When is a one-way alley, not really one-way? When local cops have no authority to enforce the designation.
That’s the odd problem the Brookfield village board plans to resolve next week when it approves an ordinance making the one-way traffic signs behind the Cordial Inn tavern official.
A few years ago, Brookfield paved the alley in the 3100 block between Maple and Arthur right behind the Cordial Inn tavern. The village put up two signs to make the alley one-way northbound to make sure cars leaving the tavern’s parking lot would exit on to 31st Street instead of heading south down the residential alley.
But at the time the village board forgot just one thing. It failed to enact an ordinance that would allow the police to enforce the one-way signs.
So next week the current village board aims to correct that oversight and enact an ordinance officially making the alley a one-way northbound alley.
“At night people are driving down the alley at a high rate of speed,” said Brookfield Village Manager Ricardo Ginex at last week’s Committee of the Whole meeting of the village board. Ginex said the village has received complaints from residents about customers of the Cordial Inn speeding southbound down the alley late at night.
Currently there is a temporary barrier at the north end of the alley and a few widely separated plastic orange cones that mark off the alley from the Cordial Inn parking lot.
The owner of the Cordial Inn, a man named Frank, he wouldn’t give his last name, said that kids often run off with the orange cones which leaves gaps in the separation. In any case cars can easily drive over the cones and go down the alley. The village hopes giving police the authority to write enforceable tickets will persuade Cordial Inn customers to exit on to 31st Street and not go down the alley.
Frank said he is all for the ordinance.
“Whatever they want to do is all right,” said Frank. “I tell them that if they put a squad car there they could get 40 tickets a day.”
But Frank also said he doesn’t think many of his customers drive the wrong way down the alley.
“There aren’t too many that do it,” said Frank.
Richard Rogoz lives just behind the Cordial Inn. He said Friday that occasionally he hears cars driving down the alley late at night, but doesn’t see much wrong way traffic in the alley during the day. He said he supports the plan to give police the authority to issue tickets for driving the wrong way down the alley.
“I think it would be a pretty good idea so that little kids don’t get hurt,” said Rogoz who said that a number of five and six year olds live on the block.
Ginex said the village has no plans to erect a permanent barricade to block off the alley because it is not proper planning to close off an alley. “We don’t think it is a good idea to block an alley off,” he said.
Village President Michael Garvey voiced strong support for the proposal and warned that drivers leaving the Cordial Inn who try to avoid 31st Street will be ticketed.
“If people are trying to leave that establishment and are trying to avoid 31st they will be ticketed,” said Garvey.