Bowling Green City Council held back-to-back committee meetings tonight.
During council’s Finance Committee meeting, finance Director Dana Pinkert delivered the quarterly finance report.
“Although we have been extremely busy with beginning of the year stuff and things starting to roll forward, there really hasn’t been a lot of surprises or activity for the first quarter,” Pinkert said.
“The one surprise for the first quarter,” she said, was an increase in the city’s income tax collections. Through March, the city has collected more than $6.4 million, exceeding estimates for the year by nearly $547,000.
“It is up 8%. That is not a typo,” Pinkert said. “It was a surprise to me. I have been watching it for the past three months. … I’m not really ready to make a change in the projection but certainly by the end of the next quarter we’ll have to decide if we want to do that.”
Council’s Transportation and Safety Committee met to discuss a resolution that would provide for a Vision Zero commitment from the city, involving eliminating fatalities and serious injuries that are a result of crashes on city streets by 2045.
According to a legislative package document prepared for council, Bowling Green and the Wood County Engineer’s Office have partnered with Lucas, Ottawa and Sandusky counties, as well as Toole Design, a Vision Zero consultant, to develop a Northwest Ohio Safe Streets for All Action Plan.
Part of the scope of items Toole Design Group will be providing is the submission of a Safe Streets for All Implementation Grant application, due in May, which will be based on the results of the regional study the city and partners have been participating in. The application will be regional in scope and the Wood County portion of the scope will likely include pedestrian and/or bicycle safety infrastructure improvements.
For the Safe Streets for All Implementation Grant application to score the highest points, each participating jurisdiction must make a public commitment to the goal of zero roadway deaths by 2045.
Committee Chair Bill Herald said that he had issues with the original wording of the resolution.
“So I did some research on it,” Herald said, “and determined we can accomplish the same thing with wording that better fits Bowling Green than something the seemed to be a boiler plate from another community. … I don’t like that the original resolution really doesn’t do the city justice in all the efforts that we’ve done thus far” on the issue of safety.
He said that his major objection was that the language of the resolution as written further commits the city to a Vision Zero plan which, Herald noted, hasn’t been created yet.
“We’re committing to something that hasn’t even been put together yet,” he said and offered substitute that showed what the city has been engaged in regarding safety practices. “The substitute is more tailor-made to the city, it commits us to a goal,” of zero roadway deaths by 2045, but not to a plan that hasn’t been made yet, said Herald.
Committee member Jeff Dennis asked if the new language offered by Herald posed any issues with the city administration. He was told that the new language meets the necessary criteria for a Vision Zero resolution.
“I think you’re absolutely right,” Dennis said to Herald. “We have been making a ton of great progress in recent years,” but he also acknowledged that he, too, did not feel comfortable endorsing a plan which they haven’t read yet.
The committee voted unanimously to recommend to council that Herald’s substitute resolution be adopted. Later, during the evening’s council meeting, council formally voted to substitute Herald’s language for the original language, and then unanimously approved the resolution.
