CHEVIOT, Ohio — An impaired driver lost control of her car and drove into Alyssa Bryant’s yard on Applegate Avenue in Cheviot last Sunday night.
“She took a big chunk out of the side of the hill here,” she said, pointing to the area where the impaired driver came to rest.
The problem, according to Bryant, is that there’s too much activity on the street and people driving too fast.
“That’s every day,” she said. “Multiple times an hour.”
Bryant said she’s hoping for a permanent fix: Speed bumps or some other kind of deterrent.
Along with a half dozen other homeowners, she took her concerns to Cheviot City Council hoping for a change to make their community safer.
“I feel like I’m not asking too much to ask for additional safety measures for our neighborhood,” Bryant said.
She said she discussed the issue with the police department and the city safety director.
“I can tell you, Applegate Avenue is the 50th or 60th street that has requested speed humps,” Cheviot mayor Samuel Keller said. “If we put speed humps in every street that requests them, we’d have nothing but speed bumps over our entire city.”
He said that adding speed bumps wouldn’t be beneficial due to the damage it could bring to city vehicles like fire trucks, and the funding for projects like speed bumps simply isn’t there.
“It’s not like there’s a plethora of tax dollars coming into the city of Cheviot,” Keller said. “I wish I had 30 officers that I could run on every shift that could run radar. The reality of the situation is that we have two officers on each shift. Three on a power shift from 4 to 4. There’s only so much we can do.”
Council said they would put up a radar sign and continue to monitor the issue. Bryant said she would continue to advocate for her street.
“I was very disheartened and taken aback by the mayor,” she said. “I thought he was extremely aggressive. [I] didn’t feel respected or heard by him.”
