[BikeLongmont] February meeting minutes

[Nenad]

Hi,

I've been really dilatory in posting meeting minutes for the last few
months, but I've resolved to mend my ways!

We met this Tuesday and had a lot to talk about.

Lauren and Buzz are starting "Safe Routes to School" (SR2S) at the
Spangler Elementary. The plan is to start for the Earth Day in April.
They have a ton of things planned - "walk and roll Wednesdays" where
there would be a bunch of organized ways for kids to walk or ride to
school, classes, helmets and so on. The plan is to get teachers, parents
and especially kids to be program champions, so that after a while the
program becomes mostly self-sustaining.

They may need some volunteer help when the time arrives, but for now
plan to mostly rely on teachers and parents.

Lauren has also other classes planned, some through the Longmont Free
University. Good for us to have a certified instructor in our midst.
We'll post details on the Bicycle Longmont website as they become
available.

Richard is organizing our participation in the Bike to Work Day. He is
involved in the regional meetings and works closely with the city. As
you might imagine, he has a bunch of things in mind and could really use
some help. He'll send email to the list and I hope people respond, even
if only to take posters and post them in their workplaces.

We've started the Bike Mentor program - if someone would like to try
commuting or otherwise biking in town and don't know what routes to
take, how to go about it or are just intimidated by traffic, there's
someone to help.

We have a grand total of four mentors on tap - let me urge you all to
consider volunteering to be a mentor (send email to
mentors at bicyclelongmont.org). If someone asks for mentoring (we've had
no takers so far), we'd like to be able to pair them with someone living
relatively close by.

As long as I am on the subject of volunteering, we had a long discussion
on what should be our future plans for the group. We are slowly getting
stronger. Couple of years ago we had trouble getting anyone to come to
the meetings. Now we have a regular core that not only shows up, but
also volunteers to do things. And our mailing list keeps growing.

Our thought is that we'd like to continue helping people to ride - to
school, work, for recreation. We have excellent relationship with the
city, the trails and streets take bikes into account, so we are starting
to devote more attention to outreach and education.

At some point, we'd like to become a "real" nonprofit. The trick is to
organize in step with the group capabilities. Just enough to stretch us,
but not so we get overwhelmed. We have been moving in this direction
already - for example, now we have a bank account and some money that
can be used to help with programs, thanks to kind folks who contributed
to the "Buzz jar".

To move a bit towards this goal, let me ask you the following questions:

- what should be our group's goals
- where should we be in a year? 5 years? 10 years?

We are really interested in what the people on the mailing list think.
Post your thoughts to the list (send email to bike at bicyclelongmont.org)
or if you prefer send them to me. We plan to have the March meeting
devoted to this issue.

To move to more mundane topics, the Street Design Forum is this
Saturday, 2/12, from 9AM to 3PM at the Senior Center. Craig has been
following this for us, see the posting in the archives with the
details:

http://picek.bicyclelongmont.org/pipermail/bike/2005-February/000378.html

City is proceeding with traffic mitigation on Mountain View. Two traffic
circles and some other features will be installed. They are
"semi-permanent" and can be removed if needed.

Nelson will be improved this summer from Airport east to Nelson Park
Lane. Nelson and 75th will get a signal and 75th is being improved as we
speak. 

Finally, a new triathlon will come to town this summer. Swim part will
be at the Union reservoir.

I think that's all.

Hope everyone gets to do some nice riding. I took some falls skiing
three weeks ago, hurt wrenched my back (going bippity-bump with a
backpack is not recommended!) and had to take couple of week off.
Bummer, but I finally got back on my bike today.

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