Okay, let's go ahead and call this meeting to order.

Um I'm calling the general purpose meeting December the 15th to order.

And I am gonna ask uh Councilmember Davis to lead us in the pledge if you could remove your cover and stand, please.

Okay, thank you, Councilmember Davis.

And uh we have the pledge.

Let's go ahead and have roll call.

I'm here.

Councilmember Davis.

Present.

Councilmember Phoebe, present.

Councilmember Mota.

Councilmember Thomas.

Present.

Vice Chair Mulkru.

Present.

Chairman.

We have a quorum.

Thank you.

Okay, um, next item on the agenda is uh public comment.

This is uh an opportunity for anything that is not on the agenda comment tonight.

So um if you could fill out a speaker card and um we'll call you up.

You'll have three minutes to speak at the podium here.

And um just keep in mind that the microphone needs to be on because everything is recorded.

So um Jen Paps.

We've do we have anybody online that wants to speak.

We do have an online speaker.

Okay, let's go room first and then online.

Can you hear me?

Awesome.

It's on.

Okay.

Hello, happy holidays.

I'm gonna make this quick.

I know you guys have a long meeting this evening, but I just wanted to give you some quick stats for November and talk about what CHB has been doing in the community.

Um in November, we issued 238 traffic citations.

We had arrested five DUI drivers on uh the unincorporated roadways, not including the freeway.

We had three misdemeanor arrests, 17 injury crashes, and 36 non-injury crashes.

Those were down for the from the previous month, and we recovered one stolen vehicle and we towed and stored 20 cars.

Some past events that we were doing, uh the Thanksgiving holiday enforcement period, we had no fatal crashes over the long holiday weekend.

Uh officers were out in full force, um, making sure that people were driving safely and getting to their destinations without injury.

Uh we also attended the Castor Valley tree lighting ceremony, which was great.

I didn't see any issues this year, so I was very excited to be a part of it.

Some upcoming events um on December 16th, the some of the toys that were donated through the Chips for Kids Toy donation will be distributed at the Castor Valley Rotary Kids' Christmas party.

So we're excited to see uh what people's generous donations are able to do to those who are in need this year.

Um we are still collecting toys for our chips for kids toy drive.

So if you stop by Walgreens this week, uh throw a toy in the donation bin, or if you need to, you can come down to our CHP Hayward area office at 2434 Whipple Road to don to donate some toys.

Uh let's see.

We don't have any education scheduled for the rest of the year due to the fact that it's there's a whole bunch of holidays and we're quite busy.

Um, but I just wanted to remind everybody that December is national impaired driving month.

Uh DUI crash or arrest is completely preventable.

Designate a sober driver, utilize a ride share or get a taxi um where you can or stay at the place that you are for that night.

Uh DUI could cost you your license, freedom, life, or the life of another person.

And as always, I'm taking traffic complaints.

If you like to call our office at 510 489 1500 or email me at 345 reckless driving at CHP.ca.gov.

Have a great meeting and happy holidays.

Officer perhaps, if you could just hold on one second, I'm gonna do something we typically don't do.

Um, we had a uh an accident on Crow Canyon Road where there was a fatality.

Yes, sir.

Okay, do you have any information since there was a castor value fatality?

So I don't have any information.

Um was it Sam Ramon PD handled the investigation?

Yeah, they closed the road for a day and a half.

Yes.

Well, they did their handled we assisted with traffic control, but as far as the investigation or any details about the traffic collision, I have nothing to release.

Yeah, I just heard that it was a fatality and there was uh a uh DUI involved or something.

Chuck, I don't mean to cut you off, but since it's not on the agenda.

Yep.

So anyway, thank you for that, and uh welcome.

Maybe we can get more information on it next meeting.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

All right.

Is this on?

Okay.

Um I wanted to um bring to your guys' attention the issues with the park benches that are up and down Castro Valley Boulevard that belong to Clear Channel.

Um, I want to say there's probably close to a dozen or more of them.

Two of them currently may have advertising on them.

The other 10 have a please come and advertise with us sign.

These locations are dumping grounds for trash.

Um, we have some unhoused population that use them as their full-time housing during the day at night.

I don't really know what that situation looks like, but um these are adjacent to covered stations for the bus.

So it's not that they're taking the place of a bus stop, the bus stop is there, and then there's two benches next to it.

So I would really appreciate that this board look to agendize this matter so that we can clean up the Redwood Road to Center Street area of these unused benches that are just sitting and not being properly utilized.

Um, another item that I also would like to see agendized in the future is the way that these Mac board meeting comments are taken when it comes to neighbors and adjacent property owners and concerns that they raise during a planning process for a building project.

Um, I had made comments specifically on something that's on the agenda tonight with regards to parking, which I'll talk about in that regard later.

But we have a vegetation issue that was brought to the planner at the time that that project was being looked at, and it was not addressed in the overall plan when it was finalized, and it is a big problem for us as property owners to the adjacent parcel.

So we make these comments at public meetings, and they don't get incorporated into the documents, and then they don't get translated into what we see as a finished product.

So we cleaned up a problem when we grazed and took out the existing vegetation, but then we recreated a problem when the landscape plan wasn't properly taken into consideration with neighbor comments, and where that vegetation was specifically planned and placed is adjacent to a sound wall within inches, and these are trees that will grow 40 feet tall and 15 feet wide, and they have nowhere to grow.

So what they're gonna do is grow into the wall, grow into our property and our sewer lateral and cause us problems again.

So I bring these two items to your attention because I would like to see them agendized and discussed so that when neighbors make these types of issues relevant to the planning department, the planning department actually pay attention to those concerns and address them during the planning process.

Thank you.

Caller, you're on the line.

We're on public comment.

You have three minutes, Kelly.

Hi, this is Callie.

Um, well, one thing we just heard from um a county employee was that the uh the uh traffic safety is not on the agenda.

Well, you know, that employee has been to a lot of these meetings, and so have I.

I've heard the same uh, you know, uh roll call of of uh you know traffic safety statistics and all the great work that the CHP is doing every every meeting I've gone to.

So maybe just maybe that government employee um who works for the Office of Supervisor Miley could put it on the agenda since they're the ones who write the agenda, they could put, you know, CHP traffic safety report or public safety uh update or whatever you call it, and that way we won't we won't have this problem of not having things on the agenda.

They can fix it, they write the agenda.

Um so one of the other things that I wanted to bring up that's been going on here for many years, is in 2016 the public works agency put forward a traffic safety report on Crow Canyon Road, and they th they said that the um the the uh traffic uh you know the crash rate was pretty average and in uh 2020 uh June 17th, 2024.

They came back with an update, and they told you that Grow Canyon Road was scheduled to get uh four roundabouts and that uh those roundabouts would be designed and the designs would be finished or be ready in December 2025.

And wow, I just looked at the calendar.

It's December 2025 right now, so and we do have public works agency employees in the room today.

So I I kind of would hope that maybe they they would know what's going on with those roundabouts.

Where are those designs?

And they also said that uh construction would start in 2026.

Um and so why is it that uh Crow Canyon Road is so dangerous?

You know, they're right.

The crash rate is kind of average, and actually the injury rate is kind of average.

But if you look at the statistics and really dig down and do you know a technical statistical analysis, you what you find is a lot of deaths, a lot of fatalities on Crow Canyon Road.

And that's why we they probably were were planning to build uh the roundabouts.

Um I would have thought that that would be on the agenda today.

You know, the roundabouts of Crow Canyon Road, the the designs.

Uh we maybe we should we should have had put that on the agenda too.

And in addition to uh asking about the f the recent fatalities, these fatalities have been going on for a very long time at a very high rate, much higher, double or triple the state average.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Do you have any speakers in the room?

Any more cards?

No more speakers of the room.

Do you have any online?

No other online speakers for public comment.

Any other speakers in the room that we must okay?

I want to go ahead and close the portion of public comment and move on to uh the approval of the minutes from November to 17th.

This chair, uh move to approve the minutes of November 17th, 2025.

I'll second that.

Any discussion?

Uh I'm gonna recommend that we continue the approval of the minutes.

I didn't see the minutes until tonight.

Did anybody get advanced uh copies of these?

We don't get hard copies uh of uh any of our uh items for these uh general purpose meetings, and I didn't get even get one email to me.

Am I the only one?

I I think I think.

Oh geez, I'm sorry to call you out.

I'm so sorry.

No, I I think you're right.

I I did I did attach the uh attachment to the agenda, but uh my recommendation is we continue this item until we get a chance to review them.

Okay, we okay with that.

Okay, get her early and you can read them early.

Okay, we're gonna go ahead and continue the minutes.

Um, the next presentation is from the Art Commission, and um Rachel.

Good evening.

Thank you for this opportunity.

Is the mic on?

Yes, okay.

Hi, I'm Rachel Ossajim.

I'm the director of the Alameda County Arts Commission, and um you have a report in your packet, it's available to the public um through the link on the agenda and also my PowerPoint presentation.

The subject of my report is Alameda County Arts Commission public art projects connected to Alameda County Fire Department Measure X projects, Fire Station 7 in Castor Valley, Palomaris Hills, and Fire Station 25 in Castro Valley on San Miguel Avenue.

The report is about the final recommended artists and artwork proposals for these two projects.

It's an action item, which is an opportunity for you to support the recommendation.

The report includes a number of details, and the information was presented to you on March 17, 2025.

Additionally, I was here for an update on September 15th, 2025.

As you know, the Alameda County Arts Commission is managing this project along with two other projects.

So the report information actually includes all four projects that are concurrently taking place.

For those who want to review the report, I'll just say it includes background information, details, description of the art opportunities, opportunities for community involvement.

And all of the committee members that participated on the four projects, the additional non-voting members, the artists who were selected for as semi-finalists.

There were six for each of the four projects.

And there's a budget, which the MAC has seen in the past, along with a detailed timeline.

So now we'll look at the my presentation.

So I'm skipping ahead to the main element here, which is about the two fire stations and the public art.

On the slide that we're looking at here, which is sort of halfway through the presentation, you'll see the members of the two selection committees that are the focus of this meeting.

So we had a wonderful participation of community members and Alameda County Fire Department staff members who work together as teams to first select the six semifinalists, and then they reconvened and interviewed the artists and made a recommendation for each project.

And a highlight from when I saw you last on September 15th.

Just remind you that all of the proposals were on view for public comment.

We are at the Castor Valley Fall Festival and they were online, and here at the library there is information.

And I'm happy to report that a high number of Alameda County Fire Department staff members also looked at the proposals and submitted comments.

So for Palomaris Hills, we received 101 comments, and for Station 25 on San Miguel, we received 139 comments.

Those comments were given to the selection committee, and they looked at them closely and helped with the consideration of the proposed artists for each project.

This is just an overview of the other selection committees for the projects.

Next.

Next.

And on this slide is a summary of all four projects, which artists are being recommended.

But we'll see an image of station seven and 25 in one minute here.

Next.

After this, the next steps include that there's um our other groups are reviewing and approving the recommendations.

And then the recommendation will go to the Alameda County Board of Supervisors and the Board of Directors of the Alameda County Fire Department for approval with their contracts.

We anticipate this will be in January or February.

And then the artists will be under contract, and the arts commission staff will manage them very closely.

Their current proposals are sketches, but at that point when they're under contract, they'll go through a number of stages to refine their proposals and make the original artworks.

And as you remember, then they'll be printed on very durable materials and integrated into the construction and architecture.

Next.

So this is the proposal for station seven.

The artist is David Burke.

The actual artworks will be original paintings.

They're fabricated on these large panels that is porcelain enamel on steel.

So from a distance, it'll appear like a large painting or mural, but when you get up close, you'll be able to see the details.

And also the durable material is extremely weatherproof and should survive the length of the time span of the building itself.

Next.

And the theme here is that the artwork celebrates the natural beauty of Palomaris Hills and the vital role fighter fighters play in protecting it.

So that's the first proposal for station seven.

And next for station 25, the art proposed artist and artwork is by Josh Powell.

And the artworks are on two sides of this low wall that is along the sidewalk to the entrance to the building, the reception area.

And for the sake of convenience of this illustration, the image is represented on both sides, but in the future it'll be a different image on both sides.

Next.

So this is the second image, but in sort of in place.

Next are the two images together.

So again, it's a proposal.

The artist under contract will improve the design elements and we'll make an original painting that will be printed on the porcelain enamel on steel.

And the theme of this project is that the artwork celebrates the ideas of the community and service of the Alameda County Fire Department.

And as you'll see, there's a lot of images that represent the history of Alameda County Fire Department and local elements of Castro Valley.

So that's my main information from my report.

And I have the pleasure of having Deputy Chief Eric Moore with me, who I invite to say a few words about the process.

Good evening, Council members.

Thank you again for having us.

I just wanted to just uh acknowledge the hard work and dedication that Rachel and her team has put in to getting to this far.

Um we from the beginning have had a very solid partnership in this selection process, and we went through, as mentioned, we went through a selection committee, we had members of our department um sit on those committees, and we're here tonight for your support on moving these art projects forward as we think that it's a good representation of not only the fire department but the community that we serve here.

Um we're in a spot where we feel like we can make an impact.

And I think that both of these artists that you see tonight are in that spot.

So just thank you for um accepting this and and moving this forward for us.

Thank you very much.

I welcome any comments or questions.

Thank you, Rachel.

Rachel, if you could hang in there for a minute, while we just go to public comment, and um don't want to engage with the public, but uh maybe you can come back and answer some of the questions that come up.

Okay, so let's go ahead and um go to public comment.

I have one speaker card here.

Do you have anybody online?

Okay, then I'm gonna call the one speaker card here, and that's uh Ken Carboni.

Good evening, commissioners.

Um, thank you uh for um the opportunity to speak on this item.

I was one of the uh members of the selection committee here with uh on on the fire department for uh station um 25, and we had gone through a pretty rigorous process with a number of different artists and designers.

A lot of effort and thought was put into this, and I I commend the team for um how we got here, um, your support and um taking our recommendations and moving them forward would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

Any speakers online, any other speakers in the room.

You can fill out a card afterwards if you'd like to speak.

I can't hear you, ma'am.

If you could go to the microphone, we're out of cards.

Oh, you said you filled out a card.

Uh maybe it's in.

You can just approach the podium and we'll make sure that it's like we have uh we'll find it, but you go ahead and speak.

Okay, go ahead.

All right, thanks.

Okay.

Um, my name is Linda Willis, and I was a community representative uh on the committee to choose the art for the station on San Miguel, station 25.

Uh the committee had a real diversity of people, community representatives, business representatives, and representatives from the fire station 25.

Um, it was a really thorough um collaborative process, and um to choose the final artists.

All of the art presented was really good, um, but thanks to the thoughtful and input from the firefighters at this station.

So the committee and the fire staff are proud of the art that was selected.

And I think you'll be really proud of it too.

So I hope that you will vote tonight to um approve this art that has been presented to you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Do we have any other speakers?

Anyone online?

Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and close public comment.

Rachel, is there any comments that you want to make on any of the okay?

Hang in there.

We'll go to the board and uh we'll start with uh Councilmember Davis.

No questions.

I support the uh project, and that's it.

Councilmember Thomas.

Thank you.

Like all the every time.

Excellent presentation.

Thank you.

I'll just have a quick question.

Um, any of the art get damaged by natural causes or any other stuff?

So same artists will come back to um fix it or uh how is that process work?

The question is if the artwork is damaged, how would it be fixed?

Yes.

So the way this will work is that the artists will make original paintings, both um David Burke and Josh Powell.

The original paintings will actually be part of the Alameda County arts collection, and then they will be uh presented at a location to be determined.

But the then we will take a high quality digital image of each of the all of the paintings, and they will be printed on that high-quality porcelain enamel on steel panels.

So if they are dirty or there's a graffiti or whatnot, either the Alameda County Fire Department staff will clean it or we would assist them with that, but they're essentially just very cleanable, durable materials.

If they're actually damaged, let's say there was um like let's just say they were dented or scratched or something, because they're they're they're printed on this porcelain enamel and steel, we would work with Alameda County Fire Department to reprint them and then reinstall them.

So it's a system that's highly flexible and allows to sort of to ensure that it could be maintained and looks presentable at all times.

I support the project too.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Councilmore DeVrini.

Thank you, Chair.

Um excuse me.

Uh Rachel, uh Deputy Moore, you guys nailed it.

Okay.

I'm I'm very pleased with everything about this.

The process was fantastic, a lot of community uh input and feedback.

We asked you to talk to uh the historical commission.

You did that.

You met several times, brought it to the fall festival.

I like the way that you set it up where the six finalists all got a small stipend uh to encourage them to do nice artwork and maybe be uh be the absolute finalist.

Um just beautiful, fantastic.

I love the historic uh representation.

Um it's not my it's not in keeping with my position up here to ever not make one complaint.

So I have to make one.

I'm telling you, the Paul of Harris Hill, that is a deer, not a goat.

So if you could pass it on to the artist, the ears are all wrong, and and the height should probably be modeled instead of uniform color.

It really looks like a deer, which is not what you are intending.

You're intending it to be a way to go, fully support these.

And of the four presentations, Cassi Rally got the two best out of all four of them.

Thank you.

Councilman Roda, thank you, Chair.

Great job.

I second that.

Um, everything's been coming through really good.

I really like the artwork.

Um, I do have a few questions about um Mr.

Burke.

Um, he is he's doing both uh seven and twenty two.

I do like that it um explained that the views of the landscape are the Salorenzo Creek.

Is that right?

That's really nice.

Does the E22 represent a certain fire fire?

The station itself.

Okay, okay.

Station number, station number on it, okay.

And then um the other question was um what's the view of of this one here?

Is it first for station seven, Polymaris Hills?

There's an image.

I guess um TC, you could put that back up.

Uh David Burke, he he visited the uh the neighborhood and walked all around and took photographs of the different elements, and he's actually standing on the ridge up higher than Paul and Maris Hills, and he took that original photograph and integrated into his um his mock-up.

So for those of you who visit or live there, the image is looking down towards the clubhouse, um, and then out towards the bay.

That's what the image is.

Okay, yeah, it's the other one.

Yeah, and um the other images include um uh images of flowers and other elements from gardens, and there's a light post that's the signature element within the neighborhood, and the red doors incorporate the artistic uh style and design of the other red doors of the station.

Um given that these are gonna be these are sketches.

Is there gonna be another variation that the community or someone would be voting on or anything?

Or is this the final?

Question.

So the artists will continue to work on um the improvements to their designs, and I'm sure that this artist will look very closely at the goat.

The goat is the mascot of that station, and so it's important it's uh it recognizes the the work of the fire station and the mascot of the station itself, but also um goats that play a role in fire vegetation suppression.

Um so they'll they'll work on the elements, they'll work closely with Elameda County Arts Commission staff, and then we have two reviews, the public art advisory committee, which are community members appointed to do the work of advising and being a focus group for the imagery to ensure that it matches the intention, and then the appointed members of the Alameda County Arts Commission will look at it too, and then we'll update the selection committee members and the fire department staff along the way.

Um Chief Um McDonald has also looked at all the proposals and he endorsed all of them.

So we'll be in informing everybody along the way.

And if you would like me to, I'd be happy to come back and give you a presentation before it's fine.

I always love to hear from you.

Um and then just the comment about two doors, like two doors on the painting.

Just wondering what were your thoughts on on two doors, like you know, the painting has two red doors, you know.

Okay, that's a that's a good question also.

So the station itself has the the all of the stations have this architectural element of these red doors that are both the doors to the aperture bay where the engines and trucks are parked.

Additionally, the same red doors are the entrances to the reception areas for for visitors, and so the artist chose to take um to render those same red doors in his artwork.

So he's essentially um including that same building iconography into his painting.

So just for clarity, this will be his painting, but it will look similar to the doors that are part of the building.

So hopefully that answers your question.

Yeah.

He he decided on the two doors.

That's a door a doorway open to the nature and service.

Yeah, because it looks like it's right in the middle, right?

The the next one when you see the station where it kind of be in the middle of the it is, that's the actual entrance to the building.

Yeah, that's nice.

Um see what other question I have.

And then you I think you might have addressed it, but um, I just wanted to see if the art commission can confirm that the um non-measure X funding for artist fees and administrative costs is fully secured by both stations.

Just wanted to make sure.

Yes, okay.

I think you answered that last time, right?

Okay, that's all I got.

Thank you so much.

Great presentation.

Josh Wilber February.

Yes, thanks.

Good to see you guys again.

Great job again, as usual.

Um, I think everything looks great.

I mean, you've done a great process.

The whole process has been outstanding, involved the community.

Uh you've reached out, I like the historic that that really pops.

That looks good.

So I just I don't really.

I have one question, and that is the size of it.

As you're driving by, is it big enough to kind of notice it and see it and see the detail, or do you have to actually get out of the car and go closer or so?

For um, in our partnership, we agreed that the artwork should help elevate and celebrate the fire department and fit into the architecture and be both visible but not overpowering to the rest of the environment.

And we told that's that the artists who made the proposals that that is our goal.

And we do believe that the artists and proposals selected for station seven and 25 do accomplish that, where there are strong design elements and the scale will be such that when you're driving by and walking by, you'll be able to see it.

But additionally, that um when you get up close, you'll see more details.

So I think it is well suited for each environment.

And um, so I think the answers are like yes, you can see elements from a distance, and you can see elements up close.

Good to know.

Thank you.

Yeah, looks good.

I'm I'm for the project, Vice Chair Moore.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair, and thank you, Rachel and Chief Moore.

Um, I think the arts commission and the fire department have done a really nice job of of getting input from the community, um, bearing with some speed bumps along the way, and and just doing a great job of hearing the voices.

I commend you for that.

Um, the artists fine by me.

I support the project, and I that being said, I'm very disappointed that none of the selected artists are either from Castro Valley or from the unincorporated area.

And we talked about this the last time you were here, and I get it, but um by the same token, I would love to see the selection committees maybe weight local artists a little heavier.

Um, just to have that just to have that connection so we can say it's homegrown, you know.

Um, everything else was great.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Uh just a couple questions.

Um budget, are you on target?

Yes, we are on target for the budget.

In uh the um San Miguel, it looks like your artist had probably been to a fire before and really understood what he was painting because uh or suggesting because it's really well done.

When you um it would that's really kind of cool for a fire department to see a little fire truck and ladders and people working and putting out a fire.

I think it in the future maybe um uh whoever the artist is, maybe they need to go to a fire and see how hard these folks work, and maybe they could capture some of that more of what you see at San Miguel.

Um, I'm certainly not an artist, but I I do appreciate seeing uh art reflect hard work and um and the community.

Um I think you do a wonderful job of reaching out to the community.

I thank you for that.

Um I'm glad to hear that it is on budget.

If we were to replicate what's at San Miguel and a couple of the other fire stations, would we save any money?

Because it's really nice artwork, and nobody's gonna drive by the same fire station the same day.

Oh come on, we gotta just look at ways this put a little bit more money in the in the fire department, buy bigger and better fire engines.

So, anyway, um, but thank you.

It was um you did a real nice job of reaching out, and um, and I you know I really like what you did on San Miguel.

Great.

I'm so glad to hear that.

Yeah, just do more of that.

In my opinion, though.

Okay.

It looks great.

Any other comments from the council?

Okay, um, this is an action item, so uh we want to move this forward.

Um, I'd like to get a motion.

I'll make the motion to approve to approve Alameda County Arts Commission public art projects connected to Alameda County Fire Department Meshorex projects, fire station seven and fire session 25.

Second.

First and second.

We're going to discussion on it.

Okay, um go ahead and roll call.

Councilmember Devini.

Aye.

Aye.

Council Member Feveg?

Aye.

I council member Mota?

Aye, Councilmember Thomas, aye.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Hello.

Thank you very much.

Good job, Rachel.

Okay.

The next item on the agenda is the Cash Valley Bike Lane utilization report.

Um, I believe public works is here and it is an action item.

So and we have quite a few speaker cards on this item too.

So I think I counted 17.

Good afternoon, good evening.

It's been a long day.

So this uh item uh hopefully you all have the the sorry Daniel.

Can you pull the mic down a little bit so everybody online can also hear you?

How about now?

Can you hear me?

We can find a box for you to stand on.

Turned on, I hope.

Thank you.

So uh hopefully everybody has received the memo that I have prepared.

Uh this item uh basically is uh to give you uh a findings that we uh have you know after conducting a bike count along East Castro Valley Boulevard uh from uh Redwood Road all the way to uh Five Canyon.

Uh as you know, uh basic background information is that a class two bike lane was installed recently, uh and most people don't might not realize that that bike lane was identified in the county's uh bike pit master plan uh as a class two bike lane.

That process went through rigorous public, extensive public engagement, uh provided it came to the MAC a couple of times, uh all the other mechs as well as uh Castro Valley Mac.

Uh and at the end, uh we when we were out there resurfacing Castro Valley Boulevard, that gave us an opportunity to kind of implement the master plans recommended class two bike lane with buffer, uh which is what we did.

In order to do that, obviously we had to make some some judgments, and I think I presented that last time, the decision uh protocol that we followed in order to implement uh the class two bike lane.

Uh basically we have to remove 12 Wall Street parking on the north side uh and 23 on the south side in order to be able to implement uh the class two bike lane, and you can see that I think earlier you had it on on the screen.

Uh uh I included uh uh a chart uh a map showing where those locations are and it's also attached in your in your attachment, and you can see it there uh before and after uh of the area.

There are the ones in green dots up there on the top side of the area or the locations where parking was removed.

So as indicated last time, several factors were taken into consideration in order to do this.

Uh for example, are there any off-street parkings available?

Uh are there any fire hydrants, any other restrictions that could make parking lesser desirable or not required at this location.

So we went through that exercise and decided uh to relocate uh to remove these 12 and 23 parking spaces uh on the north and south side.

Now, uh obviously that's uh not a very popular, nor nor uh uh nor uh you know generally supported by everybody.

I mean uh hopefully uh our conclusion was that we went through the process of master planning extensively engaging the community at the time that people felt that was you know, class two bike lane is what they'd like to see.

That's the way we took it, that's the way it went to the board and got adapted, and that's what we implemented.

Uh however, obviously it created a lot of uh controversy and tension uh in terms of the use of the right of way.

But just to stay focused on the memo that I gave you, uh what was the purpose of the bicycle utilization study?

Uh this is uh somewhat of a standard practice for us.

Whenever we do improvements, we do uh average daily traffic, whether it's bicycles or pedestrians or vehicles, so that we can see uh establish a baseline data and compare that before and after type of information for future studies.

So in this case, the methodology that we used is similar to what we have been doing for cars.

We went ahead and acquired the secured tubes.

These tubes go along the bike lanes, and as bikes go on top of them, they count those bikes.

So we went through that process and uh did the counts and use the the software that comes along with it to make sure that we have that information clearly identified.

Number one, we don't want to we wanted to make sure that there were not unusual numbers.

For example, cars that kind of weave into the bike lanes are not counted.

Uh or uh in some cases, uh, you know, the speed at which the two wheels are passing on.

Are they motorcycles or are they bicycles?

Those kind of stuff that the system kind of analyzes, but we also validated through our uh engineering traffic engineering staff.

And our finding is basically just to summarize it, and I have a touch of table uh along with uh the locations of where these tubes were located.

As you can see, uh uh basically the the average daily uh volume range from 22 to 51, depending on the location, uh across the eight different locations.

Uh and then in some areas we wanted to know what was the maximum uh during this 16-day period, what was the maximum number of bikes that we've seen, and there were dates that days that we've seen as high as 89 uh and between 38 and and 89.

These are the largest number of bikes that we've seen during the 16 day period that this count was done.

And and you can see the locations, the dates in the table that was attached with uh with the uh with this report.

Now, you know, to I mean, obviously someone could argue the current ridership is fairly modest.

That's not a large number of them uh when you compare to the 21,000 ADT of cars that go along Castro Valley Boulevard.

So it's uh it's it's uh uh you know the numbers might not be something to compare with vehicles versus bicycles, because we are uh somewhat you know adapting to the bike facility in a bike use use in the in this environment.

But you know, the installation basically uh, like I said, has met the broader goal as identified in a master plan uh in improving safety, connectivity, mobility for cyclists.

At the same time, obviously reallocating space parking, uh uh which is you know has generated uh substantial discussions among the community.

And there are folks, businesses, residents, and others who uh rather have the parking rather than the bike lane.

So that's primarily one of the reasons we're here.

I think you guys represent the community, the residents are here, and uh we just want to make sure we we put it out there as to how the decision was made, what are the numbers telling us in terms of establishing a baseline bike utilization?

Uh you know, it's a judgment call.

Is that adequate?

Is that less?

Is that more is something that people can discuss uh and and say.

However, uh I think uh it is uh one of the things that I think we need to take into consideration is uh these kind of allocations are gonna be compromises, are gonna be something that we have to deal with on ongoing basis, just about on almost all projects.

Do you want to provide sidewalks versus parking versus cars versus bikes?

That discussion is gonna take place, and it is a community-based decision.

We make the technical decisions to make sure that every user of the roadway or the facility has some degree of safety when they utilize our system.

Now, uh because of that, we actually apply technical data, technical information, baseline information, which I try to give you here today, uh, rather than uh personal beliefs.

Uh you know, this is better, this better.

No, that's not you don't you're not gonna hear that from me.

Uh, you know, I leave that for discussions uh among yourself.

So uh I would say uh it was uh interesting to notice that there was this many bikes uh along the corridor because most of the constant thing that uh people say is I never seen a bike on these bike lanes, I've never seen anybody, and it's not by the way, unique to Castro Valley.

Uh Hayward has put a bunch of bike lanes and and people complain, you know, why there's nobody there riding.

So uh that is one discussion.

Others will say, you know, once you build it, it takes time to build up that capacity.

That's the kind of discussion that we need to have.

However, it's always going to be a debate whenever you reallocate right away for specific use.

Uh as you know, I'm a big advocate for pedestrians.

I'm a big advocate for pedestrians because we all walk.

Uh we all have to get out of our cars and do something.

We may maybe we all don't ride a bike, but we know I know for sure we all walk.

All of our kids walk, everybody walks.

So making sure that pedestrians have the safest uh uh way of kind of utilizing our right-of-way is one of my personal commitments that I've done for a long time.

Now, uh otherwise you're gonna have some competition.

So, you know, we uh if you look at some of the areas where people have been parking, we've been receiving calls saying, you know, people are parking in the bike lanes.

You know, one can argue that those people parking on the bike lane were doing something illegal, or another one could say, you know, that just shows you there's a higher demand for parking.

So it is it is like I said, I'm kind of putting this in the on the table so that when you discuss these things, there's no one size fits all, there's no one right answer, one wrong answer, but rather how do we compromise, come up with a reasonable solution that eventually as we move forward, because we're gonna be faced with this kind of stuff on ongoing basis.

How do we make that decision?

Uh we will be coming back to the community real soon for updates of the bike paid master plan.

We have a consultant on board, and that's gonna come up.

That's the venue that you have to discuss how to prioritize uh the utilization of the right-of-way.

Okay.

I and I totally agree with the folks that want to prioritize businesses.

They want to prioritize uh the parking for folks that live within the downtown area.

Uh, you know, uh the specific plans, some of the plans that the community has developed advances some of those kind of concepts.

So it's just it's just something that hopefully we will kind of discuss and get to some type of compromise solution.

Uh that's a win-win, if at all possible.

So with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions you have.

The summary that I gave you is uh a summary of a very extensive road data that that captures information by the hour for 16 days uh every day and and uh 24-7.

That's the summary that you got there, and that's what uh the numbers tell you.

So if you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them, or uh if you want to hear from the community first, uh Chuck, I guess your call.

Yeah, and all of you just hold on for a few minutes.

I think we're gonna go to public comment.

Um, how many people speakers do we have online?

Okay.

Uh I'm gonna go ahead and stick with the three minutes.

What?

Twenty-two?

Five online speakers.

Okay, and I think I have about um 20 something speaker cards.

So I'm gonna go ahead and say we're gonna be a two-minute um session here so that we can get through all of them before the end of the night.

Um, so what we'll do is we'll go in the room and we'll go online and they'll come back to in the room, and um so we'll start out that way there.

And uh it would speak speed it up.

If um, when you come up to speak, if basically what you're gonna talk about has already been said five times before you.

If you would just say, Yeah, I agree with Bill or something, you know, or it would move the thing along quicker because it there are a lot of cards here, and I do plan on listening to everybody.

So um we'll just go ahead with uh two minutes and we'll start with uh I believe it's Craig Staudelmeyer, who's my first card.

Good evening.

Uh thank you for the opportunity to speak uh tonight.

My name is Craig Summelmeyer with Main Street Property Services, and we have uh been in the development business for retail shopping centers in downtown buildings for about 30 years.

Uh we've done several projects in Castro Valley, and we were looking to do a fourth project, which is a projected forest and um Castro Valley Boulevard adjacent the new May May Market, and I passed out a rendering uh of what we had drawn up for this project, which would require a substantial investment on the property owners' behalf.

Um so we're devastated when we saw the parking spaces removed.

Um tenants that we had strong interest from that interest dissipated.

And I want to just share with you the retail is under a great deal of pressure.

It's um often communities are looking to go how do we maintain and restore our retail environments, and uh parking management convenient parking is extremely essential, and in this particular case, and along Castro Valley Boulevard, many of these buildings have been there for many years prior to even the widening of Castor Valley Boulevard.

So this property one time had some on-site parking, but the street was widened and that parking was removed, left it completely reliant on the street parking, and now that parking has been removed.

So I'd like to ask for you to work to restore the parking and then these critical locations as quickly as possible.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, caller online.

You want to.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes.

Yep, Garlandui here, long time Castro Valley resident.

Um, I actually work in the auto industry, and I'm a secret frequent cyclist on this portion of Castro Valley Boulevard.

So the Mac after being on the wrong side of the road on Cast on Somerset Avenue on Higher Avenue.

Here you have another opportunity to provide for Castro Valley's future.

Um and that's basically helping people get safely into central Castro Valley rather than pandering to local businesses.

Um I know that the business ours is important and I support them.

Um but they mostly have parking lots already.

As a taxpayer, I want to see that the roads that I pay for are used for roads, for transportation, not for somebody's private profit or benefit.

Um the businesses will be fine without the small handful of parking.

Mr.

Salomar just said that he was devastated when he saw three spaces removed.

Um, there's already spots there.

They have multiple done multiple studies uh showing that bike lanes are good for business.

Further, the bike lanes are part of the bike ped master plan that Mr.

Will Dessenbett referenced.

They're also part of the climate action plan.

They make travel safer safer in Castro Valley.

People are riding e-bikes more and more.

The explosion of e-bikes actually means that the demand for safe routes into central Castro Valley is more important than ever.

Forcing kids and cyclists to play frogger by jumping in front of cars when the bike lane disappears is simply uh a mistake.

So I asked the Mac to stop trying to play roulette with the safety of Castro Valley citizens and let's hang on to those bike lanes.

We will need them.

Thank you.

We're going to back to the room.

Bruce King.

Hi, Bruce King.

Um, I love to ride bikes.

Um, and I've I've rented e-bikes.

I think they're fantastic.

I think they're gonna blow the socks off of commuting if we give have the right infrastructure.

But I know I'm not invincible because I know when I drive my car across Castro Valley, I get hit.

My wife gets hit.

Our cars get totaled.

And I know that if I'm on a bike and I get hit by a car, I could easily be totaled for the rest of my life or the lack of my life.

So um, you know, I I realize that the ideal spot is to park in front of a store.

But frankly, when I come to Castro Valley, I don't expect to park right in front of a store.

And when I go to adjacent towns, I don't park in front of a store.

Last night it was in Oakland.

I walked down, went parked down the street, walked to the store.

And these stores, I you know, I go to places like the burrito shop.

I if if there isn't a parking spot right in front of front where they've got a few parking spots, I go down the street, park, and I've never had a problem getting a parking spot.

So I'm a bit perplexed by this problem.

And then we get new developments like these townhouses.

Okay, and there's no on-street parking, and you know, everybody knew there was a bike ped plan.

There's no parking on the street because the townhouses probably wanted to build maximum townhouses.

It went through the Mac, the planning commission, public works.

Did anybody warn them that hey, there's not going to be parking spots when those bike lanes come in that were approved in 2019?

And then Craig comes here and says, You want to put in new businesses, and there's no parking.

Oh, a surprise.

It's we've known this since 2019.

So why aren't businesses planning for parking if they think they need parking right in front of their place?

People can park down the street and walk to the business.

It's not a big deal.

That's what people do everywhere.

Thanks.

Online.

Paolo Esperitu, you have two minutes.

Hi, uh, can you guys hear me?

Yes.

Okay.

Um, so thank you for the opportunity to speak.

I've been uh resident of Castro Valley for the past three or four years.

I work at the local high school.

Um, and I've um before I moved to my current residence.

I lived uh right next to the new um shopping center May Mays Market, and I ride my would ride my bike to central uh Castro Valley down to the downtown and the village.

And one thing I really struggled with was just basically my safety.

I felt really unsafe just riding down that street just because of the speed that people are going through, um, passing through those lanes.

And I understand the need for parking for businesses.

Um, but I also think it's really important to think about the safety issue because there's a couple things.

If I ride on the sidewalk, that's actually very dangerous for pedestrians.

Uh and it could be something that I can injure it.

And with the proliferation of uh e-bikes, that's something you do not want on a regular sidewalk just because of the speed that it goes down, especially going downhill into central uh Castro Valley.

So I really appreciate the study that was done.

Um, I know uh ridership is modest at this point, but I think it's important to think about the future of Castro Valley.

Um, this is a really great place to live.

I also think uh we are in a great location for bike commuters for people that want to go up Redwood Row, go into the Redwoods.

And this is one of those things where bikers want to be able to frequent the places, go to local cafes and things like that, and having a safe way to travel between uh these areas is really important.

And I think uh I really think that's something we need to be mindful of because these businesses will thrive with more bike uh commutership in the city.

Thank you.

Back to the room.

Um Crystal arisen.

Good evening, counsel.

My name is Cristada Rison.

I'm one of the two owners of Redwood Cycle House, uh tax paying business on Castro Valley Boulevard.

I'm also a cyclist.

Cycling Castor Valley is deeply personal to me.

It's how I met my fiance.

It's been essential to my life and the lives of countless others for getting to work for health for connection.

These lanes are the difference between the boulevard I avoided for years because it was dangerous and the one I can now ride safely.

And now I hear you're considering ripping the lanes out based on 10 days of data.

Nine months ago, your own public works department said these bike lanes were a quote practical and valuable safety enhancement.

They analyzed the parking impacts, they called it the right decision for the community.

These bike lanes were installed based on a five-year study showing 49 crashes on this boulevard.

That's real people getting hurt.

Your current study, it lacks baseline data.

You never counted before the lanes went in.

You measured in October when the weather gets worse and cycling drops off, and new infrastructure takes two to three years to reach full use, not weeks.

The double standard is also absurd.

You justify lanes for cars using year-round traffic data, but for bikes, you count for 10 days in bad weather and call it done.

And parking, the heart of the controversy here.

I understand it's a concern, but nine of the impacted spaces are in front of the old ride aid, which has been redeveloped with hundreds of new parking spaces.

You're considering removing safety infrastructure to solve a 35 parking spot problem that's already being addressed.

When you remove safety features, your own department called improvements and someone gets hurt.

The money comes from our country jet county general fund.

Who pays for that?

Our libraries, fire department, and schools.

And let's get to the point here.

And name the elephant in the room.

This agenda item isn't about a carefully careful data-driven consideration.

It's a predetermined conclusion dressed up as analysis.

So I implore y'all vote to keep the bike lanes, don't waste our money, don't contradict your own safety efforts, and don't let 10 days of data undo all the rigorous work that's already been done.

Lead with integrity.

Thank you.

Jeremiah, you're on the line.

You have two minutes.

Thank you.

My name is Jeremiah Mallor.

I chair uh BART's bicycle advisory task force.

I urge you to keep the bike lanes on Castro Valley Boulevard and strengthen them, not remove them.

We have uh research finds protected bikeways reduces crashes and injuries by 20 to 50 percent.

We have real crash data.

UC Berkeley's safe transportation research center wrote a report on Castro Valley analyzing police reported traffic collisions.

Over five years, Castro Valley had 64 reported bicycle crashes, including six serious injury crashes.

Castro Valley Boulevard had the highest concentration with 22 crashes, and about 40% of the people hit were school-aged youth, many between the ages of 11 and 14 years of age.

If you remove these lanes, you increase the risk of serious crashes on a corridor that already has the highest concentration of bicycle crashes.

This is also about access to BART for many residents on both sides of the station.

Castro Valley Boulevard is the only direct, continuous east to west route to reach BART by bicycle.

These lanes connect to Redwood Road and Norbridge, um, which also have um you know, bicycle facilities.

So the, you know, Castro Valley Boulevard forms the main bike routes to the station.

And it connects other bike lanes.

This there's also legal and policy risk in going backwards on a high injury network corridor.

Removing existing safety feature increases liability exposure if a serious crash occurs.

And it undercuts vision zero and complete street commitments.

Please retain the bike lanes, strengthen them, make them longer, and judge acts success by safety outcomes, not based on some short snapshot count.

Thank you.

And back in the room, um, just like Balam Muddoff.

Good evening, everybody.

My name is Galen Mundorf, and I also own Redwood Cycle House on Castro Valley Boulevard.

I have been involved in the Castro Valley cycling community since 2002 when I began cycling thanks to the help of Eden Bicycles.

Since then I've been involved in all things cycling in Castro Valley and abroad.

And that is why in March of 2025, I decided to open up my own bicycle shop here in Castro Valley.

I chose Castro Valley because I love this town.

I want to see my friends share my love of cycling in the Castor Valley the way I do.

I was elated to finally see painted and protected lanes installed this year.

And then to hear them so suddenly questioned is truly distressing.

I walked into this room tonight, and the first thing I heard was, and I quote, the destruction of our community via bike lanes and the damage to parking and property value.

Nothing can be further from the truth.

These bike lanes create community that extend well beyond the roads of Castro Valley.

I could tell you stories of how for hours, but I only have two minutes.

And in case anyone has any doubts about the amount of riders in Castro Valley, I personally, over the last decade, have sold over $9 million in bicycles.

That does not include the business's total sales.

That is me personally as a salesman.

The true dollar amount is far higher than me alone.

When Castro Valley installed these lanes this year, you signaled to cyclists that you cared about their safety, their children's safety on their way to school, commuters on their way to BART, and cyclists who envoy enjoy riding to the village or shop at Phil's, we get coffee or over Redwood Road, Chabot and beyond.

Taking these lanes away tells these people the opposite.

I'm asking tonight, please do not sacrifice the safety of Castro Valley citizens for the convenience of parking and a percentage increase of property value.

Show them that you care.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

On the line, boys.

Rebecca, you're on the line.

You have two minutes.

Great.

Thank you.

Good evening, everyone.

Uh I'm Rebecca Stanek Rykoff.

I live in Castro Valley on Somerset Avenue, no less.

Um, obviously I support the bike lanes on Castro Valley Boulevard.

Um, I want to point out that time and time again, we have had meetings in Castro Valley where people of all ages, but particularly families and parents and our youth have come out asking for bike lanes.

Um, and I also want to highlight that cars are getting bigger and heavier and taller.

And so the risk to pedestrians and cyclists has only been increasing over the past decade.

And so, you know, our families, our community has been asking for bike lanes throughout Castro Valley so that we have multiple options for traveling throughout Castro Valley.

And so I'm asking all of you tonight on the Mac, what is your vision for Castro Valley?

What is your vision for the future of our community for the future of our children who are growing up in a world with a climate crisis and again increasing danger to them every time they go for a walk or go for a bike ride?

Um, two other quick points I want to make.

Um, one is that one of the things that Castro Valley really needs um as part of its bike network is more bike lanes on its north-south corridors.

Right now we have um northbound on Stanson Avenue, and that's it.

We need bike lanes on Lakeshabau Road, Redwood and Center to get a real network going.

Um, and then finally, you know, removing a bike lane would cut off Castro Valley from the publicly funded bike infrastructure that has been developed throughout Alameda County.

You are re proposing the removal of this bike lane.

I mean, this is our tax sellers' go to fund this public infrastructure, and to have us not be able to access it safely is truly distressing.

Thank you.

Andrew Silva.

Good evening, Council.

I believe I was here about 18 months ago when we were discussing the um when we were discussing the actual facade of HL Peninsula and May May Market.

I represent the property owner.

And I understand the theory that if you build it, they will come.

But I also understand that once you take it, the customers won't come.

And so personally I'll maybe circle the block once or twice and then I'll go somewhere else.

And so that's the risk that's involved.

And I wasn't involved in the initial discussions on this issue, but maybe there's a way to remove the center medians on Castro Valley Boulevard.

That's maybe like a few feet.

I haven't done the measurements, but there has to be some middle ground here.

So that's all.

Thank you.

Online.

Alejandra, on the line, you have two minutes.

Can you hear me good?

Yes.

Good.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Alejandro Hasso.

I live in Hayward and I'm the co-chair of Bike Hayward, but we also cover the uh Eden area, the unincorporated area, and we work with uh Castro Valley um bike walk Castro Valley.

Um I also work at my family's food business, Yojas Botanaria, which is not far from Castro Valley in Cheryland.

And I'm here to ask you to keep the bike lanes on Castro Valley Boulevard, because I do spend my money in Castro Valley.

I like to ride after work from Cherryland to Nick De Creek or other restaurants, and then from there take the new lanes to take uh five canyons parkway to ride home.

If you remove these lanes, you remove the safe route that I had uh after work.

So I wouldn't be visiting Castro Valley as much as I used to.

And also uh we have a business, so we understand the parking issues.

We're right next to Chai Tai Noodles, which is a very popular spot that has been around for a bit over a decade.

And they don't have their own parking lot, but they've they've been around for over over 10 years.

So their success proves that you don't need a parking lot to thrive.

But on Mission Boulevard, we do see some free parking that instead of being used by the patrons, it's actually abuse by people that park their cars and then they put signs for sale.

So free parking does not translate to to business for the local businesses there.

So here's a compromise.

If you need more parking, perhaps remove a car lane.

And that would all that would add space to add parking and also add protected bike lanes, and it would also calm the traffic and make it more enjoyable to spend time on Castro Valley Boulevard.

Also, I just wanna I just wanted to let you know that uh hey Hayward has a grant and uh 1.5 million dollars of that grant went to the Trek Bicycles in Castro Valley.

So that's the Hayward Rights program.

And that's gonna add over 2,000 people that ride bikes in Hayward.

And if you remove these bike lanes, you are isolating Castro Valley from these uh potential customers.

Um finally the legal liability.

Sorry, your time is out.

Thank you.

Go back to the room.

Um, Michael Solas.

Thank you.

My name's Michael Solis.

I've been a resident of Castro Valley for 15 years and a coach of the Hayward Composite High School Mountain Bike Team.

I'm urging you to reject the proposal to remove the um the bike lanes on Castro Valley Boulevard.

As a coach of the high school mountain bike team, the lanes are important for our kids to safely get around town.

Our team started with less than 10 kids about six or so years ago.

Now we have between 20 and 30 kids every year who use their bicycles to get around.

I also work for Bay Area Rapid Transit, and as a regular user of transit.

I've seen the use of bicycles, e-bikes, and scooters just explode since the um since the pandemic, and these bike lanes are a critical way in um in allowing them a safe way to get around town.

And as a resident who has seen the traffic and parking problems just increase over the years, um, I'd like to continue to avoid being a part of those problems by using my bicycle to access the businesses up and down the boulevard.

You know, the um the bike lanes are critical to that, and I've also managed to stay incident-free around here with cars for the past 15 years.

I ride about 8,000, 9,000 miles a year.

And um, a large part of that is because of the um the safe bicycle corridors in the East Bay, and I'm hoping and the kids are hoping that Castor Valley continue can continue to be a part of that.

Thank you.

I want to ask your police reframe just on a concert or something from clapping and so on like that.

Okay.

This is a business meeting.

Thank you.

Um, online, please.

John, you're on the line, you have two minutes.

Thank you very much.

I'm John Spangler, resident of San Leandro now, and uh vice chair of the Bark Bike Advisory Task Force, and I helped author and approve that letter that you have before you in your packet.

But tonight I want to speak to you mostly as an individual who in 2019 with my wife looked at a lot of homes in Castor Valley, and we decided not to buy a house in Capsor Valley because we'd have to drive everywhere.

It was not a bike-friendly community, and it was obvious to us.

I've been riding since I was six years old, never gave it up, but I'm 73 by the way.

Um I would like to ask the members of the MAC, uh, how valuable compared to a parking space is a human life to you.

You mentioned the Crow Canyon Road fatality earlier in your meeting.

How valuable is it to have a human life lost compared to having a parking space lost?

I do not hear that comparison in your in your deliberations, and I believe it's important that you look at the cost of injuries and deaths caused by drivers not paying attention to cyclists or taking away their right of way.

Um bike lanes make it easier to shop.

I was in Castor Valley December 1st.

I had plenty of time to look at a lot of interesting businesses, but could not stop because I was stuck driving my car back from delivering a friend to uh surgery in Pleasanton.

And there we do carry credit cards as bicyclists.

So I want to, I hope you'll consider those things.

Uh, because we shop when we're on our bikes.

Thank you very much.

I think this next one's Kyle Frodnik.

And after Kyle, I think it's Kevin.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak.

I'm a Castor Valley resident and a regular cyclist, and I rely on our bike lanes to travel safely.

I'm here to strongly oppose removing the bike lanes to make room for additional parking.

First and foremost, it is a safety issue.

Bike lanes are proven to reduce conflicts between cars and cyclists.

When bike lanes are removed, cyclists don't disappear.

We're forced into vehicle lanes, making the streets more dangerous for everyone, including drivers.

Removing the bike lanes will also increase traffic rather than reduce it.

Bike lanes support people choosing alternatives to driving.

Every person on a bike is one less car, adding to congestion and competing for parking.

Adding parking may feel like a quick fix, but it encourages more driving and worsens congestion over time.

Bike lanes are also critical to public transit and connectivity.

Many residents, bike to BART, buses, and local destinations.

Removing bike lanes undermines our investment in mass transit and makes it harder and less safe to access.

There's an equity aspect as well.

Not everyone can drive or afford a car.

Bike lanes provide affordable access to transportation and uh for many residents, and removing them limits those options.

Once bike lanes are removed, they're very difficult to bring back.

I urge the council to explore alternatives, better parking management, time limits or pilot solutions before making permanent decisions that impact the safety and mobility.

Please preserve our bike lanes and pursue solutions that improve access without compromising safety.

Thank you.

Bruce, you're on the line.

You have two minutes.

Well, you know what?

Let's hold on here one second.

When we first started, we had five online people.

We were already down six.

We have two more.

Okay.

I just want to make sure we get through everybody that's in the room that's sitting in here.

And uh, want to make sure um so what we're gonna do is we're gonna go to two here and one online so that we can get everybody heard in the room.

Kevin, I believe you are next.

Good evening, and um thank you for the opportunity to speak here.

Um, I'm here to urge the board to keep the existing bike lanes and to consider their value to the entire community.

Um bike lanes are fundamentally about safety.

Uh, they reduce conflicts between the cars, bikes, runners, and pedestrians.

Um, I currently are I personally am a uh runner and a cyclist throughout this community.

Um, they make streets calmer, they make uh the um they're they're more predictable uh for traffic movement, and removing them will increase risk, especially for kids, seniors, and less confident riders.

Bike lanes improve mobility, they reduce congestion.

Um that helps everyone, including drivers, replacing bike lanes with parking.

Uh, that is, as we've heard, it's a short-term fix.

Uh, parking fills up quickly and encourages more driving.

Bike lanes move people efficiently.

Parking, uh, parking stores cars inefficiently.

Uh, this change would likely uh recreate the same parking problem that we're trying to solve.

Bike lanes support local businesses and quality of life.

They support healthier residents, cleaner air, and quieter streets.

This is a low-cost investment with long-term benefits.

I'm not asking the city to choose bikes over cars.

I'm asking the city to choose safety access and smart long-term planning.

Please keep the bike lanes and continue investing in a community that works for everyone.

Thank you.

Let's go online.

Bruce, you're on the line.

You have two minutes.

Uh hello, Bruce Dougie here.

Um, I just want to point out that uh the bike counts are actually under counts because um I see lots of um uh people uh riding on the sidewalks in that area, and I see a lot of uh May May customers or uh a number of May May customers uh in uh the older uh Chinese uh people riding uh these these e-bikes, small e-bikes um on the sidewalk, and I also see uh students uh also riding on the sidewalks and there and those um uh those hoses didn't go across on the sidewalk.

And there's also a lot of scootering also that happens on the sidewalks.

So this is quite an undercount in general.

So I you know, whatever you see is on the low side.

But mainly we need to have uh uh the the key is to have um uh you know safe safety.

And I also want to, you know that the uh the first and last mile is critical for the use of BART.

So I use BART quite a bit, and I ride my bike to BART and I take my bike on BART.

And at one time before the uh pandemic, um, uh Castor Valley was ranked number 10 in the whole system for uh use of bicycles.

That's from a BART report.

Um, so people do use them, and uh it really expands that the combination of bicycle and train.

I go almost everywhere in the Bay Area, uh Redwood City, uh San Francisco, obviously, lots of other places.

I I go by bicycle and BART.

So those are the um it's a it's a like a magic um you know combination.

But there was also I want to mention construction um during, and there was also rain, um, like somebody mentioned in October.

There was rain during that uh first time when they were collecting data, and there was construction in front of May May at the time of the um that they had the uh the hoses out.

So yeah, please keep the bike lane.

Thank you.

Okay, we're going to call it you're on the line.

You have two minutes, Kelly.

We just um, I'm sorry, can you put that caller on hold?

Oh, I'm sorry, we're back to the room.

We're gonna go uh two in the room, Sean and Lethian and Gary Howard.

Good evening, council members.

Uh, thanks for your time on this subject.

Uh I've spent the majority of the last 25 years of my professional life on the boulevard.

Um property owner and business owner on Castro Valley Boulevard, and you know, I don't want to say that the number counts were flawed on the bike counts, but uh I've spent day and night on Castor Valley Boulevard, and I'll be surprised if I see more than 10 bicycles riding up and down the boulevard on the section between Redwood Road and Center Street.

That being said, I'm not anti-bike, I'm not anti-the bike coalition is very well organized and very passionate.

I'm not anti-that at all.

I'm actually pro-bike lane for one reason and one reason only.

It cleaned up the boulevard.

You don't have RVs parking on the boulevard, you don't have car for sale parking on the boulevard.

It in essence did what the county was unable to do in policing the two-hour parking restriction on the boulevard.

So I'm pro-bike lane for that reason.

I'm anti-bike lane, but not anti-bicyclists or bike riding.

I'm anti-bike lane because I think the process was a bit flawed.

I think Daniel and his department have a big task at him, and I think he's very good at what he does.

And I've had some interactions with Daniel, so this isn't a personal attack on him.

But I was told that the decision to paint the bike lanes was done within a five-day period when the contractor was scheduled to stripe the boulevard.

Whether that was put in the plan from 2019 or the strategic plan or general plan of Castor Valley, business owners and property owners were not engaged recently.

There was no outreach to us, none, no mailers, nothing saying your parking spaces are going to be eliminated.

I think it's disingenuous, ignorant, and irresponsible to not engage in the business community when you're going to do things like that.

Again, this isn't anti-bicyclists.

This is pro-business owners who are paying taxes and providing a service.

Because if you're if you don't have a viable business, you don't have a place to ride your bikes to.

Good evening.

I'm Gary Howard, and I've lived in Castro Valley for 32 years.

I have a very brief comment actually.

I think this is a really rather difficult problem that we're going to face for some time because we have two things that are good here.

You know, bike lanes are a good thing.

We really want to have them.

On the other hand, we really need to take into account the needs of the businesses and the residents who for a long time have depended on street parking.

So somewhere to uh follow uh Director Wallensbeck, I hope I've said your name correctly.

Uh, we need to find a compromise here.

And um, I think, you know, for example, to echo what the previous speaker just said.

One of the real problems we have here, to put this in a slightly larger context is that we don't have a specific plan, and I think it would help us uh really uh to gain local control over our local over our planning decisions, so that when these kind of compromises need to be made, hopefully they would be made in advance and before we paint the free paint the highway.

So thank you very much.

Let's go online.

I think I'm next to you.

Just a minute.

We'll come back to you.

That's me.

Uh me.

I didn't call your name, sir.

Pardon.

We're online.

Just hang on there.

We're gonna get to you.

I promise.

Kelly, you're on the line, you have two minutes.

Thank you, this is Kelly.

Um, yeah.

Uh it's been said uh a couple of times that the bike or uh uh advocates are very organized and um very motivated here in Castor Valley.

Um and uh I agree with that.

I mean, I've been to other others, I don't live in Castor Valley, and uh, but the the level of of bike uh bike support there is in a much higher, and I and I give all the credit to the Castor Valley Mac.

Castor Valley Mac has created this bike coalition, and uh the people, the bike people are are very motivated just because of what the Castor Valley Mac has been doing for all these years.

Um it's it's really been been amazing.

Uh we've we've given up a lot of uh bike facilities, but we've created a bike uh uh bike uh culture.

Um and um also uh rather than going into the value of bike lanes, which you've heard over and over again, and if you haven't heard it, um you should start listening because it it's pretty obvious.

Um uh the uh business people that have come here um are telling you that you need free parking, uh free street parking, and the you only have a few, even if you uh let everybody park everywhere, you would still only have a few street parking spaces.

Um and uh what you're doing is you're undervaluing the value of the street parking.

Look at SF Park in San Francisco.

They uh have dynamic pricing for the parking, and that was that is a tremendous success for the businesses, for the residents, for everybody.

And in Boulder, Colorado, they adapted uh performance-based pricing for about a thousand downtown curb spaces.

Uh they kept the curb rates higher, the uh to increase turnover at the curb and push longer-term parkers off into the off-street facilities.

Now, uh Castor Valley has no concept of the value of the street parking.

You just uh you know let people park for two hours for free, and you are uh misusing your your most valuable resource.

Thank you.

Okay.

Um Greg, I uh uh you already been up once.

Okay, we're not gonna let you vote twice.

Okay, um Hera.

You see him?

Dr.

Harobi, Ken Corboni.

Good evening, Mac.

My name is Hara Aliki, and I come to you this evening.

Um I'm wearing a very unique hat.

When the project at KB Homes was approved, I was very active in that process, specifically highlighting the issues with parking that were going to be developed as a result of the commercial spaces at that location.

In 2019, if this was part of a bike master plan, why were the spaces in front of that building counted in the parking allocation at this Mac meeting to satisfy parking needs for those commercial spaces?

That being said, a family member previously also told you we have a happy coincidence.

Trash has been cleaned up on that half of Castor Valley Boulevard because the Alameda County Sheriff's Department never patrols that area.

I call in and complain when somebody's parked for three weeks in a spot and hasn't moved.

Not two hours, not 24 hours, not forty four 44 hours, three weeks.

Okay, guess what?

I don't have to make those phone calls anymore.

I appreciate the bike riders, their successes.

I want them to be successful, but I want the businesses that we own to be successful as well.

I am a property owner.

I look to lease and rent to residential.

I look to lease and rent to commercial.

I want there to be a symbiotic relationship about all those components.

I'm also pedestrian in Castor Valley.

Our sidewalks are sad people.

They're sad.

The new sidewalks that were put in in the streetscape 10 years ago are being raised by the trees that were not put proper tree barriers in.

Not the property owner's problem.

Again, Alameda Counties.

The biggest issue here is the county knew about these problems, and they didn't let the property owners or engage the Mac and letting them know, hey, there's a bike plan.

We can't count these spaces, yet the spaces were counted.

That's the fundamental issue here.

We're not engaging with the property owners and the business owners at this location as part of the process.

Thank you.

Ken Carboni here again.

I had a prepared statement here, but this has just gone completely off the rails, and it's just it's really truly unfortunate.

I think that let me just make a quick statement here really quick.

Castor Valley Boulevard the bike lane is the issue.

We're not saying that we don't want bicycles, we don't even we're not even saying we don't want bike lanes, and this whole thing is turned completely upside down.

The problem is the wrong choice of bike lanes was made.

We took parking away where a normal class two bike lane does not.

Why we took the buffered bike lane route?

Well, okay, we can debate on how that happened, however, this could be solved in such a way where there's enough room for both.

Uh in doing research, you know, starting at the state where Caltrans makes some guidelines for counties to actually follow to actually create these bike plans.

It says don't put a buffered bike lane downtown in a commercial district.

It just says it.

It's so strange that these, you know, I don't know how it got there.

And like I said, we're not none of us were even on those committees.

I think only one person.

But we're not saying no bike lanes.

So I think we need to get past that and say, how do we make this semiotic to where we're not damaging the businesses, the properties, or anything else along that boulevard and allow the bike lane to be there.

There's five choices of bike lanes.

We don't need a freaking barrier and a 10 foot wall and a bike in the middle of it.

I mean, we've destroyed communities, and it's clear there's a whole slew of them of cities that made some really bad bike line choice bike lane choices, and they have destroyed their downtowns, and now they're trying to pull it back.

Let's don't be the next one.

I don't, you know, and so that's kind of all I have to say.

If you have any questions, please let me know.

Thank you.

Do we have any more callers online?

Okay.

If somebody comes up online, just let me know.

And meanwhile, we're gonna focus on the room.

Okay, the next one is Jim Robertson.

Thank you, Jim.

Sorry.

A little bit of hearing issue.

That's all.

Uh yeah.

Uh uh Jim Robson.

I've been here in Castro Valley for 40 plus years.

Um, yeah, get a little closer.

Just show you it this way.

I've been here for 40 plus years.

Uh I bike commuted from uh uh San Jose uh and uh the West Bay at different times.

Um bike, bus, and Bart, a supporter of that, but um my support is for keeping the bike lane.

It's a safety issue.

We need to separate uh the bicycles from the sidewalk and the pedestrians, uh particularly seniors like myself and uh and uh other people that uh are not quite as uh mobile and at the same time, traffic on the road is not the place for kids on bikes to be.

They, you know, and they really shouldn't be on the sidewalk either.

Bike lane is the only way to go.

Um, the other thing is uh we're doing the county's doing a lot of work in uh other areas, and it's important to have the connectivity and thrownness of bike lanes.

Where bike lanes don't go for uh certain direct ways and then curve around cars uh because we have to have parking.

Uh I like to go straight through, have a clear uh line of sight of where I'm going.

That's safer for everybody around.

And uh I'm a little concerned about the count on the uh on the that was done.

Is that bicycles only?

Let's can't uh let's uh keep track of the scooters, the e-scooters, the e-bikes that also uh proliferate out there on the roadways.

Uh thank you.

Okay, I'm gonna go to the next two people be uh Lawrence Henderson or Hennings.

No, I'm sorry, Lawrence Hutchins.

And then the next one after that would be Roy Taylor.

Thank you for your time, allowing me to speak.

Oh I guess I have three concerns is uh see more, sir.

Hello.

So I guess I have three concerns safety, the future, and and retired people.

I was a long time bicyclist, and I'm an easier shot, I gotta admit.

I got an electric bike, and I like going up and down Castro Valley Boulevard to do business.

But I'm afraid to go out in the traffic to be honest with God.

So the bike lanes are a savior that I can do business downtown.

If I've tried driving, street parking is great if you can find it in front of the store you want to go to, but you can't find it, it's already occupied.

So you end up walking three or four blocks where you finally find a place to park, usually behind uh the marketplace, and not walking, but these are shot, so that doesn't work well.

But that's the other thing is I see more and more and more and more electric bikes.

And I think if you build it, they will come, more will come.

It's a it's a recent phenomena.

We're in the present, moving to the future.

And I think that I see kids out there with electric bikes, went to and from school, you never used to see.

And I really hate to see them out in traffic.

The traffic is frightening if you get out there in the middle of the road.

So I would I would look for that as a reason.

So I would say look to the future, look to safety of kids and consider your retired people who are starting to use electric bikes to get around where they're not able to walk as well as they used to.

Thank you.

Roy Taylor.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um I think I must be close to the end of the speakers, so I guess a couple of points.

I've been keeping tally.

So of the public speakers, I have 15 speaking in favor of bike lanes and six against one person.

I couldn't decide actually what the uh preference was.

Um so I would employ you to listen to the community, yeah.

They we are an unincorporated area.

And the purpose, a large role that the Mac plays is to allow our community to have a voice.

It's actually the only place we can come for our community to have a voice.

Uh Director Will Dessenbert actually pointed over here and said, You are the community, don't take it personally, but you are not the community.

The community does not look like this.

Uh the last census, Castro Valley was uh roughly 40% white and 30% Asian.

And I'm pretty sure it's 50% female.

So, you know, by no means are you representative of the community.

The community is over here, and the community was on the phone.

And so I'd urge you to you know put your own um, put your own opinions aside and and listen to the community and what the desires of the communities are community is here.

Um when the KB home development started.

Actually, we had a chance to meet with them, the bike coalition.

They were actually very excited to meet with us, and they actually offered to put in a bike station.

I don't know if it's still there because the developers changed hands, but they were going to put in a bike station, which is like a repair place for bikes and a bike pump, and they were very excited to try and make it a destination.

I don't know if that's happening, but uh because of the change in ownership, but I remember the conversation uh we had with them, and they were very supportive at the time.

Thank you.

Next two speakers would be uh Linda Willis and uh Alex and Hello Noes.

I can't quite read everything.

Thank you.

You're next.

Hello.

Can you hear me?

Okay, good.

Um yeah, I'm Linda Willis.

Um I live in Castro Valley.

Um I drive a car and I'm happy to have one.

Um, but I also um think that we were living in a car-centric culture, and it's really not working.

Uh Castro Valley Boulevard is stalled in traffic most of the day.

Uh the cars are too big, too fast, drivers are too rushed and too distracted.

Um, pedestrians of all ages, from children to seniors to the disabled, are at risk crossing the streets, uh, especially without bulb outs and uh too short of times to cross the street.

Um cyclists are at risk without bike lanes.

So I think we really need to think about the future.

Um everyone here who's spoken said bikes are electric, we got kids on scooters on the things that they ride on on the streets.

Um, so let's keep the bike lanes.

Um, let's keep the streets good for users.

Um of all kinds, kids, seniors, all pedestrians, cyclists, the disabled.

Um, think about how our future is going to impact all of us who live here.

Um, think about the cyclists who will safely ride to your local Castor Valley businesses and spend their money.

Think about our health by reducing car traffic by having more people able to ride and walk to Castor Valley, especially downtown.

Um, it'll keep our air clean from car pollution.

So think about the future.

Think about what people of Castor Valley want, and thank you for your time.

Alex.

My name's Alex Castellanos.

Um, my daughter and I, my two-year-old daughter and I regularly bike from Joseph Street down on Redwood, Castro Valley Boulevard, either to frequent all the businesses, um, the bakeries, the coffee shops, the new um uh bike, bike uh businesses that have opened recently, and also here to the library.

And I find myself riding with her on the sidewalk on Redwood because it feels so unsafe.

And then I it feels really good to actually ride that ride down the valley with my daughter right in front of me, you know, like actually feeling safe and enjoying a day into the town or into the library to um become more involved in the community and to frequent the businesses that we we love going to that we have developed relationships with.

Um I am also a leader in a meetup group of about 6600 members, and I really want to like do more meetup groups in Castro Valley, but I find it even hard to like uh figure out where can people put their bikes on if we go into a coffee shop or into you know different areas because it can be difficult to uh to find a bike friendly uh or where there's more access for us to to frequent the businesses.

Um also when I'm planning the bike routes, I have to take into consideration safety and bike lanes uh play into that.

And so uh please keep the bike lanes and please um build more bike lanes, thank you.

We do have an online caller.

Okay, I'm gonna get these two here and we'll come back to the online.

Um Lisa Danichuk, and after that it'll be Brian Foster.

Thank you, council members, for hearing us out here.

This is the two-year-old that Alex just spoke of.

And uh I am the mom who sometimes stays home or works while they're out on their bike.

So I really feel in my body the concern for her if any of the bike lanes were removed, and I strongly urge you to m maintain the safety in downtown Castro Valley so that we can safely ride to and frequent the businesses in the marketplace and all around downtown.

Uh I also am a yoga teacher here um on Redwood Boulevard, and occasionally, very rarely we have bikers come into our studio, but again, people say, Oh, I would cycle, but it feels unsafe to ride all the way down Redwood or from Hayward up here.

So I encourage you to expand safety.

I think there's also elements of culture and sustainability and public health, physical health, mental health, communal health at play here.

So 35 parking spots versus those elements seems um kind of a no-brainer to me.

And I know it's something you're thinking about a lot.

So as someone who has also been a cyclist and very active for a long time, I have been fallen on the road and had cars very nearby.

I thankfully was not hit by one, but it's incredibly scary and takes very long time to heal if you're lucky enough to be able to do so.

So again, really weighing in that experience of harm and hurt and sometimes loss that comes when cars come too close to people.

So thank you for considering those elements uh and for being very mindful in your decision making.

Thank you, Chair Moore and members of the Mac.

Um, I like bike lanes, bike lanes.

I I really do.

I wish they had them when I was a kid.

Um I really like them even more when they feed into schools.

I think that they're really needed there.

The question I have for you is one of scope um or context.

You've based on the numbers, you've heard from probably a third tonight, a third of the 50 or so average daily bike riders.

You have not heard from a third of the 20,000 vehicle drivers down the boulevard.

So scope, like priorities, you know, who gets what based on whatever values that we have as a community and needs as a community.

Um I can't ask questions that you can, and I'll I'll suggest too that you might ask.

Um it cost a certain amount to install the bike lanes on Castor Valley Boulevard to paint them.

We have an average of 50 a day.

I'd ask Director Will Dessenbet, what was the cost divided by 50?

That's the value that the bike riders are getting now, right?

Another question I would ask you have uh a member of our CHP, maybe she could ask the uh the staff or the deputies who work here in town, since the bike lanes have been installed.

Has safety from their perspective, has safety improved, declined, or stayed the same.

I honestly don't know.

But you know, the the constant I constantly hear that bike lanes will make things safer because studies show, study show.

Well, we now have actual results, so let's find out.

Last on e-bikes.

Uh I've forgotten which city, but somewhere in the North Bay, a city is working with the school district to regulate or eliminate e-bikes among kids, little kids, right?

I think up to actually after the age of 16.

Schools will not let them.

This is what they're working on in terms of a local ordinance uh because of the explosion of e-bikes and the fact that they're apparently riding on sidewalks, which makes me think, well, why do we need bike lanes if they're on the sidewalks?

But I'll hold off on that.

I think that we're gonna we as a community need to face the issue of e-bikes in the very near future.

Now we're gonna deal with that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Let's go online.

Caller, you're on the line, you have two minutes.

Hey, it's Todd England speaking as a business owner almost 13 years in Castro Valley.

Um, I definitely agree with a lot of the concerns, safety, you know, one accident to a child, you definitely can't replace that.

But I was pretty shocked to see 20 to 40 plus average bikers per day.

And to the last caller's point, you know, we think about the money spent, the disruption to the businesses, everything that's impacted for a few bikers using this, whether it's 20 bikers a day or 50 bikers a day, it's a pretty minimal number compared to the 65,000 residents in the town.

And I'm hoping to maybe bring a solution or something we probably haven't looked at, but when you go to a beach or even the bridge, there's usually a split down sidewalks where pedestrians are on one side, bikes are on the other.

I'm not the public works guy, but maybe there's a solution.

Maybe they could be widened a little bit or somehow split, but maybe that would accomplish doing what we're trying to accomplish without impacting all the traffic, parking and everything that's hurting the businesses so much for such a small group of people using these bike lanes each day on this report.

Thank you.

We have we have another online speaker.

We have no more online speakers.

We do have one more.

Okay, I got two in the room here, and we'll go back to that one.

Um let's see.

I have uh, is it Grain Hughes?

And then after that will be Daniel or Danta Herta.

Hertha.

Thank you.

Good evening.

Thank you for taking the time to listen to this topic.

My name is Grant Hughes.

Um, I submitted a written comment this weekend focused on safety, and I want to supplement that with some comments here this evening.

Uh, I'd like to say that this is not just about bikes, and it's come up before, it's about micromobility.

It's scooters, it's skateboards, it's newly electric electrified versions of them coming on the market and give it 10 more days.

I'm telling you, there's gonna be even more.

As such, we need more places to ride safely, not fewer.

And that's just thinking of those who ride because they want to.

There are others in the community unable to drive, and these mobility devices are their primary way to get around.

To the retailers and business property owners, I ask that more bike and micromobility parking gets added.

Bikes and scooters take up way less space than a car.

We need more, we need a place to put them.

We have mostly flat downtown area over by HL as well.

It's wonderfully accessible to those willing to bike, board or scoot to our local shops.

I ask that you continue to support safer biking by keeping the lanes.

Thank you.

You guys hear me?

Good evening.

I'm Dan Werthas, and I work for KB Home.

So we're the developer of the property right next door.

Um, so as developer of the property next door, I came here to advocate for our business owners and our buyers.

Um, I do agree with bicycle safety and so on, of course.

I think everyone in this room does.

Uh but when we first started to build the chapter next door, there was approximately eight or nine parking spaces along Castro Valley Boulevard.

And we had already sold several of uh several of the townhomes to members of the public who are happy to be living in Castro Valley.

And when those uh spaces went away, it was a surprise to us.

We had to remove some improvements that we had put in on Castro Valley Boulevard, and also our buyers.

They didn't see it as gaining a bike lane, they saw it as losing parking.

It changes their home place.

Um, and in addition to that, there are four retail spaces, and they're they're very nice spaces.

There's a big uh like a restaurant space on the corner of Norbridge and Castro Valley Boulevard.

There's three spaces that front Castro Valley Boulevard, and all the parking is gone.

And I think we all know as business owners that people do like to drive and park relatively close to the shops they want to attend.

And so the people that are buying those spaces, they're not corporations, they're just folks.

And I think the loss of those spaces is really gonna impact them.

And I just wanted to come out and speak on their behalf.

Thank you.

Caller, you're on the line, you have two minutes.

Tyler.

I mean, to somehow think an ordinance, you know, saying that you can't use an e-bike is within the realm of um anything that would be taken seriously.

I just think we really need to think about the ability for people to be able to have choice when they get around.

I mean, if you and if you don't give them a right of way to get around, you're really not giving them a choice.

So, you know, I I don't have a right to put my couch on the sidewalk.

I don't have a right to put my tools or put anything else, but for some reason, car owners think that they own the public right of way.

It's a right of way, it's not a right of park or a right to park.

It is for ingress and egress, and it's nothing but quote, the way we've done things that have given this weird entitlement that people think that they have the right to park their private vehicle on a public right-of-way, endangering the most vulnerable of our society, the elderly and children trying to go to school.

Keep the bike lanes.

And no more folks online.

Last call for anybody else that would like to speak.

Okay, I'm on a close public portion, and uh I'll start with uh councilmember Davis um and um if you have any questions for public works and um and any comments.

So, Mr.

Chair, by clarifications, this is just for questions of staff, or are we also providing?

Let's go with questions of staff and then we can come back to Kraken.

Okay.

Umrector, if I may ask a question.

Thank you, uh, for your report.

And one thing I'd like to iterate, the numbers of the of the bicyclists that were provided as an indicator.

It isn't an absolute rule.

There's going to be some give or take, but it is showing that uh there is utilization on Castro Valley Boulevard.

I appreciate that.

My question gets one of my questions gets back to the master, the bicycle master plan that was prepared by the um bicycle pedestrian advisory group, whatever that is, and then did it go from there directly to the Board of Supervisors?

I was just trying to understand the process of adoption.

Yeah, the master plan actually was developed by through our agency, not uh any other body, but it went through a public process, came to the Mac a couple of times, had uh large community-based meetings where people contributed and all that stuff, and that then once it's finalized, went to the board for adoption.

Oh, I guess I lost the that that had been before the Mac several times.

That wasn't referenced in any staff report.

So sorry for the for my misunderstanding there.

We have uh you've taken machine counts of the bicyclists.

With the machine counts, we would know the time of day that that bicyclists would be traveling by do we have an idea as to the what times of day the of the ones that were counted was most prevalent.

Well you know we have a data I mean I don't know if uh you can see it but we maybe you can see it on the graphs that uh I give to uh Tisa you showed the volumes and everything I was just sort of curious as to what time of day was the largest percentage of bicyclists whether it was a three hour period or four hour period or we could we couldn't make any determination it was highly fairly well distributed you know you're looking at two three five bikes per hour uh the numbers that I shared with you is the average over 16 days but every day when you look at it it's not a significant large numbers that you see it's basically you can see it on a chart there that shows you that you can't establish any you know we were trying to figure out when is the peak hour distribution maybe you know that time we can look at what options exist but there was no really discernible uh consistency as to when the bikes were riding okay thank you for the info.

Well the purpose of a bike lane obviously is to separate bicyclists from vehicle traffic.

If that bike lane is not there it is my understanding that that bicyclist has the absolute right of right for that number two lane.

Is that not correct?

That's correct which is an important point because of uh we're talking about bicycle safety and that sort of thing we want to clearly define where a motor vehicle should be and a pedestrian or I mean a bicyclist should be um I don't I have a series of comments I'd like to make that I'll I'll wait until after everyone has their questions.

Thank you.

Council Martalas.

Thank you for being here.

My first question from the I'm just gonna uh say 51 bikes go down you know the bullet that's the most I saw on the that's what you said right 51 the number the number of bikes yeah uh in the chart yes so you you're looking for the most yeah the max the maximum so in the table that I provided you uh we had I guess the largest we've seen was uh eighty-nine nine on a Thursday uh that one of the Thursdays.

Eighty nine okay yeah and uh you said 21,000 around 21,000 cars.

Yes.

How about the pedestrians?

How many pedestrians go through we have not counted pedestrians in this case.

So the school kids walk in or another desktop is not hasn't you haven't counted that this is strictly putting a tube so that the bikes go on top of them it keeps counting so some of the numbers for example on a Thursday uh one of the gentlemen mentioned the meetups they do have meetups where they get together at like at 580 marketplace and you see a a bunch of them get together in the morning and ride a bike and some of those numbers are reflective of that kind of activity not necessarily your routine commute type of bike lanes.

Yeah I know a couple of speakers talked about we don't have any we're not having um good sidewalks we need to fix our sidewalks too right I mean and the pedestrians are also important as important as uh cars and as important as um bikers too so I uh I like to see I'd like to see how many pedestrians walk through there too see I totally agree with you but you know pedestrian counting you have to have an individual sit there and literally count the number of people because uh they're not gonna be stepping on any tube like the the cars do.

Okay.

Um, another a couple of speakers said this is a 10-day survey for the bikers.

That's not fair, right?

I mean, is it?

Well, I think you know uh I appreciate people making statements like that as an advocacy.

That's basically reflect the lack of understanding.

We don't count cars every day.

Once they've, you know, if we count them it's for about three days, and that's what we determined the annual 20,000, you know, cars that we say.

So actually, we did a pretty decent longitudinal look at at the bike counts this time because this is the first time we're counting them.

So typically for cars, we're counting them maybe three days, maximum five.

So uh it's not like uh we're counting cars every day, so to determine the average, no.

Makes sense.

Um my other concern is electric bikes, right?

You know, we we talked about electric bikes, electric bikes, nobody talked about it.

It goes in a different rate of speed.

Right?

It's dangerous for the cars, it's dangerous for um, you know.

I see kids who has this electric bikes cutting in and through in through traffic, going driving through the traffic.

So that that's gonna be a whole different problem coming up.

So that's you know, I don't know if we're gonna give another lane for the electric bikes, or I don't know what's gonna happen.

But uh you know, we one of the things we did when we do the counting is uh when we program the application to do the counts, we have to specify what the average speed should be.

So typically uh the program comes in with about 50 miles per hour for bikes.

So we actually did an uh an analysis, including up to 25 miles per hour, because there were some bikes that we noticed downhill at 30 miles an hour, regular bikes, and then there was a bunch of e-bikes that were going uphill at 25 miles an hour.

So those are counted by the way in this uh in these numbers and not just basic bikes.

So, yeah, there is some uh some bikes uh that that are going at a very substantial speed, and uh I do agree.

I think those kind of bikes need to be prohibited from pedestrian sidewalks.

Yeah, and um all respect to the bikers.

Everyone I have seen, you know, they're they go, you know, following all the laws and doing the right stuff.

But electric bikes, I've seen going to school, dropping kids off, they cut in and out, and this is it's dangerous to see.

I saw a couple of them get hit because they think road they also go, they can also go through the road.

So it's not it's not safe, and they don't they don't have no guidelines or loss, you know, loss following uh what they're doing.

So the last thing, um, as a couple of speakers said, you know, with these bike lanes, you know, the motor homes have gone gone away and um the trash is being cleaned out, and I agree with that.

But um, my concern is why wasn't the businesses notified?

You know, they can they talked about it.

They talked about, hey, this came to a surprise to us.

Was it a surprise?

Yeah.

Well, you know, uh, I appreciate that statement and the statement being made that way.

At the end of the day, we went through an extensive public process to establish the bike lanes.

So, you know, you can have that discussion.

If you were to do that today, you think everybody here will agree on the same thing.

No, so what it is is somehow someday you have to make a decision to move forward on a decision.

And the decision was that we went through an extensive process in 2019 when we established the bike play master plan, and Castro Valley Boulevard was designated as a class two.

Now, yeah, we can go back and say what do you think about that again?

But at the end of the day, decisions have to be made, move forward.

And then you mentioned, by the way, the the one thing I want to say is we don't take these things very lightly.

Okay, let's let's kind of look at some of these things.

When you mentioned the area was cleaned up because of uh, you know, uh one time, uh one time in front of the new restaurant and that whole stretch, one of the biggest challenge we had was a bunch of cars parked there for two, three, four weeks.

When you consider the number of parking that we remove relative to the parking that was being utilized by this illegal parking, the numbers that we took out is a lot less.

So, yeah, we can argue all these things if you want, but at the end of the day, we need to really recognize this is a compromise between how we best utilize our curbside facilities, and I think that's that's the kind of stuff that you have to kind of put on the table.

There's a lot of people who say some stuff today that was more misinformation, but advances their advocacy position.

I'm not gonna dispute any of them engaging that discussion, but I think at the same time, this body here to me is one of the best bodies that I've known to have spoken on behalf of the community, discussed things on behalf of the community.

And this is something that you're going to face every other project.

So there's going to be a decision that needs to be made.

Is this area more appropriate for parking?

Is more appropriate bike lane.

You know, when we did it, we looked at it, we saw the fact that there was adequate off-street parking to justify the things that we did.

And it was supported by the fact that it was a community process that established the bike thing.

So, you know, I'll be honest with you.

I'm not going to be apologetic for making the right decision based on the information I received.

So that's where we are today.

But I also do clearly appreciate the fact that businesses are growing, more businesses are coming.

There's going to be an increasing demand for parking.

No question about that.

So I don't envy your position, but that's what you have to listen and reconcile.

Yeah, no, and I appreciate your nice comments.

We try to do as together, we try to do the best for the community.

But uh, you know, we need a compromise, like you said, I agree.

We need to come up with the compromise, and whatever that is, we have to talk and decide about it.

And that's all I have.

Thank you.

We'll move down to Councillor Davini.

Thank you, Chair.

Uh Director Uh Waldes and Vat.

I just wanted to show off that I could say that name.

Um, thank you so much for being here.

And I truly mean that.

You started this process without our console, and that kind of irritated us.

Uh, and you've gone way the opposite direction, in my opinion, to amend for that uh in meeting after meeting and analysis after analysis.

So you came to us on February 20th, uh, we voted 6-1 asking for the parking to be uh uh installed.

Uh you then went to the planning commission uh on March 17th.

I believe they voted for one-to-one, also asking to supporting our decision and then asking it that get it gets referred to the uh um Board of Supervisors as Transformation and Planning uh Commission, which you went to on April 7th and gave uh a presentation to them.

Um they uh it was an informational item only for them, uh, but they did give you some advice.

Uh I think that they found merit, and if you could tell me if you disagree with my summation of what they found, that they found merit in some of the arguments to reinstall the parking, they clearly deferred to your expertise and they didn't want to override you, and they said it's up to you.

And I believe they left the meeting um with with a mandate that if it is in fact really adverse to the commercial interests and to the merchants, that they would reconsider.

I thought you were very fair in that meeting where you say, I'm standing by my decision, but it's the decision that could be changed, and it's not a big deal.

You didn't say it's gonna be terribly costly or anything like that.

Um, so with that kind of background, again, thank you for all of your and and then after all of those, you went and did a study, okay, and you went and you and you counted the uh the use.

We've heard testimony tonight uh saying that it's undercounted and testimony tonight to say that it might be overcounted.

And I think both arguments are sound.

Uh the uh time of year construction, so on and so forth.

Um, to me, it seems like the counts are high, just based on my own observation, which probably talks of my bias of perhaps not seeing the bicyclist.

But how certain are you that the data is real?

Is there cars park in those lanes all the time?

They roll through those lanes all the time.

Will it is there any chance that a slow-moving car would register as a bicycle?

No.

So that's one of the things that we need to make sure we actually tested our testing methodology for about a week, yeah, to see that we actually optimize and make sure what we know what we are doing and how the application works.

So there's no way that these things could be uh erroneous in terms of recording something, but uh let me tell you about this kind of stuff.

It's it's uh it's a typical problem that exists and everywhere else.

People will see they'll drive at 20 miles an hour, 30 miles, 50 miles an hour, or fi 80 miles an hour, and they look at something and say, Oh, I saw a bunch of people standing out doing nothing.

Or if I come and tell you Astro Valley Boulevard has 21,000 cars a day.

It's not because you could actually sit down and say, Yeah, you're right.

You know, if you come in the middle of a day and you know, uh a retired fellow who just wanna casually look at it, you don't see the peak hour traffic, you might say you're wrong.

Because you don't see it.

Or if I tell you there are 250,000 cars on the Bay Bridge, unless you experience it, it's very hard to kind of visualize.

So these numbers actually are uh extremely uh well justified numbers in terms of the bike counts.

Like I say, they're not very big, they are very modest.

But but reliable numbers.

You you believe the numbers.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Okay, yeah.

Uh very good, I appreciate that.

Um, uh quickly, uh uh a lot of talk about e-bikes, and I agree that they're gonna become more and more prevalent.

When when does an e-bike and a motorcycle really start to perform the same?

We're not allowing motorcycles in bike lanes.

Um are we approaching that that uh reality as well?

Well, you know, I mean, to me, the e-bikes are gonna be an alternative means of transportation eventually, but I think they need to be separated from pedestrians.

That's that's one of my uh at least view because I can see e-bike going out 30 miles an hour and hitting somebody that can kill you.

So I think we need to be careful about that.

And you know, I have no, uh, I have not ridden them, I don't know how they work and all that stuff.

I've had somebody who run into uh one of my cars once, but you know, luckily it wasn't that serious.

So I would say we need to recognize e-bikes are gonna be there and people are gonna use them.

Uh so we we need to continue to work on how do we accommodate.

Yeah, I mean, there's not a speed limit in a bike lane, is there?

So, I mean you can you can have an e-bike going 30 miles an hour performing just like a motorcycle that wouldn't be allowed in that bike lane.

As high as 30 miles an hour, 32 miles an hour when we were doing the counts because the count does calculate the speed.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay, good.

If if we can uh talk just a second about the different types of bike lanes, and just even taking this project, if if I take westbound on the north side, um, we have three different types of bike lanes from Center Street to Marshall is a shareware where there's no painted bike lane, just a big emblem in the road, tells the drivers, watch out, there's gonna be bicycles you're sharing the road with them.

Uh the next stretch from Marshall to Forest, all the parking has been removed, and it's a designated lane.

And then in the next section from Forest all the way to Redwood, all the parking has been retained and there's a painted bike lane.

So we have three different options here.

Um, and I'm supposing that based on the width of the road, perhaps the adjacent uses, you've made determinations as to which one you want to pick.

But all of those are bike lanes.

In addition to that, no designation means a bike shares a road with uh with the with with a car.

And then at the highest level of a bike lane would be a segregated bike lane, either by a curb or row of bullards or physical separation, and that would that would be the the creme de la creme of the bike lanes.

That is absolutely correct.

So what you just described is exactly what we have out there on the downhill side coming down because of the speed, we decided that's adequate utilization of shadows rather than you know dedicated bike lane.

But then when you get to down further, the width of the roadway does not give you enough space unless you do something in the medians or kind of modify the whole structure to allow you to put uh both parking and uh bike lanes.

Yeah, I measured I measured it myself.

It's it's only like an 18-inch difference, but there is a difference.

There is a difference from forest to redwood is uh is slightly wider than from a Marshall Forest.

Just keep in mind we have to meet these standards because if we don't put them according to standard, any incident that happened, uh you know, we're a very litigious society as you know, we'll be paying a premium.

So you have standards, I'm assuming Caltrains issue standards, but they don't have any dictates as to which design you pick.

No, no, they don't, but they they will provide you uh options that are more appropriate for certain areas versus others.

You know, if when you have high volume traffic, you will like you prefer to see uh protected bike lanes.

Right, and Cal Trans doesn't have a requirement.

Yeah for but it's not per se a requirement, but there is a minimum standard that you have to meet in any bike lane if you're gonna install them.

Anything less than that, you're exposing yourself to major liability, not to mention the safety concerns.

Okay, and so then my last question is really a comment.

So when you decide uh you have three different styles of bike lanes on one contiguous uh stretch of road, when you when you decide that you're making that consideration based on adjacent land uses, uh widths of the road, um uh gradient uphill, downhill, uh straight, curvy, so on and so forth.

So you're looking at all the uh surrounding things.

Uh, but you agree that all three of the the styles of bike lanes are appropriate and can work.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

I mean, legally any bike is entitled to use the lanes just like a car.

There they could do that.

Now it's just a matter of how safe do you want to make it?

So what you just described is an excellent description of the various degree of safety that you can incorporate into a bike lane facility.

Again, thank you for being here.

I know you don't have to be.

That concludes my questions.

I do have comments uh when it comes to that.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Council Ramoto.

Thank you.

Appreciate your presentation and everyone's comments.

I think um we have a tall task to kind of meet in the middle.

I know there's um heavy opinions on the residents, the bike um folks.

I think everyone that presented had very valid um opinions, and um I feel that um we need to take those into consideration.

But we're in a position now because we didn't make that decision during the time that um you know we had that opportunity during the the painting of the lines or whatever you were mentioning.

Um, did was there a cost that you you know, when you mentioned that you made the decision during that time because you were doing something else, where was it a cost associated with that that you wanted to kind of save so that you made that executive decision?

Not in the decision process process.

The cost was not there, but there is cost to uh to implement bike lanes.

So I can't give you an exact number, but if you're interested, I could I can give you uh how much it costs per mile or per foot.

It's mostly uh depending on what you do.

In the case of Castro Valley Boulevard, we were gonna resurface the road for the road maintenance, basically.

So that was the one that gave us an opportunity to restripe the system so that it can accommodate the bike lanes.

So uh yeah, there is cost associated with uh uh providing bike lanes.

Yeah, um just wanted to um find that out with the cost um associated and then what would it be to change it back, right?

I want to know what that would be as well.

Um I don't know if you've kind of considered that.

Obviously, if you want to go and take out the bike lanes, you're gonna have to, you know, do the scrubbing and getting rid of the existing uh bike lane striping and all that stuff, but it could be done.

And as uh I don't think in this case, cost is a big factor in the decision.

That's not the way I would look at it.

Uh however, you know, people were talking about can less understand what's going on.

I think maybe some of the consideration for your body here is uh, you know, let's let's study.

Is a bike lane really safe?

Are we seeing some safety measure?

I think one of the gentlemen spoke.

Are we seeing some safety improvements?

Are we seeing uh increase in bike utilization?

Uh are there anything like that?

Like I said, this is a baseline count that we did.

So some of it is just if you are if you want to make a data driven decision, uh that might require us to look into uh what are the options looking forward to kind of understand what's going on in the utilization.

Maybe we might even look at what are the options to uh provide uh enhanced parking.

You know, there's uh one of the some of you know this, but the new restaurant has over 340 or so parking spaces.

I was wondering, like last time, uh very busy place, very busy, and there are streets uh the streets are being utilized, but maybe one of the things that your body could consider is maybe talking with these businesses to see could they do any kind of restriping to restore back the lost nine spaces on the street, which I have no doubt they could do that in my mind, because all they have to do is identify a few of the parking spaces as compact cars and and and do maybe so that you have options to kind of look at, but I'd rather uh and the reason I'm suggesting this is not to influence your decision.

I want you to know, but I know this is an extremely difficult decision for your body here because it's you can't win on either side.

So uh, so some of it might be just a matter of looking at the data furthermore and see what options can we actually explore.

Given that I don't really know how it works as far as um making those changes and how the lanes and the the uh cyclists would be impacted based on those changes.

You know, I I don't know if I don't have that data, right?

So I don't know professionally if that would even work with cyclists just going into the lane, or you know, and then there's a car and then they have to go around and now they're in the lane, you know.

So I just I don't know.

So do you think that the agency will conduct like further studies throughout um the spring and summer 2026?

We we will like to.

We don't know what uh frequency would be, but it'd be nice to see if there is any actual value add because of the bike lanes installation, uh, because a lot of the people keep mentioning studies, and most of the studies are not in the same kind of demographic, same topography, some kind of business or community values or community interests.

So it'd be nice to see some numbers like that.

So uh that might also give your body here uh an opportunity to uh elevate your discussion based on data rather than you know uh just uh anecdotal information.

Um Public Works Agency.

Um are you gonna integrate any future um like level decision making to the community like more community-driven specific plan process to avoid like repeating discretionary decisions at this scale?

Like just want to make sure that I think um in the past, you and your team came and you gave us like options and kind of got our input and really created a picture in a in a PowerPoint, and the community was involved in some of those decisions, and that was a great representation of your agency and how you guys want to work with the community and give us the options and show how different bike lanes can be utilized.

Is that something you're going to continue like moving forward?

Just we have always done that.

We've been recognized nationally, by the way.

If you ever watched any of my budget presentations to the board for the last 20 years, you will see that's exactly my budget presentation is to show you what was it, what is it now?

Not just in numbers, but visually for most people to understand, number one.

Number two, you know, a lot of people like, you know, being in this position, we're used to the idea of being, you know, told you no good.

But at the end of the day, we make decisions, decisions are supported almost uh unanimously by most community members by our board, and then one of the things I'm very proud of is we are highly result-oriented group.

If we don't do these things, continue to discuss them until you know time and memorial, you'll never see improvements in communities.

So we make decisions and we stand by those decisions.

And I can tell you, most almost all of our decisions have been presented to the community.

Either a specific community group like Higher Avenue, we came to you, but we before we came to you, we went to the community and called a community meeting.

Most of you guys knew about Somerset.

We went to the community, presented to the community, then came to the MAC, and then to the board.

So that's our standard practice.

That's our standard implementation.

So we will continue to do that.

And I'll be honest with you, the bike paid master plan was one of the most highly vetted community process.

I mean, I've had arguments, heated arguments, even at the MEC when uh Mark Crawford was the chair.

So uh we've done this, but I would appreciate any feedback, anything that you guys can give us.

I'm more than happy to assist you in guiding that decision.

And I think your body, in my judgment, at this time, we might want to look at what are the improvements associated with this bike lane before you make that call.

Yes.

Okay, thank you.

Appreciate it.

Councilwoman Feeburg.

Yes.

Thanks, Daniel.

You've done a great job.

Really appreciate you being here again.

So stepping up.

It's really, really good.

Um I think everything that I've kind of written down here has been asked and answered.

So I just there's one one last thing, but I I do really feel that we need to figure out what's gonna, you know, help these businesses, you know, have parking, feel good about being in business in our town, and at the same time keeping our our bike traffic and our bike people safe as well.

Some kind of as you've mentioned, some kind of compromise or some kind of um research, perhaps additionally, or or something of that nature.

But you know, I think um a lot of the a lot of this has been explored, but there was one thing is there alternative routes that could be used instead of the routes that we're using now.

Could there be other routes that would accomplish the same goal for the bikers?

I think we should look at that.

I agree with you.

Uh the bike paid master plan when it was developed, one of the core objectives was to look at alternative routes, the connectivity, and going how do we get to BART, for example, connecting bike lanes to transit.

I think all of those things were discussed, and the community did took a very active part in those discussions.

And and I think one of the areas that uh my uh suggestion to your body, for example, since you guys deal with land use decisions most of the time, one of the areas that needs to be looked at is how can we actually make decisions about parking uh as part of the development suggestions?

You know, can we put in a centralized parking structure?

Is there any way?

You know, things like that need to be looked at so that there could be a possibility that you could actually enhance uh parking, for example, at the the 340 space, if you add one more layer, you know, that could be one of the requirements that you could put in in some of uh the development or even encourage the county to invest in something like that.

It's not new because the county did invest uh a few million dollars to put in the parking stuff uh right there by will be behind uh uh the that area.

So there's a lot of opportunity, and that's why I say this needs to be a true compromise.

It can't it can't be my way or the highway because both sides will be going in a different direction, and and your body here is uh the one that is gonna be mediating those things.

So uh I would think uh those kind of discussions are important.

I think parking, and if you go into downtown, uh any downtown, you'll find uh parking structures.

Has there been any preliminary studies like alternative routes or do you have anything kind of on the drawing board that you've uh explored in the past?

Well, uh a good example of an ultra, not for this side of Castro Valley Boulevard, but despite all the pressure that we got, one of the reasons I pushed the Norbridge side, you know, of Is Castro Valley to connect Norbridge is because I wanted an alternative east-west route to the Bart station.

Uh as you know, we came to your body because of that little intersection stuff, but that one had a very good alternative.

We're gonna in fact enhance a little bit of the bike lane there, and that would be a very positive connection.

Uh it relieves Castro Valley Boulevard in that area.

So here on this part, uh, we could, you know, maybe ask when we do the next update, the master plan for them to focus on finding alternative routes.

Yeah, I think that's a good idea.

Okay, again, Daniel, thank you.

Great job.

I'll that's it for me.

Sure, Mobert.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you, Daniel.

Uh, good to see you.

And uh you have the toughest job in the county, I'm sure.

Um, just a uh a few questions.

Everybody's asked really good questions.

Um I'm kind of nerdy.

Um on the on the pneumatic traffic counter.

How does it measure speed?

Because your report says it measures speed.

Basically, it c it's calculating the the hit, the back the front wheel hits it and then the back wheel hits it.

So the amount of time it took between the two is calculated in uh as a standard.

That's how our odometer works, you know.

Okay.

Um again nerdy, but as a kid I used to have fun jumping up and down on those things.

What's the what's the weight that triggers a count?

How do we know that they're bicycles and not uh renegade boy scouts that are jumping up and down on those?

My understanding of the way the system works right now, the way I was told is that we put them in there, and then if uh a vehicle goes at a higher speed than what we have highlighted, it will be determined it will disqualify.

Okay.

Uh you know, if you're on a motorcycle and going 70 miles an hour, you know that's not a bike or an e-bike.

So we we've uh you know that that's how the system works generally, but we because of the speed that we noticed uh physically, we raised the the count to 25 miles an hour.

And and then by the way, we also looked at it at 50 miles standard 50 miles an hour.

The number of bike counts did not change in any substantive way.

Okay, thank you.

Um would you be willing to share the the raw data with the council so that we have it as kind of a benchmark?

Absolutely.

I know I know I know you said you have a lot of time in your hands, so I'll be more than lucky to that's it.

Um what's the what what is the source of the data that shows the vehicle traffic at 21,000 vehicles?

Is that current or is that 2022 or uh I'll have to check what year that was three minutes?

10 to 15 years ago.

Uh the we we are we we we actually do a study by vehicle counts on just about all of our roadways, especially the major thoroughfares, they are required.

So uh those are also available, but usually when you see those strips across the street and you ride on them, that's a count basically.

Um I I think I just heard 10 to 15 years on the the traffic count, 10 to 15 years old.

I think about 2015.

Okay, thank you.

So um I have no idea, but uh I would guess the traffic has increased a little bit in the last 10 years in this town.

Uh I don't know either, but I think uh if you know we like I said on this one, this is our first bike count.

So it would be nice to use this as a base count and look at what's going on because a lot of pap people make the assertion that if you build it, they'll come.

Right.

A lot of people say it's a lot more safe.

A lot of people so maybe we need to validate those things.

And I'm pretty sure this body would agree with anybody that says, you know, our our collision rate went down by X number, you know, instead of two people being harmed, only zero was harmed.

I mean, you would see those kind of numbers, I think informing your decision.

Thank you.

Um, as you were doing your data gathering and evaluations, what did the parking utilization on those 35 spaces look like?

Well, since we installed the parking the bike lane, people are not supposed to park.

So the only thing we know is that there were some illegal parking, that CHP was sighting.

So okay, but what we don't know if, for example, the spaces in turn in front of the burrito shop or you know, got 24 cars parked there over it.

So I think I gave you the number last time, and you can see it on the attached map.

For example, in burrito shop, the only we only lost one space basically in front of the burrito shop.

And how many people park in that space every day?

Yeah.

So I don't know about the utilization rate.

Uh I'm not sure I we can tell what the utilization rate was, but the spaces that I can tell you is nine spaces were lost in front of the new restaurant.

Right.

And that, you know, when you look at nine space versus 340 spaces available on space, you know, you can see the contrast.

So uh and I'm absolutely fascinated that that actually that space is full.

And I can tell you it is full.

I've seen it.

So uh but as you go further down, the other spaces right now are not reflecting the kind of uh activities that it is in the in front of this new restaurant.

So the one space that we lost by the burrito place, uh I'm pretty sure that's a valuable space for them.

Uh but you know, still one.

So I'm hoping that at least there's the one biker that can go and buy some burrito at there on a regular base.

But we don't know how many um the frequency was the word I heard.

We don't know how many customers, how many parkers um per day were been lost since the bike lanes have replaced parking?

No, no, we we don't know that.

Okay.

Um you're in your discussion um segment section marked discussion.

Um you say continued monitoring will monitoring will help determine whether demand increases, how parking dynamics evolve.

How are you going to measure that?

Well, you know, uh that's why I was suggesting you probably have more influence than I do in terms of advising the private uh enterprises to uh to modify their parking uh use.

Uh you know, if I was I might even advise them to say, you know what, might want to encourage uh carpooling when families come to the restaurant rather than everybody driving their own cars.

So some of these things, what the some of these things that we're experiencing right now, irrespective of the bike lane issue, is is a high demand environment that is going to require them.

Because like I said, we they lost nine in front of their space, but their demand clearly exceeds substantially more than that.

So that means the solution needs to be bigger than just restoring those nine spaces.

Agreed, agreed.

Um, what was the CEQA determination that was applied to this particular project?

Sequo.

The CIQA is part of the master plan.

So the master plan was you know uh SIQA exempt.

Okay, the board has approved it, and that's all done.

Okay.

Part of the master plan.

Thank you.

Um I have no no more questions, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you, Daniel.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um I heard a lot of a lot of things that uh made me write down some questions for you.

Um budgeting.

How much money does a county provide public works for roads?

Well, so uh that's a very good question, another misinformation.

Somebody said uh the county gives general fund, we get zero general fund for roads, any transportation project, none of it is general fund.

I get, you know, out of the $6 billion budget in the county, uh, I get approximately about $500,000 for crossing guards at each school that you see, which is very important.

So there's no money associated to bike lanes or roadways or anything else that comes from the county general fund.

So I just want to make sure I'm clear on it because when I hear that, I want to make sure I understand, and the community understands that the general fund for our county, our tax dollars, don't generate any money or contribute any money to parking, bicycle lanes, road repair, or any of that that.

That comes from the state, and I believe the fuel tax.

Yes.

So our primary source.

License fees.

Yeah.

Our primary for funding sources gas tax that and we also are very aggressive in going after federal grants, uh or state grants.

So that's one of our success stories.

We invest a lot of money because we competitively beat a lot of folks to get those monies back into this community.

So it's not, it's not general fund.

I just I'm glad you bring that up because people keep mentioning that we're paying taxes, my my fund, my property tax and all that stuff.

No, your property does not go to maintaining roadways.

It does not fund the bike lanes, it does not fund any of these things.

So uh so uh but gas tax, yes.

Um, so uh I just want to get the I I'm a research person before I make a decision to spend money.

Uh I don't have a lot of money, so I gotta watch what I spend.

So before we were to get this road paved or striped, was there any, and I heard in here accidents.

Was there any studies that revealed or reflected driving this uh direction from accidents in cars and bikes?

So I I would one of the reasons I'm suggesting we need to look at it is because that's one of some of those false fallacies, alcohol and fallacies that people make by making this generic statement that there's a 60% decline in safety and all that stuff.

But I'd rather find that out based on actual studies after we install it because right now I don't have any number to tell you what the bike lanes could have done.

Well, what I'm trying to get at is I always look at results.

I don't want to confuse effort with results.

So I want to look and say, okay, we had, because we might identify an area going forward that has had several accidents that are bike related, then we can use that information to generate a grant or funds to do some paving or restriping, or we look at it and we say we've had no engagement here with an accident, but um, or we've had it and we put a bike lane in and now we don't have any for the last six months.

And I asked the CHP and the sheriff's department to come in regularly and give us traffic updates, and I rarely have heard of a uh Cashavale Boulevard, a bicycle accident.

Now I'm not saying it didn't happen, but I asked for those regularly because I care about the safety, um, so I I I think that would be important if we could identify that.

The next thing is I'm confused at what is a standard for traffic that would generate an investment of 50, 100,000, 200,000, 300,000 in a bicycle lane, and how would we weigh that against removing parking for a business?

Because I've been on the Mac now for 10 years, and I don't remember seeing this bicycle lane put on the boulevard in 10 years.

Now it could have happened in one day when I was off, but I don't think I've missed many meetings in 10 years.

So I'm a little concerned when I see that, and I'm just trying to figure out if you could give me some dates that when that come back to us, and I'd like to go back and look and see and what we discussed, because um that that's that's uh a bit concerning.

Um is there a standard that the federal or the county would use in saying that we have 20,000 cars a day on this road and we have a hundred bicycles, we need to have a safe path of travel for bicycles.

Have you developed a standard like that yet?

I don't believe there is such a standard to tell you the truth, it's just uh uh to me, uh it's uh a community decision that took place when we were doing the master planning to say because there were discussions uh that were a lot more aggressive in terms of putting bike lanes and eliminating parking, even dead smack downtown where you have uh all the businesses, and and the Mac stood up and say no.

Uh and and uh a few community members at the time expressed no, we're not gonna allow that to happen in that area.

So uh I think uh there's I don't I don't know of any specific standard that says this is a ratio we're gonna have to do.

I mean, a ratio of accidents, a ratio of frequency of use, I mean something to drive, yeah uh a direction.

Um when you looked at the bicycle master plan that I keep hearing about, where was the e-bikes in there?

Uh e-bikes uh were not as popular then.

I think they're a phenomena that's kind of taking place right now.

Uh, and and when we do the the update now that the consultant has taken, we're gonna we're gonna require them to do a little more.

In fact, I would if this body has a specific questions that we need to be posing, asking the consultant to look into, uh you know, I'd be more than happy if you could send it to me because we would like to know to me, uh I totally agree with you, and I appreciate that you want to make decisions based on research, based on data.

And and uh uh the data right now for e-bikes and scooters, and uh, you know, it's it's not well still.

Um some of them are electric motorcycles, all it is, yeah.

Ones with pedals, I understand are e-bikes.

Yes.

I think the parks department kind of recognizes that is a bicycle that's electric if it has pedals.

Um, yeah, but either way it goes.

I'm I'm just looking at this because there's a there's a real shift in here, and I'm seeing it in other communities.

Um if you go to Danville, uh every kid is riding an electric bike to school.

I mean, I would almost say every it's an exaggeration, a lot.

I was just in Tennessee, um, and down in uh Nashville, they're parking bikes on every corner.

You just get on it, we'll put your credit card in and off you go.

Not one bicycle lane, but they seem to be doing it pretty well because they were everywhere.

And it's it's becoming and you see it in the city a lot more.

There are companies that are putting these bicycles out.

And um I I'd hate to be behind the curve on planning with this, and I think somewhere on the line, I'm just asking these questions because I think we're a little bit behind where we need to be going forward, and and we definitely need to have a conversation about how to work together where businesses flourish and bicycles are safe.

Um, anyway, um if we could come up with the dates that when those came back to the Mac, I'd really like to go back and look at that calendar because I I sure as heck don't see it.

And I can tell you that particular project that was put through by KB.

I was in that meeting, and we definitely required parking and we definitely made KB go back and make that retail.

Because that in the beginning that was not retail space, and we demanded that be retail.

And we also allocated parking and we rearranged the uh on Strawbridge for parking.

So I don't know if it made it to the planning department properly, as somebody else had mentioned sometimes, but it was, and we can go back and play the minutes of the meeting.

So um, I don't think it made it through the planning documents, but uh, but because several people have indicated to me that the MAC wanted those parking in front of KB homes to be counted in.

But as as I've reported to you in the past, uh the official document that was adopted by planning commission and the board and everybody else did not include those.

So uh uh for our decision, we could not uh count those as required parking for that specific development.

And I don't want to debate it here, but I would say that if we would have solved this striping before it was done, we would have had that conversation again.

That's all.

Yes.

You know, and the community would have had an opportunity to weigh in.

And this is not against any of the bicycle issue.

It's just what's fair in making sure that we move forward with the plan.

Totally.

I agree.

I think I think uh I've explained how this happened and I think you know, there's no more to add about the specific project in Castro Valley.

But I think one thing you said that that makes sense to me right now is this various bikes that you see everywhere people use their iPhones to hop on and go on it.

You see it globally.

I was in Barcelona.

I mean, it's that's how I went around the city.

Uh, you know, you go to Rome, you go to different places in Europe, you see them everywhere, you go to uh Nashville, yes.

So I think part of the thing that I think your body needs to look into is this that just tells you what is the bigger land use plan that you have for businesses, businesses need to get engaged because clearly this jurisdiction that I have these bikes are benefiting, the businesses are benefiting from this kind of arrangements.

So I think uh uh I think Castro Valley could benefit from that kind of open uh discussion that you're raising here because uh ultimately uh they have to add value, otherwise they wouldn't be as ubiquitous as we see them right now.

Right, and we're begging for good businesses.

Every time a business comes before for us, we jump through hoops to get them up and going.

And I hate for to hear KB Holmes say, I can't rent this space.

After we drug them through the mud to build that space.

So anyway, uh I gotta get to the council for comments or we're gonna be here all night.

Um, Davis.

Well, yes, I do have some comments.

Uh first off, I sort of have a philosophical issue with this whole thing, as you hear property owners saying that the parking spaces in front of their establishment is their parking.

And we know that isn't the case.

It's it's public right-of-way, and anyone that uh can use that that parking.

Um the second one is as a public agency, is it our role to facilitate on-street parking for businesses?

Is our is it our role to say, no, don't have off-street parking, use on-street parking.

And I sort of take issues with that.

The the questi the w uh an interesting uh comment that the director put up was uh maybe you look at a site where we could put a parking structure.

Well, obviously parking structures are very expensive.

I know for a fact that you can get more parking spaces on the uh May May HL site, uh, because I worked with the developer and came up with a plan, but it was costly from the perspective they were gonna have to be relocating light poles and that sort of thing, some landscape areas and uh it would have been quite a burden on them.

So the question becomes one is there a potential for a public-private partnership to take advantage of uh private uh uh in conjunction with the private property owner to in fact expand parking.

I would think so, because uh like I said, we did that uh over at uh Wheelbeam by uh the Castro Valley Marketplace, and uh that's why the county has uh economic development department that they should be engaged in looking at what kind of partnership you can create.

Uh you know, I will I will uh maybe philosophically you say it, but I think uh, you know, uh uh we should be discussing, should parking be taken away or given back or so those things, but more so as what is in the interest of the community.

But that interest should not undercut the safety and the well-being of the community either.

So that's the balancing act that I see, but it is a uh a legitimate public policy discussion among yourself.

I'm sorry yeah I again my my apology for posing that question and I'll get back to making a statement again as I stated before class two bicycle facilities are um a very safe and it's very important to separate the bicyclist and the motor vehicle travel of uh driver having no bike lane would allow that bicyclist to use the entire number two uh lane of the on on the boulevard and I think that would create a far more dangerous situation and and the potential for road rage of a vehicle driver coming up behind a bicyclist that's traveling 15 20 miles per hour um the other advantage of the bike lanes it hasn't been discussed really much it improves pedestrian safety as well because you're reducing the area of which in which a pedestrian is exposed to uh vehicle traffic when they're crossing a street there's 10 feet less that they're exposed to to vehicle traffic also enables a pedestrian to get out beyond any parked car or any car pulling out of a driveway or something like that to be seen by by the motor vehicle drivers we talk about um well gee we have 50 bicyclists and can we compare it to 21000 you can use the analogy you see uh an AC transit bus go by you see three people on it you go oh my god how how can they be in business with that well that particular line may be handling five to ten thousand people in a day but you're just seeing it at one point in time uh there's obviously we're becoming more of a a bicycle community we have I I can think of three bike shops in town that have all been doing well so there's got to be some indicator that uh people are uh doing things right out there so um the other point I want to make out uh technically right now with the California um vehicle code I believe the maximum speed an e-bike can use in a bike lane is actually 20 miles per hour and obviously it isn't being enforced but uh yes there are more powerful e-bikes coming out but they are not allowed to be in a bike lane so we have some existing laws that do address these type of things that people say well gee they're moving in and out of traffic okay that is an education and enforcement issue uh with our school kids as to the safe practice with uh using e-bikes or e-scooters or wherever else so um I guess my only other thought is whether we can come up with a hybrid and keep the bike lanes in but as we have done in the past with four lane roadways uh and with uh parking at night you know we have parking restrictions during the day during uh so to have the full capacity of the four lanes but use that same sort of concept with the bike lanes and determining when the use the highest use of bicycle whether it's you know going back and forth from school that sort of thing and um post the bike lane be in effect for those hours and the off hours allow parking now this can just be done in a couple of locations that are are really problematic as has been identified by the people that have been here but I think that is a lot better approach than taking the entire bike lane out for the entire stretch.

So I am in favor of keeping the bike lanes.

I would like to see if we can in fact create that hybrid situation in specific locations.

Whether it could just be a broken the broken white line on the on the bike lane, which we do on approaches to intersections where both bikes it lets bicyclists and vehicles know that they can both be in that space.

So those are my thoughts and I encourage this board to keep the the bike lanes with um a hybrid system with those problem locations.

Thank you.

Council Thomas I agree uh we should come up with the compromise um it's a give and take situation so everybody has to coexist and we are one community so we have to all come together and make some decision as some may not be liked you know but it is a compromise the second thing I want to say is um you know there's something called DoorDash now 10 years ago we didn't talk about it.

So the businesses um when they come in they're dashing so they want to make the time to deliver the foot in foot on time so they take handicapped parking they I've talked to people where I say this is handicapped parking you can't park oh maybe two minutes but so that's what I'm saying some of the businesses need those parking where they can do the door dash well you can say door dash parking but that's something that's happening right now there you but these drivers are coming in and they're parking there.

So they need to get those parking though it has to be a compromise somewhere and as uh Daniel said we need a parking structure in Castro Valley.

So a lot of people if you go to Livermoor first street you know they have parking uh Pleasant and main street you know people visit there we all go there they have parking I know exactly where to park if I go to First Street or Main Street Broadway Plaza and Wallace Creek they have parking structures so we do need a parking structure.

If not people you know businesses are coming in and we have uh like HL Peninsula we have Phil's coffee we have Breakfast Club people are coming in from other towns and you know coming in you know they can't find parking you know for but other cities they do have parking structures um so we got to do something about that and lastly um 10 years ago it was 21,000 cars I believe is at least 2500 cars a day so um we gotta look at we got to get you know uh current with everything we can't go backwards we can't we have to look at the current data and move forward that's all I have some of the uh chair may I uh ask uh one of the speakers a simple question I think it could be answered in a yes no this is your comment time and then we're gonna take a look okay well then I will float uh my intended question into my comment um I I think I'm inclined uh at this point to uh to be in favor of uh um reinstituting the parking uh I'd like the room to know how I'm informed uh on my decision um part of it is certainly the testimony in the room tonight uh there was a tally that was kept uh I think it was about 20 speakers in favor nine speakers uh uh against and when I'm saying favor I mean in favor of retaining the bike lanes uh nine against two of those weren't strong endorsements against we've also received a number of letters um most of the letters particularly from the the bike advocates I thought were very professional and nice a couple of them were a little nasty um but I thought that they were really professional and and very made the case and the testimony tonight is really making the case as well um what I think it's coming down to for me is some of the letters that we received from the merchants and the question that I was going to ask um Ken you did a lot in in in soliciting these um have we had any merchants that have come forward in favor of the bike lanes have we had any merchants anecdotally that have said that this is really beneficial it's my supposition that none of them have um I I see a hand raised in the back.

The merchants that I'm Dan, Dan.

Let's get the comments and move forward.

We're gonna be here all night okay okay the the the merchants you heard from the community.

The merchants that I have seen on East Castor Valley Boulevard seem to uh feel that uh uh that it's had an adverse impact.

Um I think my decision is also weighed by the um the the makeup of our community.

Um, although bike use might be increasing, uh I I think that the amount of vehicular traffic traffic far outweighs it, and there's certain people that just can't join the bike crowd.

I can't join the bike crowd.

Um uh people with kids can't necessarily people that are multitasking, people that don't have leisure time, um uh people that are that are running around multitasking, doing three or four stops in any given uh uh trip.

So I think it's uh uh the numbers that have been reported, whether they're overshaded or understated, just pale in comparison to the potential number of people that could benefit from uh from that parking.

Uh so with uh with that being the case, I think I'm uh in favor of the parking being uh reinstalled.

Councilmember Moda.

Um I think I agree with uh council member Davis.

I think there needs to be a compromise.

Um I think we need to also talk to the businesses and see what the impact and what they're um you know, where they would want um parking.

Um but I also feel like the the bike lane should be removed in in a sense as well.

So I'm kind of torn between the two.

I do agree, maybe a partial, I'm really tied right now, um, in my decision.

Um I think um I will think about it, and um, that's my comment for right now.

Feedback.

Well, I think you know, we need to look at this as a community.

We have uh both the bicyclists and the business people.

Um I think some of the businesses that have been affected drastically, and they do need parking spots, and you know, I think there should be a way, a compromise where we could perhaps accomplish both.

You know, the KB development that they have retail there, no parking, that's that's not very good.

Um I don't know if we can have some parking and you know, reestablish partially some of the parking.

That's probably more crucial.

I think in front of that ride aid, why do they need any parking there?

Because they have a whole parking lot full of parking spots, so you know that direct in front is probably good for them with none.

Um, but I think other businesses probably have been affected.

I think we should probably look case by case and see what we could do, and then how would a bike lane work if there's parking in one part and not in another?

So I know there's several different bike lanes to choose from.

I'm not sure how we do that, but I do think there should be some kind of compromise.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair, and I want to start by uh thanking the members of the cycling community for being here and advocating.

Uh it's important.

Uh, also want to thank the merchants and the residents that are here.

That's important.

Um, and thanks to public works for for doing the work.

Um, this project is really difficult for me, and it's not because of the result, not at all.

Um, this project is difficult for me because we got to a solution without adequate public input and adequate examination of data and facts, and no discussion within the community of alternatives as as council member Davis and others have referred to.

Um, we got the result we got without the community being involved, and and I can understand that this was part of the bike bike Ped Master Plan that was discussed in 2019.

Uh, but since I've been on this council, we've heard bicycle-specific issues uh regarding you know, Stanton, Strowbridge, Norbridge, Somerset, higher now.

Um, but this body did not hear anything to do with removing a parking on Castro Valley Boulevard, our artery.

And I think the community needs and deserves the opportunity to hear that.

Fewer cars on the road is absolutely wonderful for the environment.

Cyclist safety is just as important as pedestrian safety, which is just as important as vehicle safety.

A buffered class two bike lane may be a great solution.

I believe there are other alternatives that would not harm the merchants, would not make life difficult for the residents, the consumers.

I don't know what those alternatives are.

I believe the community can bring bring ideas, bring examples.

That's a holistic view that's going to take into consideration the entire downtown.

Business and residents have suffered under this decision.

And you know, we've got a pretty limited uh array of choices tonight.

What I would like to see is have the project return to its original state with parking restored while we go through the robust, thorough and complete public process that will enable 100% of the community to bring their feelings, their ideas for consideration.

In my limited understanding, um is intended to guide the long-term improvements, not mandate them.

And in that vein, this particular project where the downtown uh merchants are being affected, um, you know, deserves hearing from the community um in total with with full information.

So I would support um requesting transportation and planning to return the boulevard to the public state and uh to the previous state and um asking that staff be directed to bring this matter back for full public um full public airing.

Thank you.

Okay.

Um I God I look at this and I I'm I am support also of restoring the parking, and I'll tell you why.

It was the exercise was done without data to support, taking it away and the impact that it would have on the businesses.

There was direction from the transportation and planning department that said if the businesses were harmed, bring this back, and they would restore the parking.

Um that was a direction from the transportation and planning department.

I've received uh several letters, multiple letters, and feedback from businesses along that one particular area of uh where the cross from the right aid and so on that area up there.

Um, I I look at this and I say we did it in a vacuum.

We didn't have the data, we did not have what the accident rates were.

We had no target to go from, and um, and I think a bicycle plan that was put together many many years ago is not relevant to what it is today.

Today is a whole different ball game, and I think we need to go back to the drawing board and come up with a plan that is much better than what we currently have in what we're doing.

Because 65,000 residents.

Um, by the way, everybody that came tonight, thank you.

I I did count roughly um we had 22 speakers in the room.

We had uh nine speakers online.

Um we had uh seven speakers that wanted to reinstate the uh parking.

We had 20 speakers that were either online or in the room that said that they would like to keep the bicycle lane, and then we have four of those speakers that were out of the area.

I do take my notes down.

Okay, so I'm not speaking in a vacuum.

I'm looking for data to support changes that we want to make.

And I'm not in any way opposed to bicycle lanes, however, we do it, but it needs to be fully vetted with our community, and it needs to be functional for our businesses.

We cannot harm our businesses, and I think all of you that are in this room would agree to not harm anybody's business, because if you owned it, you wouldn't want to be harmed.

So we need data, and we need better data on what we're getting right now before we can start um making these changes.

So I am um not in support of uh keeping the bicycle lane as it is today.

Um I would um uh I would support a motion from the group that um to restore the parking.

Mr.

Chair, I move that we um forward to Transportation and Planning Committee the recommendation that the class two buffered bicycle lane on Castro Valley Boulevard be re um removed uh that parking be returned, pending um a restart of the process that would involve um community input business input um probably through this body um before decision is made as to how to accommodate the need for um safe cycling through our boulevard.

We have a first of a we look for a second, someone else.

I'll second that.

Okay, first and a second, Mr.

Chair.

I'd like to offer a substitute motion, which would uh keep the bike lanes in place with the exception of removing or replacing the parking in site-specific locations that businesses are adversely affected.

Chair, I'm sorry.

Um there was a first and a second, so he can't offer it until we vote on.

No, that is not correct.

Robert's rules of order gives me the opportunity to offer a substitute motion before this one is vote.

The substitute motion is subsequently, if it's seconded, has uh is voted on first, and then if it's voted down, it goes back to the original motion of which is voted on.

I'd like to hear the substitute motion or any other substitute motions.

I just made a substitute motion to uh oh okay.

If you want if you're looking to make an amendment to the motion, the the council member that made the emissional motion would have to accept that amendment.

So I asked for a substitute motion, which is again my right.

And uh if there's a second, then we vote on the substitute motion, and then if that's voted down, then it goes back to the original motion on which we vote.

If you want clarification on the motion, it was to uh keep the bike lanes in place except in those locations where we restore the parking that affects specific businesses.

Do we have a second on his amended uh or a second motion?

Substitute motion, it's a separate motion, a substitute motion, yes.

Yeah, I'll second it.

Okay, you want to vote on the substitute motion first, and then we'll go back to the first motion.

Chair, is it appropriate to have a round of discussion on the two alternative uh um motions that have been made right now before we vote on either one or the other?

The only appropriate action would be taking it would be asking for uh points of clarification on the motion as you you can't go into debate.

There's no discussion.

Do you need a point of clarification on the second motion?

How would you determine which businesses are affected or adversely affected?

I was hoping that staff would be able to assist us in that.

I don't see how we're gonna tell how the businesses would be affected.

Um repeat that motion.

Yes, it's keeping the bike lanes in place with the exception uh of restoring parking adjacent to businesses that are adversely affected by those bike lanes, another question of clarification.

Might that create a checkerboard bike lane?

It could, but it's better to have 90% bike lanes than zero percent, as far as I'm concerned, do we have clarity on the motion?

I do.

Okay, we have a first and a second.

Let's have a vote on we're voting on a substitute motion, council member Devini.

I'm gonna say no, council member feebig.

No, no, yes.

Aye.

No.

Okay.

Go back to the first motion that was made and seconded by um council member vice chair Mulgrave.

Would you please repeat your motion?

Can you read it, please, madam clerk?

To remove um the bike lanes to return the parking pending, uh the rec um to remove um, to remove the bike lane, and the parking pending start of the pending part of the process with community members and business members, was that okay?

All community members, yes.

That's clear.

Okay, we have a first or second.

Uh let's go ahead and call for roll.

Council member Davis.

No, council member Devini.

Aye.

Councilmember Feebig.

Yes.

Councilmember Mota.

Aye.

Councilmember Thomas.

No.

Vice Chair Mulgrew.

Aye.

Chair Moore.

Yes.

Motion passes five to two.

Thank you for getting through that.

Okay, um, let's see what's on the agenda here next.

Do we have any um any uh council or staff reports?

You have any staff reports?

No staff reports.

I have no council reports.

Um, this meeting's adjourned.