Town Board to meet Wednesday to hear budget presentation
DELMAR – The Bethlehem highway superintendent told town officials earlier this month that the department is barely “staying afloat” as the town continues negotiating its 2025 budget.
At the Town Board’s special meeting last Tuesday, Highway Superintendent Marc Dorsey told board members the department needs more funding to purchase heavy machinery and retain staff to keep up with the needs of the town’s growing population.
“We are utilizing every bit of manpower we have, we are utilizing every bit of equipment we have, and the town is still growing and we’re not keeping up,” Dorsey told board members.
Town Comptroller Michael Cohen did not have the same concerns. He told Spotlight News the highway department often extracts a larger portion of collected property taxes than other departments, adding that the department’s budget is projected to go up from $7.4 million in 2024 to $7.6 million in 2025, a 2.8% increase.
But Dorsey, who has served as highway superintendent since 2020, said this increase is not enough to help the department efficiently do its job, which includes purchasing new equipment for major projects like sidewalk replacements and road pavements, in addition to year-round yard waste collection, fall leaf pickup and snow removal.
“We actually have to save money in order to buy new equipment,” Dorsey told board members.
Dorsey said the department, which uses street sweepers, dozers and other heavy machinery to clean up the streets and roads, spends approximately $1.3 million on equipment each year to maintain a replacement schedule for aging tools. However, he said budget restraints have put a toll on this schedule, and, as a result, the department recently downsized its plow truck fleet from 22 to 18.
Dorsey also said the department has struggled to retain staff as the town continues to grow. He argued the department is not able to offer more competitive wages than many private sector employers, saying most of his employees can’t afford to live in Bethlehem. Currently, Dorsey said the department has four vacancies, one of which was created by the retirement of a senior-level equipment operator, leaving 54 of the department’s 58 positions filled.
Mary Tremblay-Glassman, director of the town’s human resources department, said it’s been especially hard finding new equipment operators for the highway department, as many do not have the proper training or a commercial driver’s license to operate heavy machinery. These concerns are why town leaders including Dorsey and Tremblay-Glassman have proposed a new Safety Coordinator Position that would be tasked with training new hires to become equipment operators, including helping them obtain their commercial driver’s license on the job instead of paying thousands of dollars for them to attend driving school. If approved by the town board, the position would go into effect on Jan. 1, 2025.
“It’s a big cost savings,” Tremblay-Glassman said. “The average CDL training is somewhere between $3,000 to $4,000 dollars per person. Giving someone the opportunity to train on the job is a way to coach and develop your employees, and give them an opportunity to get the higher paying positions, so that’s a way that we think we can retain people.”
Town Supervisor David VanLuven said at the special meeting that the town reduced its workforce by 10% in 2008 due to the economic recession, adding that the town has not recovered its numbers since then.
Dorsey was one of several department heads who spoke to the Town Board a day before the town unveiled its 2025-2029 Capital Plan, which outlines capital projects the town plans to prioritize as well as their tentative completion timeline and funding sources.
The capital plan expects to spend $61.3 million over the next five years, an increase from the $54.5 million tentative capital plan that was released for 2020-2024. While this plan is not binding, town officials said it will play an important role in guiding spending decisions before the town’s preliminary budget is negotiated and presented at the Oct. 23 Town Board meeting.
In other town news, the parks and recreation department shared plans to renovate the Bethlehem town park pool complex, a construction project department leaders said would cost around $5 million and that they hope to complete by May 2025.
