North Salem weighs in on CHIPS funding issues

NORTH SALEM, N.Y. - It could be a rough road ahead for North Salem and other municipalities if they don’t see an increase in state funding for local street and highway repairs and maintenance.

Gov. Kathy Hochul unveiled her executive budget for fiscal year 2025-2026 on Tuesday, Jan. 21. 

In a subsequent press release, she highlighted Albany’s continued commitment to investing in “road, bridge, and safety improvements,” including $1.3 billion in the state’s capital plan to “repair local roads and bridges through the Consolidated Local Street and Highway Improvement Program (CHIPS), Pave Our Potholes (POP) initiative, and more.”

In FY 2024/2025, the entire CHIPS program was funded to the tune of $539.3 million. 

According to Supervisor Warren Lucas, North Salem’s current share of CHIPS funding is $143,387.

Which is enough to pave one mile of our 42 miles of towns road, he pointed out.

If the governor’s budget passes as is, that amount would remain the same.

The town was also allocated $33,318.32 in 2024-2025 through the PAVE-NY program, administered through the state’s Department of Transportation (NYSDOT); $28,797.82 in Extreme Weather Recovery (EWR) funds; and $22,212.21 in Pave Our Potholes (POP) money.

Altogether, that added up to $227.715.90.

The town spends between $400,000 and $500,000 a year to pave its local roads, of which there are 42 miles in total, Lucas said.

Normally, roads should last between 10 to 12 years, but with all the wear and tear lately, some of their lifespans have shrunk to approximately six years.

“It doesn’t sound like a lot, but instead of having to pave three or four miles of road each year, you have add another mile a year just to keep up,” he said.

There are three state highways in North Salem -- Routes 116, 121, and 22 – and three county roads – Bloomer, Hardscrabble, and June.

“Our understanding is that the governor’s budget did not increase local funding in 2025-2026, but did provide extra money to the state DOT,” Lucas said.

North Salem is part of the agency’s Region 8, aka the lower Hudson Valley.

Region 8 covers 5,963 miles of state highways and 1,143 bridges in a 4,295-square-mile area and includes 13 cities, 75 villages and 107 towns in Westchester, Ulster, Rockland, Putnam, Orange, Dutchess, and Columbia counties.

“I can tell you that NYSDOT’s Region 8 needs as much money as it can get to fix the conditions on many of the state highways,” Lucas said, pointing out that North Salem “literally gets thousands of cars, many from out of state” driving through it each day.

The massive traffic volume is an equal-opportunity destroyer; it doesn’t matter if the road belongs to the state, country, or the town, he said.

A startling statistic: New York’s crumbling roads and potholes cost drivers $8.7 billion -- an average of $715 -- in repairs, fuel and wear and tear in 2023, according to a report by Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives (TRIP), a private, nonprofit organization that researches, evaluates, and distributes economic and technical data on surface transportation issues.

The report used state and federal data to figure out the economic impact that poorly maintained roads have on drivers in urban centers from Buffalo to New York City.

When congestion-related delays and crashes that were related to roadway safety are factored in, that tab rises to $36.7 billion, according to TRIP, which blamed road conditions.

It also reported that in 2023 about 43 percent of the state’s major roads were in poor to mediocre condition and 16.7 percent of local bridges were in fair or poor condition, which 9 percent of those being rated structurally deficient.

Costs Skyrocket 

Bearing in mind that costs have skyrocketed and the U.S. inflation rate – as of December 2024 – is 2.9 percent, not increasing CHIPS funding will adversely impact local highway departments and the communities they serve, transportation advocates say.
CHIPS was established in 1981 “to provide state funds to municipalities to support the construction and repair of highways, bridges, highway-railroad crossings, and other facilities that are not on the state highway system,” according to DOT.

In order to be eligible for CHIPS reimbursement, a capital project must be undertaken by a municipality for highway-related purposes and have a service life of 10 years or more with normal maintenance or compliance with certain exceptions.

Hochul had actually cut CHIPS funding in the last budget go-round. Local highway officials fought back and the money was restored in the “One House” budget.

North Salem Highway Superintendent Ward Hanaburgh is planning to take part in the “Local Roads are Essential,” advocacy day in Albany in early March, Lucas said.

“No matter how much money they give us in CHIPS, it’s not going to be enough because of all the out-of-town commuter traffic on our roads,” Lucas said.

Hochul Responds 

Responding to the outcry, a Hochul spokesperson issued the following statement:

“Throughout her tenure, Gov. Hochul has made transformative investments in infrastructure projects across New York. In the coming months, the governor looks forward to working with the legislature to pass much-needed infrastructure funding, so the state can continue the work necessary to keep New Yorkers safe on our roads and bridges.”

After unveiling her $252 billion FY 2025-2026 executive budget, Hochul said it includes “investments to support New Yorkers – without raising income taxes.”

Pocketbook areas highlighted included affordability, housing, crime-fighting, economic growth, education, climate change, health care, and transportation.

Besides the $1.3 billion for CHIPS, POP, and other initiatives, the new plan included investments in road, bridge, and safety and commuting improvements:

· $6.9 billion for the New York State Department of Transportation’s capital plan.

· $3 billion in state funding to support the MTA’s proposed $68.4 billion 2025-2029 Capital Program

· $344 million for Upstate transit systems and $588 million for non-MTA Downstate transit systems.

· $25 million for planning and design of improvements to Hudson Valley rail service, working to shave as much as 15 minutes of commute times for certain trips.

Once the governor has submitted a spending proposal outlining anticipated income and expenses, legislative committees open it up to public review and comment. Joint state Senate and Assembly hearings are now underway. The final budget has to be approved by April 1.

Highway Superintendents ‘Shocked’ 

The New York State Association of Town Superintendents of Highways (NYSAOTSOH) said in late January that its members were “shocked” that Hochul’s FY 2025-2026 proposal “contained no new funding for town highway and bridges despite continued explosive growth in construction and supply costs.”

The organization pointed out that local municipalities own and maintain 87 percent of New York’s 97,000 miles of highways. Just 13 percent of the state’s highways are maintained by the state DOT, it said.

Without increased funding, many highway departments will have to defer scheduled road projects, which could lead to further deterioration and higher repair costs, highway officials said.

The NYSAOTSOH also noted that in Hochul’s recent State of the State address, she promised to “restore the purchasing power” of the DOT’s capital plan to “address rising construction costs.”

She followed through on that with “a large increase” for the DOT’s roads and bridges, but no hike for town highways and bridges, it said.

NYSAOTSOH president Matt Mustico, the City of Elmira’s highway superintendent, called that “stunning and deeply disappointing” considering that towns are “struggling to keep pace with the very same cost increases.”

His dismay was echoed by James Dussing, the organization’s first vice president and the Town of Clarence’s highway superintendent.

“The government needs to ensure public assets are properly maintained. This budget as proposed fails to meet that standard. We will ask our state legislators to once again step in and provide the resources we need at the local level to guarantee that our highways and bridges are safe and well-maintained,” he said.

Desperate Appeal 

In a Dec. 11, 2024, letter to Hochul, both the NYSAOTSOH and the New York State County Highway Superintendents Association (NYSCHSA) called for an increase of $250 million in CHIPS funding alone.

“Alarmingly, the condition of our local systems is worsening for several reasons,” wrote Mustico and NYSCHSA president Jeffrey Smith, blaming the deterioration on “an unprecedented spike in inflation over the past few years.”

The rising costs of construction materials and labor have “significantly eroded” the DOT capital plan’s purchasing power, they said, estimating “that the equivalent of one whole year of funding for the local program under the plan has been lost to inflation.”

Smith and Mustico also claimed that many projects “originally programmed within our aid levels and local budgets will be deferred or canceled, further compromising the functionality and safety of our transportation system.”

Conditions of roads and bridges can only be expected to continue to decline, contributing to higher repair costs “down the road,” they added.

“$10 billion is calculated as being required to improve local bridges outside NYC for 2023; and $6.3 billion of that is needed just for counties that own most of the local bridges,” they wrote, adding that “local pavement conditions are suffering as well.”

New York’s “massive local highway system supports economic development, employment in the construction industries, local commercial sectors like agriculture and tourism, and important pathways to vital public services,” they reminded the governor.

According to Mustico and Smith, the “vast majority” of New York’s 1,600 municipalities receive no federal highway assistance.
This means that the bulk of federal aid is directed to the state system and larger projects of statewide “significance.”

Reducing public investment in local roads increases the burden on local taxpayers, impacts the cost of living, and threatens “the viability of home ownership particularly in the rural, lower-income areas of the state,” they asserted.

Copied on the letter were DOT Commissioner Marie Therese Dominguez; Blake G. Washington, director of the state’s Division of the Budget; Allison Bradley, assistant secretary for transportation; and Janet Ho, the DOT’s assistant commissioner for finance and integrated modal services.