County five-year Capital Program plan presented

Tompkins County Administrator Joe Mareane last month presented to the legislature’s Facilities and Infrastucture Committee the first draft of the proposed 2017-21 Capital Program.
 
The legislature adopts the five-year capital program as part of the annual county budget process.
 
 The draft program carries forward a number of projects included in the County’s 20-year Capital Plan and contained in the 2016 capital program. Among new projects included in the 2017-21 draft are two new bridge projects—rehabilitation of the Fall Creek Road Bridge in the Town of Dryden (design only) and replacement of the Ludlowville Road Bridge over Salmon Creek in the Town of Lansing.
 
 The draft program also includes a new, ongoing program to support natural infrastructure related to natural floodplains and water resources—allocating $200,000 per year to support projects that address surface water, flooding, and groundwater quality and quantity issues within the context of increasingly extreme weather patterns.
The program would be focused on protection by easement, restoration, and stabilization of upper watershed forest and wetlands, stream corridors and floodplains, to protect and enhance natural systems that can mitigate the impact of intensive rainfall events, help lessen sediment loads and streams and Cayuga Lake, and protect overall water quality.
 
 Among projects carried forward are long-discussed bus stop improvements at the Health Department to allow easier bus access, design to begin this year with construction in 2017, at a total project cost of $500,000.  The program continues the County’s multi-year Facilities Restoration project to address deferred capital maintenance issues in county buildings and its capital improvement program for roads and bridges—allocations for each $2.4 million over the five-year period.
 
The county, by policy, commits to increase the tax levy by 0.5 percent each year to support the capital program.