Smithtown OKs $6.9M for road improvements

The Smithtown Town Board approved by a 4-0 vote the highway department’s road improvement program at Tuesday’s board meeting. Councilman Edward Wehrheim was not present.

The board authorized $6.9 million to be set aside for this year’s program, the same amount that was set aside for the 2012 program, said highway Superintendent Glenn Jorgensen and highway project inspector Louis Varrialle.

This year’s program includes repaving about 20.3 miles of road, reconstructing about 2.6 miles and applying a new sealing layer to about 5.4 miles of road as a preventive maintenance measure, Jorgensen said.

“I plan on starting in San Remo in a few weeks,” he said. “We must maintain safe roads.”

Still, the program is a far cry from the road-improvement plan that Jorgensen presented to the town board in February, requesting that the town also borrow $5 million this year, and an equal amount in 2014, to repave about 60 miles of town roads and fix curbs and sidewalks.

Jorgensen’s proposal, because it calls for borrowing, requires approval from at least four of the five town board members. He has not received approval.

“This money that I get,” he said of the $6.9 million program, “I still lose ground.”