Council directs staff to join Friends of Pathways' e-bike safety outreach and scoping process

The Jackson Town Council on Jan. 21 directed staff to participate in a community-led process, led by Friends of Pathways, to develop strategies addressing e-bike safety on the town's pathway network. The motion, made by Councilman John Schechter and seconded by Councilwoman Beaman, passed unanimously.

Bridal Schilling, the town and county pathways coordinator, presented a scoping report at the council's request that summarized prior efforts (education, enforcement and engineering) and recommended that staff participate in Friends of Pathways's grant-funded facilitation and stakeholder outreach. Schilling said the Friends group had obtained an opportunities grant through the Infinity Foundation and hired a facilitator, Alex Norton of OPS Strategies, to manage the outreach, a community survey and stakeholder meetings.

Schilling said the town's prior measures include school-based education programs, work with bike shops, pathway speed limits (a town-only pathways speed limit of 15 mph with some 10 mph zones) and planned engineering measures such as chicanes and signage for high-use areas like Garriman Park. He described the primary safety concern as higher speeds associated with the rise in e-bike usage and framed the proposed role for town staff as participation and coordination (estimated at 30 to 40 hours over six months), internal stakeholder convening and reporting to council at key policy milestones.

Katherine Dawson, director of Friends of Pathways, told the council the outreach would include a community survey, stakeholder interviews and research on how other jurisdictions have addressed e-bike regulation. She said the group expected to complete stakeholder group meetings by March and to release the public survey in about three to four weeks.

Council members asked about staff opportunity costs and the definition of success. Schilling said the staff time would likely come from other pathway and planning work; he suggested success might be measured by subjective improvements in how comfortable people feel using pathways, supported by objective indicators such as crash and injury data or speed-study results.

Town Manager Tyler Sinclair said smaller outreach costs could be covered from existing budgets, but larger requests would be returned to council for authorization. Schilling said potential town contributions to outreach would likely be modest (he suggested $5,000 to $10,000 as an example for mailers or utility inserts) and that larger funding needs would be brought back for council approval.

The council approved a motion directing staff to participate in the Friends of Pathways process and to report back at milestone points. The measure preserves the option for the town to lead a separate, town-led process (which Schilling said would be costlier) or to decline participation entirely.

The Friends of Pathways-led work is expected to be multi-jurisdictional in scope; participants identified include town and county public-works and parks departments, law enforcement and school district representatives, plus the nonprofit and philanthropic partners referenced in the presentation.