Residents of Seymour’s Jay Lane and Patton Avenue: the town knows your roads are awful, and will fix them this year.
Seymour Selectmen voted unanimously Tuesday (July 16) to spend up to $350,000 to repave the two streets, which the town’s engineer called the worst in town.
Beyond that, they plan to place a referendum question on the November election ballot asking residents to approve $5 million in more road repairs.
First Selectman Kurt Miller said that if voters approve the question, the town’s recently upgraded credit rating and a restructuring of existing debt would mean no increase to the town’s tax rate as a result of the new spending.
During Tuesday’s meeting Town Engineer James Galligan gave Selectmen a 25-page report detailing a recent inspection he performed on roads town-wide.
“We did not (inspect) every road in town,” Galligan said, just the 50 or 60 worst roads.
“There’s probably another 25 or 30 that we looked at that were in reasonable condition, so therefore we didn’t do a specific report on those because no action was required,” he said.
Galligan, of Northford-based Nafis & Young, a civil and environmental engineering company, said he broke down the roads that need work into three categories based on the level of work required to get them up to snuff.
Article continues after the first part of Galligan’s report.
The evaluation took into account the condition of the roads’ surface and drainage, and how heavily trafficked they are.
The Worst
Jay Lane and Patton Avenue were the only two roads in Galligan’s “Category A” list of roads needing immediate attention.
“Jay Lane is the absolute worst road in town,” Galligan said.
Though a cul-de-sac with minimal traffic, Galligan said “the surface is so bad, so horrendous, that it really needs to be corrected immediately. It barely meets the category for a gravel road, that’s how bad the pavement has been deteriorating.”
Take a drive down the road and you can see what Galligan is talking about. Vehicles lurch over the uneven surface and oily goop sits in clumps at the end of the cul-de-sac.
The condition of Patton Avenue isn’t as terrible as Jay Lane, Galligan said, but since the road gets more traffic, he recommended it be repaired immediately.
Click the play button on the video below to see a portion of Galligan’s remarks (if possible, wear headphones and turn up the volume).
The two roads were chip-sealed last year in an effort to extend their use in the short-term, but residents of the area complained that the liquid asphalt laid down during the job got tracked into their yards and homes.
Miller announced earlier during Tuesday’s meeting that the town will be taking “legal action” with respect to last year’s shoddy chip-sealing.
The $350,000 cost of repaving the two roads will come from state money and cash the town has set aside for roads in the past several budget cycles. The Valley Indy asked Miller for a specific breakdown Thursday.
Not Quite As Bad
Beyond those two roads, Galligan identified further 7.3 miles of “Category B” roads in town which he recommended the town bond $5 million to repair next year.
Beyond that, he listed nearly 9 miles of roads in slightly better condition — “Category C” — that could in the long-term use about $6.8 million in work.
Galligan said that the roads won’t fall apart into total disrepair next year if the town doesn’t fix them, but advised against going too many winters without doing some work.
Selectmen Tuesday did not formally authorize putting a referendum question on the November election ballot asking residents to approve bonding the $5 million, but appear to be headed in that direction.
Miller said if the town were to bond $5 million over the course of 20 years, the cost to the town in debt service would be $368,000.
“So with the increase to our bond rating and the savings that we’re doing, we can do this roughly $5 million worth of road work at no impact to the residents,” the First Selectman said.
The town will have more and more flexibility as more debt service payments from past bonding projects will come off the books in the coming years — and would allow officials to bond more money to address the “Category C” roads.
“The problem is we’re so far behind that we’re going to have to take a big swing to catch up,” Miller said.
He also stressed after the meeting that the roads listed in Galligan’s report — other than Jay Lane and Patton Avenue — are not “set in stone” in terms of their priority for reconstruction.
He said if selectmen do put a referendum question on the ballot for road work, he’ll host an informational session for residents outlining all the work and associated costs, probably sometime in October.
Galligan’s breakdown of roads needing work and estimated reconstruction costs, as well as details of his inspections of the roads, are posted below.
