Council still pondering left turn lane to the Children’s Center on Wilroy Road. The childcare facility was awarded a million + in federal stimulus money to expand the Early Head Start program. So City recommends the Center be required to pay for the turn lane but the Director, Tamie Rittenhoouse says the Center can’t afford to use their money and might go out of business. No turn lane compromises safety of the children. The stimulus money would allow a 3000 square foot expansion, increase the parking lot, and allow Head Start to increase to a max of 95 with a staff of 32. But a city traffic engineer is concerned that this would add traffic to an already-busy roadway. A city study states there have been three accidents in the eight years since 2002 caused by vehicles turning left into the Center, and lowering the speed limit may have prevented those.. So who wins? The Center maintains student expansion means more students arriving by bus, making it safer and less traffic but Council won’t allow expansion without a new turn lane. This argument over who pays is called “dueling.”
2 comments:
Hey here is great idea. Why not take more funds from the school system. The council had no problem taking it before and "improving" a road up north. Better yet, is there any money left in the 3.1 million the concerned folks at Centerpoint provided to the city? How about the city making these improvements as they did for a local car dealership. The city knows a "deal" when they see one in the private sector.
A turn lane would NOT be required if it were not for the one development that is located on Executive Court, that being the Childrens Center. Perhaps they picked the wrong site for their project in the first place if they did not want to make reasonable roadway safety improvements. Why should the average tax payer pay for a turn lane that only serves the Childrens Center?
and lowering the speed limit so that a private business does not have to make improvements is not the right move. Why should 10,000 cars per day have to drive 10 mph slower just so this development saves on the "cost of doing business"?
if that logic were used, we could just lower the speed limit on most suffolk roads to 25 mph to solve all our accident problems.
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