Hartford Group,
Below is a brief story in today’s Post Star about an idea to swap County Route 23 (Main St) and 23A (East St) for Shine Hill Rd.
Main St is a County Rd and Shine Hill is a Town Rd.
The Hartford Highway Garage is on also on County Route (Main St) 23 so it makes sense that we maintain and snowplow our own Main St. that all the Town snowplow trucks have to drive on to leave the highway garage anyway. Most of the traffic on Main St is local traffic. It is not an interconnector between two State roads handling heavy traffic like Shine Hill does.
In fact, Shine Hill Rd is the heaviest traveled Town road that Hartford maintains. It is used a lot as a short cut from State Route 40 to State Route 196.
Simply put, we should swap the jurisdiction of Main Street to the Town and the jurisdiction of Shine Hill to the County. The roads area almost the same length.
This swap would make snow plowing in the winter and year round maintenance of these roads much more efficient for both the Town and County while both parties keep the number of centerlane miles needing to be maintained about the same as before.
Dana.
Washington County supervisors review Hartford road swap plan
Washington County Board of Supervisors Public Works Committee
Meeting
* Washington County Board of Supervisors Public Works Committee, Tuesday morning
Top story
* Hartford Supervisor Dana Haff presented a jurisdictional realignment proposal to the committee that would swap ownership of current town-owned Shine Hill Road with County Route 23. The measure would create efficiencies in the highway departments of both the county and town of Hartford. The swap was the third proposed, with the first two failing to be desirable to both entities. Shine Hill Road is a bit longer, 1.72 miles versus 1.36 miles, but was recently paved and meets the criteria for a county road. The committee agreed to move forward with the swap. Haff will need approval from the Town Board to move forward with the deal, which includes a promise from the county to pave Route 23 in 2015.