Raised Median on Maple Avenue Between Lawyers and Nutley: Why Lie About This?

Last week the Sun Gazette's Brian Trompeter reported:

Moved forward with planning for Phase 4 of the Maple Avenue Enhancement Project, which will improve that road between Lawyers Road and Nutley Street. Improvements on the previous three phases have included undergrounded utilities, brick sidewalks, paver crosswalks and park benches. Because only the end areas of this stretch of road have signalized crossing areas for pedestrians, town officials are considering a raised median down much of what is now the center turning lane. Such a median would provide a safe area for walkers, but remove some left-hand-turn options, officials said.

This news sounded "odd" so we started a freedom of investigation to find out how this "proposal" started. Before we could report on it another resident addressed the issue at an unrelated post. That resident was responding to the Trompeter reporting:

Now they want to install raised planter medians in place of the center turning lane on Maple from Lawyers to Nutley... BEFORE they decide how that section of the commercial corridor might be redeveloped. Not only will this clutter an already impossibly congested roadway, but any such median installation will likely get rip out to allow turning access to future developments. Nevermind that losing ANY of the useable roadway will only worsen the driver's experience in Town.

What have we found out about this new raised median proposal? The Town Information Officer Marie Kisner informed us:

According to Cathy Salgado, who is managing the Maple Ave. project, there is no such proposal, therefore no records exist.

We asked the Town if they saw this reporting. They responded:

Yes, Cathy did too and will be in contact with Brian concerning a correction.

Now most people would say. "Why don't you listen to the tape of the meeting and find out what proposal was offered and who said it?"

In Vienna it doesn't work that way. This was a work session. There is no recording of the meeting. No audio, nothing. The Town has plausible deniability to say, "What proposal?" even though it is clear that someone proposed something about a raised median in the middle of Maple Avenue. What they are really doing is calling reporter Brian Trompeter a liar.

Some will argue this is a fine point. We say BS. We say this is systemic corruption. It happend last year when this group wanted to keep secret the Council member who proposed banning video. They hid behind the notion that there was no record even though Brian Trompeter was there and reported on it. Tropeter to this day has refused to reveal who on Council proposed to ban video.