“This gets backed up a lot,” said a woman waiting for her fourth grader Friday, March 11, after the closing bell.
The driver, who wouldn’t give her name, was hit by a truck in September after pulling out of a streetside parking space just two cars down from the school’s parking lot entrance. She said that drivers often swerve around slow and stopped cars, creating a dangerous situation for students.
“They don’t have consideration,” she said.
The city of Tracy hopes to solve this and other traffic-related issues at the school by turning stretches of Dove Drive immediately next to the school’s lone parking lot entrance into no-parking zones from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m., while turning the bus turnout — currently a red zone — into a spot where parking is allowed.
Regular buses will still pick up students on Sycamore Parkway, just around the corner for the school at 1280 Dove Drive.
The City Council is expected to approve the changes at its Tuesday, March 15, meeting.
Hirsch parent Juan Rangel, parked Friday in what will soon be a no-parking zone, said that it might help during the busiest times of the day in front of the school.
“About 1:30 to 3 p.m., there’s a lot of traffic here, but later it clears up, about 3:30,” Rangel said.
Congestion and reckless driving are reported problems at many of the city’s schools, and for the past few years the city has made adjustments to parking and driving rules near several schools in an effort to improve safety for kids and drivers alike.
Also at Tuesday’s council meeting:
• The council will be asked to approve more money for a consultant that was hired to help organize a new computer aided dispatch-records management system for the Tracy Police Department. According to city staff, the current system is at the end of its lifespan, and the project, already “very highly technical and complex,” according to city staff, became even more difficult “when the needs of the city required the new CAD-RMS system to handle multi-jurisdictional and multi-agency capabilities.”
The maximum additional $272,500 will cover what the city calls the consultant’s increased time and services for the project, and will be paid for out of capital improvement expenditures approved in the 2008-09 fiscal year budget, and won’t affect this year’s budget.
• Approve hiring a full-time employee as an administrator to the CAD-RMS system. The position, which will cost the city $77,174 in salary and benefits for nine months, would be paid in full for nine months by a $100,000 state COPS grant. The balance of the grant could be used to pay for several pieces of technology to assist the police department, including video monitoring of the detention area, outfit all cruisers with Bluetooth hands-free headsets, and a computer system to help traffic cops and detectives reconstruct crash scenes.
• The council will have a hearing about how to spend $439,000 in Community Development Block Grants and $152,000 in HOME grants. City staff recommends putting the HOME money toward the city’s Down Payment Assistance Loan program, while the council will have several options for disbursing the CDBG money.
Traffic traveling east on Dove does not have a stop sign and vehicles often unsafely barrel through the blind intersection. A stop sign for east-bound traffic on Dove would also (hopefully) slow down the many speeders during non-school hours.
With a 4-way stop, get rid of the Right-Turn-Only Municipal Code posted at the exit of the parking lot. It make no sense as some drivers live right across Dove or to the left of the exit. This sign merely re-directs the snarl of traffic to the Dove/Sycamore intersection.
And yes I have children.
The drop off/pick up problems are at all the schools. My kids go to Poet and luckily we are on a 4 lane street so it doesn't seem as bad. However parents still don't get the idea of the car line. It is ridiculous.
Hello! Do not park on the school side of the street from Larsen Park to the car line, EVER, during drop off/pick up times. The line would run smoothly if people stay in line and follow the flow. Also there is a double yellow line....so don't do a u turn in front of the school!
Hirsch could have a car line on Sycamore since it is 4 lanes too. Have a staff member on the sidewalk and the car line dropping kids off at the Sycamore side. You don't need a consultant for that.
By the way: how is keeping kids in School, and out of gangs, anything other than a Parent/Child problem? "You" are the parent. The only way to prevent them from dropping out, or joining a gang, is to be a decent parent. It is not up to the City, or the Tax Payers, to keep these kids in school. If they drop out, or join a gang, it is because you failed them as a parent. Not because the city wouldn't fork over a few dollars to teach them the lessons you never wanted to.
Ooops, I think you're correct. Sorry about that!
I still disagree with the need to hire the consultant. Doesn't the city have an information technology department with that kind of expertise who could certainly handle that?
But when it comes to spending money on consultants for studies about traffic issues created by parents picking up their children at a "school", it becomes a city problem and the city needs to spend a quarter of a million dollars to find out what the problem is. How ironic is that?
I get off from work at 2:30 in Livermore, and by the time I get into Tracy to drop off my three co-workers I get to enjoy this experience every day.
If someone wants to risk getting a ticket for parking in a no parking zone, be my guest, I don't care, but I hate it when the street is used as a parking spot. While it's a inconvenience and depending on my mood a pain in the butt, I do worry about emergency vehicles like police, fire or an ambulance losing even one second of their time when they have to play the maze game.
Any way you look at this it stinks...
Every school where parents pick kids up at, especially in a residentual area is like this. I turned on Kavanaugh off Corrall Hollow one day and both roads were totally blocked. Same went for another area.
No consideration is right.
People are not going to wait for your kids to get out of school.
Tuesday he's recommending that we spend another $272,000 to hire another consultant. If that's not hypocritical then what is? Churchill, thiessen, and the rest of his team of misfits need to go.