Divided board votes to narrow 10th Avenue

A revision to the plans to rebuild 10th Avenue between Maple Street and Falls Street in Grafton that would have maintained the road’s current width and added angled parking in front of Grob Inc. was rejected by the Village Board on Monday.

The revisions had been recommended by the Public Works Board the week before.

The Village Board voted 4-3 to instead keep the original plan that reduces the street width to 32 feet. It currently varies between 33.5 and 36.5 feet wide.

The plans will only offer parallel parking on the street, removing the parking area in front of Grob Inc. that allows employees to park horizontally onto the road by driving onto a smoothed curb.

President Dan Delorit, who voted to keep the village’s original plans along with trustees Mary Pat Fenton, Amy Luft and Dave Armstrong, said narrowing the road makes it safer.

“Narrower streets do slow traffic and provide safety for our least protected residents, not just kids but our handicapped and senior folks,” he said.

  The Public Works Board, by a 3-2 vote led by Trustee Lisa Uribe Harbeck, proposed keeping the current road width to address concerns from several residents that a narrower road would cause traffic congestion leading to Kennedy Elementary School and Grob Inc.

The street is not an official part of the school’s pick-up and drop-off plan but is used by some parents to park and walk their children to school.

The board also proposed designating angled parking in front of Grob Inc. to reflect the company’s long-standing parking arrangement with the village.

At the Village Board meeting, village staff members said the cost of those changes would be $71,500 for construction and design work and as much as $100,000 for power line pole relocation.

Delorit said that price tag far outweighed the benefits.

“What are we going to go without to pay for this?” he said, noting that amount is comparable to the annual salary and benefits of hiring a police officer or purchasing park land.

However, Harbeck and a representative of Grob Inc. said at the meeting the cost estimate is inaccurate compared to what the Public Works Board proposed.

Harbeck said the village’s cost estimate was for expanding the road to a consistent 36 feet width and adding diagonal parking across the entire front of Grob Inc.

“It was not the exact motion I made,” she said.

At the Village Board meeting, Harbeck and trustees Jim Miller and Andrew Schwartz voted against returning to the original plans.

Delorit said the Village Board should follow its ordinances that set the standard width for minor roadways at 32 feet.

“As trustees, we establish policy. The policy question here is should we support our ordinances,” he said.

He said the goal is to discourage through traffic on minor roadways and this shouldn’t be an exception.

“Enforcing an ordinance on a case-by-case basis is not consistent policy making,” he said.

But, Harbeck argued, those ordinances are not meant for road reconstructions but for building new subdivision roads. The ordinance cited by village staff is in a chapter that regulates subdivisions.

Harbeck said she was concerned with the short review time given to residents and the Public Works Board to review the reconstruction plans, which were completed a couple days before the meeting.

Additionally, she said, a village letter inviting resident input in November incorrectly stated the road is 32 feet wide while in some places it is more than four feet wider.

It was not until the final engineering design that residents found out their road would in fact be narrowed, Harbeck said.

“The information that was sent to residents said the road was 32 feet wide,” she said. “My concern is that it wasn’t accurate information.”

The road reconstruction is scheduled for this year. Officials said it is needed to address underground utility issues.