Oh, we can't do that.

Roll call, please.

Chair Johnson.

Here.

Vice Chair Gain.

Counselor Bully.

Council Member.

Counselor Kim.

Here.

Castle Member Joe's.

Council President Acre.

Here.

Seven present and absent.

All right.

Well, um, I feel like our attendance is always kind of a fun thing to do.

It's to make people make a lighter day.

Um, we have a couple of the presentations today.

Um, the oh so important street light repair um and replacement update that's coming in from our new director.

Director Barber, I believe this is might be your first time giving a presentation.

So exciting, exciting.

Um, and then we'll go on to Millen Overlay, which will also be a Director Barber and several other folks that'll be joining her as well.

So first and foremost, uh, Director Barber, welcome.

Uh welcome.

I'm really excited to be a part of your first presentation uh in front of the body, but also just like welcome to the city.

I hope you're getting settled in well.

It's been great to connect with you offline and overall.

Just excited for you to be here.

Absolutely.

Thank you so much for having me here.

And yes, this is my first time uh presenting, but very excited to do so.

Um and uh we've got two important topics, and I've got a number of experts in the audience here, so uh I will kick things off for both of the presentations, but then we'll call on them.

But we also have some if you have other questions, we'll make sure that we get answers to you.

All right, so first we're talking about St.

Paul's street lights and wire theft.

Um, what we know is we know that street lights is a significant um public safety issue.

We know it's a big problem.

I want to share right out of the gate that one of we were talking about how to prepare this presentation.

One of the key things we wanted to talk about is what a frustrating thing it is.

Like we do a lot of work, we work very hard, we're doing repairs constantly, and sometimes as soon as we repair a light, something else happens and it's down again, and the fat the wire is stolen again.

And this is turning into sort of this repeated cycle.

And so we're gonna talk about how we want to ground ourselves into how we're gonna approach this going forward because we're really in a situation where we'll continue to have dark lights throughout the city, but we want to be responsive.

We are doing a lot of work, and we want to make sure that people understand the kind of work we are doing.

Um our team is very committed to doing this, and you know, it gets very hard for them too when this is happening on a uh cycle over and over and over again.

Uh there's a variety of lighting styles here in the city, as you well know.

And I think that you know, there are different issues with different types of lighting.

Some are for residential streets, some are for bigger thoroughfares, all of that, and there's a lot of historic lighting as well.

Um we do know that some of the lighting fixtures are affected more than others by copper wire theft, and we've noticed specifically some of the decorative the cast iron or aluminum ones are the ones that are often uh the ones that are targeted most quickly.

Here's a slide we won't spend a lot of time here, but you can kind of see the percentage of the different lights throughout the city.

I think the key number that I want to mention is that we have almost 40,000 lights in the city of St.

Paul.

And that doesn't include the alley lights, so the alley lights are um uh managed by Excel.

And so um there are a lot of light fixtures in the city.

So why is this happening?

Uh it's copper wire theft.

It's very, very um is the goal of what the the thieves are after.

Um it's very uh very prevalent across the country.

We're not the only city that's struggling um trying to address issues related to copper wire theft.

And it may not seem like um the value is a lot, but it adds up over time, and especially that's why you see corridors like entire corridors affected at one time where uh people are trying to get as much copper as possible.

And the drive is the price of copper is going up significantly and it continues to go up right now.

Um currently it's about six dollars and fifty cents a pound, but it's expected to be over nine dollars a pound by 2028, which again, when we talk about a problem that's continuing and will continue, that is part of the driver behind all of this.

Also, when we look at it, this is something that affects the entire city.

So, all of you that have seen um I've heard from many of you about this over time, so I know this is happening in all of your words.

Uh, this is a citywide problem, and which is why we're really starting to try and look at it from that perspective where we're coming at from multiple perspectives from repair and fix to new solutions to how do we prevent the theft in the first place.

And so, you know, what you see in the audience, we've got representatives from parks and from St.

Paul PD because we're all working together to try and come up with solutions.

And I think that's a key message for um us to carry forward as well.

And before I transition over to um uh Randy Newton, um, uh want to talk about so the estimate right now is over 10% of the lights in the city are out.

So that equals to 3,500 street lights that are out right now.

And then we look at the timing of things.

The last time when we asked asked our team that we thought everything was fully functional was in 2022.

So this has been quite some time as we're going.

It's what's dark today will take years to fix.

And even if we come up with solutions that prevent access to all things, we still need access to things to fix them.

And so it's finding the hybrid solution between some of those things.

But with no changes, I think the takeaway here is estimated could take at least 20 years to address the current lighting situation.

So it's a people issue, it's a supply issue, it's a budget issue, there are multiple things.

So that's why we are gonna try and present and talk about more of this multi-pronged approach that we want to take.

That I'll turn it over to Randy.

Thank you, Director Bower.

Thanks to the committee.

Um, just maybe touch on a little bit of what this last slide, but I think the key thing here is that we are falling farther and farther behind.

So in standard 22.2, every year we're farthering falling farther and farther behind.

And with the trends in wire theft, we don't expect this to change.

We're gonna continue to fall behind.

Uh this one has just a lot of a lot of words, but I think just a little bit, a couple key messages with this one.

Is uh first is that uh we have a process like we get a lot of complaints, and one of the complaints that we're seeing more and more of is just is this safe?

Or you know, we see wires kind of coming out of the poles, some of the complaints we're getting.

So, right now with our operation staff, one of the key things they're doing is actually going out and making sure that when we do get a complaint, the first thing they're doing is going out there and making sure that the power's off and there's no immediate safety issue.

Uh we're not able to do a lot of wire theft throughout most of the year or like wire theft replacement at this point.

It's a lot of the safety checks that we're doing.

Um we do to repair, there's a lot of factors that come into play, and that's for the second part of the slide.

Um, you know, is it actually functional?

Like are there major repairs that have to be done to the lighting system?

Some of the some of the wire theft is causing significant damage to the lights, and it's not a simple just pull new wire.

Um, some of it is can we do some wire theft determinants when we put it back?

Um, some of it's how long the lights have been out.

A lot of cases we've seen re repeated theft.

So at some point, like we can't continue to go back and back to the same places if we've seen theft.

That's a super frustrating thing for our staff as well, as well as the public.

Uh and respond in the committee uh with the community.

I think I heard that uh probably because of the news stories, we had over 50 wire theft complaints over the weekend.

Um those all need to be responded to.

We are responding them.

We have a consistent message.

Unfortunately, part of that message is weak to we cannot offer a specific timeline for when wire will be replaced.

We have 3,500 lights off, 3500 lights off, we're following father and color behind.

There's a lot of factors here.

Um we unfortunately can just not give people a timeline.

And I'm sure that's frustrating for our constituents, uh, elected officials, et cetera, that we can't give a timeline, but that's the reality.

And I think that's uh that's not a very well received response.

And I have actually two questions.

I saw Council Member Kim's hand and then I'll go to Councilmember Naker.

Just a quick uninfirmed question.

Um the majority of the street light replacement, it doesn't happen the major majority of the years.

I think I heard you say is there a seasonality to the repairs at all?

Like I think the uninformed question is like do we do these in all weather, or like does winter make it harder, or does summer make it harder?

Is it much more about the volume of what you're trying to address versus like the seasonality?

Because I would imagine that I would I'm not going to conject that actually, but in my head it was like maybe there's less in the winter.

I don't know.

So is there more of a seasonality to this work in terms of replacement?

Thank you for the question.

Yes, um, there is kind of a seasonality.

Part of it's just like during this time of the year we're doing project work.

There's other things that are like the the crews need to do, as well as just it takes a lot of time to just respond to those safety checks.

So there is an ability to do some occasional wire theft replacement throughout sort of the summer months.

Um but the last couple of years there's been sort of a push in the fall, uh doing a bunch of overtime work to try to get as many lights turned on before the winter as possible.

I think what we've seen is that there's probably less wire theft occurring in the winter because conduits freeze and it's not as easy to pull.

Uh that said, we're starting to see that trend change a little bit where we are seeing somewhat wire theft occurring throughout the winter.

But it's a good time that fall sort of push is a good time to try to get as many lights as we can turn get turned on for the winter, and then we don't see quite as much uh theft throughout the winter months, but it's still occur.

Councilmember Neaker.

Thank you.

Thanks, Madam Chair.

Um Mr.

Newton, going back to the last bullet on the previous slide.

Did you did that say that the lights are on circuits, meaning like Christmas lights, if one goes out, others go out?

Is that what that means?

I want to make sure I understand what you're saying in there.

Uh yes, thank you, Madam Chair, and uh Council President.

Yes, essentially that when if you pull a light and you break the circuit, multiple lights come out at the same time.

So it's similar to what you're saying.

Uh you you break the circuit, more than one light goes.

So it might be the case just to follow that thread that wire doesn't have to lights could be out and wire could still be in them.

It's just that one key light wire was stolen.

Uh well, correct.

The wire can be stolen from multiple lights.

Typically they're pulling strands of lights at one time.

But yes, like if if it gets cut, like something if you were to cut it, um, all the lights would go out on that circuit.

And how sorry, how I this is the first time I'm hearing this.

So how many are all of our lights on circuits?

And when we're talking about a circuit, is that how many lights are we talking about on a given circuit?

Uh I don't have that question.

I have to defer to staff.

I don't know if I'll just look into Mike.

Did you know how many lights are typically on a circuit?

They vary between like one and eight lights on a circuit.

So just to so everyone could hear that was between 20 and 80 lights on a circuit.

Okay, thank you.

The questions are just gonna keep coming.

I'm sure as we're talking through um we actually have two additional questions as well from Council Vice President Yang and then Councilmember Joe still.

I was just wondering if you can give us a refresher on whether this is as big an issue in other cities too.

It seems like I don't often hear about it, like neither from Minneapolis.

So just wondering if you can give some context.

Thank you for the question, Madam Chair and Councilmember.

Um yeah, our understanding this is an issue everywhere.

I think it is going to be different in different municipalities, uh, just thought about the way they're framed.

I mean, my understanding is Minneapolis does not um have the same investment in street lights that we do in St.

Paul.

So they have a lot more called XL-owned or wood pull uh facilities where St.

Paul has more um actual street lights, like decorative street lights that we have.

But I think this is a nationwide issue.

Councilmember Jones.

Uh thanks, Chair Johnson.

I um just had a question about Council President's question with the the way that the circuits are wired for the lights.

Um is there a different way to wire them?

Um such that like so that they're in if they're lighted like in parallel, or is that cost more?

Um or is there a way to provide more redundancy around the way that the the circuit is is uh is made.

Uh thank you for the question.

I I I don't have that.

I think we'd have to take that back to our team and get more information on that.

But I I would say that I mean this has been a challenge that we've been looking at for five years.

I think there's been a lot of creative solutions that we've come up with.

Um that's not one that's we've discussed that I'm aware of.

But I'd defer to the team.

Okay.

Thank you.

And I'll do um just I want to keep us moving along for this so and I know that there's uh quite a few different slides around it too.

Um Councilmember Kim, is this a question related to this slide, or is it kind of more um related to kind of the general topic at hand?

It's more an overnall question, but I can I'm gonna have us go through, and if you have questions related to the specific presentation, I just want to make sure we get through each and give the time in and from a facilitation standpoint.

I want to give you a chance to get through some of the um additional slides that you have.

Okay.

Well, I mean the last thing I want to say with the slide, just partly that you know I know there's frustration throughout the city.

And I um, you know, I know our residents are frustrated, I know our leadership is frustrated, but I do want to like paint a picture of our our staff that's working on this.

You know, we have staff that we share that like they go out and do this all the time, like they're putting in lots of hours of doing overtime, and in a lot of cases, uh they're seeing the wet wire stolen within days.

So can you imagine of the frontline worker you're working all weekend, um, you come in on Monday or Tuesday and you find out a lot of the work that you did over the weekend is then already removed.

That's a super hard spot and not a great place for morale.

And then at the same time, they're hearing complaints from the community and requests like why aren't you replacing our lights?

So it's uh it's not a great morale place for our our frontline workers.

This slide is really just kind of the show all the things we did.

I won't name all of them, but like I really want to show the width and depth of the thing that we're looking at.

It's not one strategy, we're really looking at multiple things across multiple sort of uh call it lenses.

Um and we've done a lot.

I think there's been a lot of kind of creative ideas out there.

Uh I mean, one of the things is early in the process, we're now using a reduced wire size that was allowed because of our change to LED lights.

Um, you know, because of safety, we um our crews were putting out uh kind of came up with a plastic base plate to like cover these up.

Unfortunately, those have been uh damaged.

So one of the things we're seeing is a lot of these things work, um, maybe for a period of time, but then they that some of their effectiveness goes away.

Um we'll we'll talk more about some of those.

But you know, some of the other cool things, like we are trying to we are doing a lighting pilot project on Pleasant this year.

Uh it's uh kind of a cool thing.

I will tell you this is not the solution for the entire city.

I'll just be blunt.

Like it's a great tool to maybe have in the toolbox.

We'll have to see how it plays out.

But this is not like solar is not something we're gonna it's gonna work throughout the city, tree canopy, etc.

There's other issues, but it's a great thing to have in the toolbox because maybe it works in certain locations.

Um, high access poles is something that we tried.

Um I think we've seen a lot of damage to some of the ones that parks has put in.

So they works in some situations, not in others.

Um but there's a lot of different cool things that have been done.

Um one of the other things that what we're working on and our staff is working on when they have time is meter replacement.

Um a lot of our uh we pay Excel uh for lights.

Some of them we pay for power, others we just pay them by based on the number of lights.

If those lights are out, we're still paying them.

So one of the things we're trying to do is actually switch over to meters so that when lights are out, we're not paying that uh that fee to Excel.

Kind of what we've learned.

There's a lot of like lessons learned, and this is not a great story here, but there's there's a lot of challenges.

One is scalability is super important.

I I mentioned solar lighting.

Like we have 40,000 lights.

Uh, if we said solar was the option, like the cost and time it would take to replace all our lights to solar would take forever and would be a massive expense.

So we really have to kind of up solutions that can be scaled and actually can like change over a larger part of our system in short order.

Uh those are hard to come by.

Um Thieves are resourceful, innovative and determined, quite frankly.

Everything that we've done has had some success, but over time it seems like it loses some of that.

So this is a picture of our those high-access poles.

Like it we've had some success with it, but um they're finding out thieves are finding out ways around that they're willing to do more damage to our poles.

So sometimes when we like try to like secure them so it's harder to get in, they're just breaking through it and actually doing more damage to the polls.

Um I think the other part is some of these deterrents are great, but there's still a lot of our systems huge, and they can just sort of go down to another street or a couple blocks away, and the the wire is more accessible.

Um I would say the other one of these problems with the reality for our operations folks too, is every one of these strategies as we try to keep uh a thief out, it actually makes it harder for our electricians to do their work.

Um so there's a really balance in here of how do you how do we come up with solutions that allow us to do the necessary maintenance and necessarily repairs when we need to, but also has that positive deterrent effect.

Uh and the fact of the matter is we just can't keep up.

I mean, we are following farther and beharther behind, and I don't think we see that trend trend changing.

Uh and you know, we keep looking, but there is really no silver, we have not come across the silver bolt to fix this problem.

Uh this is you know, just kind of quick like what that that fall work that we were talking about.

So, this is sort of a summary of what was done in 2025, sort of number of circuits and lights that were brought on board, and just the number of hours that were worked.

Maybe a little bit of a story about streetlighting.

Um, there's the funding for street lightings.

Um folks probably know a few years back we lost our ability to uh charge streetlighting fees.

So all the funding for streetlights was transitioned to the general fund.

Uh we did get a like a one-time funding for 500,000 to support wire theft repair in 2024.

Um, but since then we had budget cuts in 2025 where we lost electrician that's been carried over into 2026, and there really is no dedicated funding for wire theft repair.

So, really, we're just paying this out of our street lighting budget.

Um, and it's really coming at the expense of deferred maintenance on our street lighting.

Our street lighting system is getting older and older.

Um, and there actually is a lot of repair and replacement that needs to occur, and that is all being deferred right now.

And I think the final thing is one of the things that has been talked about is that we are starting to look at a streetlight and improvement district.

Not different, not all that different from the strip sidewalk improvement district.

It's kind of a summary of like the amount that we spent on wire theft, unfortunately.

Uh, our numbers for the last couple years are not great.

Partly this is due to some of our changeover and software systems as well as the uh cyber attack.

Um but you can see I think I said at the beginning, end of 2022, we thought we were kind of at sort of a net zero in terms of wire theft out.

Even though we've spent increasing numbers of dollars, we are falling farther and farther behind.

So even with that more, you know, putting more investment here, uh, we are uh not keeping up.

You know, kind of as we look forward, I think you know that we I think we've always had this approach where this is more than just a public works issue, but sort of as we you know move forward, this is not a problem that public works can solve by itself.

There is uh you know multiple lenses that we're gonna have to look at it for, and we're gonna have to maybe get more creative in those lenses.

Um, this kind of talks about some of the things that we've done from through each of those lenses and then those um those different lenses.

I think you know, infrastructure, that's kind of public works.

What can we do with the lighting system?

I think in uh police and enforcement play a strategy here, are big part of this.

You know uh what is the deterrent?

Are we trying to go after and catch wire thieves?

There's the legal aspect, there were the changes to the laws around selling wire, but I think those need to probably even be strengthened.

Um of the policy, do we have the policy desire to sort of change some of those rules?

Um change funding, etc.

And then even the community, uh the community can be a little bit of a watchdog, uh, understand this issue a bit a little bit more.

So these are kind of the those of the five layers that we're looking at.

Uh keep going.

So uh we have been partnering with the St.

Paul the Police Department, um, and I think uh senior commander Halstrom is here.

Um I mean, as a resource, um we we've been they've been doing a lot.

I think one of the strategies that was is there it was that these theft um the technology, the uh what was the it might not be on here, but there was uh a technology that was looked at that had like motion sensors um and that that was tried and done for in a few locations, you know, part of the issue.

I think that has gone away.

Um I'm not exactly sure that the reason why that that one went away, but I think there was ultimately there were the resources weren't there and the the mechanism for communicating out uh and to quickly respond to those um was not something that was viable.

So it was one of those things that we tried and ultimately uh didn't work.

One of the things that we are currently talking about with uh police is the expansion of cameras uh to try to provide an ability to identify uh and help with the um capturing of the thieves.

Legal strategy.

So uh in January 1 of 25, there was new legislation about selling copper wire.

Um this is a I think a we see this as a huge win in terms of being able to better enforce um the wire theft that's going on.

Unfortunately, one of the things that we just haven't seen is a lot of the focus on the actual policing of this uh this rule and actually trying to you know uh enforce uh at that um the sellers or the uh the recycling centers, and that's I think a focus moving forward and how do we exactly do that?

I'm not sure how much that is in our control as a city versus that we need help from our external partners.

From a policy standpoint, um, you know, I think there is we we we want to look at the streetlighting improvement districts, you know.

Are there you know new ordinance or legislation that can happen uh that can be strengthened around that scrap metal and how we actually enforce it?

Um are there you know additional resources at the local uh local or statewide level?

Um and then just really pushing for higher prosecution penalties.

I think there we have had some success prosecuting, um, but I think some of those penalties are still not that significant.

And is it really uh are those penalties really uh enough of a deterrent to keep the the wire theft from occurring?

And thank you.

Um Mr.

Newton, we have a question from Councilmember Coleman.

Thanks, Chair.

Thank you so much.

I just could you say a little bit more about the streetlight improvement district since it's come up a couple of times.

I know it would be similar to a sidewalk improvement district, but understanding more about what that looked like would look like would be helpful.

Could you repeat that, please?

Just the streetlight improvement districts.

Can you say a little bit more about what that would look like, what the cost would be, how that would increase our ability to scale our response.

Uh thank you for the question, Madam Chair, and Councilmember.

I don't I don't personally have that information.

I think that's something that we want to talk about and move forward.

I don't know if we've done any director.

Madam Chair, Councilmember, thank you for the question.

Um it would be similar to a sidewalk improvement district.

We don't have numbers yet.

We're working with um uh the policy team um through the mayor's office and also with the city attorney to come up with a framework because we do need a legislative change um in order for that um to for us to do this because of the lawsuit a few years ago.

And so I think it's uh we will be working over uh out numbers over the next few months, and that is something we can certainly bring back to you as we get this um program or a proposal for this program built together.

Thanks.

Council President Acre.

Thanks, Madam Chair.

I mean, I this is more of an overall question.

I can hold it till the end if you want me to.

That's okay.

It's fine.

Okay.

Um well, I guess I I really I am grateful for the information.

I am I am not hearing the innovative strategies that the director mentioned.

I'm hearing a lot of things that have been tried, haven't worked, the frustration of staff, the frustration of the public.

Um it feels to me like we need that strategy, and if it's not gonna come from the department, then we need to know who is putting that together.

Um I will be really straightforward that um a streetlight improvement district, for example, is not something that is a solution to this problem.

It is a way of asking our residents to pay more for their wire to be stolen.

So that is a non-starter for me until we have a way of actually addressing this problem.

So I'm I'm seeing a lot of things that aren't working.

Um I certainly hope that we're not continuing to put wire back into polls that is gonna be stolen on Monday when it's put in on Friday.

Um but I'm I'm not hearing right now either what we are doing or what we are planning to do to figure out a plan.

Thank you, Madam Chair, Council President.

Um we are actively working on trying to come up with a plan.

I know that's not the answer that everyone wants.

Um I opened the presentation with this is a frustrating problem.

Um, and because that was the conversations we were having too.

And that's why we really feel it needs to be an enterprise approach and talking with um leaders across the city and different organizations, including uh with parks and with um St.

Paul Police Department.

Um because if we have to come at it from many different directions, we have to continue looking for options that are um deterrent technologies themselves, and we will continue to do that and deploy them in different areas to see what works.

Uh as Randy had mentioned, the main problem is there is no solution that it will work everywhere.

And so um the creativity, one of the key things I think is I've come in is um even um having a new position that is traffic safety and operations focused where that is all under one structure will allow for more focus to get on some of these targeted areas, including street lights.

And um it's because the I see it as a true public safety issue.

Um I think that this is something we can focus on.

We're more than happy to come back as we work on this.

Um, you know, we're we're fairly new into some of these roles here, so we're still getting the the groundwork laid out how we're gonna do this.

But we do know that we want to work with partners across the city because it is it does matter for it's it's a frustration for the department, it's a frustration for the citizens, it's a frustration for all of you, and we know that, so like we will be able to come up with big plans.

Um but you know, part of what we wanted to share today is what really the state of affairs is, and we wanted to be blunt about where we we have a situation that is very hard to work ourselves out of right now.

Uh thank you.

Um I'll just say I I wish there was an easy solution.

This is a super super hard problem.

Um I think we were, as a director said, we're gonna really have to like focus on this and really push ourselves to see if we can come up with additional strategy of the solutions from the public work side, but we really do also need it to be an enterprise approach as does not appear that this problem is going away.

Um in terms of community strategies, I think we've we've done a lot in terms of like putting together uh if folks haven't seen it, our our web page on public works about all the things that we have done, sort of the state of affairs, like a frequently asked questions.

Um there's lots of ways for people to report wire theft.

Um and I think you know, one of the things that we've heard from police is it's super important, and we're trying to share this out that uh you know, folks that see like they they share as much information as they have, so the more information they can provide on the details of what they've seen uh certainly helps in the enforcement or the you know, going after the thieves.

Um then so some of these other you know best practices keeping garage lights on, just watching the street on and reporting uh reporting what people see.

Um from an infrastructure strategy, we're gonna continue to respond to complaints.

I think uh, you know, I think we're from a plan from public works is to continue to repair street lights as we can.

Um I think you know, part of this is well, there's a high expectation from our constituents that there we are continuing to replace, um, even though we continue to see the wire theft happen.

Um we are looking for other wire theft deterrence strategies.

Um I think again we've had some successes in this realm, but they they seem to be short-lived.

Um, you know, this is a picture of the pleasant Auburn solar lighting.

Um, you know, we'll see how this works and whether or not this is something we could use in certain locations that maybe are more prone or you know, have a more open tree canopy.

Um and we're gonna continue to like look for those those strategies that we can implement and implement on that that larger scale basis.

So just kind of in summary here, um yeah, we see this as a significant community and public safety issue.

Uh we have tried numerous strategies.

I hope you know that's come out here that we we are really trying.

This has been a really challenging problem.

Uh we're looking to continue to look.

We're not giving up.

Uh we're going to keep looking and seeing if there's other options that we can uh implement and you know push our teams to try to find those uh innovative solutions.

Um our current situation is not sustainable.

We are falling farther and be farther behind.

And unfortunately, we're gonna have more complaints about wire theft being out or wire or lights being out and not the ability to replace it.

Um and ultimately, if we're gonna be successful in this realm, we're gonna need uh more resources and a broader approach across the city.

This is not a problem that's like what public work can solve by ourselves.

We really need some of that leadership help, some of the that policy help from police, our partners in parks, etc.

That we can take any questions.

Wonderful.

Um I see a couple council members' hands as well.

I know thank you guys for waiting.

I do have a quick question as well.

Um could you just could you talk about like the cost of maybe some of the solar lights, like just so we can understand some of the numbers of what how much how expensive of are some of these mechanisms that are seen or deemed as um potential alternatives that you're looking at, what are the costs for like the average person?

Like that's not necessarily in um the realm of the work or you know, what is the cost of the solar lights?

What are the costs of the different types of replacements?

Um thank you, Madam Chair.

I'd have to like maybe get you more information uh later, but I'd say for the I don't because I don't have it readily available in my memory if um is that the solar lights probably were a little bit more on the up the upfront end.

Um the other thing that you know part of the reason we're calling this a pilot is there's maintenance things that we aren't aware of with solar lights.

Um for instance, there's batteries, so there's battery with part of this is a battery that's holding the charge from the solar.

Um that has to be replaced on a regular basis.

We don't have to do that with our regular lights.

Same thing with the solar panel, how long will those solar panels last and how often do they need to replace?

So I don't know if there's a big difference, like there is a difference on the capital costs.

I think there's a uh a slight increase for the solar, but there is sort of a different maintenance that comes with them that would require some relatively significant investments as you like in the maybe the 10 to 20 year line life, where with our um you know wired street lights, it's um there's ongoing maintenance, but it's not uh you know a big investment that's needed at different, you know, let's say that 10 or 20 year point in the life cycle.

Okay, I want to go with Council Member Bowie, because I know you have this will be your first question with the group, and then we'll keep going with the hands that I see.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Johnson.

Thank you so much for the presentation.

I just have a question, particularly um related to the enforcement um in like the holistic strategy slide.

Uh I'm just curious to know what has been the partnership um, particularly with the city attorney's office and also the attorney general's office, particularly around you know, looking at heightening or enhancing some of our enforcement um statues I saw that uh believe wire theft is now considered a felony charge.

Um I'm just curious to know as well.

You know, I mean, obviously we should be using every tool.

Um, but if there's any uh if there's any uh relationships to some of these vendors that's accepting the wire um because I you know, like similar to uh other copper wire thefts, like obviously the people who are that that the thieves are incentivized by some of these companies that they're selling the wires to.

So I'm just wondering if there's any accountability or enforcements for those companies that's receiving that as well.

Thank you for the question, Madam Chair, and Councilmember Kirk, do you want to come up and maybe speak to this?

Uh I'll start while he walks up.

Um for like we have we our police force has been targeting people uh who have um have have been stealing wire.

They're not necessarily within our structure to go to the people who are uh taking in the wire, right?

It's uh I do appreciate the comment about the uh attorney general.

I don't know that we've done that.

Um I'd have to ask, um, I know we've had some charges through the county, so I think we're they're involved, but now I'll defer to you.

Welcome, Chief Harstell.

How are you doing, Chief Halstrom?

I'm I'm very good.

Thanks for thanking for the invite and great question.

Um it is a very complicated uh matter when it comes to actually charging and holding uh offenders accountable.

Uh there's a there's only three uh recycle yards that are in the city of St.

Paul.

The rest of them are scattered across the state.

So we do have legislation and an ordinance in the city of St.

Paul, um, but you are exactly uh 100% correct that we need a statewide approach.

Um there are there are jurisdictions across the country that have established a statewide uh wire theft task force, uh Louisville, Kentucky uh is one that comes off the top of my head where they have coordinated efforts uh across the state.

Uh unfortunately Wisconsin's right across the the border from us.

Uh but that is a that is a approach that I have been in in conversation with uh the mayor's office on the next legislative session.

Um there's also uh some changes, I think that we we've made a lot of progress, copper wire theft, or not copper wire theft, catalytic converters uh was a big thing.

Um the the state law then changed that that that has to be registered on an electronic database.

The law now states that you have to record these uh these sales transactions on a journal.

Um no law enforcement agency in the state has time uh to visit the site to scroll through pages and pages and pages uh of these documents.

So uh those would be suggestions that I would make going forward um uh on that front.

And we have made some arrests, it's been uh a bit since we've made some.

Um it's very difficult to to get a case uh from arrest to charge, uh mainly because we are uh behind on what it is that uh is out and what is current.

So we have to be able to say that the light was working when the individual caused the damage uh to the light.

But we have been able to make some successes uh in the past, but it's uh comparatively speaking a relatively low level felony anyway to to begin with.

Okay.

Oh yes, uh Council President Maker.

Thanks, Madam Chair.

Just quickly following up.

I'm glad you brought up catalytic converter theft because that I know we had put a lot of stock in the legislation that passed on copper wire theft because after the legislation passed related to catalytic converter theft, we did see a dramatic reduction in those thefts.

So can you say a little bit more about why this is proving to be so different?

Um well the catalytic converters is is they they are recorded in an electronic database called Leads Online.

And that that is a different database than what is included in the copper wire theft.

The copper wire theft uh requires the the seller to have a license that's free and issued by the Department of Commerce.

Or there's a nominal fee associated with it.

And then the law says that they have to record, you know, the weights the the vehicle uh and the driver's license information when they make the sale.

Um but it's not in a searchable database with the the world in which we live in today.

Uh, you know, you walk into a restaurant, they remembered that you were there last week to say that we're recording this data on uh on a cloth-bound journal that's kept under the desk.

Um it's not efficient for any law enforcement agency to be able to go out there and say this person has been here 15 times in the last two weeks.

So those are the leads that will definitely help law enforcement come to uh uh you know an idea of who is doing this.

And it's not it's not just copper wire theft.

Um it's now air conditioning units, um, it's cell phone towers.

Um we see the statewide uh and it's it's a much bigger problem than St.

Paul.

Thank you, Chief.

I see um Councilmember Kim's hand as well.

And counsel council vice president.

Yay.

Yeah, similar line of like interest and questioning.

So the bill that was passed was by two of our St.

Paul representatives, um, my representative Athena Hollins and our retiring Senator Sandy Pappas.

Um, and I think that um, you know, they'll be interested in even weakening the language next year.

So I'd encourage our colleagues to consider, you know, if we were to amend this bill so it works stronger, what recommendations we might make and how we want to maybe adjust our own legislative priorities for next year.

Um, but one thing that has come up time and time again is your exact point, Council President, is like how are we sort of tracking this information?

And one of the best parts about the cadillac converter theft was also that they required to show an ID and prove the VIN number of the catalytic converter and that they had possession of it.

And so there isn't sort of a similar regulatory space there, but um one idea that had come up previously was limiting the number of times someone could sell could sell it because even looking at the numbers that you posted earlier.

If I were to even times by two the numbers between January 1st and June 30th, we are on track to have 15 1,581, which situates us right between 2024 and 2025 in terms of the number of lights that are out.

And so I would just encourage us to think about not just putting it on our list of priorities, but what is the language that we want to change to ensure that it could be enacted statewide?

Um and what like I don't know if they need to show an ID, but it's just to state like it legitimized the market, but now we're seeing issues where it actually doesn't then quell the theft.

Um so that's like a thought for my colleagues.

But then the follow-up around the numbers, it says reported.

Um the number that you are offering us is a snapshot of reported wire theft and recognizing that it's a report-based system in my mind, based on the number of complaints that our office gets and how much of a hot topic this is.

Could one infer that actually the number is quite larger than the ones that are being reported?

The number is much higher than what is being reported.

So that number um that you see for that street light map is just what is reported and gets um logged into through complaints through Zendesk and some of those things.

We know complaints come into parks, come into public works, come from uh constituents through your ward offices to us to complaints to the police department, um, so we know it's much higher than that.

Um and that goes to a couple of things that uh DC Hallsman was saying, like one of the things that we need to be able to do, and this is an active thing that we need to do in public works, is have also a record of the assets of which lights are on, so you can show have the proof that the light was on and it's no longer on.

So um to help with that, but also um as we were talking, this multi-prong approach, part of it is going back into the legislation.

Um because the problem isn't justn't just the the tracking of the records, it's even where they're um um selling it to is sometimes out of state, and so that is a huge problem here because like you said, we've got three in the in the in the city, but that's not necessarily where the wire is going to.

Anything to add?

Um we're gonna do council vice president uh ying's question and council bridge's question, but then we're gonna transition to Millen overlay.

If folks do have additional questions for Director Barber on that, um, you know, I think it's gonna be really important for this for discussion.

I think to echo some of the things you've heard here, too.

Like I think being able to share some of the information regarding the issue is really important, but what's equally important is being able to show, you know, especially on the budget committee, some of the things that we've talked about is just like what are some of these things going to cost?

What does it look like to have an innovative strategy to address the issues that we are seeing?

Because you know, doing nothing obviously is going to lead to further degradation of this and also just like a bigger problem in the long run and a more expensive problem for the city for um for our staff or or you know our St.

Paul police department basically to fix if the state doesn't come and save us, which they often don't.

And so just thinking about like what the strategy looks like in the short term and long term, I think it would be really helpful to be cued in on that.

I know that the department is doing a lot of internal conversations, but I don't necessarily know you know to what level those conversations have even, you know, kind of reached us as well.

And so do see us as like allies in that work, especially when it comes to the budget season.

Um I know we had like a slide that was on some of the dollars we have um given, but not necessarily how it was utilized, or just like what's the breakdown of those funding sources, and we talked about the verd maintenance and just how that that's been the money that's been kind of scraping through, but then also that maybe even more dollars hasn't actually led to a decrease in the theft that we've been seeing.

Um because it's doing nothing or even just being able to put band-aids on the problem doesn't seem to be working for us.

Um thank you, Madam Chair.

I agree, doing nothing doesn't work, and that is definitely not our intention.

Um it is currently we'll get you some additional numbers for um how uh the funding has spent been spent after the past couple of cycles.

Um I think and I this before my time, so I think the half million dollars that that was allocated, that was that slide that went to a lot of extra overtime and electricians to um take a big push that tried to fix a bunch of things a couple of years ago.

Um but we do need to look at the ongoing funding structure because where the money comes from now is from deferred street maintenance to pay for street lights.

And so it is the right question to be asking, and I'm really glad you brought us here to talk about it because we all recognize it as a complicated issue, and um, but it's good to have partners that are interested and and want to help us solve the problem.

Yeah, and I think just so you all know and everyone who's watching, but also city staff know when a topic is brought to the budget committee this year, it's symbolic of the um of the feedback that was given from this council.

So you're here presenting because of our you know, a majority of the council, if not all of the council members actually vocalized in interest in supporting it.

And so just really being able to hear from you all is really helpful, beneficial.

And I think when we're thinking about the budget season, just know that you have allies in our and our work and we are watching because we see the maps, we understand, we hear the calls, we also see the complaints.

But on the plus side and also on the other side of things, you know, we are invested in trying to understand what the innovative solution is and what the strategy is and how we can support that as well, because beyond the complaints and beyond the work that our staff and our team are doing, um, you know, the volunteer overtime that folks are taking.

Uh, we essentially also share the same common goal of addressing the public safety issue, which is when we have street lights that are stolen, um, we have you know streets that are dark, we have folks that don't feel safe walking down the street walking around the lake in some cases, and so just really making sure that we are also able to um to mitigate that with investments, I think will be really important.

And if we don't know that ahead of time, um you see things like positions that maybe you're hoping to fill or are part of the strategy not getting funded.

You see things that are part of the strategy not being funded because we aren't aware of the strategy.

So that piece is gonna be really important this year.

Um I'll uh kind of end with two questions.

Councilmember Jose, did you still have a question or was your question answered?

Um I just I just had a comment, but weren't you gonna go to the Yes?

I'm we're gonna go to both.

Um I yeah, I agree with um what Chair Johnson said.

I think that um you know we're we're talking about an issue that to solve it is gonna take a really long time and it's probably going to cost millions of dollars, just guessing.

Um, and I think we do need support from the state government.

We can't solve this problem alone.

Um, and so what I would also like Chair Johnson said, what I would really like to see is you know, from the strategies that you have, what is the cost, what is the timeline?

Are we looking at short-term strategies versus long-term strategies and and what is the difference in how many lights that that's going to keep on in our city?

Um I mean, so I'm sitting here, I'm thinking, like, why don't we make them all inaccessible to everyone?

Will that keep more lights on?

I'm not sure.

But you know, I think there's I share your frustration and trying to think about all these options and also knowing that you know the feasibility around some of them and the time that it'll take when we're talking about 40,000 street lights.

Um so I I really appreciate the presentation.

Um, and I think more of that information, even no matter how big the cost is, uh you know how much you maybe don't even like it or love it, just seeing what those options are, so that as Chair Johnson said, we can work on making decisions or even adding some of these things to our legislative agenda are gonna be really important.

Um because you know, we this is this is such a huge issue, and if this goes on for another 20 years because it's gonna take that long to fix it, we're gonna keep spending 500,000 to a million dollars every year until it gets fixed.

So I'm for you know, no matter what the cost is, wanting to know what it is and figuring out how we can get it paid for now because it's just gonna cost us more money later, and as everyone knows it's a huge public safety issue.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Um council member, um uh we will work on some of those numbers.

I think that um I mean it will be a high number um if we're looking, especially if we're there's one thing to fix the 3500 lights, it's a different thing to deploy across the 40,000 lights across the city, right?

Because as we've seen, the thieves will move as as we implement things.

But I think that we're having the right conversations with um St.

Paul PD as well.

So I think we can um we're kind of working together to figure out both the fixing and then also the um theft prevention.

And so we'll put a focus on talking about some numbers and trying to get you guys something of if we had all the things to be able to fix everything and to build in prevention strategies, what that would be.

Um it'll be a big number, and we know it.

That's why we wanted to be very blunt and honest today.

Thank you.

And um Council Vice President Ying, I'll end with you on this particular presentation.

Thanks, Chair Johnson.

I want to take a moment to recognize all of the work that our staff have put into problem solving this issue, um, and just trying to be really innovative about it from public works to our police department to Parks and Rec and all of the other departments involved in this.

And I I say this because that one of the things that I when I reflect on just how far along we've come on our city stance for repairing the street lamps and how important it is.

I'm just really proud that we are where we are today because I remember during the pandemic, there was a presentation done about this, and at the time the the rhetoric was well, like having a street that's more lit doesn't mean it's you know it doesn't make it safer.

But I believe that our residents are very clear about what actually is safety to them, and they do want to make sure that they're going to business corridors to a park that is well lit, um, and they can they they can see you know where it is that um they're going, whether it's you know a few feet ahead of them or many feet ahead of them.

And so um again, I'm really proud about that, and I um you know really commend you all for your work.

I'm sure it's very disheartening to our residents and and to our leaders here in the city too, whenever we do hear about the wiring getting stolen again.

However, I also know that it's even more you know disheartening and discouraging for our staff who are the ones doing the hard work of putting the wire in.

So I really appreciate you all.

Um thing I wanted to uplift is I wonder if, and this is just a suggestion out there.

I'm talking out loud, you know, when I say this, I wonder if there's some sort of partnership that can happen between the city and especially our business corridors, because in my ward, Payne Avenue has been without lighting for probably over a year now, and that's the one I hear the most um complaints about.

I also share a desire in getting that uh business corridor lit up too because I know that you know we can just bring in more patrons onto um into the businesses when we can accomplish that.

And so um the idea I'm I have in mind is I wonder if there's some sort of recommendations that even our planning and economic development department can put out to businesses that are facing this issue.

Um because I I see bus some businesses where like they just put up their, you know, hang up their own string lighting and the lighting is really great um on the corner or the area that they're in.

And even though that's not going to be a permanent um solution, and we don't want it to be, because it'll also drive up energy costs for our businesses if it's something that can be done for the interim too.

Um I'm sure that there are many entrepreneurs who are ready to spring into action and um try to you know do something in the meantime.

So that's uh something I want to put out there.

I think it would definitely be great if PED can talk about that some more in partnership with other departments here.

Thank you, Madam Chair, Councilmore.

That's a great idea.

And um I will definitely bring it up with PED and even within the assistant mayor's group, like there could be other uh departments who might have a role to play as well.

But thank you.

Thank you, and thank you, Mr.

Newman, for being here.

Thank you, Chief Alstrom, for being here as well on this item and for making time for it in the entire uh public works uh staff team that's here too, or related to it.

We appreciate you guys um coming out to talk about this.

Um we'll transition over to Mill and Overlay now.

Yep.

All right, back again.

Uh Madam Chair Council members were here today to also talk about uh mill and overlay program within the city of St.

Paul.

So we're gonna talk our agendas, talk a little bit about what is mill and overlay, the funding sources, projects over the last few years, some of the benefits and the shortcomings of it, and then challenges and uh kind of what um we see as a budget priority.

So, what is mill and overlay?

Uh mill and overlays a street rehab technique, and I'm gonna show a little video if I can get this to work.

But now how do you make it to sound you may have heard the words mill and overlay used a lot lately in St.

Paul.

But what exactly is mill and overlay?

We asked Chris Anderson, St.

Paul Public Works Paving Supervisor for an explanation.

Simply put, mill and overlay is a way of adding life to old pavement.

When a street surface deteriorates, it can be rehabilitated through mill and overlay.

It begins with the milling or removal of the top layer of asphalt.

We remove about one and a half to two inches of the top layer of the old pavement.

The old material that is ground off by the milling machine is then recycled into new asphalt.

The mill pavement is then swept to remove any loose debris.

Next, attack code is applied to the newly milled surface.

The tack home helps bond the new layer of asphalt to the existing asphalt.

Then the pavement is ready for a fresh layer of asphalt.

St.

Paul uses a variety of asphalt that is stronger and more resistant to wear than other commercial grades of asphalt.

This asphalt is produced at the city's own asphalt plant.

The pavement is given a final smoothing with a trio of rollers.

The new pavement can then be open to traffic within 15 minutes of completion.

All said and done, the mill and overlay process is done in two to three days, and the street is set to last for several more years.

So mill and overlay, I think the key thing that to take away from that is it is a way to help extend the life of a road.

So as we know we have some challenging corridors within the city.

It is not the carefix that a full road reconstruction is, but it does extend the life of the road.

And this is what looks before and after.

And then this one, um, this slide was put in by our one of our asphalt X experts.

And it's a good way of understanding kind of where you want to be in the cycle of all of this.

So the PCI is the pavement condition in the X Men just tells you the condition of the surface of the structural integrity of the road.

So early on in the early days, obviously should be good.

There's a point in time where things start to deteriorate, and that is actually where you want to start doing some of the mill and overlays or repairs earlier in the cycle.

So like before you're here, you really want to be spending the money on this preservation here.

And so one of the key things in the long-term look and plan that we need to build out, and I think you know, there's a lot of um there's been work being done on this, but it's really figuring out how we staged the construction and the mill and overlay um and street repairs so that we're hitting that sweet spot more rather than just responding to things.

Um overlay is really cost effective comparatively.

You can see um the cost on about four dollars per square foot.

Now, so this is only the the operational piece of it, so there are some additional funds required for the other pieces when we do a mill and overlay, we also go in and fix, um do concrete work, um, build in the ADA accessibility, some of those other pieces of infrastructure at the same time.

So there's some additional costs associated with that.

Um but overall it is a good cost and effective um a way to approach um street maintenance and repair.

All right, so how they how is it funded?

So the funding sources come from um a variety of places, so there's street reconstruction bonds, um, which are uh issued for residential mill and overlay, general fund for arterial mill and overlay.

Um we'll have our city engineer come up and talk about those two different programs a little bit more.

Um there is assessments um that are applied to use to service bond debt on the residential mill and overlay.

Um we it covers a portion of future costs and a larger portion is actually used for reconstruction.

Um now I am going to transition over to Nick Peterson, the city engineer.

Thank you.

Welcome, Mr.

Peterson.

Good morning.

Uh Nick Peterson City Engineer.

So I will start with arterial street mill and overlay and uh work through the residential program that's relatively new.

So every year, about three to five miles of arterial streets are paved through the mill and overlay program.

It's gonna depend on the types of corridors and the amount of funding that's available.

If we step back in time and look at you know, not only a decade ago, uh the city had a whole lot more money budgeted for this kind of work, but it was really kind of falsely budgeted because uh there were some legal challenges that were uh imposed on the program and the the way that our projects were funded.

And you know, fast forwarding back through time, now we we find that we've got four million dollars of general fund available and one million of assessments.

So related to that, there was also less maintenance funding that was available, uh, a similar legal challenge at the same time.

So less mill and overlay work that helps extend the uh the pavement life, and then also less ability to keep up with those potholes.

The pavement preservation, as I said, it's going to extend the life of the road, it's gonna serve as a uh seal a seal on top of the pavement.

It's like it's almost like it's it's so much more than this, but it has the effect of paint, right?

That it will keep water out as well.

So not only does it add structural integrity, it actually adds load carrying capacity to a pavement, but also helps extend its life.

When these projects occur, there's also concrete work that happens.

So in the video, we saw the bituminous operations.

As a part of the uh the larger project, there's also a lot of concrete work that has to happen.

Sometimes curb has to get replaced, ped ramps have to be brought up to ADA standards, and there might be bump outs that are that are introduced.

And when we look at arterial streets in particular, they're gonna have higher volumes of traffic, and uh as a result, there's more risk associated with uh crossing those streets.

And so there's also a focus on pedestrian safety improvements that happen with these projects as well.

Um so traffic calming, and because there's this ability to kind of reconfigure the road, since all the striping disappears, and uh you know, we we've got a uh a bigger project, then bike lanes might be added as well.

So that's uh a consideration on the project.

So historically, arterial mill and overlay work, a contractor has done the concrete work, and then our forces, city public works forces would perform the actual new bituminous placement, and we'd work with another contractor to mill stuff off.

So kind of a hodgepodge, but generally speaking, historically the talking point has been that we've we've done the arterial work in-house.

Starting this year to simplify things a bit, we've kind of switched that around where our own forces are going to do residential mill and overlay work.

We'll still have you know specialist contractors doing the contract, the uh concrete work, but the bituminous work on residential would be done by our forces.

There's less coordination, it's a more efficient operation for our folks, and then the arterials, because there's so much more that happens with those, would be done by a contractor.

Council President Aker.

Uh thanks, Madam Chair.

Do we perform work on I assume the answer is no, but I want to make sure we don't perform work on state and county roads within the city, correct?

Uh Madam Chair, Council President.

We do on occasion, but we do that via cost participation policies.

So uh I'm I'm anticipating kind of the root of the question that we do have some maintenance responsibilities on county and state facilities.

Just imagine if we had it already, I know it already feels like we often have a whole lot of stuff going on.

It seems like it's uncoordinated.

Um, and imagine if if we had the state and and the county doing a lot of that stuff on their own.

So we have some maintenance responsibilities, and so we will do some of that work, but we will make sure that we are made whole from the the state or the county when that work occurs.

We have cooperative agreements that come through council on occasion for that.

So the cost participation is a hundred percent on the owner.

Um it will vary by the type of how it's how it's delivered.

Um, but I I would offer uh I would really like for those cost participation policies maybe to be more amicable in the city's favor, and we're working through that with Ramsey County right now.

Thank you.

And on this slide, we're kind of looking back over the last you know, nominally five years here over some of the work that's been uh performed on the arterial network.

And so we've got 21 through 25 indicated.

Um these corridors show up in our five-year plan.

Really, we're we're trying to be more dynamic, and we're not planning for these five years in advance on a lot of these corridors.

We don't have the funding to do that reliably because we'd have to do it sooner.

We don't have the ability to do these things on a rigorous shorter term schedule.

So we're trying to acknowledge that some corridors can be worse than others.

And uh so we've only got really the first couple years of our five-year plan has actual placeholders in there for specific corridors, and then we've got a bin of of uh the corridors that are at the end of that.

So we can see there's a whole lot of projects that have been performed.

The far right column has the street maintenance bituminous costs included there.

Um there's also concrete costs that go into these as I noted, and then of course the uh administration, engineering, and inspection that goes with these.

And uh rough rule of thumb is that the concrete cost is nominally the same as the bituminous cost.

That's that's not a perfect science, but generally speaking, as a rule of thumb, you know, you would see in that first row 1.5 million dollars, roughly multiplying by two to get to what that total construction cost is, and then adding in engineering and and you know those administrative aspects, testing and that sort of thing.

So just want to give some some background here.

As we progress through time, it's it's not a perfect science, um, but as we progress through time, our funding has decreased, and we have issues with these, you know, every entity has projects uh throughout the city.

Sometimes there are scheduling challenges that come up where something something takes longer than was anticipated, and our window we get a we we ask for and usually need a fairly narrow window to do our work, and we don't want to be uh, you know, as a good partner, we don't want to be too asking for too egregious of a window, you know, being too conservative in that.

But on occasion, the window will pass.

And so we we see corridors like Ruth get get slid a year and then another year because you know there are big things and we don't want to get in the way of our partner's important work as well.

Because there are there can be some bigger some bigger impacts out there.

And then the the last row here is 2026, and in our uh next slide I'll talk about St.

Anthony, but Selby is is a I'll say I don't know they've ever used the word fun before council before, but it's kind of a fun example of partnering with with one of our uh agency partners out there to do work on on Selby.

Uh Metro Transit had some money that was available and it had to be used to enhance their it was attached to a specific project, it had to be used to enhance that that service offering, and so that transit facility was along Selby, they offered to pay for uh bituminous work there.

So we let them, you know, hey, we're we're all on board with with that, right?

Um, and then we have to then the part of the agreement is we take on the concrete work and the cost that would go with that.

It's our street.

So good partnership, and you know, making its way through through the process here.

Now, St.

Anthony, this is gonna look a lot like uh kind of procedurally, it's very similar to what had happened on uh Concordia Rondo somewhat recently.

This is a corridor, it's a frontage road that kind of struggles with that identity.

Am I a one-lane road?

Am I a two-lane road?

And uh this project would propose to narrow the the lanes down from two to one, make it much clearer as to how it should be driven.

Um it's complicated in the sense that it crosses county roads and uh min dot facilities, and the uh the opportunity as I noted before comes up to do so much more.

So we have to do ADA enhancements, and then there is also the opportunity to look at traffic calming and to um you know look at adding a bike lane facility.

So the project proposes uh some bump outs and bike lane maintains parking on the one side of the road, and uh you know should make things safer in the long run.

And it's it's not a reconstruction, so it's not as robust as a reconstruction project would be when that all the curb is getting replaced, but you know, it's sort of a happy medium.

Then transitioning into residential mill overlay.

So this is a relatively new program that started in 2023.

It's funded by street reconstruction bonds.

Um the the budget for this is three and a half million dollars on an annual basis, and the order for these projects is determined going way back in time when these streets were reconstructed.

We're going back and milling and overlaying these roads in that same order.

So there's an aspect of being consistent with that.

And you know, we took we took the multiple pages of those areas that were done originally called the RSVP areas and just working forward through that in that same order.

So making making good progress on that front.

It's focused on pavement preservation because these corridors are residential streets, they don't carry the same volume and have the same risk associated with arterial crossing.

So there's more of an emphasis on pavement and less on the the other safety aspects.

And as I noted before, this is a case where our forces are going to do the bituminous work and they'll be subbing out the the milling that removal of the old pavement on top.

This is a map of what the program initially looked like when we kicked it off.

There's actually you know, maybe one element of pride I might I might point to on here.

Uh our our next project on this slide is area number five, and that's actually been moved up to this year.

So it's progressing a little faster than anticipated.

And this is this has been challenging because of the you know, there's there's uh a set dollar amount every year.

Um but these projects are all gonna be very different in size and in complexity.

And then uh again, another sample project here, the Ivy Birmingham project is uh you know, residential mill and overlay, it's gonna do some ADA work and uh you know take care of a whole lot of stuff in the area at one time as as best as we can.

City forces will do the the button-up work at the end.

So back to kind of big picture here, mill and overlay benefits.

Um it's it's one of those very few of affordable options.

We don't have uh as much money as as we wish we did to be able to fund this kind of improvement.

Um, but it is one of the the few somewhat affordable options that we have.

It imparts structural uh uh benefits to the road, it actually increases the the you know carrying capacity and helps it live longer.

Uh we do have the ability to assess these projects, the city can assess you know there are limitations on that.

So we can get 25% on these projects.

Um, you know, and and it's it's a super effective way to improve the the pavement condition versus reconstructing.

We're not gonna go out and reconstruct a road just for the sake of having a smoother riding surface.

Um so it's it's significantly cheaper than that.

You get the you know, a really smooth, quiet surface.

Uh we can reconfigure things with you know new paint markings and and uh you know kind of change up that the use of the roadway at the same time.

And every time that mill and overlay work is done, it reduces the maintenance to demand, you know, the number of potholes and the severity of potholes in particular will go down dramatically, at least on that corridor.

So that's an important flag.

Um I mentioned ped ramps and uh safety improvements that go with them, they're a part of the five-year plan.

Um there's a lot less disruption that goes with this, generally speaking.

Um, you know, the concrete work can take a bit longer, but it's really it's we're measuring this in weeks and not months.

You know, a conventional construction project would be months, and this process can be done multiple times.

There are limitations to this, it's not the right thing to do on every road.

And uh, you know, there's there's a whole lot of uh challenge that goes with you know the the funding limitation that we have.

So you know, some roads are really old, they've they've maybe they weren't constructed uh consistent with the demands of the you know the current current times here, but uh you know they it's it's one of the best things that we can do.

If you've got a road that's super degraded and and it wasn't constructed correctly, or it's just simply old and the materials are just tired or broken and failed, um it doesn't make sense to do it if there are utility needs, it doesn't make sense because we need to dig it up anyway.

Why go through the process of doing just the surficial work when we could do so much more?

Um it doesn't address the underlying issues.

Pavements tend to fail from the bottom up, you know, in a catastrophic fashion.

Transitioning into our departmental challenges, so uh, you know, this is where maybe I I make a sales pitch for you know different equipment kind of a thing for the operation side of public works.

But um our the equipment that we use to perform this work is is uh it could be more optimal.

It's not as big as it could be.

We could have bigger equipment that is uh more efficient, it you know can cover more area at one time, it could impart more energy into the work that it's doing to have a more solid product in the end, um, would be kind of nice.

And then you know, the the trailers that we use or routinely making rounds from the public works facility back out to the site, whereas contractors will have bigger equipment that they can mobilize more readily more quickly.

And uh then we want to move into uh really making sure that we've got top-notch products out there rather than using a qualitative method that's been used for a long time, but actually using technology to do that.

So when we're all doing this, one of the things that I I have to always forewarn is it's the same people doing the work that would be filling potholes.

So it's either overlay operations or or uh pothole operations due to that staff limitation.

Uh we do have our own asphalt plant.

It's a thing of pride every spring when I go out to the public works facility and I see all these trucks from other cities that are queued up waiting to get our asphalt because we're the first shop in town.

That's a thing of pride to see people do that.

So you know, we've got some control over that, and of course, uh, you know, it's it's intended to be self-sufficient.

The plant's aging and it's gonna need some some serious attention here.

So we're we've been kind of noodling how do we do with that.

Mr.

Peterson, I'm gonna have you finish your last two slides here for us.

So we have uh a couple of times for um some quick questions from council members before we have to adjourn at 11 30.

So if you could just quickly finish the last two slides that you have.

So the impact of of uh decreased funding for mill and overlay, if if uh you know that happens, the road's gonna accelerate its decay much faster.

Uh Director Barber presented a slide that had a graphic that showed that uh roads gonna decay a lot faster uh as it ages.

And uh, you know, if if roads don't get attention in time, water gets in and it just creates all kinds of problems.

Um we've got an increased costs that I that I mentioned and then claims and complaints and you know all kinds of things that that come up from uh from the public.

It's one of uh a number of strategies.

Some of these are are relatively new.

Obviously, we're talking about mill and overlay, reconstruction is is pretty clear, reclamation is something we're we're it's kind of a hodgepodge of the two, so to speak, that we're trying to ramp up.

We did uh a couple projects here in the in the city somewhat recently.

Um then looking into new additives that would help our roads last longer.

Um and then of course we have we have maintenance things that we do.

So with that, public works is happy to stand for questions.

Thank you.

Uh Council President Baker.

Thanks, Madam Chair.

I will combine all of my questions together in one.

Um well, not one question, but at one time.

Um the two slides ago is definitely my favorite slide because it talks about sort of some of the needs and ideas to make this work happen more efficiently.

Um I've never heard about the need for the different equipment, but I hope that there will be follow-up with how much that would cost and how much that would save.

Um I'm curious why we don't use contractors or consider an apprenticeship with the trades potentially to so that we're not using the same workers to do potholes and melon overlay if it's just a labor issue um how we're thinking about solving that.

Um do we have plans to make our asphalt plant min dot certified?

And then finally, um I never hear about seal coating anymore.

Do we still coat?

And what's the value of that to the life of a street versus melon overlay and other processes.

Uh and that's all of that.

Um let's take a couple of them like we want to start with the min dot, if there's a plan for min dot being so being uh certified.

Okay.

Madam Chair, Council President, uh, I'm gonna try and go in reverse order here.

Um the and I'm trying trying not to get distracted.

Uh the the seal coat is something that is uh it's a preservation tool and it helps slow the decay.

And we pulled the plug on do you want to jump in anywhere or gotta make sure I'm getting in front of the end.

Um the the seal coat aspect, it's it's to help prevent decay.

And we got to a point where we were doing one-eighth of the city every year, but we had done that for so long, we found our way into having lots of seal coat layers on roads.

And we pulled the plug on that because at some point it just didn't make sense anymore.

And it it uh could cause more more trouble than benefit at that stage of time.

So it'll be reintroduced, but it'll be reintroduced on roads that are most appropriate for it at some point.

Um I supposed to when you okay.

All right, I'm just gonna keep going and then you're gonna tap me on the shoulder.

Um the plant.

Okay, all right.

So then I'll skip the plant, and now I'm totally forgetting what the rest of the questions are, and I apologize.

Contractors to help with paving and filling pots simultaneously or ways to address that labor issue.

Uh the uh well, I'm gonna have Cha address that one, I think actually, because there's a uh having a contractor to perform maintenance purposes would be uh an operations aspect.

Any is that it?

Those are the hi, my name's Chad Lee and the street maintenance manager.

Uh that can answer the Mendot question.

Uh we are working on trying to get it certified.

Uh some of the stuff that we will have to do is we have to build an extra thick cut wrap recycle asphalt to add to our plant.

So once we work through all the the costs and we'll bring it forward to the council member to to support us.

Um but we are trying to get it min dot certified.

So we could because a lot of uh uh other municipality that they do their projects, they need min dot certified products, so we are working on that.

And as as for the contractor, uh we did look at one time it costs us to hire and contract them more than what our force could do.

But if we do have the budget, I would support going for the contract.

I think again, you know, just overall uh director barber, I really do appreciate both presentations.

It would be really helpful to see the actual finances behind what it's being presented.

Um it's a little hard to follow, and I appreciate the arterial um presentation pieces, but like my questions remain of like the amounts of resources that are actually allocated.

I appreciate that the four million and the one million, but like that doesn't actually translate for me of like what you know what we're spending, what we need, um what is the kind of dollar amount behind the work that happens.

And I think to the question to the piece of just equipment, you know, I think my biggest question around equipment any time is how that benefits residents and like where you know where making those investments is one thing, but like investing if we're if we're in needs of millions, like I think when we think about just what it would ultimately look like to create some relief for people so they're not just covering the entire piece of the mill and overlay process.

I think that would be helpful to know where the revenue sources of some of these um projects come from as well.

Just like where the money comes from, where it's being spent, and numerical numbers.

I love spreadsheets, I love numbers, I love all the things, and that's why I really want it to be budget chair.

Um, and so we review those, and I find them a little bit missing from the presentation, and I just wanted to be able to share if that's available at a follow-up, we'd appreciate it.

Um I'll go over to Councilmember Joe's and then Council Vice President Yang.

Um Thank you, Chair.

Uh thank you, Director.

I have two questions.

One about the you mentioned the rolling equipment, and I also would like to see what that would cost.

Um I'm gonna assume that the rolling equipment that you have is providing a sufficient like rolling of the asphalt, but I uh it also sounds like if we had better equipment, it would provide better um uh a better roll to the asphalt.

And then there would be you know uh cost benefit associated with that around the longevity of the um of the mill and overlay.

So that's kind of my first.

I don't know if you know what that would be, what the improvement would be in the road if we had better equipment and then if we could if you could get the costs that would be helpful.

Um bunch of friends, thank you, madam, uh Madam Chair Council members who have some of these answers, so I'm gonna step out of the way and let them answer.

Okay.

Welcome to Haas.

I'll start a little bit and then I'll let uh Jericho finish because he's really more the expert.

So I've been the operation manager in public works for a whole two and a half weeks interim.

So um I'm this was my crash course in Mill and Overlay.

But one of the things you know, asking some of the same questions that you guys are asking, and one of the things that uh Jericho I left it up to me was that um the rollers uh take four passes where we can rent equipment currently, or if we purchased equipment for about two to three hundred thousand dollars, um we could do it double and do two passes opposed to four.

So we are looking at those numbers and the efficiencies, and then the next question I asked Jericho, and he can talk a little bit more about this is okay.

Well, what would that mean for um staff hours and efficiencies and time and how much more could we do?

So we are digging into those things right now to see um where the actual dollars align and what the benefit would be.

But you know, top of my head, the benefit is we can get it done quicker and get more done.

Okay, and then my other question, and I know um council president Naker asked a similar question about sealing uh cracks in pavements.

It's it's my understanding that that is would be a maintenance um strategy in addition to mill and overlay, that by providing the sealing of the cracks in between mill and overlays, you you know, you you get you you prevent water intrusion, you get more life out of the asphalt, you don't you don't have to um and that's kind of a part of that maintenance, but it is it my understanding that we aren't it sounds like we're not currently doing that, we're only doing mill and overlay.

Could you clarify like which of the pavement improvement strategies we're actually doing right now?

Madam Chair, council member.

There's a distinction between seal coating, and I apologize.

I I I thought the council president asked about seal coating specifically.

Um, and then there's crack ceiling.

Yes.

And crack crack sealing um is still performed uh you know throughout the system, and that's I think it's still it's funny I'm I'm saying this, and Jericho probably you want to touch on it.

You're here.

Um Jericho Hogar on the super or superintendent for uh street maintenance.

Um so with uh seal coating, we're not doing that's where we would put a full layer of a coat on the street.

Uh cracking uh cracks, we do feel uh most of the time we're doing that when we're doing repairs in the area, if we know there is a big crack there.

Uh most of the time we do that when we're doing uh uh cuts which is when they cut uh the square hole in the street and stuff like that.

So yeah we do put uh uh ceiling in there then but as a city overall like just going out doing everyone at this time we are not doing that.

Okay so you so you do the seal seal the cracks only if you have a project in the area it's not part of the general maintenance of all of the streets.

As of right now no okay and I guess I'd be curious if we were to do that what would the cost be and how would it prolong the life of the road and what would be the cost if there's a cost savings that would be important to know too that would be fine.

The cost part I can't say anything about but I will say with doing it it prolong water is the the enemy so it prolongs the street right okay thank you.

And uh thank you madam chair council member we're taking all this information and so Lisa's frantically writing all these things down in the audience and so we'll come back with numbers till you have them so thank you.

Yeah no I I really appreciate being here being able to hear from folks that you know are doing the work um at hand so I just really appreciate that piece too it adds like faces behind the names I would share you know just as a feedback point um as well like I look forward to kind of being able to share some of the work that gets done that may or may not be like that staff may or may not be getting current credit for and so we get a lot of complaints with a lot of folks that go through and maybe they're focused on that one particular road but also if we are seeing that work you know and we know that staff is doing the roads nearby maybe the roads and the streets that aren't on the the quote unquote list of things to do you know how we better tell that I think it's going to be really important just because that like I didn't know that if you go out to the project you also look at the neighboring streets and other places too.

I think that's a really valid point to share with people.

Yeah thank you Madam Sherry you're reading our mind yes um I'm really excited about what's coming so um the street maintenance team has been working on as you know proactively kind of circling the area to see what they can also fill and we're working on a map that can be um shared with the public it's not ready yet we're still getting the kinks worked out but it is showing the response to complaints the number of potholes that have been filled and then adding in that information too about those potholes that we're proactively um filling as well.

So it's coming soon to you know city website near you but we're we're not quite there yet.

So I think it's impressive to see the number of potholes that actually are being filled and the work that is being done and when I looked at the map I went wow I didn't know we were doing such a great job.

Well and while you're here Ms.

Haas thank you and congratulations on your new role with the public works team and yes that's you know very very excited for you.

Any person that can make trash seem exciting and endurable the way that you can definitely make sure that the story is told around our operations work here at Public Works which I think is so important that we are are you able to accurately reflect just the work that folks are doing the um is it's hard it's manual and it's labor so we appreciate you know that work too and I look forward to being able to share that map out when we get it.

Are there any other questions for my colleagues for literally the entire team but like multiple people that are a part of it while we have them okay quick question from council president I actually wasn't going to ask it for them with the invitation you know I can't resist two minutes it's fine.

Any very very quick before I get in trouble update on the new mix that allows us to fill potholes in winter as you can tell thank you madam chair council member I have the best team so I'm gonna turn it to them like with the real stuff not the cold patch.

Well the first thing I wanted you guys to know too some that isn't on our uh we're not able to put on a list for you a lot of times we go to areas that we haven't got calls and take care of that area where people in that neighborhood may not call in report so that's something that is not tracked that we want to let you know too we do look at every area make sure even though they're not calling we have supervisors drive in that section.

So what that process allows us to do is we uh we have a lot of or not a lot we do have some waste when it comes to asphalt like if the truck's done at the end of the day and they dump it in one of our yards.

So with this machine we're able to take it in mostly in the winter and uh put it in this machine and it'll heat it up and recycle it so we can use it again.

So it helps in the way of uh yes, less waste and a more uh I shouldn't say permanent because potholes you can't permanently fix, but it it helps in uh spring, so it isn't coming out of the hole, and we don't have uh we have less reports.

So we really appreciate um all of your time and for folks being here today and just being able to answer the questions and interact with us in this discussion.

Again, the reason why these two tacos were brought up was because they were echoed uh similarly amongst the council as priorities for this budget cycle as well.

So, do you want you guys to know that we see the work that you all are doing and want to continue to invest in it?

We understand that the problem itself takes both the street light repairs and the mill and overlay.

It's like multiple years in process, but we hope to see and be a part of the strategy with you.

So thank you guys so much for making the time.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair and Council members, for having us here today.

It's important for all these great people who do great work to be able to share some of what they're doing.

So thank you very much.

Appreciate it.

With nothing else in front of us, just want to give a shout out to Council Vice President Ying.

I hope your budget engagement event went really well last week.

I mean, yesterday, sorry.

Um, and I look forward to hearing about it.

We'll continue to promote the others from it that are coming up as we enter into budget season.

Thank you guys.

We are adjourned.