The final City Council meeting of the first part of 2025 took up just a handful of items, including addressing the state of city roads and sidewalks.

Highlights:

“There’s 130 miles of roadway and the average out of 100% being perfect in Holyoke, it’s 71.9. So, they did an analysis by ward. And if you look in this booklet, you’ll be able to tell which ones are good, which ones are getting some paving done, and, it was pretty interesting. So, I’m sure that if there’s any questions you could check with (Interim City Engineer) Victoria (Houle), but this program is great.” – Councilor Patti Devine

“If we don’t start spending more money on preventive maintenance, we’re going to spend a lot more money in the future because it’s going to continue from that 71%, a downhill trend. That downhill trend gets more and more and more expensive to do less and less amount of miles of roadway.” – Councilor Michael Sullivan

“I think the other thing that’s important for our constituents to be aware of is that when they put requests for road resurfacing to us and we put it forth to DPW each year, they undertake an evaluation process. So while they will be aware of the request, the list may change from year to year depending what happens from one year to the next.” Councilor Linda Vacon

The documents pertaining to this meeting are here.