This morning Bruce Anderson, Eric Johnson, John Stull, and I met with Northfield mayor Lee Lansing as a follow-up to our February 12 proposal to the city council to create a city Nonmotorized Transportation Advisory Board. Mayor Lansing stated his concerns about creating a new board, particularly his feeling that he did not want to take staff and council time away from the many other issues the city is dealing with. He also stated that he did not think a new permanent advisory board would meet with council approval.

He did speak in favor of creating a task force to address the issue, possibly of one year in duration. We advocates were in agreement that this seemed the best approach to take. The mayor seemed to like our idea that the task force might include neighboring towns such as Dundas and Bridgewater Township. I mentioned that the city of Edina, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis, has created the Bike Edina Taskforce, which has an ambitious agenda to create a city bike plan and to apply for specific grants. See also the Bike Edina web site.

We left the meeting promising to write up some documents that outline the mission and specific goals of a task force. The next step would be to get approval of the new group from city councils.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 28th, 2007 at 2:59 pm and is filed under Biking/Walking, Northfield.