The Benson Street Neighborhood has always been the heart and soul of Hart County. As the years have passed the community demographics have changed. This historic community populated by older couples with older children or the elderly is now a bustling neighborhood with young families that have school age children.
The Hart County Department of Transporation has a regulation in place that basically states that there are no bus transportation available to the school age children that live within a one mile radius of their school.
This regulation necesscitates the families in this these neighborhoods to find alternate ways to get their children to and from school. The Benson Street Neighborhood families, such as mine, have resorted to walking our children to school and back home again due to the cost of gas and the amount of automobile traffic congestion in this area.
A neighbor and I take turns walking our small children on our street, Hillcrest Drive, to and from Hartwell Elementary and Hart County Middle School each school day. We have seen many other older, high school age kids and other parents walking their children back and forth to school too.
The first week of school; my neighbor and I were walking our kids and our neighbor's children (5 children in total) to Hartwell Elementary and then to Hart County Middle School from our street behind Benson St., Hillcrest Drive. When we came to Benson St. we looked very carefully and when we saw an opportunity to cross the road with our children, we crossed Benson St. As we were crossing a man in a black SUV stopped to let us pass and as we passed his vehicle, he started to race his engine and beeped his horn at us. I stood there and looked at him in disbelief. I approached his vehicle and asked him why he was doing this to us and our children. He shouted at me that we were crossing the street illegally because there was not a crosswalk there. This incident, albeit scary for us and our children, was though provoking.
There are no crosswalks on the entirity of Benson St. for pedestrians to utilize in order to cross the street.
There is a dire, immediate need for protected crosswalks to be installed on Benson St. to help better ensure the safety of our children as they go to and from school, but Benson St. is also a favorite walking area for many Hart County citizens.
I want to thank the Hartwell City Council and Mayor for their consideration of this petition and their time.
