A presentation was made by the Town of Salem’s engineer, Len Roecker, at the Town of Salem Board of Supervisor’s Committee Meeting earlier tonight. Three charts were on display. This represented a general scenario multi-year plan. (Pictures would have been taken by the writer, except that the road identifiers and color-coding would have been illegible.)
The first showed the 2012 road conditions. Roecker explained that, every two years, the town rates the roads and reports on them to the State of Wisconsin. The last time this was done was in the Fall of 2011. They then created the map in 2012. The ratings are done on a 1 to 10 scale, with 10 being the best, and 1 being the worst. The roads were then color-coded. Roads with a rating of 1 or 2 were red; roads with a rating of 3 or 4 were yellow; roads with a rating of 5 or 6 were purple; roads with a rating of 7 or 8 were gray; and roads with a rating of 9 or 10 were green. The town has 68 miles of roads to maintain, and the average rating of all of those roads is 5.48.
The second chart was a “draft two-year plan.” By spending $1.5 million in 2013 and $1.5 million in 2014, four and one-half miles of roadway would be paved in each year, bringing the average rating up to 6.3.
The third chart projected a rating of 5 or better on all roads. The goal was to eliminate all yellows and reds. Over a six-year span (from 2015 to 2020), $4.5 million would be spent, averaging $750,000 each year. Fourteen miles of roadway would be paved, bringing the average rating up to 7.9. For years 2021 and beyond, $325,000 to $350,000/year would have to be spent on maintaining the roads.
Board supervisor Michael Culat asked if these were at today’s costs, and the answer was yes. The costs could, in fact, be more than quoted above. Culat also wanted to know if the sewer and storm water repairs would be coordinated along with the road repairs, and the answer was yes.
A referendum would be needed for this road work. A bond issue will be presented at the electors meeting, which will take place on Tuesday, April 16th, at 7 pm.
