During heated exchanges at last night’s Belen City Council workshop, a citizen questioning the city’s process for placing speed bumps on residential streets ended with one city councilor conceding that city hall is violating its own ordinance by delaying a request for speed bumps.

Randy Gettings, who lives on Esperanza Drive, has been trying to work with city officials for seven months to get speed bumps placed on his residential street. He followed the city’s process for requesting the speed bumps, winning support from more than 90 percent of his neighbors on a petition required by the city.

But when it came time for the city to hold up its end of the bargain by conducting studies of the street, including an engineering study, the city backed off, and according to Gettings, passed the buck from one person to the next.

“It’s going around in a big circle and we’re getting nowhere,” he said.

While the workshop was set up to discuss amendments to the speed bump ordinance, more than once the conversation drifted toward Esperanza and the city’s inaction on that neighborhood’s request for speed bumps.

City officials had difficulty explaining why it’s done little to address the request, with Mayor Ronnie Torres saying the request was put on hold because the city wanted to take a closer look at its ordinance.

“I think we weren’t sure about the ordinance as a whole,” Torres said.

The city is weighing every option — things like eliminating the ability of citizens to get speed bumps, easing the burden on the city by doing away with certain requirements in the ordinance, such as the required engineering study, and even collecting a special assessment from citizens who want speed bumps on their street.

The length of the process, which now includes rethinking the ordinance, has upset Gettings.

“I’m frustrated with the city. Come on — seven months to give me an answer on speed humps? Come on,” Gettings told the city council and mayor.

He said he’s been waiting for the city to conduct an engineering study for four months.

“It shouldn’t take this long. Nobody should have to go through what you’re going through,” Torres told Gettings.

Councilor Rudy Jaramillo said the city is “misleading” the public about the process and not following through like it should.

“This is our fault. We let this happen,” he said. “We need to see what should be done on Esperanza. Randy’s done everything we’ve asked of him. Have we done everything we need to do?”

Similarly, Councilor Terese Ulivarri also put the blame squarely on the city.

“Randy did his thing. He got what he needed done. The city hasn’t done anything,” she said.

She pointed out the ordinance says the process of approving or denying speed bumps, which includes the engineering study, must be done in “a timely manner,” a phrase she said can be loosely defined, causing unnecessary delays.

“We’re not following our own ordinance and it’s got us in a pickle here,” she said. “We’re trying to fix it.”

The process bogged down administratively.

According to Andrew DiCamillo, the city’s planning and zoning director, he doesn’t have the expertise to conduct an engineering study, but the issue has fallen on him.

“There is a considerable amount of engineering required,” he said, adding, “I’m not an engineer.”

He pointed out the city has an engineer.

Ulivarri said one way of ensuring the city does its part is by drafting a sign-off sheet for the various city employees who need to complete one or more parts of the process.

“This needs to be tweaked and have some sign-off signatures for the police department, fire and the engineer,” she said.

By the end of the meeting, city officials decided to form a committee to continue looking at the ordinance — and decided, according to the mayor, to continue delaying the engineering study.

This page was published on January 26, 2010 at 10:42am and is filed under Infrastructure, Reform.