Friday's Feature (On Saturday)

The $800,000 project on, under and near the 400 block of Union Street to replace an ancient stone sewer has begun in earnest.  This should make the homeowners whose basements have been flooding for years due to the faulty (shocking!) sewer pretty happy.  Drivers, well, maybe not so.  Yesterday, there was a procession of cars from South 5th and from Union that were forced to proceed on Allen or Partition, turned left to head down the hill and out of town on Power Avenue or, more commonly, turned right on Court and then left on Union.  Of course, drivers headed east on Union will be forced onto South 4th Street and then have the choice of heading up Warren, Columbia or State to get to their destinations.  How long this will continue, and if the detour is going to be present every weekend, remains to be seen.  It's not going to be pretty for a long, long time, that's for sure.  There will be crashes, you wait and see.  Some may be even akin to this, though with much smaller vehicles: 

(A very old photo I recently came across that is now in my possession.)

There is no mention on the city's website of this huge, disruptive, long-term project, the parking situation, or the long-term detours, and Robert Perry made no mention of the situation during his report at the most recent informal Common Council meeting.  Why the heck would he if the detours don't affect him personally and he doesn't live in the 400 block of Union Street or anywhere nearby?  

If the end date of this project is a complete mystery, the start date is a bit of a head scratcher.  Does anyone agree with me that beginning the excavation of Union Street on a Friday was a ridiculous idea?  Whose idea was that, anyway?  The contractor Colarusso's?  Apparently, they couldn't wait until Monday to start digging up the street, and our DPW Superintendent was either perfectly fine with that or he had no interest in knowing about it.  Yup, that sounds like the approach of our Great Communicator on Zoom, the same guy who claims not to have an office he works from and somehow gets paid over $117,000 a year.

What detours, what parking issues, what huge project to
replace a 150-year-old stone sewer on Union Street
which began this past Friday?