BY DERRICK PERKINS

Selectmen held off on making a decision to petition for a special town meeting in the fall that would allow them to move toward rebuilding two bridges on the state’s red list.

During the Monday, June 23, meeting, selectmen discussed a possible special vote, which would allow the board to contract with an engineering firm to design replacements for the Lawrence Road and the Cluff Crossing bridges.

A seven-month window from a potential special meeting to the annual meeting would allow town officials to present a hard cost estimate to Salem residents at Town Meeting in March. Fire officials had asked the town to take action to repair the two bridges because weight limits for them could affect the response times of emergency vehicles if the bridges deteriorate further.

According to Town Manager Jonathan Sistare, the board would need to petition Superior Court to go set up a special town meeting. He estimated that from the date of the selectmen vote to go ahead with the petition, it could take up to two months until the vote could be held.

Sistare estimated the cost of a special meeting at a couple of hundred dollars.

Holding a special meeting in the fall would allow the town to move up the construction of two new bridges by a full year, according to Sistare.

“This is the only possibility to move this forward and get the town bridges built in 2009 rather than 2010,” he told the board.

Director of Engineering Robert Puff estimated the cost of contracting two new bridge designs to range from $200,000 to $225,000. Puff told selectmen that in a best-case scenario, the engineering firm could have a plan ready in six months. Variables like relocating utilities, such as power lines, could prolong the process, Puff said.

Were an article to pass through the annual Town Meeting in March, Puff said construction on the two bridges could begin within a short time, depending on the level of water run off in the spring.

Selectman Michael Lyons proposed creating a bridge fund using state funding to repair the two weight-restricted bridges as well as other municipal bridges declared structurally deficient or obsolete in the future.

“The board’s intention is to set up a bridge fund, much like we have for roads, with selectmen as agents to expend. We haven’t done that yet because they’re aren’t any funds,” he told fellow selectmen at the Monday, July. “In a sense we’re so far behind on our bridge reconstruction we need to jump start our ability to access the trust fund, even though it doesn’t exist yet.”

According to Lyons, the town could use funds to leverage against an equal amount of expected funding from the state to expedite the building of the two new bridges.

Currently there are five municipal bridges on the state’s red list in Salem. Both the Lawrence Road bridge and the Cluff Crossing Road bridge have had weight limitations placed upon them, restricting access by heavier town vehicles.

According to DOT officials,Lawrence Road has been on the red list since the state began tracking the condition of municipal bridges in 1996. A 1995 study initially recommended that the bridge be given a weight limit. Despite some damage suffered during more recent flooding events, the posted weight restriction remains accurate.

Cluff Crossing was added to the list in 2007, when state inspectors first recommended a weight limit be placed on the structure.

Last month the school district began rerouting buses around the Lawrence Road bridge and fire apparatus, like the 32-ton ladder truck located at the Fire Department’s South Salem station on Lawrence Road, were only recently granted emergency access to those bridges by the board.

Police began actively enforcing the weight limits on both bridges last week.

“I think this is the way to go,” Lyons said. “I think we’ve done our best to address it in the short term. We need to fix it in the long term as soon as possible.”

With only four out of five selectmen in attendance, the board opted wait on any decision until the next full board meeting in July.