Petition To Help Protect Children and
Animals From Speeders, on Roads Servicing
The Lake Louise Marie Homeowners and
Emerald Green Property Owners’ Associations

To: 
Richard Benjamin Jr., Highway Superintendent
Town of Thompson Highway Department
33 Jefferson Street
Monticello, NY 12701

From:
Michel Donato, Resident
387 Lake Louise Marie Road, Rock Hill, NY 12775; On behalf of:
Residents of the Lake Louise Marie Homeowners and Emerald Green
Property Owners’ Associations and other concerned people.

Dated:  November 9, 2022

Responsible Public Official:

The Highway Superintendent is an elected official responsible for the construction, maintenance, repair, plowing, and salting of town roads. The Highway Department is also responsible for adding and abandoning roads. In addition, the Highway Department operates highly complex road building equipment and carries out state and local road building programs. Highway Department employees perform other maintenance duties for various departments of the town.

Petition Details:

Roads servicing the Lake Louise Marie Homeowners and Emerald Green
Property Owners’ Associations’ (LLM/EG) homes are vital routes of ingress, egress, and recreation to all LLM/EG residents, friends, and family.  Our two communities are well established, well maintained, and have a high percentage of homes with multi-generational families.  Children of all ages play in our two communities and children and adults gather at the two communities’ Common Areas for swimming, boating, tennis, and other recreational activities and various administrative activities associated with LLM/EG.

In addition, people of all ages walk, ride their bicycles, jog, and walk their pets on the two communities’ roads every day.  In fact, from these two communities, it is estimated that there are over 350 residents who walk, over 245 residents who jog, over 140 residents who bicycle, and over 175 residents who walk their pets on these roads on any given week. Some of
these roads are Primary Roads and some are Secondary Roads.

The majority of the posted speed limits on these Primary and Secondary roads range from 30 mph down to 25 mph.  On several critical roads servicing these two communities the posted speed limits are chronically exceeded with vehicles speeding well above these limits.  Personal and commercial vehicles are regularly seen traveling in excess of 50 mph or even 60 mph on these 30 mph posted roads.  Because of this pedestrian use, and especially that children contribute to this use, the risk of children, adults, and/or animals getting hit and seriously injured or killed by speeding vehicles is greater when individuals exceed the speed limits on the roads that service these two communities.

In particular, the most vulnerable roads to speeding include:

•  Lake Louise Marie Road,
•  North Emerald Drive,
•  Old Sackett Road,
•  Lake Shore Drive East,
•  Lake Shore Drive West, and
•  Lake Shore Drive South.

The residents of the LLM/EG associations have repeatedly approached the boards of these associations in an official and unofficial capacity. We have been told by the board members that it is not the responsibility of the LLM/EG associations to maintain these town roads. While we understand that the LLM/EG associations cannot directly implement or enforce any of these measures, we believe that the board members, in their capacity as community representatives, have neither taken appropriate steps to inform you, nor demonstrate the importance of this issue to you, directly.

Therefore, we, the individual residents of the LLM/EG communities and other interested people, have signed this petition directly so that our voices can be heard, and these requests can be considered.

This petition is created to ask Richard Benjamin Jr., Highway Superintendent of the Town of Thompson Highway Department (as well as all those who are being CC'd on this petition) to please consider the speeding concerns voiced by all of the signatories of this petition and to please implement
at least one of the following mitigation measures (or any other mitigation measures, in the collective expert opinion of the Town of Thompson Highway Department and/or the CC'd people on this petition) that would effectively reduce the chronic speeding problem in the LLM/EG communities, to each of the roads listed above.

Mitigation Measures:

1)  Caution, Reduce Speed, Children at Play, Animal Crossing, and/or
Pedestrian Crossing signs installed in prominent locations to make drivers aware of the use of these roads by animals and people.

2)  Speed bumps installed in strategic locations to ensure drivers reduce speed.

3)  Flashing signs showing a vehicle’s speed installed at strategic locations to remind drivers to reduce speed.

4)  Stop Signs installed at strategic locations to ensure drivers are not able to exceed the speed limits before having to stop again at the next stop sign.

5)  And, most importantly, an increased police presence on these roads to enforce the already existing speed limits and ticket those who violate the laws.

Respectfully submitted,

Michel Donato, Resident; and on behalf of all the signatories of this petition