Bicycle Board Members,

Do you concur with my presenting the attached Bicycle Friendly Community award application to the Traffic Commission at their meeting next Wednesday?

Normally, we would review the application in our meeting, finalize it, approve it and then present it to the Traffic Commission.  Since our next meeting is next Thursday, that means that the earliest that we could deliver the application to the TC would be October 4.

Positive Spin worked on part I over a year ago.  Don Spencer, Greg Good, Nick Hein and I (the BFC committe) have been working on the whole application since February.  To complete the application, we interviewed and obtained input from

• Chet Parson, MPO Director;
• Dan Boroff, City Manager;
• Terry Hough, City Engineer and Director Public Works;
• Phil Scott, Chief of Police; Mike Lantz, Police rep on TC; Mark Trump and Brian Hennessey, bicycle mounted police;
• David Bruffy, Director of MountainLine;
• Tom Arnold, Director of Morgantown Parking Authority;
• Ralph Larue, Assistant Director BOPARC;
• Terri Cutright, Director Downtown Morgantown;
• Stacey Brodak, Morgantown Convention and Visitors Bureau

We completed our interview with Dan Boroff last Monday.  He is reviewing the attached now.  He said that he would sign it and submit it after we ran it through the Traffic Commission.  My intention is to have Ron Justice, Morgantown Mayor and MPO President; Dan Boroff, City Manager; and Chet Parsons, MPO Director to sign the transmittal letter to the League of American Bicyclists.  By next week, I think they will be primed to do it.  If they have to wait until October or later, it might not happen.

I want to present the application to the TC next week mainly to keep them on board and to take the opportunity to use it to educate them about what it takes to become a bicycle friendly community.  We don't need their approval because we're not asking for any money.  But, if we delivered it directly to Justice, Boroff and Parsons without their first seeing it, we could lose their future support.

As you review the application, I hope you will see that it is an accurate, if somewhat rosy, report of the bicycling situation in the Greater Morgantown area.  I'm pretty sure we won't win the award.  Everybody we interviewed understands that's not the immediate purpose.  They understand that submitting the award will get us authoritative feedback from LAB that the City can use to make us a Bicycle Friendly Community. 

Some attachments listed at the back of Part II of the application, such as our February recommendations to the TC, are not included in the attachment to this message because they would make it way to big and you already have them.

Sorry for the long message:(  Obviously, I need your reply by next Tuesday!

Frank

Cyclists fare best when they act and are treated as drivers of vehicles