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"Stimulating meaningful thought & debate in Sullivan County without retribution"
Traveling along Sullivan County's Broken Highway System
Forestburgh Supervisor Sipos makes proposal for consolidation of two town highway departments
by Steven Kurlander
There's an interesting item on the Town of Thompson Board agenda on Thursday that all Sullivan County elected officials should be examining closely.
For the first time in years, there's talk about consolidating municipal services in Sullivan County - in this case, between two town highway departments.
Forestburgh Supervisor William Sipos recently sent a letter to the Thompson Town Boardrequesting that the two towns consider combining their highway departments, stating in part: "By joining forces, the Highway Department of the Town of Forestburgh and Thompson could save the taxpayers money by offsetting some of the cost which is now incorporated in our budgets."
Whether the Town of Thompson Board and the two Highway Superintendents agree remains to be seen
Judging the population of Forestburgh and the amount of town highway it has, consolidation is a good idea to explore.
And it should be the start of serious discussions involving the cash strapped villages and towns throughout Sullivan County and the county and state too that face increasing costs for highway department budgets.
The Town of Forestburgh has a population of under 1000 residents and approximately 35 miles of town road to maintain and plow. It has a Highway Department of 7 employees and its budget is between $1.1 million and $1.2 million. That's 80% of Forestburgh's budget.
Further, the Mid Hudson News reported that there is in fact defacto sharing of manpower, equipment, materials, and highway services already taking place between the Town of Thompson and the Town of Forestburgh.
Throughout Sullivan County, there are village, town, county, and state roads, all intersecting with one another. And the servicing of such a myriad of roads under such an individualized system has gotten expensive (and results in duplicate waste) over time for taxpayers not only in Sullivan County, but statewide.
And it gets silly and wasteful at times. During a snowstorm, four plows, State, County, Town, and Village, will drive down Broadway in Monticello, but only one will have its plow down.
Take neighboring Ulster County. In July, 2010, the Pattern For Progress Think Tank published a study by Michael Hattery of Binghamton University entitledIndentifying Opportunities for Highway Service Cooperation which studied how the various municipal highway departments could achieve service sharing, service consolidation, and cost savings for Ulster County highway services. It's an enlightening document to read.
After providing an overview of the highway services and capacity, it discussed a number of policy options being utilized in Monroe, Jefferson, and Chemung Counties that all have some sort of shared costs, maintenance responsibilities, and labor pooling. The study identified a range of options for the various highway departments in Ulster County to achieve efficiencies and savings by consolidating and working together highway maintenance and services.
It's time for a similar study of Sullivan County highways.
The first County Legislature was elected in part on the premise of exploring the consolidation of services in various areas, and in fact, some movement was made in terms of a county-wide police force and the creation of a District Court to alleviate the towns and villages of the high costs of their criminal justice systems. That was back in the late 1990s, and the initial efforts failed in the face of opposition from local justices not willing to give up their expensive courts. Since then, there's been no true movement on the county level to continue exploring any other major consolidation of services with the towns and villages.
The move for examining consolidation by Sipos on the town level may work better in 2013. It's a smaller proposal in range and cost and truly makes sense.
And if the Town of Thompson Board agrees, such shared services between Town of Thompson and the Town of Forestburgh may be the start of cost savings and the elimination of wasteful spending county-wide for taxpayers. It would certainly save Forestburgh and Thompson taxpayers some money.
Sipos' consolidation initiative can also spur further cooperation agreements between various local villages and towns, or at least a Pattern for Progress type study of the idea at a time when both taxpayers and municipal governments have little money to spare.
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