State and local officials celebrated the increase in transportation funding to Chautauqua County from New York State at an event in Falconer Tuesday. State Senator George Borrello said CHIPS, or the Consolidated Local Street and Highway Improvement Program, saw a 23% increase in funding in the state’s budget from last year, “The PAVE NY program and the Extreme Weather Recovery program, which was cut from the budget, not only was it restored but it was increased by 50%. Here in the 57th Senate district, which stretches from here in Chautauqua County, Cattaraugus County, Allegany and up into Livingston County in the Finger Lakes, we saw a dramatic increase, an initially $17.2 million dollars.”
Chautauqua County is receiving $6.6 million dollars total in CHIPS, Pave-NY, and Extreme Winter Recovery Funding. County Department of Public Facilities Director Brad Bentley said the additional funding is critical to supporting the economy and will make a difference, “This will allow us to pave about 32 miles of our 550 miles of road this year. Typically we get about 15, so about half of that so we’re going to see a significant difference in the quality of our roads. As well as we’ll be able to repair 16 to 18 our 308 bridges in our county, which is an increase above what we normally do.”
Bentley said his budget usually has $4.5 million dollars to spend on road and bridge work and the County DPF is receiving an additional $2.1 million dollars this year.
State Senator Borrello said the State Touring Program is a new program this year that addresses fixing a state road that doesn’t have an identifier, so it’s known as a “touring route,” “These are often roads that, sometimes you turn off a major road and you get on a kind of bumpy side road but it goes through a neighborhood and area. Those are those touring routes. And they often get forgotten, quite honestly, but not by the people who have to drive on them every day.”
The City of Jamestown will receive $561,924 to do maintenance and upgrades for these state touring routes.
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