09/12/2026
📣 Hot off the press! 📣
From the Mayor's Desk: Talking About Our Roads
I’ve heard recent concerns about the condition of our roads, and I want to address them directly.
First, I understand the frustration. We all drive on these roads. We see the potholes, cracks, uneven surfaces, and areas that need attention. As residents, we want our roads to be safe, well-maintained, and something we can be proud of. I share that expectation.
One of the challenges that isn't always visible from the driver's seat is how difficult it can be to fund road improvements at the local level. It's easy to look at the Town's overall budget and assume that if we have money somewhere, we can simply move it to roads. Unfortunately, that's not how municipal finances work. Many of our revenue sources are restricted by law or designated for very specific purposes. Money collected for one purpose cannot simply be transferred to another because a different need has become more pressing.
In other words, there isn't one large general pot of money that the Town can freely pull from whenever an unexpected expense comes up. The dollars we receive often come with strings attached, and we have a responsibility to use those funds for the purposes for which they were collected. That makes finding funding for significant road work a challenge.
We have to compete for grants, identify state and federal funding opportunities, look at what local revenue can legally be used for, and plan projects around the resources that are actually available. And even when grant funding exists, it can take considerable time and effort to apply, meet the requirements, and wait for an award. There is no guarantee that every application will be successful. There is another part of the equation that isn't always apparent: building a town street is much more complicated than simply paving a road.
There is an important difference between a rural county road and a street within a developed town. A rural road may have relatively few underground conflicts, perhaps a culvert or drainage structure, but a town street often has an entire network of infrastructure running beneath it.
When we construct or reconstruct a town street, we're not just designing a roadway. We're trying to fit stormwater pipes, sewer lines, water mains, electrical conduit, telephone and cable lines, and increasingly broadband and fiber into a limited amount of underground space. Each utility has its own requirements for location, depth, access, separation, and future maintenance.
That requires significant coordination among the various utilities and can sometimes mean making compromises in the preferred street design to accommodate infrastructure that is already there or needs to be installed. What may look relatively straightforward from the surface can be a very complex engineering and coordination exercise below ground.
This is also one reason that street projects can be considerably more expensive and complicated than simply repairing the pavement we see from our cars. In many cases, we're dealing with an entire infrastructure system, not just a road surface.
We also have to make sure that when we do spend limited road dollars, we're spending them wisely. That means understanding the condition of our roads, determining which repairs should take priority, and looking at whether a short-term patch or a larger, more expensive project is the better long-term investment. Sometimes the right answer is to repair the surface; other times, the condition of the underlying infrastructure means we need to think about a much larger project.
None of this changes the fact that our roads need attention. It simply explains why addressing them is more complicated than identifying a road that needs work and writing a check. I believe our community deserves both action and honesty. We will continue looking for funding opportunities, evaluating our roads and their needs, and making the best decisions we can with the resources available to us.
I also appreciate the residents who speak up. In a small town, we see each other at the grocery store, at community events, and around town. We are neighbors first. It is okay to disagree, ask tough questions, and expect our local government to do better. That's part of being a community.
In my next post, I will highlight the incredible list of accomplishments the town has completed over the last several years. Based on my involvement with the town this year, I can assure you that we work tirelessly on plans and ideas for improving the town and evaluating the next steps to accomplish those goals. We are fortunate; we have amazing staff across all aspects of our departments, and their dedication to our town is unparalleled.
Evan Perrollaz, Mayor
