Great news, Frank! Congratulations, and thanks for the note. It isn’t always easy to get recognition for bicycling efforts in West Virginia. I’ll be sure that Bill Robinson lets Becky Davison know; Becky is the former Safe Routes to School coordinator in this office and presently heads the Transportation Enhancement program. Your grant predated Becky’s TE responsibility but she’ll be glad to know about the award, as will the rest of the Grant Administration staff. Perry Keller is the current state bicycle/pedestrian coordinator and I’m sure he’s pleased as well. He’ll be in Morgantown soon for a public meeting on the statewide bike routing study.
We’ll honor the May 14 announcement date.
Richard
From: Frank Gmeindl [mailto:fgmeindl@gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, April 28, 2012 9:11 AM
To: Pennington, Robert
Cc: Keller, Perry J; Warner, Richard L; Robinson, Bill C; Radabaugh, Bryan L; Shoukry, Fouad N
Subject: Fwd: Bicycle Friendly Community Award
Dear Rob,
The message below informs Morgantown that the League of American Bicyclists recognizes Morgantown as a Bicycle Friendly Community at the Bronze level. The message also requests withholding announcement until May 14 so I ask you to do so until Morgantown officially releases an announcement.
I expect that LAB considered Morgantown's Effective Bicycling Education Program to be a major factor in deciding to give us the award. The Transportation Enhancement grant that you awarded Morgantown enabled us to develop and deliver that program. Please accept my personal gratitude for that.
As you know, to be recognized as a BFC, a community must demonstrate achievement in all the E's: Education, Enforcement, Engineering, Encouragement, Evaluation and Equity. I'm also sending you this now to express my gratitude to you, Perry Keller, Richard Warner, Bill Robinson, Jim Hudson, Bryan Radabaugh, Fouad Shakry, Ray Lewis and other WVDOT employees whose names I am embarrassed to have forgotten for the cooperation and assistance we have received in striving for recognition in all the E's.
As soon as we have an announcement crafted, I will send it to you.
Frank D. Gmeindl
Chairman, Morgantown Municipal Bicycle Board
LCI #1703
491 WilsonAvenue
Morgantown, WV 26501
304-376-0446
Cyclists fare best when they act and are treated as drivers of vehicles
Date: April 27, 2012 5:47:57 PM EDT
Subject: Bicycle Friendly Community Award
Congratulations! The League of American Bicyclists has decided to designate Morgantown as a Bicycle Friendly Community at the Bronze level. This decision involved careful review of your application and consultation with local cyclists.
As you know, this award is presented only to communities with remarkable commitments to bicycling. You should be very proud of this accomplishment. Please share this with your partners in the city and advocacy community. The League will be publicizing this nationally Monday, May 14th to coincide with National Bike to Work Week. We look to working with you to help promote this accomplishment and will be sending you a template for a local press release next week. We encourage you to create your own for local & regional media. Please hold your announcement of the award until May 14th.
You will also be receiving an award certificate, BFC road sign and feedback on what you can do to make Morgantown more bicycle-friendly in the next two weeks.
Your designation will be due for renewal in February 2016. At that point your community will be reevaluated so we urge you to make as many improvements as possible in the meantime! Of course, if you wish to renew sooner than that please do. We look forward to seeing the community’s progress.
If you would like to do an award ceremony, please let us know. We would love to work together to promote this great achievement. Also, we would like to promote the community on our website. We are asking you to provide a few new photographs that we can use to produce your community profile page onwww.bicyclefriendlycommunity.org. Please email those to nicole@bikeleague.org Once again, accept our congratulations on your tremendous efforts to create a truly Bicycle Friendly Community.
League of American Bicyclists