To the Editor:

Is the Berne superintendent of highways painting Saw Mill Road black? This is the euphemism used in civil engineering circles to describe throwing a quick asphalt overlay on deficient, neglected infrastructure on election years to buy votes.

Mr. [Randy] Bashwinger has simply neglected the condition of the town’s infrastructure. He just throws money around doing very poorly planned and executed overlays because they are very visible and look like he is getting things done.

In reality, the vendor is left to decide how to pave over the existing deficient highway infrastructure where no attempt has been made to correct grades, highway widths, or cross slopes. These irregularities result in wildly varying asphalt depths and dangerous surface features.

Berne has failed to take advantage of subsidized engineering and survey services through the New York Consolidated Highway Improvement Program, known as CHIPs. Programs like Bridge NY have also been ignored.

But Mr. Bashwinger finds time to sell shingles and try to get jobs for his buddies from other highway superintendents? Paying this guy with your tax dollars is ridiculous.

Why not take advantage of free engineering and survey through the NY CHIPs funding? Why not put together plans for an engineer-designed project to address the more complex town road challenges?

CHIPs funding is regularly rolled over year to year, so money is available to spend, say 10 percent or 15 percent, of a project’s cost on engineering and survey. Plans should be put together first and then finances approved by the town board when spending hundreds of thousands of your tax dollars.

Instead, everything is just thrown together. And things like construction specifications, inspection, guide-rail safety, hydraulic capacity, safety etc, are not carefully considered. I predict this will cause another catastrophe one day.

The large, crumbling concrete box culvert at the intersection of Saw Mill and Long roads (carrying Saw Mill) is severely deteriorated (photos attached). The highway subbase is subsiding into the stream, leaving pronounced, abrupt sags in the highway surface that have existed for years.

This large box culvert carries a lot of water in rain events. Changing its shape or capacity without an engineer’s recommendation could be disastrous. Just overlaying it would be stupid.

This failing culvert should be evaluated by an engineer as part of a staged, engineer-designed Saw Mill Road rehabilitation project. Fix the failing stream crossings, widen areas too narrow to accommodate guide-rail systems, address poorly drained areas of highway embankment, and then worry about an overlay. This looks like less progress, but it is an investment in safety and the integrity of the town’s infrastructure. 

Saw Mill Road also has a severe and unnecessary, chronic flooding problem at Ricketts’ Pond where that deteriorated and neglected concrete culvert has been plugged for years (photos posted online with this letter). That segment of highway is very near the same elevation as the water. 

What could go wrong? It’s ridiculous. The highway profile clearly needs to be higher than the water elevation and an adequately sized and maintained culvert pipe is necessary there. An engineer could quickly propose a new, economical profile and a properly sized and installed culvert.

Chronic highway flooding is a hazard there. Hitting 10 inches of water unexpectedly at 45 miles per hour can destabilize a vehicle. Soaked cars drip water all over the sometimes-freezing highway. This creates black ice when there is no precipitation anywhere, so no sand or salt trucks are out.

Eventually a vehicle will lose control on that ice and be impaled by the seriously dangerous and seriously defective guide-rail hazard there. This is another “accident” waiting to happen.

There are areas where the highway subbase is not adequately drained, the surface is deeply rutted, and the highway embankment has failed. Overlaying those areas without consulting an engineer is a waste of tax dollars. Those areas should be evaluated by an engineer for a recommended treatment.  

The highway section is not of adequate width to accommodate guide-rail systems. Those areas where guide rail is necessary should be widened as recommended by an engineer and guide-rail systems that are not a hazard, that actually function, should be designed by an engineer. 

The existing guide-rail systems on Saw Mill Road are literally roadside hazards. I designed guide-rail systems for decades and reviewed guide-rail plans for town, county, state, and interstate projects. I can say with complete certainty that the guide-rail systems on Saw Mill Road are not functional and are roadside hazards.

Mr. Bashwinger and the town clerk were both made aware of this in 2016 and again in 2019 in defect notices that illegally disappeared!

Then, while looking over the field conditions at Saw Mill Road, I discovered that a large-diameter culvert carrying Long Road (at the intersection with Saw Mill) is in imminent danger of catastrophic failure.

This is a big culvert: You can walk in it. It carries a lot of water. I’ve seen it very full. This is a dangerous situation, so I provided a Notice of Highway Defect to the superintendent. It will probably illegally disappear as they often do.  

Its most likely failure scenario is that the existing, loose, distorted sheet-metal panels would plug the culvert barrel during a significant rain event. That would impound water and potentially overtop the highway and wash it out. That’s how people end up dying in raging streams!

The best first step in addressing the town’s liability for substandard and dangerous highway features is to show that they have been identified and prioritized for correction by an engineer. If it can be demonstrated that the town proactively identified the issues and is doing all that is practically possible to correct them in a logical order approved by an engineer, liability is greatly reduced, and safety is greatly improved.

Instead, dangerous defects are ignored, and notices of defect illegally disappear. Berne needs to go in a new direction and, to accomplish that, Mr. Bashwinger needs to go!

Joel Willsey

East Berne

Editor’s note: Berne Highway Superintendent Randy Bashwinger declined to respond to Joel Willsey’s assertions in an email to The Enterprise, writing instead, “Can you please give this guy a job with you [sic] rag paper. He is a [sic] a**hat and for 10 yrs you guys still print his garbage. I won’t respond to anything Joel writes. He is right it’s election yr and he will be on his game. Please tell him keep writing he helps me with my election he is my best campaign help. His family must be proud of him.”

Bashwinger is seeking re-election on the Republican and Conservative lines. Willsey is a Democrat.

The New York State Department of Transportation declined to comment on the condition of the Long Road culvert, referring The Enterprise to Berne officials. No member of the town board, each of whom were previously given a copy of Willsey’s defect notice, could be reached.