JAY – Selectmen this week expressed support for Town Manager Ruth Marden’s decision to write state transportation officials urging them to include a section of Route 4 in the state’s package of biennial road projects.

Marden also explained Tuesday that she decided not to write another letter to the state concerning improvements to Crash Road, which is located off Route 4 and runs from Jay to Livermore.

“I’m not comfortable writing a letter not to support it because it’s a safety issue,” Marden said.

The Livermore Falls Betterment Group has begun a grassroots campaign to lobby the Maine Department of Transportation, the governor and others to reconsider a decision not to include reconstruction of Route 4 that runs from Bridge Street in downtown Livermore Falls to Pineau Street in the Chisholm area of Jay in the next biennial plan.

The DOT conducted preliminary planning meetings on the project several years ago when it was first considered.

The group would like to see the state’s plan to strengthen and repave Crash Road not be done and instead have the Route 4 project done. The betterment group believes not doing Route 4 will have an adverse affect on the town and the group’s attempts to revitalize downtown. It says that what the DOT calls a repaving project is a “widening” of Crash Road and is in effect a bypass of downtown, according to an e-mail sent out to supporters a couple of weeks ago.

Marden said she and Livermore selectpersons’ Administrative Assistant Kurt Schaub agree that improving Crash Road is needed for safety purposes. The road was built in the 1960s so trucks could haul large equipment and machinery to the then-new paper mill in Jay.

Jay Selectman Steve McCourt said Tuesday that most of the chemical trucks coming through town are going to Verso Paper, and if Crash Road were improved, more trucks would take that road.

The Crash Road project would come out of the state’s road maintenance pool of funding, while money for the reconstruction of Route 4 would come from a different pool used for road reconstruction, Selectman Amy Pineau Gould said.

“I agree that the state won’t move that money from one pool to another,” Chairman Bill Harlow told Marden. “I agree with what you’ve done.”

In another road matter, selectmen voted to award the 2007-08 paving contract to Pike Industries Inc. The company bid $54.40 a ton for paving, and the second bidder, Bruce Manzer Inc., bid $58.69 a ton.

Roads scheduled for repaving this year are Claybrook, Old Jay Hill, Jewell Street and Tessier Road, though the latter might change.

Selectman Rick Simoneau asked Marden to contact Schaub in Livermore to see if that town is doing anything with its section of Tessier Road.

“I’m not sure what the benefit would be to do the Jay section if Livermore doesn’t do theirs,” he said.

If Tessier Road is scratched, another road could be done, highway foreman John Johnson said.

The town is still looking for Road Committee members to develop short- and long-term plans to improve town roads, Johnson said.