DEERFIELD — The town will recommend borrowing up to $5 million for emergency road repairs at an upcoming special Town Meeting on Oct. 23 to pay for road repairs resulting from July rainstorms that washed out streets and caused lasting damage.
The decision to ask residents to approve $5 million came after a lengthy discussion between the Select Board and Finance Committee last week. Much of the focus is on repairs to River Road, where the embankment has slowly been sinking in subsequent rainstorms.
The town may not need to borrow the full $5 million because the state could potentially provide some funding to affected towns in late November, according to Select Board Chairwoman Carolyn Shores Ness. Instead, having the approval to borrow this money gives Deerfield the “flexibility” to repair River Road if it were to suffer a “catastrophic failure” in the coming months.
“I would like us to have the capability, if River Road does fail, to have the ability to go out and fix it. It’s a major artery,” Shores Ness said. “To have that shutdown is serious — we have to be able to get on it and we don’t know when it’s going to fail.”
If approved by a two-thirds vote at Town Meeting, the borrowing would then go to the ballot box for a Proposition 2½ debt-exclusion vote, which Select Board member Tim Hilchey said is another chance for residents to approve or deny the funding, a process similar to the approval for Tilton Library’s expansion project in 2022.
“It makes the most sense to ask the voters … they get two opportunities to say yes or no,” Hilchey said. “I’d like the Select Board and Finance Committee to go into this meeting pretty much in agreement.”
If the state were to provide Deerfield with the $4.7 million it requested, Shores Ness said the town can always cancel the override vote, which would be slated for December. Town Accountant Brenda Hill added they could then rescind the borrowing authority at the spring annual Town Meeting.
Finance Committee Chairwoman Julie Chalfant said the average single family tax bill, based on the average home value of $359,661 and an estimated interest rate of 6% over a 20-year period, would increase by $178 per year, or a 3.2% increase.
Shores Ness said the $5 million ask is intended be “transparent” about borrowing money and to be upfront about the anticipated costs because they don’t know if River Road will last through the winter.
While the work is important, Finance Committee member Mark Brennan said he had some concerns about the $5 million request being an “arbitrary amount” that could escalate because they truly don’t know what the repair costs are without engineering.
The matter will come before voters at the special Town Meeting on Oct. 23 at 7 p.m. in the Frontier Regional School auditorium.
