AMESBURY — Keeping track of the state of the town's roads and sidewalks will soon get a little easier.
Public Works director Robert Desmarais says his department is compiling a "pavement management" plan, a Web-based computer program through which employees will survey all of the town's streets and rate their condition, and log and track work as it is performed.
The program will be part of the new GovQA Web program that Mayor Thatcher Kezer plans to launch in Amesbury, Desmarais said.
"That's coming, and this is part of the change," he said.
Through the program and a new interactive town Web site that will also be unveiled in the coming months, citizens will be able to log in and see through the site how their streets are rated and when construction is scheduled, Desmarais said.
Through GovQA, residents will be able to even send a request in — such as asking for a pothole to be filled or report a fallen tree — and get an e-mail back when that task is done. The program will log a project's progress and track the response time for a request, Desmarais said. The program will even include answers to frequently asked questions.
GovQA is run by the WebQA Inc. company. Pricing starts "at a few hundred dollars per month" for unlimited use and is based on a town's population, according to its Web site.
Through a pavement management plan, the town will be able to invest money in streets in order to extend their life span and not add more projects to an already big backlog of projects, Desmarais told an audience of residents and municipal councilors during a workshop Wednesday.
By doing so, the town will then be able to use its limited resources — community development block grants, state and town money — to "chip away" at the backlog, Desmarais said.
The town's estimated project backlog is about $17 million for roads, $14 million for sidewalks, $10 million for drainage, $20 million for water and $5 million for sewer, Desmarais said. Those figures are estimates based on 2008 dollar figures and prior studies, he said.
The town gets about $250,000 to $300,000 a year in Chapter 90 money — state funding given to a town based on the amount of miles of roads it has. That money goes toward sidewalks and road projects, as well as engineering costs for projects, Desmarais said.
During the workshop, Desmarais was asked by residents about their streets and sidewalks, as well as state roads and crosswalks. One person wondered why the sidewalk on Congress Street across from the Horace Mann School was never finished. The town ran out of money, Desmarais said.
One citizen asked if auto excise taxes go directly to road projects. The answer? No. That money goes into the town's general fund. The money in the sewer and enterprise funds go directly to those departments, Desmarais said.
The town decided several years ago to use only concrete sidewalks, Desmarais said. Concrete sidewalks take more to maintain but are more aesthetically pleasing, he said.
"People wanted a certain look for Amesbury, so we went with concrete," he said.
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