Concord City Engineer Lands RI Town Manager Gig

CONCORD, NH — The city of Concord is currently looking for a new city engineer. Ed Roberge, who has been on the job in the capital city for more than 12 years, will be moving to Block Island, RI, to become that town’s manager, according to the Block Island Times. He was hired in late September but a contract snafu concerning housing held up the contract negotiations as well as “unfinished business” in Concord, the newspaper noted.

Roberge, who currently lives in Bow, has agreed to a five-year term which includes a six-month probation period. He will be paid a little more than $119,000, with $36,000 for a housing stipend for the first 18 months.

Before coming to Concord, he had a private consulting firm in Concord and also worked in North Berwick, ME, during the early 2000s, according to LinkedIn, after getting his civil engineering degree at Northeastern University in the 1990s.

Roberge told the Times that he thanked the community and always felt welcomed during the entire hiring selection process. He added that he was excited to begin working for the town.

While in Concord, Roberge was instrumental in bringing improvements to the city’s Main Street as well as the Exit 16 roundabout and by most accounts would be perceived as affable. However, others have been critical of some of his actions including suggesting that the Main Street project was padding his resume. Others were critical that he often seemed to be setting policy as a department head instead of directing policy initiated by the city council.

While many in the community are pleased with the Main Street project, others were critical that it was not actually a “complete streets” project, due to lack of multi-modal transportation options, and that the concept was not actually approved by the council before Roberge petitioned for a TIGER grant for the project. Once the millions in federal money for the project came to be though, there was no turning back despite the $12 million-plus price tag and a commitment of more than $16 million in maintenance costs during the next two decades.

At one council meeting a number of years ago, Mayor Jim Bouley openly chastised Roberge for proposing a roundabout in McKee Square before the Exit 16 roundabout, which was recently completed. Some in the community had to remind all involved that, decades ago, there was a rotary at that location – that was removed due to pedestrian safety reasons as well as traffic calming. Roberge, however, countered that the rotaries of the past were not the roundabouts of today.

Then, there was – what seemed to many – a finger on the scale promotion of the unpopular Northwest Bypass-Langley Parkway extension – as well as proposals which cut Penacook Street in half, leaving dual dead-ends on each side of the street and a roundabout proposal for Rumford and Penacook streets which was nixed for a four-way stop sign.

Read the full stories here and here at blockislandtimes.com.

Image via Dave Lane/New Hampshire Union Leader, used with permission