More than half a year after a temporary home was secured for it, the Hurley highway department still doesn’t have a facility adequate for its operations. Highway superintendent Mike Shultis blames the town board and administration, while town supervisor Melinda McKnight puts the blame on Shultis.
Between the finger-pointing, the temporary garage on Basin Road lacks a backup generator. Only one bay is large enough to fit a truck, and the ceiling is not high enough for a lift.
And finally the rented facility is not in the Town of Hurley, but pays property taxes to the next-door Town of Kingston.
The Hurley building department’s condemnation of the previous highway facility on Dug Hill Road necessitated the move. Shultis doesn’t argue that the building conditions there were not dire. He said its condemned status has prevented him from access needed equipment stored at the former facility.
The Basin Road site into which the highway department has moved was formerly used by a coffee-roasting firm which illegally built a box within the structure, limiting space with which to work, according to Shultis. The space must be returned to the way it was before the highway department moves out.
That condition makes removing the box cost-prohibitive.
“They didn’t even have any input from me,” Shultis said. “We had offered up a couple of options to keep everything on town property. We would have taken the existing Quonset hut [on Dug Hill Road] and put spray insulation in there and brought it up to a usable structure. Or we would have used concrete blocks and built an extension off the existing garage, piped out the heat, and put a roof over top of that. We figured $150,000 to stay on the property there, but they turned us down.”
The Town of Hurley is in a state of political transition
Shultis maintained the Basin Road space made available in August was far from move-in ready. Facilities were the town’s responsibility, he said. The highway department is tasked with maintaining road safety.
The town hired a moving company in August to help Shultis and his crew set up shop on Basin Road.
“So one of the things we told them in August, the town board said to them, ‘Hey, not to worry, we will hire movers who will box everything up and bring it,’” said councilman Mike Boms, a Democrat now challenging McKnight for the supervisor’s post in this year’s town election. “So what happened was at the end of October, November, when the garage was not yet set up to be moved in, the movers came. And Mike [Shultis] was told by us that they would pack everything up and they would move everything over.
“Well, that wasn’t happening. They didn’t know what to pick, what to take, and so forth. And what they boxed up and brought over are things that shouldn’t have been brought over. Things like cones, things like lawnmowers, things that could have stayed back in the [old] garage there in storage.
“What needed to be packed over basically was the mechanics’ tools and all his things. But he couldn’t move because the compressor wasn’t set up yet. The electricity wasn’t set up yet for welding, and so forth.”
Finally, in mid-January, the compressor was set up.
“Still, the tubing for the compressor was not put in yet. Plumbing was not finished yet, going through,” continued Boms. “What happened was that around mid-January, they finally got the move because they condemned the garage.”
Boms said deputy supervisor Peter Humphries had volunteered to do the retrofit work in the temporary garage “because he’s an expert on retrofitting garages because he was a manager of a race-car team.”
Humphries was tasked with installing lockers, shelving, the compressor, and possibly a generator.
Work didn’t commence until December, according to Boms.
Who’s responsible for what?
In February, Shultis invoiced the town for $14,000 labor related to move-in costs, which McKnight said was nothing more than unpacking boxes.
Shultis said it was much more than that. Wind was blowing through the eaves one December day. And to make things worse, the toilet was broken.
“All these things were discussed back in September, and they’re trying to make it look like I’m an obstructionist, and that the shop was ready to move into in October,” said Shultis. “And that’s just not true. Not with these issues.”
Shultis said his crew had to fix the bathroom and finish the installation of the compressor to make the space usable.
“Yes, it was available, but the mechanic could not work there. And that was the crux of the matter, the mechanic had to be in there,” Boms said. “The other guys, they could be there, but it doesn’t matter if they’re there or not, because they don’t stay in the garage at all. They go out on the road
They had to go in there and do the work. They spent like about four or five days working full-time in the garage to get it ready for the move, and that wasn’t their job. ”
The town board is in charge of all the buildings and grounds, including the highway garage. The town board is responsible.
What’s the plan now?
The money’s apparently there for a new structure. Previous two-term town supervisor John Perry said the town government had accumulated a $1.5-million reserve fund for a new town highway garage. Consulting engineers had recommended a location on town-owned land in back of the condemned Dug Hill garage. The structure could be built in stages to fit the needs of the highway department.
McKnight opposes that location. Mike Shultis claimed the town didn’t have a plan for what to do instead. The need for an appropriate town garage, he said, is acute.
“We have no place to store a quarter-million-dollar vacuum truck or the fire truck. They have to stay in a heated garage. We told them that they had to have a plan. You know, the devil’s always in the details,” Shultis said.
McKnight said Shultis’ crew had the time and resources to do the moving work. “There’s 54 miles of town road, and they have twelve people in the department. He has a $1.8-million budget. He has money in his budget,” she said. “At that point, there was no snow, and the paving plant was closed.”
McKnight also countered the contention that the garage condemnation was done to get Shultis to speed up the move.
“The fact is that on November 17, 2022 there was an arching event from the front of the electrical panel that required a visit from Central Hudson to take the power off the building because there was no main shutoff,” McKnight said. “Since I was sworn in as supervisor, I and the town board have been very concerned about the health and safety of the employees. Based on the conditions at the highway garage, it would have been irresponsible for us not to act swiftly so our employees are safe and can go home to their families at the end of each workday.
“If the highway superintendent is not concerned enough to work with the town board to get the highway department employees into a safe work environment, then the town board will go around him to ensure our workers are safe and protected.”
Methane problem?
Despite claims to the contrary, McKnight said there was no methane leaking into the old highway garage.
“I started January of 2018. I told the board that there was indoor air-quality problems at the garage, and I wanted testing done. And they didn’t do testing, and then finally they put a new methane monitoring system in. But they didn’t hook it to a computer. So if it registered methane, it would just reset.”
McKnight said a methane detector was setting false alarms due to its location over a drain that didn’t have a trap. A trap was installed, and the detector was moved. Problems solved, she said.
Unrelated nearby problems with the leachate system at the old landfill landed the town in trouble. McKnight said she inherited problems from the previous administration.
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