Remember Old Crompond Road? The road that was either closed or restricted to one-way traffic for the 18 months it took the town to replace the 106-year-old culvert that collapsed in July 2023 after a hurricane.
Are we about to repeat that history for four other roads?
In a recent email to Town Board members, Highway Superintendent Dave Paganelli identified culverts on four roads, Whitehill, Old Kitchawan, Ridge and Brookside, in need of repair BEFORE they collapsed altogether and would have to be closed. (Old Kitchawan Road is already closed.)
Mr. Paganelli asked the Town Board to direct the Engineering Department to begin developing plans to replace each of the culverts. (The Town Board added the expense of a second in-house professional engineer in the 2025 budget specifically so staff could design future infrastructure projects.) But when I suggested to my colleagues that the culvert issue highlighted why we needed a real capital plan ─ one that would provide us with a carefully thought-out roadmap for addressing our many infrastructure needs ─ I got no takers.
Supervisor Lachterman dismissed Mr. Paganelli’s warning about the potential road closures and said that the highway superintendent was looking at a 10-15 year horizon. He also attributed the closing of Old Crompond Road to the hurricane, forgetting that he was on the Town Board as far back as 2016 when board members were advised that the culvert needed to be replaced.
Town Board minutes from 2016, 2017, 2019 and 2022 document that multiple Town Boards knew that replacing the Old Crompond Road culvert was a high priority; the culvert was declared “failed” as far back as 2008. Board members also knew that in 2018 the town failed to get a state grant to replace the culvert and instead kept applying Band-Aids to shore up the culvert ─ until it finally collapsed in 2023.
In 2008 the cost to replace the culvert was estimated at $600,000, or $920,227 in 2026 dollars. Not counting what was spent between 2008 and 2023 on Band-Aids, it cost taxpayers $1,494,000 in 2025 to replace the culvert.
Yorktown has a capital plan – sort of. It begins on page 136 of the 2026 budget. Take a look. The problem is the “plan” is nothing more than a wish list of ideas without any attempt to prioritize projects based on need or how those projects would be funded.
What Yorktown needs instead is a REAL capital plan ─ one that would impose a discipline that would keep the Town Board focused on the town’s priority projects and avoid the all-too-easy pitfall of using the excess funds in our fund balance on unplanned projects or short term goals.
Which projects should have greater priority: financing a visible sensory garden at Granite Knolls or replacing an invisible culvert that keeps a road open? A new stand-alone senior center or upgrading our existing buildings in order to preserve them and reduce recurring maintenance and energy costs?
A REAL capital plan would also require the Town Board to make choices ─ difficult choices ─ on how to use the excess funds in the fund balance.
The 2026 budget uses a $1.5 million transfer from the fund balance to achieve a one year zero percent tax increase – roughly what it would cost to replace the culvert on Whitehill Road that would last for decades. And in December 2025, following a surprise November presentation, the board gave the green light to withdraw $909,606 from the fund balance for a project that was not on the capital plan.
A real capital plan would also:
Provide a framework for town staff to prepare designs for priority projects so that when grant opportunities opened up, we would have shovel-ready projects, which would significantly increase our chances of being awarded the grant.
Save taxpayer money in the long run by not resorting to short term, ineffective Band-Aids that only eventually result in more costly replacements.
When the 2025 audit is completed by the end of the month, Town Board members should know the size of the unallocated fund balance as of Dec. 31, 2025, and how much “excess” revenue might conservatively be available for capital projects.
It’s politically easy to say that a project will be funded by a grant, not taxpayer dollars. But how long does the town postpone a project waiting for a possible grant opportunity? Or what happens when the grant application is rejected, not once but twice? Does the town shelve the project or bite the bullet and use excess fund balance to finance a priority project?
Being a Town Board member requires balancing the competing needs and desires of 36,000 residents spread out over five hamlets while at the same time controlling tax increases and being a responsible steward of the town’s financial reserves. Not an easy job.
But that’s the job we were elected to do. So let’s get down to work. Let’s sit down, roll up our sleeves, reach a consensus on priority projects, and come up with a capital plan – a REAL capital plan.
Susan Siegel is a member of the Yorktown Town Board.
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