09/18/2000 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Regular Council Meeting 9-18-00 Page 8 every driveway can be accessed. His idea was to make cuts a little wider so you could hit two drives with one cut and not have so many cuts. We don't need to discuss that tonight. After hearing everything, Mr. Buckholtz said he will back the resident and what came up in terms of representing people who actually live there currently. Mrs. Mills said she would like Mr. Ilacqua to read the recommendations of the S.O.M. Center Road Widening Committee. Mr. Ilacqua read his memo of August 18 from the S.O.M. Center Road Widening Committee to Mayor Rinker, Council, Department Heads and August 24 regarding the Committee's median recommendation. (A copy of the letter is attached.) Mr. Ilacqua said the Committee recommended, by a vote of 4-2, Option #2 on this evening's agenda. Mr. Ilacqua said he concurs with Councilman Buckholtz that he is comfortable with the thought and consideration that the Committee has put in on the design of S.O.M. (specifically as it has to do with whether or not we will incorporate a median into the design of S.O.M.). Mr. Ilacqua said he is comfortable with the work we have done and the choices before Council this evening. Council President Marquardt asked if there were any further comments. Mayor Rinker said I appreciate the comments so far but would like to make a couple of observations. First of all, the drawing prepared by URS Greiner, the last color rendering, is reflecting exactly the canvassing that Mr. Abate did up and down S.O.M. I find it a little interesting the way the vote has been characterized and I am not going to dwell on it other than to suggest to everyone that it is not unusual for any particular vote to be presented and it is not a rarity in this body, especially, for a vote to be made and then someone changes his mind, amends a motion, and adjustments are made. I would ask that this Council recognize, and I think the minutes of the S.O.M. Widening meeting bear it out, that what happened is Mr. Abate indicated that he and a number of his neighbors who live in that stretch between Highland and Metro, indicated that they would actually like to have a median there but their concern was whether or not they had access to their driveways. Following the meeting, the request was made of Mr. Buchanan (who has been the Engineer that this Committee, I believe, has been using for his expertise), prepared that map to demonstrate in fact that those entrances could be there to accommodate the residents. The other comment that I made at the time of the meeting (and I repeated this last week), we would not expect to design in any features that were not going to be well engineered. The fact is the purpose of this has been to help those residents who live right on S.O.M. and for those who would like to have some form of screening as well as the traffic calming benefits which we have all talked about and the record is pretty clear about that. I think that what my request. stressed was that to the extent that we can accommodate those wishes, to the extent that we can put a median down there, then we ought to try to do it. Then, ultimately this is somethixlg that is typically at the tail end of the work that goes on. That was where I was coming from when I picked up on the fact that Mr. Abate went faced with the first three options that the vote presented didn't have. available an option that accounted for that opportunity. My understanding was that that option was~then,put into the vote and the vote. of 4-2 reflects the opportunity for a number of people to change their because they now had an opportunity to recognize the viability of a