Safe Routes To Schools Project Expected To Start

HARWICH – It's been a long time in the planning stages, but the federally funded Safe Routes to Schools sidewalk improvement project on roads around Harwich Elementary School is expected to get underway this summer.

 “The primary work is to implement sidewalk infrastructure improvements/upgrades for the area immediately adjacent and contiguous to the Harwich Elementary School (HES) located at 263 South Street to facilitate a safe and accessible pedestrian connection from HES to Harwich Center,” according to the project description.

The select board, in its Feb. 17 meeting, signed an order of taking for temporary and permanent easements necessary to implement the project, which will occur on South Street to the north side of the school, extending along the south side of Main Street to Sisson Road, turning southwesterly on that road and terminating at School House Drive, the entrance to the Cultural Arts Municipal Building.

The new sidewalk on South Street will be eight feet wide. The asphalt sidewalk along Main Street and Sisson Road will be five feet and have a six-inch granite curb. There will be 15 accessible curb ramps and crosswalks installed at the roadway intersections. There will also be limited signage improvements.

Department of Public Works Director Lincoln Hooper told the board once the easements are secured, the Massachusetts Department of Transportation would put the estimated $3.6 million project out to bid. The town’s only obligation with this project is to provide the order of taking and to fund the easements.

Town meeting last May authorized town counsel to prepare the order of taking, and Hooper said the town is obligated to pay private property owners for the easements, expected to cost a total of $144,450. The money will come from Chapter 90 funds, state funds provided to the town annually through gas taxes for repairs and improvements to roadway infrastructure. 

Property owners have received two certified letters from the town explaining the easement process and the amount of money property owners will receive for use of their property, he said. They will now be receiving a third certified letter from K.P. Law, town counsel, advising the property owners on how to collect those funds.

Hooper said 95 percent of the easements are temporary, requiring five feet of space outside the right-of-way to give workers room to make installations in the right-of-way. He said a handful of permanent easements are required to install guardrails and signage.

 “Essentially, it’s paying people to rent their property,” Hooper said of the temporary easements.

Hooper said he had to do similar easements when the town, state and federal government did improvements to Route 137. In that case, 102 of the property owners choose not to accept the easement payments. But since then, the federal government has changed the easement acquisition process, making it a more cumbersome process to reject the payment. If a property owner has a lien or mortgage, the lender now also has to sign off to forgo the payment. He said hunting down the lender can be a cumbersome process.

Craig Sheehan, MassDOT’s right-of-way compliance officer, said the process has gotten much more robust in protecting the property owners’ rights.

With the board’s signing of the order of taking, Hooper said, town counsel will record the order with the Barnstable County Registry of Deeds, and MassDOT is expected to start advertising for bids in mid-March. 

The project is expected to start when school ends for the summer, said Hooper, though work will not be conducted during the summer on Main Street and Sisson Road because those roads will be too congested. Summer work would take place on South Street, said Hooper. 

MassDOT is allowing three years to complete the project, but Hooper said he expects the project can be done in three seasons, in between a year and a year-and-a-half.