The Village of Cambridge and Town of Oakland will begin the new year at an old impasse, as another meeting on the future of Blue Jay Way renovations did not yield an agreement.
Despite requests for action from Cambridge School District representatives, a committee tasked with finding a solution for the road walked away from a Dec. 19 meeting with no changes to report on the status of the deteriorating road.
For more than four years, Blue Jay Way, which runs in front of Cambridge High School and is home to both Cambridge and Oakland addresses, has been the source of resident and school district concerns. But the town and village have been unable to find common ground on a plan to repair it.
“Our primary concern regarding Blue Jay Way is ensuring the safety of students. The road is hazardous and poses a threat to safety due to excessive pot holes and the jagged surface,” Dr. Marggie Banker, superintendent of the Cambridge School District, wrote in an email. Banker attended the Dec. 19 meeting.
“We are optimistic that the Village of Cambridge and Town of Oakland will partner to remedy this significant safety concern for the entire community, especially our children,” Banker wrote.
The two municipalities reached an agreement in July to evenly split the cost of repaving the road, but those plans were put on hold when Oakland’s town board added the condition that Cambridge annex the road from the township.
The question of annexation and ownership of the road remained in contention after the Dec. 19 meeting.
“There wasn’t any new breakthrough, per se,” Cambridge administrator Lisa Moen said. “But it was good to get the perspective from the school.”
The repaving would cost each municipality $38,000, and represents a short-term fix to the road’s most glaring issues. A full reconstruction of the road, including curb, gutter and under-street utility work and the installation of a sidewalk, which the school district has requested, was estimated in 2019 to cost up to $894,000.
Oakland and Cambridge signed an intergovernmental agreement over the road in 2006 and renewed it in 2016. That deal leaves the disputed segment of Blue Jay Way—from Simonsen Street to Potters Lane—in the township, but it places responsibility for maintenance on the village.
In the agreement, both municipalities acknowledge that “at some point in time, the homes between Simonsen Street and Potters Lane will likely be located within the village.”
“Both the village and the town further acknowledge that it is in the public interest for this segment of Blue Jay Way to be considered a village road as of the date of this agreement,” the document reads.
But Cambridge has argued that its duty to maintain the road only extends to routine work like plowing and not to larger repair projects. Oakland has said that the agreement makes the village responsible for all maintenance, including repairs and reconstruction.
Ted Vratny, a town supervisor for Oakland, said in a phone call that the school district’s concerns at the meeting seemed to mainly focus on potholes, which he believed were clearly the village’s responsibility.
“I left more confused than when I got there,” Vratny said of the meeting.
