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HomeMy WebLinkAbout10-26-11 Board of Public Works Meeting AgendaBOARD OF PUBLIC WORKS OFFICIAL NOTICE OF REGULAR MEETING A meeting of the Board of Public Works will be held on Wednesday, October 26, 2011, at 4:45 p.m. in Common Council Chambers — Third Floor, City Hall, 108 East Green Street, Ithaca, New York. Please Note the Special Meeting at 6:00 p.m. with Common Council! Agenda 1. Additions or Deletions to Aaenda (Items 1 -5: 15 min. 2. Mayor's Communications 3. Communications and Hearings from Persons Before the Board 4. Response to the Public 5. Reports Special Committees of the Board Council Liaison Board Liaisons Superintendent and Staff Other Department Heads 6. Approval of Minutes 7. Administration and Communications 8. VOTING ITEMS 8.1 Buildings, Properties, Refuse and Transit 8.2 Highways, Streets and Sidewalks 8.3 Parking and Traffic 8.4 Creeks, Bridges and Parks 8.5 Water and Sewer 9. DISCUSSION ITEMS 9.1 BPW Meeting Schedule for November and December 2011 9.2 Livable Streets 9.3 Sidewalk Program Stop Work Order 9.4 Special Meeting: Public Works Governance Working Group Update (beginning at 6:00 p.m.) 10. New Business 11. Adjournment If you have a disability that will require special arrangements to be made in order for you to fully participate in the meeting, please contact the City Clerk at 607- 274 -6570 at least 48 hours before the meeting. The Board of Public Works meets on the second, third and fourth Wednesdays of the months at 4:45 p.m. All meetings are voting meetings, opening with a public comment period. Meeting agendas are created from prior public input, Department operating, planning issues, and requests made to the Superintendent. The Board reserves the right to limit verbal comments to three minutes and to request written comments on lengthy or complex issues. This information may then be used to create committee agendas, with the speaker or author invited to attend. Notes for BPW Agenda, October 26, 2011 9.1 BPW Meeting Schedule for November and December 2011 9.2 Livable Streets 9.3 Sidewalk Program Stop Work Order Please see the notes from the agenda for October 19, 2011. Tim Logue has supplied some additional information for our discussion of Livable Streets. There is a lot more information available that covers what is known as "Context Sensitive Design." While I don't believe we will be doing major road overhauls in the near future, the Livable Streets idea seems to provide a smaller scale means for neighborhoods to influence the way their streets appear to the general public, developing a sense of place and local involvement or pride. As Tim points out there are some issues fitting our local streets into a public /private partnership, where insurance, liability, state and federal laws or rules may come into play. 9.4 Public Works Governance Working Group Update (beginning at 6:00 p.m.) The Mayor has requested a Special Meeting for the review of the current working documents of the Public Works Governance Working Group. The main driving force here was that this work was a subset of a larger effort to look at the City Charter for opportunities to recommend changes that would streamline it and bring the document up to date with current operating principles (and state laws, mostly Civil Service). The Charter provisions under Public Works also contain a large number of policy and operational items that are duplicated in the City Code, and sometimes are in conflict with those other sections. My understanding is that the Charter should layout the form of government we want and the Code should contain the policy and procedures under which that government operates. It is fun trying to find a line between the statement of government that you want and the policies and procedures you want it to operate under. A review of the Charter also provides a setting for proposals that would change the way the Board operates within City Government. The Mayor has drafted such a proposal, believing that a cleaner statement of what the Board of Public Works is under the current (20th Century) Charter makes a good back drop for discussing what the City residents would like it to be for the 21 st Century. Her proposal would be a fairly significant departure. Kathy has assembled a substantial collection of documents from the committee's discussions for your review. W U,2V,J. c,ra�, P.E. superCv tenoievt of 1>1,CU o Works October 21, 2021 Page 2 CITY OF ITHACA 108 East Green Street Ithaca, New York 14850 -5690 OFFICE OF THE CITY ENGINEER Telephone: 607/274 -6530 Fate: 607/274 -6587 To: Board of Public Works From: Tim Logue, Transportation Engineer Date: October 20, 2011 Re: Livable Streets/ Intersection Repair Along the lines of the video you watched at your meeting on October 19th, in regard to "Intersection Repair" a la Portland, OR, I've enclosed two items that would address how the City of Ithaca can allow neighborhood groups (or anybody) to design and build community -based enhancements to City streets or intersections. The first item is a proposed Board of Public Works policy that could be used in addition to our standard Street Permit to allow for work in the right -of -way. This policy is nearly identical to the one from Portland. The second item is the official functional classification map for the City of Ithaca, as approved through the Ithaca Tompkins County Transportation Council. The green line (Route 13) is the only principle arterial in the city. The red lines are minor urban arterials and the blue lines are urban collectors. Streets with no lines are local streets. This functional classification does not address ownership; it's a way to classify streets according to their function to carry traffic. As you can see, many streets are considered non -local streets; this means that they are eligible for federal -aid. That's the good news. The bad news is that it also means they carry a more auto - focused design standard than local streets should we ever get federal - aid to rebuild them. For the purposes of "Intersection Repair," it also means that they would not be eligible for painting or other things, according to item 3 of the proposed policy. We could, of course, include collector streets in our list of streets eligible for "Intersection Repair" or we could work through the process of re- evaluating our functional classification map. I would proposed this to be one item of discussion. The other point I wanted to make about this permitting process is that we have some paperwork requirements for a street permit that might be difficult for residents to deal with. In order to get a street permit (according to the Code), the applicant must provide a certificate of liability insurance naming the City of Ithaca as an additionally insured. Most residents do not have liability insurance except perhaps a homeowner's policy, but insurance companies will not add An Equal Opportunity Employer with a commitment to workforce diversification." co someone to a homeowner's policy. Instead, the best a resident could probably do would be to get a special event liability insurance to cover the block party and actual work days. This would probably cost them something on the order of $100. It would cover an incident during the block party, for example, but it probably wouldn't provide any additional insurance coverage after the work is completed. Additionally, in order to get a permit, applicants must provide proof of compliance with the NYS Workers Compensation Law. Though this will likely be a bit of hassle, I believe residents can get this proof with a little effort and at no cost. It would be important to me to have direction about the insurance question, both so that it is an explicit policy, but also so that there is clear direction to staff. City of Ithaca Board of Public Works Policy approved Conditions of Revocable Street Permit to Modify City Intersections In addition to the standard conditions of a City of Ithaca Street Permit, the permittee agrees to the following supplemental conditions: (1) The permittee shall hold the City of Ithaca, its officers, agents, and employees free and harmless from any claims for damages to persons or property, including legal fees and costs of defending any actions or suits, including any appeals, which may result from permitted activity. (2) The intent of a proposed project and the likely outcome of such project shall be consistent with the goals of the City of Ithaca Common Council and the Board of Public Works. (3) The two streets must be classified as Local Streets (as opposed to a Collector or Arterial street) and carry less than a combined 2,500 vehicles on an average day. (4) The applicant for a permit must provide to the City Transportation Engineer a petition of support for the proposed intersection modifications. The support petition must have signatures from each of the adjacent residents and at least 80 percent of the residents on the project street frontage(s) within two standard city blocks of the proposed project. The City Transportation Engineer shall have the authority to modify the petition boundaries when considered appropriate. The City Transportation Engineer shall certify the accuracy of the petition. (5) The applicant for a permit must provide the City Transportation Engineer with a written description of the proposed changes, including diagrams depicting how the intersection will look when completed. The applicant must demonstrate how the project will improve, or at least maintain, traffic safety and the safety of individuals at or in the vicinity of the intersection. (6) The City Transportation Engineer may approve a revocable permit authorizing construction and maintenance of the project as described and shown in the submitted diagrams, subject to any changes that may be required by the City Transportation Engineer. (7) The permit shall be for use of the public right -of -way only, and does not exempt the permittee from obtaining any license or permit required by the City Code or Ordinances for any act to be performed under this permit. Nor shall the permit waive the provisions of any City Code, Ordinance, or the City Charter, except as stated herein. (8) The permit shall not exempt any party from complying with all applicable traffic laws, including laws regarding pedestrians. (9) The permittee is not authorized to do any excavation, except as specifically identified in the project plans. The permittee shall be responsible for protecting all public and private facilitates placed in the public right -of -way, including underground utilities. (10) The permittee shall notify all households and businesses within two standard city blocks of the proposed project at least 30 days before the project installation date. (1 1) The permittee shall obtain a Block Party Permit to close all legs of an intersection, for up to one block distance, in order to install the intersection modifications. Permittee shall use Type III barricades and STREET CLOSED signs as provided in the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Dez4ces. No street shall be blocked for more than 12 hours in any 24 -hour period unless specifically allowed by the City Transportation Engineer. (12) Repair, maintenance, or installation of existing or future utility facilities in the right -of -way may require the permittee to reconstruct, move, or remove the project, or portions of the project, with all costs borne by the permittee. w fT, to 10 1 0 AJ. m 00 AMR it AA EXAM lit IL I4I L 2j AM, 6P J Ft ftf -Q 5r ED a dD' AW] 7 All is r -1\ _-ool NP, f kv -dF-' t 00 411111 {; o WIN Lille I Page 1 of 1 Bill Gray - key meetings From: Carolyn Peterson To: Council Date: 10/20/20118:11 AM Subject: key meetings CC: Gehring, Kathrin; Gray, Bill Dear all, I am scheduling two important meetings for your attendance, one of which is a special CC meeting. The special CC meeting will be scheduled at the beginning of or a bit later during the 10/25 budget meeting. This is solely for consideration of support of a TIGER transportation grant application which has a deadline of October 31. The second is in invitation to attend the BPW meeting on October 26 at 6pm. The Public Works Governance group of the Charter and Code working Group will present 2 approaches to issues around the BPW. One is amendments to the charter that consolidate and update the language; the other is a different approach to a BPW that changes it fairly markedly. Please rsvp on the BPW attendance to me. (We have a budget meeting at 7 that night). Thanks, Carolyn file: / /C: \Documents and Settings \billg \Local Settings\ Temp\XPgrpwise \4E9FD79Ecoima... 10/21/2011