Talk of the Towns 7/13/22: How Municipalities Maintain Roads

Producer/Host: Ron Beard Theme music for Talk of the Towns is a medley from Coronach, on a Balnain House Talk of the Towns: Local Community concerns and opportunities For the most part, you can get there from here, thanks to the dedication of those who take care of our road systems. At the town level, that might be a whole public works department or to a road supervisor with a budget to contract for services. In conversation with representatives of Ellsworth and Tremont, we learn how they take care of their roads… plowing and potholes in the winter and repaving and other projects in the summer and fall. -Description of Ellsworth and Tremont’s road systems and annual cycle of maintaining roads -Are their best practices or “science” that you follow in maintaining or rebuilding roads? -How do you share responsibilities for any State Roads with Maine Department of Transportation? -How is your town adapting to the increased frequency and intensity of rain storms and other weather? Guests: Lisa Sekulich, Public Works Director, City of Ellsworth Jesse Dunbar, Town Manager, Town of Tremont About the host: Ron Beard is producer and host of Talk of the Towns, which first aired on WERU in 1993 as part of his community building work as an Extension professor with University of Maine Cooperative Extension and Sea Grant. He took all the journalism courses he could fit in while an undergraduate student in wildlife management and served as an intern with Maine Public Television nightly newscast in the early 1970s. Ron is an adjunct faculty member at College of the Atlantic, teaching courses on community development. Ron served on the Bar Harbor Town Council for six years and is currently board chair for the Jesup Memorial Library in Bar Harbor, where he has lived since 1975. Look for him on the Allagash River in June, and whenever he can get away, in the highlands of Scotland where he was fortunate to spend two sabbaticals.