Council hears update on new stoplights on Hwy 34/48 intersection

The Red Oak City Council recently met and received an update from Red Oak street superintendent Chris Baird who spoke to the council on the new stop lights at the intersections of Hwy 34 and Hwy 48. The lights went live on Sept. 4.
“Chief Justin Rhamy and myself met with the traffic light company representative who’s operating the 34/48 traffic lights. It was an important meeting, we felt, because now the city takes over the operation and maintenance of the lights. We felt this is a good experience for us to learn, both of us,” Baird said.
Baird said the representative explained how the lights operate with the assistance of the camera system.
“The way I understood it, if a car or truck or anything is coming at a very high rate, it senses that vehicle coming and it’ll switch the light from the other direction so that it goes to red and stop the speeding vehicle while the other vehicle will go through,” advised Baird.
Rhamy said he and Baird were told by the representative that the system for the light is reportedly one of the most sophisticated systems that are out there.
“If it senses any sort of danger, it’s video, motion, and radar activated. So if it senses a vehicle coming in too fast and that the vehicle won’t make the timing threshold, it’ll trigger the red. It senses up to 400 to 600 feet, so it would sense vehicles coming all the way past the Fourth Street intersection,” Rhamy said.
Baird added there were some things regarding the intersection that have been talked about, but locally there was not much the city could do to make changes, as everything was done by engineers at the state level.
In regards to traffic lights, Councilperson Brian Bills voiced some of the concerns he had with another traffic light on Broadway.
“I don’t want to wear this out, but we’ve talked about the light at Corning and 48 a number of times. When we had a four-way stop there, I never saw traffic backed up.. People would come, they would stop, and they’d continue on. Now that we’ve spent the money to get that light fixed, I notice sometimes that traffic will be backed up all the way to the Do-It Center, going to the south and all the way past the Fareway, going that direction. I’m not really sure if we need to maintain and keep that stoplight in operation, I know it costs us money to do so,” stated Bills.
City administrator Lisa Kotter said that the Iowa Department of Transportation had issued a recommendation that the stop light be removed, however, they did not advocate for a four way stop being put in place, and merely allowing the existing traffic to drive through unimpeded.
“We could ask, but I don’t think the DOT will support a four-way stop, and the decision to put one there is not up to us. They simply told us to pull it, because it’s a state highway,” commented Kotter.
Councilperson Sharon Bradley asked who was doing maintenance at the Hwy 34/48 intersection. Currently, the city is working with the state.
“They’ll mow two times a year. We normally are mowing it, but we’ve not had that agreement until just recently. There are ditches, not necessarily at the intersection, but there are ditches that are just not going to get mowed because of the severity of the slopes,” said Kotter.
Bradley felt that since the location was at one of the entrances to the city,  she felt they needed to make a point that the city is deploying maintenance on things.
The light is co-owned by the city and Montgomery County. If there were any issues or needed repairs, Baird said the city would be the first point of contact at the costs would be shared. Also, there were emergency features in case of an outage of power.
“It does have a battery backup. It was a fear of mine what would happen if the power went out. Here in town, we just put a stop sign out. The traffic in town is 25 to 30 miles per hour, but out there, you’re talking 45 to 50 miles per hour. When the power is out, we’ll know, because it goes to a four way flashing blinking light,” advised Baird.
If four way stop signs were required during a long outage, Rhamy said questions would need to be asked about who was responsible for putting stop signs in the middle of that intersection.
“It’s technically a state highway, under the agreement now, the stop signs along every approach road to Broadway is the state of Iowa’s responsibility, and the stop lights are ours, which doesn’t make an ounce of sense to me. I don’t know if we want to take that risk of putting four-way stop signs out there,” Rhamy commented.
Baird said in a situation like that, it would likely be handled by the local DOT office. No further discussion was held.
The council also appointed Lisa Kotter to the SWPCO RPA 13 Policy and Technology Board, and approved the appointment of Adam Smith as temporary patrol officer and approved the wage of $31.99 per hour. Smith will qualify for IPERS, but no other full time benefits.
“This is just going to be to help alleviate shifts while we have officers who are deployed overseas. Obviously, when he departed us and went to Council Bluff Fire Departments, he was still fully certified to the state of Iowa as an Iowa peace officer. With one of our officers deployed, it taxed us just a little bit with manpower. And being able to cover shifts fully, but I have to pay a whole bunch of overtime,” explained Rhamy. “Adam did approach us and said he’d be willing to do that for us. He thought he would still like to try to contribute to the IPERS while he helps out.”
The council approved the resolution as presented. Also regarding the police department, the council approved the purchase of a police patrol vehicle from T&T Ford for $45,932.
“This is just an annual yearly replacement of a vehicle. We’ll be replacing the same exact make and model of a vehicle, so the theory is we’ll have a cost savings there with being able to utilize some of the equipment that’s currently in the vehicle that we’re taking out. While there was a low bid, there was only $1,000 difference between the two, and a good majority of the equipment that we take out, like a cage, that’s about $3,000. It’s little more to buy that equipment new, so we should be able to transfer some of that equipment over for a cost savings,” said Rhamy.
The council approved the vehicle purchase.