DPW - COMMITTEE

Monday, March 23, 2026 - 9:30 AM

Clayton Barber, Chairperson

Chris Clark, Vice-Chairperson

Chairman Barber called this DPW Meeting to order at 9:30 am with the following Supervisors in attendance: Clayton Barber, Ken Hughes, Mary Lamphear, Steve McNally, Clayton Menser, Timothy Pierce, Richard Preston, Cathleen Reusser, Matt Stanley, Davina Thurston, Ike Tyler, and Margaret Wood. Matthew Brassard, Chris Clark, Joe Pete Wilson and James O’Bryan were excused. Timothy Follos was absent. Tracie McGill was excused.

Department Heads present: Doreen Abrahamsen, Judy Garrison, Roy Holzer, Michael Mascarenas and Jim Dougan.

Deputies present: Bill Tansey

Also present: Alice Halloran

BARBER: Will the department of public works for March 23, 2026, please come to order. Please stand for the pledge. Thank you. Good morning. If I could have Mr. Dougan come up. Jim, we’ll start with resolutions.

DOUGAN: Yeah, we can start with resolutions. Maybe the first three which are all permits I could kind of just bundle together. Since when we get to some of my budget amendments we may have more description. So, I’m looking to issue permits for the use of county roadways for Ironman Lake Placid that’s on Sunday, July 19, for Lake Placid Marathon which is on June 14 and for the Wilmington Whiteface 5K and 10K run which is on June 20^th. It will be a resolution to issue permits to those agencies to have their events.

RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING THE ISSUANCE OF A PERMIT TO IRONMAN LAKE PLACID FOR THE USE OF THE COUNTY ROADWAYS FOR THE 2026 IRONMAN TRIATHLON TO BE HELD ON SUNDAY, JULY 19, 2026. Thurston, Menser

RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING THE ISSUANCE OF A PERMIT TO LAKE PLACID MARATHON/LPM EVENTS FOR THE USE OF THE COUNTY ROADWAYS FOR THE 2026 LAKE PLACID MARATHON TO BE HELD ON SUNDAY, JUNE 14, 2026. Thurston, Menser

RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING THE ISSUANCE OF A PERMIT TO WILMINGTON HISTORICAL SOCIETY FOR THE USE OF THE COUNTY ROADWAYS FOR THE 2026 WILMINGTON WHITEFACE 5K AND 10K RUN TO BE HELD ON SUNDAY, JUNE 20, 2026. Thurston, Menser

BARBER: Questions, concerns? All in favor, opposed – carried.

DOUGAN: So, number four would be amending resolution #295 of 2024. The original announcement for that bridge that is Hurricane Road over Spruce Hill Brook, the original announcement from the Governor’s office was for $846,000 worth of funding but when the master agreements came through from the State they were in the amount of $792,000, after two years of discussions with DOT and the project is now complete they did agree to stick by the original announcement of $846,000, so we just need to amend that resolution to get the funding.

RESOLUTION AMENDING RESOLUTION NO. 295 OF DECEMBER 30, 2024, AUTHORIZING THE IMPLEMENTATION AND FUNDING OF THE COSTS OF 100% OF THE COSTS OF A TRANSPORTATION PROJECT, WHICH MAY BE ELIGIBLE FOR FEDERAL-AID AND/OR STATE-AID, OR REIMBURSEMENT FROM BRIDGE NY FUNDS. (HURRICANE RD OVER SPRUCE HILL BROOK) FROM $792,000.00 TO $846,000.00. Stanley, Pierce

BARBER: Questions, concerns? All in favor, opposed – carried.

DOUGAN: Number five will be a resolution authorizing the purchasing agent to award a purchase order in the amount of $549,900 to the Fort Miller Company that’s for precast culver for three locations. This is the Tracy Road in Moriah right at the Roe Pond outlet, another location just downstream also on Tracy Road and then a third one also on the same stream that went across Witherbee Road and these are coming from Bridge NY/Culvert NY funds.

RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING THE PURCHASING AGENT TO AWARD A PURCHASE ORDER IN THE AMOUNT OF $549,900.00, TO THE FORT MILLER COMPANY FOR PRECAST CONCRETE CULVERT SECTIONS FOR THE TRACY & WITHERBEE ROAD CULVERT REPLACEMENT PROJECTS LOCATED IN THE TOWN OF MORIAH, WITH FUNDS TO COME FROM BUDGETED CULVERT NEW YORK FUNDS AND FURTHER AUTHORIZING THE COUNTY CHAIRMAN OR COUNTY MANAGER TO EXECUTE SAID PURCHASE ORDER. Menser, Thurston

BARBER: Questions?

THURSTON: That is three culverts right?

DOUGAN: Yup.

THURSTON: Okay that’s not $549,000 each?

DOUGAN: No, it’s all three.

THURSTON: Okay, thank you.

MASCARENAS: Jim, just a question these are all upsized correct?

DOUGAN: Yes.

MASCARENAS: Do you mind explaining to the board quickly, I know we’ve talked about it a great deal but you’re seeing a lot of this throughout our county with increased weather events sedimentation all those things that are happening they are really driving a lot of costs in terms of repairs and future operations and maintenance. If you don’t mind explaining that please.

DOUGAN: Yeah, I’ll go back one resolution even to Hurricane Road which originally was two culverts, no excuse me it was one culvert and a couple little off sheets off to the side that was eight foot in diameter. It’s now a bridge and it’s about 30 feet long. Here on Tracy Road those three structures are all just metal pipes right now, the outlet right at Roe Pond is six feet and we’re putting in a seventeen-foot, pre-cast concrete box culvert. Roe Pond, that outlet was damaged in the FEMA events in 2019 but wouldn’t fund it. It was damaged in ’23 and ’24, FEMA events and they again, wouldn’t fund it partly because we almost repaired it too quickly we should of just let it wash all the way out but we fixed it while it was in place so all three of those structures are now really at least three times the amount of water volume that was there before so that is going to buy us a lot more resiliency, a lot more flow when we have these events moving forward.

MASCARENAS: And I think the point I want to try and get across, you’re seeing this in your own towns when you’re having these event areas that were prone to flooding or not flooding or all of sudden becoming problematic overnight there were things that you couldn’t expect that are now a problem. I think the bigger issue is understanding that we’re often, Jim will say this, treating the symptom, not the disease when it comes and while we’re dealing with the here and now the long-term costs will likely be upsizing again, fifteen, twenty years down the road because we’re not really dealing with where this is coming from. Ensign Pond is kind of a real good indication of that where we’re seeing that happen again after the road was raised twenty years ago and just something to consider when you’re looking at your own planning locally and kind of what we’re dealing with here at the county level as well.

BARBER: Any other questions, concerns? All in favor, opposed – carried.

DOUGAN: Number six is regarding the public safety building and us continuing to change out the control system there to get away from proprietary controls. This would be a contract amendment with Core Climate Systems in the amount not to exceed $18,251.00. So, we’ve already done the first phase in the boiler room we got the boilers and the hot water heaters off of those proprietary control systems. This will allow us now from the boiler room, speak with, communicate with through non proprietary controls, the roof top units which is a whole other project that we’re designing that replacement but this will allow us to speak to them and will actually allow us to get rid of the Emcore controls, the proprietary controls that have been there since the building was built in 2007. This will allow us also to get rid of the $869 month bill we get from Emcore where I’m not getting into how little they do for $869.

RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING THE COUNTY CHAIRMAN OR COUNTY MANAGER TO EXECUTE A CONTRACT AMENDMENT WITH CORE CLIMATE SYSTEMS IN AN AMOUNT NOT TO EXCEED $18,251.00, FOR BOILER ROOM CONTROL UPGRADES AT THE PUBLIC SAFETY BUILDING WITH FUNDS TO COME FROM BUDGETED FUNDS. Stanley, Clark

BARBER: Questions, concerns? All in favor, opposed – carried.

DOUGAN: The next few are a number of budget amendments. I’ll try to go as quickly as I can but I’ve got a lot of detail if we need it. Number seven is I’m looking to carry over funds from 2025 to 2026 budget. This is specifically in road machinery from my budget where we are buying replacement equipment. In 2025, I budgeted the replacement shoulder machine. After I got a new supervising mechanic who has got a different look at things than the gentleman that was there before, we found we didn’t need to replace that shoulder unit and he actually did some fairly inexpensive repairs and probably bought us another four to five years with that shoulder machine before we have to look at it again so, that was a pretty expensive unit but we saved those funds. So, I’d like to roll them forward, it’s in the amount of $73,769.00 and I’d like to look at that as a way to get a few other things done. So if we need a transmission in one of our plow trucks from 2019, again, with this new supervising mechanic we think we can do more repairs on those solid waste walking floor trailers than we’ve done in the past some of you who have been here for awhile have may recall us doing resolutions sending it off to Hale Trailer or Mac Trailer and this supervising mechanic and some of his staff out there think we can tackle this ourselves whereas, previously people who worked for me did not. I’d like to make some of that investment so that’s why I’d like to roll the money forward to 2026.

RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING A BUDGET AMENDMENT IN THE DPW – ROAD MACHINERY ACCOUNT INCREASING REVENUES AND APPROPRIATIONS IN THE AMOUNT OF $73,769.00, CARRY OVER 2025 FUNDS. Menser, Thurston

BARBER: Any other questions, concerns? All in favor, opposed – carried.

DOUGAN: Number eight is specifically carrying over some funds that were in last year’s capital reserve. We brought money from the buildings capital reserve to work on the old Probation Building and some work on the Public Safety Building. We’ve completed most of that work but we have a little bit left to finish up in 2026. The way those funds were set up they don’t just stay with the project they are an annual basis so I would like to roll forward $30,428.18, to complete those two projects. One of them is $18,000 I just brought up for Core Climate in resolution number six and the other is for the interior of the first floor of the former Probation Building. I still have to buy the kitchen cabinets, the door trim those kind of things the finished carpentry materials all the rest of it is done and well on its way but I’d like to roll that money forward to finish those projects.

RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING A BUDGET AMENDMENT IN THE DPW – BUILDINGS & GROUNDS ACCOUNT INCREASING REVENUES AND APPROPRIATIONS IN THE AMOUNT OF $30,428.18, CARRY OVER 2025 FUNDS. Menser, Clark

BARBER: Questions, concerns?

THURSTON: Is there anything in the old building that can be used? The old fairgrounds, the CCE building?

DOUGAN: For what?

THURSTON: For any materials that may be optimal. I’m just thinking of the cabinets in there. It’s not feasible?

DOUGAN: Those cabinets in there are actually built in place so to make them fit someplace else would probably be –

THURSTON: I figured but I just thought I’d ask. You certainly don’t need any chairs for the new building, right? You can use all those chairs?

DOUGAN: Oh, absolutely. Yes.

THURSTON: Just trying to save a little money that’s all.

BARBER: Any other questions, concerns? All in favor, opposed – carried.

DOUGAN: So, with that we will complete I will say is the intent of that money we pulled from the capital reserve last year and because we were under budget on most of the items that we did that leaves me $92,368.00 that I would like to restore back to the capital reserve. Think of the capital reserve as a savings account let’s just say we took $25,000 out, for example to do a roof but only cost us $22,000, I’d like to put the $3,000 back in our savings account is my simplest analogy.

RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING A BUDGET TRANSFER IN THE DPW DEPARTMENT IN THE AMOUNT OF $92,368.00 FROM 2025 CAPITAL RESERVE ACCOUNT TO BUILDINGS CAPITAL RESERVE. Thurston, Menser

BARBER: Questions, concerns? All in favor, opposed – carried.

DOUGAN: So, number ten and number eleven are both about the new Ag and Youth Building. So, the Ag and Youth Building we had two different funding sources this is where I said it may get a little complicated. One is USDA Rural Development and the other was ARPA funds. The ARPA funds had to be spent by December 31, 2025. The USDA Rural Development funds, they didn’t have to be spent by a certain date but USDA requires you to have some contingency money when you go through different phases of the project yet, USDA rural development also wants your money to be, their money to be the last in so if they gave you a grant, and you put too much contingency in specifically into the budget if you don’t use all that contingency money they don’t give you all of the grant. See the weird math here? So, we carried some contingency money but we carried it in the DPW budget okay? I had about $200,000 in contingency money in the DPW budget rather than the ARPA project which was funded by Rural Development. So, resolution number ten, is we had a line item in inventory which was where we would put, where we would buy cabinets, where we would buy appliances, where we would buy furniture okay, where we might buy a lawn mower or a snow blower or any of that kind of stuff to maintain the building on that side. I’d like to again, we set that project up not as a project we would roll year to year, we set it up so that it is just budgeted for the one year. I’d like to roll forward from that inventory line item, $21,750, that I had kind of kept for contingency and have that for 2026 so I can buy a lawn mower for over there, snow blower and if any other small things come up inside the building soil and water has been asking not so much Cornell has been asking for some pine on the walls where they might have a lot of postings so they don’t damage the wall some of those kind of things. So, I’d like to carry this forward so that I could have that money to spend on that building in 2026.

BARBER: And the lawn mower and snow blower is needed? Much needed?

DOUGAN: The snow blower for example we’ve never had to deal with sidewalks and things like we have here. We just added another eighteen or so employees that are going to be stationed out of that on a daily basis all year long so we’ve got to handle the maintenance of that space a little different than we have the fairgrounds in general in the past.

RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING A BUDGET AMENDMENT IN THE DPW – BUILDINGS AND GROUNDS DEPARTMENT INCREASING REVENUES AND APPROPRIATIONS IN THE AMOUNT OF $21,750.00, 2025 CARRY OVER CONTINGENCY FUNDS. Pierce, Wood

BARBER: Is there any other questions, concerns? All in favor, opposed – carried.

DOUGAN: So, number eleven I told I had a contingency amount. I’d like to return the unused out of the DPW budget back into that capital reserve also even though it was never in the capital reserve I’d like to put it in that savings account. The fact that we didn’t have to use it is a good thing. We didn’t have any change orders on that building and so I’d like to take that and put it, it was set aside to build a new building, so I’d like to set it back aside in the capital reserve account in the amount of $130,000.

RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING A BUDGET TRANSFER IN THE DPW DEPARTMENT IN THE AMOUNT OF $130,000.00, FROM BUILDING ACCOUNT TO CAPITAL RESERVE ACCOUNT. Clark, Menser

BARBER: Any questions, concerns? All in favor, opposed – carried.

DOUGAN: It’s not on here but I gave you a picture. This is a picture of the Forge Lane Bridge here in Elizabethtown. That bridge has been closed since 1993. There is DEC and Boquet River Association are going to be removing the fish wire that’s just downstream and they would also like to remove the abutments from this bridge if the county will remove the super structure that’s on the top of it. So, in order to do that we need to do a resolution to abandoned it. If you guys work on discussing that right now I’ll work with Mr. Manning to get more specific language to bring to you for the ways and means committee but that’s what the picture is about.

BARBER: Do you have an estimated cost for removing this?

DOUGAN: The structure itself and the pictures as you can see it’s probably going to fall in the river pretty soon, we’ve talked to one of the civil term contractors that we have about it and we expect it about $50,000.

BARBER: Anybody else have any questions?

REUSSER: I would just like to say the Town of Elizabethtown fully supports the removal of that bridge. The question I have is I’m assuming you have found no evidence of prior abandonment either by county, I found none at the town level as well, so I appreciate that.

HUGHES: Thank you Mr. Chairman. I’m not on this committee but this is a county bridge because it exceeds the length?

DOUGAN: It does exceed the length which makes it a bridge. It’s one of those structures that was assumed to be the counties for decades some of the resolutions that we did in the last year to clean that up these bridges that were on town roads that were assumed to be the county’s we did that resolution to clean that up. This one we actually didn’t include in that resolution because both Cathy and I thought maybe it had been abandoned before and didn’t need to be dealt with but it’s not on there, it doesn’t appear that it ever formally came to the county but it was always assumed to be and DOT had it on their list as a county structure.

BARBER: Is there any other questions?

REUSSER: The Town of Elizabethtown this bridge would it benefit for us because maybe we don’t know abandoned it at the time should the town of Elizabethtown do a resolution at its board meeting tomorrow in support of the county removing the bridge?

DOUGAN: The highway law is actually Highway Law 234 Mr. Manning knows probably a lot better than I do but it requires a resolution by the County and it usually requires at least a letter of support from the town that it’s located in from what I read of the local law.

REUSSER: Will do.

BARBER: Any other questions?

MCNALLY: I think the most important part of this is that the liability it’s in pretty poor shape, if somebody fell through that walking through we would be liable so this is a good project to get done as soon as possible.

THURSTON: I support this. I would just also like to make sure that if this bridge is on Google maps, I’m assuming it’s not because it’s been closed for some time but maybe just make sure that it is removed from there.

DOUGAN: Yeah, there’s a notification process that we have to do after the formal resolutions are done there’s official notice and official filings that have to happen in a number of places but I will mention Google maps.

THURSTON: Thank you.

BARBER: Is there any other questions or concerns? All in favor, opposed – carried.

GARRISON: We did not have a resolution. You didn’t present a resolution did you Jim?

DOUGAN: I didn’t really present a resolution I wanted to introduce it. I will work with Mr. Manning to give us actually what the resolution should say but I wanted the board to be thinking about it before it got to ways and means.

BARBER: So, you are going to come back at ways and means?

DOUGAN: I’ll work with Dan so you guys will at least be familiar with it. And last, I just gave you a couple of graphs on what our fuel prices have been so you can consider it. It’s kind of crazy. Keep in mind this, we bought 117,000 gallons of gasoline last year. We bought 121,000 gallons of diesel and we bought 99,000 gallons of propane just for the public safety building so I started running the numbers I just didn’t get them all down here for you but that’s what, that increase alone if that price stayed the same across the year it was $300,000 across those three locations on there so I just wanted you to be aware of that but that’s a pretty major increase in budget. That’s all I have.

BARBER: Does anybody have anything else for Jim? Alice, next Soil and Water. Good morning.

HALLORAN: Good morning. We met all of our performance measures and our expenditure requirements for 2025 so we did receive our Part A and Part C funding that we get specifically for soil and water conservation districts from the State.

I’ve received the prompt from the utilization plan and I just received that email for the salt reduction WQIP so hopefully I can work out those details as soon as possible because I’m getting a lot of questions on that but as soon as I have the information that I can get out to the towns I’ll get that out.

And I wanted to make sure that everybody got the email with their annual report from 2025 in it? So, if you didn’t let us know and I can send that to you. And the last thing is we are doing our final erosion & sediment control 4-hour course on April 10 that’s probably our final one for the spring again, free for municipal employees so if anyone wants to take that they can sign up for that. That’s all I have in my report. Any questions or anything?

BARBER: Questions?

PIERCE: Yes we met the other day and we talked about the three interns that applied. You said they had other opportunities do you know if anyone has accepted?

HALLORAN: I haven’t called them yet because they were all on spring break last week so I will give them a call today.

BARBER: So, he’s talking about the three interns?

HALLORAN: Yup three interns that we are going to offer the position but again, they’ve put applications in several places so we’ll see who ends up coming to work with us.

BARBER: Any other questions for Alice? Very good. And next, Transportation Doreen.

ABRAHAMSEN: Good morning everyone. Everyone got my monthly report. I did want to mention that we did get a $20 per leg increase. I applied for that last year and they accepted it for MAS so we’ll know get from $75 to $95 per leg. It will be an increase of ten to twelve thousand dollars depending on what our service is.

Continuing to recruit the bus drivers and I kept the MVS and the Cascade combined at this time because of those issues with drivers so again, if anybody has anyone interested just have them give me a call.

BARBER: Is there any questions?

HUGHES: Good morning. One question I heard that ORDA struggled this weekend with some shuttles from point A to point B in North Elba for the world cup and I was just curious, did anybody reach out to us for any type of assistance with shuttles?

ABRAHAMSEN: No not this year. I did it two or three years ago but the last couple of years they hired their own charter services and our shuttles ended the 15^th which was last Sunday and so, it always raises havoc with the Lake Placid Express they are trying to get around town, we go as far down as the ski jumps so sometimes they don’t allow us in there even so yeah, there’s a big traffic and coming off of Old Military into where the airport is as well as people trying to flag us down when they really should be waiting for other buses but I didn’t get any calls. Not too many this weekend wondering if the ski shuttle can bring me out to Whiteface because they are still skiing but there is no longer any ski shuttles.

HUGHES: Thank you.

BARBER: Anybody have anything else?

MASCARENAS: Mr. Tyler, I hate to put you on the spot but do you mind just doing a brief review. We had a task force set up for the new building, the new transportation building we are looking at the wash bay. We had a small task force to see if the fairgrounds -

TYLER: Sure. We had a meeting with everyone that is involved with the Ag and Markets, it was me and the county. It was a very productive meeting and we are going to be sending out an email about that meeting to move ahead hopefully. It was a great discussion. We had a few minor issues but we worked it out.

BARBER: Does anybody have anything else to come before this meeting? We stand adjourned. Thank you.

As there was no further discussion to come before this Department of Public Works Committee, it was adjourned at 10:00 a.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Judith Garrison, Clerk

Board of Supervisors