Stanton speed bumps may violate city policy

Controversy stems from City Council representatives again, as a road project in downtown El Paso may violate city policy. Speed humps were installed on Stanton St. next to Cathedral High School in February as a way to keep drivers from speeding through the area.

“Last year, before the speed limits came in, people definitely moved a little bit faster. But now that these speed bumps are in, you can tell poeple are taking it a little bit easier,” said cathedral parishioner Sam Litz, who drives down Stanton St. every week to go to mass.

This cathedral church goer says drivers have slowed down since the city installed these speed humps.
But it’s the process used to install the humps that’s raising eyebrows.
You see, the city requires residents submit an application to request street changes.
And using objective criteria, the city determines if the change is needed using something called the Neighborhood Traffic Management Program, but in the case of these speed humps, there’s no evidence the city followed it’s own process.
We asked city rep. Cortney Niland about this since it’s in her district – but she told us the speed humps were a project led by city manager Tommy Gonzalez and representative Larry Romero.

We reached out to Gonzalez to find out how the humps were approved.
A city spokeswoman sent us a statement from Gonzalez saying he attended two community meetings where residents expressed concern over traffic safety on stanton.
So he took action. In his statement he said:

“The neighborhood traffic management process in place usually would address these concerns; however, I firmly believe that safety issues are a priority and I did direct staff to install speed humps on stanton street, which is a very heavily traveled street and poses major concerns.” -tommy gonzalez, city manager

But there’s another issue: the city program says only residential streets, or residential connectors with no more than two lanes can have speed humps.
Stanton doesn’t meet that criteria.

Gonzalez told the El Paso Times the money used to install the Stanton humps didn’t come from the neighborhood management traffic program, so the humps didn’t have to meet the program’s requirements.
Regardless of the process, one resident says the humps haven’t stopped late-night speeders.

“Hitting at such a high speed, you can hear the thunk and then as soon as they clear the bumps they take off straight up Stanton St,” said Michael Narvaez, a Stanton St. neighbor.

ABC-7 did reach out to Rep. Larry Romero about his side on the issue, but he refused to comment, telling us it was representative Cortney Niland’s district.

Niland says she had nothing to do with the modifications.