[Bcna-announce] BCNA Meets with the City, Aug. 4th

[Jesse Fiske]

Hello Everyone,
This is a reminder that there will be a meeting hosted by the city on
Tuesday,  August 4th at 7PM in the basement conference room.
We will be discussing the concerns that many residents have brought to light
over the downtown Belmont area and the possible solutions. For those who
missed the last BCNA meeting there is a review (written by Julia Williams)
of that meeting posted below.
I hope to see you there.
Thanks
Jesse

"We may have City Hall's ear for a moment and to capitalize on this we
discussed coming to the 8/4/09 meeting with an agenda/proposal/outline of
target issues. We boiled the issues down to 4 topics: Vehicular, Pedestrian,
Visual (aesthetic?) and Noise. We discussed coming up with a short list
of items in these 4 topics to ask the city to investigate. Though the
meeting 8/4/09 may be about Down Town Belmont it is important to that these
issues and the impacts of possible solutions are looked at for the entire
Belmont Carlton area.

The priority issue was *noise* and the need to reduce allowable DB in
NCC districts.
I believe Jesse is working on a report about noise ordinances in similar
cities and petitioning our city to reduce allowable DB.

The next issue was *vehicular *and a number of desires were brought up:
reduce speed of vehicles in Down Town and other parts of Belmont that have
become cut-throughs, analyze dangerous road intersections and awkward
parking and study impact any changes would have before implementing, improve
vehicle/pedestrian interaction, and discourage bad driving habits.

We heard from Brian Haluska that the City is doing a traffic study
in August and we encouraged him to recommend that a second study be done in
the fall when vacationers, students and UVA faculty are back.

A plan was presented that had been developed by residents +/- 7 years ago
showing possible ways to mitigate many of those issues in Down Town Belmont,
improve storm water management and add green space (rain gardens and
planting beds?) by narrowing roads, changing "Y" intersections to
"T", adjusting and adding cross walks, etc. It is thought that narrowing
roads would reduce traffic speed and discourage other bad driving habits
like cars swinging around a stopped vehicle and may deter drivers from
stopping in the middle of the road. Speed bumps were discussed as a cheap
way to slow traffic but the main route through Down Town Belmont may be an
emergency vehicle path that would not allow bumps. Parking was also
discussed and with this issue I am sure I have imposed my personal slant. We
do not want to add parking and certainly not a parking garage in Belmont, we
do want to encourage walking and other non-auto transport, we want to break
the trend of new businesses that have significant parking needs after
business hours relying primarily on residential streets for parking.
However, the permit parking scenario may not be a welcome solution as it is
costly and limiting to residents. Can there be an incentive for restaurants
to have (and have customers use) shared parking agreements with the many
area businesses that have mostly empty lots after 5pm?

Third issue is *pedestrian* and the discussion here focused on adding raised
cross walks at frequently used locations to reduce random pedestrian cut
through. Also maintaining 5ft clear sidewalks seems critical to encouraging
pedestrian to stay on sidewalks.

The final issue was *visual *and the ideas here include adding green
space by reshaping vehicular path, requiring businesses to screen their
dumpsters and in the future upgrading the street lighting."


-- 
Jesse at hackensawboys.com
434-249-9973
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