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.
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I've set this forum up in response to the desire for many not to be CC'd on community email regarding the project. There is the general overload of email in people's lives, as well as fears over spam.
Unfortunately, using BCC means that people cannot reply so that all may see it if they wish.
Once you have registered for this site, you can not only post forum topics and respond to existing topics, but you may also set your notification settings to receive email from the site when new things are posted. To turn on these notifications, click "My account" in the left hand side, and then "My Notify Settings" at the top of the section that appears. To get full notifications of everything, select every lowest radio button in each sub-section, and click "Save Settings". Alternately, pick and choose in which manner you wish to be notified.
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 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.
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:
