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Dutchess County comptroller: ‘U’ youth-center project shrank, stalled after $4.5 million in COVID funds
Summary
Dutchess County Comptroller Dan E. Blair told the Poughkeepsie Common Council that the Youth Opportunity Union project was repeatedly redesigned, spending about $4.5 million of COVID-era funds and missing key sale benchmarks that could let the city repurchase 35 Montgomery Street.
Dutchess County Comptroller Dan Eimer Blair told the Poughkeepsie Common Council on July 1 that the county’s Youth Opportunity Union project — often called “the U” — has been repeatedly redesigned, has no practicable construction or operations plan and has used about $4.5 million in federal COVID-19 funds to date.
Blair, who presented a summary of his office’s audit of the project, said the site at 35 Montgomery Street was purchased by the county in 2021 under a contract that included five benchmarks. "The county missed three of the five benchmarks," Blair said, and that failure makes the city eligible to repurchase the property for the costs the county incurred developing the site.
The audit traces the U from an early concept that architects priced at roughly $165 million, to later designs that dropped the total to about $154 million, and then to subsequent iterations that cut the scope roughly in half, removing or downsizing many public amenities. Blair said the…
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