Ellis Farm – Care4Suffolk

Road Safety in Suffolk

Care4Suffolk — Thu, 02 Nov 2023 15:12:59 +0000

Most people in Suffolk have probably heard about the school bus that overturned on Cypress Chapel Road on October 16th with twelve children on board. According to news sources, the bus driver and 12 children were taken to an area hospital and at least one child underwent emergency surgery. While the cause of the accident is still unknown right now, we do know that this is a narrow, rural road. School bus drivers brave these kinds of roads everyday in our city and this situation highlights the risk involved.

When the rezoning application, Lake Kilby Road rezoning request (RZN2021-018), came before the city earlier this year, Care4Suffolk opposed this rezoning on the basis of over-crowded schools and unsafe roads. During this rezoning, the topic of school bus safety on rural roads came up. We wrote about this in a March post.

The developer offered to widen the road in front of this proposed development, but only to 20 feet (from 16 feet) by extending pavement right to the edge of the existing ditches. The lawyer for the developer, Grady Palmer, stated at the Planning Commission, “We understand, that’s not standard. We wish we could do standard, but we can’t do standard. But 20 feet, and the way I think about this as a lawyer, can two school buses pass each other safely on 20 feet of pavement. I think the answer to that question is yes.” (Source: Planning Commission Meeting video mark 2:39:34-2:39:55)

This Suffolk school bus was measured from its widest points: side mirror to side mirror. The bus measures almost 9 feet 7 inches.

During the City Council Meeting on August 16, Council Member Fawcett called a city employee to the podium to ask him questions in an effort to discredit our research. The city employee stated that school buses are about 8 ½ feet wide and that he did not know of any incidents involving school buses on our roads during the school year. In actuality, Suffolk school buses measure 9 feet 7 inches from mirror to mirror, the widest points. The city employee may not have known of any accidents involving buses, but that doesn’t mean there haven’t been any, it just means the city didn’t bother to investigate these issues.

We filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the city and found that there were, in fact, over 56 incidents involving school buses throughout Suffolk last school year. There were sixteen incidents of buses being struck by other vehicles and eight incidents of a bus in a ditch. Accidents can happen anywhere for a variety of reasons. Collisions with other vehicles and buses flipping into a ditch are far more likely to lead to injuries. Narrow roads, with no shoulders, and steep ditches along the sides leave no room for error when something unexpected happens.

The information sheet below was provided to the city in opposition to the Lake Kilby rezoning application. It states the basic standard requirements from the City of Suffolk’s Unified Development Ordinance (UDO), the legal codes set forth by the city. The sheet below demonstrates the standards that the city is ignoring regarding road width and design standards for the amount of current and future traffic.

The diagram below demonstrates the road updates the developer was proffering. Developers improving roads below standards does not fix the problem of having lanes that are too narrow and ditches directly adjacent to the road.

The city may not have the funds to widen all of Suffolk’s many narrow, country roads, but it is well within their power to prevent large developments on these types of roads. That new development on Lake Kilby that just passed will be adding 200 homes and 2,000 more vehicle trips per day. Many tractor trailers already use this road as a cut-through, and many more are coming to our vicinity with new warehouses recently built and in works.

More vehicles equals more chances for accidents. If the City can’t fix the roads, for the safety of its citizens, it has two other options: require proffers from developers that will actually bring the roads up to standards or do NOT approve rezonings on these roads. The City of Suffolk needs to think of safety first; the safety of its citizens and the safety of our children.

U-Haul Truck Overturned on Manning Road

Care4Suffolk — Tue, 21 Mar 2023 13:45:25 +0000

This accident happened on March 17, 2023 at around noon. A neighbor in the area reported that the driver of the U-Haul experienced wobbling in the trailer pulled by the U-Haul truck as she came around the curve and ended up in the ditch. The neighbor also reported that rescue had to cut the driver out of the window, but she believes the driver was not hurt.

This is yet another example on Manning Road, and other narrow country roads likes this in Suffolk, that these roads are not designed to handle wide vehicles. With lanes that are only 8′ wide and deep ditches on each side, when something unexpected happens, there is no room for the vehicle to make a safe recovery: there is no room for error.

Adding developments to areas like this, with insufficient roads, is irresponsible. Suffolk needs to fix its infrastructure first, if it wants to build on these roads. Otherwise, accidents like this may be an every day occurrence.

Trucks Passing on Manning Road

Care4Suffolk — Tue, 15 Nov 2022 18:53:05 +0000

This is what it looks like with two big trucks try to pass each other on Manning Road. This happened right in front of Ellis Farms, where the developer wants to add 300 homes. The road is so narrow, with lanes each measuring about 8-8.5 feet, that trucks have to move off the road to make room to pass. There are no shoulders with these narrow lanes, and the road has a deep ditch on both sides down most of Manning Road. Manning has posted signs saying no thru trucks are allowed, but it doesn’t stop these big rigs from using it as a short cut or bypassing the traffic on Holland Road.

Opposition in a Box

Care4Suffolk — Fri, 28 Oct 2022 11:40:00 +0000

The Ellis Farm rezoning request has not gone before the Planning Commission with a public hearing yet, but CARE4Suffolk is ready when that day happens. In early September, when neighbors of Ellis Farm realized that a developer applied for rezoning of the land with the intention of building 300 houses, they gathered together to form a group to oppose this rezoning and came up with a plan of action.

When rezoning signs get posted by the city, there are only two short weeks for citizens to learn about the rezoning, gather information and research, and if they oppose the rezoning, it does not leave them much time to make a plan to oppose the rezoning. CARE4Suffolk would like share what we did to prepare for the Ellis Farm opposition.

Our first step was to contact the city and learn all we could about what the rezoning is, what the plan for the property is and where in the rezoning process it is. Next, as neighbors we started to connect with one another about this. We were emailing each other, calling, and bringing it up in conversation as we ran into each other. One of our neighbors organized a meeting to bring everyone together to figure out what we can do to stop the rezoning. She reached out to our city council member as well.

At our first community meeting at the house of one of our neighbors, where around 20 people attended, we discussed what our options are and let everyone have a chance to share their thoughts. The meeting was about 5 days before the scheduled Planning Commission meeting, so there wasn’t a lot of time. We decided to focus on two main areas of concern: overcrowded schools and traffic/safety on Manning Road. We asked for volunteers to speak before the city and two volunteers offered their help with research and writing. With this group of five, we worked the weekend to prepare the speeches and documentation to be delivered to the city the following Tuesday. We had an online petition gathering scores of signatures daily. We also had several people outreaching to the broader community to gain more support. Our plan was to have as many community members show up to the Planning Commission meeting as possible, and when our first speaker asked for anyone present who opposes the Ellis Farm rezoning to please stand up, our group would stand en masse. Our outreach was done through social media, emails, phone calls, and the monumental task of delivery flyers up and down Manning Road and the surrounding communities. We asked community members to ask their friends, family, and neighbors is Suffolk to join us.

As it turned out we were able to gather a crowd of about 50 people. We all showed up early to City Hall but the developer got wind of our opposition and requested the item to be tabled. The public hearing for the Ellis Farm was tabled for 30 days. At first we were all very disappointed and frustrated by this, but in the end it worked in our favor. Thirty days gave us a lot more time to prepare. We jumped right into preparations for the next Planning Commission meeting. One member of our group began getting t-shirts printed. Another started a website. We also decided to organize our volunteers into teams to better spread out the workload. In addition, our researchers grew in number and they had more time to perfect our arguments against rezoning. Our outreach team continued to deliver flyers, make calls, and post online. In addition, we held a series of public meeting inviting anyone in the community to come and bring a friend, to learn more about what we were planning.

CARE4Suffolk’s Blue Binder with each argument in opposition to the rezoning and each piece of documentation in its own labeled tab.

“Opposition in a Box”: This banker’s box contained eight blue binders from CARE4Suffolk, one for each Planning Commissioner, along with a thumb drive with a digital version.

From our first Planning Commission meeting we learned that emailing our substantial documentation, which was then printed by the city, and provided to the Commissioners, was not the best format to provide our detailed arguments opposing the rezoning. One member came up with the idea to organize our research into binders. Our research and writing team began to prepare these. We sorted our binders into sections, with each argument in opposition and each supporting document having its own tab to quickly reference. We duplicated this is a digital format. The week before the October Planning Commission meeting, all of our documents were due to be handed into the city. One member boxed up eight binders into a banker’s box and attached a thumb drive with the electronic version, and then delivered it to the city. We have dubbed this our “Opposition in a Box”.

By the end of the thirty days, our membership had multiplied and we began to make contacts with other Suffolk residents who were experiencing rezoning issues of their own. We began to collaborate and to share information and resources. The Lake Kilby group was scheduled to appear before the Planning Commission at the same time and their rezoning plight shared so many issues with our Ellis Farm rezoning. We decided to coordinate. We attended each other’s meeting and we shared our binder with them as well as our strategy. Our rezoning got pulled from the agenda by the developer, so we did not end up having our public hearing, but we were happy to be able to join forces with Lake Kilby and stand for them, as they were prepared to stand for us, to oppose the irresponsible rezoning on Lake Kilby Road. We are excited that the Planning Commissioners voted against recommending the Lake Kilby rezoning. We hope to persuade them to vote against rezoning Ellis Farm when we get a chance to have our public hearing.

If you are facing a rezoning request near you, and you have concerns about its impact, feel free to use any of our strategy to help your cause. Here is a link to our digital binder. It shows our arguments in opposition and the research we collected, and how we organized it all. If your rezoning concern is in Suffolk, consider completing our Rezoning Concern Form to let us know more about it.