06-25-2014 Additions - Laserfiche WebLink

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Joel, I will not be at the council meeting June 25`h. I will be in Philadelphia for the NHL draft. I read the packet and watched the Planning Commission Meeting. I have some opinions on two of the items that are on the agenda. Town home project. I understood that they are asking for an averaging of the side yard setback. That is a no for me. They either meet the set back or they don't. I also have reservations about raising the grade of the property. I do not know everything about drainage but I do know water runs downhill. Without his drawings it is hard to understand where he will put the run off. Secondly without some type of agreement between the owners how would they negotiate for services such as snow removal for a common driveway. For those three reasons I would not be in favor of the project. Cement mixing and hauling. We have two businesses located on that intersection that are dependent on traffic being able to move in an orderly fashion and not be overrun by large trucks. Secondly we have the cost of replacing streets whose life expectancies were cut short by the heavy hauling and last but not least we have no way of measuring the how much this project will be speed up the life cycle of the streets failure. First the Clark gas station does not a good exit now. Add those trucks and it makes an already difficult situation worse. I realize that it is not the trucking companies worry about this but I do believe the city council should be concerned and do what it can to protect that business from unnecessary pressures to sell their product. The next business I am concerned with is Porterhouse Steak and Seafood Restaurant. This restaurant depends on people from surrounding communities for their success. The traffic configuration on Little Canada Road is an inconvenience for their customers now. Adding multiple trucks per traffic light will only exacerbate the problem for them. No matter how good the food and how good the service, potential customers will tend to stay away during construction. I believe the question for them becomes do we lose these customers for good because they have found another restaurant to spend their money in. Some will say there will only be s short overlap, from 4:30 PM to maybe 8:00 PM that the truck will be hauling. If one is familiar with the restaurant customer pattern those are their peak times. To me it is not a logical argument to say the added truck traffic will not affect this business. Wear on our streets. The company was very willing to accept the $0.15 per ton we charge a local company as their pay for the wear on our streets. The gentleman said they would video the streets before and "if they were broken up after they were done that money would serve to pay their share. The state would bear half the cost. Since transportation began it has been proven over and over again that adding more traffic and more weight to that traffic will shorten the life of highways and streets. No video will show how much the added traffic and weight might speed up the failure of the road leading to a reconstruction. It did not sound as if there is an industry formula that government entities and trucking companies use to figure out the effect of these trucks on streets nor does there seem to be a willingness on the haulers part to pay for a study on the condition of the streets they will be using.