BANGOR – Supporters of an effort to undo the ban on left turns from State Street to Howard Street have gathered the signatures needed to get the issue before voters, with both time and signatures to spare.

By Friday afternoon – more than a week before the July 21 deadline – staff at the city clerk’s office had verified 2,323 valid signatures from registered Bangor voters, City Clerk Patti Dubois confirmed.

That’s 49 more than the 2,272 signatures – representing 20 percent of the votes cast in the last gubernatorial election – needed to bring the issue to a citywide vote, which will take place in with the presidential election in November.

Though James Butler, spokesman for the group leading the charge, said that more than 2,600 signatures were collected and submitted, city staff stopped counting after it became clear that the group had met the referendum threshold.

“It’s a done deal,” Butler said Friday. “Our prediction is that this [left-turn ban repeal effort] will win by a very comfortable margin.”

Butler said Friday that the group he worked with submitted the bulk of the signatures, more than 90 percent, by June 30, or within about half the allotted time, and that finding voters willing to sign the petition was easy.

“When you limit access on a public street, you tend to get people’s attention,” he said.

The signature drive was launched a week after the City Council’s 4-4 vote May 28 on a proposal to lift the ban. Five votes were required to overturn it.

“Our position is very simple,” said Butler. “This is a public street that belongs to the taxpayers of the city of Bangor,” he said. “We feel that those four council members [who voted to leave the ban in place] got it wrong. We would like to see what 20,000 registered voters in Bangor have to say about their street.”

Howard Street, which many drivers had been using as a throughway to and from the Bangor Mall area, runs between State Street in front of Eastern Maine Medical Center and Stillwater Avenue. It crosses Garland Street, where one of the city’s middle schools is located. It also intersects Mount Hope Avenue.

The left-turn ban was one of three steps city officials agreed to last year in an effort to reduce the volume and speed of traffic on the street. After a six-month trial period that ended last October, councilors voted 7-2 to make it permanent.

The other steps were a raised crosswalk and a traffic island, both built on Howard.

Howard Street resident Bob Cimbollek, who was among the residents who lobbied city officials to take steps to reduce the volume and speed of traffic on the street, said the left-turn ban wasn’t what he and others had in mind, but that it appeared to be serving its purpose.

On Friday, he noted that traffic counts on Howard have gone from 3,500 vehicles a day to 2,000. Despite initial complaints that traffic on nearby streets increased after the left-turn ban was imposed, City Engineer Jim Ring provided statistics in a May 13 memo showing traffic has decreased on Maple, Birch, Bellevue and Fern.

“This is about safety versus convenience,” Cimbollek said, noting that many children live on the street and that there are two schools and a park in the neighborhood.

Most of Howard Street, he added, lacks sidewalks and the middle section is narrow and ill-equipped to handle large volumes of traffic.

Cimbollek wants the ban to remain in effect. He did not think it was an issue that warrants a citywide vote, noting that many of the residents who signed the petition don’t live in the neighborhood and “don’t have a dog in this fight.”

Having voters weigh in on what he sees as a safety issue, he said, “sets a dangerous precedent for the city.”

The group working to repeal the left-turn ban is only the second in more than a decade to bring an issue to referendum through the petition process. The first was the group that brought the police station location to a vote in 2004.

dgagnon@bangordailynews.net

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