's a decade old but it doesn't look different [1:34:28] Carl Epic: if it was updated yeah it is a decade and now hold now it that's the trend has been relatively flat over time there hasn't been Lucy is there any more I could speak to on that you know you have to look a quarter by quarter but [1:34:44] Speaker D (unidentified): but generally that's been the recent time i think that's been a typical trend even though [1:34:49] Shanna Cox: it's not that there's not growth in the area but we've had six percent population growth in the larger metropolitan area since 2021 so it might be worth seeing if you have more yep thank [1:35:01] Speaker D (unidentified): you and [1:35:04] Lucia Gibson: then just travel patterns change so much after covid that we're still kind of finding our way and there is much commuting more off-peak traffic things [1:35:14] Carl Epic: like matter yeah I will add that in we'll update it and see just a bit comparison yeah it's worth it's worth taking it yeah no thank you again this is something we're familiar with from the from the last study we went over but looking forward in the future currently the point here is that the corridor has really reasonable capacity, over capacity in many areas, the A's and the B's, and even projecting out into the future based on that growth, assuming that there will be some growth, there's the ability to do some interventions that would slow down traffic, create not congestion, but just a slower environment for movement out there, which allows us to do a lot of different things that we're gonna that I'm gonna walk you through in a few minutes. so alternative concepts again and get the QR code up there if anyone wants to take a look and respond to the survey based on this presentation or online. are a bunch of a ton of data that we used to get here again. it's chopped up into six segments and I just add this one. this is this was where one-way Lisbon Street parallel married to canal street as lucy covered. so we're really looking at the outer six segments and we're going to go through them one at a time looking at again two alternatives and a quick build and a longer term vision. big thing that tool prides itself on is developing plans that are implementable not necessarily like in one big you know go for it but something that can be done in the short run like the demonstration project that we did here that can be used to demonstrate how it could work and maybe test you know how things could work or might not work and how to refine that before you actually build something more permanent. I just orientation downtown high schools to the north of Lewiston Mall is there in the middle. so we'll start just high level again that this shows where there are existing signalized intersections with the blue dots and then the yellow crossing simp sign symbol where we're looking at important places to add some crosswalks and as you can see if I should have made it before and after but down at Kessel Street or Castle Street there's nothing you know between st. Croix and all the way down to Pleasant Street to cross again people cross there though I've witnessed it in the time I've been coming here and looking at people cross there. people do crazy things they 're going northbound and they turn left to get up to go to get on to the main Turnpike. I think maybe you've all seen it. so there's just things inherently going on here that let me that can be addressed with some of the options that we're going to be proposing. can I ask a question. yeah of course on that slide [1:38:15] Shanna Cox: I see you saying where there's existing signals and where there's proposed crossings. are there any crosswalks that exist currently outside of the intersections that are signalized. no just want to make sure that was understood in crystal clear. there is no [1:38:34] Carl Epic: other place there this the roadway as it's configured you can't really do it 's a highway you can't do it you can do them but it's absolutely safe it's going way too fast and it said you know in some places it's 82 feet it's just too far too wide you have to have signal yeah I don't know if there's a minimum Lucy I don't know you know what for unsignalized crossing but it's generally far too wide along most of the corridor just again that brought this in here because we're going to talk a little bit about buses again. This is the transit network, this slide was earlier, and so this is more to give an idea of some approach to bus stop management. So without moving bus stops, leaving them maintained at their existing locations, look at different way to configure buses boarding platforms, you know, boarding platform would just be slightly raised and in line, in line, and some of these concepts where they're pretty, so they're protected both the bike lane, the multi, the bike path, the to a bike path, and one of the options, and also for the cars that are whizzing by. So it's it's a it's very much an urban design and something consider, and that can be included or can, could be changed, but this is what a direction we wanted to talk about and that we would be recommending. There's gonna beg questions about, you know, how do you get around a bus? Well, ideally they stop very shortly and it's you're stuck behind the bus until it moves. There are some ways to do it with having it move out slightly then maintain enough space, there still be 14 foot through lane, but just all something to be discussed. It's not built into the design completely, but it's something that our engineers are want you to seriously think about and recommend, are recommending as far as consideration. So segment one, we'll start back up near the downtown again, between Cedar Street and Adams. This is generally the existing condition, the cross-section, it varies, it has parallel parking, it's two lanes in each way, parallel, I'm sorry, coupled with Canal Street. Okay, so this is the first one, so I'm going to have to carry you through because there's a lot going on here. The typical existing conditions is in the upper left, where you've got a 10 foot sidewalk, 7 foot parking, 13 foot travel lane, two of them in one direction, ain't eight foot planted buffer, and a five foot sidewalk. And so that is Kong, I'm sorry, Lisbon Street, Adams Ave to Cedar Street, and we're going to talk a little about working how this works also with Canal. Street that's parallel this in this case and this is the only segment of the six we're proposing a curbside bike facility, which means it's not a separate path from the curb. It's actually the bicycle facility is one way up against the curb. In the quick build configuration, which is the next one down, it shows that you're able to eliminate, instead of going from two through travel lanes to a single, which allows you to add a six-foot bike lane, a separated bike lane, and in this case quick build again. This is meant to be quick, not changing a lot of geometry or curbs, a seven foot wide painted buffer, which is that hatching in the middle, and the full build with, if that, if the quick build worked, then you would go to something with more permanent, which shows at the bottom left still one single traveling, a concrete buffer, which would allow you, if it's five feet or wider, to put lighting in, and that's something that's come up before. There's a lack of lighting for traveling, especially if you're walking or biking at night, another safety component to the design. So that would be segment 1, Adams to Cedar, and with a proposed curbside bike facility, the other segments are going to have to a curbside bike facility and a two-way path. Everybody with me so far? This is one of the easier ones because it's, it's, there's one option with a short-term quick build that can be used to demo the design, and then a more thought out once tested longer. The right-of-way here is very narrow, it's only 56 feet, and this is paired again with Canal Street that I already jumped through. Let me see, yeah, I just wanted to make sure I covered one thing to mention here is that we don't have the drawing in here, but you can see in that middle concept that Canal Street still has a two-way facility coming from the other study, and we've drawn there how that would, that's at this point it would split or it would join to the two-way as we come up in segment two here, a two-way path on just the north side, so it's a little bit tricky here on how to accommodate a path that's coming down Canal Street to either splitting one way in each way or to move that two-way path over to the north side, and it'll be a little bit clearer when we get to these next ones. Segment two is again Adams Ave to Androscoggin, this is the hill, it gets narrow through here, it's, it's only four lanes with no on-street parking, and you know, there's no center turn lane again, typical cross-section, it's a multi-lane, it's approximately 63 feet wide to I think for purposes of measures 12 to 13 foot travel lanes. We've shown here the six foot and five foot sidewalks. They vary. That's the point. The proposed would be to turn it into to traveling in each direction, some significant buffering for either proposed quick build here of the curbside bike lane. You got bike lanes concurrent with traffic in each direction, we're not changing curbs, we're not widening sidewalks under this scenario. And at the bottom, a full build, if the quick build worked, would allow you to have potentially a buffer between the bike lanes, again concurrently they move with traffic, and you could play with this a little bit and do a little bit of widening of the sidewalks, but we've left them generally at five to six feet here. So again, the middle one's quick build. If that works you go to a full build and this is curbside. This is the curbside bike facility. Compare that with a two-way path and this is where it gets, it gets very different, but there's space out there to do this and it would be a really amazing facility and solves a lot of problems as far as speeding, curbs, access management. Again, same typical existing cross section at the top. The proposed quick build would put, we've drawn it, a two-way bike path on the north side. You've got the hatching you can see there to cover where the existing pavement and then at the bottom a full build would allow you to put perhaps a planted buffer over sections of it. You know, you still need to, you'd have to have basically a u-turn in certain places, the ability to turn around, because when you put a buffer down the middle it really manages access management, limits it, but there's ways to design it so that, you know, access can still be fulfilled. It's just not at every single possible opportunity like it is out there now. No questions on that one at this point? Okay, segment three, this is the kind of the heaviest commercial use section. This is between Androscoggin Ave and Rosedale Street. There's a bunch of signals here. There's existing crosswalks at the signals and, well, we'll just get into it. It's typical cross-sectional, what it looks like. We began to kind of look at some of the issues here, the open, really big open curb cuts. Crosswalks are there, but they're, they're a little bit offset. The distance is, you know, five, six lanes. We wondering, you know, what can we do to use the signals to improve things? Is there any opportunity to reduce the total amount of turn lanes or the lengths, etc.? And we know that there's a new future residential development going up on the corner at with East Ave. Again, lots of access management issues here. We also know that from the legacy Lewiston plan that this area has been planned for Elizabeth. Street suburban retrofit concept, which is from the 2013 plan, and just pulled this in for everyone's considerations, and maybe needs to be a refresher that this was the concept for this area on the 2013 plan, and these designs for the roadway are the kind of designs that would enable this kind of development here, mixed-use residential commercial, you know, really an extension of the fabric of the downtown, and really introduced like you've come to a different place when you're coming up Lisbon Street. This is, these are where the signals are, so this is a place where people are used to stopping, and now it's just a matter of narrowing it up, making it a little bit more pedestrian friendly, and making it a little bit more like an urban setting. So this is the curbside bike facility again, existing conditions, it's about 72 feet, although it varies. I get a large center turn lane, 13 foot center turn lane, to a you've got 11 foot lanes, two in each direction, and fairly narrow sidewalks considering the. Potential context, seven, eight feet, wider than in other places, but still pretty narrow. Quick build next one, the first one down would in the short run require for the curbside bike option pretty wide painted buffer with a, some kind of a vertical element that's temporary, like a, like a jersey barrier, and that eleven foot five, but in the full build condition again, you could, you could add to the sidewalk, you could do the concrete buffer, planted buffer with the lights in the middle, and still have two. Decent sized through lanes, this is not at the intersections, we still retain generally the turning lanes at the intersections, but the queues may be shortened, there's opportunities to shorten them because there's not a lot of turning movements at every signal. Yes, Lucy had a question. Yeah, you're. [1:49:58] Shanna Cox: Proposing bike lanes on both sides in this segment, one in each way. Yeah, but in the segment before you've got you there's the possibility of having both of them on one side. I think that would be counterproductive. You know, either do them on the whole length or do them, you know, one on each side, because otherwise at the intersection of Lisbon and East you're gonna have people, bikers, you know, having to cross over to get to the correct bike lane. So and that could [1:50:32] Carl Epic: possibly, you know, let me just provide clarity. Both of these options, the curbside bike facility and the two-way path, would be between Adams and Westminster. It's not chopped up like and I knew, so it's either or. Yeah, length of their two alternatives. I knew it was gonna be a little bit difficult to show it this way, but because of we wanted to include the quick build, the short term, the demo, basically the demo version, and then a full build, a full build, and either one of them, you know, you'd really only do one or the other. But over long, you know, if you can imagine a long period of time, if you built up enough use with the curbside, you know, the curbside one's a little bit easier to demo and then implement versus building a you know a two-way path on one side. You could ultimately get there, it's just how you get there, right? And if you want to get there, it's a lot of access management issues with a two-way bike path. Yeah, so the treatments would be consistent from end to end, they would transition again around Adams or Locust Street, you know, back closer to the downtown where it would join the other study. Yeah, that's fine. Okay, so yeah, I know it's a little. [1:51:51] Shanna Cox: I was a little confused. [1:51:52] Carl Epic: And I just wanted to be really clear there as we go on. So yeah, it's one or the other, and then there's the short-term quick build and full build for each option. Okay, great. Okay, great. This is again out. This is still segment three, but it varies this one existing conditions. This is where it flares. I think out to 72. This is still this is the proposed two-way path, excuse me, that's what we're doing here. So now you're gonna see the two-way path. Which is, you know, eight foot side of you still have sidewalks. You have the travel way in the in the quick build option. You've got 11 foot in each direction. You still have a fairly large Hatched, you know 7 foot buffer there. This is the middle one as I'm moving left to right, and then you have a 10 foot wide to a bike lane, Bike path, and you still have a 7 foot wide sidewalk, and then in the full build if that were successful, You could provide all kinds of buffering, whether or not it's a planted median, a concrete median with lighting, this would be further designed for what you had ultimately decide to do, probably from building off of the quick build. scenario overall, you know this one reduces from five lanes to three and establishes standard lane widths, which is I just post point that out, and then this is this we broke this out segment three still, but this is a typical, this is where the right-of-way widens to 85 feet, so this is again where we were talking about earlier where it's really difficult to cross today, the typical the top you've got two 13-foot travel lanes, you've got five foot wide sidewalks, five to six, you've got turning lanes. you've got, you know, there's a lot going on here, it's very wide and really hostile for crossing, the quick build in both of these reduces it to a single travel lane in each direction, we retain the turning lanes, the left turn and the right turn lanes, but there's still some buffering here for channelization, as we call the nine foot on one side, and I think it's a smaller seven foot on the right, keeping the two-way bike lane or the two-way path, and opportunities to widen out the sidewalks, or. in this case, these are eight feet here. the full build is similar but adds the more permanent concrete buffers, but you get on the left you can see there where the sidewalk goes from five feet out to potential 14, and so if you have that kind of development that was contemplated in the legacy Lewiston plan in this area, you know this is you can imagine that being a very busy pedestrian area and you would need wider sidewalks, and there's just a drawing there of what the intersection may look like, a little bit more engineered than just a. Schematic. Okay, on to four and five. This is what it typically looks like, again, still two lanes in each direction with a center turn lane. We're looking at between Rosedale Street, South Avenue, and Castle Street. A lot of signals through here, so again, we're retaining mostly the turn lanes at these signals, but there's opportunities to shorten them or better coordinate the signals. There's some improvements happening here, the headset program for the crosswalks and the sidewalk crosswalks, so there's already some stuff happening here, but anyway, we'll go, we'll go through what these options look like. Back down to 70 foot right away, five foot side, five to seven foot sidewalks, twelve, eleven foot travel lanes. There's a center turn left turn lane here. In the quick build scenario for the curbside bike lanes, we look at a very large painted buffer again with some vertical elements, 11 foot lanes, painted buffer again. This is quick build, this is, this is so we can test it in the short run and then the full build shows here there's opportunities to do a planted median up to 8 feet, still have the to the 11 foot lanes going through, perhaps lighting. This is a little bit more of a neighborhood location. It's also a place where you come up the hill, place to transition to the Lewiston Mall area where we're looking at that more mixed use urban development, and then the two-way path option, same existing conditions, continuing in the quick build to do a lot of painted medians and some hatched shoulders, perhaps a Jersey barrier, but we're still providing the two-way bike lane, the two-way path on one side, on the north side, and then the full build again, potential to do planted medians, concrete buffer, perhaps wider sidewalks. Sorry for the scrambling of all the, all the texts, and when you upload it to the cloud it has some way of messing it up, but I can, I can get you all the narratives here. And last but not least, segment six. So this, there's an interesting treatment here. There's a gateway treatment here. As you can see, we've got a pedestrian sign there to indicate a new unsignalized crosswalk. It also is important in the configuration with the two-way path because we have to be able to get over to the park and ride, so we'll just get right into it. There's the concepts here of how this has been done in other places, New York City DOT, between the full build out of what this would look like. But in the big map at the bottom there, again, we need to move, get everybody into a safe situation. So a lot of changes to what's in the pavement would naturally slow you down. Today people accelerate here. Remember there's a bunch of crashes going up the hill, crosswalks here, transition potentially from curbside bike lanes, the two-way path at Olive that would get you over again to the park and ride. Quick build would be a lot more paint, and in the long term full build potentially from, you know, vertical medians, better lighting, maybe something overhead that really kind of denotes expect people to be crossing here even though there's not a signal, so it really needs to be designed to slow people down. And get them to go the speed limit. Maybe some rectangular rapid flashing beacons could be installed here. You guys are probably familiar with those, I'm sure there's some around the city. The big one here is that the access to the on-ramp to get up to Alfred A. Plourd, which is here, it's just shown as that, probably be grass, but exactly how you would transition over to it today. It's just kind of like a slingshot, would need further design. But the idea is that this is an area to go through more slowly. It's been contemplated that maybe around a roundabout with the ramp is something that could be considered. We haven't designed that, but that this is an important gateway location to really get people to be going 35 or, you know, the real speed limit that's out there. This is also the most constrained area once you get close to the parkway, it goes, gets down to 40 feet, and I say. Constrained just because we're looking only at curb to curb, but because so much this area is off ramps, we suspect that a lot of it is public right away, but for the purposes of this study we've looked at, you know, where it gets really constrained, it's down to 40 feet. There's already some shoulders out there, crosswalks side, the sidewalks, excuse me. Quick build, you could, you can do bike lanes, you a lot of measuring, really have to pay particular attention to exactly what the widths are, you could. Minimize the shoulders and just put in bike lanes, eight foot sidewalk in the quick build that's not messing with the curbs, and then in the full build really you need a shared side path, which is what showed at the bottom right, a 12-foot shared side path, which would most likely again be on the north side to get you through underneath the parkway. This is just something showing some more of the details and considerations. As I mentioned the RFP around Olive Street, Olive Avenue excuse me, the transition between side path and curbside protected bike lanes because once you get further out here you're probably going to transition as you go further out Lisbon Street towards Lisbon to actual bike lanes past Westminster the bottom big panel we looked closely at Pleasant Street you know this 45 degree angle and there's a giant slip lane there we tested that with a stop the software and a large semi truck already is already driving over the median there's a pole in the middle of that pork shop wedge there, a lot of problems here, and it would be fairly easy to eliminate that slip lane. We think that most of the trucks are not doing that movement because they can do that right turn onto Alfred a plored instead of coming down here, but they would require some signage and some logistics management with you know anybody doing freight through. It sounds like that's already going on because it's apparently not a problem, so we're curious why that, why that slip lane is still there and that is you know has a large crossing, you can see the other one on the right or the main street of Pleasant Street, no easy way to get that right without, we looked at doing you know shifting Pleasant Street to coming in at a 90-degree angle, very complicated to resolve it, but there's some, there's some concepts that we looked at, so that's again that, where we're at, and again the surveys up, love to hear any questions [2:02:21] Shanna Cox: concerns, what you like, what you don't like. Can you offer before we dive into that, can you offer any kind of process next steps? So you'll hear from us today and then what are some of the steps that will come next? Well [2:02:36] Carl Epic: We're going to model this in the traffic software just to get those letters in an understanding of, well, ultimately a direction with, you know, don't, don't go towards the two-way path or we think on, you know, on street bike lanes are the answer that are concurrent with the direction or keep exploring these things. Curious about how it affects level of service, give us some metrics on, you know, idea about safety. We know we want to be able to churn out that information about how this performs. We have a matrix of performance, you know, we're gonna be weighing these against some performance goals and scoring each of them to see [2:03:20] Shanna Cox: your input and make a recommendation. Yeah, and then once you place that recommendation, do you know, and this might be a Jeff question again, is there more public input planned on final recommendations and is there a lot of like state cooperation and actually realizing and implementing some of this and is there a time frame you're aiming for [2:03:42] Carl Epic: any of those milestones? Definitely more with ATRC in the state as far as, you know, we need, we need more data about how these work now that they're somewhat designed and generally, you know, this would be fall into the road diet category if this is an area where, you know, what degree of road diet and is acceptable [2:04:08] Lucia Gibson: So I think one option would be the next time Maine D.O.T resurfaces it this could be done but the city may want to do something sooner so it is a Jeff [2:04:22] Shanna Cox: question, sorry Jeff, and if Brad wants to find a microphone to answer that question I would welcome Brad to do so. I mean I think it's, I just want to be really candid as somebody who's been here for 18 plus years and engaging the public, your study is a study that we've had a lot of deaths on, your study is an area that has had as you noted a lot of injuries and property right and so there is I think there is an excitement and a necessity of seeing some elements of this realized and as a body that regularly sees our capital improvement plan we know that we're like just trying to take care of sidewalks and streets in all of the parts of the city so you know is this a really pretty plan that maybe gets funded when DOT feels like it and that's what we can anticipate or is this something that it creates real opportunity for how we as a planning board and how the city is planning the allocation of resources and further engagement of our community. I guess I would just love to know like then What these lovely folks and over some great designs, data has been finalized. We get to do what with it? And you've already named a couple things on the horizon. So can somebody hand him the microphone so he doesn't have to get up? Thanks so much, Lucy's might, Lucy, yeah, see, yeah, you're great, you're good. So yeah, it definitely comes down [2:05:55] Jeff Bowley: to funding. And you know, for me, I'd like to see some prioritization of how we can, how we can bite off a portion, you know, and not try to tackle the whole quarter at once. And you know, start with a section and see how it works, because that would be a lot easier to get funded sooner than later. If we wait for funding for the whole thing, it yeah, it'll take forever. So I'd like to see some recommendations on how to, how to phase it and prioritize which sections we'd like to see for done first, which probably does come down to where the most accidents are, where are we going to get the most bang for our buck, but we don't want to do a piece in the middle either, because then [2:06:48] Shanna Cox: well, I worry about, I mean, I really appreciate prioritization, and I really also appreciate that you're looking at it through the lens of safety. I can, you know, Lucy's comments around transitioning from two-way on one side to one way on each side, can you imagine if we, yeah, it's not the Auburn Park Street School when there was really great sidewalks that went to the school and ended from the school to the main course of the road, right? And like it was very much, we did this in pieces, and so it's not just like what are the priorities, but how those priorities will connect with each other, and how you know, if we do quick builds throughout and then prioritize the full builds, I'd think of Westbrook's route, I think it's route 25 air arterial, that was like through the downtown, and you know, was just like so big and so impossible and had a lot of these same treatment, and now you go through there and it's really the managed access points and the managed speed, and I don't know what it looked like to get that funded and how long that took, I'm sure it was forever, but I do worry about even just getting bicyclists, like I had family come in from out of town, they're, they were excited to be in a city that was like walkable, which I snickered at, I lived on [street] at the time, and they were trying to make their way to the Dollar Tree I think and McDonald's, and they looked at a map and they're like, oh this is so close, and it was my mother with like my siblings who were, you know, four and eight At the time and they asked for a ride to get back because it was so terrifying. And so if you, if you get somebody on a bike or somebody with a stroller thinking, well, I can make it this stretch, or I saw this treatment as I came in through the gateway and it goes nowhere, I think that could be really alarming too. And so I think to your point, I get why it's almost impossible to do it all at once, particularly in the ideal format. Not only how do we prioritize it, but what does it look like to transition from guarded safe bike lines and really nice crosswalks to nothing for the entire ladder, one and a half miles or so. Jeff just lay a little cover for you. And I think there's some like, where are we, where are we in county and state funding and priorities, or where might we be looking at already doing some work that we don't miss opportunities, which we've been good at, but that feels like an important piece for us to give whatever information we have that would weigh into it. I don't know that someone else won't have another question for you, but that looks uncomfortable. And thank you, I appreciate it greatly. You know this corner [2:09:36] Carl Epic: again, it was in thinking about it, we're like, well, how do we, because it's so long, and how do you, how do you create a plan that people can get, you know, do it in pieces and see, oh okay, I see, I see the big overall vision, how the heck do we get there. Personally, when I've looked at this, it's probably most logical to start segment one, you know, work from the downtown out, at least from Cedar Street to, you know, Andrew Scott and Lewiston Mall. I mean, even that though is still a big, but it's probably the that could be done. And now that you all have experience with a demonstration project on Canal Street, that could easily be another demonstration project, perhaps after a paving, you know, a DOT paving. I don't know how they, I know enough to know that they say we're gonna pave this segment, is that its own segment, you know. Yeah, it's, it's, it's always there's a break somewhere, and they do from here to here every time. So you, we need, would need to look at that. So it's worth taking a look at where, yeah, where the paving projects are, and maybe try and phase it around what the paving segments are. But sometimes I, you know, there's no relation to, yeah, it's just, it's just where they said something made sense of somebody, but not for the reasons that are necessarily consistent with what we're trying to achieve. So we'll look at [2:11:05] Shanna Cox: that if I had a break to make a recommendation I mean I realize this is like a center segment but the East Avenue Lisbon Street intersection is bad we've already had multiple people get were killed and we're going to get it 's going to get worse because they're building a new grocery store in the Lewiston Mall and they're building the senior housing across the street and you've got a Popeyes and a Starbucks and Burger King so you know I might like to go eat there you know and the crossing is Scary. So you know, that might be because of the increase in traffic that has to be projected because of these two developments at that intersection that, you know, is I think a very high priority in, at least in my book, and you know, just for safety, because you're going to get a lot of little old ladies and little old guys walking with canes or walkers trying to get across these streets, and somebody's going to get hurt and has already has already, and it's going to be worse. So thank you, I appreciate Lucy's comments, and I've also been sitting here thinking about beyond Westminster, which isn't part of your study. I mean, it becomes a little racetrack, you know, trying to get first in line going out of the city and hustling coming into the city. So I'm curious about, even if you were acting on Lucy's recommendation, what are some other strategies that might help modify the speed of traffic that's coming off that long stretch of Lisbon Street beyond Westminster and then that at the intensity of the Traffic accidents where Alfred Plourd is crossing just going up that hill. That's a pretty treacherous thing, and so what the longer term sort of, I don't even know what they would be, but what those strategies would be coming into that, if that could help that, and then be able to start in a place where the East Ave is not a bad idea too. So I don't know if you have them, but you [2:13:55] Carl Epic: Know those mobile, they there's a sign and they flash if they detect, they tell you what your speed is supposed to be, and if you're going over that speed limit, it I think a blue light comes on, and we all know what blue lights do to us, so they make us slow down. When we I live in South Portland, and you come across the Casco Bay Bridge, they've got, you know, that bridge is designed for 60 miles an hour, you hit a traffic line, it immediately goes to 25 30. that the police often put that one of those mobile units out and I mean you know I don't know if you guys have a bunch of them or whatever but it's relatively inexpensive in the short run without redesigning the road that's something that could be done in a couple places but that's you know very different than them or what we're talking about but it for there is an immediate problem there absolutely I've been witnessed it people doing the turns accelerating both directions to get here to go southeast and to go towards downtown I know that works for me and a lot of people I don't know if that's been tried at least in the very short run in the immediate time frame other comments or questions one [2:15:07] Unidentified speaker (Roll Call): one element that or maybe a couple elements that I didn't hear you discuss were things like speed tables or raised crosswalks I don't know if those played a role in anything that you considered at all but didn't make it into the presentation and I thought of that particularly because of the idea of adding crosswalks at the park and ride we're at an area where people are right now are accelerating and if you're going to be adding pedestrian crossings that could be an area that [2:15:36] Carl Epic: yeah benefit from that again it's hard to imagine it out there as the way the road is today but if those crosswalks without a signal went in at the park and ride that would certainly be considered not a lot of people and like and nobody really likes that type of treatment it's better to narrow it narrow down plow guys love it who does plow guys oh yeah they don't like there it's their favorite absolute favorite yeah it's not it's not an ideal treatment in a in a [2:16:10] Shanna Cox: location like this I would say don't we usually see raised speed tables in 25 mile an hour and [2:16:16] Carl Epic: not 35 mile an hour yeah I don't even know if they can even be deployed it you'd have to [2:16:23] Shanna Cox: change the context to get the speed down I don't think it's necessarily well I [2:16:38] Carl Epic: mean the truth you know the way it is there now two through lanes it's it's feels like a highway if you did a single lane narrowed up everything with a real gateway treatment there and then you come to st. Croix and Martin and the and you know that area, it's a matter of changing the context, providing that message at the Gateway there at the bottom of the hill, and then being consistent with design. It really hard to do all at once, but there we can look at it and figure out, you know, you know, maybe it's it's the bookends. You can start, yeah, at the north end and you can start right there, and then as development happens, you can require developers to do things, you know, other [2:17:26] Shanna Cox: comments from the board. I have one or two I want to make. Okay, you don't need to go back to this slide, but there was some a slide about bus stops and how that interfaced with these segments, and I have no like I am I happy to sit behind a bus when it's stopping, and usually they keep going. There are a couple of locations in our city where it feels like, and i guess my question is like, will you please look into this and get data from the bus company, but where the stop is longer because of wheelchair use and kind of the time to like mechanically amend the bus, yeah, and so i even if we design it so that people are meant to stop, they're not gonna, they're gonna be like, and then they're gonna try to get around, and it's gonna be dangerous. And so we're adding in senior housing. And we have some senior housing that's essentially on Oak, right off of Lisbon as well. And so we've got it in a couple of locations. And frankly, hopefully we'll have more, and hopefully it'll look like that Legacy Lewiston plan. And so what does it look like to either create a space that maybe doesn't require the ramp is built in when you talked about the raised bus stops, so that they don't have to slow down and look at the bus end solution, and not just, it would be helpful for you to find data of how often the bus companies are actually seeing that. i think parents and strollers are a little quicker to get, they don't require all of the same mechanisms on the bus, but i think that's going to be an important design element and then the other piece is like, we're we're happily a tree city USA, and I love the amount of trees that we have in our community. it cools areas, there's good information about it keeping heat down, and there's just, and we've got them and they're beautiful in all of our corridors except this one, and in all of your graphics we didn't see any trees introduced until maybe the median in the full build, and I'm just wondering, and this is like as you design this and make your recommendations, what is Consistent enough between the quick build and the full build that street trees can be used as a solution without having to be like undone to move from the quick to the full. So if there's one side that can get trees as we're as we're going or trees and planters that can be moved, I was just going to say a plant in [2:20:05] Carl Epic: the clinic in a quick build configuration you could do maybe smaller [2:20:09] Shanna Cox: trees and large planters. Trees just immediately say visually it's here instead of where the buildings are and no amount of paint, yeah, closes that [2:20:21] Carl Epic: visual skate. I mean down it down by the park and ride Castle Street that would be the quick build could include that. Yeah, absolutely a great gateway tree and [2:20:31] Shanna Cox: we've we've got a great arborist and we've got a great street tree program and so just being intentional and like the what the phases could look like or where street trees that are permanent could be included in the quick build. Yeah, I think I think would be something that our city would be that's great to hear because yeah we can definitely include that. Shout out to Steve Birch. I'm gonna open it up for public comment which I don't need to gavel so please ma'am find yourself the podium again I do think you're the only one but I welcome [2:21:04] Elizabeth Eames: anybody on the only one Brad. Elizabeth Eames Ward 3. Eames Ward 3. It's really a question out of ignorance. When you're rebuilding the quick build and it's work the reconfiguration of streets and it's mostly paint on the ground and it's winter time do we think it will work is it safe. It's a question I just [2:21:32] Speaker D (unidentified): don't know the answer to thank you. Yeah, I mean in every instance there's a lot [2:21:37] Carl Epic: of operational learning curves of you know obviously it provides a great place to store snow which I think some people will be excited about but it complicates things in different ways because you need to store snow potentially more of it where there might be crosswalks or if it gets too high it might provide a sight line it might block a silent so it would definitely become more of a management. It's already snow management so it would be a new level of snow management and just paint you know just repainting is a challenge in maine because it's you know especially the more paint you put out there the more costly it is even though it's cheap because it's a it's a demonstration it's a short term it's a quick build so all things that will need to be considered but again it's the it's a path the quick bill is a path to try things before you know you spend 1 million versus 10 million or whatever that's it's just like the demonstration project over on canal street it's that kind of approach. But yeah, management plan would definitely need to [2:22:46] Shanna Cox: be a part of it. For thanks. Yeah, was this the only shot that these lovely folks get, or does, is there like a public workshop? I had, not that this shouldn't have counted, but ahead of city council meeting, is there any other public engagement around this, or is Ms. Eames the public and thank [2:23:07] Speaker J (unidentified): goodness, I suppose. Right, Madam Chair, if I may, I have a question for Carl, and this could be construed as a public comment, so I'm just curious if the study entailed any secondary or tertiary side effects, if you will, for slowing down the area of Lisbon Street down by the Alfred Parkway. As you stated, your, the goal is to try to slow traffic down going up that hill. The immediate side effect of that is going to be people will bypass Lisbon Street, they will go Pleasant Street, and they will use Pleasant Street as the new Lisbon Street highway. If they don't do that, they will go further down to Webster Street and use Webster Street as the byway to get to the downtown area. So doing all of this is great to Lisbon Street, but what are the unintended consequences of those other residential [2:24:01] Carl Epic: neighborhood streets? Are there existing speed problems? Yes. Sorry, on those other streets, yes. Yeah, it's a whack-a-mole, people will, they will realize it [2:24:15] Speaker J (unidentified): and they will bypass it at the entrance of Pleasant Street, and then they will just take, instead of the loop off the turnpike, go to the Clarion and head left. Yeah, I, we have not [2:24:28] Shanna Cox: more four-way stops unpleasant and Webster dead end. This is right, thank you. [2:24:34] Carl Epic: I mean, this is, you know, I'll reach out to you outside here to get a better understanding of [2:24:40] Shanna Cox: Of what already is going on, Pleasant Street is Bartlett Street. The reason it becomes unpleasant when it enters the tree streets is a long thwart in my side, but it is the other side of your mall plaza. And so the other, the other consideration of that, particularly, you know, pre 2045, when we maybe aren't infilling the gray space that is parking lots around that intersection, and we've seen commercial investments, that leads me to believe that version of the legacy plan will not be realized because of the commercial investments. But you might get more residential around the edges. Martel is, I think, living into that promise, but you're going to see mixed use, right? You're going to continue to see, and how great to live next to a grocery store or two. But as we see those changes, you already see people short-cutting elements of the East at Lisbon Street intersection by cutting through the parking lot, and that connects to Bartlett Street, which is Pleasant Street, and Pleasant Street is exactly parallel to Lisbon the entire way, and, you know, brings you out not only at the intersection that you modeled, but the Alfred Parkway just before it. Sounds like we have an [2:25:56] Speaker J (unidentified): expanding scope situation. Yeah, well, I mean, I think it's just two stop signs in one intersection light [2:26:03] Shanna Cox: versus all of Lisbon Street. Yeah, yes, right, two stop signs, yeah. Plus you have to factor in on Alfred Plured Parkway behind the Clarion and between the Clarion and the funeral home, there's going to be a fire station, yep, which was ideal planning. Okay, thank you to the public for showing up tonight. I think that was a great comment, regardless of what hat you were wearing, and so thank you for that. Anything else from the board? Mr. Marclad? No, just kidding. Okay, all right, well, that's great with our gratitude. Thank you so much. Thank you all. Yes, thank you. It's very informative, both, presentations. Will you send the slides as PDFs so that you don't have any text issues and send them out to us? Yeah, that would be great. I'd love to have presentations [2:26:58] Carl Epic: like two slides per page type of thing. Yeah, something like that. Yeah, just get it, get it to Shelly and, yeah, okay, yeah, super, thank you. Thanks, nice to meet you all. Yeah, thank you, thank [2:27:07] Shanna Cox: you, thank you. Okay. We're gonna move on to we have two more agenda items. Both of them could be longer agenda items. We need to we need to keep moving. So item d, discussion of the process between planning board, city staff, and council. I'd like to note that this is partly at my request and comes on the heels of a declination of moving into an executive session. And so before director Connor goes into the contents of his memo, I'm gonna preface with a couple of things. One, it was my intention to ask for an executive session that so that we could speak candidly in a way that didn't disparage any individuals of staff or our city as a whole, because developers and investors do watch these meetings and do form opinions about how coordinated we are as a city, how we respect their opinions and their time, and I do not wish to further damage that. And this request does come from a meeting with city council on the heels of a March 16th meeting that the planning board had where I feel like respecting the planning board and making sure that process is thoughtful and that information is shared wasn't met. And the only way to address that was to do so publicly during a city council meeting. That is not the ideal way to deal with issues, and I want to be thoughtful about how we speak about staff this evening and how we speak about City Council this evening and the respect that we offer to those looking to invest or partner with our city while also seeking transparency and remedy, and that is a tightrope I am gonna name. Though coming down for a couple of weeks is probably brought my likeliness to use bad words down quite a bit, so director Connor, you have a memo for us. I would like to just name on the outset and you create space for this when you are done that your objective for tonight's discussion is a singular objective and I think is a bit shy of a second objective that we had requested, so I'm just gonna go ahead and name it on the front end in case you want to address it as you go, which is that I was looking for us to reach agreement, us staff and board to reach agreement on how requests from the planning board to other departments or council are handled, and that is not specific to just [2:30:00] Speaker J (unidentified): property dispositions. Okay, please sir, I am if you'll indulge I'm writing all of [2:30:08] Shanna Cox: that down, madam chair. [2:30:17] Speaker J (unidentified): Thank you for eloquently stating that. Oh, welcome. [2:30:22] Shanna Cox: That's the thing behind the wall and it does it every meeting. Wow, yep, wow, yeah, strong, yeah you do. There's a vibration on here and when it stops you take a deep sigh and realize [2:30:35] Speaker J (unidentified): Wow, my tinnitus was bad. That's bad. I'm not going to read through the entire memo. I trust everybody has read it. Those are just kind of the topics that we'd like to discuss tonight included. You know what you would like to add tonight for me. Tonight's goal is to turn recent frustrations into a permanent process fix. To keep this productive and legally sound, we need to focus strictly on processes, protocols, and workflows, as you've already stated, not individual personalities or personnel. My goal as your director is to ensure you that you have land use context you need to do your jobs effectively while ensuring our process stays aligned with councils legislative authority and state executive session laws. You know, we're pretty much opening up tonight to get all of your comments to us so that we can take that and kind of figure out what's the best way going forward. What is it that you need from other departments? What is it that you need from us? What is it that you need from the council in order to make a better decision with not just property disposition but all of the recommendations that you are charged with making to the council? So you know, I've got some suggestions, but again, that's coming from my perspective. I would love to, we would love to hear from all of you. I think my memo was pretty clear in, you know, what each role is according the Charter, according to all of state statutes, what each body does, but that doesn't mean we can't work effectively together and try to figure out the best processes and protocols going forward. So I will say, as we went back after the recent events of the vote at the council, staff went back and watched the review of the planning board video where the comment of an executive session was brought up. And I think staff, and Shelly can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think at the end of that meeting we didn't get the feeling that the, that the executive session was warranted at that time. It was more of a if they want us to give this recommendation, they're going to need to give us some more information. So I think we misrepresented or we mistook the feeling or the vibe of the board by the end of the meeting, because I think the question about the, executive session was made towards the beginning of the meeting, and as we kind of worked through, as you guys all kind of worked through some of it, but it didn't sound like that was still a request. So we will ask that clarifying question going forward at the end of the meeting. If something comes up at the beginning, we'll make sure that we get clarification from the board at the end exactly as to was that comment made earlier? Is that what you want us to go, the direction you want us to go? Or have your questions been answered? So we did take that away from re-watching that video. But unless Shelley has something to add again, we're here to try to figure out the best process of bridging this gap that came up in the last probably a few different dispositions and other agenda items that have come up. [2:33:54] Michael Marcotte: Yeah, just one other thing to add, the minutes also did not reflect a request for executive sessions. So when the board is helping to review minutes, if you can flag that as well if you don't think that we're accurately representing the requests, thanks. [2:34:12] Shanna Cox: I'm just going to parse out of what you just named Director Connor for me, there's something sticky about intent versus impact and I can appreciate that our goal tonight is to hear some concerns that lead to recommendations on workflow. What I'm concerned with because of what I heard from staff that night and in writing in advance of that night is that there was not a need for and I'm not trying to drill down on whether the request was made or made in the right way or any of that, we weren't provided enough information about the disposition of the red shop and then the City Council got a lot more information than we did and a negative recommendation from us and the rationale by multiple staff in multiple departments was essentially a disposition wasn't being requested and what that means to staff and I'm using that term really broadly is I don't know what the internal process looks like but this is intent versus impact and the impact is that two departments work together or didn't to represent to an investor with long-term standing in our community that our intent as a city was to dispose of it and because this was not a technical disposition that's fine to do and that at best feels unethical at worst it feels dismissive to a body that invests time and consideration and so I want to parse out that whatever workflow gets us to understanding action steps relative to an agenda item that the board considered which has admittedly come up many times for a disposition but there Are other times when there has been an action step of a joint council workshop or the ability to understand we and we did this really well with the prior council, interestingly enough, where we had joint sessions about commercial goals and commercial corridors doors, and that wasn't about a disposition, that was about a planning body and a decisioning body working together, and that feels really important and is not just about technicalities but is about intention relative to our two roles and I don't want that to get missed in the concrete answer to the question you just posed and I really want to name that because the ethical component of that is what absolutely stopped me dead in my tracks that night. I was concerned and if it had just been something missed and that was what had gotten surfaced leading into the City Council vote, that would be people are human and humans make mistakes and I get that. I don't believe that's what happened that night. I don't believe that's what happened as that agenda item was drafted internally, run through administration in multiple departments, and when it was considered more fully and when I'm naming my concern around intent, it is that other members of the board, I'd love to hear from you. I certainly have other comments that I want to make sure get raised this evening, but I appreciate director Connors open invitation for any thoughts that might be considered into any improvements made into the interworking relationships as well as the property disposition Lucy you know it as you mentioned Shannon, you know we had a really good relationship with the prior City Council who initiated multiple joint meetings to discuss the corridors at the time and we brought up other stuff and that was great and I think that's a something that is lacking. I know I'm sure it's not part of the city charter or whatever, but there should be joint meetings between the City Council and this board at least a couple of times a year and so that we can discuss you know how things are being looked at I mean this whole plan of mr. Thompson was totally out of the blue, it was it's a fantastic plan don't get me wrong, but it was totally out of the blue, it was it felt like it was snuck to get it around the planning board and if we had some kind of a gathering or at least have been forewarned about what in blazes they were going to be talking about, it would have lessened the shock that people felt, whether it's getting, you know, selling the red shop or not. And again, in March, we were, you know, we weren't given any information about, and that's the problem. I understand that's part of the Charter, but that's a problem. It happens all the time, and I know mr. Marc got a good one to bring it up. It happens all the time. We said, well, you know what, do you want it gonna do, you know, we're gonna buy this piece of land now, you know, like we're buying the piece of land at 9 Foss. Absolutely, that sounds like a great thing, but that hasn't come before us as an acquisition, has it? Before tonight, no. Before tonight. No, not before tonight. Or was it presented as an acquisition without a purpose, without addition? Like we had five pages of information related to that. Yeah, you know, this is great. I mean, if FOSS came before us with this kind of information, we, you know, I'm using that as an example, everybody would say,, yeah, super. That sounds like a great idea. It's a heck of a lot better use of money than to rebuild this bridge that has to be rebuilt every X amount at twice the price. So this is the problem. We are asked to dispose of a valuable piece of property in, you know, I mean, the little house lot that doesn't have a frontage, you know, that's not a big deal, but it's the pieces of property that are valuable that we are asked to dispose of with no rhyme or reason presented to us, and that is very frustrating for us, and that's why you get denials like we did with the red shop, because we had no idea of what in blazes anybody had in mind selling a valuable piece of property that's in the middle of a very valuable piece of property, you know, so it sounds, but that's a pig in a poke. I mean, we don't want to do that. 's not good planning, and that's, that's a problem for us, mr. [2:41:56] Darren Galant: Marquardt, not sure where to begin. Again, several different thoughts here, but to start from something that Lucy just said, frustrating. I also find it insulting that we are asked to give recommendations on the acquisitions and dispositions of properties from an uninformed point of view or perspective. This is not the first time it's happened. None, it was a unanimous vote in opposition on the recommendation for the Red Shop. The same occurred on Martel School several years ago because we weren't given privy to the inside information. It's not unprecedented that the Planning Board has been in executive sessions. If you need to look back at some institutional memory, make contact with Mr. Arsenault if he's still around, still with us. Dave Hediger, I know that he is. As a matter of fact, I remember during the Mr. Hediger years when we were studying, Lucy will probably remember, all of the ins and outs of the riverfront. Not only is the Planning Board the keepers of the car plan, but we were given a huge charge to participate in anything and everything that went on with respect to the riverfront. So I took it a little more personally a couple months ago when that just seemed to be back ended none city council not having executive sessions, and a little bit of sarcasm here, but giving away our assets that the local taxpayers, the state taxpayers, and the federal taxpayers have all contributed to. I mean, there's been land remediation down there because of soil contamination. There's been an investment in an amphitheater that this board was absolutely involved in. As a matter of fact, I believe that idea germinated from this board as the result of having certain funds available to us and wondering how best to use those funds. And that was the idea that came out from many others. But to just wake up one day, a couple days before a recommendation, and simply being asked yes or no on the disposition of the Red Shop and some of the other items within the letter intent which may or may not be succinctly Planning Board, but I find some of the financial math a little bit a bit insulting to the entire community. I mean, we need to start respecting our community to the point where we're not giving things away, making trivial comments such as, well, the investment will bring more investment later. I had a rather heated conversation last week with an individual with respect to how if this community is going to succeed survive first and then succeed we really need to take care of some of our cultural problems first because every idea that I've seen in the last 46 years of my adult life that I've been paying attention has not resulted in improvement if anything it is no resulted in quite the opposite tonight we listen to transit ideas for the city of Lewis and I've seen plenty of them come And go in this community, particularly Lisbon Street, that, and cut my attention the most because that's the corridor that I live in and have for the last 64 years. All these ideas were so great. Where's the material success from all those previous plans? We really have to consider Lewiston as a place of economic energy, not just a playground that's paid for by the poor taxpayers of Lewiston who are now abandoning their homes, not sure if they can pay their taxes, especially with next year's reval and so on and so forth. But so there has been a, had the word here somewhere, it's not unprecedented that the planning board has been involved in executive sessions, though I can't remember the two or three explicitly. I know that one came during a short tenure of a member, Mr. Medora, so that could help triangulate on the minutes of the meeting as to what the executive session was. What I do remember about it is that we had cast a vote, prevailing vote, in opposition to something that staff and council didn't like didn't like and we were a similar door was asked to make the motion to reconsider he did so and had a different result because of different attendance configuration of the boardish arrived at that next meeting even though he and I believe voted in opposition the second time around as well my aunt why was it an executive session I'm sure that it had some sort of sensibility with respect to the developers, et cetera, involved in that particular item. [2:48:07] Shanna Cox: Mr. Marcotte, I think you have a number of good points, and I want to hear them all. And so you have established that we have done executive session before, and that we should include what that is clearly in whatever protocol gets adopted. But I want to hear what else you've got. [2:48:22] Darren Galant: Yeah, and I wanted to circle, I know I'm throwing a lot of different things, grabbing things from different facets here, but what I've heard during all of my intermittent tenure here since 2009 is that no, we don't get to participate in executive sessions with the council. It's always been a struggle, even though it's not unprecedented, and there's two or three occasions where we have. But I hear more recently than even back 10 to 17 years ago that we don't get to, just like the memo that we got a little while ago that outlined MRS chapter 405 6c. I mean, There's many different ways to interpret some of this language, the considerations. Anyone can make an argument for and against anything that they so choose. That's the feeling I get here. We're the redheaded stepchildren that don't deserve to participate in being informed, but we're expected to provide the recommendation because it's in the Jada. It's an obstacle. come on to the City Council or to staff run many times has been administrations that it just as onerous as the council maybe even more so and I'm going back 46 years with that comment a lot of different administrations not just the current one but I think I've exhausted my ability to remember all of the little shards that I wanted to throw out there yeah I [2:50:28] Shanna Cox: like the idea of the council and the Planning Board having an understanding of expectations of one another and having joint opportunities to meet for that purpose and I wonder if there's some procedural things that for us to serve in an advisory role the way you define the roles of the different bodies at the beginning for us to serve in an advisory role for us to have some clarity on what that means and what it doesn't mean but also procedurally how do you advise on something what is required to be provided to an advisory body in order to provide advice like procedurally that only makes some sense and I'm also curious about while there's a fiduciary responsibility in the council from a legal perspective one would think that confidentiality the obligation to confidentiality should extend to us as well so that if there is some process that is happening that is gonna build a proposal require decision-making advice to that decision-making for actual consideration as opposed to feel like we're rather than just being a little speed bump like how does how do we really get that but have the obligation to hold that with confidentiality in the same way that the council does so I'm wondering from an implementation standpoint if there's some procedural things that could be built in that could foster relationship and communication when people are working together the things that happen more positively but also defining that obligation to provide information for advice to be able to be Given in any meaningful kind of way, like when we've had a couple of follow-ups when there has been some difference in what we've provided for advice and sort of the opposite of that happens, the decision, the discussion afterwards sort of is like an, it's enlightening and how much more positive it would be for that to be at the front end. So be great for this to be an opportunity rather than, rather than a crisis like. To just add one item on that, which is you're talking about policies and procedures, and I think one of them could be looking at the orientation information that we as planning board members receive, which my orientation was like seven or eight years ago. But I don't remember there being a lot, and I don't, I know that City Council gets an orientation. I would be curious about what they are oriented to understand our role as, and I would love for wherever this lands on that role clarity and our role as a board to reflect that, and for them to understand that as they're oriented. Right, this is the purpose of each of these committees, this is the relationship between Council and these committees, and here's what the planning board does, here's what you rely on them for. That feels like a procedural and process way to build in that and create that. I would also say like wouldn't it be cool if there was a meet and greet during that orientation where current planning board members say hi, nice to meet you, or this other body that you never see, and I think that structurally that would start to build some of those relationships and awareness in a meaningful way. Recently we had former council president Chittum essentially override months worth of discussion, public workshops, decision making. It's our next agenda item, I won't belabor it, but it was pretty clear to me that he didn't know what we had put into it or what our charge was with that item. So a procedural item, I think any time that we're being asked to make a recommendation, we spend some time naming what that recommendation is, not just reading the action, like I make a motion to make a recommendation. In beyond that, we take time, and usually the staff also takes time to read back those recommendations or clarify from us, where we are being really specific. And that is because we take our role seriously, and we are citizens, but we're professional citizens that I think have always understood how this body represents the city to a very specific and very important stakeholder group. It's not the only stakeholder group, but we understand that. And so I think the one of the procedural opportunities, even if it's just a new cover letter with a recommendation that includes an action steps item, which is different than just a recommendation, like the action might be clarifying information or an invitation and advance notice that it's on the council agenda, or the opportunity to have a click. There are other things that I think could be communicated into those recommendations. One of my concerns procedurally is that, and this is maybe the way the memo was framed, and I already see you kind of hearing a broader scope, which I appreciate and want to recognize, but I do think that there are times that a discussion, and sometimes they're discussions like tonight where it wasn't a public hearing there wasn't a specific agenda item we're not being asked to make a formal recommendation and we've still said we'd like this relayed to the council and i have to be honest with you at this point i have no confidence none that any of the times would made any of those comments that if it wasn't a formal recommendation read back within the one sentence that was in the motion that we made that all of that dialogue unless some council member through the kindness of their heart is watching this video, that it died in this room. And as chair, it makes it really hard to understand why I don't just, enough of that discussion, let's just move it, no one cares. And that's not respectful of our time or our skills or our expertise or our talents, and we do all have, I'll bring that to the table. It's frustrating. I also don't believe anyone on council is aware that they're not considering that we had input, that there were good ideas or a question to be clarified. I don't think that communication is getting to them, and I don't know if that's, I, when I say I have zero faith of staff, I want to say, to be clear, I think we have great staff for the planning department, and I see that pretty consistently. I think the breakdown happens inter-departmentally and to this floor of administration, and I don't, I don't know that, I'm not assigning intention or malice, right, at all, but I do think the impact is that this board spends time and care and careful care and Consideration on items that no one else even knows we've spent time on. I can't feel good for you guys because you're spending time writing these memos, listening to us, making sure the minutes are right, reiterating it back to us and why, and so procedurally. And I, and I say this because one of the concerns that I had specific to the Red Shop, specific to City Council that night, is we were asked to consider a disposition with almost no information. It has been explained to us in multiple different formats previously, but specifically again in this one, that it's real estate and confidentiality is a necessity. You've already heard a willingness this many times future as well as procedurally tonight to make sure you know that we know, for us to swear an oath that we understand confidentiality and for us to be allowed access to that information. What I am further concerned with though is that the notion that we're the guardians of multiple documents, we're applying that to the capital improvement process every year. We apply it to every decision that we're asked to make about a development, and you hear us with the Martell development say we're aware that there's pedestrian issues, we're aware that there's pedestrian plans underway, how is that being coordinated? We take care to ensure that the information we have across different departments and across multiple different planning documents are being brought to bear on the decisions that we make, and we are asked to do all of that work because frankly that's a lot of work, and Council has to do that and understand the Finance Committee's role and School Committees, and we're charged with our own separate piece and we take it seriously. And it is what I heard that night from the developer sitting next to staff was that there was a willingness to have a public workshop. We're up here talking about an executive committee that wasn't even necessitated, and that there is procedurally outside of what we do once it comes to us, there is procedurally within city administration and interdepartmentally the opportunity to say not can we get away with this LOI, but more specifically what would garner excitement and public support for a monumental milestone, and how do we include others in it? That is a completely different mindset shift, and it has been a successful one for two huge developments on Pine Street where developers came in publicly, workshopped it with us, talked about it, encouraged the public to understand, gave us the information and us the opportunity to ask clarifying questions before they proposed anything concrete, which then got full support. And we have been doing that for decades. Public workshops, public... You don't have to set up the whole room and do a whole joint session. Have a public workshop, invite us to it along with the public. I'm not asking you to take extra steps or more time. And we have a long history of having done that really well under previous administrations with different department heads. We've had a phenomenal amount of staff turnover. Some of that historical knowledge, some of that muscle memory might have been lost. Again, I'm not trying to assign malice, but it felt unethical. Doing it sloppy is not a good answer for an investor who's thinking about putting millions of dollars into our city. But doing it because we think we can get away with doing it quicker, and that backfiring so significantly that we have multiple headlines about it, is damaging. We have been asked to be business friendly by the council, multiple councils, multiple times. We hold that intention with public interest, common good, public safety, which was a big portion of tonight. I'd like to know that energy is being matched by staff in all departments as well as the city council, and what I heard that night as I sat in this room and heard city council was that they wished they'd had that recommendation from us, that they wished they'd had the opportunity to meet with us, in executive or otherwise. And when you have two decision-making bodies saying we wanna be working together more closely, and we functionally are not, I don't think it's a disposition protocol that's gonna get us there. I think it's about culture, I think it's about under-resourced staff. Yet there's a lot of reasons, but it's embarrassing and it's unacceptable. Acceptable, it just is. And like Mr. Marcotte said, it is not the first. It was the biggest and most significant in my tenure on this Council, but it is not the first. It won't be the last. I, it could be the last. It could be the last. There is every opportunity, right, for it to be the last. And so I would love to see a future conversation here before we get to a joint conversation with city council that pulls any documented statute required language of what our role is, what our intersectional roles are. What duties are for either finance or council to consider our recommendations? I'd like, wherever this goes tonight and where we get to a final approved or agreed upon process and a new understanding, I'd like for somewhere between now and there to include what you're using to communicate across departments. Because one of, one of the things that this very much felt like, in the same bucket, completely different item, business property, all of the things are different, but it felt the same to me, is when we had development, we had an application for a parking lot, yeah, at the mosque. We had an abutting neighbor and stakeholder across the street. Both of those had come to us at multiple times, but at the time that stuck, right where we had actually had all the information and all that information was ordered and a decision and vote was reached, we had a member of the public saying to us very clearly that they had been told that this board and this body was the solution to their problems around occupancy around approval of the process that they had gone to mul and everybody had said now i don't know that 's true or not it's pretty there was a lot of things said by that member of the public that night and so right but what i will say is it does feel like it is not uncommon that other departments are saying that it is planning which is you and your staff as well as planning board that it's their purview and we cl you can go back to that specific night where we named if you're concerned that it's over occupancy, that's code enforcement. If you're concerned about public parking enforcement at the public parking lot next door or the street, that's parking enforcement. If you're concerned about altercations around parking, that's PD. And the response was, they've all said it's your problem, and that us reviewing a complete application would somehow stop those issues from happening. And in that night, and this is a concrete example that I'm offering, in that night I said it would be helpful to see, since it is a matter of public record, the email exchanges between that member of the public and the departments of which had given him that advice. That is a request that is still outstanding and I have not seen. So when I talk about the way it's working between departments, I'm trying to give you very clear concrete examples that you can research by planning board minutes and video of requests beyond a disposition that have been made for good reason and one of the questions that I personally enroll would like clarified in the short term and then as a result of whatever happens in the long term final solution when this board makes a request not just a motion for a recommendation but a request can you ask city council this could we inquire about a meeting any of those items should i be following up personally as chair of the planning board to administrator kainrath and copying the council on it so that request has been made and then if council chooses to ignore it that's one thing, and we've and we've we've lived with that at different times. I'm concerned that we don't know that the ultimate recipient ever got the information, and should I just take it upon myself, and is that the is that the way we're gonna do it now and forever, or just in the short term? Do you have a recommendation? [3:08:17] Speaker J (unidentified): The short answer is no, you shouldn't. You should not have to do that. You should be given the assurances that if you as a body make a request to another body, if it's the council, that we get that clarification from you, we know exactly what your intent is, what your intended impact is, and get it to that body. [3:08:44] Shanna Cox: But as follow-up from the meeting that we requested it in, or at a future date when the council brings up something related and somebody makes an independent decision that those two dots should connect, then because I don't think we've ever had a request or an action item or a follow-up step that was like someday in the future, we recognize that they might not consider it until someday in the future or never at all, but they won't know that they should be taking a minute to ask that question or follow-up if it's not on their radar. And that is where my concern is. Right. [3:09:22] Speaker J (unidentified): And so we, I mean, we'll take the blame on that one. If it's not getting into their hands because we haven't put it there, that's one thing. As long as we can show that we're putting it into their hands or that it's in front of their eyeballs, I can't make them read it. We can't make them take action on it. Nor do we expect that. But what I can do is ensure that it gets in front of their eyeballs. And if we know what you guys are asking for, if we have that clarity, and that's on us. We're not double checking to make sure we know exactly what it is that you guys want us to do. This is not a recommendation. We are just asking this question. We would like this to go to the council. We get that action. We can draft something. And if you want it to be just, if you want our preview at first through the chair, we can do that. Or if you, if you trust staff to just say yes, you've met the intent of what we're wanting, put in front of their eyeballs, we will get it [3:10:15] Shanna Cox: in front of them. Maybe you could just include that as correspondents in the next agenda packet so we know that, like for us it's knowing what occurred and what happened. And there's again, like human error is very real, and I have staffed multiple committees and boards myself, and it is not about that. And it, I don't need blame to be taken. My point around it is if the chair of the board or if the board is copied on that communication to council, not only do we know it when, and we know when it went, but we know what's in there. And if something in there is like, oh, actually what we, what we intended, or I didn't, IS THAT WHAT YOU THOUGHT WE MEANT? I DIDN'T REALIZE. WE CAN CLARIFY THAT. WE ARE NOT DOING IT SIX MONTHS LATER AND BEHIND THE EIGHT BALL. I THINK THAT WOULD BE A GOOD PROTOCOL TO CONSIDER. I THINK THAT WOULD HELP. [3:11:09] Speaker J (unidentified): I AGREE. I THINK ONE OF THE THINGS WE STRUGGLE WITH THAT WE RUN INTO IS THERE MAY BE TIMES THAT YOU ASK, YOU WANT SOMETHING TO GET CONVEYED TO THE COUNCIL. BUT WE DON'T HAVE AN AGENDA ITEM FOR THAT COUNCIL MEETING night, so trying to find the right spot to put that, or how do we get that to them when it's not on a very controlled, very regimented agenda. So it doesn't, but that's what I'm saying is it, we're just trying to figure out where do we place that. Is it just, is it, I mean, is it an email, it could [3:11:45] Shanna Cox: be an email to them, correct. Exactly, it's like this is information we want you to have. Well, so that's the alternative is I start showing up at public, where we take turns showing up at public comment periods and delivering our message ourselves, right. Like it doesn't make it public record, it's not a, we're very much for transparency, it's not about that, it's about timeliness and conveyance of information. I'd like to think that one of the, what I'm gonna guess three or four executive sessions where they were working with a developer and working with economic development on drafting out language in an LOI somebody might have said hey the planning board get all in a kerfuffle about this should we find out what that's about before we take this outside the room well that's a good question can somebody watch that video or send it I mean it's all there right and I know for a fact because a number of them sat up here and said it that night on council that if they'd known they would have asked some clarifying questions or not let it get out of executive section in the shape that it was it and like they didn't need an agenda item for that information to have been beneficial to them and our reputation as a city and to the investor to the project like and that's and this goes back to intent it's not about like well how do we create a procedural spot that this fits into its information write a letter man it hundred percent [3:13:12] Speaker J (unidentified): agree and we're fine doing that and that's what i'm saying is we can get it in front of their eyeballs i mean they have they have the exact same kind of an email group that you guys have i've used it a lot so we can we can get it in front of their eyeballs yeah i just want to make sure that we're we're doing it in a way where it correlates to something that they that they either have already seen that they know about or it may be coming up in the future and so that's what i'm trying to piece together is this one yes this example works because they're THEY'RE IN DELIBERATION IN EXECUTIVE SESSION TALKING ABOUT A SPECIFIC PROJECT. SO ANY INFORMATION THAT COMES IN, IT'S GOING TO BE TOP OF MIND TO THEM. THEY'RE GOING TO GET IT. BUT IF WE'RE TALKING ABOUT SOMETHING THAT MAY NOT HAVE COME UP ON THEIR AGENDA YET, IF YOU GUYS ARE JUST TALKING AS A BODY ABOUT SOMETHING THAT YOU WANT INFORMATION TO GET TO THE COUNCIL AND IT'S NOT SOMETHING THAT THEY'VE DISCUSSED YET, I WANT TO MAKE SURE THAT THERE'S A CORRELATION THERE WITH THEM VERSUS JUST THROWING INFORMATION AT THEM. A, I DON'T THINK WE'RE [3:14:07] Shanna Cox: CAPRECIOUS, HEY, CAN YOU UPDATE THE COUNCIL AND LET THEM KNOW MY NEW FAVORITE FLAVOR IS CHOCOLATE? RIGHT, LIKE WE'RE NOT AGAIN, WE'RE PRETTY SERIOUS ABOUT HOW WE TAKE OUR DUTIES AND HOW WE CARRY THEM OUT, AND SO I DON'T THINK THAT'S AN ISSUE, AND I DON'T THINK YOU SHOULD DESIGN TO THE BOTTOM TWO PERCENT. RIGHT, I DO THINK WHAT IS MORE LIKELY IS, AND WHAT THERE IS GOOD HISTORY OF, IS THIS BODY SAYING IT FEELS LIKE THIS HAS BEEN AN ISSUE A COUPLE OF TIMES AND CITY COUNCIL SHOULD CONSIDER taking this up. We're trying to put something on their radar and they might say, that's cute, little planning board, we don't really care about that. Great, at least they considered it and made a choice and didn't fail to make a choice from lack of information, right? And that's, you know, whether it's parking or pickleball courts and the excitement that garnered and how they might want to consider investing in more pickleball courts. I don't like, there are times that information and it not all of them require a meeting. Or an executive session or significant follow-up from us, and it's us trying to work with them to steward and plan our resources, land and financial, for the future, because that's what we've been asked to do. That's, I mean, that's literally, and so I don't think it needs a procedural milestone to fit into. I think it's, and if, and if you want to plan for a future where this body is somehow capricious or not thoughtful about the time for you to relay the message or for counsel to read it, then say within. 48 hours of memos provided to counsel and what they do with it's what they do with it, right? We're not asking you to force anybody to open their eyeballs, we just would like. [3:15:59] Speaker J (unidentified): It to get in front of them. Yeah, we can, we can definitely do that. 's, I don't think that's been done if, I don't think, I know, I haven't, I haven't presented anything and like I said, that's why I said earlier, I know you're not looking for blame, but you know, bad on me for not doing that, and so I will, I will be sure to do that going forward as a starter, just to make sure that if you, we can get things in front of them, just give them the information is. [3:16:28] Shanna Cox: There anything else on this agenda item from the board? Will you make sure that part of what you bring to us is how we do appropriately deal with staffing concerns? Could you say that again? Yep. What do we do if in the course of our duties we are confronted with a concern about staff? What is the appropriate way to handle that concern? There is no other item d discussion. We'll move to item e. Okay, a memorandum on the no name pond overlay and staff interpretation. I think this is you again, director. Connor, I think I have. [3:17:32] Speaker J (unidentified): Have all of them tonight, so I think you and I had talked about this. I think I've received some emails from others just kind of getting a, you know, what happened, what's going on with this whole thing? It's gone back and forth, we ping pong this. Just to give you a lay of the land where we are right now, obviously I'm assuming you all watch the council meeting if you weren't in attendance, and the second reading of the language pass, so we're just waiting the timeline for it to be implemented. Just to give you some background on it, obviously, you know, we brought it to you guys based off an interpretation of the ordinance that staff was reading. We had some thoughtful and deliberate, you know, discussions. We came up with some language, you guys came up with some language that we presented. The council rejected it, came up with their own language and sent it back. In that interim, staff really started digging deep, like we really started delving into the into the ordinances, and what we came up with, what Shelly and her planners came up with, was that, you know, maybe we, maybe we misinterpreted that, like do we, did we really need this language, and do we really need to go through all of that and going through the definitions we're looking at you know a buffer and what can be in a buffered what is a buffer and what we determined that and obviously listening to all of you I think some of you at the beginning THOUGHT MAYBE THIS DOES FIT. Counselor Chiddum came to the conclusion he didn't think it was needed. The permit could have been issued. It taught us to really go back and look interspectively of how we interpreted that. We feel like the added language that any work in a buffer will be done according to the, what is it, the best practices. We feel that adds to it, but the original language should not have precluded or prohibited, rather, any, permit being issued, is the short of it. And so we went through all of this. We feel like we strengthened the ordinance a little bit. I don't think we made it more murky, but going forward, you know, taking into account chapter two's definitions of the buffer, that we're, we're in the right spot. We don't foresee this coming up again in the future, but that's, that's the short answer of how we got to where we're at. [3:20:32] Shanna Cox: If that's short, shorter than you reading the memo, I love that. 's not a practice any longer. I just, I [Lucia Gibson: would] argue, and I am not entirely sure if you are or are not arguing this, because it's not clear to me, to be honest with you. It's helpful to hear where, how we got here, since we were along for a lot of that ride. I don't think much of that's a mystery to me. Glad to hear you're moving forward with the permit. One of the challenges that I had with councillor Chittum's comments that night in this room for planning board was around the fact that there was this lack of clarity, and that his language didn't actually address that root cause. I think we had some agreement that night that, yeah, it still wasn't super clear. I think that's what your second, your first bullet point under item 4 is saying, but I'm not sure, to be honest with you, for you to have to go through all the steps that you went through, it's not clear. I'm just like, if it requires staff to go through an introspective and re-looking at all the definitions, then and for that to have only been taken as a step before we reviewed it three or four times in here and made a recommendation to council and then reconsidered the recommendation the council sent back to us, and it took all of that for current staff to feel clear on it, I would argue that the language isn't clear and it still needs to be clarified, period. That I just, yeah, that's a good, that is a very good argument. Hey, it took us six months, but now we're really clear in the language and no changes need to be made. As soon as this existing staff is gone, I'm gonna argue that it's not clear enough. Fair argument. It's a very fair argument, and it's a long memo that says, yeah, it took us a while, and if it takes a while, it's not clear, and if it's not clear, we should still do our [3:22:37] Speaker J (unidentified): Original work. Well, we also think that given number seven, the addition of number seven, it does clear it up in our opinion, in our interpretation of it. Yes, that first part could be a little murky, but once you get to the, you add number seven to it, then pretty much clears it up for you that yes, you can do this, you can do in this buffer area, you just have to follow these principles or these best management practices. But I see what you're saying and I agree that, you know, could it be cleared up? Do you want to make it as simple and get the legalese out of it and just make it as black and white as possible? The person [3:23:17] Shanna Cox: that needs to understand it in the very first place is the developer or property owner is trying to figure out what their request is and whether they can even request it. That's right, that's who it's, it needs to be clarified so that a layperson who has no engineering or any of that stuff, environmental mental expertise, can figure out, can I do this here or can I, if I agree with you, I 100 agree. [3:23:54] Speaker J (unidentified): If we're going to do that, we should probably throw out all of our ordinances and start from scratch, [3:23:58] Shanna Cox: or as ordinances come before us, we should just insist that they're readable instead of trying to hover, which is, by the way, exactly what we're doing right now, and the problem is they're written by lawyers. Yeah, I so the, I feel like the which manual to look at and you must mitigate phosphorus, which is the addition that was made by council, assumes but does not state, like because I asked that language question that night, that language assumes that development's okay and this is how you do it, but there was no change to anywhere else that says if development is or it's just temporary development or like could a house have gone in that, right, like none of that was clear on the front end. It just, I really think like a next generation 2050 planning department is gonna say, well, it's clear that we've got to take care of phosphorus, but I don't know if it's a permeable driveway or non-permeable driveway or if they can even develop in here temporarily, just dropping at all, even if, and those were the same questions that we had and tried to deal with. Maybe we could have dealt with them better, I don't know, I'm very open to that, and Chittum's language is great, don't get me wrong, we approved it, didn't deal with the original issue. So what are next steps regarding [3:25:19] Speaker J (unidentified): This item we can definitely sit down and have another workshop on it if you want, and we can, we can try to come up with some even clearer language that gets to the same result with easier reading and really clear it [3:25:36] Unidentified speaker (Roll Call): up. Thanks, Zoe. I'm also still a little bit concerned about that definition of buffer where it's being defined as the reserved portion of allotment to mitigate land-use impacts on adjacent parcels, but then is very clearly used in the section we're talking about to talk about a buffer that, yeah, things like that, but it's being clearly used to talk about a buffer where you don't want to disturb a waterway, which is different than adjacent parcels, so there's still, there's still some concern there for me as well. If we need to add to the definition of buffer, or if we need to use a different word then buffer and call it a setback or something like that, yeah, you know, not to further muddy THE WATERS, FIGURATIVELY AND LITERALLY. THAT'S RIGHT. [3:26:27] Speaker J (unidentified): WOULD THE BOARD LIKE TO SEE SOME EXAMPLES FROM STAFF TO BRING FORWARD AT ANOTHER AGENDA? [3:26:38] Shanna Cox: I DON'T KNOW THAT IT NEEDS TO BE A BIG FORM. WE DID A LOT. I WOULD BE CURIOUS, IT FELT LIKE THE COUNCIL FOLLOWED COUNCILOR CHIDDUM'S recommendation and that counselor Chittum's recommendation to throw out our work and go with the recommendation he created was because he had a very different understanding of what problem we were trying to solve with the language, and so I don't know that our language was bad or not helpful. I think that it, from what I understood from that evening, it was dismissed because it didn't strengthen the water protection and clarify on how to do it, and that's great, we weren't asked to do that, and it's a handy lovely outcome, but what we were asked to do was provide clarity, and I and I think that miscommunication or lack of understanding of intent and what we were asked to do or the goal of our work is what led to these kind of two disparate actions, and so it would be different if they said we saw your recommendation and it really made it more confusing and onerous and we don't like that it's prohibitive of development and we rejected it and just mitigate phosphorus, that is not the feedback that i heard that night and it's not in line with what work we did and [3:28:05] Speaker J (unidentified): so that's, yeah, give us, give us some time to come up with some [3:28:12] Shanna Cox: new ideas maybe next six months sound good [3:28:15] Speaker J (unidentified): shorter than that we'll have something soon right there's like great [3:28:18] Shanna Cox: Something between in 2026, let's button it up January 1st, 28th. No, his mic's not working. First part of January. Shanna, you made a comment maybe in the earlier discussion about recommendations having some kind of cover memo so that this is what we're trying to accomplish by saying it in this way, and it's like, oh, but we didn't think about this getting that kind of feedback back, and the council seeing that we're not addressing this issue, we're addressing this issue, would probably be helpful for them as well. So I just, I want to just highlight what you said earlier, maybe being a good practice for us to take. Forward like desired goals or outcomes or intent of this agenda item on that cover letter, I think. [3:29:10] Michael Marcotte: That would be good too. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I do want to point out that when we do send ordinance changes, we include all of the materials we sent you with their packet, and then there is a separate memo that says you took a certain action and what the motion was and if there were any specific comments that you wanted to have included. So usually, hopefully they understand what you were given and what your charge was, but well. [3:29:40] Shanna Cox: If the only way for them to understand that is reading multiple three or four page memos relative to the one agenda item, I would hazard a guess that no. But it's not that you're not providing it, they're not consuming it. And if we accepted, which given that sometimes my agenda comes in a box for this board, like just some good call outs on the memo, like the original request was to clarify the intent, like it should be a sentence, it shouldn't require sloughing through a couple of memos to find it, and. Please do continue to give them your good work that we also spent time reading, but I don't expect them to read it, and that's fine. But given that real reality, how do we work within it, Mr. Murcott, having had. [3:30:26] Darren Galant: Interest in this item, and I read the council packet, I found it very confusing. If I had been a city councilor looking at that packet agenda item, I would have been confused. I wasn't even sure which way the recommendation was, what version they were actually voting on that night. I think I understand now, but I didn't from the reading. And speaking of recommendations that go to Council, having sat there for two years, having previously been on the Planning Board and Finance Committee, and being on the. receiving end of a recommendation whether it's the LC IP or it's the budget planning the Finance Committee does budget recommendations as well. I tried to make sure that got read out loud, but all too often city council simply accept and put on file. The public has no idea what kind of recommendation that they were receiving from the two different bodies on those issues unless somebody on the city council actually reads it out loud or on occasion because council overturned the finance committee on several occasions while I was there someone comes to City Council for the agenda item and makes a presentation. I remember one particular night case where unfortunately I wasn't the chair that year somebody else was no sat right there made the best presentation of his life and still got turned down which was pretty bad pretty sad because it is supposed supposedly a finance committee that's appointed with the skill sets not to be on a finance committee as well as here no I assume that when the mayor and the approval of City Council not to the members of this board think about the resumes none do they have expert resumes not do they have a background that suggests that they know a little something, come from different walks of lives. Speaking of recommendations and ordinances and stuff, they go back to the 70s. In the 70s, there were a lot of attorneys on this board. At the time, I didn't think that was a great thing. Now I'm thinking one or two might be nice to have, it really would. and we've had planners here too and since I'm thinking of it and no we know we're sort of still on the no-name pond I mentioned it during the discussion earlier March 16th was that the date George DCO worked in the planning department here back in the 90s he might actually have institutional memory on why the language says what it says with respect to no-name pond and the overlay BECAUSE IT WAS A HUGE DEAL AT THE TIME TO HAVE THAT PARTICULAR OVERLAY DISTRICT IMPLEMENTED AND ALL THE CONTENTS AND WHETHER ANY OF IT IS MURKY OR NOT AND YOU MIGHT HAVE SOME PERSPECTIVE TODAY. [3:33:43] Shanna Cox: DIRECTOR CONNOR, DO YOU HAVE ANY CLARIFYING QUESTIONS TO ASK US ABOUT NEXT STEPS RELATED TO AGENDA ITEM E? NO. OKAY. IF I MIGHT, I'D LOVE TO MOVE US TO AGENDA ITEM 6, READING OF THE MINUTES, AND SEEK A MOTION TO ADOPT THE JUNE 22ND. [3:34:00] Darren Galant: Nope. Could I sort of add like an F or an F? Oh, I had sent at least one request to Director Conner, and I'm trying to remember because I have two ideas in my mind. One was when was when was the last time that the Planning Board and gave a recommendation on disposition of mill five and the parcel it's got to be out there somewhere in the minutes, and the other one that I've since had conversation with Mr. Connor is and seeing how somebody helped me with I was supposed to bring a prop tonight but I didn't. It was mentioned during the transit segment ramp somebody helped me with the riverfront island master plan. Okay, yeah, the thing that we're supposed to have a lot of ins involvement in that's just one of the many different reports and studies and so forth that the city pays big money not to have on a dusty old shelf on the third floor. I'd love to see a bibliography not pull them all down and have a stack of them here but a bibliography that if that's the right word for it where we can look down through it's got a timeline it's got the name of the report you want an inventory an inventory. Yeah, and so that, I mean, I've got a few at home hanging around and every once in a while I'll see something that catches my attention and I wonder, wow, look at the year on that. [3:35:50] Shanna Cox: This might exist on the website already and just sending that link to us. [3:35:55] Speaker J (unidentified): Are you speaking specifically to the riverfront island master plan? No. The comp plan and the island point? [3:36:02] Darren Galant: No. Every single report that may [3:36:05] Shanna Cox: exist. I would like to dial that back just a little. Every single plan that might exist is a big tolerant. [3:36:12] Darren Galant: I'm sure we don't commission [3:36:14] Shanna Cox: any economic development or planning documents or studies related to economic development, planning in parks or transportation. [3:36:25] Darren Galant: Things that would appear in the comp plan. [3:36:30] Shanna Cox: Does that scope help? [3:36:31] Darren Galant: The one that got my attention was a homeless study that said end of homeless in five years and it was probably 15 years ago so my so the impetus to the request is maybe I'm going to want to see one of those reports and how have we met what that report was supposed to do for us because I haven't seen a lot of those materialized. We're here today a lot of good ideas killing the [3:37:01] Shanna Cox: riverfront island master plan and the choice neighborhood transformation plan both of those are like high success completion rates [3:37:10] Darren Galant: two of them I wasn't sure what you said you said killing [3:37:14] Shanna Cox: when you said killing I thought oh like we're killing we're slaying sorry doing a great job [3:37:21] Darren Galant: We're doing a great job. I thought you meant decommissioning those reports. [3:37:26] Shanna Cox: I meant killing in a very positive way, and I can see how that's confusing, so I apologize. [3:37:33] Speaker J (unidentified): So would it help, Mr. Marquardt, if we started finding some of those reports, started pulling some of them up and sharing them with you and the board and asking, is this what you're talking about? Because I need to know exactly. Are you just saying you want an anthology of every report that has ever been commissioned by the city? [3:37:51] Shanna Cox: Could we make it 2,000 on? Because 20, like, I can't imagine that super back is going to make a huge difference. [3:37:57] Darren Galant: 2,000 present is fine. Put a time stamp on it? I mean, it's probably 20, 30 listed items. I'm not looking for necessarily copies. Hopefully they exist somewhere. But just knowing that they exist, having a, like a reference library of what may [3:38:18] Shanna Cox: exist in the stags. And Director Connor, start with low hanging fruit and say this is what exists, this is what's on our website, these are the links that we have. While we continue to look for any other any specific that you would like that you know exist that you would like us to look for it like give us a feedback loop [3:38:36] Speaker J (unidentified): opportunity before you that's my fear is we don't know we don't know yeah if I [3:38:42] Shanna Cox: don't know what I'm looking for just tell us what you do know and ask fill in the gaps and we can collaborate on it we can start that and then an answer to [3:38:50] Speaker J (unidentified): your initial question staff did a search through the internal share drive, both for the agenda items of the council as well as all of the planning board files. We did a search for Mill Five and we also did a search for the actual address. What was the address? Mill Street? Whatever the address was. We did a search for those two and got zero hits in terms of disposition. So if anybody knows an exact date and time that one may have transpired we couldn't find any in any of the files that there was a position [3:39:28] Shanna Cox: for bait smell number five you're not gonna find it because that hasn't taken ownership of the property and won't until the brownfields is done so if you're searching for disposition you won't find it row la did some data and some research and worked with some academic institutions to look at alternative uses and pathways to like restoring saving conserving and that was prevents presented at a public workshop for City Council and should be available circa 2011 12 but and I know that might be a Separate, but like there was a plan presented and a workshop with architectural rendings and student college when CMMC was thinking for that as well. But no, the before just to get to the point where there was enough energy to say holy, maybe we shouldn't wrecking ball that building. There was request made in a workshop made to City Council that engaged some academic like college students of different disciplines put together a plan. Yeah, Bates probably you should, you should work with Bates on their library of our plans that they've helped create for us. I bet you they keep great record [3:40:50] Darren Galant: to that. Yeah, and as far as specific dates, you could look back to May, June of 2009. Yeah, enough for the wrecking ball because that was approved before it was retracted either in December of that year or January one after the new council is seated. No, they may been a pullback on it. No, but no, I'm glad to believe that there were recommendations in the past, you know, whether they were increments of every one of the extensions or whether they go back to that period when it was going to be torn down for a mere 800,000. Yeah, no, which we'll never see again. And I think something would have happened in the last 17 years if it had been. No, because it would have been everything except for the, I don't know if it's called the pump station or the portion of the building that's close to the crossfire. It's power station, power station. There were, there were generators and they weren't sure whether taking that out would collapse the canal walls. Yeah, and there is something out there speaking of reports and studies, there's a Shelly report, a Shelly before Shelly I think too. Now there's a Shelly report that talks about the spalling and the structural integrity of the cement and it's rebar. And Shelly, an acronym for something? No, it's an actual engineering firm of some sort. Shelly, congratulations, you own [3:42:32] Shanna Cox: an engineering firm. Yeah, I'm mindful of the time, it's 9:12. Was your F enough? Yes. Okay, great. I'm looking for a motion to adopt the June 22nd. Thank you. Is there a second? Thank you. Any discussion? Call the roll. I [3:42:51] Unidentified speaker (Roll Call): have to try to remember everybody's names. I know. Wait. We're doing great. I know. Darren Gallant. Yes. Shanna Cox. Yes. Zoe Lidstrom. [3:43:00] Shanna Cox: Yes. Lucy Bisson. Maybe I'll be contrary and say that. Yes. Penthea Burns. Yes. Michael Marcotte. Yes. Great. [3:43:11] Speaker J (unidentified): Motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn. A second? If I may. No. Really quickly. Okay. I'd like to pass out one more memo from Dirk. [3:43:19] Shanna Cox: We heard this was going to come earlier in this. Why was that not in other businesses? [3:43:23] Speaker J (unidentified): I just wanted to hand it out. I understand that. Stand up and hand it out, man. Darren had asked for something on the vacant building ordinance that we had talked about, and then Mr. Marcotte also brought up rental registration in the same vein, and I didn't know exactly where I was going to sound like it was about there's six other microphones talk as [3:43:46] Shanna Cox: you walk, so it wasn't in our packet, so it wasn't online. How could the public get this information, or will be included in next month's next times [3:44:01] Speaker J (unidentified): minutes, tonight's minutes? Yes, we'll include it with the minutes, and we'll include it in the in the packet. It's it's basically we'll get it up for the public. Yeah, that's great, we'll get it for the public. I just wanted you guys to get an update where we're at. We're still working. The short of it is we're still working on one. We went back and talked to some of the commercial developers and got their feedback that jumping into a commercial vacant building ordinance would not be in the city's best interest right now and so we're working on the residential piece of it we're trying to align that with some future commercial possibilities in the future for potential tiff districts or development districts in the city but we are we're working to draft something you can see in the back the next steps are basically what we'd like to bring it before you guys for your for your input and making sure that it ensures neighborhood bless you neighborhood stabilization and code compliance we'll take your recommendations and feedback. We'll we'll meet with the city administration, I go over it with them, and then get it onto a council agenda, taking all of your changes, feedback and recommendation to the council for them to enact. Might I say that [3:45:22] Shanna Cox: Zoe's brought it up before in addition that you consider putting in something about the short-term housing, Airbnbs and just to see where that might fit in there. [3:45:40] Speaker J (unidentified): Right, so that would fall more in line with the rental registration, and that's a different topic all together that we're working on. That's under the clerk's purview. Definitely something [3:45:53] Shanna Cox: she would say she's been looking for an update on that as well. I'll just bring her voice into the room and say glad you're working on it because you should be, right, so the rental registration [3:46:04] Speaker J (unidentified): Piece as well as the vacant building are gonna kind of run hand in hand, and hopefully we can get something to you here within the next couple months. But hopefully that answers your question. We are working on it, and we do want to get something out there for the council, super as [3:46:20] Shanna Cox: well as you. Thank you. I think there was a motion and a second on adjourning. All in favor just say [3:46:26] Michael Marcotte: Say aye. Aye. Good night, everyone. Yes. Yes. I wish it were.