Saunders Street Bridge still closed

By Bill Toscano

More than a month after the Saunders Street bridge project was certified as complete, there is still a huge pile of snow blocking the connection to Broadway, and the orange detour signs are still up.

At Monday’s village board meeting, Mayor Francis “Fra” Putorti said electricity had been provided to the intersection by National Grid and the state Department of Transportation had planned to put the stoplight up on Wednesday, Jan. 19.

“Now, that’s when we had the really bad storm, so I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt,” Putorti said. “I am going to give it another week, and if we don’t see anything by then, we will call again.”

The project to fix the bridges over the Amtrak tracks at Clinton, Division and Saunders streets started last year. Clinton and Division are open, but Saunders remains closed. It will be reopened once the stoplight is up, but the light will be flashing yellow on Broadway and red on Saunders for three days before going into normal operation

Concerns over vehicles
Putorti said Chief Matthew Dickinson has reported that the police department’s 2007 Dodge Durango is out of service because of a cracked frame. The vehicle was in a minor accident last month, but since then, it was apparently driven into an object that cracked the frame.

“My issue is that the accident was not reported,” said village Trustee Walt Sanford, who is also Fort Edward’s police chief. “It’s very inappropriate not to report something like that.”

One of the department’s Crown Victoria patrol cars remains in a repair shop while it is getting its electrical wiring harness re-installed.

Questions on awning
The board was also visited by a lawyer representing a building owner on Main Street. The owner’s building is next to City Steak & Seafood and the building is for sale. “They are concerned because the new awning at City Steak may extend too far in front of their building,” Putorti said. “We have turned to over to our village attorney.”

In other business
Trustee Ken Bartholomew presented his colleagues with two draft documents. In one, he pulled together all of the village’s personnel policies, including the new intern rules and put them together into a single employee handbook.

He also drafted an Internet usage policy, something the village does not have.

“I want you all to take a good look at these,” Bartholomew said. “Let me know what you think.”

Sanford, for one, liked the Internet policy. “It’s a good, liberal policy,” he said. “It’s not overly strict.”

Sanford said the employee handbook needed a section on workplace violence and said he would bring the material in to add to the policy.