Waverly Council discusses adding stop signs

Waverly Village Council met in regular session Wednesday and had an extensive discussion about an emergency item on the agenda.

Ordinance #75-2024 Sought to create a three-way stop at the intersection of Clough Street and Walnut Street.

The ordinance was declared in part due to the beginning of the school creating “a necessity for the three-way stop.”

According to Mayor Richard Henderson, Pike Christian Academy had an incident where a student was nearly struck by a car traveling on Clough Street last school year.

The ordinance would add a stop sign for traffic going from the intersection toward US 23 (down the hill); traffic traveling away from US 23 toward the intersection (up the hill) will not have a stop sign.

“That makes me nervous,” Councilman Skymr Bevens said. “That seems really confusing.”

“Is there no way to do some sort of lit flashing signals on either side to say ‘yield, slow, caution, school hours’ or something?” Bevens asked. “The just seems really confusing to have cars going through, if someone wants to turn left (off of Walnut Street onto Clough Street.)”

Henderson said there would be a cost to have flashing lights because there is not electricity in the area, so you have to have a solar powered signal, and Richardson said that the solar power would be “pretty expensive.”

All the streets that cross Walnut Street, except Clough Street have stop signs for traffic going toward and away from US 23.

Henderson explained that the reason for not making the intersection a four-way stop was the concern of stopping traffic on that hill when the road was ice or snow covered and having a vehicle stop and then roll down the hill.

Bevens still had concerns.

“I think there needs to be something that says oncoming traffic does not stop or has the right of way along with that (proposed) stop sign,” he said.

Henderson said he had talked to Street Department Superintendent Dean Knight and there would be additional signage saying that traffic coming from the one direction does not stop.

“We’re just trying to do something for the safety of the school,” Henderson said. “We’re having problems there, and we have to do something.”

Bevens said that he was “100% on board” with that, but still thinks the ordinance as written could cause some issues.

“It just makes me nervous doing that way without knowing more,” Bevens added.

The ordinance can be amended in the future, but as an declared emergency a vote on it was mandatory Wednesday or the council could have voted to table the matter.

“What we can do is try it,” Henderson said. “(We can see) if it works or if it needs to be readdressed and we can try something else. We can talk with the school and then after a few months say ‘is this helping or do we need to do something more?’”

Bevens asked if there was a way that there could be a trial run done on a couple of weekends to see how traffic responded to the new pattern.

The ordinance by 4-1 vote with Bevens dissenting and Councilman John Gedeon abstaining.