Bloomingburg Trustee Chaim Friedman walked into Village Hall last Thursday evening and even before sitting down, picked out Mamakating Supervisor Janet Lybolt in the crowd, smiled and said, “It’s an amazing day.”

“I agree,” Lybolt replied.

The excitement was palpable as the village prepared to approve an intermunicipal agreement (IMA) in the works for a year that will permit the construction of sidewalks on Winterton Road between River Lane and the Chestnut Ridge townhouse development.

Earlier last week, Mamakating had signed on to the agreement. When the village board came to order, Lybolt presented a copy to the trustees, requesting they approve it, too, in the interest of safety. The village board — Friedman, fellow Trustee Samuel Weingarten and Mayor Russell Wood, Jr. — did not waste any time, voting to give Wood permission to sign the IMA, which he did.

“It’s a great day for the village, the town, the community,” Friedman said. The small crowd attending the meeting clearly approved, giving the board a round of applause.

Still to come is approval from the Sullivan County Legislature. The county owns the stretch of road along which the sidewalk will be built. A thumbs up is all but guaranteed, said Legislator Nicholas Salomone, District 4, who attended the board meeting. Salomone sits on the legislature’s public works committee, which has given the deal its blessing and passed it on to the full legislature. Salomone said the legislature would take up the IMA this week.

The village has been trying for years to get the sidewalk built. The developer of Chestnut Ridge agreed to build it as part of the original site plan approval in 2009. But between Chestnut Ridge and River Lane lies a stretch of road in the town that’s owned by the county, and the county refused to allow sidewalks on Winterton, a heavily travelled road that doubles as County Route 62, Wood said.

But the county eventually changed its tune and agreed to seek a solution for the safety of the many pedestrians who travel back and forth from the Chestnut Ridge Hasidic enclave to the village center. The village proposed to annex the road between River Lane and Chestnut Ridge. The town objected and offered an IMA, which would give it more say over what got built. But negotiations bogged down, and after a year or so village trustees voted to abandon the IMA and revive the annexation plan.

After that, talks picked up again. Under the agreement, the county will deed its property, a strip less than a half-mile long and 60 feet wide, to the town. The town will be responsible for the road, and grant an easement to the village from the edge of the road to the edge of what had been the county property. The deal allows for sidewalks on either side of Winterton and such additional infrastructure as lighting. The final version took a lot of hard work by a lot of people, Friedman said. “A lot of negotiations.”

In another effort to make Winterton safer for pedestrians and motorists, the village agreed to support the town’s bid to get the state Department of Transportation (DOT) to reduce the 40-mile-an-hour speed limit on Winterton. In addition, the village is proceeding with a plan to buy speed monitoring devices that alert motorists to their speed and collect traffic data that can be analyzed. Friedman, who has been looking into the available options, said research shows the signs do make a difference.

DOT Exit Closures

The village also volunteered to assist the town’s effort to object to a DOT plan to close Route 17 exits 114 and 115 in Mamakating. The exits do not meet the standards that apply to interstate highways, and the long-delayed plan to turn Route 17 into I-86 would seem to doom them. To meet interstate standards, 114 and 115 would have to include on and off ramps in each direction. Lybolt is asking the DOT to upgrade 114 and 115 rather than close them.

The public spoke out at a recent meeting in the town, arguing that shutting down the exits would impede first responders, divert traffic to small village and town roads and adversely affect the local economy. Village board members said they will help distribute petitions that ask the DOT to abandon the plan to close 114 and 115.

Village Court

Yet another safety-related move will station an armed sheriff’s deputy in village court when it is in session. The new village justice, Julia Sherman, had requested the presence of a court officer to provide security and maintain order when village court is in session the second Tuesday of each month. Wood said the village and county would enter into an IMA to provide a deputy for a few hours each month. Under the deal, the county, not the village, would be held liable should anything go wrong.