Report of the Montpelier City Council's Citizen Budget Review ...

monitoring as objective as possible. For time sake and comparability sake only approximately3 miles of downtown and arterial street concrete sidewalks (the composition of most suchsidewalks) were compared (although the general comments refer to asphalt or brick sidewalksfactors.) All sidewalks including Montpelier’s were monitored with in short three week weekspan so that standards were internally remembered* and somewhat consistent, which mightnot have been the case if we had used figures from previously monitored Montpeliersidewalks.Streets Segment of ReportStreets were monitored in all comparable cities by driving over downtown and arterial streets,but not by as objective criteria as was done with sidewalks. Following is a subjectivecomparison:Good Quality Streets: Brattleboro, BurlingtonFair Quality Streets: Concord NH, White River Junction, BarrePoor quality Streets: MontpelierConcord NH has a 10 year plan for street maintenance. Barre a few years ago evaluated their60 miles of streets and came up with 15 miles of poor quality streets. Since that evaluation,Barre has been working on improving the quality of those 15 miles reducing the number ofmiles in poor conditions. By next year Barre is working on reducing the remaining 3 miles ofpoor quality streets to about 1 and half milesAt this point it is not clear if planning was the cause why the streets of Brattleboro andBurlington are such good quality or what the reasons were.It does makes sense that a plan or inventory as envisioned in the City Council goals should becarried out. Further It is clear to Montpelier citizens and its City Council that Montpelier needsto improve their streets, a goal which will cost money.It seems that following the recommended and privately accepted but not officiallyacknowledged Complete Streets Policy should be followed, a policy that calls for improving alluses of the street whenever construction takes place.Department StructureThe department of public works is segregated into 5 divisions: Equipment; Streets; Water andSewer; Water Plant; and Wastewater Plant (see DPW organization chart following).Page 70 of 88