By Marcus McClain
NEA Town Courier
The Blytheville Public Works Committee heard an additional update on the Elm Street repair during their May 9 meeting.
Director Mark Key stated engineers will be in town this week to meet with the mayor and finalize plans. Once this is complete, the city can begin bidding out the project. However, finance director John Callens pointed out an additional problem could be solved during the Elm Street repairs.
He explained that near South Elm, where the road turns into Dogwood Lane, there is a road that was washed out due to flooding issues and a previous water leak.
“Cars can come through there, not doing much over the speed limit, and they’ve ended up out in the field,” Callens said. “We’ve requested the engineer to do a bid item. This way, it will be incorporated in the Elm Street bid, but it will be separate. We’d get the bid for Elm, and a separate bid for the washed out section.”
“We’re already going to be there and we’re going to have to fix it sometime anyway. You know part of your cost is bringing them and all of their equipment back in. This is just a way to address it all at once.”
Committee chair Matt Perrin also introduced an amendment to the speed bump ordinance that was sent to the full council. Currently, requests for speed bumps require a petition with signatures from 75 percent of residents on the street.
“There was concern with the language,” Perrin said. “It only takes signatures of the residents and some are thinking that it needs to be the signature of the homeowner since renters tend to be temporary.”
“If 50 percent of the people living on that street are renting, they could live there for a month, move away, and they’ve made this permanent decision for the street that they don’t live with anymore.”
Council R.L. Jones added, “The people that live there are the ones who will be complaining about speeding. The landlord may not live in that area, so you may still have a problem. I would try to make it a little more broad, to include the signature of renters and homeowners.
Perrin went on to clarify that under the proposed amendment, only the homeowners signature would count towards the 75 percent requirement to place a speed bump. However, applications could still be gathered by occupants of the residence.
An official vote on the amendment will occur at the full council meeting May 17 at the Justice Center courtroom.