Print

Email story

Comment

Letter to the editor

Speed bump splits residents

Some want it for safety, but others see it more as an inconvenience.

By S.I. ROSENBAUM Times Staff Writer
Published September 14, 2007

The hearing was getting out of hand.

Residents packed the room, shouting over each other and booing the opposition. The hearing master called for order, but it was hard to hear her voice.

The issue of the day?

A speed bump.

How did a once-peaceful Valrico neighborhood come to this?

Rewind to November 2006.

That's when Cathleen Landry, a resident of River Overlook Drive, asked the county for a speed bump near her house.

Kelley Palmonka, one of Landry's neighbors, remembers that Landry had small children and was afraid to let them play outdoors because of speeding drivers.

"For years we've had speeding as an issue on this road," Palmonka said.

She said that Landry didn't expect to stay in the neighborhood long enough to see the speed bump installed.

"They were military," Palmonka said. "Cathleen told me she knew it would be a long process. She told me she didn't think she'd be here when the bump came through, but she wanted to leave this neighborhood a better place, a safe place for kids to play."

Sure enough, by the time the county processed the request and scheduled a hearing, Landry was gone.

But five of her former neighbors, including Palmonka, supported her cause. They showed up at the hearing last month expecting an hour or so of staid governmental due process.

That's not what they got.

"I have to tell you, I don't know what all the hostility was about," Palmonka said, "but right from the get-go, people showed up to shoot."

Which brings us back to where we started: people yelling.

The ones who were shouting loudest, Palmonka said, were the ones who didn't want the speed bump.

"I didn't even realize before that people wouldn't want it," she said.

One of the people who doesn't want a speed bump is Trish Carter.

From her point of view, a handful of neighbors are trying to impose an inconvenience on the rest of the neighborhood.

River Overlook Drive snakes around and doubles back on itself. On a map, it looks like a complex number six. Palmonka lives at the top of the six. Carter lives at the bottom.

"The majority of the room thought it would be a joke to put a speed bump on a one-way road," she said. "Everyone in the community would have to go over it. ... We're all affected."

She remembers the August hearing as chaotic.

"The meeting was disturbing to me because of the way it was run," she said. The hearing master, Upick Suwarno, "wasn't familiar with the map," Carter said. "She ran the meeting in a very confusing way."

Still, Suwarno recommended that the speed bump petition move forward.

Ordinarily, said Buz Barbour, manager of the county's traffic program, the next step would be a neighborhood petition.

The neighbors who wanted the speed bump would have to gather the signatures of 75 percent of the residents of the affected area - an area that doesn't include Carter or her neighbors.

Then the matter would be passed to county commissioners.

But that's not what's going to happen now due to Suwarno's procedural error, Barbour said. As Suwarno tried to calm the crowd, he said, she misspoke and unintentionally created the perception of favoritism.

The result? Another hearing that gives both sides a chance to be heard.

"It's a do-over," Barbour said.

S.I. Rosenbaum can be reached at 661-2442 or srosenbaum@sptimes.com.

[Last modified September 13, 2007, 08:15:18]