Enforcement key to “speed” issue

Grimsby council dodged a $200,000 bullet by one vote during its council meeting last week.

Unfortunately they rolled over from misguided pressure to approve a reduced speed limit of 40 km/hr for Roberts Road.

First, it is important to note everyone, and I mean everyone, wants the streets of all our communities to be safe.

Claiming otherwise and throwing one’s hands in the air and running around screaming that the (speeding) sky is falling is nothing more than a king sized red herring.

Full house

Royal Canadian Legion Branch 612 Beamsville hosted a packed pickerel dinner event. The event included a live band. A perfect evening made it a great night to hang out on the patio.

Good luck, Sarah

If Sarah Kim can survive Hurricane Harry and hijacked Downtown Improvement Area board AGM, she has earned a shot at Grimsby’s CAO gig.

Kim was named CAO last week as Grimsby council concluded its search for a replacement for former CAO Harry Schlange. It has been noted on this page several times, it will take 10 years of patience for the municipality to recover from the four-year term of the previous council and the reign of Schlange during his tenure.

Major brain drain set in with firings or good people fleeing a bad situation. Some, undoubtedly, will still be experiencing PTSD (and that is not noted in jest). Rebuilding staff and residents’ confidence is a huge task. I think Sarah Kim is up for the challenge. M.W.

Grimsby public works director Brandon Wartman did an excellent job of A) keeping his cool, and; B) explaining again and again that Grimsby’s roads are safe, there is next to no speed issue whatsoever, and no traffic warrants merit further action.

Regardless of what residents say, and some members of council, everything should have been full stop right there. Park it. Wait for the Transportation Master Plan as the Public Works Committee had recommended in the first place.

Coun. Lianne Vardy would have none of that, unfortunately.

Personally, I like Lianne. She is tenacious and fair but - in this case, though - misguided, and I told her so directly during a discussion in my office. So there is no mystery to the at break neck speed. We had a family who drove like that when I lived in Vineyard Valley across from Wills Chev. But I would not suggest the speed limit change there because it would have zero impact. A squad car sitting at the end of the street after 4 p.m. would have turned the trick, though. content here.

The heart of this matter is, a municipality does not and should not adjust a speed limit in a town-wide fashion because of a handful of speeders.

Dropping a speed limit has next-to-no impact as Wartman indicated when he noted other municipalities found their average speed dropped 1km/hr after lowering their limit.

The ONLY thing which has a lasting effect, if these things need attention, is enforcement. That is where Niagara Regional Police come in. They have their own budget issues and are doing all they can. They don’t have the time to park a police car in every area of every town suspected of being a hot spot.

They use warrants and data to determine hot spots...logic.

Not “OMG, everybody is racing down our roads. It’s a death trap” type stuff.

Sure, some neighbourhoods have a clown or two who think it’s cool to motor through the streets

Luckily, reasonable heads prevailed and the town-wide 40 km/hr limit was voted down. Then though, Roberts Road was singled out.

Wartman rhymed off a host of speed calming measures already done on a road which does not warrant any of them, according to all the data researched on that roadway. Clearly, those measures are more than enough.

But, by the same 5-4 vote with Mayor Jeff Jordan flipping to the “yes” side, the 40K limit for Roberts was approved.

That in itself is not a horrible thing, but it must be noted it was not warranted and should not have happened.

Council absolutely should have followed proper process and worked any consideration for lower speed limits into the Transportation Master Plan Study - and then voted it down because it is not warranted.

Accidents happen every day, somewhere, but a 10 km reduction of speed won’t change a thing.