The Utility Commission met on Tuesday, June 1, 2021. A video of that meeting is available at
http://mountvernoncityoh.iqm2.com/Citizens/SplitView.aspx?Mode=Video&MeetingID=2062&Format=Agenda .
When you watch it, you will see the City Engineer spouting one vague notion after another about tying an “emergency” in water lines to the destruction of the Edgewood Road neighborhood.

Residents of Edgewood Road neighborhood have been hearing the water line excuse for more than five years. Some “emergency.” In fact, water lines are just the latest excuse to ram ever more traffic through the largest contiguous R-1 neighborhood in Mount Vernon.

It is past time for City Council to halt piecemeal destruction of our neighborhood, when every so called “improvement” the city has made on streets and roads connected to Edgewood has increased the flow of traffic. Increasing traffic makes the neighborhood ever less appealing for residential use.
A qualified engineer should study the effect of ever-increasing traffic on a short residential street that was not designed for such use, has six intercepting cross streets or dead-ending streets in the 3100 feet from Gambier Road to Marieta Drive, crosses hilly terrain and has only a forty-foot right-of-way for 2,072 feet from just north of Gambier Road to the north line of the Oakland Terrace Subdivision.
Edgewood Road has become the default connector between OH 229 (Gambier Road) and US 36 (Coshocton Avenue). This has occurred because City Council has never met its obligation to protect residents by requiring the City Engineer to justify destruction of our residential neighborhood within a comprehensive plan. In the absence of comprehensive planning anything can be justified as responding to an “emergency.” There is no more costly or destructive way to run a city.

It is time to ask, "Why would anyone move to a residence in Mount Vernon when the largest contiguous R-1 residential neighborhood is threatened with destruction? Why would any resident encourage others to believe the slogan, 'Mount Vernon, one of Ohio's Best Home Towns'"?