Selectmen review pavement assessment management plan

By Stuart Hedstrom
Staff Writer

DOVER-FOXCROFT — In August the board of selectmen accepted a proposal from Gorrill Palmer of Gray for a pavement assessment management plan on the town’s travelways, and a draft of the study was presented for feedback to then go into a final document during a meeting on Jan. 11.

“As everybody’s been aware we have been working with Gorrill Palmer since early fall,” Town Manager Jack Clukey said. He said the firm is helping determine “what we might do over the next 10 years, primarily to preserve hot top.”

The plan objectives are to update local road evaluations conducted in 2010, provide a list of treatment options, review the current paving budget and provide a spending plan recommendation and prepare a paving improvement plan for the next decade. Gorrill Palmer staff conducted their fieldwork in mid-October.

“Basically it boils down to coming in and evaluating your road networks,” said Will Haskell of Gorrill Palmer as he began his slideshow. He mentioned how pavement drops 40 percent in quality over the first 75 percent of the life of the asphalt and then in the next 12.5 percent the quality drops an additional 40 percent. Haskell said small incremental treatments are needed before a road falls off the 75 percent of life/40 percent drop cliff.

“The data collection consists of driving every single road and observing seven pavement distresses,” he said. “We tend to stop to get a better look at the road at various spots.” Haskell said the distresses, which were photographed, are alligator cracking, transverse/longitudinal cracking, edge cracking, patching and potholes, roughness, rutting and drainage.

Dover-Foxcroft has 34 miles of local roads and in town are another 12 miles of state aid roads. Clukey said the town conducts winter maintenance on the dozen miles of state aid roads, with the state maintaining these travelways in the summer, but knowing the condition if the roads are turned over to the town would be advantageous.

Haskell said the road surface management system (RSMS) software does not rank the roads but the report classifies roads under five categories — no maintenance or excellent condition, routine or good condition, preventative or fair condition, rehabilitation or requiring significant repairs or reconstruction or having reached the end of useful life. Among some of the roads in the worse condition are Harvey, Depot and Spring streets, per a slide of Haskell’s.

“You really want to focus in on the preventative category and not let them get any worse,” Haskell said. He said these roads will deteriorate at a faster rate than those in the no maintenance or good condition categories. Nearly 14. 5 of the 34 miles of local roads fall under the preventative classification, with the other 19-plus miles being divided evenly among the other four categories including 10. 5 miles in no maintenance or routine and nine miles of rehabilitate or reconstruct.

“It’s going to be difficult to make any significant progress with a $100,000 budget,” Haskell said. “We are kind of looking at a $400,000 budget to make minimum progress on preventative maintenance, even before the other roads.”

A number of options are available specific for each maintenance status such as patching and crack seal for routine, various seals and overlays for preventative, reclaiming and reverting to gravel or repaving for rehabilitation and reclaiming and reverting to gravel or full reconstruction for the reconstruction category.

“I think the town has the ability to mix and match here,” Haskell said about the 10 year paving improvement plan. A slide summary said the aims are to focus on the 14.4 miles of preventative roads in the first few years to prevent further decline, also address routine roads and began work on the rehabilitate and reconstruct category roads toward the middle and end of the plan. The $100,000 annual paving budget is inadequate to make progress with $400,00 a year enough to treat preventative roads in three years and a bond or other funding source is needed to adequately address rehabilitate or reconstruct roads.

When asked, Haskell said Dover-Foxcroft falls right in the middle of the 17 Maine communities Gorrill Palmer has worked for. “The majority of them are not borrowing I would say, they have a consistent amount each year but that’s not to say they are not fighting for it,” he said. “Again, it all comes down to money and what the reality is.”

“One of the things we wanted to come out of this is what’s a meaningful plan for 10 years,” Clukey said. “How do we go from something that’s not making any progress be something that’s making progress?”

“This is something that’s going to be talked about in March and we need to sell this,” resident Chris Maas said about the work of the budget committee. “That $400,000 all that does is keep those roads from going off the cliff.”

In other business, the selectmen approved a fee schedule for billing for traffic incidents involving non-residents which was adopted via an ordinance approved at the June town meeting. Billing is calculated on a per incident basis using current costs for personnel and equipment at the scene.

Fire Chief Joe Guyotte said, “As public servant, which is what we are, we don’t want to bill our neighbors. It’s the major haulers that cause major delays, that’s what we are looking at. We are looking to recoup a portion of what we spend day in and day out.”

Code Enforcement Officer Connie Sands told the selectmen that during the previous week’s planning board meeting, a 9-year resident of Pleasant Street spoke to the board about how he would like to have the land use ordinance amended so the maximum number of chickens allowed in the residential and village zones be increased from six to 12 birds per lot.

“His reasons are solid,” Sands said about Owen Sherman, who currently has a flock of four hens but per state law chickens can only be purchased in multiples of six which would put him over the six-chicken limit. “This is just for chickens in town and he would still have to abide by all the rules for having chickens in town,” Sands said about Sherman’s request. “He did his research.”

Guyotte, who also is the animal control officer, said he had no issue with doubling the chicken count to 12 “as long as they keep the roosters out of town.”

In his report, Clukey mentioned Piscataquis County Economic Development Council Executive Director Chris Winstead is working on a pair of grant applications. The first is for a new washer and dryer at the fire department for turnout gear as well as for an exhaust removal system for the station. The second application is to USDA for hydro and solar projects at the Mill.

Clukey also wrote that the PUC has approved the application for the riverside development to participate in the renewable energy pilot program that will provide a subsidy to the price paid for the electricity generated from the hydro and solar projects at the facility.