Town of Normal not expected to formally allow electric scooters

There will be no movement on electric scooter regulations in the Town of Normal in the immediate future.

City Manager Pam Reece said the town will not recommend approving use of E-scooters as an intended use on streets and sidewalks. The town has looked at the issue off and on for at least five years as personal transportation modes proliferated with electric skateboards, scooters, and even unicycles. A commercial firm had hoped to begin offering E-scooter rentals in town.

Reece said a state law allowing cities and towns to authorize that kind of personal transportation had lawsuit immunity for municipalities taken out before lawmakers passed it last year.

“So, the question is … does the municipality have the ability to maintain our pavement that if E-scooters are an allowable use we can minimize the risk of accidents and injuries?” said Reece in an interview with WGLT. “That’s a pretty significant risk. The risk for an E-scooter is different than a bike or a pedestrian or a vehicle.”

There is risk for bicycles as well. But Reece said E-scooters cause the town "great concern" regarding shifts in sidewalks during various weather conditions. And sidewalks are a bigger issue for scooters than for bicycles.

"I am not in a position to say what sized pothole is or is not able to be averted by a bicycle versus a scooter, but that’s one of the conditions [liability]. In my job as a leader of a municipality, I would want to make sure that we’re maintaining our pavement, sidewalks included, for the intended users. And if an E-scooter is an intended user, we have to keep that in consideration,” Reece said.

Without tort immunity in the bill, the town did not feel comfortable proceeding.

“My job is to protect the municipality, protect residents, so I wouldn’t be recommending that,” said Reece.

Lack of town approval of such use will not stop some people from using the scooters, but it could lessen their prevalence.

Colin Hardman

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WGLT

Another precondition to an official blessing of E-scooter use is whether the town’s community partners are on board, such as Illinois State University, and the City of Bloomington.

“We wanted to make sure that if this is going to be a community solution, we wanted everybody to buy in,” said Reece.

ISU has not changed its position of promoting safety notices and dismount zones for scooters, bicycles and skateboards, following the 2022 death of an ISU employee who was hit by a bicycle.

Bloomington has not completed work on the issue the issue.

“We are working on a coordinated plan with Friends of the Constitution Trail on E-scooters that emphasizes safety and courtesy to all trail and sidewalk users,” said David Lamb, assistant director of Bloomington Parks & Recreation.

A city spokesperson also said Bloomington is working on a coordinated educational plan with Normal and Friends of the Constitution Trail to address e-transportation as a whole.

"This joint effort will focus on speed and safety across the board. The progress is expected to roll out in the spring possibly in coordination with bicycle safety month," said the spokesperson.

Earlier in the fall, town officials had expressed some dissatisfaction with some e-bike rider practices on Constitution Trail. Mayor Chris Koos mentioned the potential for enhanced enforcement of trail speed limits.

“Those conversations are going to continue through the winter," said Reece. "I’m hopeful that we can find a solution that’s not just Normal, that’s going to be the City of Bloomington and perhaps McLean County as well so that we can do our best to ensure that speeds on the trail are safe and whatever solution we have is an enforceable solution. That’s, I think, where the challenge is.”

Among the wrinkles with any new regulatory scheme or enhanced enforcement is how to treat personal mobility devices such as electric wheelchairs.

“The challenge will be for the legal folks to come up with language that allows electric mobility, in terms of accessibility. We don’t want to have unintended consequences of restricting wheelchairs and people that need their device,” said Reece.

Reece said for now, the conversations are among stakeholder groups such as Friends of the Constitution Trail, but there will be a broader public input component as well.

Reece said the year winding down in 11 days was a big one for capital projects in the town. Last month, construction began on the fire station No. 2 project that Reece hopes will be completed in the fall of 2025.

Everyone who drove in Normal during the summer probably had some inconvenience from construction projects, said Reece.

“Hopefully they were well worth it,” she said. “We can celebrate success. We implemented some traffic signals at some very busy intersections that have gone into effect.” [Fort Jesse Road at Greenbriar and Fort Jesse at Landmark Drive].

Reece said she expects another robust road construction package for the new year. She said the Normal Public Library will reopen, following gutting of the older section of the current structure for asbestos abatement, and a refresh to the rest of the facility.

Various parks and recreation and other cultural enhancements will happen, too.

“We look forward to celebrating opening our sculpture park which is the implementation of our public art program,” said Reece, who also expressed hope the town will make progress on the Uptown Underpass project beneath the railroad tracks that will connect Uptown and Uptown South. The low bid exceeded $35 million, about $6 million more than the most recent estimate of the cost.

“The bids that we opened at the end of November are good for 120 days, so we have time to thoroughly review and come up with a plan for council," said Reece. "It is my hope that we can present council a reasonable plan for that project. But we’ll know in a couple of months."

With a state budget deficit and uncertain federal funding climate, Reece said next year’s budget for the fiscal year that begins in April will likely not plow new ground.

“We are going to be presenting to council in January a budget that’s pretty much status quo. We won’t be looking to expand our personnel. We’ll be looking to maintain our continued investment in roadway projects and the like,” said Reece.

The town wants to be very conservative, she said, in its estimates and to see what happens to the interest rate environment — that if rates continue to decline, it could jump start previously approved projects.

“We want to position the municipality to be able to react and respond when our development partners move forward with their projects,” said Reece.

Municipal elected officials in a number of taxing bodies have over many years talked about a goal of keeping relatively static property tax rates and relying on sales tax money for revenue growth needs. They have talked about leaving the property tax revenue stream to schools that heavily depend on that source. It’s a sort of informal understanding that this is my lane and that’s your lane.

McLean County school districts, including Bloomington District 87 and Normal-based Unit 5, have decided to ask the public to create a 1% sales tax to fund school facilities and some services like school resource officers and mental health programming for students. The referendum will be on the April 1 ballot.

Reece declined to address whether that violates any cultural norms in the community.

“Well, that’s a very good question and I’m going to keep my thoughts to myself on that particular topic,” said Reece. “I can only speak on behalf of the municipality, and I’m not going to take any position regarding the school districts and what their goals might be.”