Bicycling Advisory Commission: 2026 Goals and Bicycle Infrastructure Planning - 2026-03-25

AI-generated summary. Written by gemini-3-flash-preview from the transcript below, which is the record. It may be incomplete or wrong; it does not report votes. Every item links to the moment it began.

The Commission established its mission statement and five core goals for 2026 while reviewing local infrastructure projects and regional cycling events. Key decisions included approving bike rack distribution sites and requesting the preservation of a cycling path near a proposed Tufts University development.

1:08 Minutes and Guest Introductions — Approved the February 2026 minutes and heard introductions from representatives of the city of Everett and Pedalheads Bike Camps.
3:04 Announcements and Correspondence — Noted several upcoming regional bike rides and reviewed a request for feedback regarding e-bike nomenclature and safety terminology.
8:59 Pedalheads Partnership Presentation — Discussed potential collaboration with Pedalheads for youth bike camps, including tabling at community events and co-sponsoring safety kit giveaways.
20:22 North of Boston Coalition Bike Ride — Reviewed plans for a multi-city coalition bike ride on May 31 connecting Cambridge to Lynn and discussed Medford's role in the event.
34:26 Bike Month and Event Planning — Discussed partnering with Bike to the Sea or other local organizations for May events due to limited internal volunteer capacity.
43:44 Playstead Road and Pump Track Updates — Received updates on short-term pedestrian improvements at the Playstead Road rail crossing and a pending support letter for a bike pump track.
45:51 Tufts Boston Avenue Advisory Group — Reported on the first meeting of the advisory group, noting receptiveness to bike safety improvements and potential budget for raised crosswalks.
51:57 Tufts Aquatic Center Path — Approved a motion to write a letter to Tufts University requesting the formalization and maintenance of a key cycling path connection near the proposed Aquatic Center.
1:03:40 Budget and Website Updates — Noted a request for a $700 budget increase for conference attendance and reviewed efforts to update the commission’s online events calendar.
1:12:30 2026 Goals and Mission Statement — Presented a revised mission statement and five strategic goals focused on inter-agency collaboration, infrastructure, and safety policies.
1:42:25 Mystic River Rotary — Noted that a letter with redesign sketches for the rotary was sent to the Department of Conservation and Recreation.
1:43:42 Bike Rack Installation Sites — Approved the distribution of 15 new bike racks equally between the Boston Avenue corridor, Salem Street, and Main Street.
1:53:49 Safety Equipment and Member Resignation — Discussed ongoing fundraising for bike lights and helmets and accepted the resignation of member Anna Rankert.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: March 2026 Medford Bicycle Advisory Commission meeting to order. Secretary, will you please call the roll?

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: Mary Kate Gustafson. Can't say it well. Looks like he's missing. One moment while I catch up here. Leah Gronstein. Also apparently missing. And I believe Adam told me he was not going to be able to make it. Adam, are you here? I don't see him.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: All right. With that, do we have a movement to approve the minutes from the February 2026 meeting? So moved. Seconded. OK. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. All opposed? Hearing none, the ayes have it. Meeting.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Oh, yeah. I'm sorry. I skipped that. We'll jump back to that. Sorry about that, everyone. Just getting through the early order stuff. Sorry. Our guests, would you like to introduce yourselves? Sorry, I might have mispronounced that now. Thank you. Would you like to start us off?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's OK. If people go from INA, it's OK. I'm ASG here for Odds. I work at the city of Everett as a transportation planner. I'm also on the Everett Active Transportation Advisory Committee. And I'll present later today about a bike ride that I hope you guys will join. But yeah.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Yeah, sounds good. Thanks for coming, Gaia. And Nikki, would you like to do a quick intro?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, of course. Sorry if it's loud where I am. I'm on my phone in a weird little corner of a hotel for this. But I'm Nikki. I work for Pedalheads Bike Camps. We have seven locations in the Boston area. And I was just hoping to chat possibly about just being at some of the events that you guys host. We believe in a lot the same stuff and making Medford and other areas a little bit more bike safe. So yeah, just hoping to chat about that.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Awesome. Well, glad to have you here. All right. And with that, I don't think I see anyone else aside from Dennis, who's here all the time. He's our regular over at the city. And I guess with that, let's move over to announcements. Bike to Work Day 2026. Who was anyone?

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, I've assembled all of these and then there might be others that other people have, but I'll just run through these really quickly. Bike to work day we've been doing for a while. We reverted the route from Winchester through assembly row instead of the path. And possibly we'll look at doing different convoys next year, but not this year. Again, I'm working with David Anderson of Winchester, and we start at 7am. There's also a massive bike kickoff party that we've been alerted to Saturday, May 4th down in Reedville, part of Boston at Roundhead Brewery. Again, we have a link there that you can go to. Bike to the Sea Ride, annual April Fool's Ride on April 4th, not April 1st.

which is I think a fun ride to do. They're not actually going to be riding up the trail for the most part though, which is interesting. It's going to be kind of more of a loop through Somerville, Charlestown and a few other things. So that could be kind of fun. Let's see. Who's sponsoring that, the wayfinding on us? I forget where, oh, that was from, I think, DCR.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: Oh, Mystic River Watershed Association. Watershed Association, yeah, that's right. And we don't care so much about the Alewife Brook sidewalk, but we might care about the Mystic River bike ride. So you can see the information there, Thursday, April 16th, beginning at the amphitheater at Assembly Row. That's where those steel uprights are, right along the river. Got a notification about the Mystic River Bridge at Assembly Row. We're familiar with that. This, however, is from the US Coast Guard. So it's primarily a water navigation concern as opposed to things like decking and approach and width and that kind of stuff. So I listed it because we do care about that bridge, but I don't think this particular one warrants any comment from us unless you happen to be boaters independently and you care.

Well, finally, I just got notified from Alicia. I believe it was yesterday. Here's a last minute request, which is a little bit odd, and she wants to... get ahead of some of the problems that are having with people conflating basically motorcycles and powerful e-bikes and what they call dirt bikes and so on. This came about as a result of a crash that occurred in November in Stoneham involving a 13 year old who was unfortunately killed when the car made a left turn I don't know if made a left turn in front of him or whether he was attempting to overtake and it made a left turn. A lot of that reporting was not reported. I think the police didn't do a good job of summarizing it for the press and the press didn't do a good job of trying to figure out what really happened. In any event, I put together a document which ended up being much bigger than I expected. And I would just ask all of you independently to go in and add your comments or ignore it if you want. Um, I, I really, it really got a little bit more wordy than I expected it. It's a little over 2 pages long, but I summarized at the end. So I just wanted to get comments from others on the group. So that we could have a somewhat informed.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, it's right there. It's in the Google Docs. You should have access to it. And when you get to it, if you want to edit it, let me know and I'll turn editing on.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: Yes, it is. Oh, it's in the new agendas that I updated this morning, which you should have access to. I can also put it in the chat.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: That's fine. Sorry, when you say we should have access to it, does that mean through the Google Docs?

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: Where I think you better put it in the chat because the other thing is that it would need to be copied into the minutes because it would also.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, I've got it. I've got it in my, my version of the agenda. I don't know why other people aren't seeing that in any event. There it is. And if you pop it open, you'll see that it says bicycle type nomenclature. And just add your thoughts, I'll put it all together and get back to Alicia about, you know, what terms and what things mean and how she might approach this issue.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: Emily from WAC Medford also has responded to her. Okay, that's it. My announcements.

[Jared Powell]: One quick one in the vein of what Bruce was talking about before. The Medford Historical Society is having a talk on Thursday, April 9th at 7, specifically about the Clippership Connector and the history of it. So I don't know, maybe some cyclists would be interested in that or want to show up for that. It may pop up on a later agenda item as well. But that is an announcement.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: All right. Moving on. All right. We have no events. Sorry. Any other announcements? Okay, I'm hearing none other and having no events currently scheduled. Nikki, would you like to take it from here?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, absolutely. The reason I reached out is because, like I said, I work for Pedalheads Bike Camps. We run learn to ride bike camps for kids ages 4 to 12. We're a little newer in Boston. We've been in Boston since 2021. Pedalheads itself, we have over 800 locations across the US and Canada. So we're a big company, but in Boston, it's just me year round. So I'm kind of the little engine that could over here. So we've been trying to reach out to various daycares and local businesses to try to set up community partnership opportunities. And obviously, I know as this is a commission that's part of the government in the town and whatnot, you can't directly endorse us. However, I would love for my, it would be myself, but for pedal heads in general to be a presence at bike events or even just be clued into that. These events are happening. Like, I knew about bike to work day simply because that's all that's all we talk about too is biking.

But I'm not quite up to date and I also personally live in Medford. So I and we have our honestly our busiest site this year right now happening at the Loconte rink right across from the Wegmans over there. So we're kind of we're launching into our summer. I would love to like just get the word out about Pedalheads even if it's just if attending by myself and You know, I don't have to hand out things, but if that's something that you would be okay with doing that. Bruce mentioned in his email that also like sponsoring a bike ride, we would love to do as well. I just don't know how to coordinate those. I would love to. I would love to work with the commission on that in the future. But really, I just wanted to say hi and let you know that we're around. Yeah.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: I wanted to suggest that if they create events that are open to the general public, that we would probably be able to participate in that manner. And not directly, again, market for them, but just it's an opportunity for people to show up and find out more about the group if they want. So kind of like the way we do with JRA cycling on the helmets, lights, and other stuff like that. So I'm making that suggestion. I don't know how other people feel about it, whether that's possibly stepping over the line they feel or whether that would be an appropriate form of collaboration.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: I can't imagine, or in my opinion, us joining any sort of public event as a commission doesn't, I don't believe that steps over a line. direct endorsement, it's simply participation. So I see absolutely no problem with that from my perspective.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: So is that something that your group would be able to do, Nikki? Is that the kind of thing you do, or is it just like class?

[SPEAKER_00]: We do things. Obviously, our main focus is like the summer and running our camps. But we're pretty flexible on what marketing opportunities we do. um we've done you know like helmet presentations and like at you know I know one location they had like partnered with the zoo and did like a whole demonstration on how we teach kids and stuff like that um so we're pretty flexible to what that entails um it like definitely could be something we do I would have to talk to obviously other people on on my team but like I definitely even just like sponsoring a bike ride was not a thought I had so already I got something out of coming here tonight you know

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: One thing I'll note is that we have at times put together safety kits and done helmet giveaways. So if that's something that you're also, I don't know what your organization typically does or does not do, but it is something that we have partnered with other private organizations in the past to help promote bicycle safety. So that is like another avenue that I believe we could go down without too much trouble. Sorry, Chris? I'll actually hand it over to Ernie because I know he's had his hand up for a while. Oh, sorry. And then Emily and then I'll go. up there, go for it, Ernie.

[Ernie Meunier]: That's nice of you, Chris. Nikki, I think you referred to the organization as a company. Is this a for-profit or an NGO or what are you?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so we are a for-profit company. We do have a charity section of our company as well called Petalheads Plus that we do raise money for like Kids to come to our camps who like can't afford bicycles or helmets or like even the camp itself. We do have a charitable section of our company as well. It's not like super, again, Boston is a little bit smaller of a territory for us. So it's not quite up and running here, but we always do accept Petalheads Plus donations and have that aspect as well. So that is also another opportunity just in general.

[Ernie Meunier]: Let me follow up and ask, what is your revenue stream? How do you guys make money?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we do a lot of camps, really. So, like, my year-round is just focusing on setting up our camps for the summer. We set up in, like, parking lots of, like, churches and temples and various schools and rent out there. And then we also have... We also do bike trails, swim, and soccer in other locations. So we have year-round soccer some places. We have year-round... Yes, thank you for linking our website. But year-round soccer in some places, year-round swim in others. In Massachusetts, it's purely bike. I spend all my year thinking about the summer, which is crazy in September that I'm thinking about summer already. But yeah, that's how we do. Thanks.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: I was just going to say, if you're looking for outreach opportunities in Medford, we don't tend to organize a whole lot of events independently. We haven't generally had the volunteer bandwidth for it, but things like the Medford Farmers Market or the various, like Circle the Square, the various city events like that with tabling events, Harvest Your Energy, those would all be good places. I would also coordinate with like the bike to school days when that happens. And then the family bike rides, which is also in this, it's not Medford specific, it's in this general area. But I think that would be, a lot of that would be a good place to get seen.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah, absolutely. And honestly, I didn't know any of those were happening. So, again, I'm truly out of touch with the bike scene in Medford and otherwise, which is crazy. I'm so focused on setting up my summer that like even like I found out that we had a bicycle commission. I was like, oh, yes, you guys will know things for me. So, yeah, I'll take any and all suggestions. Yeah.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: I believe, you know, family bike ride is a specific operation.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. However it's coordinated, whoever to get in touch with, I'm sure you know better than I do.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: Morgan, yeah. It's not Medford specific, it's kind of, it has gone through Medford sometimes, but he does a bunch of events.

[SPEAKER_00]: in the local area. Yeah, we have other locations too. So thank you. Very, very helpful. Thank you.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: And the link to Paul's is in the chat, just in case. Also feel free to reach out to the commission on Medford. Thanks.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: I'll put a plug in for Petalheads. Our son did the camp about a year and a half ago when he was three, and we think he may have been part of the reason why they don't do it for three-year-olds anymore. It was wildly successful.

[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't him, it was licensing reasons, I promise. I wasn't there at that time, but I guarantee you it was licensing.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Probably a good call. We went from a child who could not bike, was very resistant to his parents trying to teach him to bike, and over the course of a week was able to bike on his own 100%. It was a game changer for him. We have a personal experience that puts it in a really good light. I think for the community, the more kids that can become competent at an early age and then learn to bike and become comfortable with it, I think it's good for biking broadly. I certainly support what you guys are doing.

Even though the commission may not be able to plug your name in places, I as an individual would be happy to do that. So if you want to reach out to me on the side, our son goes to preschool in Medford, and I'm sure you'd be happy to circulate it through the school there. And I think we, at a minimum, could at least keep you posted of other events, public events that we know of that could be relevant for you to table at.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And I truly am so happy to hear it. We do believe a lot in getting kids not only just comfortable biking, but comfortable with even just the thought of biking on the road as well. So we do a lot of helmet safety and road safety things as well. And yeah, even if it's just events you think of that I, as a person, can go to and talk to people, that's kind of what I wanted to get out of this. So already super helpful. So thanks, guys.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: Separately, I'll do that and I'll serve as a liaison as well. If you'd like, just kind of. Maybe we can put together my, my vision of this would be if you want to put together. Like I said, a bike ride, like a marketing bike ride that the public's invited to, we would be able to also say. You know, this is going on without any endorsement and it would be useful for both both parties. Yeah, absolutely. So, I would bring it to the commission for approval, but we could go that way. And so I'll, I'll get you Daniel's information and we'll act as a liaison as well in the future.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, lovely. Thank you. Yeah, feel free. Yeah, I can drop my email just into the chat. Um, in general, if anyone has any questions about pedal heads in general, or like where we're located or anything like that, um, be aware that the chat is a matter of public record. Um, that might be useful to you, but just saying that hand on my card enough, Bruce, you can share my email to people if they want it.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Um, all right, uh, I guess with that, um, yeah. Yes, sorry, go ahead.

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, you're good. Yeah. Um, I'm also interested Nikki. That's a very interesting thing for Everett. If you're looking at Everett, um. But. Yeah, I'm so happy. Thank you, Chris, for reaching out to us. We have been trying to get more connected to different committees and commissions around the Boston area. I feel like we are all experiencing the same issues, and we all have the same gripes with this area. And it's really cool to get connected to people that are advocates of it. So my friend.

Alessandra is not here today, but she is from the Somerville Pedestrian Transportation Advisory Committee. And she and I have decided to do a North of Boston Coalition bike ride. So this is planning to go through Somerville. We're trying to connect Cambridge, Somerville, Everett, Malden, Medford. Lynn, Revere, Saugus, all in one ride. And we can do this with the Community Path in Somerville and with the Northern Strand Path in Everett and the rest of those. It's a pretty big ride. Do you mind if I share my screen to share a map, or is that something I can't do?

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Sure. You should make it so that you can. You're all set.

[SPEAKER_01]: OK. Oh, great. And I'd love to get Medford on the map, too. I think I might go through, like, technically, but I'm not sure. Can you guys see the map? Yeah. Yep. OK, so right now it's starting in Davis Square in Somerville. We're looking for a route that starts in Cambridge. The linear path is being renovated right now. But this is how it is. It's 25 miles. It goes through Everett, and then it comes back to Everett, where there's going to be a little tabling party where we can all mingle. and get to know each other. I'm really excited for this. I think it's a great way to get everyone talking in the area. I feel like we're all so segmented sometimes and we're all in it together. But happy to answer any questions. Yeah.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, so my first one is you're stopping basically at the Rotary in Lynn. And Lynn has put in, has completed some pretty good infrastructure that I believe now gets you all the way to the beach. Were you considering including that at this point, or did you want to prepare right at Lynn just because it's a lot easier to manage people at that stop instead?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I didn't say when this was. This is May 31st, by the way. I don't know. Is that project completed?

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: My recollection is the tracks on Common Street were almost open, but not quite, because there were a couple of layers of blacktop they needed. But the bike track along Linway, I believe, was completed. at this point. Anyone know any more? I don't suppose any of us get up the Lynn much.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think we did decide to stop it here just because Western Ave is a really uncomfortable crossing to get to the Lynnway. And we did want to get back to the center, which is Everett.

[SPEAKER_01]: So it wasn't too much trouble and then going back just for a little bit of it. I think that was our thinking.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: I'd like to suggest that this is a great idea and figure out what do we need to do to help participate, lead, et cetera.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, so it doesn't go through Medford technically. And we would like to have Medford, we want everyone included, because it goes through a little bit of Boston and it goes through a little bit of Somerville and Everett and the rest. We're trying to connect Cambridge.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: The way to do that would be to go, I guess, to go through from assembly. You then, I mean, the thing is you end up having to go a not really ideal way across from Wellington to get to the rest of your route.

[SPEAKER_01]: It could be like a bike bus situation where, or like bike to work day, how there's branches too. If you guys would like to lead like a branch that can meet us somewhere, I think Encore is like where we plan on having a table with snacks refreshments and pick up new riders.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Yeah, I could see two options here. One is like, it doesn't really matter if it goes through Medford, we can still participate and support and help.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: It's so close and it's all places we need to go. Yeah.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: I think the sort of branch is a great suggestion too. And I think you could probably have a branch that starts. There's a few ways we could do it. So we could discuss that if we wanted to have someone here lead that portion of it. Maybe you could talk a little bit more about kind of what the... What's the partnership with Everett and Somerville? Are there other local groups involved? What are the activities that you guys are leading? Is it corralling people and then shepherding them through, as we normally do in a bike ride? You mentioned tabling. I'd just like to hear a little bit more about what's happening and how we could potentially join forces.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, basically, the Alessandra and I had the same grad course. So we were talking about what we could do to connect the two. And this kind of sparked that. So there's no really like big partnership. We want to partner with a bunch of people or cities. So Boston is coming. Myra is really interested in Mystic River Watershed Association. They'll be helping with a couple like volunteers, like to the seas also included. I'm trying to think of anyone else. Mass bike might be included, I think.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: Are you considering getting any police escort or that kind of thing? No. Do you think it's going to be offhand? How many people do you think will show up?

[SPEAKER_01]: We will have registration for that. This is open to bike advocates broadly, so it's not only people that are part of committees and commissions and stuff like that. We were thinking about it. We don't think too many people are going to join, but I can see it gaining a lot of traction. attraction. So we're not thinking about police escort. I think since it's mostly on trails, it should be fine. The only bit that isn't on trail is from Somerville to Everett, which is about like seven minutes. And with a lot of people, it's fine. I don't know if you guys do bike to work day going through that rotary, but When it's a lot of people, tower numbers, everything is OK.

But yeah, we are planning to have 10 volunteers, a couple of marshals, someone at the end, a few at the beginning, a few at the end. For, sorry, I'm trying to answer all the questions, so I might be scattering everywhere. In terms of tabling, we're partnering with lower mystic TMA, so LMTMA, which works a lot in Everett, and they are tabling in Encore, so that is going to be the big, like, get snacks, water, stuff like that from the TMA. The rest of the stops will be to pick up different residents or to pick up different advocates. And that will be more of like, we're looking for volunteers with cargo bikes specifically to hold water and snacks so we can just pass those out. We're also trying to get Cargo Bee in here so they can maybe lend us a bike for the ride so we can have that on hand instead of setting up a table at every stop and making it a whole big deal.

Let's see, did I miss any other questions that I missed in that long? Sorry for trailing.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: I think the biggest question now is just how do we stay involved? We've got to put together a working group to help plan the ride.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, for sure. I think that'd be a great idea. I think that's the next step. Alessandra's on vacation right now, but I think it would be great to have a working group if you guys are in it to be like one of the people like... Do you guys want to be like a part of it? So that'd be great.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: I guess the question, Bruce, is do we want to have a working group or do we want to have any volunteers from the commission join?

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: To me, the big question is, do we have people who are available to at the very least we should table if there's tabling? Do we have people who are available for that? And then do we have people who are. who have the bandwidth to get more involved in the planning. I think for sure we can, at the very least, we can help promote and we can share it on our social medias and all of that stuff. I think that's an easy yes.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and you guys are welcome to do anything with any capacity. At the end of the day, it's a bunch of advocates going on a bike ride, so it's not anything too big. The tabling is just grabbing snacks and talking to each other and sharing ideas.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: But I just to make sure I understand that it's more of a like, hey, we're just trying to get some of the community people from the commissions and committees, or is a broader community event sort of led by those commissions, community committees and organizations?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we're advertising to Bike advocates, whatever that may be. Is that your question?

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Is it like anyone from the general public? You're advertising to anyone from the public can join this, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: Or it's really just trying to get the- If they self-identify, yes. If they self-identify as a bike advocate, yeah. We don't want to close it off too much.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: So I'll ask a direct question. We're not planning then on advertising and recruiting publicly, really. Is that your thought?

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm still we're still need to discuss this. I think we're half and half. I think we're scared of this getting too big.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: But I think that's why advocates threshold start coordinating with the police.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that is a TBD. I think it is 18 plus. So we don't necessarily want any children. to join.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: I would say I for one, I'm interested in helping out. You know, we this there's lots of discussions we can have the offline and the details of it. One may make sense to have it be a bit more of a like, hey, organization focused, because I think there's a ton of value in trying to develop. And we've just been talking about internally as well, how to how to develop the relationships among the different organizations in this area to help strengthen our sort of connectedness. So I think that's a a really good reason to do it. I'm excited.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're thinking 10 to 2, which is not going to take that long. But that was just a big stretch of time.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: So I guess in terms of for the commission here, do we want to form a working group or just have volunteers independently? But maybe it just depends on who's interested in helping out.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: I'd suggest we just have volunteers and then maybe it firms up and we feel like there's more formal participation needed. We can bring it back to the group.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: But not be, you know, there are also only 2 meetings before that and 1 of them would be right right before that. So, it seems like calling it a working group and then expecting it to report back for something that we would then vote on. It seems sort of silly because what are we going to decide in the.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: We're already connected by email so we can follow up. Is anyone here interested in being a volunteer? Just throw that out. I'm a maybe, but I will see if I can. I might only have a little bit of time that day, but I will see what I can do.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: All right, I guess we'll be in touch independently then. Yeah. Or more or less. I'll get in touch with Chris, that was you, and who else wanted? Daniel. And Daniel? Yeah. OK.

[SPEAKER_01]: And we'll have more information and specific stuff soon. OK, great. Sweet. Thanks, guys.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: No, thank you very much. Thanks for organizing that. No problem. And good luck to the communities. Yeah, thank you. Appreciate you coming out, IF.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, of course, thanks. I will head out now, but let me know if you have any questions. You can share my email internally anywhere, but sounds good.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Okay. And with that, we are right about on schedule. Bike month planning, Jared, this is from February.

[Jared Powell]: Yeah, we talked about this in February. I think if my memory is right, I don't have the minutes from last month open, although I guess I could. But I think the question was if we wanted to start a working group to actually plan some bike month activities. I think that was where we left it. We didn't have quorum, so we couldn't officially start one. For those who are not able to attend, we don't tend to lead or even really sponsor that many rides. And we are a bike commission, so that might be kind of fun for us to do and a good thing to do. Maybe starting small and co-sponsoring and joining some other rides might be a low barrier to entry starting point for us.

So I guess that's the ask, if we should make a working group with anyone who's interested to maybe see if there might be some opportunities to kind of lead or co-sponsor some other events in the area for at least bike month and could be more broadly for the summer, I suppose.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: I'd like to move that we do so. I can't necessarily help out with bike month because I've got other things I've already volunteered for and don't want to stretch too thin. But if there's others, I would move that we do that.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Given that we've got this other ride on the 31st, that's probably where I'll put my efforts for bike month.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: I feel like I'm also kind of overcommitted at the moment. I don't really want to take on planning another event and committing to another date.

[Jared Powell]: Yeah, fair enough. It's... This is a busy time for me as well. Um... But, uh, well, that's why I was thinking, like, this is why we've always kind of struggled here, because it is a lot to plan your own thing. It is easier to tag along to someone else's thing. One thought... And publish, and unpublicize it.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: One thought is Adam, who's not here, runs a weekly weekday morning ride. And it starts from Davis. But I wonder if we could, you know, sort of turn one of his regular things into a Bike Months event, since he already does it anyway. And it's close to Medford. It could be brought closer. I'm sure he could pick a route that goes into Medford or something. But it's a thing that he does anyway, so maybe we can piggyback on it and I can talk to him about that if you want.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Another option is also to reach out to JRA and see if they're doing anything. I forget when they start their Saturday rides. I'll have to check on that.

[Jared Powell]: Yeah, there may be There may also be a bike to the sea type event that we could join with. I reached out to Pat Bibbins, who formerly of the Medford Bike Commission, and now at Bike to the Sea, and he was very happy to have us co-sponsor something. That's probably a good entry point. I mean, I suggested this, so I'm happy to take part. I have limited capacity right now. But again, I think we can kind of adjust the scope of the effort to fit the time available rather than over committing.

Would anyone else be up for joining such a working group? I envision it being like a meeting or two, finding some good opportunities to partner with another organization. And our participation in whatever ride it is could probably be fairly limited, publicizing, putting our name on it, that kind of thing, as opposed to planning and leading a very intense effort.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Jared, just to follow up on your comment about the bike to the sea and just looking at their website. a half dozen events in May, so there could be tabling opportunities at some of these. There's the herring paddle event on the 17th, so you've seen that herring run and paddle event, which is in the water in Somerville. And they've got Revere Bike Fest May 2nd, Bike to Work Day Ride and Festival May 7th, Multimodal Transportation Fair May 9th in Everett.

[Jared Powell]: Yeah, I mean, a popular thing is also like you could kind of expand, like take advantage of an existing event and have it be like, learn how to bike from Medford to the Northern Strand Trail, that kind of thing, which may be an easy way to kind of get a group of Medford folks to go to another event.

[Jared Powell]: Yeah, yeah. So a working group of one is no working group at all.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: I would volunteer, but I'm just concerned that I'm overcommitted as well.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: I think with the thing that it seems like is if we have a working group that, and maybe this needs to be all of us individually saying, here's an event that I personally could actually make it to. Because all of these things, it's like a working group decides that it would be great to collaborate with this, but we still come back to the same problem is that we need to have somebody who's actually available to be at that event or to do whatever it is. I am really, really hesitant to commit to any of these in May.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: I think we've got to have at least two people who are really, or it's just one person going off and working on their own, or if we're going to create a working group, at least two people who are really excited to try to figure out something. And so we should just see if we have two people here who want to do that. I'm going to say I'm a no, already working on one event. Yeah, I'm not sure that any of us have the necessary bandwidth to be able to commit to putting on our own events right now.

But I mean, I think that we can join in and help out with some of the others that are obviously like Aya's.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: I think it would also be okay to just make a note to the email list saying that we are not currently planning any of our own things, but that we would love to get on board. If somebody has the bandwidth to get involved with one of these things and to commit to being there and we can vote or put our seal approval of it on at next month. Um, if we have somebody who's, who's willing and able to do that, who's not here right now, even though that's not that many people, but.

[Jared Powell]: Well, for the sake of simplicity, how about I simply work with Pat directly, see if we can come up with some reasonably low effort way for us to partner with something that they're thinking about doing. And I'll bring it back to the group next time to see what we come up with. How about that?

[Ernie Meunier]: I like that idea of, of conflating a part, you know, an extension of the strand that goes into Medford from that northern strand. and a convoy from somewhere in Medford to Malden, then continuing up to the beach. Sounds like an ideal opportunity. I like that as well. If that was what one of your thoughts was, JR?

[Jared Powell]: Yes. Yes, it was. All right, well, I'll get back to Pat then. Thanks, folks.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Sounds good. uh place said road commuter rail parking pedestrian path i remember this um that was sort of a brief discussion we had last month um i actually i think we're gonna land on that is there's really not much regarding the commission here i i reached out to todd separately on that um and he just mentioned i think he said that that's um They're doing, uh, it's really just pedestrian walkway, um. To demarcate a specific pedestrian path near the cars at the commuter rail station in West Medford. So, um, you know, sort of. Tangentially related to biking, and it's sort of just a quick low cost where there's probably a longer term effort that's needed in that whole area. But so this is just what's planned for the short term.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: Will that striping affect the bicycle operation on places that road in any way, like causing the parking to be out further or that sort of thing?

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: I think what they're doing is I think they're actually going to, I think they're marking a pedestrian path on the, outside end of the cars. I'm not quite sure. He didn't deem to send plans. I think it was more of a polite way of saying, hey, we're going to do this. It's a short term fix, but we're just going to do it. Trust me, I got this. And there'll be time for more discussions for longer term changes to all of Placedead.

But I don't know the details. I think it's behind the cars, but I don't know how it affects parking spots, whether they have to take some out to make sure that there's enough width. It's a place that's pretty wide right there. Yeah, there's just one area where it kind of narrows down. Yeah, right near the stairs. Yeah.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: So I think we can, I don't think we need. There's not much that commissioning be involved with for this project. Yeah, correct. No. Okay.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: All right. With that, the Tufts Boston AB advisory group, Emily, you were present at that one, right?

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: Yeah. So they did accept me into that, into that advisory group. It had one meeting so far, which was a couple people from Tufts, a couple people from the design firm, a number of community members, I think a couple of folks who live nearby, a business owner nearby, somebody from WAC Medford, the tree warden. Um, and it was a really nice start. I missed the, I was coming back from a trip and I missed the introductions, but I didn't miss much otherwise. Um, I think it was a really positive first step. Uh, they had, they spread out big maps and took notes on what everybody. would like to see, the encouraging thing was that everybody had, people were basically very sympathetic to the safety questions, both for bicyclists and the door zone, and also for pedestrians crossing the street, and also for overall traffic speeds, which makes all of these things harder than they should be.

And it seems like there is actually sufficient scope and budget in this project to do things like move curbs, create bump outs, put in raised crosswalks, things that are in a lot of places are off the table just for cost reasons. So that's encouraging. not anybody there who was saying, we must keep all the parking spaces at all costs. So that was good. There were, if anything, there were a lot more people complaining about the number of MBTA and construction employees who park between the Tufts Garage and College Ave, and often including illegally, et cetera, et cetera. So I think those, Those parking spaces, if they go away, or if they get sufficient, if they get a lot reduced, that's not going to be at least for the people who are there. That was not a huge sticking point.

So, but it's an initial early stages thing when we can all dream of whatever we want. Time will tell when the rubber meets the road and we actually see. how much space we are really working with and how all of these desires that we all have come together. But it was a great first start.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: So I've got a couple of comments and points that I think we need to be aware of. I took a look at the website for the project, which in fact I've listed here in the agenda, and the rendering shows Bike lanes on both sides, similar to what we had at one point, you've expressed concern about door zone bike lanes along the stretch. There was a question of whether or not the right of way will be increased even if by a couple of feet, which would be beneficial. The notion of bump outs for pedestrians is inherently at odds with bicycle operation. And unless done correctly, you know, is a problem. And so I would want you as a representative of Medford's bicycling community to stress that. And, you know, it could be a bone of contention with pedestrians who don't want to walk so far, but there are ways to mitigate that.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: And that's one thing that I would hope that if we end up with raised crosswalks, that can help solve that problem. with a raised crosswalk, there's a few more options there.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: Raised crosswalks are problematic for bicycle operation as well. I mean, it's kind of like, you know, it's worse for a car to go over the raised crosswalk, but I've seen a few places where the raised crosswalk is actually not raised in the bicycle lane area, which is great, right?

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: And that's really it. That's really a devil's in the details kind of thing.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, little details like that that can make a big difference. And I just want to make sure that something doesn't go steamroller that we regret. So thank you.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, so they seemed receptive. We'll see. It was very much a, this is what we want. Um, this is what we, this is what we don't like about what's currently there. Um, they didn't present, they didn't present a plan for anybody to give commentary on at the moment. They were only talking about existing conditions at this particular meeting. So I don't know. what the stuff on the website. I don't know how, I don't know how, um, how far along that really is or whether that's just a sort of a, we threw up something.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: So that's something it looks like kind of a generic rendering to be frank.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: Yeah. That's, and that's kind of my sense is that they aren't nearly as far along as that makes it look. So that was a good start. It is very, very much a preliminary start.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Oh, I mean, I think Tufts has been relatively good with community involvement in the past, so I'm not too worried about it, but hopefully. All right, Tufts Aquatic Center from February. I'm trying to remember what this was.

[Jared Powell]: Yeah, that was something I brought up. It might be a little less, well, they already had a meeting about it. So Tufts is planning to build a big, this came up in the last meeting where we didn't have a quorum. Tufts is planning to build a big aquatic center over in the parking lot on College Ave across from the gym and their current pool building over by the baseball fields and tennis courts and things like that.

Um, but near the Greenline station, and they're going to build a big aquatic center. They wanted public input, and my request was that individually, potentially as a commission, we participate in the public feedback process on that because that parking lot and the path that goes around those athletic fields is an extremely important, although far too little known path for cyclists to get from basically the hillside neighborhood to ball square and onto the Sarville community path and wherever you might want to go, but. It's a really good connection between the hillside neighborhood and the ball square area without having to ride on Boston Ave, which is a road that people might not feel particularly comfortable on for that stretch. So, path wraps around Holby Street, Harvard Terrace, Winchester makes a pretty nice pretty nice route there. So, my request was that we.

That our feedback again either individually as or as a commission is that that path structure that access for cyclists to get around their property there. be retained and if anything formalized and maybe add signage and better advertise so that people can know that it's there. Don't drop a building there without maintaining that very useful and safe access for cyclists.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: That's a really good point because it's hard enough with just the parking lot, people don't know it exists. I can see it's very useful for those, as you said, that don't want to go through the College Ave intersection.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Do we want to take a motion to write a letter as a commission? I'm happy to take that on.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: One comment about that is I did mention that path at the meeting about the Boston and college area, especially because people were discussing the number of people that sometimes accumulate on the corners of Boston and College, especially in between classes and where the corners get really crowded at peak pedestrian times. And so I mentioned that path and also that there's the stairway down to get to that corner of The of the parking lot, they did say, oh, we know about that and we are going to keep it and the aquatic center is going to be on the other side of the parking lot. So they are aware of that part. The part that was interesting to me that I think we should probably follow up on more is they had there a map of which things are Tufts property and which things are. city in which things are other private property or something. And that path connects to that little parking lot. And then those private ways, which I had always assumed must belong to Tufts, and they don't.

And in terms of making that a formalized route, those are one way the wrong direction if you're heading south. If you're heading north, they're fine. And we've kicked this around a lot over the years. But if we really want to formalize this, I think we need to really make some headway. Recording stopped. Uh-oh.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: One second. I'm the host. I can record. Recording in progress.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: If we really want to formalize this, we need to make some headway in um, figuring out who is actually, who actually owns the property there and who we're dealing with and get the buy-in not only from Tufts, but also from the city. I don't think it'll be, I don't think it'll be hard to have Tufts advocating on our behalf or saying that, yes, they want to see this happen. Um, but it does involve a bunch of stuff that's not theirs. And I had always assumed that it was theirs.

But they are aware of that. And I think at least right now they're not planning to change it. But that may be something that we want to pursue a little harder and figure out actually what it would take to make that a formalized route that you could actually use legally in both directions.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: Emily, what was the concern that the roads, Bowdoin, Princeton, Colby, Yale, et cetera, those are private ways?

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, or some of it, or some parts of it. And they're also one, Harvard Terrace and part of Colby are one way.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, that's a bigger concern. One way the wrong way, right.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: And so to change that or to put Colby, or I think it's Colby, is it becomes one way. It's not one way the whole thing.

[Jared Powell]: Well, so you're totally right, Emily. I totally support making that part of a bigger plan and fixing that absolutely 100 percent.

[Jared Powell]: But within the scope of what we're talking about right now, it is Tufts property and I just want them to maintain that. This is a both ends thing. Yeah. We should absolutely do the other and this is something that we can weigh in on now and we should do that too. It's pretty low effort to do that.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: So Jared, I think you put a motion on the table to write a letter. I would second that, because I think even though they're planning on keeping it, it would be useful to formalize the route to the parking lot in conjunction.

[Jared Powell]: Yeah, I suggested it. I didn't formally make a motion, but it sounds like you are, Bruce.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: I will either make the motion or second it. And I'll second your motion, Bruce. Great idea.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: All right, just to clarify for everyone, the motion on the table is a motion to write a, or I will write on, or I assume everyone's okay with this. I will write on behalf of the commission a letter to Tufts. Say what? I will write a letter to Tufts asking them to maintain and formalize the route Um, going between College Ave and Colby Street, uh, when they redesigned the aquatic center, um, or just in general, um, that I believe just correct me. That is the motion on the table. I believe it is sounds great. All in favor.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: All opposed. Hearing none, the ayes have it. I will write that letter. Bruce, can you add that as an action item for me coming out of this meeting? You got it. Thank you. So if you guys can see my screen here, this is a map of public versus private ways in Medford. And so this would confirm what I'm saying is at least this little stretch here, whatever that is past Colby Street and Harvard Terrace are both private.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: It's probably owned by people who live there. Oh, you think it's owned by 55 and 65? Yes. And maybe half of it by Tufts because of the parking lot. Is that a Tufts lot? Maybe.

[Jared Powell]: Well, wait, let's, let's, we should confirm this because I couldn't tell in that map if that green section there was referring to the end of Colby Street, or where it actually kind of becomes that parking lot?

[Jared Powell]: Right, there's a parking lot there that is definitely private property.

[Jared Powell]: Right, because there is that small little parking lot that connects the path to the street, where that outside the lines tag is on that.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I was just there today and it's definitely like a chunk of road before you hit the parking lot.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_02]: The city might still have some part of that. I live on a private way and 10 feet is the cities and 3 feet are the abutters. So I think the devil's in the details. Yeah, that's interesting though.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Another thing I wanted to bring up now, it doesn't mean that a private entity didn't pave it, but Harvard Terrace has been repaved recently, like within the last year. And I'm not sure who did that, but I wasn't sure if that street was turned over to the city.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: I'm going to reveal a surprising detail, since I almost know where every street is. Where is Harvard Terrace?

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: It is off of Harvard Street at the end of Winchester Street. If you were coming from Broadway and Somerville, and you go straight north on Winchester Street, which parallels Boston Ave, then you go straight over Harvard Street and hit Harvard Terrace.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: I heard they probably paved that when they paved Harvard Street at that intersection with Boston last year. Parallel to Berwick.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: There you go. I don't think there's been any movement on this. I think me and Emily swapped a few emails being like, who is going to write this? What was this about? This was for the bike racks at the pump track, if I recall.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: No, this was just in support of them building one. This was just us writing a letter saying, yes, it's a good idea. That's all.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Okay. I guess we have not followed up on that. We can follow up on that. We'll get that done.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: All right. How long can it take us to write a single letter? Who knows? Just use AI, right? No. No. No, I agree. No. Sorry. In any case, budget review and proposals. That's me. I did send an updated request to, oh gosh, why is my brain shutting down? Alicia. Thank you, Alicia. Yeah, I don't know why I could not remember Alicia's name. I requested an extra $700 for attending. I forget what we considered that line item.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Yeah, it was basically an extra $700 for being able to send people to events and other conferences. I think it had been listed as conferences. It was originally 500. We requested a $700 increase on that to $1,200 to be able to send people. to various things throughout the year. I didn't get any pushback from Alicia, so hopefully that will go through. That's being presented to the mayor. Beyond that, no other changes to our budget, so hopefully our budget goes from $1,500 a year to $2,200 a year. Emily.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: Just because I think there's a number of people here who were not here back the last time, the one time we did this before. Some years ago, I think maybe 2018, we used that budget to send me to the League of American Bicyclists Conference in DC. My mom lives there, so I had a free place to stay, which made it cheaper. But it was a really valuable experience, and we think it would be really useful if we could send someone else to the same conference. And if we could like send a different person every year, that would be really great. And so the increased budget would hopefully allow us to also pay for accommodations or, you know, send two people if there's a free place to stay or whatever it is. But it was valuable. I think it's useful to have. I think it would be useful for somebody else to get that experience and to have more of us here having been there.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, it's happening now. So we don't have to, this is not, this is not an imminent decision that we need to make, but probably sometime by like early fall, we should be, we should be thinking about this.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: All right. That is my update there. Um, website working group, Chris,

[Ernie Meunier]: Oh, okay. Yeah, not a question. Do you want to talk about budgetary items now? We had a little back and forth as to- We can talk about that during the bike lights update. I'm not sure that's on the agenda, but yes, that's more appropriate. Okay, thanks. Yeah, no worries.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: One quick thing that I think is interesting, the city council made their recommendations to the mayor for budget things for the city yesterday, and I think three of the city councilors all plugged adding budget for a transportation engineer or transportation planner within TAWS group. Who knows if it'll happen, but hopefully that'll give his team more resources that'll benefit us as well.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: I believe that... Todd also said that they are interviewing candidates for a position like that right now.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: Yeah. I've got communication from Todd further down the agenda.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Oh, great. Yep. Sorry. Go ahead, Chris. Yeah, so working group, so it's Anna and Bruce and I. Guys, I'm happy to share my screen with where the website's at right now, or if one of you want to give the latest updates, I'm happy to do as well.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: I can just say the three of us met and we broke off some tasks, some of which have been completed, some of which haven't, to basically make sure that the three of us understand how to edit the website, and begin making some changes to update it. And once we are all more comfortable, we will continue making recommendations as to what the content should be.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: I made a few changes already. I've deleted the old events and put at least one of the upcoming events here, the April Fools ride with Bike to the Sea. I also added a separate calendar page. So any events we add here, we can also add to our calendar. shared or our Medford Bikes Gmail calendar and it is subscribable here. So one question I had for the group, and so Bruce and Anna and I will continue with the updates in the near future. And so the goal is to get it to be up to date and then maintain it up to date moving forward. But in terms of events, I think I'm happy to sort of manage that ongoing and add events and remove them as they come up, put them on the calendar. But I think it's worth a quick discussion of what events do we want to be putting on our website. We've got, you know, a handful of things that have come up in this meeting that, Bruce, you had the agenda at the beginning. You know, something like a bike ride that goes in our area feels like an easy one to sort of promote by putting on the website. But then, you know, where do we draw that line? What's relevant? What's not relevant? I think it's worth a little discussion here.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, I think what's listed under upcoming events, like, this is bike related events and activities in Medford and the surrounding communities. So while I think some of the other further away ones, like, for example, the one that was going to be in Redville, like, is great, maybe is not the audience of people who might be coming to our site to look for it. So I would say stuff in and around Medford.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, like if it's in Medford or any of the adjacent towns or within a 15, 20 minute bike ride of somewhere in Medford.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: So what about, so there's the April 7th meeting at Tufts to discuss all the work being done at that intersection or along Boston Ave. Does that fall into something we care about? I'd probably say no.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: I would say, I think if it's a public meeting that has any impact on roads or right-of-way or that would affect people's experience biking, then yeah. If it's a publicly announced meeting that affects any of the stuff we care about, then that counts.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_01]: This might require more of a website expertise than we have at this current moment. But I also know that there's often ways where you can, on websites, list events and then have different tags so people could click. I want family-friendly activities. I want advocacy-related activities. So if there's a way to figure out how to tag events where people could click to get the ones that they're looking for, that could also be a way to do it, where we can have both of those things or list them in two separate columns or something.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_01]: But I think having them broken out by type of event, because I think some people will come to this just looking for something fun to do with their families, and some people will come wanting to improve infrastructure and whatever. So I think having them split out would be good.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: I think that'll be a good problem to have if we have enough things to put on here.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: I'd like to suggest that for now, we leave it to Chris's discretion with encouragement or discouragement from each of us as we see fit. Like, if you have an idea of something, we can send it to Chris and say, hey, we'd like to see this. And he might say, yeah, it's a good idea.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Yeah, I would say if you guys find stuff, just send it to the internal mailing list. We're all aware of it, and I'll happily add it.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: OK. Excellent. Marks, you're now the website czar. Be warned. No, the event's website czar. I never thought that would happen in my life. The event website czar. Okay. Goals working group. All right. Anna, do you want to present? Yes. We'll kick it off, and then I can take the next section. Do you have it up? Yes. I'll open it up.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_01]: OK. Great. So Chris, Adam, and I met to go over the goals and mission statement to try to kind of take everything that everyone had suggested and narrow it down to a more manageable set of goals that we can do this year. In terms of the mission statement, looking at everyone's feedback, there was kind of a longer version of the mission statement and a shorter version of the mission statement that we came to. And I kind of looked through it and opted to go with the shorter version. I think it just leaves a lot of room for the kinds of things we take on and do, but also still gets at what we're trying to do. And it's just less text in general for people to read. And then they can see through events and other things of what we're doing if they're interested in more information.

that is the mission statement that we're hoping to get approval on. And I think as we go through the goals and the mission statement, we're kind of hoping that we, me, Chris, and Adam all feel comfortable with where these are at. So if people have suggestions for improvement, otherwise, if you are good with it, we are comfortable with them and happy with them.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Yeah, and I'll just add that I think what we'd like to do for the purpose of trying to make this efficient and effective, let's go through all of it and maybe reserve questions for the end so you guys get a picture of sort of comprehensively how we're thinking about this. And then we'll open this up for some more discussion. Does that sound OK?

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: You just want to link to that document into the chat so I can pull it in? Yes. Thank you.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_01]: Okay, great. So to start, we kind of distributed the goals into different buckets of what we thought were kind of the broad themes of what we were looking at. So the one that we thought was most important was developing stronger relationships with people in the city and other relevant state agencies to make sure that we're being involved in conversations and we know what's happening at the city level and we know when there's new painting projects or bike lanes. So our goal is to establish both a shared understanding and process for collaborating with key partners within Medford, inclusive of those three, mayor's office, city council, traffic department. police and with state agencies like MassDOT and DCR so that we can enable having more input on projects and policies that affect cycling in Medford. This one also felt like very, very central, like the most central goal to our mission. So it was our number one goal. And then as kind of a secondary thing in terms of developing strong relationships was establishing better communication channels and relationships with cycling groups in nearby towns and cities. As we saw earlier with the folks from Everett. So that is the first set of goals.

The next one is generally with improving cycling infrastructure in Medford. So we've all been talking about bike racks, and so supporting the installation of 50 bike racks throughout the city. And I believe there's an update later from the February meeting. I know there's more context that goes with it that we can talk about later. And then the second one is completing the repainting of the high street rotaries that we've been discussing ongoingly as well. I don't know when we were switching, Chris, but let me know.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_01]: Okay, great. The next one is implementing policies to improve cycling safety in Medford. So this would be looking at the development of a multi-year plan for the adoption of a safe cycling ordinance in Medford. Then to ensure appropriate resources to support cycling initiatives and build a strong public presence in Medford. We want to maintain an up-to-date website and create a mechanism for community outreach or better community communication and engagement to increase awareness of new policies, infrastructure improvements, optimal bike routes, et cetera. We also want to participate in four tabling events and distribute a certain number of bike helmets or bike lights. We weren't sure what the normal number is, so we were going to leave that open for discussion. Finally, enabling clear, transparent and equitable operations within the right commission. So, creating a document that better describes roles, responsibilities and expectations of new members.

And then this last 1 was 1 that we had kind of waffled back and forth on on if we have. enough information or a good enough understanding of what already exists in order to implement a data collection system and or methodologies to track safety and enforcement data. This was a goal, we just weren't sure kind of what already exists, not wanting to duplicate efforts, what would be really important and whose responsibility it would be to track all this information and then what exactly we would do with it.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: So, thanks Anna. Great job. I think what we want to do is get some consensus around what we've shared. Ideally, vote to approve and formally adopt these as our goals for the year. Add any tweaks, edits. I think we should strive to have completion by dates for all of these and then we should have at least one person or and or a working group for each of these so that we've got somebody who can own it and that's what we should that's what i want to accomplish today um sorry jared i see your comment here i can give you guys access um just let me do that but we can open it up for discussion comments now

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: I'll just comment that this is a great job, guys. I appreciate the effort you put into it and getting it in as good shape as it is. Thanks. Thanks, Bruce.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Yeah, and just organizationally, we sort of grouped it under these sort of initiative categories, each of which are really tied into the mission statement. And I think we found, again, there was a list of, I don't know, 50 or 60 or more goals to begin with that a lot of similar themes kept coming up. And so this felt like the right set of goals that I think we can attain. This is very achievable, I think, for us for the year.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I just want to echo, we really tried to make them attainable, given capacity restraints. And we know that this isn't everyone's full-time job. And so trying to find ways that we can take short stabs at things. And then hopefully, as we establish a better shared understanding in future years, that could snowball into accomplishing some of the other goals that we didn't select from the list.

[Ernie Meunier]: Did you want to enter timelines for the first two goals? It's left blank right now. Would you just? Yeah, maybe.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: So my thoughts on that, guys, I think the sort of establishing a shared understanding, it's intentionally a little bit vague. And quite honestly, it's going to probably be a little bit different timeline for each of the different sort of groups that we've nested within this first goal.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: That seems like just something that we should be doing all the time. There's not an end point to that. There's not the point when we can say, okay, we've established those relationships and now we can check that off the list.

[Ernie Meunier]: Yeah, this isn't a fixed deliverable, so just delete the sentence there, complete by.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Yeah, I mean, I would say that I think there are. there are aspects of this that have more deliverables. And that's fair to say, like the way it's written, we could say this is an ongoing activity. I think there are elements of this that I think we would want to have a deliverable, for example, like the sort of shared processes. And if we talk about specific groups, and I think the one thing that pains us a little bit is we're always kind of having to chase down, like, hey, we found out this project's happening. Like, how do we get a seat at the table? And can we get to a point where that is sort of protocolized so that we are included as part of the process rather than us having to go find that person? And so that's a little bit more of a specific deliverable. And maybe that could be a sub-task of this that has a specific deliverable attached to it. I think that's fine. I mean, I think the way we look at this is at the end of the year, we look at this list of goals and we feel like we've hit them. and we're happy with the progress we've made.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. Another intention we had was that for each of these, whatever the working group is or the person owning the specific goal, they would move forward after we approve the goals with creating some of those subtasks Chris is talking about of like, what does establish a shared understanding look like? How would we say, oh yeah, we did that. So I think for each goal, we want to establish like sub tasks that need to get done that are a lot more specific.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: I think that goal has several deliverables, actually one for each of the offices that we're trying to communicate. It's like, how do we communicate with the mayor's office? Who do we contact? What's the number? Blah, blah, blah. How do we communicate with City Council?

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_01]: Yes, and exactly. That's why they're intentionally a little bit vague, so that the working group that is assigned to this or the individual assigned to this can put those together and then maybe come back at the next commission meeting or a future commission meeting with, these are the deliverables we think fit this goal so that we can achieve it.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: I'd like to suggest that we try to get the goals and sub goals of number one done by the mid-year. Is that too aggressive?

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: Can you, I'm sorry, can you share or zoom out so we can see a little bit more of it or make the document public or something? Just because we can only see what's on the screen right now. Right. And I know that there's like another page. Yes, I'm not sure if.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, I did. But I think that Chris was busy. Can we go back to 90? I can't read it.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I was going to say, if I zoom anymore, I'm not sure people will be able to read it. But I think that's a good point so that we can go through all of them so everyone can kind of see them.

[Jared Powell]: You can also undo the print layout. That might help a little bit. Under view, uncheck print layout.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: I think I probably find myself now in Ernie's camp of I think the goal number one is maybe we just refrain from having a, I think it's an ongoing or the subgroup working group owners of that can define the goals and maybe bring it to the next group meeting and say, here's the sort of specific deliverables we're hoping to achieve. I tend to agree, Bruce, that end of the year seems like too far off to make some movement on some of this.

but it might depend a little bit on each one of those. Some might be harder than others to hit by mid-year. I'd probably say for the second one, though, that the establishing communication channels and sort of step one of that was we just happened to reach out to Everett and that's kind of one of the local groups. That seems very achievable by mid-year, right? Just making contact, having an established communication channel, email address, contact person. Do we want to, is this simply us deciding that reaching out is the only thing that we need to do, or do we need to have some sort of two-way communication? To me, the value is having a history of speaking to people, at least a name, and ideally, 1 or 2 conversations to sort of establish an open communication channel that we can then use. When something comes up that we want to leverage the expertise of our neighbors, or sort of pull in together this kind of coalition of groups in the area so that we become more powerful by having a larger community to tap into.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: I think the sub-goal of this is that we would end up being top of mind to the groups or to the people in steps one and two here, so that when something comes up, they think, oh, I should contact so-and-so at the bike commission to let them know what's going on, right? That would be my goal, ideally, that someone in the mayor's office would say, oh, this came up, contact these folks or the police or whatever, that kind of thing. That might be a bike dream, but I think that would be the ideal of what we are trying to do here.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: I think that would be true, too, with with any of those committees and surrounding. You know, if somebody in Arlington thinks, oh, we've got a public meeting about a bike lane that's in Arlington, but it's near Medford, we should contact those people in Medford. Yep. Yep.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Yep. Share best practices, you know, like to being able to tap into someone like Paul Morgan, who's run a bunch of bike rides. Hey, we're trying to plan a bike ride. Can we get your help on how to do this? I think there's just so many ways that those relationships can support us down the road.

[Jared Powell]: Can I ask a, all right, I'm going to ask a clarifying question about 0.1, uh, establish a shared understanding. A shared understanding of what exactly? I can't tell within that goal. The sentence seems like establish processes for collaborating with key parties is clear to me. What am I missing?

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_01]: I think the shared understanding from what I recall in our discussion refers to like them understanding what the role of the commission is, like people within the city knowing we exist and what our role is, and then the processes for how we engage together. So maybe shared understanding is like us understanding what they do and them understanding what we do in our role.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Yeah, I guess I was thinking like it's a shared understanding of collaboration, a shared understanding and processes for collaboration. But I think, I mean, that's true also.

[Ernie Meunier]: It grammatically gets difficult the way you should reset the sentence chain.

[Jared Powell]: I think I get what you're saying. It just wasn't clear to me in reading it.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Yeah, yeah. And certainly, we're happy to tweak this to make it more clear. I think the intent is we want to have both sides understand it. There's a process, and we both understand how it works to ensure that we are involved in the relevant happenings in the city. And I think to Anna's point, some of that, there's a sort of understanding of what we do and what we're here for and how we can help for each of these groups in the city. And then I think on our side, at least for me, there's an opacity over like, you know, Todd's group in the engineering, like, how does that work? And how are we, How can we be helpful in supporting what Todd's doing as well? Because I know they're doing a lot of great work over there. So there's sort of an understanding how each other is working and how we can work together.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_01]: Are there any major goals people have had either now or in the past that they feel like are not within here that they feel really strongly about? Or do people feel like these cover a lot of things that we've been talking about and would like to get done?

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: I would say with the one that's improved cycling infrastructure in Medford, those those two bullet points under it are are important things but those are sort of like those are sort of very granular projects and i wonder if we want just some more top line um, a more top line, bigger picture thing here. The, you know, the, the high street rotaries is something that's just kind of happened. I mean, and this is coming back to those, that first one is to make sure that we have the lines of communication. So things like that don't just happen. Um, but a lot of the, a lot of the really specific stuff, it kind of, it comes up when it comes up. Um, and so it seems like if we're putting together a top line, a more top line document than we want, um, then we want something that's more big picture or broad.

[Ernie Meunier]: Anna, the elephant in my room is to connect those two rotaries. And I've had a proposal for several years now to have a bike lane connecting West Medford Square with that rotary, changing the way the parking works. So I think that the big picture there is, yeah, to get the rotaries to work. and then to continue to have all of Route 60 be a proper thruway with bike lanes. So yeah, I think that the infrastructure needs to relate to the master plan and then specific projects we want to highlight there. And my pet one is High Street, getting that to work between the roadways.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so just for some context on why we chose these and why there's not some of the other many wonderful and important projects is a we wanted the projects to be stuff that we really believe that we could get done in the next year. And, you know, Ernie, you've been advocating for this one for multiple years. So we wanted them to be things that we thought would actually get done based on information we had. Be a lot of the goals that we ended up discussing discussing related back to number one, our first goal, which is established a shared process for collaborating with people within the city and with state agencies.

A, to be more proactive and less reactive, but also B, we felt like there was a lot of things that it was hard to make progress on the bike plan or hard to do a lot of the things that we want to do if we don't know who we're working with in the city, since we don't have that power to do it ourselves. And we need those relationships in order to get a lot of the other projects done. So that's why we kept going back and being like, well, that one feels like we really need to accomplish goal number one before we can make real progress on some of these other really important things. And like we had discussed, maybe Doing more of the big master plan, but a lot of it went back to, we don't feel like we have the relationships to make progress on all of our various goals.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Daniel, you want to jump in? Well, two things. One, we may need to either wrap up the discussion on this or defer a few other points. Second thing I just wanted to note about this is, A, I think this is amazing. Really nice job. um my one little pet peeve with like complete the repainting of high street rotaries is that it does require action by a non-city entity and i just question if it's good to tie our goal to that versus like tie our goal to maybe getting either like a future promise from mass.dcr this is like getting to the point where there's an agreement on a design versus the actual implementation of the design just because that does feel like that's outside of our hands so that's the only thing that I wanted to state there but also I don't want to like belabor the point I know we've discussed this in a few ways and I'm in agreement with everything that's been said. So also just a little bit of a time check here. Yeah, so let me comment on kind of all the aspects. I think what I would suggest then is, you know, if we're at least largely aligned on the goals and if we want to continue a little bit of wordsmithing and tweaking offline over the next month, I think that's fine. But I'd like us to at least assign working groups or individual owners for each goal. I think that we can conclude the section. In terms of the High Street Rotary specifically, jumping ahead a little bit, not to spoil the surprise, but Bruce has made some headway and we actually sent a letter to DCR last week. And so I see that as being achievable, that the repainting could be done this year. Happy to take the pressure off a little bit. I also tend to like the goal being a little bit aspirational. And the goal is to like, hey, let's let's put it maybe a little bit, you know, set the bar a little bit high, even if it's a bit of a question, like, let's do our best to get there.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: Regarding the bike racks, I am happy to take that on, and I have an item relating to that, too.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: In that case, while I can't officially make motions here, I would say, would it make sense for us to, now that we have these, we can take some time before the next meeting to come back, figure out which ones we might want to be on a working group for. And then we can sort of divvy those up and create official working groups during the April meeting or possibly another meeting that we could schedule for a more focused session on this in the next like two weeks or so.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Yeah, I think I'm fine with that. I think. just because when we push things off a month, we push off work on it for a month. What I would say is I'm personally pretty interested in number two. And so what I would be happy to do this alongside anyone else who's interested as well. I'd like to start reaching out to some of the other groups in the area and just establishing some of those connections. We've kind of got that bridge with Everett already. And so in the spirit of trying to make some progress in some of these, we can-

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_01]: I was going to suggest, is it possible that if anyone's like, I know I want to work on that right now, that we can assign them to that to begin work on it. And if anybody else wants to join them, they can start. And if not everyone else, if you're not sure, you can think on it for a month. It's like, we can.

[Ernie Meunier]: Yeah, let me pipe in here. I'll continue to work on helmets and bike lights and take that on as I won't be here two weeks from now and don't need to wait another month in order to make that decision. But I want to report therein for a couple of minutes tonight as there's some news there. But I'll wait till we're through.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Thanks, Ernie. Ernie, I would just ask if you want to take take ownership of kind of rewording that goal how you see fit and what you think is achievable in terms of numbers and quantities of whatever you want to however you want to phrase that. Oh sure of course. Thank you.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_01]: Okay anyone else who wants to grab one now or if not everyone can wait.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: I think also that Daniel, you and I had talked to the police department and we should try to get, is there one on here about, yeah, for discussion, under the for discussion, the data collection system, or I think this is something that we should come back to the, we should get back together with the police department and get some input from them and get some, just at least get some acknowledgement from them that this is a thing that is needed.

And maybe this is part of the building relationships too. But I think we need to circle back to that with them.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: I'll throw my name in the ring for number one too. I think there's enough work to go around there that we'll need at least a working group

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I imagine that one would be a big working group.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: I actually was just about to say, it might make more sense to move me from High Streets to that one, just because I do have that ongoing... I think we can put Bruce and I for the High Street Rotary since... Yeah, you two... Yeah, that's fair. I don't think it was too much of a lift there and we're already kind of sailing along. All right, that makes more sense.

[Ernie Meunier]: Can I ask that maybe we, I'm thinking what you're saying, Ana, about just this being for this year or the fiscal year and not going beyond that. But I'd like there to be some attention given to fundraising or increasing our budget. And I'll address that later. But I wonder if that might not be something that we should take on. Looking at patrons, patrons, et cetera.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_01]: We had thought about that, Ernie, because I know you mentioned that before and had thought maybe it could go as a sub task under the bike helmet, bike light one as like a sub goal to be able to ensure that goal. So think about it on that front.

[Ernie Meunier]: And also, as you were talking about before, that Emily was bringing up historically, scholarships for attendance to national meetings, et cetera.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: You know that we did actually just ask the city for more money and we're finding out if they will approve it.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: But I'm not sure that like asking the city for more money is a goal for the, until like this time next year, because we already did that.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: I think it's gotta be, it's nested under what is the money for. And so the goal is to something else that requires money. But I think if there's something there, we certainly could justify pushing for it.

[Ernie Meunier]: Well, am I hearing that Our allotment has been frozen at $2,200 for next year.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: We're hoping it goes up from 1,500 to 2,200 and we'll find out.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: And that's the amount that the city offers us that has nothing to do with whatever else is fundraised.

[Ernie Meunier]: No, no, I understand that. Okay. Well, when I talk about helmets in a minute or two or five or 10 or whatever it is, this will become a little clearer as to how muddy these waters are.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: Okay. I suggest that because it's 847 and we need to do that and there's an, I have another pressing thing about bike racks that is fairly time sensitive.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: I think we can probably leave it here and pick it up next time.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: What are the assignments that we came up with? I thought I heard three.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Yeah. If you want, we can send those to you afterwards, Bruce. Yeah, sure. It's also in that document. Yeah, we'll get that doc over to you.

[Jared Powell]: I'll put my name next to the clear equitable operations. I think I came up with that long list of things that, Daniel, I think you put into a slide deck a while back anyway. So I feel like a lot of that's kind of run of mind.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: Okay. Mr. River rotary. We finally got a call back from Dan Lynch at good conversation. I put together a letter. Including the sketches that Chris put together. And included Christopher talking Scott Smith from Arlington. And myself and Chris on the letter, and we're now waiting for a response. So sometime this week. I would probably bug Dan again and say, hey, what's going on? What are we doing? So I think we just kind of have to keep being a thorn in his side about it until something actually happens. He seems like he's willing to have something happen, but needs to be prodded. So that's where it is.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Thank you for that. All right, infrastructure updates. I'm not going to run through all of Todd's. I would just say we have a lot of things going on. I move to defer this to the next meeting. Yeah, we can defer that. Is there anything that requires input or action in the next month of that list? Not of that list, but Emily's list or Emily's bike racks update does. So I'm going to say that we move on to bike racks.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: So, the update with bike racks is that DPW currently has now in their possession 25 bike racks. They say they will have more coming later in the year. Some of this is what the city has agreed to pay for. Some of this is grant funded. It is the most efficient for the crews if they can install them in a batch of them, a bunch in the same area. rather than like scattered piecemeal around the city. So Todd wanted somebody from our group to come along and help mark out the spaces. And this all happened very fast and on short notice to where as of 2 o'clock, I was in the middle of answering his email, and as of 2.05, I was biking down the street to meet up with him. We marked out spaces for 10 bike racks in Medford Square. I have added those in a separate layer to the map of bike rack location requests. Um, this takes care of a lot of places that we want them in Medford Square. Um, there are a lot of, um, a lot of kind of restrictions, a lot of places where you can't put it next to the handicapped parking spaces. And ideally, the parking spaces are mapped, are plotted out, then putting it in the middle between two spaces is less likely to put it in front of somebody.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: The short version is, there are 15 more bike racks that need spots marked for them. Todd is going to be away on vacation next week. He gave me the spray paint and his template. And I can go and mark out those 15 spots and send him a list of the locations. He suggests that we pick 2 or 3 neighborhoods that we want them in. And so I figured that since we had this meeting tonight. Before I just unilaterally decide where those 15 will go, I would like to get the group's approval on which general vicinity they should go in. My suggestion is West Medford Square, the Boston Ave near Winthrop Street at Tufts, and then either like Salem Street on the east side of the Rotary or Main Street.

between the square and the Somerville line. So I'm thinking if we have those three general areas, we can put five in each of those. And sometime in the next week or two, I can go out and pick five likely looking spaces in each of those areas and mark them. We could also just do two of those and put like seven in one and eight in the other, something like that, which would be, More convenient, but not as good coverage. So that's what I would like a vote on.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: Not the individual locations, just the general neighborhoods. If it's just West Medford and Boston Ave, or if it's West Medford, Boston Ave, and one other spot, and if that's one other spot is either Salem Street or Main Street. Um, and this is just where do we think it's a higher priority?

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: We have a quick synopsis of how many are in each of those spots already.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: Okay. I mean, I mean, like, does West Bedford square have 2 or 3 or 0?

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: I can also scope out West Medford. Even though I live right here and more bike racks is welcome, I would say we should try to do a little bit of geographic distribution and not bias at all to the sort of west side of 93 and we should definitely get some on the other side of town as well. My 1 vote is for areas that would have commercial foot traffic. I think that's probably 1 of the more obvious uses of bike routes.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: And that's really and that's really all of these are all of these are businesses that have storefronts. My thinking is, on the one hand, we know that there are more people biking already through West Medford or through the Boston Ave corridor is kind of an obvious one, because there's a lot of bike traffic there and really not a lot of bike racks. Places like Main Street, I think a lot of cyclists tend to work fairly hard to avoid biking there, so they're not currently biking there. But on the other hand, if you do want to go to any of those businesses, there is not anything good to lock your bike to. So it's maybe slightly more aspirational, but you should also feel welcome to ride your bike to any of those places. And I think Salem Street is a little bit similar.

[Jared Powell]: Yeah, and near where bike racks, or not bike racks, bike lanes exist too, right? Because we know there will be bike traffic there.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: I will say I did see a SQL fix request near my house. Someone asked to put a bike rack in front of Pikaichi, Robin, on Boston Ave. So if there's an extra one.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, I mean, I actually have seen a lot of times like people's bikes piled up and locked to each other in front of PIK-IG. So that particular spot was kind of on my mental list anyway.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: Can we put four in each neighborhood? Four or four mostly in each neighborhood?

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: We could. I mean, basically, it's most efficient for the crews that are installing them if it's one batch. And we have, this is not our only bite of this apple this year. There are other, there will be more.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: You've got 60, right? 65 this year or something like that?

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: Would you say that the Tufts area, the Winthrop-Boston Avenue area is mostly frequented by pedestrians from Tufts? as opposed to cyclists?

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: I've biked in a lot, and I never have anywhere to lock my bike, so. Yeah, OK. Yeah, there's a lot of people biking up and down there and locking their bikes up there. When we used to do the bike counts, that was a heavy trafficked route. There also are a lot of restaurants and cafes and pizza places and stuff, and it's definitely not only Tufts traffic.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: So I suggest we, of the four places you've described, we select the one that we think is probably least effective for this go around and then go and just go with it.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: I'm going to retract my former statement and say, maybe you just start with the two areas you talked about, West Medford and Boston Ave, and see how many you use up by going there. Let's try to be cost-efficient too. If we're going to get the rest of them later this year, then we can go to another neighborhood in a few months. I don't think that's going to matter.

[Jared Powell]: I'm going to register disagreement with that because I think that it sets a really bad message if we focus on the wealthiest neighborhood in the city. For that very specific reason, we should not prioritize West Medford.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Then maybe we do the reverse, like go over to Salem City and just plug as many as you can over there. And then if you've got some left over, then come to West Medford and just try to concentrate them together.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: Or a little of both. Well, we did Medford Square today.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: Good to know. Thank you. We marked out 10 in Medford Square today.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, either 5 in 3 locations or 7 or 8 in 2 locations.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: But I think we should drop West Medford because there's also a bike rack in the parking lot. It is one of the comb bike racks. It's not ideal, but if we want to, as Jerry suggested, prioritize some of the less wealthy parts of Medford, that would be a good one. And then we can add to it in the next go round.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: So do we want to do Salem and Maine or Salem and like Boston Ave just because Boston Ave is.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: is high demand and they're- Well, I thought we were going to do five in each and that gave us three locations. Did I misunderstand that?

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: We can do five in each of three locations, yeah. Or we can do seven in two locations or whatever. Let's do five in the three.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Five in three. Just to confirm, so we've got this all. Five at the Boston Ave, Winthrop Street intersection area, five at Salem, and five along Main Street. Yeah. Okay.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: So that's what we, that's what this theoretical motion slash vote would be for.

[Secretary Bruce Kulik]: Would anyone like to raise that before, before we do that? I would like to suggest that we also allow Emily discretion to modify that.

[SPEAKER_07]: If it makes sense. Like, if you could only put for somewhere. But, you know, go to another place. Do we need to vote on this?

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: I mean, I don't think we need to, but I would like to, and just, I feel better going out by myself with a can of spray paint if I'm not making a unilateral decision about it, that's all.

[Vice Chair Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, but your spray paint doesn't tell DPW employees where to drill holes in the sidewalk.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Seconded. All right, all in favor? Harmon Zuckerman, PB – he, him, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, Ernie, can you give a quick bike light update? It's going to have more item that we do need to do. I want to save a minute for after this.

[Ernie Meunier]: So sure, sure, sure. Well, let's see before the news about the bank. Damn, what was the other item? Oh, so we have bike lights that were purchased last year for the distribution this spring. I started packing some. I will try to get that done. I'll be really jammed for the next few weeks, but I'm going to try to squeeze that in and have a lot more free time when I get back in late April to sort of finish the distribution of the schools.

The supplier is still around. As a matter of fact, they emailed me yesterday and said, gee, do you need any more lights? And you know, we won't until the fall at the earliest. Funding is the issue. So before I talk about helmets very briefly, as you know, Brookline Bank has been swallowed up by Beacon Bank. And I think Brookline, or maybe they're in Boston,

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Can we get to the request specifically? Well, I'm not sure. Do you have a request or any specific update items?

[Ernie Meunier]: Yeah. The update item is that our contact at Brookline Bank did not go to Beacon. Beacon Bank has their own marketing department whose a leader we don't know yet, nor does the staff at Brookline. So I have to do some digging to see if we can get a repeat, continued funding at the $500 level. that we've been used to for several years, because Peter Rovetto no longer works for that group. So I have to start over again. I don't know if that means I have to pull out the Dog and Pony show and pitch it again, or just ask them to roll it over. Part B about the helmets. Alicia was supposed to have placed an initial order subsequent to our agreement in the working group for 50 helmets and then told me that she didn't want to do it until they were paid for and was waiting for funding somehow. I don't quite know how that process works, except to say to her, buy the helmets, that's what we need the money for. So when I hear that the budget is, our allotment is stretched for an item like a scholarship in effect or travel expenses for something, I wonder where's the big picture here? Why aren't we having a much more comprehensive and concerted effort to get the city to come up with several thousand dollars for us each year. Helmets are going to average 10 bucks a piece. We need thousands of dollars, not just 500 here or 700 here, et cetera. So that's for discussion next month. And so in the meantime, I will at least try to get our loss covered by trying to get it back. or find other patrons who might want to help us out. So I think it's important for us to talk about how we fund ourselves. If the city's not gonna help or be really gingerly and almost quid pro quo about it, then we have to look for some outside funding, which is a little odd because we're asking people to fund the city. So it's not an easy ask in a way, but I'll just leave it there. And I'll, of course, have some news at next meeting. Thanks. All right.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Anna, do you? Sorry, I saved a little bit of time for you.

[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_01]: Yes, hi. Sorry, I just wanted to let everyone know that the April meeting is unfortunately going to be my last meeting on the commission. I'm moving out of state to go to law school in the fall, and I'll be moving in early June. So I'm very sad about it, because I really love the commission and all the stuff we're working on and all the progress we're making. But I will miss you all very much, but I'll see you one more time in April.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: And thank you very much for all of the work you've done, Anna. It really has been helpful.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: I'm happy for us to stay on a little bit later, but I know that some people may want to jump off. So, uh. Seconded all in favor. Okay, meeting adjourned. And now if we want to talk about law school, we can, but I also will let everyone know.

[Ernie Meunier]: Thanks, everyone. Congratulations to you. Did you have another minute? You said you wanted another minute? That was for Anna. Oh, that was for Anna.

[Daniel Nuzzo-Mueller]: Yeah. Yeah. I wanted to make sure that she had the opportunity because I know everyone Feels the good work that she's put into the commission. Yeah. So thank you again, really from the bottom of all of our hearts, or at least mine. I can't speak for everyone. Well, thank you.

Bruce Kulik total time: 15.28 minutes total words: 2660