On May 30, the Board of Selectmen (BOS) approved $99,000 to support the replacement and repair of town sidewalks in targeted locations. Funding would come from the town’s Capital Outlay fund and be transferred to an off-budget fund called “sidewalk construction.”

“We would do spot repairs and the replacement of a stretch of asphalt sidewalk on Boston Post Road,” said First Selectman Carl Fortuna, Jr. “It’s a quality of life issue. People walk everywhere.”

The BOS also approved $25,000 to update the town’s Natural Hazard Mitigation Plan. To be eligible for funding to upgrade town infrastructure after storms to make it more resilient, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) requires that towns have an up-to-date plan. The town’s current plan expires in June 2019. To ensure the town will continue to be eligible for municipal infrastructure upgrades after major storms, the plan needs to be updated before that date. The funds, if approved by the BOF and Town Meeting, would be used to hire GZA Environmental to conduct the plan update.

GZA Environmental is the firm the town recently hired to complete the Sea Level Rise/Coastal Resiliency study. In the first phase of this study, the firm collected data and mapped existing municipal infrastructure; in the study’s later phase, the firm developed projections of the potential future impact of sea level rise on it. Sea level rise is one of the natural hazards that the town faces and that would be addressed in an update to the town’s Natural Hazard Mitigation Plan.