Committee previews GIS-driven five‑year street plan and asks staff to reprioritize Stonefield and High Road

The Public Works Committee reviewed a new GIS-based five‑year street improvement dashboard and voted to direct public works staff to prepare a revised plan that reprioritizes Stonefield and adds design and reconstruction for High Road.

Why it matters: The dashboard will let residents and staff view color-coded pavement-condition segments, current projects, and segment-level details online. The committee’s revision request reflects residents’ concerns about rapidly deteriorating roads and interjurisdictional coordination with neighboring towns.

Dashboard demonstration: Staff showed a public-facing GIS app that breaks the city’s streets into approximately 1,100 block-level segments (up from ~500 previously) and uses color coding to indicate candidate treatments (reconstruction, resurfacing, overlays, chip seals). "It's available to the public," Sean said during the demonstration; staff said clicking a segment brings up details such as priority rating and contact information.

Budget and prioritization debate: Committee members discussed how the five‑year plan currently assumes a fixed $2,000,000 annual budget, and raised concerns that a static target does not keep pace with inflation. A council member said Stonefield, which faces heavy traffic and deterioration, should be moved earlier in the schedule. Another member proposed adding High Road (noting part of the corridor lies in the neighboring town of Middleton) for design in 2027 and construction in 2028 as a placeholder subject to intergovernmental agreement.

Motion and outcome: The committee voted to direct staff to produce a revised five‑year street improvement plan that moves Stonefield and adjacent boundary sections up the schedule and adds High Road design and reconstruction to the plan; the motion carried by voice vote. Staff noted they will identify projects to defer or remove to accommodate the change and provided a preliminary estimate that a red portion of Stonefield could represent roughly $1.2 million of project cost.

Next steps: Staff will return with a revised schedule and options for fitting the change into the capital program; finance and borrowing constraints will affect final timing.