A plan prioritizing pedestrian and bike travel hit a roadblock at Monday night’s City Council meeting and is headed back to committee for a retry, after confusion over procedural rules and a desire for a public hearing has several councilors pumping the breaks on it.

The Public Facilities Committee voted to approve the measure, but there was one problem, which was brought to light Monday night. The docket item, which had been discussed and voted on by that committee, stated that the Walk, Roll, and Bike Network Plan is to be an amendment to the city’s Comprehensive Plan.

But the City Council rules state that amendments to the Comprehensive Plan must go through Planning and Development. Does that mean the Planning and Development Board? Or the City Council’s Zoning and Planning Committee.

Words matter

The Walk, Roll, and Bike Network Plan was set for a full Council vote a couple of weeks ago, but it was postponed until this week.

The plan, according to Councilor Susan Albright, “lays out consistent design and policy guidance to ensure all projects meet the same standards, coordinates implementation across departments and tracks progress annually for transparency and accountability. The goals of this plan, as stated in our report, are to enhance safety and comfort, connect people to key destinations, build out a core network, manage speeds for safety, advance accessibility for all and encourage active travel.”

But the mayor’s office requested, and Albright motioned for, an amendment striking the part about the pedestrian and bike plan being part of the Comprehensive Plan—saying that part was a mistake—which had some crying foul over transparency.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that at some point here in the near future that this plan is going to be approved by either this City Council or the next City Council. I mean, that’s inevitable,” Councilor Leonard Gentile said. “But if you care about process, whether it is a mistake or not, the docket item is clear. It was docketed to read requesting approval of the Walk, Roll and Bike Network Plan as part of the city’s Comprehensive Plan. That was what was docketed, that was what was taken up in committee, and that was what was approved in committee. And if that is, in fact, not the case, I don’t see how anybody can change it at this point, because of the way it went through the process to this point.”

Try again

Vice Chair David Kalis, like Albright, said he believed the part about the pedestrian and bike plan being an amendment to the Comprehensive Plan was a mistake, but Gentile wasn’t buying that.

“It wasn’t a mistake that it was docketed this way. It was docketed this way because someone—and I don’t know if it was Transportation, the mayor’s office or whatever—felt that it was a worthy enough cause that it should be added to our Comprehensive Plan,” Gentile said. “So don’t try to say it was a mistake that we’re now going to correction the floor of the City Council. That’s not the way we do business.”

Several of his colleagues on the Council agreed, including Randy Block, John Oliver, Tarik Lucas and Julia Malakie, who pushed for a public hearing on the plan.

And then there was the question of what committee to send the docket item back to. Zoning and Planning? Public Facilities? A joint meeting of both?

Before that could be decided, City Council President Marc Laredo convinced Albright to withdraw the item and send it back to the Public Facilities Committee for a public hearing and whatever else needs to be done to get everything labeled and filed correctly, and then bring it to the full City Council for another try, either in this term or during the new term after Jan. 1.