City Council — 2020-06-16

Call the meeting to order and will the clerk please call the roll.

Yeah I appreciate that Mayor Johnson, Council Member Mr. Vega. I'm Rudy Gonzalez Southern California Edison's Government Relations Manager for the Ojai area. Thanks for the opportunity to come before you this evening I came to work for Edison over 37 years ago, starting as a meter reader with my very first routes covering the Ojai Valley. So I'm very familiar with Ojai and the surrounding communities.

I have a couple of objectives this evening, the first is to explain and highlight the fire risk that exists in the Ojai Valley. The second is to convince you all of the importance of allowing Edison to move forward with daytime work so that we can meet our obligations related to wildfire risk reduction. Following California's historic 2017 fires, the CPUC adopted and introduced new fire safety regulations that cause the state's industrial utilities to step up efforts to reduce the significant risk of wildfires including critical upgrades to both our distribution and transmission systems.

These regulations included identifying the three tier levels of fire risk depicted in the CPUC's Fire Threat Map. The purpose of the map is to delineate areas in the state where there are both elevated and extreme risks from utility-associated wildfires. I can tell you, the entire Ojai Valley area is identified as Tier 3 on the Fire Threat Map where there's an extreme risk for utility associated wildfires.

Development of the fire threat map was overseen by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, also known as CAL FIRE. The state's fire safety regulations mandate that each electric investor-owned utility must file an annual report that contains a fire prevention plan that includes specified information for its overhead electric facilities in the high fire threat districts.

Edison submitted its first wildfire mitigation plan in 2019. This was the first of annual submissions as required by SB 901, legislation that was passed in 2018 and serves as a first step towards addressing the rapidly growing wildfire challenges in California. Earlier this year we filed our 2020-2022 wildfire mitigation plan which was emailed to the city in February.

I'd like to take a moment to highlight the components of our 2020 wildfire mitigation plan submission. The plan builds on the progress made in 2019 to help prevent wildfires and protect the safety of our customers and our communities. The plan, which we are obligated to fulfill has several key components that are directly linked to work we planned to complete in the city of Ojai.

Enhanced overhead inspections that focus on equipment issues that could lead to a utility-caused wildfire are typically completed during the early part of the year. These inspections go beyond our regularly scheduled inspection cycles and result in what we refer to as notifications or scopes of work to remedy issues we find as a result of these inspections.

Examples of these issues include deteriorated poles and damaged cross arms or insulators. Depending on the severity of the issue, we have a prescribed amount of time in order to complete the necessary repairs. These are what we refer to as compliance dates that are monitored by the CPUC and are what drive the need to complete the work in a timely manner. The grid design and system hardening part of our plan is more programmatic, and includes projects like replacement of bare wire with cover conductor.

Many of the ignitions associated with utility infrastructure are caused by objects that contact power lines or by conductor-to-conductor contact. Cover conductor has proven to be an effective prevention measure. We are targeting the highest risk areas for near term deployment. as well as areas where a cover conductor can reduce the need for public safety power shutoffs or PSPS.

We're in the process of completing a cover conductor project on the Thatcher circuit and hope to initiate work on a cover conductor project for the Patricia Circuit later this month. To give you an idea on the scope of work associated with these reconductor projects, There are 32 separate work orders associated with the Patricia Circuit reconductor project alone.

A single work order could include both replacement of bare wire and replacement of poles that support the cover conductor. Combined, these two projects will account for replacement of over 60 line miles of conductor and over 1,000 poles replaced. This includes work both within the city of Ojai and the surrounding unincorporated areas of the Ojai Valley. Installation of fast-acting fuses throughout our system will reduce electrical current when there's a wire down event, and segment circuits to minimize the number of customers impacted during a PSPS event.

Situational awareness work includes installation of high-definition cameras and a network of weather stations to monitor location specific real time conditions as we consider PSPS implementation. The cameras will provide 90% coverage of the high fire risk areas within our service territory. Our vegetation management program will continue with the focus on maintaining adequate clearance between tree branches and our power lines.

Tall trees up to 200 feet from the high voltage power lines will be assessed to determine if they could fall into or have vegetation like palm fronds that could blow into power lines. We will also expand efforts to clear brush surrounding poles. The final component of our wildfire mitigation plan is the use of public safety power shutoffs or PSPS. While we expect the frequency of PSPS to lessen as more of our wildfire mitigation plan mitigations are deployed, it will remain available as a tool to reduce wildfire risk during severe weather and high fire potential index events.

The planned work we hope to proceed with in your community will help reduce impacts of PSPS. In regard to planned work in the city of Ojai, we have had a bit of a challenge due to restricted work hours as directed by city staff. We fully understand the impact COVID-19 crisis has had in your community. We worked with many of our local communities on how best to proceed with critical wildfire mitigation plan work while being sensitive to the fact that many residents were working from home and students were attending courses online from home. We were able to strike a balance of completing daytime and nighttime work with most of our communities.

I provided you with a copy of a joint letter signed by the director of Cal Fire, the director of Cal OES and the president of the CPUC The letter clearly spells out the state's expectation that despite the COVID-19 crisis, the investor owned utilities must continue to prioritize and expedite wildfire mitigation and wildfire risk reduction work as spelled out in our Wildfire Mitigation Plan.

Failure to do so would subject Edison to significant exposure and increase both fire risk and the need to implement public safety power shutoffs. Our number one priority as a company is to reduce fire risk The fact that we had two fires in Ventura County last week should remind us of the very real threat we're all facing. Just as you all have an obligation to protect the interests of your residents, we have an obligation to do everything possible to ensure we're operating an electrical system that is as fire safe as we can make it. Unfortunately there's more work pending than there are hours currently available to complete this work.

Although we've completed a significant amount of work during the overnight hours, it is the overwhelming preference of both Edison crews and our contractors to complete work during the day. Public and employee safety are primary concern as we complete this work. Completing this work during the daytime hours allows us to be safer and much more productive. As state and county restrictions are lifted, residents have added flexibility and are no longer stuck at home. With that I would respectfully request the city staff be given the direction and authority to allow Edison to begin construction work during the daytime hours. I thank you for your time this evening and would be happy to answer any questions you may have.

Okay do we have questions Rudy? Bill

Rudy, are you able to... I understand it's assumed that there'd be a lot of communication back and forth between Edison and the city manager or whoever he designates. Is there a way of having some guidelines as to the maximum duration of planned construction outages? And is that part of the communication to the city manager when you're looking at a particular schedule?

Sure. When we went into the COVID-19 crisis, we changed the way we communicate planned outage information to all of our cities and I'm hoping that the city staff is receiving the critical work And it identifies the type of work, the duration and our proposed start time for the work. So there is definitely enhanced communication as we are maneuvering through the COVID crisis. And we've been working very closely with city manager, public works director Mr. Grant and really they're doing everything they can to try to accommodate us.

Unfortunately, we are in a position where we literally have more work than there are hours in the day so hoping that we can reach some type of a compromise and start being able to do some daytime work.

Yeah, I understand.

Thank you.

Are there other questions?

Mayor? Yes, Randy. I just have a couple. Rudy Do you have an idea, do you know how many crews are actually working in Ojai at any given time? And the areas that they're working in and is there a way to coordinate that where maybe there's only two crews allowed to work in the Ojai area at any given time. I mean, is this something that could be worked out with the city manager? That's one question.

The other area, the other question I have is that you are installing. Is the city of Ojai have any access to that information? Or is that Southern California Edison only? That's the second question. The third question is the information on your weather station and your camera. Is that information available to Police Department Greg Grant City Manager at any time?

It's available to the general public. Anyone can access the high-definition cameras and anyone can access the data that is being provided by the weather stations we have installed, and I would be happy to share those links to the city staff. In regards to your first question about limiting the number of crews. I don't know how many we typically have in the day. I can tell you that over the course of the next couple weeks, I think we've got 12 days of work that we have scheduled.

It really depends on the size and scope of a particular work order. If we're changing out two or three poles and several spans of overhead wire and replacing it with cover conductor, we're likely going to have two or three crews working that single job. So I don't know that there's a way to limit the number of crews while still achieving our objective of getting the scope of work completed that we plan to.

So maybe it's not the crew size, it's the job description. So in other words if you had three crews working on one job on the east end of city limits and another crew on the west end whether it's 1 or 3 or 4 that's what I'm looking at is there any way that we could work together on limiting the number of projects that are going on

We can do our very best to evaluate and determine if that's possible. And we certainly want to minimize any inconvenience that we create by having our crews on the road, and we can certainly look at that and try to coordinate maybe having just one job going in the city per day.

If that'd

be a good

idea. What percent of Ojai is completed and not completed? Do you have that information?

I don't have a percentage of what's completed in the city and outside the city in the Ohio Valley. I'm sorry.

Okay, and then while you're

on your second let's stay with that question is that going to be made available?

Yeah, I think we can provide you the scope of the cover conductor work and let you know how much of it is within the city and how much of it is outside the city. The Patricia circuit, we haven't started yet. The Thatcher circuit which also runs through the community is about one third complete so we can definitely show you the areas where the work still needs to take place and a timeline associated with that work.

My last question is regarding light fixtures that are attached to these poles. Is there an opportunity at this point in time to change these light fixtures out, to meet our dark sky ordinance and also maybe to convert to LED? And is that part of the plan?

So we are currently working with the County of Ventura to change out, to convert the high pressure sodium vapor in the unincorporated areas of the county. I'm not sure that we've had conversations with city staff about that project but we can certainly get you in the queue. It's a conversion project that doesn't cost the city anything it's on Edison's dime and we can certainly get the city in the queue to have that work done Hopefully within the next year or two.

Well, I'm just trying to think about how you could do it in conjunction with the activities you're doing now.

That may be a challenge because that's a whole different scope of work that's managed by different departments so but we can do our very best to try to coordinate if that's possible.

Okay thank you. Other questions or comments? When you talked about how everybody would prefer to work in the daytime, my understanding was is that you were going to continue to work at night as much as possible and you'd be working day and night in order to get the full backlog caught up. Is that correct?

We will still conduct work at night if it's safe to do so. But if there is an issue that we believe exists in regards to public or employee safety, we will definitely state our preference to work during the day but we will continue with night work as appropriate yes.

Okay so it's not like you're shifting over to the

day? No we're not completely shifting over we're trying to create find a balance here

Okay, because my thought was is that we needed to give you enough hours to be able to do all the work not just the hours being worth. The second part of my comment is, is that it would be very helpful to the staff and to the council if the Edison company could give us as much summary information as to the importance and necessity for the work being done. So when we get the complaint, we can just simply, you know, we don't have to make something up or blame you guys. We can tell the people I were sorry that this has to happen but this is the reason why it's being done and why it isn't everybody's best interest from a safety standpoint.

I appreciate that comment and when we went into the COVID-19 crisis, we sent out a communication to all of our cities informing them that we were only moving forward with what we refer to as critical work. Work related to wildfire risk work related to public or public safety issues. So we've been holding off on the routine maintenance work and focusing solely on fire mitigation work, so all the work that we're doing now is related to our efforts to fulfill our obligations related to our wildfire mitigation plan.

Okay but my what I'm requesting it you may already be doing this but I'm requesting that if there is a way through your office Provide games with, you know kind of a script that says we are working the Patricia circuit because we have uninsulated wires that are, you know it doesn't have to be very long but something that we can explain to the people. I'm not sure they'll listen if they're upset, but at least if they get a reasonable response, I think most people will be understanding and cooperating. We can

absolutely do that.

Bill?

Yeah, one last question, Rudy. Have the reset protocols been changed? Some of the fires were directly related apparently to major lines being brought down and then attempting to being reset without inspection. Has that protocol been pretty well changed? So during the automatic re-energized attempts themselves seem to aggravate some of the fire conditions. Has that protocol been changed?

Yeah, it's always been a protocol whenever we have bulletin 22 conditions which are high wind conditions, we deactivate our automated equipment So if there is a fault on the system, somebody has to go out and manually operate a switch. If a switch opens up it's not automated the way it normally would be. And that's all within the high fire defined areas.

The high wind conditions and everything? Yes. And the other thing too is what is the protocol for when you put in conductor separators even with covered wires? You know because even covered wires in high wind conditions can't they break the insulation they start slapping each other?

So the covered conductor is a pretty hardy wire. It's much heavier than the bare wire and there's not going to be a need for spacers on the cover conductor because they'll be insulated so that will solve that issue. Even if they're flapping

under high wind, they're not going to break the insulation?

Right, no they won't. It's completely insulated along the bare wire.

Mayor I just had one final question it was Rudy you started the conversation saying that you sent these protocols out in February of this year. I'd just like to ask staff that we coordinate this as an agendized meeting on an annual basis but if we're receiving this information on a bi-yearly basis That I would think that it'd be important that council receive it and have a, and then maybe Rudy from your perspective quarterly or bi-quarterly something that just keeps us refreshed and in the loop as to the who what why and how you're proceeding. I think that'd be beneficial to all of us and the community.

We'd be happy

to

do that. And I'm certainly comfortable with your working with our city manager to kind of up the pace of mitigation on this fire risk personally. Much appreciated,

thank you. Okay is there anything else on this? Rudy thank you very much. I didn't realize we've known each other for almost 37 years.

I'm flying by, we must be having a good time.

Yeah right okay

thanks Mr. Mayor. Thank you all.

Thank you. Thanks.

And Mayor, thank you for agendizing this. It was a much needed conversation. Thank you.

You're welcome. Okay we have only one item on the agenda then but it's apparently controversial and complex issue so James do you want to kick it off? Even if you don't want to would you kick it off?

Yeah, now that the anticipation is boiled up here. Let me share my screen. We have a presentation there's a lot of things to talk about and so we put together a presentation we want to walk through it. and focus on a couple of key things. First off, we want to walk through the design. We've heard recently at city council meetings that there were some questions and some confusion about the design. We want to walk through it and kind of try to lay that out clearly. And then towards the end of the conversation talk about what funding this project has and what the costs of the project are expected to be.

So we'll try to lay it out like that. I think big picture the point, one point we just want to make clearly is that you know this is a overall it's a good thing we have. We've been able to leverage a lot of grant funding to make improvements to Ojai Avenue and Maricopa. Obviously, there's controversy and questions about the actual design which I think we can walk through and talk about but I think big picture once we nail those things down it's a good thing for the community and it's an opportunity that it's say once in a generation opportunity to do a project this major for a city our size with the funding Challenges we have to be able to do something like this. So with that, we'll just kind of walk through quickly. We have some new renderings and we want to show those just to give people a feel for what it will look like.

And I'll try to keep the presentation brief and then we can always go back and look as we go. But this rendering is color coded and it shows the major parts and components of the project With some renderings as well, so you'll notice obviously the hot topic here is the orange striping here shows where the proposed lane reduction with parking separated bike lanes will be added.

The pink striping that's shown throughout is sidewalk infill to help pedestrian traffic and I walk that area frequently and know that sidewalk infill would be a big benefit for us The yellow here is bike lanes along Ojai Avenue. And then the last part here, the purplish is a class two bike lanes with trees and so we have some renderings that will show right now but just big picture and scope this is when we say ATP which people have been hearing for five years now this project has been moving.

This is what we're talking about is Maricopa Highway all the way through Ojai Avenue The improvements that we are proposing are as follows. Might as well get the big one out of the way first, this is what's proposed currently for Maricopa Highway. Just to explain it to someone who has never seen this before, somebody watching, there would be driving lanes on each side, one driving lane And so, you know.

Obviously that's a pretty major change from the four-lane highway that is currently there. So we're expecting that will be a big topic of conversation. This is what it currently looks like, one reason talking to the people who have worked on this project for a few years now I have a couple of questions. One of the reasons why this is proposed is people turning onto the highway in various areas it's a challenge to turn when there are two cars coming and you cannot see around them.

We talked about area that most Ojai Valley residents would like to see modified and I think Caltrans had proposed some modifications there as well. So what it could look like, as part of our discussion today is this is the one lane in each direction With landscaping and well the next slide shows what it would look like with trees but it's landscaping and parked vehicles here. I think my little arrow is showing up, and then bike lanes on the other side of the landscaping in the parked vehicles. And we've got you know one of the basic questions we get asked is why there would need to be a lane reduction Basically it boils down to if we want parked vehicles and a bike lane, that's why the lane reduction was proposed. So that would be part of the discussion of alternative options.

Just showing version two here with trees instead of landscaping. This image shows kind of a low-hanging branch here. We'd obviously try to keep that from happening. Next section of Maricopa is near the hospital, across from the hospital. This is what it looks like existing and what it would look like with this project as it would be bike lanes, two-way bike lanes are proposed in this area. No parking is proposed at this portion as it narrows a little bit and the two lane bike lanes are proposed instead.

So those are the designs for Maricopa. We'll come back, I want to try to just kind of lay out the whole vision before we get into this in depth but we also then have Ojai Avenue east of the Y here's what it currently looks like and here's what's proposed relatively simple bike lanes so not as major obviously as the Maricopa changes But it proposes these bike lanes at the Y. Vons, if you can see my arrow, Vons is about where my arrow is here and this is the large file. And then this area here is where the Wine Garden Memorial is.

Weinberger? Weinberger Memorial, sorry. So this would add bike lanes in those areas And would make that a lot more bikeable than it currently is. Anybody who's been on a bike in this area and has gone through the Bonds parking lot and curb cuts knows that this is a challenge. Next big section is Ojai Avenue, and this shows a rendering of the bike lanes being added on either side of Ojai Avenue. It's five foot bike lane, One of the components of this project is it'll add landscaping in certain areas that will provide shade for people walking.

And so looking at what it looks like currently, and this is what it would look like as proposed with these bike lanes and striping added to Ojai Avenue. Similarly, Ojai Avenue at Rincon, the bike lanes added here And then throughout Ojai Avenue in sections, and we'll look at some of those sections in depth when we talk about cost. The part, Ojai Avenue includes some parts of our sidewalk infill throughout certain portions of the project.

So as proposed, we have some sections that are decomposed granite and some sections that are actual sidewalks. So another section on Ojai Avenue that would have some of those DG sidewalks added. So again, the before and after the sidewalk in the bike lanes And this one is, I think a big one that we don't talk about very often. But Ojai Avenue from Kenyatta to Blanche, this portion of the street right now anybody who walks that and sees the cars coming at them knows that it can be scary. And so this would add several sections of curb extension Give the pedestrians some more delineation and protection.

So this is what it looks like currently again, the vehicles coming down sometimes you can't tell which way they're going to turn and what it could look like with those curb extensions added in some landscaping would be a lot more pedestrian friendly is the goal. Just, we've developed a couple of alternate options. Some show the trees and some show more of the landscaping or rock medians in different areas.

So that is the difference between this version and this version. And then one of the areas that we wanted to make sure to lay out because obviously it's, you know, the trademark of Ojai is the arcade block. This is what it currently looks like. We would add some curb extensions are proposed under the project which would make it look more like this. And obviously these curb extensions are intended to kind of slow down traffic a little bit and get people, allow the pedestrians to stand here and be more visible.

We included this picture, we just thought it was interesting. This is the arcade block 100 years ago and we noted that there were trees then so this would be a little bit of a return to form. Not as many horses nowadays. Ohio Avenue east of downtown here's what it looks like currently. As proposed it would add bike lanes and striping And that would be added down, I believe it's all the way to Gridley.

Similarly just from another perspective here. So these are all the updated renderings and some of those were existing but these are the renderings and we'll get Next section. I did want to say, I guess I said that it would slow down traffic, the current section extensions and my notes are that it will actually... It's intended to shorten the wait time for cars.

So those are the renderings, and we can go back to those. But just a couple of more points we wanted to show. We have this rendering that shows the areas throughout the valley that are two lanes currently versus four lanes. The red is the four lane section. The yellow is the two lane section. So you could see the Maricopa Highway And there's very little red. So from the traffic engineering perspective, the thought is that the section that is four lanes currently is so minor in the scheme of things that the reduction to two lanes doesn't make as much of an impact as far as adding to vehicle travel time as one May expect, but we know that that is a hot topic and one that people that drive it every day will feel differently.

Also, we just wanted to include... We've presented this prior, but the traffic volume for the parts of the project. I think everybody's aware Ojai Avenue is the heart of Ojai as far as traffic goes and Average traffic count is shown here and it's far higher here than it is anywhere else in the valley. This section of Ojai Avenue, there's average daily trips of 22,500 with a peak of 2200 per hour. And in this section, it's 18,500 with the peak of almost 2000. Maricopa is about half of that currently.

We've been seeing, I think we've all seen this graphic a lot because it's come up with various projects and in a lot of cities refer to this now as people start talking about the reduced speed limits increasing pedestrian safety. The statistic that is important to remember is that at traveling at 20 miles per hour, nine out of 10 pedestrians would survive an accident. And when you double that speed to 40 only one out of 10 pedestrians would survive that accident. So that's a important part of traffic engineering.

I'll run through these there's a couple slides here on costs and we'll run through these and then we can go back And look more closely, but we included this in the staff report. There is currently including the demonstration project, which is you know, the first phase and it's somewhat separate, although it is part of the project. It's kind of a standalone as well. So including that demonstration project and the construction grant We have approximately 3.233 million available for this project in grant funding.

Obviously, the demonstration project is expected to take up that whole amount. We also noted that there's right-of-way procurement and design work so what will be left for construction will be $2.3 million. And then as we noted in the report, we wanted to make sure we included all costs over the last five years. And currently the city has spent $130,000 on the project.

Also, one of the things we'll talk about as we go through this project is that we have identified some other grant opportunities. Obviously they're not guaranteed. We would have to apply for them and try to seek them but there may be other grant opportunities available if we choose to pursue those. And this is kind of the bulk of, I think the report. And so I'll try to go through it kind of high level and then we can get more into it but we tried to lay out Maricopa Highway and Ojai Avenue to show what is being proposed on each and what the costs of those components are. Maricopa Highway would be...

It's currently projected to take up about $1 million of the grant funding That $1 million, the biggest chunk is the four pedestrian crossing improvement curb extensions. There's also costs associated with the lane reduction striping, adding the class 4 bike lanes including the landscaping which is a large portion The sidewalk infill at Ben Franklin's is approximately $65,000. Bike trail modifications at the Y are actually a lower chunk than I thought they're only about $100,000 and then there's some Nordoff High School improvements although the parking lot modifications and improvements we've discussed recently would be an additional cost that hasn't yet been included in the budget for this project.

So the Maricopa Highway improvements total a million dollars and we went through Parts that could be removed such as if the lane reduction were to be removed, that would reduce about $347,000 from the project. And there's additional items that could be removed such as landscaping and irrigation. And then the Ojai Avenue part of the project is about $2 million and the bulk of that goes to the 13 pedestrian crossing improvements which is almost a million dollars on its own. With the next biggest chunk being sidewalk infill at about $780,000 and then the remainder going to bike lanes and striping and tree infill.

We wanted to provide some information, the 13 pedestrian crossing improvements that total almost a million dollars. We've actually made some improvements to some of these crosswalks recently such as the Kenyatta Street Crosswalk we added an RRFB stands for the rectangular rapid flashing beacons which basically means those flashing lights at the crosswalk. So we've added those at Kenyatta Street, we've added those at Blanche So as part of this project, we had already done that through separate funding. But as part of the project, we still would add curb extensions to those crosswalks and then curb extensions to Ventura Street and the Arcade Center at the rapid or the beacons on Arcade East in the curb extensions.

And then you can kind follow along there, that there's the additional crosswalks and whether we are adding beacons to them or just curb extensions to them. They're listed there. So last slide and then we can go back as needed but the last slide is the schedule for the project. The design phase is expected to be complete by the end of the year. With this report, we are at 60% designed and we would come back in coming months with the, I believe it's the 90%.

We also expect to launch the Maricopa Highway Lane Reduction Demonstration Project in either July or August. Obviously, that one has been challenging because we were trying to launch it when there's school and football. And the coronavirus pandemic has made that difficult if not impossible at this point. So it's projected to start in July or August. Caltrans final design approval is expected in December. We can make modifications to it still. I know that's been a question a lot as we can modify that as we proceed with our demonstration project And then finally, construction would be expected to start in the summer or fall of 2021 and be completed in about a year.

So those are the basics again we wanted to start by just refreshing everybody's memory and providing some updated renderings of what this project could actually look like. And with that I'm happy to take any questions.

Okay thanks James. Who would like to kick it off? Susan?

Well, I'm already ready to make a motion to approve all four recommendations. But I'll wait for the right time. And

a second.

Yeah, my first question of Jane and first of all, James, thank you for this excellent presentation. I think it's very important that we make this available to the public because there are so many misconceptions about the project. So can you assure us that it will be posted on the city website these slides?

Yeah, and that's something with getting these new renderings done. The goal was to get some better clear information that we'll put on the ATP website.

And then I just want to...

Well, the presentation James just made should be maybe easily assessable because I think it answers many people's questions as to what we're trying to do whether they agree is another question?

Yes. Yeah. It will also be available on YouTube and all of that So yeah, I just want to excuse me. Can I continue? Go

ahead.

I just want the public to be aware that the time there's a in the staff report, there's a timeline for this project that goes back five years and this is actually the 21st City Council meeting that we've discussed this. There have been 24 Public outreach meetings and the police. And I wanna repeat again that the police, we've met with the police and fire department, the hospital, there have been neighborhood planning efforts. This project has been thoroughly vetted. It's not something that just came out of thin air.

And it seems like we received at five o'clock or a little bit after five We received a lot of emails and 42 of these emails were all the same. They objected to the city spending $500,000 in funding and I thought maybe we should clear that up because I believe that's a false claim. That seems to be the main objection is that we should not be taking money out of the city coffers during a pandemic. So perhaps, we could address that one more time.

James, you want to talk about it? Yes. And so I think the challenge with it is it is a multi-year project. We have obtained a variety of grants We still think there may be some available, but obviously to be fair you know it's not guaranteed either. But to address those comments we currently have $2.3 million available for construction If we do all of the things that we listed in this report, the cost is anticipated to be about $3 million. So there is a gap that we either need to obtain more grants for or one thing we could do at this point is still move forward with the design and We still have the option to remove components later if we don't obtain more grants.

It's not that we would take this funding from the general fund necessarily because it would come down to multiple options. Council can reduce it now, they can reduce it later, or we can try to obtain grants. So it is a little more complicated than that but there is a projected gap at this point. And the last thing, if I can add one more thing is we did note in the report that when we get the bids they can range anywhere up to 25%. So there's a possibility. We tried to be realistic and conservative. There's a possibility that the gap could be less once we bid it out so... Or possibly more just depending on circumstances.