Road repair delay raises Carmel ire

CARMEL – News that the state plans to defer repairs to Route 2 from Newport to Hermon raised more than eyebrows Monday at the selectmen’s meeting in Carmel where the road cuts a significant path through town.

“I don’t like the idea, I can tell you that right now,” Suzan Rudnicki, chairwoman of the selectmen, said after the meeting where the news was formally presented. “I think that with the amount of taxes we pay the state, we could get some good roads.”

In a Nov. 21 letter to the town, Maine Department of Transportation Commissioner David Cole wrote that because of financial constraints, $130 million of transportation projects planned for 2006-2007 are being deferred. Included in those projects is roughly 15 miles of Route 2 scheduled for repair.

For town officials the deferral affects more than just roughly six miles of road, it affects livelihoods and safety.

Commuters use Route 2 to get to and from work, while commercial truckers use it to avoid the lower weight restrictions on Interstate 95. And town officials suggested that a good road is more than aesthetics, it can also help with economic development.

But all that traffic has taken its toll on Route 2. Potholes, cracks, grooves and weakened shoulders and poor draining that allows water to pool up are some of the common complaints.

“It’s just getting worse and worse and worse,” Carmel Town Manager William Collins said Monday.

Go farther down Route 2, between Farmington and Newport, and “It’s like night and day,” Collins said.

Unwilling to accept the state’s decision sitting down, an effort is already under way to mobilize communities along the affected Route 2 corridor. In a letter dated the same as Cole’s letter, Hermon Town Manager Clint Deschene is encouraging municipalities to hold public meetings to discuss the issue.

Such multicommunity efforts can be effective, said Collins, pointing out how in the mid-1990s communities from Ashland to Patten banded together and convinced the state to repair Route 11, which every summer had to be closed.

The alternative is even worse, officials said.

“Route 2 is a vital part of the economy through trucking and tourism to our areas,” Deschene wrote in the letter. “If the road is not corrected soon, the negative impact will be even bigger than the damage that has already occurred.”