Alright, welcome to the uh City of Evansville Board of Public Safety meeting.

This is the 12th scheduled meeting, and uh we'll begin the agenda for June 24th after we stand and but uh legal agents, and which it stands, just as strong, all right.

First up, we will talk with uh business representatives.

First up is uh Todd Early.

Todd, you want to come forward uh state your name and address for the record.

Yes, my name is Todd Early, uh 524 Main Street with Tiki on Maine.

Uh I wanted to first of all come to the board and to defend myself on uh bike night.

It was very successful except for that one incident, and um we uh I did everything that the board had asked me to do, did it to the book.

I did everything that the Renaissance and one particular person who has done a one-person campaign against me.

Um everything I did I've done, I do what I want to do is make sure that I am in good standings with this board for future for future events that I want I want to do as well.

Uh the bike night, of course.

Uh I'm I won't I don't know if you guys know I did have to cancel that uh because of the issue, and uh the there was also another issue, another bike night somewhere in town the next day or a couple days later.

And so now because of the safety of my staff and safety of my customers, and to quiet down the renaissance, I've decided to cancel that.

So what I'm asking the board now, though, is uh keeping that roadblock to have uh a safer uh event a Jeep night, which during the summer, same amount of times, uh, and exact doing the exact same thing beside except having a having motorcycles.

So, so you're asking you're asking to change it from a bike night to a jeep night.

Correct.

Okay.

Um one of the questions that came up, and and obviously we'll get some some input from those up here, um, was things going on the sidewalk, uh, and I mean is it is is a situation where people are going to drive jeeps up on the sidewalk too?

Because I think that becomes an issue.

Well, uh, as I spoke with Curtis about what my assumption was when you blocked the entire street that that I was able to be able to do that, and uh uh Paul Black even told me that, sent me a message saying that, then after that he sent you guys pictures of people on the sidewalk, bikes on the sidewalk when he himself told me that I should be able to do that.

Uh and my that that was my assumption, so that's what I did.

Um, if I was just blocking uh parking spots, I understand that I'm not blocking that entire street.

So I understood that that indicated no bikes on a sidewalk.

And we promoted that to uh I've brought some support here today.

Um we promoted that as well initially with the bike nights.

But uh but no, uh I would not think that they would be parking on the sidewalks.

These are bigger vehicles.

And I was gonna defer to engineering.

One thing that bothers me, and Todd, it's it's nothing against Tiki or the events you try to have.

I struggle with blocking those streets like that.

It personally, if something happens and things need to get through, but uh go it up and open it up for some discussion.

Well, uh barring comments from the engineers on actually putting vehicles on the sidewalk.

I mean, motorcycles on the sidewalk is not really gonna be a structural issue.

It's more for us uh a compliance issue.

So when the permits granted, exactly what they can do needs to be specified in the permit because uh due to these last uh issues, I had uh patrol commanders coming to me asking, okay, what what can they do?

What do we need to enforce and what we need to stop?

And and placing motorcycles on the sidewalk wasn't really in the permit, so technically they could have gone out and ticketed the bikes for parking on the sidewalk.

So we need to make sure that we're we're specific with what we're gonna allow in the permits, yeah.

And that's what I was gonna add.

I was gonna say I it didn't really I didn't really think of that when you guys were making the request.

I sort of just assumed it would be the streets.

Um but I the other thing I wanted to clarify is I don't know what what you've heard.

We received a complaint, we responded with you know, well, tell us you know, all this stuff that you said.

Did you call 911?

Was there a report filed?

It sounds like 911 was called, but no report was filed.

So we're like this we need more evidence than what they provided.

They sent some photos of some trash that we see after any event, so it wasn't.

I mean, there was nothing with this board telling you need you needed to shut it down.

We heard that you were shutting it down because we thought it got too out of control for you guys that you guys thought it was too much, but it sounds like maybe you're saying that you thought you were doing it because of stuff Renaissance is doing.

That is a big factor.

However, the safety not it's not that we couldn't control it, it's uh what happened with the incident.

I don't know if you guys know, but we had there was a bike organization called Since City came in with their cuts and colors and and uh targeted somebody that was there.

Oh wow, and uh it lasted less than a minute because our regular bikers that were there said that's not happening here.

That and so they stopped it, and that was early on, so rest of the night was there was no incidents at all.

Well, I I appreciate that you're you're prudent enough to see that the potential uh problem that could happen.

And honestly, the only comment I had when the initial information came in as a member of the board, and I'm only one member of a three-member board, was my concern was to you know the downtown is for everybody, and and there's people gonna be downtown at other restaurants that live down there and come downtown that are not gonna participate in bike night on those Mondays.

Having said that, uh I I as counselor said it it wasn't an issue that we were ready to shut it down.

It was trying to find out more information.

Right.