The Tolland Town Council at their meeting of August 14, 2012 approved a referendum question for the November 6th 2012 ballot as follows:  Shall the Town of Tolland appropriate $5,000,000 for road improvements and authorize the issue of bonds and notes in the same amount to finance said appropriation.

The Town has approximately 132.5 miles of road.  On an annual basis the Town has been budgeting approximately $500,000 through a combination of Town and State funds to repair roads with the plan to increase that amount to $750,000 annually.  Several years ago the town began working with VHB engineering to inventory the condition of all our roads and on a four year cycle going forward update the inventory and assign a pavement condition index on a scale of 0-100 for our roads. The most recent review assigned an average pavement condition index of 71 for all Tolland roads and based on our assumed level of funding for road repairs estimated that we would stay at that level through 2016 and then start to see a further decline in the index indicating a decrease in the condition of our roads.

Overall the system has projected that our current backlog of road repairs which includes routine maintenance, preventative maintenance, structural improvements and base rehabilitation is $15,289,542 and covers some 123 of our 132 miles of road. This only includes our paved roadways and not the some nine miles of unpaved roads that we must maintain on a regular basis. In working with the engineering consultants it was determined that to address the backlog an additional million dollars of road work per year for the next five years would increase our pavement condition index to the mid to upper 70’s but just as  important keep the index moving forward in a level position without further decline.

It is important to remember that with roads the more preventive maintenance you can do the longer you can preserve the base of the road and put off major reconstruction.  It is estimated that to do base rehabilitation is a cost of about one million dollars per mile of road.  

The financial impact of our debt service as planned over the next five years with and without this issue is a difference in FY 2014-15 of $17,862 in our debt service cost and in FY 2016-17 $85,119. In both scenarios following fiscal year 2016-17 there is a decline in our debt service due a number of older issues coming off the books which helps to absorb the increase cost of debt service related to this issue without having to increase our current level of debt service payments