ORDER-2017-31 : Acceptance of MGL Chapter 90, Section 17C, as amended by Chapter 218 of the Acts of 2016, to reduce the prima facie speed limit in the City of Melrose to 25 miles per hour.

Transcript (~21 min @ 10:50)

Speakers identified by voice; unnamed voices are numbered within this recording. Auto-caption text — verify against the video.

▶ 10:46 John N. Tramontozzi: for an acceptance of massachusetts general laws chapter 90 section 17c as amended by chapter 218 of the acts of 2016. that is to reduce the prima facie speed limit in the city of meadows to 25 miles per hour this order is sponsored by vice chairman francis wright and alderman wright would you like to say something on this matter thank you yes mr. chairman I propose

▶ 11:22 Francis X. Wright Jr.: this order it is a piece of legislation that comes out of the municipal modernization Act which is a law that passed through the legislature the governor signed the governor actually and his staff authored a great deal of

▶ 11:41 Francis X. Wright Jr.: it and what this will allow is for municipalities that have the average

▶ 11:53 Francis X. Wright Jr.: distance between residential homes that are 200 feet or less to be deemed to be thickly settled and as a result may if they choose reduce their their speed

▶ 12:10 Francis X. Wright Jr.: limit to 25 miles an hour generally the speed limit is 30 miles an hour

▶ 12:18 Francis X. Wright Jr.: remember I raised this issue back in 2008 2009 when we discussed the traffic safety zones and at that time it didn't make sense to me that we would have one speed limit basically whether you lived in Lenox or you lived in Boston or you lived in Provincetown or you lived in Lowell it was 30 miles an hour so the governor has seen fit to recognize that there are different communities that have different needs and may have different desires and have the will to you know exercise their independence and make their own decisions as to what their speed limit should be and this is our opportunity I know the one thing I hear the most about as an alderman award alderman is traffic speeding cars how

▶ 13:10 Francis X. Wright Jr.: people operate cutting through their neighborhoods cutting past their homes going by parks going through intersections not stopping at stop signs etc and this isn't a cure-all we only have so many police officers they can't

▶ 13:24 Francis X. Wright Jr.: everywhere to enforce this but it is it is a message we can send it gives the police the ability to to stop cars that are speeding and by posting it to send

▶ 13:38 Francis X. Wright Jr.: again send the message that you know Melrose is looking for people to slow down that we are expecting you to operate safely my hope and my expectation is that you know this will eventually cause people to drive a little better drive a little slower allow a little bit more time to get where they're going and I think that overall it can only be in the best interest of our pedestrians our school children our elderly who are trying to get downtown get to the doctor's office get to the supermarket children getting to parks and playgrounds and schools as I said so I hope with that in mind you

▶ 14:26 Peter D. Mortimer: support this order thank you that's a motion to recommend for passage I'll

▶ 14:31 John N. Tramontozzi: second it is that a motion to recommend for Paris all right we'll have further

▶ 14:36 John N. Tramontozzi: discussion so we do have a motion by the maker of the order alderman rights to to recommend for passage and it's that seconded by alderman Mortimer on further

▶ 14:47 Gail Infurna: discussion alderman inferno thank you mr chairman i'm not a member of the committee so is there any other member of the committee that wanted to speak

▶ 14:55 John N. Tramontozzi: okay thank you well you are a member of the traffic commission so that yes

▶ 14:59 Gail Infurna: that's what i was speaking on as a long-standing member of the traffic commission we certainly have heard um our number one complaint that comes to us is about speeding cars and and so i i think this is a really good order um i thought um alderman wright explained it very well so i'm not going going to go into that it is a message that we can send and I think it's a good thing I have been in touch with our city solicitor to see whether it needed to go to the traffic Commission for you know approval and basically he said that the alderman is authorized to accept the law allowing for a reduced speed limit on the city in the city of Melrose however a fully empowered traffic Commission following acceptance of the law by the Board of Aldermen would there have to be authorized to further consider and vote on any speed limit reduction throughout the city so what we what the committee decides to do here tonight and what we do when we pass it to the full board Elena Proakis who's our chairman of the traffic Commission did say that it would be on the December meeting of the traffic Commission for them just to have the discussion also to see if anything needs to be tweaked out with it or if they you know want to flush it out a little bit or whatever but um i don't want to speak on the traffic commission but on their behalf but certainly uh we're all aware that that is the number one complaint that comes before us so um so this so for the public this will be on the december um traffic commission meeting which meets the third wednesday of the month um no matter what probably happens here this evening

▶ 16:37 Monica C. Medeiros: very good any further discussion alderman medeiros thank you um i too am not a member of this committee i do have some concerns about lowering this to 25 miles per hour i know that you know certainly as an alderman here just like you and a former ward alderman i i certainly hear many of the concerns about speeding and but that being said i don't think that the the problem uh participants are those who are going in that 25 to 30 mile per hour range and i am concerned about lowering this to 25 that it might actually in some ways make things a little bit more dangerous uh i i'd like you know everybody before our next meeting to you know take some time and really drive the speed limit on the roadways that you drive and i i say this because when you do sometimes you're met with a lot of

▶ 17:36 Monica C. Medeiros: anger behind you and you know i'll take for instance a road that i used to drive quite often over in wakefield is montrose ave they have now in wakefield dropped the speed limit on that road most of the road to 25 miles per hour and some of it actually 20 miles per hour

▶ 18:02 Monica C. Medeiros: and you know i've had more than one occasion of driving the road at the posted speed limit and having absolutely irate, angry people behind me who then eventually act in a very unsafe manner because they will pass you on a road where there's only one lane without any regard for the people or other cars that might be coming. And especially on some of our roads, our smaller roads, people are probably already driving. most safe people are probably already driving 20 miles 25 miles per hour but on the bigger roads and even some of the longer roads you know this this puts the driver who is following the speed limit in a situation of a lot of angst and anxiety and some of the people who are impatient and might not otherwise know that Melrose has adopted this lower speed limit because if it is just the

▶ 19:12 Monica C. Medeiros: prima facie speed limit then you know we have people coming in from out of town and just not not being aware and and really raising the level of anxiety on the road and there's that and the fact that you know one of the things that has really come up often is that people have often said that we'd like to see more enforcement out there and if we drop our speed limit to 25 miles per hour really I think we'll see almost every person in Melrose probably speeding and at that point in time you know where where do the police officers enforce and who do they choose to enforce this with and you know we have we have a situation in the the world today and in this country where there's already some anger against police officers and unfortunately we found that when you have laws they seem

▶ 20:14 Monica C. Medeiros: to be often applied most often to the people who of color or other minorities and I don't think that this is the time to set ourselves up for situations where we might be selectively enforcing the speed limits or people might assume that we are selectively enforcing the speed limits and creating more tension with our law enforcement out on the street so I I have a lot of concerns about doing

▶ 20:49 Monica C. Medeiros: that and I just you know I know we have speed as a concern but it's usually about people who are going a lot faster than 30 miles per hour Thank You

▶ 20:59 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: Alderman Tia Margolis was up next Oh thank you Mr. Chairman actually since Alderman Wright presented this order filed this order I have been driving around town a lot at 25 miles an hour and it's rather refreshing because you don't feel like you're rushing and even if there are people right behind you you know what slow down I mean we have had three fatal accidents in this in this community in the last couple of years with pedestrians whether or not speed was necessarily a factor I I'm not sure we can say that but I do believe that if we all slow down more we would avoid you know the possibility of having more of these I think Melrose certainly from when all the Majerus and I grew up here and we were sort of an insulated community Melrose has really become a a very cut-through community now people are cutting through from 93 down Franklin Street down Howard Street up to route 1 and they're flying there people are flying and you know so let's say the speed limit is now 30 that means people are going 35 to 40 if we lower it to 25 maybe they're gonna go 30 to 35 and again I also think enforcement and what I hear people asking for is enforcement And I think that those two things will go hand in hand. And I would like to ask Alderman Inferna, as our representative to the Traffic Commission, if in discussing this order, can they also discuss the enforcement issues? I have met with the chief a couple of times regarding selectively pulling people over, and there is training that our officers are beginning to that are receiving and you know for racial profiling and and we're they're working hard to be aware of those issues and address any issues like that that come up so I don't have a real concern about the selective enforcement I just have a concern about the enforcement that I think most of the people who live in this community really would like to see happening and I don't think everybody that's driving 26 miles an hour would need to be pulled over but I do think that there is a point at which by lowering the limit you make people more aware of it you put us you put some good signage out you put some good education out where people are coming into the into Melrose you have the the flashing signs or you know whatever you whatever the traffic Commission can determine is the most effective way to let people know who are coming through our community. I know that the Fellsway is DCR, so I'm not sure if Alderman Wright has any information about whether or not this can apply to parts of the Fellsway or not, but for several years we've been trying to get the DCR to address the Fellsway, and I think that could also be something that perhaps the Traffic Commission could take into consideration when they discuss this order so as I say everyone that I have heard for from is very supportive of it particularly around our schools or parks or senior housing which we have done much of that already but once people get through those areas they tend to just speed up and and really fly down the street and that's inappropriate in my opinion so very good thank you so we're gonna hear from President Kahn

▶ 24:50 Speaker 2: next and then we'll go to this side of the uh the horseshoe thank you mr chairman this is a i thought a pretty simple order we're delving into vistas that i hadn't imagined and don't know whether i still imagine that they're relevant to this discussion um having a having a per se speed limit of 25 miles an hour is a good step in the right direction um it's something that we should

▶ 25:14 Speaker 2: vote to adopt if they're if there's public sentiment to the contrary they have until our November 14th meeting to discuss this but this is a good step in the right direction it needs to be tailored with enhanced enforcement respectfully enforcement is not a traffic commission issue it's a fiscal management of resources issue and a police staffing issue obviously everybody wants more enforcement and speed limits and speed limit reductions don't work without enforcement a couple of points that I don't think we want to lose sight of here is and the maker of the order can correct me if I'm wrong but I read the text of the statute and the statute seems to clearly exempt state highways I would assume that it exempts state roadways such as as the Linfels Parkway and perhaps and I don't know the answer to it but it may exempt designated truck routes so there are going to be a number of major roadways that aren't going to be subject to the limitation and the other thing that I What I think people need to keep in mind is, we could vary the speed limit on any road that we wanted to. If there was a particular road that was a problem, a 30 mile an hour speed limit could be established for that road.

▶ 26:52 Speaker 2: This adoption of this act creates a default position where everything that's not marked would go to 25 miles per hour, so that if there were concerns about particular streets, they could be addressed. Heavily traveled state roads are not going to be subject to this. And this is going to have nothing to do with enforcement, which is a conversation for another time. But it would need to be coupled with greater enforcement. I'm in favor of this. I don't really see any downside to it, and I'm going to vote for it tonight and head full board.

▶ 27:26 John N. Tramontozzi: Thank you. Alderman Lemmon, you were up next.

▶ 27:30 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I very much support this order. I think that it's one of several steps that can be taken to increase the safety on our roadways. and I think while there are many other pieces to the puzzle as has been mentioned tonight it's part of creating a culture here on our streets that we expect drivers to be safe when they are in thickly settled areas and neighborhoods and around children in Ward two in particular you know we have sort of just by way of where we're located and the structure of many of our streets with people who are trying to make it from Wakefield down to the Malden side and are often using our streets to bypass Main Street and are going quite fast when they do that and creating very dangerous situations for me anyone who has a road rage situation is going to have that issue at 25 miles per hour just as much as at 30 and they are also the people who are going to be going 45 or 50 on a 30 mile an hour so you know I don't think it's a reason to to not use this tool to make the streets just a bit safer I would also say that it again as a tool is one for the police and that it's not a tool for any sort of racial profiling real or imagined it is one for them to do their stated committed job that they do every day which is keeping us safer and it's one to help them with this enforcement that President Khan mentioned that is going to be so needed so I very much support it and I think it'll make Ward 2 safer

▶ 29:14 John N. Tramontozzi: and I think it'll make the city safer very good thank you I know all the men as work all had something to say and then I'll give Alderman Wright the final

▶ 29:22 Michael P. Zwirko: say if that's okay with you thank you mr. chairman I just have some very brief comments I'm supportive of this order as well and I appreciate Alderman Wright work to get this before us tonight my hope is is with the passage of this ultimately that it does pass that might be able in some way to reduce some of the signage that we have in town with this being the default position hopefully for streets that are currently posted at 25 maybe those could be removed or something like that there's a lot of sign pollution on some of the side streets so I would just like to hopefully that can be part and parcel of this passage of this order and I also just wanted to state and echo some of the comments here tonight they're very proud of the job that the Melrose Police Department does I know that they do a lot of community outreach and they're thought very highly of and I think they're doing a commendable job those

▶ 30:10 John N. Tramontozzi: are all the comments I had this evening well thank you and if I could problem

▶ 30:13 Francis X. Wright Jr.: right thank you very briefly mr. chairman as to all the mcconnell's question I do agree that this does not appear to be in any way able to be applied to state roads which would take the fellows way out of the Linfels Parkway out of the equation also with regards to signage it's my understanding and you can find it on the dot website but i'll hold it up the sign that i think you'll be required to put at the entrance way to the city is uh it says thickly settled speed limit 25 miles per hour citywide unless otherwise posted so very good thank you welcome any further discussion i just

▶ 30:52 John N. Tramontozzi: want to make one one note i did read the statute as well and although the traffic commission can

▶ 31:01 John N. Tramontozzi: and provide some input into it. Ultimately, the final decision, pursuant to Mass General Laws Chapter Four, Section Four, is the legislative body. So it's up to us to vote on this, and we will vote on it at our next, or at some point during our full board meeting, presumably if it gets recommended or gets to the full board. So ultimately, it's our responsibility to make that decision. Any further discussion? Seeing none, there is a motion on the floor for a recommendation, and to the full board it's been seconded. On the motion, all in favor?