If there’s one thing everyone can agree on in Stafford, it seems to be that the roads have been ignored for too long. How to fix that problem… well, that’s another story.
This week, there were two meetings where the town side of the budget was up for discussion. The first was at the Board of Selectmen meeting on Wednesday, February 28. It was a short meeting focused largely on reporting the latest shifts in the proposed budget. First Selectman Bill Morrison said they would postpone taking action on any potential cuts to the paving budget until after the informational meeting. But one concerned citizen, Mark Richens, came out to share his point of view on the paving budget because he would not be able to attend the larger meeting on Thursday, February 29, where the First Selectman and Director of the Department of Public Works, Devin Cowperthwaite, put on an informational session to talk about road work.
For the record, Richens indicated he wouldn’t vote for the budget because, as he said, the town is “trying to rectify a problem that’s gone on for decades.” He pointed out the need for a maintenance plan, saying if you can’t keep up the roads you pave, there’s no point in repaving them at all. Of course, even a maintenance plan requires money – money that historically has not been in the budget because it’s the first thing to get cut when voters reject the budget. As Cowperthwaite likes to say, “Roads don’t cry.” So they are the first thing to get the axe when it’s time to make cuts to the budget.
So, you can see the dilemma the town has before it. Do they present a larger budget with the paving budget included and risk having it shot down at the referendum? Or do they make cuts now, hoping it passes on the first vote?
Historical funding and the worst roads in town
During the Thursday night meeting at the community center, Cowperthwaite said that over the past 10 years, the average paving budget in town has been $210,287. Furthermore, based on recent projects, Cowperthwaite says the average cost to pave just one mile of road is $350,000.
In the 2023/2024 budget, there was $150,000 in the public works budget for paving, which essentially covers the cost of filling potholes and repairing curbs. Cowperthwaite said those basic repairs cost the town between $110,000 to $140,000 a year. The extra $10,000 the town had last year will go toward matching the funds awarded through the STEAP grant to repave the parking lots at the community center and Kealy Field.
This year, Cowperthwaite asked for an additional $850,000 for a total of $1 million to tackle road work in town. Even if the town funded $1 million yearly from here on out, it would take as much as 40 years to catch up and fix all the paved roads in town. And it's worth noting that doesn’t take inflation into account. On the brighter side, Cowperthwaite noted that once the worst roads are taken care of, and the town can make its way to some of the newer roads that were built better, the work may go faster, and the money may stretch further.
While Cowperthwaite hesitated to commit to a “paving list” as road conditions are fluid and change constantly, he acknowledged that he has a list of the “bad boys” or the worst roads in town. Those roads will come as no surprise to most people: Old Springfield Road, New City Road, Hampden Road, Hydeville Road, Barbara Lane, Woodland Drive, and Laurel Drive, just to name a few. He also shared the estimates to do the needed repairs to each road, and the only one that came in under $100,000 was Hyde Park Road. Old Springfield Road alone would cost more than a million to fix. In addition to the roads that are likely beyond saving, there are the roads Cowperthwaite hopes to be able to repair and save, forestalling full replacement for now. In other words, any paving projects the town is able to undertake will likely be a mix of rescue missions and full gut jobs.
Let’s talk about funding roads
Funding comes in many forms: local taxes, town aid from that state, grants, and bonds (borrowed money). Local taxes are what we’ll be voting on later this year. Stafford typically gets somewhere between $300,000 and $400,000 in town aid, and that money buys salt for the winter, gravel for dirt roads, and if anything is left over, it goes toward paving. In fact, Cowperthwaite says his department will put some of those leftover funds toward repaving New City Road this summer.
That brings us to grants. Cowperthwaite says the town has received $33 million in grants since 2018, and that he and Grants Coordinator Amber Wakley-Whaley just submitted (again) for a BRIC grant through FEMA to fix Willington Avenue. (No word yet on when they will hear back on that one.) However, most run-of-the-mill paving projects don’t qualify for grants. In many cases, a road has to qualify as a collector road or higher even to be considered. In Stafford, most of those roads are state-owned, and therefore, the town is not responsible for them. Furnace Road, however, is considered a collector road and consequently was eligible for grants, and is being fixed without any local funds. Cowperthwaite said he was also able to have Gulf and Burbank Roads reclassified as collectors, making them eligible for possible grants.
Grants, however, sometimes come with their own costs. Not only do many require the town to have done the design work in order to apply, but they sometimes require matching funds. The ARPA committee set aside about $250,000 to fund the design work needed to help the town be more competitive when applying for grants. Regarding matching grant funds, that doesn’t always have to be in the form of cash; it can be in manpower and time spent, but they sometimes require the town to put up some funds.
That leaves us with bonds. Borrowing money in the form of bonds can make it possible for the town to undertake bigger projects without needing to raise the funds through taxes immediately. In fact, that’s how it’s tackled big paving projects in the past. However, like all borrowed money, it needs to be paid back and ultimately ends up in the budget as debt service.
Polling the people
With a relatively full house at the community center, plenty of people who dodge potholes and drainage problems daily turned out to give their opinions and talk about the particulars of their streets. But one question came up more than once: What happens to any paving funds that are leftover at the end of the fiscal year? That money typically gets sent to the general fund (which, as we reported last year, is low), but the Board of Selectmen and Board of Finance could vote to leave it in the paving budget. Any transfer of more than $20,000 requires a town meeting.
When resident Mark Maynard asked how Stafford’s funding stacks up to other towns, the answer was complicated. Stafford is the third largest town by area in the State. So, we also have more miles of road than most towns. However, in Somers, the town just bonded $6 million over five years. So, a town considerably smaller than Stafford is spending more than $1 million a year on redoing its roads. Ideally, the town would be repaving its roads on a 20-year cycle, but as Cowperthwaite pointed out, the $150,000 in last year’s budget is getting us nowhere.
While it was clear that most people who spoke would like to see their roads paved, it wasn’t entirely clear where most of them fell in terms of approving the funds to do it. Leonard “Butch” Clark, however, said, “This idea is long, long overdue… Quite frankly, it should be more.”
There was plenty of discussion during the two-hour meeting, but what it comes down to is, as Cowperthwaite put it, “The less money we spend, the longer it will take…I will do whatever the taxpayers of Stafford want me to do.”
But in order for the paving budget to even make it to the ballot for the voters to weigh in, it has to make it past the Selectmen and the Board of Finance. So, if you want to weigh in at the voting booth, you may need to let those boards know.
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