Local residents fed up with constant speeding

By LENNY C. LEPOLA

News Assis­tant Man­ag­ing Editor

Sun­bury Mead­ows Drive res­i­dent Jeff Gib­son and sev­eral of his neigh­bors attended last Wednesday’s Sun­bury Vil­lage Coun­cil meet­ing to ask coun­cil mem­bers if they could do any­thing to slow traf­fic on their street.

Gib­son and his neigh­bors live close to the Sun­bury Mead­ows entrance on Ohio 3. He said res­i­dents liv­ing at the far end of Sun­bury Mead­ows Drive are trav­el­ling along the 25 mile-per-hour road at speeds up to 40 miles per hour. They know, because one res­i­dent has a radar gun used for base­ball purposes.

“It’s a 25 mile-per-hour zone,” Gib­son said. “There are kids in the area, and there have been close calls in the past. We’ve brought it to the atten­tion of the police depart­ment. They’ve been seen in the area but sel­dom write cita­tions. We should not have to police our neighborhood.”

Gib­son said he and his neigh­bors would pre­fer to have three-way stop signs installed at neigh­bor­hood inter­sec­tions to slow traf­fic, and also stop signs and marked cross­walks at the devel­op­ments two exist­ing school bus stops where Sun­bury Mead­ows Drive inter­sects with Mill Run Drive and at the Saf­fron intersection.

Gib­son said when res­i­dents yell at dri­vers to slow down many of them respond with obscene ges­tures, even when chil­dren are present; and in at least one case, Gib­son said, a phys­i­cal threat was made.

“We don’t want to divide our neigh­bor­hood, but we don’t want to see a child hit,” Gib­son said.

Sun­bury Vil­lage Admin­is­tra­tor Dave Mar­tin explained that the Ohio Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion (ODOT) has rules about using three-way stops for traf­fic con­trol. Mar­tin said that the vil­lage could have the inter­sec­tions exam­ined by the vil­lage engi­neer for safety issues.

Sun­bury Mayor Tommy Hat­field promised Gib­son, et al, that he would give his per­sonal atten­tion to address­ing the issue.

“I can assure you that nobody (on vil­lage coun­cil) is going to wait for some­one in your neigh­bor­hood to get hurt,” Hat­field said. “I will sit down and dis­cuss this with Mr. (David) Brehm (vil­lage solic­i­tor) and (Sun­bury Police) Chief (Pat) Bennett.”

In other busi­ness, coun­cil mem­bers approved a $9,005 pur­chase order to out­fit the village’s two new police cruis­ers with pub­lic safety equipment.

Coun­cil mem­bers approved Ordi­nance 2012–13 and Ordi­nance 2012–14 chang­ing the village’s No Right Turn on Red restric­tive hours to accom­mo­date the school district’s new three-tier bus­ing sched­ule. There will now be No Right Turn on Red from 6:50 a.m. to 8:40 a.m., and from 2:10 p.m. to 4 p.m. on all days when Big Wal­nut schools are in session.

Coun­cil mem­bers also approved a motion to increase the restricted hours let­ter­ing on the inter­sec­tion signs to 3.5 inches to make them eas­ier to read.

Mar­tin reported that fol­low­ing the June 29 storm the vil­lage main­te­nance crew was busy remov­ing bro­ken and fallen limbs from trees on the square and other village-owned properties.

Mar­tin said vil­lage employ­ees have been crack seal­ing vil­lage streets. In-house crack seal­ing is sav­ing vil­lage dol­lars, Mar­tin said; but the crack-sealing project has been slowed by the addi­tional work caused by storm damage.

Mar­tin also reported that AEP is using the Nestlé prop­erty as a stag­ing sta­tion for the new Vas­sell Sub­sta­tion east of the vil­lage; because of the recent train derail­ment, explo­sion and fire in Colum­bus, Rumpke Waste col­lec­tion would be one day late because Rumpke’s truck yard is in the evac­u­ated neigh­bor­hood; and some­body cut the chain off a valve and opened it at one of the village’s up-ground reser­voirs, caus­ing it to overflow.

“We’re dis­cussing installing sur­veil­lance cam­eras in a cou­ple of loca­tions around the vil­lage to keep peo­ple from doing pranks like this,” Mar­tin said.

Hat­field thanked the village’s sum­mer employ­ees and employ­ees of the vil­lage main­te­nance and streets depart­ment for prepar­ing the vil­lage for Inde­pen­dence Day; and Sun­bury Police Offi­cers for their work in mak­ing the village’s Fourth of July Cel­e­bra­tion run smoothly and with­out incident.

“We’re going to con­tinue to use our sum­mer help to spruce up the parks and not spend a lot of money,” Hat­field said.

One final note: Coun­cil mem­bers approved pay­ing $3,025 (plus water costs) to C-Contract Sweep­ers & Equip­ment to sweep the village’s 30-plus miles of curbed streets. The village’s curbed streets have not been cleaned since 2008. When the clean­ers are in town streets will be marked with No Park­ing signs as needed; and beware – tow­ing is an option.

Sunbury’s web­site is located at < sunburyvillage.com >.

Sun­bury Vil­lage Coun­cil meets the first and third Wednes­day of every month at 7:30 p.m., third floor coun­cil cham­bers, Sun­bury Town Hall. Coun­cil com­mit­tees meet one hour before reg­u­larly sched­uled coun­cil ses­sions. All vil­lage coun­cil and coun­cil com­mit­tee meet­ings are open to the public.

Posted by Gary Henery on Jul 18 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.