Access Road Through Bicentennial Park Still A Possibility

Will the town build an access road from Rockwood Road to the elementary school grounds off Boardman Street through Bi­centennial Park? Yes, no, and maybe are all still viable options. Selectman Rob Garrity, no fan of the idea, wants to final­ize a decision on it soon, and so selectmen are inviting various school and town officials to their next board meeting in mid-July 12 to discuss it.

Garrity said several depart­ment heads under the town ad­ministrator, Jack Hathaway, have continued to push for the access road even while draw­ing little enthusiasm from most board members. “The problem I have is that in my investigation of the access road issue the only people push­ing

it appear to be our employees — Jack’s employees, the depart­ment heads,” Garrity said dur­ing the selectmen’s meeting this past Monday night. “… It’s been a constant kind of nagging issue that’s never really been yesed or noed.”

Town public safety officials support building an access road through the town-owned land to provide another means for police cruisers, firetrucks, and ambulances to get to the school grounds if needed.

Some town officials also like the idea of an alternative access for construction trucks once work gets under way this fall on a new elementary school to replace Freeman-Centennial School.

Residents who live in a cul-de-sac neighborhood that in­cludes Ware Drive, Geneva Av­enue, and Malcolm Street are wary of any road construction that would make their neighbor­hood a potential cut-through to and from the school grounds. The access road could be con­nected to that neighborhood, though selectmen have said they have no plans to do so.

Building the road has been es­timated to cost about $500,000. At various times the access road has gotten support from the town’s police chief, Charles H. Stone Jr.; firechief, Coleman Bushnell; and public works di­rector, Remo “Butch” Vito. Garrity, chairman of the Board of Selectmen, suggested during the board meeting this past Monday night that the ac­cess road is unnecessary and that the town doesn’t have money for it. “And I’ve heard the public safety concern about it, which I think can be addressed in a perhaps politically unpopular but rather less expensive way by moving a boulder, and al­lowing extreme public safety ac­cess through the end of Geneva Street. And I’ve said the awful word, which is maybe that you need to use the end of Geneva as a public-safety-only access to the school property, which would require moving one boulder and allowing a police car and/or an ambulance to get there the min­ute and a half to 2 minutes to 5 minutes earlier that Chief Bush­nell is concerned about and the police chief is concerned about,” Garrity said.

Garrity’s suggestion would mean that emergency vehicles could get to the elementary school grounds through the Ware Drive neighborhood but that regular vehicles would not be allowed to do so. At the moment the town has no means of paying for the ac­cess road, but that could change. Several months ago the select­men floated an idea of selling off town land as house lots once the access road provided frontage for the lots.

Another possibility is to findmoney in the $36.9 million school project. The School Build­ing Committee, which is oversee­ing the school project, has shown little interest in including the ac­cess road as part of the construc­tion, but it’s at least theoretically possible to do so, said Selectman Jim Lehan. “You say there’s no money. There could be funds in that project if it were realigned ap­propriately. And I have that with some knowledge. So it’s not out of the question that it could be built into the school project. It is not. But people have to make de­cisions to make that happen. And those decisions have to be made in a pretty timely manner. I would say sooner rather than later,” Le­han said.

Lehan said that the Bicenten­nial Park land is under the ju­risdiction of the Norfolk School Committee, not the Board of Se­lectmen, and that whether to in­clude the access road as part of the school project is up to the School Building Committee.

Lehan also said department heads with a responsibility for public safety, which would include the police chief, the fire chief, and the public works director, should feel free to make their case to the School Committee and the School Building Committee.

Even if the town doesn’t build a permanent access road through Bicentennial Park, some observers say the town should at least build a temporary road so construction trucks can access the construc­tion

site without jeopardizing the safety of students at Freeman-Centennial, which is supposed to stay open while the new school is being built nearby.

“I’m still not sure how they’re going to get everything in and out of there,” Selectman Jim Tomasze­wski said. Hathaway said the current plan is to build a fence dividing the construction site on the west­ern

side of the school grounds from Freeman-Centennial, while still allowing access to the major-league-level Little League baseball field on Boardman Street just west of the Freeman building.

If the joint meeting on the ac­cess road comes about as select­men hope, it would take place during the next regularly sched­uled selectmen’s meeting on Mon­day, July 12.