Are you a Chatham resident? Do you visit or shop in Chatham? Do you know that the NYSDOTi is planning to rip up the Village of Chatham in it's next "improvement" project? In particular, did you know that the Circle is in danger?
Our charming, harmless traffic circle is going to be turned into a Roundabout similar to the one in Valatie - complete with bump-outs, "splitter" islands, curbs, signs and a whole lot of paint.
Perhaps the biggest problem is that no one seems to know the extent of the NYSDOTi's plans. Do you?
Please help preserve the historic nature of our Village by participating in an email campaign. All citizens from the Chatham area are invited to participate:
If you have a stake in Chatham, let your opinion be known.
It seems whenever I talk to someone in Chatham about the upcoming changes the DOTi intends for our Circle, I am met with surprise, revulsion, and sometimes disbelief. Just last week, in fact, I was told that the changes were to be very small, as far as the party had been told (allegedly from a CACi member). In fact, the changes to our historic Circle are nothing short of the tearing out of the simple nature of our village.
Here's a short list to consider:
These changes would significantly affect the character of our village. Worse yet, they provide little or no improvement to the safety or driveability of the Circle. In fact, they may amount to a net increase in safety. As it exists now, the Circle has many "escape routes" from poor drivers, due to it's openness. These poor or inexperienced drivers won't go away. They will just become even more confused by the sensory overload they will receive upon entering the "Roundabout".
Some people don't like the strange Right of Way that our town has employed for decades. It's understandable, since many are from out of town, and were never told about it! Years ago we actually had "Yield" signs in the Circle. Unfortunately, an errant snow plow removed them. But here is an interesting fact: even without the signs, the Circle has an excellent safety record, with no serious accidents or injuries reported. In fact, very few bumper scrapes or fender dents over the years have occurred. This is somewhat shocking. Did our leaders of old have some clue about the benefits of being polite to oncoming cars? Here is an excerpt from the January 15, 2004 CACi/DOTi meeting minutes:
Mayor Paul Boehme: This is an historic area and it's your job to make this work and not loose (sic) parking. This Circle works for the Village.
Joe Foglietta, DOTi: The concerns from the Public Workshop are the operation of this intersection and public safety.
Mayor Paul Boehme: This Circle works.
Diane Klinger: The pedestrian concerns are not necessarily at this intersection.
A short while later in the meeting...
Mayor Paul Boehme: Are the "green" areas (median islands {aforementioned "splitter islands, as DOTi now calls them}) raised?
Joe Foglietta, DOTi: Yes, it's a mountable curb.
Mayor Paul Boehme: That will cause a problem with snow removal.
Francis Iaconetti, CACi: That's a detail. (indicating that it could be changed, and shouldn't affect the soundness of the plan)
So, we can see that as much as two years ago, our current leadership (Mayor Boehme), fought to save our Circle. But how long can one man, even the mayor, stand against the mighty bureaucratic engineers of our incredibly efficient state government? Well, it turns out that Mayor Boehme is made of strong stuff, and has successfully turned aside many ridiculous "proposals" (sometimes phrased as requirements) of the DOTi, including the elimination of parking along Hudson Avenue.
These are things to think upon. While your thinking, maybe you should seriously consider writing a letter to our Mayor Boehme, and let him know how much you appreciate his defense of our community and its history. You might want to mention that you would appreciate his continued defense of our historic Circle and the benefits it provides. He deserves it.
In researching the past activities of the NYSDOTi, I have come across another instance of the DOTi claiming "the public has been properly informed", when in fact they have not been.
Here is a link to a Village Voice article from 1998, describing what seems to be a very familiar NYSDOTi habit. Here is a taste of the article:
The Tribeca residents argue that NYSDOTi failed to adequately inform them of its plans for Canal Street. In a November 18 letter, Community Board 1 chair Anne Compoccia complained that "these changes were apparently buried in hundreds of pages of engineering drawings" that eluded the community, including elected officials. City Council member Kathryn Freed, for instance, is one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit."
And from the DOTi:
Alex Dudley, a spokesperson for NYSDOTi, says the plans were part of publicly available documents, and that "for anyone to say that it wasn't available isn't truthful." Dudley called the outreach on the project "historic." So how could elected officials be unaware of NYSDOTi plans? "I'm not sure how that could happen, but certainly the 9A paper is a large document, and certainly we were concentrating on items that we felt would be controversial and of concern to community.
We are not alone in being kept in the dark. Decisions have been made that will impact our village. That beautiful Oak tree by the retaining wall? Gone. Destroyed to create a sidewalk. A sidewalk which many on the CACi feel would be a dangerous route to travel. The Circle we all are very used to? Gone. Made into an abomination scarring our village for the sake of an engineer's ego. Will safety be improved? Let me ask you: How many people have you seen run down in the street while trying to cross? How many accidents have you witnessed in the Circle?
According to the Context Sensitive Solutions website:
The project is in harmony with the community, and it preserves environmental, scenic, aesthetic, historic, and natural resource values of the area, i.e., exhibits context sensitive design.
This website is dedicated to education in the area of context sensitive solutionsi. It's worth a read.