NORWICH – Chenago County lawmakers were surprised to learn last Wednesday that anticipated state aid for replacing the Halfway House Bridge had been flagged at the state comptroller’s office in Albany since October.
Construction of a new bridge got underway in September after the state transportation department signed off on the $2.5 million project. Approximately one million dollars in county highway reserves has already been paid out to contractors.
“That $1 million is money this department needs to do projects we already have planned for May and June,” Public Works Director Randy Gibbon told members of the Chenango County Public Works Committee Thursday. “It’s ridiculous. We are being penalized for a mistake that the state made, because we have no recourse.”
The bridge, also known as county Route 32B, connects state Route 12 to county Route 32 and lies between the towns of Norwich and Oxford. Replacing it was an original part of a $8 million Route 32 road enhancement project initiated by the county back in 2002. Both approvals and funding for the now six-year-old project have been delayed over the years due to an historic barn that needed to be removed and legal questions regarding a railroad crossing perpendicular to the new bridge’s entrance off of 32.
Gibbon said New York State Department of Transportation officials from Region 9 in Binghamton had repeatedly promised Chenango County the reimbursement by the end of 2007. After approving the contract in July, Gibbon said NYSDPW sent the authorized contract onto the state comptroller’s office in September.
“I’ve been calling the DOT ever since. They kept telling me that it’s coming. They had no idea why the contract hadn’t been executed,” Gibbon told the committee.
Gibbon said he only learned about the glitch after asking state Sen. Thomas Libous to intervene. “If I hadn’t called our legislator, which I don’t like to do, then we would have never heard from the comptroller’s office. NYSDOT did not help,” he said.
According to a representative at Region 9, the reimbursement was held up due to an unknown procedural change. The comptroller’s office requested that the agreement be separated into two parts, one for the county 32B bridge work and one for creating turning lanes off of state Route 12.
“The comptroller’s office decided that we needed to have separate agreements for the work we perform and the work the county performs. ... They never told us. There was no problem when the application went in. It was standard practice to do it the way we did,” said David Hamburg, public information officer for the NYSDOT.
The Route 12 work, at $650,000, will be constructed and picked up by the NYSDOT. To cover its share of the work, Chenango County expects to receive 80 percent from the federal government and 15 percent from the state.
“It (the reimbursement) is on its way to the county. We are going to expedite it through our main office to the comptroller and attorney general. We would like them to put it at the top of their pile. It’s been a long time,” Hamburg said.
According to a New York State Office of the Comptroller spokesperson, the contract was received in mid October, reviewed, and then sent back on Oct. 26 to the DOT’s central office in Albany for revision.
“It was our understanding that the DOT central office reached out to Region 9 on October 30 noting our concerns and asking for the changes,” said Jennifer Freeman.
John Pioch, the project’s engineer liaison for Chenango County, said the road enhancement project was “fairly large for county government” and that “federal processes have taken more time than any of us wanted.”
Gibbon said planned 2008 road projects would proceed as scheduled if the money arrives by April.
Treasurer William E. Evans said the money was “a big part of” the county’s highway reserves and is needed for cash flow purposes.