By Ashley M. Casey

Staff Writer

The Van Buren Town Board is hoping to avoid accidents by restricting parking on Van Buren Road, which is a popular place to park for those attending events at Ray Middle School. The town board will hold a public hearing Nov. 1 on a local law that would ban parking on the east side of Van Buren Road from Ellsworth Road to Route 48.

“When Ray [Middle] School holds their open houses, their musical events, you cannot get up and down Van Buren Road,” Town Supervisor Claude Sykes said at the Oct. 18 town board meeting. “Emergency vehicles cannot pass. They have probably at least four events a year where it stops basically all traffic.”

Sykes said Ray recently had an event on the same night as a town board meeting, and event attendees were parking in the town hall’s parking lot.

“There was a tractor-trailer that got down there and got bottlenecked in,” Sykes said. “Jamie Rodems, [assistant superintendent for management services for the Baldwinsville Central School District], told me there was even people parked over up on Route 48. They don’t have enough parking on the Ray school grounds to house them all, so they park up and down Van Buren Road on both sides and it really creates a dangerous situation.”

Sykes said Van Buren Road is a main route for first responders, such as the Greater Baldwinsville Ambulance Corps, so keeping one side of the road clear will make room for emergency vehicles.

Since there are no sidewalks on Van Buren Road and many school events end after dark, Sykes said people are walking in the road to get back to their cars.

“It’s a wonder someone hasn’t gotten hit,” he said.

Sykes said he has asked the school district to split up Ray’s open houses and other events by grade level to alleviate the congestion.

“They’ve tried to do things with scheduling, and it just hasn’t worked, so people are going to have to find a new way to do it,” Sykes said.

He said the district plans to address the issues with traffic and parking in a long-term plan, but in the meantime, the town is taking action before an accident occurs.

“We did the same thing over at the soccer center on Jones Road,” Councilor Howard Tupper noted.

Assessor reports on STAR exemptions

Also at the Oct. 18 meeting, assessor Theresa Golden updated the board on changes to the STAR school tax exemption program. Golden said STAR renewals for senior citizens, disability and Enhanced STAR were mailed in September, and the deadline for existing property owners to renew or apply for a 2016-17 school year STAR exemption is Dec. 31, 2016.

As part of the 2016-17 state budget, the New York State Legislature voted to eliminate the STAR program for homeowners who purchased their houses after March 1, 2015. Current homeowners with STAR exemptions have been grandfathered in.

Golden said her office is still notifying new property owners of the change because many people still do not know about it.