Readers Offer New Year's Resolutions For Peabody Officials

PEABODY, MA -- Trees and traffic. If Peabody's elected officials want to make their constituents happy in 2018, those are the two things they will resolved to fix. And while you're at it, maybe think about finding a way to not charge students that take the bus to school.

Peabody Patch asked readers to come up with New Year's resolutions for city officials that would make life better for Peabody residents. After traffic -- which seems to be a universal problem -- the top complaint seemed to be about the slow response time from the city when they request for limbs to be trimmed on trees that are on city-owned property.

"Cut the tree down in front of my house -- it keeps dropping limbs," Mike Brown wrote on our Facebook page when we asked for New Year's resolution suggestion. "Tired of cleaning them up after asking for it to be cut down."

Brown's request may have gotten resolved: Ward 1 Councilor Jon Turco responded to Brown's post and told him to message him directly so he could take care of the problem.

Traffic may be a tougher problem to solve. As Patch reported earlier this month, Census data shows that traffic in Peabody is getting worse. But some readers offered suggestions on how to fix traffic in well-known bottlenecks in the city.

"Do something about the traffic mess in Peabody Square. Enforce no right on red and don't block the box. Heck the police department could make their yearly quota doing this alone," Deb Dwinnell offered. "With all the technology at our disposal it is hard to believe the lights can't be synchronized to avoid the traffic jams every day."

State law only requires school districts to provide free transportation to students in K through 6 that live two or more miles from their school. Peabody charges $300 per student for transportation to school, with a cap of $600 per family per school year. The policy was implemented for the 2016-17 school year, and it clearly is unpopular with parents who have to pay it.

"I’ll bet if school buses for kids were cheaper then there would be MUCH LESS traffic," Dianna Charest noted. "It is one of the things that makes me want to move out of the city."

Check out the full set of responses we got below:

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Patch file photo.

Dave Copeland can be reached at dave.copeland@patch.com or by calling 617-433-7851. Follow him on Twitter (@CopeWrites) and Facebook (/copewrites).