COLONIE — Boy Scouts of America from the Village of Colonie canvassed more than 3,000 homes earlier this month, raising money—and traffic awareness—door-to-door. Last week, on the evening of Thursday, April 14, the village traffic committee fed them pizza to say thank you.
Members of Troop 278 took to the streets on Saturday, April 9 to deliver bottle drive pick-up bags in an effort to raise money for summer camp activities—and to deposit traffic safety doorknob hangers reminding residents to slow down. The effort was intended to raise traffic awareness in the village and address the problem of speeding through residential neighborhoods.
The doorknob hangers are part of the village Traffic Committee’s Drive 25 campaign to remind residents to drive at safe speeds through residential areas. The campaign began in early 2015 after village officials received a number of complaints that drivers were ignoring the 25-mph speed limit on most village residential roads.
“We don’t get paid for this,” Traffic Committee Chairman Frank Prevratil said to troop members at the Village of Colonie Recreational Center where the boys were being honored. “We do this because we care. I like to think of it as civic duty, and that’s something that you guys did on Saturday. You went out there door-to-door for us and were handing out important flyers that we hope will get drivers to think before they speed or do something wrong. And we thank you very, very much.”
“We wanted to do it before the bottle drive next week,” said Hunter Normandin, Troop 278’s Senior Patrollier. “We stapled them to our bottle drive flyers and split up into groups and gave each group enough to cover their whole neighborhood—we tried to make it so that everyone could flyer his own neighborhood.” As a senior officer in his troop, Normandin will soon be called upon to develop his own community service project and said that he is exploring traffic and bus safety ideas.
Members of the traffic committee coordinated the outreach with Scout Master Brian Casey and thanked him for his work in partnering the troop and the municipality to reach common goals. “You guys don’t realize the impact you have on your community,” said Traffic Committee member Dan Judge. “On the traffic committee, we really want to make people in the village slow down and drive by the speed limits.” Once the committee came up with the idea to disseminate flyers, said Judge, they were at a loss for how to distribute them before they came up the idea to work with the scout troop. “You guys hit 3,200 houses in one Saturday morning. We couldn’t have done that without your help.”