Selectman Will Rodgers did not want to close the August 18 Board of Selectmen meeting without praising First Selectman Pat Llodra, Public Works Director Fred Hurley, and his Highway Department crews for accomplishing a neighborhood’s worth of road resurfacing in the areas of Flat Swamp Road and Brookwood Drive earlier in the preceding weeks.

And while Mr Hurley said he would like to see more of these areawide improvements, and endeavors to “tie neighborhoods together” with multiple streets being repaired and resurfaced at the same time, it can only be accomplished when there is a somewhat unique alignment among suppliers, vendors, and work crews — along with the cooperation of Mother Nature.

“It does happen periodically that we can connect a lot of dots, figuratively speaking,” Mr Hurley told The Newtown Bee this week as his crews look for a few more weeks of road work weather before they reorient to clearing those roadways of winter precipitation.

He said the highway crews and public works staff are always looking at neighborhoods where there may be several roads in good shape among several others that are in disrepair like in the area of Bonnie Brae and Brassie Roads, where crews recently completed similar multistreet resurfacing.

“We also did Platts Hill and Hundred Acres Roads, tying that work to other adjacent streets to give the whole neighborhood the benefit of a smoother ride,” the public works chief said.

The challenge always comes down to the scheduling of multiple vendors and staged or phased projects. First, Mr Hurley said, roads scheduled to get drainage replacements will often have those new catch basins installed so they can ideally settle for several months or over a winter before the adjacent road is milled and resurfaced.

“In some cases, we just can’t leave that road with those raised [basins] for more than a few days or weeks, because of the extent of traffic flow on those roads,” Mr Hurley said.

But when all aspects of a job line up, the results can not only deliver smoother rides throughout the neighborhoods affected, but some nominal cost savings according to Town Engineer Ron Bolmer.

Mr Bolmer said every time the town can purchase asphalt and materials in larger quantities, it provides those materials at a lower cost.

“So while you’re spending more up front for the materials, you get even more surfacing for less money,” he explained.

And while it is a goal to complete road milling and resurfacing in quick succession to minimize driving discomfort, Mr Hurley said the opposite of what Selectman Rodgers was praising could happen.

“We don’t want to grind a roadway and wait two weeks to resurface, but depending on our contractors and the weather, it can happen,” he said.

Which could generate a lot of complaints versus compliments from neighbors bouncing down roadways in those affected areas.

Mr Hurley did see more of that perfectly aligned sequencing occur in areas off Route 302 on Flat Swamp and Poverty Hollow, where the drainage work, milling, and resurfacing was happening within days.

“We’ve only got a few small areas left and that entire neighborhood will be done,” Mr Hurley said. “We find there is a lot of positive reception — a quality of life benefit, even if the work is not being done on someone’s street because folks are driving from streets already in good condition to newly paved roads that might have been pretty torn up before.”

On occasion, Mr Hurley has to work creatively with funding that may remain at the end of a fiscal cycle or budget year.

“So if we, say, have $100,000 left, we might choose to do more drainage repairs in areas and leave the rest of the work until the next fiscal year when we have more in the budget to do more resurfacing in those areas,” Mr Hurley said. “Basically it’s about taking the best shot you can with the materials and crews you have to get as much done as quickly as possible. It improves the quality of life and limits the aggravation for regular drivers on those roads.”