NORWICH – County highway officials are concerned that Governor Eliot Spitzer’s budget proposal, coupled with high prices for fuel and materials, could cut in half the 63 miles of roadwork it has scheduled to begin once the weather turns.
“I’m scared to see the cut backs from the state. It will be interesting to see just how bad things are,” Public Works Director Randy Gibbon said. Members of the Public Works Committee discussed road maintenance methods, from using multi-grade pavement to regrinding and resurfacing, at their February meeting.
“Some roads might be better returned to gravel,” Gibbon said.
While the Governor’s 2008/2009 budget calls for reducing the Consolidated Highway Improvement Program (CHIPs) funding by $9 million dollars, Gibbon said his real concern was a potential $4.5 billion shortfall in the state’s overall budget.
“Where do they make up that budget?” he asked. “Nobody knows where this shortfall will be made up from. Highway budgets are discretionary funding. Usually the first few budgets they go after are highways.”
The uncertainly has forced Gibbon to push back the date for bidding some of roadway projects. He recommended that municipal highway departments purchase any piping and guide rails they may need for summer projects sooner rather than later when, he said, prices for steel are expected to rise 20 to 25 percent. Concrete already costs 12 percent more, he said.
“We are losing so much on the dollar now,” he said. “The purchasing power of your dollar is so much less. I would just like to have the same purchasing power we had in 2000.”
The county’s highway budget totals approximately $9.5 million per year. Last fall, the Chenango County Board of Supervisors agreed to Gibbon’s request for a 9.3 percent increase for administration, maintenance and equipment over a five-year period.
Supervisor James Bays, D-Smyrna, blamed the state’s economy on the proposed cutbacks and commented, “You can hardly try to revitalize business in upstate and cut back CHIPs, too.”
Gibbon, who was in Albany yesterday, said members of the Senate and Assembly “were fighting like hell” to keep $9 million in the CHIPs fund. The amount, he said, was actually a one-time boost to CHIPs last year, and “really wasn’t a take-away.”
“If municipalities thought they would get the same amount as last year, it’s going to hurt them. They were hoping that it would be there from now on. They didn’t realize that was a one-time shot. I don’t blame them for that,” he said.
The public works department did recently, however, recover in excess of $1 million for local expenditures on the state Rte. 12 B Halfway House Bridge and Ives Road Bridge projects. The latter was damaged in the June 2006 flood.
According to Gibbon, the New York State Transportation Department still owes Chenango County about $400,000 more. “We got the bulk of what they owed to us,” he said, referring to the six-month lag time in recovering reimbursements for the 12B bridge replacement and state Rt. 12 bridge approach renovations.
In other highway news, Gibbon told the committee that Chenango would join with Broome County to apply for a grant that would extend the soon-to-be-built biking and hiking lane along state Route 32 from Oxford to the Chenango Valley State Park in Binghamton.
Chenango County highway maintenance crews repaired washouts yesterday on Routes 34, 27 and 42. Gibbon said much of the flooding was caused by ice build up in culverts. Crews planned to continue repair work today.
In addition, Gibbon reported that the department had used 8,000 of a 9,000 ton allocation of salt planned for the 2007/2009 winter.