Special Committee on Environment and Resiliency | Regular Meeting | February 9th, 2026 | 5:30pm

For coming into the journey that has been making changes to this. I wanted to walk through a few of the changes, and also I'll back up and say what it is. Because you already put it. But Got it. But the quick history, the goal of this, and also to share knowledge, we're joined today by the councilman, chairman, Oscar Vargas.

Thank you for joining us. The works committee. The purpose of this, and you used... Prior to this this over a year ago, was to address something that I've seen, and I... I've heard from many of my colleagues from the what happens when all of the utilities go into our bedrooms and sidewalks to do utility work.

I really just wanted to make sure that as that's happening, our neighbors, our constituents have transparency about what's happening. And that as a city, we're asking to make sure that folks have a plan. This is for all nonemergency work. For just like that they they have some sort of plan for notifying residents that the work is gonna happen. There's some plan for how they're gonna clean up at the end of the day and the timeline for some restoration of any any property that they've damaged or touched.

And we've discussed this previously, but I think we all have examples of this in our words. I can share, you know, about one street in my ward, though I have, like, 20 of these examples. The road was open for so long, and people were needing... The workers were needing tools and stuff on people's yards and in the street. People popped multiple tires.

They didn't have a recourse for what to do about it. And we didn't... There was no plan for for having this. This just creates, a a simple... And I'll explain what's happened where it's been amended since this was first introduced, but just requires notice to go out for any non emergency work and then asks the utilities to provide a plan.

DPW doesn't need to, like, exhaustively review these plans. It doesn't add a lot of work to the goal. So it doesn't add a lot of exhaustive work to DPW. It's just we've received these plans. So then if there is a failure to submit a plan or failure to follow through with the plan and our our roads are left in disarray for a long period of time, the way that affects our constituents, there is some formal recourse that we can take.

And we'll note a few things we've changed. One is that because of good conversations with Chris at Broadridge Water, while they are not exempted from this charges, they are exempted from fines and fees because they're a public entity, and we don't want to close a fee that then we can use services to our constituents. We also really were recognizing the vote on DPW and the importance of timeline and moving these projects forward, many of which are important for health and safety, like the word work to replace the lead. So amendment you've seen since... Or you should see since last time is there's no required, like, call it hearing from the council.

We'll receive the list of the projects that are going through. It seems like we do the raise permits. So this... We'll have access to that on our agendas. And then, yep, this this amended version is really just meant to kinda streamline the process, make sure we're getting the information we need, we're requiring the information we need, but not putting any unnecessary measures in.

I'll also note that we have that the ordinance will go into effect on September 30. This is to give the administration time after the budget cycle to put the processes in place to, like, make this work seamlessly. So we wanna make sure that DPW, the engineering team has the time they need to get this up and going. So are there any comments or questions from committee members or from councilman bargains?

Yeah. Thank you, Geraldine.

I know you've been working on it for a long time. As you mentioned, I think it was a year ago it was introduced. Because this is a concern that we hear from our neighbors from time to time. At least the the perception that they see is, you know, unnecessary work or ridiculous and just folks not, like, on the same timeline. So I think this work has a very clear, transparent accountability mechanism in place.

And, yes, this is important work for us today, and I appreciate all the work that you did to get us to this point.

No. Thank you. One other quick thing I'll say, which I forgot to add is one of the things. Sorry. Had to make notes even if forgot them.

That's what's in my house. One of the other minor changes was an... Which gratitude to Cox and Verizon for walking through the process they do for when they have requests to add Internet services or other cables. It's a very short process that disturbs, like, very little. So there is, like, if a project's gonna be less than forty eight hours, it's not gonna disturb very much.

There is a more streamlined process for that.

So I

just wanna highlight that so you're Thank well pressed. So

you.

Is this ordinance replacing or spending any currently existing plans? So this ordinance is updating a really old ordinance that was already on the books requiring some of this planning to go to the Department of Planning. And when I was trying to figure out, and I was getting a lot of complaints from my residents about the roads and the the work, we looked up this ordinance. It was like, oh, we have something on the books. Like, what's going on?

And I called, like, planning. They were like, no. This isn't. It's both not that this process isn't happening. And, also, if it doesn't make sense for this to go through planning, like, planning doesn't need to be getting this kind of information.

They're not the ones, like, issuing the permits or doing any of that. And so it was on the books, less detailed requirements, but there was something on the books which is amending. But it wasn't quite the... In my view, it wasn't quite the right process, and it was going through the planning department, which is not the home of the utility workers. Thank you for that.

And I have a follow-up question, which is one concern I've heard from the lack of access to this. Yeah. When work is going to be done. And I'd love to know sort of historically how that has been addressed and how this might impact. Yeah.

So this does in section b here under part two say that the residents need to be noticed... Given written notice thirty days in advance and then again within, like, forty to seventy two hours. And I did speak with a lot of utilities to see what their current practice was, and it's it's a mix. And I spent some time with the gas utility to ask them what what they're already doing. A kind of funny thing happened in the middle of, like, the year is I got a written notice in mid December than in the prior October.

They were gonna do work on my street. And I was like, you're counting this up. Like, it came in the mail. Like, mark your calendar, 10/15/2025. And I like, that was two months ago.

Like, that already happened. That was one of the primary concerns I was hearing from mostly. Like, I had a number of constituents, and maybe you had as well, try to leave for work in the morning, and they had gotten their notice that the roads would be torn up, and they got stuck in their driveways. And they were like, how am I supposed to get to work? Like, this hap...

We started at seven. I was gonna think at 07:30. So just any prior notice would be Councilman Marcus, chairman.

Yes. Thank you very much, chair. So the notice was sent to the whole block there or to all your

It would go to the folks who are affected. Yeah. So the way it's written is that it would go... Anyone who's gonna be disturbed by the By the work. By the work would get the notice.

Can I have a second question?

Oh, of course. Yeah.

Anything else. Province water is changing the lead pipes.

Yeah. Which is great.

But it's not Province water trucks. It was done as a subcontract.

Yeah.

Is this contract has to do the same thing?

Yeah. It says utility company or affiliated company.

It's... This was Yeah.

So you're cheaper to open the process.

Yeah. You're right. Because sometimes they leave... They they use a portable toilet. Sometimes they leave their portable toilet right in the middle of the sidewalk.

Yeah. Blocking the sidewalk. Someone... Sometimes they leave the the path or on the sidewalk, blocking the sidewalk. Yeah.

Or sometimes they leave utility tools on the side.

Yeah.

So they they should use a little parking spot in the stream Yeah. Here and leave the sidewalk free. Yeah. Another question I have, I don't know if you noticed the... We have a lot of half telephone calls ringing.

Yeah. So we should find out who wants these telephone calls. Yeah. Could be Verizon, could be Glass, or could be Nash...

Could be...

Could be a lot of energy. So now the administration was talking about live... What's that? Public life or lifestyle or something like

Oh, quality life?

Quality life. So I want to be reaming with these balls every day at zeroes. Every street you go by, you see at least every black is important.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And What