By CRAIG FREILICH

The state has promised St. Lawrence County $3.9 million for 2016 road construction projects, but many local highway superintendents can’t get started because Albany hasn’t spelled out how much of the funds can be used.

County Highway Superintendent Don Chambers is still waiting to hear from Albany how extra money promised to his department can be put to use before the construction season gets snowed out.

“The funds are in place, but we don’t know the rules of what we need to do for the county to be successful in being reimbursed,” said Chambers.

He said he is glad that the state legislature and the governor are promising more funds for highway and bridge repair, but as long as the money and the rules attached to it are tied up in Albany they can’t put it to work.

“If we don’t get details, that could affect programs already scheduled,” Chambers said.

For earlier story on this summer’s plans, click here.

Members of the Senate, Assembly and the governor’s office loudly hailed the extra money in the budget for roads and bridges this year – money that a great many state representatives from all over New York had asked for.

That was announced in April: $3.9 million to the county and its municipalities in the annual state Department of Transportation funding program known as the Consolidated Local Street and Highway Improvement Program (CHIPS), plus $891,000 for the new PAVE-NY program for road paving in the county and its towns and villages, and more money in yet another program, BRIDGE-NY. But its not clear how the money in the two new programs can be applied to projects and what the municipalities would need to show in order to be reimbursed by the state under the programs.

Chambers said that’s because “the memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the New York Legislature and the governor’s office (that) would give us details of how the funds would need to be administered,” has not yet been revealed.

Chambers said he and his colleagues in other counties and at town and village road departments have heard rumblings that something on the policy could be coming from Albany this week. “That’s what I’m hoping for,” Chambers said.

But in the meantime, “we don’t really have a way to request reimbursement of funds, or know what guidelines would be needed for projects to be accepted.”

So they’re waiting to start some projects they have scheduled and would like to begin.

“That’s the dilemma,” he said. “We have a short construction season in the North Country, and it makes a difference not knowing what the rules are going to be because the MOU is not in place. So the county has not progressed in the projects we would ask reimbursement for.”

And he says “it’s not decided even now how the BRIDGE-NY money funds will be allocated. We actually know how many dollars are allocated. The distribution has been decided. But as far as what we will actually receive funds for -- there’s no word on how it is to be used.”