Main Street Roundabouts Officially Dead

“It’s off the table,” concluded Village President Greg Goetz. “It’s off.”

Goetz is referring to roundabouts, and after every Sussex Village Board member expressed a disinterest in them on Tuesday, the village president ordered architects to kill the idea of roundabouts for Main Street.

The group of officials met on Tuesday evening for the , held for convenience reasons at the . And good thing it was; close to 100 concerned residents packed the room and lined the walls waiting for their turn to speak to the board.

However, rather than an endless stream of comments opposing roundabouts, the Village Board was met with something else: applause. Goetz summed up comments from trustees by saying while roundabouts are functional, they’re not for Sussex.

“My opinion as far as the roundabouts go is that they do serve a purpose, but maybe not in Sussex,” Goetz said as the crowd erupted with applause. “, and that’s not where my decision came from at all. This is a small town community. If we want to have our community still stay like a small town, that might not be what we want to do for our community.”

 “Since this roundabout saga began, the biggest question people had was, ‘Does anyone on the board have any common sense?’ Guess what? We now know they do.”

Each trustee agreed, saying they want to closely review the enormous packet of public comments collected at each public forum before making any additional concrete decisions. However, both trustees Pat Tetzlaff and Jason Wegner agreed they thought , is the concept they find most appealing.

And local business owners that would have been directly affected by the placement of roundabouts had to throw our their prepared statements and list of questions. The owners from and said they were loaded with questions, but now only can say, “Thank you.”

“I was going to read this whole thing tonight, but I don’t have to now,” said . “Since this roundabout saga began, the biggest question people had was, ‘Does anyone on the board have any common sense?’ Guess what? We now know they do.”

Now that roundabouts are off the table, trustees and community members can begin solving more specific problems with the functionality of the road. For example, many community members opposed rerouting Silver Spring Drive to create a more traditional intersection with Main Street.

Along with rerouting the street, residents were concerned about rerouting traffic away from Main Street, the vitality of businesses on the street and creating a bridge over the railroad near Quad/Graphics.

The next Main Street workshop is scheduled for sometime in June, but no specific date has been identified.