Vermont Trans. Budget

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Created on Monday, 24 September 2012 20:56

Written by Alyssa Sylvia

ST. JOHNSBURY - A state budget of 50 - 70 million for the fiscal year of 2014 may have a distinct impact on Vermont Transportation system. The transportation infrastructure of Vermont is expected to have financial needs that the state cannot accommodate.

V-TRANS, Vermont Agency of Transportation, is responsible for district seven, which means requests for funding of transportation projects in the Northeast Kingdom must be decided there. Administrator Dale Perron believes that the district's operations are going smoothly, "We're doing a pretty good job of maintaining what we've got, we're not stepping up and building a lot of new stuff, so theres a shortfall to some degree, but overall I think we're going to be okay.".  Proposal talks for District seven transportation are in the early stages, and Perron has already established a basic idea of what it will and will not be, "I think they'll go relatively smooth. Overall, yeah, if you project out and say 'Okay, we have X amount of bridges and they cost whatever they cost, a million or two million dollars apiece, every road needs to be paved. So if you've summed that all up, realistically you'd need a lot more money than we're getting."
Before certain projects are paid for, Perrons stresses that not everything will be taken care of, so priority funding must take a front seat, "Everybody wants their road paved. Well, if you look at other roads, you'll find another one that's worse than yours. And so they try to prioritze, and the limit, there is something. Sooner or later the bucket goes dry, and you got to stop somewhere. But we are prioritzing and I think we do a pretty good job."
District seven is in a pre-planning stage to submit a transportation budget by July 1st of next year.