HAVRE, Mont. (NMB) – The Havre City Council’s Streets and Sidewalks Committee convened on Monday evening to discuss issues related to 6th Street and Carpenter Park
Local resident Cheryl Lynn Tatum provided extensive comment on what she says is a major safety problem for pedestrians near Carpenter Park.
Tatum said that people are often speeding down 12th Avenue at the intersections with 3rd and 4th Street, an area where children cross regularly to go to the park and there are no crosswalks.
“The families do a really good job of going corner to corner with their kids. But the kids without adults, they don’t do that and they don’t care… Just Friday, somebody came down 12th, there was a car parked illegally on the corner. He pulled in the wrong direction as the kid was coming on his bike and I just went ‘Holy God, please don’t let anybody die.’ So the lines are really just, we call them visual aids in the special ed world. You just want to put them there for people who actually are paying attention.”
Tatum’s proposal calls for four different actions:
- 3 new crosswalks. One on 4th Street on the west side of 12th Avenue, and two on 3rd Street – one on the west side of 12th, and another on the northern side of the intersection
- 15 mph signs by the park
- An easement/alley one-way to reduce drive-thru from 4th Street
- Removal of the 25 mph sign on 12th Avenue going south (this was done prior to the meeting)
Public Works Director Dave Peterson worried about the cost of these crosswalks and said it could set a precedent where they would be asked to install more crosswalks in other areas of town.
“It gets to be very expensive. And right now, we haven’t even received our paint to do our crosswalks. Typically, with the type of paint that we get, they might last a few weeks and they are gone. So we try to do it right before school starts. And things like that around the school areas. But we can’t get our paint. Nobody’s got paint.”
Tatum asked if Public Works would put the paint down if her neighborhood was able to raise the funds, and Peterson said the Mayor would have to take a look at it.
“I have a lot of kids with no adult supervision on the east side, and I feel like I’ve got to do something,” said Tatum. “So if we need to raise the money for the paint, then we raise the money for the paint.”
Peterson said if they were to go through with this idea, they would need to repaint the crosswalks multiple times a year to keep it maintained.
The section of road has a posted speed limit of 15 mph, but that is not always followed and Tatum says signage had been inconsistent until recently.
“I actually watched a gentleman with a brand new Cadillac SUV drive up on the sidewalk, around the stop sign, and up a one-way street so he didn’t have to stop at the northwestern barricade,” said Tatum.
The Committee was unable to take action on anything due to a lack of a quorum.
