One of the unfortunate operational shortcomings of the Haberek years in Stonington was the failure to fund for a period of time the Director of Town Planning position. The input of a skilled nonpartisan planner to a community is invaluable. This placed Stonington behind the curve in addressing many town needs inclusive of its long-term infrastructure planning. When one fails to plan one can plan to fail is an adage proven true over the years, and our town again finds itself at a crossroads. With recent respected professional Planners Jason Vincent and Keith Brynes having set a table for future work, it is in that frame of mind, that we cannot as a community continually wait until infrastructure is in a crisis state before we address and remediate the issues.

Looking at the unacceptable state of the Old Mystic Bridge that has been out far too long, and endangers brave volunteer firefighters, it’s time for our community to prioritize maintenance and literally prepare a comprehensive infrastructure plan for our community. By outlining a 10-year forward needs overview and focusing on a five-year action plan, Stonington can become proactive as opposed to reactive in regard to our roadways repairs and maintenance. Don’t wait for things to break to fix them, professionally evaluate what requires maintenance, and evaluate exactly what we need to invest in to keep Stonington vibrant from the ground up. This approach would allow Stonington to facilitate and coordinate future capital improvements and effectively approach stakeholders such as the state of Connecticut, acting within existing and future financial frameworks together, and create a predictable and appropriate prioritization of planned infrastructure investments.

A comprehensive plan for Infrastructure that identifies needed projects and prioritizes town capital projects in a focused time frame, is an exercise cities typically undertake. Utilizing grant funding in the Federal Safe Streets for All program, the City of Tampa Florida, and City of Providence Rhode Island have been award winners and have factored in all modes of modern and future transport. From commercial vehicles to foot traffic and bicycle traffic to make it safer for all. With an accident index rate in town showing two fatalities for a man in a wheelchair and then one on a bicycle on Route 1 in recent years mitigative steps to address obvious risk on the Route 1 corridor are long called for. The Masons Island Light onto Route 1 is a tie up that worsens by the year, this situation addressed concurrently with the Route 27 and Route 1 intersection, will allow traffic flow and keep vibrant the small businesses and professional services located there. Pawcatuck and its Downtown area has an underperforming grand list and needs to incorporate egress and parking to match zoning changes in recent years to allow those merchants clustered there to succeed.

For this Capital Infrastructure Plan to function optimally three disciplines need to be stakeholders. First, Public Works with areas of responsibility being streets, sidewalks, bridges, dams, and the monitoring with inter agency help sewer and storm water drainage investments.

Second, our town Recreation Department has to be involved to ensure playgrounds, trails, and all town amenities our citizens enjoy are invested in. Political leadership needs to ensure as well that public safety features and facilities in our police, ambulance corps and fire districts are prioritized and their input given great weight.

Third, our schools, although administered by a separate political process, we need to ensure the significant infrastructure investments made to educate our town most valuable asset, its children is a priority of support by all governmental function.

Bottom line: A town must have an Infrastructure plan for maintenance and growth. Internet access and speed also factored in to ensure the growth of the small business dynamic in the community. We also need to factor climate resilience into these projections and find common ground that the storm of 2010 showed vulnerabilities in our community. What has been done to mitigate them? We can no longer react to infrastructure as a crisis only. It is an investment. Invest in formulating a plan to address and ensure its viability.

Michael J. Spellman lives in Pawcatuck.