When you're not as good as Cupertino
Not every community has a Larry Dean and a Walk-Bike Cupertino. But those that do are better for it.
Larry is a founder of Walk-Bike Cupertino, an organization that has been instrumental in moving the City of Cupertino’s safe streets work forward much faster and further than most communities. He is connected, knowledgeable about the city process, and as a retired tech exec, now has the time to push the City to make the streets more welcoming to people who walk and bike. The organization boasts an email list of 2,000 people and has been instrumental in mobilizing residents to convince the City to prioritize an off-street trail system that caters to the transportation needs of students.
For SVBC, this is exactly how it should work. Residents should come together to form groups of caring individuals to work together to advance a common cause. In this case, SVBC pushes any of its members that live in Cupertino to get involved with Walk-Bike Cupertino. It’s a great partnership where a local group of informed residents is highly effective with little to no help from SVBC.
There are lots of cities that are fortunate to have strong community leaders and a Walk-Bike Cupertino. But there are many that do not.
SVBC covers 35 cities and towns in San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties. Each community has different strengths, weaknesses, and needs. In Cupertino, the need for SVBC to be involved is minimal. But in other communities, there are no affluent, connected, people who have the time to organize an effective advocacy group.
This is important to underscore because this is part of how SVBC determines where it works. We look at the communities that need us and determine priorities accordingly.
To get more specific, SVBC has been gradually changing how it works to focus on the development of local groups of organized and effective bike advocates. The organization’s goal is to seed and support community based groups that are able to advocate for themselves with little support from SVBC.
Examples of these types of groups include Parents for Safe Routes in Menlo Park, San Carlos Bikes!, Livable Sunnyvale, and more.
In some cases, these groups have popped up organically and we’re ecstatic they exist. In other cases, SVBC has played a lead role in forming city based groups, what we call “local teams” (join one here!). Right now, SVBC has active teams in San Jose, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Palo Alto and San Mateo County. We’re attempting to form new local teams in North San Mateo County, Redwood City, San Mateo, East Palo Alto, Santa Clara and are working hard with funding from the Energy Foundation to grow several San Jose teams. Our goal is to have 10 local teams with 5-10 savvy advocates in each.
This work is hard and labor intensive. It requires identifying people who have the time to become above average at lobbying and then will continue to pay attention over an extended period of time. What type of person has that kind of time? Is it a parent with three kids with two jobs? Probably not. For that reason, SVBC focuses on those areas that don’t have capacity to be and stay involved.
Ideally, here’s what SVBC’s vision for community based advocacy looks like.
For communities that have the capacity to advocate for themselves and already have a local organization, like WBC, SVBC directs bikey people their way. This requires good communications and relationships with the groups and involves very little of SVBC’s staff resources.
For cities that have the capacity to advocate for themselves but don’t have a group, SVBC provides local team development guidance to get started along with policy tools and training to form a group that can advocate for its city. (See Resources page for Advocacy Guidelines and Local Team Toolkit).
For residents that don’t have the capacity to advocate for themselves, SVBC is interested in helping to seed and support the development of local teams. That means a dedicated SVBC staff person helps convene people, monitors City issues, sets agendas for meetings, keeps team members informed, provides tech tools for communicating with each other, builds the team, facilitates relationship building with city staff and plays the appropriate role in helping city teams be involved in their community. All of this is done with the understanding that in communities with busy working families, SVBC should be sensitive to community needs in advocating for improved mobility and safe streets.
There is a lot of work to be done and SVBC can’t do it all. And, not every community is fortunate enough to have its very own Larry Dean. For that reason, we focus and prioritize our time towards the communities that need our help and can’t do it without us. This is where you come into play. If you have the time to get involved with your local city team, let us know and we’ll get you plugged in. And if you don’t have the time, that’s fine too. SVBC appreciates whatever support you can muster.
