My post on the traffic safety grant at last Thursday's city council meeting has gotten a bit of attention. I want to provide a bit of clarification and to accept the corrections offered by Councilors @benforward3.bsky.social and @jake4somerville.bsky.social. bsky.app/profile/some... 1/? - ThreadSky

somershade.bsky.social • 16 days ago

My post on the traffic safety grant at last Thursday's city council meeting has gotten a bit of attention. I want to provide a bit of clarification and to accept the corrections offered by Councilors @benforward3.bsky.social and @jake4somerville.bsky.social.

https://bsky.app/profile/somershade.bsky.social/post/3li42lmdav22s

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Reposted from Chris Dwan (he/him)

Item 8.4: "Chief of Police conveying the Municipal Road Safety Grant application."

This is the grant that has historically paid police overtime to "educate" (hassle) cyclists who go through red lights during the all-pedestrian phases.

I would prefer that they ticket drivers.

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somershade.bsky.social•16 days ago

Councilor @benforward3.bsky.social posted a quote from the grant application showing SPD's commitment to de-prioritize "true" Idaho stops (in which a cyclist treats a red light as a stop sign) and focus on higher risk behavior.

That's good, as far as it goes.

https://bsky.app/profile/benforward3.bsky.social/post/3li5uypukhk2t

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somershade.bsky.social•16 days ago

Councilor @jake4somerville.bsky.social wrote a whole blog post laying out the history of this grant in prior year finance committee discussions, showing the history of how those sentences came to be in the application.

The history is helpful.

https://www.jakeforsomerville.org/funding_for_traffic_enforcement

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somershade.bsky.social•16 days ago

I accept the corrections and I'm glad that the department listened.

At the same time, I still think it was a big-picture mistake for the council to authorize this funding. As I said later in the thread:

https://bsky.app/profile/somershade.bsky.social/post/3li44gkoltk2v

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somershade.bsky.social•16 days ago

Focusing on the Idaho Stop and the modest fraction of the grant earmarked for cyclist education misses the big picture:

We budgeted $18M for the Police this year, and yet somehow this $60k grant (a third of one percent) is being framed as load-bearing in our fight against traffic violence.

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somershade.bsky.social•16 days ago

This grant doesn't create capacity - it's just more work (on overtime) for the same exhausted department that already works to rule and complains of overwork and under-appreciation.

It's an ineffective fig leaf on our lacking response to traffic violence in the city.

https://bsky.app/profile/somershade.bsky.social/post/3li4avwlbp22m

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somershade.bsky.social•16 days ago

Budget time is coming up, the Mayoral race is contested, and we're supposedly going to see some motion here in this fifth year of re-imagining and creating external oversight of the police.

Let's have the conversation about capacity and priorities.

https://bsky.app/profile/somershade.bsky.social/post/3li4bfboig22m

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