At a Duxbury Select Board meeting on October 13, board members heard updates from select board assistant Jonathan DeLaBruere on road projects, grant nominations and more. Here are some of the developments discussed that night:
ROAD INVENTORY
On October 12, the town of Duxbury and the Central Vermont Regional Planning Commission completed an extensive road erosion inventory of Duxbury roads. The information collected in this inventory includes the grade of the roads, the slope of their crowns, locations of every cross culvert, what the inlets and outlets of those culverts looked like and photos of each road segment.
“It’s an extensive bit of work,” said DeLaBruere. In Duxbury, the team inventories all hydrologically-connected road segments. “In the town of Duxbury we have 280 segments, each at 100-feet long per segment, so they walked 28,000 feet to do this inventory for the town,” said DeLaBruere.
The next step after completing this inventory is to download all the data and create a priority list for a budgeting and capital improvement for the town. “They’ll present it to the select board at a subsequent meeting,” said DeLaBruere.
CROSSETT HILL
At the meeting, DeLaBruere also gave select board members an update on the status of the Crossett Hill slope stabilization project. “That project is ending this Friday. After that, the only remaining piece of it will be the guardrail and they’re still two weeks out. So, the road will remain closed until that time that the guardrail is installed, due to safety concerns,” said DeLaBruere.
Select board members were not happy to hear that the road would stay closed an additional two weeks and encouraged DeLaBruere to reach out to the contractors and see if they could open the road earlier. “I would like to see it opened up,” said board chair Kevin Garcia. “It’s one thing to close it if they are showing progress and activity. But two weeks for the road to sit idle? I can just hear the residents now asking, ‘Why is there a detour for two weeks of inactivity.’”
DeLaBruere explained that guardrail companies were backlogged on their shipments, but agreed to reach out to contractors and try to speed along the installation process.
“If it’s going to sit for 14 days with no activity, I would be disgruntled,” said Garcia.
EQUIPTMENT GRANT
The Central Vermont Regional Planning Commission emailed the select board informing the town that it did not receive the Winooski Watershed Grant. “Unfortunately, there were too many applicants for the funding that was available,” said DeLaBruere.
According to DeLaBruere, the grant prioritizes towns with the most hydrologically-connected road miles. “Duxbury did not make that priority list. So, unfortunately, we were not awarded.” The town hoped to use the grant to purchase a hydroseeder.
However, after January 1, Duxbury has the opportunity to access extra funding from the grant, if there is anything left, that is.
