Marietta residents may soon need support from 70% of their neighbors to get speed bumps and stop signs added to their blocks.
City Council recently discussed adding a petition mandate to Marietta’s traffic safety policy. That would require homeowners pushing for traffic safety projects on their residential roads to collect signatures from 70% of the affected property owners.
The measure was discussed during a May 25 Public Works committee meeting. Mark Rice, the city’s Public Works director presented plans for a revamped “traffic calming” policy.
Rice said the petitions put the onus on residents to show community support for new stop signs, crosswalks, speed signs and other street safety measures. His proposal would also mean residents need to collect signatures from 50% of their affected neighbors just to get the process started.
Public Works would do traffic studies, review residents’ concerns and devise a traffic plan, according to Rice’s proposal. Those plans would be presented during a public meeting. If residents supported the plans, they’d move ahead to City Council for final approval.
But some council members felt a petition would be too much of a roadblock for citizens.
“So we’re not coming in until after that person’s had to go out and do all that? People are busy, they’ve got other things,” Ward 1 Councilwoman Cheryl Richardson said. “It’s important, but it’s not their job.”
Ward 2 Councilman Griffin Chalfant argued homeowners need to show some level of community support before pressuring City Hall for traffic improvements. He said there have been too many occasions of a single resident demanding stop signs and speed bumps without any consensus from their neighbors.
Councilwoman Michelle Cooper Kelly, Ward 6, was okay with the 70% mandate for final approval. She said it was too much to ask citizens to obtain signatures from half their neighbors just to kickstart the process. Cooper Kelly asked Rice to find an alternative for that threshold.
Rice agreed to fine tune the policy proposal before City Council considers it again during its June 7 work session.
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