Photo by Elizabeth Izzo
The Plattsburgh City School District Board of Education will meet Tuesday to weigh an offer from the City of Plattsburgh that may see the Webb Island Footbridge repaired as early as this spring.
PLATTSBURGH | The Plattsburgh City School District Board of Education has set a special meeting Tuesday to consider a deal that could lead to the repair of the Webb Island Footbridge as early as this spring.
The special meeting follows a unanimous decision by the Plattsburgh Common Council last Thursday to respond to an ownership and repair agreement offered by the district with a counteroffer of their own.
The school board will weigh the city’s offer March 19.
The board will convene at 5:30 p.m. in the Duken Building on Broad Street. A two-hour executive session is anticipated, and the public portion of the meeting is expected to start at roughly 7:30 p.m.
The Webb Island Footbridge has been closed to pedestrians since November 2017, after an engineering report deemed the structure unsafe to use.
THE CITY’S DEAL
The council’s offer is nearly identical to the district’s, with some tweaks designed to further protect the city.
Under the council’s terms, the district will be responsible for repairing the bridge using up to $400,000 in state funding secured by state Sen. Betty Little (R-Queensbury).
The council has also asked that the district use a portion of that funding to pay an engineer to work on behalf of the city, someone that would be responsible for reviewing design and repair plans.
The City of Plattsburgh no longer has a qualified engineer on staff to review those plans. The city’s Engineering Department was abolished by the mayor and council in July 2017, and councilors were hesitant to have the city foot the bill for an outside engineer.
The district would also be responsible for securing an updated land easement from New York state to operate the bridge on Webb Island. The existing easement expired in 2008.
After the bridge is repaired, the city may, or may not, ultimately take ownership of the structure.
If any portion of the bridge is deemed irreparable by one of the engineers, the two entities would be able to terminate the agreement and abandon the project.
“Yes, school board, we like your proposal,” Councilor Michael Kelly (Ward 2) said last week. “But we’d also like to see the protection of knowing we can pull away.”
If ownership is transferred to the city, $50,000 in state funding secured by Assemblyman Billy Jones (D-Chateaugay) would be given to the city “for any purpose within the city’s sole discretion,” along with an additional $12,500 from the school district.
This payment would be given to the city with the expectation that the city would be responsible for maintaining, and eventually demolishing, the bridge.
Separate from this agreement, the Clinton County Legislature has also committed $5,000 per year for the next 10 years to the city, a total of $50,000, to help the city maintain the bridge.
“I think we have a good resolution,” Councilor Rachelle Armstrong (Ward 1), who introduced the city’s offer, said last week.
DISTRICT MIXED; BOARD MEMBER PROPOSES CITY BE NIXED
The district’s response to the city’s offer has been mixed.
Superintendent Jay Lebrun said that after seeing the council’s deliberations, he felt encouraged.
But school board member Fred Wachtmeister railed against the council’s proposal, painting the terms of the agreement as being vague, at times contradictory, and creating “burdensome and unfair requirements on the repair process.”
He believes the council’s agreement is designed to ultimately leave the district with ownership of the bridge.
Wachtmeister has had it with what he describes as “obstructionist” dealings with the city laden with “stalling tactics,” and wants to cut the local government out of the mix — at least for now.
“The district should take upon itself the repair and maintenance hoping that some future mayor and council will do the right thing and simply take ownership,” Wachtmeister said in an email Saturday.
Under his proposal, the district would keep all of the state funding and repair the bridge, the district would ask the county legislature for aid to maintain the structure, and the bridge would be open to the public by this September.
Wachtmeister intends to introduce his proposal Tuesday.
