T-R FILE PHOTO Following a discussion during Monday night’s meeting, the Marshalltown city council voted 5-2 to convert the intersection of South 6th Street and West Merle Hibbs Boulevard (pictured) from a two-way to four-way stop. The change will take effect on Thursday.

About two months after a petition was first presented with over 300 signatures from Marshalltown residents requesting the change, the city council officially approved converting the intersection of West Merle Hibbs Boulevard and South 6th Street to a four-way stop during Monday night’s regular meeting.

The conversation was part of the first reading of a larger ordinance change updating yield intersections across the city, which Public Works Director Heather Thomas described as the culmination of a couple years of work within the engineering and street departments to control 145 intersections that were previously uncontrolled.

“While we did that, we also determined that our ordinance that was last updated or recodified in 2013 had some discrepancies from what was in the field and what was in the ordinance, so we worked to update some of those intersections. And there were 18 intersections that we found like that,” she said.

Thomas referenced specific intersections as examples and said there were 416 stop signs in configurations that were in wording conflict with the city ordinance. The 18 intersections she mentioned will switch from yield to stop signs as the result of requests from property owners and determinations by city employees.

The research also showed the presence of stop signs like those at Riverside Cemetery, Menards, Walmart and the Iowa Veterans Home that Thomas did not feel the city bore responsibility for maintaining and keeping in their ordinance, so those were removed. Stop signs where streets have been vacated were removed as well along with one at the intersection of Washington and South 2nd Street due to the closure of the railroad crossing there.

In addition to the larger ordinance change, Thomas asked for council direction on the aforementioned intersection at West Merle Hibbs and South 6th Street, noting that the ordinance called for four stop signs at the location before the petition was presented. Currently, there are only two stop signs on Merle Hibbs Boulevard but none on South 6th Street.

“With that, our ordinance does currently have four stop signs there, so that particular location would not need to go through three readings to be implemented. We did feel, though, because of how busy of an intersection this is, we did want to make sure it came before you guys one more time to get voted on before we make changes in the field,” Thomas said.

She added that city staff are prepared and ready to make the change, and they were hoping to do so by Thursday with plans to utilize electronic message boards and provide advance notification in hopes of getting the word out as widely as possible. Councilor Greg Nichols motioned to move forward with the new configuration, and fellow Councilor Mark Mitchell quickly seconded it.

Councilor Melisa Fonseca asked about the pedestrian crosswalk, which Thomas said would not be painted, and Councilor Jeff Schneider expressed his opposition by arguing that he did not believe a four-way stop would make the intersection any safer.

“In my research, this is not an appropriate intersection for a four-way stop, especially given the downhill approaches from the north and south. This is also a road that was meant to get traffic north and south more quickly through town, so we’re deprioritizing the majority of traffic, I’d say,” he said, noting that there is four times as much north-south traffic as east-west. “I have gone through this intersection probably 10,000 times in my life, and that’s no exaggeration. I used to have a business out there. I had an office out there for 15 years. I live in that area of town. I just do not think this is a wise idea. I think we’re gonna get more accidents.”

If the council was serious about making it a safer intersection, he added, they would consider a survey to study the possibility of a roundabout or traffic circle. Fonseca said she could understand both sides of the argument and asked for more information specifically related to safety.

Thomas reiterated that her recommendation, based on quantifiable data, was not to implement the four-way stop there.

“I do understand comments about being proactive for future traffic, but to some degree, you could apply that to a lot of other places too as far as putting stop signs in,” she said. “The importance of thoroughfares in a community is to provide that arterial and collector streets and to minimize the amount of impeding traffic flow, so definitely installing stop signs would impede 6th Street as it’s currently designed today.”

Ultimately, however, the council has decision-making powers, and all Thomas can do is provide information, she said. As he offered his view, Nichols, who represents the ward where the intersection is located, cited the petition in offering support for the four-way stop.

Mitchell felt that snowplow drivers would oppose a roundabout, and during the public comment period, Doris Kinnick told the council she had changed her opinion and now supported the four-way stop the more she has driven on South 6th Street especially with the impending closure of the Center Street Viaduct.

Mayor Mike Ladehoff asked the council to vote on the four-way stop issue first, but Councilor Gary Thompson called for a point of order as he felt the matter had already been decided due to the wording in the ordinance calling for a four-way stop. Thomas recalled that there were discussions back in 2011 and 2012 about the intersection, and the council initially agreed to make it a four-way stop before reversing course after the speed limit was reduced from 45 to 35 miles per hour.

Because the larger ordinance change motion was brought forward first, Thompson called for that vote to occur first, and it passed by a unanimous 7-0 tally. The subsequent motion specific to the four-way stop was held up by another point of order from Thompson, who asked if three readings would need to pass before it could be implemented and wondered if it needed to be voted on at all since it was already codified under a previous council.

Thomas responded that she was simply asking for council direction and hoping to be as transparent as possible, and City Administrator Carol Webb felt another motion would be beneficial. That motion passed 5-2 with councilors Schneider and Marco Yepez-Gomez opposed.

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Contact Robert Maharry

at 641-753-6611 ext. 255 or

rmaharry@timesrepublican.com.