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Monday, February 13, 2012

By Janet Hefler
Published: April 9, 2009

After approving a layout for a connector road between Edgartown-Vineyard Haven Road and State Road Tuesday night - if they do - Tisbury voters will be offered a package deal at next week's annual town meeting. A bond issue included in an article on the warrant proposes funding not only the connector road project but also the repair and reconstruction of many town roads and sidewalks.

Warrant article number 13 calls for the town to borrow $4 million for a package that includes $2.5 million for designing and constructing the connector road, plus another $1.5 million for local projects. Those include rebuilding and resurfacing about 20 roads and about 14 sidewalks, as well as replacing Tisbury School's traffic warning lights and the Park and Ride lighting fixtures, drainage structures, and signs.

The borrowing article also requires a corresponding ballot question on the April 28 town election ballot asking voters for an exemption from Proposition 2.5 provisions.

Despite what may seem like a hefty price tag, director of public works (DPW) Fred LaPiana says the bond issue will save taxpayers money in the long run.

In going over the DPW's capital plan for fiscal year 2010 with Tisbury finance director Tim McLean, Mr. LaPiana said they realized the backlog of roadwork that needs to be done.

"When we looked at all the numbers, we also considered the possibility of deferring the maintenance of the roads," Mr. LaPiana said. "And looking at the condition of the roads, we realized that if we defer the maintenance, we'll have to rebuild these roads - and the cost of rebuilding the roads is about three times the cost of maintaining or resurfacing them."

To repave roads, the town has traditionally relied on the State's Chapter 90 aid program, which is now at its highest at about $110,000 a year, Mr. LaPiana said. "That's not a small piece of change, but that's not what we need - we need about twice that," he added.

However, over the years Tisbury has neither matched the funds received, nor put much money towards general road maintenance. "I believe over the last 15 years, our roads budget for the town has averaged about $5,000," he pointed out. "Even today, it's $8,000. We don't have much money in our budget to maintain anything, in terms of roads. It's just fixing potholes, basically."

Tisbury has about 24 miles of paved town-owned roads, Mr. LaPiana said. Figuring the life expectancy of new asphalt is approximately 24 years, to maintain an infrastructure of 24 miles of road amounts to resurfacing one mile per year, at a cost of about $100,000. "When you look at it from a numbers perspective, for every year that goes past that we don't have an article on town floor to resurface one mile of road, the infrastructure loses, and the roads start to decay," he said.

Instead of coming up with a separate warrant article each year for $150,000 to $200,000 for roadwork and sidewalks, it makes sense to combine those costs with the connector road's cost in a bond issue, Mr. LaPiana said. "We're figuring in the amount of five years of Chapter 90 money, which we anticipate will be $550,000, and that brings the cost to the town down to $1.3 million, plus the $2.5 million for the connector road," he said.

The DPW inventoried the condition of Tisbury's roads and sidewalks to come up with the ones to target first under the bond issue proposal's five-year program (see chart).

Since the DPW already planned to use Chapter 90 money towards repairs and resurfacing on North William and Pine Tree Streets in the next year, those costs are figured in, along with the Park and Ride lights and school zone traffic warning lights, which brings the total bond amount to $4 million.

The plan calls for replacing the Park and Ride parking lot lights with new LED lights, which will reduce electricity costs by two thirds. The Tisbury School traffic warning lights would be replaced with solar-powered lights for energy efficiency.

The timing of the bond issue proposal is good for the town as well, Mr. LaPiana said, since interest rates, labor costs, and asphalt prices are down. "The other advantage to bonding this issue out, beyond spreading the payments out at this low rate, is that the first payment doesn't come due until 2011," he pointed out.

With payments for the bond spread over 10 years, Mr. LaPiana said they would amount to a little less than what the town would have to budget every year on maintenance, with the bonus of getting a connector road at the same time.

Tisbury voters approved the location of the connector road at a special town meeting in November 2005 for the purpose of easing traffic congestion at the intersection of State Road and Edgartown-Vineyard Haven Road, a familiar bottleneck, particularly during the summer months.

The connector road will offer motorists the option to cut over from Edgartown-Vineyard Haven Road along the access driveway now used by Island Food Products near the Edgartown National Bank branch and exit from either High Point Road or Holmes Hole Road onto State Road.

The scope of work for the project involves construction in three sections. The first extends from Edgartown-Vineyard Haven Road to Mud Puddle Road. The second section continues from Mud Puddle Road to State Road through High Point Road, and the addition of a third turning lane added at the bottom of High Point Road. The third section runs from Mud Puddle Road to Holmes Hole Road around the landfill.

Another benefit of the connector road is that it will incorporate a shoulder and barrier around the landfill side. Mr. LaPiana said it satisfies the request of the state Department of Environmental Protection that the town come up with a method for discouraging dirt bike and ATV riders from using the area because of the threat of damage to the landfill's liner, which is only 18 inches below the grade.

If voters approve funding the connector project next week, the next step will be getting the design done, which Mr. LaPiana expects will cost about $350,000, and then submitting it with a grant application. "If successful, then $2.1 million of the bond issue we're proposing won't need to be borrowed," he said. "We should be able to start construction next fall, unless we know money is coming from a grant, and then we'll wait on the check."