[Denis MacDougall]: Okay, yes. On February 12, 2022, Governor Baker signed into a law a supplement of COVID-19 fiscal appropriations and an extension through July 15, 2022, of certain authorizations related to public meetings. This new law extends the remote reading provisions of the governor's March 12, 2020, executive order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law. In accordance with the 2020 executive order, this meeting of the City of Medford Bicycling Advisory Commission is being conducted totally via remote participation using Zoom, including committee members and the public. The use of Zoom complies with the laws requirement to provide live, adequate, alternative means of public access to the deliberations of the public body instead of hold meetings in a public place that is open and physically accessible to the public. Persons would like to listen to or view this meeting while in progress may do so by using the link that was included on the meeting agenda posted on the city of Medford website. If despite our best efforts, we are not able to provide for real-time access, we will post a record of this meeting on the city's website in the near future at the link provided in the meeting agenda.
[Jared Powell]: Great. Thank you, Dennis. Well, with that, welcome everybody to the April meeting of the Medford Bicycle Advisory Commission. Let's see, Lisa, would you like to do a roll call? We've got some announcements, obviously, that will explain some of the new faces on here. Maybe you can start with the names you probably know, and I can identify some of the others and things when we get there.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, sounds great. I will just, for the sake of those who don't know what people's roles are, if you will, just say what those are as well. Jared Powell, chair.
[Jared Powell]: Present.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_09]: Pat Bivens, co-chair. Here. Lisa Duraco, secretary. Bruce Kulik.
[Unidentified]: Here.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_09]: Emily O'Brien. Here. Dan Fairchild.
[Unidentified]: Here.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_09]: Ernie Meunier, I do not see, and Doug Packer.
[Jenny Graham]: Here.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_09]: All right. He just showed up.
[Jenny Graham]: Oh, there's Ernie.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_09]: I see Ernie's in his Son and grandson. All right, awesome. And then, Jared, should we see Dennis McDougal, but do we want to have others introduce themselves?
[Emily O'Brien]: Should we maybe finish calling the roll and then have everybody introduce themselves? Yeah, I think I'm done.
[Jared Powell]: Yeah, I think that was everyone. But since I've got the rest of the names, I can finish the role of the people who have not been added to your list yet, Lisa. Peter Calves? Calves? Am I pronouncing that right? Calvis, but here. Calvis. All right. Well, I was wrong on both tries. Thank you. Gaston Fiore?
[Gaston Fiore]: Yes, hello. I'm here.
[Jared Powell]: Hello, Gaston. Danielle Nuzzo-Muller? Nuzzo? Nuzzo? Sorry. You're muted. You're muted.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Nuzzo-Muller, but that's fine.
[Jared Powell]: Here. Nuzzo-Muller. All right. Thank you. Let's see. Is it Dee or Dana Phillips?
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_13]: I go by Dana.
[Jared Powell]: Dana. Okay. Well, welcome. Rebecca Wright?
[Jenny Graham]: Here.
[Jared Powell]: Do you prefer Becca or Rebecca?
[Jenny Graham]: Um, either is fine. It's fine.
[Jared Powell]: Okay, thank you. Well, that's everybody. Those are those are our new our new members. Spoiler alert for the announcement section that's coming up next.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_09]: We have another attendee Harrison Green. Would you mind just introducing yourself?
[Harrison Green]: There we go. Yeah, my name is Harrison Green. I'm a new Medford resident, bike commuter. Want to get a little bit more involved, hear what everything's going on in this group.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_09]: Great, thanks.
[Harrison Green]: Yeah, great. Thanks for coming.
[Jared Powell]: All right, let's see. So I think the minutes have been circulated. Has everyone had a chance to review them? We talked about, let's see, on the last meeting, we talked about updates to recent city and area meetings, so the Arlington Bike Path meeting, Medford Parks and Path meeting, Comprehensive Plan meeting. City Councilor-President Nicole Morell talked with us for a while. We talked about the bike-friendly status and also some new bike infrastructure from Medford Square to the new GLX station, bike route signage with a presentation from Emily, and a little bit about lighting and helmet giveaways and whatnot that Ernie's been leading. We'll talk about that a little bit more tonight as well. Let's see. Do I hear a motion to approve the minutes from last month?
[Emily O'Brien]: So moved.
[Jared Powell]: All right. Seconded. Seconded. All right. All in favor of approving the minutes?
[Unidentified]: Aye.
[Jared Powell]: Aye. All right, well, let's see. Actually, now we have newer people here. You all are officially part of the commission, so you can vote on those sorts of things now.
[Gaston Fiore]: Do we need to get the letter in the mail before we are officially members and then go to the city hall and swear in?
[Jared Powell]: There is no swearing in. That's a good question, Gaston. There is no official swearing in process, and I've confirmed with the mayor that you all have been approved. So you're waiting for something in the mail maybe, but I've already gotten confirmation that you are all set.
[Gaston Fiore]: Thanks for the clarification.
[Jared Powell]: Oh, sure. Let's see. Dana asking about last month's minutes. Good question. Those are, yeah, I think I've got it here. So things like that, Dana, get posted to Google Docs. And so you probably have access to them already. Shortly before the meeting, I added you all to the Google groups.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Yes, I just pulled it up. I just pulled it up. Perfect.
[Jared Powell]: right? Well, actually, that's a good that's a good question. You all weren't here to review the minutes or participate in that meeting. So perhaps it's not appropriate for you to vote on approving them.
[nqVIJ3wsDWg_SPEAKER_13]: I don't think we have a rule for that.
[Bruce Kulik]: It was just a voice vote anyway. There we go. All right. I wasn't at the meeting either. Unfortunately, for some reason, I thought it was still the end of the month and not the third. So I apologize for missing it. I was traveling at the end of the month.
[Jared Powell]: That's right. Well, so approve that. All right. Let's move on to our announcements. Well, the big one, obviously, we have new members. We have five new members on the commission here who've introduced themselves already. Peter Gaston, Daniel, Dana, and Becca. Welcome. Thank you for being here. So now we have a total number of people on the commission of 13. So we've bumped up our numbers substantially. We have 13 people. That gives us a quorum of seven. So for anyone not familiar with that, that means that you basically need 50% plus one to make official decisions as a commission. So you need just over half. So we basically can't vote on anything where we would need to in a meaningful way unless seven people show up on one of our meetings. Just as a bit of background. So thank you for coming. We'll do introductions of everyone momentarily, but we'll do some more announcements first. I only have one. You'll see when we do these meetings, announcements kind of start at the top. I'll provide some commentary as we go through this meeting for the sake of new folks as well. You're not totally lost, although I recognize some of you have been to these meetings before. One announcement that I have is, I wasn't aware of this, but I got the dispatch about it. The Medford Housing Authority apparently applied for a grant through MassCEC, the Clean Energy Center, to get e-bikes for residents at various Medford Housing Authority properties. Which is pretty cool. It's, uh, it's going to be a 15 bike program. So it's not huge, pretty small scale, but I think they're kind of splitting it up where five people kind of get their own bikes to keep, uh, five. I think we'll live at, they'll still be privately owned, but we'll live at a docking station where they would be charged. And then I think five more serve as kind of a rotating bike share type thing that anyone could be able to access. So there's an application and people can submit an interest form, and I'm not sure exactly how they'll allot that, perhaps a lottery or something, I would imagine. But a neat idea, a good use of, interesting use of grant money. I thought that was also kind of a good opportunity to remind ourselves that there are other people in city government and associated with the city who may be interested in what we have to do with whom we may or may not have a particularly close relationship. So a good reminder that there's some partnerships there to be made. Those are the only announcements that I had. Does anyone have any others they wanted to bring up before we move on to other meeting business?
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, Jared, on the e-bikes, I just posted the article up in the chat, if anybody wants to refer to that. But yeah, I just learned about it today. I didn't know about it at all. But inevitably, we will probably get asked questions about it. So perhaps we might want to invite somebody from the Housing Authority uh you know presented our next meeting or um maybe get uh fill us in on a little information so we could help support that.
[Emily O'Brien]: It might also be a good chance to pass out some, at least light sets. I assume the e-bikes have those on them already, but still other people who aren't using those might still have their own bikes or have interest in using other bikes or have kids with bikes. And so that might be another good place to make sure that we're in touch so that people who need lights and helmets can get them.
[Jared Powell]: Sure. Good idea. Yeah, we've got a thing on the agenda to talk about how to how to get rid of some of those lights. So that's a that's a good idea there. Anything else on the Bruce I see there.
[Bruce Kulik]: There we go, sorry. I just got a notice from the folks that are running the commuting convoys that have been kind of in hiatus due to COVID. But on Friday, May 17th is, I guess that's actually National Bike to Work Day still. I don't know how many people are actually still commuting to work. I know personally I'm not, but I still nonetheless agreed to proctor one of those rides with David Anderson from Winchester, and we typically leave from the Winchester train station. come down through Medford Square, through Assembly Row, through Charlestown, and down to City Hall, Boston City Hall at that point. So anyone, if you want to, stay tuned. Give me a buzz if you wanna join me. I'm not quite sure what time we leave, but it's usually, if I recall correctly, a little bit on the early side, seven-ish, maybe 7.30. So I just wanted to make sure everyone aware of that.
[Jared Powell]: That's great, thanks, Bruce, for leading that and letting us know about it. Anyone else have a similar route to work that they might wanna join?
[Emily O'Brien]: Did you say May 17th?
[Bruce Kulik]: No, I did say May 17th, and that's because the original email says Friday, May 17th, but in fact, it's Friday, May 20th.
[Emily O'Brien]: Okay, that makes more sense.
[Bruce Kulik]: I was just reading it verbatim, because it came in literally just an hour ago.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_06]: Hey, Bruce, do you know where that's posted online?
[Bruce Kulik]: Yes, I can share the link in the sessions, boston.gov, bike-2-work-day.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_06]: Okay.
[Bruce Kulik]: So let me.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, post that up in the chat.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_13]: Question, to return to an earlier point with the e-bikes, is there any possibility of, with the senior housing, Um, of getting, uh, you know, possibly a demo or something like that, or possibly, you know, bikes at the senior housing facilities, because just because those people are in the senior housing, um, and may or may not have cars doesn't mean. Um, that they might not be able to write a bike.
[Jared Powell]: Sure.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_13]: Are you kind of suggesting that we, that they be officially invited or you want to see if or something just you know so that they have people at the senior housing, who have, you know, if they can be like, Oh, you know, there's this this image of a cycling is hard. But if you have the e-bike and we have a demonstration of the e-bike at the senior housing or something like that, or we have some representative of the residents or some number of the residents, so they can pedal around on the e-bike. And so they can say, oh, actually, this is easy and convenient, and it means I can now go over to the drugstore, or I can go to the grocery store, or basically it can give them a bit more independence.
[Jared Powell]: Sure, yeah, I'm not sure if they have anything like that planned, but it seems like a good idea that we could maybe do to help drum up some interest for this and make sure that people, you know, not only know about the opportunity, but feel comfortable enough riding them, so.
[Bruce Kulik]: Do we know who we'd contact at the Housing Authority?
[Jared Powell]: I think there is a contact listed on that public material, on the public materials, but I don't remember specifically what it is, but I can check.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, that will become even more relevant in the future when the Clippership Connector is completed. Is everybody familiar with the Clippership Connector project? That'll be the bike path that follows the Mystic River and really runs from the senior housing in Medford Square and connects to the middle schools.
[Bruce Kulik]: So Pat, not to volunteer you, but maybe that's a good opportunity for us to exercise our LAB cycling instructor credentials.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_06]: Sure.
[Bruce Kulik]: So I'll take an action item to contact whoever I can find on that press release, just introduce us and offer to put something together. I won't commit to anything until I speak with you a little more, Pat, but just an idea.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, that sounds great.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Bruce, I just want the link to the press release for the Midford Housing Authority in the chat.
[Bruce Kulik]: Great, thank you all. So, can we get Chickariello? Yeah, okay, thank you.
[Jared Powell]: Well, let's see, any other announcements?
[nqVIJ3wsDWg_SPEAKER_13]: I have a quick one related to the bike-friendly cities thing. I just found out about this last week. People for Bikes has a ratings program for cities. it seems to be somewhat less involved to get into it than the bike-friendly cities. So it basically depends on one city official filling out a short survey, let's say 15 questions, and some number of community members filling out surveys about how they feel about things. So, um, and there's a, you know, form to fill out to be included, but I presume would take require some amount of, um, social posting to ask people to fill out the surveys to get enough responses. But for example, Somerville is on their list. Cambridge is on their list. Melrose is on their list at varying levels of ratings. Somerville gets a 38 rating overall. I think it's out of 100. Cambridge 51 or something like that. Yeah.
[Emily O'Brien]: I wonder if this is something that we maybe want to all kind of read and review over the next month. My caveat would be On the one hand, it's really nice if we can get a rating that's within spitting distance of Somerville or something, and that looks nice. But my concern is that if we end up with an embarrassingly low rating, then it just makes the idea of biking in Medford unappealing. I would rather just not be on the list for a while. If that's and it's it's sort of the similar argument with us kind of not pursuing the bicycle friendly communities ratings right now, either we can use, but we can still use those those guidelines.
[Unidentified]: Yeah.
[Emily O'Brien]: help us make the argument for other things that we need to get better. I think we all should definitely take some time to read that. I think that's a good suggestion. I just think we should be careful about how far we want to jump into it if we are not going to like what rating might get.
[Jared Powell]: Oh, yeah. Could I maybe suggest then that we do, Emily, what you suggest and we read it and then B. Dan, maybe you could kind of walk us through it briefly on the next meeting?
[nqVIJ3wsDWg_SPEAKER_13]: Yeah, sounds good. I just posted a link to the page for Somerville, which also, of course, has some links about how the whole thing works. but you can sort of see what it does. Like it's not, it's not as complex as, um, the, um, Michael friendly city thing, but it has like a few aspects and they do what they do a network analysis, which is kind of cool actually.
[Jared Powell]: Right. All right. Anything else? Ernie was, were you, was that you? Okay. Yep.
[Ernie Meunier]: I was just going to we've already decided I was just going to agree with Emily that in this case, the emperor has no clothes and we should get done for jumping out of the shower. Thanks.
[Jared Powell]: Fair enough. All right. Well, the next thing on the list was, was an introduction of the new commission members. So I thought what we could do was, since you all are new to the commission, we're new to you, you're new to us, it might be helpful if everyone kind of went around and gave a little bit of background about who they are. Interest in cycling, you know, expertise, kind of whatever you want us to know as a as a group, frankly. And I can give a bit of a rundown as well about kind of what the commission is and how it works. So you've got a little bit of a have a primer for what it's like. And of course, we have people who've been on the commission for longer than I have who are welcome to chime in and correct me where I'm wrong or provide useful context as well. But let's see, I'll start going around based on the order that I see on my screen. Lisa, you're up.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_09]: Sorry, so I don't know exactly how long I've been with the commission, but I joined with sort of a single focus of bike share. So I was very, very motivated to help us. We got line bike, was involved a little bit with blue bikes. And I'm basically a recreational cyclist, not a hardcore commuter. So I kind of have to have that point of view on things. But anyways, and just in general, enjoy hearing about what's going on in the cycling world. So keeping it brief.
[Jared Powell]: And you're also our secretary. I am. You've been responsible for publicizing everything, making sure that we're following open meeting laws.
[Jenny Graham]: Exactly.
[Jared Powell]: All right, well, I'm next in my own view, so I guess I'll go. My name's Jared Powell. I'm the current chair of the commission, though if things go my way, that will change over the course of this particular meeting. And let's see, I was a bike commuter before I knew that that was a thing. I bike commuted to my first job when I was 16. I bike around the area a lot. It's been my normal mode of getting around. I walk to work, bike when I'm feeling lazy or in a hurry. I ride Dutch bikes and I have a kid, so I am hauling around a very heavy piece of steel all the time and I'm very sensitive to the needs of people who are not fast riders. but I am an environmental consultant, so I do a lot of survey work and interview work and things like that for my job. Occasionally, that has overlaps with what we do here. Emily, you are next on my list.
[Emily O'Brien]: I'm Emily. I've been on the bike commission for, I guess, the same amount of time as Jared, however long that is. I'm a past secretary, so I know how much work Lisa has been doing. And I've been a bike commuter Since I was old enough to be one, um, I've never had a driver's license and have a lot of bicycles. Um, and that includes a cargo bike and folding bikes and road bikes. I do long distance riding. Um, I do kind of a little of everything. I don't race anymore. Um, But I am really committed to helping make biking easier and friendlier and safer and more approachable for as many people. And I think that's just a really important part of easing a lot of the issues that every city faces, whether it's congestion, whether it's one of the huge arguments that always comes up when people want to build new housing is where are all those new residents going to put their cars. It ends up being connected to a lot of the other important issues, whether tangentially or more immediately. That's what I'm here for.
[Bruce Kulik]: Emily, I think you can brag a little bit about your rods and earring and, you know, doing 500 miles in three days, that kind of thing.
[Emily O'Brien]: Uh, I like, I like long bike rides. Uh, Dana's spouse actually is another, uh, member of our club. Um, yeah. And, uh, so if you like going on rides that last all day and all night and potentially all day again, uh, send me a note and I'll hook you up.
[Bruce Kulik]: And what's the biggest thing you took on your cargo bike? A Concord bass recorder, I think you said.
[Emily O'Brien]: Well, that's the biggest instrument that I own that I carry on a cargo bike, but it is not even close to the biggest thing I've ever carried on it.
[Jared Powell]: I'm not sure what that would be, but I've carried- The tree was impressive. Yeah. How many trees have you carried on your bike in the past two weeks?
[Emily O'Brien]: Two trees and six tall forsythias.
[Jared Powell]: Impressive. Well, thank you.
[Emily O'Brien]: But that doesn't give me a lot of sympathy for people who are not fast.
[Jared Powell]: Pat, you're next up on the list.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, hi, I'm Pat Bivens. I'm one of the charter members of the commission along with Bruce and Doug who are also here. And I grew up in Cambridge and I've been riding around the Boston area for, I don't know, quite a long time now. So a lot of commuting, but I do like some recreational rides and distance rides and things like that. We moved to Medford some time ago. Our kids have grown up here. Our youngest is now about to graduate from college. Got that perspective of a parent and seen like how people of all ages navigate the city. My undergraduate degree is actually in growth and structure of cities. Bikes and transportation really fit into that. My day job is a graphic designer. I work in communications in healthcare. That's another perspective that I have on things. I have been secretary, chair, and vice chair of the commission. I've done the whole thing at this point. But I'm so excited to see some new members here and really look forward to working with all of you and doing some great things together.
[Jared Powell]: You're here. Doug, you're next.
[Unidentified]: Pretty sound on Doug.
[Ernie Meunier]: Doug, you're muted.
[MCM00001136_SPEAKER_03]: There, I'm unmuted. Hi, I'm Doug. Like Pat said, I'm one of the original members of the Bike Commission. I live in North Medford. I work in the Boston-Cambridge line. And I commute both by bike and car, so I've seen the best and the worst of both sides of the commute. I used to take my son to daycare on the back of my bicycle. He's now 25. I commute just because, or I ride just because it's faster to get from here to work by bike than it is from car. I used to mountain bike. I used to bike tour, but age and arthritis has caught up with me. So now all I do is commute. Looking forward to new people too.
[Jared Powell]: I'm done. Thanks, Doug. Dana, you're next on the list.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_13]: Hi, yeah, so, Medford resident since 2010, I think it was, yeah. Been biking around Boston since I moved here after college, have done a mixture of long distance rides, long distance commuting, short rides, at one point when My spouse and I lived in Lexington. I was commuting out to Billerica on my road bike a couple times a week, which was fun, getting a lot of training in. Have done a couple of long rides with Emily's crew, NER. At the moment, I am commuting three times a week from home down to Kendall Square on our cargo bike. and which we picked up right before the pandemic started. Love having the cargo bike for going to the grocery store. We put 200 pounds of cat litter on the cargo bike, which is absolutely wonderful to go over to Wegmans and load up the cargo bicycle full of groceries and bike back. At one point, I was riding with critical mass back when that was a thing. So fighting with the cars. Yeah, so and I'm, you know, I, one of y'all met your members, we interacted on my commute home. And so you know, I was interested in being more of a voice for bike infrastructure here in Medford.
[Jared Powell]: Great, thank you.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_13]: And Vidan and I were classmates in college.
[Jared Powell]: Small world. Peter, you're up next.
[Peter Calves]: Yes, hi. I've been a Medford resident for going on two years now. Lived in Cambridge for four years before that. Uh, unfortunately have not been able to be a bike commuter just because of where I've worked too far out. Uh, but do a lot of biking for like short hop trips around Medford into Somerville, Cambridge. My partner commutes, commutes to downtown Boston by bike three times a week. Uh, my, my traffic engineer by profession. So. Learned what went to Northeastern learned, learned a lot about bikes from Peter Firth and wanted to help make biking better in Medford. So, yeah. Great. Thank you.
[nqVIJ3wsDWg_SPEAKER_13]: Uh, B Dan. All right, I'd be Dan Fairchild been on the commission for I think about three years now. Move to Medford in 2014. After living in Cambridge and Somerville for like seven years before that. Um, and other places for that. Uh, I also have never had a driver's license. Uh, before the pandemic, at least I was a daily bike commuter, um, from Medford to Watertown. Um, but now I work full-time remote, so I don't get nearly as much biking as I used to at least. Um, I've also done a number of longer distance trips, although not quite so many miles in a day as Emily does. And big believer in lowest common denominator biking. That we should be aiming. To, you know, make it comfortable for the people who are not comfortable biking in traffic or in, um, high stress situations or high speeds or, you know, or taking the lane, that sort of thing. Um, make it so that. You know, people who are uncomfortable biking at all now could feel comfortable biking around Medford and other places. And also a network effects that if we make it so that there's a good network of safe bike routes, people will use them a lot more than if there's just, you know, a couple of pads that you can get. Well, if they're going where you're going, but not if you're living, you know, a mile off to one side.
[Unidentified]: Absolutely, thanks PNM. Daniel, you're up next.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Hey, I am Daniel. I currently live in West Medford. I moved to Medford, actually South Medford back in 2014. So I've been here for a couple of years. I am, I would describe myself as a, you know, As a sports cyclist, I definitely, I do a lot of racing, mountain bike, road bike, cross. I sort of enjoy doing all the types of cycling I've done. I've done long distance touring. I've done racing. I was, I actually, I'm from downtown Boston and I was, you know, a bike commuter in elementary school and high school and, you know, went to college, not all that far away in Worcester and still bike commuted there and still bike commute to this day. So I've, uh, just always been, um, you know, I've, I've always wanted to get more and more people into it, sort of like, you know, beat in the network effect. Hopefully more and more people just figure out how fun it is and how much easier it can be if. just ride a bike somewhere.
[Jared Powell]: Great, thank you. Bruce, you're up next.
[Bruce Kulik]: Hi there. Bruce Kulik, one of the founding members, as Pat had mentioned, of the Bicycle Commission, former chair and co-chair. I used to be a very avid bicycle commuter year round from here to Waltham to Bedford, downtown Boston and Cambridge, so I've kind of gotten by commuting and all the different forms suburban trail downtown traffic. And unfortunately, I am now remote on my job, so I don't get out. And I say, that's got to be the biggest thing that I don't like about my new job. The job itself is great, but the fact that I don't get out cycling is like driving me up a wall. But I can't seem to find the time to make as much as I used to, unfortunately. But with that, what else do I do? I've done a fair amount of touring. I used to do a lot with my daughter, haven't done as much lately. Although we did do a trip from the end of Long Island to New York City this summer, which was quite fun. And having our heads to do the forget what they call the Pittsburgh to Washington DC trail at some point. We thought we might do it this summer, but that never materialized. Anyhow, that's a lot of what I do. I'm a computer engineer by day. I have gotten well-versed in understanding the traffic laws and how they apply to bicycling, both in Massachusetts and in other states. I'm not a lawyer, but I do read the the words on it and try to understand what they mean. What else? Like Patrick, I am a league cycling instructor. We got that a few years ago, and that basically means that we can be indemnified by the league to do cycle instruction if we follow certain principles. And what that means is, as I pointed out earlier, we can do things like give cycling instruction to the people at the housing authority. who might not know some of the issues they face even on an e-bike. And so I look forward to doing some of that work. I got on the commission originally because I just, you know, I wanted to really encourage cycling and we've done quite a bit of that. And it's been a little bit sluggish, but we're making progress, I think, in getting paint on the road in a lot of places and getting the DCR to come around, at least build a few paths. We've got a clipper ship connector. that kind of thing. I get involved with the folks at Mystic River Watershed Association, particularly Amber Christopherson when she's working with paths that they are putting forth, have some contacts with the people in MassDOT and so on. So I make it kind of my business to poke my nose in a lot of different places. And that's kind of what I bring to the committee at this point. Thanks.
[Jared Powell]: Yeah, thanks Bruce. And I'd say you're, you're probably the ultimate subject matter expert, right? Cycling related. So thank you for your expertise. Uh, Gaston.
[Gaston Fiore]: Hello everyone. I'm Gaston. Um, I like cycling mostly as a means of transportation. Um, I don't get to commute to work anymore. Um, and I. Rarely in these days, I ride a bike recreationally. I mostly run on trails, either in the woods or in the mountains. My wife does have to commute to work, so she commutes from here to the south end and back, so she probably bikes actually more than I do these days. I'm very interested in the environment. I'm also a member of the Medford Energy and Environment Commission, And actually here in Massachusetts, transportation accounts for over 40% of the greenhouse gas emissions, which is a lot. I didn't know it was that high. And I'm very interested in making it much easier and palatable for people to get interested in human powered means of transportation, particularly biking. for a lot of things that currently, you know, cars tend to get used. So, I kind of want to make my focus there. I'm also very interested in the Complete Streets Committee that MedFar has, how we can interact well with that. And then I'm a software engineer slash data scientist. A few years ago already, I did a lot of work in grad school related to demand modeling using tons of data from cell phones and taxis and things like that. So maybe that will become useful to the group as well.
[Unidentified]: Great. Thanks. Becca.
[Jenny Graham]: Hi, I'm Becca Wright. I have been bike commuting since 2008 when I lived in Los Angeles, and then I moved to Somerville where I lived for nine years and then I just moved to Medford, two years ago. And I bike now three days a week instead of five days a week from here, Fulton Heights, to I work at MassArt, so Fenway area. So 18 miles round trip, which is nice to kind of not be remote anymore to get some movement in. My background is in art and painting, and then I do a webcomic called Bikey Face. basically try to get everyone on bikes and make it ordinary and acceptable. So my big thing is breaking down something that seems strange and weird to people and just making it normal. And I don't know, now that I'm in Medford, I definitely kind of coming from Somerville want to kind of bring Medford kind of more onto bikes. And so that's why I wanted to join.
[Jared Powell]: Great, thank you. I was familiar with your cartoon before realizing when I saw your name on the application, I was like, oh, look at that, a celebrity.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Wow, this is actually, this is really cool. I remember your comic from like years and years and years, and I love that comic. It's really cool to meet you in person. Thanks.
[Jared Powell]: Yeah, thank you. Let's see, Ernie, you're up next.
[Ernie Meunier]: Hi, everybody. Yes, Ernie Meunier. And like Emily, I have Baroque musical roots. I grew up as a child prodigy, Baroque organist in French Canadian ghettos in northern Rhode Island and, you know, was groomed, sent to seminary and then had to throw out Catholicism and get involved in drugs in an Ivy League school and learn to become a mechanical engineer and design laboratory equipment and do QA and engineering and got thrown out of that first career and resurfaced and just ended a 38 year career as Boston's independent, the Subaru guru in December. So as penance, for putting all those hydrocarbons in the air and stealing, or stealing all that oxygen, I decided that I'd return a bit to my 70s roots and bicycling. I guess, yeah, I bought that bike at 14. So I sort of got serious about it eight years ago. And then eventually, you know, joined the committee, got a couple of bikes, became a weight weenie, which is ridiculous because I'm overweight. and joined the bike committee and, you know, was struggling with carbon saddles and, you know, was wondering who else was around here. And I asked Bruce, I said, you know, how long does it take before you get sore on your saddle and need to sort of get out and rest? And he said, well, around Arizona. And I'm like, what? So I realized I was up against some serious people. And then when Emily said that she was linking together centuries, it sort of blew my mind. And then my cardiologist said, no, no, you have LBBB. You go over 135 beats per minute, you may fall off the bike and never get up. So yeah, I get out of my bike every day. It's been kind of fun. And the inspiration now is that I have grandkids, you know, five, nine and 13, who is starting to bike, etc. So it's less about my children, who are adults. And I'm having a blast with this bike lights thing because I think that getting kids involved with their first bikes and getting excited about it is actually easier than dealing with teenagers or adults. or especially an infrastructure that has such inertia around it, that's fun. I'm trying to give back in that way and help foment the transition toward human-powered transportation and electric vehicles as well, just to move this along. Maybe that's it. Thanks.
[Jared Powell]: Great. Thanks, Ernie. Well, that's everyone on the commission now. Thanks to the folks who've been here a long time. Thanks to the new people. We've got a lot of diverse experiences and probably pet issues that we care about, and that's very helpful, I think, for making the commission stronger. Look forward to working with you all.
[Bruce Kulik]: I think we have another guest who has joined at SIGGRAPH.
[Jared Powell]: Oh, yeah. Hi, Matt. I believe you've joined us before. Want to say hi?
[phPK_rgTxTg_SPEAKER_06]: Hi. Hi, everyone. Yeah, I joined a little late. I wasn't really... We're just giving our backgrounds generally. Yeah, this is my second meeting. Happy to be here. So yeah, I moved into Medford last year from Somerville. I've been biking around Cambridge and Somerville since about 2014. I, until 2020, commuted every day into downtown Boston. Now I commute into downtown Boston two or three days a week. I'm not much of a distance biker. I'm pretty much just a commuter biker. but I really wanted to get involved in this once I started biking around the Medford roads. It's just a couple of miles further, but the infrastructure is really, really wanting compared to Somerville and Cambridge, and we're gonna all work on it, of course. So I wanted to get involved in that respect. I have a legal background, I'm a municipal attorney, so hopefully I can help in some way in that respect, but I'm just here as a biker, yeah.
[Jared Powell]: Great. Thanks for coming to the meetings, Matt. Hope you keep coming. Well, I can give a bit of a background on the commission itself, just a bit of a primer, like I mentioned, that may be helpful to some of the new folks who may have different levels of experience with this sort of organization, but it's probably a good idea to get some of that out of the way so that we're all on the same page generally. So the Medford Bicycle Advisory Commission, we have some of the founding members on the call, as they mentioned, but this is technically an ad hoc commission. which means that this is not a commission that was established by charter, by the city charter. Some of the commissions, Gaston, if I'm not mistaken, the energy environment one, I think is by charter, maybe I'm wrong.
[Gaston Fiore]: Yeah, I think it is.
[Jared Powell]: Those require the swearing in and whatnot. This one's a little bit different in that regard. But that said, we are still appointed by the mayor and we've serve at her pleasure, essentially. So we are a group that does provide an official function to the city. So we're not a separate nonprofit advocacy group. We might advocate for things and we might want a lot of the same things that some of the advocacy groups do and our interests certainly align. But technically, you know, we are an official organization associated with the city, so it's good to mind that difference and be cognizant of that fact. We are governed by Massachusetts law, so there's a couple of key ones that are probably worth knowing about. One is a conflict of interest law for municipal employees. That is one where we are technically classified as municipal employees, which may not make any sense because we're not going to be sending you a paycheck, unfortunately. But under Massachusetts law, people who are involved in their cities in this way, map, you may know this, and be able to explain it may better than I can, but it's something that I've come across at my at my work that we are classified as municipal employees. So there are conflict of interest rules like, just be mindful that in some circumstances you may be considered kind of a representative of the city and employee of the city essentially so There's rules associated with that regarding self-dealing, nepotism and whatnot, bribes, that sort of thing. They're fairly straightforward. If you have questions about that sort of thing, the city has a solicitor, their attorney, that can help us answer those questions. And we sometimes go to her to help us figure out if there's something that we're doing, if it's appropriate and in line with Massachusetts law and whatnot.
[Bruce Kulik]: Jared, I think at some point, we're all supposed to take some sort of conflict of interest law training and get a certificate or that kind of thing. It's pretty straightforward. But As I recall, it was one of these questions where they ask you the question and it's like almost common sense. It's like, so if you're on the commission, can you take money from so-and-so to do this and that? It's like, no. Right. Exactly. I don't know if the solicitor will mention that to us at some point.
[nqVIJ3wsDWg_SPEAKER_13]: Um, I'll, I'll reach out about that and just, uh, get, I think they, um, send us a packet into on their own. Um, last time, like sometime last year or something like that. And I'll imagine that again with new people.
[Jared Powell]: Yeah, that's good to know. Did I hear someone else that sounded like it was breaking up or are you going to mention. We hear you, Dennis, but just barely. All right, well, he probably had something to mention on that front, but we'll put a pin in that until he comes back. The other one was the open meeting law. That was another one that I wanted to chat about that governs. That is really kind of a big thing that determines a lot of how we're allowed to behave. If you haven't heard about it before, Massachusetts Open Meeting Law is essentially, there's a lot of rules associated with it, but generally the idea is that meetings of public bodies like us have to be done in a public forum. There's a lot more to it than that, but that's kind of the general sense. There's a training that they hold, Massachusetts holds trainings on this a couple times a month. So that's something that anyone who has not done one of those should definitely do it. And I'll send her on that meeting because it's. There's a lot of rules associated with it that are not as commonsensical as the one that Bruce mentioned before, the conflict of interest rules. So it's really worth looking at that training and taking it to heart and paying attention to it because it will explain a lot about the mechanisms of how this commission has to work. So if there's essentially a quorum of us meeting, so 50% plus one, it needs to be in the public, it needs to be publicly advertised and accessible, posted to the city calendar. There's a few places where things like that have to be posted. That's what the secretary, what Lisa has been doing in this case. So whether that is our monthly meetings or whether it's working group meetings, if we have a smaller group that wants to get together about something, all of those meetings have to be public. We're not allowed to deliberate about things privately. Anything, any decisions that we're making need to be happening in an above board way in front of the public and the public needs to be aware of it. That really comes.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_13]: Sorry, yeah, so is that is that only for deliberative actions because, you know, there are things like, you know, I'm like, is like, you know, for information or, you know, clarification, things like that.
[Jared Powell]: Yeah, it's largely deliberative. That's the main function of that. Administrative things like when meetings are happening, here's some background information for you to review before the next meeting, that sort of thing. It's described in those trainings, but that's the kind of thing that is okay. It's, I have an opinion on topic X, what do you think about it? That's explicitly the kind of thing that we don't do.
[Bruce Kulik]: particularly with email is an area that we have to be careful not to step over that bound, because it's so easy to start responding to someone to say, well, I disagree, we should do X, Y and Z. And we have to just cut it off of the knees at that point, so you will take it up at the meeting.
[Jared Powell]: Right, exactly right, Bruce. Emails are really challenging in that regard, because the thing is, we have the Google groups, whatever it is, it's a long email address that is the email address that sends an email to all of us who are on the commission and a couple of other people. But that's kind of the way that we remind ourselves, you know, give announcements or send administrative things around. we can't deliberate over email. And the thing is that deliberating about a topic that it falls within the purview of our commission is a much broader thing than you might expect it to be. So having a debate about where some bike lanes should be, I've got an opinion about this, those are all things that as frustrating as it is, we shouldn't be doing any of that over email because on that email listserv that we have, that group email, it's essentially a quorum all the time, right? So you send an email, boom, you've got 100% of the commission on it, which is fundamentally means that we can talk about the same things in the same way that we are at this meeting right now, which is exactly what we're not supposed to do. My understanding is that even in some of those emails, I think I saw you there, Ernie, but just one second. If I were to deliver an email to the group expressing an opinion about something that falls within our purview, that is generally the type of thing that we would expect to be talking about on this meeting, even if no one responds and has a counter opinion, that already is a problem. So that's why we just don't talk that much over email, as unhelpful as it, or as challenging as it can be to get things done. You also can't do workarounds either. So I can't send an opinion email or a directive to 10 different people separately, knowing that there's not a quorum of people on a given email thread, because I'm clearly just trying to circumvent those rules and still express opinions to all of the same people. You can't do that either. The training is helpful because it helps explain some of that stuff. Ernie, go for it.
[Ernie Meunier]: You answered one question. The second one, is there a workable loophole though when we put together ad hoc working groups? Yes. To deliberate and then use e-mail freely within our group and then report back formally at an MBAC meeting.
[Emily O'Brien]: Those are smaller than quorum.
[Jared Powell]: Yeah, as long as they are smaller than quorum.
[Ernie Meunier]: Smaller than quorum, I see, so n less than seven, okay. Yeah. Thank you.
[phPK_rgTxTg_SPEAKER_06]: Yep, sure. Can we use those? How many people are on the commission in total?
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_13]: N over two minus one.
[Jared Powell]: Yeah, there's, as of today, there's 13, so our quorum is seven.
[Ernie Meunier]: So six, good.
[Jared Powell]: Yeah. So that's something to remember. Even Google Docs is even a problematic thing in some cases, as useful as that is. If you have one document that is about some bicycle-related policy, all of us get access to it. All of us start commenting, replying to one another, and comment threads on the side. Boom, you've already crossed the line and you are now deliberating about things. So it is a pain, and it makes our work slower, but that's what we do. We're an official organization, so we follow the law. Let's see. Other things to think about, meetings, as you can tell this is a less formal meeting than what you might expect to see and, you know, city council or something like that where they're generally following Roberts rules of order, the, the official motion seconded, you know, the official rules that make a public meeting sound so so formal. That's kind of subject to the discretion of the chair. The chair has the ability to tighten that down and make it as formal as they care to make it. There is certainly benefits to doing that. We've generally been a small and polite enough group that that hasn't really been something that we've done as long as I've been on the commission. But in general, orderliness is good, of course. In Zoom, it's particularly kind of a challenge, right? We all have to kind of be mindful of trying to not talk over one another and pay attention to others and be considerate in sharing the time and the space and that sort of thing. So the chair, again, has the ability to tighten it down. We're usually pretty casual about it. Let's see. Yeah, I mentioned, we sometimes have, Ernie, you mentioned this, but subcommittee meetings. So that's something that we haven't done a lot of lately. But we sometimes will break off into smaller groups if they're into kind of little working groups, if there's a particular project or something that a few people have an interest or the inclination to work on that doesn't that allows us to make progress on a particular project outside of the context of these meetings. These meetings happen once a month, fourth Wednesday of the month, they're two hours long. You can only get so much done in that amount of time. Sometimes those working groups are really useful to make progress in the meantime. But I think you've heard the mission of What people have described as wanting to accomplish in the city is kind of in line with our commission goals, right? I mean, we're basically here to help make cycling better in the city. So that's what we're doing. Some of the specific functions that we've done to accomplish that. several folks in here put huge amounts of hours into the bike master plan. I think that was maybe just being finalized or had recently been finalized when I came on to the commission. If you haven't seen that, that's a big plan of It lays out a page kind of per road section of kind of key parts of the city with kind of a menu of good, better, best options for what the commission thought would be good upgrades to those roads. So it's kind of depending on the extent of any renovation and repair work that's being done in a given stretch of road, it kind of gives the city a roadmap for, okay, well, we're just doing very light work. Here's something that we can easily change. If we're ripping up the whole road and making something all new, new pavement, whatever, maybe there's a more substantial redesign that's recommended as a part of that process. So it's a very thorough and helpful document due for a bit of a refresh. And we actually have the support from the city to do that. They've hired an intern that will be overseen by the city engineer. who will work with us to update that document. So it'll be nice because that means that there will be official city engineering capacity behind that effort, and it's not going to be something that solely rests with an outside volunteer body. As you can imagine, it's, you know, with a group like us, as well-intentioned as we can be, it's difficult to make the same level of progress that official employees can make with, you know, a work week and 40 hours every week and whatnot. Let's see other things you know we provide feedback to the city we work with the planning and transportation department engineering department. to provide feedback on road designs. So whenever they're doing construction projects, we try to be involved in that process and provide feedback about what we want to see, tweaks to their designs, make recommendations about parts of the road or parts of the city that they should be focusing on that we don't think they are. Maybe that's based on our own experience or public feedback that we've solicited along the way. We get called on to attend various public meetings as well. So there's traffic commission meetings which are actually a lot more important than you may realize, that's kind of a hidden commission that meets on Tuesdays in the late afternoon doesn't sound particularly bicycle related. Because a lot of what they do is kind of parking related. But anytime the city wants to do something that is bike related that touches cars, it falls under the traffic commission's purview or not cars rather, but parking, like the removal of parking, the traffic commission has to has to approve it. So there's a lot of other kind of groups that we will that we'll deal with in that regard, and we might provide feedback from our personal or commission perspective on some of those meetings. We've attended city council meetings, council of the whole, meeting of the whole, what is it, council of the whole? Why does that sound wrong? Is that right? Committee of the whole, that's it. Right, there we go. So we provide kind of subject matter expertise on bike-related issues for those sorts of meetings, for city officials who may not be experts themselves, A really nice development that is that the city now has dedicated bike related officials essentially and engineers, so they have people who are involved in the engineering department now. actually care about making biking better. In the past, there just weren't necessarily specific people tasked with that, but now they have the expertise, they have the interest, the department exists. In the past, I think we were a little more isolated from that process. Sometimes we would find out about things a little too late to be that effective at changing them in some cases just because we were kind of the separate body but it feels like we've been embraced into the city's planning department.
[Bruce Kulik]: I dare say, Jared, that that's something that the bike commission at least provided some impetus to the city to hire people. And the current DPW director, previously the city engineer, Tim McGivern, was on the commission. So we definitely have a friendly voice there. And then we also ended up getting Todd Blake, as another person who was brought on board who was actually very bike-friendly as well. And I think that was partly because we were lobbying the city to move in that direction.
[Jared Powell]: Yeah, great point, Bruce. Absolutely. And it has really paid off. Ernie, go for it.
[Ernie Meunier]: Which of the three, including Angie, Todd's assistant, is directly involved in the master plan intercourse?
[Jared Powell]: Good question, Ernie. I can run down some of those key people that we've mentioned here for those who may not be as familiar, but there's Tim McGivern. He used to be on the bike commission. I think he was one of the original members, if I'm not mistaken. He's the commissioner of public works. He's the head honcho there, which is terrific. Let's see, Todd Blake, he's the director of traffic and transportation. He is involved in a lot of the infrastructure type improvements that we'd like to see in the city. Amy Ingalls, she is the transportation engineer. Todd got promoted and they brought on a new engineer. Amy is a local cyclist as well. She bikes through the area. She attends a lot of our meetings. Todd does too, but Amy has been attending pretty much all of them lately. which is great, and she's a very friendly voice to cycling issues in Medford. And the two of them, Todd and Amy, really control a lot of the paint that goes on the ground in a lot of ways, so it's really nice that they are, that they involve us in the process and seek our input.
[Bruce Kulik]: I also just read that the city appointed a new city engineer, I guess, to take Tim's place. I don't recall the name of the person, however.
[Jared Powell]: Oh, great. another person to rope into our meetings, perhaps.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_13]: Since we have bike friendly people, you know, on the various like traffic and whatever, have we done any sort of bike volume studies so that we know like, Where the bikes are going in Medford, like what streets there on and things like, I mean, we can certainly like, you know, do Dana mining on like Strava and things like that, but not recently.
[nqVIJ3wsDWg_SPEAKER_13]: We've so we've looked at Strava. And Strava is, I don't remember where we got with that, but there's like a weird thing with Strava where it tends to be a certain segment of bikers who use it. Yeah.
[Emily O'Brien]: We did used to, um, do manual bike counts.
[Unidentified]: Right.
[Emily O'Brien]: where we would have volunteers out on different intersections. That was interesting, but it's a lot of work and it can be very weather dependent because you do it one day every six months or maybe once every year. You're comparing year to year, but the weather is not the same. The other stuff that's on this schedule is not the same. But what we've also A conclusion that we've come to a number of times in some of these volume discussions is it's not necessarily only about where people are going now, it's about where people want to go. We basically know where people want to go on bikes because it's the same places they want to go every other way. In some cases, it seems like that would be good useful data to have. But on the other hand, Medford's not that big. It doesn't have that many through routes. We know exactly where people want to go. If you look at which roads get the most congested, those are the routes that most people are interested in taking. Then there's also the argument of you don't judge demand for a bridge by the number of swimmers in the river. You don't assume that because nobody's biking on a certain road, then nobody's interested.
[Bruce Kulik]: A great example is like Mystic Avenue, the great straight shot, and those who are comfortable will use it. Yeah.
[Emily O'Brien]: So we have done those counts, but that data is difficult to collect and not actually as useful as it should be.
[Jared Powell]: Ernie, I see you there.
[Ernie Meunier]: Yeah, we've come to sort of the conclusion, because exactly what Emily and Bruce were saying, that maybe it's more like if we build it, they will come, you know, the Apple model, because, you know, High Street is the same thing. It's too dangerous. There's not enough help. Going east-west is a problem. People want to do it. There aren't a lot of bikes doing it, and we know why. So we have to get the infrastructure up to snuff, and we think people will then come. So that data mining has proved, yeah, somewhat useful, but really biased.
[Emily O'Brien]: It also would be, even if we had the data that isn't really possible to get, but if we had the data of where every person on a bike is going, all the time. If you're doing a bike count out in Medford Square, for example, you will miss all of the people who are taking some circuitous back roads way to avoid Medford Square, even though their route would ultimately would actually take them through there if they wanted to go that way. If there's a bad intersection and you want to see how many people are biking through that intersection, you can count them, but you'll miss all the people who know some back way to avoid that intersection.
[Jared Powell]: And another thing on top of that is blue bikes, blue bikes. Yeah, that's what it's called now blue bikes, those are actually going to be coming to the city sometime this year. Yes, we've got three stations definitely and more are likely coming. So part of that process is that there's usually like a data sharing arrangement or something where we might be able to get access to some kind of data. Well, they'll at least be able to provide some sense of, you know, which stations are being well utilized and not. And, you know, Motivate has the company that runs it. They have an incentive, obviously, to put stations in the right place. So there is a lot of like kind of data analysis going.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_13]: Yes, there is a blue bikes station, like 200 feet. from my office.
[Jared Powell]: There you go. Well, there will now be one closer to your house.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_06]: One more point about bike counts is that, yeah, like, like, we kind of came to the conclusion like that we had questions about how valid the data was, but There's, aside from that, there is, especially in the early days, there's real value in getting out on the streets and just seeing, like, for the people doing the counts, like just having that chance to observe traffic for a couple hours, and then taking the data that we did get and presenting it so that we could start making the case and we could have some data behind a statement like, you know, College Ave is the, like, busiest, like, bike route in the city. So from that perspective, it had a lot of value and was, and I think, you know, in the future, we may consider doing, like, some spot counts for something if we're, like, trying to make a point, like, this is why we need to, you know, there, this many people using this route or something like that. From a persuasion and communications point of view, it can have a lot of value.
[nqVIJ3wsDWg_SPEAKER_13]: I think from that perspective as well, there's value to saying, we know that people aren't biking here. Why not? Obviously, they want to go this way though because there are things to do on this way, but they're not biking here. This is a route that needs improving because no one's biking on it.
[Emily O'Brien]: I think also, sorry, one second when I was doing it.
[Jared Powell]: I see Ernie's.
[Emily O'Brien]: Sorry, go ahead.
[Jared Powell]: Oh, no.
[Ernie Meunier]: I was just going to follow up Pat and saying when I spent a few days and bunches of hours watching High Street and West Medford as an example, what was really informative is to try to figure out in the future how a bike lane versus just shadows would work when collecting the observational data from how people drive. and where it would be impossible to try to squeeze them with a bike lane, et cetera. Curvy roads like that, you can't just assume people will drive in the way that the road suggests. So it was helpful to be able to do diligence on the safety of anything we would propose by actually going out and looking at it for a while. We should be careful about
[nqVIJ3wsDWg_SPEAKER_13]: safety of paint because there are studies showing that shadows do nothing to improve safety.
[Jared Powell]: So Emily, I heard you before there.
[Emily O'Brien]: I was going to mention along the lines of what Pat said. I thought it was notable when I was doing counts in Medford Square that we all know that that's a complicated intersection. What I thought was the interesting observation I made, that was before I lived as close to Medford Square as I do now. but it was notable to me that for the fairly high number of people comparatively who were biking through Medford Square at rush hour, how few of them actually follow the established traffic patterns because it's really not a friendly thing to do if you're on a bike. Everybody has their own different way of picking their way through crosswalks and sidewalks and things. The fact that we can stand out there and say, there's this many people who need to get through this intersection and it really just does not work in its current configuration for these users, that's an interesting thing to be able to say. It does make sense to have spot observations like that.
[Jared Powell]: Well, to circle back to a previous point, Ernie, you asked about who's in charge here, who's in charge of this intern and the master plan update. That, Alicia will be, is the one who hired the intern. It'll be Amy in the city who is actually overseeing them, I believe, at least for that part of the exercise. I'm not sure if that intern's, responsibilities may be split across Amy and Alicia, that's possible. It wouldn't be surprising. But they're going to involve us in that process. I'm just very happy that we'll have official city support in that endeavor. Just a good way to get it done. So I think those are kind of the general background type thing. Well, let's see, a couple of other things real quick that I made a quick few notes on. We mentioned some of the officers already, so you know who's been in charge of the commission in the past. We do have a social media presence. I feel like that's got to be 95% Pat. and Emily probably the remainder. But others have access to it and are encouraged to provide content. So we might do some pushes to solicit content or at least photos and things from you all to help generate some interest in that sort of thing. I mentioned before our meetings are the fourth Wednesday of each month, so that's absent unusual circumstances which we've had a few of lately. So if there's conflicting meetings or we know that not enough people can attend or there's a bunch of holidays or technical problems or something like that that might cause us to To reconsider but generally that's what we're aiming for and you should put it on your calendar from 4th Wednesday of the month. 7 to 9. So that's that's generally what we're what we're doing. Let's see anything else that anyone would like to mention to new folks about kind of background on the commission or anything you wish someone had told you when you were new to the commission that you want to tell them.
[Bruce Kulik]: I think just understanding sort of the whole overall political lay of the land, I don't mean the city councilors and so forth, but the way we interact with other agencies that have jurisdiction in the area, like the DCR for one, MassDOT, and the city, a lot of the streets on the city, are not under the control of the City of Medford. And that proves to be problematic because stuff will happen that we've not been informed about, consulted, or stuff won't happen that we would like to have happen. And sometimes these things are good and sometimes they're not so good. You know, they did things like finally put some bike lanes on the Fellsway, which proved to be a very beneficial thing for moderately experienced riders, right? It's not the kind of thing that is going to encourage neophytes to go on that busy road, but it certainly means that people who are somewhat comfortable in traffic will be more comfortable on a street that's a through street. We didn't know about that until it just kind of showed up. What else? We had input to a little bit to how they were designing the the paths on the memorial park from Whole Foods to the river. There was not much there. There was not a whole lot that they changed, but that was something that we had value doing. Clippership Connector, we got to do because that was a partnership with DCR and the city. and so on. So just knowing that the jurisdiction is split, and when someone comes to you and says, how come you can't put X, Y, and Z on this road? The answer might be that we don't actually have jurisdiction to even do more than suggest like individual citizens would. So I think that was one thing that is probably a surprise to many about what we can and can't accomplish.
[Jared Powell]: Yeah, that's a, that's a great point Bruce the, the new traffic patterns that are going to be happening around the GLX station I think are kind of a similar thing right like there, we have a bike lane and a well did a bike lane and a bike box on College Avenue but now that whole thing is changing, there's going to be to southbound. traffic lanes on college and whatnot. So some things are out of our control, at least until the state stops working on it and looks the other way. And then maybe we can change a couple things here and there.
[Bruce Kulik]: Oh, the other thing is some streets that we think are in Medford are actually in Somerville. Important to know.
[Jared Powell]: Like the back half of the Whole Foods, right? That's in Somerville, technically. Whole Foods.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_09]: I don't know if it's possible to do this for the benefit of the new members and even myself. There tends to be a lot of little things going on. For example, I know some folks are involved in the meetings around the whole Wellington Circle planning and all that. I feel like there should be a way for us to know what are some of the most important things that we need to pay attention to. It's almost like it's a little scattered or you just sort of hear about it and you don't hear about it. If there's even a way to. I've often thought he put it on the website. These are all the things going on in Medford, that, you know, could have could have impact to to bicyclists, that we should be aware of and keep track of and follow. It's just something that occurs to me a lot. Like she said, when was going on with the Wellington Circle? Oh, I wonder what's going on with Flipper Ship Connector. Oh, I wonder, I don't know. I don't even know how to find out and I'm on the bike commission. So it's maybe something to think about that we could at a future meeting or somehow try to gather together with so many great people now that we could get more involved in those things and be a little more organized about it.
[Jared Powell]: Yeah, I like, I like that idea, Lisa. Thanks. I guess I saw your hand there.
[Gaston Fiore]: Yes, just one quick comment. Also along those lines of what Lisa just mentioned. So I also wonder how we can, you know, maybe partners, not that I work, but work together with some groups on some of the goals that we have. So for example, I think I mentioned this to Jared. So on the last meeting, Emily brought up that she wanted to improve the signage. Spanish, I don't know what the pronunciation is. Science for bikers. And I was actually going over what Medford's sort of master plan that they have, what they want to improve. And science for walking is one of their seven kind of things that they want to work on too. So I think it would be great, for example, if they want to work on science for walking, we want to work on science for biking. We need to engage the city in some capacity to make this happen. And I think if we can sort of partner, maybe we can gain a little bit of weight in terms of like, you know, engaging the city. So maybe it's something that we can look into.
[Jared Powell]: Yeah, great suggestion, Gaston. I mean, honestly, having a little extra horsepower on the commission will go a long way toward accomplishing some of that stuff with a few extra people and whatnot. I think we can maybe tackle some of that in a little more organized way. Ernie, I see you there.
[Ernie Meunier]: Yeah, to comment on Lisa's question, I remember when I joined, so it was a couple of years before you, Lisa, and B, Dan, and Jared, we were told, and I don't know if that's because we're of the nature of a commission, that we were to keep our general comments to each other as commission members more strictly related to commission activities and not peripheral stuff, certainly not, you know, equipment reviews and stuff you can just chase on the net. But that, I think, got to spill over into how we interrelate with other groups and, as you say, collect peripheral information about parallel activities or other kinds of activities within our city nest. So I too would like to see that we somehow be able to broaden our ears and hear more about what's going on so that we can cross fertilize without bending any rules as a commission, quote unquote.
[Emily O'Brien]: Well, I think we maybe are talking about a couple of different things, but certainly there's a lot going on that if at the very least if we're all keeping an ear to the ground. If any of us hear about any public meeting about anything that's even peripherally related to what we're interested in, then we can at least post that to the email list. That's not deliberation, that's just a heads up. And then that can be potentially added to the agenda for the next meeting if necessary. And the more of us that are paying attention, looking out for those kinds of things, the better.
[nqVIJ3wsDWg_SPEAKER_13]: Yeah, I mean, so I've actually thought about this a bit in the past as well. Frankly, there's not, there is no one source of information for any of this stuff, obviously. The way any of it is maintained is haphazard, basically. Every individual project has its own, maybe has a site, maybe has several pages on which information is distributed depending on who's involved, maybe has some email lists, maybe distributes information elsewhere. Kind of the only way to actually keep abreast of everything is for someone to, you know, dedicate a fair amount of time to compiling all of the area projects and sources of information and keeping track of them. And I thought about doing that and I don't have time for it, unfortunately. But if anyone does have a bunch of spare time and wants to like, you know, go through and like, well, track down what the projects, current projects are and how to keep track of them all. Um, it would be really useful to have, and like, this goes beyond Medford too, right? Cause like we go to meetings in Arlington or Somerville or Malden sometimes, and they're always relevant to stuff we do. Um, so it was, you know, general region.
[Jared Powell]: Yeah, that's a good point. Maybe we could put an agenda item on this for the next meeting to maybe think about this in some more concrete ways. Let's see. For the sake of time, I think we should move on here, because we've talked about a lot of important things, but we do still have a few agenda items that I'd like to get to. The first one on the list here is Not the first one. It's on the list. Nominations and elections of new officers. Lisa is the secretary. Pat is the vice chair. I am the chair. I requested on a previous meeting to step down as a chair, not because I don't like it. It's great. You all are terrific. I love being here. I want to stay involved. But I have a toddler. and an extremely demanding job lately. And I have a second child coming literally any day now. If it came on the same schedule as my first one, it would have come last Sunday. So I have a lot to do and not a lot of time. So I would appreciate someone else taking over the reins for a while. So that is my request. Bruce has done it in the past. Pat has done it in the past. I've done it currently. I think that's the full list of chairs, if I'm not mistaken, Bruce, right? You were doing it for an awful long time.
[Bruce Kulik]: I think that's true. Yeah, I was the first one for several years until Pat took over.
[Jared Powell]: Yeah. I solicited for people to think about if they wanted to serve that role. Frankly, I think it's probably best if that's someone who is not brand new to the commission just because I think there's some historical knowledge that is beneficial there. I have some thoughts there, but one thing is, so we have three roles essentially up for grabs. Pat, you'd like to step down as vice chair, correct?
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, I can, I'm willing to like stay on for a few months to kind of like, so we can have like a nice transition. But yeah, that's what I would like to do.
[Jared Powell]: Okay. And Lisa, you also would like to transition out of secretary, correct?
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, if someone is willing to do it, I'm also willing to do it for a little while longer, but it's actually a great way to get really deep into what's going on. It's not terribly demanding, but yeah, if someone else would like to do it, that would be great.
[Bruce Kulik]: I can suggest that secretary is something that perhaps some of the newer people could do. It is work, but it's not as involved as either being chair or co-chair and kind of understanding the institutional knowledge of what we do. Maybe I'm wrong there.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_09]: I don't know. I agree.
[Jared Powell]: Yeah, I was going to suggest something similar, Bruce.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, and there's a document that Lisa will share with you that says everything you need to know. The main parts of it are putting together the agenda with the estimated times for everything that's on the list and sending it to the necessary places at the necessary time before meetings.
[Jared Powell]: There are necessary times to that point, right? Things have to get posted at a certain time, so we have to be fairly diligent about it. Notes have to go out at a certain time. Yeah, exactly. Is there anyone here, maybe among the Newark group, who's internet savvy, comfortable with Google Docs, or willing to learn, who might like to participate in that sort of process? And be the secretary, any interest? Don't be shy. volunteer you but it's not rocket science no it's not we're happy to we're happy to it's it's very you it's very useful work like it is how we document what we are doing as a commission and bring people up to speed and make sure that the public knows what we're doing so it's it's a very useful endeavor i i can offer to take that on but i
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Probably the next few months for me are particularly hectic. So I'm not. I'd be fine trying to take on the role, but it might be hard for me to start that immediately. I guess is what I'm.
[Emily O'Brien]: What you can do is if you take that on and you can get the announcements out and just find somebody else to take notes during meetings, if you can't make it.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Okay.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, I mean, the notes are the most time consuming part of it. I can get the minutes out and I can also just hold on if you want, just I can circle back with you in a few months. That would work for you.
[nqVIJ3wsDWg_SPEAKER_13]: I was gonna say also, Well, most of the note-taking happens during the meeting and there's obviously editing afterwards, but if you can make it to the meetings, then you could presumably take notes during the meetings and possibly divide things up a different way.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, you know, another thing I would say is like, you know, a lot of these roles are what you decide they are going to be. So, you know, I've held all the offices, and I think in particular, in some ways, the secretary position is the most challenging because it's like, you know, you're responsible for making sure things get done and posted and things like that. There are a lot of ways that work can be shared. The secretary could direct to have a different person take the minutes for each meeting, which takes a lot of the burden off. I think Lisa and I have both experienced to this, is that if you're the one taking minutes all the time, you don't always get to fully participate in the meeting. So that, you know, that's something to keep in mind, but really it's, you know, it's a volunteer commission, we can do as much or as little work as the group is willing to do. And it's, I would say it's also like a great opportunity for personal and professional growth and like having a chance to try new things that you might not have done before. And I know for myself, a lot of what I've learned here, I've applied to other areas. So it's been a really valuable experience.
[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: All right, I'm convinced. I'll nominate myself for the secretary position. All right, with the learning, I'll be on a learning curve. All right, sure.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, I think you'll find a lot. There's a lot of support and a lot of experience.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_09]: I'll follow up with you, Daniel. And Pat's right, too, that I tend to be very diligent. So my notes are like novellas. You don't have to do that, you know. I looked at your notes and I was like, oh no, I'm not sure if I'm- Yeah, Emily was a great secretary and I would say she was much more to the point. So, you know, you do it your way. Maybe you can do it with cartoons.
[Bruce Kulik]: It's always nominations for secretary.
[Jared Powell]: Yeah, seconded. All right, all in favor of closing nominations for secretary and selecting Daniel to be our secretary. Aye. Aye. The ayes have it. Congratulations, Dan. Thank you. Thank you. Ernie, sorry, I see your hand.
[Ernie Meunier]: Lisa, does that mean, I know this is tongue in cheek, but will you have now time to co-chair?
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_09]: You know what, I actually, we don't need to get into that now. I believe the continuity of leadership is a really important thing.
[Bruce Kulik]: So yes or no.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_09]: I know it's a no because I'm going to, if no one else does it, I'll nominate Jared because I think if he had, if he can do it, it's the continuity is really important. You know, so if we have a new chair, I think it's great. That's the way when, you know, Pat has been the co-chair. And I, I, I think that's valuable.
[Ernie Meunier]: Yeah, I was too sad that Jared wanted to step down, but I now realize that he's probably heard that one plus one equals three when it comes to.
[Jared Powell]: So I've heard that one child takes up 95% of your time and the second one takes up the remaining 5%. That's the remaining 95% of the time.
[nqVIJ3wsDWg_SPEAKER_13]: Takes up 150% of your time. Yeah, maybe 150. I actually have a question for Dennis. So these meetings are all recorded, but we don't have transcripts, I believe. Can we get transcription? on the meetings and would that be beneficial to note-taking if so, so that if you miss something, you can at least plausibly go back and look at it.
[Jared Powell]: That's a great question, P. Dan. If we can get a digital copy of the recording, which I believe we can, there are actually like free software services that can transcribe and get Zoom to it.
[Bruce Kulik]: I don't know, that would be nice if it would. Google Meets does have a built-in. Well, I know there are apps.
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_13]: We can run it through deep speech.
[nqVIJ3wsDWg_SPEAKER_13]: I know there are apps you can add to Zoom that will just do live transcription and including live subtitles. And then it says only if it airs on the public access channel live. So if we do one of those and turn on subtitles, then maybe we can use that. Yeah, maybe we can- It seems like a useful accessibility thing anyway, so.
[Jared Powell]: Yeah, good idea. We'll look at some other options for maybe making the note-taking process a little simpler. Yeah, I'm willing to serve as vice chair, but I'm also willing to open it up if there's someone else who's really champing at the bit to serve in that role as well. I think in terms of a chair, I would nominate Emily for that. You definitely carry the most stuff on a bike of anyone I know, so that's gotta be qualification for something. But seriously, you're very competent and committed, and I think you very much walk the talk of what we do. I mean, you also make my collection of bikes look paltry by comparison, which is an impressive feat. I think you've got a lot of boots on the ground experience, and I think we do a very good job. That doesn't mean that other people- You're not on the pedals, Jared. What's that?
[nqVIJ3wsDWg_SPEAKER_13]: You mean on the pedals, Jared.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yes, I can backstand well enough. I don't need to put my boots on the ground. I am willing to take over that role. I've had a chat with Jared about it.
[Bruce Kulik]: I'll second the nomination of Emily.
[Jared Powell]: All right. Well, look at that. Move forward quickly. All in favor of Emily serving as chair? Aye.
[Jared Powell]: The ayes have it. Congratulations. Well, I guess I'm done leading the meeting. It's all on you now.
[Emily O'Brien]: Oh, you can finish for the rest of this one.
[Jared Powell]: Fair enough.
[Emily O'Brien]: You can still get back to vice chair.
[Jared Powell]: Which we did not actually have a motion for yet, or maybe we did, but it wasn't seconded. Was there anyone else who really wanted to be vice chair?
[Bruce Kulik]: I'll serve as vice chair.
[Jared Powell]: Second. All right, all in favor?
[Unidentified]: Aye. Aye. Aye. All right.
[Jared Powell]: Well, thank you all. Thank you for understanding and being willing to have a bit of a reshuffle. I do appreciate it.
[Emily O'Brien]: Congratulations.
[Jared Powell]: Thank you. Thank you. My wife appreciates it as well. She's like, why haven't you already stepped out for this? Come on. Thank you all. All right, well, that's down. The other, well, we got a couple of other things here. I'll run through these really quickly, but there's gonna be some new bike lanes on connecting Medford Square and the new train station, the GLX station, the Green Line. That was presented, Todd and Amy presented that at the last Traffic Commission meeting. Speaking of important meetings, there's going to be bike lanes southbound on Main Street from around South Street. Southbound, it's going to be mostly a bike lane there, southbound direction, Sharrows northbound. Then once you get to George Street, It will be sharrows westbound on George Street parking will remain on the north side of George Street. It will be officially removed from the south side of the street apparently that wasn't allowed but the sign had been torn down at some point, so people weren't really sure you could park there or not. But parking will be removed from the south side of George Street in between College and Maine. There will be an eastbound bike lane there on George Street from College to Maine. I would pull it up on the map, but I'm short for time. And then there will be bike lanes, maybe a little bit of sheriffs but bike lanes the majority of North and South on college have between George and Boston. So taking you to the new the new GLX station. So it's not necessarily like the quietest, nicest way that some people might choose to ride, but it is making it clear that we expect there to be riders there. And for people who enjoy a direct route, there's now going to be a bit of infrastructure to accommodate them. And there will be requisite narrowing of vehicle lanes as well, down to 10 feet or so, which is about as narrow as you can get away with. So very exciting. The important thing to remember is that we will still have some opportunity to provide very specific feedback to Todd and Amy about what exactly the paint looks like and where it transitions and whatnot. But they really just needed the Traffic Commission meeting to approve the general existence of these bike lanes and the removal of the parking. That has been done, and that's great. So thank you to those of you who were able to join that meeting. speak in favor of that. So exciting stuff. Anything else on that before I move on? All right. We'll move this at a quicker pace here then. Distribution of bike light kits. Ernie, you have been going full force on putting these together. Thank you so much for doing that. What would be helpful, like you dropped some off at my house and those are just, really, really, really awesome. It's a little packet that's got front bike lights and some kind of useful pamphlets about how to bike in a city and how to stay involved in what's going on in the city. So kudos to you for taking the initiative to do that and really getting it done. I guess I wanted to chat with the group about know, getting here from you, Ernie, exactly how many do we have?
[Ernie Meunier]: Yeah, I have.
[Jared Powell]: And how do we get them out to people? Yeah, should we be focusing on?
[Ernie Meunier]: Sure, I have a quick report. So I designed them. So they're for Medford only. You know, as you can tell, both sides sort of restrict the distribution there because I don't want to be overextending us and that's not our purview. I wonder if I could include in the kit a message from MBAC or the city or the mayor, just something to think about to address The kids, I don't know if the chairs should be writing that. As an aside, last week, the bike kitchen at Medford High did not get off the ground. They, I think, plan to meet next week. I was going to get active there and maybe get some people involved with the high school and distributing the lights, etc, etc. To date, the 240 came in. I have distributed personally 107 kits. You know, maybe a third of them went to commission members, the rest to JRA. I dropped some off at the police department. I threw some in police SUVs, chatted them up. There's some at the kitchen. So there are 133 left that I'm assembling now because I've got more of those cards. from Alicia's people and Dennis and Therese up there, the Medford Conference of Planned Cards, which I think are useful. They get parents involved automatically through putting lights on with their kids. So it looks like schools are a good venue there, chatting with the parents. I've been meeting on the street with their kids and talking this up and all that. They all suggest that we somehow get the schools involved and go to the schools and talk to kids, put lights on bikes. We'll be doing that at Tufts Park with the helmet rodeo stuff next month so I think a bunch of them are going to go there. JRA has have half funded the first set. So I got $450 there. As a matter of fact, today. And Dennis has the bill for the rest of it, which will give us some money maybe to make the second purchase. Remember, there's a month delay in getting these from China. But I think that by the end of May, may run out of these and would want another 240 sets for the rest of the year. I think a letter to any sponsor right now it's JRA and it's perhaps about to be Alewife Auto from the mayor or MBAC just as an appreciation for helping the kids in Medford with this is a good idea. I don't know who can write that if the mayor can't get involved, maybe we can as a commission. New members, would you please get me your addresses? I can ride to you in the next couple of days and maybe drop off a half dozen kids at each of your addresses to put on kids' bikes or your own kids or whoever you know. When I talk to kids, I tell them there are two requisites to getting these lights, that they wear a helmet all the time and they don't blink. Then I go into a thing about dinosaurs and blinking and prey and all that.
[Jared Powell]: Well, Ernie, I wanted to stop you real quick there.
[Ernie Meunier]: That's it for my list. So what do you have for questions?
[Jared Powell]: Well, one thing I want us to think about is like the remainder that we have left, and I'd like us to maybe think strategically about who should get them. You know, there may be some people who need them more than others, whether that's people who live in certain poorer parts of the city or things like that. There's probably different groups that might be good targets for that sort of thing. I'm not sure exactly how to do it, but I'd like us to think about that. Maybe reaching out to Kevin Bailey at the rec center might have his finger on the pulse for how to reach some of those people. I just want to make sure we get the right distribution of those.
[Ernie Meunier]: No, I agree. When is our rodeo Tufts Park thing? in May. Is that scheduled already?
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, so I think that's actually next on the agenda, right? We only have a couple minutes left. Do you want to transition into that?
[Ernie Meunier]: You have any other questions, Jared, for me about the lights? I would like to order the next round so that if we run out in a month, we're not left without any for the rest of the season.
[Jared Powell]: Yeah, I think I'd like you to touch base with yet that was on the agenda to to touch base with Dennis figure out like I'm a little unclear on exactly how much money is left. Yeah, I was there today.
[Ernie Meunier]: I was there today and we went through that. And with getting the 450 from JRA and the promise of another 450 from blah, blah, Dale Wife Auto, we're all clear. I just wanted to make sure the money was spent before the fiscal year ends.
[Jared Powell]: Right. And we've got a grant.
[Ernie Meunier]: So I want to place that order and get an invoice for the lights for what, May 30th? Is that the deal? Or is it June 30th, Dennis? Dennis? Oh, so you've seen my point. I want to make sure. And also he says that whatever we spend now, we should make sure we spend all of it, even more than we have, because that informs our allotment for the next year. Right. Anything you want to do is buy a lot of helmets.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, I was just going to say you had made a point about targeting the distribution. And one of my interests in this is to have actually be able to target them to adults as well as children. I know that packets are oriented to children, but there's so many times when I see adults who, for lack of better words, should know better. And, you know, they're dressed darkly, they don't have any lights on, they think everybody can see them, and they're basically invisible riding their bikes on the street. And somehow, I would like to be able to, you know, some of it I'm sure is just obstinance and other aspects are not just not considering it, not getting it, not getting around to it, maybe not being able to afford it, I don't know. But in any event, I'd like to suggest that we also, if we see an adult riding and have the wherewithal to approach them, that we provide the packet to them as well as necessarily kids who do it.
[Ernie Meunier]: One of the reasons for distributing them to everybody was that hopefully you would all carry one around. And when you see someone in need, you talk it up and give it to them, even perhaps put it on their bike if there's not a COVID risk, et cetera. So that's my hope in sort of having all of us get around and spread these out to yes, people in need, etc. I'm a little low as to whether I want to approach someone without a helmet and put lights on their bike until they get a helmet on their bike, but that's a chicken egg thing. Peter, you can't harm reduction.
[Jared Powell]: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, so a light can help.
[Ernie Meunier]: Yeah. I don't know how to do that, Bruce, but the card that I included in the pack has the scan on the back for the Medford Comprehensive Involvement or whatever it's called. That was the lure to try to get parents involved in other activities. I didn't want this to be geared to just grade school kids. but I see the looks on their faces when I give them each one of these little gusseted packets is remarkable. They're extraordinarily appreciative. They said they're not going to take the training wheels off and take biking seriously, put their helmet on all the time. The conversations in the last couple of weeks have been interesting and informative and energizing me to really push on this, get the next generation to be safe and on bikes and Sure. Yell at their parents to push for infrastructure.
[Emily O'Brien]: Before we get too far from this, you mentioned writing a thank you note to sponsors. I think that's definitely something that we should do. Ernie, if you're willing, since this was your big push to get these lights purchased, I think it would be okay if Ernie, if you write a letter thanking the sponsors and then either Jared or I can send it and we can write a letter on behalf of the commission. We could either vote on that now or I think that is the kind of thing where the chair can just send that thank you letter. But I think that is definitely something that we should do and we shouldn't forget.
[Ernie Meunier]: Yeah, it was unclear to me if we had letterhead or whether it should therefore come from the mayor's office.
[Jared Powell]: We do, yeah, we've got graphics we can use for letterhead.
[Ernie Meunier]: We've got graphics, well then, okay. It's just a simple letter, something that JRA can put a plaque on the wall, you know, that shows we appreciate it and that they, you know.
[Bruce Kulik]: I'd like to move, just to be formal, that we authorize Ernie to send a letter on the behalf of the committee to the light contributors.
[Ernie Meunier]: Seconded.
[Bruce Kulik]: I second it.
[Ernie Meunier]: Did you say me? I didn't hear that part. All right, thanks.
[Jared Powell]: All in favor? Aye. Aye. That sounds good.
[Ernie Meunier]: Oh, can I have one very last thing? Jared, you were talking about, or someone was talking about monies coming into the commission at the beginning, or conflict of interest or something like that. Could there be, and maybe this is for Dennis, could there be an issue with me or anyone seeking sponsors for any of this stuff we do, whether it's bike racks or helmets, et cetera, or has that bridge already been crossed and isn't an issue?
[Jared Powell]: I think that's a good, I suspect we're probably okay there, but that's exactly the kind of thing that like, I don't want to pretend like I'm a legal authority and we should just talk to the city solicitor about it.
[Ernie Meunier]: Maybe Matt knows. No, okay. What was the question? Oh, well, good lawyer you are. In general, we can't
[nqVIJ3wsDWg_SPEAKER_13]: personally benefit or do things for the benefit of like our friends, but that's not what we're talking about here, right? Like it's getting other people to spend money on things that we're then handing out, not keeping for ourselves.
[Jared Powell]: Or also if the sponsors were essentially in some way purchasing favor with the city, that could be a problem.
[Ernie Meunier]: But a sponsor can give us money to use with city's money to buy things for public use.
[Jared Powell]: Is that a question?
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_09]: Looks like Dennis responded. Dennis responded and said that's something to ask the city solicitors.
[Bruce Kulik]: Just to, there is precedent where there have been private donations to the schools, for example, for items. The school committee has had to vote on them if they are above a certain amount, but otherwise smaller donations I know are just accepted as a matter of course. I presumably fall in that category, but I'll concur with Dennis that probably just check with the city solicitor to make sure we don't have any, we're not crossing any line there.
[Jared Powell]: Okay. One, one last thought I have on this as well is, you know, we mentioned the housing authority, that may be another good resource for ideas for ways to distribute lights like this, because it doesn't necessarily have to just be kids like Bruce talked about kids and adults, you know, lit up people on the roads could all be good, good targets for this sort of thing. They might have some ideas for how to get this out.
[Ernie Meunier]: Ian, how do we get helmets on them as well, as an example?
[Jared Powell]: A topic for another day, perhaps.
[Ernie Meunier]: Okay, Doug?
[MCM00001136_SPEAKER_03]: Pat, have the, where have we been getting the helmets from? And if we got any trouble in the last three to four years with them donating the helmets?
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_06]: No, that has not been an issue.
[MCM00001136_SPEAKER_03]: So I really do not see a difference between the helmets being donated and money being donated for us to buy the bikes. Ah, the bike lights. So I think we might be worrying about this. Let's not worry about it till we get in trouble about it.
[Jared Powell]: Yeah, I think you were right to draw that parallel there, Doug. It's a correct one.
[Ernie Meunier]: The only parallel I have, and I'll be very quick, is that some 20 years ago, a rich guy in the neighborhood wanted to give microscopes to every kid in the grammar school his kid was in in Medford. And he was not allowed to unless he bought a microscope for every kid in Medford, not just the school his kid was at. So there was this kind of weird thing. So maybe concerned about how we operate. But I skirt the edges too. So I'm with you, Doug.
[Jared Powell]: Thanks. Let's follow the letter of the law. Never hurts to ask.
[MCM00001136_SPEAKER_03]: We've got a lawyer on the commission now.
[Bruce Kulik]: Can we buy Bernie some more orange paint for the potholes?
[Jared Powell]: I didn't hear that.
[Bruce Kulik]: I'm sorry, that's not you.
[Jared Powell]: That's a that's a mask.
[Ernie Meunier]: You volunteered to pay for the paint.
[Jared Powell]: Technically, Matt is not on the commission. He's in it. He's an attendee. So he's free to do whatever he deems appropriate. But we don't sanction of course. All right, quick things. events, helmet distribution, Friday, June 3rd. Do I have that right, Pat?
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_06]: Uh, yes, you do. Um, five to seven. Yeah, I'll do this in a minute. Um, so we thought last year we did a helmet distribution and do it yourself bike rodeo at Tufts park in collaboration with Medford rec center. It was very successful. Um, we have a, um, donation of helmets, which are in my living room right now, and which were given to us by Project Kidsafe, which we've worked with for quite a few years now. So what I am looking for is anybody who would like to volunteer on Friday, June 3rd from five to seven in the evening to help fit kids helmets. And if we have enough volunteers, Ernie already volunteered. So we've got and I can do it. So that's two. OK, Doug, three. Maybe, and I'm attentive. And we'll have. Okay, so we got a lot of people available plus some of the staff from the rec center. Um, so what I was going to say is, if we have enough volunteers will do the do it yourself bike rodeo to which is a half mile loop around the around Tufts Park, and we just need a couple people just to kind of keep an eye on the course and Like, you know, make sure that kids, you know, if kids fall off their bikes or anything, there's somebody there to help. Um, so if you, if that sounds of interest to you and you're not, uh, you can't commit immediately. Um, I'll just drop my email in the chat and you can, um, email me or, or just to use the Google group and let me know if you're available for it. And I'll, I'll share out the details on it, on the, on the Google group too. So everybody has that.
[Ernie Meunier]: Pat, why Friday afternoon instead of the weekend? Wasn't it a Saturday last year?
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, we did it Friday evening last time. It worked out well for everybody's schedules. There's also like over the weekend there are a lot of, for parents and kids, there are a lot of baseball games and stuff like that.
[Ernie Meunier]: How many helmets did we give out last year? It was over 100, wasn't it?
[MCM00001142_SPEAKER_06]: I think we did like 60, 70, something like that. We have about 100 right now. Yeah, so kind of repeating what we did last year because it worked very well.
[Jared Powell]: Great, thank you. Yeah, maybe the rec center is certainly great because I know they have distribution with kids who are, you know, less affluent, which is a good target for for free helmets for sure people who may not be able to afford it otherwise. Doug, I see you there.
[MCM00001136_SPEAKER_03]: Yep. Ernie, how many kits will we have by then?
[Ernie Meunier]: That's what I'm worried about because I've got 133 left. I don't know that I'll even have 50 left in five weeks or less. What was your turnaround time? I'm going to think about ordering them next week or at least contacting Ali Bob on the Chinese, see if I can get the same quote. Because it took a month to get here. And at $1.12 each for the lights, it's ridiculously cheap.
[MCM00001136_SPEAKER_03]: Because actually, if you read, I think the fiscal year ends the end of June. If it's anything like my nonprofit, it ends the end of June, and it starts up in July. So any money we have, we should spend by then. So I would say go for it. Yeah, I know.
[Emily O'Brien]: Dennis did add in the chat that the end of June is the end of the fiscal year.
[MCM00001136_SPEAKER_03]: OK, so it is basically the same.
[Emily O'Brien]: really no reason to wait, just buy them all, spend all the money whenever you're ready.
[Ernie Meunier]: Yeah, yeah, okay.
[Jared Powell]: Yeah, we've got, it's something less than $800.
[Ernie Meunier]: Now, if anybody wants to come to the house to pick some up and help me bag them, I've got it down to 90 seconds each and I can teach you how to do it. It looks all very pretty, just let me know, especially newcomers who want to come and get some.
[Jared Powell]: I'd like to formalize this a little bit, though. So I'm trying to think about what exactly the motion is, but we have some amount of money that is less than $800. Ernie, go ahead.
[Ernie Meunier]: Yeah, the motion is to order another 240 lights sets that come in at like $525 plus the peripherals, the Ziploc bags and all that, plus the printing. I think you've already got that done, Pat, on the league stuff, because that's a buck and a quarter each. So we'll be spending about $960, half of which will be reimbursed to us by ALY photo.
[Jared Powell]: Well, so I think I'd suggest then that why don't we confirm the exact dollar amount remaining with Dennis and spend up to that amount.
[Ernie Meunier]: He said it was $800.
[MCM00001136_SPEAKER_03]: And we have $400 in training and we can actually take the training money and transfer it to the other one. I'm reading chat as we speak.
[Ernie Meunier]: Yeah, so we're all, yes, that's right. So we've got over $1,200. I'll need just about 500 of it. I'm going to be taking the $4.50 plus the $4.50 he's sending me from the first one. So I'll be taking $9.50 of the $12.50. So there's still $300 to spend for somebody else who wants to use it.
[Jared Powell]: By the end of June.
[Ernie Meunier]: Yes.
[Jared Powell]: All right. Well, let's plan then for the next meeting to figure out what to do with that remaining.
[Emily O'Brien]: Are we moving to authorize Ernie to buy the stuff he just mentioned?
[Jared Powell]: All in favor? Aye.
[Jared Powell]: All right. Thanks for taking the charge on that.
[Ernie Meunier]: Thank you.
[Jared Powell]: All right. Well, I think that covered all the things that I had on here. We're past the time. So I think we can motion to close the meeting.
[Unidentified]: Second. Motion to adjourn.
[Jared Powell]: All right. So moved. All in favor? Bye. All right. Thanks.
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