Any of you folks work for a municipality? Cortland County has had this knack for destroying the good things they have and the new legislators were voted in to try and change things....but they are no different. Just try to re-lable the same stuff with a Republican tag instead of a Democrat tag..amazing:
The budget is aprox $21,000,000.000 dollars
State mandated social services are 11,272,380.00 of that.
Highway department is aprox 5,000,000 and the rest is broken up between more social sevices, police, and who knows waht.
So the legislator's solution is to cut back the Highway Department. The NEW administrator see's the Highway Department as a liability that needs to be eliminated to what ever extent possible. Some of the new legislator's want to pay back their supporters by splitting services from the county Highway Dept. to the towns, some want to pay their contruction / contractor freinds back by privatizing functions, and some want to start their own companies to take over highway department functions....net net is they ALL want a piece of the highway pie......!
All of this is being pandered to the pubic as "cost savings"
Understand there are 250 miles of roads, most need COMPLETE rebuilds as the have only had oil and stone for the last 50 years. Also this county is one of the few who has already implemented one person plowing....most have a driver and wingman....also many of the current employee's are close to retirement...Not much of an encentive to get new blood to learn the ropes from those who have plowed those roads for ever.
I was a contractor for many years. I understand that mentality and the cost of doing business. Insurance and liability is expensive in right of way situations...NO way a contractor can do it less. The liability of a contractor vs. county government is rather different..and the mind set is different as well.
There is no way the Towns can do it cheaper either....same expence for employee's, trucks, fuel, etc....Most of the towns also support 50-100 miles of roads in addition to parking lots and their specific issues. They don't want to take on more.
The Highway Department is one of the few good things left in this county. They have an amazing range of capabilities and rather than gutting this I wonder why our legislators don't bend this to the task of improving the county...
Snow plowing alone allows business to continue while we endure our 6 month winters...no momma's driving around, and businesses suffer..when they suffer the tax base suffers. Less sales tax, income tax from those businesses, and when they die (as many have over the last few years here) property taxes suffer. Also if folks don't think they can get to work, they won't buy places here. Property values go down. Harder the attract new businesses...it goes on and on. Rough roads, increase in a families automobile expenses...
This county gets a huge amount of revenue by plowing NYS State roads. The legislators want to stop doing that. ...Even as the NYS DOT is cutting back their own staff. Another amazing thing. NYS has huge budjet issues of their own. Both the counties and the States problems are centered around very expensive social programs implemented when times were better.....so instead of fixing that, its politically easier to attack the donut eating county/State highway departments.
What this all boils down to is a power grab and political favor payback....at the tax payers expence. They will sell this crap as reducing governemtn etc etc. and then the taxes will not go down while the have to pay for the building of alternative solutions. A huge shell game.
What a bunch of political garbage. Enough to turn a hard core Republican into a Democrat!
Any of you have similar situations where you work/live?
The budget is aprox $21,000,000.000 dollars
State mandated social services are 11,272,380.00 of that.
Highway department is aprox 5,000,000 and the rest is broken up between more social sevices, police, and who knows waht.
So the legislator's solution is to cut back the Highway Department. The NEW administrator see's the Highway Department as a liability that needs to be eliminated to what ever extent possible. Some of the new legislator's want to pay back their supporters by splitting services from the county Highway Dept. to the towns, some want to pay their contruction / contractor freinds back by privatizing functions, and some want to start their own companies to take over highway department functions....net net is they ALL want a piece of the highway pie......!
All of this is being pandered to the pubic as "cost savings"
Understand there are 250 miles of roads, most need COMPLETE rebuilds as the have only had oil and stone for the last 50 years. Also this county is one of the few who has already implemented one person plowing....most have a driver and wingman....also many of the current employee's are close to retirement...Not much of an encentive to get new blood to learn the ropes from those who have plowed those roads for ever.
I was a contractor for many years. I understand that mentality and the cost of doing business. Insurance and liability is expensive in right of way situations...NO way a contractor can do it less. The liability of a contractor vs. county government is rather different..and the mind set is different as well.
There is no way the Towns can do it cheaper either....same expence for employee's, trucks, fuel, etc....Most of the towns also support 50-100 miles of roads in addition to parking lots and their specific issues. They don't want to take on more.
The Highway Department is one of the few good things left in this county. They have an amazing range of capabilities and rather than gutting this I wonder why our legislators don't bend this to the task of improving the county...
Snow plowing alone allows business to continue while we endure our 6 month winters...no momma's driving around, and businesses suffer..when they suffer the tax base suffers. Less sales tax, income tax from those businesses, and when they die (as many have over the last few years here) property taxes suffer. Also if folks don't think they can get to work, they won't buy places here. Property values go down. Harder the attract new businesses...it goes on and on. Rough roads, increase in a families automobile expenses...
This county gets a huge amount of revenue by plowing NYS State roads. The legislators want to stop doing that. ...Even as the NYS DOT is cutting back their own staff. Another amazing thing. NYS has huge budjet issues of their own. Both the counties and the States problems are centered around very expensive social programs implemented when times were better.....so instead of fixing that, its politically easier to attack the donut eating county/State highway departments.
What this all boils down to is a power grab and political favor payback....at the tax payers expence. They will sell this crap as reducing governemtn etc etc. and then the taxes will not go down while the have to pay for the building of alternative solutions. A huge shell game.
What a bunch of political garbage. Enough to turn a hard core Republican into a Democrat!
Any of you have similar situations where you work/live?
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