Voting Rationale
During the February 19th vote on Kwik Star, I expressed my traffic safety concerns on Greenhill & Main, which I believed would be worsened to dangerous levels with new developments in that area. I'd seen traffic backups myself while campaigning last year, and many letters and comments from residents supported that concern. So, when voting "no", I meant "not yet"....I wanted to wait until after the Viking & 58 interchange and Greenhill & Main reconstructions to approve those kinds of projects, for traffic safety. I assumed other council members would have similar concerns.
New Perspective
Seeing that I was the lone "no" on Fareway, I felt obligated to go out to Greenhill & Main to observe traffic; I needed to re-evaluate my perspective. I spent five hours at that intersection, from a vantage point at Bluebell andcounting cars and watching the traffic dynamics during the morning and afternoon commuting times. My observation times were:
- Thursday, February 22, 6:15am - 8:15am and 4:45pm - 6:15pm
- Friday, February 23 from 7:20am - 7:55am
- Friday, March 2nd from 7:20am - 7:45am
- [edit: also Sunday, March 4 from 10:00am - 11:00am to see traffic from worship services]
Balboa, Cordoba, and cross-traffic on Greenhill Road. (Google Maps earth view)
Throughout those periods, I simply didn't see the major traffic issues on lower South Main that I noticed last August. I can't explain why I saw much more traffic on lower South Main in August; the traffic I did see was on upper South Main headed southbound to Greenhill Road, and time of significant car-flow along Greenhill, but those were speeding along nicely (not congestion. [Edit: I also noticed a big uptick in traffic on Sunday, March 4th at around 10:30, presumably from worshippers getting out of service at Candeo Church, Valley Lutheran, and other places of worship along Greenhill...but that cleared out in about ten minutes' time].
Once, I did watch a semi in the left turn lane cause traffic to go back past Balboa, but it cleared in less than a minute. Overall, what I saw was much more in line with the City Engineer and traffic study's descriptions. And I met for two hours with the city administrator and the city engineer to go over both the existing traffic dynamics, and the city's plans to mitigate the traffic hazards in the short-term, leading up to that intersection's planned reconstruction in FY2021.
A Duty to Act
With that new information in hand, I simply can't express the same concerns about the safety of vehicular traffic at Greenhill and Main that I did previously. Sure, I think the Greenhill and Main intersection will be congested, but not the potential train wreck I was envisioning, with future traffic compounding an already dangerous situation. Also, I expect that the upper part of South Main (going southbound to Greenhill) wil regularly have 6-10 cars queued up, and other solutions are needed for that. My perspective on the traffic situation is a night-and-day difference from what I believed going into the council session. Because KwikStar was a 4-3 vote against, and the prevailing side can bring the matter back up for reconsideration, I see a clear duty to set this straight. I appreciate that this decision has economic and quality-of-life impacts for many residents, and there may have been some misunderstanding of why I voted against the project on February 19th. I've recently posted my general philosophy on the council's role in site plan approval, to help all stakeholders better understand my thought process in these reviews.
Lessons Learned
In future reviews, when I have a perspective that's very different from what I see from staff recommendations, I'll go back to the original data and question staff on their reasoning, and provide my own, to see if we simply have differences in opinion (which is fine) or if we're using different sets of facts (which would be concerning). I'm also more comfortable now hitting up staff with all my questions via e-mail on the Sunday night before the council meeting, since we only receive the packets late Friday afternoon. I'll also plan to take a half-day vacation from work as needed, on Monday, to meet with staff in person. Probably because I'm new, I have a lot more questions than other council reps, so city staff knows to expect that. Finally, I'll continue working to open up dialogue between council members at the council meetings, so that I can better understand their thinking in these decisions as well.