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Highway staff ask to restore machinery-replacement schedule, expand asset management and maintain chips-funded paving
Summary
Interim Highway Director Nick Ensign and team told the committee much of their fleet is 20–31 years old, asked to return machinery replacement funding to schedule, requested completion funding for OpenGov asset-management rollout and described steady capital requests for paving and bridge work funded by CHIPS.
Interim Highway Director Nick Ensign and the highway budget team told the Expanded Budget Committee on Sept. 11 that a number of county machines are aging and that capital funding is needed to keep the department on a replacement schedule. Ensign said county highways manage about 302 center lane miles, 109 bridges and more than 4,600 signs, and the department’s shop supports fleet maintenance across county vehicles. He presented a machinery-age chart showing many pieces at least 20 years old, with the oldest at about 31 years and the newest at eight years. The highway team described a capital plan that drives the annual machinery-request amounts and noted that a late-2024 ARPA allocation replaced a couple of older machines. The 2026 machinery-replacement request is intended to return equipment replacement to schedule. Ensign said the county’s road-paving capital program has historically been funded and that a sustained capital stream is important to avoid repeatedly “patching potholes instead of paving our roads.” On operating items, the highway team asked for routine maintenance-of-effort increases tied to inflation and specific costs: asset-management software (OpenGov), which the highway division says is fully operational but is seeking an additional $27,500 to complete full rollout (the department previously received a $30,000 OTR); an annual OpenGov asset-management license line cited at $57,500; increased electric utility charges for traffic devices; and various contract increases for shop services and diagnostic software. The team discussed frost/weather stations and cameras used for winter road and pavement monitoring; Ensign said Tompkins County shares data and camera feeds with participating towns. Ensign said CHIPS funding for preventive maintenance and sealing totaled an estimated $4,562,000 in recent budgets and that state reimbursements typically arrive quarterly. On staffing the highway roster remains unchanged for 2026; the presentation identified three focal pressures — inflation and supply-chain impacts, weather variability and deferred maintenance on roads and bridges — and said the division will continue monthly budget reconciliation and monitoring with finance staff. Ending: The highway team asked the committee to support returning machinery replacement funding to schedule, to complete the OpenGov asset-management implementation and to maintain capital paving funds; members requested a town-by-town summary of capital balances and an explanation of how unspent permit revenue is reflected in the highway fund.
