Over the past six months there have been at least five or six accidents in which children have been hit by cars either walking to school or home from school in Utah. I have been working with the local schools and parents over the past few years in trying to make the school zones and walking routes that the children of our community use to get to and home from school safer. The responsibility of ensuring the safety of streets and the safety of the crosswalks etc falls is that of the City of South Jordan (not to take away from the fact that the safety of the children also falls on the shoulders of the parents as well, however the parents do not have control over safety features that could be put in place for added safety of the children). 

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     In the past few years there has been some safety improvements made that I have been pushing for with the help of local leaders. One of those improvements was getting additional crossing guards at all three of our local Elementary Schools. One of the hurdles to get these crossing guards is the same hurdle that is still putting the children of our community at risk, which is the City of South Jordan’s concern of impeding the flow of traffic.

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     Now there are still three locations that I have been pushing to get stop signs in that are walking routes for the children of the Daybreak Elementary School. Two of the locations are in the school zones itself in which there have been many close calls of where children have almost been hit by cars. And to top it off, all three of these locations (Pale Moon Lane and Blue Rise Ave Ave, Krestel Rise Rd & Silent Rain Dr, & Krestel Rise Rd & Harvest Side Lane) have had data strips laid out for metrics for the City engineers and in all three locations the average speed of traveling cars is above the speed limit and even up to 10 mph over the speed limit. Now I understand the City of South Jordan has had to make budget cuts and the City needs to be careful about their spending. However the City of South Jordan has the healthiest budget in South Salt Lake County and our reserve funds (savings) are maxed out at $5 million. And the cost and installation of a stop sign only costs the City of South Jordan a few hundred dollars.

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     So the questions at hand are: 

.1.   Is the safety of the children of the Daybreak community worth the cost of a few extra stop signs? 

.2.   And/or is the flow of traffic more important than the safety of the children in the Daybreak community?

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     I am sending another formal request to the City Manager, John Geilmann, to install the requested stop signs in hopes that he will finally agree that the safety of the children of the Daybreak community are more important than the flow of traffic and is worth the few hundred dollars per stop sign. I will update this story once I get a response…

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     I in my follow up to this story I will also be identifying locations that the residents and parents of the Eastlake Elementary children are trying to get stop signs installed to ensure the safety of the children who attend their school. There is a Eastlake PTA lunch/meeting this coming Wednesday Feb 17^th that I have invited Kent Money, John Geilmann, and Lindsay Shepherd to in hopes they could get some first hand feedback on some of the safety issues facing the children of Eastlake Elementary, hopefully they will attend.

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     In hopes to get the most visibility possible this story is being sent to all registered Daybreak Daily users which includes many local leaders and at least four local media outlets. The last thing I want to see is another story about a child being hit by a car on the way to or from school, lets see if the leaders at the City of South Jordan do the right thing, actions speak louder than words…

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Thanks for your support…

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Joe Ross~