When you attend a lot of municipal meetings, you come to learn that each board has its own pet buzzwords and phrases. But one phrase favored across the board by local government bodies is the term “subject matter experts.”

Town boards and committees rely on these subject matter experts to inform and validate their actions and decisions.

When it comes to public safety, the town’s subject matter experts are the police and fire chiefs. But if any Town Councilors thought that their two high-profile employees would back them up and support the new North Avenue redesign, they miscalculated.

Councilor Mehreen Butt had insisted that Police Chief Steven Skory and Fire Chief Michael Sullivan attend the Jan. 13 Town Council meeting and provide their take on the new North Avenue bicycle lane and flex posts.

Few decisions have sparked as much public outrage as the new North Avenue bike lane, which has resulted in shrinking the vehicle travel lanes on the major thoroughfare to the width of a typical residential driveway.

The chiefs were adamant that the vehicle travel lanes on North Avenue are now too narrow and should be re-widened. And they recommended getting rid of the flex posts permanently.

Apparently, the chiefs believe that real safety concerns outweigh any effort to fight climate change by favoring bicycles over cars. They don’t want to see a serious accident on North Avenue as a result of the new design. And when it inevitably happens, they certainly don’t want to be the subject matter experts who gave the plan the green light.

So now the question is, will the opinions of their subject matter experts carry more weight with the Town Council than those of their constituents, who have raised the exact same safety concerns?

A lot may depend on the result of the April Town Election, especially if the current Town Council decides to kick the can down the road until after the election and let the new board deal with it.

Despite the backing of bicycle advocacy groups like “Safe Streets Wakefield,” the North Avenue bike lane and flex posts remain wildly unpopular with the driving public.

But if they persist in electing bike lane proponents to the Town Council, people will get the North Avenue that they deserve.
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{This column originally appeared in the January 23, 2025 Wakefield Daily Item.]