KINGSTON – Ulster County Executive Michael Hein announced on Thursday that the “Building a Better Ulster County” program will be expanded to include additional projects that will cost nothing more than what was originally earmarked for a $15 million expenditure.
That funding is going for repairs, upgrades and replacement of county roads and bridges.
Hein said the additional projects are being made possible by “close project oversight, leveraged procurement and construction efficiencies” by the county Public Works Department.
“This year we saved and saved and saved leading up to this so we could make the largest one time investment in Ulster County’s infrastructure redoing roads and bridges and getting all the way up caught up,” Hein said. “So many places around the state and around the nation continually lag in maintaining roads and bridges. This is a huge investment that we have made – $15 million, all in an environment where we lowered property taxes.”
The resurfacing of a 2.3 million stretch of Glenford-Wittenberg Road in Woodstock is the first additional project made possible by the cost savings in the initiative. That repaving is expected to take about two weeks.
This year, seven bridges will be repaired or replaced and 51.8 miles of county roads will be reconstructed and repaved under the county program.
The repaving projects include 13.9 miles of Lucas Avenue from Route 209 to the City of Kingston. In total, the county will be repaving/resurfacing over 89 miles of county roads this year. That is 20 percent of all county roads.
