Uh this is operations meeting today is Thursday, December 18th.

In attendance, we have myself, Representative Policia, Representative Didalo, Representative Bradford, Representative Zachary, and Representative Beckham.

Is that correct?

And I declare I declare a quorum.

So welcome everyone to the first operations meeting for uh this board.

Uh right now we have three items for this meeting, uh, two approvals and then one review item.

Um we have our guests in attendance uh from the administration, um Miss Carpanzano and also uh Director Canonez and I believe uh engineer uh Luis Casalo.

Um so what we'll do right now is because we have three items.

I'm just gonna go through the the first one to the second and the third.

And the way this works, if anybody hasn't had a meeting yet, is the chair cannot make a motion or second it.

So what I'll do is I'll read the item that we're going to take up, and then I'll need a motion from the floor and a second, and then we'll take up the item and I'll let the guests go ahead and speak.

So I hope that makes sense.

So our first item is 03203.

It's an approval, uh, the first amendment to agreement with Fuss and O'Neill pursuant to request for proposals 2025.10 uh two six, a drainage assessment for areas of concern in Stanford for the law department file number uh A250162 submitted by the administration and approved by the Board of Finance 600.

So at this time, I'll uh entertain a motion for item 03203.

This is Representative Zachary.

Uh I propose that we approve this motion.

This I make a motion to approve this.

I'm not sure what how to say it.

There's approval.

That works.

I I make a motion to move uh item 03203.

And do I have a second?

Is that an execum second?

Awesome.

Thank you so much.

So at this time we have item 03203, and I believe uh Luke Casalo from the engineering department um is going to be speaking on that.

Is that correct?

Uh good good evening.

It it yes, it is.

Thank you.

I the floor is yours.

If you want to go ahead and uh brief the committee on what exactly this is, and then we'll open it up to questions.

Uh thank you.

Good evening.

My name is Lou Cassillow.

I'm the city engineer for the city of Stanford, and I'm presenting item number one.

Uh, as the chair indicated, this is an approval of an amendment, first amendment to an existing contract with a consultant Fuss and O'Neill for a project related to drainage assessments in the city of Stanford.

Um, I'm here tonight because the amendment is necessary as the contract itself uh that was we're working under is valued under 100,000.

And with this first amendment, it exceeds 100,000 and necessitates board approval.

As the chair indicated, the Board of Finance um approved the contract on November 13th, or the first amendment on November 13th.

Uh I'll just give you a little bit of background.

Um the existing contract is valued uh just under 100,000, and that uh contract contained tasks, uh work tasks in the scope uh to assess um various areas of concern within the city related to drainage.

That uh initial step helped me focus on screening and prioritizing flood prone areas uh in Stanford.

And right now I'm I'm targeting around 39 different locations, and those those locations are made up of either riverine, and that's properties and and city uh infrastructure in and in near rivers and also uh other areas of drainage within the city city.

So we're basically coming to an end of the first series of tasks within the existing contract.

And within the RFP, there's a task 500, and that's what that's what is contained in this first amendment.

The value of task 500 is 400,000.

And that task is mainly made up of uh three components.

Um as you may know, this is a kind of a complicated subject because it's widespread throughout Stanford, different areas, different reasons.

Um, and it's by my experience that when either residents, um business owners, other people experience flooding or or drainage issues, they contact uh the city.

And um, it often uh can be the problems can sometimes be resolved simply, and others not not so.

Um, these happen to fall into categories that are more complex that require hydraulic modeling, uh engineering designs and funding to support the the improvement.

The other matters of maintenance and other areas that might just be a clog pipe um or uh minimal damage can be resolved using maintenance forces.

So the these 39 areas I'm talking about really don't fall into those categories.

So uh the amendment, which I refer to as Task 500, basically takes all of these areas and it's going to put them into a GIS or GIS system that's a graphical information systems database so that it can be logged and seen and viewed by multiples of people within the city of Stanford, so that everybody is sort of working off the same sheet of music.

That hasn't happened before.

Um, so utilizing GIS to model uh these areas is important.

So and that takes effort and time to do that.

So that's part of Task 500.

The other part of uh the work scope includes the engineering analysis and design.

That's where the hydraulic modeling and a better understanding of the issue will come about.

Uh the third component of the task is uh grant assistance.

There's a lot of different grant programs that come up throughout the year, and we want to be ready to be able to take advantage of those opportunities.

Um so we are working right now with several uh smaller grants under the Connecticut Climate Resilience Fund grant program.

And by getting a better understanding of these projects, having some design, some modeling uh completed, uh, although some of them may not be shelf ready or shovel ready, they'll be pretty far along to be convincing to those that are offering these opportunities uh additional assistance.

Um, in terms of the overall authorization to pay for this uh supplemental, it's it's it's all fully uh authorized already under an ARPA grant.

That's a federal grant.

And what's important that you need to know about that grant is that it expires in December of 2026.

So it's really uh critical that um I continue moving forward this project with the authorization approved as ARPA funding, uh, so the work can be completed um on or before that date.

There's a lot of work to do here, so you know, December of 2026 is not that far away in terms of a horizon for me at least.

At this time I'll pause and if there's any questions, I'd be happy to answer them.

Is there anybody from the floor?

Yeah, I had a quick uh question for you, uh Lou.

This is also in regards to um some of this is involved in the Toilsome Brook project, correct?

Or am I confused on this matter?

You're you're you're warm, um, not confused.

There's there's three there's three different um things that are happening right now in the city related to uh hydraulics, uh flooding, uh, storm water, and one of them is a toilsome brook study.

So that's an isolated uh study by itself.

All properties along the Toilsome are being uh managed in a different project.

So this is work outside of that.

Although there's flooding issues and drainage issues along Toilsome, we decided to break that out at its own project.

So these other areas of concern, these other 39 areas I'm talking about, are not those within Toilsome.

Okay, thanks.

I appreciate that clarification.

No problem.

Anyone else?

Uh I don't see any hands.

Oh, sorry.

Uh Representative Pelisia, go ahead.

Hi, uh, thank you, Chair.

Um, I do have a quick question in regards to the completion of the project by 1231.

Um, is the contractor confident?

Um, you know, they'll be able to satisfactorily complete the entire project within the time frame and um grant paid up, of course, the second kind of question.

I apologize.

Um if it is not completed within the time frame, is there any agreement there as well?

Yeah, the the type the consultant is um has indicated to me that they can complete this work by December of 2026.

It's a long-standing uh consulting firm with a lot of resources, so they're gonna have to apply a lot of um manpower to this to get the work done.

But I've already requested a schedule and a manpower breakout.

So based on that, they're they're pretty sure that they're gonna be able to get this done.

And of course, it requires active management by my me and my office to meet with them to check up on them to get reports from them and to stay on top of this for the next 12 months to see that they're putting every effort forward to do that.

We've had um we've been working with them for six months now, and we basically had a very complex uh task in front of us, and the product that we were we've been able to get real is really is a priority matrix of all these 39 areas that have been weighted and scored.

So we definitely have the foundation to move this thing along.

So they're they're well equipped with understanding what our concerns are, how to work with the city.

They um are pretty uh very good to work with.

And I hope that um it's my hope to get this all done uh prior to the deadline.

Thank you.

Uh yield the floor there.

Thank you, Chair.

Thanks, Representative Pelicia.

Um, I don't see any other hands, Lou, if you want to continue or if there's any anything else you want to add.

Well, um what I could uh say is that um at this point I would uh like to seek your approval of the First Amendment to the agreement with Fossen O'Neill.

Um, as I said before, the amount of 400,000, which is funded through ARPA uh to move this project along.

Yeah, understood.

Um at this time, are there any other questions from the committee members or anyone outside?

I don't see anybody uh hands raised.

Um that being said, what we'll do is we'll try to do this by a voice vote.

So what we'll do is I'll announce the item and I'll say all those in favor.

Those that are in favor just say yes.

Those not in favor would say no, and then we would go to a roll call vote.

Um so at this time I'll try to do this by voice vote and say all those in favor of approving uh item 03203 say aye.

Hi, hi.

Hi.

Though any opposed.

Okay, that passes, and I believe we have one, two, three, four, five, six, zero.

Is that correct, Sheila?

Yes, that's correct.

Okay.

I just wanted to make sure that I didn't see someone enter in uh while we were talking.

So I appreciate it.

Uh uh Lou, and um thank you so much and good luck on the uh on the project.

So we'll see what happens.

Yeah, thank you for your time, and uh I look forward to working with you all um uh on other projects as well going forward.

I appreciate it.

Feelings mutual.

At this time, we'll go ahead and look at item two, which is 03204, which is another approval of a proposed contract with uh sanitary equipment company uh incorporate for the purchase of OEM parts, equipment and services for Loadmaster, uh leech.

Sorry, I've got to get my glasses of some point, or here we go.

Uh Wiki, Labri, Perkins Manufacturing Cartlifters and Products, Parkan Company, uh, butcher municipal equipment, hackmore, American Powfinger products, and VATCON Incorporate used on road maintenance department trucks and the associated waiver of the competitive process for this purchase is a sole source vendor.

So I think that's kind of the big part of the sole source vendor.

So at this time, I will entertain a motion to take up item 03204.

Uh Chair, I'll make a motion to take up uh item uh 032.

Uh 004.

Awesome.

Is there a second?

Chair, I will second that.

Multiple seconds.

So at this time, I will welcome uh Ms.

Carpanzano from the Department of Operations.

I uh if you are or Director Canonas, I I believe you are speaking on this item.

Yes, I am, representative.

Thank you.

Thank you, everyone.

Go ahead.

Um so this is an agreement for parts that primarily um support our sanitation fleet, all of our giant roll-off containers that you see at reset the recycling center.

Um they repair them, they weld them, and they help us maintain them when the amount of hours that it takes to fix one of these is surpasses what our staff can do.

Um in addition to that, they are one of the primary um sole source providers for parts for our larger variant trucks that handle snow plowing and leaf pickup.

Um so what we do throughout the year is if there is a major project that we can't handle, such as let's say a wiring harness that has been totally destroyed by uh rodents, we would outsource it to them, limiting um limiting the impact to our staff that has to handle smaller, quicker items out to maintain the fleet and keep it moving.

So this would be um an agreement allowing us to um purchase equipment, also parts and repairs.

Um this is a standard agreement that we um uh agree to annually, and um we uh anticipate that it will go over a hundred K.

Pending your questions.

At this time, is there anybody on the floor that has any questions?

Uh Representative Didalo, go ahead.

Yeah, I just wanted to clarify.

Um, this is the only company in the area that does all of this.

Is there any because I I know I understand the process of only not having any other bidders for these particular cards, or is there another like brand that also supplies them or this company that's it?

There's no other alternative.

That's just what I was wondering about.

Yes, uniquely, this is the only one within the hour range that allows us to take those vehicles up.

Anything past that starts to really get expensive to tow and um then to retrieve back if you can imagine.

So, yes, this is uniquely the only vendor that we have in the area to support us.

Well, thank you.

And right, Presentative uh Zachary, go ahead.

Yes.

Uh I don't know.

Is this an open-ended amount, or is there a an amount specified in the contract or approval?

Uh or is it open?

It is open-ended, but historically we we average about 120,000 a year in repairs.

Um, in extreme situations, we may go over that, but the fleet is um over its the majority of the fleet is over the 10 years.

So we do start to see these types of larger repairs.

Um, but it is it is um open-ended.

Great.

Thank you very much.

And thank you for talking about this with us.

Thank you.

Anyone else from the floor?

Uh I don't see any hands.

I uh appreciate you coming um and talking to us, and we'll go ahead and try this again by voice vote.

So at this time, I will um asking for a vote for approval of item number two, zero three two zero zero four.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye, aye.

Any opposers?

Any opposed.

See none, that item passes uh six zero zero.

And thank you to our guest for speaking on items one and two.

At this time, we're gonna move over to oh, go ahead, representative Zachary.

Uh Chair uh Chair, thank you.

Uh, for the record, did we have a vote on this in the finance committee as well?

Or fiscal it was.

It was approved 600 for from finance, board of finance.

All right.

Thank you.

Anytime.

At this time, we'll uh go ahead and take a I'll entertain a motion to take up item three, which is 03202, which is a review overview of the Office of Operations with Director Canone's motion to take up item three.

Second second, second and multiple multiple seconds at this time.

I will go ahead and uh give the floor to Director Canonez, who will give us a review of the Office of Operations.

Thank you so much for joining us tonight.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, uh members of the operations committee.

Uh look forward to to working with you in the months and years to come.

Uh hopefully this evening I can give you a bit of an overview of the operations department and and um at the chair's discretion, uh, have an open dialogue uh about any questions or interests or or inquiries that that you may have regarding our department in terms of its structure.

I will try to offer as much of a comprehensive overview as I can um for a department that that has uh broad range of uh responsibility, but um happy to dive into as much detail as anyone is interested in.

Um if uh the chair permits, I I do have a presentation to be able to just offer some visual aids as I talk through the department structure.

Um, if if that's permissible for you.

Do you have the ability to share your screen or does it something that I think I do?

Let me try.

Okay.

You let me know if that popped up.

Okay.

Yeah.

Great.

So I tried to use just uh uh some of the annual report information as just kind of a baseline for folks to get an understanding on some of the work that the department is involved in and give you a sense on kind of the the capacity or reach of uh volume in some cases that um uh we're responsible for.

So just a general overview here that the department is responsible for day-to-day services.

So I like to say that uh operations is the most visible face of uh the uh local government, um, whether that's for uh street maintenance from uh road to sky being our pothole uh replacement um to street lights, signals, et cetera.

So um it does offer opportunities for us to engage uh frequently with members of the board of representatives because you're oftentimes on the front line of the residents.

Um if either we've failed to um uh uh meet uh complaint or concern that that they've submitted, or if they don't know uh to go through uh our our fix it system, um they'll often come to you.

So we usually uh do uh develop a good relationship with board of representative members as they advocate for the needs of their constituents, um, and we are kind of on the front line of that.

Um but uh prior to um we're also involved in in planning and maintaining our infrastructure and public assets.

Um some of our focus is highlighted here.

Um, and that includes kind of uh coordinating across different departments, which is an emphasis that that we have as our current um administration um looking to uh incorporate the different areas that allow us to execute on whatever we're assigned.

It does go beyond the operations department.

So maintaining great working relationships with the administration or public safety, um OPM, purchasing, legal, these are all critical support functions that allow us to move something forward.

So uh we take that very seriously, as well as responding to the the needs of our community and doing so in a uh focus around sustainable growth.

So this is a structure um that our department is organized under.

So at the top far left is administration.

So that really speaks to to my role.

And um you've met our our deputy director, Josie Carpanzano.

Um so as the kind of leadership group of the overall department.

Uh we also have some other uh personnel who support us in in kind of overseeing the uh entire department and uh helping to organize our coordination.

Um that's the primary responsibility of the administration.

Um but you've also heard from our city engineer, Lu Castillo representing our engineering department.

Um and I'm gonna go through a brief description of each of these, so I won't name them all, but um you can just see here kind of the uh various divisions and departments that fall within the Office of Operations.

So just giving you a little bit of a sense of the work that each department is involved in, beginning with our building department.

Uh you can see here their uh primary activities involving uh the um work around inspections and the issuing of building permits uh highlighted here some of the revenue that our building uh department generates through that effort uh for the city.

Um and you can see our focus around public safety um being the primary and code compliance being our our primary emphasis for that department.

Uh one change that we've employed over um the last three plus years uh has been to align this department with our zoning enforcement uh team and our blight anti-blight operations.

Uh so previously those were siloed uh in their own organizational structure.

Um we chose to align them within the building department, and that effort um was so that we can uh become more efficient and and um more productive around enforcement.

Um many times an inquiry may come in uh from the residents' perspective without kind of the exact expertise or knowledge on which enforcement tool uh we as the city could employ to remedy their situation.

So we felt as though by consolidating it, having it, those assets under one uh leadership, uh, when those tickets came in, we would be able to be responsive to the incident with whatever enforcement tool we had at our disposal in those three particular areas.

So that's been one change that we've um uh uh employed over the last couple of years that I just wanted to highlight.

I I thought I saw a representative's hands up, so I just want to make sure if if there's anyone wants to jump in, feel free.

Go ahead, uh Representative Zachary, go ahead.

You're muted.

Yeah, sorry.

Um thank you, Director Carronis.

Uh I had a question about the anti-blight.

Uh, can you tell me what that means?

Sure.

So there's a blight ordinance that um the uh city has uh currently on the books, which establishes certain uh conditions of private property that would be considered a violation of blight or the blight ordinance under that particular ordinance.

The city has certain authorities to try and address that.

Um kind of the the theory behind it being that if your neighbor is not upkeeping their property, um, there's some authority that the city has under blight to be able to kind of force them to meet uh reasonable standards of of upkeep.

Um and there's a whole host of different items that are identified in the blight ordinance from you know tall grass to unkept um uh weeds to uh stacking of rubbish and um waste on a property that would be a violation of blight.

So we have um a blight officer who then has that authority to go and inspect such property, and then if it does uh violate the blight ordinance, they can then start uh to issue the issuance of fines, and then there's some escalating enforcement activity or or uh responsibilities that they have beyond that.

Okay, thank you very much.

Representative Finkel.

All right, thank you.

Uh first let me apologize for being late, got stuck in traffic.

Uh quite question speaking of blight.

If the property is owned by the city and it's overgrown, uh what recourse is there?

That's question number one.

Question number two is just a general question.

Can we get a list of contacts and all of the different departments so that when we have something that comes up, we can go right to the exact person that we need to.

Yes, I can develop that for you.

No problem.

We'll send that out.

Um, and the answer to your first question is also yes, uh, a public property can be considered blight.

Um we, I don't believe have find ourselves that to my knowledge um to date, but uh I can offer uh one situation um that we we did have recently, and both um deputy director Carponzano and um city engineer Lou Castle were part of this as well, which is uh we have the property that was at Cortland Avenue Park known as the Hunt Center, which had deteriorated for years and years, um if not decades.

Uh and you know, we saw it as a an unsafe structure, certainly one that would be considered blight given the neglect of that.

Um and we did actually um end up uh blighting that property and and uh it did help us in establishing some funding um support to ultimately demo demo the building.

Um so that's one example that I've been involved in on uh blighted property of uh of city property.

Thank you.

Uh so just jumping to to the next department, engineering.

Um you can see here a whole host of responsibilities fall within engineering, overseeing many capital projects, uh uh storm sewers, roads, bridges, parks, facilities, um, and different MEP systems, um, supporting our utility paving uh coordination, uh a couple of dollar figures highlighted there in terms of the uh revenue received going back to uh probably 2023.

Um a couple of bridge projects that have been completed is also highlighted here, as well as uh some of the scope um that they're involved in and permitting.

Uh fleet maintenance uh is also within the Office of Operations.

You get a sense of our overall fleet, over 750 vehicles, trailers, equipment across our city.

We've employed a preventative maintenance program over the last couple of years.

Looking at renewable diesel adoption, some electric vehicle planning, and just right sizing our overall fleet have been a few efforts that we've been supporting.

And some of the work that they do also is around our support of our fuel stations as well.

So they have responsibilities to provide administrative support as well as technical expertise to our different land use boards to include planning, zoning, zoning Board of Appeals, our environmental protection board as well as housing planning and the Affordable Housing Trust Fund.

So both technical and administrative support.

Also that involves different sustainability measures that we support.

Parks and recreation.

So this is also somewhat of a change over the last uh three plus years.

We uh previously um had a department of recreation and then separately a department of uh parks and facilities.

Um we elected to merge the parks and recreation under kind of one department and one senior leader and then separate facilities.

Um that's been a change that we thought would better kind of align the recreation planning with uh some of the the park investment and park maintenance that our park department has.

So we've been pleased with the results of that.

Uh but you can just get a sense of the scope of responsibility that uh parks and rec has, over 900 acres, 58 parks, 22 athletic fields, our four beaches.

Um so Stanford is is rich with um uh variety of different recreational areas, limited and some others, but um parks and um beaches and marinas are within this scope.

Um you can see our recreation services.

So we do uh actually directly uh provide for uh youth sports and adult sport leagues uh within the the city of Stanford, and this department is responsible for oversight of that.

Recycling and sanitation, uh so you get a sense of the scope over 55,000 households, uh variety of different municipal municipal facilities, uh approximately 76 tons of municipal solid waste, and just some of the efforts that uh we have underway in terms of pilot programs, include uh a composting program as well as our litter basket program, uh road maintenance and stormwater.

So we have the responsibility of over 315 miles of roadway.

Um what that means in terms of department responsibilities uh related to what I would say is probably what some of the most visible uh um services for the city.

That means snow removal, leaf pickup, uh, our paving program, um, our catch basin program, um highly visible through through this department.

Um paving program has been an effort we've chosen to really focus on over the last three years and plan to do so, which I'll I'll speak to a bit in the later slide.

And apologies for just trying to fly through this, um, but just want to give you the full picture and uh just at the end highlight a few uh initiatives that um uh we're looking to employ over the next couple of years uh with your support.

So school construction um has has been a big effort underway.

This is also uh a new endeavor for the department over the last three years.

We've developed uh this uh department, if you will, um, which is is lean primarily uh through a staff member and and consultants, but our school construction is tasked with the construction of the new West Hill High School, uh Roxbury K-8 uh building, and the lower and upper schools often refer to as South School K-8 buildings at located at Lockwood and uh the current KT Murphy site.

In addition to that, I like to say that those are kind of three pillars of a four-pillar school construction effort.

The fourth is the small capital program, kind of less visible, maybe less highlighted, but extremely important, which does span across all 21 Stanford public school buildings over the last three years.

We've invested over 25 million, and this is changing out of windows and roofs and more of a smaller projects that I would say are to the tune of two to three million or less, but certainly add up and make an impact on each of those buildings.

So significant in its own right.

But in addition to the oversight of all these programs or in alignment with it, there's a lot of grant research, grant writing, and uh compliance that that's associated with the school construction department's work.

Transportation, traffic and parking.

Um you'll hear a lot about uh Vision Zero Initiative, um, different efforts that we're uh employing to try and um uh embrace pedestrian safety cyclists uh for um across the city.

Uh a lot of service requests go through this particular department as well as a lot of grant dollars for state and federal support flow through here as well.

A lot of work over the last year has been uh in support of the comprehensive plan.

We'll just see a lot of mobility recommendations um come to life.

Uh finally the WPCA uh kind of somewhat falls within the Office of Operation.

It's a separate authority uh but through uh the director of operations.

Uh there's an administrative or administrative alignment so with the city of Stanford.

The authority has certain aspect of how they operate that need to fall within city policy and and city protocol.

So the role of director while not uh involved necessarily in the day-to-day operations of the plant management, um, has responsibilities on kind of oversight for their compliance with city policy would be the best way I would kind of define the uh the role.

Um so it it falls within operations, but not really on the day-to-day oversight.

There is an executive director uh who oversees that plant.

Jumping into just a couple of uh goals moving forward uh for the department as I see it over the next couple of years.

Um I talked about a few areas where we've had alignment of departments.

Uh we'll continue to try and reduce silos across our um infrastructure related departments.

Um having an alignment between transportation and road maintenance uh will will be a priority early in this administration, uh as well as pursuing strategic alignment around sanitation and WPCA.

Um we're also looking at uh different ways here to continue to operate better on uh day-to-day oversight, which means the establishment of uh operations command post here at government center, um, which has been in the works, trying to ultimately centralize our kind of emergency coordination when when those events occur uh and giving us more kind of real-time situational awareness.

So improving on that will be a goal over the next couple of years.

Uh sustainability and environmental efforts, uh, so reducing our admission.

Um we have a couple of initiatives that we're undertaking right now.

We have a uh route optimization plan.

Really, the goal of that is uh looking to find the most optimal or ideal routes for our collection operations, um, and a couple of benefits to that in terms of the reduction of uh of fuel becoming just more efficient at pickup.

Um that is underway.

We have a composting pilot program right now that we would look to expand and research on and the feasibility, the feasibility of having a greater impact for a composting program across the city.

Similarly, um the research and hopefully implementation of a glass recycling pilot program, um, pursuing a gas-powered equipment in favor of the electronic alternates, alternatives, which has been uh something that has been in partnership with the prior board of representatives and representative uh Camparelli has been an advocate for uh we're participating in a regional waste um pilot right now, seeing ways that through regionalization there might be some efficiencies created.

I think you heard a little bit of our uh work around citywide drainage, but uh our goal is to hopefully implement uh as many area uh capital projects to address um uh key flooding areas.

Uh we're continuing to pursue our our fleet's transition to EV wherever appropriate.

We have uh project in the works for uh installation of uh electronic uh vehicle charging stations at the government center and some upper other efforts that would allow that to move along.

And our urban forestry preservation is also something that we're focused on as a department in the creation of an urban forester position.

Uh and we currently have a urban forestry working group that consists of members of the public, board of representatives and staff that kind of help shape uh some decisions as a department that that we make around this area.

Uh major capital construction program is underway.

Uh so you may be familiar with some of the school construction projects, which I already highlighted.

Uh, here's just the timeline for that.

Uh so beginning from the left here, our West Hill High School project will be in construction um this coming year, this spring, uh, with uh opening of 2029.

Uh a few months behind that is our Roxbury K to 8 building, um, which should be in the the fall uh breaking ground.

Um and then I mentioned the the lower school at Lockwood.

Those that aren't familiar with that, it's currently right now operated by uh Domus and is not a Stanford public school.

Um the plans that have been approved have been to build a Cadet 4 facility at that location with the goal of then moving the students currently uh assigned to KT Murphy to that school when it's opened in 2029, and then moving construction effort to uh build at KT Murphy a five to eight school, ultimately having one K to eight school, but on two different campuses in somewhat proximity.

The reason for for that decision was the limited uh availability of land in kind of the southern end of the city, which was a priority uh coming out of the long-term facilities plan that the Stanford Public Schools developed.

Uh so those are some major uh projects that are that are underway uh for our school construction, highlight a few uh non-school programs to include the animal shelter um, which is we've we've broken ground that's being run by our engineering department, um, and that should be uh approximately 18 month schedule going back a few months from from when we broke broke ground.

Uh and then uh we currently have uh earmark for uh the creation of an East Side Library at Cortland Avenue Park.

Um that's still a project that has to be authorized, as has not been designed, but uh is something that is a priority of the mayor.

Um and then finally highlight just a few areas of of park investment, which um will be coming up in the next year or so.

Uh we have uh a grant, uh federal grant to continue to do improvements at Cummings to the tune of over 10 million dollars.

So uh a lot of investment going in over there.

Um we have uh a master plan for Bakutsi with the uh uh second phase of work uh currently being being designed, uh, and then a couple of playground projects that I would highlight that um we will pursue over the next year or so at Cummings, one at Haig Avenue Park, uh, and then one at the Phil Giordano Playground at Nemoyan.

Uh you may be more familiar with it being referred to as Heart School.

Um, but that is a city park where we do have an authorization to build a playground.

A couple of things around facilities.

I mentioned we had as a uh priority kind of remove this as its own department.

Um, and in doing so, I think I have come a long way around our overall management of our facilities and uh give a lot of credit to our deputy director, Josie Carpanzano, who's who's been a real leader in this area.

But moving forward, we are um looking to really emphasize the importance of having longer-term investment decisions that are driven off some sort of planning document.

So uh we will be uh pursuing kind of a citywide facilities assessment and in doing so, then be in a position to develop more long term capital planning uh based off of the condition of our facilities.

Uh we put an emphasis on modernizing the government center as kind of the face of city government.

Um we've done a lot in that area.

Hopefully, as you've entered the building, you'd notice some changes.

Um we'll continue to do so over the next couple of years, not in kind of one lump sum project, but year over year continue to make improvements where where we can, and hopefully you've you've started to notice a difference and then getting more formalized agreements with our our tenants is another area of improvement uh for the next couple of years.

Housing and community development, um, highlight a few investments in Oak Park and Stanford Manor that are priorities of the mayor, as well as the redevelopment of 41 Main Street, um, which is currently uh a vacant MITS building previously occupied by by MITIS, which is owned by the city here on Main Street.

I'm pointing behind me because that's where it is.

Um, but we have gone through a RFP process to select a developer to create affordable housing at that location.

Um I highlight that because that'll be a contract eventually that'll that'll come before the board for their consideration.

Um that is a uh unique opportunity to turn city land into housing that uh we'll be able to hopefully take advantage of.

Really our role in housing is is as a department uh is certainly in planning through land use, but beyond that, um, helping where we can around infrastructure, like in the main street location, uh permitting coordination for those that are um private developers developing housing, that we can become more and more efficient uh for them to be able to get approvals in a timely manner.

Um, and then in some cases, providing uh direct financial support uh either through the fee and loo program that is then administered through the Affordable Housing Trust Fund or through uh the the capital budget, which the mayor has um uh previously submitted uh uh proposals for.

Um then on the kind of community development side, uh we continue to invest uh more in our our park enforcement operations, knowing that that's an area where we can improve uh with the last couple of years.

We have tried to increase um the attractiveness of the park police position.

We've been successful in adding an additional officer and creating a park ranger program to help supplement some of those uh enforcement needs that um we're unable to provide through through having sufficient number of park police officers.

So we're gonna stay committed to uh having the um resources in the budget for for consideration to increase the number of park police officers uh as well as maintaining our our park ranger program.

Uh transportation mobility and vision zero.

I I mentioned a little bit of this as we're introducing you to the department.

Um, but there's a lot of work around the the train station and that transformation, ensuring that our uh vision is aligned with whatever decisions are being made by the the state there, um expansion of our vision zero program, looking at expanding our Stamp Forward Um, if you're not familiar with that, is uh essentially uh a free service for Stanford residents to be able to move about the city of Stanford uh in a kind of Uber-like um uh service.

Uh right now it's limited by geographical area.

Uh, we hope that we'll be in a position to have enough uh funding support to grow that effort to be a citywide service.

Um reforming our utility paving program and uh getting better at coordinating with our utility companies is also uh a focus for for the next uh several years, and also the launch of our unaccepted road program.

Unaccepted roads have been roads that are uh not accepted by the by the city.

Uh the result of that uh over many decades has been a lack of investment in a really no investment in uh road remediation, leaving them in a very deteriorated condition.

Uh so we've looked at approximately 90 roads or so and said that we would like to make the commitment uh to remediate those roads despite um by charter them not being the responsibility of the city to remediate.

It leaves a sort of purgatory state of road remediation where neither the private resident or homeowner on the street nor the city seems responsible for it.

Um that has over the years resulted in just decades of neglect.

Um, and that has over the years resulted in just decades of neglect uh for this upcoming budget year, we have proposed uh that three million dollars um be put towards this program separate from the citywide paving program and our utility paving program so that we can hopefully begin to make a significant impact on the number of roads that have been um neglected under this status.

Uh and then we'll continue our commitment um which we had in our our prior term of paving 200 roads to hopefully replicate that uh again uh for the next three, four years.

Uh just some kind of mantras around how our our department looks to operate from uh leadership perspective perspective, advancing our our major capital programs, uh continuing to monetize in the areas we can, strengthening our coordination and uh kind of maintain a strong partnership with the the Board of Representatives and other city boards uh as we go through these efforts.

With that, um sorry I threw a lot at you in hopefully a timely manner, but um happy to to answer any questions um I can and um kind of pause there.

Does anyone have any questions?

I just go ahead and ask them directly.

You don't need to go through me, it's just kind of a back and forth.

Go ahead, John.

Thank you.

Thank you, thank you, Director Allen.

That was an excellent presentation.

Um, I do have one request.

Could you actually send that to the board office so we can have it for the record for the public?

Because I think it would be excellent to share that.

Um I know you know the public can obviously watch the video as well, but just to see the PDF and the presentation would be phenomenal.

Absolutely.

Yeah, I'll send that following the meeting.

That was it for me.

I'll let others ask questions and I jump back in.

Thank you.

I'm not sure if there's an actual like document, but is the document accessible for the priority for the paving in the upcoming year?

So now there was that study on that.

I've been looking for, and so my constituents have been looking for it.

Is it possible to get a PDF or one of those just so that for people that are wondering about the status of their roads and at least see where on that list with the scores that we're going through, um, where on the list that it kind of lies, if you could get that out to the board as well.

So we we we do publish what we call kind of the 200 list, which is the first hundred roads that we prioritize, and then the second hundred, which is you know, one oh one through 200.

The reason why we don't publish the entire list is it could be misleading.

Um so you have 1,000, I think 191 total roads.

Um four years ago, we went through a citywide uh road assessment, which allowed us to then have like a paving condition index score for every single road.

Then based off of that, we created the 200 list, which was just raw scores of the um you know, worse to best to give a sense of the conditions of the roads that kind of we inherited four years ago.

Um it has like five scoring metrics, like starting with good or very good, good, at risk, uh poor, and very poor.

80% of the roads were at risk or very poor.

So 80% of 1,191 is you know, over close to 900 roads.

So what ends up how that reaches the public is that you could very well live on a road where objectively you drive outside and say my road is poor or at risk.

It is one of 800 roads as of four years ago that were of that condition.

So making the investment we made, we moved from paving between 10 to 20 roads a year to approximately 70 with that increased investment.

And still in doing that, we pave 260 roads in four years.

So we probably left over 500 roads over four years still in that condition.

So what and then over time, given how much time it takes to do that, the conditions of roads can change.

So I say all that to share that.

The next step really, once we are seeing the conclusion of these first 200 roads, is to commission another study and essentially establish another list with presumably the remaining 500 or so in poor condition if you know other roads haven't deteriorated even worse.

So it's not it's like uh disingenuous that there is no list of like one through 800.

It's the commitment of these 200, then another assessment and a new list.

So that's why we just published the the 200.

So if a road is not listed in that 200, we do not have a plan for that to be paved through the city paving program right now.

That being said, if utility work is conducted on a road, regardless of whether or not it's on the city paving road, as a policy, what we've done is committed to assess that road when the utility company is pursuing their permit and then pave the road from curve to curve.

So some roads have been paved that haven't been on the list at all because utility work has um kind of sparked activity at that area, and we've said essentially as policy it makes sense while they're there paving the portion that they're responsible for for us to essentially tack on to that project and pave the entirety of the road.

So it's not um a loss cost for lack of a better term for someone whose road is not necessarily on the um one through 200 list um over the course of the next few years.

If there is utility work that will be done, they could expect um that that road would be paved.

Sorry for the long answer, it's just a lot to the the reason why we don't just publish the you know a score of one through eight hundred.

I I like long answers.

I think Representative Finkel.

Uh tagging along on the roads, the things on the side of the roads quote sidewalks, many of them are in really, really bad shape.

And I think the city has a tremendous liability.

So we have a program for taking care of sidewalks too.

We do.

Uh sidewalks have been harder to uh invest in than roads, just that it is more expensive, frankly, uh, than roads.

So what we did a few years ago is really prioritize um the sidewalk areas around schools.

Um, and then we were successful in some sort of sidewalk investment in pretty much all schools over the last four years, and really was a thought that you know we don't have enough of uh uh investment or resource right now to cover kind of citywide.

So, where can we make the most kind of targeted impact?

Um, and that's why we kind of chose to prioritize that moving forward though, we have developed uh a scorecard that will allow us to create a prior priorities for sidewalks through our transportation department.

What we haven't been um great at, frankly, is around um kind of the publishing of that.

Um, but we do have some excuse me, plans to to improve in that area so that we can give more notice to the public on kind of how those decisions are made, the timing of projects, etc.

Um, so it is an area of of improvement.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

I don't see any hands unless somebody has snuck up on me.

Um I just want to say, Director Canona's to you and your staff and everyone that showed up tonight, thank you so much uh for that overview is very informative, I think, uh, for our first meeting to kind of get a big kind of overview of what's going on and the amount of responsibility that you have.

And um just a couple of action items that I took down was just uh contact sheet.

Uh and then maybe if you could share that presentation that uh I I don't know what you're allowed to release or not, but um you know, if you if you can share that, that'd be great.

And I appreciate that.

And that yeah, absolutely, and chair, I'll just throw out an open invitation.

If um you know any area uh was of interest or or questions still remain, um you know, please feel free to reach out to me directly if you want to have just a conversation or you know, learn more about any particular function of the department.

Um, we're all here for those conversations and happy to elaborate further one-on-one if if if um anyone prefers to to have those conversations.

Yeah, thank you so much.

Um without any further ado, I just want to say thank you to everyone for joining us tonight.

And I know next week is gonna be kind of hectic.

So I hope you all have a happy holidays and a happy new year, and we'll see you after the new year for our our next board meeting.

Obviously, if you have more committee meetings next week, I I understand that as well.

But as a committee, I just say thank you for everything and uh look forward to working with all of you.

So that being said, I'll entertain a motion to adjourn.

I would like to make a motion to adjourn.

All right, have a good night, everybody.

It doesn't require a second, but I appreciate it.

Okay.

All right.

Take care, everyone.

We'll see you next time.

Good night.

Happy holidays.

Thank you.

Bye-bye, everyone.