Blue Springs Ranch Owner Questions Board Over Speed Limit

Bourbon resident Marvin Ray has to cross Highway N each day to retrieve his mail. Ray is disabled and said he has hearing problems, vision problems and can no longer run.

“I hobble now,” he said.

It was Ray’s ailments and a recommendation from Bourbon Police Chief Paul Satterfield which spurred a unanimous vote from the board of aldermen in May to have the speed limit in the city’s boundaries on Highway N lowered from 40 mph to 30 mph.

Each day, Ray said, motorists whiz by him going well above the speed limit. He feels his safety is being threatened.

The board’s decision has not yet been codified into law via ordinance, but it pitted Blue Springs Ranch owner JR Isom against the board Tuesday during a lengthy discussion. 

While Isom was complimentary of the Bourbon Police Department, saying its the best he’s seen it in 30 years, he nonetheless had plenty of invective for the board for voting to lower the speed limit. He asked aldermen if they wanted to go back to the days where the city and its police department had a poor reputation.

“You had a (police) chief that was half crazy…you dodged a lawsuit by us. Are you going to go back to that?” he asked.

Isom said lowering the speed limit would be penalizing everyone that comes in and out of town from Highway N and blasted it for being anti-business.

Read more on this story in the June 28 issue of the Sullivan Independent News.