Whatever Queen Street Wants…
Whatever Queen Street Wantsâ¦
To the Editor:
The neighbors on Elizabeth Street, Meadow and Glover Avenues, all in the borough, didnât ask the Police Commission for much. All they asked for was a crosswalk at the intersection of Meadow and Glover so their children and they might be able to safely cross Glover Avenue. Compare that to what Queen Street residents asked for: $200,000 worth of sidewalks, four speed bumps, the narrowing and restriping of the entire road, the redesign of the intersection of Queen at Glover, and the narrowing of the entrance of Queen at Mile Hill.
The residents of Elizabeth, Meadow, and Glover know that Glover Avenue is one of the townâs busiest streets with perhaps 15,000 vehicles traveling on it daily, three times the traffic on Queen Street. These residents utilize the network of sidewalks within the borough and their children walk to the middle school and the theater. All they asked for from the Police Commission was a crosswalk so they might cross Glover Avenue a little more safely.
The consulting firm hired by the town, Vollmer Associates, recommended it. The borough government, who studied the consultantâs recommendations, endorsed it.
Last week the Police Commission voted unanimously to reject the idea.
The police chief encouraged the commission to reject a crosswalk because the children could take a bus to the middle school, two blocks away. Iâm not making this up! Rather than encourage the children to walk to school, the chief told the commission that there is a bus that would pick them up so there was no reason to have a crosswalk on Glover Avenue. Forget the input the residents gave the consultants during the citizens three input meetings that a crosswalk was needed to provide them with safe access to the rest of the borough.
Oh thatâs right; neither Carol Mattegat the chair of the Police Commission nor Herb Rosenthal the first selectman bothered to attend and listen to the public input at the three sessions held to get the residents input on the traffic problems. Apparently they had already made up their minds and didnât think the publicâs input was important. Seems to be a pattern with the public officials recently in town, doesnât it?
Forget the low cost of perhaps $1,500, verses the $1.8 million of recommendations the Vollmer study produced, much of that dedicated to Queen Street.
The Police Commission continues its myopic and obsessive focus on Queen Street, recommending three 15 mile an hour speed bumps, diverting traffic to other roads, so Queen Street can have their wish of a becoming a rural country road. They also recommended Queen Street sidewalks, which is a wonderful idea. I wonder whether the commission will ask for crosswalks so Queen Street residents so they can cross over and use their new sidewalks. After all whatever Queen Street asks for the Police Commission and the first selectman seem to go along with, but God forgive if any other residents ask for anything.
Can anyone make any sense of this?
Bruce W. Walczak
12 Glover Avenue, Newtown                                             May 9, 2007