Residents Object
To Flashing Light
On Street To Lake
They Say Tidy Neighborhood
Looks Like ‘Fire, Accident Scene’
By JENNIFER HILL • Special to www.AllOTSEGO.com
COOPERSTOWN – How do you stop a stop sign?
About 25 neighbors expressed their opposition at Monday’s Village Board meeting to a flashing stop sign at the intersection of Fair and Lake streets, with Bernie Viek, owner of 10 Lake Boat & Lodging as the group’s unofficial leader.
The village installed the sign, rimmed with pulsing red lights, on August 28, four months after John Smirk, 75, of Cooperstown, drove down Lake Street into Otsego Lake and drowned.
“I applaud the sign’s safety and technology … but when I first saw it, I thought it was either a crime scene or an accident,” said Jim Howarth, 2 Lake, the first to speak.
