Question one: Why is the city spending $400,000 to install temporary bulb-outs at two intersections on lower Main Avenue to judge their efficacy for two months, when there are existing bulb-outs in two neighborhoods that could be studied right now – Three Springs and Twin Buttes?
I suggest city staff members drive out to see the tire marks on these bulb-outs, where vehicles have cut the corners too tight, creating an unsafe situation. This action would have cost a couple of dollars in gas rather than $400,000.
Question two: What is driving the Next Step project to modernize downtown sidewalks and intersections, when the existing infrastructure has worked fine for decades? I suggest the city staff go downtown at any time, and witness families and couples strolling up and down Main Avenue with no problem.
I maintain you should not fix something that doesn’t need fixing, especially when the unneeded fix will cost tens of millions of dollars, if not more.
My third question: Why not take tens of millions of dollars, plus the in-lieu parking fees collected from a bank and other businesses that were earmarked for a future parking structure and do just that. Build a parking structure?
It has been discussed and never acted on for decades. This would fix the present parking problem that has encumbered the property owners on Third Avenue and neighborhoods to the east.
This would fix something that really needs fixing.
Gerald Weis
Durango
