An update from the Selectmens Office: The Sandwich Selectmen did indeed write a letter to the NH DOT Commissioner and all our State legislators a few weeks ago and invited all to drive the State roads in our community. Representative Karel Crawford was the only legislator who responded to the letter and attended the Selectmens Meeting last Monday evening. Commissioner Clement took the time to drive a few of our roads the following day, driving to Sandwich on Squam Lake Road and departing via Route 109 and Little Pond Road. The Commissioner spent a good hour meeting with the Road Agent, Selectman Yeager and myself. He expressed his frustration with the lack of funds to fix these secondary State roads and gave us information on what the gas tax would do (not much toward our road repairs, except will give the town more money annually as part of our Highway Block Grant). Most federal funds for State roads are earmarked for major highways and highly populated parts of the state only. There are funds allocated to resurface secondary state roads, but these funds are divvied up between districts and really only provide a band-aid. The estimated cost to rebuild these roads is $500,000 per mile - and as you know, this is really the only way our roads are going to improve for the long term. Resurfacing really only buys us a year in smoother roads. The meeting with the Commissioner provided a few options for cost-sharing of road projects and certainly helped start better discussions on this issue for future meetings. The public input at the meeting with Rep Crawford focused on the economic impact to the community, both to individuals (our cars!) and to businesses. It was a great discussion. Rep Crawford is also a member of the Transportation Committee and so is in a position to relate these concerns at a State level. Since Monday nights meeting, Representative Crawford has e-mailed me twice gathering up more information from me, and Commissioner Clement called me with follow-up information. Bottom line, it is important to communicate with our legislators to express your concerns about the deplorable and unsafe conditions of our State roads, even though funds for total rebuilds are apparently not in the cards.
Posted on: Sat, 29 Mar 2014 13:01:24 +0000
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