Page 10 - 2021 Annual Reportprint

Selectboard Report 2022

Running municipal government is a lot like maintaining a house and property—if
you don’t keep it up things start to go downhill fast. When you think about what
it takes in human ingenuity to design, build, operate and maintain the municipal
infrastructure in a place even as small as Island Pond village, you have to give them
all credit. Buildings, roads, water systems, sewer systems, school systems all need
constant attention.
There are three big infrastructure projects that the Town is working on that are going
to be costly but that will leave Island Pond downtown infrastructure transformed and
serving the village for the next thirty years.

Downtown Re-vitalization

The Downtown Re-vitalization Project will replace century-old underground water
and stormwater pipes, construct new sidewalks, remove the telephone poles and
make streetscape improvements in the downtown. This in-the-works project is the
end result of community goals established at meetings held in 2016, followed by a
grant for a $70,000 “scoping” study in 2017. These laid the groundwork to advance
the project to a Preliminary Engineering phase paid for by an $80,000 grant from
two state agencies with a 10% town match. This current study will give us a more
detailed plan and cost estimates to consider, and information about the funding
available to help pay for it.
Sewer Treatment Plant

The water and sewer departments have been focusing on the old water treatment
plants and sewer treatment plants. The town will go out to bid for a $3.756 million
sewer upgrade project this year. Former Chief Operator Marty Frizzell and his
staff kept these old plants running on borrowed time, but they absolutely need to
be upgraded. The water and sewer department staff are contracted employees. But
when Marty passed away in April, the contractor could find no one to replace him
and the town had to find another contractor. The new contractor is H2O Innovations,
but there is no one on their staff responsible for moving the sewer treatment plant
upgrade project to completion. H2O Innovations just operates the plants. Neither
does the Water and Sewer Boards have staff, so Selectboard member Mike Strait and
Town Administrator Joel Cope have stepped in to pick up on the work Marty was
doing to ensure this vital project progressed to completion.

Water Treatment Plants
Preliminary engineering for the water treatment plants upgrade is almost completed.
Besides the old water treatment plants, that project also identified that the water main
coming down from the north treatment plant needs to be replaced and this includes
the same water main that is part of the downtown project, so digging up Cross Street
is necessary regardless of whether the larger downtown re-vitalization project is done

10 Town of Brighton, VT