According to this Letter to the Editor which appeared in a recent copy of the Savage Pacer, one Savage resident is furious that so many people slow down but do not stop at an intersection outside their home.

From the Letter to the Editor:

I live in downtown Savage on the corner of 125th Street and Princeton. I came home on Friday, April 20, and looking out my kitchen window around 5 to 5:30 p.m. I counted over 20 cars within a half hour go through the stop signs at the four-way stop.

Yes, they slowed down, but not one of them stopped. I thought there was a law that you had to come to a complete stop at stop signs.

Perhaps if so many accident free rolling-stops can occur, the proper thing to do would be to consider replacing the stop signs with a different control mechanism all together. Clearly it was a poor planning choice to add the stop sign at that intersection if people do not really need to stop there so why not make a change to something a little less rigid such as a yield sign instead? While the Savage resident is certainly within her right to suggest to the Savage PD that they patrol the intersection, why not solve the problem at what may potentially be the root cause?

What do you think about the possibility of altering intersections where no one stops anyway into another type of affordable (this eliminates roundabouts) controlled intersections instead? Do you think that this person should have contacted the Savage PD before writing the letter to the editor or is this sort of passive civic interaction the best way to do things? Whatever you have to say about this one go ahead and comment on as I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Last week’s poll asked home improvement and whether you did it yourself or hired someone to do it for you. Most people offered some great suggestions, including privately contacting me with the names of contractors they have used, and noted that mostly they use contractors to do the work. We’ve had several out to the house now and have a written estimate from one ($2800+) and we’re waiting on two more this week. We hope to have a decision made shortly and work to hopefully begin soon. Yay for new bedrooms.

This week’s poll comes after reading the Savage Pacer‘s most recent police calls where a woman who had recently taken a new job found that a theft conviction in Hennepin County was on her record after a background check was done during a preemployment screening. While the Savage PD could do nothing for her, it was very good that the State of Minnesota allows those having a background check being done to receive a copy of what was found.

This week’s poll question is whether you’ve ever been the victim of identity theft and how did you find out about it? How could someone be convicted of theft when they supposedly didn’t do anything? Do you believe the system is that broken that someone could get away with pinning a crime on someone else? Have you ever been surprised by what was found during a background check (one that was recently completed on me let me know that when I drove with an expired license [by accident] and was pulled over it was a misdemeanor and not simply a ticketed offense even though I never had to go to court, etc).

Whatever you have to say about this one vote on the sidebar and then comment on below. After you do both of those things feel free to check out our expired polls in the archive or read through the previous posts about polls here.