APPRO-2024-36 : Requesting an appropriation from Free Cash in the amount of $40,000 (Forty Thousand Dollars) to Public Works Accounts (#422) as set forth herein and for sidewalk replacements at various locations throughout the City.

Transcript (~9 min @ 22:17)

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▶ 22:07 Speaker 1: Councilor Hamilton? Yes. Councillor Vandiver? Yes. Councilor Romanul? Yes. Councilor for Naro? Yes. President Elli? Yes. And Chair Aldine? Yes. That motion passes unanimously. Alright,

▶ 22:20 Speaker 2: Thank you. Thank

▶ 22:24 Maya Jamaleddine: you. Appropriation 2024 dash 36 requesting an appropriation from free cash in the amount of $40,000 to public work account number 4 22 as set for hearing and for sidewalk replacement at various locations throughout the city. Good evening.

▶ 22:45 Speaker 5: Good evening. Uh, thank you for having us again. Um, the, this first request is for $40,000 for sidewalk panels. This is what we use to address our, um, work order list for sidewalk repairs. When someone identifies a tripping hazard or an issue, a cracked sidewalk or whatnot, um, they put in an assessment, we go out and assess them. We then, if we think it requires a repair, we put in a work order for repair. We have a repair list for concrete and a repair list for asphalt. And any stretches that are either too long for us to do in-house or too complex for one reason or another, we have them done by our on-call, uh, paving and sidewalk contractor. And so this annual request is typically what funds that list? We do have a small line item in our budget that also is for sidewalk repairs, and we try to use that for more immediate work that we mainly do in house. Um, and then however much we get each year in a free cash order, that's how much we are able to fix from our work order list.

▶ 23:53 Maya Jamaleddine: Thank you. Councilor gpe.

▶ 23:54 Mark Garipay: Uh, just a quick question. Um, how big's, how, how big's the list right now? Um, the work order list for sidewalk repair, Will This cover? Will this catch us up?

▶ 24:04 Speaker 5: It will not catch us up. Um, we have 97 open concrete work orders. We have 56 open asphalt work orders, and we have another 26 that are in a category called safety repairs. So, um, we can do, if we're, we tend to focus on the concrete panels with this funding because that tends to be what's more difficult for us to do if it's several panels in a row. And with this money we can do about 95 panels. So we had 97 work orders on the concrete side. But the reality is that most of those are probably not just one concrete block. So we will not get caught up with this money.

▶ 24:41 Mark Garipay: And on the safety and repair, you said there, there are three categories or the, the asphalt and the cement overlap into the safety repair?

▶ 24:49 Speaker 5: They overlap. I mean, th there are three separate categories. So in theory, a work order is only entered once, but in reality there probably one's in concrete and asphalt that could also be characterized as safety repairs. So I wouldn't say necessarily that those 26 are the, the highest priority safety repairs. They were just ones that, for whatever reason, our highway folks decided they belong in the safety category.

▶ 25:12 Mark Garipay: And we consistently right around the same number of work orders annually. Would you say for sidewalk repairs or is this,

▶ 25:18 Speaker 5: Um, Rush Year? You know, it's interesting. We, we played a lot of catch up a few years ago. We got a large, we got over 200,001 year. And so we really caught up on the list and I don't know, that was right as I was coming on as director. So I'm not quite sure how much of a backlog we had had and how much we were getting for free cash in the years previously. Um, but this seems to be a typical amount that we have right now. Um, but they go back, some of them go back two years.

▶ 25:51 Mark Garipay: What, what do you think the ideal number for free cash if we continue to go this route in order to keep this list at a manageable level? Um, the residents when they call, they're not waiting six or eight months or

▶ 26:05 Speaker 5: Yeah, I can see if I can quickly find that information. We had, um, when we did the CIP process, we had entered in, um, what we thought was the appropriate annual request.

▶ 26:24 Speaker 2: Um, if

▶ 26:25 Speaker 5: I can find that pretty quickly,

▶ 26:28 Mark Garipay: It's fine. You can, you can email, email that, that's fine.

▶ 26:33 Speaker 5: Okay. Um,

▶ 26:38 Speaker 5: actually it's right here.

▶ 26:47 Speaker 5: There are a lot of rows in this spreadsheet. We had put down a hundred thousand a year that if we consistently got a hundred thousand a year that we thought we could stay caught up.

▶ 26:56 Speaker 6: Okay. Thank you. Okay.

▶ 27:00 Maya Jamaleddine: Any other question? Councilor Stewart?

▶ 27:02 Speaker 4: Thank you. Mad chair. Uh, ms.

▶ 27:04 Robb Stewart: Is, is that list available for us to see? So we know,

▶ 27:09 Speaker 5: I believe you all have, does everybody have an e gov login on the council? Yeah, so all you'd have to do is log into e gov and you can look at any of our open work orders. Um, you can search by category and it will pull up every single one. So

▶ 27:22 Robb Stewart: Search by sidewalk and you can see if,

▶ 27:24 Speaker 5: Yeah, you can look at, there's sidewalk assessment and then there's concrete repairs, asphalt repairs, safety repairs. Um, there might even be two different sidewalk assessment categories. One internal and one that the public can enter. So, you know, you'd have to glance through those different categories to see the locations and everything.

▶ 27:42 Robb Stewart: Okay. So I can see if the, the big tripping thing on Trenton Street

▶ 27:47 Speaker 5: is on the list. You Can see if it's on the list. Okay. And if it's not, you should put in an assessment work order for sure.

▶ 27:52 Speaker 4: Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Mad,

▶ 27:56 Maya Jamaleddine: Thank you. Any other question? Okay. What is the will of the committee counselor? Romanul. Sorry about

▶ 28:02 Devin Romanul: That. Um, thank you for, uh, giving the estimation for roughly how much it would take to keep up. But has there ever been any discussion of having this be a regular line item so we don't have to go back for free cash every year, or, I know there's a squeeze everywhere, but

▶ 28:17 Speaker 5: Yeah, so we, like I said, we do have a small line item and we would certainly be open to bumping up that line item to meet the needs every year. This falls into a similar category as the trees that we're gonna talk about next, where we certainly support having this in, in the annual budget. And I think knowing that it is an annual expense, it, it does lend itself to being an operating budget expense. Um, but the reality is that when things need to get cut to meet budgets, this is something that can get cut from the operating budget. Um, so that's how it ends up being a free cash request.

▶ 28:54 Maya Jamaleddine: Thank you. Thank you. Councilor Vandiver.

▶ 28:56 Kimberly Vandiver: Just curious. So I think I just looked at it quickly so I could be wrong, but so is the approximate amount for one panel is about 400, including the labor and materials, it's a 40,000 request and gets through about a hundred.

▶ 29:10 Speaker 5: Is that Yeah, that's fair. I I, it was not exactly 400, but it was in that range.

▶ 29:15 Kimberly Vandiver: Okay. Yeah. Um, just curious, uh, if, uh, since we won't get through the entire list with the funding, if there were any areas where, you know, a neighborhood, for example, wanted to pull together money and fix that one anyways, like, could there in the future be any method for a neighborhood to say, Hey, we're gonna fund this one ourselves, can you complete it? Or something like that?

▶ 29:38 Speaker 5: Um, we really haven't followed the model where a neighbor funds it and we perform the work. But we certainly have had people who are doing work along their frontage, including like when a new development is put, if a new, you know, if there's a tear down in a new home, oftentimes they will report the sidewalks 'cause they'll do new utilities or whatnot. They might cut through a couple blocks and because it's a brand new home, they want the look of all new sidewalk panels. And that does happen sometimes where private entities pave a whole strip of sidewalks and we're perfectly open to that. Okay.

▶ 30:07 Kimberly Vandiver: So the city wouldn't mind if it happened. It's just not something people, I mean, and in certain cases people do that.

▶ 30:12 Speaker 5: Yeah. It gets a little complicated in terms of our contracts to have the, a private property owner paying our contractor directly. Okay. Unless they're doing it, they, they're welcome to hire our contractor Mm-Hmm. And pay them directly, but through our contract, it's complicated.

▶ 30:27 Speaker 4: Okay. Great. Thanks. Okay.

▶ 30:30 Maya Jamaleddine: Thank you. Any other question?

▶ 30:35 Maya Jamaleddine: Okay. What is the will of the committee

▶ 30:37 Speaker 4: Motion to recommend to the full council? Second,

▶ 30:39 Maya Jamaleddine: We have a motion to recommend to the full council made by Vice Chair Williams, seconded by Councillor GPE on discussion. Seeing none, Mr. Clerk,

▶ 30:48 Speaker 1: Vice Chair Williams? Yes. Councillor Gpe? Yes. Councillor Stewart? Yes. Councillor Hamilton? Yes. Councillor Vandiver. Yes. Councilor Romanul? Yes. Councillor naca? Yes. President Elli? Yes. And Chair Jamal Dean? Yes. Motion passes unanimously.

▶ 31:04 Maya Jamaleddine: Thank you. Next. Um, so would both of you and, uh, it's appropriation 2024 dash 37 requesting an appropriation from free cash in the amount of $39,720, uh, to Public Works account number 4 75 as set forth herein, uh, and for tree planting throughout the city.