[0:05] It
[0:30] One minute of warning. Have a great meeting.
[0:49] Hm. There's a little mirror right here.
[1:15] Uh, welcome to the October 12, 2026 council work session. I'm Council President Waterman
[1:21] filling in, um, presiding over the meeting though Mayor Hunter is online. Can I have
[1:27] a roll call, please? Councilor Nunnley. Councilor Walker here. Councilor
[1:35] Gabriel, Councilor Blank here. Councilor Dowd here. Councilor Lefridge. Councilor
[1:43] Fisher. Council President Waterman here and Mayor Hunter here.
[1:52] Oh, today we have one item on our um work session and that is to discuss traffic
[1:59] calming, um, and our traffic calming policies. I would like to invite the staff to
[2:05] give a presentation.
[2:08] Thank you. Good evening, Council President, Mayor, and council members. We are excited
[2:14] to kick off the discussion on the development of a traffic calming policy for the
[2:19] city of Kalispell. Traffic calming is a very important part of building safety and
[2:26] a livable community, and we recognize that concerns about speeding, pedestrian safety,
[2:31] and neighborhood traffic are an important part to our community and residents that
[2:35] live within our community. Currently, the city of Kalispell does not have an adopted
[2:40] traffic calming policy. While staff still routinely receives and evaluates traffic-related
[2:46] requests, we need a consistent framework that establishes some clear guidelines,
[2:52] prioritize, prioritization of certain projects, funding, and implementation of those
[2:58] traffic calming measures. An important part of this discussion is recognizing that
[3:03] not every traffic concern or request will result in a physical improvement. The policy
[3:09] needs to establish reasonable expectations, provide objective criteria for making
[3:15] those decisions, and ensuring that our limited resources are directed towards projects
[3:20] that provide the greatest benefit to the community. Tonight, we bring forward a working
[3:25] draft of the policy, um, as a starting point for discussion. We're looking for council's
[3:31] initial direction on policy framework, uh, particularly project eligibility, uh,
[3:38] prioritization, and funding. We'll talk about funding quite a bit cause that's one
[3:42] of the things we really need direction on tonight. And, and in future work sessions.
[3:48] Uh, from there, we, um, we envision refining the policy through additional council
[3:55] discussion, stakeholder involvement before bringing it forward for some official
[4:00] adoption. Ultimately, our goal is to develop a very practical, uh, transparent policy
[4:07] that staff can consistently implement, uh, with the support of both city council
[4:13] and the community. So with that, I'm gonna turn it over to our Deputy Public Works
[4:19] Director, Keith Haskins to walk through the draft policy that was provided to council.
[4:25] We're gonna do an in-depth look at the policy. Um, and what is, uh, the development
[4:31] of the process. Again, seeking quite a bit of council direction, and we're hoping
[4:37] it's a pretty interactive council meeting. Um, so feel free to question us during
[4:42] the slides and, and ask questions, uh, during the presentation. So with that, I'm
[4:47] gonna turn it over to Keith and I guess buckle up. It's, it's gonna be a, a long
[4:53] presentation tonight. All right, not too bad. Thank you, I guess we've done longer
[4:59] maybe.
[5:02] Thank you and good evening, Mr. President, Mr. Mayor and council. We have 3 main
[5:07] topics tonight. First, we'll walk through the working draft of the traffic calming
[5:12] policy. Second, I need your initial direction on the framework of the policy and
[5:16] on funding. There are 6 open questions which are policy choices and we'll get to
[5:20] those uh near the end of the presentation. Funding is one of the most important discussion
[5:26] points, as Suzie said, because it affects how the process is completed. Third, I
[5:31] want to confirm the process from here. Suzy mentioned, we're proposing a deliberate
[5:35] sequence with the kickoff tonight, a 2nd work session to refine the framework based
[5:40] on the discussions that we have here, a stakeholder review with residents um and
[5:45] developers and our own emergency responders, and then a 3rd work session with recommendations
[5:51] from that stakeholder group and um city staff and then public notice and adoption
[5:56] for council. So, that's the, the hopeful process. The outcome we're hoping for tonight
[6:01] is initial direction, not final answers. If we leave here with a sense of where council
[6:06] wants to go on funding and framework, staff can do the refinement work. So here's
[6:12] just to just to start that off, you want this to be a little bit conversational.
[6:17] So if we have questions in the middle of the presentation, interrupt, please do just.
[6:23] Because there's 3 of us who have not been on previous prior councils. So could we
[6:28] get a little history of where we got to doing where we are here as well? I'm sure
[6:32] that's in your overview, but, uh, yeah, and actually we had it in the overview, but
[6:35] I took it back out. But yeah, I'm happy to, um, in fact, so 2016 about, um,
[6:43] we had, uh, uh. A known traffic calming issue that came up with East Oregon. So we,
[6:51] we brought that to council, we went through the data with council and we had um some
[6:59] recommendations for council and as a, a result of that, um we had a second
[7:07] meeting with council and I can't remember the date of that meeting but um With that,
[7:12] we went through a preliminary traffic calming policy that staff kind of developed
[7:18] a very uh rough outline for and talked through some of um what we were suggesting
[7:25] as a policy to move forward. We got stuck in council really with the funding question.
[7:31] Um, and, and the issue that came up was really what is fair, um, because we didn't,
[7:37] we don't have a funding mechanism for traffic calming. And so the staff recommendation
[7:41] at the time was to do a special improvement district and that puts the funding on
[7:47] to the residents that are the nearest the traffic calming item. And so that kind
[7:54] of became a lot of back and forth of is that really fair to those residents or is
[7:59] it a benefit to the entire city and should we be looking at other funding mechanisms.
[8:03] And as a result of that, um, I think the direction that we had was to look at other,
[8:08] uh, municipalities and see how they're funding it. And then this has been kicked
[8:14] down the road since then. So that's, that's where we're, that was back in 2022 when
[8:20] that was. And then essentially everybody's world was shaken up a little bit with
[8:24] COVID and ARPA funding, and I think we just Uh, we didn't have the resources to come
[8:29] back with, um, more information on it. We just prioritized other things above traffic
[8:35] calming, and then we, the last six months, we've kind of taken a deeper dive into
[8:39] it and brought back this policy in front of council tonight. I just wanted to open
[8:44] that up as just a little bit of a historic that this has been a conversation, but
[8:48] again, the reason we're looking at a policy is that we're moving forward. But part
[8:52] of it is that when we have one-off requests for like First Avenue East or something
[8:56] like that, we really, the staff Doesn't have any guidance and having a larger policy
[9:02] gives us some framework for staff to be able to look at requests and this is and
[9:07] we'll go through some examples tonight, you know, um, kind of how we would apply
[9:12] what we propose and trying to get feedback on some of that too. So I just wanted
[9:15] to take a pause there just to one encourage counsel that questions are welcome in
[9:20] this and just sort of give a little. A bit of the history of where we've been before
[9:24] and why we're looking at putting some policy into this so that we have some guidance
[9:28] in case we have those future requests. And additionally, this is kind of one of those
[9:32] actionable items within our land use plan, so we have our kind of overriding master
[9:36] plan, land use plan. So this is talked about quite a bit throughout that document,
[9:41] the Main Street Safety Action Plan, although it focused on Main Street, did, you
[9:46] know, kind of identify a number of safety measures that could be incorporated into
[9:50] city projects, so, And just as growth has happened, it's Not been an issue that's
[9:55] gone away. It continues to come to the forefront, um, quite regularly, so yeah, and,
[10:01] and our list has definitely gotten longer with requests as, uh, population increased
[10:06] and traffic has increased, um, so, well, thank you, Keith for that, and then I just
[10:11] want to let everybody know that that's a question, Ms. Blank, if you have anything,
[10:16] anybody's welcome to participate into those questions. Yeah, go ahead. Would it be
[10:23] possible, I didn't see it in the report, so I'm sorry if I missed it just to know
[10:26] where those requests have come from, just to see a, a heat map of what, what's going
[10:30] on. Um, I, we might be able to do that. I, I don't know if we have that, but it would
[10:35] take a little bit of time for us to do it, but we're, we're gonna go through some
[10:38] examples. Yeah, OK. It'd just be helpful for me to see what parts of the city, you
[10:42] can imagine every part of the city, OK, OK, yeah, I, I, I don't think that there's
[10:47] not an area as we would sit and tick through all of the, uh, requests that we've
[10:53] kind of reviewed that you can imagine every part of the city. We could think of almost
[10:58] every part of the city. Uh, downtown new subdivisions, um, subdivisions that were
[11:04] developed in the 2000, so almost every area of the city, OK, thank you, and we'll
[11:10] have, uh, we'll, we'll show some, we, we developed a rubric, so we'll show some scores
[11:16] as we kind of put those side by side and how they lay out. Yeah, I saw that. I was
[11:19] just thinking in terms of where the If in terms of funding, right, who, who's, yeah,
[11:26] it just came to my mind, yeah, and that's, that's a good point because one of the
[11:29] funding mechanisms that is important. Go ahead. Oh, over the past 6 years at least,
[11:36] uh, the most requests have come from Oregon 7th West.
[11:45] Um, 4 Mile and Main Street.
[11:52] Yeah, kids sports, sports, yep, yep, yeah. Ah, Main Street and then also um First
[11:59] East. And then I would also add in, yeah, you could add in roads crossing. We've
[12:06] seen, we've seen other conversations come up. I do agree with the assessment. It
[12:10] comes from just about everywhere, which is why a guiding policy needed to be set
[12:15] up. So no problem. No, you're, you're fine. It's, it's a great question. Yep, yep.
[12:22] Yeah, I really like the format of work sessions for this reason. We have more back
[12:26] and forth. That's great. Um, so here's the, the shape of the document we have, um,
[12:31] the 1st 4 chapters are very short. Um, they define traffic calming. They provide
[12:35] a vision for the policy. They explain why Calpo needs a policy, and then they state
[12:41] the policy goals. Chapter 5 is the peer review, what other cities do with particular
[12:48] attention to the 4 Montana communities that we looked at. Chapter 6 provides the
[12:53] toolbox, which is the menu of physical measures and where each one is appropriate.
[12:57] Chapter 7 is geared toward traffic calming requirements for new development. Um,
[13:02] this chapter allows proactive installations of traffic calming that's new to this.
[13:07] Chapter 8 is funding. Which we'll spend a lot of time on. Chapter 9 is the procedure
[13:15] requester goes through for a traffic calming installation on an existing street.
[13:19] Chapter 10 covers construction and who maintains the device afterwards. And then
[13:24] we have 4 appendices, a flow chart of the procedure, an example ordinance for the
[13:29] street maintenance district as a funding mechanism, the recommended amendments to
[13:34] our standards, and the scoring rubric we'd use to rank the requests.
[13:41] So, why do we need a policy in the first place? Kalispell had an estimated 31,851
[13:48] residents as of July of last year. That's 27% growth since the 2020 census, which
[13:54] makes us one of the fastest growing micropolitan areas in the country. Growth does
[13:58] a specific thing to a street network. As the arterials fill up, drivers start looking
[14:03] for ways around them. And residential streets can become convenient cut-throughs.
[14:08] Speeds go up, volumes go up, and our phones start ringing. We complete traffic reviews
[14:14] as our workloads allow and unfortunately, we get more speed complaints than we can
[14:18] study. That's not a staffing complaint, it's a structural issue and honestly, one
[14:22] of the biggest issues is even when we see a need for traffic calming, we lack the
[14:26] funding mechanism to move forward. By having a traffic calming policy in place, we
[14:30] hope to be able to fairly prioritize projects, have a process in place for what traffic
[14:35] calming technique is used, understand how an installation is paid for, and know that
[14:40] we have the backing of council as we move forward.
[14:47] Since 2020, Public Works has logged 141 traffic related requests with 112 involving
[14:53] speed management, stop signs, intersection controls, and traffic calming. These numbers
[14:58] don't include requests handled directly by the police department or concerns that
[15:02] weren't formally logged, so the actual number is likely higher. And so and often
[15:07] we have follow-ups um with each one of those. This demonstrates the ongoing demand
[15:13] on staff to evaluate and respond to traffic concerns throughout the community and
[15:17] reinforces why we need a consistent policy to guide how requests are evaluated, prioritized
[15:22] and addressed.
[15:26] The definition we use for traffic calming is the Institute of Transportation Engineers
[15:30] definition, and probably the most important word in it is physical. Traffic calming
[15:36] is not normally signs or paint. Those are traffic control and those aren't usually
[15:41] lacking. Where a sign asks a driver to slow down, a curb extension or a speed table
[15:46] requires it. That distinction runs through the whole policy. In fact, for existing
[15:50] streets, the policy requires that standard traffic control has already been in place
[15:55] for at least a year before we consider traffic calming. Second, calming is not a
[16:00] substitute for enforcement. What it does that enforcement can't do is work continuously.
[16:05] The traffic calming measure is as effective at 8:00 a.m. when school traffic is highest
[16:10] as it is at 2:00 a.m. when a driver might think they're free to run as they will.
[16:15] Third, the cold weather climate is a constraint. Everything installed permanently
[16:20] on our list needs to be able to survive winter. It must be easily locatable by drivers
[16:25] as well as snowplow operators under the snow, and it can't be something that prevents
[16:30] our operators from performing required operations and maintenance. The photo on the
[16:35] right is a chicane, which is one of the horizontal deflection measures in our toolbox.
[16:43] Before I get into the toolbox and the procedure, I want to put the, the vision in
[16:47] front of you, which is safe streets for all Kalispell residents and guests. The vision
[16:52] is the aspiration. We've anchored this into Montana's Vision Zero, which is the Department
[16:57] of Transportation's goal of 0 deaths and 0 serious injuries on Montana roadways.
[17:03] That isn't just borrowed language. The comprehensive highway safety plan is the document
[17:08] federal safety funding is organized around, so a local policy that aligns with it
[17:12] is on a strong, is a stronger grant application than one that isn't. The middle system
[17:18] or sentence, I'm sorry, is the argument for the entire document. Speed decides more
[17:24] than whether a crash is survivable. It decides what a street is. Below about 25 miles
[17:29] an hour, a roadway is a neighborhood street. Above that, it becomes a thoroughfare,
[17:34] and everything else about the street is incidental to moving cars through it. Kalispell
[17:38] will build toward a transportation system that is safe, livable, and connected for
[17:42] all users. Hey Keith, yeah, just wanna comment on that. I appreciate, um, that reference
[17:50] to Vision Zero, in there, um, you know, that is, uh, nationwide, a lot of communities
[17:58] are adopting this Vision Zero, and I'm glad to see that Montana has it, um, and I'm
[18:03] glad that we're kind of anchoring this policy on that as well, and I just wanna flag
[18:08] it as Um, local municipalities can adopt Vision Zero, policy as well. And I know
[18:15] that kind of referencing that in this document is complimentary with that. Um, but
[18:22] I would just, uh, you know, flag that it'd be something that'd be good to maybe adopt
[18:25] a resolution or, or policy on Vision Zero as well in the future at some point. OK,
[18:33] thank you for that.
[18:40] All right. So there are 8 goals in the document. First, we want clarity for the public.
[18:47] Residents should be able to read the policy and know what will happen to their request
[18:50] and why. Second, we want the right measure in the right place. A device that works
[18:56] on a local street may be entirely wrong on a collector. The toolbox will say so.
[19:02] Third, we don't want to shift the problem. This one matters. If we calm one street
[19:07] and the traffic simply moves to the next street over, we haven't solved anything
[19:11] and we've just relocated it. The policy requires us to evaluate diversion.
[19:20] Fourth, maintaining a level of service, the network still has to work, including
[19:24] for emergency emergency responders and for our own snowplows and sweeper operations.
[19:31] Fifth, uh, we want standards-based design. Everything we install has to conform to
[19:36] the MUTCD, our own standards, and the Move 2040 transportation plan. 6, we want to
[19:43] be able to prioritize installations. There needs to be an objective system in place
[19:47] as issues arise so that projects can be appropriately reviewed and prioritized for
[19:53] implementation.
[19:57] 7, this one, we've heard from council, develop standards for traffic calming implementation
[20:02] and new development. Rather than only addressing concerns retroactively, we need
[20:06] to be able to determine where traffic calming should be considered in new developments.
[20:10] This will require updates to the standards for design construction. And finally,
[20:15] and maybe the most obvious goal, reduce speeds. The overall goal for this policy
[20:20] should be to reduce speeds to posted speed limits which enhance the livability and
[20:24] community feel along our city's traffic corridors.
[20:30] For the peer review, we looked at two different groups of cities. The first group
[20:34] was a national selection of 3 cities. We had Howard County, Maryland, DeSoto, Texas,
[20:39] and Minneapolis, Minnesota. These cities are mainly useful for the broad strokes
[20:44] of the program structure. Minneapolis in particular has had to manage a backlog,
[20:49] which we will too. DeSoto funds installation directly out of its annual budget. Howard
[20:54] County uses community open houses. However, each of the reviewed national peer programs
[20:59] operate under enabling legislation and revenue authority that Montana cities don't
[21:04] have. So, we looked at 4 Montana cities which also have traffic calming programs
[21:09] because we all draw our authority from the same place, Montana Code. What's useful
[21:13] about these four cities is that they bracket our whole range. Missoula is at one
[21:17] end, fully city funded, Billings at the other, entirely SID funded. No dedicated
[21:23] city funding source at all. Bozeman is somewhere in between and Belgrade is at roughly
[21:28] the same stage of policy development we are.
[21:33] Quickly through the four Montana programs, Missoula funds installations out of city
[21:37] money, 50,000 in fiscal year 2026, which works out to about 63 cents per resident.
[21:44] What's distinctive is who screens requests. A standing interdepartmental team drawn
[21:48] from planning, engineering, street maintenance, fire, police, and communications,
[21:53] not one department deciding. Bozeman is citizen-initiated but city funded and city
[21:59] administered. 30,000 funding 7 projects this year chosen out of 20 applications which
[22:05] work out to about 50 cents per resident. They published a 100 point scoring scale
[22:09] and their installations are seasonal. Devices go in in the spring and they come out
[22:13] by late late October before the snow. Belgrade is where we are building their program.
[22:19] Their toolbox has 18 treatments and each one carries a winter maintenance note, and
[22:23] we borrowed that idea. Billings differentiates itself by having no dedicated funding.
[22:28] Everything runs through a special improvement district. Projects move forward based
[22:31] on local support and SID funding.
[22:36] So 5 conclusions that we took from this. One, every Montana program puts administration
[22:41] with city staff and most fund the less costly treatments of the toolbox with city
[22:44] money. For the most part, SIDs get reserved for the expensive permanent construction.
[22:50] Billings is the exception and only uses SID for traffic calming. 2, Bozeman requires
[22:56] quick build pilot projects prior to permanent installation. This is a bit of a mixed
[23:01] bag. On the one hand, it offers a potential benefit of proving a measure can work
[23:05] before investing money in a permanent solution. On the other hand, the pilot program
[23:09] has a higher final cost due to the pilot installation. It requires staff time to
[23:13] install, maintain and remove and requires staff time to contrast data before and
[23:18] after the pilot project, which then delays the installation of a more refined permanent
[23:22] solution. 3, Belgrade's practice of noting winter maintenance, which we mentioned
[23:28] already. 4, Missoula and Bozeman both moved from staff judgment to a scoring rubric,
[23:33] so did we, and that's Appendix D. And 5, on new development, there's no consistent
[23:39] standard anywhere. Requirements range from mandatory to absent, absent, and that
[23:44] gave us room to make a deliberate choice, which is our chapter 7.
[23:50] Now to the toolbox which is found in chapter 6. This is the menu. 16 measures organized
[23:56] into 5 categories. The 1st 4 are physical measures drawn from the Move 2040 transportation
[24:01] plan. The fifth is a driver feedback and perceptual measures which this policy adds.
[24:08] So the four physical categories we have horizontal deflection, which keeps a driver
[24:13] from going in a straight line. This group includes chicanes, realigned intersections,
[24:18] and traffic circles. Vertical deflection changes the height of the roadway so that
[24:23] the speed becomes physically uncomfortable for the driver. This includes speed humps,
[24:27] speed tables, raised crosswalks, and we're adding in raised intersections. The raised
[24:32] intersection is in addition to the toolbox we presented in 2022. It's appropriate
[24:37] in a pedestrian priority setting such as a downtown block face or a school frontage,
[24:41] but it's also one of the most expensive devices on the list and can interrupt drainage
[24:46] on all four approaches, so it cannot be installed in all situations. Street width
[24:52] reduction narrows the driving space. This includes curb extensions, median islands,
[24:57] and road diets. These, when paired with crossings, can shorten the pedestrian crossing.
[25:03] Routing restrictions is the heavy end. This includes diverters, closures, median
[25:08] barriers. These reduce volume rather than speed and they're the measures most likely
[25:13] to move a problem into a neighboring street, so the policy treats them very cautiously.
[25:18] And then a 5th category, driver feedback and perceptual measures. These are not traffic
[25:23] calming under the chapter 1 definition because they work on driver attention rather
[25:27] than geometry, but they are often the most practical first response and some of them
[25:31] can even collect speed data so we can measure their effectiveness as they're installed.
[25:37] One thing on that, uh, Keith, I, I didn't notice, um, on the, on the feedback, perceptual
[25:43] measures, uh, reference to rapidly flashy beacons, and I know we've used that in
[25:47] a number of cases. Um, Might be just a point of inclusion of referencing it in that
[25:54] section. Yeah, and that's, I think mainly because it's more of a pedestrian, um,
[25:59] traffic control device rather than a, a speed control device. Yeah, but it's, uh,
[26:05] I mean, the, the safety of the pedestrian and, and, and that for the vehicle. So
[26:09] if a vehicle is approaching, you know, a crossing, um, traffic calming of saying,
[26:16] hey, slow down, you have, uh, pedestrians crossing here with a flashing beacon, I
[26:21] would think would be appropriate. Yeah, I think, I think in a lot of cases, it probably
[26:25] would be, um, but it's specifically just a pedestrian, uh, device. But yeah, it's,
[26:32] that's something that we can note.
[26:45] Sorry, taking a note.
[26:49] All right, so this table is part of the toolbox staff will use to review the appropriateness
[26:53] of a measure. It rates every measure against arterials, collectors, and local streets
[26:58] on a 1 to 3 scale. So, uh, a 1 being least appropriate, 3 being
[27:06] most appropriate. And you can see the pattern immediately. Almost everything is appropriate
[27:10] on a local street. Very little is appropriate on an arterial. And what is appropriate
[27:15] there is the width reduction family like curb extensions and median nylons because
[27:19] those don't require a driver to slow abruptly. The scale is guidance, not a prohibition.
[27:25] If there's a compelling reason to use a two-rated measure, staff can and they can
[27:30] document why. But the default is on the page, it's published and the same for every
[27:35] neighborhood.
[27:38] So chapter 7, this is the, the new chapter which takes a proactive approach to traffic
[27:43] calming rather than a reactive approach. We added this chapter based on some of the
[27:47] feedback we received from the previous presentations to council on traffic calming.
[27:53] And here's what we found when we went looking. Our standards for design construction
[27:58] last updated and adopted in June of 2022 say in plain language that traffic calming
[28:02] devices may not be installed in new developments. However, our subdivision regulations,
[28:09] which council amended in May of this year by ordinance 91951, say that traffic calming
[28:15] techniques shall be incorporated into subdivisions when they're necessary for pedestrian
[28:19] safety. So, we have a conflict and section 9.1.1 of the standards tells us how to
[28:26] resolve it. Conflicts get resolved in favor of the standards, which means the operative
[28:31] rule today is the prohibition and the subdivision requirement you adopted in May
[28:35] has no effect on new development. I don't believe this is anything that anyone attended.
[28:41] Um, the subdivision regulations were amended 4 years after the standards were last
[28:45] touched, and the two documents simply drifted apart. But it does mean that right
[28:49] now, if a developer platted a subdivision with a half mile of straight local street,
[28:53] we'd have no authority to require anything. And then in 5 years, the residents of
[28:57] that subdivision would be in this room asking us to fix the problem at public expense.
[29:03] So Appendix C of the policy is the fix and we'll come back to it.
[29:11] Yeah. Mhm. Just from a historical perspective, why we did that? So. It's a change
[29:19] in Uh
[29:24] It's a change in evaluation of risk is how I would put it, um. And when I did the,
[29:31] the previous uh draft, traffic calming policy, we went through a lot of examples
[29:37] of these different methods. And one thing that was really apparent when you're looking
[29:41] at any of these is that the curbs, the, the railing, the signs, they're all beat
[29:46] up because they get hit a lot on these traffic calming measures. And so, you are
[29:51] creating a risk by putting something in the road. And it creates a little bit of
[29:55] a mixed bag from a risk perspective when you sign this road for 25 miles an hour,
[30:01] but you have to drive it at 20. And so, um, On the flip side of that coin is the,
[30:09] the safety for the residents, the pedestrians, the other users of the roadway, and
[30:14] so this is just an attempt to balance that out. But that's why the standards were
[30:19] the way that they were.
[30:22] So if you're saying May of this year, that must have been snuck in the Malupa stuff,
[30:26] right? Yeah, so I, I didn't notice that. So with that there wasn't really a lot of
[30:32] change language to that, but yeah, it was, it went along with it. What, what was
[30:37] it prior to May? Did it say shall be in the subdivision regulation or did it just
[30:42] not mention it at all? I believe it was in there before May as well. OK. Planners
[30:49] versus engineers is what Keith meant to say. Here, I, I, I got you on that.
[30:57] All right, go ahead. We're gonna come back to this, I'm sure.
[31:03] So, how do we add traffic calming and new development and um you know, this isn't
[31:08] part of the notes, but what, where we, where we found a good uh traffic calming policy
[31:13] for new development was out of Flagstaff, Arizona. Um, so we've, we've kind of tried
[31:18] to Mimic a lot of that here. After we talk through this slide and the next slide,
[31:25] we'll have some examples to look at to show you how this would have been applied
[31:28] on recently completed streets if we have already had this provision in place.
[31:34] The number we picked is 500 ft. That's the maximum distance between speed control
[31:38] points on a new street. We picked 500 because that's the figure Billings adopted
[31:42] last year, so we're aligned with another adopted practice in Montana. And the number
[31:47] is the easy part. The definition is where the work happens. A speed control point
[31:51] is a place where the design actually makes the driver slow down, a genuine stop condition
[31:57] or a curve tight enough to force it. 300 ft radius, 30 degree delta. Only if the
[32:03] designer can show that geometry can't do this, will we require a physical device.
[32:07] And here's the key point, a stop sign between two local streets does not count. That's
[32:12] deliberate. Studies show that unwarranted stop signs have a low compliance rate.
[32:17] We should not install unwarranted stop signs because that doesn't comply with the
[32:20] MUTCD. When stop signs are ignored, it can create conflicts with pedestrians who
[32:25] step out into traffic expecting traffic to stop. Additionally, the MUTCD prohibits
[32:30] stop sign use as a speed control. If stop signs were approved for speed control,
[32:35] that would be the cheapest solution for a developer to use, and we would end up with
[32:38] unwarranted stop signs to meet the traffic calming requirements. Again, this gets
[32:42] back to installing physical measures that require compliance rather than signage
[32:46] that asks for compliance. Our block length cap is already 600 ft. So if we only measured
[32:53] between intersections, this rule would do nothing. Because we exclude stop signs,
[32:57] a street running straight through 3 blocks gives you 1800 ft of uninterrupted run.
[33:03] That's the street that comes back to us as a complaint, and that's the street this
[33:07] rule catches.
[33:11] The spacing rule handles long straight streets, but some places need calming regardless
[33:16] of how long the street is. Which is why we have this section, which is, was not in
[33:20] that Flagstaff, Arizona. This is something that Suzie and I have ground out. So a
[33:26] pedestrian generator is a park of a half acre or more, a school or school walk route,
[33:31] a trail crossing, a transit stop, or a postal cluster box serving 6 or more homes.
[33:37] In new subdivisions, the postal service doesn't deliver to the door. Instead, you
[33:42] get a cluster box and every household in that block walks or drives to it. It creates
[33:46] a concentrated pedestrian crossing, usually mid-block to keep congestion from intersections,
[33:50] plus cars stopping and standing. It's a genuine generator and nobody designs for
[33:55] it. So we've required that if it serves both sides of the street, there's a real
[33:59] crossing. Near any pedestrian generator, the spacing tightens to 300 ft, and at least
[34:04] one feature has to be within 100 ft of the crossing itself. That second requirement
[34:09] matters. Without it, a developer could satisfy the rule with a curve 300 ft away
[34:13] from where pedestrians actually cross. And one technical note, we reduce the target
[34:18] operating speed to 20 MPH, but we keep the design speed at 25 miles an hour. If we
[34:23] drop the design speed, we'd be reducing the site distance we require to a pedestrian
[34:27] generator. That's backwards. We want long stopping site distances where pedestrians
[34:32] are active. Hey, Keith, on this one. just a question. I, I like the idea of this
[34:39] pedestrian generator. I think that's creative. Um, so I appreciate that inclusion.
[34:44] But just thinking about, and, and, you know, I, I'm not sure if this is, uh, in line
[34:49] with kind of the intent of the pedestrian generator. But if I think about, uh, what
[34:54] is a pedestrian generator, what, you know, what uh draws pedestrians, you certainly
[35:00] cover it with a lot of those, um, Uh, items on there. But I was thinking also of
[35:07] a commercial, a walkable commercial district like our main street. You know, if we
[35:11] have a new development, they have kind of like a, a block or a few blocks that has
[35:16] a lot of shops, um, ground floor retail, that's very walkable like our main street,
[35:21] that's gonna become a, a pedestrian zone as well. And I'm wondering if we, if there's
[35:26] any value in adding that as an identified pedestrian generator.
[35:33] Yeah, it's a, it's a good thought. Um, one thing I always struggle with and maybe
[35:38] we can, maybe we can, uh, mull this over a bit and come up with something is, uh,
[35:44] especially with new development, you never know what the use is going to be until
[35:47] it builds and so it's more of a something that might come forward during a Maybe
[35:52] a site review process rather than um a subdivision process but it's yeah so sometimes
[35:58] they're like tenant improvements and we just don't quite know what's gonna be occupying
[36:02] that tenant improvement commercial space until later on or or a zoning that allows
[36:08] different uses, you know, if it's a residential versus a commercial use, it's just
[36:14] really hard to define a lot of times during the subdivision stage but Yeah, we'll,
[36:20] we'll take that comment and I can see where, I mean, we look up at Church Road and
[36:25] how that subdivision has finished off. They put a gym and they're putting those activities
[36:31] in one in that commercial cluster, and that is the gym, the playground area and stuff
[36:37] like that is creating a. Yeah, through some of the PDs we're a little more certain,
[36:44] so it might be possible in some of the PDs, but I wonder if, uh, you know, I don't
[36:50] know kind of the staging of the process, if it's too late and kind of that site review
[36:55] time to, you know, uh, come in and put in some of these um requirements. But
[37:03] Like just even a placeholder of or other um identified pedestrian generators as identified
[37:10] through the review process or something like that, you know, that could be uh allow
[37:14] for a little bit of uh discretion and leeway through the process. Yeah, that's a,
[37:20] that's a really good thought.
[37:23] Is there anybody else on that?
[37:29] All right, so this is, this is where it gets fun. Um, so now to look at an example.
[37:34] So this is Eagle Valley Ranch. We just wanted to pull something that's some somewhat
[37:38] recent, um, new, new development. The first few phases have already been completed
[37:44] and the last phases are currently under construction out here. I used our aerial
[37:48] mapping to measure some distances between speed control points for discussion. So
[37:53] the middle two streets are just under 500 ft. The northern middle street has a T
[37:59] intersection with the collector and a short radius curve on the west and a T intersection
[38:04] on the east. The total distance is below 500 ft and would not require a speed control
[38:09] point. Likewise, the southern middle street has a T intersection on both ends and
[38:13] has a total distance less than 500 ft. No speed control point would be required.
[38:19] The north-south street on the east end of the development has a length over 760 ft.
[38:24] Although it passes through two intersections, it's a through street rather than the
[38:28] branch, so those intersections do not count as speed control points.
[38:35] So if this was still in the design phase, what options could have been used to provide
[38:41] the speed control points on the stretch? Well, it could have been curveball routes
[38:46] at the intersection to narrow the roadway such as I drew in. This might get a little
[38:50] messy with the driveways that are in place at that site now. Another option could
[38:56] have been to install a couple of raised crosswalks that could have fit between driveways
[39:01] and provided a vertical deflection traffic calming element that would have split
[39:04] the roadway into acceptable links between speed control points.
[39:12] What about the road to the south? Although there may not be much of an issue today
[39:17] when the road is extended further east in the future. A long tangent length will
[39:21] have been created that may encourage higher driving speeds. Maybe a speed table in
[39:26] the center of the block would have been a good choice. Alternatively, a mid-block
[39:31] curveball choker configuration could have been completed or, you know, could have
[39:36] been a median island as well.
[39:42] When we zoom out again. At Jefferson, which is the north-south road, which runs up
[39:48] from Calmerna Town Center and into and through Eagle Valley Ranch, we see a very
[39:53] long stretch of roadway that is more than a quarter of a mile between intersections.
[40:00] Additionally, once you get into Eagle Valley Ranch, there's a pedestrian generator.
[40:05] In the form of a mailbox cluster. Again, if our draft policy was adopted and this
[40:10] was a new review, then the design would need to include a speed control point within
[40:14] 100 ft of the pedestrian generator. Maybe that could be a raised crosswalk that would
[40:19] connect the neighborhood to the mailbox. This is one area that we already currently
[40:25] get a lot of complaints about speeding. There would also need to be something done
[40:29] to split the 1500 ft into smaller sections, smaller than 500 ft with speed controls.
[40:35] Maybe another raised crosswalk or bulb out at the intersection at the left to the
[40:41] north. And maybe speed tables to split up the remaining portion of the straight tangent
[40:46] for the areas to the south shown on the right. Just How it could work, I guess that's
[40:52] what I'm trying to show.
[40:55] And here's another recent subdivision in another part of the city. This is South
[40:59] Side of states. There are some speed control points at intersections of local streets
[41:04] with collectors streets as shown at the intersection of Pintail Drive with Morganzer
[41:08] Drive, and at the intersection of Destiny Lane with Airport Road. Additionally, there
[41:13] are some curves that have more than 30 degrees change in direction with radii less
[41:17] than 300 ft. These would all be counted as qualifying speed control points. On the
[41:23] other hand, the long straight portion of Destiny Lane would need some sort of speed
[41:27] control added in to break up the 1500 ft into sections shorter than 500. And maybe
[41:34] this could be accomplished by choker bulbouts or speed tables in the area shown in
[41:39] orange. Where did they go? One more time. There you go.
[41:45] Got, got ahead of myself.
[41:55] So, 6 traffic calming features are what we are looking at to approve for new streets.
[42:02] This isn't the entire toolbox because we want items that are on the easier side of
[42:06] the spectrum for our streets and TSS staff to maintain and we'll work with current
[42:10] city designs um elements. Every one of these will need to be built to a city standard
[42:15] detail that will need to be created by engineering staff, vetted by emergency services.
[42:21] And added to an update of the standards. On emergency access, we kept the requirement
[42:26] narrow on purpose. We could require a sweat path analysis for several reference vehicles
[42:32] on every device, but that's expensive for the developer and it doesn't really tell
[42:35] us much. If the device matches the standard detail, we already know the apparatus
[42:39] fits. So the draft says build it to the detail and you're presumed compliant. The
[42:44] only exception is a traffic circle where the turning path is constrained not only
[42:47] by the circle, but by the geometries of the intersection. For traffic circles, we
[42:52] want a turning analysis for the model fire apparatus. That's the same turning movement
[42:56] question staff worked through on East Oregon in 2021. And winter Every raised feature,
[43:02] every curb extension, every island nose has to be marked so a plow operator and commuter
[43:07] knows where it is, even when buried in snow with plow friendly noses. Also, no vertical
[43:12] deflection devices would be allowed on grades over 6%.
[43:19] On the uh Go back the uh approved features for for new development um.
[43:28] I'm wondering, cause one of the things that I think is really valuable for um speed
[43:34] reduction is lane narrowing. And I know we have that kind of listed as a travel way
[43:40] delineation. Um, so, including that, but also just the idea of, um, you know,
[43:47] having adjusting our standards so we have narrower Uh, lane width. So I know the
[43:53] standard is 12-foot, uh, lane, but research, um, has shown that 10-foot lanes, 10,
[44:00] 11-foot lanes are, uh, very effective in kind of slowing down traffic, uh, but still,
[44:07] you know, being functional. Um, so I'm just wondering if we could consider that as,
[44:14] uh, a feature too, uh, for if, uh, You know, coming in and say, hey, this is a local
[44:20] street, uh, we can have kind of a narrower uh width, or, or, and I know it's painted,
[44:26] so it's not a physical feature, but even just painted lines uh that narrow the the
[44:31] lane width. Yeah, I, I think that's something we can work through. Um, once we narrow
[44:38] the road, we also can remove parking. We also have, you know, uh, minimum standards
[44:45] for when and where parking can be, uh, included on our different street classifications.
[44:52] So that's something that we'd have to balance out, um, and especially with some of
[44:56] the new state law that, um, doesn't require off-street parking, um, that could be
[45:02] a That could be something that we need to to think about pretty uh pretty heavily.
[45:08] Yeah, and I know, I mean, we have the 12 ft width and, you know, parking lane. Um,
[45:16] so even if we kept the parking lane, it'd just be uh narrowing that allowed width
[45:20] of the Of the, and I know local streets, I guess we don't have any paint. We don't,
[45:25] yeah, yeah, so, so it would be hard. It would have to be physical with the curb,
[45:30] yeah, yeah. So I, I guess I'd, I'd look to that as part of our standards. I, I know
[45:36] we've had that, um, we've had that discussion in the past, but, uh, there has been
[45:41] kind of more definitive research on that that's come out, so I'd be happy to share
[45:44] that, um, but just on the value of those narrower widths for you wouldn't mind sending
[45:50] that over, that'd be great. Yeah, and we could probably draw up some examples, no
[45:54] parking with no parking on there too if we narrowed some, so we could probably think
[45:58] that through a few examples and come back with something on that too. Yeah, I, I
[46:03] think what you're getting at mainly is the entire block length would have a narrower
[46:09] lane rather than just creating a choke point or a, a median, is that right? Exactly,
[46:14] yep, yep.
[46:18] All right. Anybody else have anything? OK.
[46:24] Appendix C is the operative language, the actual replacement text for the code sections,
[46:29] and there's 4 pieces. First section 9.1.4, delete the prohibition and put the spacing
[46:36] standard and the pedestrian generator rule in, and the performance test in its place.
[46:42] Second, section 9.1.17. Right now, our standards require that every traffic calming
[46:48] device be recommended by a study completed by a professional traffic operations engineer.
[46:54] Since we are setting up the minimum requirements, the standards will dictate where
[46:57] and how often traffic calming devices need to be installed, so that really doesn't
[47:01] need to be a PTOE. Third, matching amendments to the subdivision regulations, so
[47:06] the two documents say the same thing. And 4th, we'll need to develop new standard
[47:11] detail sheets for the design standards.
[47:16] All right. So, we're going to skip over funding for now and come back to it after
[47:20] this. Chapters 9 and 10 lay out the process for traffic calming on existing streets.
[47:25] This is the procedure. Appendix A of the policy is a flow chart of everything I'm
[47:29] about to describe, so if it gets hard to follow that chart is the picture version.
[47:36] OK. The proposed process is a gate, which is based on objective criteria. Not every
[47:43] complaint or concern can or should become a project. The first condition verifies
[47:48] we have all standard traffic control already in place, signs, striping, whatever
[47:53] is warranted, and it has to have been in place at least a full year without changing
[47:57] driver behavior. Now sometimes we'll get something that comes in, um, and we will
[48:02] do a site visit and realize That there's a sign missing, say from a higher speed
[48:07] low to a lower speed road and that happened just recently on um Spring Creek Drive.
[48:13] So, That that would be a scenario where we get a traffic speed complaint, we realize
[48:19] that we're missing something that should have been installed. We'll get that installed.
[48:23] And then if we continue to get um complaints, that's one that we'd monitor and make
[48:28] sure that that's in for a year and hopefully uh driver behavior modifies in that
[48:32] time. If not, then after the year, we would move forward with the next step. Is there
[48:38] a reason we would suddenly expect the traffic control devices that are just suggestions
[48:44] and not Mandatory to suddenly start working. Existing ones, yeah. No, I, I would
[48:52] say if the existing ones have been in place for a while, we would say then that you're
[48:58] going on to step number 2. I mean, even if they haven't been, I mean, we kind of
[49:02] acknowledging that these things just in general don't work, right? Like the signs
[49:07] don't change behavior in general. That's why we're going through with all of this.
[49:11] So why would we subject people to a year of additional speeding if we know there's
[49:17] a problem. Yeah, I think it's because we haven't verified that behavior will continue
[49:25] and in this case, the, the one that I just mentioned, we haven't gotten a complaint
[49:28] since we installed that um sign. So, I, I see, I see where you're um where you're
[49:36] going with it, but I think a lot of times people don't realize um that they've, you
[49:41] know, they're in a lower speed zone until they're faced with it. Sometimes they do
[49:46] realize and, and just don't care. Um, and so I, I guess it gives the opportunity,
[49:52] it gives the sign the opportunity to work. It doesn't mean it always will, but at
[49:57] least then we can verify that it did.
[50:01] Gotta remember everything we do too, although. There's risk associated with it to
[50:07] the city as well, I mean even a traffic control device, there can be risk associated
[50:11] with that, so the most documentation we can have as a reason why we did it, will
[50:16] ultimately limit the liability to the city and any risk that may come to us, as well.
[50:22] So I think that's part of it, just the objective analysis and ultimately just trying
[50:26] to limit any risk to the city as well, using best practices. I understand where you're
[50:31] coming from as well because like you said, if what if something were to happen within
[50:36] that year, right? Yeah, like if we, if we know that this safety measure would be
[50:41] better and we don't put it in because we want to collect more data and something
[50:45] happens, are we then not opening ourselves up to liability that way too, right, so.
[50:51] To make sure we're using the best options available to us for the given situation,
[50:55] we're not hamstringing ourselves just to check a box, right? Yeah, and I mean, I
[51:00] think a lot of it like Jared's saying, you know, the MUTCD is a federal requirement,
[51:05] so we have to follow that, um, but so the documentation I think is important, but
[51:11] also we're struggling to keep up with stuff and so we wanna make sure that it's truly
[51:17] a problem that's not gonna be solved by the simplest solution.
[51:23] Um Hm Where was I? Oh yeah, 2nd condition. The measured average annual daily traffic
[51:31] has to fall between 1000 and 5000 vehicles per day. There's a floor and a ceiling.
[51:36] The floor is about proportionality, below 1000 vehicles a day. We'd be asking the
[51:40] city to build permanent concrete and then maintain and plow it indefinitely to address
[51:45] a problem affecting a small number of trips. This is a judgment about where limited
[51:51] public money and effort goes first. We still have a path for those low volume roads.
[51:58] Above 5000 vehicles a day, a street has stopped behaving like a neighborhood street.
[52:03] First, the traffic does not disappear when you calm it, it relocates. 5000 vehicles
[52:07] a day pushed onto parallel local streets can create a bigger problem than the one
[52:11] we set out to solve. Second, at those volumes, the measures like chicanes, traffic
[52:16] circles, single lane chokers begin to queue. Queuing creates its own hazards and
[52:20] it tempts drivers into passing where they should not. So the ceiling is not just
[52:24] us saying the street is fine, it's just saying it needs a different kind of attention
[52:29] through a different process with a different budget. And one practical point that
[52:33] you will see in the volume exhibit, a good share of our streets above 5000 vehicles
[52:37] a day are MDT routes such as Maine, Idaho, and Meridian. We could not install calming
[52:42] on those unilaterally even if we thought it was the right answer. The third condition,
[52:47] we need at least one of three things, a documented crash pattern in 5 years, an 85th
[52:52] percentile speed more than 5 miles an hour over the posted speed on a local street
[52:56] or 10 miles an hour over the posted speed limit on a collector or arterial, or 5%
[53:02] of the traffic running 10 miles 10 miles an hour over the posted speed limit on the
[53:06] local street, or 15 miles an hour on collectors or arterials. So these are what we're
[53:12] setting as the gate. Um Couple of things. I'm, and I'm just kinda looking at the,
[53:19] the, uh, the Appendix A, uh, flow chart, uh, for this as well in, in terms of my
[53:25] thinking. But, um, I know we're kind of basing the premise on a request, and obviously,
[53:30] a lot of this will be kind of, uh, resident driven from complaints and, and uh requests.
[53:37] But I also think it's important that we flag or note that staff should be able to
[53:43] initiate Uh, their own process. If, if we know of a road that's a problem, um,
[53:51] even if there's not kind of a resident initiated request or effort that And, and
[53:59] based on like our transportation plan or our safety action plan, we have analysis
[54:06] that says, yes, this is a good location for a traffic calming measure that staff
[54:11] can initiate that. Um, I, and I noted in the document too that all the references
[54:17] to staff um involvement is public works, which I understand because these are physical
[54:22] features, you're going to have the engineering side and you have to have public works.
[54:26] But on the, you know, safety action plan and the transportation plan, that's our
[54:31] planning department. So I think planning department should also have a role in this
[54:36] process of identifying locations and kind of initiating efforts, uh, to install traffic
[54:43] calming. So, um, that was kind of one of the first things I, I flagged on the, on
[54:48] the process end. But the second thing was, um, Again, in a lot of the references,
[54:53] it's uh uh an emphasis on speed reduction, which I certainly think that's, uh, uh,
[55:00] important, maybe one of the primary things. Um, but there's also other considerations
[55:05] of just safety, regardless of speed, uh, and also traffic volume. And so safety might
[55:12] be a, a pedestrian crossing area where you want to erase crossing because it's going
[55:17] to be more visible and, and uh people, traffic's going to be slowing to that point
[55:22] anyways uh for, for pedestrian crossings. But also, when I think about the street
[55:27] I live on, 3rd Avenue East, You could say that making it two-way rather than a one-way
[55:32] was a traffic calming. Effort Um, and it wasn't because of speed, because there was
[55:39] never really a documented speed problem on 3rd and 4th. It was a volume issue of
[55:45] people using it as a cut-through, uh, when 1st Avenue East was available and had
[55:51] capacity and was more appropriate for that. And so we implemented the two-way, and
[55:56] it worked. It effectively moved 80% of the traffic over to 1st or Main. And that
[56:02] had nothing to do with speed. So, I think it's important to acknowledge that um traffic
[56:08] calming can be more than just a speed issue. It can be a safety and a volume issue
[56:13] as well. Yeah, um, so on the, on the city staff, it's interesting because
[56:21] when we drafted this, we had city staff in and then we decided that wasn't appropriate.
[56:27] We pulled city staff out. Then we met to go through it and we added police and fire
[56:32] in. And then we ended up pulling it back out and, and part of what we are struggling
[56:37] with on the um city staff side of things is our process requires local support and
[56:44] so where we struggled was if, you know, if the fire chief wanted uh traffic calming
[56:51] in a place. Then who's going to be the person to go out and get the local support
[56:57] as part of this process and so that's another question we're gonna get to. What's
[57:01] that? It's a whole other section we're gonna get to we'll get to that in a minute.
[57:05] So, so some of it was we were. Waiting for this discussion to happen so we could
[57:12] recognize how to then maybe stick in who would initiate uh what certain projects
[57:18] and what council would be acceptable for. So it, it was hard to just for me to initiate
[57:23] a pro a problem. And have a resident pay for it, you know, if they, if we decided
[57:29] that we were only gonna do SID for traffic calming, um, you know, and I was initiating
[57:34] all these traffic calmings and placing an SID, you know, out there that I wanted
[57:39] to make sure that, um, We got direction from council on how we were going to address
[57:46] the traffic calming issues that were arises and I. Yeah. I, and I get that. I mean,
[57:53] obviously, if our only funding mechanism is going to be an SID then uh it makes sense
[57:58] that you have that support. Um, that's the only way it's gonna happen. Um, but if
[58:02] we do choose to go with, um, you know, other options to include in, in addition to
[58:08] SID then, um, you know, I, I would expand it and You know, part of an example why
[58:15] is we all know that people love to complain about traffic circles and roundabouts.
[58:21] Um, but we also know the data is overwhelming about how effective they are as a safety
[58:26] measure. So, um, I, I wouldn't want, you know, our focus should be what works, right?
[58:33] What's safe. Um, and if that's a traffic circle, People are gonna complain about
[58:39] before it goes in, but it's going to be effective in making the streets safer, then
[58:45] maybe we should, you know, move forward with it. Um, so, uh, I just wanna, yeah,
[58:52] uh, I, I think public support, you know, residential support is important, but sometimes,
[58:58] um, the data speaks for itself. Mhm. Yeah, and we don't, we don't ask people about
[59:05] sewer line replacements, you know, when we need to do it, we need to do it. Yeah,
[59:10] but we also have a funding mechanism for that, and we bring that through a capital.
[59:14] So if we develop that process, yeah, I, I, I completely, yeah, as soon as we have
[59:21] a funding mechanism and a process, then I say yes, but I thought it was a little
[59:26] bit ahead of the discussion to put that stuff into the policy, knowing that we were
[59:30] going to talk about it. And then, uh, on the, the volume, um, that is, that is one
[59:36] of our, uh, minimums that are required there. Um. I, I guess our Uh, Mr. Mayor,
[59:44] are you speaking to the volumes that we've chosen, or, um, no, I, I think, I, I guess
[59:50] it's just maybe, uh, inconsistency in the, in the document because I did see it elsewhere,
[59:55] the, you know, reference to volume, um, but on the flow chart it Only mentioned speed
[1:00:01] issues. Um, so I would just maybe make sure that it's consistent that wherever we're
[1:00:06] referencing kind of the, the purposes or objectives of traffic calming that, uh,
[1:00:11] you know, it, it has the full complement of speed, safety, and volume. OK. Yeah,
[1:00:16] um, one thing we'll look at here in a minute is that the, the volume does, um, Increase
[1:00:23] the score on the rubric, so the higher the volume, the higher the score. Um, I, I
[1:00:30] also worry a little bit too about the, the documented collision pattern. Like, is
[1:00:35] this, we have to have 10 number of people hospitalized before we can put in. A safety
[1:00:41] feature or can we like can we put in language that if there is a safety feature,
[1:00:45] a near miss, if there is a problem that we can act before someone is hurt or dies?
[1:00:52] Yeah, it's, it's one of the measures, um, so the crash patterns, so we're saying
[1:00:58] one of those three, right? So if there is a crash pattern, we certainly want that
[1:01:01] to be included. So like what if it's just a high volume area with low visibility
[1:01:05] and it's not speed, so there's no, there hasn't been a crash yet, but there's been
[1:01:09] several near misses, for example, between pedestrians and cars. Near misses are really
[1:01:15] hard to document and qualify, so I don't know how to even You don't got a lot of,
[1:01:20] you don't, you just don't have a lot of verification with near misses. Uh, it's just
[1:01:25] hard to warrant something on a near miss. So we, we just don't have a lot of data
[1:01:30] to say, yep, this should be in here because we got a near miss. There's, there's
[1:01:35] not a lot of data or um warrants for us to go on on that.
[1:01:43] So we're, we're looking for something a little bit more direction. So with, with
[1:01:47] data that is, um, repeatable data that's defendable, but near misses are hard because
[1:01:54] we get a lot of calls on near misses, a lot of calls, so there's near misses everywhere.
[1:02:00] So it's just really hard to quantify a near miss. Well, sure, a lot of it's relative
[1:02:04] to the person, right, um, so two people aren't gonna say the same thing about the
[1:02:10] same. Incident and I guess like I said if we can identify that there is an issue,
[1:02:14] for example, poor visibility on a high volume street when you go out there, even
[1:02:18] if it's hard to verify that there's no missage, you can say yes, people are crossing
[1:02:23] here and it's not safe like you can, and, and in that case I think that's one of
[1:02:28] the instances where we would look at doing an RRFB, a pet actuated RFB, to, to let
[1:02:35] the drivers see that pedestrians are there needing to cross. Um, and, and there's,
[1:02:40] you know, we're, we're focused really on traffic calming, um, but, you know, there's
[1:02:45] other things that we're looking at, um, site vision triangles at intersections and
[1:02:50] those don't really fall directly into this, uh, policy. So, if we're looking at,
[1:02:56] um, when and where, uh, stop sign might need to go, that could be related to a site
[1:03:01] vision issue at an intersection. And if we, if, if it's a building and not a tree,
[1:03:06] Then we probably need to install a stop sign. It just really, you know, from situation
[1:03:11] to situation, it varies but um it's not necessarily a traffic calming thing. It's,
[1:03:16] it's uh more related to that specific location usually. OK.
[1:03:25] Um OK.
[1:03:30] All right. So the process we're proposing, once a request qualifies, it gets scored.
[1:03:35] We have 5 categories weighted. Speed and crash history carry 30% each. Pedestrian
[1:03:41] generators carry 25, volume is 10, and that's deliberate. Volume is already a gate
[1:03:47] in the qualifying criteria, so weighting it heavily here would count it twice. Street
[1:03:52] characteristics like um tangent length grade carry 5. Notice that speeds, crashes,
[1:04:00] and pedestrian generators together are 85% of the score. That's the statement of
[1:04:05] what we're saying the program is for. The score puts a request in one of 4 tiers,
[1:04:10] from monitor only up to critical. And the tears connect to a real response. A critical
[1:04:15] request goes to engineering design. A low one gets logged and monitored. There's
[1:04:20] an engineering discretion provision. I can move something into the queue for an emergency,
[1:04:25] a grant deadline, or to coordinate with a street reconstruction or other capital
[1:04:30] improvement project that we're already doing. The rubric answers the fairness question.
[1:04:35] When a resident asks why the street isn't first, we can show them the score.
[1:04:44] So our GIS staff put this together um and near the end, I can open it up.
[1:04:53] I'm just not wanting to do it now because I have to go out of the presentation. Um,
[1:04:56] but I think this, this is a pretty good snapshot of, uh, the main area out of the
[1:05:01] 2040, uh, plan. Um, this maps the 2040 modeled volumes.
[1:05:08] Red is volumes over 5000, orange is between 1000 and 5000, and yellow is between
[1:05:16] 500 and 1000. Orange per this recommended, recommended, recommended policy is what
[1:05:23] matters per um the document because 1000 vehicles a day is a floor on our qualifying
[1:05:29] criteria. And then I also want to be careful about what this does and doesn't say.
[1:05:34] First, volume alone qualifies nothing. Every one of these streets still has to have
[1:05:39] had standard controls in place for a year and still needs either a crash problem
[1:05:43] or a speed problem. Second, these volumes are from the Move 2040 transportation plan
[1:05:48] which was built on data about 10 years old. So in order to determine current volumes,
[1:05:53] data will have to be collected.
[1:05:57] We, we really just wanted to give you a picture of where the threshold would be applied
[1:06:01] cause it really does kinda, uh, these roads would be, but some of the local roads
[1:06:05] really don't apply. So just keep that in the back of your mind.
[1:06:10] So, we have scored eight locations against the rubric. Crash data comes from MDT
[1:06:16] crash summary reports for September 2021 through September 2026. Segment links were
[1:06:23] measured in City GIS. Four mile drive out of these eight is ranked the highest at
[1:06:29] 41.75. It's the only location in the top speed band more than 10 miles an hour over
[1:06:35] the posted speed limit. And that single category contributes 24 of its points. Its
[1:06:42] crash density is among the lowest on the list. Three crashes over 2800 ft. And so
[1:06:46] this is a speeding problem, not a crash problem. East Oregon is 2nd at 39.5, and
[1:06:53] it's the mirror image, the highest crash density in the set, and that's not surprising
[1:06:58] due to the number of intersections. 14.5 per 1000 ft, 37 crashes in 5 years with
[1:07:06] 8 involving injuries. You'll remember East Oregon from the 2021 presentation or you
[1:07:11] might not if you weren't here. Um, 5 years later, the rubric independently places
[1:07:17] it near the top. 7th Street is 3rd at 33.5, and those three make up the high tier.
[1:07:26] North Main and Silverbrook Drive are 4th and 5th, both at moderate. Silverbrook is
[1:07:31] worth a moment because it shows the scoring working at the margin. Three crashes
[1:07:35] over 3100 ft puts its density at 0.96, just under the first break point, so it earns
[1:07:41] nothing from the density of the crashes, but one of those three was an injury crash.
[1:07:45] So the severity modifier gives it 10 points. An injury still registers even when
[1:07:50] the crash pattern is thin. That is the balance that we're trying to strike. Uh, Bluestone
[1:07:57] is 6th at 17. 2 injury crashes spread over 2600 ft and the density is modest. And
[1:08:04] the bottom two are useful ones. 5th Street East scores 8 and Riverview Drive scores
[1:08:09] 5. Riverview has no crashes in 5 years, speeds at or below the posted speed limit,
[1:08:14] under 1000 vehicles a day, and short tangent sections. Its entire score comes from
[1:08:19] being near a trail on Whitefish Stage. The criteria and the rubric agree with each
[1:08:23] other and we can show a resident how their street compares to others based on these
[1:08:27] objective data. Some of these would also need MDT coordination and 4 mile drive is
[1:08:34] a minor arterial where most of our toolboxes rated least appropriate. As a side note
[1:08:41] This is great. I, I appreciate you putting together that slide because that's all
[1:08:46] the, you know, if I think about the complaints we've received in recent years, yeah,
[1:08:50] I, you know, you, you grabbed them all and, and, uh, being able to see how they rank
[1:08:55] against each other. That's a, that's a great, uh, great tool. I love that. Thank
[1:08:59] you. You bet.
[1:09:03] It's it even means more if you're not colorblind like me, cause then you can see
[1:09:06] where things go.
[1:09:11] It looks good. What happens when the volume is too low to qualify for traffic calming
[1:09:15] but speed or crashes verify a need? Just reporting to a resident that the project
[1:09:20] doesn't qualify, doesn't feel like the right place to leave a resident whose street
[1:09:24] has a real speeding problem, so we're proposing a second path. If a local street
[1:09:28] has standard controls in place for a year and shows either a crash pattern, and 85th
[1:09:33] percentile speed more than 5/ or 5% of traffic running 10 or more over, but its volume
[1:09:38] is at or below 1000 vehicles a day, it would not move forward with the standard traffic
[1:09:42] calming process. As a reminder, the 1000 vehicles per day volume threshold is the
[1:09:48] point where we've recommended permanent construction as a reasonable threshold to
[1:09:51] move forward with traffic calming processes. Limited city resources go to the locations
[1:09:56] that meet it, but a speed or crash problem on a quiet street is still a real problem
[1:10:00] to the people who live on it. Under this recommended policy, those locations may
[1:10:04] advance as non-threshold projects designed and funded entirely from sources other
[1:10:08] than the city. The technical process is still the same. They need the same 67% property
[1:10:13] owner support, a design prepared to city standards and approved by the city engineer,
[1:10:17] and the concurrence of the public works director, the police chief, and the fire
[1:10:20] chief. What they don't get is a position in the priority queue because they aren't
[1:10:24] drawing on city funds. In these cases, the usual mechanism is a special improvement
[1:10:29] district under Title 7. however, property owners could also use private funding,
[1:10:35] an HOA or POA contribution or an outside grant. Staff will hand over the traffic
[1:10:41] data, the crash records, and the technical work we've already done and we'll review
[1:10:44] and approve the design, but we will not prepare or administer a grant application
[1:10:49] or complete a design for a non-threshold project. What makes us defensible is that
[1:10:54] these streets don't meet the determined threshold for allocating city resources in
[1:10:57] the first place and the people paying are the people guiding and benefiting the most
[1:11:01] from the solution.
[1:11:04] I anticipate there's questions on that. I, I would just say, um, I, I think it makes
[1:11:09] sense, you know, we have a prioritization, so we're making the most effective use
[1:11:13] of our, our funds. Um, so it, it, it makes sense. I would just say that Someday,
[1:11:19] in a very um optimistic future, if we are able to meet our needs uh for traffic
[1:11:26] calming on the higher priority streets and There's, you know, we're flush with funding
[1:11:33] for doing these projects, uh, that we might come back and revise this to be able
[1:11:37] to go and do the lower volume streets, uh, and, and provide city funding, um, because
[1:11:43] I do think, you know, there are streets that are lower volume that could use it,
[1:11:47] um, obviously. With limited funding, they're not going to be a priority and they're,
[1:11:51] you know, so this makes sense. But, uh, someday in the future if we knock off our
[1:11:56] checklist of those higher priority streets and, and we still have funding available
[1:11:59] that we could come back and revise this and go, go do some of those, those lower
[1:12:03] priority ones. Yeah, that makes sense.
[1:12:09] Yeah, I, what I like here is again, I think the volume really helps us talk about
[1:12:13] where we're putting public dollars. But again, if there's. A neighborhood that's
[1:12:18] seeing the issue that they still have an option of a way forward and that there's
[1:12:21] some. Information that the staff's able to provide for that, but I think it. That's
[1:12:28] where I appreciate the threshold right now because I think that that helps helps
[1:12:32] us focus in on where the issues are.
[1:12:38] Great. All right, so what happens next once our project qualifies? The rubric score
[1:12:45] helps us prioritize projects. We'll take them in order of priority, then staff will
[1:12:48] write a tech memo and send it to the requester and to the benefited property owners.
[1:12:53] Then we need 2/3 of those property owners to sign in favor before we spend engineering
[1:12:57] time. An HOA or POA letter can substitute for individual signatures. We previously
[1:13:03] chose 67% or 2/3 as a reasonable number because it shows a large contingent of support.
[1:13:08] Also, if an SID becomes necessary for funding the construction, the chances are we're
[1:13:13] likely to get less than 50% protesting the SID. If we clear that, we do preliminary
[1:13:18] engineering, uh, make up to 3 alternatives with cost estimates, and hold a neighborhood
[1:13:23] meeting. To advance, we need 2/3 of the owners who attend plus the public works director,
[1:13:28] the police chief, and the fire chief to agree with the chosen alternative and a cost.
[1:13:32] Any of those three can stop a design that compromises emergency response or a level
[1:13:36] of service, and that's intentional. Then funding. Nothing goes to the final design
[1:13:42] without a secured funding source. We'd rather tell a neighborhood no at this stage
[1:13:46] than design something we can't build. If a special improvement district is needed
[1:13:50] in whole or in part, the petition has to be approved by the council before final
[1:13:54] design begins. Then final design, bidding, construction, and the city takes over
[1:13:59] for maintenance.
[1:14:05] So fun chapter funding. This is a chapter where we need the most from you and it's
[1:14:11] where the draft is deliberately incomplete. So possible funding sources include local
[1:14:17] assessment, which would include a special improvement district, which is the traditional
[1:14:21] route. The Montana Board of Investments revolving loan, which lets us borrow below
[1:14:27] market and pass that rate through so annual assessments on a homeowner is lower.
[1:14:31] And the Street Maintenance District Improvement Authority, which we'll come to in
[1:14:35] the next slide. Uh, city grants, uh, or city and grant sources, I'm sorry, an appropriation
[1:14:42] from the general fund that some of the communities have used, uh, federal HSIP safety
[1:14:48] money through MDT, transportation alternatives, um, at about a 13% local match,
[1:14:56] CDBG and NHTSA grants and tax increment financing where we're inside a district.
[1:15:04] Uh, development sources that could include developer constructed improvements like
[1:15:09] we have in chapter 7. Negotiating a cash contribution through a development agreement
[1:15:15] or we could collect in transportation impact fees where an adopted program identifies
[1:15:20] calming as an eligible facility. And then one that isn't on the list, which we want
[1:15:25] to know is gas tax money was considered. Wasn't considered for this purpose. Our
[1:15:31] fuel tax apportionment is fully committed to street maintenance and pavement preservation
[1:15:37] and STPU funds are restricted to the urban highway system.
[1:15:44] So, this section of the draft is deliberately blank. It says placeholder pending
[1:15:49] council input, and we didn't want to write the city's funding strategy without hearing
[1:15:52] from you first. These are the funding options, Group one, grants, HSEP, transportation
[1:15:58] alternatives, CDBG. Federal safety money is the cheapest money we can spend and if
[1:16:04] a location has a crash history, it may compete well. Each grant has its own hurdles
[1:16:09] though, one of which is commonly a competitive selection process. This is a source
[1:16:14] that may be opportunistic for certain projects that fit a grant's requirement when
[1:16:18] funding is available, but really isn't a dependable source for a continuous program.
[1:16:23] Group 2, tax increment financing. If we're inside a district and the project fits
[1:16:28] the urban renewal plan, these projects require review by the URA before coming before
[1:16:33] council. Projects must be within a TIFF district before the funds can be considered.
[1:16:38] 3, general fund. Council could designate a certain amount of money annually to be
[1:16:43] used for traffic calming. Staff would work towards trying to complete projects as
[1:16:47] money is available. For the street maintenance district, this option would require
[1:16:52] counsel to amend the current ordinance. An example ordinance is provided in Appendix
[1:16:56] B which would need to be vetted by the city attorney. 5, an SID. This option remains
[1:17:02] a viable funding source but can put a burden on affected neighborhoods dealing with
[1:17:05] cut-through traffic. This became an issue of much discussion in our previous presentations
[1:17:10] to council. What we'd like from council is your ideas and how we should fund these
[1:17:14] projects. We could allocate monies from the general fund like other Montana communities
[1:17:18] do. We could modify our street maintenance district ordinance to include improvements,
[1:17:22] which would allow us to complete traffic calming projects. And we'll give you some
[1:17:27] time for input here in a couple of slides where we'll focus more on it.
[1:17:33] It's a great question. So Missoula pays for other general fund, right? And it's only
[1:17:41] 50,000 a year. Or last year was 50,000. Last year was 50,000, yeah. And Billings
[1:17:48] does entirely by SID, right? Do you know the comparison on how many projects are
[1:17:53] completed by each city in the last fiscal year? I did not do an evaluation. I don't
[1:17:59] know if you looked at that. I, I didn't look at it, but I think it's just gonna depend
[1:18:03] on the project too, the, the scope of the project, whether you're doing small bull
[1:18:07] bouts, whether you're doing a traffic circle. So it just probably depends on what
[1:18:10] type of project they did year by year. Do we have any idea how effective either one
[1:18:15] has been for each city? Because one's even happy, one expanded, the other one's unhappy,
[1:18:22] and then nothing's stalling. Yeah, I think both Missoula and Bozeman have data showing
[1:18:28] that they're effective. Um, and you know, Missoula's program has morphed over time,
[1:18:34] um, so they, they have changed how they're, um, moving forward. Bozeman added the
[1:18:40] rubric, um, and yeah, I think both of those have data that shows their effectiveness.
[1:18:46] And Bozeman, if you recall, is only seasonal, so they, they rip theirs out. They
[1:18:51] install it in the spring and take it out in the fall. And does it make a sense difference
[1:18:58] as well because I know Missoula isn't. Citizen driven, right, they, it's all coming
[1:19:03] from their city planning department and they couple, they have a couple of their
[1:19:08] departments, right? They have a multi-department, um, review process, yeah, um, I
[1:19:14] think it's, I think it's, yeah, staff generated. That was what I got from my yeah.
[1:19:21] And then we currently sort of see from. Our current work with the grant process,
[1:19:28] I mean some of these things as permanent are not really currently eligible for a
[1:19:33] lot of the grants. That's where we ran across with the demo grant for Safe Streets
[1:19:38] for all, you as a demo project you couldn't put in permanent features. Which made
[1:19:45] it very difficult to find something that we could put in. And then you said that
[1:19:51] you could use a um impact fees, transportation impact fees, is that, where does that
[1:19:56] fall on this list? Uh, that's, did I forget to put that in the list?
[1:20:06] Well, we don't necessarily have traffic impact fees. So if that would be something
[1:20:11] that council wants us to move forward with to review traffic impact fees, then we
[1:20:15] would, that would be a whole additional conversation, but we don't have traffic impact
[1:20:20] fees at this time. It could be a potential projects we could add into it if we ever
[1:20:25] were directed to re-look at traffic. Impact fees and it can only be used on new development.
[1:20:31] Traffic impact fees are only for new development, so it wouldn't go into existing
[1:20:35] neighborhoods at all. It'd be only for support of new development, and that's what
[1:20:39] this slide is. I, the, the top is for existing streets. If traffic impact fees can
[1:20:46] only be used for new development, but we have a whole section about kind of new development
[1:20:50] and, you know, requiring it for the development. Um, we wouldn't necessarily need
[1:20:55] traffic impact fees because for that purpose because we would just, it'd be part
[1:21:00] of our requirements for the design, uh, approval, right? Yes, yes and no. I, I think
[1:21:05] where it might still have a place is off-site. So this works really well for on-site
[1:21:10] streets, the new streets, but where you're, um, having traffic funnel into a development
[1:21:17] can have a, a pretty big impact and so that could be utilized on some of those locations.
[1:21:23] Um, Right, OK.
[1:21:32] Uh, OK. Do you wanna explain a little more what this, the street maintenance and
[1:21:37] what a proposed change would look like and how implementation of that would be, cause
[1:21:43] yeah, grant eligibility, it's hard to create a, you can't really create a program
[1:21:46] based off of that, it really be project specific. TIFF eligibility, certainly, as
[1:21:51] long as our TIFFs are active, the ability to do that is, would be, you know, relatively
[1:21:57] easy. I think everything we're talking about aligns with our TIFF districts as it
[1:22:02] is. Um, SID formation is very
[1:22:09] You know, it doesn't spread the cost throughout the entire city, but at the same
[1:22:12] time, if you have a neighborhood that wants something and 67% feel like it's needed,
[1:22:17] it could be a very easy tool as well, it just, you know, you're really the cost is
[1:22:22] being borne by really that neighborhood or that street, so certainly there could
[1:22:27] be some inequities there if you're looking at say a street that's getting a lot of
[1:22:31] regional traffic or something, but, At the same time it is an option, I think that's
[1:22:36] why Billings went that route. There still is a lot of staff time that goes into SIDs
[1:22:40] and creation and ultimate um. Kind of management of those, but it's probably the
[1:22:46] most straightforward and then the street maintenance and kind of our history with
[1:22:50] that and any changes that may mean may need needed is yeah so we currently have a
[1:22:55] street maintenance district called District one and as we that code was adopt adopted
[1:23:01] by the city years ago we identified what the street maintenance district could be
[1:23:06] used for and right now it's. to use for maintenance of the streets and so, but under
[1:23:13] uh Montana Code, we can add improvements to our street maintenance district and to
[1:23:18] do that, we would have to identify what improvements would be supported by the street
[1:23:24] maintenance district improvements portion and we would increase the assessment to
[1:23:28] accommodate those capital projects. So traffic calming could be a part of that. But
[1:23:34] that would take us going in and amending our street maintenance district to include
[1:23:39] improvements and then we would come back with what type of increase in assessments
[1:23:45] that we would feel comfortable with to support the projects that council feels um
[1:23:51] would benefit the city. So maybe if, if we wanted to do $100,000 worth of
[1:23:58] traffic calming or other types of improvements to our streets, we could add that
[1:24:03] into the street maintenance district parts of it, and we would kind of line out the
[1:24:07] capital projects year by year that those would support. With, without lowering our
[1:24:12] existing level of maintenance, that would be our goal as well, this would be above
[1:24:17] what kind of the existing street maintenance is, so it would be an improvement that
[1:24:21] then would be kinda on top of what our existing programming is for construction,
[1:24:26] have a capital list of Projects that we would look at on a yearly basis, dedicate
[1:24:31] funding towards that, that would come out of the assessment, which would be citywide.
[1:24:36] So would that be a new enterprise fund basically would that I mean we be funding
[1:24:41] 100,000 and it carries over if we didn't spend that or how we could carry it over,
[1:24:45] yeah, you could carry it over. You would just have to identify what projects you'd
[1:24:49] be spending those on, which would be street improvements which could include traffic
[1:24:53] calming projects or however council wants to set that up. We would bring forward
[1:24:57] a couple examples for council to vet that. Do we have an idea on how much? You would
[1:25:02] want or we would need to we actually anticipated that we would be asked that. However,
[1:25:09] I don't have an example of that because I didn't know if you'd be interested in it.
[1:25:12] So if you're interested in it, then we'll come back in the second work session and
[1:25:16] we'll provide examples. I guess I'm just shocked that Missoula is only 50,000. Like
[1:25:20] it seems very low for these kind of construction projects. And if, if that's an effective
[1:25:25] amount of money to be doing projects here, it's very interesting to me because it
[1:25:29] doesn't seem like a lot at all. I was also extremely surprised. I would think that
[1:25:34] would be like one, right, one curve flare, you know, pretty much. It seems very low.
[1:25:40] So that was my question too is along those lines is what, what. How do, how do we,
[1:25:45] how did they come to that, and how do we come to our own? Is it, yeah, they've, they've
[1:25:49] modified their program a bit to, um, not do as much of the permanent installs. So
[1:25:55] they're, so that's why the money goes pretty far, yeah, so they've gone to adding
[1:25:59] those, uh, fiberglass delineators for their bulb outs instead of actual bulb outs,
[1:26:05] um, and so we're, we're kind of scared of that idea, that concept, just because,
[1:26:10] you know, with those few that we have in place. We have a lot of maintenance on and
[1:26:15] so that's just a constant um maintenance feature and um and It seems
[1:26:23] like they get run over on purpose sometimes and so the effectiveness of it aren't,
[1:26:29] you know, those are some of our concerns about that and that's one of the reasons
[1:26:32] that I'm not too excited about the, the Bozeman idea of seasonal installs and removals.
[1:26:39] Um, so we're just trying to make something that's fairly simple for our staff. It
[1:26:44] goes in, it's in, it's something easy to maintain, and it's effective. And did you,
[1:26:49] since you use Flagstaff, did you look at how much they, because that didn't come
[1:26:52] up in here? I was just curious how much they put out. Um, I, I don't. I don't, I
[1:26:58] don't remember. I, I, if I did look at it, I don't recall. We reviewed Flagstaff
[1:27:02] standard for, um, implementation of, for new development, not necessarily construction
[1:27:09] for existing development. So yeah, we didn't look at Flagstaff for that. It's really
[1:27:13] difficult because they just, uh, different states have different funding mechanism
[1:27:17] for street maintenance and improvements, so. Sit So, um, my
[1:27:25] opinion is that this should be like a flow chart with. 1 through 5 there, right?
[1:27:32] Uh, you start at the top, and if that doesn't work, go to the next one. If that doesn't
[1:27:34] work, go to the next one. but I will say that general fund and street maintenance.
[1:27:43] Probably should be pulled off of this list, and the reason why.
[1:27:50] Our top two complaints over traffic speeding are lack of sidewalks, which have no
[1:27:56] funding mechanism either. So if you put in traffic calming before you put in sidewalks
[1:28:01] in places that don't have sidewalks, you're gonna get, uh, using general funds, you're
[1:28:06] gonna get, uh, a lot of people really angry. Same thing with street maintenance.
[1:28:11] If you start messing with the street maintenance or increase, even if you increase
[1:28:15] it to cover this. People are gonna want that street maintenance to go into street
[1:28:19] maintenance because that is, you know, I don't know which one rates higher, the complaints
[1:28:24] about sidewalks or the complaints, the complaints about, um, street maintenance that,
[1:28:29] that are, I, I think they outweigh what the people might, um, accept. You know,
[1:28:37] for traffic calming beating either one of those two things. So that's just where
[1:28:42] I'm coming from on this, and this is for we're just talking about the existing streets
[1:28:47] right now, um. SID is kind of a surefire way to get this done, at least
[1:28:55] partially funded, uh, but realistically, even if you're eligible for a grant, it
[1:29:01] might not cover the cost and you have to go to the next thing, the next thing, uh,
[1:29:04] to, to cover it. So, that's what I'm thinking right now as far as existing, um, streets
[1:29:11] and traffic calming, and I'd love to hear what everybody else has to think of, uh,
[1:29:16] you know, say about that, but seriously, I mean, If we put in a traffic calming measure
[1:29:22] and we don't put in a sidewalk, uh, they're going to be pretty sidewalk. What's that?
[1:29:27] Well, let's put it in the sidewalk.
[1:29:30] Extend the skybuck into the street.
[1:29:35] Um Yeah, I, I'm, I'm OK with that. I think it would be nice if, I mean, there's nowhere
[1:29:43] we're, we're, we're pretty stuck on, um, existing is gonna go in when the ownership
[1:29:49] changes of the parcel that's uh associated with that piece of sidewalk, right? And
[1:29:53] I can understand that, but, um, so sidewalks aren't getting built. Yeah, I would
[1:30:00] agree with your observation there that, um, you know, my, my, the county ditch problem
[1:30:05] that I see that we have 4 Mile, that is part of what's happening on 4 Mile is that
[1:30:10] there's not the pedestrian zones, plus it's straight and narrow and like it's like,
[1:30:16] so I agree with you that like we're not addressing the county ditch problem or that,
[1:30:20] that issue. A, a really good example is Bluestone's on this list, right? Was on,
[1:30:24] on that slide. If you went to Bluestone and asked them, would you rather have a sidewalk?
[1:30:30] Because they have no sidewalks and they have a ditch right now. And that is a heavily
[1:30:35] trafficked school walking road. Um, Or would you want traffic calming? They're gonna
[1:30:42] want them both, but they're gonna want the sidewalks more. They've been complaining
[1:30:45] about that for since the place we needed a rubric for sidewalk. What's that? Do we
[1:30:50] need a rubric for where we need sidewalks and where those are in high demand? I think
[1:30:54] we just necessary, you know, I think that the people of Kalispell would be OK if
[1:30:59] we did set aside a fund for sidewalks specifically, but, um, like I said, they're
[1:31:07] gonna be. More interested in getting those accomplished first, I think. So I, I hear
[1:31:15] what you're saying, and I, I, I think you make a good point. I, one of my comments
[1:31:19] on this was just, uh, one of the things missing from the list of options was the
[1:31:23] voter-approved levy, which we've talked about several times. And we haven't pulled
[1:31:26] the trigger on, um, in all the times we've spoken about it. Um. And so that it may
[1:31:33] not rise to the top of the list just because it's been hard to get agreement and
[1:31:37] get us there. But one of the things that we talked about was pairing traffic calming
[1:31:42] with sidewalks, um, as well for a, a levee. So, um, I, I like that. The idea of pairing
[1:31:50] the two as well, you know, if we set aside general fund money, that it would be traffic
[1:31:55] calming as well as sidewalks. Um, the street maintenance, I, I guess I, so I, I guess
[1:32:01] I, I agree with a lot of what you say, but I come, I actually come out the opposite
[1:32:05] side of it is that I agree that we should kind of have, uh, I'm for all the above
[1:32:11] on these options and kind of a step process like you uh spoke to. Um, but I would
[1:32:17] actually, uh, put, keep the, uh, general fund and the street maintenance in there.
[1:32:23] And I think those are some of the top, you know, would be the top kind of first go
[1:32:27] to options. You know, SID I've I think it's great uh if people, you know, the neighbors,
[1:32:33] the residents want to do that, but the problem with it, of course, is that it requires
[1:32:37] a lot of work on behalf of the residents, a lot of organization. Um, and, uh, kind
[1:32:43] of active civic civic engagement. And so what you're gonna find is very few neighborhoods
[1:32:49] that actually do that, and the ones that do are going to be the wealthier, kind of
[1:32:52] more involved, uh, neighborhoods. And so it's, it's not, I think, the, the, the most
[1:32:57] fair, um, uh, or really The, the path that would result in kind of the, the,
[1:33:05] the best way of, of getting these things done. So, I would keep general fund and
[1:33:09] street maintenance, and I like street maintenance because I think traffic calming
[1:33:14] is, is inherent to, um, you know, maintaining safe streets. Um, and so I
[1:33:22] think the public would get that, that, um, our, the streets is not just filling a
[1:33:27] pothole. It's also making sure that They're safe for our residents to uh use. Yeah,
[1:33:33] and Mr. Mayor, I, I 100% agree with you on the, on the levy. I mean, I, I am always
[1:33:39] for taking it to the people in, in circumstances like this where they're deciding
[1:33:43] on like big chunks of their general fund, um. And, you know, the other thing we can
[1:33:50] look at is what Bozeman did, uh, you know, I'm, I'm flipping back and forth between
[1:33:54] sidewalks, and I, I understand that, but people don't see those as kind of separate
[1:33:58] issues. Um, Bozeman. Went out and and did an uh did an SID for the
[1:34:05] entire city and includes sidewalks. That's why the sidewalks are so good in Bozeman,
[1:34:11] right? Um, now that was a voter approved thing as well, right? So either one of those
[1:34:17] options totally for, in fact, I would put them above right below grant eligibility
[1:34:22] right there and then if we're gonna keep. Street maintenance and general fund in
[1:34:28] there. Let's put SID above general fund so that we can try that first because if
[1:34:33] the, if the neighbor is gonna bite off, it's more of a sure thing for them than us
[1:34:37] continuing to try to figure out funding. And we can use the general fund stuff if,
[1:34:44] if we're gonna set aside that for the streets that probably aren't gonna have the
[1:34:49] neighbors that are OK with being taxed because it might be a lower income area or
[1:34:53] whatever.
[1:34:57] I guess a question to consider is, do you want to create a program or not, because
[1:35:00] a lot of the scenarios just continue to leave it out there and maybe land. No, I
[1:35:06] have no problem you're talking about doesn't build anything unless you know what
[1:35:10] I'm saying, so I guess that's something the council needs to consider if you want
[1:35:13] to tackle the complaints. A street maintenance Assessment Would do that.
[1:35:21] OK, that's the only one you're actually gonna be able to fund the program. General
[1:35:24] fund is not gonna fund the program at all. I mean, like Missoula's budget is much
[1:35:28] larger than us, and they put 50,000 to which that's not gonna do anything. So I don't
[1:35:33] want there to be an expectation of using general fund because it's limited, it changes
[1:35:36] every year based off of the needs, and you're not gonna be able to create a program
[1:35:40] off of that. That's why even when we had the sidewalk conversation, it was essentially
[1:35:45] creating a new district or assessment just for sidewalks. The reality is we've already
[1:35:49] got a street maintenance one and by state law we can include improvements to that
[1:35:54] which would include traffic calming. We can include sidewalks into that. So we're
[1:35:59] kind of deciphering if we're, it's very easy to get sidetracked, you know, we had,
[1:36:05] so we could, you absolutely could do a levy, but that's gonna. Be a whole other animal,
[1:36:12] um. I think with new construction, there's that part of it with associated with traffic
[1:36:18] studies, but if, if council really wants to tackle the complaints. Really that whether
[1:36:25] it's a grant, which is questionable, TI has to be in the district and there has to
[1:36:29] be funding. There has to be a need to which we use the same rubric, but um in SID.
[1:36:36] It is relatively easy to do if the community wants it, and that's why I think Billings,
[1:36:40] I believe, takes that route all the time. It's like, hey, if there's an existing
[1:36:44] neighborhood and they've got an issue, that's the route. If you want to make it all
[1:36:49] more equitable across the city, the, the street maintenance assessment is the only
[1:36:53] way to do it. I mean, that's just one of the reasons I'm saying to put this SID above
[1:36:59] that is because if, um, if you went out to a vote citywide with every single one
[1:37:05] of these, right. The people around the problem are all gonna say yes, we want that
[1:37:10] and everybody else that uses that street is gonna say no, right? So, it, it, it's
[1:37:15] very subjective, but this gets around that problem by the, you know, the, the people
[1:37:21] surrounding the, the problem area. If they want to step up and do an SID totally
[1:37:27] great. I mean, at least that's a funding source. I don't know if we can start a program.
[1:37:33] With any of these really. None of these are sure things except the street maintenance
[1:37:38] thing which we're talking about raising an assessment, applying a fee. That's why
[1:37:44] it's in there and that's why it's council discussion. But yes, it absolutely will
[1:37:47] increase the assessment. There is a question by how much, how much does the city
[1:37:51] want. Does this council even want to explore that idea, what would a program even
[1:37:56] look like, you know, is it a million dollars a year, and a million dollars a year
[1:37:59] is gonna do how much, or is it $500,000 a year, you know, we can kind of start to
[1:38:04] look at that and present that to council what that would look like, um, and it is
[1:38:09] just the general as the mayor stated, you know, whether you wanna just,
[1:38:15] Leave the, leave the solution up to that neighborhood or that street, or if it's
[1:38:20] more a citywide issue that should be looked at by the, the city population as a whole,
[1:38:25] which is when, when the assessment would play into it. And again, I would just observe
[1:38:32] billings being 100,000 people. I mean, the SEID approach works as well because it's
[1:38:38] so sprawled that something that might be happening over Zimmerman Trail versus Poly
[1:38:43] Drive and, and Billings. Like there's different neighborhoods, one large enough they
[1:38:48] could be the size of the city. Of Cali spell to pull together an SCD, but like there's
[1:38:53] different, it's hard. I can see how one that is the option that they're looking at
[1:38:57] just because of the sprawl of buildings, but then they also have the population that
[1:39:01] could make an SID. Work Sure, and you know, Missoula is bigger than us
[1:39:09] and they allocated 50,000, right? Uh, what could we realistically do with 50,000?
[1:39:16] Well, and I, I mean, I would agree that what we end up seeing is more of those temporary.
[1:39:21] Well, we could probably do like the, the, a center island, the bull bouts, maybe
[1:39:26] some, um, table tops. So I, I, I mean, I think there are some projects that we could
[1:39:31] accomplish with. You know, 50,000, we're not gonna get them all, you know, it's gonna
[1:39:36] take several years to, that's why we have the prioritization list and maybe we do
[1:39:41] one bigger project the first year and several the next year based off the prioritization.
[1:39:46] Obviously when we, when we go through the rubric, 4 mile drive obviously pops to
[1:39:51] the top. So our focus would be 4 mile drive, um, in providing the appropriate traffic
[1:39:57] calming through that corridor. Um, could we do that one for 50,000. There's a high
[1:40:03] potential we probably could. So, so I mean if that's how we wanna do it then then
[1:40:08] yes and if we had extra if it did cost us 35,000 and there was a priority number
[1:40:15] 2 and we could get it to fit in, then we would try to fit that in, um, so I, I think
[1:40:20] the program itself will, will probably learn as we go and we can make some changes
[1:40:26] and decisions on how if, if we use the street maintenance improvement district funding.
[1:40:32] You know, um, we, we could review it every year to see what that would mean for residents
[1:40:37] as far as assessments too. Well, one of, one of the things I don't like about the
[1:40:42] street maintenance thing, I mean, I understand that the funding mechanism for sure,
[1:40:47] but in all of these other cases where we're talking about like, um, you know, if
[1:40:52] we were talking about a levy or whatever, the, the, the people would be voting for
[1:40:55] it, we could administratively put through. Changes to our policy with the street
[1:41:01] maintenance thing, we still have to have a public um
[1:41:05] Whatever I'm losing the word you still have to go through you still have to do that,
[1:41:09] but it's not the same as people, you know, if they, if, if it's on like the ballot,
[1:41:15] everybody knows about it. If we do it here, everybody knows about it 3 weeks after
[1:41:19] it's done, and then they get mad. Right, that that's the reality. You're not. I would
[1:41:26] just, I, I would just note that, I mean, if we're talking about being able to complete,
[1:41:32] you know, project on one of our high priority, you know, 4 mile for 50,000, if we,
[1:41:39] you know, did an increase on The street maintenance, you know, citywide, it wouldn't
[1:41:46] take. It it wouldn't be that much of an increase to get enough funding to make some
[1:41:52] real progress on a year to year basis. So, um, You know, I obviously the concern
[1:41:58] is you're raising rates that impact people's uh pocketbook, but, you know, it We're,
[1:42:05] the numbers were tired. I mean, that's where we, we have to see kind of more of an
[1:42:10] example of, of how far the dollars will go looking at our top priorities. But personally,
[1:42:15] I think street maintenance makes sense. Uh, I would, I would be a, a, a vote in favor
[1:42:20] of moving in that direction. Again, I, I still think it makes sense to have all of
[1:42:24] the above because if, if you can save on the street maintenance to do a TIFF in a
[1:42:29] TIFF district or somebody comes forward and wants to do the SID. That just means
[1:42:34] more money in those, uh, street maintenance to go somewhere else and do something
[1:42:38] else. So you should have kind of all options on the table. But, uh, I certainly think
[1:42:43] a street maintenance district to have a program that's annual, we know where the
[1:42:48] funding's coming from. Um, it's consistent and we're tackling these on a, on a year
[1:42:54] to year basis, making real progress, and it sounds like the numbers are, are not
[1:42:58] going to be so significant that, uh, you know, it'd be, uh, you wouldn't have to
[1:43:03] raise that street maintenance district by, by a lot to have an impact. Yeah, and,
[1:43:08] and you're, you're correct, Mr. Mayor, but the, the other issue is, um, this is all
[1:43:14] a cumulative, right? So we have A new assessment or a higher assessment for the street
[1:43:19] maintenance improvement. Um, we have higher sewer and water rates, we have, you know,
[1:43:25] stormwater assessments, we, uh, you know, the, the, it, it just, it's all like little
[1:43:31] tiny pieces and if you microscope down on the one thing, yeah, that sounds reasonable
[1:43:35] for this price, right? But you have to add all of that stuff in and see what we're
[1:43:39] doing to people that are on a, like a fixed income, right? Um, it I, I, you know,
[1:43:46] I'm looking for, I'm looking careful, but you gotta be careful for sure. But I mean
[1:43:50] if you go too far with that, you'll never spend anything, right? You'll never do
[1:43:53] anything. I'm all for that.
[1:43:58] I mean if you don't want fire, if you don't want roads, if you don't want police,
[1:44:01] that's fine, right? We can,
[1:44:05] I mean, that's where 80% of the budget goes. So I got you. So personally, I mean,
[1:44:12] I, I guess I mean I agree that I can see where it fits into the street maintenance.
[1:44:15] You raise an issue which I think is important to me, which is the sidewalk side of
[1:44:19] things, um, because I do and thank you for just Elevating that because I do think
[1:44:24] that that's sort of the other conversation that I, I hear is goes between. Traffic
[1:44:31] calming, wanted to see slower traffic and sidewalks. Um, and this is the same conversation
[1:44:38] that we had years ago of like when I wanted to see, um, Impact fees be able to be
[1:44:43] used for sidewalks and it just doesn't work out that way because it's not penciled
[1:44:46] out that way because it's about traffic and it was about new development. So in,
[1:44:50] uh, so I see where we would go with street maintenance and seeing like what the nominal
[1:44:55] 50,000 a year might look like, but I also would look at exploring what a levy would
[1:45:00] look like for calm traffic calming and sidewalks just because I do agree, you put
[1:45:08] that to the voters. And I think that that is a concern I hear on a regular basis.
[1:45:13] Is Mr. Dowd, as you said, it's the sidewalk side of things because, and again, that's
[1:45:19] 4 Mile. I mean, 4 Mile is. Is it a traffic calming problem or is it the fact that
[1:45:24] it doesn't have sidewalks? Is, is, is just one of those challenges over there that
[1:45:29] I, that I've heard and watched. Right, I mean, we're we're trying to keep
[1:45:35] 4 mile days connected by, that's why we just got the TA grant and it's all connected
[1:45:40] and it's all in there, so just so you're aware, there are sidewalks on 4 mile's awesome
[1:45:46] to see how we've been able to work on that, but again it's just sort of see that
[1:45:49] that's just one of those. I hear that same thing that Mr. Dowd raised up, which is.
[1:45:56] Traffic calming and sidewalks and you highlighted the fact that we're not talking
[1:46:01] about sidewalks. Maybe the fun could be both things. That's what I'm saying, and
[1:46:06] I would love to see it. We don't have to fix all this in a year, right? Or even 2
[1:46:10] or 5, right? Like if we can just start some incremental progress and start making.
[1:46:15] You know, baby steps towards this, I think you'll see some more public support that
[1:46:19] their funds are going towards things that they can see, right, that they can actually
[1:46:22] use and they can do. We don't need to fix it all in one day. No, of course this is
[1:46:27] an incremental year by year thing and we're just making progress to hit small, right?
[1:46:31] Um, yeah, and I'm all, I love the rubric. I love seeing the top two there. Obviously,
[1:46:39] those are the top two that we need to attack first. Um, but I think both of those
[1:46:44] were also a sidewalk concern. Uh, I don't know if they, I think 4 miles pretty much
[1:46:49] there, but um, Uh, it's still, you know, I, I, I, the raised crosswalks will do a
[1:46:57] lot for that as well. Um, anyway. I don't wanna keep going. I think we're on the
[1:47:03] right track here. I just, I'm, I'm pretty resistant to the street maintenance increase
[1:47:07] just because I, I, I know that we're hitting people left and right and the economy
[1:47:11] is not getting better. And by the way, if gas and lithium prices keep going up, none
[1:47:17] of this is a problem anyway. Nobody's going to be driving anywhere. That's why we're
[1:47:21] going to need sidewalks.
[1:47:25] We'll still need those.
[1:47:31] All right. I would say too, um, we do have some fairly recent costs on Four-Mile
[1:47:37] Drive. We, we looked at doing a raised crosswalk at that cross section or the crosswalk
[1:47:42] on Four-Mile Drive and we didn't have the funds and the TA grant to move forward
[1:47:46] with it. Um, but we did have a bid, so I, I can provide that to council as a, a cost.
[1:47:52] My, my recollection was like $40,000 or something, um, so it was a significant cost,
[1:47:57] um, and I think when we looked at East Oregon Street when we were considering, uh,
[1:48:03] um. Traffic circle, which the residents hate, by the way, um, that was $20,000.05
[1:48:11] years ago. So, uh, you know, since that time we've seen some significant increases
[1:48:16] in construction costs at least 50 now. I was gonna say triple. I think too as we
[1:48:21] discuss some of this, because the, the selection of the traffic calming treatment
[1:48:27] is important to the surrounding neighborhood, we still Appreciate the, the thresholds
[1:48:33] where we get their concurrence and what after it's engineered cause we really do
[1:48:38] want their buy-in uh on the traffic calming that we select and want to move forward
[1:48:42] with. So I think those part of the process are really still very valuable to this
[1:48:48] whole policy. I, I, I, I think it's, it, it's important when we can get it. But as
[1:48:55] uh Mr. Walker pointed out, I, I, we don't do that with other things. Like when we
[1:49:01] know, we have data and we have, um, you know, the expertise to know that something's
[1:49:06] going to be effective and it's going to solve a problem in our community. Uh, we
[1:49:10] don't, we don't take a poll and, and see if the public, you know, is, is, supports
[1:49:15] that we, you know, move forward with our expertise and our, and the data. Uh, what,
[1:49:20] and so I, I would. I, I understand with the SID that's what we need to do. Um, and
[1:49:27] I understand that that's ideal, but I would not want to, uh, not make safety improvements
[1:49:33] that would save lives or save, prevent injuries because the public doesn't understand,
[1:49:39] hasn't seen the data and doesn't have the expertise. I understand, but also sounds
[1:49:45] like, hey, we know what's better for you. Yeah, so I, I believe that is a very important
[1:49:48] discussion, and if that is the consensus and the direction of council, more than
[1:49:53] happy to implement that. I'm just gonna need that direction from council.
[1:50:00] Yeah, I'd like to see all of what what all of this means like what would the increase
[1:50:06] in the in the maintenance fee be that kind of thing that those are yep yep I have
[1:50:10] those takeaways to bring back for the next work session.
[1:50:14] I think what Suzie was asking in regards to staff. Whether we would solicit public
[1:50:20] input or not on a decision that staff was making outside of funding, I mean, it should
[1:50:26] be solicited, sure, I just think if there's an overwhelming evidence that, you know,
[1:50:31] something needs to be done. That it should be done.
[1:50:37] Shouldn't our communications manager do that, right, right. I mean, it's unfortunate,
[1:50:43] but you know it's, it is, it's like we need, you know, if we need new water line
[1:50:47] because it's poisoning us like if you, you like the sweet taste of your water just
[1:50:52] because of the lead, you can't keep it right like. We make those decisions all the
[1:50:58] time and so there has to be. A threshold, I feel like if, if there is data that says
[1:51:04] this is dangerous and it needs to be fixed, we need to be able to fix it regardless.
[1:51:08] We wouldn't have a single roundabout in our community if we sought public support
[1:51:13] before doing a roundabout, even though the data on roundabouts is unambiguous, it's
[1:51:19] solid, you know, so. Though I, I appreciate where this is really community
[1:51:26] driven as as suggestions, cause when I've seen problems, my neighbors know what.
[1:51:33] The problem streets are, I mean, I think in sort of honestly relieving staff of having
[1:51:38] that responsibility of being like that neighbor, that that intersection looks dangerous
[1:51:42] without there being public feedback. I have neighbors who are concerned about different
[1:51:48] um intersections in my neighborhood. Um, I think the thresholds really help address
[1:51:54] some of those issues cause like I think that's also really important cause I have
[1:51:57] one neighbor who would put a stop sign at every intersection if they could. Um, but
[1:52:03] I don't think that that would be reasonable, but definitely when one of those intersections
[1:52:07] had an accident in it, I became a little bit more aware of what that complaint was
[1:52:12] plus I've now seen an accident happening there. So it was reinforced. What was somebody
[1:52:18] was observing to also just much more empirical evidence where I sure and you know,
[1:52:25] to, to that point, this is gonna be really hard for staff. I understand that because
[1:52:30] you do one thing and it might partially solve another thing or might make it worse.
[1:52:36] Like my guess is that if we get the funding for the south side of Main Street roundabout
[1:52:42] on on 11th, if we put that in, it's probably going to become. A deterrent for some
[1:52:49] people, they'll go, well, I can either take the bypass and go through roundabouts
[1:52:52] or I could go down Main Street and do roundabouts, so which one is gonna be faster,
[1:52:57] right? Um, so it might cause a decision point where people go down Main less, which
[1:53:03] might alleviate some of the speeding, uh, complaints on First East. We don't know.
[1:53:09] And if the speeding complaints about First East are being exacerbated by, uh, Friday
[1:53:14] night cruising. And put that roundabout in and they can just go around the roundabout
[1:53:18] instead of going on the side street and, and speeding. Well, you know, a lot of these
[1:53:22] little things are going to affect each other and I, I don't even know how you guys
[1:53:26] do it over there. Um, it's complicated. Again, I think that's where the rubrics really
[1:53:32] helps because again, your example really raised up something which we all know. And
[1:53:37] that's been my experience, like I was over in Walla Walla recently, where they have
[1:53:42] a lot of roundabouts, and I sort of asked one of the people there, like, how did
[1:53:46] you end up with so many roundabouts that are not very popular in Kalispell, and there's
[1:53:50] like, well, we started with the right ones. Then that was, that was sort of their
[1:53:54] examples like the spaces that they. Picked were really elevated. The rubrics seemed
[1:54:00] to like identify where that would be the right solution, and then the community got
[1:54:05] more accepting of that change. So I like the fact that we have the rubrics in just
[1:54:12] the general direction that we're going with that. We'll talk about that again. We'll
[1:54:17] talk about this again, Mr. Council President, just as a heads up, I have about 10-15
[1:54:24] minutes and then I'm gonna have to go pick up my kid, um, so I, you know, there we
[1:54:29] are. What we really need, I, I think we have the go-ahead for staff to, to drive
[1:54:33] on with. Yeah, do we have more questions, presentations? Yeah, just a few more. OK,
[1:54:39] let's go through a couple of those, and I definitely want to make sure that we have
[1:54:42] a little bit of time for public comment. Yeah, we, uh, I have a lot to say about
[1:54:46] the New construction piece of this, um, and that might be a work session in and of
[1:54:53] itself actually well um are here tonight I well for a little while we're here tonight
[1:54:59] councilman Dowd I, you know, I mean. We're here, the discussion's happening, so I
[1:55:06] would suggest if you want to comment on it because like I said, we're going into
[1:55:11] the next, we've got a lot of work sessions, a lot of meetings coming up. It's hard
[1:55:14] to get things on the schedule. So, with that being said, coming back, we'll look
[1:55:18] at more funding options, but if If there's some concerns, I would certainly, you
[1:55:24] know, put that out there because like I said, it's not easy to get these meetings
[1:55:28] scheduled and with staff time and stuff because that's the next thing we're going
[1:55:31] into fine if it's like gonna be a half an hour from now, probably not.
[1:55:38] I mean we got uh 3 slides till the questions at the end or we could just take it
[1:55:43] now. OK, so I'll just go through this quick. Um, for the stakeholder, um, participants,
[1:55:51] we, we think that this would be important, uh, as part of our process. We don't want
[1:55:55] to bring you a policy that only public works is read. Um, so, between the 2nd and
[1:56:00] 3rd work sessions, we'd like to take a draft out to people who will use it, implement
[1:56:04] it and design to it and be affected by it. And we think that should be made by residents
[1:56:08] and neighborhood representatives as, as one, stakeholder group because they'll file
[1:56:13] the requests and live with what gets built. We have some residents in this room,
[1:56:18] um, that we currently communicate with on traffic calming that would provide a great
[1:56:21] perspective. Um, developers and consulting engineers because new development chapter
[1:56:27] changes what they have to design and along the same lines, planning staff because
[1:56:32] subdivision and site plan reviews where requirements land for new development. Our
[1:56:36] own public works maintenance and engineering staff because they plow, sweep, and
[1:56:40] maintain and design the devices that are put in. Um, police and fire because they
[1:56:45] have power in the decision of preferred alternatives, um, so they ought to see it
[1:56:48] before it's final. Um, the questions to the right are what we would anticipate as
[1:56:55] providing to the stakeholder group unless you have additional, and then we would
[1:56:58] summarize what we hear and bring those back to you as recommendations.
[1:57:04] And here's the process we're proposing. Tonight is step one, the kickoff. Um, step
[1:57:09] 2 is a second work session where we would come back with revisions and work through
[1:57:13] the questions that are still open, eligibility, thresholds, prioritization, neighborhood
[1:57:18] support requirement, what treatments we allow, the funding framework, how we handle
[1:57:22] new development, how much authority you want to delegate to staff. We'd anticipate
[1:57:26] this meeting to occur in about a month. That's what I was hoping for. I was going
[1:57:31] through this with Suzie, she said, I'm being optimistic. So I, I was thinking 1st
[1:57:35] or 2nd meeting in November, potentially. Uh, step 3 is stakeholder review which I
[1:57:40] just covered. My thought was this could potentially occur through December. Uh, step
[1:57:46] 4 is a third work session where we bring back, uh, what stakeholders said and what
[1:57:50] changed because of it and confirm the funding framework and how funding, uh, how
[1:57:54] traffic calming projects would compete in the annual budget process. And this would
[1:58:00] be good to get settled before we go through the annual budgeting process. So, my
[1:58:05] thought was, uh, shooting for January. Step 55 is public review, notice, um, an opportunity
[1:58:12] for written comment and the draft available to anyone who wants it. Um, my thought
[1:58:16] was that would take us through February. Step 6 is adoption by resolution, and that's
[1:58:21] where the street maintenance district ordinance update would also come forward if
[1:58:25] that's the direction you want to go, maybe sometime in March. Um, step 7 is ours,
[1:58:30] and that's application forms, tracking data collection procedures, scoring process,
[1:58:34] neighborhood notification materials, uh, all that stuff. Uh, most of, if not all
[1:58:39] of those items we would be doing concurrently with the other steps.
[1:58:44] Um, here's the 6 main questions for council and, um, and, you know,
[1:58:52] updates to city standards, that really is the, that's number 6, but that's really
[1:58:58] the, uh, development question. So, if we want to start there. Um, does council agree
[1:59:03] with the approach staff proposes to include traffic calming requirements in new development?
[1:59:08] Um, and if so, standards need to be updated.
[1:59:14] Go ahead, Mr. Duff.
[1:59:18] All right. So, um, when I'm looking at the construction standards, the pedestrian
[1:59:24] generator piece of that, um, The features that we really like that developers put
[1:59:30] into projects. Are the features that trigger the need for traffic calming, which
[1:59:37] triggers the need for developers to pay more, so it might actually end up having
[1:59:42] less of the features that we like because of that, um. Uh, you know, all of, all
[1:59:49] of this, uh, you know, is going to raise the cost of a unit in that development.
[1:59:57] And we are pulling out of the housing crisis, but we are still in it. Um, and I think
[2:00:03] it would be Pretty, pretty sad of us to keep piling on costs and kind of combating
[2:00:11] the affordability of housing, um, right now. Um, Destiny Lane was one of your
[2:00:19] examples. So Destiny Lane by the criteria, if that was gonna be in put into a new
[2:00:26] development would, would trigger a couple of those traffic calming because the streets
[2:00:31] so long. But the reality of it is it's a local street only. There's no through traffic
[2:00:36] there yet. And uh the traffic there is really, really not an issue today. Uh,
[2:00:45] now, it might be in the future, who knows how it's gonna develop out. There might
[2:00:48] be a crossover between in the between the bypass and there, who knows? Um, things
[2:00:54] could change in the future, but if we Did it a lot of these, I mean, we're gonna,
[2:01:00] we're looking at increasing the cost of a development by quite a bit for putting
[2:01:05] all of these automatic generators in there, um, if they're, you know, I, I like.
[2:01:12] The word may be instead of shall be or will not. Um, it should be kind of a judgment
[2:01:18] call. If we see, hey, this is going to end up connecting two parts of the city that
[2:01:24] are really rough to get to, so we expect this to become a through street for a lot
[2:01:29] of people. Yes, that probably would kick off some of this, but like Destiny Lane,
[2:01:35] until that becomes the issue there, by design, it wasn't a problem when it was designed.
[2:01:43] Um, Mr. Dow, can I ask you a question? Because I'm thinking of your statement that
[2:01:48] if we don't do it, then later it becomes an issue and then. We end up paying for
[2:01:53] it, which I know is a challenge, but I was wondering how you balance that. I, I balance
[2:01:59] it completely. So my number one reason that I'm on council for this, this, this term
[2:02:04] is to make sure that we are not raising the price of housing on council here, um,
[2:02:12] and, and we all said that when we were campaigning, right? But don't we also, if
[2:02:15] we raise taxes, then my Cost of living also increases. I, I don't know how. I'm just
[2:02:20] trying to figure out how to put those two together. Well, I do understand at some
[2:02:24] point destiny may become a problem. Let's say it was a new development. It was being
[2:02:28] planned. Instead of putting the traffic calming in first, we put it in when it becomes
[2:02:32] a problem, and then it comes back to how are we gonna fund it, right? I understand
[2:02:36] that. Um, I'm, I'm just trying to tackle the number one top priority that I have
[2:02:42] and not have it be kind of. I mean, we're, when we talk about construction standards,
[2:02:47] you know, we've talked about all these things this year, and this is from the top
[2:02:50] of my head for like a minute that I had to think about it. So like the dark sky compliant
[2:02:55] street lights are more expensive. Landscaping requirements make things more expensive,
[2:03:00] although I heard that we might be talking about lowering that threshold. The green
[2:03:05] space requirements make new developments more expensive. Um And now we're talking
[2:03:11] about the auto re um generated requirement for traffic calming and uh implementing
[2:03:18] a traffic impact fee to pay for those uh in in some cases or here's here's my my
[2:03:25] response to that so. We talk about like affordable housing, we wanna bring down the
[2:03:30] cost of affordable housing, like true affordable housing. They were really like it's
[2:03:36] not new house. It's old houses. That's where your, your real affordable housing is.
[2:03:41] It's, it's the old 30 year old houses, right? 40 year old houses that were well built.
[2:03:45] They were expensive at the time, but now they're 30 years old, right? So they're
[2:03:49] still good, but they're not nearly as much as they were. So I'm. I'm not so concerned
[2:03:55] about the cost of new building of new houses because if you're buying a $600,000
[2:04:00] house, you can afford a $610,000. That's I mean that's the basic. I understand that
[2:04:07] is the general concept and the increase in supply overall brings down the cost of
[2:04:13] the older houses. When someone moves out of their older house into that new house
[2:04:17] and pays the premium for the brand new house in the nice neighborhood with the crosswalks
[2:04:22] and the dark sky compliant and the sidewalks, and they pay a premium for that, their
[2:04:26] old house goes on the market. And now it's available at a cheap, you know, and the
[2:04:31] price of everything as a whole comes down. Now the new houses, yes, they're going
[2:04:36] to be more expensive. I understand that 100%, but I'm just not, I'm just not that
[2:04:40] concerned about the cost of the new houses. I guess they will charge whatever they
[2:04:44] can get for that house. There's not a penny less. There's no definition of what affordable
[2:04:49] housing is. Well, no, there is none. It's not even a thing. There's only a third
[2:04:53] of your paycheck goes to the housing costs, essentially, right? That's normal housing
[2:04:59] right now, right? That's so I have a question just using your hypothetical to staff.
[2:05:05] I mean, so Destiny Lane. Is it doesn't really have, does it have over 1000? I mean
[2:05:12] like, so it's, so it wouldn't be required to because there's not confusing the existing
[2:05:18] with the new development. If that was a new development, it would require by but
[2:05:22] they could design in the road angles and things that would not cost extra cash necessarily
[2:05:29] just by designing the layout to have more interesting roads and not just straight
[2:05:33] long shots of flat road. They can still meet the requirements of having, you know,
[2:05:38] speed intersections without having to
[2:05:44] be. Designed differently, would it hit a threshold like new development doesn't have
[2:05:50] the threshold issue if it was coming in today and this policy was adopted the way
[2:05:55] we have it laid out, they would have to do something to break up that 1500 ft like
[2:06:01] break that up so that they didn't have that. Long of us, I understand that that answers
[2:06:06] my question. But now we're, we're talking about having very interesting streets in
[2:06:09] Kalispell that don't, there's, there's no really great, right, which on, on the plus
[2:06:14] side it's harder to invade us. But on the, on the, on the other side it's, it's,
[2:06:19] it's more difficult to navigate right for if you're going a longer distance, um,
[2:06:24] but I would agree with that, that the most of the new development design already
[2:06:29] sort of has the curving roads and stuff like that. I mean that's just something that.
[2:06:33] People are building into those so. I would also I would also just kind of point out,
[2:06:39] I, I mean, I, I agree with Mr. Walker's assessment about affordable housing and,
[2:06:43] and buying premium and into a new development, but I'd also point out that Building
[2:06:49] these things into when you're actually constructing the road is going to be, I mean,
[2:06:53] we're already talking about how, you know, not a big price tag some of these things
[2:06:57] are when you're looking at just, you know, utilizing $50,000 or whatever. But also,
[2:07:03] You know, when you have the equipment out there already doing the work, and you're
[2:07:08] kind of starting from scratch of building this road, it's, it's even more kind of
[2:07:13] cost effective to, to put it in when you're constructing the street rather than coming
[2:07:19] back later. And basically retrofitting the street. So, I think ultimately, uh, even
[2:07:25] on the kind of the cost of the new housing side, when you're building the street
[2:07:28] and you just kind of incorporate it into the design from the very beginning, uh,
[2:07:32] is, is, it's just not going to add a lot to the cost overall, I think, when you,
[2:07:39] when you look at the overall, um, Cost of the, of the development, when they can
[2:07:45] factor this in, it'll it'll be fairly marginal. Overall.
[2:07:54] Yeah, I still don't agree with you. I, I, I would agree. I would have some questions
[2:07:59] there because I've had conversations with developers about the difference between
[2:08:04] 2 inches and 3 inches on a sidewalk. I mean, like in those costs all are there, but
[2:08:09] here, Mr. Walker, what you're also talking about of just which is the musical chairs.
[2:08:14] When you add more chairs, the old chairs have a, have a lesser value that is part
[2:08:19] of the market-driven solutions, so.
[2:08:24] Do we wanna make sure that uh we address any of the other questions that staff has
[2:08:30] for council before we get into the affordability conversation too much. I, I think,
[2:08:36] uh, you know, the first two we've kind of, we've talked about quite a bit. Um, it
[2:08:41] sounds like for the street maintenance district ordinance, you want us to come back
[2:08:45] with what that would look like and um how much that would affect residents potentially.
[2:08:52] Um, I think too we'll also look at Missoula's to see how far the funding goes to,
[2:08:58] to see what projects they, they were able to construct with $50,000 so we, we can
[2:09:04] ask some follow-up questions on that. And I'd also be curious how many, uh, applications
[2:09:09] for SIDS that Billings has gotten, how many projects they're doing through self-funded,
[2:09:14] self-requested SIDS. Yeah, we'll do that. I will say that going into our next work
[2:09:18] session we're gonna keep. The formatting and stuff as it is, I will, I'm gonna send
[2:09:24] out a link to the council on the password sessions cause adding sidewalks and trails
[2:09:29] to this. This is traffic calming policy, it's not. So, that adds a whole other layer
[2:09:35] of council wants to go there. But I, it totally changes this whole scenario, so I'm
[2:09:40] gonna send that out so council can watch that or rewatch it cause there was a whole
[2:09:45] cost to that as well in, in adding sidewalks to this unless that's absolutely the
[2:09:50] direction council wants to head and wants to look at a more holistic um funding opportunity,
[2:09:57] um. It adds a lot of complexity to what you're looking at for sure. So we'll, at
[2:10:03] least going into our next work session, kind of keep it within this realm and look
[2:10:07] at the funding options for council and if, if they, if you feel like you wanna head.
[2:10:13] You know, a little broader, then we can have that discussion at that time, so. And
[2:10:18] Mr. Council President, please, uh, please adjust quorum. I gotta, I gotta thank you
[2:10:23] very much. But I, I really want to hear the public comment, uh, so I will watch this.
[2:10:29] Uh, I, I, I hear our recordings, audios have been all fixed, right? Perfect. Great,
[2:10:34] thank you. Thanks, Sid. Thank you. So, number 3 there um was the
[2:10:42] 67% support threshold that was developed um in our original draft council
[2:10:49] and um the main reason for that is just so that if we do have to move forward with
[2:10:56] an SID we feel comfortable that we're going to have the support um to move forward
[2:11:01] with something. But that threshold is a policy decision and so, you know, we'd like
[2:11:07] your guys' input on On that May I ask you a question? So if we go, and I'm not saying
[2:11:14] which way I, I'm wanting to go, I'm just trying to understand. So if we go to the
[2:11:18] street maintenance and district ordinance, then. Could we have a I guess what I'm
[2:11:25] trying to think through is
[2:11:29] I lived in Missoula for 20 years, so I know why they went the route they went because
[2:11:33] they were that low income neighborhoods were not getting in there so uh it just kept
[2:11:37] getting harder and harder for them so I'm concerned about going down that route because
[2:11:41] I saw it happen.
[2:11:44] And yet I don't wanna, if they're our neighbors who want it, could it be that there's
[2:11:49] a threshold where that's what we do for street maintenance or levy or whatever? I
[2:11:54] mean, there are other things thrown out here, right? But then, so that they, those
[2:11:58] neighborhoods, and we all gain from that. And then if there are neighborhoods really,
[2:12:03] really want something that, that's not denied them, but we, we have a baseline. Yeah,
[2:12:09] does that make sense or am I just crazy? No, no, no, that makes perfect sense. If,
[2:12:13] if, uh, SID isn't a funding mechanism, the threshold isn't important anymore, um,
[2:12:21] but for the, uh, non-threshold installs which, um, would be on the streets that are
[2:12:28] low volume potentially, then it would still be important. So, um, I guess either
[2:12:33] way, whether, you know, if we were going to look at SIDs as a funding mechanism.
[2:12:38] What would be the threshold support that um that we would want to utilize for the
[2:12:43] local um support.
[2:12:47] Thank you. So that would be for the SID, but for just a, a general project that maybe
[2:12:54] we're gonna use street maintenance improvement funds, if hypothetically, if we were
[2:12:58] to use that, would you want any type of threshold from the neighboring residents
[2:13:03] that would receive a benefit from that traffic calming feature? And when you say
[2:13:08] threshold, do you mean asking for that maintenance because it could be just one person
[2:13:14] that lives in that area that is concerned about traffic and that one point, would
[2:13:20] you like us to consider a threshold of 50% or 25% or none? And, and that, and I'm
[2:13:26] OK with any one. I just would like direction on, on what that would be. I mean, I
[2:13:31] can speak for myself, and that may or may not be with the rest of the council, but
[2:13:35] I would like none if there's a threshold for safety issues. So that the income level
[2:13:40] of the area does not dictate whether they receive services, but that, and knowing
[2:13:45] that there is an argument, and I do understand it, that some neighborhoods benefit
[2:13:49] more than others. So what's the social contract, right? At, at the social contract
[2:13:54] level, I would say those areas that are clearly rising, you, you've got a list of
[2:14:00] them, right? 4 mile, and you did the sidewalk, and yeah, it's way better. It is remarkably
[2:14:05] better. I run that every day and it's amazing. So how changed and how many times
[2:14:09] I haven't seen people almost get hit, just, it's better. So there's those kinds of
[2:14:15] things versus wouldn't it be nice, right? So that, that's because I guess where I
[2:14:19] fall is I'd love to have a baseline of this is what we hope the community as a whole
[2:14:23] to have. I'm, I'm leaving sidewalks out and, and then, but if we have other areas
[2:14:28] where if the neighborhood is so in, in.
[2:14:34] Inspired, I don't think that's the right word, but I'm looking for something. But
[2:14:37] it's convicted, convinced that this will be, this will be it, then they, then that
[2:14:40] could also be an option, right? And, and there's an inherent threshold if an SID
[2:14:46] is required. They have to get that local support anyway. So my, my thought goes to
[2:14:51] Oregon because as we've done studies on that. Traffic circles are the the recommendation
[2:14:56] in the neighborhood did not like traffic circles. So same in Missoula and guess what?
[2:15:01] Now they all love them. OK, OK, yeah, yep. Just I think it's good that we talked
[2:15:05] through some of these instances. Uh, I lived in one and I saw it play down that they
[2:15:10] now like them and they're safer. They're faster. They're more efficient. Yeah, yeah,
[2:15:15] I'm, I'm all good with it. I just wanted to have the conversation. Yeah, I'm, I'm
[2:15:19] back to, there's a, there's a safety issue, we need to, we need to do it. We do that
[2:15:23] for everything else, like we don't let people keep their lead lines, we're not gonna
[2:15:26] let unsafe conditions linger, we shouldn't let an unsafe condition linger just because
[2:15:31] somebody wants their unsafe condition. So, so you prefer none, is that right? If,
[2:15:38] if required. I mean, I, I think we would like to have it, sure. OK. We should seek
[2:15:43] it if possible.
[2:15:47] I think we can write. Um, so then on thresholds, we have the volume and speed thresholds,
[2:15:54] and, and so just as a refresher, the, the volume was a minimum of 1000 vehicles.
[2:16:00] Um, so this council felt that that's appropriate. We didn't make that number up,
[2:16:06] that was from another traffic calming, uh, policy or program, but, um, that's also
[2:16:12] a policy decision.
[2:16:16] That narrow down the number of roads enough to a manageable level. Yes, yeah, I,
[2:16:23] I think the volume really does help where that is. Again, part of it is that And
[2:16:29] the smaller volume issues, that's where a neighbor can go get one of those signs
[2:16:35] saying kids are in the neighborhood sort of thing, I mean, like, I mean, like I'm
[2:16:37] just saying that like it like, by the point where it's a public interest, I want
[2:16:41] to make sure that there's a volume going through there, they do. Um, so I do think
[2:16:47] that that's like where the volume makes a lot of sense to me because I think it really
[2:16:53] Also helps staff know where we're focusing and on the public good that something
[2:16:58] we could adjust in the future years if it determines that we've met all of these
[2:17:02] or we need to expand our thresholds or whatever, right? Yep, absolutely. Um, speed
[2:17:08] thresholds is another portion of this. So we have the 85th percentile of 5 miles
[2:17:14] an hour over, um, for the locals or 10 miles an hour over for a collector or arterial.
[2:17:21] Um, and then the other speed threshold is uh a 5% exceeding the um 10 miles an hour
[2:17:29] for a local or 15 miles an hour for a collector. So just Is everybody
[2:17:37] kind of on board with those ideas? OK, yeah, yeah, I think, um, just. It,
[2:17:45] what sold me on kind of the thresholds was seeing your, your chart of how the roads
[2:17:51] we've received complaints on rank out and that these, you know, roads that we buy,
[2:17:59] you know, we know our priorities simply because of the complaints we received them.
[2:18:03] They, with the thresholds, they still come out and they're, they seem ranked fairly
[2:18:08] appropriately and they all uh qualify for You know, as a priority. So I think, I
[2:18:14] think that was really helpful for me to, to say, yeah, the, the thresholds work.
[2:18:20] Yeah, yeah, I think we've already talked about 5, so move on to the next, and that's
[2:18:25] just kind of open for do we want to do, is there any more discussion on the updates
[2:18:28] to the standards do is that.
[2:18:33] I just said, I had a few notes and I'll, you know, do that more on the discussion
[2:18:38] as well, but if we want. Focus on the standards. There was one section, um, this
[2:18:44] is on page 42, reference publications. Uh, it says where reference publication conflicts
[2:18:51] with the MUTCD and ASHTO policy, um, that the standards would, would be the
[2:18:59] governing controls. Um, and You know, my, my general comment throughout the document,
[2:19:05] anytime I see ASTO, I, I, you all know, I, I bring up NACTO, uh, National Association
[2:19:11] of City Transportation Officials, that I want that to be, uh, kind of throughout
[2:19:15] our documents, um, included as a standard. Um, and there was a question,
[2:19:23] unfortunately, Mr. Dowd has left already, but, uh, in the past, he asked, well, what
[2:19:27] is NACTO? I don't even know kind of what It does. And essentially what it does is
[2:19:30] what we're trying to do here, uh, is it kind of lays out, uh, what these alternative,
[2:19:36] um, ideas are for traffic calming and, and just better streets for pedestrian safety
[2:19:42] and livability and so forth. So this is very much a NACTO aligned document, as I
[2:19:48] understand it. Um, but the whole idea with NACTO, for example, is that Um,
[2:19:56] Ashto is inadequate when it comes to questions like this. And so it's providing this
[2:20:03] alternative view. So, if, uh, if we're saying that when Ashto and Nacto, for example,
[2:20:08] were to conflict, that Ashto Um, prevails, then that kind of
[2:20:16] That goes against the whole document in my mind. Uh, cause the whole document is
[2:20:20] saying, no, actually, uh, we're, we're applying these standards that NACTO is trying
[2:20:25] to elevate, uh, that gets away from these kind of cookie-cutter, uh, old-style standards
[2:20:32] that's in Nashville. Um, At least as I Understand it from a cursory view. I,
[2:20:40] you know, Keith, you may have, you know, studied Nacto versus Ashto more closely.
[2:20:46] So correct me if I'm wrong, but, uh, that, that was just something that, that stood
[2:20:51] out to me. Uh, I would, yeah, I guess my only, so we did add NACTO as
[2:20:59] a reference document, a couple of different NACTO documents as reference items. Um,
[2:21:05] as well as, you know, the ITE designing walkable urban thoroughfares, um, and I think
[2:21:11] there may have been Uh Oh, Federal Highways, traffic calming primer. All of those
[2:21:18] documents are, are very similar in that they're not providing exact engineer, uh,
[2:21:24] engineering calculations or, or empirical data. They're, um, they're providing,
[2:21:32] uh, general planning, um, best management practices, ideas like you're saying. But
[2:21:38] the NACTO document itself, um, it, it suggests that you develop your own standards
[2:21:45] based off of those as kind of a guiding principle. And so that I guess is kind of
[2:21:51] our hope is that we're gonna be able to take some of these ideas from multiple sources
[2:21:56] and then refine them down into what is Kalispell's um Toolbox, uh, detail designs
[2:22:03] that we would include in the city standards which are then the engineering, um, standards
[2:22:08] that Calspell adopts. Yeah, and that's, that's exactly my, you know, uh, that, that's
[2:22:15] what I understand, and uh, and uh, I'm glad that we're doing this process. I guess
[2:22:19] my concern is that there might be, and again, I'm not an expert on this, so I'll
[2:22:24] rely on your expertise and knowledge of it. But if there's something in Ashto that
[2:22:29] says, you know, we can't be doing some of these things because it's not in there
[2:22:34] as a standard and it conflicts with some of the things we're, we're trying to do,
[2:22:39] then I would say, You know, we should move forward with when we know we have a proven
[2:22:45] solution. It's been implemented in other communities. The data shows it works on
[2:22:50] safety and so forth, that we don't let the Asto standards, if it conflicts, to say,
[2:22:56] well, we can't do it. Yeah, and I think the city standards would govern over the
[2:23:02] other, other ones as well. So, OK, so as far as like where I am on that last standard,
[2:23:09] I mean I do think when I see what Mr. Dowd's saying the difference with new development
[2:23:13] when we have a lot of standards including sidewalks, curbs, gutters, and like the
[2:23:19] Traffic triangle, the, the, the, the sightlines that we are building all these things
[2:23:23] out to. I feel like in general this policy is talking about our more historic neighborhoods
[2:23:30] and so that's. Uh
[2:23:33] My 2 cents' worth on it cause I do see that a lot of new developments already. Designed
[2:23:40] in a way that we're already putting have a lot of requirements that. We wouldn't
[2:23:46] necessarily by theory need to go back and go into um traffic calming into those spaces
[2:23:52] as a as a requirement, but again where I see these these features being added are
[2:23:57] more of our historic areas, so not I, I would, I would. I would just I would say
[2:24:04] I, I'm not seeing that actually in new developments. I'm seeing new developments
[2:24:08] actually building rows um very much kind of on the, the old style, uh, where
[2:24:16] Where they are, and, and we're seeing it. I mean, we've seen, we've gotten complaints
[2:24:20] of Silverbrook, that was one of the, one of the lists, and, and there's a new development,
[2:24:25] um. Uh, I forget the name, but, uh, it's brand new. I mean, they're still under construction
[2:24:32] and we've gotten complaints about, uh, traffic calming issues. I would say that,
[2:24:37] uh, We are not, we are not, we are not seeing these new, um, kind of approaches
[2:24:44] to street design that would slow traffic in our new development. They're, they're,
[2:24:49] they're, they're building out kind of the traditional road network and, and so I,
[2:24:53] I, I think this is actually Very, very much important part of this traffic calming
[2:24:59] policy to amend our development standards so that we get it upfront, so we're not
[2:25:05] continuing to double down on the problem by building more and more roads that are
[2:25:12] creating the problems we're trying to solve in our old neighborhoods, uh, and that
[2:25:16] we're just going to have to come back with more money to solve in our new neighborhoods
[2:25:20] that are getting built out the wrong way. Yeah, um, oh, sorry. Yeah, the, the last
[2:25:26] one on, on the, the new standards. So there's, there's kind of at the end here, page
[2:25:31] 46, um. It talks about requiring for transportation impact study, uh, including
[2:25:39] kind of analysis of traffic, uh, calming. And I, I think that should be expanded.
[2:25:44] Uh, you know, this is something I've, uh, I've been interested in a while as well,
[2:25:49] is, and we saw it with Tronstad. Where, uh, and, and the development there at Blue
[2:25:56] Bluestone, uh, that Mr. Dowd was talking about as well, where you have new development
[2:26:01] and there's a concern about the impact that that new development is going to have
[2:26:06] on safety. And this could be pedestrian safety as it was on Bluestone, but it could
[2:26:12] also just be vehicle safety, not considering pedestrian when it comes to Tronstat,
[2:26:17] when you're looking at the intersection at Whitefish Stage and Tronstad. Uh, and
[2:26:22] 93 in Shaunstead. Uh, but it was difficult for us to have that conversation and require
[2:26:28] things of the developer because our traffic impact study just looks at, um, carrying
[2:26:33] capacity. The, the functionality of intersections in the road, uh, is not looking
[2:26:38] at safety. And so, I think our traffic impact, um, study requirements. Should require
[2:26:45] not only, you know, traffic calming features, but specifically looking at both traffic,
[2:26:51] vehicle and pedestrian safety questions and what, what mitigation measures might
[2:26:57] be required to address those. And Mayor Hunter, I would agree with you that I'd like
[2:27:03] to see, unlike, um, Council Dowd, I'd like to see updates to city standards so that
[2:27:08] we don't have to con incur costs later. Yeah, I would definitely also agree with
[2:27:13] that. Going back to my earlier concern is I would certainly like to see uh pedestrians
[2:27:19] saved before they get hit and see these calming measures put in before accidents
[2:27:23] happen instead of always in a reactive manner after someone is hurt or killed. So
[2:27:28] I, I, I 100% support them going in first. It's definitely the more financially viable
[2:27:33] option and it saves lives and, and, and kind of uh piggybacking on that thought,
[2:27:40] um. Our standards, I think, do a very good job now for pedestrians. I, I, I think
[2:27:46] that's where our standards are in, in good shape, um, outside of maybe some of these
[2:27:52] crossings that we're talking about with traffic calming. Um, but, you know, we have
[2:27:57] straight sections, the, the one on um Jefferson is an example of the recent development
[2:28:03] that has created an issue for the, the residents that are there trying to get to
[2:28:08] the mailbox. And so that's why we brought it up as an example. I pulled in the um
[2:28:13] south side of states just because it was another area of town that I wanted to analyze
[2:28:17] and see how the, the curves in the road would um be affected and that sort of thing
[2:28:22] and it, it showed that most of it was compliant, maybe some small things would have
[2:28:27] to happen, but So, um, yeah, I think. Updates to the standards. I've kind of
[2:28:35] changed my mind on this, um, uh, you know, originally I was really hesitant to add
[2:28:40] any kind of traffic calming into the standards because of the risk that that, um,
[2:28:46] would potentially put the city at or an engineer in particular at if someone got
[2:28:51] into an accident at a traffic calming feature. Um, but, you know, I, I think there's
[2:28:56] a risk and reward and there's a risk on both sides of that, um, argument, so Um,
[2:29:02] you know, I, I do see how much more expensive it is for a traffic calming device
[2:29:08] to go in in a built-out neighborhood and it's not just the cost of the construction
[2:29:13] but also you have to figure out where to put traffic while you construct it. In,
[2:29:17] in some of these new developments, you don't have those options, um, really if you're
[2:29:21] taking away one of the two entry points to a development that they needed to, to
[2:29:27] get built in the first place, so I, I see the advantage of going in with new development.
[2:29:31] I, I think that's a very valuable thing and it's, you know, over time, um, that's
[2:29:38] changed my opinion and seeing some of the things that we're dealing now with, with
[2:29:41] new development. And some of that just comes with growth, right? You know, 1015 years
[2:29:47] ago we weren't seeing these types of issues and now we are, so I think we just have
[2:29:51] to be more open-minded and understanding what the community needs and try to implement
[2:29:56] that into our new standards, so. I think those are good things. And one of the things
[2:29:59] we did try to add, uh, Mayor Hunter, to your, um, concern as far as the traffic impact
[2:30:05] study, we did add pedestrian generators to review that as a part of the traffic impact
[2:30:11] study. So we did add that in.
[2:30:15] Right. It was so, uh, yeah, but that's, that's specifically for those areas, right?
[2:30:22] So, um, I don't know if like Bluestone or um Uh, you know, the intersection of wife
[2:30:29] is stage and Tronstad, whether that would get captured in terms of a safety analysis
[2:30:36] by that. So it might be too far away from the actual subdivision, but yeah. Well,
[2:30:42] but we were talking about that stuff as part of like both development reviews, and
[2:30:47] it was part of the traffic impact study to look at those streets, but because the
[2:30:51] traffic impact study only looked at um you know, level of service. Uh, you know,
[2:30:59] you're only looking at level of service with traffic impact study and, and kind of
[2:31:03] the, the ability to handle the traffic volume, but not, it's not a safety question.
[2:31:08] I mean that's the biggest. I, I reached out to our um third party traffic review
[2:31:14] consultant about that very question and um we're, we're discussing what could be
[2:31:20] done there. uh. You're right, like Transtad is, is a little bit different because
[2:31:25] there is no pedestrian features out there per se, except for what the city's installed
[2:31:30] on Quil, um, Quil Meadows or whatever the Quil one is. Um. So, you know, the intersection
[2:31:37] of uh Whitefish Stage and um Tronstad Road, there's no pedestrian features out there.
[2:31:43] Um, you know, I think where it comes up more common it would be like the landings
[2:31:48] at 2 Mile where we wanted the connection down to, to Meridian and that was off-site
[2:31:53] and it's not really addressed in the traffic um review, um, you know, we're providing
[2:31:59] the The pedestrian features in the the development itself but off-site that gets,
[2:32:05] uh gets more difficult to push that onto the, the development when it should have
[2:32:10] been maybe in place years ago. Um, but yeah, I, I'm, what's, what's also difficult
[2:32:17] is again when you don't have Uh, defined use in place for new development, it can
[2:32:25] be really hard to determine what your pedestrian generation is going to be because
[2:32:29] it can change dramatically by just different commercial uses. Um, so, those are things
[2:32:35] that there's, I think there's methods out there. I'm just not familiar with them
[2:32:39] and I'm trying to learn a little bit about it.
[2:32:46] With that, I mean, I think we've had, we're clearly that we've given some direction.
[2:32:51] Motion of council isn't here right now, so we're gonna have a clearly some more conversations
[2:32:57] from those who are absent for today and stuff like that. I would love to make sure
[2:33:01] that we make time for public comment for the willing public who stayed for 2.5 hours
[2:33:07] of our meeting. So with that, I would like to now open our meeting up for public
[2:33:11] comments. If you would like to provide comments on any items under the jurisdiction
[2:33:15] of the city council, please approach the podium, state your name, whether you're
[2:33:19] a city resident. And um where you would live, where you live with us. Um, if you
[2:33:25] are attending via Zoom, please raise your hand and let's limit our comments to 3
[2:33:30] minutes if we can. I'll give you a little bit of extra time if you want.
[2:33:43] Is this on? Doctor Dewey. My name is Paula Mendel and um I've been coming since
[2:33:51] 2023 and I want to thank you guys for all your, I mean, this is huge for you guys
[2:33:56] to do this kind of a study and everything. It really makes it fair and I think people
[2:34:03] will understand that when they can see when you make choices. Unfortunately, there's
[2:34:07] never enough funding to do all of this, but um I did wanna say thank you, um.
[2:34:16] You guys completed the trail from on 4 Mile by Kidsport all the way down to Kidsport.
[2:34:23] And so now, now we don't have folks running with strollers up 4 Mile to try to get
[2:34:29] to the, the, the new path. So that, that bike trail, the walking path has been completed.
[2:34:35] And we do have flashing lights. Unfortunately, I walked that. Every day, and usually,
[2:34:44] 1 out of 5 cars will stop for me when the flashing lights are all flashing. Some
[2:34:49] of them are on their phones, they can't be bothered with a little gray-haired lady
[2:34:54] trying to cross the street. But um thank you for getting that done. That's huge.
[2:34:59] And now I'm hoping that we can get for 4 Mile some tabletops because 4 Mile, the
[2:35:05] volume, you guys can see has Just increased. I mean, it's crazy. The people coming
[2:35:13] down the hill, they will stop up at the top of the hill because it's a 25 mile an
[2:35:18] hour flashing. They stop for that and then they roll down the hill and they're going
[2:35:23] 50 at least by the time they get through. All the exits for, you know, for the kids'
[2:35:30] sports, the entrances and the exits. Now we have so much volume in kids' sport that
[2:35:36] they're using the church um That empty lot that's next to the meadows.
[2:35:44] I forgot my address. My address is 205 Meadow Vista Loop, but um, now they're using.
[2:35:51] That empty lot, little kids coming out and their folks, you know, they're all geared
[2:35:56] up and they're walking, they've got to get to the game, you know, to, uh, to play
[2:36:03] and nobody's slowing down for them. I mean, it's, it's scary, the kids crossing,
[2:36:09] so I'm glad you guys are, are working this and, and thank you for all your efforts.
[2:36:32] I have to elevate this, excuse me. OK. Um, my name is Justin Van Emmerich. I'm a
[2:36:38] resident of Kalispell. I live at 851 North Main Street, Ward 2. Hi, Councilor Blank.
[2:36:44] Um, I, I have a lot of comments on this, and this is excellent work, but, uh, I know
[2:36:49] we're focused on the money, so I'll just focus my comments on that. Uh, I would encourage
[2:36:54] council to ultimately get to yes with establishing a permanent sustainable funding
[2:37:00] source, um, that recurs annually. I'm by no means an expert on how to do that within
[2:37:05] city budget mechanics, so I'll certainly leave that to you, but it sounds like there
[2:37:09] might be something that would work with the um highway or street maintenance or improvement
[2:37:14] uh mechanism. It's not gonna be a lot of money, you know, 20,000 to 30,000 $50,000
[2:37:21] a year, it doesn't buy a whole lot, um, but I think we've just heard that we can
[2:37:24] chip away at some of our highest priority problem areas and, you know, 5 years, 10
[2:37:31] years, 15 years, that really makes a difference. Um You know, I, I'm a husband, I've
[2:37:38] got a wife, I've got a 16 month old kid. We live on North Main, uh, and we cross
[2:37:44] that street every day to access the multi-use trail directly across it. Um, we're
[2:37:50] not, you know, we have a sidewalk, we have trails, we don't have is a street where
[2:37:53] people drive at a safe speed. We just want people to slow down. Um, and we're not
[2:37:58] even the worst in the rankings, you know, we're 4th, and I think that's totally valid
[2:38:03] based on the, the data that Public Works has collected, so I can't imagine how people
[2:38:07] living on 4 Mile and East Oregon feel. So, I would just ask that the city council
[2:38:14] ultimately look at how to establish a modest budget to start making progress on this
[2:38:19] so that safety isn't left to very uneven neighborhood engagement through strictly
[2:38:24] SIDs. Um, and finally, I'll close just by saying this is, this is really excellent
[2:38:30] work. I appreciate all the time and diligence that has clearly gone into it by Public
[2:38:34] Works. So, yeah, I just want to specifically commend Director Wiles and Deputy Director
[2:38:38] Haskins. So, thank you very much for your time.
[2:38:51] Nothing online. No more public comment. Um, is there a city manager's report? Yeah,
[2:38:59] Mary Council, so we do have direction. We'll kind of proceed forward as I mentioned
[2:39:03] earlier, um. Trails and sidewalks does add a whole another layer to this, so at this
[2:39:08] point in time, we'll kind of focus within the traffic calming policy and some of
[2:39:12] the direction we heard. I'll send out the link to kind of some of those older work
[2:39:16] sessions and meetings we had in regards to that, um. Other than that, ah. Sure, everybody's
[2:39:24] aware, the president's coming to town. Um, we are doing the best we can to be prepared
[2:39:31] for Wednesday, and, uh, with that being said, Please pay attention to any public
[2:39:36] notices that are gonna be coming out. There's gonna be a lot of traffic control,
[2:39:39] there's gonna be a lot of interruptions with traffic come Wednesday afternoon, so
[2:39:43] please, Um, follow any public alerts and stuff that'll be coming out because, uh,
[2:39:50] If you're on the north end of town, your day is gonna be a bit different come Wednesday.
[2:39:54] I'm just putting that out there, there is gonna be a lot of disruption, um, so that,
[2:39:58] that's all I got for today.
[2:40:02] Any council reports?
[2:40:07] Ms. Blank, I just have a quick one. It's late, so I won't go into it, um, but I would
[2:40:11] love to request a work session to look at how we, um, manage public comment and can
[2:40:17] we look at some models for comment cards for, uh, we have a police chief now whose
[2:40:23] family has been threatened. We have a city council member whose family has been threatened.
[2:40:27] I just feel like the temperature is rising. And I'd like to think that our staff
[2:40:31] also probably feel some of this, and so I'd, I'd really like us to have a work session
[2:40:36] about how we make sure everyone feels safe and there's space for all of us to say
[2:40:40] what we have to say, but there's accommodation so that we feel safe. I don't know
[2:40:44] what else to say except for that.
[2:40:49] Mr. Walker, uh, just wanna say thank you, staff, for this, uh, traffic calming stuff,
[2:40:55] um. It's, I think it's uh long overdue. I think it's a great policy, um, really excited
[2:41:02] to see it. Um, nothing's perfect, but uh I, I think it's a great starting point,
[2:41:07] um, see how these things go and I look forward to, uh, To getting this implemented.
[2:41:12] Thanks again, and I echo your sentiments as well, but we all need to be safe to express
[2:41:17] our opinions and feel safe to do so, uh, in here. So I know some people have trouble
[2:41:23] understanding why our format is the way it is, um, but we want to ensure everybody
[2:41:28] has the equal right to speak their mind, uh, in this hall.
[2:41:35] OK. And I would just second both, um, I actually mentioned that to Mayor Hunter a
[2:41:40] while back about the possibility of comment cards and modifying public comment perhaps,
[2:41:47] um, so everyone that wants to speak has a chance to do so. Um, and thank you, Keith
[2:41:53] and Suzie. I suspect you had something to do with all this too, Jared, but what a
[2:41:59] great in-depth presentation and um appreciate. I could have given more comment, but
[2:42:06] I'm really wanting to learn and listen um before I, I speak out, so thank you.
[2:42:14] Bear hunter
[2:42:18] Yeah, thank you. Um, uh, yeah, I just wanna echo, I've, I've been waiting for this
[2:42:23] work session for a long time. Um, everybody knows this is a priority for me. Uh,
[2:42:30] and I, um, apologize not being there in person. Um, but, uh, I, I'm very happy
[2:42:38] that we had this discussion, and I'm very excited that we're, uh, uh, moving in the
[2:42:42] direction of, of getting a policy like this in place. So, thank you to staff for
[2:42:48] um putting together, I think, uh, excellent first draft of it. Um, I think it's definitely
[2:42:53] on the right track, and I know a lot of work went into it, and I, I think it's very
[2:42:57] good. Uh, one thing I didn't, uh, have a chance to mention, uh, just my last comment
[2:43:02] on it is, I know we have, so the pedestrian generator for the new development.
[2:43:10] Um, but in terms of the screening criteria, For projects um in existing
[2:43:18] neighborhoods. I didn't, I, I'm wondering if there's value in having some sort of
[2:43:23] pedestrian generator type criteria in that as well when we're looking at, I didn't
[2:43:28] see anything that, oh, you know, if you have a school zone, or if you have a park,
[2:43:33] or you have, you know, one of these pedestrian areas, that, that maybe rises up the
[2:43:38] list a little bit of an area that needs treatment, uh, if there's ongoing concern.
[2:43:44] So, uh, I didn't see that in there, and I just thought that might be um Uh, consideration
[2:43:49] for, for inclusion. Um, in terms of, uh, you know, work session on doing things,
[2:43:56] uh, differently on public comment, happy to have that discussion. And, and yeah,
[2:44:00] I, you know, obviously, we've, we've been running into some problems, uh, with people
[2:44:04] who don't respect, uh, kind of the, the reasons why we try to limit, um, uh, the
[2:44:10] total time, um, uh. It's, there, there's reasons for that. Um, I did, I did, uh,
[2:44:18] Ms. Gabriel had mentioned the comment card. I, I did give it serious consideration,
[2:44:23] um, and can have that discussion, obviously, um, I would respect the majority of
[2:44:29] counsel's opinion on that. I, I felt there was, um, some real issues with practicality
[2:44:34] of implementation of it, um, but, uh, happy to have that discussion further. Thank
[2:44:40] you.
[2:44:45] Right, well. Thank you all for your work on a great presentation. A reminder to everybody
[2:44:52] in the public that part of the reason we have conversations about traffic calming
[2:44:56] is that we all could just drive a little bit slower. I mean, I know I, my husband,
[2:45:02] and other people sometimes just add that extra 5 miles onto every speed, speed limit,
[2:45:07] and that's, that's breaking the law. So I do think that just reminders that we also
[2:45:13] have a responsibility for making our community safer. Um, and then also, um, really
[2:45:18] excited that the president's coming here. I can see why he would come to Kalispell
[2:45:21] because we're the greatest city in America. Um, and I know that city staff, the police,
[2:45:27] and firefighters will do their best to make sure that we are a city that's proud
[2:45:32] and what a great week to have. So best of luck with everybody, but, um, let's make
[2:45:37] this work.
[2:45:43] Get your sleep now. Yeah