Mayor Fitzmaurice held a meeting Jan 29th to discuss possible amendements of language in the SCPD OTS "bike/ped safety" grant.
Present were lots of SCPD staff including primary grant author Sgt Bailey, PC Belcher; besides the Mayor, councilmembers Reilly and Krohn attended. From the bike community there were (at least) myself, Ron Goodman, Micah Posner, Piet Canin. Metro reporter Sarah Phelan was also there. I may have missed some folks, as there were quite a few people at the table and I didn't get a copy of the attendance sheet.
I would appreciate it if others who were there would send me any expansions, corrections, etc. to these notes.
To start the meeting, Mayor TF asked what changes "we" wanted to make to the grant language.
Micah proposed that the grant should include bike safety classes for adults, based on "Effective Cycling," and that also a hotline should be established which cyclists and peds could call to report endangerment by motorists (or presumably other safety issues as well?) Micah had a couple of draft subgrants showing how the Hub could provide such services.
The police said that the grant includes a commitment to connect with community groups, that the "Safe Moves" training program content varies with age (i.e. more "effective cycling" skills are taught at the higher age levels). They also said that, although the "Safe Moves" program is listed in the grant as an example, OTS rules do not allow them to specify contractual providers in advance; and when they do go out for bid, only OTS approved providers (of training and services) can be used.
Piet asked how this grant affects existing CCTS programs. Are they competing for the same pot of public money? SCPD said no.
Sgt Bailey said that plain clothes officers will soon be doing a "special detail" on crosswalk violations (i.e. a 'sting'), and that the grant would support further "special details" for bike and ped safety enforcement. He said a "detail" is a single day-long operation, sepcially targeted.
Various people asked again why education and outreach for motorists is not emphasized in the grant. Sgt Bailey said that "motorist education is primarily through enforcement."
CM Reilly spoke in favour of a 'sting' operation and suggested that the community clearly feels strongly about this and would probably provide plenty of volunteers! SCPD declined, saying there were "liability issues" with using civilians.
CM Reilly suggested that individual ticketing of motorists still does not deliver a broad enough message, and said that we have to alter the City's reputation, build a new self-image for Santa Cruz as a place that doesn't tolerate dangerous driving. She complained that much of the grant is bike-focussed and "pedestrian" was just "tacked on" in many places.
At some point, I forget when, one SCPD guy said that there was a need for special outreach to seniors, who are involved in too many pedestrian accidents. I asked why the focus was on the seniors. We know that crosswalk violations by motorists are epidemic in town; if seniors are less spry than the rest of us and can't sprint or leap to safety, is that their fault? We also know that many walk-light cycles in town are too short for the average senior, little kid, or disabled person to make it across the street -- is that their fault? No substantive response from SCPD.
Mayor asked, how can outreach be improved? Micah asked about training for police officers in better accident reporting, etc. SCPD said 40+ of their officers have taken 24hr course (POST certified) in bike safety, effective cycling, bike law. They have a training film on bike accidents [here I kind of cringed]. Thus they said, they are already doing the things that the public says is missing from the grant, and they don't need to do much more along these lines.
SCPD, when pressed on the exclusive focus on peds and bikes (as in re-educating, training, etc) and lack of focus on motorists, said that OTS enforces a "neutral" language for grant proposals. I said that I didn't find the exclusion of motorists neutral at all. SCPD said the grant format was very tight, it had to be exactly 4 pages in exactly a certain font, etc. (thus, by implication, no major changes could be made because the text already ran to 4 complete pages).
CM Reilly said that she wished to see the community more united; motorists, she said, have nothing to gain by driving dangerously, it is very traumatic to nearly hit (or actually hit) someone with your car, and motorists have a stake in avoiding this. She wanted to see motorists, peds/bikes, and the police engaged in a common, cooperative project to make Santa Cruz streets safe, and that this would require further dialogue, meetings, etc.
SCPD said repeatedly that the terms of the grant include consulting with the community about the actual implementation. Some of the public present suggested that motorists can be reached through the DMV, through driver's ed classes in high school, through live presentations, through local advertising. SCPD repeated that "motorists are already covered in the proposal," and that OTS has money only for specific projects, such as helmet promotion or K-12 classes; they do not have a pot of money for, say, aggressive driving publicity/outreach programs.
One cyclist went beyond the issue of even-handed application of the VC and questioned whether bikes should be treated exactly like cars. Bikes, he said, are somewhere between a pedestrian and a car. If a bike rides on the sidewalk, should it be ticketed a high dollar amount just like a car if it drove on the sidewalk? Or should there be a special traffic law for bikes?
Micah made another pitch for bike safety school for adults, saying that many cyclists break VC because they are not aware of the law pertaining to bikes.
The meeting got a bit bogged down from time to time, with the police resolutely insisting there was no bias in the grant proposal, and various members of the public saying there was. Though everyone was polite and did not mention it, the Duncan/Gutierrez incident seemed to me to be always in the background of the discussion.
Eventually the Mayor called "time," saying he had a bus to catch. He would, he said, try to alter the language of the grant as much as possible w/in OTS guidelines, to address the concerns of the public.
In reviewing the final text of the grant as submitted, the language and focus are still imho carcentric. However, the Mayor did succeed in making a couple of important modifications. Motorists and their behaviour are now mentioned and targeted in the specific goals list, and bike lighting and other safety devices are added to the program for equipment/training, enriching the previously single-minded emphasis on helmets alone.