The longest discussion at Monkton’s town meeting this year was about a 2-mile-long unpaved road.
Piney Woods Road has been closed since the summer of 2024 after a rainstorm wiped out a culvert.
The road was also damaged in 2023. And in 2019, and Monkton taxpayers had already invested money into fixing the picturesque town road, which is a popular walking and biking route.
This year the select board asked voters how they felt about spending another $100,000 or so on Piney Woods Road.
After more than an hour of debate, voters decided they’d already spent enough.
“There was a lot of robust discussion about that road,” said select board member Sam Piesch.
Residents who live on Piney Woods Road can get in and out from either end, but the biggest concern is public safety, Piesch said, and for some it means more driving to get into Vergennes.
Vermont towns are increasingly having to make tough decisions about their infrastructure. And for most towns, their highway budget is by far their largest expense.
Taxpayers are already stretched beyond the breaking point due to rising education taxes. Along with historic flooding, towns are also contending with the rising cost of materials and machinery, uncertainty about federal aid, and a drop in the state’s transportation budget, which is fueled by the gas tax.
“Those things are sort of a recipe for disaster,” said Josh Hanford, director of intergovernmental relations for the Vermont League of Cities and Towns. “And the challenge is, there really isn’t any big plan in the works to fix it.”
Delaying local road projects only means they will be more expensive in the future, Hanford said. Monkton isn’t the only town being forced to give up on rural roads when the price tag for maintenance is too high.
“It’s of great concern to municipalities,” Hanford said. “And we’re wondering if we’ll be left shouldering the vast responsibility for road maintenance, repair and construction going forward.”
Despite some FEMA funding and state aid, towns are still facing expensive repair bills.
One of the challenges facing the state, according to Hanford, is that no one really knows just how bad town-maintained roads have become.
The Agency of Transportation does a routine assessment of the quality of state-maintained roads, but each town is responsible for its own roads.
Morristown earlier this year did a comprehensive study of its infrastructure, and found that more than half of its roads were in poor or very poor shape.
Selectboard Chair Don McDowell said, in an effort to save money, the town has identified 19 roads that the town could turn over to private ownership.
“There clearly are limited funds out there, and you don’t have to drive very far in Vermont to find some roads that are heavily impacted,” McDowell said. “There are a large number of roads that need to be taken care of.”
Closing roads, though, carries consequences for the residents living on them. In the most severe situations, property owners can be left to figure out how to access their land when a road is closed.
And even when there aren’t people living along a newly closed road, there are issues like emergency services taking longer and long-term maintenance being put off.
“Those things are sort of a recipe for disaster, and the challenge is, there really isn’t any big plan in the works to fix it.”Josh Hanford, Vermont League of Cities and Towns
Lamoille County Senator Richard Westman, chair of the Senate Transportation Committee, is working on a bill that would establish a statewide tax to help municipalities with their road budgets.
Westman said very small and rural towns can’t really adopt their own local option tax because they don’t have stores and restaurants, but they do have roads to take care of.
The senator said the committee has just begun talking about the idea, but the proposal would put a portion of each town’s new tax into a statewide fund that then goes out to help towns with their road budgets.
“Most communities, with the pressure that’s on the property tax, are level-funding their municipal budget,” Westman said. “We understand that all towns are having trouble maintaining their roads.”
