b'yone! As youll see in this issue, weve got a great one planned for you. Happy summer, everIn the spirit of summer, I thought Id keep this column light with some little-known facts and misnomers about city government. Lets start with the police have speeding ticket quotas. Absolutely not true. Not only are our officers not required to write a certain number of tickets, but theres also no significant financial benefit to the city. Speeding tickets are state citations and proceeds are divvied up with most going to the courts. I dont know the exact amount, but Ive heard about $10 comes back to the city. I do know that our total annual budget for fines and accident reports revenue is $5,000 (of our more than $10 million budget).What about streets, you say? Well, our city consists of a mix of state, county and city streets, with each entity in charge of maintaining their respective roads. If you want to find out who owns the road, simply Google Kenton County roads and then click on Road Maintenance | Kenton County on the countys website. It will take you right to the color-coded map and you can click on the street. Independence has more than 200 lane miles of city streets. Maintenance of these streets also includes streetlights. In fact, each month I sign more than $20,000 in checks to pay Duke and Owen Electric (that was a shocker to me when I first took office). Thats the reason weve been working with our service providers to replace standard lights with LEDsthe taxpayer savings are huge. What if a streetlight is out or you have another problem with roads? Just call us at (859) 356-5302 or go to our website, click Contact, Contact Us, and then Report a Road Problem. Youll find a lot of other helpful contacts there, too!Ive got another fun factthe concrete or asphalt seam down the center of most city streets is not a center line or lane marker. Whereas a yellow line IS a lane marker, a concrete or asphalt seam is just there because we typically only tear out and replace half of the street at a time so that we can keep traffic flowing. Modern city streets are constructed to accommodate parking on one side of the street, as well as allow one lane of traffic in each direction. This means you should not expect the person traveling on the parking side of the street to wait behind parked cars for you to pass if youre traveling in the other direction. You need to stay close to your edge of the street and allow room for them to pass, regardless of parked cars. Obviously, if you are not comfortable, go ahead and pull over, just please dont beep, throw up your arms or make other inappropriate gestures when someone doesnt pull over.Now lets really get down in the weeds on streets and talk about right-of-way or ROWs. This is my wonderful wifes least favorite topic, because she listens to me complain about it all the time. The ROW is the portion of land that includes the street, sidewalk and a certain amount of area around it. Its not always easy to tell whats ROW and whats private property, but you can generally assume at least a few feet alongside the road is ROW. The grass strip between the street and the sidewalk is almost always ROW. While this is public property, maintenance of the grass and sidewalk is the responsibility of the adjacent property owner. Nothing is allowed in the ROW - this means you, signs! No temporary yard signs for businesses, political signs, signs advertising events, yard sale signs, etc. I could go on and on (just ask Jeanette). Its unsightly and can create visibility issues for drivers. Unfortunately, we dont have the staff to regularly clear these areas. If it gets bad, I will try to send someone out to pick them up (or do it myself), but we keep our crews busy with bigger things. I just hope for the sake of safety, aesthetics, and my wife, people will please stop putting signs in the ROW! Its illegal. Signs are only permitted on private property with the owners permission and even then, there are additional regulations. Sorry, rant over.My last few items are fun facts that people are often surprised to learn about being mayor. First, this is not a full-time job, or at least not a full-time salary. As is the case in most cities, you have to have a day job (or some other source of support). You also have to be a resident of the city to be the mayor. Ive been surprised how many people have asked, Oh, and do you live in Independence, too? when they find out Im the mayor. Last bit of triviawho thinks it is one of the great privileges of his life to serve as mayor of the City of Independence? I think you already know the answer to that one and I appreciate you trusting me with it. I will do my best to continue to earn that trust.Mayor Chris Reinersman2'