Millerton is on the heels of sidewalk grant

MILLERTON — The Village Board has voted on its Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) application for the upcoming 2013 project year. Its choice, as in years past, deals with sidewalk remediation and street lighting.The board voted and formalized its decision following a public hearing on Monday, Oct. 15. That hearing was continued from the public hearing that opened on Sept. 17. There was no one from the public present at either of the two hearings.Mayor John Scutieri spoke about what he expected the board to do at that Monday meeting just days before, fairly confident its plans would move forward without any obstacles.“Ultimately the final decision the board is leaning toward is to continue on the quest for much nicer sidewalks and to add on lighting for Main Street — the type used for Dutchess Avenue,” he said.The project will work in conjunction with sidewalk repairs that are already in the works for North Main Street. Those repairs do not hinge on the block grant, although the two projects would compliment each other nicely, according to Scutieri.“We’re already planning on replacing all of southwest Main Street, running from Coyote Point down to South Center Street, then on the other side of South Center Street to NECC to the corner of Taro’s parking lot, down to meet the Rail Trail and around the corner,” he said. “If the grant is awarded we will add street lights and deal with other sidewalk areas that need replacing.”The application has not yet been drawn up by the village. The board has, though, already discussed some streets that might be included in the sidewalk application.“A lot of the back roads are in pretty terrible condition,” the mayor said. “Maple Avenue, Church Street, North Center Street — the engineers have to put together a priority list.”In terms of a priority list, the county has one of its own. CDBG funds, though part of a larger program funded by the federal department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), are distributed by the county. The county determines which municipalities are most deserving of the money according to a priority list; affordable housing is at the top of that list while infrastructure improvements (including sidewalks) falls at number two on the list. The maximum annual award per municipality is capped at $150,000.Sidewalks have been a main concern in Millerton for many years, with the village “picking away at them as we can,” as the mayor put it. Some grants only cover expenses to repair a few hundred feet at a time, so the village has been pursuing block grants as well as other funding regularly.“Because of the infrastructure of a village of our age, things start to fail as a certain age, and we’ve got people tripping and falling and getting hurt because of sidewalks of poor quality,” Scutieri said.The village last received a block grant in 2009, according to the mayor, to create a parking lot for the Harlem Valley Rail Trail on South Center Street. That grant was worth $130,000.Another idea the board discussed for this year’s grant in addition to sidewalk remediation included doing work in the village’s water department, which was decided could potentially be done more effectively next winter in conjunction with the town. The Village Board also met two weeks ago with the Town Board, at which time it discussed jointly pursuing the block grant for 2013. Those project ideas included working on a bridge at Old Post Road #3 or on handicapped accessibility issues at Denney Pool. In the final analysis it was decided the village would pursue sidewalks for its grant proposal.The CDBG program, it was agreed, is of major benefit to communities like Millerton throughout the county, and by extension, throughout the nation.“They’re very essential,” Scutieri said. “This work would have to be done anyway, the difference is the sense of relief from taxpayers that rather than coming outright from the tax roll to complete the project it comes from this grant, and that doesn’t have that much of an impact on taxpayers. The pool of money from beyond the county is not felt quite so individually, and that’s a huge advantage to taxpayers when the village and town achieve these grants.”