Lack of Planned Sidewalks, Bike Lanes Around New Morgan School Concerns Police Commission

At this week's Clinton Police Commissioner's meeting, Morgan Building Committee chair Gerry Vece and John Plant of Langan Consultants came before the commission to present again review their plans for the new school. Both Vece and Plant appeared at the June commissioner meeting as well to present their plans for the traffic patterns within and around the school.

Parking and traffic on Route 81 were part of the discussion, but as the presentation continued, several police commissioners raised concerns about the lack of sidewalks and biking lanes leading to the new school.

Currently, there are no plans to add sidewalks or bike lanes on Route 81 traveling north or south from the new school. Plant stated that based on the pedestrian studies they had done, current pedestrian and bike activity at the schools current location is much higher than what is anticipated at the new location.

"Because of the area the school is in now, more centrally located in relation to the mall and library, students walk to those locations more than they will when the school moves up the road," Plant stated. "The new school will have more of a campus feel and the students will not leave it as much due to the the increased distance from places they now frequent. To create bike lanes and sidewalks around it isn’t practical. They would be disconnected from everything else."

But several police commissioners were not satisfied with the explanation.

"This issue has been building with me since last month," said commissioner Phil Sengle. "There is no allowance for pedestrian and bike access. I've seen studies of other towns building new schools and they looked in depth at pedestrian and biking paths. This plan for the new school would be so enhanced if it were to be given more pedestrian access. We have to look at what is going on outside the campus, not just on it.”

"It strikes me that a project as big as this with so many of our kids, that the town doesn't provide for bike and pedestrian access, I think we're missing the boat," Sengle continued later.

"Students are still going to go to the library, the mall, the coffeeshop," continued Commissioner Peggy Adler. "And for them to have to rely on buses to take them to those places, when physical fitness is so important, doesn't make sense. It's also a huge safety issue."

A parent at the meeting agreed saying, "I don't care what kind of studies you've done, students will still walk to those areas. This is such a busy road, we have to find a way to make sidewalks available."

"And in no way would the sidewalks be disconnected," Commissioner Adler later argued. "They would be connected to the existing sidewalks by the mall and library. We're talking about adding a 1/4 mile of sidewalk in."

While Vece and Plant did not appear to disagree that sidewalks and bike lanes were important, they stated that the endeavor was not within their scope of work.

"The school superintendent gave us educational specifications to build a school on the property, and it did not include anything about sidewalks outside of the location," said Vece. "To put sidewalks in now would be very expensive and money we don't have in our budget. It is also money that is not reimbursable by the state. The minute we step off our property, the improvements that we make, those moneys cannot be reimbursed."

"When the town approved this plan they gave us money to build a new school," Vece continued. "In my opinion, if people want to build sidewalks that is something you should bring to the town, and say, do you want to spend millions of dollars on sidewalks. Every cent we take out of our budget is money we can't use to spend on the school itself."

Commissioner Adler stated that parents had expected sidewalks to be included in the project and were upset that they weren't in the plan. One resident at the meeting agreed, saying that the committee had been called to build the school along with an infrastructure that would support it.

Vece asserted that to conduct work outside of the school grounds was never in their plan, and the issue was really one that needed to be brought to the Board of Selectmen and Planning and Zoning.

Plant pointed out that the cost of widening roads to accommodate bike lanes and installing sidewalks could cost millions of dollars.

"The sidewalks stop where they do for a reason," Plant stated. "The road narrows down and there are two culvert areas we would have to work with if we wanted to add in the kind of access being suggested."

Commissioner Kim Neri-Simoncini wasn't satisfied that cost should be a deciding factor of whether sidewalks should be installed, but that safety should take precedence (SEE VIDEO).