Rumor has it the vendor failed to order the concrete culvert and it will be in "any day now". If they knew it was going to take 6 weeks they should have reopened the road temporarily. It better be done before November so Mr. Delnicki can have his wonderful light display. I miss the penguins.

Thanks for the update, Mayor Prague. :-)

There are a number of questions that must be answered concerning the Felt Rd Bridge :

#1 Why did the contractor take a one month Vacation from the project ?

# 2 Why was the Contractor given such a long amount of time to get this project done ? Let’s face facts, if the contractor gets the job done on time, he was give at least 30 days too much time !

# 3 The side streets are woefully inadequate to "Safely" handle the traffic that has been diverted from Felt Rd. Why wasn't that taken into account in establishing the time line ? The longer these streets carry the high volumes of traffic the greater the chance a child could be injured or worse !

# 4 this project has gone from an inconvenience to a Public Safety Issue. By that I mean I live at 130 Felt Rd and had a Senior Citizen make a path thru my lawn to avoid hitting the Concrete Barriers. Had my neighbors children been playing in my yard we could be reflecting on an avoidable tragedy.
Just the other night 2 vehicle "Raced" down Felt Rd and slammed their brakes on avoiding hitting the barriers.

# 5 Why was there not a Stop Sign installed to Stop the Traffic speeding down Felt Rd at the Farm Brook and Felt intersection. I have brought that to the town’s attention but no action has been taken.

# 6 There has to be Standards and Accountability in everything Town Government does and in my opinion the Standard of common sense has not been met !

This should have been a 3 month project at best. People can understand being inconvenienced as long as work is being done, but when nothing is done for a month the public’s confidence and trust comes into question.

I hope our Town Staff learns from this and develops Common Sense Contractual Time lines for work to be done.

In the Mean time I am still awaiting a written explanation from the Town as to why there is no work going on.

Tom Delnicki

Interesting tidbit about a vendor and a part, yet were Mr. Delnicki's questions answered? Here they are again...

#1 Why did the contractor take a one month Vacation from the project ?

#2 Why was the Contractor given such a long amount of time to get this project done ?

# 3 The side streets are woefully inadequate to "Safely" handle the traffic that has been diverted from Felt Rd. Why wasn't that taken into account in establishing the time line ?

# 5 Why was there not a Stop Sign installed to Stop the Traffic speeding down Felt Rd at the Farm Brook and Felt intersection. I have brought that to the town’s attention but no action has been taken

# 6 There has to be Standards and Accountability in everything Town Government does and in my opinion the Standard of common sense has not been met !

All good questions. The mayor's comment leads me to think the town isn't happy with the contractor either. Let's hope you get some answers promptly. I'll forward this report on Monday to the appropriate people.

Maybe they're using spoons to do the job. Evergreen Walk was built faster than this. I'll miss the penguins also.

Interesting how no one said anything or pressed this, including the "mayor" and the guy who lives right there, until a chance at getting in the papers came up.

That light display is worse than the closing. This is about the inconvenience and safety of the people who live in those neighborhoods, not a gaudy, tacky, abomination of a religious holiday.

Hi, Chris K, You are able to view this as are the rest of the public because the JI put up this site. How do you know the "mayor" and "the guy who lives right there" didn't press this, but you just didn't see it until now.

To each his own on the display. I live nearby and don't have a problem and most of my neighbor's do not have a problem either. Kids love it from far and near and so do many adults. The penguins are my favorites. Bah humbug.

FYI. The JI has nothing to do with this site's creation.

Okay, I'm game. Who created the site?

Hi Chris & Kathy,

Chris is correct in the long term, in that a group of Yale students came up with this site a while back. Here's a link to the company's "about us" page.

http://www.seeclickfix.com/about_us

However, after talking with Ben Berkowitz - one of the site's founders - it's clear that SeeClickFix and local newspapers are natural partners. So to that end, the JI has in fact partnered with SeeClickFix. They created a special widget to bring their site to our site, and that's why it's available for free on the JI's Web site.

We're also going to highlight some of the problems and solutions in our print edition on a regular basis in order to both empower you folks and the rest of our readers to take part in improving our communities. We're essentially providing tools to local citizens and organizations that will help make it a little bit easier to improve your community.

We published a column on Page One on Friday and it's available for free here:

http://www.journalinquirer.com/articles/2009/08/23/page_one/doc4a8eb2c3bb01a560408640.txt

So, Chris, thanks for keeping an eye out. But if you see a JI on one of these reports or my ugly mug, it means we're watching too and doing what we can to connect people to solutions.

As you can see above, there are differing opinions about the quality of the services the town is receiving from the contractor on the Felt Road project. Hopefully by shining a light on that project we can help get it moving.

One thing that no one has mentioned is that the weather has been terrible for road work this summer, so that might be part of the problem. Also, once a town hires a contractor, it's expensive to fire them. The mayor has commented here once already and I think that's a good indication that we're on the right track.

Doug & Team, I forgot to mention before that this is such a fabulous idea and I love learning about the trouble spots that other folks identify and their opinions on the ones I have noticed myself. I'm just hoping this doesn't become a "new home" for some of the sociopath windbags that used to appear on the blogs of that newspaper in Hartford. I logged onto those for about a week and couldn't take it any longer. This seems like it could be a good tool all the way around. Kathy C

Hi,
Just wanted to post an update after this mornings drive-by the site. A crew was back to work with at least one big concrete piece with them. I am the original poster of this issue, the picture was taken while driving by over a month ago from my car. I hope other posters here don't turn this into something other than a way to get some things fixed. Now that work is proceeding, I'm closing the ticket.

Work has resumed, seems the long delay is over.

This issue was closed

Thanks for the support, Kathy. Stay in touch!

Patience, Felt Road residents

Mike Weinzimmer, Folsom Construction's project manager, said the contract provided for the option to fabricate large components off site, and that in his experience it is generally better to do so.

Both Weinzimmer and Public Works Director Michael J. Gantick said the process of designing those pieces requires a variety of tests at the site, including soil tests, before designs can be drawn. Then plans need to be approved and that process took longer than expected. As a result, Folsom ran out of work to do while the fabrication was under way elsewhere.

They still expect to finish the project on time. But that’s the nature of the construction business, and that also is why projects are scheduled to take place over several months instead of several weeks.

You can click the link below to read the whole follow-up story, and feel free to re-close this issue if you want. I just wanted to let you folks know I'd gotten in touch with the people involved. Thanks for reading!

http://www.journalinquirer.com/articles/2009/09/14/towns/vernon/doc4aae57675babf537461050.txt

Doug, did they try to tell you the dog ate their homework too? They should have done all the testing and designing before closing off the road to traffic! They didn't even put up the road closed signs until a few days after they did it.

They will finish on time, their time. Meanwhile, ours has been wasted.

Timeline has been "adjusted"

Completely understand your frustration. They've admitted that they could have gotten a better jump on the designs but haven't lost more than a month - only a week by one estimate.

In a larger sense, I think you might be unhappy with the amount of time contractors are given to complete projects in general. I tend to agree with you on principle. However, given the opportunity to sort of attack that issue with, say, an aggressive effort from the town to shorten construction schedules, there might be some unintended consequences to consider... maybe contractors simply won't want to do business with the town. Maybe they'll charge more to ensure they can meet tighter deadlines. All I am saying is that there are worse situations to be in. They've been trying to get a contractor to agree to refurbish the Q-bridge in New Haven for years and no one will even bid on it.

Let me know if there's another gap in visible activity. I'd be happy to address it again. I'm just sharing my take on this after talking to the neighbors, the town, and the contractor... and hey I could be wrong. Everyone's wrong sometimes!

This is getting depressing. I feel trapped in town. Can't get out of Felt. Can't go over Deming, and got stuck on Buckland today. 3 rounds of lights at Deming and Buckland and about 4 cars moved. This was 8:09 a.m. Finally had to get to East Hartford via hill and dale.