Back in May, County Engineer Derek Snead met with the Jones County Supervisors to introduce his department’s plans to begin working on a Safety Action Plan (SAP).
A SAP “is a document that provides local governments the means to make strategic roadway safety improvements. The plan will identify the most significant roadway safety concerns in your community and outline the projects and strategies to address them. In addition to assisting local practitioners in understanding crash trends within their jurisdiction, a SAP will also be a locally focused plan for practitioners to make informed, prioritized safety decisions.”
During the Oct. 22 Jones County Supervisors meeting, the board approved a pledge “in support of the strategies outlined in Iowa’s Five-Year SHSP (Strategic Highway Safety Plan) and the overall vision of zero fatalities on Iowa’s public roadway.”
“This document is going to be inserted into Jones County’s SAP,” Snead said.
Of the comprehensive plan, Snead explained it doesn’t just pertain to roadways.
“It also takes into account things like education and legislation. For example: helmet laws, seatbelt laws, distracted driving laws, etc.,” he said. “It does have road components in it as far as uniform signs and things we can do in coordination with a higher frequency of traffic.”
Of the Jones County SAP, it will be used to identify “dangerous stretches of roadways, intersections, and goals moving forward” not just for Secondary Roads, but the county as a whole when it comes to safer roadways.
Snead said the state’s SAP is targeting decreasing serious and fatal accidents throughout Iowa in the next five years. The stats show the total number of incidents “equates to approximately to one person being either fatally or seriously injured per month per county.
“Unfortunately, a large portion of those injuries or fatalities are on local roadways,” continued Snead. “About 70 percent. They don’t carry as much of the traffic volume, but they do count for the majority of the accidents. They don’t have the ability for as many of the safety features on local roadways.”
Having a SAP opens up the possibility for federal grants to help fund safety improvements along county roadways.
In other county business:
• The board held a public hearing to discuss a violation of the county nuisance ordinance on property owned by Matthew Mayberry located at 9073 County Road E-45 in Wyoming. James Bartram currently resides on the property.
Land Use Administrator Whitney Amos shared that after reviewing the property the week before, she felt there was an improvement from what the condition of the property initially looked like.
Bartram said he researched the code via the Iowa Legislature and found that old RVs/campers that are used for storage don’t need to be registered.
“So that means I don’t have to get rid of my RV,” he told the board.
Amos said she’d have to review the ordinance.
The board felt Bartram had made a big improvement and voted to abate the nuisance. Supervisor Joe Oswald was opposed. He felt that if the board abated the nuisance, the condition would revert back to how it looked in the beginning.
“I’m not going to stop,” offered Bartram of continuing to clean things up. “If you drop it today, I’m not going to stop cleaning it up. I will let you know that.”
“I want to encourage you not to let it get bad again,” urged Supervisor Ned Rohwedder.