Worcester Can Fix 1 Road Mile a Year. 19 Are Failing.

Last updated: November 2026

The Town of Worcester owns 115.5 miles of road. Fifty-nine of those miles are gravel and 56.5 are blacktop, a split the town only recently got right after finding errors in the state’s road database.

Of the blacktop, roughly 19 miles are in poor condition. At current funding the town can afford to fix about one mile a year.

That arithmetic is the story of the October 27 town board meeting, and it points somewhere residents may not like. Some paved roads are going to go back to gravel.

Quick Answer: The Town of Worcester board met October 27, 2026, and reviewed road conditions showing about 19 of 56.5 blacktop miles in poor condition against a budget that fixes roughly one mile per year. Crosscut Road was named as a candidate to revert to gravel. The board also reviewed $14,000 and $16,000 quotes for a fabric building over its new blacktopped salt storage area, declined a $465,000 new grader, and set a budget meeting for Tuesday, November 10 at 1:00 p.m.

The road math does not work, and the board knows it

Chairman Jim Michler laid out the numbers without dressing them up. The town has 115.5 total road miles. The corrected figure is 56.5 miles of blacktop and 59 of gravel, a total that had been slightly wrong in the state database for about a year until the town caught the errors.

Nineteen of those blacktop miles are rated poor. A mile of pavement runs about $250,000 to pulverize and repave with four inches of blacktop at today’s prices, and that figure excludes the gravel and shoulder work the town does itself.

The town can fund roughly one mile a year. A Tri-S or Tri-D grant pays 50 percent, which would stretch that to two miles — and the town intends to apply next year.

Two miles a year against 19 miles of failing pavement is a decade of work if grants hold and nothing else goes wrong.

Crosscut Road may come out of the pavement column

The option Michler raised is reclassification. A road that is lightly traveled and does not carry heavy truck traffic may not justify pavement at all.

Crosscut Road is the candidate. Michler called it one of the worst roads the town has and said the road review meeting identified it as a good fit for going back to gravel.

He also said no decision has been made. That distinction matters — this is the kind of change that shows up as a surprise if residents first hear about it after the equipment arrives.

Springs Drive and the Price Electric question

The town holds a $25,886 TRI grant good for up to 50 percent of road work, and expects it may be able to draw additional money from Price Electric.

The plan under discussion is the first half mile of Springs Drive. The complication is that building heavy-duty for Price Electric means four inches of blacktop, and at $250,000 a mile that single half mile would consume a large share of next year’s road budget.

There is a wrinkle in how the grant applies. Only the blacktopping can be billed to the grant — the gravel and shoulder work cannot. Michler noted that a quarter million dollars of blacktop would absorb the $25,886 easily, so the grant is not the constraint. The budget is.

The salt shed finally has a floor, and still no roof

This has been a Worcester topic since at least 2022, when Michler joined the board and a proper salt shed was assumed to cost $50,000 to $100,000.

What happened instead was incremental. The town used a gravel area it created when it crushed in the pit in 2023. Then it stacked concrete blocks and bermed behind them. This year it blacktopped the pad, which solved a specific and expensive problem: rocks from bare ground were getting into the salt-sand mix and breaking the spreaders.

The blacktopping cost $9,700 through American Asphalt, which was already doing the Little Chicago Road job and cut the town a deal. Done on its own the work would have run about $13,000. Michler had told the board it would stay under $10,000, and it did.

Now the question is a roof. The town has two quotes for a steel-and-fabric structure sized to sit on the existing concrete blocks:

$14,000 for the lower option
roughly $16,000 for the higher one
The fabric carries a 20-year rating at 24 mil, against 10 mil for a heavy-duty retail tarp

The road crew looked at both and said the cheaper one appears to be the better deal.

The case for doing it is practical. Deer walked on the pile before the plastic went on, then walked on the plastic and punched holes in it. Wind catches the leading edge and tears the cover no matter how it is tied down.

A board member raised a structural objection: the building should not sit on the blocks at all, because the blocks move. They have been used as a pushing wall before and they shift even when stacked.

The decision was to leave it for this winter and revisit in spring, with roughly $20,000 carried in next year’s budget as a placeholder. Carrying the line does not commit the town to spending it.

The grader: $465,000 new, or keep a 25-year-old machine

Worcester’s grader is 25 years old with just under 9,000 hours. Michler checked Machinery Trader and found that most listings have fewer hours and are newer, which suggests the town has gotten better service out of its machine than most owners do.

The dealer’s pitch was $465,000 for a new grader with the bells and whistles. Two years ago the same conversation started at $370,000. Six-wheel drive and joystick controls alone add $50,000, and Michler was blunt that the crew would love both and does not need either.

The dealer also declined to take the old grader on trade. His suggestion was that selling it through Wisconsin Surplus might bring around $60,000.

A two-year-old machine with 800 hours came in at a tentative $395,000. That landed about as well as the new price.

Michler’s own framing of the economics was the most useful part of the discussion. Equipment depreciates until it does not, then maintenance climbs. The textbook answer is to replace when average annual maintenance exceeds the depreciation on something newer. On that measure, the town is not there yet.

Because Worcester’s grading is mostly not time-critical, a broken grader does not shut down a job the way it would for a contractor. That buys the town room to wait.

The direction the board settled on was to look for a good used machine, with all brands on the table. A resident in public comment pushed specifically for Sany, noting a 2020 or 2021 unit in Wisconsin listed under $150,000 and two in Minnesota that sold at under 1,000 hours for $90,000. Michler said he would treat Sany as a serious candidate and would narrow the field by size, weight, and horsepower before bringing the road crew in.

At roughly 400 hours a year, a 5,000-hour used grader would carry the town a decade.

Money is better than expected

The clerk-treasurer reported the town began September with $702,877.19 and ended the month with $785,143.85.

Year-end is projected near $600,000, against under $400,000 at the end of last year — roughly $200,000 better off. The main reason is that the Little Chicago Road and Timber Lake Lane project came in under budget.

That matters for the grader conversation, because it means the town could draw on savings rather than borrowing. Michler was careful to note the town will not know the exact figure until the final ARP reimbursement and bills settle, likely around the end of December — after the budget is set.

The October voucher list totaled $323,779.93, covering checks 18045 through 18081. Major items included $175,000 to J&X Excavating and MSA as what is expected to be the final bill on the road project, $75,000 to Scott Construction for chip sealing, $17,000 to the city of Phillips for third-quarter fire protection, $16,000 to the county highway department as the town’s half of the Springs Drive culvert, and $9,700 to American Asphalt for the salt shed pad.

Public comment got sharp

Anthony Sleck used his three minutes to challenge the chairman over meeting procedure, saying a road review session had been scheduled at a prior meeting but never properly posted.

“When that came around, no public notice at all,” Sleck said. “You all chose a date and a time. Everybody scheduled around that.”

He described arriving to find the meeting not properly convened, and said the sequence left him unable to participate because of a doctor’s appointment.

A second resident, Mary Ann, questioned why the road crew rather than board members would evaluate graders. Michler said the crew knows the mechanical side, and the board would be brought in at the next step. She was not persuaded.

“I don’t think they know any more than a woman about fixing things,” she said.

Also worth noting

All town bridges were inspected previously and the resulting repair list has been completed.
The road crew mixed 300 yards of sand-salt and put it under cover in the new storage area.
All four grader tires were replaced at once because the front and rear axles are locked together, so mismatched diameters cause damage. Two rear tires had failed with plies separating.
A culvert pulled from Forest Lane turned out to be two-thirds plugged with sand — evidently never functioning as intended.
Crews avoid trimming overhanging oak too early in the season because of oak wilt risk.
The town election is November 3, with polls open 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.
The next budget meeting is Tuesday, November 10 at 1:00 p.m. The board intends to adopt the budget at its next regular meeting.

Frequently asked questions

Is Worcester going to turn Crosscut Road back into gravel?

It is under consideration and no decision has been made. The chairman identified it at the October 27 meeting as a good candidate because it is in poor condition, lightly traveled, and does not carry heavy truck traffic.

How many miles of Worcester road are in poor condition?

About 19 miles of the town’s 56.5 blacktop miles are rated poor. The town can afford to repave roughly one mile per year at current funding, or two with a 50 percent state grant.

When is the next Worcester budget meeting?

Tuesday, November 10, 2026 at 1:00 p.m. at the town hall. The board plans to adopt the budget at its following regular meeting.

Did Worcester buy a new grader?

No. The board declined a $465,000 new machine and a $395,000 two-year-old unit, and directed the chairman to research used options across all brands including Sany.

What did the salt shed pad cost?

$9,700 through American Asphalt, which was already working nearby and discounted the job. Standalone pricing would have been about $13,000.

Sources

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