Christensen offers partial solution to St. Germain road-funding dilemma

Over the course of the last few months, the St. Germain Town Board has spent hours in public discussions regarding the condition of the town’s roads. A massive replacement project is required, and the question of funding it has been a concern since the topic was first addressed. During a town board meeting on Thursday, June 27, board chairman Tom Christensen offered at least a partial solution for his fellow supervisors to consider. 

In March, the board came to a consensus that the scope of the problems is so significant that they must consider asking permission from the town’s electors to raise the tax levy.

In all, 74 town roads will need to be completely replaced, according to observations which were cataloged and quantified by Christensen, town supervisor Kalisa Mortag, and public works superintendent Tom Stoltman.

During the March meeting, Christensen told the board replacement of every road on the list would cost $6.17 million — if the entire project were to be committed to and paid for immediately.

In all likelihood, the work would take place over the course of several years, and costs could easily exceed $10 million. In May, supervisors considered the possibility of selling the town’s municipally-owned golf course to raise funds.

“I really don’t think you want to go down the path of selling it (the golf course),” Christensen cautioned at the time. “The other thing, too, is that if we want to change the levy, we need to keep talking with the taxpayers.”

“Boards in the past would have had to increase the levy substantially in order to keep up with the roads,” the chairman explained.

“Two years ago was the first levy increase this town has had in anybody’s memory,” he said. “It’s been since the 1970s. So this town has operated very efficiently for many, many years. Unfortunately, everything is starting to catch up. When they did the roads in the early 1990s, they went out and borrowed — I think the number was — around $3 million dollars and did almost every road in town. And a lot of those roads are now ready for replacement.”

“The question is how do you want to do it,” Christensen said, “And the board now has to go and ask the electors how they want to do it. So that’s why we’re talking about it: what choices do we have?”

In 2022, electors approved a tax increase of $200,000 for a special (ongoing) road-maintenance program, and that amount will be included in the annual levy going forward. That money, however, can only be used for roads which need repairs; not those which need to be replaced.

“So if we increase the levy by $500,000 a year, that puts $70 on a $100,000 house,” Christensen said. “The average house — of $315,000 — has a $220 increase in the taxes.”

“If you raised the levy $500,000 and took $250,000 out of the $536 (debt-service) payment and borrowed money, you could start to make a dent in the roads. But you’re only making a dent. You’d probably push the project out to 15 years, at least,’ he added.

“I think we should use a combination of everything in the toolbox,” Supervisor Brian Cooper said at the time.

On June 27, Christensen advised he had been investigating funding possibilities.

“I talked with (an officer) at Peoples (State) Bank,” he said. “I talked to him about the loan that we’ll need to re-up for next year’s levy. Right now, if we tie it into the other loan — and by ‘tie it in’, I mean have it paid off when the other loan is paid off — and the other loan I’m referring to is the fire truck, plow truck, and fire department well money that we borrowed. That one should be paid off in August of 2027.”

“The other loan that we pay $536,349 a year on is paid off next February, with a final payment somewhere around $227,000 and change,” he noted. “There are factors that enter in around the payoff date and those sorts of things. Then we need to add to the payment so that it adds up to $536,349 for next year, because any loan that you levy money for needs to have a payment that corresponds with it at a financial institution. If we do that, asking him to tell us what the amount is that we can borrow, at this rate, today, he’s estimating $1.2 million that we could borrow that would be paid off in August of 2027, corresponding with the other loan that’s paid off.”

“And then that board that’s in place at that time can make the decision whether or not they’re going to keep levying that money for a new loan that would be available for work in 2028,” Christensen said.

“Out of that $1.2 million, I guess that doesn’t all need to be spent on road replacements, but that would certainly be my recommendation, that it would be done that way,” he added. “The leftover fiber (-optic broadband grant) money — that we mentioned last time could be used for road replacement — could be put towards some of these projects that (supervisor Kalisa Mortag) mentioned last time, about trying to get those done.”

“The thing now is that you’ve kind of got a number that the borrowing could be $1.2 million,” he told the board. “So kind of think about that number for our next discussion.”