To The Editor:
What is the town thinking? In the Waitsfield bridge news article, a company has been hired to restore the bridge with wonderful historic plans and construction. Miles Jenness is hired to restore the bridge in accordance with historic restoration/preservation standards. He helped in the rebuilding of Notre Dame Cathedral after the fire. I’m sure the French put into place some sort of rules, safety measures and stipulations to ensure that the fire would not happen again. How can our town administrators not see that before we fix the bridge, there must be something put in place that prevents the truck drivers from running into and damaging our bridge again and again. There are many ways of doing this without touching the bridge.
I’ve seen several bridges that have managed to do this. It seems like common sense. In the article it mentions that the bridge is regularly damaged, so this is not a secret. Also, the restoration is being done during one of the busiest weeks of the year — detouring visiting families, out of state visitors to The Valley, and local shoppers to town. This made Christmas week very inconvenient to get to Waitsfield to shop, eat, church, classes, school, and car service to doctor’s appointments. Also, I wish the town would share with us the cost of repairing the bridge, does the town have insurance on the bridge, what company and driver (who may not be familiar with Vermont’s covered bridges) is responsible and has been ticketed and cited for careless driving and damaging historical sites. One more item about the bridge not connected to the restoration. The east side of the bridge has a little look out over the river. This “look out” is treacherous and you cannot get on it unless you carefully hold on to the side to maneuver yourself into the look out. I’m amazed no one has fallen and made the town accountable for injury.
Nancy Emory
Waitsfield
