Roads project - status update
The Village Roads project continues to be a significant topic of conversation in the Village. Here are a few questions that have come up in our small group meetings, and in discussions with residents.
Why does it cost so much?
The pink section is estimated to cost $48,600 per house, and the blue section is estimated at $42,300 per house. These are big numbers. Those prices reflect the substantial construction cost increases since our last petition effort ten years ago. In 2015, HRC (the Township’s engineering firm) estimated the cost of rebuilding our roads throughout the Village, excluding Cranbrook and Covington, at $25 million. Construction costs have increased over 50% since that 2015 report, reflecting the overall inflationary environment as well as factors more specific to construction material and labor costs. In fact, using inflation adjusted dollars the pink and blue section 2023 prices are within 8% of the 2015 estimate.
Unfortunately, construction costs are unlikely decrease anytime in the future – if we choose to defer dealing with our roads now, it will only cost us more to fix them in the future.
How is the petition process going?
Many residents have expressed a deep frustration with the state of our roads and their desire to fix the problem before construction costs escalate further.
Recapping our current status: We now have cost estimates to rebuild the roads in 2 of the 5 colored sections of the Village – pink and blue – and have commenced the petition process in both of those sections. As you would expect, petitioning in the winter was slower, as many residents headed for warm weather, and the rest of us hunkered down against the cold. The good news is soon we will commence our door-to-door efforts. All that said, already many residents of both sections have already signed the petitions to support new roads in their neighborhood. We hope to have both the pink and blue petitions completed, with more than 51% support for rebuilding our roads, and turned into the Township by late spring.
If you are in the pink or blue section, volunteers are contacting residents in these sections to discuss the Roads project and arrange a signature on a petition. If you support the Roads project, please respond promptly to the volunteer’s call or email and sign a petition. Or, stop by the Village Hall – we are announcing new office hours every two weeks. If those hours don’t work, call or email the Village office to arrange a good time to sign. If you don’t support the Roads project, we want to be respectful of your decision; please let us know so we no longer contact you during our canvassing.
Once we have enough signatures on the pink and blue petitions, we will turn them into Bloomfield Township for validation, and then to start the public hearing process. We hope to complete the petition process by late spring. After the first of two public hearings for each section, the Road Commission will bid the project, and the actual assessment for each house in the section will be determined. If all goes according to plan, shovels will go in the ground in April 2024 and we will have new roads in those sections by Christmas.
