 Look at everybody. Good evening everybody. Hi Great to see everybody Is Jim Allison here by any chance He he's a the host of this party when we have it in real life in Sacramento I'm really sorry that we don't get to have it with him in real life Uh this time Well, I will start with welcoming people Hello everybody Welcome to this reception I sure wish that we could be At jim's place in sacramento But we have a pandemic and so we are holding it online The advantage is that we get to include people from all over the state We get to include people who we would normally be able to include like our board chair Cynthia, for example so, um You have to supply your own pizza and drinks, but we will supply some inspiration and we'll facilitate some camaraderie I think it's going to be a great event after some introductions and housekeeping We will hear from a bunch of people on our team and others who made a big difference in 2020 We're going to start with a little review of 2020 And then we'll hear about our plans for 2021. We'll have time for some discussion in the large group And then we'll have time for some breakout groups We're going to create some breakout groups based on our campaigns And we're going to have some breakout groups that you can select yourself just to have whatever conversation you want to have In order to do that you need to have the latest zoom app Keep a keep an eye on the chat For some more advice on how to make sure you can take advantage of that latest technology Right around six o'clock after the breakout rooms. We'll come back and we will adjourn the official part of the meeting With discussion about ways you can help ways that you can help make the vision that we talk about all our reality in 2021 And that includes financially, of course First I want to take a moment to Make some special introductions. I can't tell all who's here Is senator scott weiner here? Yeah, there you are senator. Hi. I'm here Thank you for coming appreciate it Do you want to say you want to say a word you don't have to sure No, I want to thank you for day for Posting this and thank you to cow bike for everything that you're doing a special. Thank you to cow bike for endorsing my reelection to the senate I'm very appreciative of that it's been such a pleasure to work with dave and with the team for the last four years Whether it's our crusade to get caltrans to actually focus on safe biking and walking and tramp wait and and waiting for the bus And doing legislation around there and pounding our head against the wall a little bit, but ultimately we hope make some progress The work we've done around transit funding or the work To make sure that we can make it faster and easier and less process intensive to put down bike lanes Which is something we worked on this year It's just been a real pleasure. I know we're already in conversation and how we can work together next year we You know, we need to move towards towards progressive Policy sustainable transportation policy in california We're in the stop with the focus on On cars and cars only and understand that we are a multi-modal state and coming from san francisco It's a little bit more of a challenge in Sacramento than in san francisco city hall But I think we can make some progress and I just want to just say to you that cow bike is an extremely effective Organization with amazing expertise and it's just a real honor to work together. So again, thank you for everything Thank you, senator. It is a pleasure to work with you as well. And and though The complete streets bill was vetoed. I think that it Drew a line in the sand and it laid down some expectations that they are meeting so far. We I'm not I can't say 100 But so far so good I think it was a really valuable effort I invited assembly member elect Steve Bennett here There you are, sir I had the pleasure of meeting you in bike gear in ventura county and We are looking forward to working with you as a champion of bicycling As as involved as you are Welcome. Thank you for coming and if you'd like to say a word or two You have to unmute yourself first We muted everybody upon entry so There we go. Well, thank you very much for the invitation to this evening here Dave. I really appreciate it it's particularly a pleasure to Get to hear the comments from senator weiner and I look forward to Connecting with you if we ever get to spend time in sacrament We will and congratulations Steve. Congratulations. Thank you very much and same to you for your reelection and and all of your leadership on all of the multimodal Approaches that we need and stuff so cow bike I've become increasingly familiar with cow bike particularly through my involvement with cycle california coast, which is a collective effort between the counties of santa barber county and ventura county to try to improve bicycle infrastructure and make Our areas more bicycle friendly and cow bike has just been Very good resource and what I think I most want to learn more about is the effectiveness of cow bike in terms of legislation and lobbying in sacramento where I will now turn my attention We've been pretty successful in ventura county and getting the county to be sure to pave broader shoulders Whenever they do repaving to try to make sure that they have a reasonable shoulder there for bicyclists I'd love to talk with senator wiener about that kind of legislation at the state level that You know some kind of requirement for local governments to take that into consideration and stuff. So Dave, thank you very much heard great things about cow bike I look forward to working with cow bike more and I think senator wiener wiener It's probably as good of endorsement as you're going to get in terms of that. So thank you Thank you So I would hate to Fail to introduce an elected official if you're here and I didn't catch that so With apologies if you are an elected official and like to introduce yourself. Please Speak up. Okay. Now I get to introduce another Special person our board chair synthia rose Is the longtime leader of san amonica spoke That is the bicycling and and and sustainable transportation advocacy organization In san amonica a chapter of the los angeles county bicycle coalition on which she serves as a board member as well and As board chair she's going to Give you a little greeting and introduce any other board members who might be present. Cynthia. Hi. Nice to see you Hi everyone, thank you so much for joining us. I'm I know we have board members that are due. I'm not sure I see anybody in the Chaperone yet, but I do want to say thank you to our electeds for joining us and for the kind words That you've given us and for the support that you have Provided in the past and that we look forward to working with you in the future I Can looking through I don't see any of our board members here yet Again, they are on their way So I am we have a lot of um great things to share today So we're going to get right on to the program So I won't take up any more of your time now and I'll um be talking to you later at the end. Thanks, dave Great. Thank you So, uh, let me introduce the our staff who's here just to say hi y'all. Um In no particular order. Jamie Smith is our admin manager who is Handling a really difficult Transition of our of our uh systems our background systems right now and helping us out a lot Kevin Claxton is our development associate. He's the tech person today Forrest Barnard is our active transportation planner working in the Central Valley and Bakersfield and Fresno He works with Asha who is here Asha chandy Who is the programs manager for bike bakersfield? Jared Sanchez is our policy leader Philip arca is on On special duty as a deputy director to help us get some of our operational systems Working super smoothly Nikolai cridler And laura mckamey are two hot shot consultants that are helping us with our communications and Jen a guitar is our Most veteran person besides me here. Uh, she's our development director and She's going to start by talking about Uh, what we did in 2020 I'm gonna share a screen Say hi, Jen. Say hi to Jen everybody so when covid started Our legislative agenda pretty much died and any bill that wasn't related to covid or that wasn't essential considered essential to to covid response um Was was uh withdrawn We and we also realized that suddenly there was this new reality of A lot of a lot more people were biking and there were a lot of people who are new to biking or returning And so we we put we put a whole bunch of resources up on our website just generally for biking and also for biking under covid Another thing that we worked on initially under the pandemic was that we connected people With programs around the state that were matching people With who needed a bike with people who had an extra bike Another thing that we did that was really important was that we Got the department of public health to include bike shops as an essential business initially they were including Car mechanics as essential but not bike shops. And so we made sure that they clarified the stay at home order And you know to make sure that that bike shops were considered essential and that communities around the state knew that that bike shops were allowed to be open Another thing that we put together was a how-to guide on implementing slow streets And we used oakland of the case study. They closed 74 miles of streets Throughout oakland to car traffic or you know or recommended that people use other routes So that there there's this whole network um that's still there Of of streets where people can bike and walk safely and more socially distant And so we put together a we sort of interviewed people from those organizations and from the city On how to do that effectively and you know to really get great community engagement to have good feedback mechanisms and building on existing campaigns and bike plans All of this celebration about open streets seemed out of place for a lot of californians though For whom the streets are not safe not because of traffic, but because of the color of their skin the protests in support of black lives matter affected all of us hopefully and Definitely affected cow bike We consulted with a lot of our local partners We consulted with civil rights groups and some of the leading transportation advocacy groups around the country To develop a set of proposals to get police out of the role of traffic enforcement. We developed six proposals Some of them are long term Visions and some of them are things that we can work on right away For example, the office of traffic safety gives grants to police departments for their officers to do overtime Very often giving tickets to people on bikes rolling through stop signs in quiet residential neighborhoods as a supposed traffic safety thing That's something that we can work on fixing this year also We can work to decriminalize common behaviors that everybody who walks and bikes does that are Illegal and result in unnecessary interactions with police. We're going to talk more about that when we get to our 2021 agenda Another project that we did this year that was really exciting was that we created a quick build guide in collaboration with Alta planning and design quick build for those who don't know Is a way of planning and building bike infrastructure that is obviously fast And also inexpensive. So the idea is that you use sort of inexpensive sometimes temporary materials like posts or planters or paint to um to create to very quickly You know get a bike project on the ground in a matter of weeks or months instead of years We don't want to wait five or ten years to have safe bike infrastructure when we can do it much faster and the other thing about quick build is that now is a really great time to to do it because city coffers are empty because of coveted and reduced tax revenue and quick builds much cheaper than traditional bike infrastructure The other thing is that so many people more people are biking in some communities right now And it's a really great time to sort of show Uh, you know show policymakers and show communities around the state And a better and easier and faster way to get bike infrastructure on the ground so that people will feel safe and comfortable while they're biking Um, so we created this guide and and it's it's got two pieces to it There's a sort of a brochure that that advocates can use to quickly educate policymakers about quick build and sort of sell them on the idea And then there's also a 77 page guide that's really thorough that's for planners and engineers To consult so that they can see what are the different kinds of materials that you can use to create quick build And what are some of the considerations to have a successful quick build project? Um, and at a fast a fast big build project um, so we're distributing this guide to policymakers and advocates and um, and planners all across california in collaboration with alpha Hi everyone A bike boom was seen early on in the pandemic where new and existing riders were turning to bikes for getting around safely One of the most important yet vulnerable sites for this boom has been in community bike shops Community bike shops empower people to build and repair their own bikes Also located in disadvantaged communities. They usually provide training shared tools in a supportive atmosphere community bike shops Are an important transportation public health and economic development resource Cal bike consultant laura mccammy created a critical investigative article interviewing a wide variety Of bike shop workers to assess their operations and how they're grappling with the pandemic What this led to was a short campaign for cal bike to lift up community bike organizations While there are many things that each of us as intervals can do to support community bike shops These vital organizations also need institutional support Here are a few of the avenues that we pursued awareness At cal bike we'll be looking and we did look for ways to shine a light on california's community bike shops And elevate their visibility in the community number two government support And the last was around funding Although many community bike shops Have an operating model that allows them to stay open on the shoe string budget Money could give the ability to hire paid staff to ensure operations are safe Others might be able to move to a safer or more permanent shop space So from this article it led to our next step a webinar that we held Where we had more than 25 or 25 attendees to join across the state's community bike shops We put our heads together Guided by expert governmental advice on how to safely continue the necessary Serious work during the cova 19 pandemic Lori waters from the californian transportation commission helped inform So potential ways shops can connect to funding opportunities It is clear that community bike shops are natural allies for advocacy organizations These grassroots organizations are able to reach communities whose voices are too often left out of the conversation about bicycle safety We will continue this work for lifting up community bike shops during and beyond the pandemic Thank you. I just want to make sure i'm sharing the the screen Just to make sure that uh, uh, you all can hear it. Okay I am about to introduce and thomas of ashastah living streets the california bicycle coalition education fund is a sponsor of a couple of great projects the amazing one in redding california ashastah county Is is working to help Folks in redding a small relatively small town and relatively conservative Uh really get that bicycling is an economic development tool and important for public health and thomas is doing amazing work up there I'm going to back this up just a second What happened last year? We stayed focused planning breakthrough ventures for redding in shasta county Construction is on track for our shasta bike depot a bike station and trail tourism and redding bike share Located adjacent to the redding transit center and directly on the downtown section of a protected bikeway loop That will connect more than 68 000 people in and out of downtown redding um We uh, are also working in the central valley With the high speed rail authority They as you know are building a high speed rail in in the central valley as a first segment to a statewide system And they wanted to help the cities there plan their station areas for access and so they gave the cities grants to plan Pedestrian and supposedly bike access within a half mile radius of the station a station area planning grant and We noted that uh, you can bike a lot further than a half mile You're missing an opportunity to get people to those stations by bike And so they awarded us a grant to help a handful of central valley cities Fresno more said bakersfield Figure out how to do that. We're using a fantastic tool that forest barns can tell us about So for us. Thanks so much for that introduction I am here with asha chandy from bike bakersill and We want to talk to you all about some of our work in the central valley That really ties in with our 2021 organizational initiatives So the first thing I want to talk about for a moment is cowbikes assisting The bakersill with a state funded active transportation grant to implement a bike share system in the central bakersill More city to ensure equitable And affordable access to bike share All around the central part of bakersill and ensuring that it's Accessible to get to community identified destinations and then asha's going to talk about So of our low network planning work Yeah, so bike bakersfield was asked by cow bike to partner on planning a low stress network in central bakersfield We a lot of our work included community engagement with target populations that we identified Like homeless residents foster youth public transit users students And this outreach directly translated to the route recommendations that were provided in our report Yeah, and so keep an eye out in 2021 for that. Um, we're also Completing the same process in fresco number seven and we're extremely excited that some of our work in the central valley Is going to inform tall bikes push to do this work statewide with both complete low stress bike networks and Publicly supported bike share and my mobility systems All right, thanks, dude. Yeah, you're welcome for us. Thank you um another project that we sponsor Is the mother load bicycle coalition there? working in the Northern San Joaquin valley in the sierra foothills Rob Williams is their Leader there rob During the last three months. I have been actively out On the community using phones because of the COVID-19 but talking to people civic leaders tourism directors Economic development directors business owners about the possibility of encouraging people To ride bikes in the central valley the foothills in the sierra And I am finding that people are excited about the opportunities to get more people riding bikes on our rural roads and traveling by bike Staying over the weekend and riding bikes in our areas. So I have been busy talking with people Soliciting support for cycling tourism Yeah, thank you rob, you know, um, you mentioned that project. I uh have my introductions in slightly the wrong order Rob does two things. He's the um one of the leaders of the mother load bicycle coalition And he's the project manager for this project that we're doing with the to wallamy county transportation commission to promote bike tourism in five counties san Joaquin calaveris alpine stennis loss and foamy The idea is to get the business leaders in those communities to Understand that bike tourism and bicycling can bring some economic development and dollars of their community And is yet another reason to make their roads safe. It's kind of a tricky way to get them to uh Work on safe streets For reasons other than just to help those silly bicyclists. So We're excited By the the success of the project so far. Rob has been doing a great job despite the pandemic Reaching out to people another person with the mother load bike coalition Is carl baker and and carl can tell you a little bit about what He's doing on behalf of the mother load bike coalition Soon as soon as he comes up Uh Accomplishments now have been advocacy. We commented on the to wallamy county active transportation plan uh, the district 10 active transportation plan and uh, we made comments on a couple of projects We're funding through the shop to add complete streets funding city and county have you know through their boards made it clear to the transportation council that they prefer Trails and a kind of a visitor experience emphasis for active transportation and the bike coalition made it very clear that That shouldn't come at the expense of getting people to the store to work to schools to county services and Our our comments were taken and I think we made a dent We have a lot of work to do with the local agencies to change that emphasis Thank you carl So, um, let me stop sharing the screen here We are unsurprisingly running behind uh, a little bit. So i'm gonna skip the group discussion about what we did in 2020 I believe that jen has posted if she hasn't could you please post a link to the blog blog post That summarizes everything you just heard I want to get to our 2021 agenda. That's what we came here to talk about and that's what i'm excited to Discuss with you and get your feedback and opinion on so let's jump right into that You can see that a lot that we did in 2020 Is is feeding into What we want to accomplish in in 2021 Forrest mentioned a couple of things one was The bikeway network analysis that they are doing they are using a really neat tool to analyze how an improvement in one part of town Improves the connectivity of destinations throughout the town It's really important because a lot of cities and counties as you know Will be very proud of themselves for spending a lot of money on some really nice bike facilities But they won't do the little thing at the intersection that is necessary to make one bike lane One really pretty bike lane connect to another really really pretty bike lane a quarter a mile away because they don't want to take out Traffic lane on a busy arterial We are hoping to get the state to develop some kind of program to incentivize cities and counties to Make those kind of improvements. They they ought to be building whole bike networks all at once and they ought to be doing all of the pieces that are necessary to Make your network work not just the easy pretty pieces And the other thing that Forrest mentioned was the Bike share that they're working on in bankersfield so bike share As you know is almost always a private enterprise in california And the bike share companies aren't making much money and they are not providing bike share or a scooter share for that matter To the community at a price that's affordable and to communities that really need it Those last mile systems ought to be integrated with public transit You ought to be able to get a bike or a scooter with your transit pass at the same price and on the same terms We are hoping to create a program in The state transportation public transportation account that will support transit agencies that want to do that And then there's two other big campaigns that I want to talk about But let me spend just a minute on on some of the the little things that add up so Uh, you know senator weiner I mentioned the complete streets work that we're doing with caltrans The new director there is Um, he's he's got the right idea and he's on our side. I sincerely believe that I'll tell you a little story to justify it When they came out with the Uh last round of shop proposals shop is the state highway operation and protection program It's the largest pot of funds that they spend and it's meant for only repair rehabilitation And you know, they they often cheat about that, but uh, it's mostly that's what it's for They have done historically a really bad job of taking advantage of those opportunities to make safety improvements The staff at caltrans wanted to do Kind of a big thing and at the last minute pull 50 million dollars out of the proposed set of proposals proposed set of programs to Make safety improvements on those projects and the director said why only 50? Why not a hundred? So that's why I think that he's on our side now It's a hundred million dollars in a four point two billion dollar program. So we're we're not talking, uh, you know massive change here but we're talking change and and and we're talking An agency that's willing to admit that it messed up so badly that it did an unprecedented thing and and pulled a hundred million dollars from the program at the last minute And and they couldn't approve the the full program when they sent it to the commission. So We're working internally with caltrans on that it it means a lot of work It's not gonna be anything that shows up in any kind of fancy way or any kind of legislation But it's the kind of things that that we can do because y'all support us And it's it's very valuable to make sure that we watch dog caltrans and that their process For the next shop is good. That's when we'll know whether or not we are successful or not is when they produce the next shop Another example of a small thing that we're doing is around The design manual the caltrans design manual is terrible and we meet with the director of the division of design to get them to to Change the rules so that for example We don't have Doors own bike lanes or That we can go down to a 10 foot lanes in order to put in a bike lane, which right now will require exceptions That's kind of work that we do through our administrative advocacy So that's kind of the the background stuff I mentioned the shared mobility campaign I mentioned bike bikeway networks. There's two more that I want to mention and I'm going to pass this one off to jared to talk a little bit about our work to Decriminalize certain behaviors that everybody does on a bike and everybody does when they walk But which are illegal and which result in unnecessary interactions with police that are tragic for some of our fellow citizens here in california So jared you want to spend a minute? I'm telling folks about the campaign and What we're planning Yeah, sure. I thought you were gonna play the video that I recorded, but you need to slide Yeah, sorry. I didn't get a chance to go ahead. Sorry. No problem. I'll keep it. I'll try to keep it brief. Um, so I'll say that We sent a survey out to our local bike affiliates and partners for their Suggestions on what we should pursue in our 2021 agenda A few of them are what david already mentioned But one of the top priorities that they highlighted was exactly this the decriminalization of walking and biking And what do we mean by decriminalization? the two Most important pieces that came up for us were around the Of course the pedestrian side and the cyclist side for the pedestrian side There is a long history that you all might be familiar with of midblock crossing and Making it illegal to quote-unquote j-walk. Um, so this is on the california Books along with many local ordinances making it illegal to cross the street If you're not in a unmarked or marked intersection or crosswalk that is So starting off with a full repeal of that Which is a very audacious move to make but as david mentioned These are not only very common and harmless behaviors in many ways, but they can be very very tragic and lead to death especially for black folks across the state Which we see in across the country The use of j-walking as a pretext to pull folks over or to target them And their actions in the public street and roadway Um The other one around the cycling aspect of it that you all might be familiar with is trying Again, uh to get the idaho stopped past in california. Um, and that's um the ability for cyclists to Roll through stop signs, um without stopping Before checking of course, um that the roadway is safe and Not in the way of traffic this Uh bill idea was pursued a couple years ago without success. Um, there was a lot of opposition to it This time around, um I'd say there's a lot of precedents. Um, just recently with the last two years Washington state and oregon were able to pass the statewide idaho stop type bill, uh in addition to What's already been passed in idaho, arkansas um Delaware in some aspect and also in colorado as well in in some shape of it um, and yeah, we're looking forward to Couching that aspect which you all might be very familiar with and passionate about Also within this idea around criminal justice reform really building up off the energy that we saw in early summer around black lives matter protests and The suspicion that I have so far that there will be a plethora of these types of criminal justice bills in 2021 And for us to step up on the walking and biking piece I think it's important not just for staff and leadership, but for all of you and many others who expect all of advocates Around this space in the equity space to really step up on on these issues. So I can stop there I don't know if Dave you wanted me to speak a little more on that No, um, we'll uh Maybe take a clarifying question And then you'll be leading the discussion in the breakout group for everyone who wants to join you for a more serious discussion about that. So That's the best way to follow up and then and then finally there is um a proposal to Let californians get their hands on e-bikes with some government support in the same way that the government helps people buy e-cars It's money can go a lot further to help people Replace their car trips with some kind of electric transportation And which happens to be healthy and safe and fun, too so uh states All over the country all over the world as you know are doing this it's about time california followed suit We have found an author for this We're really glad that assemblymember tasha Horvath has agreed to Boss of the proposal for us again and I need to Hi everyone, I'm tasha bernard horvath, and I'm honored to represent the communities of insinitis carol sped Oceanside vista and camp pennilton in the state assembly What you may not know about me is that i'm a big fan of biking A ride around the neighborhood has become a favorite way for my kids and I to get out of the house and reset for half an hour In the middle of our busy day, especially during covid not only is riding a fun and healthy form of exercise Biking short distances instead of driving is also good for the planet because of all the emissions that are avoided Biking to work or to school is a win win win It's great for the environment reduces traffic and makes for healthier happier communities That's why I introduced a bill last year to create incentives for people to buy E bikes But unfortunately we had to put it on hold so the legislature could focus on responding to covid 19 emergency In the upcoming session. I look forward to working with the california bison coalition to make this bell happen and get riders out on the streets Thank you so much for your support and let's bike on Thank you tasha We're really excited to to have her support for This bill We are looking forward to crafting something that that will support mostly low income people to get their hands on e bikes the One of the criticisms and rightfully so of the existing Program to help e-cars is that it it helps Rich people buy teslas we need to electrify our vehicle fleet no doubt about it But let's let's make sure that we are focused on The social impact in regards to equity as we do so So that's it. Those are the four main campaigns We're going to have breakout rooms for three of them breakout room for the shared mobility That is getting shared bikes and scooters integrated with public transit a breakout room for decriminalization And a breakout room room for e bike purchase incentives. Jared will be in the decrim room Forest will be in the shared mobility one and i'll be in the e bike purchase incentives one and then As we announced we are going to create some Custom breakout rooms. There's just uh Um Just some rooms that you can select yourself um And have a conversation about whatever you want to have about so with that Kevin, why don't you step in and explain to people how This is gonna work. Sure. Hey everyone Um, so like Dave just mentioned, we're gonna be trying out to one of zooms and newer features the breakout rooms So in a second here, i'm gonna Click this button that's going to open the rooms for those of you with the desktop or mobile app You'll be able to self select which room you'd like to go into and hear that kind of focused conversation Again, we've got shared mobility decriminalization of biking and walking e bike subsidies And then we've got an additional room for open discussion The catch with the desktop and mobile app is that you need to have a newest a newer version So you might want to take this opportunity to update you can go into the menu at the top of your app And scroll down to check for updates took me about a minute earlier today If you don't use the desktop app or mobile app and you're watching through your internet browser right now You won't have the option to select your own room. So what we're gonna ask you to do is um, just type into the chat move me to Whatever breakout room you'd like us to move you to and we'll try to get you in there as quick as we can So i'm gonna go ahead and open those up right now And um, you can go ahead and move around type into the chat where you'd like to go and we'll try to get you Slotted into the right place Did you explain that that people have to click on the zero? I was I was not paying attention. Oh, yeah, uh, you should see a little breakout room icon at the bottom toolbar if you open that up you'll see a new dialogue and then uh, you'll see the The title of the room say e bike subsidies and to the right of that will be a number if you hover over that number It'll say join and you'll be able to move to the room of your choice And for anyone who missed it, we are um moving into some breakout rooms for the next few minutes There should be an icon called breakout rooms along the bottom of your screen there Which you can open up and that's going to give you the option to join a couple of these rooms You'll see the title of the room For example shared mobility and then to the right a number if you hover over that number You should be able to join if you're not seeing those options. Just go ahead and Type into the chat where you'd like to go and I'll get you moved to the right spot Hey, all if you're just joining the meeting We're taking a few minutes to have some more focused discussions in some small breakout rooms There's a small icon in your toolbar the bottom of the zoom app that says breakout rooms Which should open up a new small window. You'll be able to move into those one of those rooms if you like if That prompt isn't working for you or the button's not quite working Feel free to just chat to the name of the room Over to me and I can make sure you get to the right spot Uh, is our chat room done? Yep, the everyone's going to be returning in the next minute and a half about that was pretty short I wanted to get something in I guess I could Keep your culture shift for sure That was quick I knew that was going to happen Brutal That wasn't enough that was two minutes in the in the I'll tell you what, um, we promise we did at six and we will end at six, but uh, Kevin We can go back right after after six o'clock Yeah, so so we'll be able to go back to our breakout rooms, uh, and and we'll keep the the zoom call open for another 15 minutes at least so, um, uh Hold on to your your your thought marina, and I'm sure others of you and other rooms had had, um My rude interruption Uh Anyway, so thank you all so much. Are we all back? I want to Express a lot of hope and optimism that we can get this uh agenda pass I I um I think that the the appetite for bigger change is Greater than it ever has been people Had done things in 2020 and we've made policy changes and street changes in 2020 that We previously imagined impossible. So I I think that that it's okay to think big and I'm confident that we can Get some significant um Progress on all of these things and get a win in in uh the e-bike purchase incentive and others and the decrim At least for example so I'm super excited, but we need resources to do it gen guitar is our development director and She's in charge of getting those resources for us. Jen. How are we going to pay for all this? You're muted Somehow my little trick for unmuting isn't working. Can you guys hear me now? Yeah um I am really passionate about cal bike and about the work we do and about getting enough resources for our policy team To do the amazing work that they do But I'd like to to call on a few people who are supporters of ours to just share a little bit about why they support cal bike And I'd like to start with Sharon There we go. I had to figure out how to unmute Well, I really thank you all for the work you do. I'm a physician. I um believe in promoting a healthy lifestyle I tried to leave lead by example when I was working and I rode my bike to work as often as I could And um, I really just feel strongly that we need to preserve the health of the community and our planet And everything you do just supports that vision and I thank you for for your all your work and efforts Thank you so much Sharon. Um, and I now I think uh, Stefan are you here? I think I saw you Yes, I'm here Hi, Jim Hi Stefan is a board member and also supporter Yes, and I've been a board member for quite some time. I'm retired now, but for over 30 years um I was uh original planner here in san diego dealing mostly with active transportation stuff And I learned early on in my job that a lot of the things I was trying to get Get accomplished would be helped by changes in policy and law at the state level And so that's how I got involved with cal bike and uh And then once I became involved and I saw the quality of the people and the the hard work that was going on to To make the kind of changes that needed to be made um This was just something that I had to support and As I've been able to support them more and more over the years. I've been really happy to do it and Encourage all of you to think seriously about what you can do to keep this good work going forward Great. Thank you Stefan and finally Amit. Are you here? I am. Hello everybody Hello everyone can you hear me? Hello. Yes. Hi. We can hear you. Excellent. Great I just I wanted to take a quick moment to say thank you for um for your support I want to say thank you to everybody for being here and for being a part of this Listen cal bike is so important to um, I think each and every one of us For uh for a number of reasons for me that One of the biggest reasons is is this such Say hi Say hi One of the biggest reasons is is this guy right here and we go on these amazing bicycle rides We have incredible adventures together and um And and so to have you know a safe Safe cycling infrastructure and to um to to to feel comfortable On on uh roadways and paths wherever we go is so important and so crucial So I just want to say thank you to To to um to the entire cal bike team and and also say thank you to to everybody who's here tonight who supports us And um and and really without your support. You're the lifeblood of the organization We couldn't do what we do so so I just want to say thank you to everybody for being a part of this And um for for helping make the future of cycling safer, right? So so it's really important. Thank you everybody Thank you. Thank you so much. Amit. That was a wonderful addition to the end of our presentation And um, I just I know we're a little over time So I'm going to be really really quick, but it's been a challenging year with covet our amazing supporters have kept us thriving And I just want to ask you all If if you haven't made a donation yet this year If you can dig extra deep to make up for those people who haven't been able to continue to support us Because of covids because there are a lot of people who are impacted financially um So thank you all so much. This was fabulous. And I think dave are you going to just wrap it up for everybody I just want to say thank you everybody. Uh, it's a pleasure to work with My amazing team and with all of y'all, you know every day I get a call out of the blue that that reminds me of people's passion for Better communities with bicycling and I I'm very fortunate that I get to do the work that I do I'm really wish that we could be in person and I really wish that we could just keep hanging out but uh I will hang out for a while in the e-bike room So dave if I could step in for a second just um sure If my thanks again to everyone who is here tonight and and reaffirm what amit said that That you all are the lifeblood of this organization and thank you so much for being here And thank you gen and all of the staff for all of their work that they've done for this entire year and getting us through This pandemic. I know as being an advocate at a local organization how important The support is from our regional partners But also from cal bike. We can't do it without Where it makes our lives very much more difficult if we can't do it without Leadership in Sacramento and thank you to our electeds that are here today Which uh again without whom we can't really move this agenda forward So thank you everyone for being here And thank you staff and thank you to our board for their leadership And um onward. Thank you dave. Thank you Cynthia Okay, I'm gonna say goodbye everybody. Uh, and um If you want to hang out with me, I'll be in the e-bike room It looks like I can send everyone right back to your breakout room from earlier So I'll go ahead and open them up and then I'll hang out here in the main room If you have any other questions, I could try to point you in the right direction. So thanks y'all for joining us Thank you