Local officials and stakeholders in the Sarah Mildred Long Bridge replacement project say they have not heard a peep from Maine Department of Transportation officials since last fall about the new bridge. They say no meetings have been held, no e-mails or newsletters sent, no word of any sort has been forthcoming.

“There clearly needs to be better communication,” said stakeholder committee member Ben Porter of Kittery, Maine, who heads the organization Save Our Bridges. “I think people may feel like it’s cloaked in secrecy, and I don’t know if that’s necessarily the case. I don’t think there’s a lack of commitment (to the public vetting process), I just think communication isn’t a priority.”

MDOT this past week scheduled a public meeting on the bridge project for Sept. 18 at the Kittery Community Center — the first one since January, when officials came to Portsmouth at the request of the city. The last MDOT-sponsored meeting was in Kittery last November.

“We’ve been pretty upfront with all we have,” said MDOT spokesman Ted Talbot. “We really haven’t had any new information to share until now.”

The $172 million Long Bridge replacement project is set to begin either later this year or early in 2015 and will take two years to complete. MDOT is the lead agency on the project, although Maine and New Hampshire will jointly own it.

The span is the No. 1 red-listed bridge in the state of New Hampshire and is expected to end its useful life in 2017. MDOT and bridge designers Figg Engineering and Hardesty & Hanover held several public and stakeholder meetings from January to November, 2013. Since then, the two states, the designers and bridge construction contractor Cianbro Corporation have been meeting to match the design to available funds.

Talbot said there hasn’t been anything further for MDOT to share as the details are being worked out. “We don’t want to waste people’s time if something’s not new.”

But Kittery Town Councilor Judy Spiller said at least some communication with the town over these months would have been helpful.

“What is happening with the whole plan for a replacement? There was all that pre-work, and meetings to discuss maps and signage, and I’m not aware of anything since,” she said. “As a councilor, I’ve not heard anything and would like the community to be part of the discussion.”

Stakeholder committee member Steve Workman said “it’s been making me crazy” that the committee hasn’t received any communication from MDOT since last fall.

“They started really strong with the design process and I thought they were going to continue that citizen involvement,” he said. “The reality is they came in with a highly structured parameter, and they asked us about swishes and sweeps, but I think the real meat of the design was decided in Augusta.”

He and others said the lack of communication has been particularly noticeable after the very public involvement in the Memorial Bridge project.

“The Memorial Bridge they started out with is not the Memorial Bridge the community ended up getting, because of the citizen participation,” Workman said. The New Hampshire Department of Transportation, the lead agency on the bridge, “now admits they got a better product as a result.”

Porter agrees. “I think the Memorial Bridge community process was really, really good,” he said. “I haven’t seen the same kind of commitment on the Sarah Mildred Long Bridge project.”

Portsmouth Historical Society president Richard Candee said, in his official capacity, that he’s been getting communication from the state as required under the federal Historic Preservation Act. But as a member of the stakeholder committee, there’s been silence since it was asked to comment on “minor aesthetic details.”

“The last thing was, ‘Thank you. Your help was appreciated.’ There’s been no serious public input,” he said.

Portsmouth Deputy City Manager Dave Allen said the NHDOT has been working with the city on plans to tie in the new bridge with the Route 1 Bypass, particularly with bicycle access coming off the bridge. The new bridge will have a five-foot shoulder that MDOT officials have identified can be used by bicyclists.

However, the same discussions have not taken place in Kittery, where Town Planner Gerry Mylroie said the Planning Board is also concerned about the lack of communication from MDOT.

The MDOT came to a Planning Board meeting last September, but has not updated the board since, Mylroie said.

“They’re reporting it as 80 percent complete, but now I understand it’s 100 percent designed,” he said. “When they get to specifics, there should be a meeting.”

Talbot said MDOT hasn’t received a request during these past months to meet with councilors or the Planning Board, “but we would be happy to do so.”

Those interviewed said they understand the states are under the financial gun to get this bridge built in a cost-effective manner. But Porter gives the following example as emblematic of MDOT: When NHDOT was getting ready to file an application for a federal Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grant for Memorial Bridge, Save Our Bridges members offered to send e-mails in support of it “and we delivered more than 100 e-mails to New Hampshire.”

“We reached out to MDOT and asked what we could do for the (pending) TIGER grant (for the Sarah Long Bridge), and we got a lukewarm response,” he said. “They basically passed on it. They said, ‘I don’t see that as adding value,’ which is kind of sad.”

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