City staff recommended clarifications to Brentwood's residential traffic‑calming policy on Monday intended to increase process certainty for neighborhoods and reduce irregularities in petitioning while preserving engineering-based decisionmaking.

The memo presented to the commission consolidates existing tier 1 (signage, speed trailers, enforcement) and tier 2 (physical improvements such as speed tables, raised crosswalks and medians) approaches and keeps the city's engineering review as the determinative step for whether a traffic-calming measure is appropriate. Engineering will continue to select measures and determine spacing; staff said speed tables are used where higher design speeds are expected and speed humps are reserved for slower local streets.

Changes staff proposed to the petition and voting process include: a higher-clarity initiation threshold (a neighborhood without an HOA must show roughly 50% initial interest to trigger a study), an increase of the mailed petition period from 30 to 45 days, city-administered mailings (the city would mail ballots and tabulate results), and randomized unique identifiers inside each mailed envelope so votes can be validated without exposing how individual households voted (staff said this is to mitigate public-record disclosure from FOIA requests). Staff also reiterated that nonresponses will be counted as "no" votes for the final two-thirds approval calculation and that each proposed physical improvement is treated as a separate voting block (each hump or table within the study area must independently meet the two-thirds threshold among affected addresses).

On the substantive design side, staff recommends clarifying minimum requirements: a petition initiation should seek at least two speed tables (rather than a single isolated device), spacing between multiple speed tables should generally be 300 to 600 feet, and speed humps remain limited to local residential streets rather than collectors or arterials. If an approved speed-hump project cannot secure the petitioning neighborhood's funding or support within six months, staff recommended the approval lapse.

Staff also proposed a waiting period after petition failure: rather than an open refile, the draft policy would require a two‑year gap before a new petition in the same area. Commissioners discussed alternatives (one year, two years, or limiting attempts to two petitions in five years) and expressed support for a multi-year break to avoid repetitive applications.

Staff said the city will perform comparative research on the existing 1,000-foot affected-area radius used to determine eligible voters and report back; commissioners questioned whether 1,000 feet is too broad and suggested alternatives such as stopping the affected area at the nearest stop sign or reducing the radius for denser subdivisions.

No final policy vote or ordinance change occurred at Monday's meeting; staff will return with transferred language and comparative research for commission consideration.