[the first part of these comments were added during the meeting due to the Baker Tilly presentation on salaries and pay scales. Some light editing was completed prior to posting.]
Thank you.
Wow. What a presentation by Baker Tilly. The data and analysis they provided is critical for understanding the pay scale question before us and to build confidence in the decisions the City Council, the Mayor, and the Department heads make.
Imagine if we had this depth of information and understanding of impacts for all of the questions before us as a Community? It would be a different world of representative government.
The Robinson Street Light project is underway in New Chauncey. Hawk Construction is doing the work. We’ll see how it all looks when it is completed. The placement of lights begs a lot of questions, especially their density in some areas. May the temperature of the lighting be warm.
I also hope Hawk returns good quality soil back to the curbstrip so we can maintain some plant life. Too often these contractors fill with low quality sand and sprinkle a little top soil at the end. Ask anyone who went through the gas line replacement in New Chauncey and they’ll tell you the poor quality finishing work that was completed.
And I know this light project was intended to try and make Robinson Street safer. From the WL Moves website:
This effort is part of a larger goal to unify lighting styles across the city while addressing safety concerns identified through a recent traffic safety audit.
However, the report stated that only 2 crashes, in their 2018 to 2022 dataset, occurred where there were no streetlights.
Most crashes occurred when it was daylight (54). There were 19 crashes when it was dark. 17 of those crashes occurred in an area with streetlights and only 2 occurred when there were no streetlights.
To make Robinson Street safer, especially during the high traffic, high speed daytime rush, there are a plethora of traffic calming measures we could take that would require minimum capital and effort: intersection murals, mini-roundabouts (similar to 10th and Brown in Lafayette), gateway features (signage, plants, neighborhood art created by neighbors), further reduced speed limits, enforcement of speed limits, pavement texturing, etc.
I strongly encourage the Public to continue to work on making our streets safe for everyone, especially our children who play around them.
My family and I continue to pick up 5-gallon buckets of garbage on our walks. The litter, mostly concentrated around student houses and consists mostly of beer cans, broken beer bottles, liquor bottles, vape cartridges, cigarette butts, junk and fast food wrappers. Shout out to The Kesslers, who I learned are leaving town soon. I know I was inspired by Thomas’ Concrete Updates he used to give at City Council meetings. Imagine if the Purdue students who lived in New Chauncey cared about where they lived. We wouldn’t have to spend so much time cleaning up after them.
If anyone is interested in doing their own, we’re happy to sponsor you to get a cart, bucket, grabbers, and bags. Just let me know. Thank you.
