Mayor: town roads must be addressed

WINSTED — Will the repair of town roads be a priority in the fiscal 2012-2013 budget?Mayor Maryann Welcome strongly suggested it should be during a meeting with members of the Board of Selectmen and officials from various town departments on Monday, Feb. 13.The meeting was held to go over a first preliminary draft of the proposed town budget for fiscal 2012-2013.Toward the end of the meeting, Town Manager Dale Martin asked the selectmen if they had any ideas for projects that should be funded in the fiscal 2012-2013 budget. Mayor Welcome said funding repairs for town roads should be the first priority.“Something needs to be done,” Welcome said. “Four years ago, the town created a five-year plan to address the problems with the worst roads in town. I don’t know what happened to it. The roads need to be safe. People are complaining and people need to see something done. They want the roads fixed and they are becoming dangerous.”Welcome said she is frustrated about the town’s lack of action concerning Holabird Avenue.“We’ve been talking about repairing it for over 20 years and nothing has been done,” Welcome said. “We have to go after funds from the state. It’s ridiculous because they have money on the table for us to fix it.”She said the state previously allocated funds to fix the bridge on Holabird Avenue.“Yet, they won’t give us the funds to fix up the road?” Welcome said. “What’s the point of doing the bridge then? In the past, the town has been penny wise and pound foolish. It’s amazing that the town is still functioning and something hasn’t happened. We need to put all of our resources into getting this town back into a safe way.”Martin suggested the town investigate the possibility of turning some paved roads into gravel.“When you study road deterioration, including the lifespan of some roads, sometimes it makes better sense to tear the pavement up and into a gravel road for a short period of time,” Martin said. “In some cases, gravel roads are much better quality than the existing pavement that you have. If we are looking at a few small roads around town, that might be something the town should consider.”Other projectsAs for other potential projects, Selectman James Divita said the town should consider finding ways to upgrade disaster resources in light of the unexpected power outage in late October.“We should make sure that if it happens again we will be ready this time,” Divita said. “We need to make sure our fire and police departments, the town garage and the Senior Center are ready.”Selectman Michael Renzullo said the town should consider a project to rehabilitate Tatro’s Pond.“We could figure out how much it would cost to clean it up and what options we have to rehabilitate it,” Renzullo said. “We could include it under the Parks and Recreation side of the budget.”Selectman Glenn Albanesius would not comment when asked if he had any ideas for town projects.Instead, the only republican selectman present at the meeting said that any budget put forth to the voters would be a “tough sell.”“The community is going to ask and look at where we are with the budget. They will ask whether we are running our government and education systems efficiently,” Albanesius said. “I don’t think that they see that. We need to sell it to the taxpayers, and that’s a huge hurdle in this community. We have not done a good job selling a plan or vision for where this town should be.”At the end of the meeting, Welcome said town supervisors will need to be creative with their budgets.“Departments are going to have to look at how to do more with less,” Welcome said. “I know we have been looking at how to do this for many years, but I don’t know how its going to be changing. I agree, this is going to be a tough budget to sell.”Selectmen George Closson, Candy Perez and Kenneth Fracasso were not present at the meeting.