Dear Council,
Please re-examine the Coleman Ave issues.
The following issues are:
* To move forward, another study/survey will need to be conducted to evaluate all possible options and provide more details on objectives, success criteria, how it will be measured, etc. This was actually the recommendation of the SMC Sustainability Director during the 9/17 BPAC committee meeting [first paragraph on page 7].
* The process has been fraught with challenges:
* BPAC was unaware that a survey had been conducted in December 2023, reaching 265 community members. Of these, 45% supported the closure of Coleman.
* At the 9/17 meeting, BPAC agreed that there was no consensus on which option to pursue. However, in the letter they presented on 10/17, they claimed that 23 of the 26 people present during the 9/17 meeting supported the one-way option, completely disregarding the people who spoke on Zoom, who had far more diverging opinions, and the community members who had expressed support for the closure option in the December survey. This is not how democracy works.
* Your letter misrepresents the truth. No other survey was conducted after the December 2023 survey to indicate support for the one-way option [first paragraph under ‘Analysis’ on page 3].
* Most of the examples community members cited during the 9/17 BPAC meeting involved close calls at the city side of Coleman, given the lack of a dedicated bike line and double-parked vehicles. So, even if the one-way closure is implemented, it will not alleviate any potential safety issues unless parking is also removed on the city side of Coleman (action 2).
*
Thank you,
Kathleen Lorist
Coleman Ave.
