NORWICH – Members of the Chenango County Finance Committee spent the majority of the time during their monthly meeting Thursday identifying the funding sources for two bills totaling $100,000.
The first, for $50,000, was from the New York State Dormitory Authority for pre-construction phase work completed for the Public Safety Facility’s communications project. The county budgeted $700,000 in 2007. Clerk of the Board R.C. Woodford said he “hoped” that this initial part of the estimated $3 million, two-year long project was now complete, at $750,000, and told the board that DASNY would be requesting $1 million more this year for construction.
The first three towers, one each in the towns of Norwich, Otselic and Coventry, are scheduled to be erected summer. Woodford said new towers in Pharsalia and New Berlin will follow at a later, unspecified date.
The committee agreed to tap into a set-aside 911 surcharge reserve to the pay the bill. The reserve tracks between $300,000 and $400,000, Deputy County Treasurer Ardean Young said.
County leaders retained DASNY services and appropriated $700,000 for the project during the budgeting season last year. The board applied $500,000 in unused funds remaining with DASNY after close-out of the Public Safety Facility building project, $100,000 from Tobacco Settlement Funds and $100,000 from 911 surcharges.
Young said Chenango County has $600,000 in unexpended funds remaining in its Public Safety Facility building account. “We should, I hope, be coming in under $3 million,” Town of Pharsalia Dennis Brown said, referring to the tower project. The county resolved in February to apply the 1 percent dedicated sales tax to help pay for what they have dubbed “the communications phase” of the Public Safety building project.
Financial leaders went into executive session for 25 minutes to discuss paying a second $50,000 bill. Communities Against Regional Interconnection (CARI), a consortium of eight upstate New York counties opposing a 190-mile long high power line proposed in upstate New York, requested the amount to cover litigation expenses. The county paid out the same amount last year for the same purpose, but to the New York State Association of Counties. Chairman of the Board Richard B. Decker said he was unsure why NYSAC was no longer involved as a conduit for funding litigation against the power line.
“CARI started the opposition anyway,” he said.
Rocco J. DiVeroncia, chairman of the Madison County Board of Supervisors and a CARI member, said, “Doing business with us was probably not a function of what they (NYSAC) usually go through.”
CARI was formed in June last year from the communities that would be impacted if the proposed NYRI line is authorized. Member counties are: Herkimer, Oneida, Madison, Chenango, Broome, Delaware, Sullivan and Orange.
Finance Committee member Brown moved to apply Tobacco Settlement funds to pay the bill, but stipulated “as long as the other counties involved agree to do the same.”
Following the executive session, Decker said he would reveal the particular concerns raised regarding CARI’s litigation process at the March 12 Board of Supervisors meeting. “They are asking us to do something that we won’t do, that we can’t do,” he said, regarding CARI, but confirmed that the county “is involved and willing to stand up with the finances to support CARI and their efforts to stop the power line,” he said.