On Thursday, June 6, 2000 the City of Palo Alto had a meeting with a small group of citizens to discuss the Traffic Safety and Education Plan that will be implemented soon. Originally the City applied to the state Office of Transportation Safety for a grant to develop and implement a program that included enforcement and education. OTS said that they could not fund the development of the program, only the implementation. The City hired Public Affairs Management (PAM) to develop the educational component, for a cost of $22,000. OTS funded $79,000 for the educational part and $108,065 for the enforcement part. PAM interviewed a number of people in Palo Alto (including Debbie Mytels) at the start of the project. This meeting was to get together with those people who were interviewed, and a few others, to discuss PAMs final plan and the Police Department efforts. Joe Kott emphasized that the City wants to make the streets safer and to increase the amount of walking and cycling.

John Hernandez, the officer in charge of the Police Department's Traffic Division, told about his part first. Their program is clear and straight forward, with most of the money being spent on hardware. John said that the details of the enforcement plan were flexible. Their goals include reducing collisions from 3% to 5%, depending on the type. The budget is:

2 new motorcycles	$30K
7 moving radars	~$19K
2 handheld radar guns	$ 4K
10 automated citation devices	$47K
1 computer	$1.5K
software	$4.7K
travel to OTS conference	$2K

The moving radars will be mounted on the motorcycles and will allow officers to clock cars while the motorcycle is moving. The automated citation devices are palm computers that officers will use to record citations. They will reduce data entry time and errors at the station. The software goes with those. They are looking for better record-keeping and analysis of crash patterns and locations. The data will be categorized as car/car, car/bike, and car/ped.

Amanda Jones presented the budget for the education and encouragement campaign next, before discussing the PAM plan details. This budget is:

educational packets/materials	$12K
print media advertising	$7.5K can only be done before Oct. 2000
signs/posters	$18K
office supplies/misc	$4.5K
postage	$14K
additional media	$13.5K
event costs (one special event)	$5.5K
travel to OTS conference	$2K

(This only adds up to $77K. I don't know where the other $2K is---Rich).

So far everything was clearcut. After that, Amanda began presenting the PAM report. The beginning stated the goals, challenges and issues. Nobody had any problems with those. Then the report gave the target audiences (commuters, soccer moms, delivery truck drivers, etc.) and the messages to send to them. All of this was just regurgitation from the interviews, so all was still fine.

Eventually Amanda got to presenting the campaign PAM had planned, and showed the graphic image they had developed. Just about everyone barfed at that point. The graphic image said "Slow Down" at the top, and "Life is fast enough already" at the bottom. In the middle was a cartoon of a guy driving a car while juggling a cell phone, a palm computer and a cup of coffee. Everyone felt that "Slow Down" was such a bland message that it would be immediately forgotten. Presenting an image that is supposed to be negative is also a violation of PAMs own guidelines. To make it worse, some believed that it would not be viewed as negative by all. The rest of the campaign components were standard PR items: T-shirts, balloons, meetings with schools and community organizations, etc.

After hearing what PAM had planned, we began to discuss what we really thought would work and who the targets are for the messages. Phil Turner felt that anyone behind a steering wheel was equal as far as a target and a message, but others disagreed. There was no consensus on how to post a message that will actually get read and understood by those who need it. An alternative slogan of "Share Our Streets Safely" was approved by everyone there as being more to the point and a bit catchier. Phil Turner volunteered the services of his graphics design company to develop an new graphic image for free. There was widespread agreement that this should convey an image of a driver who is alert and aware, looking around for those with whom the street is being shared.

The schedule is to kick off the campaign just before school starts this fall, with a press conference and a big event. There will 6 traffic safety presentations by next June, and 5 community-based organizations will be contacted by the end of the year. Because of peculiar federal funding rules, the print media money cannot be spent after October 2000.

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