Town Council Approves Sending $10 Million Request For Road Repairs To Referendum

The Town Council voted to send a $10 million request to repair roads in town to referendum at its meeting Monday night.

"I would like to authorize the Town Manager to use the proper wording so that we can send Phase I of the roadway improvement project to referendum," Councilor Phillip Sylvestro said. "In our discussions with the Government Operation Committee, we said that this money will be used exclusively for roads, not for equipment or perking lots, just roadways.

"We have asked all of the department heads to put together lists of priorities for paring lots and we have received cost estimates. We did not categorize the importance but we think at some point in time we look at the parking lots and see if we can put the costs into future budgets."

Councilor Frank Szeps was the lone dissenting vote against sending the project to referendum and bonding it.

"Shame on us for waiting for it to get to this point where we have to borrow the money to do this project," Szeps said. "We have got to start to manage this town better. We can't wait until things fall apart before we take care of them. To borrow $2.2 million over five years is not the way to go. I understand the need to improve our roads but I will not be supporting this. What's missing is all the capital items and arge expenditures that we need to begin to budget instead of borrowing." 

Mayor Timothy Moriarty asked and was answered that the town highway department will continue to work on sealing cracks because it has money budgeted and equipment to do that task. 

Councilor Nadine Bell said that while Phase I is a necessity, the Council should look at budgeting for Phase II.

"There are parts of roads in town that you can actually pick up in your hand," Bell said. "In a perfect world the goal would be to budget for items of this magnitude but if we don't start this project we will never get ahead of the curve. I would advice the Council and any future Councils to look at the parking lots and the Phase II roads so that we might budget for those projects and not have to go out to referendum."