At Monday night’s Town Council meeting, representatives from both Fuss and O’Neil, Inc. and NH Department of Transportation came to answer various questions from the Council regarding the ongoing project that is the installation of Exit 4A. Over the years, the Council has had a lot of talks with these two organizations and they continued on Monday night where the goal was to finally bring them to a close. This project began in June of 2016 and the expectation was that this project was to be complete in 19 months with an end date of December 2017. According to the representative from Fuss and O’Neil Inc. this was a very aggressive schedule and the revised date going forward is set for March of 2019 (15 months later than anticipated). There have been multiple complications along the way including cost. With this project coming to a close, Fuss and O’Neil Inc. has come to the conclusion that they will need more money to be able to complete this project once and for all.
An amendment is looking to be made to the Exit 4A Road Construction Project, so more money can be allocated to finish the highway exit. The asking amount is $665,735.46 (this $332,867.73 per community) and brings the total amount for Londonderry to $1,499,466.27. This is not, however, the total expenditure for the 4A project. The representative from Fuss and O’Neil Inc. assured the Council that this asking amount will remain under the five million dollar budget.
Councilor Ted Combes questioned why this project took an extra fifteen months for completion. According to the representative from Fuss and O’Neil, it all came down to the traffic model. By putting this model together, it was found that a significant amount of effort was needed to meet the requirements of issues found by the model. The model was built to predict traffic flow all the way to the year of 2040, so additional preparations needed to be made to accommodate this traffic flow. As of today, the project is set for completion in March of 2019 for the exit to be open and in working condition for public use. Vice-Chairman of the Council Joe Green commented that all parties agreed on a price and it seemed that someone did not do their due diligence when it came to the traffic study. “I don’t know why the agreement can’t be honored and why we have to pay for that oversight. I don’t think it’s fair and I think that people should honor that part of the agreement.” Green said. Chairman John Farrell felt that this conversation has been going on for much too long. “I have a great deal of respect for the math involved and everything else to come up with the right calculations to do the right thing, but we’re at the end.” Farrell said.
The Department of Transportation also had their doubts about making the amendment to this project to ask for more money and raised the question of “Is this justified?” Both representatives assured the Council that they were several elements that came into play that were not known at the time of the original agreement. Farrell remarked how it was not fair to come back to the Council and ask for more money from the community.