[BikeLongmont] October meeting minutes

[Nenad]

We had a small but productive meeting this week.

We decided to try to stick with Tuesday meetings: we do have reservation
for Tuesday next month. Craig is investigating a possibility of getting
a room in the Justice Center, but he has already found that they also
allow scheduling only a month in advance. It would be good to have a
place that we do not have to reserve promptly every month.

There was suggestion we could meet in a restaurant, but we are reluctant
to do so. You might recall that we used to meet in the LAC bar and I was
never very happy with it. Unless we find something better, the current
plan is to stick with the second Tuesday of every month in the Longmont
Library.

We all liked the text of the grant support letter that Richard came up
with. I'll add a real address and sign. Steve, our assumption is that I
give it to you, so you can add it to the packet. Let me now.

We had a couple of comments on the I25 EIS. I urge all of you to check
out the website

  http://www.dot.state.co.us/northI25eis/index.cfm

and post your comments to the list. I'd like to get back to them late
next week.

Craig told us about the Multi-Modal Transportation Plan task force he is
participating in. Craig was out of town, so Richard filled in for the
first meeting - you've seen the postings a month or so ago. Craig told
us about the recent public meeting.

There were probably 15+ citizens, in addition to the city staff and
consultants. They split into working groups and identified issues.
Craig's group contributed the 119/Hover intersection for bikes and
pedestrians as one of their issues. It is great to give that trouble
spot a lot of visibility!

The next public meeting is 12/2. Please consider showing up, this is an
excellent way to have input.

We found also that FasTracks will have a station next to the
intersection, which will probably be a good opportunity to tackle
ped/bike access. We learned that there will be two other rail station in
Longmont, in addition to the terminus at the old sugar mill.

Now that we have a bank account, we talked about projects we could do
that require money, in addition to volunteer labor. We have tentatively
settled at looking into bike-related packets for children - this is
something that we could do with manageable cost and possibly have
positive impact. Trails, perhaps a coloring book - there is apparently
plenty of stuff to choose from.

We could have something that can be handed out free in bike shops and
also class materials for bike safety classes. If we could get extra 5%
of kids to ride to school instead of being driven, and do so in a safe
manner, it would be a huge impact! 

Any suggestions, by the way, on the possible projects for the group are
more than welcome!

Richard suggested an interesting way to raise funds: produce a CD of
bike songs. He gathered 22 (!) which I at least found really nice. The
main problem will be tracing down copyrights and getting permissions.
Any volunteers to help us?

Regards, Nenad
...your friendly Bicycle Longmont coordinator...