Upcoming City of Phoenix Virtual Budget Meetings

Dear Neighbors: Willo needs your voice at the upcoming City of Phoenix virtual budget meetings!  Completion of improvements to 3rd and 5th Avenues depends on the City Council approving funding for the construction phase of the project – a now 6-year effort by the Willo Neighborhood Association to secure the future of 3rd and 5th Avenues as safe, pedestrian and bike-friendly local/neighborhood streets.

Here’s how you can help:

• Sign up to speak in advance on the City’s Budget Webpage: https://www.phoenix.gov/budget/hearings. The District 4 Budget meeting is scheduled for April 5, 2022 at 8:30 a.m. The first communitywide meeting is set for April 2, 2022 at 10:00 a.m. You may sign up to speak at any of the scheduled meetings.
• Log in to the meeting and let City leaders know you want them to approve funding for construction of the much-needed improvements to 3rd and 5th Avenues through Willo.
• The following are talking points for the budget hearings coming up tomorrow, April 2^nd at 10:00 a.m. (City-wide) and April 5^th at 8:30 a.m. (District 4). While the design for improvements to 3rd and 5th Avenues is nearly complete, the project cannot move forward unless we secure construction funding in next year’s budget.
  • The very best talking points are for you to share your personal experiences with speeding, wrong-way drivers, cut-through traffic, unsafe pedestrian and cycling encounters, etc. on 3^rd and 5^th Avenues in Willo.
  • It is vitally important that we preserve 3^rd and 5^th Avenues’ status as local streets, which are defined by the City of Phoenix as: “Local/Residential streets are typically in residential areas, and provide connectivity between the collectors and arterials for local traffic. In other words, our streets should be used to connect Willo residents with McDowell and Thomas Rds. – not for commuters to cut through our neighborhood.
    • Currently, 3^rd and 5^th Avenues through Willo are being used as cut-through commercial corridors, which is not their intended purpose. This creates safety issues for our residents on a continual basis. If we don’t secure the future of 3^rd and 5^th Avenues as local streets now, the traffic issues are only going to become worse as population density in Midtown Phoenix increases.
  • Willo Conservation Plan. The Phoenix City Council made a commitment to preserve the Willo neighborhood when it passed the WCP in 1986. The WCP has specific traffic goals that are not being met:
    • Traffic and Circulation Goals
      • “Provide for an orderly flow of residential traffic to and through the neighborhood while minimizing the adverse effects of commercial traffic flow and parking.” (WCP, p.7)
    • Transportation and Circulation
      • “Continued development of the Central Corridor and the lack of a high capacity north-south street to accommodate traffic to and from Downtown is putting more traffic on local streets.
      • The major traffic problem is caused by use of the local streets between Central and Seventh Avenue by a large number of nonresidential vehicles.” (WCP, p.14)
• Additionally:  You can submit a comment or sign up to speak here (scroll down for hearing dates and times) https://www.phoenix.gov/budget/hearings

We can’t continue to function as a desirable, high-quality residential area with 3^rd and 5^th Avenues functioning as mini-highways cutting through our neighborhood moving commuter traffic to and from downtown Phoenix. The time to fix this is by securing funding for the 3^rd and 5^th Avenues improvement project now.

For further information on the 3rd and 5th Avenues improvement project, visit https://www.phoenix.gov/streets/3rdand5thavenuesnorth. Updates will be posted on willophx.com.

Thank you!