Residents of Osborne Hill Road attended the Police Commission meeting on December 6 to express opposition to a town plan to paint double yellow lines on their roadway. The town has halted its plans to paint the road until at least next year while it looks into the matter.

The roadway for years has had a single yellow line painted, but a change in the standard model of road painting by the State of Connecticut has meant that Newtown has been shifting to conform to the new model. Under the new model, roads are either painted with double lines (including dashed lines to denote passing zones) or no line at all.

Osborne Hill Road resident Kelly Cerrato said that double yellow lines reduce the home values of any home along it. She said that buyers prefer roads with no lines or a single yellow line. She said she and her husband chose their home on that road because it did not have a double yellow line.

“It all comes down to perception,” said Cerrato. “We looked at five different homes, and we didn’t take them because they were on double lined streets.”

Cerrato had a petition with signatures from 23 homeowners on Osborne Hill Road opposing the painting.

“It has big impact on home values,” said Cerrato.

Cerrato was asked by commission members to provide them with information on any studies that show home values decrease from double yellow lines on the roadway so that they can consider it in their final decision on whether to paint the road.

Commission member Neil Chaudhary said that the general feeling on double yellow lines is that it “delays sales, not reduces price,” but he was unable to find concrete evidence or studies.

Cerrato and residents of the street said Tuesday night that painting double yellow lines does not slow down traffic, if that was what the town was trying to achieve. Resident Judith Neary said she lives close to the road and it is “very quiet.”

Karen Martin, who also lives on Osborne Hill Road, asked the commission what data was used to come to the conclusion that the road required double yellow lines. She said that trucks had already been out to the road to begin to paint the white lines along the sides of the streets.

Commission Chairman Joel Faxon explained to residents there are “rules that have to be followed” in painting lines on roadways. He said that with 250 miles of road in town that there needs to be “consistencies in expectations.” The commission does want to listen to people’s complaints and be responsive to them, however, he added.

“We have to be compliant with the rules,” said Faxon. “There are standard practices. We have to be consistent in the types of roads painted with lines, otherwise it’s up for debate and everyone will want no lines.”

Faxon explained that double yellow lines “are not deployed for speed.”

“It’s mostly because we want people to stay in the space they should be,” said Faxon. “Sometimes we have rumble strips because there are areas people cross, and go too fast, like Toddy Hill Road. The lines are to increase lane awareness.”

Public Works Director Fred Hurley said everyone who has called him about the line painting had been “terrific.”

“It’s not often you get people who are passionate but also polite,” said Hurley.

Hurley told the commission he took the residents’ complaints “seriously,” and went back and looked at Osborne. He said the main concern for the town was the section of Osborne Hill Road between Mt Laurel and Paugussett, which many residents use as a cut-through.

“We need to think about what we can or should do in the corollaries,” said Hurley, who added many roads need to be looked at because there are a lot of roads that still have single yellow lines.

Hurley said the project has been put on hold, and the season for road painting is ending in a week or so as weather is turning too cold. The Public Works Department will “do more mapping and look at road widths,” he said. Road painting will not resume until next year.

“We need to take a look at what we decide and how we decide,” said Hurley.

Some discussion centered on just painting the part of the road between Mountain Laurel and Paugussett, but some commission members were concerned with a lack of consistency. It was noted that beyond Mountain Laurel, the road becomes a residential neighborhood.

Associate Editor Jim Taylor can be reached at jim@thebee.com.