Information Items:
Council members should have received a special invitation to attend the Clean Air Works Kick-off scheduled for 7:30 am, Thursday, May 24, in the Young Dining Room, Queens University, 1900 Selwyn Avenue. Please note that a parking permit was included with your invitation.
This is the second summer for this major initiative led by the Regional Air Quality Board. Over 100 employers throughout the region are being asked to volunteer to change employee commuting behavior and operating practices to benefit air quality. Attached is the project update for May. We will continue to keep the Council informed about the campaign's progress over the summer.
The Food Lion Speed Street Festival will occur Thursday, May 24 - Saturday, May 26, 2007. Uptown streets will close today to begin festival set-up. The event site map is attached.
Food Lion Speed Street is an annual festival that celebrates the May races at Lowe's Motor Speedway. This is the 13th year the festival has been in Uptown.
Staff has worked with festival organizers and CMPD to create a traffic control plan that will move traffic around the festival site. CMPD has staffed additional officers at key congested areas during the morning and afternoon rush hours. We are expecting Thursday afternoon rush hour to be the most congested.
The attached notice outlines the street closures by date and time. This notice was also sent to Uptown property owners and property managers. Charlotte Center City Partners has posted festival information on their website
www.charlottecentercity.org as well as assisted Staff with sharing information with local media.
The first City Bond Report is attached for your review. This report will be published every six to eight weeks to update City Council on select bond projects. It is not a complete list of all bond projects; however, the update includes information on projects, which are encountering major milestones.
The new version of the water/sewer/storm water customer management and billing system is scheduled for activation over the Memorial Day weekend. Customers will not see or experience any noticeable change with their bills or billing service. Behind the scenes, however, this has truly been a significant and elaborate undertaking involving lots of teamwork over the past eighteen months. The Finance Department has led a collaborative effort including Utilities, Engineering/Storm Water Services, 311 and Business Support Services/IT to keep this important project on-time and on-budget.
The "go-live" process will begin on Friday, May 25. To avoid potential impacts on citizen service over the holiday weekend, the current system will remain available for most of the weekend.
Manual procedures will be used during limited times when the system will not be available. Key staff members from 311, BSS/IT, Finance, Storm Water, and Utilities will spend their holiday on Monday testing the new system to insure we are ready for business on Tuesday, May 29.
The new system is web-based, will be easier for employees to use and offers a number of improvements such as a streamlined, dashboard-type main screen that will enable customer service representatives to respond to customers more efficiently
