The City Council Committee on Public Works & Transportation met on April 19, 2022. The committee approved the minutes from February 1, 2022. The main discussion revolved around an order from Michelle Laruda of 37 Chicago Street to remove 16 feet of curbing for a horseshoe driveway, which had been previously tabled. City Engineer Dan Aguiar presented two options for a 10-foot curb cut, with Ms. Laruda preferring Option 2. Abutting property owner Mr. Sevigny raised concerns about parking, arguing that new spaces created across the street would not alleviate his tenants' issues and pointing out a boat parked in his own lot. Traffic Department representative Laura Ferreira clarified the parking situation, stating a net gain of one parking space for the neighborhood. The committee ultimately approved Option 2 for Ms. Laruda's driveway, with one councilor abstaining due to a conflict of interest and the remaining voting members in favor. The committee also discussed the acceptance of Small Street and Stanley Street as public ways. Mr. Aguiar advised against accepting Stanley Street due to its unconstructed status and significant cost implications, recommending only Small Street be considered. Residents expressed concerns about potential traffic congestion and parking issues if Stanley Street were opened. The committee voted to refer this item back to the planning board for a new recommendation and public hearing, specifically to consider only Small Street.
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2:51implementation will now begin pursuant to the open meeting law any person may make an audio video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or transmissions are being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible item number one citizens in
3:18i'm sorry you want to do a phone call here here good job first item is citizens input do we have any citizens input okay item two the minutes from february 1st 2022 motion to approve second all in favor all right that's been approved item number three order michelle laruda 37 chicago street for the removal of 16 feet of curbing to the existing 16-foot driveway opening for the purpose of
3:54creating a horseshoe driveway tabled and 2-122 i would entertain a motion to lift from the table from the table second all in favor aye motion is uh yeah motion is the order is lifted and then vice president yes sir if i may make a statement tonight that uh mr smigny is one of my friends mr sevigny's helping out for 20 25 years sold tickets helped me out with the
4:29meals a lot to eat we go shopping we do everything and before i get in a position that i have to explain myself conflict of interest i feel that this would be a conflict of interest to vote for this tonight so i want to lay that on the table that's why sometimes you have nine counselors you get eight left and uh that's my position uh it was hard to decide what to do uh but i felt
5:06being with ronnie today it says you know i don't know what i'm gonna do it's just tough to do what i have to do but i have to do it and uh that's it so i will be abstaining from the boat and uh i i don't feel that i should have any input as well i'm going to sit here and be quiet with that i heal thank you thank you appreciate your straightforwardness and honesty and i'm
5:35sure everybody does including mr cevingni with that mister
5:49nice to see you all again good to see you as well thank you thank you for having me for the record my name is dan aguiar i'm the city engineer for the city of fall river massachusetts here this evening on a follow-up meeting that we had back in february and at that time we had a discussion about a few different proposals of how miss aruta could proceed and at that meeting the subcommittee made the determination
6:20to table the matter until the applicant could put together some proposed plans of a few different scenarios and to pick up from where that conversation left off to come back and see you all today so what i with mrs reuter i was able to sit down and and put together her wishes i've got a couple of extras here too with anybody mississippi would like a copy
6:52now i know at that meeting oops i'm sorry i'll wait to get back
7:02i know at that meeting one of the things that was discussed was a buffer between the two properties if in fact the horseshoe driveway would go in that is correct that mississippi would want uh like a six-foot buffer so the proposal would be amended to ten feet instead of six feet i believe that's correct so what we were able to do is with the help of laura ferreira from traffic myself
7:24the applicant we went out did some additional measurements and i prepared this little exhibit for you so i'll go through it let's start with the very top um top plane you'll see the red asterisk on every plant is the end of mrs aruda's existing driveway so just for orientation purposes wherever you see a red star that that's concur in every plan so you'll have an idea of where you are so
7:48she currently has this existing driveway where you see the red star to the left of that you'll see mr sevigny's driveway to the west that accesses his existing parking lot you can go to the next page this would be a view this would be the view on chicago street looking westerly again the red star is the end of mrs rooter's driveway you see the existing curb section heading towards stafford road and then the
8:12driveway for mr cevigne as well the third sheet looking the opposite direction is from mr cevigne's property his driveway looking easterly and you see the red star where mrs wood is existing driveway is the next two plan sets sketches are option one and option two in both of these again you'll see the red star where the existing asphalt driveway is that services mrs arroud is home at number 37 chicago
8:43and then westerly you'll see the existing asphalt driveway that services mr savigny's property so the last month we had a discussion about the reduction of the proposed 16-foot request down to 10. so that is consistent on both of these i did have a discussion with mrs aruda and we came up with these two different options option number one coincides with council of kadeems idea at the time which was
9:10can we just make the existing driveway add on an additional 10 feet so the option one illustrates that taking the existing driveway extending it 10 feet to the west that would provide a four foot buffer a 20-foot space and then about eight feet plus or minus before we got mr cevigne's driveway that's option number one you will also see at the top of this plane working with the traffic department we were able to
9:39create two new on-street spaces on the opposite side of chicago by relocating a no parking sign that used to be on that existing utility pole laura went out and made some measurements and was able to move that sign westerly so that you see relocated no parking sign and that was allowed us to create two additional spaces directly across the street from mr civic so in the original
10:02proposal um one parking space was going to be lost but now two were gained so essentially in the long run there's no one on one correct in both scenarios option one and two there will be a net gain of one space it's just logistically now what works better for mrs aruda mr cevigne and how the committee would like to move forward if they want to grant the additional 10 feet so option one is to
10:29create the adjacent driveway of 10 feet and i'm sure mrs aruda will explain this to you adding this in this location creates a little bit of an issue for her because it creates an area or a driveway in a location where she had put some substantial monies into some landscape so if you look at the very top picture you'll see directly adjacent to the driveway there's a little bit of a
10:51landscape feature directly to the left of her driveway which she was trying to straddle that and put it on the other side so option one is the idea that counselor kadeem had uh mrs aruda it's not her number one option because of the landscape feature that she had spent some money on option number two would be the scenario that mrs aruda would ask the board to look at first so again we have the existing driveway
11:22on both sides of that driveway provided a four foot buffer the same 20 foot space i thought it was very important that the spacing in between these two driveways is that we didn't do it in a manner that eliminated an additional space so we had to spread those two driveways out enough to provide enough space to make up that one parking space so that's why we have that 20-foot dimension in between the two driveways a
11:46buffer of four feet on either side a ten foot opening and then a four foot buffer to mr cevickney's driveway to the west i am not here to tell you which one is better which one is worse i'm only here to present the facts to you uh and that these were two scenarios that i discussed with mrs eruder and told that i would present those two to you this evening however the committee like wants to take
12:09that information and proceed um by all means do so now that 20 feet would allow for two vehicles to be parked only one yeah so our normal parking space is nine by 18 when we're doing parallel parking like this to a curb where you're not coming in off of a driveway we try to leave a little bit more maneuver room um so 20. and then the additional buffer is to make sure
12:31that no one is parking close to someone's driveway so you've got some forefoot there is no magic number to that um some cities and towns have an ordinance that you can't park within a certain distance to a driveway i don't believe we have that we do not maybe we should but and for now this this is a comfortable layout for both driveways to be able to back out both scenarios are that people
12:55could back out of either driveway or pull in without having any difficulty whatsoever and the last thing to note is i went back historically to look at the development of the area in general so when the development across the street happened in this first area that we're looking at there were three curb cuts closed for a total of 70 feet that used to service saint williams church
13:27different driveways so that also closed up a number of curves so historically there has been additional parking provided to this area is there ever enough no but this would one it would allow additional vehicles to be off of the street while providing new spaces on this lot in either scenario they would they would have additional off-street spaces and a net gain of one now the net gain of one the two spaces
13:55across the street could have happened regardless if this proposal was here at all and somebody had ever brought it to the traffic department's attention they could have resolved this on their own it just happened to be concurrent with what we're proposing today what happened was someone had knocked down the sign someone had whether it was dpw whoever picked the sign up and put it on the
14:15closest utility pole and that's why they could drag so far down the street because it was just convenient to use the existing pole rather than go and replace them now those two new spaces are they on the side of the street um for when there's a parking ban that would allow for parking or on the are they on the side the i believe and let's take a look at the picture mrs ferreira is here we can
14:35i think i think she knows the answer to that question i believe the hydrants are on there's on both sides the new space is fine that's where they should be anyway okay so actually they're also gaining parking spaces during a parking ban as well well they're not losing it that side of the street because of the parking ban right so they're not games they gained two historically yes historically not but yeah with the
15:06recent developments they gained too that's correct yeah just a quick question so the current spot here so when we say net gain so you were able to put two cars there two vehicles no across the street we were able to add two v two no what i'm saying currently here though so where's the net gain of one then because we're still maintaining losing one on our side and we picked up two across the street so
15:30here the 20 feet we're still losing one space because you can you could you could have yeah i couldn't fit three before okay so i could only fit two right i'm losing one okay and picked up two across the street i didn't i didn't so it's not that game on our side no no no for that neighborhood it's in that game i just didn't realize i was i guess i was under the assumption
15:50that you couldn't fit two vehicles there originally no no and then i guess what was the reasoning for uh mr sevigny was was it eight feet that he was looking for for a buffer so you got four feet at the end of the day i believe he stated that he wouldn't be happy with anything but i i'm not i don't want to speak for him all right for some strange reason i
16:16thought there was a an eight-foot buffer he was looking for i think
16:35microphone right there that'll make it easier
16:50all right so an option one would be is the existing driveway yeah they could add 10 feet just to that existing driveway that would leave a spot and maybe that would
17:10so here's your driveway right so if they added 10 feet to their drive right now which is what council could do that would leave them enough room for a 20-foot parking space an eight-foot buffer and then you're like so theoretically it would leave on the side of your driveway 28-432 feet from driveway to driveway but you could easily park a car in between and leave now i can't tell this person
17:40that they can't park within eight feet right but within that area there is enough room for the actual
17:54it would be shy to create that's why we're losing a space because okay so it isn't 40 feet the way it is the way it is right now and it would be pointed at 40 feet now it would be 10.
18:0630 38 42 right now which is enough for two for two vehicles without any buffer so two vehicles is still kind of tight right well can i say a few things gaining these two spots first thing there was no output you're speaking to the microphone first thing there was no health is on stafford road so these people on stafford road do not have a place to park if they have extra
18:33company or anything else they and they have but stop it they bought chicago street a hundred feet so that's somebody's side yacht so they have the right if they have company or somebody over the park sure i can't stop them from parking in chicago street so that's that's one issue i'm bringing up there because there is no parking or stafford road and they're they're really a budding chicago street and since we
19:03opened that up there we have the beauty parlor that they just parked there because now they're adjacent to the door so this is becomes it's always the people who always park to the closest possible way to get to the building so the places the beauty parlor is always it's full there all the time so uh so i really didn't basically gain anything from that because there were people who fill that in immediately but
19:32the beauty pile never had enough parking in the first place and he was there 40 years never had a problem with parking that's what i'm saying at that point i i have nothing to about this thing other than moving the 10 feet over on the other side the driveway she can put 16 feet on the other side the driveway i just like to keep these people come in they've been parking there for years in that area
19:59i've had the house for 40 years and they've assumed parking there and that's what's happened and i'm only just trying to these people don't want to cross the street because what happens they will come in from somewhere there'll be people from the beauty parlor park there so they have to look around they usually park on that side or somewhere so it makes a inconvenient to my tenants who live on that side the street
20:29okay let me play devil's advocate here for a second and um try and look at this somewhat logically so prior to any of this you had two parking spaces correct i had two two between your property right i had two two there are two parking spaces with this proposal you only lose one i'm just right you're losing one but you gain two across the street well in game if i'm losing one i'm 12. you gain two
21:00across the street which gives you a net gain of one so you went from two parking spaces to one right to three theoretically the people on staff enrolled if you hadn't gained the two on the other side and it stayed the way it is they could take those two parking spaces if they had company correct i mean there's nothing to stop them from doesn't they could park on either side of chicago street right in other words
21:26right so the fact that you gain two parking spaces from the traffic mrs ferreira going out i don't think created a problem i think it alleviated a problem because there are more options now well i it's a problem that people complained with a living there they he just they've been there for years and i have never had a parking problem people now complain to me say why should i have to park over across the street or
21:52whatever i mean i'm saying they were parking on my side the street where the houses so then my next question would be what did they do during a parking ban they couldn't park on that side of this they had what donor parking lots had an emergency they had to go to the other side the street which had which was less parking with which now has more parking well it's not just when that parking ban they couldn't
22:14park there anyways correct correct right so i think that's part of what i'm getting at so you've lost one i'm just in this scenario you lose one space but you gain two with a net gain of one so now when they couldn't park it all during a parking ban now they have two spots across the street they can park in during a parking ban so you gained during a snow emergency in other words
22:39okay okay right well that's i mean do we agree on that much yeah how many times do we have to diffuse it technically yes however the two houses on stafford road they only have room for two cars so that they got four cars right there so if they have any company the company either tries to block their driveway or they can move over here now to move the stop sign i mean no parking from
23:06here to corner they moved it about 14 feet towards the west side okay that left room for four cars to go there because there's one car there now and i calculated it out today with a tape measure and there's about 60 feet telephone poles are 100 feet apart after that you have two two car driveways they have it on that plan yeah yeah that's 26 and 40.
23:38then across the street from and this is a rootless house you had four three spots one two three three well none of that is changing i know only a small portion no but what you get you're not getting this the problem is this is the south side of the street two hydrants for sure you're not going to be able to stop it all right excuse me one second mrs ferrero would you please join us
24:10because i i think that you can add to this significantly
24:37okay so when we moved the sign closer to the corner it allowed as mr s edgar said 40 more feet so two cars were able and we have to be careful because chicago is a one-way so if any large trucks have to make that turn the beauty salon has time signs okay um so we have to make sure that as a matter of fact we used one of my guys
25:00truck that would have made that turn if there was a car parked right where i put the signal pocket here corner it wouldn't be an issue and there wasn't that's why we were able to push back as much as we can now regarding the beauty salon they do have time signs they're not open every day their time says have has certain days certain hours so any time after two or three o'clock when the beauty
25:22shop is closed those spaces will become available to whoever lives there but this is an issue that we have throughout the city we can't tell people where to park it's a public way visitors anybody anybody in the city that has a home that is very hard to pop that live on a street that's very hard to park if they have a party i get calls every day every day so that that's something that we can't fix
25:49um so but i agree with opening the two more spaces it actually gave them two spaces that they never had before those two spaces should be allocated for these two houses but you can't do that stafford roadhouses have their own driveways yeah that's the driveway
26:21excuse me excuse me excuse me i correct me if i'm wrong but i don't know any house in the city of fall river that has guaranteed parking spaces on the street for anybody to park in i have i have a neighbor who has a driveway that fits three cars in the past he's been known to park one in the driveway and two directly across the street from my house and there's nothing i can say or do
26:45about that and he has a driveway that fits three vehicles so i think unfortunately that doesn't play into this scenario because there is no such thing as you build a house and get a guaranteed parking space on the street you know if the beauty salon people are parked there and those people have company well i'm sorry about that business over there well she's in two cars sometimes six o'clock at night there so
27:14people come home from work they can't go there so they have to
27:33have any problem because it was basically open but there was no houses across the street now everybody with housing across the street makes it very difficult for them to you know they come in and talk and it's open on saturday and it's packed he had a business for 40 years there never had all of a sudden now we have to change his you know i i've had a business i own the place for 40 years
27:59i've never had a problem so i see this totally changing where it shouldn't they should they have the right to deal with so people come in and talk to anybody like you say can talk anywhere so they talk so let's let's assume let's assume that this none of this is allowed and she has to put in a driveway that um goes the other direction what do you gain
28:25what do i get what do you gain i gained two parking places over that anybody can use but you don't gain two parking spaces you have one here and one between her two driveways if this goes through which is two parking spaces if it goes the other way this parking space just moves over here and you still have two parking spaces so you're not gaining or losing any parking wouldn't it figure to move the driveway up
28:49further but she's still going to lose her space she's going to move one space but she's on the street just like she's going to lose now i'm on the east side of the house right so she puts a new driveway on this side yeah she's going to lose the spa which is still a spot in that neighborhood so right now your customers could park here on the easterly side of her driveway yes
29:12so if she puts the driveway over here that's going to eat up one of the spaces that they could potentially be using now on the easterly side of her driveway right it's still a loss of a parking space right and i actually need a parking place i don't want to lose a parking place you're not going to you gained one game i gained one together essentially but if i gained one but there's other people
29:36like they say they can park anywhere so the people in that are looking for parking places too so they can just park on chicago street nobody can stop people with park whatever they want correct that's assuming now they need parking they're going to park on chicago street we're out there on park if they get company another thing is i have and i have off street parking but i need a place of five cars for my building
30:03five wall street parking spots and now the beauty parlor he's got two i think and he parked in one so there's one or sometimes he doesn't park on one he'll park up further up on the street so chair person just just looking at that just speaking to that so you've got one two three four five is the boat still there yeah so you you're taking up a spot in your your driveway for a boat right
30:35and we're complaining about off-stream is somebody that lives there yeah well it does and that's what that building they did they had the boat they said i don't know but do you see how hypocritical it sounds when we're we're complaining about off street parking we're telling saying that it's it's allocation in the united states that's in that too but do you deal with this but you already get this
30:59no i i i i well i think we've missed all with with all due respect i think we're trying to work with the neighborhood we're trying to work with the applicant and we're just no matter what what option we submit it's still not meeting your expectations and we're hearing about parking and i think it's a little disingenuous to suggest that parking is an issue when we've got a
31:19boat in a in a parking lot right so i'm trying to do the right thing i'm trying to work with everybody but i just don't appreciate when when we're making arguments and we've got a boat in a parking lot and you're telling me that you need more parking that's just disingenuous across the board even if i just discount that there's four parking places they need a lot of street parking but we we've gained in in
31:38in this whole discussion and then i understand that mr agilia and ms ferreira had clearly articulated that this we would have gained that spot regardless of what would have transpired if somebody had made the telephone call obviously this all came about because we were having the conversation we sent those folks back out to look at it so we've got we've gained an additional parking spot so i think the neighborhood
31:57is in a better position in terms of where we are so i'm ready instead of dragging this conversation on i'm ready to make a motion that we approve option two um and and this really meets the need um of the individual we still have that parking spot we've got a four foot buffer between mr cevigne's property um and and the driveway and we we have those two additional ones so that's my motion motion
32:23i can't make a little bit right if you want to laugh i'm gonna
32:35i was just going to say the two spots that we opened up i understand that the you know the clients from the hair salon use it but when those spots weren't there they were parking further up on chicago street so in a way it helped a little bit better because now they have those two spots which opens up spots further into people's homes so it kind of washes one with the other
32:56that's what i wanted to explain and also i believe at our last meeting that mr cevini that you also at that meeting made the statement that as long as you had a buffer between her driveway and your driveway that you were okay with that at the last meeting having the buffer having the buffer go like option one would i i don't i i don't that's okay i'll live with option one that's the buffer there
33:29that's what before that came up but originally he said with a ten foot side onto the driveway that's what the original proposal was the original proposal was for a 16-foot curb cut portion right well no you had when then you came in you have an option to go either that was looking okay which has been reduced to a 10 foot right so she's given up six feet in her proposal and reduced it to a 10 foot
33:59which gave you the buffer between her driveway and your property that's option one my room no that was an option two an option two she originally i believe this is pretty much her original request on where it says 10 feet originally that was going to be 16 feet that's correct but she just hadn't provided a sketch correct and that's what i said you should have a schedule so mr aguiar
34:25amended it to 10 feet which gave you the buffer between her driveway and your driveway that you requested which still leaves three parking spaces where before there were only two is that all correct yes from the hydrant from the south side there's room for four houses to the beauty shop and two prior to chinese driveway because today i was there there was a car park and the mail truck come in
35:06and he pulled in and he popped there he's not in the two parts here he's ahead of it so and that's not going to change no that's not going to change if mrs aruda puts the driveway on the east side of that property it will line up with the big gate that she has in the back of the property so she wants to put a boat anywhere she could just back the boat in
35:37and go ahead she's not disturbing any of the vegetation or whatever the trees that she has on the west side of her house and all it is is grass and she's got a two gate in the back there that leads to that you can see it from emmett street so if you put a driveway on the east side of the house that will save a lot of problems and then i i guess
36:08if i have to be 100 honest i'm not quite understanding the problems in the respect that whether you go with proposal number one or proposal number two you're still losing one parking space it's still the same number of feet for the driveways in the end result so there's no there so nothing's changing it's still three parking spaces and again granted it it could have happened regardless but it didn't happen until
36:41this proposal came before us you have the two parking spaces across the street now that you did not have before so before you had four parking spaces now no matter what configuration you have five now is it fair to say when the beauty salon is open the the uh chances of somebody having company on stafford road are slim to none because presumably the people are working during the day
37:13by the time the weekend when they have the people there okay and weekends the people who lived there were already parked not all the time i mean i ain't so i don't monitor it yeah um but it doesn't differ and i don't understand how this this works but so you have some dedicated signs four times for the beauty salon of two spaces yes what would be the procedure for getting additional is that possible for
37:38them to get additional time restricted spaces theoretically for the spots across the street they could go through that process if they chose but if you do that um for saturdays between seven and three for the two spaces across the street could you also do that but then you're you're going to hurt the neighborhood because now it's only going to be available for the beauty salon so we're
37:59going to find out saturday time period but then it would be open the recipe but mr swigny it would be his right if he wanted to to go through that motion and attempt to have that area science it's going to have to go through your office and you're going to say yes or no but he has afforded that right if he chooses to be the traffic board won't approve more so more time science they
38:19try to limit one two to a business two i mean two spaces do a business but it wouldn't stop stop no no it's more than welcome to you know it would be the the only uh whoever runs the internet if i cannot think of something if i i don't know what my thing is if you got to go with it before um mrs wood would do do you have any comments you'd like to make before
38:49we complete this sure
39:00uh the whole reason why i did this like i stated for the first meeting was just to create more parking for like he said if we have company visitors i have all that land i'm paying a mortgage on i'm paying taxes on there's nothing there it's a waste of space so if i can have an open curb cut of 10 feet that's all i'm asking for people come to my house
39:23they park right in there he's gonna have plenty of parking i'm that's the whole reason why i'm doing it so if i don't have this people come to my house to visit they're parking on the street he has less spaces to me this is a no-brainer i have the land why not use it so what you're saying is at the present time when you get company they park on the streets
39:46for example if you're easter this is approved your company will park in your driveway of course right now they're already jumping the grass we're making it work we're sticking it in there somehow you know i have that land like i said what's the point of me paying a mortgage why am i paying taxes if i have this land that's just sitting there it's not even being used come to kadeem do you have any more comments
40:23i really at this point with what's going back and forth and transpired and uh the number of spaces i i don't see any difference in any of it at this point i'll second your motion everybody in favor aye aye after you and i to discuss you have a question or we can talk about it it makes more sense to put a driveway on the east side of her house she can have the whole driveway and it
40:58will lead up to that fence that she's got with the gate and she can park the boat behind the gate okay um have to worry about that we just voted and we voted on option two thank you are you staying for our next um i think for small street four sewing yeah
41:44number four final report acceptance of small street extending from president avenue to a dead end and also 280 feet of stanley street extending from small street to neyman street tabled on 7 20 21 entertain emotional lift from the table second all in favor all right all opposed no one opposed now i believe um there was an original plan then it was asked to be amended right so i can give you a little bit of
42:16a history lesson so this was this was week one there was a folder on my desk one of the only folders that was street acceptances and small street was was the first one so as i read through the different um motions and recommendations that the council had passed down initially this was for small street only and this is a copy of the ultimate plan that was prepared in accordance with that so that you can
42:40all get an idea of what we're talking about so here's president avenue at the bottom of the plan small street runs north expensive boarding school directly adjacent to it and then there's stanley street that connects to damon street so damage street is also constructed stanley street is not constructed nothing there so the asphalt in small street ends right at the end of this layup and as you can see some of the
43:07parking and landscaping for spencer borden after the survey plan was done actually falls within stanley street so what ended up happening was the commission initially made the recommendation to send it to planning to look at small during that discussion with the planning board i was not present at that meeting but there was some type of a discussion and someone had made the recommendation or the idea
43:34well why don't we do small and stanley not necessarily looking into what are we taking if we take stanley if you take stanley you need to construct stanley the city would be responsible for constructing stanley removing some parking spaces removing this fence but neither the committee or the planning board knew that at that time so paperwork continued on it came back to you with that recommendation
43:58from the planning board the uh city council then made the recommendation to take both streets again unknowing that these situations happen it goes to the engineering department it goes out to have the plan prepared by a surveyor prepare the plan submitted back at that point the taking ended i believe the engineer left it around that time the previous city engineer so he had been sitting on the desk so first week
44:27of february i had reached out to to colleen and said where do we stand with this there was also an issue at some point in time during a butter notification and i'll we'll talk about this a little bit in a second that one of the homeowners whether it was mr almeida or mr stroney sorry mrs strawney when they were alerted to the fact that this was happening was opposed to the
44:51fact that stanley street was now going to be potentially accepted and constructed where their input was not sought out previously so what we would like to do and whatever the i believe the proper channel is for you now to send this back to planning for a new recommendation you can't just take it upon the council to do it planning would then now send it back to you with a recommendation to only take
45:16small which i think is the proper way to do it um i'm learning this as i go but i'm looking at that that that is the case and so again when i'm reviewing this file from when we started this whole process of accepting streets to become public ways needs to be i think looked at a little bit more closely for instance when i look at this and do they have a public hearing
45:40yes they held the public they did so they followed protocol not an issue and again you can just tell by the text how old this document is and this is the document that stops the process by a number of signatures of 10 legal voters in the city of fall river any 10 legal voters can petition this process to begin these are all by people that live on free love some on president avenue charlotte new
46:07boston road hyacinth so not necessarily people that have a stake in these roads normally in other municipalities when we're dealing with whether it's a private way for acceptance or anything it's usually the people on the street itself are involved in the petition for this acceptance so i don't think that happens and then two it's also allowed only by voters there aren't taxpayers they don't
46:31have to own property they don't have to own property on the street so that's that's just what stops the process so in the last two that i've dealt with like glendale being one of them which i think is kind of in front of you as well i think the city needs to look closely at what kind of a headache are we buying because that's what you're doing you're buying this piece of real
46:50estate and you are now responsible for the repair the upkeep and the maintenance of this street and they don't come to you when they're in good shape like a new subdivision it's brand new they've been reviewed for construction they've gone through the permitting process you can take those streets knowing full well that it's been constructed to a standard that's acceptable you're you're buying
47:13time bombs is what you're really buying when you're when you're taking or accepting these streets and i know these people pay the right same amount of taxes but they want the services and everything else and that's how we get there but i think there needs to be a little bit closer attention paid either on the planning department side which i'm hoping to help so when this is presented to them they fully understand
47:32that it's not just two lines of a street layout and you're taking it and everything is great there's a lot that comes with that some are better and some are worse so they need to understand the financial responsibility of okay if we take small street roadway reconstruction for instance is about three hundred fifty dollars a foot so if we're at 328 feet times 350 a foot 100 thousand dollars to rebuild small street so
47:59that's immediately what's going to happen or requested to have happen so we can't necessarily burden ourselves with we have streets that we own now that we can't if we can't fix because we don't have enough money so to increase that number sometimes isn't necessarily the best thing to do so i don't know if this process will ever change but as i'm involved i will at least alert that fact to the planning
48:21board and whenever a recommendation is asked of me is you can take any street you want but just understand the ramifications of it after you make this vote so on this one for instance i don't think anybody looked into we're going to have to rebuild stanley now that's 350 has reconstructed the street to build a new one you're over 500 a linear foot so that's that's what needs to be looked at so i would ask
48:44that you recommend to the council to recommend back to the planning board to look just as small and not deal with stanley the plans that have been prepared we won't have to prepare new ones so we've already been through that and the engineering department has paid for these just with the actual taking document that follows in in these items what would happen is we are only going to take stanley street can show up but
49:09it's still a public way a private way small street could potentially be taken and i don't have a small street is not in that bad of condition i do believe that for the access that it provides it should be taken so this isn't one of those that it's you know this pothole infested gravel road in the middle of nowhere that serves one home and the city is going to take this huge expense it does
49:32provide access for four different homes theoretically if it had to another fire access to the school so there's a lot of different things that play into this street so i do think if asked by the planning board yes the taking of small street would be would be acceptable to me that's all i'll make a motion that we uh recommend to the full council that we refer this back to planning uh for a recommendation and a public
49:57hearing mrs spurrer i just want to comment on something so when that came about to make that into a public way we did receive calls from the residents that they were very concerned because of these spencer boarding teachers who were talking on small screen we were able to get them out because it was a private way they were very concerned that if it becomes a public way it's open to teachers parents
50:27um and they were really really concerned about that so i know i mentioned that in the letter when i received that they were going to make that into a public place so that's another thing we need to think about that you know it just goes further these residents will mention that i mean to that point i think that's what the public hearing would be for so the abutters would get a notification and i
50:48think at that time you know the planning board would take that under advisement and then when it comes back to the council we can make sure that we we highlight that and taking of the street and fixing it you still have the ability to make it no parking if if that's enough of a problem well that was the the the talk was to make the west side no parking so that way
51:07they wouldn't wait there's a snowstorm or anything you know no one would park there so that was one of their um conditions that they asked if that could be done as well and we did have two individuals july 20 that were uh opponents of of the proposal as well one one is here hello uh if you'd like to speak sir there you go the problem is when schools there's
51:37can you please uh state your name and my name is thomas the problem is there were so many schools in col and their college in that area that it backs up traffic it gets to the point where the across the street where cvs's and mcdonald's they hire police officers to stop the people from parking in there which makes the congestion on elsewhere street even that much worse because there are a couple access
52:08to president avenue from the parking area if they allow parking and they allow the streets to go through there are a tremendous amount of people they drive down the street turn around because there's no access and if you cut off the ellsbury and president avenue that's just going to congest the area even more because people will never get out on from elderly street to the traffic because the high school
52:37is getting out both conley and duffy and then the colleges get off at a different time plus expensive one is just up the street so that every year between two o'clock and 3 30 is highly congested if you allow access to the side streets it's just going to cause more confusion we still have people who go down the street and it's a dead end and they don't even know where to go
53:04they stop in the middle of the street they go over the dirt they go everywhere are there are there no parking signs now laura no no so once it becomes a city street we could put a dead end side so dead end not a through street there can be additional signs to help you know alleviate the issues that they are that are occurring there now so your concern your concern was if they were going to
53:28go through to stanley not if it remained a dead end correct okay so if that's one problem statement sheet there's no place to go it happens wrong in access back out onto president avenue which backs up everything because they tried to sneak out so you have the western east park traffic the street lanes going east and two going west it just backs everything up to the point where nobody moved
53:56they just can't move at all so mr aggie has already addressed that issue and potentially at damon i don't know what signage is there for dead end how to throw away i know we'll take a look at it i don't think i
54:20okay so there was a motion there was a second everybody in favor aye aye aye anybody opposed nobody opposed motion passes motion to adjourn motion to adjourn thank you
54:54you