Rodgers Wants To Streamline State Oversight

Of Local Traffic Projects

By John Voket

Standing at the entrance to Newtown High School, 106th District State Representative candidate and Legislative Council Chairman Will Rodgers recalled his first experience with the State Traffic Commission (STC) more than five years ago. He was at the time serving as chair of the council’s Ordinance Committee, and was charged with working with the state agency on a local ordinance prohibiting through truck traffic on certain state roads.

“My recollection is the STC was overly bureaucratic, even way back then,” Mr Rodgers told The Bee. “It seemed they were not interested in looking at [local projects] as a good cause versus erecting barriers or maintaining a ‘getting it off my desk’ mentality, with delays being imposed every step of the way.”

Fast forward to the recent past when the candidate and councilman stood by watching as the same agency imposed frustrating delays during its oversight of both the proposed high school expansion — which involves relocating an entryway along a state road — and access to the new town hall project, also from a state road.

If elected to the state assembly seat being vacated by fellow Republican Julia Wasserman, Mr Rodgers is pledging to work to streamline the state’s traffic approval processes, referencing his experiences with state agencies in connection with these aforementioned town construction projects.

His hopes are to improve the STC procedures and make the agency more responsive, to help Newtown and other communities throughout the state move traffic projects through the system more efficiently. The STC is part of the state Department of Transportation (DOT).

According to DOT, the agency promotes regulations establishing a uniform system of traffic control signals, devices, signs, and markings for public highways. It also adopts regulations in cooperation and agreement with local traffic authorities governing the use of highways and roads.

Mr Rodgers believes recent delayed reviews by the state commission, and the requirement of another agency to conduct such thorough reviews in the first place, have clearly impacted Newtown.

“The insistence of the School Facilities Unit of the Department of Education that a completely new traffic review was required after minor modification of the town’s construction plans [regarding school district offices within the new town hall complex], was questionable,” Mr Rodgers said. “The time it then took for the STC to make decisions regarding traffic flow around the high school and municipal center facility, for example, proved very much an eye-opening experience.”

He observed that these projects involved very limited redesigns of existing roads, and while he agrees they were worthy of state review, the redesign should not have caused an initial determination that a complete review was required.

“This kind of red tape chokes improvement projects throughout the state and the process must be improved in its design or its implementation, or both,” he said.

Streamlining the process would increase the likelihood that state funding for road improvements is delivered in a timely manner.

“Ensuring safety is the primary function of the STC,” said Mr Rodgers. “As long as basic safety concerns are satisfied, the state should allow for as much local control of road renovations as possible and be in a position to provide state funds for infrastructure without excessive delays.”

Mr Rodgers said that, if elected, he would use local or regional projects as opportunities to affect changes, if and when appropriate, through a diplomatic approach.

“My plan would not be to rally the legislative forces to push through a solution, but to observe and interact with the agency, perhaps consulting on a single local project,” he said. He suggested that local project might be the planned reconfiguration of the Exit 11 on and off ramps to Interstate 84.

“My philosophy is not to rush in with solutions unless you take the time to observe the agency’s inter workings,” Mr Rodgers said. “That can only result in contributing to the problem.”

He said he would draw on the experience he gained during his recent tour of duty in Iraq, where he was able to affect positive relations “between Iraqi tribes who [at first] wouldn’t even shake hands among themselves, never mind negotiate with representatives of our government.”

Turning his attention to traffic issues at the local level, the candidate commended the Police Commission for installing a speed control device pursuant to the traffic calming ordinance recently enacted by the Legislative Council.

He noted, however, that the role the Newtown Police Department is playing stepping up traffic enforcement efforts is the first step in addressing speeding concerns on local roads.

“Just as the Republican in me resists creating a new law to resolve a problem in the administration and execution of existing laws without first trying to address those problems directly on a physical level, I’m not sure we should create bumps in the road, literally, until we are satisfied that vigilant enforcement is not sufficient,” Mr Rodgers said. “I defer to the Police Commission’s judgment on this score, and am simply glad that the traffic calming ordinance provides the commission with more options to address traffic problems, as it determines.”

His Democratic opponent, fellow councilman Christopher Lyddy, has yet to put forward a public position on traffic related issues, a subject of significant local interest based on statistics from a recent townwide survey that put traffic control among 74 percent of respondents’ top concerns.