Randy Gettings wants speed bumps on his street, but after nearly 10 months of trying to get them, working with his neighbors and petitioning the city, he’s gotten nowhere.

Gettings lives on Esperanza Drive. Back in March, he went to the city with concerns about the high rates of speed some people drive, not only on Esperanza but also Tenth Street, Esperanza’s main cross street.

He said the traffic on the short neighborhood street is dangerous, with cars driving too fast and threatening to hit pedestrians, including school children leaving H.T. Jaramillo Community School located at Tenth and Esperanza.

The city provides a checklist and petition for any citizen who wants a speed bump on his or her street. It can be cumbersome for a citizen, gathering the required information and signatures from neighbors.

Gettings, however, completed the checklist, with more than 90 percent support from neighbors — but when it came time for the city to do its part, city officials fell silent.

“I kept calling her, trying to get a hold of her,” Gettings said of City Manager Sally Garley. “She was supposed to have an answer by Oct. 31. I haven’t heard anything. It’s December 6th. I almost got hit by a car today again.”

At Monday’s city council meeting, Gettings confronted city officials, saying he would be patient but wanted answers.

“I’ve given my issues to the city police and I don’t know who else — you, you and her,” he said, pointing out everyone in the room he’s spoken to. “Nothing seems to be done.”

Even though he completed the city’s checklist, Gettings explained, the city threw him for a loop, adding more stipulations to it as recently as Monday morning.

“I’ve met every criteria the city asked of me, and now, Mrs. Sally Garley, I got an answer from your city engineer today that they added some more criteria to it, and I want to know what that’s about.”

The problem is financial, Mayor Ronnie Torres said. The city doesn’t want to put money toward the speed bumps Gettings and his neighbors say they need.

Part of the reason is what’s required of the city at this point. With Gettings having done his part, it’s now incumbent upon the city to do engineering and traffic studies, including researching data on the number of traffic violations in the area.

Instead of completing the studies and gathering the data, the city is considering circumventing it, amending its speed bump ordinance to strip it of some requirements.

“We’ve looked at all the paperwork that goes with the speed humps and stuff. There’s a lot of stuff we have in there we think is too stringent, is too strict, in order to do it,” said Torres.

Torres said the police and fire chief, as well as the planning and zoning department, are reviewing the ordinance to make changes.

“We’re trying to make it easier for people to get speed humps,” he said, “because if we go by the ordinance we have in place now it’s going to be almost impossible to get.”

Torres said other streets have speed bumps because the city didn’t follow the ordinance when installing them.

“How long is this going to take? What — we’re going to wait until somebody gets killed on my street?” Gettings asked.

“I wish I had an answer for you, I really do. But I don’t,” Torres told Gettings. “We’re looking at it and we’ll get it done.”

For the safety of school children, like he did months ago, Gettings again asked the city fill a pothole in the Jaramillo Community School crosswalk at Tenth and Esperanza, re-stripe the fading crosswalk and step up patrols when children are walking to and from school.

“There’s a pothole in the middle of that. Some kid’s going to get killed there,” he said. “And it still isn’t painted.”

This page was published on December 9, 2009 at 12:31pm and is filed under Infrastructure.