Local officials asked for an additional $100 million to be added to Gov. Deval Patrick’s already $200 million proposed budget for the Chapter 90 local road projects bill during a Joint Committee on Transportation public hearing at the State House on Wednesday.
About 50 Massachusetts residents came to plead for additional funds toward maintaining infrastructures and increasing employment. The Chapter 90 transportation bond bill funds help build and revitalize roads and bridges throughout the state.
Patrick allotted $155 million to the trasnportation project during the 2010 fiscal year. In 2011, he proposed a $55 million increase, yet Massachusetts residents are requesting an additional increase toward a $300 million budget.
“We appreciate the work on the executives side, but we hope that we can do some more,” said Braintree Mayor Joe Sullivan. “We think that we can double the $155 million given to us with your blessing to improve infrastructure and increase jobs. The need is greater and you know that so the $300 million is not far-fetched.”
The budget must be decided by April 1 so the Commonwealth has adequate time to plan distribution of the money and to make efficient construction plans, said Democratic State Rep. William Straus of Mattapoisett, the newly elected House chair of the Joint Committee on Transportation.
While pleased to see a proposed increase, Chief Engineer of the Massachusetts Department of Transportation Frank Tramontozzi said additional funds are needed to satisfy repair requirements.
“Over the past few years MassDOT has been addressing long negotiated needs to make the roads safe, reliable and independent,” Tramontozzi said. “While Chapter 90 gives local towns the resources necessary to maintain infrastructure, increased funding is needed to meet our obligations.”
Tramontozzi suggested distributing the funds to towns in proportion to their need.
Other officials argued that the harsh winter caused a lot of damage to the roads and the additional funds are necessary to fix the damages.
“On behalf of all mayors we think it is important to be aggressive with the infrastructure improvement we need to make,” Sullivan said. “We just finished a harsh winter and this has had an impact on the infrastructure and we need this money to repair our roads.”
While the representatives understood the need to repair the roads, Straus said he worried that if they increased the budget to $300 million they would run out of projects and spend the money on other things. “
“The program will help us with our infrastructure and put people to work,” Sullivan said. “If we have funding in place, we have a number of problems that are ready to go and we’ll be able to improve a number of infrastructure projects to take off the shelf and put them to work.”
“With unemployment at 9 percent we all want to find jobs for the community to do.”
Based on a Massachusetts Municipal Association survey from last fall, the need for Chapter 90 is greater than $300 million, said Geoffrey Beckwith, MMA executive director.
“We will use this money to maintain about 90 percent of roads in Massachusetts and extend the life of roads to help us avoid major reconstruction problems,” Beckwith said. “It’s the difference between repaving the roads and shutting them down completely to reconstruct.”
Beckwith said the greater the budget for the Chapter 90 bill, the more money they will save in the long run to stay away from major repairs.
“It is the best way to promote commerce and save money,” Beckwith said. “One of the most important factors of expanding a Commonwealth is to bring in business and more business will consider expanding if the roads are well built and un-crowded.”
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
