Batavia City Council votes to continue bike sharing services

The Batavia City Council voted to continue its participation in the Fox Valley Bike Share program during its Feb. 21 meeting.

“We’ve had a two-year contract so far with Koloni and have seen our ridership double from the first to second year,” Alderman Abby Beck said. “So this is just a note to them to say that we wish to participate for a third year.”

Koloni is the vendor of bikes for the program, which also is in Aurora and Elgin.

According to meeting documents, there were 239 logged rides during the 2020 season and 608 rides in the 2021 season.

“It’s not a contract until we have a chosen vendor and know how many bikes and whatnot we want to participate with,” Beck said. “This just lets them know that we’re in for another year.”

Bikes can be rented through the Koloni app for an hourly rate or a one-time yearly membership fee, according to the Batavia Park District website. The two Batavia rental stations are located at the Batavia Depot Museum and the South Riverwalk Plaza.

In other news, aldermen discussed possible action on homes that are not compliant with property maintenance ordinances within the city.

“I think generally most people in Batavia take great pride in their property and want to see it maintained and look nice,” Batavia Mayor Jeffery Schielke said. “The staff and I have been talking almost every week now about new properties that emerge out of the ground so to speak that are problematic.”

Schielke said multiple aldermen had spoken to him about properties with broken garage doors, unsafe porches and unused vehicles within their wards.

“We do have some court power that we could interject here, though I don’t necessarily want to use it,” Schielke said. “I share this as a conversation that will probably be coming up at least over the summer months.”

Aldermen discussed resources that residents unable to make repairs to the property can consult.

“Obviously the last couple years have been troubling and we did a lot of work in the first year of COVID to support our restaurants,” Alderman Mark Uher said. “Our restaurants all made it through and I’m wondering if this is a similar situation that these are people who are in situations where I’m gonna choose between food and my garage door opener, I’m picking food.

“I just think it’s something that we can try and rally the community around,” he said.

Schielke said the first action on the issue would be compiling a list of properties that did not comply with city ordinances.

“Let’s adopt a let’s go talk to you philosophy and say can we help you? Can you do something yourself? We’d like to get this corrected,” he said. “We’re not looking to come in and slam, bang anybody as much as try to get everything looking as supportive and usable and safe as possible.”