Steve Trefethen, the owner of a property at 516 Mammoth Road, had a rather length discussion with Town Council members and town officials during the Aug. 19 Town Council meeting, regarding an issue with a pavement work he had recently made on his property, just before the town did some roadwork there.
Trefethen said he had met with Town Manager Kevin Smith, who invited him to take a look at the masterplan for ideas for property developments. He said that his lot on Mammoth Road has different businesses operating in it and is about 380 feet long. He has been experiencing a problem with his parking area on the front side of the lot, since trucks use its width to turn around, tearing up the paving as they do so, according to Trefethen. He added that he was even able to obtain photos and a video of one of the trucks and contacted the driver’s company.
The lot owner informed the Town Council that several months ago he decided to have an eight-foot strip, all the way down Mammoth Road, paved on his property. Since some trucks turn around on it at night, when there is no one there to stop them. Trefethen explained that he was hoping that after this fix, the trucks will at least not tear up the pavement anymore.
He said that 250 feet had been paved and the driveway was sealed, but early in August, shortly after the job was done, the town came in and started doing roadwork on that strip of Mammoth Rd., tearing the paving, including everything that was just put in. Trefethen said that the work he did cost him $8,000 and claimed that neither he nor the tenants on 516 Mammoth Rd. received any kind of notice before the town’s work has begun.
The town did publish on its website on Aug. 1 that Mammoth Rd. will be closed later that day due to road reconstruction and that it will be open only for local traffic. It also asked the public to use two detours to get to Hall Rd. and Grenier Field Rd.
Janusz Czyzowski, the town’s Director of Public Works and Engineering then approached Trefethen and the Town Council members and said that he personally went to the post office to send the notice in advance to Trefethen’s company and that he was also on the site and spoke to the operators of the garage there, explaining to them the construction plan and the access roads.
Czyzowski added that he drove on that road several times before construction started and believed that the work that was done there by Trefethen would not last for too long. He then continued to show pictures he took of the road before the town started working on it and told Trefethen: “We did not drive on the parking lot and did not damage it after the paving.” The photos show the town’s equipment on the roadside and not on the parking lot and the cut the town made in the pavement. “Everything is falling apart there and it was difficult to find a spot to cut”, said Czyzowski.
The Director told the council members about the kind of work that is being done there: “We would not be able to solve all the drainage problems there”, he said, explaining that the road was not fixed for a long time. He promised Trefethen that the new pavement, following the work, will be “ten times better” than what he just paid $8,000 for.
Trefethen ended his part of the discussion by saying that every couple of days, he has to go to the parking lot and sweep the rocks that the turning trucks leave behind. He said that since the town made the cut on the pavement, there is nothing holding the road and the trucks crush the rocks into the pavement, creating holes and destroying it.