DANVILLE – What happens when one person's passionate advocacy becomes one other person's bureaucratic headache?
That conflict has reached a breaking point in Danville, where months-long disagreements over the role of the town's Bicycle Advocacy Commission recently culminated in threats from elected officials to disband the volunteer organization entirely – lower than two years after its founding.
But smart citizen diplomacy has narrowly turned these heated conflicts right into a compromise, not less than temporarily.
On Tuesday, the City Council voted 3-1 to permit the Bicycle Commission to proceed its scheduled meetings through the top of 2024. However, this decision is simply a brief solution to years of chaos.
Danville has increasingly turn out to be a hotbed for avid cyclists who utilize the town's extensive network of motorcycle paths, routes and access points to destinations corresponding to Mount Diablo State Park and the Iron Horse Trail. The city began producing its very first Bicycle master plan At the start of 2020 with the aim of supporting the Connectivity and security requirements to forestall an influx of riders and at the identical time preserve the semi-rural character of the town.
By 2022, the Bicycle Commission was established to coach the general public about ongoing projects and programs in addition to the risks related to riding on two wheels. But over the past 18 months, some residents and city officials said a few of the passionate commissioners had taken their role in constructing a motorcycle culture in Danville too far; Concerns about harassment by commissioners previously led to a moratorium on communication with city employees outside of the group's meetings.
That tension morphed last month into allegations that a few of the volunteer commissioners repeatedly tormented city employees and hijacked meetings — eventually reaching a level of dysfunction that some say prevented the group from doing its job adequately.
Council members have focused much of their ire on Al Kalin, an advocate who has spent years attempting to improve the security of cycling on Mount Diablo through data-driven modeling and evaluation. This activism culminated within the awarding of the Contra Costa County “Bicycle Champion of the Year” in 2023, as a result of his work on a “first-of-its-kind project that has become a model for bicycle safety nationwide.”
Councilman Robert Storer was the one person to vote to dissolve the commission during Tuesday's meeting. Councilman Newell Arnerich was absent.
In a series of emails with Commission Chairman Bruce Bilodeau last month, Storer said a few of the city managers and department heads had sat right down to express their frustrations, but their behavior had not modified. Storer accused Bilodeau and Kalin of behaving more like lobbyists than commissioners, concluding that there’s “no good reason to continue this concept.”
“You have angered employees every step of the way,” Storer wrote to Bilodeau on April 5. “You abused meetings to suit your own agenda. You have monopolized your employees' time as if they were working for you. You haven’t made the cycling experience a good one and it’s time for it to stop.”
During a study session on April 9, the council began discussing whether the bicycle commission was essentially the most effective technique of implementing Danville's master bicycle plan. City staff then looked for methods to switch him with a totally different advisory board and introduced the ordinance on the May 7 meeting, which was ultimately rejected.
Instead of postponing the discussion to a later date, Mayor Karen Stepper proposed a motion to maintain the group in its current state through the top of the yr.
She said this type of compromise was the very best approach to resolve the “coercion that this Commission has been subjected to by external forces in this Council”. She said she particularly desires to avoid derailing the commission's ongoing, time-sensitive work to enhance bike safety in Danville — including issues corresponding to sidewalk access rules, street improvement plans and best design practices to avoid collisions.
“It is clear that a comprehensive list of items requiring City Council attention requires the expertise of bike people and time is of the essence,” Stepper said Tuesday, explaining that she believes the BAC’s work has the potential to save lots of lives. “It’s very important to me that we make sure our commissioners feel like they have the support of the staff and the community in their hands.”
Vice Mayor Dave Fong agreed. He said keeping the commission — not less than for now — avoids overburdening other city employees with taking over such specialized, complex tasks. To decelerate the vote, he also argued that disciplinary motion should come before more drastic measures corresponding to dissolving the commission entirely, especially if the matter affected only just a few people.
“These are volunteers, it’s not like they’re our employees,” Fong said. “I want to do some due diligence and really follow due process – so that people can understand and respond to the allegations.”
Kalin said he was pleased that a majority of the City Council agreed to permit the group to proceed its work for the rest of the yr.
“We do our best to reduce collisions and save lives on the streets and roads of Danville,” he said in an interview. “I appreciate the support of the three city members who voted to maintain the BAC.”
Even though the Commission managed to forestall its abolition, it didn’t escape unscathed from the entire debacle.
One commissioner, David Williams, has already done so got out that he’ll reapply when his term with the group expires at the top of June, citing how meetings are sometimes sidetracked by passionate advocacy.
But before Tuesday night's vote, Bilodeau argued for postponing any decision on reorganizing the commission – citing a listing of accomplishments the group had successfully tackled over the past 18 months.
In assessing how best to guard cars, bicycles and pedestrians on Danville's streets, intersections and sidewalks, he argued that the present commission has specialized, institutional knowledge that’s critical to the town's safety projects, along with established relationships with key external stakeholders, including the East Bay Regional Parks District and cycling groups throughout the San Ramon Valley.
“Reorganizing the commission will harm its relationships and damage Danville’s reputation for welcoming cyclists,” Bilodeau said. “The Commission’s focus is on implementing the City’s Bicycle Master Plan while doing everything we can to maximize the safety of cyclists and people in Danville.”
image credit : www.mercurynews.com