Seven highway superintendents back Slater for Assembly

Dear Editor,

As highway superintendents, our job is pretty straightforward: keep our roads safe, maintain the infrastructure our communities depend on and make every taxpayer dollar go as far as possible.

That is why we are supporting Assemblyman Matt Slater for re-election.

We work with Matt, and we have seen firsthand what he brings to the table. He answers the phone. He listens to the people actually doing the work. And when we tell him what our highway departments need, he goes to Albany and fights for it.

That's especially important right now.

The cost of paving and maintaining our roads has gone up dramatically. Asphalt, fuel, equipment, materials and labor all cost more. Every highway superintendent is being asked to do more with increasingly expensive resources.

One of the most important tools we have is CHIPS, which is the state funding that comes directly back to our communities to help pay for local road improvements.

For the past two years, Matt has stood with local highway superintendents and fought for more CHIPS funding. Both years, we secured a $50 million increase. This year, CHIPS reached a record $698.1 million, with approximately $1.4 billion in total state support for local highway programs.

For us, those aren't just numbers in an Albany budget.

That's asphalt. That's drainage work. That's another stretch of road we can pave. That's infrastructure we can repair before a small problem becomes an expensive one. And every additional state dollar we bring home is a dollar that doesn't have to come entirely from our local property taxpayers.

Matt has also been a strong partner when it comes to the roads the state is responsible for maintaining.

Anyone who drives around Northern Westchester and Putnam knows we need more investment in our state roads. Matt has worked directly with the Department of Transportation, local officials and our highway departments to push for projects and bring millions of dollars in state road improvements back to our region.

And he continues to push for more.

Matt was recently selected by Putnam County to serve on the Project Steering Committee for the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council's Northern Westchester East-West Corridors Study, which is looking at Routes 6, 35, 118 and 202. We share his goal of making sure that work results in actual projects and investments and not another study that sits on a shelf.

We don't measure a partnership by press releases. We measure it by whether someone shows up, listens and gets results.

Matt Slater has done that.

There isn't a Republican way or a Democratic way to pave a road. Our residents just want safe roads, reliable infrastructure and government at every level working together to get the job done.

That's the kind of partnership we've had with Assemblyman Matt Slater, and it's why we are proud to support him for another term in the New York State Assembly.

-Nick DeVito, Highway Superintendent, Town of Somers; Dave Paganelli, Highway Superintendent, Town of Yorktown; Mike Stern, Highway Superintendent, Town of Carmel; Rich Othmer, Highway Superintendent, Town of Kent; Mike Burdick, Highway Superintendent, Town of Southeast; Shawn Keeler, Highway Superintendent, Town of Putnam Valley; and Ed Foster Jr., Highway Superintendent, Town of Patterson