The city of Albany is temporarily hitting the brakes on implementing a new 25 mile per hour speed limit.
Early this month the Albany Common Council unanimously approved legislation to reduce the speed limit on most city streets from 30 to 25 miles an hour.
The measure was sponsored by 14th ward Councilor Deb Zamer. "An important step towards making our streets safer for everyone," said Zamer.
Democratic Mayor Kathy Sheehan had 30 days to sign the measure into law. But Monday night the council decided the fast-tracked law needed to be slowed down. City Attorney Brett Williams spoke before councilors:
“As it was written and as it was passed, Local law M of 2022 had an effective date, the law would have gone into effect upon final passage, public hearing and filing with the Secretary of State, a process that at the longest would have taken a few weeks from now, which probably would have caused a great deal of confusion around the city, because the city code would have said that the speed limit was 25 miles per hour, while the signs in the city said the speed limit was 30 miles per hour, that would have made it difficult. Would have made it confusing for motorists. Would have made it confusing for police. Would have made it confusing for those of us who have to prosecute those tickets, and for the court as well. So this local law is being introduced to set an effective date for that new speed limit of January 1st, 2025,” Williams said.
Albany Police spokesperson Megan Craft previously told WAMC all the signage would need to be properly posted before enforcement could take place. Council Public Safety Chair Tom Hoey says no one realized how many signs would need updating.
“Yeah, we thought it was going to be easy to change because, you know, we knew that once it passed, it would take around 30 days for the mayor to sign and to, you know, have a public hearing, and we felt it could, you know, we'd be OK at that point. But yeah, it was just one of those things that we missed,” said Hoey.
At Monday’s meeting Williams told councilors he consulted with city engineers who agree the extension will give them a "reasonable amount of time.”
“There are, as is often the case these days, shortages of materials, such as the steel needed for the signs and the signposts. It's also an issue of manpower and man hours within the department of traffic engineering, but the five months or so from now to January 1, we've been told, ought to be enough time. In terms of the timeline, this is being asked for majority consent and given a message of necessity from the mayor so that it can be passed this evening. That way, the public hearing for this local law can be held at the same time as the public hearing for Local Law M 2022, and they can both be submitted to the Secretary of State at the same time, so there's no interval of time during which there's confusion regarding the status of the speed limit,” Williams said.
Councilors again gave their unanimous approval.
