SHIRLEY — Years ago, increased truck traffic generated by a string of junk car dealers on Great Road led to a barrage of neighborhood nuisance complaints: noxious odors, noise, after-hours activity, trucks parked in front of homes or blocking driveways, overnight idling.
The problem reached a tipping point in 2018, when a previous Select Board attached conditions aimed at resolving the issues to Class III licenses. Class III covers the repair, storage and sale of junk vehicles. Class II licenses are for car dealers, new or used.
But, if the issues raised by the Great Road neighborhood are mostly resolved now, town-wide problems persist, while some residents say they have gotten worse.
The complaint of note: multi-vehicle car carriers rumbling through town, too fast and, too often on narrow, winding roads not built for heavy truck traffic. This has continued despite past efforts to solve the problem, according to residents tracking the situation, two of whom — Robert Adam and Janet Tice — brought the matter up when annual license renewals came up at the Select Board meeting this week.
The list of renewals for Class II and Class III licenses included Mohawk Village Motors, USA Auto Sales and Insurance Auto Auctions Corp., all of which have been at the heart of the controversy.
Despite local licensing conditions and concessions they previously agreed to, not all those companies have lived up to their promises, Adam told the Select Board, such as creating and posting bigger, better-placed signage, creating clearer website messages and increasing outreach to carrier companies they do business with, directing truck drivers to numbered routes rather than town roads.
“We’ve done this a number of times,” Adam said, as he referred to a letter he had sent back in October. Conceding that some of the issues he had raised were beyond the Select Board’s control, he noted that IAA, USA Auto Sales and Mohawk Motors, for example, had conditions attached to their licenses that should help. But some of those directives were “ignored,” he said.
Pointing to IAA, Adam said he had asked for larger signs outside gated areas bordering Route 2A, facing in both directions, and that IAA had agreed but fell short.
IAA Branch Manager Jessica Brady said the local business adheres strictly to licensing conditions, including business hours. She also corrected the assumption that IAA was “affiliated” with USA Auto, which it is not “…although they do buy cars from us,” she said.
As for the signs, new ones based on Adam’s design went up two weeks ago, she said. Still, Adam said the signs were too small and not placed as requested.
Brady said the signs were posted in visible spots and the only other place to put them would be inside the fence. She would also need further approval from the company to change them.
“I’ll ask corporate,” she said.
Tice honed in on the carriers, citing their impact on residents’ safety and quality of life.
Characterizing the carriers as “large vehicles that tend to pass through town quickly,” but not quietly, she said the drivers continue to use residential roads and disrupt neighborhoods, though she did not see why. “When they rattle past, you know it,” she said and noted that her “puzzlement” was why the company could not simply set rules and routes for drivers to follow and ask them not to use town roads.
Select Board Chairman Bryan Sawyer asked of the company representatives present, IAA’s Brady and Dan McNiff of Mohawk Motors, if they would have any issue with conforming to uniform standards.
Brady said IAA already does. McNiff agreed it was doable. “I could handle that,” he said.
The following summarized conditions now apply to all Class III (junk vehicle) licenses: private security details will monitor the sites on a regular basis, in part to ensure that vehicle operators do not park outside the facility or idle in the neighborhood overnight; pick-ups and drop-offs are limited to stated hours of operation; no 10-car carriers or over-sized trucks are allowed in or out; on-site operations, such as loading vehicles or use of heavy equipment (other than to plow snow or for maintenance), must cease by 6 p.m. Monday-through-Friday and by 1 p.m. Saturday; no deliveries on Sunday; facilities must remain closed and quiet on holidays; and licensees must add specific language to their websites that direct all car carriers using Route 2 to “refrain from using residential roadways.”
Tice asked if Select Board members could suggest “creative solutions.” Residents have spoken out and the Select Board has responded, “but the problem has gotten worse,” she said.
Sawyer said the Select Board had seated a traffic advisory committee, which he also serves on, that was looking into possibly getting a truck exclusion designation from the state, a complex and lengthy process.
“We can take steps… and hope things improve,” he said. But police officers cannot pull over carriers unless they commit traffic violations, such as speeding, nor can the town stop car carriers from using town roads, not by edict, anyway. But they can ask, and the companies — IAA, Mohawk and others — can help, per license conditions.
“I think we’ve made progress,” Select Board member Debra Flagg said. “I don’t know what else we can do.”
Flagg also raised the issue of too many vehicles parked on the USA Auto Sales lot, which has a limit of 50 vehicles but now has more than 70, tightly packed. Assuming the intent is to sell the vehicles, Flagg opined that it would take “years” to get one off the lot for a test drive.
The lot also presents a safety issue that the Fire Department is concerned about and which Town Administrator Mike McGovern said he and the Fire Chief Troy Cooley have been working with the owners to correct.
The father and son operation has had personal and professional troubles since they moved in a year and a half ago, he explained, including family issues, illness and pandemic-related shut downs. He said they overshot the mark, bought too many vehicles but sold too few.
But he agreed that time has run out. The Select Board set a compliance deadline for USA Auto Sales to get its inventory down to 50 vehicles: Jan. 13, 2023.
In other business, McGovern told the Select Board that the Fire Department had recently received a $9,000 government grant to buy equipment that adds to existing equipment purchased with a similar grant last year: a crane-like machine to assist firefighters responding to motor vehicle rollover accidents.
He also updated the board on the number of reported incidents involving railroad crossings. Despite rumored two-digit numbers in a community with train tracks cutting through at several points, there have been only three rail-related incidents over the past year, mostly minor, he said.
