Note.

Um okay.

It's uh 701.

Uh I'm going to go ahead and call this meeting to order.

My name is uh Representative Sanford.

I'll be chairing the meeting.

This is uh January the 22nd at 701 p.m.

This is the operations parks and rec uh committee meeting.

Uh at this time we'll go ahead and call roll call for committee members.

Uh Sheila, if you don't mind, can we go ahead and do a roll call real quick?

Yes, representative Beckham does not appear to be on.

Representative Bradford.

Uh here, present.

Representative Didalow.

Present online.

Well, can represent a Finkel.

Uh-huh.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

Representative Gardner.

Present.

Representative Felicia.

Yeah, and yeah, people.

Real quick, Representative Finkel.

I think you got some background noise.

Do you mind muting yourself?

Thank you.

Representative.

Yeah, and present.

Uh Representative Silas is excuse.

Representative Sanford.

Present.

Representative Zachary.

I don't see him on.

All right.

I I send him a note to see.

I think he's going to be on his way, but we'll go ahead and get started.

Okay.

So right now I declare a quorum.

Uh we have two items for tonight's meeting.

We have OPR 32.001, a review of Eversource Cable Modernization Project, which is submitted by Representative Didalo, and OPR 32 002, a resolution concerning building permit fees on commercial projects exceeding a million dollars.

What I'm going to do is let the Representative Didalow uh introduce the item uh since he did it, and then I'll turn it over to uh the city and also uh some folks uh that are joining us from Eversource, and then I'll open it up to questions on the floor.

So just so we will get around to everybody's questions, but that's my thought process so that we can be respectful of our guest time.

So at this time, I will go ahead and take a motion to take up item zero p uh OPR 32 001, a review of table modernization project.

Yeah, well, it's a so did Lou.

Just excuse Representative Finkel, if you don't mind muting yourself.

Thank you, sir.

Yeah, but we talked to Benny.

Actually, Joan called us.

Thank you, sir.

At this time, can I get a motion to take up item OPR 32.001, a review of Eversource Cable Modernization Project.

So moved.

Do I have a second?

Second.

I have a motion and a second, and this is going to be item zero or keep saying zero.

OPR 32-001, a review of Eversource Cable Modernization Project.

I'm going to go ahead and give the floor to Representative Didalo.

This is your item.

If you don't mind just giving a brief, you know, Cliff's notes version of uh why you introduce this, and then I'll go ahead and uh let uh Mr.

Casalo from the uh from the city go uh speak.

Go ahead, sir.

Yeah, so I just wanted to introduce the item because it's going to be um a major project over the next several years affecting uh multiple districts.

So kind of want to just get some details iron out about the scope of the project, maybe some timelines, um, and just so that we can best inform the constituents uh just based on the size of the project that's upcoming um to ensure that you know they can go around their daily life as best they can while the construction is ongoing.

And you know, I really want Lou and everyone from Eversource here to kind of share what they have.

So I'll hand the floor over to them.

And thank you.

Uh, from the city, we have joined us Mr.

Uh Lewis Casolo from the engineering department.

We also have uh Luke uh Buttonweiser from uh traffic and engineering department that might be joining us that can uh shed some light at this time.

I'm not trying to put you on the spot, uh Mr.

Casalo, but just from the city's perspective, I wanted to turn it over to you to give maybe a little bit of uh the this city's insight before we open up the floor to to our friends from Eversource.

Yes, thank you very much.

Good evening and uh happy new year to everybody and uh want to say thank you to the board for taking this item up to make it uh more um well known to the to the community what's occurring.

Um and I'm gonna turn it over to Eversource in just a minute, but in a nutshell, this is a utility upgrade project that's quite large in time and and cost and impact to the to the city uh streets.

This is a project to interconnect two substations, one at Cedar Heights to one in Glenbrook for an Eversource can explain the rationale behind that, but it's a resiliency project from the utility company.

So it's an important project.

Um I want to um just communicate some of the things that we've done over the past year with this project.

Um we work with utility companies all the time.

Uh this time it's it's Eversource Electric, and this is a fairly uh large uh project involving a lot of people.

Um one of the things I think we should do tonight is um introduce uh all the different people that are here because everybody has something different to contribute.

We have Eversource and we also have their their contractor um United Civil uh present to uh help give us an overview of what's occurring with construction.

But from the city side, um my office as well as uh transportation and others, uh Lucas here tonight, um, are administrating the the work of this project.

And by administrating, I mean uh the utility company is their own entity, but like any other um uh uh firm, uh they have to comply with the city requirements.

And those requirements are essentially uh permitting associated with the work in the right-of-way.

So anytime you're you're you're excavating or digging up streets or sidewalks in the right-of-way, uh, you're you're required to have a permit.

And along with that permit, there's there's police detail and protection, et cetera, as well as uh a track a traffic plan to monitor uh the pedestrian vehicular traffic that that traverses these areas.

So um to that end, we've been working with Eversource, like I said, for over a year now, but up to this point it's been really design related.

So currently, Eversource has taken out about 46 excavation permits just for this job alone, and it hasn't really uh fully uh rolled out in terms of construction.

But but basically those permits that were issued were all for the the testing and characterization of the existing conditions to help their designer plan out this project.

So they had to do test probes, different excavations to figure out what kind of conflicts and conflict resolution had to occur before the design could be completed.

So we worked hand in hand with them to monitor uh that that activity with the permits and also reviewing the design plans and providing Eversource R utilities, which are storm storm-related drainage piping and also sanitary sewer locations, so that you know they could hopefully avoid uh conflicts uh with those as they progress through the work.

Um this is an unusual project.

I've I've done a lot of major projects with all the utilities in the Stanford over the years.

This one is unique in that there are um 20, I believe 29, 26 or 29 vaults uh going in.

And these are large vaults that are being installed within the right-of-way uh that provide the ability for all of the splicing and uh serviceability of these cables to take place.

So that activity is taking place first in terms of construction.

So they're gonna be putting in all these vaults, and then once that's done, they're gonna come back and interconnect all the vaults with the underground cabling and conduits, uh, which is uh a significant effort to do that.

But again, all of this is being done and controlled uh through the city's permitting system um to control the the activity and and and the work.

Um so that's that's the project in a nutshell.

Uh they have we do meet we do meet monthly now.

Now that we're in construction, um we we we schedule coordination meetings monthly with this team, and it's basically a conference room full of people, and we uh we discuss things uh on a monthly basis that relate to um uh uh where the where the issues are that they're that are occurring in the construction.

We deal with permitting because the job isn't fully permitted, it it permits as it goes.

Uh we talk about the maintenance and protection of traffic, and Luke is present with others in the highway department to help uh uh guide these people on what they should be uh aware of in terms of different different concerns related to traffic.

Um and uh we also uh get look ahead schedules from the utility.

uh where the where the issues are that they're that are occurring in the construction we deal with permitting because the job isn't fully permitted it it permits as it goes uh we talk about the maintenance and protection of traffic and Luke is present with others in the highway department to help uh uh guide these people on what they should be uh aware of in terms of different different concerns related to traffic um and uh we also uh get look ahead schedules from the utility so we get six week look aheads sort of help us understand where they're going to be going and so that we can you know prepare our staff uh accordingly so those are the type of things that occur during progress meetings and um so so there's a lot of internal oversight as to what's going on here uh there has to be in a city like Stanford there's there's too much activity happening at street level to to not take this uh lightly so um I think at this point um uh I think at our last coordination meeting EverSource we didn't really rehearse we just talked about this meeting and they have um a presentation that they'd like to to to share with you tonight to review the the project and answer any questions you might have um so I think it might be appropriate at this point to turn it over to that team and if you could introduce yourselves to the board so the people know who you are uh and the organization that you represent and what your function is um that would be uh much appreciated yeah thank thank you um Lou I I don't know who is in charge of the Eversource team so whoever wants to put up their their presentation I think can go ahead um and and do that Sheila do we need to give them control or is it something that they sent to you I'm not sure they're all they're all presenters so they can screen okay awesome so I'm not sure who that person is but if you don't mind um just introducing yourself and maybe your your title so that we can make it sure that it's correct on our minutes that would be extremely helpful.

Sure my name is Eric Barber I am a senior specialist with EverSource project engagement um I have with me tonight from the project management team Glenn McDonald he is a senior project manager Peter Tazanowski project manager Stephanie Berrios project manager from our construction team we have Carlos Almiron from our community of relations team we have Christopher Farrell in Austin Samuelson and then we have representatives from our contractor United Sibyl joining us tonight thank you um Mr.

Barber I appreciate it um I I'm not sure if you've got the ability to present and we'll go give it a shot.

You're awesome can everyone see the title screen we can excellent good um well first off thank you to the committee uh thank you to Lou for the introduction uh but thank you to for the committee for the opportunity for us to present tonight on this important project as Lou described uh this is a very important project underground cable modernization program or UCMP we're doing similar projects of this magnitude in the cities of Danbury and Hartford um this one as Lou stated is connecting Glenbrook substation to Cedar Heights can't forward my screen oh here we go uh so the agenda so kind of give you the overview already but we'll get into the project need and scope we'll talk about the project locations the timeline the construction sequencing um which Lou had alluded to earlier you will like we actually have some photos that will I think be of great help for you uh to understand the kind of the work we're gonna be doing the outreach and the communications which is so critical to making this project not only a success but a smooth and safe uh project for the community as a whole and then what the next steps are going to be so um this is a very basic sort of it looks a little complicated but pretty basic in terms of how we get our what how we get our electricity from generation to um to home.

So at the very top of the page you can see the very like the various uh generation methods wind solar nuclear hydro gas plant um none of which ever source we don't we we don't do any generation but what we do is which is critical is um we take that generated energy and through overhead transmission bring it to substations and usually you know sometimes substations interconnect with each other via either overhead or underground transmission and this is where our project falls right in here uh between the Glenbrook substation which is fed from overhead transmission lines and uh the basically feeds the Caesar Heights substation which serves a good chunk of the I would say the northern part of Stanford.

So we're talking a lot of customers, both commercial and residential.

So as stated, we have two 115 KV transmission lines in Stanford that currently are underground that are interconnected south to north.

And they were these were built in 1968, and they were using an older technology using high pressure fluid-filled or oil cable or HPF.

These lines need replacement due to age.

And the existing cable technology will no longer be available.

So that's the critical, really the critical need for this.

And the proposed new technology that we're going to be using is a solid cable of cross-linked polyethylene or XLPE, and it is not fluid-filled or oil.

So basically, we can't just take the old lines out right now and then put the new ones in where they currently are without de-energizing and taking out northern Stanford.

So we have to kind of build alongside the current route as it is.

So this is the project from say the 30,000 foot view.

Basically, we've got two maps here.

So this is the Glenbrook substation down south here.

And it goes all the way up.

And we'll get into more granular locations soon in the following slides.

Up to Cedar Heights.

And this is the sort of the Google street view here.

And the length of this project is about five miles long.

So which streets are impacted.

So starting from the north working south, this is up on Cedar Heights substation.

So we the route of the project goes through Eversource property out to Duke Drive.

Again, this is all underground, nothing overhead.

Out Duke Drive, down out to Caesar Heights, makes a left onto Cedar Heights Road, continues down Cedar Heights to High Ridge Road, does a quick jog over to Vine Road, goes down Vine Road to Newfield.

So the JCC is up here.

So it takes a right onto Newfield, goes all the way down Newfield, all the way down Strawberry Hill to Colonial, makes a left onto Colonial.

Here's Colonial, here's the synagogue.

The Colonial out to Pilgrim Walk does a little jog over across Hope Street over into Schofield Ave to Glenbrook Road, takes a right on Glenbrook Road briefly before taking a left onto Windell Place, goes under the Metro North train tracks up to uh over to the 88 Hamilton property, continues on that property out to crossing Hamilton Ave to our substation here at Glenbrook.

So that is that is the route, uh both high level and kind of more mediate.

And you know, we talk about street impacts, obviously, there's going to be impact to traffic.

Uh, we're trying to minimize that as best as possible.

And the best way to do that and safely is through a traffic management plan.

You know, a trap a TMP is basically a safety and operations plan that outlines how traffic pedestrians cyclists will move safely through or around a work zone.

And these can include lane closures and detours, traffic signs and barriers, uh, pedestrian accommodations, work zone layouts, emergency access routes, uh, but most important is our coordination with the city and emergency services, such as fire uh and police and emergency other like EM EMS.

So the goal is very simple, it's to ensure safe, smooth travel while essential work is being performed.

And an example of a TMP, uh, this is one right here.

This is at Northrop Park, um, which we just completed work at recently.

So this is an example of a TMP right here.

It's very detailed, a lot of work goes into this.

Um, you know, when we submit for permits with the city, these are included.

Um, and and Luke uh can attest to this.

You know, he very he looks at these, and and if he's not happy with something, he'll let us know.

So you know, we make amendments as needed, and so this is an example, one of many that that are and they're still being currently worked on as well.

Uh our project timeline, um, you know, this project has been in the works for a very long time, uh dating back to 2022.

Uh we just broke ground the last month.

So you could it's been a while, it's been quite a journey to get here, but um design work started all the way back in 2022, along with municipal outreach, which has continued to this day and will continue all the way to the uh the basically the end of the project.

Um state approvals 2024 into 2025, community outreach began in 2024 and is continuing uh through this day.

We'll get into uh some of the you know community outreach in a little bit.

Uh construction as stated began last month, and um is expected to go through Q2 of 2028, restoration will occur alongside of that as we go.

Um and then what is what does all this look like?

You know, um, as Lou was saying, you know, we we install the vaults first, and then after all the vaults are installed, we go back through and we start trenching and then laying down the pipe and then cable pulling and then basically doing the final you know restoration over it.

So there's this they call it the train.

It's for illustrative purposes, not drawing the scale, but it's kind of that the idea is you put a vault in, then you do the trenching, and then so forth.

So some of this work, you know, like vaults can take a couple weeks.

Um, you know, two vaults can, you know, Carlos can speak on to that a little bit.

Um, as far as time wise, but also can you know trenching can vary in terms of how long it can take, it depends what they're hitting underground too.

So if there's no set time as far as how long some of this could take, it just depends what they're hitting underground.

But um, so this is what vault installation looks like.

So that's a vault.

That is what Lou was talking about, the very large box, about 20, roughly 20 feet long by eight.

Am I getting that right, Carlos?

Something like that.

Um, so this is about 20 feet long.

And that is what the lines connect to inside here.

This is we just did one at Northrop Park, or I would say one location.

We've actually did, I think there's four vaults there, if I'm not correct.

Um, and that's where we are.

We're right now we just start, we're in our infancy in the construction phase.

We've done Northwood Park successfully, and now we're moving to uh a vault installation at the property at St.

John's Lutheran Church, uh Newfield, and then within the grade A parking lot, um, probably early February now.

We're looking to put in vaults over there.

And obviously, we're continuing outreach where there are key stakeholders.

That's both with the city um as well as our butters and and neighborhood groups and so forth.

So after that, this is where we get into the trenching and the duct bank installation, uh where the pipes will go in, and then the the line will be pulled through eventually.

Um so that's what this looks like here.

And then after all that's been done, then we go back through, cover it up, and we are going to be paving uh curb to curb the entire route uh per the city's request.

Um and as Lou stated, you know, our you know, collaborative communications really just the key component to this uh to making it work.

We've been working with them uh since 2022, it's been a while.

So it's been a lot of communication uh during this time, both you know, with the engineering, transportation traffic and parking, road maintenance, communications, uh the mayor's office, uh board of ed, and you know, we have the monthly open meeting.

We also are doing a lot of utility coordination with gas, cable, water, and sewer, and community meetings.

Um, you know, we've met in the past with the Glenbrook Neighborhood Association, and we are actually going to be meeting with them to provide an update on Wednesday of next week.

Uh we've held uh few public information sessions, one up at the uh JCC back in November, and a couple at the Stanford Government Center lobby, uh same around the same time.

And as far as public outreach goes, you know, this is kind of my my ballowick here.

So, you know, we've been communicating with Butters businesses for you know, since 2024, when we send out our project introduction letter to introduce them to what's we're planning.

Um just so there's been repeated rounds as we go through various phases of this project when we did survey work, we sent letters and do door to door.

So it's not just send a letter and hope they got it.

We follow up with door to door.

If people are going to be directly impacted in terms of like real impacts in terms of access or property impacts, uh, we do multiple rounds to make sure we get in contact with them to have discussions with them.

Um, and same with businesses too.

Um so yep, you know, we provide briefings, presentations as this one is like tonight, uh project info sessions, which we've done and we'll continue to do as we go.

Notification letters, door to door.

We have a dedicated hotline and email address, as you can see on the bottom.

That if you have anyone who's concerned about the project, you know, butters can always reach out.

Uh that comes directly to my department.

So myself and or um my team will handle those calls.

And uh you know, either we can handle them or we can we'll direct them to the correct uh subject matter experts that can help them.

We also have a constant contact.

So people want to uh get updates for the project.

We try to send out weekly updates as we have updates, which we strive for weekly, but uh you know, it's early right now.

But eventually once the project gets going, it'll be more around a weekly basis.

Um there's a QR code that they can sign up for, and as we send out updates, they'll know we're working here, we're doing this, you know, there's gonna be a detour here.

So that's a big uh thing we're trying to really push people to sign up for.

And we also have a project website that is both in English and Spanish that we gives a kind of a whole overview, kind of uh very kind of watered, not say watered down, but uh abbreviated view of what we're talking about tonight.

Um we have QR codes on a lot of our material that we hand out that will direct people to this website.

And again, it's in English and Spanish.

Um also our collateral that we hand out, uh, or give out whether it's our door hangers or letters or bilingual in English and Spanish.

And this is our uh this is the QR code here that will take you to that website, our our project website.

And uh this these are our contacts here, Glenn being the project manager, Christopher Farrell being the uh community relations senior specialist and myself.

But the most important contact is right here.

This is any of the constituents or any of Butters can call this, and that's the best way to reach us.

And that's it.

So thank you.

Thank you, um, Eric.

Is there anyone from your team that need has anything else to add?

And the other question um before I open it up to the floor, the transmission hotline that's 1800 number 793202.

Is that uh open for the general public?

If someone all of a sudden their driveway is being impacted, they can call that and get some information.

I'm just trying to what what's the best that is that the best number to give out to someone that might have questions?

Yes.

Okay.

So just so you know, it's a voicemail, but we so there's not like a live person on there on the other end.

It's important to know it's a it's a voicemail, but it's checked daily.

Um if there's something more imminent, Glenn, how should we handle that?

How would you also say Daniel?

If if there's something impacting somebody and they're a crews in the vicinity, there's a good chance a member of Eric's team will be there on the ground.

Okay.

And if not Eric's team, Carlos, who's on this call and his team, our construction management team, they will be on the ground.

So if somebody you know wanted to talk to somebody on the ground, they are more than welcome to do that.

And that information will flow to us immediately.

I mean, within minutes, Eric will know if one of his team members is notified on the ground within minutes, I'll know because Carlos will be will be alerting me to the situation if there's something that we that we need to address within a butter.

So I would say Eric's right, you know, if it's not an immediate concern, if it's just general project info, we encourage everybody to reach out to the hotline, go to the website, check out our materials.

But if there's something immediate, the immediate on the ground, and they relay that to somebody on the ground, that'll make it to us very quickly so that we can action it.

Thank you.

One of the things uh, Chairman, one of the things I wanted to ask Aerosource to elaborate on, or not elaborate, but just give us a sense of of what they learn from the work they did in Danbury and other communities and some of their lessons learned as a result of that, because this project is coming on the heels of a lot of work they've done in other communities, and I'm sure they have encountered similar similar issues or uh questions that may have arisen as a result of that work.

And some of their lessons learned as a result of that, because this project is coming on the heels of a lot of work they've done in other communities.

And I'm sure they have encountered similar similar issues or uh questions that may have arisen as a result of that work.

If you guys could just touch on that, I'd appreciate it.

Yeah, so I'll touch on that as I am familiar with both the Danbury, Hartford, and Stanford projects.

Um I'm sure somewhere between like government affairs and the cities talking to each other, the Danbury team.

Um the city of Zanmary actually pulled our permit um in November as our lack of not fulfilling or lifting up place during the snowstorm.

So that was a very hard lesson learned for our team.

We had a lot of discussions with the city.

We've um implemented a very detailed winter plan.

Um we cut down the number of fee of yards that we are able to dunk back and leave plates down.

So that's very specific to our damp project.

Um in the Hartford project, we also have very specific details of how far we're allowed to work, um, how much duck bank we're allowed to have open, our crews on site, um, whether we do specifically four tens of physical work, and then Fridays we wrap up.

Um we've cut down when we're allowed to end the project.

So, okay, we have like a cut time of five o'clock.

That doesn't mean the machines stop working at five.

That means you know, machines stop working at 345, start wrapping things up to get off the public streets to get out of the way to for us to be able to comply with our actual working hours.

So there's a lot of communication.

Um I'm involved with all of the Connecticut project teams.

So um a lot of our SMEs, our subject matter experts.

We overlap in the projects as well.

We have internal meetings where we communicate like, hey, this happened in Tampa in Zambury yesterday, let's implement this.

Um, our website, also the same.

Um we have like three weeks look ahead that are specific to the website.

We're doing things and Western Mass that's a um that we're populating over to our Connecticut team just based on communications and just being open and honest about everything that's happening.

I also want to point out that the email here, project info on every source, that's specific to UCMP.

So if you have a neighbor that comes and emails us, you don't have a million project managers looking trying to filter, oh, this is so-and-so's project or whose project is belonged.

So it's very specific to just Connecticut UCMP.

I'm familiar with all of them.

We all have addresses, we have very specific groups that answer it, and we filter the emails within 24 hours as an answer going out.

Even if we say we're looking into it, we don't ignore it while we're looking into it.

We're very active in communicating back with the public.

Thank you for that.

Okay, thank you so much.

Uh at this time, I would like to go ahead.

Chair, I'm sorry, it's it's uh Luke.

I just if I can just say a few words related to the traffic.

Uh yeah, sure, go ahead, Luke.

Yeah.

Um, so hi everyone again, Luke Buttonweezer City Transportation Planner in the traffic department.

I just want to speak a little bit to the work that we do when it comes to reviewing permits or working with the team from a traffic perspective.

So Eversource, for instance, they have a traffic engineer as part of the project team that develops their traffic plans.

They've done traffic counts on all the roads where all the work is taking place to understand, you know, one of the peak hours, um, you know, how many vehicles are going in each direction on the road during the day.

And we've kind of form and build the traffic plans around that.

We have various um work restrictions for hours for those traffic plans.

So, you know, if the work is happening right in front of run of a school, we're gonna actually have that happen in the summer, right?

Or we have all of our work starting the roads after 9 a.m.

Because that's kind of after the peak morning rush hour.

Uh, we get work ending before three um 3 p.m.

or 4 p.m., depending on you know, proximity to school, uh, really just try not to impact those a.m.

or p.m.

peak hour uh commuting times as well as school pickup and drop off.

We inform and work closely with all basic, you know, CT transit, board of ed, public safety, um, sanitation departments.

Everyone's aware of you know where work is happening and what is taking place to really try to mitigate traffic.

Um, Eversource actually helped uh contribute to upgrading some of our traffic signals um to make them more efficient in work areas um to help kind of cut down the traffic.

We're working with the police department on on the ground traffic control.

Um, and again, every single permit that comes through, there's a very detailed traffic management plan that myself um I review I usually go back and forth with Eversource to make sure that kind of maximizes um benefit to the community and reduces the traffic impact.

So that's just something that we work uh very closely with um Eversource on try to mitigate the traffic impact as much as possible.

So I just want to say that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Luke.

Uh at this time, if there's no one else from the city or or Eversource, I'm gonna go ahead and open up some questions from the floor.

Right now I have one hand raised, Representative Finkel, the floor is yours.

They don't just got secretly buried.

The 68-year-old will fortune starting out a long time.

Representative Finkel, I see crazy.

And we have a lot.

You've got a lot of background noise.

Everybody else, congratulations.

Representative Finkel, if you could turn off the background noise, we could hear you.

I appreciate it.

All right, we'll come back.

Is there any other questions?

And then we'll come back to Representative Finkel.

Representative Dinnelo.

Yeah, I I did want some um just a couple of like clarification clarifying.

It was just two things.

Um, on the website, is it possible to get those vault installation locations and like a rough timeline?

Because I was looking on the website, that's all I'm kind of thinking about as they're coming in as just seeing where those vault locations were.

You know, so people are trying to avoid those areas when that work is going on.

Um my other thing was the installation of those vaults is that looks like a very significant project.

You know, is are all those vaults in the roadway?

Is it one lane alternating?

Is it only the including the installation only occurring in those nine to three hours, except that one day that it's a full day that you guys are all doing the work in there?

That's kind of what I was trying to get to clarify because it looked like the installation of that vault would be a several, you know, a couple week process at least.

And I was kind of getting some clarification on that was really what I was looking for.

I know this is your Leal Hasman.

I'm gonna jump in.

Um, Matt, if you go back and you look at the Hartford link, there's a work being done January 20th to the 23rd.

We can definitely do that for um Hartford.

So this goes back to a little with Sainabout Lessons Learned.

We can mimic and we will mirror this to be specific.

So as the permit starts to get released and we start doing three week look ads and we provide that to the city.

We will be updating um the websites proactively.

So if you want, such as go back one project and go to the Hartford one, you'll see what it will look like.

Um you can review that, we can make changes, you know, live.

We can add more information as much as as the Hartry team wants to include.

We can definitely do that.

Yeah, I think that's a good thing.

So the Harper Okay, our Hartford one is um it's further advanced.

So the website of that page is also further advanced, but we would definitely remember that.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Um did that answer your question, Representative Didalo.

Yeah, that I know the first part.

I was just kind of trying to get some more clarification on the on the vaults.

And yeah, I think we we answered the easy one.

We answered the easy one.

Yeah, we didn't we didn't answer the hard one yet.

Uh and sorry, I didn't introduce myself before Glenn McDonald, senior PM uh with every source.

The sec the second half of that is much harder.

The the short answer is every vault location looks very different.

While the vaults themselves are those 20 foot by eight foot monstrosities, and we're gonna put them in the ground.

The depth that they're actually placed in the in the ground can vary based on the project design.

So, you know, how far they're actually excavating into the into the ground to place that can vary just up and down vertically.

And then as you probably imagine the placement of that vault along the route could be on public right-of-way, it could be in the road completely, it could be on private.

Uh, it could be on a little bit of both.

There are times when it's in the public right of way and we require easements for workspace on private, or the opposite, it's on private property where we need uh easements or we need agreements with the city to work on city right away or public right of way.

So they vary pretty substantially.

There's no uh the the short answer is there's no good one size fits all that we could tell you, but but each one of those will have its own TMP.

So the TMP that Eric showed earlier, the traffic management plan, each vault location has its own very specific TMP.

And in fact, if you take a step back a little bit further, the entire project length will have a traffic management plan, and it does.

There's a draft for the entire project length.

So every little piece of the project where we're gonna impact traffic is addressed specifically in how we're gonna reroute, what we're gonna do to maintain the flow of traffic, how we're gonna barricade safely, how we're gonna divert, and all of those things are coordinated with with the city and with with Luke at detail.

We actually it's a it's a pretty involved process.

We we use uh a firm, they're Banesh, Banesh is the name of the firm.

They're a traffic engineering firm, and they do extremely detailed traffic counts, traffic pattern analysis, and then they take our designs and they look at the geometry of where our design will impact traffic, and they provide a very detailed traffic plan, traffic management plan in support of all that.

So hopefully that that helps.

Thanks, Glenn.

I I promise as the last thing, if that's okay, uh, Mr.

Chair.

Um was so I think kind of getting on to that is those vaults are not going to be a you're gonna be getting them laid and covered in a day.

Are they going to be open for you know more than 24 hours, or they're gonna be you're gonna be placing them and then seal and then having them covered in by dirt in a day, you know, in that 24 hour period.

Yeah, it's it's definitely a multi-week, multi-week process.

In fact, we've got we've got united on united.

How many?

I mean, we've just done our first set of vaults.

I'll let United speak to the timing associated with those.

Okay, thank you.

Was there someone speaking to the timing of the Brendan?

Okay.

Yes, I'm uh this Brendan Parker, I'm a senior project manager from United Civil.

Uh you know, it it varies, but typically take uh you know in a range of two weeks to install a vault between excavating, putting in the shoring, um, getting uh excavation prepped, and then actually setting the vault that comes in two pieces, uh, you know, approximately 33 tons each.

So we have to set up a crane, pick it off the trailer, set it in the hole, and then it gets backfilled.

So normally done in pairs, there's two at each location.

So it's typically a tough couple weeks for each vault.

Some it can't be trimmed down, you know, to a week, week and a half, but uh on average that's it.

Appreciate it.

Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and move on.

I've got three hands that I see.

I've got representative Bradford, Representative Finkel, and then we're gonna move to Representative uh Zachary.

Uh Representative Bradford, go ahead.

Thank you.

Um, so I'm curious.

So I might just looking around, I see that this keep that cable, the 115 uh kilobolt cable could handle about 40,000 homes.

Is that right?

And that does that cover all of Stanford, including the business buildings, or is that uh that wasn't quite clear to me.

Yeah, the the substation itself handles, I think um, Eric, you said it most of the north side of Stanford.

Um I don't know if it was clear earlier in the earlier in the presentation, but the the transmission cable itself is not connected to any home.

So the transmission cable is really just connecting substation to substation, transferring it.

It's basically the super highway of electricity.

After the substation, you get into the distribution, which is going to the homes.

That's more your uh you know, your local your local side streets.

Once you get off the off ramp from the highway, that's what's connected directly to it.

But this one is connecting between the two substations.

Got it.

So um that really covers all of Stanford, then is that correct?

Comfortably with the number of homes we have and buildings.

That's correct.

The bulk of the north side of Stanford, I think is fed by that substation.

Peter Heights, yeah.

Thank you.

Okay.

There are other EverSource substations in Stanford, such as the South End.

Uh I don't know if that if you want to you guys want to talk about all of the substations or just the ones related to this project.

For me, it's sufficient.

This is sufficient.

I just want to uh have a feeling for that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh Representative Finkel.

I'm gonna try again.

Apologize.

New computer and trying to work out the bugs.

Uh first question is isn't I apologize if uh this was asked while I was getting the other mic.

Uh, is this presentation going to be shared with us so that we can show it to constituents or other members of the board of reps that would like to see it?

Absolutely.

Okay.

Uh and question number two is I know you've done outreach to the neighborhoods that are affected by all this underground cabling.

But looking at the route is going to be a tremendous inconvenience to a lot of people in the city that aren't in the neighborhoods.

And I want to make sure that we have some sort of mechanism in order to inform everybody in the city of what's going on so that those that are traveling through the affected areas that are not living in the affected areas are in a position that they understand and they know maybe they want to take a different route or whatever.

Thank you.

Representative uh Zachary.

Thank you.

So my question is uh uh how many vaults are you intending to install?

And how many you must already know how many of them are going to have to be on public land or on right-of-way, or do you have to work with a uh a property owner to secure an easement or work out a negotiation with them?

Have you already run through all those numbers and do you know the rough numbers for each quantity?

I'll direct that to Eversource.

There's 26 volts in total.

Okay.

Do you guys do you guys have the numbers relative to the right-of-way and on private property handy, or do you have to get back to the representative with that information?

Yeah, Lou, that's something that we Lou, that's something that we'd want to get back to you on with the specifics.

As you know, we're working through the easements now.

We don't we don't have the exact numbers of each year on hand, but we can definitely get that to you.

Okay.

Just to be clear, is the number is the question how many vaults are on easement are on private easement property?

Well how many have also done there?

Uh just how many of the vaults have you have to negotiate with the private pro with a property owner to acquire their property rights or work out an easement?

And how many are on the right of way and how many are in the public streets?

So of those 26, is it one third, a third, a third, or is it 80% of them are on the in the street, and it's only 10% you have to worry about?

Just some sense of uh property, how long property negotiations are likely to take.

And how many you have to go through?

We can definitely provide those numbers.

And there will be some that are a combination of both as well.

Understood.

All right.

Great.

Thank you.

Uh representative Didalo for the second time.

Promise I'm done after this.

That's all right.

Um I do I know you guys were talking, and um in the back of my head was about the plates in the snow.

Are those vaults when they're you're not doing work covered by plates?

Is that the the procedure that the plan there?

Or that's kind of what I was kind of getting at.

I understand I'm getting the plate when you're doing trench work if you're going through to a degree, but I was kind of trying to get also on that on those vaults um and how those are even be covered when work isn't going on.

Yeah, vaults are not typically plated during work.

Um, but I'm gonna hand off to either Carlos or Brendan to talk in a little bit more detail about about how that's handled.

As you mentioned, the you know, the duct bank will be plated during work.

That's fairly standard practice.

But Carlos or Brendan, you all want to field that question.

And maybe just speak a little to the general site safety controls of the vault installs, more than just plate versus not plate too.

I think that'd probably be helpful.

Yeah, that'd be great.

So I think I'm gonna handle uh good evening, everybody.

So I think I'm gonna handle this one to Brenda because I don't want to talk about or discuss means and methods uh from United Silver Park.

So Brenda, if you want to explain that.

Yes, um vault install locations are all protected, uh they're all all done behind barrier if they're in the roadway.

Um we also set up uh temporary fence to keep the public out of any open excavations.

Um we can put plates on top of the shoring to cover the hole, uh, but it's not plates for traffic to go over, it's just for uh public.

Um we can put plates on top of the shoring to cover the hole, uh, but it's not plates for traffic to go over, it's just for uh public to keep the you know any uh public from straying into the open excavation area.

I'd also like to add that the use of plates in the winter time is not permitted.

So um what United Civil just mentioned was the barrier the vault locations are protected by barrier curb.

So there wouldn't be any active traffic over the vault excavation as it was progressing.

Um but in the event that they do need plates over the interconnecting conduit runs, that isn't permitted over the winter time.

So some other means of protection would have to be put in place to avoid the issue that was discussed earlier by Stephanie in Danbury.

So also just I'm sorry, yeah, go ahead, sir.

Yeah, so if there's a vault in a roadway, that roadway is going to be obstructed for a couple weeks if it's on if it's underneath roadway.

Is that correct?

Yes, the traffic plan would include, yeah, would it would include uh either you know we try to minimize, but some some locations are on the shoulder of the road or or uh part way in the road and then in the sidewalk area, or then there's some locations that are in the roadway where they're gonna have to have uh jersey barrier set up to protect the work area for the duration of the vault installs.

Okay, thank you.

And so just to clarify, you know, so everybody's on the same page.

These are quite large holes that we're gonna be digging.

So as you saw in the in the uh on the slides, these are two piece system vaults, all right, they require a lot of excavation.

Um so they're pretty large holes, and it's extremely hard to play it.

And even though if we get, you know, if we're able to plate them, it's not safe to play them and have uh you know, allow a flow of traffic go back and forth.

So we what we do is just we jersey barrier, we protect the hole and you know, just keep it protected from the traffic on the public.

So like I said, these are very large holes.

Why don't we go to excavation and we we you know for installation of the vault?

Um I'm gonna speak a little to the traffic impacts related to the vault install.

So it's correct, each location is different, right?

So for instance, North Rail Park, that was off in the park.

The work to excavate for the vault install was able to take place without really major traffic impacts.

Usually the biggest traffic impact day, and every source, please jump in if I'm running astray here, is gonna be the literal day of putting the vault into the ground.

Um we've actually been working very closely with ever source um to make those traffic plans less impactful than they uh originally be.

So it's always gonna be the least impactful um traffic impacts that we can do, whether that's gonna be one-way alternating.

There may be some instances where there is going to be a day-long closure of a roadway, but generally speaking, you're gonna see um you know, worse comes to worse, either day-long closure of the vault install, or if that excavation has to take place in the road, one-way alternating traffic to facilitate that.

But again, each location is different from each other, so there's different kind of parameters and site conditions, but we do look at each vault location and develop a traffic plan and work with ever source on monitoring that traffic plan before that permit gets issued.

Thank you, Luke.

Uh back to the members of the uh Board of Reps.

Representative Morrison for the first time.

Thank you, Chair Sanford.

Um through you to um Director Castle, did you you said there were 27 substations?

It's 27 vaults.

Is that along this five-mile uh route or is that citywide?

I want to make sure I understood.

This project includes 26 vaults.

Okay.

And you're gonna be uh through through you, Chairman, to two ever source folks.

You're gonna be snaking uh the new transmission lines from vault to vault.

Yeah, that is correct.

What happens if you encounter a blockage, uh a kink, uh some difficulty getting from vault A to vault B.

Uh, what happened how do you resolve that?

Uh does it involve further excavation between vault locations.

So it I can I can take this one to start and then I'll hand off to the construction management folks in United if I miss anything.

Um, but if you recall the the slide that we presented earlier with that timeline associated with the project, in theory, theoretically, you know, those years of engineering design and survey work and all the prep put us in a position where we know exactly what's in the ground going into this.

Um, there's a whole lot of hard engineering and design and survey and prep and everything else to give us the best picture we can possibly have of what the ground conditions are, soil conditions, and then what are all the existing utilities?

Where are they?

Where are they going?

Where are we going to find utility utility conflicts?

And so the design itself, as you can imagine, you know, varies vertically and horizontally to get around and under and through every obstruction we can possibly think of while minimizing the impact to any of those other utilities or existing conditions in the ground.

That's that said, you know, in a in a theoretical hypothetical world, everything's perfect.

We go in and it's it's great.

There's no issue.

We know that that's not all always the case.

Um so we rely pretty heavily on the means and methods of our constructing vendor to ensure that they're excavating safely with due diligence.

So if we think that there's going to be something, or if we're not sure in a place, we don't have 100% certainty, they're excavating in a way where they're not gonna, you know, there's not going to be a major incident.

Um if something is uncovered, then there's a very rigorous process which involves our engineers uh in-house with Eversource and our engineering vendors to relook the designs based on any new finding and very quickly address a new finding and redesign, re-engineer the project to get around or through or past whatever that is.

Okay, very good.

Thank you for uh you've answered my question quite thoroughly.

Uh thank you, Chair Sanford.

I yield.

Thank you, everyone.

I I don't see any further hands uh raised at this point.

Um because we do have another item.

I'm going to start to wrap this up.

I think it is going back to representative Finkel's point.

You know, we're all about community outreach.

That's really kind of the whole point of this call.

Um so working with maybe uh director of operations and uh Lucasolo, we can you know share this hotline number and maybe the timeline on one of our many websites or something that we have in order to get the word out so that if people have questions, um you know they they know where to go and and we can hopefully provide them the best answers that we can.

So without uh any further ado, I just want to say thank you to uh everyone from the city's office and everyone from Eversource on joining this call.

I know it's late at night, you guys have families and to come here and and uh teach us something uh is much appreciated.

So thank you that uh for that.

And at this time, without any further questions, I'll go ahead and uh close this item uh for item number one for for this meeting.

Uh moving on on our agenda for item number two.

Uh I would like to sit have a motion to take up item OPR 32.002 resolution concerning building permit fees on commercial projects exceeding one million dollars.

Um do I have a motion?

I would like to make that motion.

Uh thank you.

Uh second.

In a second.

Okay, multiple seconds.

Thank you.

Uh at this time, I will go ahead and uh give the floor to representative uh Budreau, who submitted the item.

Uh, if you want to go ahead and give us a brief uh explanation and then uh we'll we'll go from there.

Uh yeah, sure.

Uh so this is an item adjusting the uh permit fees for commercial projects over 1.3 million.

The um the title is one million, but the actual text is uh up 1.3.

Uh it's setting the rate to 25.26 cents per uh per thousand dollars of construction cost.

Uh currently we're at 3526 per thousand, uh, which is the highest among you know our peer group of cities.

So our rock is at 2026, waterbury's at 2526, Hartford's at 30, 26, bridgeport's the same.

And uh normal shell is actually at 17 per thousand, which is less than half of the cost uh of ours.

And my concern in bringing this forward is that these high fees are just gonna get passed along to renters and businesses, and the market right now isn't really compelling enough between landlords and developers for them to eat these costs.

They're just gonna increase rents to offset, is my expectation.

Um and I want to draw special attention to New Rochelle, uh, which I mentioned earlier.

As far as I'm aware, they're the only municipality in our area where rents have dropped.

Uh they found that 2% from 2020 to 2023.

That's not uh a huge decrease, but it's more success than anyone else I can name.

Uh so I really want to be taking lessons from them where we can.

And I don't think current fees are alone are uh gonna give that kind of success, but uh they're a good first step because it's a very straightforward change that's entirely within the power of the board of representatives uh and doesn't require you know uh the mayor or the zoning board planning board or the other boards that would have uh relevance to broader reform.

Thank you, Representative Bedreau.

Um real quick, because uh we have some new members joining us.

I'm going to make an announcement that we have uh from our committee, representative Zachary and uh representative Beckham joining us, and from outside of the committee, representatives uh Morrison, um just bear with me, representative Worse, uh Representative Adams, Representative Walson, um, and I believe that's it from the administration.

We have Director Canonas joining us, and also uh outside council uh attorney Robinson.

At this time, due to the nature of some uh activities going on, I would like to take a motion uh to enter executive session for the purposes of uh going over pending uh administrative claims and uh administrative litigation, and I would entertain a motion from the floor for that.

Chairman Sanford, ISO move.

Do I have a second?

I second representative Beckham.

Thank you, Representative Beckham.

I have a uh a motion to enter executive session for the purpose of discussing ongoing administrative uh claims and litigation.

Uh, and going into executive session will be the members of the committee, which will be uh myself, representative police, representative Beckham, Representative Bradford, um, Representative Didalo, Representative Finkel, Representative Gardner, Representative Sallas, Representative Zachary.

Um let me back up for a second.

Um we have to take a vote.