Highway department faces deficit

Town board considers bond, tax hike as measures

By CHARLIE BUTERBAUGH

BETHEL, NY — The Town of Bethel Highway Department is in the red, and officials met last week to explore borrowing as a means of making up a $222,0000 deficit.

But that’s just the beginning of Bethel’s highway problem.

Overspending has combined with the costs of fuel, flood damage and road maintenance to leave the highway fund stuck in a fiscal pothole that keeps cracking.

“Something has to be done with the town’s finances to get the highway out of this situation,” said budget officer Fran Foster during a July 13 meeting, when town board members met to discuss municipal bonds with an attorney from the Orrick, Herrington and Sutcliffe law firm.

To address the fiscal situation and move ahead on permanent highway improvements in Bethel, the town board is considering raising taxes and floating a bond to borrow as much as $4 million. The town would pay the money back over a 10- or 15-year period, depending on the conditions of the bond.

Supervisor Vicki Vassmer Simpson said she would support a referendum, thereby handing voters the decision of whether to authorize a bond resolution.

Eighty percent of the town’s 150 miles of roads are in need of “immediate attention,” according to Highway Superintendent Lynden Lilley. He said: “Bethel has more paved roads than it has even a remote chance of maintaining.”

Three weeks ago Lilley’s crew paved Foster Road without digging ditches, which keep water away from a road’s subsurface, because there isn’t adequate time or equipment to do so.

“Even when you’re doing the work, you know what you’re doing isn’t the proper job,” Lilley said. “People have no idea of the damage we’re facing. And the equipment is in such deplorable shape that we’re running a repair shop.”

The town’s old grade-all truck, used for ditching, leaks five to six gallons of oil when it’s on the road. The four one-ton trucks all have broken frames. Two highway department employees recently spent the morning welding a new jack onto a trailer whose cross members have rotted. A new trailer costs $12 to $14 thousand.

It’s the middle of the year and the machinery budget is down to about $2,000.

When winter ends and the highway department’s 14 men finish plowing snow, their spring schedule begins with sweeping roads and should continue with filling potholes, ditching, repairing culverts, paving, sealing and mowing.

Lilley said his men are still sweeping.

“There are so many issues around that you can’t focus on any one thing to get it done,” he said. “My predecessor had the same problem I have now.”

The highway department’s entire annual budget is $424,000. The town is divided into four districts; each is assigned $75,000 annually for highway improvement work. Recently, in order to float the highway fund, the town board took from Peter to pay Paul, transferring $255,000 from the general fund.

“Our highway budget is very stringent. It’s not feasible to do what he [Lilley] has to do with the budget he has,” Foster said.

“The solution is that the town board has to raise taxes. Only money will fix the situation we’re in,” said Lilley, who was a Town of Bethel councilman for 10 years. “I was part of the problem with not voting to raise taxes. Now I’m on the other side, and I see the impact of not raising taxes.”

If the town board authorizes a bond 60 days before the November election, a referendum will be on the ballot.