Some members of two Arlington advisory bodies are unhappy with changes being imposed on their groups’ responsibilities.

A joint meeting of the Bicycle Advisory Committee and Pedestrian Advisory Committee last week offered a chance for the groups reporting to County Manager Mark Schwartz to lay out the new ground rules that Schwartz has requested. But the general sentiment on those advisory groups was that the  changes could be costly to transportation planning in the long run.

Among the switches: The panels will no longer receive briefings or be asked to weigh in on specific projects. Instead, they will be asked to send representatives to and monitor the broader community-engagement efforts for those projects.

That proposal drew particular flak from members of the Bicycle Advisory Committee.

“It doesn’t sound like there’s any specific desire or system [by county leaders] to get advice from us other than ‘hey, go participate in the public process,'” said BAC member Mike Hanna.

“We’re not the general public. We’re the committee that was specifically appointed by the county manager to provide this kind of advice,” Hanna said.

Dana Bres, vice chair of the BAC, said forcing that group’s participation into the general community-engagement effort makes little sense.

“My gripe, for lack of a better term, with the engagement process is, it’s at some level trivial,” Bres said. “The public says ‘you should do something here’ and then you go from there to an almost full-fledged project” without needed vetting in between.

The result? “We end up getting something that is three-quarters done that doesn’t work,” Bres said.

Cynthia Palmer, who chairs the BAC, said eliminating the advisory panels from a significant review role results in “a resource that is not being used.”

“Sometimes a five-minute conversation with our committees … can save you resources and money and everything else,” Palmer said.

BAC member Gillian Burgess argued that it would go against the groups’ charters to follow county staff’s request to serve more as advocates for transportation planning and funding.

“We don’t advocate. We don’t advise anyone else. We advise the county manager,” she said. “He has been very clear he does not want the advisory committees going outside of him. It’s 100% clear. That’s what the charter is.”

Trying to calm the waters were Hui Wang, the newly promoted chief deputy director of the Department of Environmental Services, and Valerie Mosley, bureau chief of transportation planning and capital projects.

“I get the sentiment. I totally get it. You want us to be more intentionally seeking your advice,” Wang said.

She suggested the possibility of reaching a middle ground.

“We’re going to go back and think through what additional things, what intentional communication, we can do so you feel your opinion is not being thrown in a black hole,” Wang said.

The process changes being sought would bring transportation planning into line with a six-step public-engagement process enacted by county leaders in 2018.

Wang said it was necessary to “make sure we are going through the proper process for every project.”

“It does come at a cost,” she said. “The cost is while we are doing all that engagement and trying to capture the larger community, we do not have the same amount of attention and specific conversation with the committees and commissions. It really comes down to resources and how to use them the best way.”

Under the six-step engagement process, “we are trying to reach everyone we can who has an interest and wants their voice to be heard,” Mosley said.

Eric Goodman, acting chair of the Pedestrian Advisory Committee, said there could be a middle ground.

One step would be for planning staff to provide the committees with direct notification when new community-engagement processes start up. That way, the bodies could designate a member or members to keep track of them.

As for the litany of concerns raised at the meeting? Wang said staff had heard them “loud and clear,” but are not the ones with final authority to address them.

At his meeting with the pedestrian and bicycle groups in the spring, Schwartz suggested combining the two bodies, but has not moved forward on that.

The county manager’s concerns about the Bicycle Advisory Committee date back years. In 2018, Schwartz removed a number of its members and installed a new chair to make the group “more fully representative” of the biking community.