Good afternoon and welcome.

Today is Tuesday, June 2nd, 3 30 p.m., and we are in the city council chambers for our work session and an executive session.

Can I have a roll call, please?

All council members are present.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

Mayor Dolman Council members were here here this afternoon for a workshop regarding the Bullhead Area Transit System.

I had brought this topic up at the last manager's report.

We got into a conversation.

We agreed that we wanted to go deeper into conversation, and this would be a better venue for that than my manager's report.

We've invited Michael Peluso here this afternoon to give a brief presentation and then talk about uh all of the questions, concerns, and ideas you all may have.

So I'll turn it over to Michael for his presentation.

Thank you, Toby.

And thank you again, Mayor and Council, for having me here today for the workshop.

I was told brief, but um I was also told beforehand that I had until the council meeting started.

So I did have the two-hour presentation ready to go, but I'll cut it down if I need to.

So uh today um I just did want to uh give kind of a little bit of an overview of some of the things and items that we had uh discussed recently, um, both during uh the last council meeting um during the city manager's report, um, but then also during some other discussions that we've had with council, um like at the budget meetings, just to kind of go over a couple of topics and give some additional insight um that really at the time uh didn't have a lot of time to really delve into that, um, and then offer up any questions that you guys may have to go any deeper into those topics or anything else transit related.

So um to kick things off, um the first thing that we have uh that I talked about uh at the council meeting was the process for route implementation and for changes.

Um again, the process that we do a lot of major changes for transit um coincide and go along with our planning process for a short range or sometimes a long range transportation plan.

Um for that process, it typically takes about a year to develop once a consultant is hired, and then once approved by council, we have annual implementation goals that we look to do and make the changes that are made in and recommended in that plan.

Um over the year, each year that we're looking to do those implementations.

We look at and try and do updates and see if those recommendations are still good, and then work out the process for how we want to roll those out.

Now, um, one thing I did want to clear up is um for that five-year plan, it's not necessarily something that's hey, it's gonna take five full years to complete.

Again, there's steps in the completed plan to do an annual implementation goal, um, which will be you know, any kind of minor service changes up to major service changes or route reconstruction or adding new routes.

So all of those different facets go into the plan as it's developed.

Um we are looking to always update and do any kind of unforeseen or small changes to the system.

Um, but a lot of times there's some logistical steps that we do need to take, and sometimes there's budgetary steps too.

Um, that if you know we don't run into any of those hurdles, we will look to try and make some of those changes and updates.

Uh so then next we've got um uh one of the opportunities or one of the questions that was brought up had to do with uh passengers when they're looking to use the system and when they want to get off the bus and how the process works, but then also um having the opportunity to get off kind of at select locations that maybe aren't designated stops.

Um there are systems, there's multiple different kinds of systems that are run throughout the country.

Um, that type of service is called a flag stop service, and it's not something that we do with our system.

Um, on board all of our fixed route vehicles, we do have a button or a pull string that somebody can press to indicate to the driver that they're gonna need to get off at the next scheduled stop.

But we don't just stop at certain locations that people may want to get off at, and most of that has to do with two things.

The first one is safety.

Um, any of the stop locations that we end up putting on for our fixed routes are all vetted by city staff, um, both transit staff and public work staff to make sure that the locations that we're picking up and dropping off passengers is safe and able to do so.

Um, if there's any issues at those stops, we maintain those stops so we make sure that there's no safety concerns with people boarding or alighting in a safe location.

Um you know, if we start integrating certain things like trying to get people off at a certain time or whenever they choose, we run into issues with keeping up with the time and logistics.

So when we schedule and set the time frames up for boarding and alighting, if given the opportunity and multiple people want off at different times, it starts to put the system behind and kind of do the exact opposite of what it's intended to do is having safe, efficient local service that we can provide that people can count on and rely on.

So that logistically is part of the reason as well that we haven't really looked too much more into changing the system or the way that we're currently operating because of those reasons.

Okay.

So the next thing here is going to be there were a couple of locations uh that were asked or um indicated that we may not have service to.

Um, and I did want to do some clarifications and some of the things that we can look to kind of update and maintain in the future.

Um, the first one is access to the senior enrichment center.

So we do actually have a stop that's located on train at the senior nutrition center, senior enrichment center, excuse me.

Um, the stop is located literally like on the little alleyway that the water trucks use to fill up between Ken Fovarg Park and uh the senior campus location.

Um we've serviced that stop and had that stops there since 2018 when we did our last major route readjustment.

Um, one of the things that could be a little bit of a confusion is on our route maps, we do just call it Ken Fovar Park because uh when we did that last major update, we made sure to add stops at all of the different parks in the city.

So we just labeled those stop locations there.

Um, but I do know that it was mentioned and something worth us looking into that now that especially with a lot of the improvements that have been happening to the senior campus, and we want to make sure that we've got eyes on that, um, looking to rename that stop to like senior enrichment center would probably be a good idea, and that is something that staff can look at doing to make sure that it's more prominent so people do know that we service that stop as well, so that people have access to that specifically.

Okay.

Um, and then another stop location that we also want to talk about is um for access to the library.

So one stop that we've had since 2003 is actually a stop at Hancock and Train.

Um, and that is right there along the road that it's about 600 feet from the entrance to the library.

Um, but one thing that is confusing when we looked at it is we do have two stops on our blue line that are Hancock and train, one that's across the street that serves the medical complex, and then one that's right there closer to the library, which also again can be confusing.

Um, after what was discussed, and something that we looked at internally, it's another location that we can look at to update and maybe change the name to something like county services, because all of those county locations are right there for both the court and um the department of health, and then also, of course, the library.

So, something to highlight a little bit more to make sure that people know there's access to those locations there and not just naming it the part of the street that people might be able to get confused at.

All right.

Oops, excuse me, sorry about the okay.

Um, the next thing is gonna be shelter amenities.

So I know that this was a conversation that we had had, and I just wanted to give some more information on when we had discussed it during um the budgeting process.