The speed limit on Waldo Boulevard in Manitowoc will stay the same for now.
The council voted 8 to 1 Monday (July 15th) to keep it at 25 mph, but not without an attempted compromise from Alderman Todd Reckelberg.
He asked to amend a resolution that denied the speed change request to make it 30 miles an hour instead of 35 mph.
Reckelberg says the speed limit needs to change.
“You ask people do to something that’s unreasonable, they’re not going to do it,” he stated. “And 25 is very unreasonable. You make it 30. Hopefully they (drivers) will stick to 30.”
Alderman Tim Boldt and Council President Bill Schlei were against the amendment.
“Now you’re coming up 15th Street, they got a red light,” Boldt explained. “Most of the drivers will be trying to accelerate even faster now to try and go through that red light at North 8th Street.”
Schlei reiterated that thought, saying, “I just don’t see the sense in changing it. And people are going 35 miles an hour, maybe we need to have some specific enforcement over there once in a while.”
Alderman Eric Sitkiewitz wants the city to look at speed limits. He says the city is very inconsistent.
“I’d like to see a study done at the committee level to determine what the appropriate speed should be,” he described. “So, at least when constituents call us, they say that they want a speed change or reduction that there’s some rational behind our decisions on what the speeds should be.”
The change would have made it faster from the roundabout off Memorial Drive toward 8th Street.
One member of the public also spoke against changing the speed limit.
