All right. Seeing as it is 631 and we have a quorum here in person, I'm going to go ahead and call this deliberation session of the Bloomington Common Council the order here on July 23rd, 2025. If the clerk could please call the roll. Yes. Council member Flaherty. Ruff. Rallo.
 Yeah, I think he's on Zoom. Can his camera get turned on maybe? There we go. Wonderful. Thank you, Dave. Sasberg? Here. Zulek? Here. My mic doesn't work. Oh, it just takes a minute to... Oh, here. Rosenberger? Here. And Asari? Here. It takes a minute for the...
 microphones to get turned on as you're speaking in turn because of moving to a different location in the room. Just so you all know. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for the alternative setup tonight. These are definitely different mics and I'll try to adjust my volume appropriately. So tonight in terms of agenda summation, basically we have
 two primary things on the agenda. That is the discussion about sidewalk committee and the role of that committee in our work and then public comment related to that. But we are going to start with council member reports and
 wrap up as usual with any notes on council schedule before we adjourn. So if we want to start with council member reports, and I think I've been asked to do that randomly and not just start on ends, and so I'm actually, but then I do end up feeling like a school teacher, like, oh, who's on the hot seat tonight? Because nobody knows where they're starting, but if, you know, I should, like, bring something to, like, draw names out of. I'll do that next week. Anyway, let's go ahead and start online with council member Rallo. Do you have a council member report tonight?
 No, I don't, thank you. Okay, thank you. Council Member Rosenberger. No report, thanks. Council Member Zulek. Hello. No report, thank you. Council Member Flaherty. No, no report. Council Member Asari. No report, thank you. Okay, I guess I'm gonna break the trend and have a little bit of a report.
 I guess I have two things that I want to mention to the public, one of which is probably, well, they're just different. The first of which is I heard the news this week that Camp Atterbury is, the feds are planning to use that as an immigrant detention facility, Camp Atterbury in Indiana, and that is just a moment of disappointment that that facility.
 close to home is going to be used in that way. So I would like to, at this moment, I guess, urge anybody out there, if they have an issue with that, like I do, to go ahead and contact your federal representatives. That is a federal property, and the federal government can use it in the way that they choose to, even if that was not the original intention of that. And it is very important that we are
 that we're maintaining some sense of humanity and ensuring that if we are holding people in detention that they are being provided with adequate food, shelter, water, sanitation, and contact with attorneys and their family as may be necessary. And communicating that to federal representatives I think is important at this point so that we can be a society and a culture that there can be pride in.
 because I don't have much pride in some pieces of that right now. Second thing I wanted to say was a little bit more lighthearted, perhaps, is that you may have noticed that the old Napa building is no longer there. And instead there is a pile of rubble. And I know that we all have different maybe thoughts on the convention center, but it is pretty impressive to watch a building being torn apart
 by a very big truck and not to sound too toddler. And I'm looking at council member, sorry, because he has a couple of toddlers. But big machines are kind of cool. So I hope that some others of you got to enjoy the big machines today too, because I went with my son and his friend and sat and watched big machines tear things down for a few minutes today. And it was pretty exciting. So that's my report tonight.
 So I guess that means we'll launch into this council discussion on the sidewalk committee. And so we do have some staff members in the room and we're at the small table. So if the related staff members in the room want to come join the table and if council members want to not all sit on one side of the table and want to instead move around to other places, that would also be totally fine. I think I'll cry if you don't sit next to me.
 we can be more circly. And then if staff, our staff, want to put that first slide up. So what we're going to do today is I'm going to give a little bit of
 historical information, then Kate is gonna give a little bit of historical information, then staff is gonna have a chance to like weigh in from like their perspective in terms of how the sidewalk committee has gone and how maybe changes have happened over time, and then we're gonna talk about it as council members. And so while we're kind of giving that like history, council members should be hopefully thinking about kind of these three key questions related to council sidewalk committee, should it exist,
 what is its purpose and what should it fund is kind of the overarching what we're doing here today. So I'm gonna start with funding related stuff. So right now the Council Sidewalk Committee, the funding source is the Alternative Transportation Fund. And I need to actually find where I'm supposed to be.
 OK. OK. Sorry. Sorry. Let me go back a little bit. Within the packet that got distributed, you'll see some of the per year funding, which has gone from $185,000 in 2007 to $500,000 this year. That's just kind of for background information. And then there's also all of those funding projects over time, going farther back, actually, I think, than 2007.
 But the totals are since 2007. And so the sidewalk committee budget is funded using the alternative transportation fund. And revenue from the neighborhood parking permits is part of what feeds that fund. And then it gets rounded out as necessary in terms of transfers from general fund or other places. And then per the fund creation,
 So that alternative transportation fund can be used to, and this is like information actually that the controller provided the fiscal committee with today, so she's been working on trying to spell out our funds for us. So it can be used to pay the cost of operations and maintenance of the city's residential parking program, salaries and wages, employee benefits, supplies, other services, professional communications, transportation, insurance, utilities, debt service, and other
 capital outlays like vehicles, infrastructure, buildings, and reducing the city's dependence upon the automobile. And last year from parking permits, parking permits generated about $410,000 in terms of that budgeted amount, or in terms of revenue. And then in terms of budget,
 269,000 went back to parking. So I'm assuming that's managing the parking programs, et cetera. $200,000 of it went to engineering. And then $500,000 of it went to the sidewalk committee. And so those three numbers combined obviously exceed 410,000. So there was a transfer from the general fund to bring it up to make sure that there was enough money in there. And I think
 that that is all that I was supposed to talk about. Council Member Rosemarger, is that right? I think so. Okay, great. So now I'm turning it over to Council Member Rosemarger, who's gonna tell us more about the sidewalk committee and remind us all about the process involved with allocation decisions and how that has changed over time. Okay, so I don't, okay, yeah. I'm basically just going through the 2025
 report from the sidewalk committee because those are where the information is. So we already kind of heard all this, but we're gonna do it again. So, okay, we're using Council Member Stossberg talked a little bit about where the funding comes from. And then I wanted to go over the history just a little bit for folks. So this committee was created in 1847.
 I don't know when it was. Seriously? No, I don't know when it was. But it's funny, because I could have said 1947. It would seem believable, I think. OK. So in its creation, in those early years and most of the years, the way allocation happened was residents' constituents would call in, email,
 chat with the representative about a sidewalk that has a missing link or a block or anything like that, and it would get put on a really long list, what became a really long list of sidewalks that were needed or wanted in the city, and then the council members would look at that list and pick projects just from the list.
 Some years ago, we changed that process with the bike ped coordinator, and a rubric was created that took into account density, census blocks with income levels, and I think walkability and safety. And so from there, we also had a more comprehensive list of where sidewalk connections were missing in the city. And so we could look in a
 a more purposeful way to use the rubric and then prioritize our projects based on that rubric. Always a challenge is there's barely any money and the projects are usually quite expensive. So we do a lot of project design and then sometimes construction and sometimes that money comes from other places. Recently this year then we did another switcheroo with how the
 the projects are picked and we started using the transportation plan, all of the safe streets for all plan. So now we look at the priority network there and pick possible projects. And we also consider kind of like biggest bang for the buck because
 creating sidewalks where there isn't one is very expensive and the $500,000 is not necessarily like the best pot of money to use for that. So especially this year we kind of focused a little more on coordinating projects with other departments where maybe a street was already getting torn up and we could add aspects of sidewalks. So I guess what I didn't mention too is this committee used to very much be focused on building missing links to sidewalks and now it
 focuses a little more or a lot more on the pedestrian realm. So it can also include bump outs, crosswalks, some traffic calming. I don't think we've paid for a hawk signal, but I think signals could be considered. So that is a little bit of the history. Is that enough? What else am I covering? Seems pretty good.
 I think that's about right. So now I want to turn it over to staff, which may not be a surprise to staff. You guys sitting here, introduce yourselves. If you want to give any context to, well, you should probably say what your role is, because not everybody might know that. And then any context that you could give in terms of historical precedence or
 pedestrian infrastructure or anything related to this concept. Who wants to go first? Go for it. Do I just press this button here? Actually, just start talking and eventually we'll like it. Hello? Perfect. Thank you. My name is Hank Duncan, bicycle and pedestrian coordinator in planning and transportation department. I am the staff liaison for the council sidewalk committee. Council members Rosenberger and Stossberg,
 described this committee and the history of it pretty well, so I'll keep my comments brief. Essentially, my job, not just within this committee, but with any project and any source of funds, is to most effectively allocate the funds to impact street safety in our community. With this committee specifically, it is centered around the pedestrian realm. How can we most effectively, most efficiently
 improve pedestrian safety, improve pedestrian accessibility, connectivity. And as Council Member Rosenberger mentioned, we are working with a pot of money here that does not fit very well with large capital projects. We want to encourage efficiency, and that means economies of scale. Sidewalk projects are very expensive, and Mr. Copper can speak to that in a second, but sidewalk projects are expensive, and with the current level of funding,
 Essentially, we are not efficiently spending the money that is allocated towards the pedestrian realm. What we did in this past year is reallocate some of these funds towards small parts of bigger projects. For example, every year, Public Works repaves streets. So we can improve those projects by not just focusing on the auto-centric portions of it and relaying the asphalt,
 adding in sidewalk connections there, or adding in bump outs, or other parts of the project that, because it's part of a bigger project, is more efficient and more cost effective. I will pass it on over to Mr. Copper. You know, Copper, I'm the senior project engineer in the engineering department. So my role mostly comes in once projects have been prioritized, and then we take it through design, right away acquisition if necessary, and then construction.
 I guess just historically a few notes on the council sidewalk process is every year it takes a different amount of time to actually get approval of the projects. So some years there's a single meeting to reach consensus, some years there's four meetings before the projects are actually chosen and before it actually gets to council to allocate that funding.
 which means that we actually get access to that funding at different times every year. I think this year it might have been June, maybe May, that we actually got access to the funding to spend this year. So that can be a challenge. And then just to note that there are
 There's often surprises with any project. We went into it thinking it would be simple, and then it turns out we actually need right of way acquisition on this project, or it's going to be harder to do this. We need to relocate a utility, or something comes up and our original plan doesn't work. And so over the years, we've developed more flexibility with the council sidewalk committee. It used to be very rigid. You need to spend this amount on this project and this amount on this project. It started with,
 kind of percentage changes that we were allowed to do, and then has evolved into the chair of the committee actually can just say, yes, any project that was in the overall list, you can shift funding in between those projects, and that helps, but it can still be a challenge if there's a big surprise on a project. And it can get tricky with timing of projects, especially. And I want to, so one example that's occurring this year
 is we have allocated funding to construction of a sidewalk on Jefferson Street, and it's the lowest priority of the year, and the idea is bid it at the end of the year and cumbers all of the remaining funds for the year. We know it won't be enough for the full project with the idea that next year's council sidewalk committee will then immediately make up any remainder of funds.
 which I think in theory works well, but depends a lot on timeline. So if we don't find out until May again, if we don't get that approval, what we'll actually have to do is cancel the contract and, you know, all the money that had gone into the contract initially will go back into the All Trans Fund and we won't have access to it within that year. And we'll have, you know, kind of lost that contractor in that contract.
 And so there's maybe lengthy ways to get it back. Or, you know, we would, of course, try to look for creative solutions before we got to that point. But that's the kind of challenge that we can run into when we don't get access to that funds. And I will stop there because I didn't mean to talk that much. But thank you. Thank you. I find that very interesting. Ryan Roebling, Planning Services Manager from the Appointing and Transportation Department. I don't know that I can expound on Hank and Neil's comments so far.
 Thank you guys. So I think then with that kind of intro, what we're back to is council now. And asking those questions of each other, should council sidewalk committee exist? If it should, what should its purpose be? What should it fund? And council member Rosemar hit on this. One of the reasons why I wanted to discuss this was because of
 how this year's funding allocations really seemed to change pretty significantly. And we were given a pretty significant bump between last year, between 2024 and 2025, and then it kind of felt like, okay, then we turned around and gave a whole bunch of money back to Public Works. And so kind of like, I don't necessarily have a problem with doing that, but if we're gonna do that, is there a point in doing that? And maybe there is, or maybe we should think about
 it differently or processing it differently, and if we should think about that, then how should we think about it? And it may, I think staff might be doing this right now. Yeah, I was going to say it may help to bring back that so that then we can see Councilmember Rallo. So, Councilmembers, who wants to go first? Dave, or sorry, Councilmember Rallo, you have your hand raised. Why don't you go ahead. I do. Thank you. I have a question. May I ask a question of staff?
 So one significant source of funding that could be utilized is MPO funding for pedestrian projects. How much MPO funding was utilized, say, the past fiscal year for pedestrian-oriented projects? So that's tricky to answer because the pedestrian
 funding within the MPO has been part of larger projects. There haven't been standalone, yeah, I can't think of a standalone strictly sidewalk project within the MPO. There have been a number of multi-use path projects, which of course are a type of sidewalk, and that's putting a lot of money into them. But even those typically are paired with other improvements on the corridor.
 Yeah, so this was now in Courtney Daly's district five, but the College Mall Road project was, I believe, about $2.8 million total. And we got significant matching funds to pay for that. Are we still pursuing that sort of leverage?
 I think you're referencing the say road most I use path just that's what I mean. Yeah. I don't believe that council sidewalk funds have been used as the local match, but the city certainly is pursuing that type of project. Okay. Well, I think that that's excellent because I think that, you know, it used to be oriented mostly for roads, but I think that
 shifting a lot of the priorities to pedestrian or multi-use pathways is a good direction to go in and sort of helps the cost because the cost has obviously increased significantly. So I'm happy to hear that. Maybe we can talk some more about it. It's some later date where we could get a report.
 I mean, we have a representative in the MPO, so we could have that council member give a report on that as well. But that's, I think we should be advocating for that, for use of MPO funding for pedestrians. Anyway, I have more comments, but I'll hold them for now because I don't want to take up, you know, monopolize the time. Okay, that's fine. Thank you for those comments about the MPO. I'm actually the MPO representative.
 Just for some clarity though, Council Member Rallo, were you just thinking a report from like me about MPO stuff we haven't actually met this summer? Or were you thinking that a report from MPO staff would be like, is that like a request about getting a report from the MPO staff? Yeah, well, staff is best placed to tally. Tally the sums could just be a spreadsheet about where
 whether the funding went to specifically pedestrian infrastructure, whether it was coordinated and a shared infrastructure that included side paths or sidewalks and that sort of thing. But it gives us a better idea. I think the staff would be in a position to deliver that information. But I didn't want to circumvent
 you on the MPO if you wanted to give a report on that. I agree that staff would probably be able to answer those questions better than I would. So, yeah. Okay. I'm writing that down. Thank you. So, before we go on to answering kind of those three overarching questions, do any other council members have questions? Questions for staff? Council members, sorry?
 just for anybody who would know this answer. And it informs the, I guess, two of the questions, which is what's the history of, and I'm sorry if I should know this, but what is the history of it being in council specifically? Why is that money that council controls? And why not in Public Works budget or something like that?
 Councilmember Rallo, can you answer that? You were here for the creation. You were here for the creation, right? He was here. He was here in creation. Okay, I'm sorry. The mic isn't on. Okay. Councilmember Rallo, did you hear the question? I did. I did. I didn't hear that you invoked my name, but... Yeah, we just think that you as the longer serving council member up there might be able to give us some input as to why. Yeah, and I was on CYWA committee for a long time, and it was...
 I mean, first of all, it was there were a lot of requests from constituents for sidewalks and there were missing sections. I mean, well, first of all, there were missing sections and then there are neighborhoods with no sidewalks whatsoever. And that was a function of a time when sidewalks were not required of developers. Neither was adequate stormwater for that matter. And so we're talking about a period from the 1950s through the 1980s when significant build out happened. And so some of these neighborhoods
 you know, people just walked in the street in order to get to, you know, where they were going. And the idea was to establish at least some kind of functional sidewalk within neighborhoods that could rub people through, usually along a busy street. And we often partnered with utilities, probably we still do, to put in stormwater as well. So they would,
 we would leverage more money that way because utilities would have a stormwater project that they would partner with the sidewalk committee on. But I think it was that responsiveness that the mayor and the council decided at some point, I don't remember the year, but decided to set up the sidewalk committee for that purpose. Then as plans came, for instance, I think our first one was probably the alternative transportation and green waste plan.
 back in the aughts and that was focused on, you know, how we could get from here to there by pedestrian or for biking. And so that became sort of a guide as well as individual requests from constituents. And, you know, we would take views and see that there were missing gaps, say, you know, when I joined the council, there was no contiguous sidewalk on Maxwell between Henderson and High Street.
 And so the sidewalk committee set about filling those gaps so you could walk. So children, for instance, could walk the contiguous route, um, safely on Maxwell, which was fairly busy street. So I think it came from that process. And I think that it's the council has guarded it in the past because, you know, of course we have a strong mayor and the mayor has extraordinary power relative to the council. And this is one, um,
 thing that the council has at their discretion that can be decided based upon, obviously now it's based on metrics and various parameters of those metrics and so forth. But this would be my argument for keeping it within the council because obviously the mayor has extraordinary power, the mayor comes to us for appropriations, the budget,
 you know, code revisions and things like that. But the council's budget is meager. Our staff is meager. We only have a few staff members. And so giving that money, putting it into, say, planning and transportation is essentially ceding more power to the mayor. So I would think that that would be an error. That's my personal opinion. But anyway, so I hope that helps.
 Are there other questions before we move further into? Okay. So let's remind us of our primary question. Should it exist? What is the purpose? What should it fund? So I think Council Member Aralo just had a vote for yes, it should exist, but that didn't necessarily approach the what should the purpose be and what should it fund. So, Council Members Zulik?
 Thank you, testing, testing. Okay, I'll start off by saying I think we should be thinking about this less of as Sidewalk Committee and more like what our goal is. And when we talk about budgeting for outcomes, like what are we putting our money towards? And when we talk about the Sidewalk Committee, the first two things that come to mind are accessibility and pedestrian safety. And so how do we as a council fund
 that priority. It seems to me that planning and transportation is, I think the Sidewalk Committee makes it a little bit more difficult for them just in terms of like bureaucracy and the amount of steps it takes to get access to that funding. So I'm not necessarily attached to the Sidewalk Committee, but I would like to continue to see council have an active role in deciding how we do go about
 pedestrian safety and accessibility. Council Member, sorry. And again, excuse the maybe foundational question, but what is the alternative? Should that be another? I think Council Member Flaherty had a thought. My thoughts on those questions are responsive to
 Council Member Rosari's question, so. Unless you wanted to share more, Council Member Rosari. No, no, that's exactly my question. That was my whole question. Yeah. Yeah, I think briefly, I think we're kind of going about what we are trying to accomplish here with respect to pedestrian safety and accessibility in an entirely backwards way. We're starting with a sort of negotiated arbitrary amount of money and then seeing what we can manage to squeeze out of it
 in a compressed timeline that runs into weird barriers around having to spend stuff by the end of the year, et cetera. Rather than planning would be an approach that we could take to holistically think about the problem, what type of time scale it is we're trying to quote unquote solve the problem and what solving it means. Does it mean adding 180 miles of missing sidewalks in our city by the year 2050 while replacing another 10 that are
 You know, in terrible shape? What does that look like by way of capital outlay? Can we do capital planning on five or 10-year time cycles? These questions did come up. In fact, we, the council, asked them last year in our budget priorities memo asking for sidewalk infrastructure and capital planning in a comprehensive and holistic way. To me, that plan and adequate commitments around funding would
 obviate the need for a sidewalk committee. I was just reviewing the Q&A from last year's budget cycle because we had a little bit of a misalignment, I guess, in understanding about what we were asking, what the mayor was committing to. In some email and other, she mentioned that the sidewalk master plan will be implemented. Sidewalk master plan is the term we used and what we were requesting as a council.
 What I kept hearing from staff when they were presenting the budget hearing during the budget hearing was essentially what Director Wason presented last week, an operational and maintenance plan based on a better data assessment, which is also important, as I said last week. So I think we teased out that disconnect. And Director Hiddle, for instance, referenced that, yes, when the mayor said sidewalk master plan, she was referring to the Public Works Department project about operations and maintenance.
 But that a sidewalk team was assembled across multiple city departments. Again, I think Director Wason mentioned this. And they would be tasked with guiding development of a sidewalk master planner. It's equivalent for infrastructure, trails, side paths, non-sidewalk pedestrian facilities, et cetera. How do we think holistically, again, about the problem? We're probably not going to add sidewalks to every single street. Multi-use paths are another type of pedestrian infrastructure.
 And then it said, Director Hiddles said, depending on the answers to these questions, the sidewalk plan may be created in-house or may be commissioned to an external firm. In the event of the latter, Public Works and PNT have consultancy funds available. So this is all in the context of the 2025 budget. I don't think this is being done in 2025. Again, I think there was a little ambiguity on where we landed on it ultimately with last year's budget. But I asked about it again last week, and I think,
 with attention and priority from this council, I think we can get there. And I think that's how you approach the problem in a way that gets us out of the shortcomings and challenges that are inherent to, you know, a laudable effort from past councils to get some attention and focus and money going to this important issue when there wasn't a good other way to do it.
 So I think that's where I'd like to see us at. I think that eliminates the need for the Sidewalk Committee eventually, but until we have that in place, I'd be loathe to eliminate the committee because I think it's been simply through inertia, you know, and a sort of useful mechanism to have some accountability around spending on pedestrian infrastructure. That's it. Great. Who else wants to contribute a comment?
 And I'd just like to say that, I mean, I fundamentally agree with that statement that if it's the, that sort of gets at, if these are the three questions that are guiding our conversation, it's like if the way that we currently invest in sidewalk infrastructure is through this committee and there's no alternative that is viable at the moment, I think the rest of the conversation is sort of, there's not much more to discuss. I mean, it's like, you know, we,
 should continue as such and increase the amount of money as possible. Okay, can I rephrase to make sure that I understood that right? So you fundamentally agree with what Councilmember Flaherty just said, that it's still like a useful mechanism right now because we don't, because there doesn't exist a better plan for pedestrian infrastructure? Okay. Concur.
 It's like partial. I know staff has, I think, mapped all the sidewalk gaps. Like generally speaking, we know this has been used by the sidewalk committee. The multimodal priority network in the transportation plan, of course, includes pedestrian infrastructure for some of those facility types. And I think Director Hittle was getting to the point that this is bigger than sidewalks. We're really talking about pedestrian infrastructure and accessibility and safety.
 And I think the Safe Streets for All action plan also does a lot by way of tactics and how to prioritize action, so a lot by process, but I think we're still lacking some aspect of the whole picture view of the infrastructure that we think is reasonably attainable or even is ambitious on some time cycle and what it would cost and how we're gonna actually capital plan for that.
 Councilmember Rosenberger, do you want to weigh in at all on the discussion so far? Hi. Oh, I agree. I mean, I'm glad that Councilmember Flaherty just said that, too, because I think that, you know, not to be defensive of the sidewalk committee, but where we have headed with it is trying to
 like eliminate bias and use our plans that are available to us. So right, like changing over to the transportation plan and safe streets for all I think is right now the best we can do at using a holistic approach and like a priority network to decide where this small amount of money goes. So maybe a slightly different question is like is,
 So do we see any issues similar to what we see with like Jack Hopkins where our limited capacity somewhat limits the effectiveness of the organ? So not questioning whether it should exist, but should it be slightly redesigned, reconstituted, or something of that nature to make it more effective at the goal that it's tasked with?
 It goes into what I was gonna say next. I mean, I think that I just heard this, one, two, three, four, five, five members who are here that are not myself saying, yes, it should exist. And the next two questions that we had for guiding questions is what is the purpose and what should it fund? So I think, Council Member, sorry, what you just said was, well, what is the purpose and should we reassess what the purpose should be?
 Right, is that what you just asked? Somewhat, maybe a bit, slightly different is that it's the question of insofar as we have agency and control over it, like what adjustments need to be made in this coming year to make it more effective. And we know one of those answers, I mean, I think that one of the things that would be very useful is more funding to it. I mean, I think that that's something that we have
 consensus across council for, you know, whether or not the realities would allow for that in our current state is a different question. But, you know, I mean, I think that we all agree on that. But are there other things? Like how else can we help? How can we be useful in this conversation to move this forward in some meaningful way?
 Mr. Copper said it might be helpful for us to start meeting more in advance to make sure that those funds are available, or at least if they're not going to be, that the Planning and Transportation Department has that information sooner so that they can make different decisions on projects that are being funded. So like, for example, if Planning and Transportation knows in November that they have a project that they're going to need future sidewalk committee funds for, how can we
 expedite the process so that we're voting on it in January or February so that we can eliminate that pain point, at least while we're transitioning towards something else, if that's the route that we go. Is that feasible? I do think that's feasible. I wanted to actually add a different point if I can. I don't mean to distract from that question, but I just wanted, you may know all this, but I wanted to be sure it's clear that the
 money allocated to the council sidewalk committee is not all of the money that the city spends on pedestrian infrastructure. It's actually the minority of that money. Councilmember Rallo alluded to the MPO funds where we're spending millions of dollars, our own locally funded projects. The council sidewalk committee does tend to, or has historically been the only sidewalk projects, like nothing else is involved, but we spend
 more than the council sidewalk committee does just on pedestrian curb ramps alone. And that again on crosswalk improvements and multi-use paths and road reconstructions that include sidewalks. So in reference to the idea of a bigger planning effort, I just wanted to make sure that was clear that that planning shouldn't be just on this pot of money that is again the minority. So I just wanted to make sure that was known.
 I think that's a key bit of information for the question. How then, what recommendation would you make to, in that context, make the pot of money that is used here more effective? How do we supercharge what we're doing? So it all comes back to flexibility. It's not just about when we meet.
 but it's about how we allocate the funding to what projects we allocated to. One key example this year. So this was the first year that we allocated a bucket of money to repaving projects. That being bump outs, crosswalk improvements, et cetera. But we didn't specify exactly which locations that money was going to, because we know throughout the repaving cycle,
 Changes happen. This happens with any capital project. We, as Mr. Copper mentioned earlier, we may think we have the funds to do this, but we don't, so we change it to site B, et cetera. For example, we used, we were thinking about three locations on East 2nd Street, 2nd and Lincoln, 2nd and Grant, 2nd and Dunn for bump outs for pedestrians. It turns out, on another repaying project on East Rogers, we had the opportunity to put in a pedestrian refuge island.
 if we had been specific about exactly what sites we were using those funds for, we probably wouldn't have been able to construct that pedestrian refuge island. But because that allocation was broad in terms of where we can use it, we were able to do that.
 In past years, we have met in December. I think maybe November. It gets so hard with the holidays and recess that that is why then in the last few years we've started in the new year and this year was later just because it doesn't matter. So we could at least do that again. Like once the 2026 budget is set, we can direct funds. And I think too a big change over the few years is
 I think the meetings used to revolve around what projects council members wanted to see. And now planning staff brings project ideas to us, which I think is a good guide instead that you all come with ideas and maybe like version A, version B to look at and talk about. So I think that is useful.
 I think I would like to say this was at the beginning, but I don't consider that the money went back to Public Works. I consider the money is with planning and engineering, and they are using it in coordination with Public Works projects. Thank you. That's a good clarification. Okay. Oh, another thing that we were going to discuss just around these questions is that,
 It is called the Sidewalk Committee for a year. Last term it was called the Transportation Committee. And so our second slide just has some pictures of what do we want to use the money for. Is it like about, so this is about the purpose and funding, but like is it just creating those sidewalk links or is it the pedestrian realm and the Safe Streets Plan and right, like islands and bump outs.
 Some council members, I think, are on the fence about that. And I think it is something we should talk about, even though some of them are not here. I think that would maybe weigh in. I'm trying to, like, take notes on all this at the same time as I'm trying to lead a meeting. I guess maybe I would like to ask, like, what if council members haven't weighed in on, like, the flexibility of the 2025 funds and how they see that? Like, do you like it? Do you not like it?
 Council member Rallo, it would be good to hear from you, I think, on that aspect of the changes over time toward more flexibility. Sorry, could you restate that, the changes over time flexibility of the spending for sidewalks? Yes. For example, how this in 2025, we gave 300,000 to
 repaving project coordination for pedestrian improvements. And in previous years, we have said, right, we're gonna construct this half a block between 13th and 14th on Woodburn or something like that. Well, I think flexibility is part of the, it should be. I think if you want to optimize pedestrian,
 Access and infrastructure, it seems to me that you need flexibility in order to consider projects that wouldn't be necessarily sidewalks. So we were, for a long time, we were not looking at crosswalks as much, but then it was apparent that, you know, crosswalks were necessary. So I think that the process has improved over time. I really appreciate staff's input. You know, obviously they do this for a living and they've got
 their eyes on it quite a lot and they have means to measure and test and quantify things. But there is something to say for constituent input and people coming and saying, hey, I've been living in this neighborhood for 20 years and traffic's gotten worse and we're more or less
 neighborhood bound, we can't leave our neighborhood to walk to the nearest grocery store because it's too dangerous without some form of sidewalk or infrastructure of some kind. So that's important too. I had a quick question. May I ask? Well, should we see if anybody else has a question or has an answer to Kate's?
 because I mean I've mentioned that a couple times so I guess like I want to answer that and be really clear that I don't necessarily object to that and I think that the flexibility is also good but it I think it my concern with it is the like bureaucracy red tape that it's like I feel like we kind of passed it back to be used to supplement those projects like six months later and so if Public Works had known that
 or engineering had known that in January or February, then it might have been able to just be easier. And so a solution to that is managing to shift our calendars to do those recommendations and allocations earlier in the year, especially knowing when these projects need to happen. I mean, it's weather dependent, right? So it's what, like April?
 probably starts really your prime kind of actual construction. So if you don't know until June that there's gonna be money for such and such a thing, then it really, I think it gets dicey. I think it gets dicey. So if we can solve that by being really cognizant of calendars, then I think that that's great. I think as a council then we all have to kind of have buy-in for that.
 both with whoever the chair is and communicating with the staff and also whoever's on that committee and making sure that people respond to requests for scheduling and those sorts of things so that we can actually get meetings scheduled and then attended in terms of committee meetings because that is sometimes an obstacle and that that's up to us to
 like that is something that we can control, that we each need to have adult responsibility over checking our email and responding to requests like that. Yeah, so council member, sorry, do you have, let's go back to Kate's original question about the $300,000 before we detour to other things. Does anybody else have a response to that? Okay.
 Council Member, sorry, I hate to cut you off, but Council Member Rallo also said that he had a question too. You're cutting me off, don't worry. Okay, so Council Member Rallo, what was your question that you wanted to ask before? Yeah, so this is kind of a broader question about pedestrian accessibility. But since we go through a lot of trouble sometimes to make greenways, to put in sidewalks, and then they sort of end at a point where
 there's quite a bit of hazard involved in crossing a major roadway. So I'm thinking of places like, you know, the Hawthorne Weatherstone Greenway crossing from Weatherstone to Olive. There is a, you know, a flasher with a speed counter there. There's one at Olcott and Eastmores Pike. There's a raised bit, a crosswalk with, you know, I believe a speed counter.
 There to alert people, at least eastbound, I think, um, at the Allen street crossing at, um, uh, on Walnut, um, for that greenway, there is a crosswalk, but there is no lading of any kind. I wonder about, you know, whether we should be thinking about whether the city is considering or staff is considering hawk signals. So when a, when a pedestrian arrives, they can.
 safely cross because they can trigger a light. That would give people adequate time to get across the street, especially those who may not be as spry and able-bodied. My question is about, should we be considering hawk signals at some key locations that would facilitate this kind of crossing, especially at major arterials, from designated pedestrian
 you know, infrastructure like greenways. I think that that's a great question that speaks to some of the original question in terms of what should we fund. And I think that Mr. Duncan has a response to that. Go for it. So I'm going to go back a couple of steps and then end up answering your question. So we've been talking about the goal of this committee, the goal of what we're doing with pedestrian safety throughout tonight.
 The goal is Vision Zero. The goal is zero fatalities or severe injuries on city roadways. This all goes back to the Safe Streets for All action plan that Waysa City adopted last fall. That is the goal of all of our transportation projects, including those funded by this committee. As we move forward from this goal, that has shifted a lot of the city's priorities in what we are funding, how we are funding it, and what types of streets or corridors where we are prioritizing.
 which gets into what you're talking about, Council Member Rallo, in terms of those more dangerous or high-risk profile nodes and intersections that, yes, maybe we have developed something low stress on a corridor, but as you get to an intersection, that prevents people from crossing it. We are very aware, and that is actually
 probably the biggest impact of the Safe Streets for All priority network, priority intersection network, where we are shifting our priorities around and focusing more on those specific locations. For example, we as staff are prioritizing a project on Indiana Avenue because it has a history of fatal and severe crashes, because it has a high risk profile, because there are a lot of people who cross it. We are prioritizing in different
 grant applications, different projects, funding sources, crosswalk projects on Atwater, on Third Street, on these more high-profile corridors that do stop people from walking, from biking, from traveling in the ways that we want to encourage them to travel in. Now, into your specific question about hawk signals, we are considering every type of intersection
 It's all context dependent on where we put what. It could be a bump out. It could be a pedestrian refuge island. It could be a rapid flashing beacon. There are a lot of different types. There are a lot of different tools we have on our box to improve these more high risk intersections and corridors. And the hawk signal is definitely one. In terms of where exactly we put it, that's when we put it.
 and go out and do our public outreach. That's when we have our pop-up tabling events, our public meetings, et cetera, because we want to hear from the residents about what's working and what's not. And it very much is context-dependent. How can? Thanks for answering that. Could I just ask, I'm only aware of, I think, one honk signal. Are there more than by the stadium? There was one that was deployed there. If it still exists there, I can't remember.
 Do we, are there more that I'm unaware of? Mr. Duncan, do you know? There's one on South Walnut. There's one on Winslow. There's one on East 10th Street. That's actually on an Indot facility. So we can judge their effectiveness because you've got ones that you can kind of, you know, test. Yeah. So I think the answer is that there are a bunch. And so my question was going to be like,
 How much do those cost? Sometimes called a hock signal is probably more expensive. The equipment itself is probably more expensive than other treatments. I'm just going to throw out 100,000. Hold on. I'm sorry. We just had a council member leave. Do we need to call a five minute recess? Because we don't have quorum without everybody at the table. Yeah.
 Let's answer this question first and then we'll take a brief recess. For public knowledge, we have five council members in person tonight and we need to maintain five in person in order to have a meeting. So if you would like to continue Mr. Copper, so you were saying they're more expensive than some other treatments. They're more expensive, the equipment itself a lot actually ends up coming down to what do you have to do
 in the concrete infrastructure around a project, regardless of what type of tool you're using. So it's really hard to actually give an answer, but for the equipment itself, I'm just gonna throw out a $100,000 number and then say it could vary wildly, depending on what else you need to do. So it's like $100,000 just for the flashers and the posts and...
 Yeah, and to be clear, pedestrian hybrid beacon is the one, you know, you've got mast arms that extend out over the street that have the red lights that come on and flash in addition to the flashing yellow light, not just the ones that are on the side that flash yellow back and forth. Do those have different names? They do. Okay, so what's the one called that has the arms over the street? Because that's like what's on South Walnut, right? Whereas the one on Pete Ellis is just like the posts on either side. Yeah, so the South Walnut
 a pedestrian hybrid beacon, sometimes called a hawk signal, which I think is what Councilmember Varallo was asking about primarily. And then on Pete Ellis, that's actually a rectangular rapid flashing beacon. OK. So that's called a rectangular rapid flashing beacon. It's real fun talking about all these different names at a public meeting and expecting people to know what you mean. Yeah. Well, that's why I'm repeating and saying it's super slow.
 Is this super relevant to her? Well, to me it is, because it's the kind of thing like, is this an affordable piece for Sidewalk Committee to fund? So how much roughly is the equipment for the rectangular rapid flashing beacon? Maybe half that for the equipment itself. OK, great. President Stossberg, could I just ask, are there any that require people to come to a complete stop?
 Or is it just a flashing beacon? I mean, cars come to a complete stop. The pedestrian hybrid beacon does require cars to come to a complete stop. Yeah. OK. OK. So with that being said, let's go ahead and recess until 736. So that's five minute recess until 736. Thank you.
 There he comes. Okay, so calling us back to order at 736, we were just talking about both the cost of the flashing beacon systems and also that there are actually different ones, one being like the full, I'll say like the full shebang kind of thing, which is like what is on South Walnut that goes over Walnut Street like into Switchyard Park.
 I think all of us know what we're talking about, but I also sometimes want to say thanks for clarity to the public, including public who might watch this meeting tomorrow or the next day. And then, so differentiating that kind of signalized device from a rectangular rapid flashing beacon, which is just the flashers on either end, like is on Pete Ellis, like is the crossing of the beeline on,
 Oh, I was gonna remember the streets. I was right there this morning. But on the south side of town, there's some of those across the beeline too. What street am I thinking of? Country Club. So there's one of those there too. And so those are significantly less than the Hawk Signal. And I think that I'm going through that again because my question for staff is, are those indicated specifically for different size roads?
 To clarify first, the B-line crossing at Country Club is a pedestrian hybrid beacon. It is the full. It has red lights, stops traffic. It's not an RRFB for short. But it's smaller than the one on Walnut, right? It's probably smaller because it's crossing a two-lane road instead of a four-lane road. To your question, yes, there are different
 different places where we would use the different tools. So typically on a busier, larger, higher speed street, you would look more towards the pedestrian hybrid beacon that actually requires traffic to stop. And on lower volume, lower speed streets, two lane roads, generally you would look more towards rectangular rapid flashing beacon. There's lots of different pros and cons for the tools. OK. Cool. All right.
 And that was of course all in kind of the context question of what should the sidewalk committee fund maybe in terms of looking at pedestrian infrastructure more holistically as opposed to just sidewalks because of expensive sidewalks. So in answering those questions, the what is the purpose and the what should it fund, what are other council member thoughts on this right now?
 on the Sidewalk Committee, does it have a purpose statement of any kind in its existing? Council Member Rosenberger? Origin story? I don't think it does. Or ongoing management? I kind of feel like I remembered seeing something in one of the resolutions that was included in the packet, so let me, I mean, it just, the main paragraph on history is that the ATF was created to decrease the community's reliance on the automobile, and sort of from that came the Sidewalk Committee.
 And I guess when we changed it to the transportation committee, we used that a lot, that the fund itself is for decreasing reliance on the automobile. Yeah. And so what I read earlier in terms of what the controller gave me in terms of the fund, I felt like there were different categories of things in terms of that fund could be used to pay for operations and maintenance for the parking programs, can pay for related
 employee and professional services related to that and then reducing the city's dependence upon the automobile. And so the way I kind of read that was, okay, the sidewalk committee portion of the ATF focuses on reducing city dependence on automobile. Because there's different categories of money from that per the controller. And then the most original resolution we could find or staff could find
 was in 2013. It says the committee shall make recommendations to the full council on the use of the ATF fund money specifically budgeted for council recommended sidewalk and traffic calming projects. Okay. I guess with respect to the three questions in our prompt today, I think we're generally in alignment that it can be more than just sidewalks in the interest of meeting
 pedestrian-related goals of the city, perhaps first and foremost, safety, also accessibility, sustainability, equity. And I guess if the answer to the first question is that we think we need a holistic plan in place, which is what we said last year, then I don't know if we need to go to lengths to answer the other two questions, that it's a bit of a holding pattern until we can get the thing in place.
 And yeah, I mean, it came up last week. I certainly intend to ask about status and plans during the budget cycle because there was a commitment last year during the budget cycle to move forward with an infrastructure, like a holistic infrastructure plan. And I think the transportation, I mean, that's going to have to be either an internal or a consultant.
 you know, advised like for capacity reasons and maybe expertise as well involved with consultants, which is what Director Hiddle said in the budget questions from last year. I think the transportation committee that's now up and running is, you know, name checked as the standing committee to advise on projects like that. So that seems well suited. Like I think, again, with priority this can move forward probably within the next year and maybe one year from now we'll be talking about
 funding mechanisms to implement this thing as opposed to the dollar amount for the sidewalk committee's annual appropriation. I guess that's, I'm interested in questions like that more than like how much is this piece of flashing beacon versus this flashing beacon. Although I appreciate the interest in the detail too.
 I mean, it matters, it's relevant, but. I think I'm going down the path of there's not that much more to discuss. I don't know when I hear what page others are on. I think that I have one more thing that I want to kind of cycle back to, which is something that you said about the name of the committee and that it was the sidewalk committee and that it was
 the transportation committee, and then it was the sidewalk committee again. But I feel like it's kind of a misnomer if we're called the sidewalk committee, but we're mostly not funding sidewalks and funding other pedestrian infrastructure instead. And there are, I think, going to be a couple of resolutions coming through in the next few months about committees. One being there was the suggestion about interview committees changing to
 have the liaison thing, and so then there was gonna be some flux and stuff shifting around, and so renaming or reestablishment of the sidewalk committee to slightly maybe update language based on what we've discussed tonight might be appropriate there. And then similarly, Council Member Sari mentioned Jack Hopkins as also kind of being another thing to kind of like assess to some degree, and one of the things that I noticed kind of at the end
 like in June, I can't remember if I said it out loud to like to all of council, is that the like founding documentation around the Jack Hopkins committee structure itself is like scattered throughout Jack Hopkins funding resolutions. So it'll say like, okay, we wanna, you know, allocate such and such a money to like all of these things.
 oh, and we also wanna change the Jack Hopkins committee from five council representatives to four, or the resident appointments from three to two, or whatever it is, and so those are all scattered in there, so that's kind of another committee resolution that I kind of have on my mind to figure out so that then it's easier to find in one place what the Jack Hopkins committee purpose is supposed to be, so I think,
 The short of what I'm asking is should we potentially rename the Sidewalk Committee to accommodate this? Does anybody have objection to that? And does anybody have any ideas about what the name could or should be? Council Member Zulek. I would suggest Pedestrian Safety Committee.
 structure does make a lot of sense. Any other idea? Like, this is an idea generating time. Like, you all can generate lots of ideas. You can also go, Council Member Aralo. Yeah, I like the idea. And I've been kind of pondering this thinking holistically, and I think that
 has more to do than just infrastructure. We all know that the degree of injury from a car collision to a pedestrian goes up exponentially on the basis of speed. If we're really going to address decreasing fatalities and injury, we should think about enforcement. We need to enforce the speed limit. I'm quite horrified that Weatherstone Hawthorne
 greenway crossing at Olive, it doesn't seem to have made any impact. I mean, that's just my anecdotal opinion. I don't know if there's been speed counts there. Maybe I'm mistaken, but it seems that people aren't just sort of ignoring that. And so, and I think that the, you know, my understanding is that sworn officers are the only people that can issue traffic tickets. And so I think that we need to think about, um,
 staffing of BPD if we're going to address pedestrian safety. My point is I like the name because it should be about pedestrian safety and it has to be holistic and it's not just about infrastructure. I know that we would be spending money not for police on the committee, but just sending a message that certain areas, just having behavioral change on the basis of
 you know, speed enforcement would probably make a big difference and actually aid our infrastructure. So I like the name that Council Member Zulik proposed. All right, so I have proposals for a pedestrian infrastructure committee or a pedestrian safety committee. Are there other name suggestions or thoughts?
 feel free to email them to me later too. If you suddenly wake up in the middle of the night going, oh my gosh, I have the perfect name for that, go ahead and email me, that's fine. Anything in closing? Actually, I'm not gonna go to closing yet. Y'all can think about closing for just a minute because I'm gonna go to public comment right now because we can't end the meeting totally.
 we need to go to public comment. So at these meetings, we generally just allow public comment related to what we have talked about. So I don't see a whole lot of public in the room right now. But if you are online right now and would like to make a comment related to the sidewalk committee, related to sidewalk infrastructure, related to sidewalk safety or pedestrian safety,
 please go ahead and use the reactions tab to raise your hand or you can send a chat message to the host and I'll just wait here a second and see if anybody raises their hand. The clerk has their hand up. Would you like to come to the table and make a public comment? Okay, go for it. Well, is the timer ready from staff? Okay, when you're ready.
 So this evening I heard a few questions asked about when sidewalk was committee committee was formed and the rationale behind it and I wanted to add that the council has a lot of these records in their files and in their minutes and everything else so they are accessible to you if you want to access them either through online or directly through the iDrive if you have them.
 It's unfortunate that council member rough was not here this evening because he was on the committee when it was formed in 2002 to answer your earlier question and even doing a very cursory look during this meeting tonight I was able to see that you all have been having discussions and you all meeting council members not these direct council members have been having these discussions for almost 30 years now about sidewalk funding and staff funding and
 Even back in 2000 staff noted that council had added an additional one hundred and twenty thousand dollars in funding for sidewalks that had not been planned for. And I think that might have been part of the trigger. I don't know if it helps you in your discussion this evening but we are always available to help you find that information if you need it. And if you give us a little lead time we can get you more information.
 In that intervening time, has there been any members of the public raise their hand on Zoom? Okay, great. When you're unmuted, please state your name for the record and then you'll have up to three minutes. Can you hear me? Hello? This is Paul Rousseau. I'm assuming you can hear me.
 Thank you. Um, I appreciate very much the comments by council member Rolo. I agree with almost everything he said tonight. I would like to add briefly personal story. I usually get around by bicycle. You may remember, I think I told all of you about being hit by a car last summer. And so then for four months, I was getting around exclusively on sidewalks or by bus.
 But when I was on sidewalks, I was using a walker and then I was using a cane. And so I was not very nimble. It was not very spry. And I was shocked by how difficult it was in a lot of places. The connectivity issues, snow issues. Of course, that was perhaps an unusual circumstance. I don't know if we're going to have that again. But all these things really made me understand what it's like for some people who always have to get around on foot
 and how much improvement there is to be made. So I strongly support the hawk system that was presented or suggested by council member Rolo. And I strongly support the idea of more enforcement for speed limits. Thank you. Great, thank you. Sorry, it was hard to respond when you were asking if anybody could hear these microphones are a little different than the ones that we're used to.
 Are there other commenters online? Great, thank you so much. I'm not seeing any more in chambers. We'll go ahead and close the public comment time and then I'll bring it back to the group at the table. Are there any like last final closing comments or thoughts? And of course, by table, I include Council Member Aralo in that even though he's at a kind of extended virtual table tonight. Any closing thoughts to kind of leave us with?
 from council members or staff. Great. I always put a little note on council schedule here just to have something. The only note that I have is that next week we have a regular session next Wednesday on July 30th. Are there any other council schedule notes, any committee meetings anybody wants to announce, anything like that?
 Seeing none, we are adjourned. Thank you very much.