Wellton gets public safety boost with grant
The town of Wellton along with its elementary school will be getting a boost in safety following a recent grant awarded to the area.
A special funding grant from the Gila River Indian Community was given to the town after Wellton Police Chief Donald Jones applied for funding around spring of this year.
In total, $248,222.87 was awarded to Wellton near the end of October to purchase five new police vehicles and four, permanent school zone speed limit signs.
“They are going to be used by the Wellton Elementary School in the center of town on the two busiest streets,” Jones said when speaking of the speed limit signs. “The program I put together was due to the fact that what they currently use or have used are signs that an employee has to roll out to the middle of two of our busiest roads that border the school. Before school they have to enter traffic and roll these signs out in the middle of the roads and at the end of the school (day) they have to go into the middle of the road and roll them back out of the road.”
“It blocks turn lanes,” he added. “It’s not the best way to do things but that’s what they had to work with. Part of this grant was to replace those with pole-mounted, permanent signs that are electric. When the school zone speed limit is in effect there will be beacons that flash to alert drivers that the speed limit now is the lower speed limit.”
Though the signs have been purchased, Jones said he does not expect them to arrive until December. The police vehicles, on the other hand, are expected to arrive by February.
According to Jones, the vehicles will also help the traffic safety situation around Wellton Elementary School.
“The program I wrote was basically titled ‘The School Pedestrian Safety Program’ and primarily it’s to address the issue employees at the school have again with the traffic safety of rolling the signs in and out of the road,” he said. “Again, it blocks turn lanes when the signs are on the roads which congest traffic and the vehicles are to help enforce those school zone areas.”
While the vehicles will help enforce traffic at school zones, Jones noted the new vehicles are to have other benefits as well.
“The vehicle fleet at the department when I took over-the vehicles are old, they are outdated and the repair costs are outrageous to keep them running,” he said. “They are the wrong tool for the job. They are little sedans. This is a more rural, agricultural area so little sedans get beat up too much.”
Jones explained that the sedans are not “sturdy enough” for the environment. With the grant, he said the police department is able to replace the sedans with SUVs and four-wheel drive, police model pickup trucks.
“We do need that fourwheel drive capability and currently we have none,” he said. “The town of Wellton is roughly 28 square miles and there are a lot of residents that do not live in the town proper within that 28 square miles. The terrain is too rough-it’s the desert or it’s the sand-and sedans do not work in that environment. We don’t have the four-wheel drive capability to reach some of the areas we are responsible for so this will alleviate that aspect as well.”
Jones said he applied for the funds in order to take advantage of shared revenues from Indian gaming within the state of Arizona. Back in 2002, Prop. 202 was passed and gaming tribes in Arizona volunteered to share a portion of shared gaming revenues with the state and local governments to support specific state and local programs, the Arizona Indian Gaming Association website showed.
“I originally was looking for an avenue to address our vehicle problem and a way to address the problem with the signs in the school zone,” Jones said. “It’s not something we can handle budgetwise on our own. There is no way we could afford such things so I came across this and developed a program, submitted it and it was approved. It is a life saver for our area because otherwise there was no funding mechanism to make this happen.”