County Commissioners Slow Down Proposed Rise in Speed Limits

BRADENTON – At Tuesday's County Commission meeting, members' request to have staff re-engineer the county's speed limits almost halted when a couple of hundred residents showed up at the meeting to protest the idea.

There were wall to wall red shirts and more waiting outside the door. Chairwoman Betsy Benac told the overflow crowd to go to the 4th floor Manatee room where they could watch the meeting live because the fire code prevented people standing in the aisles.

The 45-minute presentation by Vishal S. Kakkad, Manatee County Traffic Design Division Manager, and Sage Kamiya, Deputy Director of Traffic Management, didn't go as planned if one lets the resident response tell the story.

More than an hour of comments expressed that disappointment would follow if any of the roads were to have the speed limit increased. Most of those who attended were from Lakewood Ranch and Palm Aire.

Anita Larson said, "Most changes are for traffic calming, not speeding up. There is only one sidewalk on the road and they jog and walk there."

Ellis Hartman said, "You don't fix it if it's not broken."

Ellen Perry said, "I have never seen people slow down when they can go faster."

Bob Bennett of Palm Aire said, "We need to slow the speed down and keep the golf carts."

David Clark, a retired state trooper who now lives in Parrish said, "I am a coordinator for the Sarasota/Manatee bike club and there is no reason to be raising the speed on Whitfield or Honorary."

More than 30 speakers disapproved and no one from the room spoke of the need to increase the road speed.

Commissioners had gone through a workshop and meeting with both Kakkad and Kamiya demonstrating how they were progressing with the request the commission had given them to re-engineer the road speeds around the county. Commissioners had said they were looking to improve traffic flow.

Several times, Commissioner Baugh made statements about not letting those in her district have their way of life change against their will. "I am not going to take quality of life away from people who lived here for years." Baugh added, "I would not negatively impact the way of life they bought into. You just can't look at people and tell them to change their life style."

The commission then proceeded to look at all of the 15 speed changes and design the new speeds from the Dais, voting on each independently. When done, the commission approved the proposed Ordinance 15-30 by a unanimous vote, with stipulations.