In a highly unscientific poll conducted by myself regarding the ordinance now before the Bellefontaine City Council that would allow golf carts and other similar-sized, under-powered vehicles to use the city’s streets, I received a number of responses, some of which have been edited for length, but not for content.
For the purposes of this piece, all of the various “low speed” vehicles so designated in the ordinance (side-by-sides, mini-trucks and such) will be henceforth be referred to as “golf carts”.
Some of the responses to my inquiries about golf cart usage on the city’s streets are listed below:
“No way.”
“Golf carts? Seriously? Golf carts?”
“Is this a joke?”
“You’re kidding, right?”
And so it went. I was batting an even 1.000 for negative responses right up to the last person I asked, a friend who is an avid cyclist who often uses the city’s streets on his two-wheeled, self-propelled vehicle.
I terminated the poll after this friend said he had no real problem with the use of golf carts vehicles on the city streets … right up to the point when he read the entirety of the ordinance that is before the Bellefontaine City Council. Here he learned that the golf carts would be allowed on any street – with the exception of the U.S. Route 68 bypass of the Downtown Historic District – in the city that has a posted speed limit of 35 MPH or less.
When we parted, he was rethinking his initial positive response to the measure.
This old chestnut of allowing golf carts to use the streets of Bellefontaine has been kicked around since I was in high school and it pops its dangerously ill-advised head out of the rabbit hole every few years.
I can’t remember if an ordinance regulating golf carts in Bellefontaine has ever been officially presented to the city council for consideration, but given that there is no such ordinance in the city code, the answer, official or not, has always the same: No way.
Include my voice to those coming out against the ordinance.
Let’s say I’m cruising south on Main St. – well within the prescribed speed limit of course – when I find myself behind Grandpa and his grandkids in a machine that has a speed that tops out at about 25 MPH, lacks basic vehicle safety equipment, weighs in at a couple of thousand pounds less than does my car, and is not exactly known for its ability to burn rubber out of a full stop.
After crawling down the center lane for a few blocks, Gramps decides to turn into KFC for a bucket of chicken. For those unlucky drivers who have been following and cursing the golf cart and, just like me, have been unable wedge themselves into the Daytona that the outside lane on southbound Main St. has become, traffic is going to be backed up to the courthouse.
The phrase “golf cart” dropped out of my vocabulary when I hung up my sticks a couple of decades ago.
There has been no general hue and cry to allow the use of golf carts in the Bellefontaine. None of my neighbors, friends, co-workers or acquaintances have been clamoring their use. The subject came up in general conversation only after the ordinance was introduced.
Funny how these goofy golf cart proposals seem to materialize whenever Bellefontaine has added, or is about to add, some new housing, i.e. Maris Park, Ludlow Ridge and Liberty Landing, but I’m sure that the timing of this ordinance is just a coincidence.
I’m also confident that developers and Realtors would never consider pitching the use of golf carts as yet another amenity to potential home buyers in these developments. Right?
Social media bemoaned the fact that the city sold the Armory, but that was the right thing to do. The Armory was falling down a little bit more every day and given its location and condition, it served no governmental function.
Two decades ago, Logan County considered the Armory so toxic that it gave – not sold, mind you – the building and two parcels of land it sits on to the City of Bellefontaine. And this is land which that abuts the county-owned fairgrounds. Talk about your white elephants.
All the Armory building was doing since the transfer was costing the city money and migraines. The city had to carry insurance on the building, which isn’t even fit to be a storage facility.
Those who thought the building could or should have been “renovated” for whatever reason weren’t using their calculators. ADA updates alone would have run into the mid six-figures, at a minimum. And that’s before work started on the HVAC, plumbing, wiring, flooring, windows and roofing. Should asbestos be found in the building, the city would have to start moving the decimal point on the check to the right. The Money Pit, 2026 Edition.
So, when city got an out-of-the-blue, unsolicited offer on the Armory, it jumped on it like a duck on a June bug, and rightly so. Any problems that the Armory building has is now Wawa Midwest’s headache.
But the golf cart ordinance is a low-speed vehicle of different color. It doesn’t take much insight to reckon that the ordinance would benefit but very few residents, the majority of whom live in the new housing developments on the eastern outskirts of the city.
The Bellefontaine City Council has already given most of those new residents very healthy tax abatements, abatements which were not made available to people who were already living here, including this writer. Passage of this ordinance would be just another figurative poke the eye to many city residents who will have no use for golf carts and don’t want to see them on our streets.
Those who agree with me said so at the July 14 meeting when the council tabled the second reading of the ordinance. In a very unusual move, Logan County Health Commissioner Travis Irvan came out strongly against it, saying passage of the measure would create a public health concern.
Curt Peterson, a longtime insurance agent who has seen his share of car v. golf cart accident claims over the years around Indian Lake where golf carts are legal and popular, came this close to questioning the collective sanity of the council for even considering a similar ordinance for Bellefontaine.
Howard Traul, former Law Director for the city, had the best line of the night when he expressed his opposition to the ordinance. He noted that passage of the measure would benefit but a small number of residents, while subjecting the majority of the city’s population to the under-powered whims of those very few who will be using golf carts as a mode of transportation on out city’s streets.
The ordinance, Traul said, “was a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist,” a line that I intend to steal from Howard at sometime in the future.
The ordinance does not specify that golf carts must hug the curb while on using the streets and there are no special lanes on the streets for golf carts to use.
What would ordinarily be a fender-bender between two cars at any given intersection where one street has a 35 MPH speed limit could very well turn into a nightmare should one of those vehicles happen to be a golf cart. They were simply not made to use the city’s streets and the city’s street were simply not made to accommodate them.
As noted above, the council tabled the ordinance at the last meeting, and that’s where it should stay, at least until council has the time to move it from the table to the circular file.
Bellefontaine has done well for 200 years without a golf cart ordinance. Let’s make it another 200.
