A reasonable approach to stop the proliferation of stop signs

"To me there are three things everyone should do every day. Number one is laugh. Number two is think — spend some time in thought. Number three, you should have your emotions move you to tears. If you laugh, think and cry, that's a heck of a day."

—Jim Valvano

I was reminded of the above quote from the late North Carolina State basketball coach by this evening’s city council meeting because (1) I discovered something I had not known previously and that is Kyle has absolutely no ordinances regarding stop signs and (2) I had to laugh a little about that oversight, it saddened me that no one had thought about this before and it got me to thinking about exactly what could be done about it.

In the last couple of months, the city has seen somewhat of a run on stop sign demands. First it was signs that were needed in Amberwood and tonight it was all about Plum Creek.

I have no problems with stop signs as long as they are warranted and by "warranted" I mean ones that have passed the required tests that makes a stop sign "warranted." That entails all kinds of traffic studies, motorist behavior studies, etc.

I don’t even have a problem with "unwarranted" stop signs, such as the two the council approved this evening, just as long as I don’t have to pay for them. In other words, I’m of the belief that the costs of warranted stop signs should be borne by all members of the community, but the cost for unwarranted signs should be paid only by those who are requesting the installation of such signs, in this case, the Plum Creek Homeowners Association. And I’m not just talking about the cost of the signs themselves, but also the cost for all the studies to determine whether the signs are warranted, the labor costs for installing the signs and all maintenance/upkeep/repair/replacement costs.

So here is a broad outline of a policy I would like to see Kyle formulate and adopt when considering stop signs. In order for one to be installed at the request of citizens, a petition must be signed by no less than 65 percent (I would actually prefer 75 percent, but I’m willing to compromise on this subject) of all the property owners within 1,000 feet of the intersection at which the stop sign is requested and acknowledging they are willing to pay 100 percent of the total costs that go into the placement of those signs. It is simply not fair to ask all the citizens to pay for unwarranted stop signs that are requested by a few people in one area of town who have the ear of an influential council member.

I would also recommend a moratorium be placed on all requests for stop signs until such an ordinance comes before council for a vote.

I hate to admit it, but we are a nation of copycats, all too often in very unseemly ways. But it’s time to slam the brakes on these stop signs (pun intended) before these requests (demands) get out of hand. Before you know it. every neighborhood group is coming up with plans to regulate traffic, plans that should be left to traffic management experts.

But, since there is currently no policy in place, the council felt it had little choice and voted unanimously to install, at the taxpayers’ expense, eight stop signs in Plum Creek, four at the corner of Kirby and Sanders and the second four at Hartson and Mather. I’m assuming the second four will not be at intersection where Mather dead ends into Hartson.

As you’re reading this, you might possibly be thinking to yourself, "Wow, if a couple of stop signs in Plum Creek was the most newsworthy item coming out of tonight’s city council meeting, this must have been a rather blasé affair." There was one other action of note that, like the stop sign matter, involved money from the General Fund and, hence, taxpayers as a whole. But this didn’t involve taking money out of the General Fund as much as it did finding a more appropriate source for tax money to pay for two fall festivals in Kyle. Under the terms of the first reading of the ordinance, $77,400 was to be taken from the General Fund of which $43,000 was to be used to help pay for September’s Kyle Field Day (the other $36,400 was to pay for a study on the design of the Four Corners project on the northwest corner of I-35 and Yarrington Road). Another part of the ordinance called for $27,000 to be taken from the Hotel Occupancy Tax (HOT) to help defray the costs for putting on October’s planned Hoghwash Festival.

I raised some concerns about this following the first reading of the ordinance and I have a sneaking suspicion City Manager Scott Sellers also spotted the problems with this idea. The solution he announced this evening, in the opinion of this writer, was a masterstroke. Instead of using any General Fund moneys to pay for the festivals, all that will come from the HOT funds. Sellers originally planned to use HOT dollars to pay for some gateway signage along I-35, but, he decided, to hold off spending money on that until, at the earliest, the next fiscal year when more hotels are open to contribute to the HOT fund. Instead, that money will now go for the festivals and so the General Fund will only be reduced by the $36,400 needed to pay for the design study, which should come from the General Fund anyway.

The council also instructed staff to quit trying to amend the city’s ordinance governing peddlers, solicitors and vendors and, instead, return with two new ordinances, one governing food trucks and the other food trailers. Personally, I think more than two ordinances are needed. I agree there should be one each for the trucks and the trailers, but I also think there should be one regulating panhandlers, another one regulating those individuals who go from residence to residence peddling items like magazine subscriptions, one governing the temporary commercial facilities at special events and one that, for lack of a better name, I will call the Good Humor Ordinance. I call it that after one of the heroes of the Lower East Side neighborhood where I grew up during the first half of the last century. (Don’t laugh. I’m still younger than most trees, although maybe not so much the trees around here.) He was called the Good Humor Man because that was the brand of ice cream he sold from his truck. Whenever we kids heard the familiar strains of "Do Your Ears Hang Low," we knew the Good Humor man was in the hood and it was ice cream time. I’ve never personally witnessed anything remotely similar to a Good Humor Man in Kyle, but I have been assured by those who have lived here for quite a while that ice cream trucks do circulate in residential neighborhoods. And, if this is true (and I really hope that it is) than the city also needs a Good Humor ordinance.

In other action this evening, the council:

• Learned all about the Chamber of Commerce’s GeoCache Tour which is, from what I gathered, a sort of high-tech scavenger hunt in which you use smartphone apps to find your treasures.
• Okayed the spending of $398,788 (it was part of this year’s budget) to draft the plans for the expansion of the city’s wastewater treatment plan. The money will also pay for 30 percent of the expansion’s design costs.
• Granted Grind House Coffee & Cocktails the booze concession at the Kyle Field Day event planned for Sept. 17-18.
• Approved the rules under which the council will operate until another new council member joins the group. The rules were pretty much the same as before. The big change was one that requires that an item brought forth by a council member that is rejected by the council, cannot be reconsidered for six months, unless one of the council members who voted to reject recommends reconsideration. I could go into details about the reasoning behind this rule, but I’m afraid it would spark irrelevant, unnecessary and inflammatory vitriol. I’ve been told I cause enough of that already.
• Heard from Sellers that a major announcement involving minor league soccer (possibly an MLS farm team to be headquartered here) will be forthcoming during a news conference scheduled for 10:30 Thursday, July 14, at Gregg Clarke Park.
• Following an hour and three minute, executive session, voted unanimously to direct the city’s staff to expedite a waterline extension.