Longmeadow road conditions report ‘sobering, but helpful’

Oct. 27, 2021 | Sarah Heinonen
sheinonen@thereminder.com

LONGMEADOW – Amir Kouzehkanai of the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission’s (PVPC) Pavement Management System presented the findings of the recent street condition inventory to the Longmeadow Select Board.

In the Oct. 18 presentation, he thanked the community for its support during the process, which involved samples taken from 93 miles of town-accepted paved roads. The Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) requires an assessment of roadways that receive state aid in the form of Chapter 90 funds.

Overall, Kouzehkanai told the board, “You are looking good in town. The majority of the roads are in fair to good condition.” As expected, he told the board, stress on the “arterial” roads, such as Route 5, is much greater than that of the residential streets.

The roads are rated on a scale of 0 to 100, with 0 considered impassable and 100 being in perfect condition. While many roads assessed are in near-perfect condition, a handful of roads scored 23 or lower, including Pondside Road, Wildflower Lane and Meadowbrook Road.

“What we are trying to do is prolong the life of the pavement. The way you do that is by trying to attend to the good roads first,” Kouzehkanai explained. This “buys time.” Roads that are crack-sealed will last longer because water is kept out of the base and sub-base of the roadway material.

Using software to model the cost-benefit ratio, Kouzehkanai said half of the paved areas the PVPC suggested as priority maintenance are sections of Route 5. The top 15 are all “arterial” and “collector” roads – main streets that neighborhoods feed into.

After modeling the current expenditure of roughly $1 million per year, Kouzehkanai extrapolated the stress on the roads and the size of the backlog of repair projects for the next five years. At the current rate, the combined condition of Longmeadow’s roads will continue to deteriorate and the backlog will grow.

If the town were to increase the funding for road maintenance to $1.5 million in the first year, followed by $1.3 million the next year and $1.1 million for the following three years, the backlog would still grow, but at a lower rate.

Kouzehkanai estimated that spending an extra $1.1 million over five years would save the town $2.23 million in eventual road repairs.

Select Board Chair Marc Strange called the information “sobering, but helpful.”

Select Board member Mark Gold asked Kouzehkanai how Longmeadow’s condition compared to other municipalities. Kouzehkanai said that it was “pretty good” and that $1 million is a “pretty good chunk of money” in comparison to similarly-sized towns. He said some towns have had to get “creative” and apply for grants. With federal funding coming into towns from COVID-19 relief bills, “now is a good time to grab some of that money.”

Gold noted that the town has taken an approach of focusing on residential roads and allowing state funds to pay for the “arterial” roads, with the exception of Route 5. Lachiusa said that it has been “almost easier” to maintain Route 5, despite it being a state road because the funding can take so long, but he added that “it’s hard to keep up on.”

Town Manager Lyn Simmons told the Select Board in her report that the roadway resurfacing project scheduled to be conducted this fall will not happen until spring due to material shortages. The contracted vendor for the service, Palmer Paving, has agreed to honor the bid they submitted, she said.

In a related delay, the Wolf Swamp Field parking lot will also be paved in the spring, since the project will use millings from the road work to reduce costs.

Simmons announced that the town has received several phone calls about delays in trash pickup from Waste Management. She said the town is working with the company to address the delays which are partly due to staffing issues and partly the result of online shipping boxes not being broken down to a small enough size, which causes longer loading times and longer routes.

The board received the final version of the inter-municipal health services agreement, known as Eastern Hampden Shared Health Services. Longmeadow has taken on the role as the host community, with Hampden, Wilbraham and Monson agreeing to share services from Longmeadow’s employees. The town will receive a grant from the state for $324,000 in the first year of the agreement and $287,000 in the second and third years of the 10-year contract. The funding would cover the establishment of the shared services and their administration across the towns, and the municipalities would take over their share of the cost in year four.

Eric Weiss of the PVPC helped negotiate the contract and explained that the cost is divided according to each town’s population. There are provisions in the contract to withdraw from the agreement or add more towns. Weiss said after signing, bylaws will be created to govern the agreement and an oversight board will be established.

Gold asked why the cost is tied to populations, rather than the number of inspections that each town needs. Simmons responded by explaining that inspections are only a fraction of the work done by boards of health. Each of the towns has “plusses and minuses” in regard to which services they use.
Assistant Town Manager Corrinne Meise-Munns has applied for a $20,000 grant from the Department of Conservation and Recreation’s Urban and Community Forestry program. The money would be used to hire an arborist consultant to inventory trees in town for their risk of falling and to prioritize maintenance. The town would be required to match the funding from its forestry budget.

During resident comment, Frank Smith addressed comments from Gold at an earlier meeting in which he said heat pumps wouldn’t work in extremely cold New England winters. Smith stated that when living on Cape Cod, his church had replaced four gas furnaces with dual air conditioning and heat pumps, powered by solar panels, with much success.

He also informed the board that the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center used to discourage people from removing traditional heat sources when installing pumps and keeping them as backups. The organization has since removed that recommendation, Smith said, as technology has improved. He urged the board members to read the studies available on the clean energy organization’s website, “rather than rely on long-outdated information you may have heard about heat pumps not being effective in cold climates.” Gold later thanked Smith for the information.

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