The Saco City Council met on Monday, November 24, 2025, at 6:30 PM. The agenda included resolutions on long-standing contract zones, a new application process for supported entities, a quarterly finance report, a presentation on sidewalk plowing logistics, and farewell tributes to outgoing councilors Phil Hatch (Ward 5) and Mike Berman (Ward 4). Most votes were unanimous (6-0) with the exception of a playful 6-1 vote to adjourn.
The meeting was adjourned at approximately 8:06 PM after closing remarks and a 6-1 vote on the motion to adjourn.
Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the Soccer City Council meeting for Monday, November twenty fourth, twenty twenty-five at six thirty PM. Like to make note of all members present this evening, including Interim City and Manager Emily Cole Prescott. And would you please join me for the Pledge of Allegiance? Thank you, everyone. All right, item number four this evening is general, and we do not have anything under that item. Item number five is committee correspondence to council. Are there any committee members wishing to speak? Councilor Hewitt. Um I just want to thank the Dyer Library for their pre preview gala this week. They did a fabulous job. The Festival of Trees is opened. It'll be open November 28th to December 28th. And on December 7th, they're having a sensory family friendly time from 10 a.m. till 2. Thank you. Anyone else? Council Johnson. Thank you. I've got several items. So the traffic safety committee in BPED met last Thursday. It was a rather full agenda, as they seem to be quite often lately. And majority of the request, as they have been, have been for safety infrastructure upgrades. I expressed at that meeting that it's become kind of increasingly difficult to uh administer or apply an arn arbitrary approach to again approving these. I think Councillor Hatch, you were previously on traffic safety with me when we had begun to look at developing policies. So I kind of had advocated for taking that back up with staff this winter, hopefully, to come to real strong standard that we can actually implement. But I just want to keep council aware because I know counselors themselves are getting a lot of these requests and they're trickling down to us. And unfortunately, you know, we had an instance where we had to table half the agenda. Um then uh an update for the demonstration on Main Street. I won't go into all the data there, but that was a 2025 Safe Streets uh demonstration in front of TA. Uh that was administered from a grant, Safe Streets for All, which was GP Cog that was the lead agency. It was installed in July and removed in October. Uh overall, the the data showed that it there was a reduction in crashes. There was only one crash. Uh it reduced vehicle speeds by five miles per hour on average across the percentiles. Uh improved safety for bikes and pedestrians, and it was uh a successful implementation of a new traffic calming treatment, which is those speed bumps or pumps or tables, whatever you want to call them. Uh and then the overall recommendation was to consider installing permanent speed tables as well as other lane channel infrastructure. Again, going back to my prior comment. We're gonna kind of work to develop the standards for that. Uh the other thing was the Pepper Park uh ad hoc committee had met also last week. It's the second meeting. And they've really just been overall, you know, 35,000 foot view of you know, pretty much the presentation that council has previously received. There was a lot of I thought um useful feedback from from residents that attended, and I just bring it up because there is a we will be meeting monthly, and they are open to the public. So again, anybody that has suggestions or is interested in that development, I would encourage to attend uh because it's it's a pretty monumental undertaking. Um that's it. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else? Council Edwards. Thank you, Mayor. This weekend uh coming up is going to be fantastic if you are into shopping.