Legalectric

There’s a meeting about the Sturtevant Redo, actually it’s Sturdevant, Putnam, Sanford and Kingman, and it’s coming up soon.  Sturtevant is our street on the other side, up next to be redone, joys of living on a corner.  Alan said a city engineer or ? was hoofing it around the neighborhood handing out notices for the meeting:

11-7 Meeting Notice

WHERE? WHEN?  Here’s the short version:

6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, November 7

Sunnyside School Gym

1669 Southwood Ave

Red Wing, MN

GREATLY APPRECIATE THE NOTICE!  Somehow we slept through the notice for the West redo, and that was a mistake…

So far, I have two questions, procedural and substantive:

1) Why is this meeting at Sunnyside, the other end of town, instead of downtown, where we could just roll down the hill?  Usually meetings like this are at City Hall, at the Library, at Ignite, so why not this one?  Is there a number of scheduling conflicts?  Makes no sense.

2) The handout suggests that there are two options under consideration for Sturtevant and Putnam, either one side parking with boulevards and trees, or two way with NO TREES?!?! Ummm, NO!

For Sturtevant, that makes sense, it’s one-sided parking now, because the street is just too narrow for parking on both sides.  It’s a pain for our neighbors on the other side, for sure, but that’s how it is, it’s been that way for a long time, and we’ve adjusted. Putnam, though, is another matter.  That street is an inexplicably VERY wide concrete superhighway, and every time I’ve driven on it, there are cars parked on both sides.

It’s obvious that Putnam between West and Pine is as wide was West, a major thoroughfare in town, with upwards of 4,000 cars daily!

On Putnam, West to Pine, from perspective of both available space and resident use considerations, I don’t see any rationale for both-sides parking with NO trees OR one-sided parking with trees.  Are they planning to change the width of Putnam?  There’s no reason to change the status quo of parking on both sides with trees.  DON’T TEAR OUT THOSE TREES!

On Sturtevant, West to Prairia, that’s might be what’s at issue.  It is already one-sided parking with trees from West to Pine, which makes sense, but I don’t recall if it’s no parking on the north side west of Pine… I think I remember cars parked on both sides.  There are also many beautiful big trees there.  I’d think that it should remain as is, either no parking on the north side as it is from West to Pine, or parking on both sides WITH the trees.  Is parking an issue on that block?  For some houses, I think it is.  The ones on the south side seem to have large garages and driveways, on the north side, there are smaller garages, and some gravel driveways.  Restricting street parking may be a problem.

Neighbors, if you have thoughts about this, now’s the time!  Don’t wait, like we did, where we didn’t weigh in on the plans for our other street, West!  Here’s what West looked like:

Sturdevant, Putnam, Sanford and Kingman won’t be as bad, no way will it be anything like West, but oh, my, if you have any ideas, thoughts, comments, critique, NOW IS THE TIME, before it’s set in a blueprint.