I call to order the May, Tuesday, May 12th,
2026 meeting of the City of Port Washington Board of Public Works.
Roll call, everyone is here except for committee member,
Jim Haley, who is excused.
I'll bring us in to item two,
which is to approve the minutes of the previous meeting.
Any questions or comments on the minutes?
If not, I will entertain a motion on that.
Move to approve.
We have a motion by older woman Miller.
Is there a second?
Second. Second by Mr. Pauli.
Any discussion on the motion?
Seeing none, all those in favor say aye.
Aye. Opposed? Motion carries.
That moves us on to item three,
public comments and appearances.
Are there any public comments or appearances tonight?
Seeing none, we'll move on to item four,
consideration and possible recommendation on a private side
led service line removal policy.
Okay. So, Mr. Chairman, because we do have two residents in
the audience who are here for an item that's later on our agenda,
I'm wondering if we should move it up,
and that would be the West Walter Street,
St. Terry Sewer surcharge of last year.
Sure. If that's okay with it.
That is item number 10.
I am 10.
And then just to, and I'm sorry,
we also have with us John Crane, so after that,
if we can move the upper like park to the next item
on the agenda. So, I apologize for the shuffle, but...
So, we'll move 10 to four, and nine to five.
Is the board okay with that?
Seeing no objections, I will move to item 10.
Update and discussion on Walter Street,
St. Terry Sewer surcharge from August 9th to 10th,
storm event.
Okay. So, I'm gonna quickly get down to that
on our agenda myself.
Sorry.
So, I'm sure you all remember last August 9th
and 10th.
We did have an eight inch rain event in the city,
but we're able to escape serious problems
that we typically have in severe weather events.
But we did have some sewer backups on West Walter Street,
which we have had in the past during these surcharging events.
So, after that event, we did meet
with the residents on West Walter Street,
and two of them are here now.
And so, I had made a promise to them
that we would, you know, we wouldn't forget about them,
and we would continue doing some items.
And so, I'll just have any trouble pulling.
Here we go.
Okay.
So, some of the things we promised we do,
we was smoke testing, which we've completed.
And so, Roger is gonna talk about that a little bit.
We completed televising.
We have that as a candidate for lining this year,
I believe.
So, Roger is going to update us on that.
We had our intern in the water utility last year
go through records for each of the homes
to see if there was any records of illegal connections.
That's been completed.
We had said that we would provide a notification
to residents regarding the importance
of keeping clear water out of the system.
We have not yet done that.
Flow monitoring, we still have some flow monitoring work
to do, and then ultimately, you know,
a decision to be made on when to prioritize
the recommended upsizing and replacement
of the sanitary sewer on West Walters and on Pierre Lane.
So, those are some of the things we're still working on.
I'm happy with what we've accomplished so far.
We still have some work to do.
One of the items, and I underlined is an interim measure
this is a recommendation from Dan Fisher,
our wastewater and water superintendent
that in graft and what they did in a situation
similar to this, they installed backflow preventers
on the laterals to a handful of homes
where there was a history of problem areas.
And so, I'm trying to get some pricing from Corin Main
that's been slowing coming,
and so, I'm trying to figure out what that is,
but I'm not expecting it to be super high priced.
And so, that is something that moving forward,
I will be communicating with the residents
and seeing that as a possible, again,
in Trump's solution so that when we do get
these major events, they can rest easy
that their basement won't be flooded
and I can do the same.
So, with that, I'll let Roger give a little bit
of a recap of what engineering has been completed
in the last year.
So, if the board members that were here late last year,
you'll recall that we approved a small testing study
to be done in this sewer shed,
which is, we call sewer shed basically all the sewer
that drains down to a common point here on Walter Street.
The sewer shed is roughly this gold area,
which runs all the way up to TJ,
and all that area was smoke testing.
And actually, the results of the smoke testing on summons
were very good.
We did not find any connected downspouts.
We did not find any like broken sanitary ladders
where smoke was coming out of a lateral,
nothing coming out of a roof vent.
So, an ad on the, I guess, system was pretty tight.
We did have 14 manhole lids where smoke came out of,
which would either they had the open pick holes on top
or the gaskets on the manholes were missing or not functioning.
So, those have been given to the street department
that they're getting replaced,
some of them are even replaced last winter already.
We don't expect a lot of I and I through the manhole lids
just because a lot of those are in the crown of the road
and none of them are in like the gutter area
where there's a lot of flow.
So, you get some leakage through it, but not a lot.
I wouldn't consider them to be a problem.
We did find there's three areas a little hard to see,
but you kind of see these blue blocks
and pointing to like here and up there
that the smoke did not travel from one manhole to another.
That's an indication that something was blocking the line
and essentially what it is in those locations
is we have SAGs in a sewer line,
which they're all pretty much far upstream of Walters
or sufficiently downstream that I don't think
that they're contributing to the backups on Walters.
They're certainly not helping with sewer capacity.
The other thing with SAGs, of course,
that that's a low spot so sediment and stuff
will accumulate so you do some capacity in there.
So with that, if there's, well, in this case,
there's three, if we didn't have issues with backups,
you might just line right through to SAGs
and leave them alone, in this case,
because the backups and some other work
is probably a good idea to look at replacing them.
So what else do we find?
So then we televised
all the sewers and we didn't find any,
like, gaping holes or breaks in a sewer line.
What we did see, which became,
I'm just gonna zoom in here since
this is our problem area.
So right here on West Walters,
I believe where all our homes are not had basement issues,
the sewer is pretty flat.
I mean, there's a little bit of a pitch,
but it's below standards.
And when we televised it, the sewer was half full.
And I went out there on Monday
just to kind of look to see, okay,
is that a one-off event?
And it was still, it was half full on Monday.
So I think ultimately we're losing half our capacity
and that's sewer off the get-go,
but just because it's running half full,
because it's all flat.
We did check out for
clear water connections in the basement.
Essentially, some of it might have a some pump
dumping into the sanitary lateral versus
either onto the yard or into a storm drain.
We didn't find any of those.
And I kind of went through the meter,
when they go change meters,
they do a quick check for that kind of stuff.
So there's been roughly 28 recent checks, meter changes.
So 27 of them were fine.
The 28th one didn't indicate a problem,
but it also indicated that there was no,
no sun pump, no crack.
So that would tell me foundation tiles
are probably tied into the sanitary lateral.
So that'd be something to check on.
So I guess really the sort of recommendations
out of everything from our engineer is,
and also our own sewer crew went through
and they did pull a root ball out of a section
of pipe here on a pier.
So I think the big project,
we start with a small project like Rob said,
but we do have in our capital plan,
would, sorry about that.
It's just kind of relaying the sewer line from Grant,
you know, kind of down around his corner on, on pier.
We're now you're starting to catch enough grade
that you can get a good slope on your pipe.
That's my summary.
So yeah, so this is okay.
So the summary that, and Roger,
and I told our West Walter street neighbors
that we'd have a report ready for today.
So we'll get, I'll email that report to them
and copy the board members.
So sorry, we didn't have it ready for Friday for the packet,
but wanted to, I promised Mr. Bickler
that we would follow through on this.
And so I wanted to make good on that promise
and we'll continue working on it
and continue to update the board.
So if any questions come up in between, let us know.
Is there any questions for the moment?
Okay.
We should have been a lot of statements.
Okay.
All right.
Well, thanks for your patience.
Appreciate it.
I just have a follow up.
It seemed like the blue dots are also on Jefferson street.
And I know that can be a sometimes a lot of water
on those streets and the sidewalks
because it ices up in the winter time.
Sorry.
I would have to look at that.
My feeling is probably that some pump drains
that are pumping out onto the grass over the sidewalk.
December's a long time for me.
So if you remind me, I'll go along.
It's my ward.
That's why I'm asking.
So thank you.
So when you say that the pipe is extremely flat,
is that like less than the statutory minimum 0.4% really
flat or is it like still above 0.4, but really flat?
No, it's flatter than a 0.4.
I mean, just based on history of this development,
this sewer probably used to go all west or somehow
down towards Saw Creek, downhill.
And then all the development, I mean,
if you look at aerial photos, development to the east
occurred and then they rewrote of the sewers.
So they probably just put it in that connect point A
to point B and that was as it's really flat.
We can make it go the other way.
Right.
Yeah.
So the problem we have is that the street
grade increases as you go west, sorry, as you go east,
but the sewer slopes towards the east.
So you get a, yeah.
So it's on the end where it meets Grand Street.
That's the low point.
And then as Roger said, I don't know how it used to drain
because the subdivision was constructed before Pierre Lane.
But the sewer is on Pierre Lane.
So I don't know where the sewer went because the sewer
follows the street, which is not straight.
I don't know how it, I don't know how the sewer ran previous to.
So the stretch it would have to be relayed as the stretch,
basically, from the intersection with Grant over
to the sidewalk that goes between Walters and Pierre
and under there over to Pierre.
All the way down to Orchard.
All the way down to Orchard, OK.
Yeah, because you can't catch up to the grade
until you start going down the hill.
Yeah.
So you need to, that's why you need to go that far.
Yeah, unfortunately, I don't think Pierre is that old in there.
We read that, well, probably in the last 20 years sometime,
but so old is relative, I guess.
But I don't recall, is Walters something
that's coming up on replacement?
Oh, yeah, definitely.
Yeah, for both water, the water main needs
to be replaced in the street.
So, yeah, in Pierre Lane, we resurfaced it.
Usually, I can tell you exactly when it was.
I want to say 2013 is when we resurfaced it.
So it's at the time we do it, it'll be all of 15 years.
OK.
Any other questions?
No?
All right, unless you have something else,
I guess we'll move on then to item 9, moving back one.
So update and discussion of Upper Lake Park planning.
OK, so our most recent rain event,
which happened April 12.
So heavy rains contributed to the failure of the bluff.
And so I think most of you know the walkway to North Beach
has been blocked and continued erosion on the bluff
has essentially increased concern over the location
of the roadway, where it's only, like,
approximately 10 feet from the edge of the bluff.
And so at the recommendation of Miller Engineers,
we relocated almost 200 feet of the road in Upper Lake Park.
Our street department was able to do that in just a few days.
Once it dried up enough to do that,
we were able to mobilize and get the work done.
Miller Engineers is on site this week,
doing their topographic survey of the area
where the bluff slid down by North Beach.
And so they'll take that information
and create a plan for the street department
to re-grade the bluff and remove that soil that
is currently blocking the walkway, which
is exactly what we did in 2022.
So the reason we don't just pull out the soil and truck it
away, or rather we put it back on the bluff,
is to essentially support the midsection of the bluff
so that it doesn't just continue to fall.
Not that we are ever going to permanently stabilize the bluff
until we take on the larger project
to cut back the bluff and de-water the sand seam.
So that part of the project is currently out for bids.
And as I indicate in my report, I believe, in 2028,
I think we have scheduled work currently
for stabilization of the tow and beach nourishment
and bluff stabilization in 2030.
So that could be moved around.
We do have the engineering work done.
And I'll take this, I guess.
So people kind of follow.
They don't have a packet.
This is not working.
That's right.
The computer is cursed.
OK.
And what do they do last time I did it today?
If that works, I'll be impressed.
I remember if I rebooted my computer or not.
OK.
All right.
Why don't you have the packet up, Roger?
Why don't you bring it up?
So in any case, so in your packet,
we do have, in addition to the photographs of the park,
we have the plans that Miller has completed
for stabilizing the bluff.
So our timing for that and the way we pursue that work
will depend on the study that's being done by Strand right
now for a possible expansion of the wastewater plant.
And so that study that Strand is working on that's
called the facilities report will be completed
by the end of the year.
And that's something that this board approved, I think,
early this year.
OK.
Yep.
You can bring up the plans.
So there's, yeah, that's just diagram of where we move the road.
And I don't know if you didn't make it.
Yeah, you're enough to.
And so these are the drawings that were created by Miller
engineers and scientists with a grant from Wisconsin Coastal
Management.
And if you go down to the next page, Roger, yep.
So this shows the ultimate road relocation.
But what we wanted to talk about a little bit today is just
the ultimately that road that runs along the east side of the park
has been moved on a number of occasions.
And some consideration has been made
to making the current southbound lane a two way street through
the park.
And then this northbound lane would become a pedestrian way.
If we did that, the intent would be to take the pedestrian way off
the street entirely and create a new path on the west side of the park,
essentially running along the top of the bluff on, again, on the west bluff.
So there's two bluffs that Upper Lake Park kind of is on.
So this path would be along the east bluff and the other path would be
along the west bluff bluff so that people could continue to
essentially walk in a circle up on Upper Lake Park, which is very popular.
And there's not a time I go up there where there are numerous people up there walking.
And so yeah, so it would be essentially a two way street.
What we would do at possibility playground is raising the cross.
I would recommend that something will look at raising the crosswalk,
making it as safe as we can possibly making it squeeze the
traffic so it's forced to slow down.
Possibly putting up a rapid flashing beacon so that that could be
pressed to alert people that children walking across.
Another alternative that we could look at is reconfiguring the parking.
So the parking is on the west side of or I'm sorry on the east side of the road.
I'm not sure how easy that's going to be.
We've looked at it already.
But that's something we would review.
But these are some of the things I think we're going to be talking about during
budgeting as we get into our budget season for next year.
And I was going to go through very quickly the capstone presentation that
was put together by UW student back in 2024 that just had some other ideas for
improvements in upper Lake Park.
So we did four years ago have a number of public meetings where the
community, well, we had just one where we invited the community.
We talked about it on multiple occasions, but we did receive some feedback from
residents.
Some like the two way streets, others like the current configuration.
But we really, we feel strongly we want to maintain that.
The walkways that we have and do whatever we can to make the crossing over
to possibly play around as safe as it can be.
But to permanently stabilize the bluff.
So we're not going through this every four years where we have to close the road,
close the beach.
We had the beach closed completely in 2020.
So right now the lake level is a little, a little lower than it's been in a few years.
And so, you know, when the lake level is low, that's a great time to take advantage
of it and jump into the stabilization.
So I just wanted to let the board know that something where we're putting together
and plan on having talk, having conversations about as we get into budgeting.
But as far as the concept of the two way, the two way street.
And the walkway around the park, if there's any initial reactions that anyone has,
I'd be happy to hear them now or we can talk about it later.
But I did talk with Nick about it.
And he suggested having traffic circles on either end of the park so that people could turn around
because sometimes people, for instance, they'll come up from the south.
All they want to do is go through upper lake park so that they don't have to go all the way
through hails trails and out to Wisconsin Street.
And I thought that was a really good idea.
So I like that idea of having circles at both ends of the park so that traffic can turn around
if it doesn't want to.
It also would be very beneficial for fish day.
Anytime we have an event up at the upper lake park that the police, when they block off the roads,
it gives people a chance to turn around and get out.
Yeah, I thought that was a great idea.
So thanks, Nick.
Any questions, comments?
We do have, of course, we have John here.
I don't know if John wants to add anything to it,
but I just want to let you know that he and I talked quite a bit about this.
So this isn't, so public works and parks and rec are certainly working cooperatively on this.
And I know he'll be bringing it back to the park and rec board too for additional discussions.
And I think we don't want to be seen as imposing a decision on to park and rec,
park and rec board that obviously, whatever is decided here,
park and rec board should be intimately involved and should be, you know,
yes, you don't want them to be able to do you.
Yeah, I do.
I do plan on bringing this along with an expanded vision of different ideas for the park.
You know, where it comes in with engineering is the road and utilities and everything else.
But we also, I think the best way to go about this is that we all work together.
So I will be bringing this to the park board, our next meeting in June,
along with, like I said, the part of this capstone project, just as ideas.
And I also had some conversations with some of the civic groups and other plans.
We have upcoming for, you know, we have a shelter and new bathroom.
In the capital upcoming.
So I do want to get a lot of feedback from the groups that use that.
So they'll be invited to that meeting as well.
This is a curiosity of mine, but.
You mentioned the lake levels. Are the, are the bluff failures that happen?
Pretty much always a result of excessive rainfall and you're just up against.
That battle or, you know, when the lake was higher, was it.
Are we seeing less issues than we did a few years ago.
The two major contributors are there's a sand scene that runs essentially midway through the bluff.
And so that water.
So that.
The sand essentially is.
What creates the instability of the bluff.
The action of the lake pounding against the toe of the bluff.
Creates instability at the bottom. And so it's those two forces that are the primary forces.
And yeah, fortunately.
The fail every failure that's happened in the 25 years that I've been here.
Has been overnight in a rainstorm.
And so, you know, thank God it's not happened.
During the day when somebody's out.
Because that's and that I know the council is certainly expressed that concern over.
And would recommend that people not, you know.
Stand over the top of the bluff on the edge and.
And but to, I mean, obviously.
We've had to failures in the last four years where.
You know, the walkway to the beach gets covered. And so again, thank goodness.
Nobody's ever been walking on the pathway to the beach when the bluff decided to give way.
Because my expectation is that is that happens in just seconds.
Anyhow, so it would make me feel a lot better.
If there was no risk of the bluff falling.
So I have one small question left because I learned a new term dewatering.
How do we dewater our sand seam.
So on the plan, you'll see.
It's not super obvious on the Oh, there it is. Yeah.
So Roger's pointing them there. So there's three.
Plastic pipes that will be directionally drilled through the bluff.
So it starts on top and then there.
We're going through to the toe. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Go to the cross section, Roger. Yeah.
And so the purple line is where where those lines will go.
And so the water from the seam. So you can see the seam. It's that blue line there.
So the the pipe will be perforated there. And so water will be intercepted by the pipe and discharged at the bottom rather than.
Continuing through the bluff and creating that instability.
Um, does the plan include any work to stabilize the toe of the bluff?
Because you mentioned it was that and the sand seam that were.
Yeah, I mean, can you enlarge that a little bit?
There should be a plus.
There you go.
Yeah, there you go. Yeah. So you can see on the right hand side, it shows.
Yeah, it shows a revetment being constructed and then buried in beach nourishment.
So there'd be armor stone, but it would be buried in sand.
And that's continuous along the beach, not just at the outflows of the dewatering place. Yes. Yeah. Right.
Well, with the dewatering plan, it's only at the pipes. It would be the future plan with the grading is where it would be continuous.
The 2028 beach nourishment project would do that.
Yeah, right. Yes, separate project.
Yeah, and the project for putting the pipes, the interceptor pipes in is actually out for bid right now. So we're crossing our fingers and hoping we get a good bid, but it has already not gotten any responses once.
Yeah, so we put that out for bids earlier this year. We had nine plan holders and zero bids submitted. So we are aware of that and we'll be reaching out to all our plan holders and encouraging them to submit a bid.
And for anyone who wants to be just reopened, if you want to go and look, you can see pretty easily where the sand seam is.
If you actually look at the profiles on here, you can see where the slope of the bluff changes at the sand seam because typically the bluff fails by slumping.
So we have the top portion, this kind of folds back and slides down the bluff and that's right at the bottom of that sand seam. So that's where the slope of the bluff changes.
And there's also, you can see the stripe going across, particularly from on the lake, you can very easily see the stripe across where the sand is.
It does stand out. If you know what, if you know what to look for it.
All right, any other questions or comments?
The cord. We give it another shot. No, it's going to be.
I got stuff on here.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Good.
So Rob, anything more on this topic? Are you ready to move on?
I think I'm ready to move.
All right.
Ready to move on. Okay. Yes, sweet.
Oh, there we go. All right. I guess, well, here, since I have it up, I will just.
Okay. So essentially, this is, this is the schematic that.
Again, this is very rough. This is my own creation, but this is, I just kind of wanted to give.
A visual of what we had in mind. So the orange line would all be pedestrian way.
So where, so we would have to move the road over here to accommodate the bluff stabilization, the cutback of the bluff here.
A walkway over to the possibility playground, the walkway roughly down to the beach as you saw on the Miller plans.
And then so this is all native plantings now. And then we, we received another grant for more native plantings in here.
This would be a walkway through the native plantings and native flowers walkway along the bluff here.
So that would kind of overlook our valley creek project all the way around and then connect with this sidewalk here and then have a connection to the walkway over here.
So, and then kind of hard to see, but I have on here an arrow pointing to a raised crosswalk and then an arrow to this would be a two way street.
And here's the representation of traffic circles on either side.
So they won't be full blown roundabouts. They'd just be traffic circles with mountable islands.
All right.
Any other comments or questions?
All right.
Thanks.
Thanks everyone for that.
Then we'll move on to item four, consideration and possible recommendation on a private slide side led service line removal policy.
All right, so I'll let Dan take the lead on this, but this is something we've been working on for and in really have had prepared for for a number of months.
And been working internally with Mark Emmanuelson, our treasure and and Melissa, our city administrator.
To come up with a recommendation for how we want to attack led service removal.
We did have a present. We made a presentation to counsel a few months ago and but didn't include any of the financial portion of it.
And I'm going to, I'll get right to the point, but, but Dan will go through this.
You know, ultimately the recommendation is we would like to.
We would like to mandate replacement led service laterals and I guess before I get too far, I'll let Dan explain what what's leading us to that recommendation and the requirements that we're under from the EPA.
Thank you.
All right.
A few of you guys have seen this at the council, but I will go through and if you have any questions, you can just stop me along the way or talk at the end.
A little background about our water system, our distribution system.
We have approximately 67 miles of public water main.
As you can see, there is blue on this map and then there's some pink purple.
The blue indicates PVC pipe and then the pink and purple indicates metal.
So the blue is either newer or have has been replaced and the rest is ductile or cast iron pipe mainly from the 1950s and 60s.
Also these areas, just as a visual, you can see where we have most of our water main bricks are located inside these, these old main areas.
With that, we have about 4100 water services.
So that just is the actual water connection to a home, a business, a building.
What is a water service line?
So from the bottom left, the visual is basically from the water main to the house.
In between is a curb stop, we call it, which is just an underground valve.
That is the ability for the water utility or if there's an emergency for us to shut off the water outside without having to go into the home.
There's four main types of pipe materials over the years.
First being galvanized steel and lead and then through the years, they switch to copper and then most recently we use PVC or HD PE basically a form of plastic.
So what we're essentially trying to do is get rid of all of the galvanized and lead that is still underground.
There is a difference between the property side and the public side.
So where that curb stop is, the utility owns from the curb stop back to the water main.
The homeowner owns from the curb stop into their house to the water meter.
So why are we doing this?
Like Rob said, the EPA has mandated a lead and copper improvement rule and this went in effect on 2024.
So what that means, the main part of it is from 2027 to 2037, all public water utilities have to get public side lead out of the ground and that graphic back here.
So from the curb stop back to the water main, that's what we have to get out of the ground.
The EPA and DNR wants utilities to try their hardest to get all private lead out of the ground as well.
So that has caused some municipalities to mandate programs and that's what we'll kind of get into with this.
We had to create an inventory.
So, like I said, we have 4,100 water services.
We had to identify and are currently identifying what each side of each service is.
So we need to know exactly what the material is for the public side and the private side.
By doing that, we've had to search through any kind of record that we possibly could to determine what the private side is and if we had as builds or any kind of information.
When the water main was put in what the public side is, wasn't necessarily detailed that they recorded 80 years ago.
As part of the inventory, we have to have a final inventory completed by October of 2027.
And what that means is we basically have to exhaust all the resources to figure out what the material types are by that date.
Also to note, every October, we have to send out letters to customers or residents, whoever lives at a property that has a service that is led or is galvanized deal or is unknown.
And unknown services are treated as potential lead services.
You might not at all have led, but you're still going to get this letter saying it could be led until we find out if it's led or not.
This year, we're doing a round of lead and copper sampling.
So every three years, we have to do more of an involved sampling for lead and copper.
So that means 30 homes will be sampled pretty extensively for lead and copper.
So this year, they're changing the parameter of the sampling.
In the past, you would take the first sample so the water would sit off overnight.
And when you get up in the morning, you go to your kitchen sink and you pour the first water into a sample bottle and we take that and sample that for lead.
And what that is basically doing is that's essentially the water that's sitting inside of the potential lead pipes,
leaching into the water and potentially being consumed by people.
What they're doing then now is requiring a fifth leader sample.
So homeowners will have to take five liters worth of samples.
We will sample the first leader and we'll sample the fifth leader and the fifth leader is supposed to be.
Okay, that's the amount that all the water that's sitting in the pipes underground has been going through the sink and potentially getting fresh water.
Any kind of water that hasn't leached is what they're trying to see is what that fifth leader would be.
They're also going to lower the action level limits.
So they're kind of going to get you from two levels.
They're going to take your fifth leader sample and then they're also going to make the action levels lower.
So potentially, maybe not so much us, but other municipalities might be forced to do different actions in the future because of the limits are lower.
So again, we submitted our first service line inventory in October of 2024.
At that time, we knew we had 292 public and private lead services and we had almost 3,000 unknown services.
By November of last year, we dropped that unknown number down to 1,200.
And unfortunately, up to our lead known services to about 350.
Right now we have about 550 private unknown services.
And what we're doing to find out what they are is we've created a web portal or website that customers can visit.
And they can either identify their own service by taking a picture and filling out a couple questions.
The picture is submitted or they can request an appointment and then one of our field utility crew members will come out and take a look and then identify it for the customer and also then identify it for our system.
So I just want to show kind of what this portal looks like. So.
If you go to the city's website, there's a couple ways to find this portal.
We have it on the utility, the water utility page and then I believe under the I want to tab on the city's main page, you can find this portal.
There's also a little nice QR code there. The QR code takes you right to the page that you can identify your service on.
We do require an email address and then you don't have to leave a phone number, but it's recommended and then you can leave a note if wanted.
With this, you also it's also acting as like the actual inventory. So as you see, we use our GIS system to help identify each person's property and then what the service is.
So on this picture, you see a bunch of colors. The blue means it's been identified and it's either definitely not led or it is definitely, sorry, it's unknown and definitely not led or it is then identified and it is not led.
The orangeish color is our unknown and then red, unfortunately, is led and yellow is galvanized. There's two sides of this circle.
The left side is the public side and the right side is the private side. So there's two colors to a circle.
As a utility, we need to identify the unknown public services as well. So starting next week, actually, we've identified multiple properties on streets that we have unknown services on on the public side that we will be using our jet back truck to
hide your excavate town right at the curb stop. And basically, we're going to physically look to see what the service material is. So if we have a section of a street, like a 500 block of Milwaukee street, North Milwaukee street, we don't know what that
material is. We can either excavate two homes, North and South parts of this block. And if they're both the same, which they most likely will be, the DNR is okay with us assuming that the entire, the entire street then is the public side is made up of that material because that material was put in when the main was put in.
So we have about 600 public unknowns, but we have about 80 locations only that we need to pothole. So by doing that, we'll be able to determine what all of our public laterals materials are.
Here's another look at this web portal. So there's a dashboard that has some little numbers to kind of show. This is this is a snapshot from a few months ago. So it's a little more dated, but this is all interactive. So any.
Can I say one thing on this page? The on the little circles, the utility side is the left side and the private side is the right side, correct? But yet on this page, you have utility side and the right and customer side on the left.
And for consistency, you might want to flip those just so no one gets confused. That is a very good observation. All right, sounds good.
Okay.
All right, so I kind of talked about how we're going to identify the rest of the unknowns on the public side, but we still have to replace them. So how we're going to do that.
The plan is to replace any of the public side laterals as part of our street improvement project per year.
So, fortunately, we've had a pretty aggressive street and water main program the last, I'd say 10 years, if not more than that.
That has replaced quite a bit already public side that we know of. So we're in a good spot right now where the next 10 years we're really going to hit a lot of troubled water main areas, but then that's going to take care of a lot of the issues we have in the system with
main breaks and then lead. So, I just kind of put the sections on what we've determined as are going to be the next 10 years worth the streets.
As you can see next year is Holden and East Washington. And really, we have a grant for Holden, right? Is that why? Yep.
And then we've obviously adopted a every other year replacement schedule. So, as you can see in 2029, we're pretty heavy with the streets, but all of Eva Garfield first, second, third, fourth and high have.
We've had not only a lot of water main breaks, but this is a heavy lead line area. So, this will be a nice section of town to update and get rid of some lead in.
As you can see in 2031, it's another collection of roads.
Again, most of these have known private lead laterals. We don't have any public known on this section just yet. 2033.
It's a little bit a little fewer. 2035. And then 2037. Any questions on the roads?
So, also, as part of this program, we're kind of going to have two programs we have for the private side. Sorry. We're going to have private locations that are on mains that already have been replaced and then private locations that need to be replaced and will be replaced as part of the water main projects.
So, this is, I believe, tower drive, just for instance, that tower was redone. But as you can see, there are multiple homes that have private side lead that need to be replaced. We have about 100 identified currently that are on roads that have been redone.
So, essentially, what we would want to do is make that a separate project where we would try to do, if we can, as many homes as possible in a one to two year period separate from the water main replacement private.
So, this kind of leads us into what we're talking about here with Rogers Memo as far as options go for the private side replacements. Do you want me to go through?
Yeah. So, option one, the one thing I don't have is we have three to five year on our memo, but on here, I have five, just, you know, option one is a city managed replacement program with a special assessment option.
And I don't know if you want to talk about the special assessment.
Yeah. So, I mean, certainly we'll be happy to convey the recommendation of the Board of Public Works, but when this goes next to the finance committee, I think they're going to determine whether or not to offer a special assessment of three years or five years.
So, I don't know if there's a recommendation from the Board. Traditionally, to my recollection, every special assessment we've issued here, the city has been five year, but we are recommending a portion of the 50% of the cost of the replacement be paid for by the utility.
And so, the feeling of the people who work the finances is that a three year special assessment would be adequate since we're cutting the amount of the cost in half. So, but that's certainly any recommendations from the Board. We're happy to put in our memo to GGF.
Yeah. So, this would be basically a city managed project, but then up to a home owner could choose to special assess the entire cost of the replacement option to is city managed projects.
This would be a mandatory participation. And then the city would, as Rob said, cover up to 50% of the cost, and then the remaining 50% could also then be a special assessed if requested option three would be not mandatory.
And we basically as a utility would not force or we would pursue as much as we are doing right now, and as much as we have to with the DNR and EPA, but it would be up to the home owner to decide if they wanted to pay and get their line replaced.
So, yeah, in your memo, I add a one A and a three A option where it could be mandatory or it could not be mandatory. And then you can either have the city participate in the cost or not participate in the cost, essentially.
So, yeah, if the property owner handles removal, the city's a completely out of it. We're not, we're not contracting. We're not hiring a contractor that that homeowners could utilize. They all be on their own work. Yes, again, we're not recommending this.
This would be the least work for staff, but we want to get the lead replaced in the city. We feel it's something that is a benefit for the community too, so that we can eliminate that as a potential health issue.
There's, you know, a child is identified as having a high lead content. You know, there's the question of, does this come from paint old painting houses or from the lead in the water system? If we eliminate it from our system, that certainly removes that variable from the cause of lead poisoning.
So we are recommending option two with the 50% and then the ability to special assess.
Just for reference in 2022, we were able to receive $200,000 to replace private water laterals.
We were able to get 33 customers to sign up and do it.
I believe it was just under 6,000 her customer for was the average price.
But what we did is we put the project out to bid. We had multiple contractors bid on this and then van right plumbing was the ultimate winner and they knocked it out of the park within.
I believe it was a week. They did 33 homes.
So this process might seem like overwhelming in a lot, but these companies are all over. You know, this isn't just us doing this in this community.
They kind of have it down to a science. We had a number of homes last year street project that were private led that was also replaced by van right plumbing.
So we're kind of familiar with the process and we feel that if we do this option to.
Yes, it is work on staff, but ultimately we kind of already have the game plan of where we need to go what we need to do to make this effective for homeowners.
How does a special assessment work is it could add it on your property tax bill or your water bill property tax bill? Okay.
And then what if somebody decides that they want to sell their house? How would they disclose that when they're putting it up?
The special assessment. The title company usually calls before closed or if there's any special assessments on the property.
I was just going to say that you guys, my dad on Milwaukee street has had his lead lateral replaced a couple years ago, and it was incredibly smooth.
He was really happy with it, but I guess not that I think getting led out of the system is fantastic.
I'm a little uncomfortable with requiring people to do it. And then I guess is the offering to pay 50% of it just because it would be a requirement or why did you guys.
So 50% is the most that a utility can pay. So we can't pay anymore.
And actually, yes, it's to help customers. I always say this.
Nobody living in a home right now that has led put that led underground. It's not their fault that there's led there. So from my standpoint is it is cost shared over utility customers, but it's a water quality issue to me.
So that's I guess my take on that.
And by most utility can pay that's a ruling by the Wisconsin Public Service Commission. Correct. Correct. Yeah.
So my question does have to do with legal also. So this is won't be like the sub pump issue that we've had in years back where you couldn't have them.
And you had to have them. And then somebody sued. And now it's optional.
Where legal is there legalities? Is there another community that's doing any of these programs?
Oh, yeah.
There.
Everybody is now being required to make lead service line replacement programs, but there are multiple communities around that have been ahead of the game.
Cedarburg has been doing this for a few years now. They have many more led services than us.
So they're requiring replacement. They have a believe it is it a 30 20 20 year special assessment.
So there's there's other examples out there of people doing this. There's many other communities that are doing the 50% as well.
Shorewood is doing 50% in mandatory.
Roger, do you know, trying to think of any other ones without off top of my head, but yeah, I can get you a list of kind of the surrounding company or surrounding neighborhoods surrounding communities that are doing this.
And you had said 6000 before as being the price previously.
So 3000 about would be their bill or would be.
Four or five.
Just to clarify, we're we're putting in for budget 7500 because, you know,
6000 was two years ago. Yeah. So, but correct. So if we did the 50% and the bills, $6,000, the homeowner would be responsible for 3000.
And then the 3000 could be special assessed over the either three or five year period.
Okay. And so all the people that did it before this.
On their own dime, like I did.
What is there a rebate that perhaps maybe some of these homeowners could get?
Fortunately, no.
Great. Sidewalk all over again.
With the duration of the special assessments, does that affect in any way the 50% amount that for repayment from the utility other than, of course,
the utility is going to be financing it for a longer time?
There's no limit on that. It's not like that 50%.
The financing charge has to be included and it reduces it or anything if you're longer versus shorter.
No, no, no, just 50%.
Okay. So you said Cedarburg is doing a 20 year? 20 year.
I would tend to want to lean on the longer side for people, but 20 year is really long for that.
They also had quadruple the services that we have. So yeah, they had something like 800 some web services.
Yeah, so just add a little bit more information. So the overall cost of the program for residents in the city is about 5 million.
So about half I'll be paid by residents half half by the city. So we're looking at two and a half million.
If you do a three or five year special assessment, you don't need all that money. You just need enough to fund, you know,
first year because then you then you get a payment back.
So and it's not 5 million right away. It's 5 million over 10 years, essentially, because we'd be targeting, you know,
the private homeowners on during the street projects.
For people who are on roads that need to be replaced. So with the inventory, we'd already know how many people on Eva need need a replacement.
So when the project comes along, we can bid that project out with the street replacement to get a better price to do it all at once.
So for the cost of the program, if we go with option two, since that's coming out of the utility financially in the utility,
is that going to lead us to any immediate rate increases or does that safely fit within our budget over the duration of these projects?
I'll let Roger answer that one.
Obviously, the money comes from somewhere eventually rates go right.
Yeah, I don't know that I have a full answer for you. I think those are numbers mark is putting together for GGF.
So I guess, hey, tight on that. But generally, the feeling is yes, that it can be funded with current current rate structure,
I guess, between reserves that we have rates that we have maybe delays another water project somewhere, but that's my expectation.
Yeah, and just to be clear, there are going to be rate increases between now and the time we do this regardless.
So in fact, phase two of our rated of our mandated rate increase from the PSC is coming later this year.
And then I think we're looking at now, I can't remember if it's one or two years later, I think it's just a little ultimately be.
I think two years before we have to do another rate case. So.
And there may be other rate cases that are required by the PSC for the work that we're doing to expand the water system.
On the last rate study that PSC did. And if you remember, we're kind of arguing for lower rates of returns and.
Basically, we ended up with a higher one. We're looking, but one of the justifications that PSC said what for that was to be able to have sufficient money to replace flood services.
Yeah.
All right. Any other questions, comments for the board?
Seeing none, you are asking for a motion and the recommended option is option two.
And after that approval here, this will go to common console or GGF first and then ultimately common console.
Yeah, for their approvals. So, so I will entertain a motion. Anyone has one.
So, what is the.
Could you is to follow the staff recommendation there? Yes. Yes. Okay.
So we have a motion from Alderman Beasters for the staff recommendation, which is the option two scenario. Is there a second?
I'll second that motion. Second by Mr. Polly. Are any questions on the motion?
Seeing none, all those in favor say aye.
Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. All right. Let's hear.
Okay. One one one opposed. Motion carries though.
All right. Thank you. That will move us on to item five.
You're fighting pull it back up. Yes. Item five consideration and possible recommendation on the port moves bicycle and pedestrian plan.
Back for a second month.
All right. Well, hey, it's worth two times. How about that? So, no, I appreciate the time that the committee wanted to make sure that they took to thoroughly review the plan and I'm.
What happened to my.
All right. Let's see if we can. Yeah, get this thing to work on.
Give it another go.
Yeah, I think I'm feeling good.
Okay.
And so rather than a PowerPoint, I'm just going to go through the.
The plan quickly at 69 pages, but I won't spend a lot of time on any of it.
Before I forget her before I begin, I want to recognize kid Keller who is with us. She's a pedestrian advocate has been doing this for a number of years and she came to our last meeting.
And she's sat through a presentation on upper Lake Park and sewer backups and and and lead lad roles waiting for this.
So thank you for coming. We were very pleased to have her on our on our committee and I'll kick off right away by showing our.
Our team if we can see that I'll enlarge it a little bit. So.
So when we set out when we set out a few years ago to.
To update our bike and pet plan and so as a reminder, our most our most recent plan was from 1996.
And so as we were well overdue to update our plan, we received a grant from.
Wisconsin Department of Transportation that paid for 80%. So we got all this for just $15,000. We're very pleased.
The the plan. I just want to make sure right off the bed that everyone knows the plan is something that that.
That staff use as a guide to inform decision making as we get into any one of our projects up our Lake Park being a perfect example.
You know, we'll use this plan to inform our design right or any time we have a street project.
It informs our decision making and I have a couple examples already. We're already using this.
This this where we're already using this plan.
Another project so.
So the project management team.
I would say it was led by myself along with Roger Strom and Bob Harris, our city planner.
And then we have our steering committee. We had a number of people recommending the schools.
I personally feel that the schools are our most important partner.
Followed by poor Washington Police Department, but then we had some pedestrian advocates such as Kit and Adam.
Adam from Jim Oluski. I'm just going to say that. I'm sure I'm butchering it. But in any case, we received an email from him a year or so ago.
That was that was critical. And so we we always appreciate when people are honest with us and telling us how they view our bike and pedestrian systems.
I thought it was a great person to have on the committee. Someone from Harbor campus, you know, we want to meet the needs of people with special needs and not everyone is able bodied.
And that's why we talk about walking biking and rolling. So for those who are in a wheelchair and certainly we see the people from portal come and visit us regularly.
And I'm always I'm happy that that they see us as a community that's friendly to people with special needs.
So we want to make that even better. And then as a quick aside, I'll just say again, because kid is here. So we go back to say 2002 I received a call from then Mark Gottlieb who said there's a walking pedestrian
in the city that's being done downtown. I want you to attend it. And I thought to myself, well, we have sidewalks everywhere in the city. What that's good enough. Why, why are we even talking about that? And as we went through and created that plan in 2002 and kit was a member and we had a police department and schools and
that's when I really got my first taste of all the things that can be done in the community. You might take for granted that you think that we've already.
We've already accomplished our goals of pedestrian being a pedestrian friendly community just by having sidewalks and and curb ramps at every corner. But there's really so many things to think about. And I really, I think that day was my when I really first became a pedestrian advocate. And so
this is very important to me. It's a it's a it was a fun project and I'm looking forward to implementing it. So in any case, so we put our team together.
And and and we met several times with our with our team and and then as our on a just on a management level and then of course tool was the the consultant that facilitated this and so
beyond the table of contents. So it talks about port moves. It builds upon the existing as I said, we have great bones here. I'm very proud of Port Washington and
the fact that we have sidewalks on just about every every street and good connectivity and we have the inner urban trail running through the community. Most of it is off street and we'll talk about that in a bit.
Scrolling down to the vision. So, I mean, this is what I put on listed as our goals when I filled out the grant application, safety, health and environment network connectivity,
modal shift, economic development and being equitable. So naturally, you know, there's a segment of our population. Anyone who's under the age of 16, they don't have the opportunity to drive.
My philosophy is no one should ever feel like the only way to safely leave their houses in a car. They should be able to walk or ride anywhere and feel safe.
It's a it's a it's an environmental every time we are not getting into a car. We're helping the environment. Every time we are not in a car.
I think we're benefiting our own health by walking or riding. So again, you know, as an engineer trying to play in the community.
Any time we design a street, we're making a statement about
whether or not we're going to make the community, whether or not the resident on that street is going to feel like if they want to walk, there's nothing stopping them from getting safely from their home to their destination.
So there's no impediments. There's sidewalks on both sides of the street. There's adequate lighting. There's good crossings that, you know, a mother and father can feel safe sending their their kid out. So,
you know, economic development actually having that.
We spent a lot of time creating a more friendly walking environment downtown from that study. We did in 2002 all the way to our the improvements we made in 2008.
Really so important to make that experience for walkers downtown, a pleasant one. And I think we've we've done that.
And I think people who live here, certainly people who move here, we hear from them saying how proud they are to live in a place where they can just walk downtown and walk to the lakefront. And it's there's a great.
I think everyone would acknowledge there's a great emphasis on walkability here in port.
So I talked about pretty much all of these things that are in there. One of the goals that we set when we when we started on this process was becoming a bike friendly community.
That turned out to be a much larger task than than I hoped it would be the applications over 100 pages long. And so that was something we set aside but create but left as a goal.
I would like to be able to pick that up someday and and and and I think again we have.
Certainly have the potential to get that designation just as we have like tree city and bird city to be a bike friendly community.
So opportunities and needs again, this is part of the public input that that we solicited through we had yard signs around the city with a QR code.
You you took a picture of that code and then it would bring you right to our website and then you were asked questions about how you felt about biking in Port Washington, whether you were brave and fearless or.
I don't know scared and cowardly.
But whether you are not you know what or did you feel safe biking and walking and what could be done to improve that.
And so we got a lot of input from residents. We we didn't invite people to city hall.
We went out to where they were out at the beer garden and at the farmers market and solicited their.
Their input and that all went into the design so.
So then just.
In the plan you'll see the maps we have.
Look, we have a map that indicates where we have sidewalk on both sides of the street where we have no sidewalk and where we have sidewalk just on one side of the street.
And so.
Again, that's in the plan, the current bicycle network, which essentially assists solely of the urban trail, which is a great asset for the community.
We're going to talk later about this little segment here. You can see.
The inner urban trail again, I think is should be a point of pride for our community that from the south end of the city to the north end of the city.
It is all off street with the exception of downtown and then this section right in the middle here. And so this is something we've been working on eliminating and getting that off street for 25 years and I'm hoping tonight we advance that so that we can.
Get even more of the trail off street.
It talks a little bit about our urban urban trail and the mountain biking trail. This is something that we're working on with the mountain bike club as part of our Valley Creek project that's part of our public outreach for that project.
We're working with them to make sure that we not only maintain, but we enhance the trail system that currently exists.
And I know when we build the Valley Creek project that that's going to be much, much better.
We looked at all the crash reports that the police department gave us.
Most of them as you see 60% involves a turning movement. Most of them are on Grand Avenue. You'll see that kind of stands out and it's not super surprising because of course Grand Avenue is one of our busiest streets.
And then also we have a lot of pedestrians.
We don't have counts, but I would imagine it's probably the street with the most pedestrians on it just because of the way Port Washington is set up. There aren't a lot of contiguous East West streets because across and across South Creek.
So, this is the most current. So good.
In case this plan aligns with our downtown, our downtown plan that was recently completed, our comprehensive outdoor recreation plan, our complete streets policy, the street design changes we made in 2015.
And builds on the bike bed plan from 1996.
So it's consistent with other plans that we've created.
Okay. And this is, I mean, this is one of the things that kind of drives me.
Is just the importance of getting, getting traffic to slow down. I said, whenever, whenever we rebuild a street, I always hear from residents when I asked them, like, what can be improved? They say, Hey, traffic was too fast on my street or I get calls all the time saying, Hey, I want to stop sign on my street.
I want to speed bump on my street. Well, those really aren't the best ways to control traffic speed because if you put a stop sign on every, on every single corner.
I think they'll be frustrating for motorists. Speed bumps, the same thing.
There isn't, you know, there isn't a street where people don't want traffic to slow down.
But people also find stop signs and speed bumps annoying. So what we've done is, you know, whenever we reconstruct a street, we look at the amount of traffic on the street, the amount of parking on the street.
And what does the street really need to be constructed at in terms of its width? And so a number of our streets have been reduced in their width.
That, like in the case of downtown, gave us more area for pedestrians and other areas. It increases the separation between the pedestrian and the street, which makes them feel more comfortable about more comfortable walking.
It increases the, the terrace, which increases the survivability of the trees and increases the tree canopy and just makes a more pleasant neighborhood and walking experience.
So, but this, this here is a little small, but.
And there's different ways to represent this, but so, you know, depending on faster traveling, if you're traveling 20 miles per hour, you know, this is what you see out the windshield, the full windshield.
But if you travel at 30 miles per hour, your vision becomes tighter. And then if you're at 40 miles per hour, this is what you see. So you don't even see the pedestrian.
If you're traveling 40, 40 miles per hour and in the likelihood.
If you double your speed, you increase the chances of killing somebody where you to.
Strike a pedestrian from 13% to 73%. And I honestly, I think that would be even greater.
If you're traveling 40 miles per hour and would hit somebody. And so just him.
So what the plan is doing is showing that that reducing traffic speed through narrowing the streets is is a tremendous benefit, not only to pedestrians being seen, but naturally.
Crosswalks become a lot shorter. Your exposure out in the street becomes a lot less and.
So the plan, this plan endorses that those steps that we've taken.
We have a complete street resolution. This talks about what a complete street is.
This goes over some of the interaction that we had from the community. There's kid.
And that's from the beer garden. This is our steering committee. We did a walking tour downtown and talked about.
Some of the things that people feel feel are important to walk safely.
There's a picture of our yard sign that we had scattered throughout the city a couple of years ago.
Then we talk about some of the best best practices.
And designing for bicyclists.
And it goes through. I'm sure you went through all this.
The different things we can we can do to improve safety to sidewalks, curdrams, sidewalks, etc.
So in the different, yeah, so the different types of bike lane treatments.
And so we'll talk about that a little more in depth.
I received some comments from Alderman Gasper where where I think we had.
We have some of our bike improvements.
Mislabeled and so we'll have to make those corrections.
Because of course we're trying to strike a balance between parking and bike safety and road with.
So road with is great for a bike lane, but it also increases.
You know, the width of the street, it increases the crosswalk.
And so those are sometimes kind of competing interests.
And I'm going to.
Through there. So this is the bicycle network.
And if you have any other comments, please, you can either give them to me tonight or between now and the next place.
This will stop actually is at traffic safety. We're going to take it there a week.
Wait, it's going to be on Tuesday this year or this month, right Wednesday, Wednesday, the 27th.
Cross scenes, we've already we've already used this for as part of our ramp.
A ramp replacement project that I brought to the council, we talked about.
I'm sorry to the Board of Public Works where we talked about whether or not we wanted to add the ladder crosswalks.
So I went back. They said there's still time to put in the ladder crosswalks as part of the project.
So this plan says essentially on any high traffic street, you should have the high visibility crosswalk.
So we will be seeing an upcoming meeting probably the next one.
And I'm going to talk about an amendment to that contract with DOT to install ladder crosswalks on all Wisconsin street.
And on spring street.
It indicates the places in the neighborhoods where you want to have the high visibility crosswalk.
So anywhere around the schools, right, I think it was a quarter mile is what they said in the plan.
Or playgrounds.
Then it talks about short term goals, long term goals. So we want to, you know, we want to pick the low fruit right away, which is again, some of this is just pavement markings reporting to this board on a regular basis.
And that's something that will continue to do.
And then there's the five to 10 year goals. So, so there's some identified projects that we have that we'd like to do to improve to improve walkability in the city.
So one of them, but I think it's on the long term is the taking the inner urban trail and putting it in the we energies easement over by the highway department, the county highway department.
But I think it does a good job of setting expectations for what we can accomplish to.
You know, improve again, improve the walkability and the right ability in the city.
Funding and.
Yeah, so it and then a map showing kind of the different areas. So again, this is the one we'll talk about tonight right here in the middle.
This I can tell you just, this is a goal of mine. I think this is a real need here. The people who live in the Lake Ridge subdivision.
For instance, if you want to walk to the high school, you got to walk all the way down spring street over to grand and then back up rather than just walking straight across.
So I think this is a real, I would say the two most important.
Projects on the horizon. I have this one. And this one right here is my opinion, not that they're not all important. It lists them all out.
I will spare you going through any of that. I'm sure you had time on your own.
And I'll just end there. Are there any questions or anything more you want me to cover? And I apologize if I covered too much.
No, but I appreciate you going over at the second time and I appreciate the extra time. I do like the way finding that was listed on there and the day lighting.
There's a term tactical urbanism. I don't know if you're.
I really would like to see us try doing something like that out on grand by the library to put just to try it out and see if it makes a difference in getting people from passing on the right, which really endangers everyone who walks across grand after.
Thank you.
All right. Are any other questions or comments?
Seeing none. We are looking for a motion to approve this.
I'll make the motion to approve. All right. We have a motion by older woman Miller. Is there a second? Second.
Second by Mr. Schudendorf. Any questions on the motion? Seeing none. All those in favor say aye.
Aye. Opposed? Motion carries.
Thank you. All right. That'll move us on to item six consideration and possible action on submitting a grant application for the railroad crossing off street into urban path.
Okay. So we'll get right back into.
So we did not anticipate moving this quickly on to.
On to this grant. This is something, though, that we've talked about honestly since the trail has been opened. So the trail opened, I think, in 2002.
And in this small segment of the trail, I think kind of.
Sticks out a little bit like a sore thumb because if you're particularly if you're on foot, you kind of get dumped out onto the street.
There's no sidewalk on Oakland Avenue.
For a person to safely walk on. And there's not a good railroad crossing. And so.
Back in 2005, we.
Received a, a DOT grant to.
To work on design and construction of a crossing in the we energies right of way.
And I'll just skip to that.
So.
To make a very long story short, that money wound up being re appropriated from this portion of the project to the north end of the city. So it used to be the bike trail dumped you off in front of the country and hotel on the north end.
And you had to ride your bike on L L and Highland Drive over to connect to the inner urban trail on the north side of the town hall. Sorry, the west side of the town hall.
In any case, so.
Or is it the north? Sorry, it is the north side. So, so that money wound up being re appropriated for that section of it.
So we were because to be honest, the amount of money that was in the grant was not enough.
Funness is a very expensive endeavor to try and get an underpass or any type of crossing above or below the railroad.
Fast forward to now we have underway and this is again another agenda item.
Where we're relaying and up sizing sanitary sewer from Oakland Avenue to Park Street.
And so as part of that plan, we are creating what will double as an access road and a bike path.
Off off street in this right of way, but it would not include the railroad crossing.
So I kind of wanted to set it up so that when we were able to find funding for either a railroad underpass or an accurate crossing that we already had the rest of the trail in place, not anticipating that this funding source would would come up.
It just came out last week. It is part of a five year plan from the Federal Highway Administration.
This is a safe hazard elimination grant. There's over a billion dollars in it.
And last year 70% of the projects were funded.
So we've been working with TKDA on this.
Coincidentally, TKDA was our second choice when we were selecting consultants for the bike plan.
So we're familiar with them in their work. They do a lot of bike and ped type work.
We put together an application that goes through the railroad process and I know.
Alderman Gasper is well aware that the Union Pacific is a large bureaucracy that isn't going to give you anything without you working for it.
And even then they might say no. Yes, or there's a good chance they will.
So, right. So I don't want to get anyone's hopes overly high, but, but again, I think.
TKDA is not going to make any money other than covering their costs by assisting us with this grant application that I'm recommending.
So, I mean, I think they have a skin in the game as well. They, they wouldn't take this on if they didn't feel that we had a very good chance.
God bless you of getting this this this grant awarded.
So the upside of it is an 80 covers 80% of the cost. I have kind of I personally spitballed this at about a $2 million project.
So that would cover $1.6 million that would leave the local share at $400,000.
While I can't make any promises, I can.
Assure the committee that we would try to cover that local share either with private donations or through other grants, but you cannot match federal money with federal money.
And right now, most of the federal money is coming from most of the DOT grants are based in federal money.
So the Knowles Nelson stewardship program ever comes back. That would be a great source.
I think this next year is the first year that the cities or the state is not funding that program, but if that were to come back, that would be a great.
Grant to go after the county is is certainly invested in the in the inner urban and we feel we can partner with them and hopefully cover that cost.
The case scenario is if we did were awarded the grant and we're going to construct this project in the next two or three years and there's different people sitting in the council and they don't want to pursue it or we just don't have the money.
We're not we're not required to pursue the project. We could return the money, but I hope we would hope we wouldn't do that.
We are not legally bound to spend the money. I think this is well worth investing in because I think if there's any hope to ever get this project off the ground and underneath the railroad tracks that this is the best opportunity I've seen in 25 years.
All right. We have any questions?
Yeah, just more of a comment. Having lived for about 10 years at the bottom block away from the south end of the red line there, it doesn't look like a big pain to go north to grand and then around on your bike and then get back to the bike trail.
But I do think it would be really nice to see that opened up.
It would make Ward 6 feel like it's a lot closer to the lake when you want to just ride your bike down there in the evening or something.
So I'd be really excited to see this grant applied for.
I don't like question. I was always curious if there's a retaining wall like north of Oakland and east of Spring Street where the right away comes through.
Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Who's responsible for maintaining that with that PTC or.
Okay. And I'm sorry. Are you talking about the railroad or the retaining wall on Spring Street?
No, it's like where the red line is.
This is the bottom end of the red line where those homes are in that little triangle.
Unless I can. Okay. Yeah. All right. It's on we energies property. Is it we? Okay.
I'm just curious because it's getting pretty beat up. Okay.
I'm going to go to that next time I'm out there to be honest. It does not stand out to me. So, yeah.
But I don't get back there all that often.
Any other questions comments? Just say if we get this built, it would be also nice to have a connection from the corner of Spring and Madison down to the trail there to just to bring those neighborhoods a little bit closer into it.
And, yeah, I was going to just saying it was considering to tonight.
The state often has grants for rail connections for businesses and stuff.
Would any of those be applicable to this type of situation to pair up with the federal grant or those pretty much exclusively for getting business connections to railroads?
I think that would be separate, but we did.
This topic did come up. We brought it up.
A spur from the only other the railroad.
Okay. Not under this grant program. I don't think I don't think so. Okay.
All right.
Any other comments questions?
Seeing none, we're looking for a motion to approve for city staff to move forward with this seeking this grant.
All move is recommended.
So we have a motion by alderwoman Miller. Is there a second?
I'll second.
Second by Mr. Sundorff. Are there any questions on the motion?
Seeing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries.
All right. That moves us on to item seven, consideration and possible action on construction change order two for Spring Street sanitary sewer interceptor.
Yeah, sure.
Keeping us in the interconnecting all items flowing to next.
Yeah, I don't know if Rob intended that, but it's been a nice segue.
I did intended it.
So the Spring Street interceptor pretty much follows that red line up there.
It's pretty close. And then it runs down Spring Street to First Avenue. And this project.
We bid it out last year. The intent of this project is we also have some basement backups over in the First Avenue area.
And this sewer surcharges.
This project will also provide enough capacity to continue to support development out on the west end of the city.
So that's the purpose of the project.
So last last year in November, they started the project by attempting to bore the sewer underneath the railroad tracks.
And essentially when they got underneath the railroad tracks, they hit an obstruction.
And they were forced to go to hand mining to try to get through it.
And even though they were making some progress, it wasn't fast enough progress for the railroad inspectors.
So they said, you got to shut it down. You got to backfill your pipe.
And you need to come back to us with a new plan.
And the result of that is about $110,000 worth of work that the contractor put in that he's got to repeat.
And essentially the obstruction was unknown.
It was almost directly underneath the railroad tracks.
We attempted to do some soil borings prior to the project.
Of course, railroad company doesn't let you do soil borings on the tracks or even near the tracks.
So we did not hit it.
Actually, we feel like it's probably the old footing or maybe the bottom of the original butts for the inner urban.
So anyway, contractors, we drew up a new alignment for the sewer.
Contractor is going to do all the current work underneath the original bid.
But he's asking for payment.
I recommend that we approve the change order for the work that was attempted to be done last fall.
I'm fortunate at, or maybe not so fortunate, but I recognize when we're doing budgeting that this or this was going to likely happen.
So I carried over to 4.1.1 million for the project into the current year.
So we'll still be underneath budget with this project to barring any other calamities, I guess.
And this was a stuff happens type construction issue that it's nothing about design that was lacking or anything else that was done.
It just ran into something that wasn't known.
You can't, well, the railroad doesn't want you to do borings everywhere anyway, but you can't do borings everywhere.
So it's messed on occasion.
And looking at old aerial photos, you know, there also were wing walls on the on the bridge structure, which on the top portion is removed.
I would not be surprised if all the underground portions were still there and we may well have run into one of those too.
All right. Any questions or comments on this item?
Seeing none, I will entertain a motion to approve the staff recommendation.
Anyone wants to make one?
Motion to approve as recommended.
All right. We have a motion by Mr. Sundorf.
Second by older woman Miller.
Any questions on the motion? Seeing none. All those in favor say aye.
Aye. Opposed? Motion carries.
All right. That moves us on to item eight construction or consideration and possible action on construction change order five at the wastewater treatment plant.
All right. So this is another one.
The roof on the secondary digester was not intended to be replaced with the project.
But our crews had to take the digester down.
Basically, there's methane gas in there. So they do the operation just like kind of like anything.
The city owns if we're doing a water main project, we operate the valves.
So we took it down on.
I don't recall if it was a Thursday or Friday, but anyways.
Came back in on Monday over the weekend and.
The whole thing was kind of like tipped over.
And what we believe the situation was that there are some high winds that week.
Weekend that it caught the the membrane.
A portion of that.
And then the structures that that supports the.
Basically the floating membrane for for the anaerobic digester there.
So anyway, we had a hard time.
This thing was built 40 years ago finding.
Original builder because they were bought and sold several times.
We eventually found the people that.
Owned original company.
They came out there and engineering firm didn't evaluation.
From from the wind damage, we had some betting members that were very obvious.
And then they found on a lot of the connections of the.
The structural steel that there's micro fractures and all that.
They didn't.
I guess they basically couldn't couldn't identify when or how those micro fractures occurred,
but basically they weren't going to stand behind them.
Continuing to work or that they're irrelevant.
So they essentially said, yeah, you need to replace.
The full structure.
So I guess that that's where we are.
That was not part of the project.
So we're going to.
I guess we're roughly 135,000 for replacement.
We can't where we're at on the project.
We're essentially at substantial completion.
There's one there's one pumping mixer in a.
In our sludge storage tank that we cannot start up and test until this process is functioning.
In the lead time on this and and work is going to be.
It's roughly going to put us in October before they get this up and installed.
So that's going to extend quite a bit to completion of this project.
Although you're not going to see any activity there for eight months and.
So anyway, I guess we're we're looking for approval for this change order so we can get the material ordered.
All right.
Any questions comments?
Alderman Miller.
How old was the storm?
It's about 40 years old.
And what's the life expectancy?
Hard to say.
The steel structure under roof.
So part of it is you can't get inside to inspect when it's full sludge.
But I'd say it's going to be anywhere from 40 to 80.
Okay.
So it really owes us nothing at this point.
Right.
Yeah.
We consider insurance claim for this.
But we're thinking and we'll still talk to insurance company, but we feel that it's because of age.
There it's not going to have any value for them.
The pay.
And because we are right up at final completion with just about everything else.
I presume we expect this is going to be the last change order.
I do have a conglomerate of a bunch of other ones.
We should finish below our contingency on this project minus this change order.
But this will actually get.
This will be because August winters is on site and capable of doing a job.
We're going to have them do it change to change our Twitter contract, but we're not paying us through.
We're paying our clean water fund loan.
We'll be paying this through other plant services.
Okay.
And if we had discovered this by different means and wasn't in the midst of a plant renovation, otherwise it probably would have cost even more, I would imagine.
Right.
And earlier during this construction project that they had also taken this digestive service and for almost like six weeks, it was perfectly fine.
So just hit.
Hit the right conditions, I guess.
But better to find out now than they have it done for a year and then have it fail.
Was it not fully installed when the wind hit it or what caused the damage?
So basically they had taken it.
Our city crew took it out of service.
So everything had deflated.
That was in there.
So basically with the methane gas, it blows it up like a balloon and then that covers it.
But with a deflated, it was flexible.
So it's like you had a big grocery bag tied to the top and it was when was whipping it around.
All right.
Any other questions?
Seeing none, I will entertain a motion on this item.
I'll move to approve the staff recommendation.
So we have a motion to approve by Alderman Beaster.
Is there a second?
Second.
Second by Mr. Polly.
Any questions on the motion?
Seeing none, all those in favor say aye.
Aye.
Opposed?
Motion carries.
All right.
Since the next couple items we have done already, that should bring us up to item 11.
Review staff monthly reports.
Okay.
Oh, okay.
Well, the only.
I was told to highlight and I guess I'm happy to highlight that the city was awarded, given an award for our lighthouse work from the Wisconsin.
Historical Preservation Commission.
So Roger and I drove up to Sturgeon Bay, which I always enjoy doing and get in an award.
So it's terrific to be recognized and I, and if you ask me, I think of all the other projects that received an award, ours was certainly, I think, as well or more deserving than any of them.
And the amount of effort that went into it from, you know, and I'm just very proud of the fact that we paid for 40% of the design with the Wisconsin Coastal Management grant we paid for.
And if we didn't have that, if we didn't, if we wouldn't have had that grant, we probably would not have done the design work.
And if we didn't have the design completed, we would definitely not have gotten the grant from was dot because that was needed to be shovel ready.
And we had to really expedite the grant application.
And so the fact that we were able to achieve a $2.5 million project for less than half a million dollars.
I'm super proud of that. And that the, and of course the finished product is something that the city can be proud of. And that's just the cherry on top of all the work that's gone into restoring the breakwater over the last 10 years.
So anyone who's lived here, and I think that includes all of us over the last 10 years knows what the breakwater used to look like. And now it's a real attraction to the city.
And of course, achieving its goal of protecting the harbor.
So yeah, I'm happy to take home that award and we're real proud of it.
So other than that, just kind of a fun update on the mural process is starting this week with what they call the poly tab creation.
We're going to see those and hearing those ceramics to the wall like they have on the wall right now, the branching out wall.
And I just, for me working here, being able to, you know, we do a lot of projects that I think make the community better.
It's great when you're working with stakeholders who are really invested in downtown as well. Those are the fun projects.
So happy to be working with paint top. Actually, I don't think this is part of paint on port, but it's the next chapter.
Anyhow, and then Roger had something to highlight.
Yeah, just just on the engineering report.
If you look at my section where it kind of talks about our work with Vantage, I say we'll be paving County highway all starting today and lake drive will be closed.
That's correct.
Lake drive is open during this period where we're paving.
L L. So just though.
If anybody read that far down into the report and saw that, but I just want to make that correction.
And I'll add under Rogers report, something we received today, the tentative schedule for Stark as fault on highway 33.
That project is scheduled to start in mid June and be completed in mid September.
That's a resurfacing project that will be done under traffic. So they'll do one lane at a time. So the highway won't be closed other than resurfacing of the roundabout, which I think they're doing at night.
So are we going to make sure that that's as open as it can be for say fish day, which usually brings us more traffic than we're used to?
Yes. Okay.
And there'll be two.
The only thing that will change besides the, you know, the new surface is we'll be adding a left turn lane for eastbound traffic going into the new public safety building and a left bound turn lane or a.
A left hand turn lane for westbound traffic going into the Shannon farm.
So anticipating development there is imminent.
Not that we have a developer right now, but we think we will someday.
All right. Any comments or questions from the board?
Seeing none, unless you have anything else for staff, we'll move on to Chairman's business, of which I have none. So they'll take us 13 members liaisons business. Does anybody on the board have any business for the board?
All right. Seeing none, they'll bring us to item 14 public comments and appearances.
It's the crowd has left.
Probably wanted to get home and watch a burger game.
So they'll bring us then to item 15.
Our next meeting date and time, which our next meeting will be Tuesday, June 9th, 2026 at 530 p.m. Here in the common council chambers.
And that will then bring us to item 16, a German. Do we have a motion to adjourn?
Motion to adjourn by Alderman Miller. Is there a second?
Second.
Second by Mr. Sudendorf. All those in favor? Say aye.
All right. We are adjourned.