By ANDY GARDNER

MASSENA -- The village board on Tuesday decided to back out of the Aluminum Trail project, which will put the village in debt $252,000 to the state Department of Transportation.

The 4-0 vote came after DPW Superintendent Hassan Fayad told local lawmakers that it will cost $546,000 to finish the project.

Many of the board members blamed the state for the project languishing for over a decade, claiming the state kept hitting them with additional costs, and they feared that would continue if they decided to see it through.

“If somebody could give me a line in the sand showing what the number’s going to be, I’d feel a lot better about it,” Trustee Tim Ahlfeld said. “We keep kicking it down the road and it gets bigger and bigger.”

The project started over a decade ago under then-mayor Ken MacDonnell. It was supposed to go from East Orvis Street to the Intake. After many years of inaction, it had been reduced to improving the footbridge.

So far, the village has spent $315,000 and $252,000 of that was reimbursed through the Transportation Enhancement Program, administered by the state Department of Transportation.

Some of the board members talked about possibly not paying the money back after Fayad said the DOT has never been in a position where they had to collect.

“Although they are telling us we have to pay back the TEP funding, NYSDOT has never been in a position where they’ve had to go and request that back from people,” he said.

“Do they have anything written down that says we have to pay it back in a certain timeframe, or they charge us interest?” Trustee Tim Ahlfeld said.

Both he and Deputy Mayor Matt Lebire expressed concerns that stiffing the state could make it harder to get grants in the future.

“Would it impact any future grant applications?” Lebire said.

“Would anybody care, I mean for future projects?” Ahlfeld said.

Ahlfeld also floated the possibility of paying it back long-term in small chunks, if the contract language allows it.

“Do they have anything written down that says we have to pay it back in a certain timeframe, or they charge us interest?” he said.

Part of the cost to finish the project would have been a new inspection of the footbridge carried out by an engineer with special certification, per state standards.

Trustee Albert Deshaies said he thinks previous inspections of the bridge should be sufficient.

“They want to inspect it again. It passed before … now they’re saying it’s deteriorating a little bit. This is ridiculous,” he said.

Fayad said it probably needs repairs.

“I don’t think the deck nor the railings meet code,” he said.

Deshaies also spoke in favor of not paying back the state.

“As far as I’m concerned, I say scrap it. Bite the bullet. How are they going to force us to pay that $252,000 back? I don’t know. We paid too much. Let’s get out of it,” he said.

Currier said he doesn’t want to leave the state in the lurch, but he would “do what I can to minimize the impact to the village.”

“If we say no thanks and make it their problem and not ours, it could impact us,” he said.

He said he would have liked to see the project done, but was concerned about mounting costs.

“I share the same concern you guys do … it makes a good deal of sense in my view to finish the project, but there’s a fear of the unknown,” the mayor said.