Saving A Few Nickels

Several weeks ago we posted that the Town Public Works Commissioner Victor Carosi highlighted a number of roads throughout the Town for repaving. Stating it was “that time of the year” when it is best to install blacktop, Mr. Carosi had told numerous residents that they were about to embark on a repaving project throughout the Town. Stating that the money was in the budget, they would be moving forward in July and August. It sounded like a solid plan.

One of the streets slated to be repaved is Old Kensico Speedway, between Rt 119 and Kent Road, which is just past the east-west I-287 overpass. ABG also learned that Mr. Carosi, the only Town leader trying to help these residents after they were decimated from Hurricane Irene, has planned to take a core sample of the road to see how deep the current layer(s) of blacktop might be. He claims that there may actually be concrete below the blacktop and if there is, the Town will remove however many layers of blacktop that’s there and repave about 2-3 inches onto the existing concrete road surface. This will return curbing to many of the driveways that either have none or very little, allowing storm water and debris to travel into their yards each time it rains. This sounds proactive and the residents we discussed this with were very pleased to hear of this upcoming action.

If the plan is to remove and repave the blacktop, why did the Town send a crew today down Old Kensico Road repainting the white side lines? The existing white lines were still visible. The double yellow lines down the center of the road were repainted about two weeks ago. ABG doesn’t see this as that big a deal. But if the Town is planning to redo the road anyway, why bother wasting our employees time and the expense of doing this work. Maybe the next time the person with the can of paint is going out to do some striping, he or she will see a list of street repaving projects somewhere in the Town offices and hold off, saving a few nickels for us taxpayers. God knows we need it the way The Paul is costing us money. We can only hope.