By CRAIG FREILICH

CANTON -- The town has added a stretch of the Pollock Road to its list of paving and reconstruction projects this season.

“And when we’re finished with that, we will have completed a little over five miles this summer,” said Supervisor David Button.

“Five miles is a great season for us,” he said.

Extra state aid this year is helping many communities, including Canton, catch up with some needed road work this year, and Canton is looking for any money that can be used for more projects, encouraged by a low asphalt prices at the moment, Button said.

“We’re looking through the budget to see if there’s any slack. We thought maybe there would be some extra payroll money from the slow winter seasons, but no. We’re trying to take advantage of low asphalt prices,” he said.

The Town Highway Department scheduled work on the Pink Schoolhouse Road, the Farnes Road and the Eddy-Pyrites Road to be done by June 1, weather depending.

Work was also planned for the Old County Home Road, now Town Rt. 21A, and the Johnson Road. They had hoped to be able to do work on the Pollock Road, which runs from Morley north to near Bucks Bridge, and possibly a rough section of the Potsdam-Morley Road in the Town of Canton.

Town Highway Superintendent Terry Billings said in the spring that the asphalt they needed for these projects was priced at about $35 a ton, when it was “probably $44 a ton last year, and that was a gift” compared to prices in the years before that, he said.

At the time the speculation was, Billings said, that that price would probably balloon with an expected rise in oil prices, but the price of oil has continued downward, only now showing possible signs of rising, experts have said.