Hospital wants light or refund

Heritage Medical Center is asking Shelbyville about constructing a traffic signal on U.S. 231 North, requesting a refund of nearly $100,000 in escrow if the city does not proceed with the project.

However, the city council would need to lower the speed limit on the state highway before any signal could be installed.

Chief Financial Officer Jon Baker asked city planning and codes director Ed Dodson about putting up the traffic signal at the intersection of U.S. 231 and Airport Business Park Drive.

"Initially the hospital had placed $97,780 in escrow with your office and we are interested in proceeding further with the project," Baker wrote on Aug. 3 to Dodson.

Baker said the hospital was still interested in moving forward with the signal, feeling that the need was still there "and is actually growing as our hospital volumes grow and the surrounding community of physicians continues to build up."

If the city does not plan to proceed further, "we respectively request to be refunded the amount that has been placed in escrow plus interest," Baker wrote.

Councilman Al Stephenson said that if the state isn't going to construct a signal, the city should return the money.

But city recorder Betty Lamb explained that when the planning commission approved the site plan for the hospital in 2007, the plat was based on a Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) traffic study, which required a signal.

The site plan review for the traffic signal at the hospital was approved in July 2007 by the planning commission, and in April 2007 the site plan for the hospital itself was approved that included a red light with a 12-foot emergency lane outside the traffic lanes.

Mayor Wallace Cartwright said that a TDOT official had told him that a traffic signal could not be placed in a 65 mph zone and that the speed limit must be lowered before a light can be installed.

Cartwright said that the speed limit would have to be at 45 mph to allow the light. Lamb and councilman Lee Roy Cunningham both remarked that there had already been accidents at that location.

"That's what they're concerned about and that why they want the traffic light," the mayor said.

Cunningham said that the hospital should contact TDOT about the matter, but Lamb said the city has to lower the speed limit first before the state can come back and do a new traffic study.

"It's up to us if we want to slow it down," Cartwright said.