Peachtree City staff is recommending that a traffic engineering firm study two key intersections on Peachtree Parkway to determine what improvements should be made at each.

The study would cover the intersections on the parkway at Walt Banks Road, near McIntosh High School, and also at Crosstown Road, next to Braelinn Shopping Center. Both intersections are currently served by four-way stops.

The City Council is expected to consider the matter at its regular meeting Thursday night at 7 p.m. Also up for consideration is a plan to offer a stipend to volunteer firefighters for working four-hour shifts at a station.

Assistant City Manager Colin Halterman said the firm will conduct traffic counts at the intersections and give the city recommendations as to what improvements are needed now and what improvements will be needed in the future.

The project also includes engineering for construction of a cart path segment from Cooper Circle to the city’s baseball and soccer complex on Ga. Highway 74 South. When the highway is widened, the DOT has agreed to construct a tunnel underneath to accommodate a path link.

Last June the City Council rebuffed a proposal from the engineering firm Qk4 to make the Walt Banks intersection a roundabout.

City staff is recommending Professional Engineering Consultants for the job. Although its bid was the second lowest, at $209,000, staff indicated that PEC has more experience with path design than the low bidder, Stantec, at $177,000 — and staff felt some environmental work was excluded from Stantec’s proposal while PEC’s included the cost of all the necessary environmental work.

Council is also expected to consider a plan to offer a stipend to volunteer firefighters who work four-hour shifts at a station. Currently a $10.83 stipend is offered for volunteers who respond to a call, and that program has increased the number of volunteers responding from an average of one-half firefighter per call to more than three per call, noted City Acting Fire Chief Ed Eiswerth.

But when a volunteer is currently serving duty at a station and that station is not called to respond to an incident, the volunteer cannot receive the stipend even though they are on active volunteer duty, Eiswerth noted in a recent memo to the City Council.

Under the new program, if the volunteer is on station time, they could not be paid an additional stipend for each call they respond to, Eiswerth indicated.

The program has a cap where no person can earn more than $1,500 in stipends for a six-month period and that would not change under the proposal, Eiswerth indicated in his memo. He also noted that the program doesn’t guarantee the number of firefighters who are needed to handle an actual fire call.

login to post comments