Councilors press to prioritize East Forest Park repairs; DPW says Surrey Road will be paved this summer

Councilors at a joint meeting of Springfield City’s public safety and maintenance & development subcommittees on Tuesday pressed the city to speed repairs to streets and sidewalks in East Forest Park that were damaged by last year’s tornado. The discussion centered on which streets to prioritize, how federal and local funding limits affect work, and the schedule for repaving.

Councilor Jerry Martin introduced a resolution asking the city to prioritize repairs to several streets he named, including Surrey Road, Kipling Street, Wayside Avenue and parts of Roosevelt Avenue. "I want to hear your thoughts on that resolution and go from there," Martin said, noting he had invited other councilors to propose additional streets but received none.

The Department of Public Works director told the committees Surrey Road "is on the paving list" and "it's going to be done this summer." The director described the city’s annual Chapter 90‑aligned prioritization process, which uses a pavement rating completed by the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission (PVPC). He said the city typically has about $5 million to spend annually on paving while the long list of candidate streets totals roughly $25 million, so staff must prioritize based on condition and utility coordination.

The director outlined tradeoffs in the process: the city attempts to distribute paving projects across neighborhoods and bundles nearby streets so a contractor can complete several segments in one area rather than returning repeatedly to the same neighborhood. He warned that treating the council’s request list as a series of spot priorities would prompt complaints from other wards and make it harder to justify decisions to residents.

Funding constraints were a recurring theme. The director said much sidewalk funding comes from Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) dollars, which are restricted to CDBG‑eligible census tracts determined by income and other metrics. "Some sections of East Forest Park are not CDBG eligible," he said, meaning sidewalk work there typically requires either mayoral discretionary funds or reallocation of other funding sources.

On repairs, the director described the city’s approach of performing temporary asphalt fixes to make sidewalks safe and then scheduling full concrete replacement in a later contract run. He asked councilors to forward specific house addresses where residents still see damage so crews can inspect and add those locations to the permanent replacement list. When asked whether homeowners must pay for these repairs, the director said in his 17 years the city has "never had a resident pay for a penny of anything" for city‑led sidewalk replacement, while acknowledging an application form notes circumstances under certain federal funding rules where a resident contribution could theoretically apply.

The director provided several cost figures during the meeting: roughly $2.5 million already spent on paving and related work in East Forest Park after the tornado, a little over $2 million spent on FEMA/MEMA‑identified sidewalk repairs, and a recent paving contract expanded to about $6.5 million after the city used reserves and additional state funds. He said the new contract will be signed July 1 and work should begin the week after July 4; the exact phasing will be posted to the DPW Facebook page when available.

Councilors asked for greater transparency on maps and rankings; the director said he would circulate the PVPC pavement‑rating file and the CDBG eligibility map to council members. Several councilors also urged an end to long‑running use of asphalt (tar) in the city’s historic districts, calling the look unacceptable even if it is a temporary measure.

The meeting closed with the chairs moving to adjourn; a motion and second carried unanimously at 5:19 p.m.

Why it matters: East Forest Park remains visibly affected by the tornado, and councilors emphasized urgency tied to the anniversary of the storm. The discussion clarified which work is already scheduled and showed how federal funding rules and available local funds limit how quickly some sidewalks and side streets can move from temporary fixes to permanent replacement.