Zalewski concerned with Village parking during snow removal

By LENNY C. LEPOLA

News Assis­tant Man­ag­ing Editor

There was very lit­tle busi­ness fol­low­ing the orga­ni­za­tional por­tion of last week’s Sun­bury Vil­lage Coun­cil meet­ing. With­out newly-approved coun­cil rules and com­mit­tee assign­ments before the first ses­sion of the year, coun­cil mem­bers were pre­pared only to read exist­ing legislation.

Coun­cil mem­ber Tom Zalewski did com­pli­ment mem­bers of Sunbury’s Street Depart­ment for the work they did keep­ing vil­lage road­ways plowed and safe dur­ing the recent snowstorms.

“But we have to do some­thing about con­trol­ling park­ing on-street park­ing dur­ing snow removal,” Zalewski said. “Our Street Depart­ment does a good job plow­ing the streets, but the way some peo­ple park on the street, espe­cially in the gar­dens, you couldn’t get a plow through there. Some­thing has to be done.”

Vil­lage solic­i­tor David Brehm said he would check the ordi­nances and deter­mine if there are any on street park­ing restric­tions dur­ing snow removal; Sun­bury mayor Tommy Hat­field said he would get with Sun­bury PD Chief Pat Ben­nett about resolv­ing the issue.

Coun­cil mem­bers approved Ordi­nance 2012–19. The ordi­nance estab­lishes a three-way stop at the inter­sec­tion of Sun­bury Mead­ows Drive and Mill Run Drive.

The ordi­nance is in response to Sun­bury Mead­ows Drive res­i­dent Angela Faust and some of her neigh­bors who are con­cerned about auto­mo­biles trav­el­ling at exces­sive speeds through their neighborhood.

Faust and her neigh­bors live close to the Sun­bury Mead­ows entrance on Ohio 3. They said res­i­dents liv­ing at the far end of Sun­bury Mead­ows Drive are trav­el­ling along the 25 mph road at speeds up to 40 mph, there are chil­dren in the neigh­bor­hood, and there have been close calls in the past.

At a July 18 coun­cil ses­sion Sun­bury Mayor Tommy Hat­field promised the res­i­dents that he would give his per­sonal atten­tion to address­ing the issue. Fol­low­ing those sum­mer meet­ings the vil­lage admin­is­tra­tion began explor­ing pos­si­ble solu­tions to the speed­ing prob­lem, and sub­se­quently promised to install three-way stop signs near the school bus stop at the Sun­bury Mead­ows Dive and Mill Run Drive intersection.

At a Novem­ber 28 coun­cil meet­ing Faust said the stop signs had not been installed at the inter­sec­tion; Hat­field said the vil­lage was work­ing on cor­rect­ing a sim­i­lar prob­lem on Fair­land Drive, and work­ing on the two sit­u­a­tions in par­al­lel was slow­ing the process down.

Just seven days later, dur­ing the Decem­ber 5 Sun­bury Vil­lage Coun­cil meet­ing, Faust, et al, had their wish ful­filled with a first read­ing of Ordi­nance 2012–19 that would estab­lish a three-way stop sign at the inter­sec­tion in question.

The three-way stop at the inter­sec­tion will be installed fol­low­ing the ordinance’s statu­tory 30-day wait­ing period.

It was noted the village’s employee health insur­ance renewal date is Feb­ru­ary 1, and rates are expected to increase 15 percent.

“The size of our plan, nobody will allow us any flex­i­bil­ity on what they have to offer,” Hat­field said. “This has to be done by Feb­ru­ary, and we have no idea yet how the Afford­able Health Care Act is going to affect us.”

Hat­field said there might be rate-lowering incen­tives put in place for 2014, like smok­ing ces­sa­tion, weight watch­ers and employ­ees get­ting physicals.

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 Jan 9 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.