Thursday, August 8, 2013

"It will take lots of money to fix the roads"

The DPW presented a plan to bring the roads currently rated 69 or less up to good condition at the Town Council meeting on Wednesday night. A copy of the presentation will be posted to the DPW webpage on Thursday and then shared here. (Actually update on Aug 12th)

http://franklinma.virtualtownhall.net/Pages/FranklinMA_DPW/General_Pages/2013%20Roadway%20Presentation.pdf

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0wjbnXDBhczZXVxdDQ5VFZGNnM/view?usp=sharing

Knowing I was going to get a copy of the presentation, I did not spend time capturing the numbers. It is likely some of the forecasted numbers could change anyway. Especially with regards to the Chap 90 funding and the local budget. Priorities change overtime and this is shown in the variability of the funding over the last several years.

While the funding is variable, it is clear that in order to fix the roads, it will take lots of money. Now the question becomes where do we get the money? One piece of the proposal is to put forward an override dedicated to roads. Naysayers will jump up and say that is all well and good for the first year but then it will go to the general funds and we'll not see it again so they'll come back asking for more. That would be true except that there is now a dedicated override. The legislation was changed to provide for this feature where some amount of money approved by the voters/tax payers would be dedicated in perpetuity for a specific purpose. In our case, it would be for the roads.

Tina Powderly expressed her approval for such a funding proposal to be put before the voters. Jeff Roy sort of agreed but then said with a new Council coming with the November elections, that such a decision should be left for them. No action was expected to be taken last night. If something does get scheduled before the election, you'll hear about it here. I suspect, the decision will wait for the new Council to decide upon.

The notes from the full Town Council meeting can be found here:




If you haven't seen the road report mentioned, you can find it here

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