Members of the Delaware County Board of Supervisors got to see the progress on Department of Public Works building projects after their meeting on Wednesday, Sept. 28.
The first stop was the three-story building in the village of Delhi that will house the county Department of Public Works staff and the Planning and Watershed Affairs department. There will also be informational technology rooms to house servers.*
The first floor will house the county Planning and Watershed Affairs departments, Jeff Francisco of Delaware Engineering said.
Delaware Engineering D.P.C., Keystone Associates and Hesnor Engineering Associates are the engineering firms tasked with designing the three DPW sites and buildings, DPW Commissioner Susan McIntyre said.
The second floor will house a majority of the DPW staff, and the Weights and Measures department, Francisco said. The third floor will house the engineers from DPW, storage for the DPW and the Information Technology staff, he said.
“This is the best room in the whole building,” Francisco said of the engineers’ office, which looked out onto Main Street in Delhi.
Jim Thomas, DPW senior civil engineer said he was looking forward to working in the office.
Walton Town Supervisor Joe Cetta jokingly asked if the project was on schedule and under budget.
Dave Ohman, president of Delaware Engineering answered, “If we started yesterday, yes.”
The project has seen several setbacks due to supply chain issues and a lack of workers, Ohman said. Some supplies that were hard to come by, including nails and screws, were a surprise, he said.
McIntyre said the building, which still needs its elevator, ceilings and floors installed and its electric hooked up, should be open by December.
A majority of the supervisors who went on the tour only had time to visit the first site, including Mark Tuthill of Delhi, Art Merrill or Colchester, Dennis Valente of Davenport, Bill Layton of Tompkins, Wayland “Bud” Gladstone of Andes, John Kosier of Stamford and Eric Wilson of Sidney.
However, four other supervisors — Wayne Marshfield of Hamden, Cetta, George Haynes of Kortright and Tina Molé of Bovina — boarded a bus to travel to the next DPW site in Bloomville. The bus was lent to the department from the county Veterans Service Agency.
At the Bloomville site, Francisco outlined what would be housed at the site. The garage will hold nine sand-and-salt plow trucks, will have a drive-on truck lift and will house the guiderail and sign making department.
McIntyre said the building will also have radiant in-floor heat, offices and a break room. Also at the site, there will be a salt shed, which has been built, and a fuel island, she said.
“It’s come a long way in the last six months,” she said.
The Bloomville construction site has also had a shortage of labor with only three to four people working on the site. She said she hoped the building would be open by August of next year and it would be the last winter the DPW trucks would be at the Page Avenue site in Delhi.
The tour returned to Delhi, where Marshfield and Cetta exited the bus. Cetta continued on the tour to the third construction site on Neale Road in Walton. McIntyre said the building there should be complete by August 29, 2023.
*this information was updated Sept. 29.
