OOLITIC – During Monday night’s meeting of the Oolitic Town Council, members approved an ordinance that alters speed limits throughout the town, creating a 25 mile per hour base limit for each street, except for alleys capped at 10 mph and school zone around Hoosier and 10th Streets at 20 mph.
The ordinance has not gone into effect. It will be read again and brought for a final vote at the council’s February meeting. If approved then, it would go into effect.
The reason for this change is that some of the current posted speed limits in Oolitic are legally unenforceable, according to council member Jon Broglin.
Broglin said that Indiana state statute requires cities and towns to have a traffic and road engineering completed and filed to legally enforce any speed limit below 25 mph.
Town Marshal James Harrington spoke to the rules regarding speed limits, saying that because the posted speed limit cannot be enforced, he is required to follow state law, which states an unmarked urban zone is to be set at 30 mph, with residential zones at 25 mph.
Additionally, Harrington said that in his experience judges are unlikely to force drivers to pay for any speeding tickets below 10 mph over the limit, so he and his crew are unlikely to issue citations because of their limited resources, which require them to currently write all tickets by hand, with them running low on ticket books.
As such a driver would need to be driving at a minimum of 40 mph in a non-residential area of the town before Harrington or any other officer could meaningfully give them a legal citation.
Additionally, Harrington said that in the event a driver is pulled over for speeding in an unenforceable zone, any evidence discovered after that point would likely be thrown out in court, because the officer knowingly pulled over the driver without legal basis to do-so.
Some members of the council expressed concerns the ordinance, which would raise speed limits in some areas of the town that are posted as 20 mph that drivers frequently speed through already, though each member voted unanimously to move forward, as current limits were said to be legally unenforceable.
Another concern would be the cost to the town of replacing traffic signs. Should this ordinance go into effect, the town would need to purchase either stickers to go over current signs or new signs entirely in areas where the limits would be changed. Before the next meeting, Broglin said he would contact businesses to receive quotes on how much such changes would cost.
