Cost-cutting experiment costs taxpayers

WEST SENECA, N.Y. (WIVB) - Did a costly mistake waste your taxpayers dollars in the south towns?

It was supposed to be a cheap fix, but some roadwork in West Seneca apparently backfired and now it's going to cost a bundle.

Town highway crews are ripping up Bullis Road in West Seneca.

Christine Grys noted, "It must be costing them a fortune."

Just last week the town treated the road with a chip seal process. The cost?

Town Highway Superintendent Matt English estimated, "I'm going to say about $15,000."

But some residents along Bullis Road, which runs on both sides of Route 400, didn't like it.

West Seneca Councilman Gene Hart said, "We received many, many complaints from the residents on Bullis Road. Both ends."

Hart says the idea was to save money by chip sealing, not just Bullis Road, but other roads, instead of repaving. But it didn't work.

"We're admitting a mistake was made," Hart said. "And we're going to repave the road for the residents on this street. Unfortunately that costs us money."

So all the work they did last week is being torn up to make way for a repaving job the town was trying to avoid in the first place.

"The paving's probably going to cost anywhere from $50,000 to $70,000," English said.

The town highway superintendent called the chip seal job an experiment, one-third the cost of milling and paving.

"If it worked, and the residents would have been happy and no complaints, we probably would have saved the town hundreds of thousands of dollars over a five, six year period maybe," English noted. But he acknowledged, "Yes it's costing taxpayers, but I think it's worth it. You have to take a chance and see if it's going to work."

Grys is grateful she'll have a freshly paved road, but she doesn't understand the complications and cost.

"A very big waste. They patched it. So I wonder how much that cost. And then they tried to fix it with just a stone road, and now they're redoing it all over again," Grys said.

English responded, "I'm not going to say it was wasting money because again, it was an experiment. If it would have worked we would have saved hundreds of thousands. It didn't work."

English says there isn't a lot of wiggle room with money. He says his paving budget is about $150,000 a year. His crews will start paving Bullis Road next week.