[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Excellent. Yeah, I said, let's dive in and we got quorum. We can at least handle some of the initial. We have for housekeeping.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, apparently getting quorum is getting easier and easier.
[Ernie Meunier]: Yeah, I was going to ask what's the magic number now.
[Bruce Kulik]: Just for 3, we have 5 members. Oh, which we will discuss later in the meeting.
[Ernie Meunier]: Yeah, yeah, indeed. Okay.
[Bruce Kulik]: All right, Mr. Chair, let's roll.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: All right, I hereby kick off the September 23rd edition of the Medford Bicycle Commission Advisory Meeting. Secretary, can we call roll?
[Bruce Kulik]: Chris Stivers, chair. Present. Emily O'Brien, vice chair.
[Emily O'Brien]: Here.
[Bruce Kulik]: Bruce Kulik, secretary, present. Jared Powell, absent. Ernie Minear, here. We have a quorum and may proceed.
[Unidentified]: All right.
[Bruce Kulik]: We appear to have no guests.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Chris, what's going on? Sorry, are you going to go through the agenda or am I? Some of my stuff is still rebooting, so just give me one sec to pull up your email.
[Emily O'Brien]: I have the agenda pulled up if that's helpful. I think I do as well. Approving the minutes in any case.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah. While we're waiting for you to come up, I will make the comment that we did not have a quorum for the August meeting, so the minutes are not formal. I have listed them as notes.
[Jared Powell]: Here we go.
[Bruce Kulik]: Oh, which I just realized I do not have a share for that. Hold on. I think we'll add that into our agenda.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: All right.
[Emily O'Brien]: I think we just got Jared and we just got a guest.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: I see Simon joining. Welcome, Simon.
[Bruce Kulik]: Hey, Ope. I'm going to be on mute and probably drop out for like part of this call, but yeah, because I'm down at Suffolk.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: No worries. Always good to have you on. Hey, Jared. All right. Yeah, so let's, so should we do the minutes for July 1st then, Bruce? Yes. All right, do I hear a motion to approve the minutes for July now that we have quorum finally?
[Emily O'Brien]: Seconded.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: All right, all in favor of approving the minutes for July. Aye. Aye. Aye. All right.
[Jared Powell]: Hey folks, sorry I'm late, I'm here.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Hey, hearing no opposing votes, the ayes have it, motion passes. Minutes for July approved.
[Bruce Kulik]: And basically, I've just added the link in, which I will add to chat as well. So we have it if anyone's interested, since they are not formal minutes, we do not need to vote on them. There we go. And basically, that's it. Okay, we talked about a few things, but didn't do any voting and moved almost all the items that were not just kind of informational into this meeting.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Right Zachary welcome. Remind remind us, do you prefer Zachary, Zach, something else?
[SPEAKER_05]: They're both fine.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: All right.
[Emily O'Brien]: The parentheses in your name are confusing. Z?
[SPEAKER_05]: Sorry, yeah. Z is fine. Zachary is fine. Zach is fine. They're all my name. Thanks for joining.
[Bruce Kulik]: Announcements? Yeah, I've listed several, and maybe others have others. A reminder that the Office of Energy and Transformation is having a meeting of some sort, and if I remember to go, I will. I don't really know what it's about, but I'll go take a look at it to see what they're doing. We were invited informally, and then I can report back if I actually go. Other people, of course, are welcome to attend as well. The information is in the link. The next thing is, I just heard back earlier today from Mark. Whose last name I forget, unfortunately, he is actually. What is his name? Was it Hoffman? That's correct. Thank you. He actually has a date for this movie at the region in Arlington, October 11th at 730. Zachary Yarrow, that would be our Zachary Yarrow, is helping organize a ride. And there's a link here, so if anyone wants to attend, you can do that. And I suppose we could also publicize that on our normal channels as well. And Zachary, do you want to tell us anything about it?
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I can drop the ride event link in the chat also. Excuse me. Unfortunately, just like due to volunteer bandwidth, so the ride that I've organized is kind of heading north from uh, Roslindale up through Boston, Brookline, and Cambridge into Arlington. Um, I did reach out to, uh, Malden Safe Streets to see if anyone there, uh, was interested in doing some sort of route through, um, kind of north of, uh, where that other ride is through Malden, Everett, Somerville, Medford. Um, I haven't heard back. Um, I know, you know, the bike advocacy community has a lot else on our plates so that might not happen but if folks feel like heading out just to ride back in with a bunch of folks that's effectively what I'll be doing just because it's nice to have an opportunity to ride with the community and I end off pretty close to home.
[Bruce Kulik]: I personally probably will not go all the way down to Roslindale but is your route published on that link?
[SPEAKER_05]: Yep. There's a link to the route and there are points along the way about every 15 minutes for people to join in. Oh, cool. So if you just want to ride it out to Cambridge and then you know, what bridge you're coming across. Um, coming over the, uh, BU bridge after stopping in Alston.
[Bruce Kulik]: So, okay, cool. I'll keep that in mind and see what I can do myself.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, there's a ride with GPS link on the event page as well.
[Ernie Meunier]: Was there a link here to a cinematic event? This is about a movie?
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, the endpoint is the Regent Theater in Arlington. And the event, the first link on the event page is to the movie tickets page, which I can also drop in the Zoom chat.
[Ernie Meunier]: Is the movie related to bicycling? Yes.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yes, Mark gave us a presentation. I know 2 or 3 months ago about it and. We decided that we would publicize any ride that's going on, but because it's basically a private endeavor, we would make a note of it, but not really publicize it. That's why we're just mentioning it and providing some links, but it's up to other people to decide what to do. It's apparently about someone who is a little bit down and out and has somehow used their bicycle to recover their life in some fashion. That's what I recall from his description.
[SPEAKER_05]: And also we're, we're not going to be like checking. Do you have a movie ticket? If you just want to join us, cause you feel like joining a group ride from, from Brookline to Arlington, that that's totally fine. The, the ride itself is not a paid event, even though the movie screening obviously is.
[Bruce Kulik]: All right, so that's that for that. I also got an email from the Medford High School Eco League Club that would like to do some collaboration. And in particular, they asked if we had two things. One is someone who might speak to their organization about riding safely in Medford. I am happy to do so during the day, during the school day. So most people, maybe Ernie, are you interested in it as well?
[Emily O'Brien]: I'd be able to if you oh, you would. Okay.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll work with the organizer then and figure out what they want to kind of set something up and then just send a message back out to everybody about what they want. And we can figure out how to coordinate that. The other thing is that they wanted to run some contests internally, and were hoping to get some sort of prizes. I mentioned that we provide bicycle lights to people who need them, and that primarily we give them to kids and young adults, but we've been known to give them to others. And I think that's something we ought to discuss whether we think that's a good use of those lights at all or not. And yeah, that's basically the question. So I don't know, Ernie, what's your thought on that?
[Ernie Meunier]: Did you ask me? I didn't hear. Yeah. Yeah. Well, are you talking about high school kids?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[Ernie Meunier]: OK, when we first started this four years ago, we decided that high schoolers were incorrigible and wouldn't do anything that we suggested. And there are financial reasons for that too. but that the emphasis was to educate young children, get them used to riding helmets, riding bikes, using helmets, and being safely lit at night. And that's sort of where it was left. So I've not included the high school in the distribution of bike-like kits as an example. This particular year, I got caught, and I'll be reporting that, got caught short uh in inventory because of miscellaneous events so there's only about a dozen lights left until you know we can get some more maybe turn of the year in january nonetheless you know to throw three or four at them is Useful gesture and maybe you know, it's a seed planted, but no, I don't have 20 or 30 Okay, that might be that might be the number they're looking for So I
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: two and a half hits that Daniel handed off before he left leftover from something.
[Ernie Meunier]: Yes, there are several or maybe a dozen sprinkled around various members' leftover supplies, but not a lot.
[Bruce Kulik]: I'm gonna suggest that we authorize, say, four to a half dozen, four to six, that we can use if it makes sense that that would be a useful incentive for their group.
[Emily O'Brien]: Are they looking for, like, you know, a slightly bigger prize for, is this like a contest thing or is this like a participation kind of prize? It's a contest thing. Does everybody get one or is there like a big prize?
[Bruce Kulik]: No, I think it's a contest type thing and I haven't had a chance to actually speak with them. I just got this out of an email and we'll get more information, but I didn't want to. I didn't want to offer.
[Emily O'Brien]: I didn't want to offer without getting approval from the group first, so my seems like if they're looking for some somewhat bigger prize. We could. I mean, we could buy something that would be appropriate like a lock or a. Yeah, maybe, you know, we could make that kind of a contribution.
[Bruce Kulik]: How about if we just approve, you know, taking up to a half dozen lights if that's what they want. And then I'll come back with a report on what else they're looking at. So, I put that in the form of a motion to allow, to allocate up to a half dozen lights to the Medford High Equal League Club.
[Ernie Meunier]: And a reminder that it's not insubstantial in that if they try to source equivalent supply in a retail bike shop, they're going to pay $40 for our $4 kit. So it's not just
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, I mean, I know that, but I also know that, like, I've heard from other parents that have kids in this public schools that they know they've been getting them various places. So, it's not, it's like, they have seen them around, even if they're in high school now. They were not always in high school and they may have seen them around as a free kit by now.
[Ernie Meunier]: Well, you'd be soon dying your hair Emily. Come on.
[Emily O'Brien]: I'm not going to go there.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Let's let's vote on the motion all in favor. All right. All in favor. So, I have it motion passes.
[Bruce Kulik]: Then finally, the next thing is I was approached by a reporter by the name of Crystal Yorkman, Yormick, sorry, with Got to Know Medford, and she is interested in doing an article on the South Medford Connector and just wanted to talk to us about it. So I volunteered to speak with her, and I've been in touch with her on email and will continue to do so. As spokesperson for the group, basically, that's it. We'll see where that goes.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Bruce, I don't know that we need to do any motions here, but you should feel free to run with it, right? Yeah. Okay. Shall we proceed to goals? Any other announcements? Anyone else?
[Jared Powell]: I've got one. Yeah. Yeah. So quick thing, uh, but I just saw on the streets blog today that mass dots. Went ahead and approved the money to pay for that bridge that goes across from, uh, it goes across the mystic river there by the encore. So the money has been approved. It's $79 million contract should take about three years.
[Emily O'Brien]: Oh, that's great.
[Jared Powell]: Excellent. I'll put the link in the, in the chat. Any idea when stuck in the ground? It doesn't say that just they voted unanimously to do it. It's like 80Million dollars, more or less, and they threw in some contingency money to expecting the cost to go up. So. Looks real that is excellent. Great.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: On the agenda later is a couple other local project updates. I'll share. But if there's no other announcements, we can move on to goals. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I'm going to share then. Oh, I need to Dennis or whoever's in Dennis's position. Can you turn on sharing?
[Ernie Meunier]: Well, it looks like this young boy. Okay.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: I'm good now actually. Thank you. All righty. Guys, let me know when you can see this.
[Unidentified]: Yep.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: All right, great. So this is this is the goals we formalized and approved 3 months ago now, and I just wanted us to do a quick status check on where things are at and and what other next steps we want to have. So, I say it kind of open forum. I'm going to go through this, but feel free to jump in questions comments. Sound good. Yeah. Zach, you too. Right. All right. So, the 1st set of goals here about developing relationships in the city and you guys my context on this to coming in just about a year ago is trying to for me to map out and understand this a bit better. So, the last few months. I've been reaching out met with Todd, who is very helpful in helping me understand sort of his unique role in the city. And you guys who've been part of the commission for a while, probably understand this, but kind of, I think it's useful. So the quick. overview my understanding of Todd's position is he's basically a department of one right with zero budget and the challenge that he faces is he's trying to do a lot with very little resources but he really is a great advocate and is trying to sneak in cycling and pedestrian friendly projects wherever he can and he's juggling all sorts of different factors in terms of where he can try to pull funds where there is no dedicated budget I mean there's not even a budget for like street signs So, a lot of it comes from grant funding and it's sort of getting it when when and where he can. He did mention and I think it's something for us to continue to think about as we look towards other places that we want to advocate for projects. Projects can be sort of pushed from the community. And so if we feel strongly that, hey, we really need to see change here, then that may be a force for helping drive priorities in the city. He did specifically mention, I think I talked about this last time, but Lawrence Road. is probably a really good opportunity. It sounds like there's some interest from maybe Medford High to create a sort of bike boulevard, bike lanes on Lawrence Road because it helps facilitate access, kids trying to get to school that way. So I think this is a topic, I don't know if we want to go through it tonight, but kind of revisiting this idea of where do we want to prioritize additional infrastructure improvements beyond the sort of wherever Todd can kind of fit things in. Um, just a couple other comments in terms of just trying to forge some connections with local area groups. I did meet with Carla Alexander at my river water said water said association. They're doing a lot of good work. They're really plugged in in terms of really trying to develop the full network along the green ways. And so I think they probably have that covered in terms of that advocacy work. And, you know, good folks to know, you know, they're certainly advocates for cycling in all the surrounding communities. And I got plugged in with Amber, who I think, you know, Bruce at DCR trails and Gerald as well. And so they, you know, basically everyone just kind of ping them to say, keep us posted of projects in the area. And again, a couple updates on things that are happening that we'll keep our eyes on for for us to review and comment on projects already in the works.
[Emily O'Brien]: Those are things too that I think that the folks at Mystic River Watershed Association, they are pretty on the ball and they know a lot, but they don't necessarily have the wheels on the ground knowledge of specific locations that we do. That's right. And so it's really worth kind of keeping an ear to the ground about that. They were working on a kind of a signage project and they had a public workshop and they had the maps all spread out on the table for people to put sticky notes about like what kinds of signage are required. And most of these places are places where, you know, they can put the signage on pathways and stuff. And it certainly needs to be on pathways, but ultimately a lot of those path access points need to be signed from the nearby major streets. And that needs to happen in coordination with the city and possibly even with MassDOT in some places. It's more than just. It's not just that the signs need to be on the path. They also need to be on the adjoining streets to get to this path. And so it is kind of a. It's maybe worth keeping in touch with them to say. Which are the places that people have pointed to on that map that are not within your purview and how can we help work with those other agencies? to get this to happen in the other places that they're needed.
[Bruce Kulik]: It's interesting that you mentioned that about stuff that's not within their purview because all their designs do tend to be very, I want to say almost pedestrian-centric or for lack of a better term, I'll call it family-oriented bicycling-centric. For example, they did put together a very well-planned corridor right along the Mystic Valley Parkway from the rotaries up to Winchester, but they totally dismissed the notion that a lot of cyclists are very comfortable riding on Mystic Valley Parkway as it is right now. And you see a lot of recreational and transportational cyclists, and every time I'm on that road, either as a cyclist or a motorist, I invariably see three or four cyclists passing one way or the other. And that tells me that's a lot of traffic on that street that needs to be accounted for. So I think one area that we need to advocate when we're working with MIRA is making sure that they take into account kind of like the same idea that DCR did in the rotaries, take into account the through cyclists who aren't just wrapping themselves on the curbs and making right turns.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, I think that's I think that's also a good point about DCR because DCR kind of tends to do this too. And I think it's, it's not just that they're. Kind of prioritizing the, the, like. Sort of short distance recreational. Writers, but it's that they have the mentality that a park is this limited. Like, location. And so it's much more about like you drive your car there and you get the bike off of the back of it and you go back and forth on the bike path and then you put it back on the car and drive away. Not so much that it's a continuous corridor that connects with other places.
[Bruce Kulik]: Right. But you're going from Uber down to Boston, right?
[Emily O'Brien]: Right. And some of the time you're on the path and some of the time you're not, but that you need, you know, there's somebody who needs a decent way of getting on and off of the path at every junction. And it's not even necessarily about what kind of cyclist they are, but just where they're coming from and where they're going. Because for a cyclist, it's basically like a highway. It's like a road that just doesn't have cars on it, and it needs to connect with all the other roads. And they need to be really, I think they need to be more cognizant of how those connections are made. And DCR in particular, the other thing I was going to say is that if we do get in touch with DCR anytime soon, which maybe we should, we should talk to them about, ask them about what their plan is for snow removal. Because it's not snowing yet, but it probably will. And we have a lot of places where even in a mild winter, A lot of these pathways and a lot of these connections and the places that people use to avoid intersections they'd rather not be in become impassable and stay that way for a fairly long time. Even with just some freezing rain or some sleet, it doesn't take a huge nor'easter to make.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: No, it's a good point, Emily. Maybe we can table that for the next meeting, or if you'd like, we can talk offline and formulate talking points to reach out proactively. I think it's a good idea before the snow season. I do want to circle back to some summary thoughts so we can move through this in somewhat efficient fashion. But Ernie, do you have another comment?
[Ernie Meunier]: Well, it was just to back up and ask if it was the change in city's funding such that Todd is without a budget.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: He's never had one.
[Ernie Meunier]: The jaw dropped there because I assumed he was sitting, you know, as staff of Tim's as engineer and that there was an appropriate administrative structure and pay structure there. So,
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, so he's, he's like transportation director, but there's no transportation department. It's just him. There are other engineers within the sort of broader DPW and the, but there isn't. Um, he doesn't have anyone that it kind of reports into him and he works across with lots of people within the city. There is no dedicated budget that he's working from all of his funds are coming from other sources, or they're part of other projects, or he's pulling in grants. And so he is doing, I would say, quite a lot with. really no resources. And I came in having met with some of the groups, some of the Somerville planning department folks a month or two, a couple months ago, to try to understand about how they went through putting together their bicycle network plan, which I think was a really well put together document that they're now going through and building all of that in Somerville. But that's a, it's a very different story in some real because they have a whole department to do this to do all the work that basically, you know, Todd would be doing single handedly with no money to do it. And so I guess that this takeaway from the past couple months of kind of just trying to build the outreach and understand the relationships and how things move to. to really focus on how do we build better cycling infrastructure in Medford. I think there's sort of two pieces of it. One is there's all the projects that are happening in the surrounding area, things that are moving forward kind of with or without us, which is great. And Myra is helping push all the stuff around the greenways. And those are the kind of things we want to have our input in to provide the voice of cyclists in Medford and make sure that they're designed to best facilitate um cyclists um and so with that making sure that we're we're on top of those projects and we're able to participate in the public comment periods and help shape the design and then there's the sort of bigger piece perhaps of how do we really shape cycling within medford and and that's um that's a really big task it kind of gets to this other one we have down here of this sort of safe safe cycling ordinance in medford and and what's the what's the best way to really move things forward and i think it's clear to me that the There's an element of political will, but there's a probably more realistic element of just funding available to push together. Talking to the folks in Somerville, they also have a safe cycling ordinance, but they said the thing that the ordinance probably like, yeah, it's helpful, it's good to have, but what really moved the needle on actually making infrastructure changes was developing a network plan. That's a big effort that requires the people to run it and a decent chunk of change to fund it. And so that's one way to sort of approach that. And the other way might be like, hey, we just sort of collectively within the commission come up with a simpler sort of prioritized list of here's barring sort of a comprehensive top down, here's the sort of how we direct traffic cycling and build infrastructure within Medford. And it's like, okay, well, at least we have some more piecemeal projects that we could advocate for that if we get them, they're still big wins. And I don't know that we want to, I don't think we want to do that tonight, but I think that's maybe a conversation for a future meeting of like, okay, if we were to revisit our bike network, our master plan. Yeah, are there 2 or 3 projects that we think would be meaningful wins? Could we get them to fruition in the next year?
[Ernie Meunier]: So this to me seems to be a slight change in the color of our liaisons. I had come to think that Todd was always, the liaison we had to work through, and because of his limitations for time and money, et cetera, it sometimes would seem to be a frustrating pathway. It maybe makes sense to look at this now as something where we should be asking him how we can help him so that we can get things done that don't have to personally Demand his attention or complete efforts or be prioritized lower because of his bandwidth. So I agree with what you're saying, and I'm not sure how to go about that, but I feel that it's a different color to the relationships that we have with the traffic and the engineering departments. maybe if they could look to us to have impact and whether that's through outreaches with police department, the fire department, other powers that be, city council, et cetera. I'm not sure of, but I've felt for years that our impact, especially in getting infrastructure changes was restricted and constricted by lack of money and staff in the engineering and DPW departments, or maybe also because we are narrowly defined as part of the mayor's office. I'm not sure. So I welcome your working in that area, Chris, and seeing if we can somehow become a little broader in order to get some things done.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Thanks.
[Ernie Meunier]: Yeah.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: And that makes sense. Yeah. I appreciate that, Ernie. Um, Emily, did you have any other comments?
[Emily O'Brien]: I suspect that at least part of that answer is, is that if it's really a question of what, what could we do or what could somebody do, um, who has the expertise and the bandwidth that would really make the difference in getting a specific project to happen. I think, um, working on the grant side of it is probably a big part of that is, is identifying funding sources. And that's, that's going to be a big, that's going to be a big component of it. Um, and drumming up the public support and stuff, but coming with a, you know, a grant proposal half written is make, you know, you want to, you want to know how to make his job easier. That's how.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Sorry, Zack, I didn't notice your hand up.
[SPEAKER_05]: Go ahead. No worries. I kind of assume that members of the body take priority over guests from the public. I just wanted to chime in on, this is jumping back a tiny bit now, but how things went in Somerville that, like, for what it's worth, the city of Somerville has been, like, building up the mobility division quite a lot in the past few years. So, obviously, like, they were still starting with more staff when the bike network plan was being developed. but they've been kind of expanding it as they've ramped up the focus on there. And you don't necessarily need to start with a department as big as they've gotten now or intend to grow in the future. And the other thing is just about the network plan and the safe streets ordinance, that those really do still go together. Yes, you absolutely need the bike network plan so you know what you're working toward. But like we're seeing in Boston right now that having a plan with no like legal mandate or timeline to build it just means like the plan only happens when you have enough political forces making it happen and sufficiently low opposition, whereas like Somerville and Cambridge are moving ahead at the rate they are because they have the Cycling Safety Ordinance in Cambridge and the Safe Streets Ordinance in Somerville, mandating that those pieces of the network get built out when they're doing that street construction and they aren't allowed to just kick the can down the road. All that to say, if there are folks who want to work on drafting the language of a potential Medford Safe Streets Ordinance equivalent, who feel able to take that on but not able to take on Like, uh, you know, advancing a bike network plan that could still be a really valuable thing to have. Like, in progress in parallel, I appreciate that input.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Um, I think it makes a lot of sense. Um, is that also a. you volunteering to support that effort?
[SPEAKER_05]: Uh, I can't right now in large part, because I'm actually helping the Boston cyclists union on a Boston safe streets ordinance. Uh, and I really don't have the bandwidth to do more than that. However, yeah, at some point in the future, I, I hope that there are people who can take that on before I have the bandwidth after that campaign, uh, get, make some progress. Cool. Yeah.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: We have your email for reaching out for a little bit of help there and there. Should we?
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I can put my email in the chat.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: If you don't mind. Yeah, you might have it from a previous meeting, but.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah. And also, like if folks want to join, there's like a Slack chat for the Boston Cyclists Union, just to be like in the conversations that are happening there about drafting proposed text to send to the Boston City Council. Obviously, Boston is a larger city and has different politics than Medford. But we're working off what Somerville has done, who we're working off what Cambridge has done. So yeah, you're welcome to join in on those conversations as well.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Thank you. I think we should maybe move on for the sake of trying to get through all the goals and update and then on with our agenda. So maybe we can go quickly for the rest of this. There's more content on the first one. So, number two, we've got subgoals. One, 50 bike racks. No updates since the last time I shared kind of what Todd had, where hopefully we still have up to 65 being installed this year. These are the dates. 40 are like maybe November. The other 25 are closer, but I don't have any updates. Bruce, we've talked about this a few times. I don't know if there's any movement on the High Street Rotary repainting. I assume not.
[Bruce Kulik]: There isn't currently. I've got to say, having ridden through that particular intersection a lot, it works just fine if you ignore the paint. You know, I mean, it's like the paint's useful, I find, as a motorist to kind of guide you away from the side of the road, keep you from doing, you know, multiple lane entry into the rotary and that sort of thing. So those are all kind of useful. And if you just ignore where the paint is and do what's safe for you as a cyclist, it works really well. And I will say it's kind of an improvement from what it was. I don't know what other experience people have in that. Ernie, you're probably the closest who might be going through that intersection a lot.
[Emily O'Brien]: I mean, I use it sometimes.
[Ernie Meunier]: Yeah. Yeah, sure. Yeah. And I think it doesn't work. It's, I think, a bit of a travesty to go through this process of highly delineated paint. It is wrong. It's similar to coming back from Duggar Park, a few blocks away, as a motorist, as you used to just yield in a very tight angle merge with Arlington Street to continue up to High Street, some Somebody decided it was a good idea to force a more than 90 degree turn to create an artificial stop sign from which you then turn left, of which, you know, I don't abide by. No one I've seen abides by. And which is not helpful. I don't know how it affects bicyclists again, but it's another instance where the safest course is to ignore the paint.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, I think I mean, I agree about the about that. And I think this is one of my. common frustrations with a lot of the way bike lanes often are painted is that they didn't really think it through from every direction that you might be coming, which is the issue with double rotaries. Nobody thought that you might be going straight. And even if you know that you can just do what you should do the right thing and ride through like a vehicle or ride through how you're going to do it, it really does mean that your everybody sees that the bicyclists are ignoring the paint and they think well look we made you all this nice bike lanes and you're ignoring it why are you complaining and why do you want us to build any more if you're not going to want to use the built ones that we built And they don't necessarily have the full context, and there's no way you can stop and give it to them. And so I feel like having bike lanes painted that are not really usable the way that they're intended, or that they appear to be intended, is kind of counterproductive in that way. And that's, I mean, that's also my issue with the door zone bike lanes. is that we paint something that people then think you're supposed to use. And then we tell, and then we have to go and try to tell people like, well, you can't actually use it the way that it looks like you're supposed to use it because there's no way for you to avoid car doors if you do. And so it seems like even, I mean, it is better than having nothing because it sort of shrinks down those, those circles. And it reduces this undifferentiated expansive asphalt situation. But having paint that you then have to expect people to ignore is kind of counterproductive. And it just feeds into this idea that bikers do what they want and they don't follow the rules.
[Ernie Meunier]: I was just going to say, adding to that, yes, it engenders a backlash. from the anti-bike people saying that we don't follow the rules, even when we supposedly provided and spent public money.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: For our cause, that's a good point, Ernie and I just a quick context when I talk to Carl from Myra, I think he said 1 is this is the roadways group and and they are sort of notoriously harder to get ahold of. And 2, he said, it's likely it was sort of like, end of the year, try to spend some money before and and part of the reason this happened quickly without really any input. I think it's, you know, I. I also agree, I think it's better than it was before, but it still can be improved and probably with not that much effort and we're likely going to be sitting on it for probably a couple more years, at least before it gets properly done. And it still does have some opportunity for for accidents because of the sort of. Ambiguity and just lack of clarity, so I think we should continue to follow up on it. And Bruce, I was just thinking that if. Who's the name of the person that you've been working with there?
[Bruce Kulik]: Because maybe I just saw it just the other day. Let me see if I can find it. Hang on. It's not there.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: So, I guess my. Stamps would be let's continue to try to get a hold of somebody who enjoyed it.
[Bruce Kulik]: By the name of Dan Lynch.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Lynch, okay.
[Bruce Kulik]: L-Y? D-A-N-L-Y-N-C-H. F. And... Okay. I guess he's got a public email, which I can provide in the chat if you think that's appropriate.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: I think that's fine if it's a, yeah, if it's a DCR email. Yeah. Great, and... Yeah, so let's table that for now. Let's continue to try to push and see if we can get their ear. And I think coming out from some new angles, I think it's actually a good argument, Ernie, that like, look, we were living with it, but there's still ambiguity. Ambiguity is dangerous, especially there's still high speeds in this intersection. And there's this other potential for drivers to continue to drive animosity for these cyclists who are just weaving in and out because we have to, and see if we can get some movement. Let's quickly go through these last ones and get to the main topic of tonight, which I think is going to be recruiting. I spent some time updating the website. I'd encourage you all to take a look, provide feedback. It should be current. Let me know if there's anything. I honestly just simplified it by taking some stuff out and try to make it less work to keep it current, and trying to keep the calendar up to date with events. So if you guys hear of anything else relevant, cycling related stuff, I'll add the movie and the ride, Zach, to the calendar as well. But take a look. Let me know if there's anything else you see in there, comment you guys have. We've participated in four tabling events by the end of 2026. It was kind of an arbitrary number, although I think it's really useful for us to get, be out there in the public, understand, hear from people. And I couldn't remember what we've done so far this year other than the Farmer's Market event. So I've got these three here, the other two coming up in the next few weeks. Did we have another event earlier this year? Or is it just the kind of three annual events?
[Emily O'Brien]: Sometimes there's something else in the spring, but I'm not sure we did anything this year.
[Bruce Kulik]: Isn't there like a Mystic River celebration or something that's also taking place near the show?
[Emily O'Brien]: We've done Circle the Square sometimes, too.
[Bruce Kulik]: Circle the Square.
[Ernie Meunier]: Circle the Square, yeah. It seems to me that there are a good five or so events anyway, if we participate in all of them. Yeah.
[Jared Powell]: Well, there was something. Bruce, didn't you come and pick up gear off of my porch? A while back was there another 1.
[Bruce Kulik]: You got me all the years blended together, so I don't remember years or wins.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, I mean, this is what I think. Let's not beat ourselves up about this. Yeah, let's move on Ernie. Do you well, I've got the, the bike house. We'll get your update shortly, right? By comments and bike lights.
[Ernie Meunier]: Yes, well, did I.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: I don't need to read the missive I sent earlier in the week, but let's circle back to that when it comes to the agenda, just to be formal and all that.
[Ernie Meunier]: I thought you were there.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, sorry. This is the goals list, which is different than the agenda. But just to hit these last couple of things here. I did just start a document on responsibilities, mostly from the chair position as I was transitioning from Daniel. I think that may be really useful, Jared, as we try to onboard new members. At least I found it probably would have been nice to have a little bit more of an orientation guide. for folks coming in. So I think that's something we should maybe revisit as we start talking about bringing some new members in, in the next couple of months.
[Jared Powell]: Yeah. Yeah. I can spend some more time on that. I just requested access to that document you, you said, is it not, let me check. I, it wouldn't, it wouldn't let me get in through my personal email. I guess I could have signed in through the Medford account. Um, yeah, I mean, I create, I came up with a lot of that content that like, uh, for that presentation before. So yeah, I'm happy to make some progress on that. Cool, I'll make sure you have access.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Cool. Yeah, and again, we'll come to this in the agenda, but the membership is significantly down and we want to get more numbers in. So that's maybe the most urgent of the goals to be working on here. I'm going to stop sharing and we can, unless anyone has any other questions, comments, then we can go back to the main agenda.
[Jared Powell]: I've been trying to recruit people left and right based on anyone that I see that's got a bike or that I know in that community.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, I did finally get, just to touch on that, I did finally get a list. So apparently Lisa Kalani from the city is the person who gets the applications. And she sent me her list. So there's two people who've sent in something at the end, somewhere in August. That we can reach out to and. Zach, you're in Somerville or you're in Medford.
[SPEAKER_05]: You muted sorry, I'm in Somerville. Um. I mean, the Davis square area, so spitting distance from the border, but inside.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Well, it's always it leaves a good impression when folks come to the join the meetings and then and then apply. Simon's, I think, on our watch list for time and go. It's a key. I know. Well, he said he had to sound like he was busy to me, too. But OK.
[Emily O'Brien]: OK, well, we did is I think basically the chair reviewed the applications and made recommendations. Yeah. Maybe with the input of the vice chair and secretary. But since we can't really go over the applications in a public meeting, because that seems not really appropriate. And we can't do it not in a public meeting.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: We'll create a, we can talk about a working group, but let's, let's stick to the agenda and go through a couple couple more project updates events and proceed. How long do we have you?
[Jared Powell]: I'm paying attention to the train schedule, but I'm probably.
[Bruce Kulik]: At least another 15 minutes and point of information regarding appointing people and reviewing them. You would consider that to be executive session. And that's not open to the public.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Okay, thanks Bruce. Um, all right, so back on the agenda here. So we've done goals. So, uh, update. This probably could have gotten announcements, but we've got, um. The, uh, oh, I think this is a message from last meeting. So. The quick, quick comment here is there's, um, construction has started, um, by Wellington, um, on the, this riverfront riverfront path connection. Um, so this is more of an update for the group. I had sent sort of, um. I guess looked into a little more and got in contact with Amber. There was a public comment period some time ago. You guys may have been part of that. So, you know, the goal here is like, let's make sure that we're these kind of projects we're getting. We're getting advanced notice and there's further down. We'll come to another 1. that's relevant just to clarify.
[Bruce Kulik]: This is the extension of. The, the green way that goes under the bridges, and then it comes into the parking lot. To be connected to the past, then go up by the tough spot house. Basically, under route 16, I believe that's right. Okay. I'll have to write by there to check that out. Thanks. Right.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, and then let's talk to events. We've got Tufts Community Day on the 4th and Harvester Energy on the 17th. We've got Bruce championing the first, Jared on the second. Do we have anyone else committed to attend either of those? I am gonna try to make it for Tufts Community Day for at least part of it. I still need to figure out sort of childcare arrangements for that, but do we have anyone else who can attend?
[Ernie Meunier]: What's that date, Chris?
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, I can shoulder forth share. So we all see the agendas together.
[Emily O'Brien]: That's community day is the 4th and harvest your energy is the 17th.
[Ernie Meunier]: Yeah, maybe for both. I'm out of town 1 of the weekends, but I have to check with my significant other.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Okay, Emily, any interest?
[Emily O'Brien]: I can be a maybe for harvest your energy, but I have a bunch of moving pieces in October. So I'm not 100% sure.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Okay. Let's by email, just try to confirm closer to the date.
[Bruce Kulik]: I'll do that pretty soon because that's coming up in a couple of weeks. So everyone should expect an email from me asking for volunteers. Yep.
[Ernie Meunier]: Good. Perfect. Yeah, especially for the 4th.
[Jared Powell]: So, are we okay? Sorry real quick. Are we okay on materials for. The 4th, like, do we have anything to demonstrate or show a community day?
[Bruce Kulik]: The 3rd point here talks about items for October events. We want to get assigned together. We want to get assigned together to recruit new members. And we also thought we would put some QR codes together for our website and possibly for recruiting new members. I think that's kind of generally a very interesting approach, where you have a business card-like piece of paper, and you see someone on the streets. Hey, how would you like to be a member? And then you throw the QR code at them. That seems to be the modern way to do it.
[Ernie Meunier]: Is this an event to lobby for an intern from Tufts to help us out in any way?
[Bruce Kulik]: We run into someone, sure.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: I think I think just putting the word what I'm imagining is, uh, either just a piece of paper tape to the table or. Folded in half, so it's like a little sign that just says, like, hey, we're looking for new members and that may be in conversations we're having. Oh, by the way, we're looking for new members. And if it turns out that somebody is in the. you know, sort of urban development program at Tufts, and they're really interested in cycling, then we can see where that goes. I would love to find somebody who wants to, you know, motivated and interested in participating. And I'm thinking of a QR code in a similar fashion. We could just tape it to the table so that people pull out their phones and they get the website. Were you imagining, Bruce, that we'd have a little printout, like business cart road takeaway papers with a QR code?
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, the problem with a larger piece of paper is it gets lost and someone puts it in a bag or they don't know what to do with it.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: I meant it's just taped to the table and people take out their phone and... Oh yeah, that's a good idea.
[Bruce Kulik]: Actually, we can do that. Yeah, okay. That makes even more sense.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: You're just on the spot. So it's just one, one that we put on the table on a, like, right in the front front and center.
[Bruce Kulik]: Medford, we need a landing page for it though. So we need to get some sort of a page on the website. That explains what it is and how to apply and so on. Oh, yeah, I can work on something over the next several days. Let's do it. Yeah. All right. That's fine.
[Emily O'Brien]: It could even just go to the page on the city website. that has the applications to boards and commissions. That's not like super specific if somebody is, you know, it's not as pretty if somebody is looking for us specifically, but it does have what they need.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah. And to be clear, I'm, I'm imagining the, like the recruiting, uh, sign and the website QR are not necessarily like, Hey, here's a link to our website. Also we're recruiting, but like, I think it makes sense for us to have a part of the website that lets people apply.
[Emily O'Brien]: And we can put that on the website with instructions would be. And actually, you know, what I would suggest too. Is if there is a link on the website telling people how to apply. Or a page on the, maybe on the front of the website saying how to apply, it might be good to recommend that they also send you an email. Or send. The main address and email, just because we had the problem before where, like, some of the applications were just getting lost in the either and we didn't. Know where they went and the mayor's office couldn't figure out what happened.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: And I think they all go to Lisa and I'm going to try to, yeah. Cause I have a spreadsheet, I have a spreadsheet from her from the last three years worth of applications. And I'm going to try to untangle that with her and see if I can iron out how to streamline this process.
[Emily O'Brien]: There was like somebody who had to submit their application multiple times.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, it was me.
[Emily O'Brien]: I thought it might've been you.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah.
[Emily O'Brien]: But are there like seven applications from you in that spreadsheet?
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: I haven't checked yet. I'm not sure. Anything else for the events? Bruce, you have everything at the moment, right?
[Bruce Kulik]: Yes, I have the tent. I have the signage.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: And you're able to bring it. Great. And we'll have to coordinate a handoff for Jared afterwards. Correct. Okay. Yeah, if anyone else has any good ideas on things to stock at a table, let us know in the meantime. All right. I guess I already mentioned the website updates. I think we'd skip that. Facebook and social media. So this was a, um, I think a topic raised by Adam. Adam has since resigned. Um, and he's just.
[Emily O'Brien]: I know what his concern was with it and it probably is worth discussing briefly. Um, his question was regarding the Facebook account and if we answer questions or engage with people in the comments. Then somebody is the person who somebody is acting and speaking on behalf of the commission. And how does that work? And he wasn't complaining with anything that was said, but how do we yeah, but how does that actually work? And who is speaking for us as a group? And that's where I think it actually is probably worthwhile to say, whoever is, whichever ones of us are admins of the Facebook group that constitutes a working group. And that we either decide that we're never going to engage in the comments at all as the, as the commission. And we only ever answer as ourselves. Or we say, or we give official approval for the people who have the admin to that account. To speak on behalf of the commission and we trust what they say. And I think it's and I think 1 or 1 or the other is fine, but we should. You know, it is personally, I think it is valuable. To have the commission page be able to answer. questions and to be able to respond because it looks bad if you post something and there's a bunch of questions or pushback and then you never answer. Yeah.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: I'll also say that maybe others have better firsthand experience, but I think sometimes the way this is handled is by having a social media policy. Um, that that set some guidelines and or got, you know, rules of the road for how we respond, how we. Manage ourselves on social media, so that's another way to do it. If we want to have a little better.
[Emily O'Brien]: I think there is some value, even though it was Adam's item and he's not here. I think that's I think this is still valuable to to have a. have a more decided upon strategy.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Who is managing? Is it you? Am I managing the Facebook group right now?
[Emily O'Brien]: It's me and I don't remember who else. It wasn't only me. Um, but, um, I guess I can go check.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: I guess the question is with with all aware, you know, 4 out of the 5 members here here tonight.
[Emily O'Brien]: Um, so it might still be somebody who's not even a member.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Sorry. All 5 members are here tonight. Yeah. So, I guess, like, if. If it's not any of the other four of us, then it's just you now.
[Unidentified]: I had not even thought about that.
[Bruce Kulik]: Emily, I'd like to augment what you said. I don't go on Facebook very often, but when I heard there was some controversy, I wanted to see what it was about. And my biggest concern with what I read was that there was some banter and someone who might have been Speaking on behalf of the bike commission was speaking, but it was not clear either who that person was or that they were officially. You know, speaking for the commission and some of the people who were responding kind of took advantage of that and began trashing some of the responses irresponsibly in my opinion, but we're making comments that were really. Maybe they thought they were well-founded when they made the comments, but they hadn't really looked at what the facts were, as is often the case with Facebook, right? You get someone who just kind of spouts off. Yeah. But the comments that came back from whoever was talking, I thought were mostly accurate, but they weren't attributed, and that was troublesome to me.
[Emily O'Brien]: Now I'm trying to even find where
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: It says, yeah, and just for the sake of time, because we're already 8 o'clock, I think we should try to move through. I think the question is, do we want to how do we want to manage this moving forward? And I think. To me, the best way would be to have even some simple version of a, like, a social media policy that. Anyone could then respond to following those guidelines. Whoever has access now into the future.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah. And I hope it will not only be me, I have to, I haven't found where they moved everything. And now I don't know where anything is. Sorry, that's, that's not, uh, that's not relevant to the discussion at the moment. Um, so I'll figure this out, but if anybody is interested in.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: This is one, Emily, I think we could also table this for a few months, say, and try to attract some more members, because right now we don't have enough bandwidth stretched across the five of us to really do much in this, but this is something we should revisit and ideally have somebody else who could champion, co-champion.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: So let's pull this back up. And maybe it's January by the time we feel like we have some more bandwidth, more and more folks.
[Emily O'Brien]: But yeah, that sounds good.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Ernie, you want to give us the lights? Yes, yes.
[Ernie Meunier]: Yeah, I sent you all a status report. Historically, by now, I placed an order for the fall and next spring, and the summer just raced by me. And when I went to pack the kits for the distribution to the schools, the cases were there, and I forgot that I had dipped into them for events, miscellaneous events during the summer. So I found myself looking at only 120 or so pieces instead of 160. So the schools were slighted a bit this year, which I'm annoyed at myself for, and also for not getting approval to order. for miscellaneous use this fall as well as next spring. So it is time to order the next group. Efficiencies of cost, their recommendation to put together production for us in China is such that, like last year, they want a repeat of the same order, which is for 960 lights or four cases of 240 each. Since we use about 400 a year, this will take us, getting 480 pairs should last a little bit more than a year. So I am making a proposal that I am free to order the same allotment as last year, and they should arrive in about five weeks. The surprise is that there doesn't appear to be any increase in cost for shipping. And that I find a bit astonishing in these times. So we're still looking at a net cost of only $1.25 for each light. plus we'll be needing before there's.
[Bruce Kulik]: You're still sharing by the way. Yeah. I want to pull up Ernie's email here.
[Ernie Meunier]: You got it. Okay.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah. Cause what I'm wondering, Ernie, um, what, what's the, like from a, from a budget perspective, what's the cost. Like the line item costs for all the lights total cost. And you also mentioned the bike lead cook guides. Like what's the total cost for that? Where does that put us for the year? Yeah.
[Ernie Meunier]: There's $1,100 that's needed to cover a little more than a year's worth of lights. There'll be $625 needed to order more guides, which is part of that. You can look at it as the, with packaging and tiny amount of printing as a cost of under $400 for each bike light kit. And we'll use about 400, 400 of those. That's $1,600 or a little less, 500 of which is provided by Beacon Bank. So the annual cost is about $1,100. Leaving very little, if any, for anything else or helmets, et cetera, which is something that I want to continue to pursue. And I'm not sure if I can segue into that. Well, first, let's get the motion over. I just want approval to make the order for the next supply. It should arrive in five or six weeks.
[Bruce Kulik]: And... That's a motion to approve your... Yes, yes. I'll second that.
[Emily O'Brien]: I think you're muted, Chris.
[Ernie Meunier]: No, he's just not speaking. Or maybe he is. He did mute himself.
[Emily O'Brien]: Or his mic is doing something.
[Ernie Meunier]: You back, Chris?
[Bruce Kulik]: Muted without having control.
[Ernie Meunier]: Well, we just need three.
[Bruce Kulik]: Emily, in the interest of moving this motion forward, could you take over as vice chair?
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, I can call all in favor of the motion to approve Ernie's light purchase.
[Emily O'Brien]: All opposed? Motion passes.
[Ernie Meunier]: So what about helmets? Just to keep this really quick. Anybody have any ideas? Alicia was supposed to take over the purchasing of an initial a batch of helmets a year ago coming up on, almost a year, and didn't do it because she all of a sudden decided she needed to see a sponsor to pay for them. And I think that we had an approval of a budget increase recently, I'm not sure if that's formalized, to $2,000 a year, which at least gets us into being able to, I don't know, buy more, hardware for our exhibits or an initial helmet order, et cetera. But I'm not sure. I would like to see us have a doubling of our budget so that we can really start to provide helmets for the kids. And storage had been an issue, but I can store hundreds of helmets. Well, a couple hundred anyway, in my basement as an example. So I want to make a movement toward developing that. I see too many kids without helmets. And I don't want to start a large topic here, but I see so many kids on motorized scooters without helmets. This scares the hell out of me. Because, you know, going 20 miles an hour on sidewalks in small radius wheels that even if they hit a tree root, you know, they end up in a collision. Can you guys hear me now?
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah.
[Ernie Meunier]: So were you able to hear, Chris?
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, my computer is printing out a little bit. I don't know that I fully understand the cost of everything, Ernie, just looking at your email. So you're saying it's the... Did you read the email I sent to you? I'm looking at it right now. So the bike lights are $1,100, and you're saying Beacon Bank will cover $500 of that? Yeah, and then there's a net 600 cost to us.
[Ernie Meunier]: Yeah, and then there's another 500 600 bucks that will need to be spent this year for the 25. Yeah.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Harmon Zuckerman, PB – He, Him, His): Yes. So yes, we're like 1200. So the only thing I'm thinking here is we we had, I didn't put on the agenda for this month. I was going to punch it a month or two, but we had bumped our budget with the city to ideally try to send someone to the League of American Bicyclists. Harmon Zuckerman, PB – He, Him, His.: : Annual meeting next year. And I think the the idea was that that would be like a thousand 1200 to send somebody to that conference. And so what's left in our budget after bike lights and League of Quick Guides to spend for an annual conference, or is there nothing left for that?
[Ernie Meunier]: Yeah, I thought there was a special dispensation of $700 for that, that was organized by Daniel with Alicia. It's a completely different expense. I absolutely do not wanna see the bike light program discounted or curtailed. If anything, with miscellaneous events this year, it appears that the need is for not just 300 or 320 bike-like kits, but a good 400. As you know, I'd like to have 20 or 30 for the events in the next few weeks, and there'll be four or five, because we just got caught short. And I don't wanna have to be that stingy with it. As it is now, we curtail the distribution to not include people who don't, live in Medford and to a greedy parent or two who shows up without kids and says she needs three of them for miscellaneous children she might have. I'm kind of adamant about not being that freely in distribution because I guard the supply. to make sure we have enough for the kids. So I'm all about petitioning the city in any way and for Alicia to see to improving our funding and don't want it to be compromised for any other activities that we can come up with.
[Emily O'Brien]: Um, quick question is when does our fiscal year and, and when does I should know this, but I can't think it's June 30th. Okay. Okay. So, um, so starting another year now, right. So we don't have to, we don't have to try to like spend down the remainder of our budget right now or anything like that.
[Ernie Meunier]: No.
[Emily O'Brien]: Okay. That was my question.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Sorry, guys, my computer keeps falling apart. Yeah, I think I just want to understand, like, what is the, like, what's their remaining budget after the spend here that we have available for this year? And does it leave us with any funds to do the lead conference next spring? Or are we not going to be able to do that?
[Emily O'Brien]: I think it's worthwhile to send somebody. And I think that's. If there's if there's a budget for it, and if we can, you know, if we can do it. In a manner that we can afford, I think it's it is worth it. And I think if we can send somebody different every time, that would be great.
[Bruce Kulik]: Do you recall how much the actual admission.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: I think it's just looking at 600 roughly, maybe a little more than that.
[Bruce Kulik]: So, assuming somebody is able to get alternative lodging to a hotel. The only other expense would be transportation.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, I mean, I think it's, it's, it's like. Right probably a few 100 dollars for a flight with flight prices. Yeah, I did like a rough budgeting and depending if you say, like, only we're only going to cover flight and registration, then it's still. Yeah, probably north of 900. So, I think that the idea was to bump the, and I'm not saying we shouldn't do the bike lights or any, but we have a very limited budget and we should track that. So we know what's available to spend on anything else.
[Bruce Kulik]: We explicitly want to make sure that already had the amount that he needed out of that budget. That was something I recall Bernie was adamant about.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, no, I think the only decision point or the 1 decision point here is we're basically buying 2 years worth of lights right now in this year, which may be the right decision to do. Especially we get a good bargain for it, but we're buying 480 kits.
[Ernie Meunier]: And we'll use 400 of them. So we'll stretch into the first part of the next fiscal year. But that's just the way the crates are built and shipped. What's going to happen, I guess, in the spring, something like that, is that I'm going to ask for 625 to buy the guides, which are a critical part of this, teaching kids how to ride bikes, a superb little guide. And someone is going to be asking for $900 to go to an event. Somewhere between now and then, some of us should somehow, and that's me, I suppose, come up with another sponsor for our activities. So far, the only durable one has been Beacon Bank or the ex-Brookline Bank at $500 per year, plus some swag. And we're really grateful to them for that. But I think we should brainstorm ways to get funding for our activities. And especially in this case of sending someone to an event, that should have sponsors like, you know, a fundraisers that send a kid to summer camp kind of deal. you know, where it's, it may have appeal to a particular kind of patron.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, no, I think it's a good idea, Ernie, to continue to sort of push for some additional sponsors. And it may be, if you have two or three that can do a couple hundred bucks, it's not a big ask. So it may be enough to just cover. I think that's a good idea. Let's maybe put our heads together. There's another new bank opening in West Medford Square. Maybe they'll want to score some brownie points with the community and sponsor.
[Ernie Meunier]: Yeah, the the the irony is that the larger the institution that does business in Medford, the more difficult their boilerplate is to apply for money. And then it gets stuck in a bureaucratic loop. And you never get anywhere. This is as an example, the elephant in the room here for me is waste management. Why the hell aren't they throwing $1,000 to us a year? I can't get through their website and their process. And yeah, another bank I guess would be okay. Nothing wrong with a couple of banks, but you know, an insurance company, real estate agent, I mean, there are players here. Wegmans was cheap a couple of years ago at 250. I made the asks either 250, 500, or 1,000. And, uh, we've got a couple of two fifties years ago, but the only durable player has been beacon bank at $500. And I couldn't get them to go to a thousand this year, but they doubled up on the pens, the highlighter pens. So at least we getting a couple hundred dollars worth of swag as well. But yeah, so let's put our heads together on, on getting some sponsorship here. Apparently it's. you know, we shouldn't be embarrassed about it, and we're not in contradiction with any of the, our organization. It's the mayor's office.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: No, I think it's a, let's take the rest of it offline. I think it's a good idea to start trying to see how much of the annual bike light helmet kit we can fundraise.
[Ernie Meunier]: Okay, that's it for me.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Guys, I don't have the agenda in front of me. Somebody mind going through the next.
[Emily O'Brien]: Next step is updates from Todd Park street contra flow late painted and folding that Webster slash tainter.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: I think everyone saw the emails on that. Bruce, if you had anything you wanted to add there, the signs are up that I suggested.
[Bruce Kulik]: In addition, there is going to be painted a. On the on the pavement, a stop indicator so that as you're approaching. uh, Central Avenue from the south. As a cyclist, you will see stop on the pavement as well, which I think is a great idea. Uh, I also have asked the question about Fulton at Webster Tainter, which is a small 100-foot section that, um, is very valuable as a contraflow, and people use it all the time. I thought it was actually a contraflow lane because a yellow stripe had been painted, but then I realized that the stripe only went about 50 feet. And maybe less than that 30 feet and. There was some traffic heading north at the same time, and it felt a little bit uncomfortable that they were kind of giving me the hairy eyeball because I was going the wrong way in that section without real adequate painting. Todd has since written back that he thought that that was maybe not enough room for a contraflow lane, but I'm going to have to go look at that myself because I still think it would be a great place to formalize that turn.
[Emily O'Brien]: That's a place where I think this sort of the treatment, like, on Hancock street is something that we could consider because that doesn't have the room for an actual contraflow. But it has that functionality and it's really valuable.
[Bruce Kulik]: And it's valuable and it's not unsafe.
[Emily O'Brien]: Right and it and it works based and it has, but it has to have sufficient signage and Hancock street has a lot more intersections and it's a longer stretch, but it has at every intersection. It has somebody warning. It has a sign warning drivers that there's somebody going to be, there could be somebody biking in both directions.
[Ernie Meunier]: Well, I think we have to really stress the safety angle here where the passage narrows and it comes to an intersection or a terminus. It's extremely important that anyone at the intercourse there knows that there could be us coming up at them. Because like you say, it doesn't meet the strict requirements for continuation. That is certainly trumped, excuse my language, by the safety aspect.
[Emily O'Brien]: Well, I mean, I think it is not an actual designated ContraFlow spot lane or otherwise at the moment.
[Ernie Meunier]: But in function it is. In function it is. It's important that it be seen that way and acknowledged.
[Emily O'Brien]: Well, and I mean, I think that's this is where it's worth pushing for actually formalizing it because that is. You know, your other, you have limited choices of how you're going to get across 93 and the other ones are. Like, not pretty, not very inviting. Yeah, we've got Roosevelt circle and you've got the Salem street rotary. And and if you can avoid those, then that's. That seems like. A small section of going the wrong way on a narrow one way is less bad than either of those, which is why people use it. And this is and this is 1 of those. 1 of those cases where. If there's not really room, it still can be, it still can have the contra flow functionality.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Here's what I'd propose. Bruce, if you want to do a little more reconnaissance. And then maybe report back to the commission next month. And then let's see if we can, like, sketch out. While we think makes sense, a couple of bullet points to justify it and let's as a commission, bring that to Todd. Because I think this kind of fits into the, like, hey, if we, as a commission are recommending specific infrastructure projects, then I think he's going to do what he can to try to make it work.
[Emily O'Brien]: And I know that he's, I know that we've talked. Or at least I've talked about this 1 with him before and I think others have too. And he was kind of resistant to it in the past. Because it's not actually wide enough for a real contra flow lane the way that like South Street is, but. I wouldn't be surprised if now that we have. a couple more, you know, two other real contraflow lanes, and that maybe people are starting to get a little bit more used to the idea that it might seem like a less radical thing to attempt now.
[Ernie Meunier]: You know, we should be aware that Todd is probably automatically bound by Ash to roles, rules, rules of the road for his professional work. But here's a case where the laws need to be broken a bit for public safety. And for him to get that message from us may be enough for him to say, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, put the rule book down.
[Bruce Kulik]: I seem to recall at some point Somerville had some sort of special treatment in that regard. I don't remember what it was.
[Ernie Meunier]: Oh, I would imagine there'd be plenty of them in Somerville.
[Bruce Kulik]: Yeah, yeah. And, you know, the idea of Contraflow Lane, I mean, I'm a little surprised he says it's not big enough because it's 20 feet, 19 at the narrowest, right near Painter Street. And that strikes me as plenty of space for a through travel lane at 12 feet. And still, I don't think there's officially parking there, but if there were, it looks like maybe there's parking on Fulton Street further south. It seems like this is a hundred foot section that could do without parking, without hurting anybody.
[Ernie Meunier]: Was that the explanation that was given?
[Bruce Kulik]: It was too- No, he just said there wasn't enough space. Or maybe he said the geometry doesn't work or something. The only piece of geometry I can see that's a little bit tricky is making the left turn onto Tinker Street in front of traffic that might not be expecting two-way bike traffic.
[Emily O'Brien]: From Fulton you mean?
[Bruce Kulik]: I'm sorry, from Fulton to Tainter, correct.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah.
[Bruce Kulik]: Right. So, when you travel from Webster, you turn right on Fulton 100 feet and then turn left on Tainter because Fulton is one way further south as well, and we were not recommending that cyclists go that way.
[Ernie Meunier]: Well, maybe he was. Assuming that the parking wouldn't be compromised.
[Bruce Kulik]: And in that, well, it's worth exploring. So, so the suggestion was, I go to reconnaissance and come back with a suggestion. So that's what I'll do.
[Ernie Meunier]: Good.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Great. All right, what's next on the agenda? I have up here.
[Emily O'Brien]: The membership membership.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah. So, um, we've been dancing on this all night. Uh, yeah. So I think it's probably clear to everyone. Adam resigned, um, sometimes since the last meeting he, uh, and he reached out to me and just, uh, he's, he's just doesn't have the bandwidth right now. Um, and so wish him the best. And if he ever, um, frees up, I hope he comes and joins again, but, um, respect the fact that, uh, especially as a parent of a young child, he's got limited time. Um, And Mary Kate, we've been trying to get a hold of. She's pretty been pretty absent all year. So, I think the assumption is that she's not on the commission anymore. I think we're going to give her officially what Bruce 7 days to get back to us.
[Bruce Kulik]: And if not, we will assume she's resigned and tell the mayor that.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, and Leah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So she we just had a quick back and forth email with her last couple days and today. I think she's going to plan to resign. She's just doesn't I think she's bandwidth constrained and and so is going to respectfully pull back since she's just doesn't have the availability. So that leaves us with the five we have here. And so who was the person you said in the mayor's office? Gave me the list. It's Lisa. Yeah, thank you. All right. Thank you. Yeah. And so that's a Daniel mentioned, right? When we're when he left, she. I believe is the point person who receives applications. I reached out and she basically said, yes, I have a list. I'm going to follow. I just got it literally this morning from her. I'm going to try to talk with her a little bit more and understand how to streamline this process a little bit more and ideally see applications as they come in and not just once in a while um so but we do have two names and so maybe i think bruce what you're suggesting is we um offline maybe you and emily and i take a look at them and and um we can follow up with those two um so two names does not include simon um who hopefully is interested um And other than that, I don't have any other leads, although I, I think, you know, we should each of us try to go through our individual networks. I, you know, what I. would hope that we can try to push for a diverse commission and by diverse I mean folks that live in different parts of the city that can kind of represent the different geographic parts of Medford and all the sort of different challenges that each area brings and the familiarity with those different parts of the city, people of different sort of cycling Competency or ability levels or experience levels, um, I think would be helpful and potentially different ages, different sort of phases of life. Um, so, you know, trying to gather different perspectives is going to be the best for the commission. Um, but barring barring that, uh, just having any more members to continue to. Divide the workload for what we can are capable of doing.
[Ernie Meunier]: Quick question if. Responses, I assume these applicants provide an essay, or at least something about their background, if not a full CV. That then becomes public information, I suspect, and means we can proceed a little bit more quickly if we could do this in our open meetings, rather than tie this up with just you three members having to do this as well?
[Bruce Kulik]: I'm not convinced that personnel information is public record in the same way that the other things are. I mean, if you're right, if you're right, you're right, that we could do it more streamlined, but I'd be concerned about that.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, I don't know. I don't know that having Like hiring decisions in open format is necessarily the best way to do it.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, I don't want to be. I don't want to be looking in a public meeting, looking down a list and saying yes to this person and no to that person.
[Ernie Meunier]: Well, but we could at least review the information. I'm saying, no, this has to be information that's openly provided. We can all see it. And if we then choose to take it offline.
[Emily O'Brien]: Or have a committee, we can't take it offline if we have a quorum. We cannot discuss it if we all have, if we have a, if we're all on an email chain and we all discuss it, we can't do that. That's what we can't do.
[Bruce Kulik]: Unless we go to executive session.
[Ernie Meunier]: I see. Okay. So we're locked in that regard. Okay.
[Emily O'Brien]: And technically, actually, if there's, if there's five of us, then three of us, it better be an executive session. Cause three of us is quorum already until we get some more. Yep.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Um, yeah, I mean, and just to be frank, I think that the application of the city website has sort of, I think it's just a blank spot for, like. Describe why you're interested describe your qualifications and sort of. What the entries are going to include are going to be limited. I think and I think. What we're going to get is people who are like, hey, I'm interested in cycling. I want to be part of commission. We're probably not going to get people who are professional city planners or that's not true.
[Bruce Kulik]: No, I, I've looked at the different resumes we've had, and it varies from, hey, I like the bike. I want to see a better infrastructure to do a complete city planner CV about, you know, I've worked here and here and here and yeah.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: I think that we can get those. And I hope I hope to get more of that experience, but it may not be, especially in the sort of situation we face ourselves in of, like, we could really use numbers and sooner rather than later.
[Ernie Meunier]: Well, why don't we broaden our view? We talked about this before how some of us. like Emily and I went to meetings for a couple of years just to attend meetings. And then it became obvious that there was interest that was distilled from these visitors and we became members. So how do we roll this into a more open invitation to please come to our meetings once a month? Listen, if you have something to contribute, fine. Hang around for a while. Maybe you'll want to be part of us.
[Bruce Kulik]: That would be part of our membership website page that basically describes exactly that.
[Emily O'Brien]: And we do have some semi-regular visitors, like the woman, Caitlin Robinson, who comes sometimes. We have encouraged her to apply before, and I think she doesn't want to make the commitment, but she does come from time to time. And I think we can make it clear to people, too, that if they want to have a say and they want to be involved and they want to come from time to time, but they don't want to make the commitment and be members, then that's great, too.
[Ernie Meunier]: Well, yeah, I think we should have this as a sign or something at our public events, you know, come to our meetings are open, you can be part of the process and your voice will be heard that you know that kind of simple outreach and from then you naturally grow. Members, of course, because maybe people are intimidated by this. They think they have to be pro bikers or part of the government already. What's the mayor's office?
[Emily O'Brien]: And no, it's a commission awful in the past when we've put out calls for members. There have been applicants. I think we also. The mayor's office needs a better system of notifying us whenever their applications, because I think that is possible. And it does happen that people happen upon or go looking for the commissions and boards page on the city website and click the link and apply for something. And if we haven't asked for the applications anytime, then that application just sits there and nobody has, and it just sits there until we think, oh, we need some new members. And it would be nice if those applications were, if somebody looked at them or somebody noticed when they were sent, Because that's the other thing is there's no reason in particular that we need to. Do a call for members or or have new members at a specific time. If the mayor's office says, hey, we got an application. Are you interested? And we're not, you know, unless we're like, there's too many of us already, which there aren't. Yeah, I think only.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: There's only been a couple applications this calendar year, at least in the last 6 months or so, and they're both from August. Um, yeah, so I'm going to try. I'm going to try to streamline that process. Um, I think it is something for us to think about here. I think it's actually a good suggestion or any. That, um, you know, new members. It's we sort of have a trial period of, like, come to. Yeah, I mean, if you're still wanting to be on the commission after that, then like, you're.
[Ernie Meunier]: Consider applying. It'll naturally happen. And that's why it works.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: We, we, that's great. You're interested. We'd love to invite you to come join our meetings and not that we need to have an official position on it, but I do think it's probably good practice for folks to sit in on at least a couple of meetings, especially if there's somebody who comes in with loads of experience and city plan or whatever, then, then maybe it's different. But for folks who are like, hey, I'm interested, I'm just like to ride my bike, then it might be good to like, let's just make sure that this is somebody that we're going to is actually going to commit.
[Ernie Meunier]: Sure. The first thing is we have to get them in the door. I have to get them to come to the meeting, and then we'll curate this flood of activity as we need. But right now, we need people coming in the door and we don't have to make it difficult or be concerned about the stricture of the bureaucratic process and vetting actual applicants, because that's possibly months away. And the first thing is you have to put out a forewarned sign and to even previous to that to just say, here's, you know, here's an event every month, you can be part of it, as much as you want to be, please come. And I'm not too worried about a bunch of riffraff coming in here, you know, looking for free bike lights or donuts. So, so I want to focus more on the marketing of the applicant pool than worrying about how we vet them later and provide prerequisites to their actually being formal membership.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: So yeah, so from a recruiting standpoint, the upcoming events are a good opportunity to put the word out. I will also ask Lisa if there is, you know, what kind of opportunities are there to sort of advertise via the city?
[Ernie Meunier]: To at least mention when our meeting will be each month, the date. And the people who are interested in bicycling, et cetera, are welcome to attend.
[Emily O'Brien]: That is that is also something we can do on the on the Facebook.
[SPEAKER_00]: There you go. That's a good idea. Yeah, I emphasize that we have to open up, you know, we have to open the door.
[Emily O'Brien]: Which we also have done in the past too.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Do we need to motion for that?
[Bruce Kulik]: Because I think we've, we've, we've already got a plan in place, frankly, with the website and with a stick, uh, the QR code and the events we're going to, and a couple other ideas that were just brought forth.
[Ernie Meunier]: Yeah.
[Bruce Kulik]: Great.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: All right, guys. So this is, we're getting pretty late, so let's kind of try to rapid fire through a couple of these things, unless anything else on membership guys. All right, um, roles and responsibilities document. We're gonna skip that. Um, basically, I sent a draft to Jared. He's gonna work on it once I give him access. Um. And I think that's going to be mostly helpful to have the sort of new member piece of it. Um. All right, I do have a couple in infrastructure project updates, which maybe I should have put these announcements at the beginning, but there is a another segment of the, the, um, the Greenway, the whole mystic river Greenway project. Um, that's they're probably a phase for, um, this is gonna be a segment. Um, there's a new development project kind of through this parking lot. Um. This is a little bit, I guess, east of the current project that we were just talking about, the riverfront path. I forget exactly how to pull up on the map, but it's sort of a development that's basically bridging a bike path along, might be a multi-use path, along this parking lot. So there's going to be a public hearing on October 22nd at 630. Um, where I think it would be really great for us to have at least 1 person from the commission attend and provide some input. Um, I don't, I haven't seen any designs yet. I don't think there's anything public. Um, so it may just be presented at that meeting. I'm traveling and won't be able to attend.
[Bruce Kulik]: I can probably make it.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Great. I think it's virtual. I'll double check if I have any other details. I got this, I think from this, uh, from Amber.
[Emily O'Brien]: If you don't mind to just send it to the list too, so that it's there.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yes, definitely. Um, and then the, this other project that we've had on our radar, the mystics minimum, um, I guess Arlington, uh, yeah, they, they have a new senior transportation planner. Elizabeth and I think that was sort of a lynch, but they got some earmarked funding earlier this year in May, but a 1Million dollars to kind of proceed to the next phase. Um, and so what I was told is that we. We should expect some public input process in the coming months. I think this came from Todd actually. Was it Todd or maybe Carl from Myra? Anyway, that's moving again. You guys may have seen, we may have talked about this in the past, but there is sort of a feasibility report that was done in terms of kind of how they have mapped. I don't know if you've seen it kind of from the main starting point of the Minuteman bike path Along uh, I think it goes mystic street kind of along Um, actually, you know, it starts out so it's further Down the minute man. But anyway, it routes along uh the mystic up to the I guess the arlington side rotary and and then it continues along mystic, um valley parkway kind of arlington side of the river and I think the project will actually hit both rotaries and the bridge in between. And so that portion of it is probably in particular where we want to have some input. And the plans, the feasibility plans leave a lot to be desired in terms of how biking and sidewalks are managed in that whole cluster of rotaries. So I think that's going to be one where we really want to have eyes on it. This will be the thing that overhauls that properly and puts in actual crosswalks and potentially time signaling and et cetera. But so I'll keep my ear on the pulse here for any updates, any public input opportunities for us to weigh in. Cool. Emily, I know you sent me an email earlier. I didn't really get a chance to read it, but police department meeting.
[Emily O'Brien]: That's okay. I just, um, I was just, we were touching, we were going to touch bases and I realized that I had started writing stuff out and then had not actually gotten around to it. Um, but let's, let's follow up by email then.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Um, you may have seen there, they just announced the interim police chief.
[Emily O'Brien]: Um, yeah, so I was, what I would also say about that is that I think that if we are. Going to discuss drafting a complete streets ordinance for Medford. We are going to discuss other bigger projects or bigger strategic. Plans for this, we. really need to be addressing the education and the enforcement aspects of this. And in particular, Medford, you know, I think in some ways the question of what a master plan network would look like is in some ways a little bit of a quicker, straightforward, easy thing to do in Medford just because there's a limited number of major thoroughfares that go across town, they have a limited number of alternative routes. And a lot of them have limited amounts of space. And so we have a lot of places where, and I think more so in Medford than in a lot of places, where we have important through connectors that you can't really avoid. Or that you shouldn't have to go way out of your way to avoid that are not going to get bike lanes anytime soon. And it might not be anybody's preference, but that's just the way it is. And so if we aren't also addressing the angle of. how do we have bicycle traffic and motor vehicle traffic using the same roads in the same lane because that's what there is, then we're missing a huge part of this picture. And it gets dicey because the idea of vehicular cycling is not always a popular thing and the term is kind of toxic. But we have a lot of places in Medford that are critical connections that you can't avoid and they are not going to have bike lanes. And so we have these situations where you have, you have the door zone situation, you have right hook possibilities, and you have cyclists getting harassed and yelled at and screamed at for doing the things that they should be doing to avoid those known dangers. And so, if we don't have a strategy for taking care of that, then we don't have a complete street strategy. And that involves enforcement of things like the 4 foot passing rule that involves more than just putting up a few bike may use full lane signs. It probably also does involve enforcement of bicyclists and especially with e-bikes and micro mobility devices. And there are people using those and regular bikes who do things that are dangerous to them, but also dangerous to the rest of us. You know, I don't really want to get T-boned by an e-bike. It's better than getting T-boned by a car, but I would really rather not get T-boned at all. So I think that's the, That's the piece that we need to make sure that we don't that we don't overlook because there are just so many places that are going to be critical parts of the network that are not going to have dedicated infrastructure.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yep. So, with respect to police, um.
[Emily O'Brien]: So, you want to follow up offline and we'll coordinate how best to yeah, and I think and I think we, I want to, I want to circle back and have a meeting with them just for. For the rest of the group, I want to go to them with a specific agenda with some shorter term, easy things, and then some longer term things. Some of which may require input from the city government or additional funding. The short term things are that I want somebody from the traffic department to come out on a bicycle ride. Nobody that works for the traffic division is willing to ride a bicycle in Medford. And I think that given that there are kids who ride their bikes to school every day, that's a real shame. So, we should get them out on a bike. It would be great if we could get some of them to take either the cycling savvy classes or the class. We can have either Bruce or Pat. Do the classes we could get John Allen to do the cycling savvy classes, but somebody from the. Traffic division needs to take a bike safety class. I want to ask them about what their strategies are for reporting of crashes, including doorings. A lot of times, because dooring happens with a motor vehicle that's not moving, it doesn't get categorized. It doesn't get categorized as a motor vehicle and bike interaction. So we have, that means that we have incomplete data, even on the ones that are reported.
[Bruce Kulik]: Ironically, a door can get classified as a cyclist crashing into a parked car. Right?
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, and it can get classified as a pedestrian incident, which is so those are the 100 dollar fine.
[Bruce Kulik]: If you open up your door into traffic, including cycles. Yeah.
[Emily O'Brien]: And so those are sort of the short term things and then longer and I have some and then longer term. I think they would, I would like to eventually have at least 1 officer patrolling by bike regularly and a handful of other kind of. Higher ask longer term things. The other thing that I want to bring up with them is that there was an article a while ago, or it made the rounds in a few outlets about a police department, I think, in the UK that was trying to combat women getting catcalled while out jogging. And so they sort of ran a sting operation where their female officers dressed up in regular jogging clothes and went jogging. And then when they got cat called, the cat callers all got arrested and fined and stuff. And so since we know that close passes and harassment are kind of an ongoing issue in Medford in a lot of places, I think this is something that we could work with here. Ideally, police officers or volunteers if needed who go out in regular street clothes on regular bicycles or blue bikes. And, you know, and they coordinate with somebody who's waiting to. Yeah, you know, who do that stuff so. So, those are, I made a list of things like that. I would like to come with a list of kind of short term, easy asks and then some longer term things that we know we're going to have to work towards in the long run. Hiring somebody who's going to be patrolling on a bike is not going to happen overnight.
[Ernie Meunier]: I was gonna say, it sounds a little Xanadu-like there, Emily. We have to be careful that we don't describe a utopia which will make most of the police force laugh in reaction to hearing.
[Emily O'Brien]: Well, that's why I don't want to give them all of it at once. And I don't want to good. I'm not going to say like, we need all of this tomorrow. But this is, you know, they have, they are aware that the harassment issue is an ongoing one that keeps coming back over and over again. You know, I would like to have an answer for what somebody should do if they get harassed. You know, if you get harassed, what should you do about it? Who should you call? Should you call the non-emergency number? Should you dial 911? Should you get a picture of the license plate? Will it matter if you do? What is going to happen? Sure.
[Bruce Kulik]: I agree, Bill. We just have to pick up because we have a assault complaint.
[Emily O'Brien]: And maybe that's what needs to happen. But at the moment, people are like, well, I'm not even going to bother. And now they don't even know about it.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Um, so again, let's, um, Emily happy to, I mean, if anyone else wants to jump on the bandwagon here to, although I guess we can't actually, for the moment, can't have more than two people in a working group outside of, so, um, yeah, I'm happy to participate. Emily, we'll, we'll hash out an agenda that we feel is manageable. And if this sort of next meeting with police. Cool. And knowing that there's going to be more work to do.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, I mean, I do think it's going to be important to. Not come in there saying we don't want them to ticket cyclists for running red lights because that is the 1st thing that they ask.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, I mean, I think I think, you know, I think. This is my last comment. I think we should move on. But I think the most important thing, especially for me, kind of just meeting folks for the first time is going to be trying to just develop some relationships here. And I think that we can't push too hard in a first meeting without any established relationship. But yeah, having a reasonable agenda that we can put forward with reasonable explanations for it is going to be OK. Cool. Yeah, we're going to follow up.
[Emily O'Brien]: Yeah, again, Daniel and I did have a have a couple of meetings last year. Yeah, so it's, it is kind of circling back to what we hopefully started. But that's great. I think it's something we should keep moving on. At least yeah, at least some what regularly.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, it'd be nice to have a regular. Okay, you know, quarterly or even less than that. So, um, all right, last thing I penciled on here. Um, this isn't following up from. 2 meetings ago where we were going to voice our support for 1 of the transportation safety bills going through Congress. This is, I think, for the, uh, the truck safety requirements. Um, so long story short, that bill has been tabled. For this legislative session, and so I kind of went down and I ended up looking through all of the Boston cyclist unions legislation that they support and I didn't finish the activity, but started looking through which of them are still active, which are not active. And I think what we should strive to do, and I'll try to come with a proposal for next meeting. Is to put together a little bit more comprehensive letter that we can send now I can offer this and directed to the relevant Medford representatives senators. In our state house to say, like, here are the bills that either are still active and we support or bills that have been tabled and we feel like need to be renewed and brought back in the next legislative session in, I think, January. So that's kind of what I'm planning on doing because I do think there's value in, you know, our. Further our whole mission here and safe cycling. It's, you know, this is kind of extends beyond the commonwealth beyond Medford into the whole commonwealth, but a lot can be done through legislation and putting our sort of weight behind the commission. And what we support from what we see here in Medford, I think, can can help further that mission. So, but I welcome any comments if you guys have any thoughts or suggestions.
[Emily O'Brien]: I think that's good. I think that's definitely true and there's a lot of important stuff and there will be more coming too.
[Bruce Kulik]: The only caveat I'll provide here is basically the only stuff remaining is in what is the session where the House and the Senate get together, reconciliation. Yeah. And, of course, as an election in November, there will be a new crew of local, our local, what's it called, delegation. Yeah, good point. Holden auto stays the same. Don Garber stays the same. What used to be Christine's pharmacy to still up in the air. Although the primary has been done and most likely that person will be. Uh, the, uh, uh, will be elected. Yeah, from Somerville. Yeah. And then, uh, for the Senate, what is Erica? Yeah, it's Erica. Yeah. So. Just bear that in mind as we move forward.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Yep. Yeah, yeah, it'd be a good, probably make sense to ping the new folks. Good. All right. In that case, do we hear a motion to adjourn? So moved.
[Ernie Meunier]: Yes. Seconded.
[Bruce Kulik]: Okay, Ernie, you get the second.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: All right, guys. Pleasure as always. We'll see you next week. All in favor. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.
[Emily O'Brien]: Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Aye. Aye. Aye.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Aye.
[Emily O'Brien]: Aye.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.
[Ernie Meunier]: Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.
[MCM00001804_SPEAKER_09]: Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.
[Ernie Meunier]: Aye Good night, everyone.
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