Council Candidate Voices Concerns About Husky Trail

Three weeks after 8-year-old Gideon Cook was struck and killed by a vehicle along Husky Trail, the Warsaw Common Council was asked Monday what it was going to do to improve the safety along the road.

Mayor Joe Thallemer and Councilman Jack Wilhite responded that the traffic commission was going to take a hard look at the issue at its 1 p.m. July 10 meeting in the city council chambers.

Cook was killed June 10 while he was attempting to cross the road at North Pointe Drive for summer school with his two sisters. He wasn’t the first pedestrian to die along that road next to Harrison Elementary School.

On Jan. 22, 2016, 67-year-old Sharon Mitterling was killed when a Winona Lake police car hit her while she was crossing the road to get her mail.

Sara McNeal Strahan-Lenfestey, a Democrat candidate for the District 1 seat on city council, currently held by Republican Jeff Grose, brought up her concerns about Husky Trail at the council’s meeting Monday night.

“Today I’m approaching the board with a simple question. My question is, what can be done in our community to keep it safe? With the recent two fatalities that have happened on Husky Trail, it has been very troubling,” she said.

Strahan-Lenfestey said Mitterling was a longtime friend of hers.

“So, again, I ask the council: When can our children and our residents in our community be safe again? What ways are being explored to ensure safety to all of our residents on Husky Trail?” she asked.

She said she’s been talking to the residents in the Glad Street addition who have been concerned about children walking to school ever since Harrison School was built. It was built and opened in 1990-91. Warsaw Community Schools requires that a child walk to school if they live within a mile of the school. Strahan-Lenfestey said her son was a Harrison student and walked through a neighbors’ backyard to make sure he was safe traveling to school.

“Today I’m hoping that the voices of the  residents there and in that district will be able to be heard finally, and that you will be able to resolve some issue here in our community to keep our residents safe and our children,” she said.

Those means of safety could include a flashing yellow light that warns drivers a school is there, or a traffic area signal there to get people’s attention that there is a school there, she suggested.

She said concerns about traffic flow should not be more important than the lives of residents and children.

“I do know that we all can agree that we care about our children in our community and we also care about the residents that live here, and I know you guys can solve this issue, of figuring out ways that we can end up having a light and making sure our children are safe going to and from school,” she said, thanking the council for allowing her to speak.

Thallemer said he met with WCS Superintendent Dr. David Hoffert and members of the city’s traffic commission a few days after Cook’s accident. He asked them to start gathering traffic data, speed data and look at the different options for intersections.

“It’s a bigger problem than each one of those individual accidents with regards to ... that mile radius where kids are having to walk to school,” he said.

He said the city and school have addressed snow removal in that area in the winter so kids would have a safe place to walk. When Mitterling was killed, Thallemer said he went to the post office and asked they move the mailboxes to the other side of the street, which they did.

“There’s probably a lot of little steps. I know the traffic commission is going to look at all the different options. There’s flashing yellows, flashing reds, traffic signals. ... But, you’re right, something’s got to give,” Thallemer said.

At the July 10 meeting, he said all the traffic and speed data collected will be reviewed. State codes permit solutions based on traffic data.

“This is something that we’re working with the schools on hand-in-hand obviously because it’s a critical problem,” Thallemer said. “Crossing guards are critical and important. The school has its transportation department that has to try and make policy, and that’s policy the school board and schools will have to change if necessary. And the city is right there with the schools and assisting them in any way we can to make those kids’ travels to school safer."

He said he was saddened by the death of Cook, as was everyone at Monday’s meeting.

“It was a very tragic thing. Poor little guy, it just happened. But we’re looking at what the issues are. We’re going to sit down with the school and the traffic commission and try and come up with some concrete answers,” Thallemer said.

Strahan-Lenfestey asked about the speed radar box that had been sitting along Husky Trail but now isn’t there. Thallemer said it was just there to collect data, but acknowledged those do serve as a deterrent to drivers speeding.

Council President Diane Quance said one of the things the traffic commission needs to look at is school speed zones.

Wilhite, who sits on the traffic commission, said that may be one of the things it looks at.

“It’s exasperating by the fact that there’s two main routes north from Warsaw and (Husky Trail) is one of them. It gets heavier and heavier traffic all the time. It’s a bad place for a school. We’re going to be looking at it hard,” Wilhite said.

Councilman Jerry Frush said the spot on Husky Trail would be “an ideal spot for a four-way stop. It would be easy to do.”

In other business, the council:

• Spent almost an hour discussing whether or not the council needs its own attorney. City attorney Scott Reust reports directly to the mayor, and several of the council members said there have been times they would have liked to have someone else to talk to.

Thallemer and Reust pointed out that besides Reust, council members could always talk to the Aim state attorney among other options. Grose said his biggest concerns were protocol when a councilman wanted to use the council attorney and adding an additional expense to the taxpayers.

It also was pointed out that no other third-level city like Warsaw had legal counsel for its council, and when a city council had its own attorney in larger cities it was usually because members didn’t usually belong to the same political party. The Warsaw council currently is all Republican.

A task force of three council members will be formed to study the issue further.

• Approved the vacation of the north/south and east/west alleys at the county justice building parking lot as requested by the county. There were no remonstrators.