To the editor:
I was just in Caribou for the high school Class of ’68 reunion and was dismayed to find that to replace the section of River Road would cost the city more than $2 million. But what would the cost be if the materials were provided free of charge? Wouldn’t the estimate come down substantially?
I’m surprised your town officers aren’t more forward thinking in this venture. I also know you plan to spend $50 million building a magnet K-8 school in the park where baseball and soccer games had been played as well as having the field flooded for ice-skating in the winter. You also plan to demolish Teague Park, the “old” junior high school, the “real old” senior high school, and the Sincock School once the new school has been built. What do you plan to do with the old brick once you tear these schools down?
With all the shows on TV pointing out how to flip or flop old houses; why can’t you do the same with old worn out roads. All you need is for someone to clean out the roadbed, place the old brick with new cement in its place, support the new base, fill in the spaces with dirt, and finally place cement or tar on top. You could also invest in using a mixture of old tires with the recycled tar to create a quieter road that would also last longer than the last section of road. There are dozens of companies out there just “dying” to supply ground up tires for you to mix in the roads.
With all your combining due to loss of population over the years since the closing of Loring AFB, now is the time to use those throw-out items again. I am sure you will be recycling all the copper in those buildings as well as the furniture in the new building to save money. If you have a better or more cost-effective way to fix River Road, I’d like to hear it.
Richard L. Etscovitz (Class of 68)
Marietta, Georgia
