1/9/08 - River Trail costs double

Engineers working to scale back project as county considers possibility of contributing money

(As published by Cortland Standard, Evan Geibel reporting)

The engineering firm designing the Tioughnioga River Trail between Cortland and Homer is working to trim back the project after discovering the trail as originally proposed would cost $2.8 million rather than the expected $1.4 million.

Unless the 2.7-mile project between Yaman Park in Cortland and Albany Street in Homer can be paid for in its entirety using the $1.4 million in federal and state grants that have been earmarked, it seems unlikely that the county would pursue the trail’s construction.

Project lead designer Todd Humphrey of Syracuse-based C&S Engineering — retained by the county in February 2006 for the project — said the design engineers were still hammering out the preliminary design of the project.

“At this point, what we’re trying to do is come up with a design that will fall within that number (the budget),” Humphrey said Tuesday.

The estimates for the trail’s final cost were made several years ago, and the ever-rising price of oil and that product’s impact on the rest of the market means that materials costs are much higher than when the project was first proposed.

Meanwhile, there still has to be some room left in the project budget for the cost of securing easements of properties the trail will run across. Estimates are impossible to make until appraisals of the needed properties are performed.

County Administrator Scott Schrader also wondered if the cost of securing easements was taken into account when the estimated project budget was established.

Schrader said that some easements that had been obtained at no cost while the BDC/IDA was still handling the project are rendered null and void because they were not acquired within the federal guidelines. The easements alone can take between six months and a year to obtain, Humphrey said.

The previous design of the trail has been plugged into a three-dimensional computer-modeling program that allows the engineers to play with the path of the trail. A trail that better follows the natural contours of the land means that less earth-moving has to be performed to install the 10-foot wide, asphalt path.

“We are looking for the way that we can construct this in the most economical manner,” Humphrey said.

What this fails to mention (this is the abbreviated on-line version) is that the project was known to have been $500,000 over budget last month, and it was not flagged by the Committee.

The C&S engineering fees are more than $200,000 on this project, and they are not yet complete. The project fee for this is reported to cost nearly $250,000. The article states that the funding for the project was to be from the State. If the project falls through (the County does not want to pay the overage of $1.4 million), the County may be responsible for the engineering fees.

As a taxpayer, how does that sound? In my opinion, this is another example of poor planning and cost projection. We cannot continue to fund projects that go nowhere and cost significant money funded by Cortland County taxpayers. How the estimate can be off by a FACTOR OF 2 needs to be explained. I hope to ask those questions in Committee next week.