By Myrna Trauntvein
Times-News Correspondent
How can young people be stopped from speeding along city streets?
Riding ATVs and motorcycles along city streets is a privilege that can be lost if the city council would decide to make such travel illegal.
Mona Mayor Bill Mills shared an anonymous letter with the city council at Tuesday's meeting.
"For the last month and a half," said the author of the letter, "there have been 4-wheelers and motorcycles flying through the streets of Mona and also running stop signs."
The writer then asks: "Is there anything that can be done about this?"
Lynn Ingram, city planning commission chairman, said that it is true that some have been using Mona's Main Street like it is their own personal drag strip.
"I worry as much about parents in their cars using cell phones, speeding, not stopping for stop signs and doing all of this while the kids are in the car," said Mills.
A variety of things have been tried, he said, with the parents who are speeding. The sheriff had even put up the speed clocking sign and had moved it around the city's streets.
Nothing had really helped.
As far as the kids were concerned, said Mills, perhaps if a complainant knew who the child was or had a license plate number, they could call the sheriff and report the offender.
Perhaps parents did not know that their children were being unsafe.
Mills said he could, once again, call the sheriff and ask for more patrols.
However, the sheriff had a busy office and not enough law enforcement to go around, said Mills.
"I see officers here all of the time," said Molli Graham, council member. "I think they do a good job of patrolling."
Mills said that perhaps people should just talk to the kids and try to get them to slow down. He had even tried that with a few parents he had seen behaving unsafely.
"It works for awhile," he said.
Allen Pay, city water master, said he had tried talking to a few young people and asked them to please drive a nice speed. Another person he knew, however, had chased one kid home and now that young person just taunts the adult.
It is better, he said, in his opinion to use a more gentle approach.
"Michelle (Dalton, secretary), please post a request on our facebook page," said Mills."Ask parents to talk to their kids about the ATV laws and remind them that it is a privilege to be able to ride them in the city. Remind them that they don't want to lose this privilege but they could."
