Town considers abandoning unused road

The Town Board will hold a public hearing Feb. 26 on a proposal to abandon the 600foot West Miller Road, which has been unused and left in disrepair.

The hearing will start 6 p.m. in the Town Hall, 80 E. Market St.

Town Attorney Warren Replansky said previous consideration of the town abandoning the road — which is off Route 308, just east of Route 9G — was halted because people wanted to use it to access the Landsman Kill creek.

“There was an attempt to abandon the road and there was some resistence to that,” he said. “There was public concern that they couldn’t walk over the road and access the stream.”

Replansky said the town now is considering abandoning the road by using a section of law that allows some public use.

“Instead of totally abandoning the road we have decided to utilize the provisions of Section 205-2 of the [state] Highway Law, which is a qualified abandonment,” he said. “It applies to properties which ... are not totally been abandoned but have not been utilized for the past two years.”

Replansky did not know how long it has been since West Miller Road was maintained.

“West Miller Road is technically a town highway because it’s on our inventory of highways, and it runs from Route 308 ... to a dead end,” he said.

“It crosses ... a culvert over the Landsman Kill, and that has deteriorated to the point where it’s not functional,” Replansky said. “You can’t cross over that bridge, and the road serves no purposes.”