By CRAIG FREILICH

CANTON -- The Town of Canton’s paving campaign began Tuesday morning with 3,400 feet of the Pink Schoolhouse Road trued and leveled, paved with a maintenance overlay, and then edged Wednesday, according to Highway Superintendent Terry Billings.

“Then we’ll come back and shim the Farnes Road Thursday,” Billings said, referring to the truing and leveling procedure. Then they’ll cover it with a layer of asphalt “to take the ripples and bumps out” over about 4,000 feet of pavement. That might take them through the week of May 16th.

By the end of May billings wants to finish that work and also work on 7,500 feet of the Eddy-Pyrites Road, a little more than half of the road’s length.

“That was used as a detour during the major downtown roadwork three years ago,” said Town Supervisor David Button. “It got beaten up pretty badly.”

Billings said it wasn’t designated as an official detour route, but it was used that way, and was recommended to the town board this year for some shimming and covering with a fresh layer of asphalt.

Those three projects will cover 14,900 feet or 2.8 miles before June 1, depending on the weather and other variables.

The projects got their approval by the town board on Monday and work started at 6:30 a.m. Tuesday.

“This is the earliest start ever in my 15-year tenure as supervisor,” Button said. And there’s good reason for that.

The asphalt they need for these projects is currently priced at about $35 a ton, when it was “probably $44 a ton last year, and that was a gift” compared to prices in the years before that, Billings said. And before long, he’s been told by informed people, that the price will be going up soon due to expected hikes in the price of the oil used to make the asphalt.

Also in line for some rehab this summer are 6,000 feet of the old County Home Road, now designated Canton Rt. 21A, Billings said. He has also recommended work on the Johnson Road. “I would like to see them authorize those roads,” but the work will have to wait until then, along with work he wants to do on the Pollack Road south of the Grasse River ending up in Morley – “high traffic, real constant” – and a rough section of the Potsdam-Morley Road.

The town is using the $222,836.29 in New York State Consolidated Local Street and Highway Improvement Program (CHIPS) funding they are receiving this year for that and other road work this season.

Meanwhile the status of another $50,864.60 in PAVE NY funding is still in state hands, waiting for earmarking for specific purposes by Albany.

“We’re still not sure what PAVE NY will be used for. We still have not received official notice,” Billings said.

“Are we going to get those monies? Yes. But it will be earmarked, maybe strictly for highway construction, maybe culverts. But should Albany dictate that PAVE NY be earmarked specifically for bridges, I like that idea,” he said. “The bridges here are terribly deficient” and are in need of serious work, he said.

He explained that any bridge longer than 20 feet in a township or village in St. Lawrence County that’s not part of a state or federal highway is maintained by the county.

“So if it’s earmarked for bridges only, it could be assigned to the St. Lawrence County Highway Department.

“But it’s anyone’s guess right now,” he said.