Parent mobilizes to solve traffic woes

One parent was alarmed by traffic congestion outside Seminole Elementary School, but she didn't complain - she took action to solve the problem.

By JULIANNE WU

© St. Petersburg Times, published January 30, 2001

SEMINOLE -- When Jamie Cooper began driving her son, Jacob, to kindergarten at Seminole Elementary School last year, she found a nice quiet street, 72nd Avenue N, where she could park and walk her child to the school's back gate.

However, when the 2000-2001 school year began and her son became a first-grader, Cooper couldn't believe how the traffic on 72nd Avenue had increased. The dirt-and-grass lot where she parked -- owned by the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 9272 -- was getting very congested.

"Cars were lined up four and five deep,and the parents would just open the doors and let their kids out," Cooper said. "I was afraid because the young children -- too little to be seen -- would walk between about six cars. I figured someone was going to get hurt."

VFW Post Commander John Mingo agreed.

"The traffic was crisscrossing in and out of our parking lot. Even I was out there directing it sometimes," he said. "We should have done something about it a long time ago."

The problem came about in part because Seminole Elementary, one of the oldest schools in Pinellas County, has a tiny parking lot off Park Boulevard that barely accommodates faculty and staff members.

Rather than complain, Cooper took action. A member of Seminole Elementary's School Advisory Council, she enlisted the aid of a neighbor, Pinellas County Sheriff's Deputy Mike Anthony, who has a second-grader at the school, and Bonnie Cangelosi, the new principal who arrived in August.

Anthony started by gathering some statistics.

He went to the spot between 8:15 and 8:45 a.m. and between 2:40 and 2:45 p.m. on a Thursday and Friday and again the following Monday and Tuesday. He counted nearly 100 cars during each peak period.

"It kind of shocked me to see the volume of cars and how fast they were going," Anthony said. "I saw that I had to be involved, not only as a member of law enforcement, but as a parent."

Armed with Anthony's calculations, Cooper and other members of the school advisory committee along with Cangelosi and VFW officials met with the city.

By mid January, the problem had been practically eliminated.

First, the city put up three-way stop signs at 109th Street, a street which intersects 72nd Avenue. Also, the city posted "no parking or standing" signs at the school fence and painted bright-yellow lines on the road there. The speed limit was also lowered from 30 to 25 mph.

Then on a Sunday morning earlier this month , a group of parents and teachers -- with the permission of the VFW -- redesigned the post's parking lot so traffic would enter one way and exit the other way. No more crisscrossing.

It meant turning the lot's stopping blocks around and painting them and nearby poles bright yellow.

"It definitely was a good example of the whole community coming together," Anthony said.

"The solution was quick," Cangelosi said. "There was such community spirit. It was fantastic how everyone worked together as a team."

Cooper added: "We tried to do it with little or no expense to anybody involved."

Mingo was happy, too.

"I live on this street and since the stop signs went up about a month ago, it's a lot safer for all of us," Mingo said. "It really slows people down."

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