LETTER: Salina, Onondaga County focus on school safety, infrastructure improvements

To the editor:

School safety and infrastructure improvements are two top priorities in Salina. As your councilor, these are two of my top priorities right here in Liverpool. Our town board has been working hard to find ways to fund some of these incredibly important projects without passing the burden on to all of us as taxpayers. I’m glad to say that we’ve found some ways to do this, and one of them is Town Infrastructure Funding from the Onondaga County Legislature.

This year, the legislature earmarked $200,000 for the Town Infrastructure Fund and invited towns from around the county to submit applications for projects in their communities. It is a competitive process, only those with the projects that would make a significant impact were selected. Here in Salina, we applied to receive some of this funding that we absolutely need in order to take care of our local kids.

Chairman Knapp saw the wisdom in our projects and awarded our town $39,000 to make improvements to three key school zones, including Long Branch Elementary. This project is important to keeping our local children safe and our community thriving. At these school zones, crosswalks will see improvements and so will speed limit signs. There will be new, solar powered speed limit signs that alert drivers to the school zone and also give them feedback on their speeds. Each car that passes through the school zone will see a display with its speed.

This reminder might seem small or commonplace, but these feedback devices have been shown to significantly decrease speeds through school zones when they are implemented. A decrease in vehicle speed is valuable, even one of just 5 miles per hour. Consider this: A car traveling at 30 mph will be able to stop as much as 50 feet sooner than a car traveling at 35 mph. Those 50 feet can avoid tragedy.

I am thrilled that the county legislature has chosen to assist in the funding of this project. It’s a step towards protecting kids in Liverpool and I continue working to make this project the first of several to come.