At an informational meeting on a proposed multimillion dollar paving project for Edgecomb April 8, attendees gave positive feedback and asked about expanding the project to include paving the town’s dirt roads.
Edgecomb’s Capital Improvements Committee, which was created last May, has been assessing the town’s capital assets to see what their needs are and how they can be addressed.
The committee found that the town roads were the biggest and most critical asset, and have various needs of repair and maintenance, said committee chairman Northrup “Nort” Fowler. The committee prioritized the needs of the roads into three categories and Road Commissioner Scott Griffin submitted associated cost estimates, he said.
“Just about every road in town has an issue,” Fowler said. The goal of the paving project is to get the town roads into a cycle where every road receives some level of attention every 10 years, he said.
“We don’t have a maintenance plan for our roads. We are basically reactive,” he said.
The committee has investigated three different levels of work, with project costs ranging from $1.64 million to about $2.95 million.
Committee members emphasized that the project does not address any roads the state is responsible for maintaining.
The committee is advocating what they call Plan B, a $2 million project that addresses all the top priority roads and a number of the roads in the two lower priority categories, Fowler said. All three plans include resurfacing the town’s dirt roads, which have not been resurfaced in the memory of anyone on the committee, he said.
To pay for the project, the committee is proposing a 15 year bond from the Maine Municipal Bond Bank. If the voters approve the bond, the interest rate would not be locked in until the bond is issued in August but would most likely be below 3 percent, said Selectman Jack Sarmanian.
The reason for getting a bond is to do all the work as soon as possible to save on material costs that will likely increase as time goes on, Fowler said.
If residents approve the proposed paving budget for the coming year at $155,000 and approve an annual increase of 2 percent for inflation, the paving budget will fully cover the bond payments except for fiscal years 2014-2015 and 2015-2016 where it would be a total of about $5300 short, according to committee documents.
If the bond is approved by the voters at town meeting, the first payment of about $21,000 would be due next May, said Selectman Stuart Smith.
Resident Robert Lozinski asked if any consideration had been given to paving the town’s 3.85 miles of dirt roads because of the potential savings in maintenance costs once those roads are paved.
“It just seems at one point it should be thought about,” Lozinski said.
Fowler said the committee has had some discussions to that effect, and while there are options, there are also associated costs.
Griffin agreed that paving the dirt roads would save in maintenance costs in the long run, but would require a lot of preparatory work and an investment in the paving up front.
“The reason it wasn’t addressed was the cost,” Griffin said.
Planning Board Chair Jack French asked what the cost would be to improve the bed of one-third or one-quarter of the dirt roads to the point where they could be paved in the future.
“It’s certainly a number we could come up with but its not in this plan,” Griffin said, adding that it would be an additional project cost.
Once the town’s tax increment financing loan is paid off in about eight or nine years, the town will have extra tax revenue that could potentially be put toward paving the dirt roads, said Smith.
Griffin said he would try to develop some rough estimates on the costs for paving the dirt roads to bring to the second informational meeting on the paving project next week.
Resident Jarryl Larson asked if the paving project would bring the roads up the same standards the town requires for roads in subdivisions.
“To me, it’s not practical to meet those subdivision standards,” Griffin said.
The paving project is geared toward making whatever improvements and repairs to structural issues are needed, not toward meeting the subdivision standards, he said.
“This is great work,” Larson said near the end of the meeting.
“I just want to say the committee has done a heck of a job,” French said.
The Capital Improvements Committee will meet again on Monday, April 15 at 6 p.m. at the Edgecomb Town Hall, followed by a second public informational meeting on the paving project at 7 p.m.