Town’s $317,000 Roads 2000 budget exhausted
By Jennifer Ruth
Staff Writer
HOULTON — The Roads 2000 committee updated its list of priority roads recently with Military Street and McIntyre Road being first in line for hot–topping. Those repairs will cost approximately $115,000 and after that, the road fund will be dried up.
Town Manager Doug Hazlett said the $317,000 budget has been exhausted almost to the last penny. At the beginning of the year the roads budget had $57,000. Another $260,000 was budgeted for 2008 projects. Of that total, $100,000 has been used for a 2008 town-share payment for Bangor Street; $12,000 earmarked for crack sealing; $38,000 for matching funds for the sidewalk grant; $49,600 for chip sealing of Porter Settlement Road; $77,000 for Military Street, $38,000 for McIntyre Road and $2,000 is left over for whatever else the town’s public works department can fit in.
“The problem is we ran out of money,” explained Hazlett. “We may have one additional road that we may work on — that might be the Access Road or South Street. We also know that we have to do something with the sidewalks on South Street.
“You very quickly, at $89 a ton, run out of funds before you run out of roads,” he added.
The town’s list of roads varies in condition from poor, fair to good. There are 12 town streets listed as in poor condition, which will not see any repairs this year due to the cost of hot top.
“You can’t keep ahead of the hot top,” he said. “Last year we paid $61 a ton for hot top and this year we’re paying $89. Until that breaks, we are going to be held hostage by the price of hot top.
“There’s no doubt about that,” he remarked. “We can only do what we budgeted, we can’t go beyond it. Once the budget is set, I legally can’t spend more than that. So the only alternative is to reduce the amount of work you’re doing.
“We’re using every nickel we can find; we’re not holding any money back and we’re going to try to fix as many roads as we can.”
Hazlett said he’s already begun looking at the 2009 budget and what projects he would like to see attempted. He said he has to wait and see how the town’s revenue looks and what the rest of the budget needs are before he can make any recommendations.
“I think roads now are top priority to the extent that the cost of fuel oil and the cost of diesel need to be budgeted in next year,” he explained. “If the budget is going to have flexibility in spending, my choice is going to be to do it with the roads. Our town is judged by the condition of the roads.
“People travel them every day,” he added. “When we’re done with Bangor Street that will be a Class A road. We’ve got a lot of other ones to start looking at.”