BEACON FALLS — The Board of Selectmen approved a bid Monday night to repair Blackberry Hill Road.
The reconstruction job was awarded to Mark IV Construction Company, Inc. for $519,714 with the caveat that work must start immediately. Mark IV was the lowest of four bidders.
The bid is still subject to state approval since the state is putting $400,000 in Small Town Economic Assistance Program grants toward the project.
Blackberry Hill Road has been washed out by a series of storms that flooded the area, with Tropical Storm Irene adding insult to injury.
Recent construction at the top of the hill has added to the area’s problems as trees that had helped slow the flow of water were cut down.
A storm drain on the upper part of the hill will be replaced with a larger one to match the 30-inch drain on the lower half and help divert water away from the road.
Mark IV will fix Blackberry Hill Road from the Bethany town line to bottom of the hill at the intersection of Route 42 and Skokorat Road.
The bottom third of the road was repaved with money from a bond package two years ago, but the town didn’t have enough money to finish the road, according to Selectman Michael Krenesky.
Perhaps you didn’t ask the right question. Perhaps the question for the officials isn’t about when the last time the road was completely paved. Perhaps the question should be – what part of the project from 2 years ago is being dug up for this project.
Also, one really last note, “Also, one last note : Your town of beacon falls taxes and your CT state taxes are one in the same. You dont pay a seperate tax to your town and one to the state.”
Under what rules of civics or math ???
If you own a home and have a job, you pay taxes to the Town of Beacon Falls AND YOU PAY SEPARATE TAXES to the State of Connecticut. (If you shop, you pay taxes that are even different from that. Our leaders are spinning this that we’re only paying $120k and the rest is coming from the State. What they’re fogetting to tell you is that YOU ARE THE STATE, so while you’re paying the $120k through the town, you’re also paying the $400k through the state.
Ok. Lets clear this up. Here is a quote from the article.
“The bottom third of the road was repaved with money from a bond package two years ago, but the town didn’t have enough money to finish the road, according to Selectman Michael Krenesky.”
In black and white, its says THE BOTTOM THIRD of the road was paved. No where in the article does it say that the THIRD OF THE ROAD that was paved a couple of years ago would be RE-paved.
Blackberry Hill Rd, has not been ENTIRELY paved since 1994. (Confirmed with town zoning officer Kevin McDuffy) SO, unfortunately BF 06403, what you are stating, is, I am sad to say, just plain incorrect.
Also, one last note : Your town of beacon falls taxes and your CT state taxes are one in the same. You dont pay a seperate tax to your town and one to the state.
I wasn’t questioning that it needs to be done, but according to the article we are paying to replace work that was done 2 years ago. My complaint isn’t about the “we’re fixing the road” part of the discussion, it’s about the “for the second time in two years” part.
With regards to being able to trust our leadership (either party at this point) with our tax dollars, like the saying goes – Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
I can’t even imagine this conversation with my boss – “Remember that spend we did on a project a couple of years ago ? Well, what we didn’t tell you was that it wasn’t enough of a spend, so now we’re going to tackle a much bigger project and with an additional spend. Yes, we’re spending more than last time but the additional spend does now include ripping up (literally) what we spent a couple years back, but it should all come out ok. No worries if it dosn’t though – we can keep going back to the trough to get more to spend.”
As someone who lives on Blackberry Hill and has no particular love for the first selectman, I can say that the road desperately needs to be repaired. It is extremely dangerous and honestly, is a lawsuit waiting to happen. The town should be ashamed of itself to have let the road get so bad. The commenter who said this road was paved recently, obviously hasn’t driven up the road because there is no indication that it has been repaved in the last 20 years. Regardless of when it was repaved last, it clearly needs to be repaved now because it is extremely dangerous. Half the road is gone in places. Also this article was written 2 weeks ago and said the repaving would start immediately–there is also no indication that any work has begun on the road. I’ll believe the repairs are taking place when I see it.
I’m pretty sure it doesn’t matter who lives on Blackberry Hill, anyone who drives up or down it knows that it is in need of repair and has been for a long time. As someone that has hauled a horse trailer up and down that road for many years, I am very glad that it is finally going to be repaired.
By the way, Ms. Cable currently lives on Blackberry Hill and has also been impacted by the drainage problems caused by natural events.
(OOPS, Where did that come from ?)
Isn’t it odd that we’re now paying to pave a road we paid to pave two years ago ?
Isn’t it more odd that a town that cut street sweeping from the budget can do what it takes to find funding IMMEDIATELY (according to this article) to have the town leader’s road paved twice in three years ?
I don’t begrudge a leader getting his/her road finished nicely, I think it’s one of the rewards for dealing with things like the insanity of hurricanes (which I believe was handled very well), but I do object to doing it every couple of years (this time to the tune of $119,714 of my Beacon Falls tax dollars AND $400,000 of my State of CT tax dollars). I would be surprised if there wasn’t significant planning and engineering paid for on the drains put in 2 years ago. We should be holding whoever collected on that accountable to foot the bills (at least for the bottom third of the road) until it’s no longer a problem.