Morristown tells Senate Transportation it faces $3.2M paving backlog, urges statewide pavement data and grant review

Morristown town officials told the Senate Transportation committee on Feb. 17 that the town faces a roughly $3.2 million backlog to bring poor and very poor paved roads up to standard and urged the state to help provide repeatable pavement-condition data and reconsider how grant programs serve small towns.

"Forty-two point four percent of our paved town highways are still in poor to very poor condition," said Doreen St. Anj, Morristown highway superintendent and road commissioner. She told senators the town has 92.13 miles of town highway, of which 36.8 miles are paved, and that paved maintenance is the municipality's largest recurring cost.

That condition assessment, performed by consultant GPI using a visual "windshield" inspection, showed a $3.2 million catch-up need for paving alone, St. Anj said. "If we pay roughly 4 miles a year, we can address all of our poor and very poor roads in four more years," she said, estimating roughly $800,000 a year to meet that pace.

Brent Raymond, Morristown town manager, told the committee the town has sought…