Dalton Division Road Repair Project at Risk of Losing Funding
DALTON, Mass. — The town is fighting to keep funding for the $11.4 million Dalton Division Road project.
Town Manager Thomas Hutcheson told the Select Board on Monday that he will be at the Berkshire Regional Planning Commission's meeting on Thursday to advocate for the project.
This project was authorized and set for funding in 2016 by the Metropolitan Planning Organization but has yet to move on to the completion of an engineering plan. The project is currently listed as being in the preliminary design phase with a start date of spring 2026.
"This project was funded and authorized in 2016, six years ago," said Select Board member John Boyle, who represents the town on the MPO. "The way they view it in six years, Dalton has not made a move to submit an engineering plan."
Boyle said the MPO is upset because of the stall in the project since it was approved six years ago.
"It's kind of embarrassing, hastily, and especially when the money was appropriated $800,000 in 2018, and that's all they want. They want an engineering plan to save. We're at this stage of the process," he said.
Hutcheson said when he first started in his post last year, he came across a lot of documents surrounding the project that contain conflicting information regarding the engineering estimates.
"When I arrived, I was trying to sort through an awful lot of documents. And I did go through some of the Division Road documents and found that we had two different estimates to go into the engineering," he said.
One of the estimates was $800,00 which was used to submit the project through the state Department of Transportation's Transportation Improvement Program. The other estimate was $1.2 million.
"I thought that the differences between those figures were so substantial, that I should actually try to figure out how that happened and put out an RFP that was first well designed to get us to a better figure," Hutcheson said.
Hutcheson reached out to MassDOT to inform it that the committee is still interested in the funding for Dalton Division Road.
The 1.6-mile road project would improve safety and drainage, and make it more accessible to walkers and cyclists by adding sidewalks.
The Select Board thinks Pittsfield should contribute financially to the engineering since road is the border of Dalton and Pittsfield. The road is on Dalton's side but the homes are on the west side in Pittsfield.
"Half of this project is in Pittsfield. The utilities, underground are all intertwined, sewer, water, cable TV, etc," Boyle said "There's going to be a sidewalk on the Pittsfield side, which is the west side. Now, here's why I brought this up before ... four or five years ago, I said, 'we should ask Pittsfield to share in the engineering cost.'"
The board asked Hutcheson if there was an opportunity to have a consultant come and assist so it can be completed a month or two sooner.
Chairman Joseph Diver recommended Hutcheson reach out to the BRPC for assistance but Hutcheson said he already and the commission declined. According to Diver, this is a problem because this is a service that the commission provides.
Tags: MPO, road project,
