Nov 21, 2019 Committee on Persons with Disabilities on 2019-11-21 6:00 PM

All right, it is 6.01 and we're going to call the meeting to order. We do have a quorum present. Val Vera and Valerie Morgan have been excused for the evening due to reasons they've explained to Mark. Because of the new sound recording system, I want to let you know that we need to make sure that I recognize you by calling your name and that we don't interrupt or talk over each other. Because it messes up that captioning that we fought so hard to get. All right, so this is the meeting of the Committee on Persons with Disabilities for Thursday, November 21st, 2019. And we have determined that a quorum is present. First is presentations from members of the public. Am I the only? Okay. I have signed up to speak as a member of the public, not as a member of the committee. I am speaking to represent my neighborhood. I live in Idiots Hill. And in our neighborhood is Wilson Elementary. And the school is being rebuilt while school is in session. So what was the playground is gone and is being built on and the original building is still standing. And eventually the teacher's parking lot will be removed. So they are putting the teacher's parking lot. We have two park systems that connect together. And right where the walkway is across the street, they are going to put what they're calling a temporary parking lot. Temporary is estimated to be two years. This is going to increase traffic, it's going to screw with visibility. And as a disabled member of the neighborhood, it is going to make it a lot more unsafe. And there's not anything keeping people from parking there at night when the teachers are gone. So the visibility problem and the traffic problem is an all-day problem, not just an early morning problem. The crosswalk also crosses at an angle, which decreases visibility and even works. Now if this plan is in place, that means planning and zoning knows and the school department knows. The parks and rec department knows. You know who didn't know about it? The disability committee. And to me that's a problem because I know a lot of people in my neighborhood that are disabled. And we didn't get told about this until it was already a done deal. We didn't even have time to make comments to our city council member. We found out through the neighborhood Facebook page that it was a done deal. And that just seems like not enough notice for the neighborhood, not enough time for you to give feedback to the plan, and a real inconvenience for every disabled person in that neighborhood, and to me a danger. So I just wanted to express the concern that things are being done that maybe neighborhoods aren't aware are being done, or maybe other committees aren't aware of what is being done in the school board committee and the planning and zoning committee and other committees. There needs to be some resolution for us to communicate with other committees and to know about things that are going to happen in our town so that we can give input as disabled people when a plan like that happens. Okay, that's my two cents for it itself. It's been requested that we move item A first. Consider the approval of meeting minutes. I motion to, can I motion? Make a motion. Do you need seconds? Alright, we'll accept the minute meetings. And then we're... I'm sorry, I may have made a mistake. I think you have to take a vote. We had a second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Sorry, first timer. No, you're good. Alright, we are going to move item F to now so that the speaker can get on the road. Receive a report and hold a discussion regarding the implementation of an exclusive pedestrian-based pilot program at certain downtown intersections around the square. And our speaker is Brian John, city traffic engineer. Good evening, Brian John, city traffic engineer. So, I'm here to talk to you tonight about traffic signals in cars and pedestrians and how we're supposed to make a few of them a little more safe around the downtown square. So, before I get into a proposal, I want to give a little bit of background on traffic signals and pedestrians and how the vehicle and pedestrian mix works historically and still at many locations. When the traffic signal goes green for the cars, the walk signal comes on at the same time. Now, this is problematic in certain instances where you have high turning volumes because as soon as that pedestrian steps off the curb, you've got a car that wants to turn right. They're not always looking for the pedestrian, they're looking for cars, so there's a conflict there. Similarly, as the car proceeds through the intersection and tries to turn left, pedestrians may be stepping off the curb going the opposite direction, again, a conflict point. So, what we have done in the last few years is introduce what we call the initial pedestrian interval, five or six or seven seconds of walk time before the car gets to green. This allows the pedestrian to get into the crosswalk much more visible. It does not eliminate that conflict, but it helps because it, again, makes the pedestrian more visible. So, as pedestrian volumes increase, or at locations where you have high pedestrian volumes and high turning movements, such as the downtown square, we're trying to isolate those movements even more. And what we're proposing is what we call an exclusive pedestrian phase, or as our public affairs group has termed it, the all-walk crosswalks. So, what happens during the all-walk crosswalks is a pedestrian will activate the button, and this is a requirement, must push the button, and then when that phase comes up, when that time is being served, all of the crosswalks will indicate a walk signal at the same time. You can cross in any direction that you want. And so, no cars are moving, no turns on red, all the signals are indicating a red for the vehicle, so there's no conflict between the pedestrians and the vehicles. Not a new concept, first used in the '40s, and then after World War II, when people fell in love with the car and what person, what car, it kind of fell out of favor, because very few people were walking anymore. So now, as we've seen a resurgence in the complete streets concept, we're providing for all modes, we're trying to get people out of their cars and walking, we're seeing a lot more of these pedestrian-only phases introduced. A lot of them are in very urbanized centers, but we think that we have a great opportunity around the square. So, it increases the convenience for pedestrians that no longer have to conflict with the cars. Definitely promotes and improves the safety. We've eliminated the possibility of the cars and the pedestrians moving at the same time. Each has their own turn, no conflicts again. And the other thing it does is it really, what we're trying to do, we're really trying to promote walking, trying to make it comfortable and attractive to walk around the square, park two blocks away, and walk. And so, this is our pilot program, the four intersections around the square, but we want to consider, if this is successful, then we want to be able to take it on the road and put it elsewhere where we think it's appropriate. Where do we go now? Excuse me? What locations? What locations? Where? When. When. I'll get there in a minute. We've got a couple of slides on some timeline and some implementation. It's sooner than you think. So again, it increases the pedestrian visibility even more than the initial pedestrian interval, because all the pads are moving at the same time in the same direction. Cars don't have to wonder, can I go now? Is this person going to step off the curb? They have a red light. Conflicts are eliminated. We can actually reduce the overall pedestrian crossing time and vehicular crossing time, because we've taken that conflict away. You don't have to wait for a pedestrian to clear the crosswalk. The pedestrian doesn't have to wait for the car who doesn't want to wait and goes in front of them, so we can actually shorten the time for both the crossing of pedestrians and the clearance of vehicles. Yes? With this plan, is there still the initial pedestrian interval? No, we've eliminated the need for that. It takes that away. So some of that time we're getting back to the – actually it's going to go to the vehicular phase, but we're trying to maintain adequate walking times. I'm going to throw a twist in here at you, even though we don't – let me get to the photos here. So we can increase vehicular delay. There are some locations where we might need more time for the pedestrians, and because of the way we're serving traffic, a little bit of increase in the delay. We've looked at these four intersections. We don't see – we're going to have a significant change, because we're able to move the green around the intersection for the cars, because we can use a shorter time. We do eliminate the turns on red, left and right. So around the square, we do have some one-way configurations where some – right now you can make a left turn on red, you can make a right turn on red. With this, that has to stop, because we don't want the conflict. Again, people looking for vehicular traffic and making a right turn and turning into pedestrians. So we may have – we may introduce some driving frustration. Now, what we're hoping is that as this program continues, people get a little bit used to it, everybody lures to take their turn, and that frustration will die down. I don't have my assistant – Todd Estes and I have been doing kind of a pinch hitting. Todd actually drove an intersection in Vancouver this past summer. He didn't know that he was going to come across this, and it had only been in place for a few weeks. But I'll put it in a short summary. What he said – what he found is that it was the most comfortable intersection that he drove through, because there was no chaos. It was – there was order. Everybody knew they had a turn. You might have to wait your turn, but when you got your turn, you wonder, am I going to be in conflict with the pedestrian? Am I going to be in conflict with another car? So it kind of brings some order out of the chaos of everybody getting the right-of-way at the same time. So here's the intersections that we're talking about. Oak and Locust, Oak and Allen, Hickory and Locust. We have taken this to the Main Street Association, Traffic Safety Commission, DEDC. We went to the Mobility Committee. We presented to Council, and Council approved, subject to your responses. So they wanted to hear from this committee and get your feedback prior to us initiating this program. We were looking originally at the 21st, 22nd. We've now pushed that to the 25th, Monday, implementation. We want to start it on a Friday and then have some conflict with staff. We want to be able to be in the field. As this is kicking off, we want to have a lot of observation, a lot of hands-on, be able to put people at these locations to help pedestrians and inform drivers of the proper way to run this. So we're going to run this program for five to six months. Again, we were originally going to run it just for the holidays, but we want to get a lot of feedback. I think we're going to have an initial curve of people not really knowing. How do I do this? Is this working? I don't know. But we want to give it enough time to settle down and get some rhythm so that people can -- they've got an established pattern. They're used to it. Sometimes that takes more than two months. Sometimes it takes a lot longer. So we're going to run this for six months. We're going to be out there collecting data. The Public Affairs Group has put together a fantastic website. There's a survey. We're going to try and get feedback from property owners, from pedestrians, from drivers, just as much as we can. We've got cameras at each of these locations. We'll be watching the activities. And we'll be assessing, as best we can, the success of this program through the feedback and through our observations. And then we'll bring that back to counsel. We'll present our information. They'll deliberate and determine whether or not they want this to stay as a permanent condition or if they want to terminate the program, go back to the way it's operating now with that leading pedestrian interval and sharing the same direction right away with the vehicles. So with that, I'll take questions. I was an embassy officer in Paris and I was also in Tokyo where they have this art. They've implemented it for decades. And they not only had it to where you could walk in a square, but they also had it in an X where you could go across the intersection. And it was met with great success, especially if you're an elderly or handicapped person. You could get across the intersection instead of having to walk around the intersection. And that way you didn't have the time where the person got as far as one intersection and then had to wait for the cycle to go through. And what they did, as I remember, in Tokyo, near the Tokyo Tower, they had a diagonal pedestrian light that would flash red and count down and tell them, "You're not going to go diagonal here shortly. It's going to cut off." So we're doing this in kind of a Texas two-step. Right now the accessible ramps around the square are directional, so they go straight across. The reason we're not implementing the diagonal, it's legal. We're going to say you can do it. We're going to provide enough time to do it. But we don't have the ramps and we're not going to paint the crosswalks until council makes this a permanent program. So if council determines that they want to stay with this, then we'll go back, we'll create a plan, find somebody, fix those, create the corner-loaded ramps and paint the diagonal crosswalks so that you can go anywhere you want to inside that box. And so we will be providing enough time. We ran a test this past week and we'll be providing enough time, and we are using the countdown timers, that you will be able to make potentially two moves more diagonal. Two moves for an average person, but an elderly or disabled person. Right. If you're moving at a slower pace, then you may only get one. But we are extending the time from what it is today. We're adding about four seconds. So, and we're going to be out in the field washing and making adjustments if we see the vehicular backups. Well, I think vehicular traffic also will begin to avoid the downtown square. You know, because there's a lot of people that just drive through there. And it's like getting on I-35, eventually people locally are avoiding it. And it's a balance, it's a trade-off. It's the square, we're going to kind of try and focus on accessibility and making it pad-friendly. You can get there, you can still move around the square in your car. It may take you ten seconds longer to make the entire block. But, if you're just going through, there may be a better route. And we're hoping that people, if they're not, if that's not their destination. And they're just cutting through to get to Bell or to Carroll, then they'll go a block south or two blocks north or whatever. But we're really trying to bring that pedestrian element and focus on that around those four intersections. Ali had a question. My question is, as far as the no turn right or left, do you have a strategy in place for the implementation of that because we're creatures of habit? Right, we're going to have signage and enforcement. We've talked with PD and we will have enforcement during this initial phase and periodic enforcement after that. So there's a public information campaign that's going to go out and the no turn on reds in there. We're going to have these little A-frame signs for the pedestrians. It'll be a media blitz. There's a DTV spot. I think UNT is trying to do a spot. We're going to try to get the message out as well as we can, but it is going to fall to enforcement. They're probably not going to write tickets. They're probably going to give warnings. Because we are creatures of habit and this is something new. We'll have the little flags on the signs and we'll make it obvious that something has changed. But it's going to take a little nudge and a little tap on the shoulder and say, "Eh, we don't do that anymore." Charlie, did you have another question? Yes. [inaudible] So our plan, my plan, is to, if we're successful and council decides to leave this in place, then anywhere we have the right combination of pedestrian traffic and turning movements, we'll try this. UNT, TWU, any of the commercial areas where we can improve pedestrian safety and vehicular safety because there's no conflict, we'll consider it. [inaudible] And so there are studies that show that this is very effective even when you have very long walking distances. And so because it takes a pedestrian a lot longer to get across, you have more of an impact on the vehicular load. But again, it's a trade-off. We try to balance the safety versus the efficiency, the movement of vehicular traffic and pedestrian traffic. Tammy, did you have a question? Ally asked, well, mine relates to Ally's. You're saying that you want to start this on November 25th? Has anyone on the committee heard of this program before? No. Okay. I'm concerned about having enough time to educate people on the fact that this is about to happen. Like with the new turn-style thing on Bonny Bray, we got a lot of notice and maps and it was in the paper. I haven't heard about this or seen it, so I'm a little concerned about how you're going to get it set up that quickly. So one of the advantages, and I appreciate that, but one of the advantages here is that you're not going to see anything as a pedestrian or as a driver that you haven't seen every day. You're going to get a red light, you're going to get a green light, you're going to get a walk and you're going to get a don't walk. The thing that hopefully, it won't be transparent, but the changes that we're making won't change how you cross the street. When we put the roundabout in Bonny Bray, that was a major change. So that's not something that a lot of people are used to. But the advantage of this program is you're going to walk up, you're going to push the button, you're going to get a walk and you're going to cross the street the same way you do it today. The only difference is you're not going to have a car trying to turn across your path. Starting tomorrow, the media blitz will go out. We've been waiting because we wanted to bring it to this committee. We missed last month because of the timing. I was out of town. So council was considering that as well. They were very concerned that we hadn't had a chance to bring this to you. We wanted to get to council because the next meeting is the third. It's a timely thing, but we definitely are sensitive to the input and responses from this group. I was just going to say, to your point, Beth, I think that because it's going to be holidays right now, a lot of the school is going to be out, so we're going to get the locals started in it and maybe students can follow suit. Our plan was to try and beat the holidays because we know the pedestrian volumes around the square are going to go up. We're going to have events. You're going to have shoppers and people going out for dinner. We wanted to have this protection in place for that pedestrian traffic. There's a learning curve, without a doubt. As far as I'm concerned, we can't get started soon enough. I think it's actually helpful to have it implemented sooner than later because we can talk about it all the time, but if it's not happening and people can't go see it, a lot of people will ignore it and say, whatever, it's not happening yet. We'll have the media campaign starting tomorrow. It'll hit the websites and the newsletters. There's a big package that's going out. We'll have the weekend for that to filter out. Monday morning, we'll probably wait until after rush hour. We'll implement the plan and then we'll have people stationed at each of those intersections to assist and help reinforce the proper behaviors. I understand it's going to be a learning curve, but we wanted to roll it out before the holidays for that very reason because the pedestrian traffic is going to go up in the next month. Any other questions? How many of us think that this is a really good idea for pedestrians? Definitely. But that gives council some feedback. I've been in countries all over the world where this is being done and it's great. I've seen it used as well and I think it's very good. Yeah, there's been a couple of times where we almost got hit. Yep. I think this is a great idea. It looks like we're all okay with it. Thank you very much. Thank you for coming. All right. Item B, receive a report and hold a discussion about the Park and Recreation Department's adaptive recreation program. Carolyn Seward and Melissa Jimenez-Bowlin. Hi. I hope I didn't mind you tonight. No, you're fine. My name's Caroline Seward. I'm the program area manager at Parks and Recreation. So I oversee our leisure services at the rec center's program summer camps and items. And we're here today to talk to you about our adaptive recreation programs. And to do that, I want to introduce Melissa Jimenez-Bowlin. She is our adaptive recreation coordinator. Hello. If you would please bear with me, I do not like a boat speaking at all. So yes, we have our adaptive recreation programs. I teach art therapy twice a week. We have a monthly dance. We had about 60 plus people come to our last one. We do adaptive yoga once a week. We do adaptive hikes and kayaking, archery, social connections. We go bowling, picnics in the park, movies. We have lots of different programs in the past. Do you all have any questions on our current program offerings? Yes. I'd like to know if you have any programs specifically geared towards older disabled people? Not at the moment. I'm definitely open to talk to anyone. I've been trying to grow the program the last year and a half. So we definitely have a lot more than what we started with. I know when I first started, I think the first dance that I went to, there was two people. So it's slowly getting bigger, but I love the input. Can you tell me about adaptive yoga? I don't know much about it. I don't teach it. But I do have someone that I can definitely give you the contact so that you can talk to her. Okay. And she's fantastic. Okay. Ally had a question. Yeah. Hi. We had a meeting. Y'all had a meeting last month about adaptive recreation at adaptive recreation programs. Did a little community outreach. I wanted to know what suggestions you guys have taken from that meeting and what you're thinking about implementing. So the purpose of that meeting was to kind of gather information for our master plan, which we're in the process of redoing. It's been about 10 years since our last master plan. And then to get ideas for future programming. So the topics that we covered, the first one was an inclusive playground. We don't have a 100% inclusive playground. It didn't. So we spent a lot of time talking about the safety features that would need to be in place or features that people wanted to see in an inclusive playground, as well as a location that might be best for a playground. A lot of ideas were thrown out as far as like colors of the playground equipment, the type of features that would be available, the type of surfacing that would be on the ground, the location considerations were not close to railroad tracks or bodies of water, making sure that it's away from a major intersection or street. But a lot of that information was shared. And then the discussion kind of switched into programming. What kind of programs would you like to see us expand on? A lot of them were sports oriented, team sports, athletic programs. We had some requests for quiet spaces for people to have a place to go hang out. More adaptive programs for all ages. Right now we currently focus mainly at 16 and up. So it is more adult adapted recreation versus for the children. So there was that family friendly events. So the whole family would be included in those recreational opportunities. Cool. Adapted rock climbing, adapted workout equipment in the actual facilities. Tell us more. We did have, and I do not remember who the suggestion came from, but it was a professor at one of our local universities who offered to help partner, to help show us what equipment would be best. A recumbent bike. A recumbent bike. Yeah. A recumbent bike is the best thing you can do for the disabled people of our community. A recumbent exercise bike. Okay. So yes, looking at how we can. I know it does not work for everybody. Rex. Adaptive yoga, the VA offers it for, like myself, combat wounded. They do it based on your disability. It is still yoga, but people who have lost limbs or unable to stand like myself and others, they do it, I do not know if this is the same as it may or may not be, but the VA has that, unfortunately. It is a long trip to Dallas. Yes. And when I worked in rehabilitation, we had a program that was, it was not called yoga, it was called chair level exercise. And that is a really great way to help serve the older disabled population especially, is to have a chair level exercise class where all the exercises are able to be done, sitting down in a wheelchair, but it is, you know, good exercise. And everyone just, you know, adapts to what they can do. Melissa is writing down suggestions right now as we go through it. Joe. Have you ever been to Scottish Rite after one year? Scottish Rite, have you been? I have not been. You don't have to go there. I know a lot about social work. Okay. Do you like to go to Scottish Rite? We'll have to schedule a tour so we can check it out. I have a tour every semester. He has a tour every semester. Who goes with his class? Me. Tamer. Sound like you are doing my teaching, you are doing my teaching me today. We are trying to, you know, we have the senior center, and they do have some of the chair yoga classes there, but anything else we can do to make them more accessible. What about pool? Pool, that was brought up that we need more pool space. Currently we have an auditorium, but there is always a demand for multiple users, so that did come up also, additional pool space and time. TWU actually has the best handicap accessible pool in town. That's where I did a lot of my aquatic therapy after my accident. It's a really great facility. So some of the other things that were brought up were a lot of just training for staff. How can we better train, so we are using the proper terminology, and you know, with children with cognitive disabilities. So we spent a lot of time at the end of the meeting just talking about different training opportunities for staff to be, to better help. An excellent training opportunity would be to meet with the therapeutic recreation staff at Baylor Institute for Rehabilitation. They are outstanding. Tamara? How do we get involved? How do you get involved? Well we are always, we are still in the process of updating our master plan, so any feedback you would like to give us as far as suggestions for future programs or facilities, we are gathering that information right now to update our master plan. But some of these items we know we can put into place sooner rather than later. As we look to switch out fitness, switch out this fitness equipment, what can we do right now to make those more accessible? Joe? Scroll down. Scroll down? I think that covers it. Social connections are opportunities to get together and do different activities, and then the monthly dances are at the North Lakes Recreation Center. Actually those are changing to the Civic Center because we can outgrow our space. The monthly dances that are moving to the Civic Center building, because we got around the space at North Lakes, they've continued to grow. But they will continue as monthly dances just now at the Civic Center. As of what date will the December 13th be at the Civic Center? Yes, that's the first one in the morning. You mentioned the Senior Center, and I know it's a great facility, but there's kind of a gap of people that are disabled and aren't old enough for the Senior Center. Right. So that's where I'd like you all to try to get some programming. Yes, exactly. So Dewey and Tamara and I can go. People that aren't old enough to go to the Senior Center, but want to be involved in some activities, that's the age group of disabled people that I think gets overlooked. That was my point, not to get me held. Is there something in specific that you're looking for? Because I feel like a lot of these programs, I feel like I am offering this. I think the chair level exercise program and having us come and see the yoga would be great. And then I can help you with ideas for the chair level exercise class. Allie? I just wanted to, these programs that they've got, they did say that they're going to start working on our younger, like our under the age of 16 community, but also these programs are geared towards 16 to senior age. So I think that that's kind of like a really good thing, is that we're not marginalizing that little window between like child and senior, which is actually a really huge window. So thanks for that. Melissa's contact information is down on the bottom of this flyer in your agenda. And she is always looking for suggestions and ideas for programming. So if you hear of anything or think of anything yourselves, please feel free to reach out to her. We're always looking to add new and exciting things to our offerings. Rex? I can go to the Cinemark for a senior ticket for $6 for a movie and have a recliner. You want $15? Well, and that's something too, you know, that I think needs to be discussed. You know, all that information, that would be food as well. That's almost three times as much. Do you all have scholarships for people that cannot afford those prices? So we do. We offer Parks and Rec scholarships. Our current policy is you are eligible based on income, and you can apply at any of our recreation centers. It's a $150 scholarship to be applied towards any Parks and Rec program, and the scholarship covers half the cost of the program, and then the participant covers the other half of the cost of the program. Any other questions? Yes. Mark. Mark Ollison. I'm the staff liaison. Just a couple questions. Do you think it might be appropriate for us to, maybe every six months or something, this committee check in with you all? Because it doesn't seem what you're doing is absolutely in line with what the committee does. Do you schedule these? Is it like winter, spring, or what's your...? So our registration programs are January 1st through the end of July, and then August 1st through the end of December, but currently Melissa's planning for the spring as we get ready, so I think it'd be great to get together every few months and look and see what you all have. Allie. I just wanted to add to that because Mark brought it up and I just thought of something else. If you are going to be working on like registration and things like that, I would be interested if you are coming back to see some data on like how many members of the community that are disabled have taken advantage of these programs and if it's increased or decreased depending upon what you do. Okay. Mark. Are there any partnerships with the school district at all? Good question. So I have spoken with a few people, you know, we've gotten together and met, and yes, I have reached out. It's been kind of one of those things where it just hasn't happened. So, I mean, I will reach out to anyone that wants to talk to me, so it just... I know when we had our focus group meeting a few weeks ago, the school district felt like they were really covering, you know, the school time activities and one of the areas they thought we could focus on are after school and weekends for programming specifically for school aged kids because that's not a market we're currently hitting. And during the summer, speaking about children also, during summer break, I know there are summer camps out of the Civic Center. Is the adaptive recreation portion integrated with the larger summer camps or are there any particular programs in the summer? Good question. There's not a specific program in the summer. We do try to accommodate as best we can in our camps. With some limitations, we aren't able to provide one-on-one care just because of the amount of kids we have in our summer camps. But Melissa and one of our other camp counselors are looking at specialty camps for that population. Correct. We have a large number of veterans returning to the community, and some of them are disabled, others are not. Have you contacted the community-based outreach clinic to see what you can do to coordinate with them to get them involved in reaching out to those veterans and bringing them into the community? A lot of them feel left out completely. That's one of the things I work with quite regularly is trying to re-assimilate them into the community. A lot of them feel totally left out and they just kind of lock themselves in their rooms and don't come out. I think this would be a good way to re-assimilate them into the community. That's a great idea. No, we have not reached out to them. It would be cool to see a veterans group, where it was just a veteran hangout day. Some of these people are emotionally or physically wounded, and they just don't feel like they belong anywhere anymore. I know I did when I came back from Vietnam. I just did not feel like I belonged anywhere, and I kind of closed myself off. If something like this were available back then, it would have been of immense help. I could see this in your monthly dances, your movies, your lunch with friends. All these sorts of things would be of great help. The manager of the community-based outreach clinic, her name is Ashley French, and I can give you her number if you'd like. Not that I did not want to do that. We can get it from you. Do you have another question? What kind of classes do you offer? Art. Our art therapy is every Monday and Thursday from 10.15 to 11.15, and I teach those classes, and it's one of my favorite parts of my job. I'd love to see you in there. We do all kinds of different things. We use paint, crayons, anything. We can get our hands on what we're doing in there. I'm sorry. Granite. But not quite. What about wood burning? Wood burning? Wood burning? No, but that would be fun. It's really fun. I'd love to see you work. Tamara. I'm aware of a campsite in Brenham. Do you have anything right there? We currently don't. But we can look at that camp and check it out. It's in Brenham, Texas. It's huge. Everything's for the disability. They can do anything. Yeah, we'll definitely check it out. Tamara, we could not hear you. Do you mind repeating? The camp. There's a camp in Brenham, Texas for the disability, and you can go down there during the summertime, and it's rooms for you. They cook for you, and then they have everything that you want to do. It's all disability. Y'all can do anything. You can get in canoes. The canoes are set up. They can go in safely, and out of it, it's awesome. It's really good. I know a group that uses that facility for their annual camp. It's a really neat place. Did you have another question? I just wanted to bring up just a point in the thought to keep in mind, is that for all these activities and these things that you're doing that are so helpful, I just think it is important to remember that more than anything, it's important to adapt and include, as opposed to secluding. So just keep that in mind. I'm originally from Wichita Falls, and we have a similar program up there, and one thing I didn't see on there was cooking classes, and that was probably the most popular thing, because a lot of people are older or younger people. We no longer have home economics classes in schools, so they don't even know how to cook, and this is an opportunity for them to learn to cook, and that was the most popular thing we had up there, and a lot of local restaurants got involved, sending their head chefs over and teaching people their signature dishes. So actually, I do have something like that set up in the spring already, and so I love hearing that feedback, because that means that that's something that hopefully will work out well and that we can start doing. Call me, because I have a master's degree in hotel restaurant management with a minor in dietetics and a minor in culinary arts in Cornell. Oh, absolutely. And I did work in rehabilitation. I'm a speech language pathologist, and I was the rehabilitation director for several facilities, so I can help you as well. But I really like Mark's idea of this committee working directly with you as you plan your activities. Is that something y'all are receptive to? Yes, for sure. I love that. Mark, can we do like, it doesn't have to be for Mark, can we do like a work session with them? A brainstorming work session with them. That works so well for me. All right. And how do we schedule that? They'll get a talk with us. You'll get with them. I really do like the idea of this group working with your group. I think that can go places. Thank you so much for having us. Thank you so much for coming. Oh, Mark has one more. One more question. Our committee has discussed several times volunteer opportunities in the city, and we have talked to some departments. So does the Parks and Rec Department use volunteers? If so, how does that happen and perhaps are there opportunities for persons with disabilities to do so? We thrive off of volunteers. That's what makes a lot of our programs happen. So we have a lot of our special events, we use volunteers. So we do our Halloween Harvest, Halloween Carnival, our Fourth of July Jubilee. We have MLK Day, a Black History Month program that we utilize with a lot of volunteers to help pass out information and direct traffic. So we would love for you all to come out and help volunteer for some of our events. Can I ask one more question? Yes, you can ask one more question. One more question on that. Is there any sort of maybe, as far as that goes, volunteer age restrictions? If so, is there somewhere online or in the media that we can find certain age restrictions for volunteer opportunities, for example, like if you've got a 10-year-old kid that has a disability, do they have the opportunity to volunteer at something like this or is it just for adults, just kind of like a different idea of what volunteers you're looking for? So currently our volunteers do have to be adults, but that is definitely something we can look at. We have a specific volunteer, sometimes we'll do large groups, we'll do a volunteer project for us and then it will be ages, you know, kids and adults, park clean up, you know, something along those lines where it is up at all ages, but these special events I was speaking of tend to be more adult volunteers. Thank you so much for having us. And I'm sorry I didn't make the meeting last month. Sorry. Oh, it's okay. I advertised it for you. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. That's beautiful. All right. Moving on. Receive a report, hold a discussion and give staff input about current and future projects of the city's capital projects department and how they can be inclusive for persons of all abilities and our speaker is Preetam Deshmukh. Welcome. Good evening. Thank you, Chair, members of the committee. My name is Preetam Deshmukh, Deputy City Engineer, and I will be talking on the next two items, starting with the first one. Let me open up my presentation. That looks like every streetman dancing. That's why it's up here. There are no construction. So this is an update on all the capital projects. It's not at full inclusive list, but I will highlight the important ones. A few of them are textile projects, but the smaller ones are also included that are city projects. Start with one of our large projects. This is a city project. It has seven phases. It was not -- it didn't start as a seven-phase project, but as it has evolved, it is the segment of Bonnie Bray that starts all the way south at Finch, and it goes all the way through the city, north-south, and then connects to Loop 288. So the ultimate connection will be an interchange over-crossing with fronted roads at Loop 288. I'll start with phase one. Phase one is already constructed. You can see some of the pictures here when it was under construction. There are two bridges over the creek and the flip planes. So phase one is almost complete. We're going through a punch list item, which is like the last step of the project, before we take over the project and open the roads. Phase two has already been let out. The council awarded a contract this past Tuesday. It will be soon under construction, I think, right after the holiday season, starting first month of the year. Next year, it will begin construction. That phase includes Vintage Road between 35W and 377. So this will be completely widened to a four-lane divided. Phase three, as you can see, some portion of it is under construction. It is a phase between the Rose Lawn and 35E. A portion of it, utilities are currently under construction. There's a lot of utility work going on. Once the utilities are done, it will follow by the roadway widening project. Phase four, we split phase four into two projects. You've seen already that the roundabout is almost done. That was the roundabout at Scripture and Bonnie Gray. That was pulled out of phase four. So the remaining phase four is between Scripture south of the roundabout to 35E. Phase five is from Scripture to University Drive. So that's the phase five. And these are all the timelines that we want to hit. And then phase six is between University and US 77. And then from US 77 to Luke 288 is phase seven. Phase seven is currently taken over by TechStop. They will be designing it. They will be constructing it as part of their project. They've picked up the project and they said, "We'll help you do it." Phase sixes are currently our priority. And then in my next presentation, I'll talk about bond projects. But phase six is currently our priority because Denton High School is moving in this area. Their timeline is 2022. It's somewhere here. And the classes will begin in 2022, which means we have to be done. And our timeline is around this. We should be wrapping things up as they move in. So it's currently under design. And with the bond passing, we receive some money to get this thing going in the construction phase as well. So the total cost of the project, approximately $120 million from phase one all the way to phase seven. And then all phases we're anticipating being completed by 2024. This, as TechStop has taken phase seven over, we don't really control that timeline anymore. So it may go into beyond 2024. Next project is Teasley. And I have received many calls on this as the project started and stopped and started and stopped and finally. So it said schedule to be determined. It originally had a two-year schedule, 500 plus days. And when the contractor first started, they did part of the utilities. Then the contractor went bankrupt. They pretty much lost everything. They're out. The bond company jumped in. Now they have a new contractor on board. But the new contractor still has two years to complete this project. So the negotiations were it was negotiated that they get the whole time back. They don't. So at least the contractors on board and they will be starting construction. I think this week or next week, pretty much they were required when they signed the agreement, they were required to start within a month. And I think it's about 27 or 26 is when it comes up. November is when the contractor should be starting back. So that will be under construction soon. Any questions? Can we go back to the last one, to Bonnie Bray? Absolutely. Kind of in relation to what Joe said earlier, this is going to cross some pretty major intersections. How is pedestrian traffic going to be handled under the new design that we're putting in? So at all intersections, pedestrians, so if it's a signalized intersection, pedestrian traffic will have pedestrian phases. It will be ADA compliant. It will have audibles, messages, and it will have the push buttons and everything that goes to countdown heads. So anything that you see on square today, the countdown heads, the push buttons, the audible sounds, everything will be added to all the new signalized intersections. Very good. So, I mean, we are making sure. And as part of this project, there is a 12-, I want to say 10-foot side path, which is a trail, bike trail, on one side and a 5-foot sidewalk on the other side of this project, all the way. So starting all the way to the south here, it will extend through this area. And then the other connection is between UNT campus and their north campus. We want to see that bicycle traffic moving up and down. Sonia? So will the sidewalk just be on one side? So there will be sidewalks on both sides. One will be 5 feet wide. The other will be 10 plus. And I think where it goes through McKenna Park and the Bonnie Ray Scripture area, it will wide into the park and get through the park. There will be some type of shading and landscaping around it to make it feel more like a trail. Similar scenario with when it passes through this North Lakes area. We'll pull it in a little bit and make sure that, you know, they can get into the park area. So that's our plan that's under design. Yes? So how will that affect his property? So we are currently reviewing that. That's under phase 5. I think I've been to a place. Yeah, it's in phase 5. And currently we're trying to stay within our existing footprint, not take more right-of-way. So you currently have an existing sidewalk in front of your house. We're trying to put this up. We have up-wired right-of-way on the other side, on the razor-edge side. So most likely then that would be the side that would impact more in the future. We're currently under design. I don't know exactly how much impact your house will have. We'll reach out to you once we get to that stage. Thanks for backtracking for us. What are you going to put in the middle of the razor-edge? In the middle of the four lanes? The roundabout. The roundabout. Are you all going to do it? In the middle of the roundabout? Where Bonnie braids? Right, so roundabout is currently, they're designing the inside. A portion of it will be stamped concrete, but they're adding bushes and trees and features. We're working with our parts department. We've ordered, there will be some plants and some trees and shrubberies within the roundabout itself. So this is 377. The limits of this project, 35, from 35 all the way to just south of 1830. And it also includes the small segment of 1830 and Hobson intersection widening. So there are some improvements at this intersection. It's pretty congested. We all know that. We're trying to fix it. And it will be fixed as part of the 377 project. There will be turn lanes added onto that segment on 1830 between Hobson. There's lanes added on Hobson for left turn and right turn. So there's considerable improvement at these intersections. One will be signalized and you can see, I don't know if you can see it here, but James Street in that area will be realigned as the fourth leg on the north side. So there will be a fourth leg at the intersection of 1830 and 377. It's currently under construction. I think there are 85% done with the utilities. Once the utilities are done, I think the city park will be out. Most of the remaining portion will be textile roadway traffic. Their schedule is November of next year, so one more year of construction. And they're moving pretty at a pretty good pace. I think they demolished the bridge, the old bridge. They've created a shoe fly. It's called a bypass. It's called shoe fly, but it's a bypass for the trains. So they've created a separate bridge. They demolished the older one. They'll now start constructing the old bridge. All right. I-35 improvements. It feels like we've been under construction for years on I-35. I started driving it in 1958. So currently we have one project that has three interchanges. One is the Loop 288. There is a new interchange on Brinker. You can see that. And then Mayhill. Mayhill was a really small upgrade. It was a Texas U-turn that they recently installed. Brinker is a full interchange with Signals. They're currently working on it. Based on their schedule, I think this project should be completed end of the year, before the end of the year. I will agree. [laughter] But there is a brand new project coming in on Mayhill Road. So this is the second Mayhill job that's coming in. So you can imagine Loop is going to be 10 lanes under the bridge right now. You can see how wide and tall the bridge is. Then after the Mayhill interchange is built, it's going to be 12 lanes under the bridge. So it's going to be bigger than the Loop interchange. Because 2499 comes in and joins in. And then Mayhill, we have another project, the DCT railroad bridge. So we have widened Mayhill. There is a bridge coming in. And this becomes a large interchange for us. So this interchange is under design. Go ahead. You had a question? No? Okay. So this interchange is under design. And it will, I want to say it will start construction next year. Because they're coming back. So it will feel that you're still back to back under construction. I live there. Yes. And as part of this interchange project, they are going to redo the frontage road on this side between the Loop and Mayhill. So it will still feel that it's under construction. When are we going to quit narrowing down the lanes of 35 when we go into, when you get up there to the Loop, you know, narrow to two lanes. Both north and south, they narrow to two lanes. We have all these accidents every day there. They'll be completely open end of the year. When this project is done, when these three interchange projects are done. I think they're getting ready. Their deadline was sometime end of November. But you know the way that goes. That's why we're still holding them on to end of December. What year? Just a thought. Typically when we get answers from TxDOT, they say it's going to be spring. I'm like, spring of what year? Yeah. That's the question we always have. So the lanes will be open. And also the Dallas Drive underpass that is currently closed, that will be open as well to get on southbound ramp. This year? This year. It's happening this year. We hold you to that. They're wrapping up. I think they're very close. The middle guardrail was the only thing, or the concrete barrier was the only thing. I see a new sign that says Bucky Drive. No, but let's not go there. Continue. I don't think you were going to explain that to me. So there are two projects here. One project is just this merge area of 35W and 35E. It's going to be upgraded. And then there's 35 all the way to 77. That's the second project. This is fully funded. It's currently going through the environmental clearance as well as going through the design phase and acquisition, right-of-way acquisition. All of that said, it should start to begin construction in 2023. So the construction is not going to go away. It's going to continue. As we further go north, there's another project that's not listed, but north of here up to the state line, there's another project that has received funding. So the total funding on this piece of 35 is close to $800 million. And it will continue this way. And that project has expedited deadline. I think that project begins in 2022. So we need Bonnie Bray as a bypass, because a lot of people are going to get on Bonnie Bray. And if it's still a two-lane, we're in trouble. So we want to make sure that Bonnie Bray is completely widened. And then we have alternative routes to go through this area. This is a city project, Mayhill, as I mentioned. We're wrapping it up. That project should be wrapped up early next year. I want to say February should -- we would have everything open up and normal. If you see the blue line is what phase one is, it's a long project. And there is a second phase to it. That's the DCTA bridge I was talking about. This project was supposed to wrap up December, but there has been many weather delays and other delays that happened with this project. So we should -- I think the timeline has pushed a couple months, but we should be able to wrap it up early next year. On the DCTA bridge, that will follow immediately. Next year, we should begin construction, and that's two-year construction for the bridge. So that way, this whole piece will be four-lane divided all the way to I-35E. There is a lot of traffic that currently uses the loop, and that will be lessened, and most of the traffic will move to Mayhill. Total market. Yes. Just a quick -- can you tell us about the sidewalks next to Mayhill? Yes, it's the same thing. If you can -- if I can zoom in. If you see, this is a larger or wider sidewalk, trail/trail. So one side, it's 10-plus feet. Sometimes it's 10 or 12 feet. And then the other side is a regular sidewalk. So all our corridor projects for the city, like Mayhill and Bonnie Bray, have that included as a feature. The other feature that we also include is streetlights. That way, all the corridors are lit and are safe to walk and drive. So that's the second portion. And the third one is landscaping. So we're also including landscaping and all our corridor projects moving forward. Rex. I was at a tech stop briefing, and they had their own plans. They said that Mayhill was eventually going to go up to Sanger. You know, go beyond, you know, 380 and curve over to Sanger. Yes, so -- it's not going to be Mayhill, but yeah, Mayhill will join into -- if you look at this area. So Mayhill comes in here. What's going to happen is 380 is going to loop around here and directly connect there. So they're going to create a bypass, limited access facility. So it will be 380. And then Mayhill will come in and connect to this. And that's their plan. You're right. You're correct. That this becomes a bypass, and then it connects all the way back here. There's another project they're working on loop on the west side. Right. I was at that meeting with the tech stop, and they're going to make a loop all the way around the other -- completely around the city. Completely around and then connect to 2449 down here. I've been hearing about that since 1988. Yeah, I was listening to it in 1958. I'm old. I was born before here. I do have a question. If they're redoing Mayhill, what's going to happen to the part closer to town where it gets really scary and hairy between 380 and the Civic Center? That's McKinney. Oh, no. There's a section of Mayhill there. That goes from suburban propane running on the railroad tracks along TWEU. Different road. Different road. That's Mingo. Mingo. Oh, Mingo. Thank you. I'm sorry. Brain fog is bad tonight. This is the road you're talking about. That's Mingo. I don't guess that one's getting fixed, is it? No, that does not. Why bother? Shh. So I can update you on that one. We are currently conducting a study in conjunction with TWEU to look at the whole area. They have their expansion plans for the previous gold course. So we're working with them on what capacity do we need and how much we need to ride. Joe, did you have a question? Yes. Are the roads from Bonnie Rae to all the way over there going to connect to the movie theater? Like Alamo? Right. Alamo. Yes. So within the Razor Ranch development. Yes. So within the Razor Ranch development, Panhandle is going to punch through all the way. Then Linden is going to go half ways and it dead ends within the development. And then there is another street north of Linden that continues. So there are going to be three intersections. McKinney Street, we have a lot of construction going on. This is, we just, we have a two, it's a two phased project. Red phase is currently under construction. We just let it on Tuesday, we awarded a contract to widen McKinney from Loop 288 all the way down here to Fork Drive. I think we've already worked on the piece from Fork to Grissom. So this will be completely widened. Most of it will be a four lane with a turn lane in the middle. So two-way left turn lane in the middle and a four lane widened project. The reason this piece was chosen first is because of the high school. The high school here, part of this project also includes a 12 foot trail on the north side of McKinney that is next to the high school. On the south side there will be a five foot sidewalk as part of this project. So from the Loop all the way to the high school it will have trail and sidewalk as part of this project. The blue segment, we don't have funding for that and that will follow. But yeah, we understand that portion of it also requires widening. There's a lot of development happening around, closer to Loop 288. So we understand that this project needs funding. The sidewalks for Ryan High School, that was huge in my neighborhood. All our kids went to Ryan and we were so proud that the city put those sidewalks in. Thank you. This is still the FM428. This is our next area that's going to expand and explode, meaning in terms of the amount of interest that we're seeing in this particular area. Several branches have come forward with plans for changing them to residential subdivisions and commercial and stuff like that. So given that there's a lot of interest and there's a lot of new development coming to town, we approached Tech Start and Tech Start currently owns, all the way from here in this point, where it bends, to Loop 288. They currently own that piece. One of the things that we found in our future forecast that this was projected to have incredibly high volumes, the reason being there's a future loop, outer loop that travels here. There's a freeway in the future that has been planned and is on the books. So from that outer loop to inner loop, there are not that many connections. 35 is here. But given that this area is completely expanding and adding more people as they move through the city, we wanted to make it easy. So Tech Start has taken this over and they're thinking or planning or looking at the feasibility of converting this as a spur, meaning that would be a limited access freeway facility from the outer loop to Loop 288. So Tech Start is currently working on the feasibility study, but that's how much traffic is getting attracted. As Denton grows, we're the employment center for a lot of other people that are on the outside, so there's a lot of traffic coming in. Small transportation projects, you must have seen smaller intersections closed down. I believe this intersection was Dallas and Teasley. It was shut down for a while to get a facelift, add some turn lanes, and redo the signal. So we have identified 13 intersection projects that would fix congestion, at least get some relief while you were going through Denton. And we've completed, I want to say six or seven of these we've already completed. I'm sorry, this is not completed yet, but we're working on the remaining. They're either in design or right of way phase. A lot of the intersections you can see, Loop 288, anything Old North and universities and other intersections, these were Tech Start facilities, so it takes a while to get them permitted through Tech Start, so we're moving through that. And most of these projects should be completed in the next 12 months' time frame. Any questions? There are a lot more projects, but I can. Tamra? I don't mean it doesn't exist, but how many women did I have on that committee for the roads? Committee for the roads? And position for the roads, and how many women? Project managers? Oh, project managers we have. I think we have half and half. I think we have three project managers that are managing a lot of these projects. So yes, we have one, our program manager is, one of the program managers is a woman. Now, okay. Yes. Tamra, did you think the women might have designed some of it different? We do get input from everyone. So basically what you're telling us, you have two types of roads here. Those that are under construction, the rest are obsolete. No, those that are under construction and those that will be under construction in the next few years. I have a question. There has been a ton of utility replacement in my neighborhood, water lines, gas lines, atmosphere going through, water lines going through. And so the roads are just, in my neighborhood, are just destroyed. Is there a plan when the utility construction happens to put the roads back? Because we have not seen any roads get redone after the utility. If you can send me the roads, I can find out typically what happens is if the utilities, Atmos, and water and wastewater are coming in and doing their job, which means it is definitely followed by a street project coming right after them. So unless they clear a certain segment, streets cannot get in and out of that segment. So I think it should be on the list. If you can send me the list, there are a lot of neighborhoods that are getting built and that was part of the 2012-2014 contract. This is an old neighborhood that is having utilities replaced that are real old lines. Some of them might be capital projects for utilities, but if Atmos is moving them, which means that we are following it by the street. Because what typically happens is if we are doing a street project, we don't want to go back for another 20-25 years, so we ask all the utilities to be looked at and replaced if there is new connections, if there is older utilities. So they go in and do that, and then we just follow it by the street department redoing the street. So if you send me the list of the streets that you are talking about, I can get you which ones, and a schedule for them as far as when the streets department will show up and start working on that. I'd love to know about Misty Wood and the area around Nutty Schultz Park. Alright, Mark has a question. I just want to quickly say something. So as a committee, we can give feedback to Pre-Tim. So he is in charge of a whole team of project managers who are executing these projects and so it's great to have him here, but what does he need to hear from our committee? And one thing I might suggest is so each time that they close a roadway and also close sidewalks, they need to have a detour plan for both vehicles and pedestrians. And I know they work very hard, but if we've encountered anything that maybe you want to give them feedback about, this is an opportunity. That's exactly what I was going to ask on any of these projects. The addition of sidewalks, because I know a lot of areas didn't have that, so that was good to see. But the plans for detours or rideways, those types of things. I live in Robinson Oaks and on Robinson when you come out, it was supposed to be a four-lane road that never was built and there's no sidewalks. You're talking about the segment close to 2181 Robinson? What? You're talking about the piece of Robinson that's next to 2181? 2499 and then goes over to Teasley 2181. Next to Teasley it's two lanes. Yeah, and there's nothing but a bar ditch and a mobile home park and no sidewalks. As part of our discussion for projects for the bond when we vetted through the committee, one of the projects was Robinson and yeah, it didn't rise high up because there's a really small section. So we're looking for other opportunities for funding. There's also impact fees collected in that particular zone. So we're looking for options. We understand. I think we heard that from... I'm kind of trapped in there, you know. Especially once the school starts and then there's turning movement. Yeah, we know it's on our list and radar to find funding and get that thing done. That's what they said ten years ago. We can keep repeating that all day. Joe? [INAUDIBLE] You what? [INAUDIBLE] Oh, you love your sidewalk and body break? Thank you. [INAUDIBLE] He gets a sidewalk, I don't. [LAUGHTER] That's why you brought it up. But you're holding a radar. All right, order, order, order. I have a question. The 13 small intersections to be done in the next 12 months, are they going to have the type of ADA stuff like the square has with all the bells and whistles and ramps and... So when we get at an intersection and we're doing any changes, we typically look at the ADA compliance. We put in ADA ramps. It's a minor cost when you look at the big picture. But there are some intersections like Hickory Creek at 1830. There's no way, there's nothing that we can do it. It's a stop control intersection. So in cases like those, we typically don't. But in cases where it's within the city and there is no ADA compliant ramps, we do install an ADA. If you look at even Dallas and Teasley, there is an ADA compliant ramp on one corner where there's no sidewalk on either sides, but the ramp is there. So that people can actually use that corner to circulate around if they have to. And then obviously everything, if it's in signal, we put in all the bells and whistles, put in the buttons and put in the audible signs. Did those smaller intersections have the initial pedestrian delay on the timers? I don't think, most of the signals, most of our signals don't. It's just on the square that we had installed that. But most of our signals don't have that. That's something you can discuss. I mean, our city traffic in New York City, you can discuss with them. And Brian can bring back another item that can talk about that. That's a good item. Yeah. That seems like a good plan for a lot of intersections. Other questions, y'all? All right, thank you very much. Thank you. Oh, okay. I'm still hearing it one more time. All right, receive a report, hold a discussion, and give staff input regarding the city's 2019 general obligation bond package and specifically discuss the sidewalks. So when I talked to Mark, one of the things that he had requested is talk about the bond program. But I don't have a whole list of projects that are in the bond program, but the list includes Bonnie Ray, Hickory Creek Road, and Ryan Road. Those are the corridor projects. There are several street segments that will be upgraded as part of the bond. But I think primarily the focus for this particular session and the committee was sidewalks. So I really wanted to go over what was our thinking behind selecting the sidewalks. Everything that you see in green currently -- this is a GIS database that the city currently has. Anything green are the places that we have sidewalk. And if you zoom in closely, you can see most of these are double lines. That means you have sidewalks on both sides. Some of them are single. But you can see most of the older neighborhoods don't have sidewalks. So you can identify pockets that really need work. So what we did is when we went to the bond committee for suggesting projects, we had a list of sidewalks based on concerns from citizens, based on priority, based on the usage, the sidewalk usage. That list was created as part of the previous bond package. The previous bond package had $2 million for sidewalks. The list was created. The money was not enough to complete the list. So there is a remnant sidewalk segments within the downtown area. You can see some of these are there that require a million dollars from a -- there's a sidewalk funding. There's about two miles of sidewalk. This is already designed. So there's $1 million here required and another $2.2. So we've already designed the sidewalk. All we need to do is go start constructing. And what we suggested to the bond committee is starting year one, we'll go ahead and start constructing some of these already designed sidewalks. But in the following years, starting this year, we'll design next year that will be under construction. So that's the cycle that we're going to set it up. What was our -- how did we identify what segments or what sidewalks we wanted to do? It was pretty simple. Our focus was schools. A lot of the elementary schools in the older neighborhoods do not have sidewalks. We've heard one too many times from residents, from parents, from citizens about kids walking in the street or kids walking in someone's front yard. And then also parents choosing not to have their kids walk, even if it's a couple blocks, because of the sidewalks not being in place. So we heard that. What we did is we started laying out these bubbles. If you see this darker color is a quarter mile from the center of the school. Half a mile is a little bit more -- less darker segment is half a mile from the school. And then one mile from the school is all the yellow. You can see everything within one mile almost covers the city. So this was our basis. We said we're currently deficient about 28 miles of sidewalk or deficient within a quarter mile. And that's considered a walkable distance. A lot of people tend to walk more. If it's less than a quarter mile, they will walk as opposed to taking a bus or driving a car. So we targeted that. And eventually we'll go to half a mile segment and then we'll go to one mile. But for this particular bond, we said we want to target on the quarter mile. So this is a quick snapshot of how it looks close in when you close into any particular area. It's about three miles of sidewalk within this area. And there's one elementary school here and then middle school here, and approximately $2 million worth of sidewalk. And the sidewalks will be on both sides. So these red lines will be both sides of the sidewalk. So this is a quick snapshot of how each of these neighborhoods are identified and we will be, as part of the bond, coming in and doing all the sidewalks within this one quarter mile. Just to give you an idea, people think that, hey, sidewalks should be simple. It's a piece of concrete that you just plop and you're done. It is. I want to show there is a variable. Some are really simple, and this is an example of real simple. It will cost really low. This is a sidewalk that we have already constructed, but this is that bridge that goes over Loop 288. It's a DCTA bridge and a trail. And then from that bridge to this particular driveway, this is a driveway for the Chipotle Grill. This piece was missing, so there was no sidewalk. The right of way exists. It's very simple. You excavate, you add concrete, 400 feet sidewalk, 28,000, we can get it done. This is a simple sidewalk. On the other end of the spectrum, you want to see the complexity. There are some that are complex. And a clear example, this is down in the south neighborhood near Creek Elementary. The elementary school is down here, you can imagine. This is Swisher Road. And then Edwards Road is down here. No, I'm sorry. The Apocris Bridge is down here, and then Edwards is up north. So if you look at this segment of Swisher, a lot of kids actually walk from this neighborhood in subdivision north. Currently they're getting dropped by their parents because there's no sidewalk that goes down. So if a request comes in that we want a sidewalk, there are several issues. We need to design it. We need right of way. There's no right of way. I'll zoom in into a street view. We need right of way. We need construction easements. We have to acquire right of way. And then if you look at it, there's no drainage. So then we have to look at drainage improvements. Then we have to put in curb and gutter. If you can see here, there is electric utility right behind. So there might be utility relocation. It starts getting complex that someone is asking for a quick sidewalk, but I can't really lay a sidewalk in the drainage ditch or anywhere close to the street because if I want kids to be walking, it better be safe. It cannot be next to it. And then you're getting onto private property if you're on the other side of the ditch. So these are all the issues that we have to tackle. And all of a sudden this price tag keeps on going up for the same 400 feet. So there are some sidewalks that are really involved. A lot of times when sidewalks are requested, citizens forget or people forget that some of them are complicated. The other thing is not everyone wants a sidewalk in their front yard. So a group of people want sidewalks, but some of them don't. So it becomes challenging. Where do you put them? And how do you work with the community as a whole to implement them? So we're going to go through all of this challenge while we move forward on our sidewalks. So as I mentioned, we'll design and acquire right of way year one and then start constructing the following year. So that's previous year, we'll design next year. Part of our plan is also to leverage whatever the bond dollars we have with safer access to school funding. So there's a lot of federal funding. I think we have one or two projects that have received that funding and are still in the process. I think Mark can talk about that. But those projects are still moving forward. We have funding from COG to construct sidewalks. What we're going to try and do is leverage our bond dollars and attract more funding. Once we get them designed or they're ready to appoint, we'll go look for funding. As we put the application together, these are all SRTS routes where they're really close to school. So safe routes to school is primary and I don't believe there would be any issues getting the funding. That's the plan. Any questions? Mark? Well, I just want to say I think this is really exciting. So this was the bond that just a few weeks ago passed here in the city. And previously we have not had annual dedicated funding for new sidewalks. We have had some for maintenance and things like that. So we are set up for many years into the future to build these improvements and to catch up. I think in the future as specific projects are identified, we can bring some of those back to the committee and just let you know about them. Rex? I know we didn't vote for the bond and I know the city is growing. How soon will we have to go back and get another bond to keep up with the growth of the city? So that's a good question. I don't have a real answer right now. But I think we are trying to catch up on 30 years of no growth or no development or not neglect, but more of very little funding allocated to maintain our streets. So the street department had for the past 30 years barely any funding to keep up with the maintenance. So we are catching up on that as well as we are looking into the future. So we are kind of playing a catch up on a lot of years worth. A couple of things. I think the reconstruction or redoing or resurfacing of the street is one aspect. And after six years if we have to, we can go back for reconstruction of streets. But as far as the larger projects, we are constantly looking for funding from COG and other agencies to fund some of our larger projects. There are corridor projects that we can go to COG and say these are regional connectivity projects. Fund us, give us funding to make these projects happen. So for the larger corridor we are trying to get funding from outside. To give you a real timeline on when we are going back, I don't have that answer right now. The growth in the city, do you anticipate tax revenues to help compensate for that? Correct. And whatever growth is coming in, the other component to that also we are collecting impact fees. So once the impact fees come in, we are trying to add more capacity to some of the roadways. So definitely we have some mechanisms in place at this point to address that. And as I mentioned, FM428 is a prime example. That area is growing. We are already seeing that people are coming in. So we are already planning for the future. We are working with TxDOT, getting that design, feasibility study and design going. And by the time actual houses and everything start building, TxDOT will be out there starting their expansion project. So we are looking in the future and anticipating some of these projects. Could you quickly explain impact fees? Yes. So roadway impact fees. Currently the city has roadway impact fees. And what that covers is back in 2015, they had identified different, they broke up the city into different zones. And within each of those zones, they identified capital projects. So say for example, Robinson Road needs widening or Ryan Road needs widening. So they identified those roads, identified the cost to fix those roads. And then they identified how much growth is coming to town. So based on the amount of growth coming to town, they did a proportionality of this much of the growth will require this much capacity additional. And based on that proportionality, they defined the roadway impact fees. These were adopted in 2015 and we currently assess roadway impact fees. I think it's about $2,000 per household. So if one single family home goes in, they have to pay $2,000 roadway impact fee to fix those roads. Any other questions? Thank you so much. Thank you. Your job sounds hard. It sounds stressful. It's stressful. Yeah, well, yeah, it's fun too. All right. We receive a report and hold a discussion regarding updates from the Denton County Transportation Authority and how it interacts with persons with disabilities. This is something we've visited before. And Michelle Bloomer is here to speak with us. Why Mark's doing that. Thank you for having us. Mark asked me to come and just give an update on the DCTA training program. I don't want to be on camera. DCTA's training program in general and specifically with individuals with disabilities. So DCTA actually operates all of its service through contractors. On our rail side, we contract with First Transit and they provide all the frontline staff, so the conductors, engineers, and the supervisors. So First Transit has their own training program of how they onboard their new conductors, engineers, and supervisors as well as annual refresher training that covers a variety of issues related specifically to operation of the vehicle customer service as well as interacting and assisting individuals with disabilities. On the bus side, we also have a contractor called the North Texas Mobility Corporation that employs all of the frontline administrative, so it's all the administrative staff, supervisors, dispatchers, mechanics, fuelers, service attendants, and the operators. With the bulk of the staff being the operators who are the individuals that are driving our vehicles every day. And same thing there. They do regular onboard or new hire training. It's generally four weeks with the first two weeks being classroom training. It goes over everything related to the service, customer service, how to operate the vehicle, how to do a proper tie-down, what to do in case of an incident or an accident. Specifically related to individuals with disabilities, they go over general guidelines of how to best interact with individuals with disabilities, customers who use a mobility device, service animals, what questions they can ask, what questions they can't ask, pre-trip vehicle accessibility. So before you leave the yard with the bus, make sure the lift works, make sure the ramp works, what are the things they should be doing to make sure that when they go out, that vehicle is ready to transport individuals. Seating priority and then calling out stops. Can we teach them or I don't teach them. I want to introduce Louise. Louise Francois is the NTMC or North Texas Mobility Corporation manager of safety, security and training. So she's responsible for getting all of our staff as they come onboard as well as annual refresher training to make sure they're up to date. We also have what I would call after the fact training. So if we have an incident where an individual forgot what the policy or procedure was, we bring them back in and Louise will retrain them to make sure that they're aware of what our policy is, what the fare structure is. And it's, as you can imagine, it's an ongoing job. But we did have an incident and Mark asked us to come back specifically. I think Val had asked DCT to come and respond to the incident. So just want to lay the background as to what the incident was. And then I'm going to ask Louise to come up and just explain to you the process we go through when we get customer complaints or issues are brought to our attention like that. So the incident was we had a passenger who is ADA certified, so they're Americans with Disabilities certified, and so they have an access card. You have an access card with a photo ID, you are able to ride DCTA services, our fixed route services free of charge. So we had a customer who was ADA certified, they took their card, they tried to board the bus, and the driver told them, no, you have to pay the fare. And so it got to the point where the driver and the passenger could not agree on what the policy was, so the driver called the supervisor. The supervisor came out and said, no, you have an ADA access card, you can ride the services for free, and the individual was able to ride. But again, that's the situation that shouldn't happen, because they're trained that when they're hired, and they're trained that on a regular basis. But like I said, there's a lot of things they have to remember, and we all forget sometimes. So when this came to our attention, come up here Louise, I know you don't like public speaking, but come on up here. She's nice. She is very nice. Just don't get on her bad side. Right. Good evening. My name is Louise, I am pretty new to Texas, so that's a good day. The process that we go through when we have a complaint come in, the complaint come in, it depends on what's the circumstances of the complaint. It calls for an investigation. It depends on the circumstances of who it goes to. If it's just something simple as an operator behavior, conduct, it'll go to an operation manager. If it's a safety issue, it'll get addressed to me. And the process is once the investigation goes on, you'll usually contact the person that's making the complaint, and then you'll speak to the operator, and then you get the two sides, and you do your investigation and find out what happened. In that time of investigating, you'll go through the policies and the procedures, and then you'll go look at their training records to see when the last time they had training, and what was they trained on, to see if it was a behavior problem, or the person just haven't been dealing with that situation in a while and might have forgot. In that incident, when we got involved in it and we spoke to the operator, it's been a while since that operator had to deal directly with somebody coming on with an ADA certification, so it was a while. So we are right now in the process of doing a whole bunch of retraining for operators that it's time for them to be retrained within a year, within two years, whatever the line of scope that need to be done. So that operator was what it taught to reprimand to the highest level that needed to be done, accountable for that situation. And also, it's going to be brought back in again because his name felt in that spot to be retrained on other topics that we do on a daily basis when we're doing a new higher-energy pressure training. So, again, I do apologize for it because that's one thing. I mean, I have the love, and I've been in the transit world since 1996. I started as an operator myself. So when it comes to disability, I'm strong on it. I think that's why Michelle had me come here because when it get there, I get really, really passionate. I mean, because like I told them, and I do it constantly, is that no matter what your disability is, everybody is human. Everybody belongs to somebody. And you could be healthy today, and you could be in that situation tomorrow. So you have to do unto others as you want them to you. And if you see the operators, they'll tell you that is one of the things that I say constantly over and over and over again. That no matter what the situation is, and when you look at reality, we all have a disability. It depends on the level of your disability, how it impact your life. So nobody should have to go and identify their disability to you. Do your job with the policies and procedures says, and treat them nice. Are there any questions? Sure. First, I would just like to say that I think all of us appreciate how well DCTA has responded when we brought concerns to y'all. Y'all have been great about taking our concerns seriously, and we all appreciate that. My second question is, if an incident like this happens, do y'all have like a monthly employee meeting? Yes. Where you could say, okay, just a reminder if somebody has this car. So if an incident comes up that y'all resolve, can you then at the monthly meeting kind of remind everyone? Yes. Louise holds monthly safety meetings for operators. One thing we also did, if we see sort of a continuing trend, we were having some issues and concerns on UNT. Because UNT is a little bit different in how the service is provided, most of our didn't connect routes. Passengers board through the front door and exit the back door at UNT. They go in and out the front and back doors simultaneously. It's not when the doors open, you let the people off first and then you let the doors open and people are going both ways. So we were having, one student was having an issue that she required, she needed to be able to sit. She wasn't able to stand while the vehicle was moving. But because she was being polite and letting people off before she got on, she was never able to get on and get a seat. And so we were having issues addressing that and the driver didn't feel comfortable asking the individuals what priorities she needed to move. So we brought that individual in to a safety meeting, to multiple safety meetings to talk to our drivers to help explain what her disability was and why it was important for her to be able to sit. And why she needed them to help her so she could sit. And I think that helped the driver sort of personalize the situation a little bit more. Yeah. But we do. Every time we start seeing continuous issues or things that keep popping up, it's like, let's put that on the safety meeting agenda. That is so cool that you brought the woman in to explain her disability and how it affected her life during the bus ride. That's cool. Rex? Hi sweet thing. Not that I don't know you or anything. Wait, what about mine? One of the things, you know that I take a lot of veterans down to the VA hospital on their first trip. And one of the things that I've done in the past, and it's been very helpful, and I haven't had an opportunity to keep with you yet, but I hope to, as I introduce these new veterans to the engineer and the conductor on the trains and the buses, and it helps them to get a personal relationship with your staff, DCTA staff, and especially the ones that have disabilities, so that your staff understands that this person has a particular disability, whether it's visible or invisible, so they know how to help that person, especially to navigate the systems. You know, you need to get off this train and get on this bus, and this bus will take you to your destination, or you need to get on the dark trains and I help them navigate the dark trains to get to the VA hospital. And I do appreciate DCTA finally honoring VA disabilities for reduced fares. It only took a couple years, but it was wild, but we got it done. But it's done, and I'm so proud. Y'all have really been so responsive, and as a committee, we really appreciate it. Yeah, but I really appreciate that, and I appreciate you, because you've been doing a lot, a lot behind the scenes there, and I continue to support you down there for what you do. Thank you, and I do appreciate that. We do, and we really do care. I know it's hard, but our operators are human. They have good days. Some days aren't so good, but Louise will whip them into shape, but it doesn't matter what kind of day you're having. You're our face, and you're on stage when you're in that vehicle, and you're representing DCTA. Joe, did you have a question? Why did you get rid of stop number 7 on Brownie Bray? Why did you get rid of stop number 7 on Brownie Bray? Is this the one that serves MHMR? By a cabin? Is it only when it's doing a circle? No, it's not that one. Brownie Bray doesn't know. Something with it? No, I'm not sure about that one. I'm not sure about that one. The University and Brownie Bray? Which side of, we can, let me give you my card, and if you can email me the specifics, I can get back to you. It was either due to construction, or a safety issue. (inaudible) There's two of them on both sides, and both sides are gone? Yeah. Okay, we can look into that. Looking at the map, it looks like it's just south of University on Brownie Bray, where there's a stop there for number 7, and I would guess that that's construction on Brownie Bray. But we can absolutely communicate. The construction, I'm glad to see there's been a lot of construction going on, but it is wreaking havoc and making our driver's life difficult, and our ability to stay on time very, very difficult. No. So we're doing the best we can given the current situation, but as soon as the construction is complete and the City of Denton gives us the green light to start running again, because I know they had opened up portions, but they're like, because our buses are fairly heavy, we don't want to damage the road. I know they were coming back, so we're going to wait to come down Brownie Bray. We're ready, but we're waiting until we get the green light from the city, and then we can put those stops back in service. Rex. Robert Lindley, you know the deputy, don't believe what you see on Facebook. Robert knows Ronan, my little 125-pound German Shepherd. He got down on the floor with wrestling with him, and somebody took video of it and says, "My dog attacked the deputy on the train and posted it on Facebook." They were playing. Of course, those of us who know know what was going on, but he got a few thousand hits. And I was wondering when Raymond was going to call me. We didn't get any go requests or complaints. Tracy called me. We're good, okay. Thank you all so much. We really appreciate all you've been doing for us. All right, GE staff reports. Staff update regarding agenda, accommodation language, bus stops, meeting, captioning. Propose a dedicated pedestrian phase on the square and upcoming events. All right, Mark Oliphant, I am the bicycle and pedestrian coordinator for the city. I am also the staff liaison for this committee. And I'm going to try to get through this quickly so that we can finish as close to 8 p.m. as possible. Oh, yes. Allie and Jessica and I would like to bring up the remote access to meetings. I've already talked to you about it, but I want the committee to know. We had one member tonight that could have participated remotely if we knew how to do that. And we think that there is a provision that the city council has used before. Maybe the recording doesn't pick it up, but at least that person can FaceTime or whatever. And they can contribute to the conversation and whatever. So can we put that on our agenda, please? Yes. To figure out. Yes. So the two topics we're going to discuss right now are future meeting topics. So that's a possible one. We had hoped to do emergency management this month. It turns out the city emergency manager was out of town. But I already have him tentatively lined up for December. So they're going to talk about the city emergency plan and how it factors in helping persons with disabilities. Another topic would be to get parks and recreation back here to discuss projects. So we discussed some of their programs today, but upcoming projects that are in the works by the Parks Department and just get some information and give some feedback about what they're doing and any input that our committee might have. The volunteer information, that's been on there many months. But if the committee is still interested, we can try that and reach out. This will be third week of December, week before Christmas week, I think. So it may... We might want to weed that list down for December. Yeah, well, and a lot of times we decide on three or four things in here, and I only end up being able to get one on the agenda. It's going to be hard to get people to do that. Things change, yeah. Another possible topic that we're looking at maybe for January is the Census Complete Count Committee. If you remember, Ryan Adams spoke to us about that. And I know it's been about six months, they've been doing a lot of things. I could speak about the ADA Transition Plan. It's kind of on hold because we're trying to incorporate it into our Mobility Plan, which has a pedestrian component. So it's sort of for a good way that we haven't quite finished it. I know Rex has brought up the disabled veterans topic. He has put me in touch with someone. One of the issues I am running into with that though is the city, because we are a committee of the city of Denton, and we are charged with dealing with topics that the city of Denton has control over, the city of Denton does not directly right now have a disabled veteran program or something like that because it is offered by the federal government, the VA and so forth. The interface between the city and the VA, I haven't found the right question. My question was to assimilate these veterans back into the community. Into the community. We have it in other cities that I've gone to where they try to assimilate that disabled veteran back into the community to make them part of a citizen of the community rather than an isolated person. Because right now most of the disabled vets that I run into are absolutely isolated. They do not communicate with anyone else in the community outside of other veterans. How about I get in touch with you and we talk a little bit about a little more of your knowledge of what other cities have done. Because we just need to find the right topic title for that. There's other things on here. We've got lots of topics. And I've got one more for tonight. Yes please. I really think that we should write up a proposal, discuss and write up a proposal to make the initial pedestrian delay a citywide thing. Okay. Does anybody else agree that that's something that should just be citywide? Let's walk before we run though. Let's see how well it works downtown. They've already been doing that downtown. Yeah, clarification there. So the ped delay is being used currently downtown. And what that is, is when the vehicles perpendicular to you have got the red light, before you get a green for vehicles in this direction, the pedestrian, the white walking individual comes on for two seconds and it gives the pedestrians a head start in crossing the street so that they're not competing with the vehicles. So that is done currently, but what they did say is that right now it's only on the square that that's done. So yeah, we could bring that up. You know, get the city engineer back and talk about the positives and negatives of that. You know, why it's not done everywhere. I will say too, Val did reach out to me. He wasn't able to be here, but he did have two topics that he wanted to let the committee know about. One is horse-drawn carriages. Those have recently been discussed by the city council. But as far as he knows, and I know, they are not generally accessible to citizens with disabilities. So if that is something that the committee would like to take a position on, because... I got a dog drawn. I don't know what the city council ended up, what their decision was about that, but it is something that we could take a position on. And the second thing, well so, is there interest in taking a position about horse-drawn carriages from others? I'd like to discuss it. It's just not a primary thing right now. Rex, did you say you needed to go catch the bus? Pretty quickly. They send that access dentin to pick me up. All right, if I'm not there, then they leave me. It's a long way to the south end. Yeah, okay. Second thing Val brought up, so there is a neighborhood in the city known as Idiot's Hill, but the term "idiot" is deeply rooted in ableism and stigmatizes individuals living with mental illness. And that neighborhood is currently being considered for historic designation. So is this a concern that is shared by other members of the committee? I can share that I live in Idiot's Hill and a poll was posted as to whether or not we should keep the name Idiot's Hill or change to something called Nottingham Woods, which really recognizes the other side of the neighborhood, or pick a new name. And overwhelmingly, the answer on that survey was keep the name Idiot's Hill. Okay. And there were over 100 votes on the poll. Anyone else want to make? You can't fix everything, and not everything needs to be fixed. Are there other opinions about that from other members of the committee? Anyone else want to? I think Ben knows right, Ben helps me. What? I think you know best. We cannot fix everything, and we've got major things we need to be doing. We can talk about this statue or something else. Okay. And then just a couple of very quick updates. We're in the process of making that accommodation language change that we worked on. I want everyone to know that DCTA, as a result of suggestions by this committee, has poured new concrete sidewalks to access the bus stops on McKinney Street in front of the veranda and fountain apartments. Captioning will still be happening. We talked about pedestrian phasing. Our next meeting is Thursday the 19th. That is all, Madam Chair. The meeting is adjourned.