Norfolk School Committee Bullish On Access Road

The Norfolk School Committee seems inter­ested in going ahead with an access road through Bicentennial Park from Rockwood Road to the grounds of Freeman-Centennial School off Boardman Street.

Town officials have said recently that Bicen­tennial Park isn’t actually park land and is instead under the jurisdiction of the elementary school district, which would mean the School Commit­tee would have the say-so over whether an access road can be built through it. The potential access road has two possible versions. The first is as a temporary road for con­struction trucks to use while the new elementary school is being built. A temporary construction road would cost about $110,000, school architect Jorge Cruz told the Planning Board last week.

To build a permanent access road connecting Rockwood Road with the school grounds, School Committee chairman Shawn Dooley said the town has a price quote of $350,000.

In theory the town’s School Building Com­mittee could try to use some of the $36.9 million appropriated for the school project to build the access road, but the resistance likely to be en­countered by the state School Building Authority makes that route unlikely, Dooley said. A permanent access road through the town-owned land would open frontage for as many as eight homes, town public works director Remo “Butch” Vito told selectmen earlier this year. Dooley said he met recently with the town’s Affordable Housing Trust, which has money to create below-market-rate housing. “They’ve been looking for lots and they have enough money they would buy three lots right away, which would actually pay for all the road construction. So then the remaining lots we would be able to sell off and use the money for the schools, for teachers or for technology or for whatever,” Dooley said. Dooley said the Affordable Housing Trust would pay between $450,000 and $600,000 for the three lots. Dooley said the access road would improve safety by improving emergency access to the school grounds and that building it could prove a boon to the cash-strapped elementary-school system.

“I think for me, the two big pluses are one, public safety, the safety of the children; and two, that it could generate revenues for the school,” Dooley said. It also potentially provides another route for underground utilities. Neighbors who live on Ware Drive, Geneva Avenue, and Malcolm Street have been wary of the access road, worried that it might be connect­ed to their quiet, cul-de-sac neighborhood and therefore increase traffic. Neighbors have also spoken against the idea of building more houses in the area, noting that they have already encountered flooding.

Allowing only emergency vehicles to connect from the end of Geneva Avenue to the school grounds has also been discussed, but residents who live in that area has spoken in opposition to it.

On Wednesday, Gilleland asked Bushnell about the emergency-vehicles-only use of Gene­va Avenue, but Bushnell demurred. “I would not permit fire apparatus to go in that way,” Bushnell said. “… The area is just not stable. You’re looking at a grass area to place half a million dollar fireapparatus. It’s just not an ad­vantageous situation.” Connecting Geneva Avenue to the school grounds would require some significant road construction, although less than the length of the proposed new access road. School Committee member Linda Andrews said she doesn’t like the idea of creating a per­manent connection to the school grounds from Geneva Avenue but that she does see the benefit of another access road. “I strongly believe we do need some other type of access road. I’m strongly against using Gene­va, because I think it’s unfair to those people who live in there to suddenly populate their street,” Andrews said.

Dooley said the town could post a sign say­ing the access road would be used only for buses and emergency vehicles, and perhaps for parking after 4 p.m. for nearby sports fields. School Committee member Ross Gilleland said that while the access road is worth explor­ing, he wonders it’s worth building considering the cost. “So during the construction process and the value engineering, we’ve been looking at $5,000 change orders to get the budget down. So to put a $110,000 price ticket on a line item here that the engineers are saying isn’t really necessary is something that I think the town needs to look at. And I’m not saying in the long run it might not be a good solution, but that’s something that we need to look at from a townwide perspective,” Gilleland said.

Gilleland said if the access road is built it would make more sense to have the buses come in from Boardman Street as they do now and re­quire parents in cases to use the new access road to pick up their children.