The Oakland Town Board voted unanimously on Tuesday, July 19 to approve a proposal that will bring repairs to Blue Jay Way and split the cost of the fix with the Village of Cambridge.
The town and the village will evenly split the approximately $74,000 cost for construction company Payne and Dolan to pave Blue Jay Way from Simonson Street to Potters Road.
Ted Vranty, a supervisor on the Oakland town board, wouldn’t speculate on when construction might begin, saying a start date would largely depend on Payne and Dolan’s schedule.
“It’d be nice to get this done,” Vranty said. “We’re ready to move.”
Once construction begins, Vranty said, the repair will be a fairly quick process.
“It’s a matter of days,” he said.
The Oakland Town Board solicited bids following a May 26 meeting of the Blue Jay Way Subcommittee, composed of members from both Cambridge and Oakland. The subcommittee agreed to split evenly the cost of a mill and overlay, a paving process where a layer of the old asphalt will be removed and a new asphalt will be added on top of the deteriorating road in front of Cambridge High School.
An intergovernmental agreement between Oakland and Cambridge struck in 2006, and renewed in 2016, left Blue Jay Way in the town but put responsibility for maintenance on the village.
The debates have largely centered around who owns the roads and the definition of “maintenance” in the intergovernmental agreement, with Cambridge arguing that the agreement limits the village’s responsibility to routine maintenance like plowing. Large reconstructions and upgrades, the village argues, is the Oakland’s responsibility to plan and fund.
Oakland, meanwhile, has argued that reconstructing the road was solely the village’s responsibility. The town has maintained that as part of the agreement, the town completely turned Blue Jay Way and several streets adjacent to it over to the village, leaving Cambridge responsible for all future short and long-term fixes.
The town each year passes on to the village $1,800 in aid money for the roads that it receives from the state. The town collects $792 in property taxes for homes on Blue Jay Way while Cambridge collects $13,774.
