Flanders family to state DOT: Forget the signs, fix the road

Barbara Tocci’s family, still looking for answers from Southampton Town Police on the cause of the crash that took the 47-year-old Hampton Bays woman’s life, now wants to know why the state DOT is so interested in the signs they erected on their property July 4 to warn motorists against texting while driving and driving under the influence.

The family says the billboard-size signs are on private property — on land owned by Barbara Tocci’s sister, Susan and her husband Michael Dispenziere.

The couple’s Goldenleaf Trail home sits on property that runs south from the quiet cul de sac to Flanders Road. Tocci and Dispenziere decided to use their Flanders Road frontage to get a message out about the dangers of texting while driving — a factor in the crash that claimed Barbara Tocci’s life Jan. 16 — and DUI, which killed Barbara’s son’s fiancee in April.

The two large signs, made and donated by Wedel Sign Co. in Riverhead, were installed on the evening of Thursday, July 3. See prior story.

On Monday, July 7, a man who identified himself as an inspector from the state Department of Transportation appeared at the site to determine whether the signs were located in the state right-of-way.

He told Tocci’s brother, Philip, that the state agency had received “an official complaint” about the signs. But after completing the inspection, Philip Tocci said, the man said the signs were indeed on private property.

Tocci and Dispenziere never heard anything further — until Friday, when three DOT work crews spent most of the day taking measurements and digging holes around the edges of the couple’s property, they say.

“They never contacted us, never asked us if we had a survey,” Susan Tocci said.

The couple does have a survey, made in 1999 prior to the construction of their home, and they had a friend who is a surveyor check the site to make sure the sign posts were not in the state right-of-way.

The survey indicates the existence of concrete monuments at both corners of the couple’s lot where it fronts along Flanders Road. Concrete monuments — four-inch square concrete posts are traditionally used by surveyors to mark real estate boundaries. Their property line as shown on the survey appears to be less than 2 feet from the “edge of pavement” depicted on the map.

“We don’t believe the signs are in the state right of way, but if they [the state DOT] thought they are, why didn’t they just ask us about them?” Susan Tocci asked.

Instead, on Friday the DOT workers went to their neighbors on either side of their house, told them they were “working on a project on Flanders Road” and asked for permission to enter their land, according to Tocci. They dug holes along the boundary lines Tocci and Dispenziere share with their neighbors to the north and south, apparently looking for monuments.

The location of the digging “seems pretty random,” Susan Tocci said. And also way off the mark, she said. The holes — which the workers left unfilled — are much farther west of the edge of the pavement than her survey depicts the monument placement.

“If that’s where the right-of-way is located, about eight feet of our fence is also in the right-of-way,” she said. The fence has been there since soon after they built the house and has never been questioned by the state.

Tocci said it seems the state is going out of its way to try to get her to remove the signs, and she wants to know why.

“Is warning people about the dangers of texting while driving and  DUI a bad thing?” she asked. “The state should be more concerned about fixing the condition of this road, which was another factor in the crash that killed my sister,” Tocci said.

A Southampton Town Police accident report said contributing factors in the crash that killed Barbara Tocci on Jan. 16 were “defective pavement” and the use of a hand-held device by the driver of the PSEG utility truck that slammed head-on into her Ford Explorer as Tocci traveled to her office in Riverhead that morning.

On the day of the accident, the driver of the utility truck, Michael Pepe Jr., 53, of Bayport, told police he struck a pothole in the southbound lane that caused him to lose control of the truck and sent him into the northbound lane, where he collided head-on with Tocci’s SUV.

But the accident report also lists Pepe’s use of a hand-held cell phone as another “apparent contributing factor.” The report does not indicate whether Pepe was talking or texting with his hand-held device around the time of the accident.

Susan Tocci said an investigator with the Suffolk County district attorney’s office told the victim’s family they found evidence that the utility company worker was texting on his personal cell phone prior to the accident. That’s what inspired the billboard, she said.

“Maybe I should have another sign made warning drivers about the road condition, too,” Tocci said today.

The state DOT began patching potholes in the area of the fatal crash the day it occurred, causing an already upset Flanders community, which had been complaining about the road conditions for months, to grow even angrier.

“Why does it take a death to get a response?” Southampton’s local Citizens Advisory Committee chairman Richard Naso asked. See prior story.

After the community outcry that followed, the Flanders Road resurfacing project was “accelerated” on the state’s schedule, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced in May.

The $6 million project is scheduled to begin this fall, right after Labor Day, Assemblyman Fred Thiele said this morning. A DOT spokesperson said the contract bids would not be opened until late August. “An expedited contract award is requested in order to begin construction on this estimated $6 million+ job this fall,” DOT spokesperson Eileen Peters wrote in an email.

The road condition, meanwhile, continues to worsen, according to Tocci family members, friends and neighbors in the area.

“It seems like a terrible waste of taxpayer dollars to be worrying about whether our sign posts encroach on the state right-of-way. Three trucks and three crews? Seriously?” Susan Tocci asked. “They should be putting those resources into fixing the road.”

Since a DOT crew leader told Susan Tocci the workers would return “first thing Monday morning” to continue their investigation into the boundary line question, family members and friends arrived at the Tocci/Dispenziere home at 8 a.m. to show their support. But the DOT workers never arrived.

DOT spokesperson Peters confirmed this afternoon that the agency had received “a call about the sign” on Tocci’s property. “We are working to confirm that it is on private, not public property, to help assure the safety of motorists,”  Peters said.

By 10:30, as the group began to disperse, Tocci’s 17-year-old niece, Angela Conforti made a discovery that family and friends took to be “a sign from Barbara.”

She was standing near a tree on Tocci’s property several feet off the roadway when something silver on the tree glinted in the sunshine.

“Oh my God,” Angela exclaimed, “There’s a cross growing out of this tree!”

Everyone gathered around the maple tree’s split base to look at Angela’s surprising find. Sure enough, a crucifix was suspended from what appeared to be rosary beads growing out of the trunk of the tree. The beads dangled from the tree on the other side of the trunk, as well.

Susan Tocci said she’d never seen the cross before. “Obviously it’s been here a really long time. The tree has just grown around it. It’s now part of the tree.”

“This is Barbara,” said Phil Tocci, the victim’s father. “It’s her showing her support,” he said. The tree and the signs are about the same distance from the pavement, he noted, smiling.