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MADEIRA BEACH — Thirteen years ago, more than 70 residents on Crystal Drive asked the city to install speed humps to control speeders in their neighborhood.
At first the city agreed but then, faced with an opposing petition from about 200 other residents, the city changed its mind.
Flash forward to last week.
Crystal Drive residents are still complaining about speeders, but this time many more are young families with children and dogs. Recently one of those dogs was hit and killed by a speeding car.
The commission is still reluctant to install speed humps, but now says it will do so if all other alternatives fail to work.
"We are not here to cause disharmony, but have some compassion for us, give us a break. We have been fighting for this a long, long time," resident Anthony De Nevarra said, asking the city, as he did in 1999, to install speed humps on his street.
De Nevarra said the 1999 fight became a "circus" and that subsequent efforts by law enforcement to periodically patrol the residential neighborhood does not work.
Mayor Travis Palladeno agreed and pushed the commission to consider a number of alternatives ranging from speed humps to electronic signs displaying the speed of passing cars.
He even suggested the city could install cameras and pass an ordinance that would make speeding a code violation so the city could start issuing its own tickets to speeding cars.
That might not be legal, however, according to City Attorney Jim Trask, who stressed that sheriff's deputies could issue speeding tickets now without a new city ordinance.
He also reminded the commission that city government is "not a democracy" and that the commission can install speed humps if it believes they are in residents' best interests.
De Navarra acknowledged speed humps are "ugly" but cited a Pinellas County study that found they are the only way to permanently reduce speeding on neighborhood streets.
"You would not believe the people who fly through here, respectable people in our community," De Nevarra said.
He also pointed to other areas of the city that have speed humps, such as Madeira Way in the business district, and asked why Crystal Drive should be treated differently.
The commission did not have an answer, but Interim Fire Chief Derryl O'Neal strongly opposed speed humps on Crystal Drive.
"They delay our response time and are very detrimental to our apparatus," O'Neal told the commission.
The commission agreed, however, that other methods should be tried first and appeared ready to rent or purchase an electronic sign that would display and record speeds of passing cars.
"They (residents) have put up with it (speeders) for a very long time. I can understand their frustration," said Commissioner Carol Reynolds.
"If the residents on the street want it and we can do it, why don't we do it?" Commissioner Robin Vander Velde asked.
"We need to find out how many speeders we have out there, we need to do that right away," added Commissioner Terry Lister.
Interim City Manager Jim Madden proposed installing temporary traffic counters that would record both the speed and time of day of passing traffic and — most important — not alert motorists that their speeds are being recorded as the drive over the cables laid across the road.
That would give the city a truer picture of the problem, De Nevarra agreed.
After recording speeds for about a month, the city then plans to install an electronic sign it hopes would remind drivers to slow down.
If that doesn't work, the city is also considering installing portable speed humps that later could be moved to similarly affected neighborhoods.
"This is farther than we have gotten for 12 years," De Nevarra said, thanking the commission.
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