SHARON — The Selectboard is preparing to ask voters this fall for permission to borrow $1.1 million for repaving Howe Hill Road and sections of three other Sharon thoroughfares that the board describes as “deteriorating.”
If residents approve the bond issue by Australian ballot on Oct. 29, work would begin during the summer of 2020 and be completed in 2021. In addition to the money the town borrows — which would be paid off over 10 years — the Selectboard expects to spend $400,000 on the project from the highway-department budget and from existing reserve funds.
Howe Hill Road runs from River Road in Sharon, near the south bank of the White River, to Pomfret Road in North Pomfret. Kevin Gish of the Selectboard estimated Wednesday that Sharon last fully repaved, as opposed to patched, its section “in the late 1970s or early ’80s,” and it shows.
“We’ve been planning ahead for about the last two years, almost three years,” Gish said. “We’ve been putting money aside at Town Meetings. … The way the bond works, timing-wise, if we waited until March for another annual Town Meeting, we couldn’t start the work next spring and summer.”
The other three Sharon locations up for repaving under the bond are Fay Brook, Broad Brook and Quimby Mountain roads.
If voters approve the borrowing and spending, Sharon will coordinate with Pomfret on paving Howe Hill Road, a collaboration that officials in each town expect to save the two communities between $40,000 and $50,000 each. According to the minutes of a Sharon Selectboard meeting in May, an engineer from Sharon’s consulting firm also pointed to continued “escalation in asphalt prices” as a reason to pave Howe Hill in 2020 and 2021 instead of setting money aside for a 2023-24 project.
As for Fay Brook, Broad Brook and Quimby Mountain, each of which includes short stretches of pavement, officials have considered going the opposite direction from repaving.
“We had lengthy discussions about simply turning those pieces into gravel,” Gish said.
However, they’re less open to the same idea on well-traveled Howe Hill Road.
“A few residents have come in to our meetings and suggested we do that with Howe Hill Road,” Gish said. “We considered it, but it’s a big connector road from Sharon to Pomfret and Woodstock that, combined with the steepness of the road, would require continual maintenance.”
The Sharon Selectboard is inviting residents to ask about and comment on the paving plan during a hearing Oct. 24 at Sharon Elementary School. The gathering starts at 7 p.m.
“We’re still open to suggestions,” Gish said. “We want to hear what people think.”
David Corriveau can be reached at dcorriveau@vnews.com and at 603-727-3304.