Underfunded Road Crews Losing Battle to Keep Framingham Roads Safe

Take a look at the image above, and see the direction Framingham roads are headed. The planned trajectory is the lower purple one, which corresponds to the funding of $2 million/year the city plans to spend in the next 4 years on road maintenance.

Note that what is being plotted is the RSR, or Road Surface Rating which runs from 0-100, projected out for the next 10 years.

The RSR scale translates as:

100-85 = Good; 85-70 = Satisfactory; 70-55 = Fair; 55-40 = Poor

So the RSR is currently barely Satisfactory at around 70, and will soon slip to Fair. Poor is on the horizon. Back in 2010, the RSR was 78, but has slipped each year since.

The Highway Division of the Framingham Department of Public Works has made it clear for years that road maintenance is severely underfunded, and the backlog of road maintenance has grown to $94 million. The Highway Division has requested that road maintenance be funded at the level of $8.5 million annually to stop further deterioration. But that request has been denied.

What is further remarkable about this situation is that the state provides Chapter 90 funding specifically for road maintenance at the level of about $1.8 million annually for Framingham. This data can be found at:

https://www.mass.gov/service-details/chapter-90-past-apportionment

That shows that the city plans to allocate $2 million annually to road repair, with $1.8 million coming from state Chapter 90 funds, have almost no local tax payer money invested in road maintenance. The city has effectively defunded any local contribution to maintain the roads, and relies almost entirely on state assistance.

If Framingham roads were people, they would be on state welfare and slowly starving to death.

All of the data presented so far, apart from the Chapter 90 info, comes from the FY24-28 Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) posted on the city website. CIPs for prior years are also accessible to the community. They all require real digging to bring their real message into plain view. Here is a telling quote from the FY21-24 CIP:

“The Roadway Master Plan in 2006 stated that we should be spending $5,000,000 per year to keep roads to good repair. That year we did nothing. We have worked incrementally to get to about $3.2 million per year. But this still creates a backlog – the Master Plan now says we should be investing $8.5 million per year. Some of that increase is due to the growing costs of paving, however, the majority is to make up for what we have deferred.”

That comes from the tail end of the Spicer administration which invested about $3 million/year in road maintenance. The high point for road maintenance was Fy16 where it peaked at $4.5 million due to town meeting concerns about road maintenance neglect. But with the new Sisitsky administration, supported by the City Council, it has been all downhill for road maintenance. $2 million was approved in FY23, deferring $6.5 million. $2 million is projected to be approved for FY24, deferring yet another $6.5 million.

We are really heading into trouble on the roads.

We all use the roads: the local community and local businesses. Take a look. Are they improving in your neighborhood? Is it fine to let them get worse?

And remember that deferring road maintenance is always the most costly approach. Timely repair of roads saves millions in later repair costs. Framingham is engaged in an approach which is guaranteed to cost tax payers the most in the long run. Further, it is hardly an encouragement to businesses to see the contagion of infrastructure neglect infect the roads. They and the community have already shelled out for steep water & sewer rate increases, due to the same deferred maintenance approach to water & sewer infrastructure.

The FY24 budget cycle is in full swing and the City Council will soon be pecking around the budget for 'efficiencies'. How about they take a look at the roads and vote to fund them at the level of $8.5 million annually to stop them getting worse and save money in the long run? Or $10 million to actually improve them. At that rate, we might get to good roads by 2040.

This is the first in a series of Patch articles delving into the poorly advertised but very serious problems of Framingham governance. Subsequent articles will take look at: water & sewer, school roofs, education, solar installations and so on. In each case, verifiable city data will be used to show that we have a looming infrastructure crisis, which has even begun to damage school system funding. And most of this trouble can be traced back to the year 2013, when the town began taxing below the 2.5% annual levy increase.

Stay tuned and check in on the Facebook page supporting this effort: The Framingham Observer.