If only people attended Select Board meetings! There are free, front-row seats for the taking to witness democracy at work. So, come! Listen to our leaders grapple with housing, taxes, and the rise of traffic accidents, to mention a few. Speak up! Because they want to hear your voice. And watch remarkable things happen. Over the past fall, I witnessed a group of residents from Jefferson Street attend every meeting, in which a representative or two would rise to describe the damage from traffic accidents which included their own smashed cars, splintered fences to their homes, destabilized retaining walls, and snapped utility poles. Charlotte Davenhill was one of those voices. Charlotte grew up in rural southeastern South Dakota in a town with wooden houses a lot like Waldoboro’s. She was a farm girl, and she rode her horse to a country school where half of the student body were siblings. A “rough school,” some said, but Charlotte says it made her audacious. As she moved into adulthood, she lived, studied and saw new places: Aberdeen, SD, Nantucket, New York City, Venezuela, Wellesley, and Westport, CT to name a few. She married and had children, and in 1989, she, her husband Michael Laing, moved with their two children to Waldoboro. They wanted their family to grow up in a less materialistic environment. She started a bakery on Main Street; then turned it into a collaborative gallery; and then sold it. When their nest emptied, she and Michael downsized. They moved to Jefferson Street. And there our story begins.
The first accident by our house happened the year we moved in, 2007. Some drunk kids in a truck jumped over the curb and landed right outside of our far bedroom, knocking down the utility pole and breaking our fence.
The following year, I was in my pajamas, home after a gallery opening, watching the next episode of “Lost,” and suddenly, there was a big, shattering “Whooosh!” “Lost” is suspenseful, and for a moment, I couldn’t tell if it was coming from inside or outside. A massive pick-up had landed only four inches from where I was sitting.
Since then, hmmm, it’s been about eight other accidents. And it’s not just us. Everyone on Jefferson Street has accidents to relate.
The worst was in the summer of 2012. It was about four in the morning when I woke up to see flashing lights and people outside. A motorcycle had gone up the bank, hit something and landed, killing the rider. It was right across the street from us. Later we learned he was Gregory Zaccadelli, just 25 years old. He’s why we call this section “Dead Man’s Curve.” The section closer to town is “The Slippery Slope,” where the run-off pools after rain and snow.
From time to time, I’d go to Select Board meetings to ask if they could do something. But nothing changed, and I think I’d figured it wasn’t going to change.
Last year, however, we had two bad accidents only a few months apart. The first was in early March when red Toyota Tacoma hit the edge of our house and pushed it off its foundation. We had more than $10,000 in damages. The second was when a vehicle totaled Ken Greenleaf’s car. After that, we started talking to one another to do something.
We started by meeting with Chief Lash. We wanted his viewpoint, and if he had any numbers about our street’s crash history. He told us he knew it was a problem. He also said that, at least over the last four years, the accidents all came from vehicles riding out towards Route 1. Lastly, he encouraged us to speak up about it.
Then, Dozier Bell from down the street, suggested writing a formal letter to the town and having it signed by everyone on Jefferson. She drafted it, and I went around with my clipboard and talked with each person. That was the fun part. Everyone signed it. Everyone agreed we needed something to control the speeding, whether a speed bump, sign or something.
At the next Select Board meeting, about ten of us went. When they opened the floor for citizens’ comments, we presented our letter and outlined what we wanted. I don’t know what we expected, but I know we hoped they’d have some ideas. Instead, they told us there was nothing you can do about drunk driving, that Jefferson is the responsibility of the State, not the Town, and that there will always be run-off from the hill above us.
We went back to the neighborhood. It must have been in November. We needed to find out if our problem was the speeding or the run-off. Everyone agreed that speeding and run-off were separate issues, not the same. We kept on going to meetings with different people each time. We focused on the speeding. Lots of people spoke, and often it was new faces getting up to remind them of all the accidents and our hope that they would do something.
Since they often talked about Jefferson Street being the DOT’s responsibility, one day we thought, “Why don’t we just go to the State ourselves?” I filled out the little box online, and literally a minute later, someone responded, the traffic engineer himself. Amazing. He asked, “How can we help you?”
I told him what we were trying to do, and he said, “Great news! We just approved four interactive driver speed signs for Waldoboro. In fact, the posts have already been installed.”
We couldn’t believe it. We couldn’t wait to see it. To our dismay, though, the post was installed at the Route 1 end of the street, not at the Town end where the accidents were originating from. That is, all except for the most recent one, from a speeding car off the highway that hit a retaining wall and ricocheted into a utility pole. That was rotten timing.
Even so, with the blinking sign off of Route 1, traffic has slowed. It was startling and it has been great. And we haven’t had any accidents that I know of since.
But we still go to meetings. We are still hoping for a sign closer to town. In December, Jason Maas and Paul Muise designed and put up a large “Slippery When Wet” sign.
And then at the last Select Board meeting, we were amazed to learn that we are going to be getting our own official Slippery When Wet sign from DOT soon. We had no idea the town was working on this.
I can’t say enough about how good I feel about this whole journey – and especially because we live in a time when we’re being bombarded about how mean, selfish, and nasty people are.
I have learned that I am in the middle of a street of friendly people. Sure, we all have different opinions on many different things. We are about thirty residences. But we all came together on this. And we accomplished something.
Some people wonder why we don’t have political parties in municipal government. That notion, though, is irrelevant when we’re talking to our own Selectmen who are our closest contact with government. Bob Butler personally came by to walk the street with me. Rebecca Stephens wrote us a note to tell us to keep going. She admired our persistence.
Before I moved to Waldoboro, I had never experienced anything like this. I had never experienced how much a part of democracy I can have. In this town, you have every opportunity to be involved in the civic government you live with.
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