Proposed locations of the speed humps on Eighth Avenue are circled in red.

Nearly a dozen Eighth Avenue residents showed up at the Village Board of Trustees meeting last Tuesday to urge the panel to consider installing speed humps on their street, saying it has become a boulevard for cars, trucks, delivery vans and school buses trying to avoid the traffic light at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Lincoln.

“Eighth Avenue is a residential street,” said Steve Estrada, who lives there.  “It is constantly used as a cut-through by residents and non-residents alike.” Estrada noted that the vehicles that go flying down the street include New Rochelle garbage trucks and school buses. “Of course, we do not have school buses in town, so these buses are from other towns.”

Estrada asked the trustees to order a traffic study of the street, which is two-tenths of a mile long, as the first step towards the installation of speed humps or some other enforcement mechanism. He noted that the village speed limit, reduced last year from 30 miles per hour to 25, seemed to have no effect on drivers taking the short-cut between Fifth Avenue and Lincoln.  He said the last traffic study in the area, advertised by signs and special stripes on the street, was so obvious that it did not capture real driving behavior.  Estrada asked that the new study be conducted inconspicuously. “You’re welcome to mount a camera on my front porch,” he said.

Estrada also pointed out that since the last traffic study, some eight years ago, the demographics of Eighth Avenue had changed. Many young families had moved in, and there are now 22 children under the age of 10 on the street.

“Parents and neighbors are responsible for their own children,” Estrada said, “but we all know that it only takes one incident of a young child running out into street at the same time a FedEx truck barrels down the street at 45 miles per hour to cause a catastrophic and fully avoidable tragedy.”

To demonstrate support from Eighth Avenue residents, Estrada said 34 of 38 households on the street had signed a petition in favor of speed humps, with a total of 132 signatures.  He said the goal of the petitioners was to “come away with an understanding of the process and hopefully the board’s commitment” to a solution. Estrada pointed out that speed humps have been installed on Fourth Avenue, Ancon Avenue, and Pelhamdale Avenue.

Puzzlement after affordable housing talks with county 

Since the last affordable housing discussion, Village Planning Consultant Nanette Bourne and Mayor Chance Mullen met with the Westchester County Planning Department. To their surprise, Bourne and Mullen learned that to access discretionary funds from the county, the Village would need to provide affordable housing in excess of what the trustees had planned to include in their ordinance. Further, any new ordinance would have to be aligned with 14 components of the county’s policies.

“This is almost a dis-incentive for affordable housing,” said Bourne. She said the county policy would hurt the village and developers when trying to get funding. The village could argue in favor of county funding based on the public benefit of a particular project, but Bourne said no funding would be guaranteed.

“What concerns me is that it is one thing to be consistent to try to defend your own policy, it’s something else to defend your policy and not have any affordable housing built,” said Mullen. “There will be no affordable housing built in a building that never gets built.”

Summing up,  Mullen said the trustees have a “comprehensive plan that requires us to redevelop our downtown. That comprehensive plan and the oaths we swore to do these jobs supersede the county’s agenda. I think it is important that we find some alignment [with the county], but I also think we have to defend the work we are doing.”