Jamestown council members this week voted to adopt the Vision Zero policy as the city’s official guide for transportation planning.

“I think it’s a step in the right direction to see what we can do to alleviate and minimize as much of the safety hazards in our community as possible,” said Tony Dolce, R-Ward 2 and City Council president. “It just came up in the last few weeks, but it’s a trend a lot of communities have looked at.”

While the Vision Zero policy itself has only recently been discussed, Dolce said the council has been considering different plans to address public safety for a while. “One of the challenges in the city of Jamestown has been traffic,” he said. “We are an older city, and trying to move it into the 21st century — more bike trails, more running, more walking routes, having more signage, more pedestrian crosswalks.”

Dolce acknowledged that the city has faced challenges ensuring the safety of students who walk to school.

“We’ve had issues around the schools,” he said. “Our schools were mostly built in a time when kids walked more and there was less traffic. Unfortunately many of them are in high traffic and busy areas.”

By applying for federal funding to implement road safety changes, Dolce believes the city can become a safer place.

“All these things together, we want to take a look at to make our community not only safer for our school kids, but safer for all of our pedestrians and bikers,” he said.

Prior to Monday’s vote, Melissa Paterniti, a local resident, voiced concerns regarding pedestrian safety at the City Council’s work session last week. This week, Paterniti addressed the council again and urged them to pass the Vision Zero resolution.

The Vision Zero policy was presented to the council at last week’s work session by the mayor’s executive assistant, Zach Altschuler.

“I know you guys are going to vote on that tonight to get him started on the grant, and I say please because the city really, really needs it,” Paterniti said.

Paterniti asked the City Council to take steps to immediately address public safety concerns.

“We have to do something,” she said. “I’ve been talking about school zones and safety for about three years now. I still don’t feel like my voice is being heard. I know things take time, but we need to do something now.”

Following the council’s adoption of the Vision Zero policy, Mayor Eddie Sundquist said the policy will address the public safety concerns.

“It is essentially an added bonus to Complete Streets, which the city already has and says how do we educate the public and how do we also redesign not only our streets but other components of the city to provide zero fatalities over the course of 10 years.”

The first phase of Vision Zero is to apply for a grant from the federal government.

“There’s no cost at this point,” Sundquist said. “We are applying for a federal grant that would help create the Vision Zero plan for the city. There is a multi-billion dollar grant currently out there for cities across the United States to adopt this plan.”

After receiving the City Council’s approval Monday, the city will now begin the process of submitting an application for the Vision Zero planning grant. The city’s goal is to receive enough federal funding to cover the total cost of the planning project.

“The application ends in September,” Sundquist said. “This is a component of it. We’re still working through the total cost for planning of it.”

In addition to Vision Zero, the City Council and the mayor have been working on several other ways to improve public safety.

“There’s a lot of things that have come up over the past couple years with the City Council, including stop-arm cameras for the school buses, which we’re moving forward with, as well as school zone speed cameras, on top of the design of our roads, our walkways and our pedestrian lanes,” Sundquist said.