Rural towns in Hampshire County can go the distance on road repair after the state tweaked its Chapter 90 funding formula to give more weight to the number of miles of roads within a community.
The Chapter 90 program distributes state aid to local municipalities for upkeep to public roads and bridges. Traditionally, the formula used to calculate the amount of aid per municipality weighs population, employment and road miles. The chosen variables often leave rural towns with more roads to maintain but fewer people with a lot less funds.
“Years ago, it was not uncommon to only afford one, or one and a half paving jobs a year,” Granby Department of Public Works Director David Deshaise said.
That changed the current fiscal year, as the Legislature and Healey-Driscoll administration altered the way it will distribute funds for public ways for fiscal year 2026. First, the total amount of money for public roads and bridges increased from $200 million last fiscal year to $380 million this year – $300 million in Chapter 90 funds and $80 million from the Fair Share supplemental bill. Of that total, $140 million is distributed solely based on road milage, with the remaining funds broken up based on the traditional formula.
As a result, many Hampshire County municipalities are receiving twice as much state aid for road repairs this year compare to last year.
“It’s making a huge difference when they base it on road miles for the western side of the state. Little towns like Granby, we have a small population and there isn’t a lot of business in town,” Deshaise said. “That’s why they changed the funding to help the rural communities that for the longest time have been bearing the brunt of it. It’s a welcome change for the smaller towns.”
Hadley, for instance, received about $376,000 more for fiscal year 2026 than the previous fiscal year. South Hadley’s allocation went up almost half a million dollars, from $495,000 in fiscal 2025 to $987,000 in fiscal 2026. Even towns like Goshen, where many roads are unpaved, saw a $140,000 increase in state aid.
When the state cut funding for Chapter 90 in the early 2000s, Granby’s roads fell into complete disrepair, Deshaise said. Even when funding was restored, increased paving costs exhausted the town’s state allocation of $273,000 last year. With an additional $323,000, the DPW could fund an additional two or three projects on the town’s 60 miles of roads this year.
“We’ve been putting everything into the roads because the roads were deteriorating so badly,” Deshaise said. “When we get everything back to where it was, we’ll start thinking about bridges and culverts and other projects.”
As the largest town by acreage, Belchertown will see almost $750,000 more in Chapter 90 than last year. Department of Public Works Director Linda Leduc said the funds not only create breathing room for repaving, but can help fund engineering costs for larger projects. One example is Jackson Street, which runs through the New England Small Farms Institute and Highway Department. The street has not been analyzed since its creation, and its sewer and stormwater systems need a full inspection before pavement can go down.
“I haven’t been able to use Chapter 90 funding for equipment purchases before,” Leduc said. “That additional finding itself is really allowing us to expand upon everything we do here.”
Belchertown keeps its backlog of work small, Leduc said. Repaved roads that allow it are coated with a chip sealant to extend the life of the pavement. The extra money, Leduc said, will give the town the breathing room to continue these processes and “do it right.”
Unlike Belchertown, neighboring Amherst has about a backlog of projects totaling $40 million. Amherst DPW Director Guilford Mooring appreciates that the town will receive $1.4 million this year, up from $834,000, but it will barely put a dent in the community’s needs.
“Every little bit is great, it’s not as much as we really could use,” Mooring said. “If we wanted to clear the backlog in five years, we would need to spend $8 million a year.”
Mooring wishes that the state would allocate more than $300 million from the $1.2 billion bond bill for public roads and bridges. The bill also earmarked $500 million for state roads in the worst condition, and $185 million for congestion reduction and street safety improvements.
Leduc, however, sees increases in infrastructure investment as a start to positive change for the western half of the state.
“The fact that they used only miles on part of the funding shows me that the message is getting to Boston,” she said. “Western Massachusetts is rural and has more miles per community that some of the densely populated eastern towns. When they use a formula that use population and jobs, there’s no way to compete.”
Emilee Klein can be reached at eklein@gazettenet.com.
