I just want to speak briefly to item number 11, which is the planning for First Avenue, and I wanted to compliment the staff. I'm looking around for Luke. Is he here? Oh, there you're hiding. Uh you were the lead. You had a lot of other people helping you, but it was just fantastic. Uh the response I've gotten from the community there. They're very happy, which as we know is somewhat unusual. And uh we're going forward. It's still construction's a long ways away, but the hard work of this planning and outreach has has come and gone, and thank you so much for that.

The purpose of the asphalt pavement resurfacing program is to extend the life of some city streets which are not scheduled for any preventative maintenance, renovation, or reconstruction in the foreseeable future. This resurfacing program is addressing city streets that are at a point in their life cycle where a new street surface will extend the street's life, improve ride quality and neighborhood livability, and help slow the overall deterioration of our city street system.

I want to say thank you, Director Sexton and your team for all of the wonderful work that you have been doing on the Van White Boulevard there in in North Minneapolis in Ward 5. All of the great ADA improvements to the curvature and all of that. It looks absolutely wonderful. So, I am excited and will be supporting this assessment today.

City staff have conducted meaningful engagement during the planning and design process of this project. There were three rounds of engagement that started in the spring of 2024 and concluded earlier this year. The project team conducted multiple public meetings, neighborhood and business association outreach, hosted online surveys and comment maps, uh attended pop-up events, held office hours for area residents, and shared information through e-newsletters.

This is for the two blocks that actually got changed from being full reconstruction to instead being this lighter or lesser amount of work after more soil testing. It was seen that we could accommodate what we needed to do here with this full depth reclamation instead of a full reconstruction project.

During his time as Public Works Director, the City of Minneapolis has been recognized as the number one drinking water city in the state of Minnesota. We've completed major storm water projects and secured critical infrastructure funding from the federal government without sacrificing core city goals.

What I've always appreciated about Tim is that he understands transportation is not simply a matter of moving vehicles, but as a public investment that creates opportunity for people. He understands that our transportation system must work for everyone, whether they drive, walk, bike, use transit, use mobility devices, or rely on a combination of these options.

Moving forward, my focus remains clear. Deliver excellent core services, deeply embed climate, equity, and safety into everything we build, and support an an engaged and diverse workforce.

One of my goals when I got to City Hall was to develop and maintain a relationship with this department. And that is because this is what matters the most to North Minneapolis. These livability issues that you all tackle every single day is something I hear about all the time.

Director Sexton, you are one of the most directly accessible directors in this whole city and I thank you for that. Although I try not to contact you outside of regular working hours, when I've needed to, you've always been quick to respond and to activate your team to manage a situation.

I think that's actually at the core of public works too that often gets um overlooked. Of course we want to hone in on the core services um and and reduce public work to just putting in um, you know, new streets or or lighting but we we also have to acknowledge what places like 38th in Chicago and even I-94 which we're going to have a role in in rethinking and reframing what that project looks like. Um, we recognize historically infrastructure projects have also been used as a tool to um, widen racial and economic disparities. And it's important that as community leaders or workers in this this this field, we not only acknowledge that history but also use the tools and our expertise to do everything that we can to undo that harm and also lead with new um, and better actions that actually bring our communities together That promotes uh, restoration and uh, a reparative justice.

One of the things that came up maybe in the last half a year, three quarters of a year is we did not do as much outreach as we probably should have in Northeast Minneapolis. So, we, uh, tweaked our engagement plan. We actually have an engagement plan in process and motion starting in June going through the summer of reaching out to some additional folks, the East Bank neighborhood partnership, um, additional additional, uh, neighborhood associations in Northeast, uh, St. Anthony, just your friends to the east, and just kind of having those conversations, getting some dialogue and and happy to talk about some of that in further detail if you are interested in that information.

MnDOT has generously offered to take on um improvements at the intersection of Broadway and Industrial, which otherwise would have become a Park Board project in excess of $1 million. MnDOT is well positioned to navigate the coordination with the railroad and our agency partners at the city and the county um to improve that intersection. That's a huge benefit for the Park Board to be able to move this project forward.

One of the things that we have noticed in the PAC is that sidewalk accessibility and condition has been all over the place throughout the city. We have noticed a few specific things that sidewalk accessibility and condition can impact. Um construction work has caused sidewalks to be closed without visible detours or detours getting thwarted...

One of the biggest things that will cause the committee to not support a project is if there is great prioritization of private vehicle storage. We want to make sure that there is more room given to pedestrians and transit users because there's a lot of overlap between these fields.

Our streets are public places where our values are made manifest. They're put forward, they're tested, they're contested, Um, um you know, to some degree the entire not just our streets, but the entire enterprise of public works uh is is a demonstration of how we want to be together as a community and what we want to do for each other.

However, this corridor still won't have the improvements that it needs in order to be an effective part of the bike network, right? So, narrowed streets are not a bike way. Traffic calming is the end result of the infrastructure changes that we make. It's not a bike way. There's not actually anything in this design that anyone who bikes would call a bike way on this project and this corridor 34th Avenue is part of the all ages and abilities network. It's supposed to have a bike way.

I want to invite you to get on a bike for whatever reason moves you. There's no better way to understand how far we've come and how far we have left to go.