Upper Park St. couple expresses anger at lack of progress on dangerous sidewalk

by Dan McClelland

The upper Park Street couple who for many months have been urging the town board to make safe the sidewalk that runs along Route 3 and 30 in front of their house were fired up at the town board's October meeting.

John Klimm began his presentation during the initial open comment period by quoting from an e-mail he received on July 22 from the Watertown regional office of the state Department of Transportation (DOT).

Reba Cervantez, a secretary in that office quoted sections of state highway law relating to town highway superintendents. Among their duties, is that they “maintain all sidewalks in the town constructed by the state adjacent to state highways and all sidewalks in the town constructed by the county adjacent to county roads and, when authorized by the town board, cause the removal of snow therefrom, and the cost thereof shall be paid” from town funds.

Up until John Klimm and Barbara Close began petitioning for repairs a year or so ago, town officials were unaware it was the town responsibility to maintain that sidewalk from Hosley to the top of Sunmount hill.

Mr. Klimm left a copy of that material with the town board that evening.

Mr. Klimm apologized to the board for his weak voice that evening as he recently underwent heart surgery for the insertion of four stents.

He said there has been no snow removal from that section of sidewalks for years. “For nearly two years we have been trying to get that sidewalk repaired- particularly near that fire hydrant- and you haven't done anything!”

He said as part of rehabilitation regimen he is supposed to walk and to do so in his neighborhood he has to cross the section where several sections of concrete are missing.

“I've stumbled several times, but Barbara has caught me!”

“If I fall there and get injured, I'm going to be a very wealthy man,” pointing to a lawsuit against the town in that eventuality.

“I'm not going to walk on the side of the highway. Some people do walk there because they can't walk on the sidewalk!”

He explained that people walking on the side of the state highway there are taking their lives in their hands, as cars race along that section. Evidence of the many speeders there are the number of tickets written there by state troopers, he told the town board.

“If someone gets hurt or killed walking on that highway, the blood is on your hands!”

“So what are you going to do about it?”

He told Supervisor Patti Littlefield and her board they didn't want the answer they've been given at every past time they have appeared before the board: “Oh, we're going to consider it or we're going to think about it.”

“I'm giving you five days. If you don't fix that sidewalk by the fire hydrant I will contact my attorney in Saranac Lake and you will get papers. So what's your answer?”

“The answer is we're working on a solution,” Supervisor Littlefield told him.

“That's your answer?” Mr. Klimm pressed.

“That's the answer,” said the supervisor.

He called her answer unacceptable and Mrs. Littlefield remained firm.

“Do we have to get a group together, which we've already talked about, and do the same thing we're doing to Mr. Trump?” he said of the federal impeachment inquiry now underway.

He said the supervisor and the board members were not doing their jobs.

“We'll take it under advisement that you came to the meeting tonight,” Mrs. Littlefield told the elderly couple.

“You haven't done anything but sit there and make excuses,” Mr. Klimm asserted. “Excuses are not acceptable any more!”

“That's all you do is give excuses...no more excuses, no more excuses!”

Councilwoman Tracy Luton, who used to live on that stretch of highway and who encountered many problems in her winters there with frozen pipes because the laterals were too close to the surface, said the board members were trying “to figure out” what to do about the situation. “We need to wait and figure it out the correct way!”

“I think your three minutes are up,” she told him, to which John Klimm replied “I am talking!”

He said he was using Barbara's three minutes.

He also objected to the smile on the councilwoman's face, saying: “don't laugh at me...this is not a comedy.”

“I can laugh if I choose to laugh, and I'm telling you mister I lived up there for a number of years and those sidewalks have been like that way before the town supervisor” investigated its condition.

She said it was only a few months ago that the town board learned that it was the town's obligation to repair those 1960s sidewalks or remove them.

“As far as we are concerned we are taking the appropriate actions!” the councilwoman told him.

“What are the appropriate actions?” Mr. Klimm asked her.

“That we need to figure out what we need to do” with the damaged walk, she retorted.

Barbara Close said she e-mailed Mrs. Littlefield ten days ago about cleaning up the mess on those sections of sidewalk near their house. “Still nothing has been done!”

Tracy Luton suggested to the couple maybe the town board needs to take a different approach to finding a solution there, “because this is obviously not working for you.”

Mr. Klimm compared the town board's progress on this issue to the county's where a section of sidewalk was removed for infrastructure work and it was replaced in a day and one half. He credited Legislator Paul Maroun for that fix and told the town board “he's getting things done, you're not!”

“Thank you for your over three minute comments, John,” the supervisor told him.

“I gave him my three minutes,” interjected Ms. Close.

The supervisor said that wasn't permissible, telling her “you are very welcome to speak to us!”

“You don't get to pass your time on!”

In a loud voice Ms. Close iterated her point about her recent e-mail.

“Could you please lower your voice,” the supervisor asked her.

The resident said her request had been for the town to clean the sidewalk from the fire hydrant next to their house to the Hosley intersection. “You said you would look into it, but nothing's been done!”

The supervisor said she was looking into the matter.

“I'll tell you one thing right now,” she told the woman, explaining it was not the town officials' obligation to respond to comments made in the public comment period. “We are looking into it and we are going to do what we are legally required to do, the right way, not the wrong way. This stuff takes time!”

At an earlier meeting she explained that projects done by the town must first be surveyed, engineered and bids let, before any public works project can be done by outside contractors.

“I've been explaining this to you guys for two years. We are talking to our attorney, we are talking to the state DOT. We will work this out between us. Yelling and screaming, and constantly sending us e-mails...and telling us to do this or we're going to be threatening you, or we're going to be rich does not get action any quicker,” she asserted.

“We are going to do this the right way on behalf of you all and the rest of the 2,000 taxpayers in the Town of Tupper Lake!”

“We understand we need to keep Tupper Lake safe and we also understand” the dollars associated with a project of this size and the cost to local taxpayers.

She thanked them for coming.

Barbara Close, in leaving, asked the board how it intended to plow the sidewalk this winter, as directed by the state statute, with all the debris on the sidewalk.

The supervisor didn't answer. “We'll review this and thank you very much for coming in,” she told them.

“You work for us...we don't work for you!,” John Klimm told her as he left.

“I know,” replied the supervisor. “I'm very aware of that!”