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It Makes No Sense

It seems like Old Saybrook First Selectman Carl Fortuna, Jr. recently performed a magic vanishing act. He made the name of the road I’ve lived on for 41 years, South Cove Rd 2, disappear by changing its name and nobody noticed. Also, he didn’t notify us about this. Two other streets were renamed without residents being informed as well.

The difficulty I have with our change is that it makes no sense historically and geographically. Here’s why. Our road is on historic Saybrook Point and was established many years before the other road was. Its name is such because it leads directly into South Cove. Also, our road is right across from North Cove Road, which winds around North Cove. Somebody very practical thought of this when naming the two roads.

Based on this and other information, we asked the first selectman to leave our road’s name. Now I’m disappointed because he didn’t really consider our request and arbitrarily changed the name without letting us know. It’s also apparent that he preferred not changing names of other duplicate streets located in beach association areas.

Finally it was mentioned that the first three or four letters of a street name are important to emergency dispatchers, so I understand why similar names cause confusion. However there are nine roads in town beginning with “Fenw” but then have different ending titles. If this isn’t problematic, renaming our road to Olde South Cove Road or South Cove Drive would be more appropriate because of the proximity to South Cove.

Our road’s new name is Clover Drive and I don’t know why. I suppose if the first selectman wanted to he could have named the street “Fortuna’s Way” because that’s how this process ended up.

John Grzymkowski

Old Saybrook