Francine Kolbinski’s driveway floods whenever it rains heavily. The problem surfaced about two years ago. Until then, the house on Jane Street she has owned for the past five years remained dry, she told the Saugerties Village Board at its March 21 meeting. “There was not a problem, and then there was,” she said. Kolbinski showed the board photographs of what appeared to be a stream running up the front of her house.
Apparently there was a change, but Kolbinski said she has not been able to determine what it is. Village Board members suggested some possibilities and promised to have the problem checked out. “I did see there is a possibility of allocating some of the federal funds for infrastructure and I was hoping that could be considered a project that you have the funds for,” said Kolbinski.
Two contractors have looked at the problem, and they were reluctant to work on it because of the possibility of creating worse flooding down the street, she said. As the Village trustees worked out which block Kolbinski lives on, she described the exact location of her house relative to a parking lot at the end of the street.
Trustees speculated that a catch basin might have collapsed or there was a problem with storm drainage.
The problem could have been aggravated by the “monsoon rainstorms we’ve had over the past few years,” Mayor Bill Murphy said. However, “something must have happened to cause the water to run into your driveway on Jane Street.”
Trustee Terry Parisian said he had discussed the storm drain issues in the Village with Public Works Director Richard Forbes. He named four drainage issues they had discussed as needing work. These locations are on the list of needed work that could be done with federal funds the village needs to spend down within the next couple of years, along with some water issues. The trustees had been asked to list areas where the federal funds could best be used.
Murphy suggested that Parisian should take the lead on Kolbinski’s problem. The problems Forbes is looking at are primarily on Jane Street, Upper Partition, West Bridge Street near Sycamore Street and Montgomery Street.
Following Parisian’s comments, Murphy promised Kolbinski that the board is looking into her problems and it will find a solution.
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