Woonsocket road budget needs patch, officials say

Public Works needs more money to keep fixing roads

WOONSOCKET – The third season of the city’s inhouse road reconstruction program got under way on Bennett Street Thursday, but the program is almost out of money and will need an infusion of about $700,000 in the fiscal 2018 budget to match the amount of work completed last year, according to Public Works Director Steve D’Agostino.

“We started out with $600,000 last year,” said D’Agostino. “This year I think we’ll ask for about $700,000.”

Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt joined D’Agostino and road crews on Bennett Street to kick off the work with a bit of fanfare. Baldelli-Hunt said her administration is running the only in-house municipal road reconstruction program in the state.

“Woonsocket is setting an example and saving tax dollars by training our Highway Division to pave roads in neighborhoods throughout the city,” she said. “We have been able to make significant investments in our infrastructure, which is a key component to economic development in our city.”

The city paved about 10 roads ranging in length from a few hundred feet to about half a mile last year. That was about the same amount of work the highway division, under D’Agostino’s supervision, completed the year before.

At this point, D’Agostino said the city’s roads are in “fair” condition. If the resources were available, he said he could easily identify 80 to 100 roads that could stand some level of reconstruction.

A veteran of the private sector road reconstruction industry, D’Agostino built up the city’s stockpile of equipment and began training workers in the highway division in road repair after he was hired in May 2014. The