Stoughton

STOUGHTON, MASSACHUSETTS ect meets their criteria, you get the grant,” Tis- delle explains. “We’ve got one project –Route 138, which is a main corridor in town. There are going to be pedestrian improvements on that, and the value of the project is $4.5 million.We also applied for a Safe Routes to School grant for $2.3 million, and we just received notice that we got that. That will provide pedestrian improvements and signals at the West Elemen- tary School.We’ve got another project through the DOT that we applied for – the Tosca Drive/ Central Street intersection. It has one of the highest crash rates in the state, so we’ve ap- plied for that and we have initial approval for about $3.5 million.” Tisdelle’s department is also focused on upgrading Stoughton’s wastewater infrastruc- ture. “About 70 percent of the community is sewered,” he says, “but we’re looking to sewer other portions of the town and we came up with a sewer priority plan that ranked several areas. One area that came up at the top was our Park Street area. It’s mixed-use with residential, commercial, and an industrial park. Our plan is a little different than what other towns use as a template. Usually, there’s an environmental ranking based on wetland areas, high ground- water tables, scaling septic systems, things of that nature.We did use that, but we also rolled in an economic benefit criteria into our ranking plan. For example, if you provide sewer to that Park Street area that has an industrial park, it uses more water and you’d have an increase in the tax base because of that. So, the areas that didn’t have an economic benefit to the town didn’t get any points for that particular criteria and got ranked lower. Right now,we’re in the planning stage of the Park Street sewer.We have an engineer under contract looking at the phasing of the project.” “That sewer expansion project is something that the town has wanted to do for decades,” says Pamela McCarthy, Stoughton’s Director of Eco- nomic Development.“So,we’re trying to work with the state and the Massachusetts Development Finance Agency,which is a quasi-public agency, to try and be creative with a new financing mech- anism.There’s a new program that Mass Devel- opment has called the Site Readiness Program, where they’re trying to increase the number of industrial sites that are available for companies to locate on.We’re trying to get some assistance from that program in order to get that sewer into that industrial park in the Park Street area.And once public sewer is available in the Park Street area, the opportunity will exist for the properties to reach their Highest and Best Use which will result in an increase in tax revenue.This summer, the Town will be working with the Old Colony Planning Council on a feasibility study of the area in order to help the property owners determine what the highest and best use will be once public sewer becomes available.” “We’re also trying to utilize a new legislation