Denton has a budget surplus of $192,000, and some city council members suggest allocating it to the Bicycle Plan. Public hearing on Sept 6, vote on Sept 20.
Council member Dalton Gregory advocated using the money to help implement the city’s ongoing bicycle plan, which would receive only $50,000 under the proposed budget.
“I completely agree with Chris that we need to not spend money that’s not there,” Gregory said during the meeting. “But on the other hand, we’ve invested some money on this plan. We’ve actually been talking about bike and pedestrian needs for over 30 years and not really invested a lot. … If we’re really serious about this, we’ve got to do more than plan.”
As councilman Gregory points out, discussions of bicycle accommodation stretches back decades in Denton’s history, but there were never any long strides. The fragments of those discussions are what we have now: the UNT Language Building bike “parking mall”, failed plans to paint lanes on Fry and Welch, previous P&Z discussions of bike lanes here and here, and the short (yet popular) W. Hickory bike lane.
Here’s some context on the $192,000:
- one four-way traffic signal intersection costs $225,000+
- $192K is only 3.3% of the target $5.8M street maintenance budget
- $192K is .032% of Denton’s overall $585M city budget
- cost of Hickory and Industrial restriping to add ~10 parking spots: $60,000
The council should require and supply these to all Denton Cyclists. That would best utilize funds spent on the bicycle plan and increase safety for cyclists.
[…] Texas Bicycling Blog and News Roundup for August 15th By Rick Ankrum, on August 16, 2011, 12:29 am City council considers allocating $192,000 to bicycle plan by bikedenton Denton has a budget surplus of $192,000, and some city council members suggest […]
[…] Next Tuesday, Sept 6, city council will decide whether to allocating any of a $192,000-300,000 budget surplus to immediate implementation of […]