Property owners in Athens-Clarke County could soon be able to pay out of pocket for traffic calming improvements in their neighborhoods.
Under the terms of a proposed Voluntary Residential Traffic Management Program being discussed by a committee of ACC commissioners, a group of neighbors could band together to get speed humps, traffic circles, or other calming devices added to their residential streets if they’re willing to foot the bill.
The process wouldn’t necessarily be easy or quick, however. First, someone from the neighborhood would need to contact the county’s Transportation and Public Works Department. Department staff would figure out what kind of traffic calming measures would be right for the area and make a list of property owners who would be affected.
Then, it would be up to the neighborhood to get support on a petition from the owners of 65% of the affected parcels. If they do, ACC staff will give them a final recommendation, which will again require 65% support. And the money to pay for the improvements would have to come from property owners, not the ACC government.
“It doesn’t have to be that everybody pays into it,” Transportation and Public Works Director Stephen Bailey told a committee of Athens-Clarke County commissioners. “They make that decision.”
With funding in place, ACC staff will help the neighborhood connect with a private company to prepare a proposal and make sure it meets the county’s standards. All of that would be done, then the Mayor and Commission would still have the final say.
“By the time you all see these, the concept will be vetted by traffic engineering, so when the Mayor and Commission says yes or no to approving the installation, you’ll see that concept and see that it has a stamp of approval from TPW,” Bailey said.
Commissioner Jesse Houle raised concerns about the role out-of-town property owners could play in stifling the process, especially if an out-of-town company owns a large number of the affected properties.
“You have some corporation that owns multiple lots, they’re not based out of Athens, they’re unresponsive to their mail and email. A bunch of other people actually live on the road and somehow, this absentee property owner can get in the way of things occurring just by being incommunicado,” Houle said.
That could make a big difference, because support for that 65% threshold is per-parcel, not per-person. So, a person who owns three properties in the affected area would effectively have three times more say than a person who owns just one property.
That’s something that the Mayor and Commission could address on a case-by-case basis, said Stephen Bailey.
“You all aren’t necessarily stuck to a policy on a case-by-case basis,” Bailey told commissioners. “You could make an exception.”
Commissioner Carol Myers, who chairs the legislative review committee, noted that the Voluntary Residential Traffic Management Program is a companion piece to another program that is funded by taxpayer dollars.
“This program is self-funded, while the other program where we’re spending our tax money, is staff-initiated and government-funded,” Myers said. Roads in need of traffic calming under that taxpayer-funded program will be determined by safety data.
All four of the commissioners at the Legislative Review Committee voted to advance the measure to the full Commission for a vote in the coming months.
This article comes to Now Habersham in partnership with WUGA
