Good evening, everybody.

Welcome to the September 8th, 2026 meeting of the Housing Planning and Development Committee.

A few items under agenda this evening.

First is approval of the minutes of the July 13th, 2026 meeting of the HP and D committee.

So I'll move.

And a second.

Seconded.

Motion passes.

Thank you.

First up on the agenda tonight communication from President, Vice President Baker, Councilpersons Bix and Stein and Evans regarding the City of Lakewood's traffic calming program.

This was referred to HPD and the case advisory board on July 6th.

I think both things we're going to hear tonight are updates on things that this committee has been working on over the past months.

So with that, I'll believe it'll turn it over to Councilman Baker.

Sure.

Thank you, uh Chair Evans.

And the communication speaks for itself in the sense that it's the traffic call me program was started a few years ago by this administration.

A lot of but it was also kind of new, like not a lot of communities were doing this.

Dangerous.

And so the the intent of this communication was was both to lift up some of the accomplishments and good work of the Traffic Calling Program, but also, you know, it's any it's a good policy of any organization that every about five years to look at something, how it's doing, reflect, think about refinements, um, seek input from the public.

Uh this is purely an administrative program.

Uh do we want to have some loose codification of it or not?

Uh what does the public think about it?

Uh what are the successes?

What are some of the challenges from a staff standpoint and the amount of work Mr.

Boss is doing?

Uh are there ways to make it more efficient?

Um I am an ex officio member of the case board as well and heard uh Mr.

Boss's presentation, so I'm I'm sure he will do that for us and take our input as well.

Um so that's all I have to hear.

Great, thanks, thanks, President Baker.

Um and I'll just add um as a little background, um, Council Persons Baker, Pixenstein and myself did have a um a really good meeting with uh city officials plan department.

Um the mayor um was in attendance and public works about this program.

All of us in council, I think, um can agree this is something we hear quite a bit about from the community um pretty much every single day.

Um so it was a great touch point.

Um I think we had a lot of uh productive conversation there, but looking forward to the presentation this evening.

So I'll turn it over to um Assistant Director Boss.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair and members of the committee.

I've just got a couple of slides.

I'll um a little bit of background, I'll walk through the process.

Uh, hopefully it you're familiar with the traffic calming process, but for now I'll just hit some of the highlights and then kind of some of the numbers of uh the last couple years uh just in terms of some metrics of the program and the throughput.

And then uh the last slide is is kind of a follow-up to the meeting that we had in terms of some of the things that uh uh we were planning on making changes, and I will I got one to add from the case meeting uh last week as well uh to consider.

So here we go.

All right, so just some background on traffic combing.

Um this was a uh uh a pretty big research project when I got here, uh 2018-2019 time frame.

Um not a lot of local or regional cities had traffic calming policies at the time, and so a lot of this information I I pulled it uh in terms of research and then also learned from kind of the past and then the efforts of on Woodward Avenue here in Lakewood, as well as and then uh I would I was fortunate enough to lead the Marlowe Avenue, which was our project, which became our pilot and um, where I was kind of to test and refine this whole process um over about a two-year period with the residents of Marlowe Avenue.

Um so one of the biggest things driving traffic calming is obviously it's intended to address volume and speed issues on a given uh typically a re residential neighborhood street.

So that's that's one of the big focuses is ours.

We don't the the program does not focus on uh major east-west collectors or commercial uh dominated roads.

It is a and that's why I I call it the neighborhood traffic calming program.

It's focused on those north-south residential blocks uh within the city.

Um of the biggest things that with traffic calming is it's it's contextually driven, so it means different things to different people depending on where you live.

Um somebody who lives on Hall uh with its eight 18-foot right of way and the homes that are like I think the building line on Hall has got to be like 12 or 15 feet.

Um you're a lot closer to traffic that is in a much narrower street and it feels a lot different than say a resident who's on Manor Park, um, who's got a 60-foot um, you know, a much much larger uh right-of-way and a 60-foot setback.

Um so the cars going the same speed feel much different to those two different blocks.

We try to respect that.

And the program did have a prioritization system that takes those things into account.

Um, but that's one of the discussions.

I'll come back to this with uh one of the recommendations from the case committee that I thought uh was valid in terms of being better in terms of that contextually driven process.

Um then one of the last things is obviously this is a it was designed and it still is or remains a resident-driven process.