MONTICELLO, NY — David Fanslau, former Sullivan County manager and now a vice president with the Center for Discovery (CFD), turned out to a meeting of the Sullivan County Legislature on June 16 to ask the lawmakers to allow the center to move forward with its plan for installing a new traffic light in Hurleyville.

The cost of a new traffic light is estimated at about $90,000, but that will be picked up by the Hurleyville Parking District, and the CFD is the only property owner in the parking district.

CFD—which serves residents who have serious physical, mental, behavioral and/or psychiatric issues—has been reshaping the hamlet over the past several years, purchasing and rehabilitating buildings on the Main Street and has opened the Hurleyville Maker’s Lab and the Hurleyville Arts Center.

CFD has also been involved in the expansion of the Milk Train Rail Trail, which is part of the former O&W Railroad Corridor, a walking trail, which stretches more than nine miles from Ferndale to South Fallsburg, with Hurleyville in the middle. The trail is owned by CFD but has been leased to the Town of Fallsburg for 99 years, and use of the rail trail, along with foot travel by clients served by CFD, is expected to increase pedestrian traffic in the hamlet.

CFD hired the consulting firm Creighton Manning to perform an analysis of the traffic and the need for a traffic light in the hamlet. A letter from Creighton Manning to Fanslau reads in part, “The primary purpose of a traffic signal on Main Street near Railroad Avenue and Mongaup Road would be to provide special-needs pedestrians with opportunities to cross Main Street [County Route 104] under controlled conditions.”

At the meeting where Fanslau addressed the legislature, Sullivan County Sheriff Mike Schiff also spoke to the legislature and said he thought a new traffic light was the only way to deal with the increased amount of pedestrian activity in the hamlet. Schiff said, “There is a lot that has already happened in Hurleyville. It’s very apparent that there is going to be a lot more happening in Hurleyville. I think it’s a very unique situation, maybe the only place in the country I’m aware of where you’re going to have such a large community of people with needs. There’s going to be shopping and classrooms on both sides of the road, and I don’t see any other way for people with special needs, and even people without special needs, to cross that highway to make use of that hamlet.”

The legislature voted unanimously to let the traffic signal project move forward.

The county resolution read in part, “the New York State Department of Transportation and the Town of Fallsburg have executed an agreement, which provides a grant of $1,270,000 for the development of the ‘Milk-Train Rail Trail,’ an accessible recreational municipal park….”