ORDER-2019-51 : Accept a FY 19 Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety Grant in the amount of $7,750.00

Transcript (~8 min @ 11:33)

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▶ 11:18 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: Okay thank you. This motion will be recommended to the full board. Thank you. You can hang out with us a little longer. Order number 2019-51 accept a fiscal year 19 pedestrian and bicycle safety grant in the amount of seven

▶ 11:37 Speaker 4: thousand seven seven hundred and fifty dollars thank you um this is an increase of 22 2250 over our previous year so i would you know thank the commonwealth for that um we generally use a lot of these funds during the first few weeks of school to get the kids and the parents acclimated to the new school environment especially the new ones coming on excuse me coming on board we also use some of our funds for target enforcement crosswalk enforcement and

▶ 12:08 Speaker 2: pedestrian enforcement alderman's work go Thank You madam chair to the to the

▶ 12:11 Michael P. Zwirko: extent possible chief could you explain why this year out of past years we may have received just a little bit of a bump in funds I would think it's because

▶ 12:18 Speaker 5: of the the fatalities the city of Melrose has and those were with

▶ 12:24 Speaker 5: pedestrians crossing the street yes there were pedestrian fatalities yes and

▶ 12:31 Michael P. Zwirko: you had stated that the general time frame that you end up using this grant money is for the schools and I was just curious if a lot of times people will forget the training the parents the kids crossing the walk you know we're coming towards the end of the school season so obviously do this at the start of the school year you've heard that there's been a lot of chatter regarding the drop-off at situation on Melrose Street yes and if you could use some of the

▶ 12:55 Michael P. Zwirko: animal morning if you could put some of these monies towards some of that I'd appreciate it i know that the drop-off does get quite chaotic especially with the changing of the times and some issues on ashland and melrose street so don't forget albion albion that's right

▶ 13:08 Speaker 5: yep they just changed it to a one-way so and people don't read those signs too well yeah um so certainly i we can address that great thank you so much and um it's unfortunate that we have

▶ 13:13 Michael P. Zwirko: these accidents and sometimes it is difficult with sun glare and people jumping in and out of cars but it's you know we do have a lot of sidewalks downtown so we just hope that people educate themselves about the safety for that so thanks for this work thank you thank you manager alderman

▶ 13:29 Monica C. Medeiros: medeiros thank you uh thank you very much and likewise chief uh i wanted to mention i know i've received a lot of uh feedback about the pick up and drop off at the lincoln school and uh some of the especially due to the chi sorry the change in time of uh the class schedule that it's running into sometimes the train schedule and you know some requests that perhaps some you know guidance or direction of traffic might be able to we do have a traffic officer on days monday through

▶ 13:57 Speaker 5: friday officer brown and he spends a fair amount of his time going from elementary school to elementary school and i'll certainly make sure that he gets note on that thank you you're welcome

▶ 14:14 Manisha Bewtra: um anyone out alderman dutra thank you um so uh thanks um so the grant specifically is for compensating patrol officer staff time effectively or is okay there's a small portion approximately

▶ 14:32 Speaker 4: 500 we're going to buy some ankle ankle bands that are reflective for one for when folks are pedaling and also in stop signs and all some some of you have seen the inserts the reflective insert goes into the metal bracing and we're going to purchase some of those so we allotted 500

▶ 14:47 Manisha Bewtra: dollars for equipment we call it and all of that is outlined so um i guess the question is can the grant a couple questions can the grant be used for other things um not necessarily in this fiscal year if that's what you've outlined but just generally what's eligible and the second question being like to what extent is this grant um sort of sufficient funding versus is it like a drop

▶ 15:11 Speaker 4: in the bucket in terms of overall need i would say we'd take all funding for traffic enforcement i won't say drop in the bucket but um when you start applying and i'm looking at our campaigns so for instance in march we're supposed to have two four-hour shifts um april two eight-hour

▶ 15:31 Speaker 5: shifts this is not a lot of time for traffic enforcement or pedestrian enforcement um i try

▶ 15:39 Speaker 4: to clump it all together so we we really saturate at one one point um certainly we're looking for

▶ 15:42 Speaker 5: other funds as well to assist with traffic enforcement one officer during the day is not

▶ 15:49 Speaker 4: enough we try to get the other officers when they're free but as as the days have progressed

▶ 15:55 Speaker 5: Just over the years of my career, I've seen us going from call to call, and in between call to call, there's a lot of paperwork involved. One of my missions this year is to do some online reporting to free up sectors, so if

▶ 16:07 Speaker 4: somebody loses a cell phone, somebody loses a credit card, we'll be able to have folks do online reporting to free up officers from sitting down with someone to fill out one

▶ 16:18 Speaker 5: of those mundane reports.

▶ 16:20 Manisha Bewtra: thanks and and and to the other part of the question can these grants be used for other purposes like how did you arrive at sort of how you wanted to use

▶ 16:31 Speaker 4: dictated in the grant itself what it can be for pedestrian bicycle safety thank you in years past we bought helmets and then that you know the helmets are we bought 50 helmets last year and we donated them to folks and never picked

▶ 16:47 Speaker 5: them up they're still sitting up at stone and bicycle show um the reason i ask i mean i think

▶ 16:52 Manisha Bewtra: some of the other things that have come up in the community are are for example the speed um signs that that the lit up i forgot what they're called but the lighting that show how fast you're going um when you're yeah is that what they're called quite simple um i thought there was like a fan

▶ 17:12 Speaker 4: we have we have i used some federal drug asset money that we seized and i bought the first one

▶ 17:15 Speaker 5: for howard street and they caught on pretty quick they are an effective tool are they the answer all

▶ 17:20 Speaker 4: no no there's nothing better than random enforcement so we can't put an officer on every street every day because as soon as we go away speed goes up so we want the motorists to never

▶ 17:34 Manisha Bewtra: know when we're coming got it so your your feeling is that this year you'll see empty police cars in

▶ 17:40 Manisha Bewtra: our community and it followed up with live radar so your feeling is that applying this funding to the random enforcement is ultimately sort of a more bang for our buck than yes another speed

▶ 17:52 Speaker 4: sign or something like that um you know i'd love to buy more speed signs but they would never i try to buy solar powered crosswalk lights and i got shot down okay but i did find some drug money

▶ 18:00 Speaker 4: so i bought one one set for one crosswalk that he's sitting in my office right now

▶ 18:09 Peter D. Mortimer: thank you for that information motion to recommend for passage second we have a motion to recommend

▶ 18:11 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: for passage by alderman one more second by vice chair Boisselle anybody else have any questions i just thought chief it would be helpful you had been kind enough a month or so ago to share with me um the aggregate numbers for accidents in 2018 through i think mid-january of this year and we had 331 resulting in 90 injuries across the city and i noticed that more than half of those injuries occurred on the following streets Maine Lebanon Franklin Upham West Wyoming and West Emerson so I'm sure you're attuned to those quarters I think you missed

▶ 18:51 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: Howard Street to our streets oh right well yes I think that's right and also just in terms of pedestrian safety I saw that the mayor has mentioned that they're going to be a couple meetings coming up one next week in the one one the week after that about the north to south bike corridor that they're working on a bike route so that information Monday morning yes okay good so hopefully your your department will be able to weigh in and be collaborative in that effort so thank you any other questions or comments all in favor any opposed we'll recommend that order to the full board thank you our third agenda item is order number two zero one nine dash fifty three accept a fiscal year 19 state 9-1-1 department support and incentive grant in the amount of fifty six thousand one hundred and eighty seven dollars motion to