By Jim Sack
The Redmond Rule. You might remember the grizzled old veteran who had a chat with council one night, something highly unusual in the sense that citizens never “chat” when council is in session, we just stand at a lectern and speak to a stony-faced semi-circle of silent elders who allow the words to drop, like so many mute stones, without comment. The city clerk quite visibly starts a timer to make sure our comments end within a three minute deadline.
Last night, to the chagrin of a couple council members, one of whom regularly checked his watch from the president’s chair, John Shoaff, councilman at large, “invoked” the Redmond Rule for a discussion of proposed work at Dartmouth and Washington Center Road, or Worshington Center Road, as City Engineer David Ross repeatedly called it.
The question is how to improve traffic flow on Washington Center without inconveniencing thousands of residents of a few bordering neighborhoods? It became quite apparent last night there is no simple answer. Mr. Shoaff invited four residents in two shifts to speak to council. They rebutted Mr. Ross who laid out the city’s argument for widening the road, removing the park strip and creating long turn lanes. The neighbors even questioned the veracity of his statistics. Interestingly, Mr. Ross noted that a state office had cleared them of fraud in the matter. Hmmmm. The neighbors also wondered out loud if the urge to spend a million and change on the street was more because federal funds were available than a good solution had been found. Over and over again a citizen said that if “you fix Clinton you will fix Dartmouth,” meaning most of the problems at the intersection are caused by backups at Clinton and WCR. Ross somewhat agreed, noting that that project is high on his list.
Council listened and asked good questions of the residents. Mr. Ross was given a chance to rebut their comments. He was obviously very uneasy. The residents were then given a second chance to rebut Mr. Ross, which they did succinctly, and they tossed in a stinging rebuttal of a comment by Council President Bender who denied speed was a problem on Worshington Center Road. One of the residents had that very morning spoken with a radar-gun-officer who said the exact opposite of his boss. Hmmm. Eventually, council voted to send a reluctant Mr. Ross back to his drawing board. He has a week.
Mr. Shoaff has long been a critic of the power that city engineers hold over the community, suggesting that they do not seem to bother with quality of life issues or aesthetics when creating new street plans. One might look at the expanses of concrete from Reed Road to the Maplecrest Road to contemplate his point, and around the city there are a hundred other examples of engineering that “paved over” existing neighborhoods in an effort to more quickly move traffic through them.
So, Mr. Shoaff applied the Redmond Rule and gave the citizens their full throat and they did not let him down. The vote to table the matter was nearly unanimous.
Tom Smith, councilman for the east side, then started a brouhaha. He voiced his disgust at the opulence found on the top floor, the former executive suite, of the Renaissance Building, formerly Lincoln National’s national HQ, soon to be the mayor’s digs. He said that citizens would not accept that sort of excessive decoration in their new city hall. Tongues will wag. Karen Goldner, councilwomen from the north central part of the city, interjected that the opulence was not the work of the current administration, but rather left behind by Lincoln management when they abandoned the city a few years ago for Philadelphia. Glynn Hines erupted with indignation, a bit theatrical, perhaps, all but calling Smith’s comments intentionally misleading, an effort to suggest to the community that Mayor Tom Henry had created a mini-palace for himself. (Given that the exec offices have marble showers, wet bars, and other quite remarkable amenities, not to mention a sweeping view of a parking lot and an alley, I am rethinking my decision not to run next year.) Tim Pape, councilman for the center and the south, a close ally of the mayor, suggested that we should dream a bit bigger, that we should not pride ourselves on being cheap, but do some things on a bit grander scale.
A couple of side bars, Deputy Mayor Malloy answered a few questions on behalf of the administration. Not knowing the community’s low opinion of Chicago politics, she frequently referenced the achievements of her former employer, but on the whole her answers showed candor and openness, characteristics that were previously in short supply. Her first at-bat a council shows great promise.
Council also gave prior approval, a go-ahead ahead of an actual contract signing, to begin work on the MLK Memorial Bridge just north of Headwaters Park. The aforementioned David Ross announced that a positive vote would mean half of the bridge redo would be completed by snow-fly time this Fall/Winter. Two members abstained on the vote, Mitch Harper on technical reasons and Tim Pape, a lawyer, for reasons of a potential conflict of interest. The honorable thing to do in both cases.
The other matter last night was creation of a cultural district in the heart of Fort Wayne. Such a district, it was explained, would help the four sponsors, including Arts United, to win grants for programming and other uses. When it was noted that the group sought no tax revenues of government support the measure passed quickly and unanimously.
So, if Mr. Shoaff has his way, the Redmond Rule will be more frequently applied so that neighborhoods and regular folk can have their say more often and more fully at council. Sadly, that will frustrate the watch watching president of council and the female councilwoman-at-large who has clearly stated that she believes citizens get in the way.
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As a Lincoln employee, when I had business on the top floor of the Renaissance Building, I would tell my secretary that I was going to the Temple of the Goddess Insurance. Tom Smith has his fingers on the pulse of the people.
I agree, Earth Girl. I heard another council member, a shareholder in Lincoln, congratulate Tom for the revelation. Tom, to be clear, was warning the administration about potential citizen backlash, not offering an admonition. Karen was right to clarify, but Glynn must have been distracted to offer his comments, or unaware of the opulence in "the Temple." Seems Ken Dunsire, himself a bit on the flamboyant side, was responsible for the pompous decor.
There was another thing, during the discussion about something Glynn Hines referred to K2, the simulated and legal version of marajuana. He called it something akin to a scourge and suggested that his folk were being targeted. He has a one issue perspective. Marty Bender corrected him by saying it is all over. A fight is coming on this matter. I was in the Marathon at Taylor and Brooklyn where a clerk directed me to it with the flourish of Vanna White turning a winning letter. Big teethy grin. The police say it has been at the center of some rather nasty traffic accidents and one of the papers reported on a kid, high on the stuff, who was simply oblivious to his surroundings, which included a traffic accident he had caused. One way to reduce the amount of the stuff in town is to boycott any station that sells it, unless, that is, you happen to enjoy the stuff.
I checked the FWPD Activity Logs for Washington Center Rd, from Coldwater to Clinton. I included traffic stops, auto accidents, and reckless driving. Granted, these are not all necessarily speed related, but there is probably a strong correlation.
From June 01 to July 07 (the past 37 days), there were 19 such incidents recorded there.
I checked the previous 37 days and found 35 incidents.
And during the 37 days prior to this, there were 29 incidents.
So, is there a speed problem there or not?
Ahh, the top floor of the former Lincoln Headquarters, marvelous bathrooms, columns, great thick carpet, I shot some video & film projects for Lincoln in the 90's up there, it was a big money corporate headquarters, thats what it looked like, I would recommend keeping what you can, refurbing it downwards would be a waste of money.
Well, Phil, the street is heavily traveled and the neighborhoods on both sides have aggressively sought to slow traffic. Marty Bender called their comments about excessive speed all but hoo hah. A few minutes later one of the residents noted that he had stood with an officer that morning and the officer told him the average speed was something around 10 mph over the 35 mph limit. The officer, the citizen recounted, had clocked people charging along at well over 50 mph. So, the citizens suggested that a bit of regular speed enforcement might slow traffic to a normal speed. Marty was not impressed. Mr. Shoaff wondered what other traffic calming might be undertaken at substantially less expense than $1.3 million, not to mention disruption. That is what the neighborhood wanted. Mr. Ross, however, sees federal "safety" money and yearns to spend it. He has a tight budget, sees the intersection as a problem and wants to act while the fruit is at its lowest. That much was clear. So, the matter is going to be revisited next Tuesday and we shall see whether the city can arrive at a better solution, perhaps a compromise that will ask the neighbors to give a bit of front yard (a bad idea, I think), in exchange for saving the park strip. Tom Didier must take the lead in this, it is his district.
Just had a chat with a council member who expects a compromise on this to be reached that will allow four foot sidewalks, not five or six, and will reduce the lane widths by a foot allowing the city to build a central turn lane. I don't know if the numbers quite work, engineers always see problems, less often compromise solutions, so we shall see Tuesday.
Jim-
Sorry to change the subjec but let's talk about something important. Now that your favorite team has gone the way of the Third Reich, are you going to be rooting for the Orange? We were raped and pillaged by the Spanish a few centuries ago and although we had a score to settle with the Krauts from WW II (my home town was the first to be invaded), we wouldn't mind getting even with the descendants of Ferdinand and Isabella and the Duke of Alva either.
Evert