Starting from scratch on Gay Street sidewalk plan

SHARON — Only about 10 residents showed up for the special town meeting on Friday, June 13. The purpose of the meeting was to talk about building a sidewalk along Route 41/ Gay Street, the main road in town.  After the meeting’s “callâ€� was read by the town clerk, attendees were asked for a nomination for a moderator for the meeting. All were in favor of Selectman Tom Bartram.

First Selectman Malcolm Brown led the meeting by saying the state of Connecticut “went back on its word.� Brown explained that this meeting was not to ask the residents for any money for the project, but simply to explain what is happening with the sidewalk. This project was designed several years ago in order to calm traffic in the shopping center area.

Town officials had met with engineers in 2005 to design a sidewalk that would start at the culvert and end where it met an existing sidewalk at the XtraMart filling station.

It seemed as though everyone including Brown believed that the project was on track until a week ago, when the plan’s engineer went to Thomaston to meet with several other engineers to discuss the sidewalk.

Several concerns were raised at that meeting. For example, the engineers said they did not like having people parking in front of the fitness center at 1 Gay St., because drivers were backing out of the small parking lot there into traffic.

Another, larger concern: The engineers claimed to have never heard or seen anything about this project before.

The engineers suggested that all of the selectmen get together and plan out three phases for the proposed project and then resubmit it, Brown reported.

The phases will include creating a crosswalk, making the sidewalk (just on the side where the XtraMart is) and adding sidewalk to the other side of the street.

The contractor will also be asked to scale down his bid of $40,000. Apparently, the contractor can lower his estimate by $14,000 if the sidewalk does not have to go over the culvert.

To help explain why a sidewalk is needed, Brown read from a traffic report that was conducted for the town in 1997, when 4,000 to 6,000 cars went through the center of town each day.

During that time, there were 42 accidents along the 8.4 mile stretch of Route 41 from the intersection of Williams Road to the center of town.

It was reported that 19 percent of these accidents were rear-end crashes, 79 percent occurred in clear weather and 74 percent happened during the day.

The traffic report is available in the selectmen’s office.