2025-02-05 Jim McMahon Testimony

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of improving and maintaining the road. The maintenance costs and liability are therefore the burden of the individual property owners and not the actual road users. • To the best of our knowledge, there have not been any engineering studies to determine if the roadbed can support the volume of traffic as well as type of heavy equipment vehicles which would result from the proposed use. Our house for example is located -30' away from the edge of the easement and is shaken each time large vehicles are passing by. • Additional impacts from the increasing traffic and poorly maintained road include dust and noise. • The road junction with H-19 (Belt Road) is also a serious safety concern. This intersection is located on a 55MPH section of the highway, in a passing zone, unlit, and where there is a limited sighting distance due to both the curvature of the highway, an embankment, and often tall vegetation. Additionally there are no dedicated turn lanes on H-19. Increased traffic volume on Indian Tree Road will thus increase the risk of high energy collisions on H-19 and also cause additional traffic backups on H-19 as the north bound traffic from that high attempts to make a left turn onto Indian Tree road. This issue has been raised with the District Engineer- State Department of Transport in 2021 - well before the additional traffic proposed by this application. • Indian Tree Road is also a gated community. A gate across this road presently exists near the junction with H-19. The gate is presently closed at night. In any case, the all night traffic which occurred during the latest event did cause some traffic backups unto H-19 as well as damage to the gate. Also, providing the gate access codes to 100s of visitors raises security and privacy concerns for the people living on the road. We would like all of the above issues to be addressed to the satisfaction of all property owners located along the road as a condition before any Special Permits are issued to the dominant easement parcels. Two disparate proposed uses in a single application It's very rare to see 2 completely unrelated uses contained within a single Special Permit application. The 1st being for a single annual "Falls on Fire" festival and the 2nd being for continuous/daily use as a heavy equipment baseyard. It does appear to be contrary to the