DRAFT
Town of Cheverly
Meeting Minutes
December 10, 2009
Call to Order
Meeting called to order at 8:05 pm in the Cheverly Community Center.
In attendance: Mayor Mosley, CMs Callahan, Watson, Eldridge, Schachter, Johnson and Tevault.
Pledge of Allegiance
Agenda/Approval/Changes
Mayor moved the speed limit discussion ahead of the recycling discussion.
Minutes – Town Meeting 11/12/09
Approved as written.
Worksession 11/24/09
Approved as with corrections.
Town Administrator Report
Mr. Warrington reported that the Public Works Department is ready for the snow although he would prefer to not have any and pay overtime. The State gave preliminary approval on POS funds and the staff is looking to see how much of a stage can be built in Town Park with the $13,500. Mayor can you briefly elaborate on the audit numbers? Mr. Warrington our audit was very positive as we under spent by about $300,000 and received about $300,000 in additional revenue. It is nice to have a cushion with the reductions from the State this year. Mayor appreciates the efforts of the Public Works Department for the holiday tree lighting efforts it was terrific. We wanted to expand the lighting, but it made me realize that they can’t do this. There may
have to be an assist committee to do this. His staff was fantastic. But they need help next year.
CM Watson did we clear-up the issue of the school fair? Mayor no we can talk after, this was my fault.
CM Eldridge Kilmer Street where they are doing work and I was wondering if they are only paving half?
Mayor Mr. Warrington can check with Mr. Torres and get back to us.
CM Eldridge there are stimulus funds for either water main or sewer mains. Is that Kilmer or other areas of work?
Mayor we will have to see if we can find out.
CM Callahan the stimulus funds could be down at Magruder Springs. Also, I thank everyone for the installation of the new stop sign at Kilmer Street.
Police Department Report
Chief Robshaw truncated report because crime is down. Received $25,000 from State Highway for overtime enforcement. There is a yellow sheet to be delivered door-to-door with prevention and deterrent tips for homeowners. The year isn’t over, but I would project that our crime will be down 25% this year and it will be the largest reduction in 20 years. Involved citizen’s is clearly the biggest reason why. Productivity was up from our officers in arrests and tickets. There has been a reduction in crime every year for the past 4 years and an increase in our productivity for the past 4 years.
Mayor that was a pretty terrific report. I want to thank you for agreeing to sponsor the 3 on 3 basketball for Cheverly Day.
Chief Robshaw also effective yesterday, we are at full strength and he had been out for 6 months.
CM Eldridge I think it would be good to acknowledge what just happened outside of Town on Kilmer Street. Can you update folks.
Chief Robshaw I can’t really discuss that at this time. There was an incident and shooting that occurred outside of Town and the County will have a briefing tomorrow.
Mayor and Council Announcements
Mayor wanted to thank all the staff for the Friday night tree lighting along with the Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Brownies and others. The Town offices are closing early on December 24th and will be closed all day on December 25th. There will be no December Worksession. The January Town Meeting will be almost a repeat of tonight’s agenda items.
CM Watson I wanted to remind the Council that our CIP requests are due to Mr. Warrington by January 15th.
CM Callahan a couple of things. First, is that there is a Community Market this weekend. Second, is that this month Mr. Bellamy, the Town Historian, handed over the documents that he has been storing in his basement. The Town taking possession of these documents, we have to store them correctly. I think there are some legal aspects of this and should be on the January Worksession. I want to thank Mr. Bellamy for caring and sharing the documents and the citizen’s who came out and helped in raking his yard last weekend. I also want to look at how we as a Town can work on defining April as Volunteer month. Finally, after attending the 450 Sector Plan last month there are ideas out there for the new Metro station to be located at the current Giant location. It is
exciting.
Mayor I did forget one thing that the Holiday Decorating Contest will be Friday the 18th from 6-9 so have your lights on and please try to make your house number visable.
Committee Reports
Cheverly Day
Nick D’Angelo Cheverly Day will be May 22nd. We are going to have a meeting on January 12th. We will have the usual line up of live music. The prom will be the night before on May 21st. If you have ideas give me a call or go to our website.
CM Callahan every year we get people saying there is nothing for teens. If anyone wants to step forward to put something together for teens, please come forward.
Green Infrastructure Plan
CM Eldridge wanted to acknowledge Ms. Robinson’s efforts in preparing a $20,000 grant to be used for more outreach events. Part of the application is the storm drain decals. The draft chapters of the plan are coming together and there will be a meeting on January 4th. Perhaps there could be some space on a Worksession in January or February. As far as the Planning Board, we met and the main topic of discussion was Quincy Manor Run development. They need to better address recreational facilities, tree conservation and impervious cover. They say we are in support of the project, but I’m not sure.
Ms. Cynthia Robinson mentioned the grant submittal. Mentioned the proposal to do a demonstration rain garden at Spellman school. A lot of ideas and energy came from the entire group.
Citizen Input
Mayor Mosley asked if there were any resident wishing to speak on a matter not already on the agenda.
Mr. Craig Tupper of 2332 Belleview Avenue. Announced that Progressive Cheverly will be hosting a legislative forum with the members of the 47th legislative district on January 7th at 7pm at Hoyer School.
Discussion – Speed Limits in Town
Mayor noted that at the back door of the room were handouts that describe the reasoning for the proposed changes in speed limits and a map denoting the proposed speed limit changes. This issue came-up as related to potential speed cameras. Noted the confusion of some streets like Crest that has one speed one way and another speed the other way. We are looking to lower the majority of streets, which if not posted are 25 miles per hour. There are a few streets in town that will go from 15 mph to 20 where a portion of a street or a specific street were changed to 15mph. Now any street that is directly by a school or a park will become 15 mph. Some already are and some are not. There are some spots, like the 62nd street alley, it is the road type that dictates the 15
mph speed limit. All of Belleview is going to be 15 mph because of the design and topography and others. Cheverly Avenue, Lydell Road and Schuster Drive will all remain 25 mph.
Chief Robshaw stated that he viewed it from a practical point of view for safety and enforcement. Setting the majority of the Town being one speed limit will make it better for adjudication. Noted a block gap on Parkway that he forgot to notice, but would like to consider making that block 15 mph. This is much easier to notify the public as well. Mayor that is a wide street and we are not sure this should be lower. We will take that under consideration.
Mr. Warrington noted that we are referring to a color coded map and if you want you can find it posted on the website under News and Announcements. If you click on it, the color coded map is at the bottom of the speed limit explanation.
CM Tevault noticing that Joslyn and 63rd are going down to 20 mph, but because they are in the school loop. I would like us to consider this to be 15 mph.
Mayor they are going down from 25 to 20, but they don’t directly abut a school, so we had them going to 20 mph.
CM Eldridge speed limits are great, but they do not lower speeding. It comes down to the design of some of these roads and driving habits that people need to think about how they drive through their community. Changing the speed limits will not have that significant effect. We need to have more education.
CM Watson the plan is great, but after the plan is in place and the mess out there now is cleared-up then we need to set a policy to really tackle speeding. We are not doing enough right now. You can change the limit, but the reality is that they are still speeding. Our job is to set policy direction that we need to tackle aggressively speeding over a short period of time.
CM Schachter this is the dissenting voice. I do not accept the general proposition that it is any way appropriate to raise any speed limits. We should be looking at speed limits to appropriately reduced, which this does in some cases. Our approach to Cheverly Avenue has not been good. We have complaints about speeding on Cheverly Avenue and we have done a lot of construction to control speeding. We are dismissing the possibility of reducing the speed limit on this street because of Staff’s guess. I think an engineer would look at it and say we can lower the speed limit to 15 miles per hour, we are not making decisions based on a guess. Some say an engineer could say we would have to raise the speed limit and the odds are remote. As far as raising the speed
limits on some streets for the idea of consistency and confusion on the part of our police officers. I think that is a distortion of what the police chief wants. To raise the speed limit on State Street to make it easier for the police to enforce? Where is the confusion? How long will it take for it to dawn on a police officer that State Street is 15 mph? They could learn that in 5 minutes or less. We can grandfather these streets in to the law. I do not accept the idea that our police officers can’t figure this out. That’s my minority report.
Mayor just a point of clarification. We haven’t totally ruled out Cheverly Avenue, but we want to get this proposal out there. Now in defense of staff, I would call their input more than a guess. I think Mr. Warrington and Mr. Torres are well versed in all of this, so I tend to agree with staff that their assessment is probably correct. The speeding and complaints compared to 15 years ago have been incredibly reduced by what we have done on Cheverly Avenue. This had a significant impact.
CM Callahan CM Eldridge said it best by saying that a sign doesn’t dictate what speed is? The truth is that we can log consistency in the mind of motorists. It is simple and straight forward of in the Town by a park or school it is 15 mph and everywhere else its 20 mph. I think we are creating a safer environment for the citizens.
CM Schachter I just want to point out that our ability to lower the speed limit on 30 streets is in no way contingent on raising the speed limit on 5 streets. It is not confusing to people because these are not people who go to other parts of town, these people are commuters coming through.
Mayor our police speed a lot of time in court for tickets at overtime rates and we hear that the courts want to know about clarity not necessarily grandfathering.
CM Schachter I want to hear from the Chief particularly on State Street. I want to hear his specific opinion on that. And the statistics of how many traffic tickets were thrown out of court for motorists being confused.
Second Reading Ordinance O-6-09 Required Recycling
Mr. Warrington this draft #13 is also on the website. This is the required recycling changes to our refuse ordinance. It will be up for adoption in January. We put the FAQ’s in the Newsletter and I have not received any questions since that was published. This has been very educational as all of our ordinances are now in compliance with the County Code.
CM Eldridge I am wondering when we will start to hear about the roll-out plan. I think this is very critical with this.
Mayor we will be producing a magnet that could go with a memorandum to roll-out to all the residents. There will be a fairly long time span of notices.
CM Eldridge I think I know that, but I would like to see a plan. A roll-out schedule perhaps.
Mayor any comments or questions? Thank you all for being here. I think this is great. Anyone in the audience have any comments or questions?
Mr. Tupper Belleview Avenue on behalf of Progressive Cheverly we want to thank everyone involved for moving forward on this proposal. We support the proposed ordinance.
Mayor that is our last agenda items and I want to wish everyone a happy holiday and safe new year and with that call the meeting to a close. See you all in January.
Meeting adjourned.
Town of Cheverly
Summary of Action
Decmber 10, 2009
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