Commissioners lower Heritage Drive speed limit to 30 mph

New signage remains a few weeks away, but Heritage Lake drivers should be on notice: Slow down.

This after the Putnam County Commissioners voted unanimously on Monday to lower the speed limit on Heritage Drive to 30 mph.

The process of lowering the speed limit took several months, but as County Attorney Jim Ensley pointed out, the decision was pretty cut and dried once he and County Highway Supervisor Mike Ricketts took a closer look at the Heritage Drive. The area qualifies as an “urban district” simply based on the number of houses per mile.

As such, the decision was simpler and less costly than a speed study would have been.

The bigger question revolves around why the speed was ever raised to 35 mph, which is unsafe in many of the hilly or curvy areas of Heritage Drive.

The speed limit was changed in 2011, when the commissioners changed the speed limit on a number of county roads.

The thought at the time was to change the speed limit from the state standard to a locally-determined rate so that the “local ordinance violations” would get money flowing directly to the county without the state taking its cut, as it does on most tickets.

However, the county subsequently discovered that such a setup was difficult to enforce and may have been contrary to state law.

More recently, Heritage Lake residents, most prominently Property Manager Ken Rozelle, expressed safety concerns. Rozelle sees these first-hand in his role as a reserve sheriff’s deputy.

With safety in mind, there were few questions in the commissioners’ minds until it was pointed out that the other roads at Heritage Lake actually have a 45 mph speed limit.

As county roads with no posted speed limits, they automatically have the state standard speed limit for county roads.

While this is laughable on some of the short cul-de-sacs around the lake, local residents worry about some of the roads in the area that are densely populated, but have stretches where a vehicle can gain some speed.

“We thought we had one issue,” Commissioner David Berry said. “Now we have two.”

After some discussion, Commissioner Rick Woodall suggested at least taking care of the first issue.

“Let’s deal with this one first,” Woodall said. “Then we’ll take step No. 2 to deal with the rest.”

After the motion passed, the discussion of the other roads continued.

A list of the other roads to be considered will need to be gathered, and then it will need to be determined if they qualify as an urban district.

Rozelle told Ensley he would have a list to him soon.