Board of Aldermen — 3/22/16 Page 7
REPORTS OF COMMITTEE
Finance Committee 200.0... cece ceccceecceecceeeceeceeeceeetaeeeaeeeseeteeereeereneraees 03/16/16
There being no objection, President McCarthy declared the report of the March 16, 2016
Finance Committee accepted and placed on file.
Human Affairs Committee 2.0.0.0... ccc ccccccecceecceeeeeeeeecesecerevereeeaeeraees 03/14/16
There being no objection, President McCarthy declared the report of the March 14, 2016
Human Affairs Committee accepted and placed on file.
Personnel/Administrative Affairs Committee... ceeeceeeeeeeeeees 03/07/16
There being no objection, President McCarthy declared the report of the March 7, 2016
Personnel/Administrative Affairs Committee accepted and placed on file.
Planning & Economic Development Committee... 03/15/16
There being no objection, President McCarthy declared the report of the March 15, 2016
Planning & Economic Development Committee accepted and placed on file.
MOTION BY ALDERMAN DOWD THAT THE RULES BE SO FAR SUSPENDED AS TO ALLOW FOR THE
ORAL REPORT OF THE PUBLIC HEARING AND SPECIAL BUDGET REVIEW COMMITTEE MEETING
HELD MARCH 21, 2016
MOTION CARRIED
Alderman Dowd
Last evening we had the public hearing on the intersection of Charron Avenue and Amherst Street, along with
the Budget meeting for the two motions associated with that construction. Very simply during the last session
of the Board of Aldermen, we had approved a contract value. When it went out to bid because of a few
different changes, the bids came back a little higher than we had anticipated. Last night the Mayor and Chief
Engineer Dookran gave a presentation what this involved. Aldi and a couple other stores are going into that
mall there. They originally had earmarked some money to just tie into the jug-handle. The jug-handle had
already reached capacity and was not operating correctly as was the other one on the other side of the street.
What this does is it allows for Charron Avenue to be widened by one lane. It allows for two left-hand turns, two
lanes if you take a left-hand turn onto Amherst Street when the light changes. It also allows for two lanes for
taking a right-hand turn off Charron Avenue onto Amherst Street at the light. The jug-handle that is there now
where Aldi is going in is being eliminated with traffic signals in there. There will be a turn lane to go into that
mall. There will be another turn lane on the other side to queue up cars to take a left-hand turn into where
Whole Foods is. It’s basically the same thing reversed on the other side to allow cars to either turn into the Aldi
site or into the Whole Foods. That section of Amherst Street has been a bottleneck for quite a long time. The
increase in traffic from Whole Foods caused an issue because it’s highly successful. Now we have the mall
across the street. We wanted to look at developing a solution to that problem to let the flow through that area
be much smoother. In our discussions with the businesses in the area, we were able to get them to contribute,
on the initial estimate, half of the cost. When we came back and there were increased costs due to things we
found out when it went out to bid, we then also got some small addition of money from the businesses in the
area because they already were having concerns about the costs. Basically we had to add to the amount of
the money for the bond to complete this project. It’s going to eliminate the jug-handle. It’s going to reduce
significantly the flow of traffic in the other jug-handle. And, it’s going to allow for better access of flow of
Amherst Street through that area. Plus, we will be repaving all of that area which we were going to have to do
anyway. In this instance, it’s going to do all this work with a substantial amount of the fees being paid by
private enterprise and not the city. If we waited until some other time, the city would have to pay the entire
