GRATIS — The Village of Gratis will be having the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) conduct a traffic study on U.S. 503 and Indian Hill to see if the speed limit needs reduced.

During a council meeting on Thursday, Aug. 24, Mayor David Johnston informed council he has been having Police Chief Jeff King look at the speed on the road and consider options for lowering the limit.

“We’ve had complaints up through Indian Hill. He finally got a hold of a woman at ODOT,” Johnston said. “We have three different ways we could do this. One way is that the village can go ahead and put us 35 miles an hour signs. We would take responsibility for all signs in the village and all violations on the state highway. We don’t want that.

“The second thing was the solicitor could supposedly read over their opinions on the speed and decide that it should be 35, The village would take all liabilities and disputes – which we don’t want. The third choice that they gave us was to conduct a traffic study. Years ago they conducted a traffic study out there and that is when they lowered it from 50 to 45.

“Since it has been 12 years, they would conduct another traffic study for free and if possible we could possibly get it lowered that way,” he continued. If that doesn’t work, then there are other suggestions like maybe being able to put up yellow signs.Those would be speed suggested signs and we couldn’t ticket people off of them. If all else fails we can make Indian Hill one direction and nobody would be pulling out.”

He added, the village would have to check with residents before going to that extreme.

The council chose to accept the third choice and to have the traffic study performed.