Franklin Avenue gets a messy paint job

MILLBROOK — Franklin Avenue, Millbrook’s main street, passes through the center of the village. Those who were traveling along the road on Monday, Nov. 28, noticed that it was the recipient of an especially messy paint job. The yellow lines dividing Franklin Avenue were smeared from the center outward all the way through the village. Some cars were splattered with the yellow paint as well. The New York State Department of Transportation (DOT) is taking the necessary measures to fix the problem. The DOT has two specialized machines in Poughkeepsie and Middletown, which are made to paint the yellow stripes on the road. The two machines take care of seven counties for the region. Sue Stepp, DOT spokesperson, said the Poughkeepsie machine was broken, which is what caused the messy work in Millbrook. A crew from Middletown did the paint job.“The problem that we had is it wasn’t our equipment or our driver,” said Stepp. “In that area cars are parked on both sides of the street making the [paint machine] travel on a narrower road than we like. People traditionally drive over the yellow line in the middle to get to where they need to go. That’s what happened to the stripes, cars drove over them. Now since this was the Middletown truck that was out there they weren’t familiar enough with the area to anticipate that.”Stepp said the next time the road is painted the DOT will contact the village ahead of time and ask them to eliminate parking on that stretch of the road for at least an hour. Cones will also be placed on the yellow line as the work is done.“We didn’t violate any procedures,” said Stepp. “We did obviously learn from the experience and we’ll be putting cones on those lines a lot closer together than we would on say, Route 44, half way to Dover. Normally on the job a little bit of the paint gets smeared and that just wears off. But in this case we are going to paint over the really bad parts with a black blacktop paint.”Stepp said there might be a person out to fix the mess on Franklin Avenue as early as Dec. 2. As for the cars that may have been splattered with paint, the DOT is prepared to repay people for damages. A small claims form may be found on the NYSDOT website and the form will explain everything a person needs to know for filing purposes. However, if one prefers to file the claim on the phone the DOT number for small claims is 845-431-5921.