Town budgets hurt by high-priced paving

The simple answer is it costs too much.

It costs about $100,000 a mile to pave town roads, and the expense mounts quickly when you consider how many miles of paved roads are in some towns. Morristown has 50 miles, Stowe 35, Hyde Park 22.

“It’s always a struggle to balance the needs of the community and maintain a level tax rate,” said Dan Lindley, Morristown’s town administrator.

Added Stowe Town Manager Charles Safford, “There’s always more demand than there is money.”

Morristown budgets between $200,000 and $250,000 a year for paving; the number goes up in increments of 2 or 3 percent. That means road crews can usually pave 2 to 3 miles per summer.

This year, Morristown paved six-tenths of a mile on Stagecoach Road and a short section of lower Bridge Street. This month, a mile of Randolph Road will get a new coat, as will a small section of Brigham Street.

And that’s it for 2016. Next, it’s on to conversations about what roads are in dire need for next year.

“There are still a lot of roads that need to be paved,” Lindley said.

Some towns are reworking their budgets to get caught up on paving. Stowe budgets about $300,000 per year, a figure that has gone up since Safford became town manager.

“As we’ve found capacities to save money in other areas, we redirect it to paving,” he said. “We know there is a demand for that and it’s justifiable.”

Stowe paved 2.2 miles of roads this year with help from a state grant.

“It’s safe to say we could apply more money,” Safford said, based on the condition of local roads.

Stowe has no official paving schedule. Rather, considering the vagaries of wear and tear on local roads, Stowe sets fresh priorities every year, looking at traffic volume and road conditions, and what’s needed to make the fix.

A break on costs

Towns are getting a little more bang for their paving buck lately, as the cost of asphalt has gone down — in line with the overall decline in crude oil prices.

This year it cost $67 per ton of asphalt to pave Randolph Road, down from $88 per ton three years ago.

Lower prices like that help Hyde Park get a little more distance on some projects.

“It can be an extra 500 or 1,000 feet,” said Ron Rodjenski, town administrator. “It’s not a lot, but it’s something we can take advantage of.”

Still, $67 per ton is much higher than the $30 to $40 Lindley remembers when he started working in town government over a decade ago.

Varying costs

The $100,000 per mile figure isn’t always accurate.

Sometimes, that rule of thumb is fairly close. For instance, resurfacing that mile of Randolph Road and the bit of Brigham Street cost Morrisville $114,000.

Other times, that figure can be much higher or lower for the same length of road. If a town only lays down a shim coat more roadway can be resurfaced, whereas 3 or 4 inches of overlay means that $100,000 might only get you a half-mile.

Rodjenski said that shim-coating option allowed crews this summer to put down a new layer on Johnson Street Extension in Hyde Park village, about a thousand feet for only a few thousand dollars. There’s a catch, though: The job won’t last very long.

“That’s not really paving,” Rodjenski said. “It’s basically smoothing up the road for plowing.”

The scale of the work depends on road traffic. High-traffic routes like Stagecoach and Randolph roads have to be resurfaced more often and need more upkeep than sleepier roads.

This year, Hyde Park spent most of its $215,000 paving budget resurfacing Centerville and North Hyde Park roads, two of the town’s most-traveled.

Traffic volume

According to Vermont Agency of Transportation estimates, the busiest town road in Lamoille County is Luce Hill Road in Stowe, with 4,300 vehicles a day. That’s the route to Stowe High School and to Trapp Family Lodge, among other destinations.

Stowe’s Moscow Road and Morristown’s Cadys Falls Road are also near the top of the list, as are Depot Street in Hyde Park, Bridge Street in Morristown, North Wolcott Road in Wolcott, Upper and Lower Pleasant Valley Roads in Cambridge, Hogback Road in Cambridge and Johnson, and Stagecoach Road in Morristown and Stowe.

Getting on a rotation

Some towns focus on establishing a paving schedule, so they can budget over a period of years to catch up on paving.

Rodjenski has been working with the Hyde Park select board to slowly increase the paving budget — it’s now double the $100,000 when he started in 2011. The town had reduced paving to keep the budget flat, but the roads were deteriorating and that strategy couldn’t continue. Once you let a road sink too far, the repair costs shoot up.

“With a budget under $100,000 and 22 miles of paved roads, we couldn’t keep up,” Rodjenski said.

Even doubling that isn’t enough, he said. The board plans to add about $10,000 per year until it reaches an annual paving budget of about $275,000.

“That would let us get out in front of it a little more,” Rodjenski said.

How long will it last?

Part of getting caught up involves creating a rotation, resurfacing major paved roads every 10 to 15 years. Less-traveled roads can be pushed out to every 20 years.

But now, nationwide research suggests paving jobs, especially on high-traffic roads, will hold up for only five to 10 years, says Rob Moore, senior transportation planner at the Lamoille County Planning Commission.

“Everyone, from local road foremen to state officials, are noticing that pavement doesn’t seem to last as long as it used to,” Moore said.

Small town issues

It’s difficult for small towns to keep up with paving, since they rely on a small tax base for revenue. Sure, small towns don’t have a lot of paved roads, but when one requires attention, the expense is hard to absorb.

North Wolcott Road is one of the county’s busiest commuter routes. In recent times, Wolcott has budgeted only $20,000 a year for paving. It recently upped that to $40,000, but that’s not nearly enough to cover the cost of repaving the entire North Wolcott Road.

So, the town has leaned on state paving grants to cover much of the cost.

“We’ve usually been doing a mile of it each time,” said Wolcott Town Clerk Linda Martin. “We couldn’t afford to do it on our own.”

Wolcott’s paving budget is enough to provide the local match for a state grant, but the state money isn’t available every year. Grants are given out on a rotation and, since Wolcott received two in the last few years, Martin doesn’t expect any more soon.

“We are at the bottom of the list now,” she said.

North Wolcott Road still needs a lot of resurfacing, so the town will make do with its $40,000 annual paving budget, and plug away at small sections of the road year by year.

“(That) doesn’t get a lot done, but with all the other pressures on the budget, we are just trying to pick away at it,” Martin said.

Bigger towns take advantage of grants, too. Morristown recently received $175,000 for Cadys Falls Road. Stowe took advantage of $166,000 from the state to help pave South Hollow Road this year. The total price tag there was $250,000.

“There’s only so much available, but when we get the sense it’s our turn, we try to work a road into the queue and get state assistance with paving it,” Safford said.