Recommendation 20250204-004: Response to City Council Resolution 20241212-133 — original pdf
BOARD/COMMISSION RECOMMENDATION Urban Transportation Commission Recommendation Number 20250204-004: Response to City Council Resolution 20241212-133 WHEREAS, City Council Resolution 20241212-133 Appendix A proposes merging the Bicycle Advisory Council (BAC) and Pedestrian Advisory Council (PAC) into the Urban Transportation Commission (UTC), to be renamed the Urban Mobility Commission; WHEREAS, City Council Resolution 20241212-133 purports to take action to reduce redundancies and increase efficiency among the City of Austin’s boards and commissions, task forces, council corporations, and intergovernmental bodies; WHEREAS, the BAC and PAC are not, nor have they ever sought to be, a City of Austin board, commission, task force, council corporation, or intergovernmental body; WHEREAS, the BAC and PAC’s status as citizen-led associated entities would make a merger with a sovereign commission like the UTC infeasible and would likely lead to conflicts with existing city code and state law; WHEREAS, the BAC and PAC have not suffered from frequent cancellations or lack of a quorum, with all cancellations since 2021 having been to accommodate either a Joint BAC PAC meeting or for an off-site field visit where no action was taken; WHEREAS, the BAC and PAC do not place the burden of appointing members on City Council Offices and regularly have 50+ applications for fewer than a dozen positions, which are thoroughly and anonymously reviewed by a subcommittee that makes recommendations to the full membership; WHEREAS, the BAC and PAC are highly effective and actively engaged organizations, with the Auditor’s Special Report finding that Boards & Commissions averaged 7.5 recommendations from 2021–2022; meanwhile, during the same period, the BAC passed 18 recommendations and the PAC passed 9; WHEREAS, the BAC and PAC recommendations serve unique functions that have proved helpful for City staff, the Urban Transportation Commission (UTC), and the City Council (see BAC Recommendation 20250122-04 Appendix A); WHEREAS, the citizen-led nature of the BAC and PAC allows the bodies to function as an important resource for feedback for City staff on bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure, leaning on members' lived experiences using bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure across the City; WHEREAS, the UTC’s status as a sovereign commission makes it ill-suited to provide feedback on individual projects and designs, and the UTC taking on the role of the BAC and PAC in providing that feedback would overburden the UTC’s agendas, members, staff liaisons, and monthly reports to the Mobility Committee; WHEREAS, the City Council acknowledged the BAC’s citizen-led structure in Resolution No. …
