Athens committee reviews plan that would allow neighborhoods to fund, build speed humps

An Athens-Clarke County Commission committee is continuing to work through the mechanics of implementing a voluntary residential traffic management program that would allow neighborhoods to privately fund their own traffic-calming projects.

From the county government’s perspective, according to a policy statement on the proposed program, the goal is “to reduce crashes, traffic volumes, and/or speeds on residential streets.”

While the Legislative Review Committee (LRC) is making progress toward fine-tuning a proposal for the Voluntary Residential Traffic Management Program, it will be at least another month before its plan is ready to be sent to the full commission for review, where revisions to the proposal could still be considered.

As currently envisioned, the program would allow neighborhoods – from single blocks of streets to entire subdivisions – to develop plans for addressing speeding along their roadway or roadways. The program would apply only to county-maintained neighborhood streets traversing properties with single-family residential or mixed-density residential zoning. All voluntary neighborhood traffic management proposals, including funding plans, would have to be approved by the full county commission.

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The county’s Transportation and Public Works Department would be closely involved with the program. The county’s Traffic Engineering Division would provide guidance in studying the affected area and developing a final recommendation for the neighborhood. In no case will a project that the county wouldn’t install on its own be approved.

The voluntary program, if adopted, will serve as a complement to the county’s residential traffic management program, in which the county is funding and installing traffic-calming solutions along a prioritized list of local roadways. While many communities have county-funded traffic calming programs in place, relatively few provide an option for neighborhood-funded initiatives as is being contemplated in Athens-Clarke County.

While it is possible that a neighborhood might bring an ambitious project like a roundabout to county traffic professionals for review, officials who attended last week’s LRC meeting told the committee that they expected most projects in any neighborhood-funded voluntary traffic management proposal to involve only the installation of speed humps.

A draft proposal under consideration by the LRC would require the signatures of 100% of property owners along the affected roadway to approve the funding of a voluntary traffic management project, but the committee now is all but certain to recommend a 65% threshold to the full commission. The 65% threshold currently in the policy applies only to interest in, and not funding of, a neighborhood traffic-calming project.

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The logic behind the lower percentage of support for neighborhood funding is that some properties in an affected area might be non-owner-occupied, and/or owned by someone outside the county. Those people, it was suggested at the LRC meeting, might not have any incentive to help pay for traffic-calming improvements, and thus could scuttle a project under the 100% approval requirement.

Commissioner Jesse Houle suggested that even “65% is a pretty high bar to look for.” And, he added, “I don’t think it matters how many people in the neighborhood pay for it, as long as it’s paid for.”

Advocating the 65% threshold, Commissioner Carol Myers, who chairs the Legislative Review Committee, noted that neighborhood homeowner associations frequently assess fees with which not every homeowner agrees.

A potential sticking point for the committee is who should be considered “affected property owners” in connection with a traffic-calming project. An improvement on a section of roadway that is central to moving into and through a subdivision could be seen as an advantage to all subdivision residents, even if only property owners along the section of roadway to which the traffic-calming measures are applied are technically affected by it.

Other issues that the committee will continue to iron out, and could consider at their next meeting, are funding mechanisms acceptable for the required county commission approval of any neighborhood-funded project.

Interested neighborhoods would sign their own construction contract, but the county would require a 100% upfront cash payment to the chosen contractor. One way to secure that funding, it was suggested at the LRC session, would be a special assessment through a subdivision’s homeowner’s association.

Also to be considered by the LRC is what happens if a contractor does substandard work, and the finished project is rejected by the county as inadequate. Requiring chosen contractors to post a performance bond, which would guarantee successful completion of the work, was discussed by the committee.

At one point in the recent LRC meeting, Commissioner Ovita Thornton noted that the voluntary traffic management program likely would be out of reach of some of the community’s less-well-off neighborhoods, and in other circumstances, simply wouldn’t be pursued by landlords of some marginal rental properties.

“Why would we think that a landlord would invest in this?” Thornton asked. “I don’t think this is really going to help the folks we are trying to help.”

A county staff member at the meeting suggested to Thornton that, as more affluent neighborhoods opt into the voluntary neighborhood traffic management program, projects on the county’s list of recommended residential traffic management projects located in economically-challenged neighborhoods could move up on the county-funded priority list.

This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: Athens committee looking at plan for speed humps funded by residents