City Council Approves Overtime, New Bikes for City Officers

With one dissenting vote, the City Council Tuesday approved a request from Police Chief John Nesky to add $38,240 to the budget to put more bicycle officers on patrol.

Nesky proposed using two officers for seven hours a day on an overtime basis. In addition, the city would purchase four new police bikes at $2,000 each. The overtime funds would be used over the next two summers.

The officers would patrol areas throughout the city, including the city’s many trails, according to Nesky.

Councilman Todd Turner explained his "no" vote by saying he was not opposed to the idea, but that he pledged in December to vote against adding more money to the budget without cutting funds elsewhere.

Turner did ask for the council to appropriate $2,000 for a public safety campaign sponsored by the National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board. Turner is first vice chair of the board.

Turner said he would be seeking “requisite cuts in the pipeline” to offset the cost.   

Turner's colleagues agreed to the funding request.

Two officers will join the force in fiscal 2012 at a total cost of nearly $260,000, bringing the number of sworn officers to 54, just shy of the 57 officers projected in the original plans for the department.

Four officers funded in the fiscal 2011 budget will start the Prince George’s County police academy Friday.

In other business, the City Council did not support Councilman Dennis Brady’s request to include $100,000 in the budget to partially pay for a traffic light at Evergreen Parkway and Route 197 near the Bowie Town Center.

“When I come home, I see people struggling to get through that intersection,” Brady said. “And now that we’re over there [in the new City Hall nearby], it will be more of a problem.”

Councilman Henri Gardner, who lives nearby, agreed.

"I've had many residents talk about the intersection and ask for some sort of traffic light. Many people just avoid that intersection," Gardner said.

The money would be used as incentive to get the State Highway Administration to pay a share of the cost for a traffic light at the intersection on the state-owned road.

The State Highway Administration is not in favor of a full service traffic light, but the SHA’s proposed alternative to a traffic light to improve the intersection is “gathering dust,” according to Deutsch.

The SHA favors installing what is known as a Maryland T, a barrier in the median which would make it easier for cars to turn onto or off Evergreen Parkway but would not make the intersection safer for pedestrians, officials said. 

The city asked the state to make the traffic light a priority after a young woman was fatally struck by a car in 2007 near the intersection. Crossing in the darkness and outside a crosswalk, the 22-year-old woman, with an infant in her arms, was heading to Bowie Town Center from the townhomes across Route 197 when she was hit and killed.

Instead of pledging funds, the city will pursue state review of the intersection to determine the potential for a traffic light there.