CC - Minutes - City Council - 8/29/2006

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Prescott City Council Regular Voting Meeting—August 29,2006 Page 9 The re-zone request will enable one family, the Tenneys, to benefit while (kW hundreds of Mount Vernon and Virginia Street residents pay the price. That is unfair and unacceptable. Virginia Street was built as a residential, local traffic street while Mount Vernon is and has been a thoroughfare for it's entire existence. Unfortunately for Mount Vernon Street residents development south of them off of Senator Highway has turned their beautiful street into a traffic nightmare. Virginia Street is too narrow for the traffic it now handles and since the placement of a four way stop two years ago at Goodwin and Mount Vernon we have had a doubling or tripling of cut through traffic as drivers seek to bypass the four way stop and the light at Gurley and Mount Vernon. We are besieged daily by hundreds of drivers doing 35-50 mph through our narrow street that is populated by families with small children and elderly retirees. We live in daily fear that our children will be killed by these drivers. We receive little to no police patrols and have had no success at getting a four way stop at Goodwin and S. Virginia to calm the traffic and discourage cut through drivers. Part of the success of the four way stop at Mount Vernon and Goodwin is because a lot of the traffic has migrated to the narrow S. Virginia Street. We are also the only street in the neighborhood without street lights which makes it even more dangerous for pedestrians at night as we also have only intermittent sidewalks and people walk in the street. Additionally, any connection of S. Virginia St to Senator Highway will have to skirt the edge of Acker Park, a serene little spot that would be ruined by that much high speed and high volume traffic. I have always thought that no developer would pay for this extension and the city would not either. These days I'm not so sure that a deal wouldn't be struck between the city and a developer with the cost burden falling to the taxpayers. Even without the extension, the traffic burden on Mount Vernon is already too much and exceeds carrying capacity. My neighbors and I are in the process of forming a Virginia Street Residents Association to counter these and future threats upon our little neighborhood. We would like a resolution before someone dies on S. Virginia Street, not after. We would like the following solutions considered: A four way stop at Goodwin and S. Virginia, a possible conversion of Oak Street to a one way street to discourage cut through traffic and more traffic patrols during morning and afternoon rush hour when it is the worst.