By Carrie Moritz, Gazette

Concern about speed limits on Dows Street opened Monday's City Council meeting, when a resident voiced a complaint about the reduction that recently occurred. In the same meeting, the council opted to table the repeal of several older ordinances as they wrestled with whether they should be mirroring several state statutes.

At the meeting's opening, resident Mike Ebbing addressed the council, asking why they had reduced the speed limit on Dows Street from 35 mph on the east side down to 20 mph.

"As somebody that travels that road, sooner or later I'm going to get a speeding ticket because I'm going to be going 22 miles an hour and I'm looking down and I can't even set my cruise in my car at that speed," Ebbing stated. He was worried his 16-year-old daughter would get a ticket, which would put his insurance costs at risk.

Jackie Rotert, who represents Ward 3 and lives along Dows Street, responded that she had heard from residents along the street that the reduction in speed was necessary to protect the number of children found crossing, walking, or biking in the area.

"I live on Dows and there were residents complaining with kids and with the baseball fields and the football field traffic, we've had requests to lower it drastically," she said.

Other members of the council concurred, pointing out that yes, it is an easy road to speed on. However, it was stated that anyone who sits and watches traffic patterns for any amount of time would notice immediately that pedestrian traffic is high from the football field entrance all the way to Highway 11. More development along and south of that stretch is inevitable in the future, which will increase the pedestrian traffic even more, precipitating the need for a reduction in vehicle speeds.

"There's also been a number of speeding tickets in there where people drive 60 miles an hour," said Mayor Bruce Brown. "So, it's one of those things that we looked at all the speed limits [around town]."

According to the Minnehaha County Sheriff's Department, 15 citations for speeding were issued from January to March this year.

Service calls up

The council then moved on to committee reports, where a new line was added for Engineering. Riley Reiner of DGR reported that seven projects had been identified as top priority for the newly-designated city engineers to focus on, including digitizing utility maps, a dog park, sidewalk improvements, and industrial park access. 

The council later approved the utility mapping at a cost of $13,500 plus a $700 cost for licensing of the software. The Highway 11/285th Street access to the Industrial Park was recently approved by the SD Dept of Transportation, and funding sources are being sought out. Sidewalk improvements have identified three areas, including South Main Avenue between Dows St. and Northfield St., the east side of Lacy Drive, and Railroad Ave. to Hwy 11 along Dows St.

Of the seven, the only one being indefinitely tabled was the dog park due to numbers. While Garretson has a high pet population, very few of them are registered at the city, and those numbers are required as part of application requests for funding.

 Tad Heitkamp of the Garretson Fire Department noted that calls have been up substantially so far this year, including 8 calls for fires due to dry conditions in the later part of March.

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