The Board of Selectmen received the latest update on local road improvement projects scheduled to be completed with designated funds during the 2021-22 municipal budget cycle.

Public Works Director Fred Hurley explained that the majority of this year’s work could be substantially completed by the end of paving season in the late fall, provided the personnel and materials are available.

“The work we did this spring and up to this month, to a certain extent, delayed us in finalizing the individual roads that are on here,” Hurley said, raising a document containing the list of planned 2021-22 projects. “We did meet our obligations from last year, even though it took to the end of this fiscal year to get it done.”

Hurley said everything promised on last year’s to-do list of road projects has been completed or is in the process of being finished.

“We’re pretty comfortable that we’ve captured everything we can within the [2020-2021] budget,” he added.

Looking toward the coming year, Hurley said some projects will be dominated by drainage work, and that he and his team are in the process of locating and evaluating whether metal drainage conduits in various neighborhoods are sufficiently rotted out, prompting significantly more costly and complex replacement.

“That continues to be a challenge for the engineering department, they can propose projects that need to be done, but we have to check and see if [related] drainage pipes are up to snuff,” the public works chief told selectmen.

He said the town has been chasing deterioration for 30 years, and his crews are still finding rotted drainage pipes as they move from project to project involving related paving. Even when drainage conduits are primarily concrete, small crossovers that are formed from metal that are rotting could be weak links in the entire network.

Making Interim Fixes

Responding to service requests across town, Hurley said he is working to address as many as possible, including making interim fixes with patching.

“The key to the whole thing is the cost it takes to [resurface] a mile of road with paving or chip seal,” he said. It costs $275,000 to repave one mile of road, Hurley explained, and Newtown has 280 miles of municipal roadways.

“So that’s $77 to $80 million to do that,” he said. With chip sealing, he continued, “We can do the same number of miles for $8 million, so it’s a ten to one difference in terms of cost, and the chip seal is a life extender for the roads. We get an extra five or six years on the road for a fraction of what it costs for paving.”

That is why, he said, Newtown cannot create budgets or practices that reduce the total amount of funding below the threshold that would cover the expense of resurfacing every mile in Newtown over any given 20-year period.

“When that occurs, you start losing whole sections of road,” he said, justifying the current combination of full rehabilitation of certain roads while others will see their lives extended with chip sealing.

First Selectman Dan Rosenthal said there is always work to do, and that Newtown got into the predicament it was in with miles of subpar surfacing some years ago when budgets were pared back.

“Once you get behind with 280 miles of paved roads, you’re just trying to catch up,” the first selectman said.

Rosenthal credited the entire Public Works department, along with public officials and, ultimately, local taxpayers for endorsing the funding and bonding schedule that has since been devised to catch up and return the town to a place where all road work is covered in the annual operating budget without any additional borrowing and its costly companion, debt service.

The Delamination Factor

Hurley said in the last decade or so of his long tenure on the job, the nature of road resurfacing has changed, especially in regard to what he calls delamination, or the deterioration of a top or underlayer of resurfacing that disrupts the topmost surface, especially as winter plowing, water invasion, and freezing take their toll.

The problem, as he sees it, has been occasional supplies of “bad asphalt” mixed in with, or laid down over and under, good layers. Hurley said it is not about application methods, adding that even the State DOT laboratory has admitted towns were provided bad asphalt mixes over a couple of years.

Hurley said he and other public works directors feel that oil in the mix was the biggest issue, and when the state forced material providers to substitute petroleum-based binding with a latex-based substitute as an environmental protection measure, “it’s never been the same since.”

Today, with latex binder a permanent part of the mix, he said “the days of getting 18 to 20 years out of a newly paved road are over.”

For those residents hoping for new resurfacing, drainage, and/or guide rail in their neighborhood, the town has determined the following roads or sections of roads (with accompanying measurements in linear feet [LF]) will be completed before July 1, 2022:

Currituck/Parmalee Hill guide rail, 782 LF; Drummers Lane drainage, 120 LF; Drummers Lane overlay, 1,000 LF; Fairchild Road drainage, 1,800 LF; Fairchild Road reclaim/pave, 1,800 LF; Hanover Road guide rail, 675 LF; Hattertown Road guide rail, 2,938 LF; High Rock overlay, 5,700 LF; and Kale Davis Road overlay, 1,200 LF

Also, Lazybrook Road overlay, 1,500 LF; Leopard Drive overlay, 1,600 LF; Liberty Drive reclaim/pave, 1,100 LF; Johnny Cake Road drainage, 690 LF; Mile Hill South overlay, 1,600 LF; Old Gate Lane drainage, 670 LF; Old Gate Lane overlay, 840 LF; Osborne Hill Road drainage, 4,300 LF; Riverside Road overlay/leveling grade, 930 LF; Rock Ridge Road #2 drainage, 1,400 LF; and Washington Avenue overlay/topcoat, 1,460 LF.

In addition, the in-house paving program will involve portions of the following streets: Albert’s Hill, Bresson Farms, Echo Valley, Chimney Swift, Cobblestone, Edmond Road, Farrell, Founders Lane, Gelding Hill, Hattertown, Kent, Longview Heights, Old Castle Drive, Plumtrees, Poverty Hollow, Shady Rest, Sherman, Smoke Rise, Sugarloaf, Taunton Hill, Taunton Lake, Timbermill, Totem Trail, and Walker Hill.

Chip sealing will be applied to the following roads: Academy Road, Beagle Trail, Bennett’s Bridge, Bishop Circle, Brennan Road, Camelot Crest, Canterbury Lane, Castle Lane, Cherry Heights, Clapboard Ridge, Daves Lane, Elana Lane, Erin Lane, Fallen Leaf, Farmery Lane, and Georges Hill Road.

Also, Gopher Road, Green Knolls Lane, Holmes Farm Road, Indian Hill Lane, Maltbie Road, Meadow Woods, Newbury Road, Nighthawk, Pheasant Ridge Road, Philo Curtis, Quail Hollow, Quaker Lane, Quarry Ridge Road, Ridge Road, Sleepy Hollow Lane, Somerset Lane, Split Rock Road, Stonybrook Road, The Old Road, Twist Hill Lane, Valley Field Road South, and Valley View.

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Associate Editor John Voket can be reached at john@thebee.com.