Wiscasset Selectmen’s Chair Sarah Whitfield Sept. 3 said Economic Development Director Aaron Chrostowsky’s written statement was true, that Wiscasset, known as Maine’s prettiest village, is also, he said, “often recognized for its gridlock traffic.”

 

“True. But I want us to stop saying it,” Whitfield said as the board discussed the letter Chrostowsky drafted that would ask the state for a traffic safety audit. The audit would aid the state’s long range planning, he said. 

 

“I’m all for the safety piece of this,” Whitfield said. “But my initial reaction is no, only because I’m just so, so sick of the narrative of traffic in this town, my entire life and before.” Recalling the upset among many locals over the state’s downtown project a few years ago, she said it “ripped neighbors apart.” If the audit will help safety, she said, “Great. I just want us to stop talking about the traffic.” When she was growing up, she would read in the newspaper about editorials being written as far as Boston about Wiscasset’s traffic.

 

“Boston has a nerve to speak of it,” Selectman Pamela Dunning said. “Hello, have you ever tried to drive through Boston?”

 

Proposing to ask Maine Department of Transportation for what he said would be a free audit, Chrostowsky told selectmen, “I think all of us have sat in traffic for a while during the summer (and) we’ve all gotten used to it. It’s just part of your day. But ... we (also) have these accidents that (are) not part of the day and really back up traffic for hours ... And it just seems like maybe it’s time to look at this again. From an economic development standpoint ... access is really an important thing. Businesses need ease of access ... and if they don’t have that, they’re not going to site here. So I feel like ... if we don’t address these issues, we’re going to have issues with business attraction.”

 

The backups are not just due to crashes, they happen all day, Dunning said. She said Old Bath Road where she lives is curvy and has homes with small children and with free-ranging livestock. “And these people (bypassing Route One, also called Bath Road) zip through as if they’re on the freeway.” A lower speed limit might help, “because some of it’s a head game,” she said. And she recalled people took Flood Avenue to lose a half mile of the Route One wait, until Flood Avenue was, in summers, changed to one way – the direction heading away from  town, not into it.

 

So there are things that can help with traffic issues, Dunning said. She further observed, before recent years’ addition of traffic lights, traffic used to back up as far as Taste of Maine in Woolwich; now the backup is down to maybe about two miles, she said. “It’s nowhere near the issue it used to be.” She suggested to prevent accidents, people should get off their cell phones and watch the car in front of them “instead of rolling into the back of it.”

 

About the audit, Dunning asked, “Is this going to include anything about people going 60 miles an hour past my house on Old Bath Road as a Route One exit ... They do go that fast. I’m afraid to be in my front yard sometimes.”

 

The Federal-Hooper streets area gets speeders, too, Selectman Terry Heller said. “It’s astonishing.”

 

Chrostowsky and Dunning both cited then-Town Manager Laurie Smith’s Bath Road Master Plan. Dunning said Smith put a lot of work into it, and it might be worth a new look. The economic development committee will be looking at it, Chrostowsky said. 

 

The board did not green-light the letter. At Selectman James Andretta’s suggestion, they chose to wait until Chrostowsky has learned from MaineDOT what if any plans it already has for Wiscasset. That information could better inform the letter, Andretta said. “I’m fine with doing this,” he said of an audit.

 

Selectmen said it could turn out things are already planned traffic-wise that address concerns Chrostowsky raised. 

 

MaineDOT’s website includes in the agency’s three-year work plan for Wiscasset “a speed reduction pilot,” part of “Piloting of selected traffic calming solutions for selected village locations statewide.” Wiscasset Newspaper asked MaineDOT Spokesman Paul Merrill about it. “We are putting up speed feedback signs. The ones that show vehicles how fast (or slow?) they are traveling,” he explained. 

 

As of Friday, Chrostowsky was continuing to seek information from MaineDOT as selectmen supported doing. He was optimistic the board will support an audit. And he said MaineDOT’s and Lincoln County Regional Planning Commission’s planned transportation study that commissioners heard about Sept. 3 could also be integral. He said the audit he has proposed seeking is focused on “a certain segment of the road.”

 

His would-be letter to MaineDOT asks that the audit focus on Churchill Street, Lee Street, Bradford Road, Birch Point Road, the Shaw’s and Wiscasset Marketplace Plaza driveways, Old Bath Road and Route 144/Old Ferry Road.

 

Also Sept. 3, selectmen nodded the Nov. 5 warrant of local questions, including the sewer plant’s would-be move to the public works facility and public works’ move to the transfer station property; a Maine Public Employees Retirement System change for the police department; changes to ordinances that have limited non-residents’ committee service; and a question Town Manager Dennis Simmons requested, to let the treasurer waive a foreclosure if the selectboard and town manager recommend that. Simmons’ explained in his manager’s report, foreclosing on “two junk mobile homes” on rented lots last year meant the town had to pay to dispose of the homes. 

 

Simmons said that, possibly through a selectboard bulletin, they will need to educate voters on the sewer plant/public works item. He said a couple people have thought the point was “just so we could get a new public works garage.” Wiscasset Newspaper has reported, the board’s talks have been on the need to move the sewer plant for climate resiliency. The board has supported the public works site for that, after other potential sites appeared to cost more to put the plant on, or posed other issues. Selectmen said photos of what newer sewer plants look like should be part of the education. 

 

The board nodded a business license for Danielle Vollnogle, selling leather bags retail as Cope & Co., at 51C Water St.; and accepted Richard Forrest’s resignation from the waterfront committee “with a great deal of respect and gratitude for his many, many years of service,” as Dunning put her motion. “Second that, and third and fourth,” Heller said, nodding.