The Vote for Waterdog’s Trails is Tonight!
The draft for the Parks, Recreation, and Open Space (PROS) Management Plan is up for a vote tonight, and we support this plan. The small group of anti-recreation have been emailing and marshalling every resource they can to blast this plan. We need your help to counter their negative wave of feedback to the city ahead of tonight's vote. Here's what you can do:
- Email the Parks & Recreation department and City Council at citycouncil@belmont.gov , prcomm@belmont.gov and info@belmontprosplan.com. Do this even if you've done it in the past...it works! We need to counter the incoming negative voices. See the end of this message for a sample email you can use to craft your own.
- Attend the meeting (details below), either online or in person, and please be positive about the plan. Try not to engage the negative voices; just be positive about the plan and multi-use recreation at Waterdog.
Read on for more details! Thank you!
Tonight, Tuesday July 12, 2022 at 7:00 p.m., item 9A on the Belmont City Council meeting agenda is to vote to adopt the draft Parks, Recreation, and Open Space (PROS) Management Plan. The draft plan is the culmination of an exhaustive public process over the past 18 months, and thanks in part to our advocacy, the draft plan commissioned by the Parks & Recreation commission essentially recommends that the status quo is maintained, i.e. having all of Waterdog's trails, including the singletrack, remain multi-use and open to bikes (as well as hikers, runners, and dog walkers).
There is a small, but highly organized group of anti-MTB activists (working in conjunction with the Sierra Club) that are aggressively lobbying City Council to make changes to the plan, demanding to study it further (read: give them more time to oppose it), demanding trail closures and hiker-only trails, and so forth. They will be at tonight's meeting in force. If you can, please attend the meeting and make public comment. You can either attend in person at City Council Chambers, City Hall, One Twin Pines Lane, Belmont, or via Zoom. (Go to Zoom Conferences for the City of Belmont select “Join” and enter Meeting ID: 95745673035. Use the Raise Hand feature to request to speak). Note: you do not have to be a resident of Belmont to make public comment, but comments from Belmont residents can carry more weight since they're the direct constituents of City Council.
Even if you can't make public comment at the meeting, it would be extremely helpful if you could send a brief email in support of continued multi-use/support of the draft PROS plan (which can be viewed at https://belmontprosplan.com/) to citycouncil@belmont.gov, prcomm@belmont.gov, and info@belmontprosplan.com. Because the anti-MTB activists are flooding City Council with letters, it is very important that City Council receives positive emails from the trail using community on this issue to balance out the avalanche of negative emails. Please send emails ASAP, as the meeting is tonight, and they need to arrive in time for the councilpersons to read. Thank you for your support!
Sample email
I am writing today in support of the proposed Parks, Recreation, and Open Space (PROS) Management Plan. I support multi-use trail recreation, and am happy to see the science-based approach the city has taken with this plan.
In particular, I support the Plan's following recommendations:
- The continued designation of Waterdog's trails as multi-use
- Unofficial legacy trails be officially recognized, and signage added for them
- Stream and waterway crossings be improved
- Calming features be added to single track trails in order to decrease speeds and increase challenge (fun) for riders
- Guidelines on trail maintenance and erosion control and (and look forward to volunteering in the parks for trail work)
- New trails be added to the Open Space
- A one-year pilot of a Class 1 e-bike policy be performed
Thank you,
(Signed)
