Silver Beach Road committee shelved

The Belgium Village Board on Monday voted not to form a committee to explore paving a portion of Silver Beach Road, going against a recommendation from an ad hoc committee.

The first step, six of seven trustees agreed, should be to talk to the Belgium Town Board since the road is in the town.

The vote was 6-1, with Clem Gottsacker, a longtime proponent of paving the road, dissenting.

The Belgium Area Chamber of Commerce last week encouraged the committee to pave the road, which leads into the village’s industrial park, saying it would spark business development that has been thwarted since Silver Beach is gravel.

The timing was key since applications for a Multimodel Local Supplement Grant that would pay 90% of a project’s cost were due last Friday.

Village Board President Pete Anzia approached the Town Board after it adjourned its monthly meeting on Dec. 2 to ask for a letter of support for the project. The town already applied for a grant through the program for work on Jay Road, and supervisors said they didn’t want to jeopardize their chances. The Town Board discussion violated the state’s open meetings because it was held outside of a public meeting.

“I feel we should slow down and do it right,” Anzia said. “At this point when I spoke with the Town Board they were not going to make any decisions, I’m assuming, until their grant went through,” he said.

He suggested getting both boards together to discuss the issue.

Trustee Josh Borden agreed, saying it would be a waste of time to form a committee to explore paving a road that isn’t in the village.

Paving the road has been discussed for years. Nearly all of the engineering work has been done and the cost estimate a few years ago was $3.2 million. The village wanted to hold off on the project until its Main Street was rebuilt. That project finished last year.

Gottsacker said the village and town had discussed the issue before and the town was OK with the village annexing the road as long as it didn’t have to pay for any of the work.

“Things change so we’re going to have to revisit that,” Anzia said.

Borden cited past flaws in the planning process.

“It seemed like things were done behind people’s backs and one person was deciding everything going on. It got landowners nuts about it,” he said.

Borden said he doesn’t think a decision could be made on the project in a day, week, month or even a year.

Anzia said there’s no rush.

“At this point there’s no grant that we could get so there’s no real urgency to it,” he said.