Bennington Banner
June 16, 1999

Local Leaders: Dean forcing plans on area

Sabina Haskell Latour
Staff Writer

Dorset – Local officials, lawmakers and townspeople from three counties are striking back at Gov. Howard Dean for pushing a proposed gas pipeline plan and adding passing lanes to Route 7 between Dorset and Mt. Tabor.

Calling Dean “cavalier” and “arrogant,” Select Board members from both towns said the governor is trying to muscle both projects through without listening to what local people want.

“The governor was arrogant in dealing with this entire thing,” said Mt. Tabor Select Board member William Gaiotti. “It is one of the reasons why we’re here and feel as strongly as we do.”

“I can’t shake this sense of a tie-in with the pipeline and road work,” added Dorset Select Board Chairwoman Angela Coolidge, Gaiotti’s sister. “We’re really fed up with this being shoved down our throats. We’re the bad guys because we don’t want superhighways and pipelines going through our town.”

Dean has used his bully pulpit to support both projects, saying he’s sick of listening to 14 years of complaints from the southern part of the state about new jobs.

“That’s crazy. For the last 14 years he should have been working on those right-of-ways, instead of letting it be developed,” Gaiotti said.

The state needs to acquire land along Route 7 to make improvements north of Wallingford.

But spending more than $600,000 to re-stripe seven miles of the national highway for alternative north- and southbound passing lanes is wasteful and uncalled-for, opponents told Micque Glitman, acting secretary of the Agency of Transportation, at a Dorset Select Board meeting Tuesday.

“There’s hardly a soul here who thinks the money is well spent,” House Minority Leader Walter Freed, R-Dorset, said. “route 7 is going as fast as it can in these two areas. Don’t waste your money on white stripes.”

Glitman defended the road project as part of a “coordinated action plan” to make improvements to the U.S. highway that is an “economic lifeline of statewide significance to folks who need that corridor for their businesses.”

The passing lanes will “increase capacity’ and actually decrease speeds along the straight roadway,” she said.

Citing a 14-year-old U.S. transportation study, Glitman said passing lanes would decrease fatal accidents by 17 percent. She also conceded that Vermont was not included and that there had been only one fatality in the last “couple of years” and a handful of other accidents along the section of Route 7.

“We’ve heard loud and clear from folks throughout the state that improvements are needed now,” said Glitman. “Our goal is to get as much done as quickly as possible. We’ll keep chugging along at it as much as we can.”

Nonetheless, opponents said adding the extra lane would encourage drivers to “compete” to take the lead through the village of East Dorset.

“To me, putting these passing lanes in is like having the Indianapolis starting line with (drivers) jockeying for position, which they don’t do now,” said Dorset Selecct Board member Jack Frost.

Glitman also got an earful about the agency’s approval process, with local planners saying the process wasn’t followed.

The AOT ignored its own scoping reports and extensive public input when giving its OK to the passing lane project, said James Sullivan, senior planner with the Bennington Count Regional Commission.

“There’s a strong message in here that the section of road is a good section of road and doesn’t need any changes. What happened in the last six months to put aside all these planning and engineering studies?” he asked.

Sultan said narrowing the road’s shoulders from 10 feet to four feet would be dangerous to bicyclists and pedestrians.

The BCC will soon release its own suggestions for improving Route 7 in East Dorset, Sultan said.

“I guarantee we will come up with recommendations far better than passing lanes north of East Dorset,” he said.

Since a car accident killed a child several years ago, the Dorset Planning Commission has worked with the state to come up with solutions for “traffic calming,” Chairman Robert Hurtle said.

Added flow planner Margaret Caravan, “I was on the scene of the fatality. I have some common sense. This doesn’t make sense. You need to listen to the people here who know how it works and doesn’t work,” she said.

The Conservation Law Foundation, in a written letter to the Dorset Select Board, pledged its support in fighting the project, saying it wasted the state’s “precious dollars on gold-plating a road segment that is adequate for current transportation needs.”

The environmental organization said state may have violated transportation law, which requires “bottom up” planning with full input form local communities. ‘OAT has estimated that the route 7 corridor will require in excess of $500 million over the next 20 years for highway improvements,” the letter states. “It is irresponsible for OAT to waste public transportation dollars on road segments that exhibit no major problems.”