“No matter what we do, we get complaints from Sun City residents,” Tanner said.

At City Manager Andy Barton’s community forum on Thursday, Feb. 18, Mesquite Police Department Chief Troy Tanner discussed an ongoing concern with speeders and speed limits on Falcon Ridge Parkway between Sun City Mesquite and Pioneer Blvd.

Tanner said his department gets a lot of complaints about drivers exceeding the 35 mph speed limit on the four-lane street with anecdotal reports that most of them are construction workers. “When we put a patrol officer out there and he writes tickets to the speeders, they complain that we’re harassing the residents of Sun City because we don’t have anything else to do,” Tanner said.

“We received a couple complaints of speeders on Falcon Ridge,” Barton said. “We also have gotten requests to increase the speed limit from 35 to 45 mph. As a consequence, it’s hard to hit the sweet spot.”

Barton said that MPD made 160 traffic stops on Falcon Ridge Parkway in 2015. Of those, MPD issued 89 citations and 57 warnings.

“Just yesterday, we had eight traffic stops and issued seven citations,” Barton said. “If people are concerned that we’re not doing our part to ensure people don’t speed on Falcon Ridge Parkway, we’re doing what we can. We are stretched pretty thin in the police department and we have safety requirements all through the city.”

Barton added that raising the speed limit “is not something we’re going to see any time soon.”

Tanner explained that because OHVs (off-highway vehicles) use the roadway the speed limit must remain at 35 mph according to city ordinances. “There are a lot of avid OHV riders in the Sun City area. They wouldn’t be able to ride their OHVs on Falcon Ridge Parkway if we raised the limit to 45.”