Selectmen are unlikely to pur­sue building an access road from Rockwood Road to the grounds of Freeman-Centennial School at Town Meeting this spring. Town officials want to wait for the results of traffic study before determining whether the road is necessary. “So basically nothing’s going to happen in the spring. We’ll wait to see what the traffic study says,” said Selectman Jim Le­han,

board chairman, during the selectmen’s meeting this past Thursday morning.

Selectmen discussed the ac­cess road with the town’s public works director, Remo “Butch” Vito.

Vito said he is keen on mak­ing sure that the new loop road around the grounds of the new elementary school on Boardman Street that replaces Freeman-Centennial is designed in such a way that it can accommodate an access road to link to it from Rockwood Road. “We’ll leave it there, but until the need arises there’s really no reason to do it,” Vito said. Public safety officials would like another way to get to the school grounds so public safety vehicles can get in and out more easily and to improve traffic flowin the area.

The road has been estimated to cost about $500,000. To pay for it, selectmen have considered selling a parcel of town-owned land that would bear eight house lots if the access road were built and thus gave the lots frontage on a public way.

But Lehan emphasized that town officials aren’t just trying to make money for the town.

“Our concerns are public safety and traffic. We have no other agenda,” Lehan said.

The topic drew a rare audi­ence at a so-called “working ses­sion” of the Board of Selectmen this past Thursday morning, as three people who live in the neighborhood of Ware Drive, Geneva Avenue, and Malcolm Street showed up to listen and express concern.

Residents of that neighbor­hood have resisted the proposed access road in part because of fears that it would be connected to one of their streets, which would hugely increase traffic there. Lehan tried to allay those fears. “There’s no intent to connect to Geneva or Malcolm. It’s pure­ly an access road to the school,” Lehan said. Lehan noted that the easiest thing for the town to do would be to simply extend Geneva to the school grounds, but that town officials don’t want to do that because it would wreck the neighborhood.

“None of us want to do any­thing to disturb your neighbor­hood. We’re very sensitive to that,” Lehan said. Vito noted another traffic concern, which is that when traf­fic over the railroad tracks on Rockwood Road reaches a cer­tain point the town will be forced by federal regulations to build a divider in the roadway to prevent vehicles from trying to cross the tracks when the crossing gates are down.

If that happens, then Ware Drive would be restricted to a right-turn-only onto Rockwood Road, which means the neigh­borhood would have to be con­nected to another road so that drivers can go left on Rockwood Road toward the town center.

That possibility makes it im­perative to make sure that the access road is at least feasible, Vito said.

“If that doesn’t happen for 30 years, O.K.. But at least you give the town the ability to address it in 30 years,” Vito said.

Selectmen floated the pos­sibility of allowing emergency vehicles to use a dirt area at the end of one of the streets to gain access to the school grounds without opening it up to general traffic, an idea that drew a mixed reaction from the residents there. In addition to concerns about increases in traffic, residents of that neighborhood also aren’t happy with the idea of building more houses in that area. They say the water table is so high now they are worried about flooding, which used to be a severe prob­lem before the town made drain­age improvements during the 1990s.

“It’s the whole watershed for what used to be called Dirty Creek,” said Richard Morris, who lives on Malcolm Street.