DOT declines control of road

GRAND ISLE – The Maine Department of Transportation is opposed to a bill that would change the designation of a local road in Grand Isle to a state-maintained local collector road.

Grand Isle has been trying to get the state to take over the 2.5-mile section of road because it needs nearly $300,000 in repairs, an amount nearly equal to the town’s annual municipal budget.

The town has been trying to get the state to accept the road since 1995.

The Legislative Transportation Committee held a hearing a couple of weeks ago, where Grand Isle officials and MDOT testified.

Morneault Road connects Route 1, Grand Isle’s Main Street, to Lavertu Road in Madawaska and then to Beaulieu, which extends around the west side of Long Lake and Cleveland Road to the east side of Long Lake in St. Agatha.

LD 18, sponsored by Rep. William Smith, D-Van Buren, would require the MDOT to maintain the road that was a state road until the 1980s. In the early 1980s, the state turned over its ownership to the town.

Smith estimated that 80 percent of the traffic on the road is by nonresidents of Grand Isle.

“The state should bear some of the burden in keeping this road maintained,” Smith said. We are trying to force the state to confront their responsibilities.

“The town has been suffering with this road ever since the state passed ownership on to them,” he said. “We want the state to recognize that the road is a local collector road, and should be maintained by the state.”

The state maintains the road does not meet the criteria to become a state road, claiming it only meets one of five criteria. That is the trip-length criteria by nonresidents of the town.

They claim the town gets $16,000 a year from the Urban-Rural Initiative Program to maintain roads from the state.

The town says that money is for three roads, and filling potholes on Morneault Road alone is a $12,000-a-year proposition.

The road needs ditching work estimated to cost $20,000, replacement of culverts at $2,000 each, reclamation of the pavement at $35,000 a mile and paving, which runs between $40,000 and $100,000 a mile.

A citizens’ action committee has been trying to no avail to find funding alternatives. They failed to get a Community Development Block Grant, and borrowing would also strain the municipal budget, and more repairs to the road would be needed even before a loan of that size would be repaid by the town.

Smith is concerned about the bill. He said Thursday that he wondered if it would come out of committee with a positive vote.