Consider yourself warned.

The Chesterton Police Department is now blitzing local roadways with the specific goal of decreasing accidents.

“With the warmer weather and the time change, department personnel are out in what we’re calling ‘crash reduction teams,’” Police Chief Dave Cincoski told the Town Council at its meeting Monday night.

Officers will focus their efforts on dangerous driving behaviors, like speeding and disregarding traffic signals, in high-risk areas, like Ind. 49 and busy intersections.

“This is the only warning people will get,” Cincoski noted.

In other business, Street Commissioner John Schnadenberg reported that the street sweeper is out and about. “Usually we break it out in April but the weather’s been so good,” he said.

The warm weather will not, however, accelerate the schedule of the Street Department’s annual Cleanup Week, which remains on tap, as always, for the third week of April.

Fall, on the other hand, is months away but not too distant to begin thinking about the 2012 leaf program. Schnadenberg requested, and members voted 4-0 to give him, authority to prepare specs and obtain three quotes on a new leaf vacuum, the cost of which will be covered by the 53-cent increase in the monthly sanitation fee paid by residents.

The council enacted that increase late last year—bringing the monthly fee from 47 cents to $1—partially with a view to defraying the expense of a new leaf vac.

Meanwhile, Schnadenberg told the council that the Porter County Highway Department is interested in replacing the bridge on 1100N just east of Pioneer Trail. The bridge is old, very narrow, and weight-limited, Schnadenberg said, and is in need of replacement.

But there’s a problem. A sanitary sewer force main is located alongside it and would need to be relocated, he said.

Schnadenberg will accordingly recommend to the Utility Service Board at its next meeting, March 19, that the force main be moved.

Schnadenberg also gave the council a head’s-up about a brand-new incurring cost which the Street Department will be absorbing: the one associated with the federally mandated upgrade of road signs to a certain level of “reflectivity.”

Traffic signs must be upgraded by 2015, street-name signs by 2018, Schnadenberg said.

Fortunately for the town, the $9,000 light meter used to measure sign reflectivity Schnadenberg will be obtained on loan through the auspices of the federally funded Local Technical Assistance Program. The town will get a hold of one this spring and will have it for five to six weeks, Schnadenberg said.

There are over 500 stop signs alone in the town, he noted. The more recently replaced ones should pass reflectivity muster but the older ones will need to upgraded.

Posted 3/12/2012