Lysander — The town of Lysander should be spending $1.1 million each year on road maintenance, according to town engineer Al Yager, but the Lysander Town Board is cutting maintenance and improvement spending by $75,000 next year.
In a presentation at the Oct. 26 town board meeting, Yager said Lysander’s roads are in “fair” condition on the Pavement Condition Index (PCI), but they require a total of $6.74 million in work.
In 2013, information from the Cornell Local Roads Pavement Management Program study suggested the town required $8.5 million in road improvements.
“We have not increased our budget proportionally [to the roads we’ve built],” Yager said.
In fact, spending on road maintenance and improvements has decreased. Yager said the town approved $850,000 per year in maintenance spending back in 2013.
The preliminary 2016 budget shows that the town has flagged $225,000 for road maintenance and $550,000 in road improvements.
That’s $75,000 less than the approved $250,000 in maintenance expenditures and $600,000 in road improvements that the board approved in 2015.
Yager said more than half of Lysander’s 96-plus miles of road are in need of major treatment and repairs, and the quality continues to decline.
“Once you get past fair condition, you’re looking at road reconstruction,” Yager said.
Yager said for every $1 the town spends on preserving its roads, it saves $6 to $10 later on in road rehabilitation or reconstruction.
Yager said one way the town is hoping to improve road quality is by switching from one-inch Type 6 blacktop to the thicker Type 7. While more expensive, Type 7 has a lower soil void ratio, meaning it is less porous and leaves roads less vulnerable to the freeze-thaw cycle that creates potholes.
Core samples from Brundage Road showed that the binder is in good shape, but the one-inch top course is not adequate for heavy truck traffic.
continued — Councilor Bob Geraci asked Yager what the town should be spending once all the roads are brought up to snuff.
“Is it always $850,000 or $1.1 million?” Geraci asked.
“No, it should legitimately be going up every year. As the road ages, the cost of maintenance goes up. The cost of materials and labor goes up,” Yager said.
Yager said inflation is a factor in increasing road maintenance costs as well.
“Road work has always been done in the town, but not sufficiently to keep us up to date,” Supervisor John Salisbury noted. “In the last couple years, we’ve tried to do more, but as Al said, that’s not even enough. We’re going to have road work long after we’re gone.”
Salisbury thanked Yager for his presentation, but the board did not say whether they would revisit the maintenance and improvement spending in the 2016 budget.
