I am hearing that residents living in Town of Lancaster subdivisions off of William Street are complaining about the condition of a road that had been repaved but several years ago – as well as road conditions on Aurora Street and Como Park Boulevard. They are blaming the town for the infrastructure potholes and failures. These individuals are missing the fact that all three roads mentioned are county roads, and as such the responsibility of the County Highway Department.

The listing of county and state roads can be found on the town’ website – under the Highway Department menu:

COUNTY ROADS

• Aurora Street
• Bowen Road
• Cemetery Road
• Central Avenue/Harris Hill Road
• Como Park Boulevard
• Gunnville Road
• Hall Road
• Lake Avenue from Village Line to William Street
• Nichter Road
• Pavement Road
• Penora Street
• Pleasantview Drive
• Ransom Road
• Schwartz Road
• Stony Road
• Townline Road
• Westwood Road
• William Street

STATE ROADS

• Broadway
• Genesee Street
• Transit Road
• Walden Avenue

Not only can’t residents differentiate between Town of Lancaster, County, and State Roads, they can’t differentiate between Town of Lancaster and Village of Lancaster Roads and/or realize that both have their own highway departments.

William Street

Residents have the right to complain about William Street road condition between Transit Road and Aurora Street considering the road was repaved several years and shows signs of wearing indicative of a much older road – not so much with potholes, but severe road ‘buckling’.

William Street, from Transit to Aurora, is a one mile, two lane road with but a turning lane with signalization at Penora Street. where 15,000 vehicles use this stretch of road daily – includes school buses and trucks (both garbage and commercial). A good portion of the road has open drainage ditches and shoulders as narrow as 1 foot in width.

In the last several years, petitions to widen the road and/or fill-in the ditches for myriad safety concerns have resulted in no action being taken by the county. The town highway department offered to lend manpower and equipment to reduce the country costs to fill in the ditches.

So, don’t call the town to lay blame for road infrastructure issues that are the county’s responsibility. Contact your County Legislator, the County Executive or the County Highway Department.

BTW – If you believe that the intersection at William and Aurora is already a cluster-f***, wait until that new building complex at the intersection goes into operation.