The Shelter Island Reporter brought a very serious problem to light last week. The Island has two Shore Roads and the fire/ emergency dispatch computer in Southold only dispatches to the one along Crescent Beach, the other is in Dering Harbor Village. Both roads have about 20 properties. The following, all viable, solutions have been offered; Dering Harbor change the name of their road, Shelter Island Town change the name of their road, add 100 to all the houses on the Shelter Island town road, train the Southhold Dispatcher to be more specific regarding the location of the emergency.
However none of these solutions is expensive enough to be truly considered for bureaucratic purposes, so I thought up a few ideas that might have a better chance of getting attention.
1. Do a five year study of how much time is actually lost figuring out which way to drive the firetruck. All the emergency workers can carry a specially designed timer and after the emergency, each can upload their time into someone’s laptop and the average time perceived will prevail as the time delay for that amount. The special timers will be expensive, plus new laptop and program - which will not be compatible with the Southold computer thereby insuring additional expenses later - and a re-placement computer when the first one gets lost or damaged.
2. We know that all the properties on the S.I. Town Shore Road are on one side of the street because there’s a beach on the other. So, one idea might be to have all the properties on the Dering Harbor Shore Road moved to the side of the street that is on the beach, since there’s a few places already there. Then simply make the Town road Shore Road West, and the Dering Harbor road, Shore Road Non-West. Now, some of you might be thinking, “Well couldn’t that be done without moving any houses?” Yes, of course, but think of the lack of confusion and expense that would result.
3. Hire a Black Ops team to take out the computer in Southold. Everyone knows that computers make our lives run better and they never make any mistakes, but obviously, this one has copped an attitude by refusing to recognize Dering Harbor. So, take it out and shoot it, and put in a Mac. How do I know the Southold computer is a PC and not a Mac ? Because Windows 7 is Macintosh 2000. Do you know why all the PC’s advertise their “award winning tech support”? Because you have to have tech support on speed dial if you work on a PC. I’m telling you, a Mac could comprehend that there’s more than one Shore Road on Shelter Island.
My own solution would be to hire someone in the night to repaint the sign post in Dering Harbor, “Are U Shore Road”, because that tiny village can be very confusing to drive in and whenever my mother would insist we drive there to look at her favorite house, we were never really sure of where Shore Road was once we got off it. And of course - to be fair, have the Town road post repainted as Sure Road, because it’s always easy to be sure you’re there because the ocean is looking at you from the other side of the road regardless of which way you’re driving. I think that’s pretty clear.
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