CHENANGO COUNTY – Over the last four years, budget cuts and flooding have hindered the pace of county road resurfacing to the point where it could soon become an expensive problem, several county officials said at a Public Works Committee meeting Thursday.
Randy Gibbon, the county’s Director of Public Works, said normally his department, on a six-year cycle, resurfaces roads (sealing, stone oiling, or black-topping) at a pace of 50 to 60 miles per year. Since 2003 however, due to cutbacks – combined with setbacks created by last June’s flood – Gibbon said highway crews have been reduced to hitting roughly 35 miles per season, putting them two to three years behind schedule.
Gibbon added that only eight miles of county road received attention last year due to a focus on the damage caused by June’s high waters.
“You can defer money for them (roads) for five years,” Gibbon said. “It will catch up.”
Gibbon explained that if delayed, normal road maintenance – using sealant and stone oil – often escalates into digging and re-paving with blacktop, which can mean a tenfold increase in normal expenses.
“If you don’t catch it when it first starts, it costs you a lot more money and a lot more effort to fix it,” he said. “It’s a vicious cycle.”
According to budget figures, stone oil costs roughly $12,000 per mile, compared to blacktop, which runs at $100,000 per mile. The county highway spends $1.6 million normally on resurfacing. Gibbon said it would cost $2.2 to $2.4 for several years to get back on schedule.
As an initial re-up for road improvement, Supervisor James McNeil (D-City of Norwich, Wards 1,2,3) recommended that the new County Correctional Facility reimburse public works for excavating work the department did at the jail while it was under construction.
“There’s expenses the highway department has incurred for excavating the jail site,” McNeil said. “We should see that highway get reimbursed.”
The committee unanimously voted that the Finance Committee review transferring money from the jail budget to public works.
Supervisor Peter C. Flanagan (D-Preston) estimated that highway could be owed roughly $300,000, and believes a re-focus and re-funding effort on road repair should not be delayed any longer.
“Hopefully none of us get much use out the correctional facility,” Flanagan said. “But everybody uses the roads...we need to focus on the one thing in the county that everyone uses.”
Gibbon said his crews are planning to resurface 60 miles of county road during what will be an “aggressive” program this year.
Bainbridge Supervisor Rick Chase asked how many miles and years it would take to get back on schedule. Gibbon did not estimate how long it will take to get back on track, but admitted that drastically hiking-up the resurfacing mileage might off-set cycle expectations and create unreasonable benchmarks for future road programs. He said setting a high, yet sustainable and consistent goal would be the next step.
“We need to create a sustainable amount of work at a price that the can be afforded by the county,” he said.
Flanagan and Gibbon both contended that the sooner money is invested in road programs, the less the county will have to spend in the future on materials and fixing accumulated dis-repair.
“We might be doing ourselves a favor,” said Flanagan.