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Potsdam village trustees asked to consider revised North Country ‘rooftop’ highway plan

Posted 12/1/18

By CRAIG FREILICH North Country Now POTSDAM -- The members of the village board will be asked to examine a revised North Country “rooftop highway” plan and to take a vote on support for it. …

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Potsdam village trustees asked to consider revised North Country ‘rooftop’ highway plan

Posted

By CRAIG FREILICH

North Country Now

POTSDAM -- The members of the village board will be asked to examine a revised North Country “rooftop highway” plan and to take a vote on support for it.

Supporters of the “I-98” proposal for a highway through St. Lawrence County to be built to interstate highway standards are resubmitting to the trustees their plan with revised wording to see if it is now acceptable to them.

“All villages and towns were asked to support it” about two years ago, and some voted to do so, but Potsdam trustees objected to some of the wording which has now been revised, according to Trustee Steve Warr.

He said advocates of the I-98 plan, Mark Bellardini and Jason Clark, would like to see the village on record as supporting them.

At the Board of Trustees meeting Nov. 19, he reported “I told them we would check the new version and see if it’s acceptable” and worth putting to a vote.

“I support the concept of a bypass no matter how it’s described,” Warr said.

Several proposals exist, including a few plans from the state Department of Transportation with bypasses of Potsdam and Canton downtowns and otherwise upgrading U.S. Route 11, and another plan for a major multi-lane limited-access highway from Watertown to Plattsburgh, which the DOT said in one report was not feasible.

Warr said he generally favored trying to get four lanes with better access through to Watertown, but by the time any new highway is built “there will probably be 15 different plans between now and then” to consider.

“I support the concept of a bypass but not necessarily any one plan” right now, Warr said.

He said he would “try to get us to work on this next week.”