ALBANY COUNTY — A draft of Albany County’s shared services plan recommends consolidating the Berne Highway Department with the Albany County Department of Public Works. The draft does not include a plan touted earlier by the county executive and Knox supervisor for Knox’s highway department to share a facility with the county DPW.

The state-required county plan, which was composed by two think tanks — the Rockefeller Institute and The Benjamin Center — states that Berne and the county have agreed to move forward with such a proposal, and that a consolidation of Berne’s highway department with the county DPW could save the municipalities at least $151,000 annually.

“I would like to see where they’re going to save it,” said Berne Highway Superintendent Randy Bashwinger, of the proposed savings. He told The Enterprise that the proposed merger is politically fueled.

Berne Supervisor Kevin Crosier and the rest of the town board, all Democrats, voted in April to conduct a study on consolidation. The study has yet to begin.

Bashwinger, a Republican who has clashed with Crosier before, said the departments are too different to consolidate, with Berne using different materials and equipment to maintain both dirt and paved roads and repairing equipment in-house rather than sending it to the county headquarters in Voorheesville.

Although the proposal states that the two municipalities “must be mindful” of their employees, Bashwinger said he is concerned for his workers’ jobs. He is also concerned about sending workers out of town should they be under county employment — he and two other highway workers volunteer for Helderberg Ambulance, and five workers are members of the local fire department, and would be unable to answer calls if they are not in Berne.

Crosier told The Enterprise that he “absolutely” feels that a consolidation would benefit the town, describing having two highway departments in the area as wasteful. He projects a 20-percent savings in town taxes should a consolidation take place.

Merger redux

In 2006, Crosier and Michael Breslin, then the Albany County executive, proposed a similar plan, which they said would be the first in the state to merge a town highway department with a county DPW.  A report put together by Berne and Albany County outlined $600,000 in savings. Highway workers raised strong objections, including losing control of money and services. Ultimately, the four town council members at the time did not back the 2006 plan.

Berne’s highway garage sits less than five miles away from one of the county’s garages. Knox’s highway garage is less than a mile from another county garage; other county locations include, Westerlo, Rensselaerville, and New Scotland.

“We’re going to be the first,” said Crosier, of the towns to consolidate with the county, adding that other towns would likely follow suit to save money.

He added that highway workers would not lose their jobs or have to work elsewhere in the county, instead describing such a consolidation as the workers operating under the same insurance, union, and building. He added that the town would then have access to county resources such as additional employees when needed and an engineering department to consult.

“When we consolidate, the same guys will be driving the same trucks on almost the same plow routes,” said Crosier. “The only difference will be their uniform and their paycheck.”

Crosier added that the workers from the town are already sent to other areas of the county, a practice described by Bashwinger before as inter-municipal agreements to share services without county oversight.

He added that the continuing of efforts to share workers and equipment among towns would not produce the same dramatic cost-cutting effect as consolidation.

“We can’t do the same thing year after year and expect a different result,” said Crosier.

Excluded?

Bashwinger was one of the few people to speak at a public hearing Monday — the day before the state-set Aug. 1 deadline to send the draft to the county legislature. At the hearing, held at county headquarters in the city of Albany, Bashwinger had asked a panel of county officials and members of the Rockefeller Institute why town supervisors and mayors were invited as panel members, but not highway superintendents.

The state-mandated process for developing a shared-services plan in counties across New York requires the county executive create a panel of municipal leaders. The executive could also invite school district or Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) representatives, or representatives of special improvement districts.

At the hearing, the Rockefeller Institute president Jim Malatras responded that a limited amount of time to conduct the study before the Aug. 1 deadline meant they were unable to meet with highway superintendents.

The hearing included very little detail on the proposed plan, with the panel explaining that its purpose was to gather last-minute ideas from the public.

At the hearing, Bashwinger said he didn’t believe consolidation would be effective, with Knox Highway Superintendent Gary Salisbury and Knox Supervisor Vasilios Lefkaditis voicing their agreement.

Malatras told The Enterprise on Tuesday that the concerns voiced at the hearing led the panel to add an additional sentence in the released draft: “There have been many concerns raised about the respective workforces, which both the County and Town must be mindful of.”

What’s next

The hearing was the first of three, with the second being held on Aug. 7 in Colonie and the third in Bethlehem on Aug. 29. With the draft now submitted to the county legislature, a final vote by the county executive's panel is due by Sept. 15. If the legislature approves the draft, it will be presented to the public a month later.

Other aspects of the plan include the county creating a formal shared equipment program memorandum of understanding in order for municipalities and school districts to share equipment, something that towns have been doing for some time on their own.

There is also a proposed plan to share specialty personnel among municipalities, something some town supervisors and highway superintendents had expressed interest in before.

No Knox-county garage

One item not included in the draft was a proposal for a building to be shared by the Knox Highway Department — its garage is in need of repairs and renovation — and the Albany County DPW.

“To me, it’s a no-brainer, to consolidate two facilities into one and have overall savings,” Albany county Executive Daniel Mccoy told The Enterprise in March.

Supervisor Lefkaditis had said that, as a panel member, he had submitted the proposal to be considered. He emailed Malatras asking why it was excluded in the draft upon learning of its absence, he told The Enterprise on Tuesday.

Lefkaditis said he would still support participating in the current plan, but that he sees few benefits for smaller towns like Knox and that the plan appears to help larger towns more.

He said he would only support a shared building should it be subsidized by the county, and did not want to put money into repairs on the current garage, saying it will need to be rebuilt entirely.

The town is currently in the process applying to spend a $100,000 Climate Smart Communities grant, which it obtained through the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority by completing four conservation measures ahead of other towns.

Councilwoman Amy Pokorny, who headed the grant initiative and who is running against Lefkaditis for the supervisor’s post, told The Enterprise that her committee is first looking to conduct an energy audit in November or December of this year to determine what the grant should fund. She said facilities being considered are the highway garage, transfer station, and the town park’s maintenance building.

Pokorny noted that, after speaking with the town’s highway workers, she learned that the town has very different needs, such as doing repairs in-house, than the county, which may make a shared facility unfeasible.

“There’s a need for a highway department to have a workshop area,” said Pokorny.

Lefkaditis said he does not think the $100,000 grant should be used on the highway garage unless it funded a complete reconstruction of the building. Instead, he advocated for using it set up a solar array in town for municipal use.

Pokorny said that she was unaware if the grant would fund the array.

Malatras said that Lefkaditis’s proposal for a building to be shared by Knox and the county was not included in the draft because it did not have the same shared support that a study of the Berne consolidation did.

“It wasn’t fully cooked,” he said, describing it as an idea that was raised but not fully seen through.

He noted that the final draft could have different components, with more ideas included as the public hearings and the legislative review take place.

Updated and clarified on Aug. 2, 2017: Comments from Amy Pokorny on the possibility of using grant money for a solar array were added. Also, while the Berne supervisor in April had said the town would use the Rockefeller Institute for the town study, we took out that reference since no contract has been set. We also clarified that it is the county executive’s panel, not the county legislature, that must vote on the plan by Sept. 15.