Friday's Town Meeting

This coming Friday, the 27th, there will be a special town meeting to consider a proposal being brought by the selectmen to take on a bond and really repair correctly many of the roads. Key words here....repair correctly. I am as dutch as my ancestors, and spending my money I want to be a wise thing. Anyone who travels our town roads knows the urgency that we have to do something about our roads. The condition of many of them is, well, almost edges on deplorable. For too many years, our town fathers have done nothing but patch patches and where there has been pavement applied, it has been a bang-for-your-buck cold mix. Looks good for about three years, then it's falling apart. And then the patching starts again.

Our town is made up of a few major components: its people. Its school. Its town hall and property holdings (ie: beach, green, community hall, fire company) and its system of roads. Those I think of as its major parts. Each must be maintained, and of course that brings a cost. We try to be frugal when and where we can, but for too many years our roads have fallen victim to being almost last on the list, or so it sure seems. Its like we never want to fix anything right in Sharon in regards to roads. We settle for mediocrity. Oh, they are ok seems to have been the answer forever.

Well, we felt the same for years at the school, and we finally bit the bullet and started at the foundation and worked from there up, and we built a good school building. And we are maintaining it. And we all have pride in it, or should have. We need to do the same with our roads. We need drainage work. We need new culverts. We need to get water to run off of roads, meaning edges need to be cut back and graded, allowing water to run off, not just run on and pool up at low spots. We need base (the foundation) in areas where there is none. We need to do it right, and we need to maintain it after we do it, not just do it once.

I have met with our first selectman on numerous times discussing the matter, and he assures me that if this vote goes thru positively, that roads will be built, not just repaired. We won't just put hot asphalt on instead of the cold, cheap mix and nothing more. If that is the case. then I recommend we all vote favorably this Friday and start getting one of our assets into shape. But if these proposals do not face the challenge head-on, and fix the problems at the bottom, then vote no and tell the selectmen to get it right.

It's our town. We all need to own it and take pride in it. Roads, and the condition of them is a part of it, and we all should be concerned.

I hope to see you and your friends there Friday evening, at our town hall.

"must be in Sharon, look at the roads"