Okay.

We're going to go ahead and get started.

Study session.

All call orders study session council study session for May nineteenth, twenty twenty-six.

Councilmember Bobby Buckley.

Here.

Council Member Kenny Bucklin.

Here.

Council Member Yan Kaprowski.

Here.

Council Member Monty Lyons.

Here.

And Councilmember Jim Torreson.

A quarum is present.

Thank you.

We have two items on the agenda.

First will be a presentation on e-bikes and the helmet ordinance.

Chief.

Hello, Mayor and Council.

My name is Mike Ankstead.

I'm one of the assistant chiefs at the Gilbert Police Department.

I'm going to be presenting this information about these e-bike ordinances along with Brenda Carrasco, who you'll see kind of midway through the presentation.

Brenda is one of our wonderful partners in the Office of Community Engagement.

They're becoming more and more prevalent.

And at that time, I think we had all kind of just seen a rise in collisions, a rise in injuries, and our community has expressed, had expressed and continues to express concerns around safety.

At that time, you know, leaving that study session, we kind of landed on four different focus areas.

Those having to do with helmets, speed, age, and then sellers.

So specific to helmets, kind of walked away with the question of you know, would council be inclined to enact an ordinance that required riders of bicycles and e-bikes under the age of 18 to have to wear helmets, or would council prefer, for instance, an ordinance that requires the riders of just e-bikes that are under the age of 18.

We discussed speed, and we and there was a discussion about you know whether a speed ordinance uh would be impactful on multi-use paths and government owned trails for e-bikes.

We had a conversation about age, and at the time there was some consideration uh not not just um with Gilbert with Gilbert's council, but really regionally, there was a lot of discussion about the prohibition of class three e-bikes being operated by uh juveniles under the age of 16.

And lastly, we had a brief discussion about sellers, the the folks that sell these devices, and uh enacting an ordinance potentially that would require the sellers of class three e-bikes to inform buyers of local ordinances.

Those were the issues last October, and um not only did we do a lot of work digging in on those four issues, but we looked at a lot of other issues that are really coming to the forefront regionally again with regard to these devices.

But before we jump into uh into some of the data and discussions, I'm about to hit the button and forward to the next slide, and when this slide comes on, I'll just forewarn you it's a video, and the video kind of shows the perspective of one of our officers as they're sitting in their patrol car and what they sometimes encounter on the street.

So I'll be quiet and play the video here for a second.

So this is really these kind of incidents where an officer, he wasn't necessarily responding to this call.

He's out patrolling he or she, and they they encounter this.

Um we're seeing more and more of this.

So we've seen a rise in organized e-bike and e-motorcycle rideouts, and it's marked by reckless riding on the public roadways, dangerous group behavior, um, certainly lots of incidents of these uh you know, primarily kids and young adults fleeing from police during traffic stops.

If you look at the different devices that are uh featured in this this random video that our officer took, um you'll see that there's a mix of different devices.

Within this uh group, you have uh electronic bicycles that follow under one section of state law currently, and you also see electric motorcycles which fall under a completely different category, but they're mixed together, and the challenge for the officers is trying to address all of these people that are riding um these devices in an unsafe way with regard to adult and juvenile bike collisions, and these aren't specific to elect electric bikes.

Um we get this data from the state when we go and take motor vehicle collisions, but it does show the you know there's been this dramatic increase, 2024, 2025, dramatic increase of adult and juvenile collisions, and we're looking uh when we looked at 2026, it's trending the same way.

And we're looking when we looked at 2026, it's trending the same way.

So it's concerning.

And with that, I'm gonna uh jump out here, and Brenda's gonna talk a little bit about uh our education efforts.

But before that, I've got one more slide here.

Um the discussion uh I had a second ago with regard to that video.

You know, there was this mix of different devices, not only elect uh electronic bikes and electronic motorcycles, but there were some gas-powered motorcycles in that group as well.

Uh, with regard to these two, though, these are the ones we see the most and have the most problems with.

The electronic bicycles, the class three bicycles actually go up to 28 miles per hour.

Um, they're pedal assisted, there's no current age restriction under state law.

So a four-year-old can jump on one of these and go 28 miles an hour.

There's nothing in state law that prohibits that, and there's nothing under um town code that would prohibit that.

And there's currently no helmet requirement.

Uh conversely, on the other side of the slide, we talk about e-motorcycles.

Um they can go the the particular device that's captured in this picture.

Uh they can go 60 miles per hour, no problem.

There are other electronic motorcycles made by Harley Davidson and Honda that can go a lot faster than that.

But for these specific ones, we see these a lot.

Um, state law requires that the riders be at least 16 miles or 16 years of age with a motorcycle uh motorcycle endorsement or a motorcycle license.

The actual motorcycle itself has to be registered insurance.