Lower Limits on Five Streets
The East Hampton Village Board is poised to lower the speed limit on five streets from 25 to 20 miles per hour, following a discussion at its work session last Thursday.
Village officials had asked Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. and State Senator Kenneth LaValle to sponsor legislation that would allow the village to reduce the limits on certain roadways below 25 m.p.h., which only the state can do. Last month, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo signed the bill, which also applies to Sag Harbor Village.
The five streets where the limit would be lowered, following a public hearing, are King Street, McGuirk Street, Middle Lane, Mill Hill Lane, and Meadow Way. In Sag Harbor Village, the streets under consideration are Main Street, Bay Street, Madison Street, and Jermain Avenue.
Barbara Borsack, a member of the board, asked if Main Street could have been included in the law. It is a state highway, said Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr., and “we’d have a lot of difficulty there.”
The state, said Becky Molinaro, the village administrator, had balked at allowing a municipality the authority to lower the speed limit on any roadway it chose, instead asking for specific streets. “These were ones that the board had discussed and has asked the state to look at,” she said. “They wanted specific streets, and they wanted those streets where traffic-calming measures could not be implemented. . . .” She said that the board could ask Mr. Thiele about including Main Street when the Assembly reconvenes in January.
Mayor Rickenbach told the gathering that the board had received a letter inquiring about reducing Main Street to two lanes from four in the central business district. “I know that there is some resistance with respect to some members of the board to allow that to happen,” he said, but he recommended commissioning a traffic study and asking Chief Gerard Larsen of the Police Department for accident statistics. “I think we owe it to the public to at least have that discussion,” he said.
Richard Janis asked the board if a stop sign could be erected at the intersection of King Street, where he lives, and Railroad Avenue, which he called narrow, congested, and hazardous to pedestrians, including children walking to and from school. “Anything we can do, in addition to the 20-miles-an-hour sign, to slow it down would be great,” he said. The mayor said that the board would consider his request and discuss it with the police and public works departments.
The board also voted to execute a new two-year agreement with LTV, which broadcasts meetings of the village board and the zoning board of appeals. The contract took effect as of last Thursday.
Ms. Borsack asked whether LTV might expand its coverage to include the planning and design review boards. The design review board meets at Village Hall, where there is no audio-video infrastructure, so recording and broadcasting its meetings might require a move to the main meeting room at the Emergency Services Building, where audio-video is in place. The planning board presently meets in the ambulance meeting room at the Emergency Services Building.
The board could ask LTV to include coverage of those bodies, Ms. Molinaro said, but “I would anticipate, if they are going to be doing more coverage, that would be for an additional fee.” Mayor Rickenbach asked her to look into the added coverage, for which the board would have to authorize an addendum contract.