From The Desk of the Mayor September 2012

My friends, the following is a letter I am submitting to the Delaware County Board of Supervisors regarding the Bridge Street bridge: To the Delaware County Board of Supervisors, On August 28, 2011, Hurricane Irene caused flooding which ripped through the Village of Fleischmanns resulting in massive damage and loss of life. One piece of infrastructure within the village that was badly damaged was the Bridge Street bridge. Originally built over 60 years ago, it has been owned and maintained by Delaware County and is known as Bridge 80. Based on a professional assessment of the damage and the risk to public safety the County deemed it necessary to ultimately remove the bridge instead of repairing and restoring what was left of it after the flood. Delaware County officials have articulated the Board of Supervisors' position regarding the bridge which is that as a practical matter the money recouped from FEMA for the lost bridge could better serve the community by making improvements elsewhere in the Village. I have listened to and fully understand the basis for this position. The County has indeed been a vital partner to the Village of Fleischmanns as we have struggled to recover from the flood. It has also become plainly apparent that the consensus among people in the Village of Fleischmanns and the surrounding community is strongly in favor of restoring a vehicular bridge on Bridge Street for the following reasons: The bridge has long been a central link from Main Street to the cultural core of the Village including the Village park's tennis courts, soccer and baseball field, playground, Village pool, Congregation B'nai Israel Synagogue, and the historic Wagner Avenue residential district. Over 600 people have signed a petition to fully restore the bridge. Our fire department states that the bridge always served as an important access for emergency vehicles, providing a vital route in the center of the village that could be counted on until the water rose too high.

Without the bridge on Bridge Street the Village of Fleischmanns is lacking an important emergency, social, and economic artery that essentially kept the heart and the soul of the Village connected. I have listened as many people have explained the negative impact of losing the bridge on the Village, their businesses, and their lives and I fully concur.

What is perhaps the most complicating factor of this entire situation is that there are strict accepted modern standards and policies which govern the construction of bridges and therefore also determine the funding of such. The federal government's policy is that it does not want to throw good money after bad. A replacement bridge structure needs to incorporate what has been learned in the past 60 years about building things to withstand flooding. Simply put this means a bigger and stronger bridge, but there is currently no room to spare due to the residential and commercial properties that surround the bridge's location. This is clearly the dilemma. What good is a vehicle bridge to our emergency responders though if it is under water and/or damaged in a flood, and what benefit to the community comes from a new bridge that can be proven scientifically to back flood waters up much higher than would be without the bridge? My number one responsibility as Mayor by far is to protect the safety of the people within my Village and I understand the implications on public safety of not properly sizing the bridge. I also recognize the need to preserve private property and as much of our tax base as possible within the Village. However, the very fact that the future ofthe Bridge is so unclear is taking its own toll on adjacent land owners and the village as a whole. As you may already be aware the Village of Fleischmanns and affected land owners on Mill Street have been working hard with the County and have agreed that eliminating the Mill Street bridge and the constriction ofVly Creek that it causes is an acceptable trade offto achieve the lowering of future flood waters. I also understand that the pedestrian bridge that washed out where the Lake Switzerland Dam used to stand will be difficult to replace given the fact that it was substandard and the outdated design can not be replicated. This is all the more reason to use the money which can be recouped from FEMA for Bridge Street for its intended purpose; a vehicle bridge to serve the same purpose ofthe one that was there. Therefore, representing the will of the people of the Village of Fleischmanns to the best of my ability as Mayor, I respectfully appeal to the County of Delaware to fully restore the vehicle bridge on Bridge Street that was destroyed in the flood. Furthermore, understanding that this will affect the immediate area around the bridge, I implore the county to exhaust all options possible in order to minimize the impact to adjacent property. I also request that the Delaware County Board of Supervisors adopt this position as its own without delay in order to end the uncertainty that the people in the Village of Fleischmanns are facing about our future. This will allow desperately needed private and public investment dollars to again flow in the heart of our Village currently being held up because of the cloud of uncertainty we are in with respect to the future of this bridge. Thank you for your consideration of this important issue and I look forward to our continued dialogue. veryff~ Todd Pascarella Mayor, Village of Fleischmanns

1017 Main Street (PO Box 339) Fleischmanns, NY 12430 phone 845-254-5514 email: village39@catskill.net website: www.fleischmannsny.com