Rochester City Council takes middle-of-the-road option on residential speed limits

Rochester’s residential speed limits will come down slightly in 2021, but not as much as originally thought, after the Rochester City Council settled on a compromise with the city engineer in the last council meeting of 2020.

In a 5-2 vote, the council approved two different actions Monday evening: it passed an ordinance giving the city engineer authority to set future speed limits, while also approving a resolution that recommends he set speed limits on existing residential streets at 25 mph. 

City staff have supported lowering all residential speed limits to 20 mph, but the council opted to pursue a 25 mph limit instead. The resolution passed Monday, however, does include a provision that all newly constructed residential streets will be set at 20 mph.

“I’m particularly excited to see the policy for new construction & evaluation of streets in new developments set to 20 [mph],” said Council Member Nick Campion. “The bulk of the pushback about a lot of these changes is on enforcement, and the reality is to make safe streets a sustainable option for the community, you need to build it right from the start.”

Councilors Mark Bilderback and Randy Staver, in their last votes as council members, were the two to vote against the resolutions. President Staver cited concerns with handing oversight on speed limits directly to the city engineer, instead of leaving some responsibility on the council.

“I’m not opposed to the city engineer bringing forward recommendations, but I don’t like the idea of taking the council out of the equation,” said Staver, adding that he believed the council would “take all the heat” for potential changes enacted by the city engineer’s office.

While city engineer Dillon Dombrovski initially recommended a change to 20 mph on all local roads and now holds the power to change speed limits on all municipal streets, he says his staff will honor the compromise made with the council and keep existing streets at 25 mph for the immediate future — while newly constructed neighborhoods receive the 20 mph limit.

“If this is the direction [the council] would give us as staff, 25 [mph] is what we would establish on those local streets,” said Dombrovski. “We don’t have any other plans to try and make some change to that. That’s what we heard last month, and we wanted to provide this alternative.”

The measure passed by the council follows a 2019 action by the Minnesota Legislature granting cities the authority to set their own speed limits on roads they hold jurisdiction over. Previously, cities had to follow state-mandated rules on speed limits. Monday’s vote does not change speed limits on collector and arterial roads, nor does it affect county, state or federal highways.

A last-ditch effort by Council Member Michael Wojcik to amend the council resolution and lower all speed limits on neighborhood streets to 20 mph was shot down in a narrow 3-4 vote.

Isaac Jahns is a Rochester native and a 2019 graduate of the Missouri School of Journalism. He reports on politics, business and music for Med City Beat.

Cover photo licensed via Canva