October Street Update

October 9, 2018

9th  Street:
During the October 8th meeting of the City Council, a number of our neighbors voiced their concerns about the removal of the stop signs along 9th street. The  City Council has been working with Dodge County to try to improve the safety along 9th street. The first part of this effort was to follow some of MNDOT's recommendations for a “collector” street, which involved the removal of the stop signs. Several studies have shown that wrongly placed stop signs give a false sense of safety along such streets. This was always planed to be a multi-faced approach. The City Council had a great conversation with those that were at the meeting and everyone that wanted to voice their concerns were given the opportunity to do so. The Council then gave some answers to the questions that were posed. The Dodge County Sheriff's Office was in attendance as was the Dodge County Engineer. Scott Rose presented the observations that the Sheriff's office was asked to collect on speed limit compliance. Guy Kohnhofer presented information about the studies that have been published about the use of stop signs for speed control and safety, presented information regarding permitted uses of traffic control devices and lead a discussion on areas to look at for improving safety. During the discussions several of our neighbors indicated they would like to be on a committee to look into, and help implement the next phases of this effort. The City Council will be forming a Citizens Committee on 9th Street safety composed of a professional engineer, an elected official, two citizens along 9th street and the hopefully someone from the school system. I would like to thank everyone that showed up last night to share their thoughts and offered to help find a solution. The City Council will continue to monitor the safety on this street and make additional changes as needed until we can improve the safety along 9th street. The Sheriff's Office will be a vital partner in this effort and has been asked to help monitor speed in the area and issue any appropriate citations.

5th Street:
The fall of 2018 has been especially wet, and this has caused several issues with our timeline for 5th street. We continue to closely monitor the progress of the street construction. The construction crew has road closed signs up with a traffic gap to allow for construction vehicles to enter and exit, I want to remind everyone that this is for construction vehicles only. The road bed between Mantor Drive and Blanch Street has been excavated down to dirt and with two weeks of rain has become extremely soft. I am aware of at least one incident where a individual attempted to drive through the construction portion and needed to be pulled out by a tow truck. The construction crew has been working on weekends trying to make up for some lost time on this project. The City has reached out to the Township and is trying to coordinate our projects so that we don't encounter simultaneous road closures. Once we have some dry weather and are able to determine a completion date, I will updated everyone on our progress. I appreciate everyone's continued patience as we make this much needed repair.

Yours in service,

Chuck Bradford
Mayor - City of Mantorville
MantorvilleMayor@Gmail.Com
MayorBradford.BlogSpot.com