  
Director of Community Services (and task force member) Harry Spila provided us copies of the Comprehensive Bike Plan proposals he received for our review and input.
No word yet from the village on potential dates for the proposed Mayor’s Ride.
The Illinois Dept of Transportation has indicated that there is $7MM in available funding for its 2010 Safe Routes to School grant pool. We are awaiting a response from the village as to whether we can update its previously-approved School Travel Plan and pursue this grant on their behalf.
We hosted a Bike-to-Metra Day (June 16) event this week. We distributed goodie bags (ActiveTrans gave us 30 bags), fruit and free coffee to those who rode bikes to the station.
We assisted Palatine Township with its annual Bike Bonanza (June 12). This event includes a stunt rider, silent auction of gently used, donated bikes, bike registration, and bike safety/obstacle course. Unfortunately, the weather was uncooperative. The donated bikes were moved indoors and the auction continued, but other events were terminated early.
We hope to submit for 501(c)(3)non-profit status in the coming month. This will allow us to incorporate, secure event-related insurance, and open a bank account.
The task force plans to participate in the 4th of July parade again this year. Feel free to wear fun costumes or decorate your bike. Last year’s parade showcased several very nice rides indeed!
We distributed a bike survey to all of the Palatine Village Councilmembers to assess their level of support of our group’s interests.
We have two Farmers Market booths coming up: July 10th and again in August. We plan to host some kids’ bike safety training at the market and need additional volunteers.
We continued to discuss the possibility of organizing a Kidical Mass event for late July, possibly by closing off a portion/lane of Smith Street for a few hours and getting the Forest Preserve to open up its maintenance access gate at Smith and Dundee so families could circle the Deer Grove East paved loop. We would have some DJ music, helmet/bike decorating and costume contests (kids get some little prize like a bike bell or horn or streamers or similar), ice cream/hot dogs from Photos or Culvers (we get a $ cut), Safe Routes booth, Mikes Bikes has a Burley or tag-along demo area, maybe get PPD, Buehler, Forest Grove, Hobby Lobby or other crafters, etc. to help and/or do some booths too. Families ride from booth to booth. We are pursuing permission from the Forest Preserve to allow this access gate before we get much further in potential planning. If we aren’t able to organize this event in time this year, perhaps we plan it earlier next year.
Stop by and say "Hi"...The task force will team with Mikes Bike Shop will host booths at the Farmers Market and July 10. Volunteers are needed for this easy opportunity!
Our next meeting is scheduled for Thursday, July 15 in Rm C of the Village Hall at 7 pm. Treats will be provided!
CycleFest 2010 plans are underway with members working on flyers, waivers, and content for both our website and the Village of Palatine’s StreetFest www.palatinestreetfest.com website. See above links. CycleFest will be advertised in Windy City Sports, Silent Sports, and My Chicago Athlete, all of which require notice at the very beginning of the calendar year. The task force will also arrange advertising in more local publications later in the summer. We may attempt to coordinate our advertising with FeetFest. An event-specific t-shirt will be designed later this summer. We have identified a very cost-effective source for printing up the shirts for us. We may also reach out to Palatine businesses (Harris Bank, Starbucks, Jewel and others) to see if they are interested in being advertised on the back of the t-shirts as a means of underwriting part of the cost. We also talked about the need to seek swag for goodie bags by Spring. The vendors who donate typically require at least 3-4 months advance notice.
As we looked back on our efforts this past year, we were pleased with our success at staging various events, but were somewhat disappointed over the absence of any tangible bicycle infrastructure improvements (either actual or planned) in the village. On the positive side, the Village has been generous with providing technical support with GIS and public service announcement development.
One topic that we need to revisit with the Village is on-road bike route designation via signs and striping. There had been concern expressed by some Village staff regarding perceived liability as a result of the higher maintenance standards such roads are held to. Neighboring communities have gotten comfortable with such on-road designation; perhaps we can facilitate discussions amongst Village of Palatine representatives with their counterparts in nearby suburbs to help Palatine embrace bike routing so that it can begin implementation, particularly on roads that are being resurfaced and restriped anyway.
Much of our last meeting focused on planning/calendar for 2010. Various task force members stepped up to take the lead on planning events:
Kevin Keene will head up the Fourth of July Parade effort
Mike Raef will plan the Bike-to-Metra event in June
Don Ami will set up CycleFest in August
As these events draw nearer, they will be delegating various tasks to the rest of us to share the load.
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Our next meeting is scheduled for Thursday, August 19 in Rm C of the Village Hall at 7 pm. Treats will be provided!
Once again our members made a showing and rode in Palatin'es 4th of July Parade! Everyone had a great time too. If you would like to share your pictures for posting them on our website, please click here. JPG images are best, sent as an attachment to e-mail. Thanks to all that participated!
Click below to view our Bike Task Force sponsored public service announcement. The Walk To School Video is posted on the Village of Palatine's website.
The Village is updating its Comprehensive Plan, something it does roughly once every 20 years. A key component of the plan involves transportation. Task force members signed a declaration at the October meeting, signifying their desire to have bicycling addressed in the plan as an important mode of transportation. Task force members are urged to attend one of the upcoming Open Houses that the Village is hosting as a means of soliciting input from its residents. The signed declaration will be provided to the Village at one of the Open Houses. We are asking that the Village adopt the Comprehensive Bike Plan (a separate document, to be developed in 2010) in its Comprehensive Plan to provide further impetus for incorporating biking in all future road projects.
The task force hosted its first-ever CycleFest, a 17-mile casual bike ride highlighting Palatine’s bike trails and routes, as part of the village’s celebration, StreetFest, on Saturday, Aug 29th. We received generally favorable feedback from our 41 ride participants, and for the first time, are operating “in the black” as a result of revenues raised! Task force member debrief comments included need for better marketing next year, better and more specific payment collection options, earlier goodie bag trawling, event-specific t-shirts, improvements to our registration form, and better speed/ability sorting of riders, among others. Thanks to so many task force volunteers stepping up! Sign-up for 2010 event now!
Discussions have take place about construction of a couple of kid-friendly, bike-related “kits” we could use at various venues to attract attention and interact with more folks. Examples include the bike pump/balloon popping and bike-powered smoothie maker or similar. More info on building these kits is presented via these links. Other ideas welcome!
http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-create-a-human-powered-bike-blender-for-les/
http://www.whirlwhims.com/boom-blaster.html
We're not suggesting patent infringement or anything – these are just ideas to get you thinking!
We are currently developing a list of media contacts in order to get the word out efficiently when publicity is important. Don Ami noted that he would get a list of the media contacts that they currently use in advertising the Arlington 500 ride.
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