Cayuga County municipalities explore sharing highway, public works services, equipment

The county is required to submit a shared services plan to the state by the end of 2018 as a way to generate tax savings and improve municipal services through intergovernmental collaboration. The state will match the county's savings during the plan's first year. 

Chemung County Commissioner of Public Works Andy Avery kicked off the meeting, which was held at Cayuga-Onondaga BOCES, by outlining the process Chemung County has gone through for nearly 15 years to develop a shared services plan for its public works departments. He said there have been many failures and successes along the way and urged Cayuga County to start slow and not rush the process. 

"Take it slow, make sure everybody is involved with the decisions you're making and understand that there's going to be some change," Avery said. "Change is hard, I don't care how you look at it." 

Bill Dashnaw, a retired St. Lawrence County highway superintendent who has been acting as a consultant to the county highway department for the last several months, advised officials to formalize and document all their shared service agreements and have a plan in place in case of an accident or injury. Several towns in Lawrence County were working with a shared road grader when a worker was badly injured by the equipment, he said. The towns ended up being sued, lost and had to scramble to pay a settlement. 

"I know we do a lot of work by handshake but it's really important to have liability, workers comp and all those other issues covered under these agreements," Dashnaw said. 

The meeting attendees then split into regional groups to discuss specific ideas for shared services. Cayuga County's 32 villages, towns and cities were divided into northern, southern and central municipalities. 

"I think you would be amazed at how much we're saving with what we're already doing," Sempronius Highway Superintendent Bruce Nodine said to County Administrator J. Justin Woods during the group session. "We have to be efficient. We have small budgets. We have to work together and we do."

Several ideas came out of those group sessions, including:

• purchasing a countywide roller and chipper equipment and maintaining a crew to operate it.

• coordinating the purchase of large equipment between municipalities to save money by buying together in larger quantities.

• centralizing services for grant administration and procurement. 

• sharing trash collection between municipalities. 

• centralizing fleet maintenance.

• purchasing and sharing street sweepers among the towns and villages.

"The beauty of this program is that we get (100-percent) match from the state on savings, so that means if two municipalities were each going to buy a piece of equipment and then you only buy one and you can show the state the savings, then you get the cost of that second one back," Woods said. "The savings just paid for itself, the state reimbursed it. That's how we've got to game this system so we get our share back from Albany to benefit the communities here."

Woods acknowledged that Friday's meeting was not enough time to have an in-depth discussion about many of the ideas and said he would meet again with the highway superintendents to flesh out the rest of the details.

The panel will meet again June 8  to discuss assessment and human resources.