Motorists on five New Canaan roads— North Wilton, White Oak Shade, Marvin Ridge, Hawks Hill, Kimberly Place and Autumn Lane—are set for even smoother traveling as town officials on Tuesday approved $400,000 for a Braintree, Mass.-based company to seal their asphalt with a thin, durable pavement surface.
Department of Public Works Assistant Director Tiger Mann said the micro-thin overlay from Sealcoating Inc. is designed to maintain roads that had been paved about a dozen years ago.
“They need to be done because the materials are starting to come out of the top of [the asphalt] and eventually” the town could see liability problems and “start to have other issues with” the roads, Mann said during the Board of Selectmen meeting, held in the Training Room at the New Canaan Police Department.
In the same meeting that they approved the contract—part of New Canaan’s annual spend on road maintenance and improvements—the selectmen approved about $85,000 for crack-sealing and $336,000 for paving.
North Wilton Road in New Canaan. Credit: Michael Dinan
Selectman Nick Williams said he was “very concerned” about two very difficult winters damaging the roads that New Canaan has spent some 10 years addressing to get their “pavement condition indeces” or PCIs “to the level we want.”
Specifically, Williams asked Mann whether the town will need to bond more than $2.5 million in order to continue to maintain its roads at the high level it has.
Mann said the town at its current funding level for road maintenance and improvement is “rapidly approaching a statis point where we are not going to get better but will lose ground.”
Though asphalt prices in the past decade have doubled, other costs had come down, but now those “other” costs are rising again so at the end of this season and into next “we will be getting behind the 8-ball,” Mann said.
It’s too soon for New Canaan to know whether and by how much it will need to up its contribution to the roads budget, Mann said, but the town should look at it.
Really bummed not to see high travelled BUTTERY ROAD or Silver Ridge Road on this list. Town keeps patching major potholes but the road still incredibly bad to drive on. Town paved adjoining Betsy’s lane but not these two for some reason!