Sen. Paul Honig (opinion): Looking down Conn.’s roads — and fixing them

Serving on Harwinton’s Board of Selectmen has given me a front-row seat to the challenges small towns face when it comes to maintaining basic infrastructure. Transportation upkeep is expensive and for many residents road conditions carry a symbolic significance. It’s hard to believe your local government is doing its job when potholes and frost heaves turn the daily commute into an obstacle course.

Here in Harwinton, we have roughly 66 miles of local roads. Public works officials say we should be investing more in paving and repairs just to keep up with normal degradation. Our largest source of road funding is the state’s Town Aid Road program, known as TAR, and our share has been about $230,000 a year.

When I joined the state Senate in January, that number had been unchanged for more than a decade. And I found out that Harwinton wasn’t alone. Overall state funding for TAR has remained frozen at $60 million a year since 2014.

In the time since then, costs for asphalt, equipment, and labor have steadily climbed. That’s a problem. Every time you hold funding flat while costs increase, you’re removing services at the rate of inflation. It means that each year, towns can do a little less with the same money. Eventually, the gap between what’s needed and what’s funded becomes too wide to ignore.

I made it a priority to take a closer look at programs such as TAR. The value of this funding is clear to every local official. Towns use it to pave, plow, treat roads, clear trees, install signs, and generally keep roads safe. Yet we were still asking them to pay 2025 prices on a 2014 budget. The math just didn’t add up.

I brought this concern to a colleague, state Sen. Pat Billie Miller, D-Stamford, who chairs the legislature’s bonding subcommittee, and suggested we do more. Because without additional support, either road conditions would continue to worsen or local taxpayers would be asked to pick up the slack.

This year’s bonding legislation delivers. TAR funding is slated to jump from $60 million to $80 million statewide, a 33% increase. It’s not everything towns need, but it is a big step in the right direction.

For the 8th Senate District, that translates to nearly $1 million in additional state support each year. Harwinton will receive about $70,000 in extra funding, Simsbury more than $120,000, and Torrington an additional $150,000.

Although those figures might seem small in the scope of the state budget, they are significant at the town level. That extra funding could mean the flexibility to treat secondary roads ahead of a big winter storm or resurfacing a bumpy stretch of pavement that would otherwise have to wait another year or two.

While I’m focused on the towns I represent, every Connecticut municipality that receives funding under TAR will be given a one-third increase for road repairs and that’s progress.

I’m proud that during my first year in office, I was able to deliver results that will make a real difference in people’s daily lives. This increase in funding will help towns keep roads safer and at the very least, it should make the daily commute a little smoother for drivers.