Westminster, Colorado, USA

Dear Editor (The Westminster Window):

When your house is burning, do you want fire trucks to slow down for speed bumps and traffic circles artificially installed for a feel-good, traffic-calming fad?
When your parent or spouse is dying of a heart attack, do you want the ambulance to slow down for speed bumps when seconds count in restoring blood flow to the brain?
When a deranged ex spouse is breaking into your home to kill you, or when a juvenile delinquent is shooting your children and their teachers in school, do you want police cars to have to slow down because of situation ignorant speed bumps?
If you have a broken neck and need a fast smooth ambulance ride to the hospital, do you want to risk permanent paralysis or death from sudden slowing down for or bouncing over speed bumps?

These are the plagues that the city of Westminster wants to inflict on its citizens, and it is recklessly pursuing this agenda in an exceedingly incompetent way. In three letters from the City Manager to me, no proof was cited that the risks increased by this fad would be justified by the risk reduction from slowing down neighborhood speeders.

Westminster is dishonestly disenfranchising the vast majority of citizens who are having their risk increased without their knowledge or consent. In my neighborhood alone, over four times as many who are having their emergency services compromised had no vote in the matter, compared to the select privileged voters living adjacent to the new speed bumps. Over a dozen Westminster neighborhoods had these dishonestly biased elections last month. Did you get a vote? If not, vote against all incumbents in the Westminster elections this coming November. The money wasted on speed bumps this summer probably could have kept all the pools open with highly paid lifeguards.

Very sincerely,

Robert Patlovany
Colorado Professional Engineer 29977
September 12, 1999

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