By Shelby Stewart-Soldan
ssoldan@mihomepaper.com
Ortonville —During the regular meeting on Monday night, the Ortonville village manger Matt Ryan provided an update on the battery-operated, mobile speed radar signs in the village.
The two signs were originally purchased in 2018, and since then have been moved around the village periodically to alert drivers of their speed. The data in them can also be retrieved to let law enforcement know when there are the most speeders so they can more accurately assign road patrol during high-traffic times.
Recently they have been taken down for repair.
“The speed radar signs, there was an issue with the way they were constructed originally,” said Ryan. “Basically the wiring in them made with a harness, it’s like a pigtail where you would unplug it, take the battery in and charge it, plug it back in. There’s a little clip on there they squeeze in order to plug it in. Well of course they were not very strong, so what ended up happening was the wiring was getting pulled out. Fixing that used a lot of our DPW director’s time because they were very tiny trying to reput all those wires in.”
Ryan said he took the signs to a person he knows who owns a company that builds wiring harnesses for fuel injection systems, and he said he would be able to make some for the signs, but the project was not completed.
“He said no problem, gave me an incredibly good price on them that was maybe 2% of replacing the signs,” said Ryan. “Unfortunately he had sold that company, and about two days after I dropped the signs off was his last day there and the new guy did not want to do that job, so I picked up all that stuff and brought it back, and I’m looking for a new vendor to design some wiring harnesses for us.”
The two signs were originally purchased for less than $6,000, and the cost of new signs has gone up.
“We want to get it done, the signs themselves are in the neighborhood of 5-6 thousand dollars a piece, so replacing them is not a very favorable option because all the other components and parts are good, but that wiring was just built very cheaply,” he said.