TO: Batchellerville Bridge Action Committee Members
FROM: Peter VanAvery
DATE: March 22, 2005

The Batchellerville Bridge Replacement Project has been out of the news for many months. Member Marilyn Sargent, who drives across the aging bridge at least twice a day and who is concerned about its safety (users include schoolbuses), asked the NYS Department of Transportation for a status report. Here's what she learned.

DOT Acting Regional Design Engineer Timothy R. Conway, PE, wrote her: "As you may be aware through the newspaper coverage over the past years, the project has been slow to progress due to an unresolved issue of ownership of the bridge. The bridge was originally built by the Hudson River Regulating District (a public benefit corporation created by New York State legislation) as part of the Sacandaga Reservoir flood control project. However, there are no State highways within eight miles of the bridge and it is New York State Department of Transportation's legal opinion, after much research, that Saratoga County owns the bridge. The County nevertheless is unwilling to acknowledge ownership. The State is investigating options with the County and legislative officials to resolve the ownership matter."

So this buckpassing farce drags on and on. Before 1930, which saw completion of the reservoir, a nondescript little bridge allowed Saratoga County Road 98 to cross the narrow Sacandaga River at Batchellerville. That bridge was obviously Saratoga County's responsibility. But the county didn't build the reservoir and the 3,000-foot-long bridge required to cross it; the District, a state authority, did. Obviously, the state should pick up the $36 million replacement bill. If this white elephant winds up in the county's lap, you can expect Saratoga County's hard-pressed taxpayers to demand that the high, arched, and expensive replacement bridge envisioned by DOT be replaced with a design that's low, flat, and cheap.

Two memorable events took place at the District's board meeting in Albany back on January 12, 2004: 1) The board hired Richard H. Lefebvre as its new executive director, and 2) The board unanimously approved a motion to conduct an independent audit of the access permit system, which is supposed to be self-supporting. Any hike in permit fees was postponed until that audit was completed. Working at its usual glacial speed, the District -- under Mr. Lefebvre's management -- took a whole year to decide which outside audit firm to hire for this task (which was great for us: no audit, no fee hike). Now, that audit is finally under way.

Knowing the District as well as you do, it will hardly come as a surprise that a problem -- a big one -- has cropped up. As I found out when one of the auditors interviewed me last week, the District has pulled off what hucksters call the good old bait-and-switch trick. The background:

In the fall of 2003, the District triggered a public rebellion by proposing to hike the lake's access permit fees by as much as 1,000 percent. In response, the self-appointed Great Sacandaga Lake Steering Committee -- composed of the Fulton County Regional Chamber of Commerce & Industry, the Great Sacandaga Lake Association, and the Great Sacandaga Lake Fisheries Federation -- proposed that the District conduct an independent performance audit of the permit system to determine the legitimate cost of running it. The key words here are "performance audit."

How does a performance audit differ from a conventional audit? A conventional audit examines how an organization presently conducts a specific task and attaches a cost to it. It's simply a snapshot of how that organization does things, and it does not analyze cost savings that could result from better management, new technology, and more efficient practices. By contrast, a performance audit factors in the latter and puts a cost on how a lean-and-mean organization could conduct that specific task. Obviously, a performance audit usually results in a cost figure considerably lower than that arrived at by a conventional audit.

With fewer than 30 employees, the District should present no major challenges to a manager who knows his or her stuff. It ought to be easy to streamline the organization to assure that the stakeholders who pay for it are receiving full value. But like the other 200 public authorities set up by the state, the District has its own revenue stream and operates outside the legislative budget process -- without accountability and oversight. That's a prescription for mismanagement. Remember the $300-per-hour Secretary-Treasurer? If you attend the District's board meetings, you find that the subject of "efficiency" never appears on the agenda. That's why the independent performance audit proposed by the GSL Steering Committee was so revolutionary.

So you can imagine my surprise when, right after I sat down with the auditor last week, he said: "The first thing I want to make clear is that this is NOT a performance audit." Huh? He said he was conducting interviews with members of stakeholder groups to determine their "expectations." (My #1 expectation, of course, was that this was going to be a performance audit!) He also said that his firm plans to mail out a survey to access permit holders.

This stonewalling stunt will result in permit fees far higher than justified and marks a new low in the District's relations with us. Did the District think we were too dumb to notice the switch? And why didn't the GSL Steering Committee, whose members are always quick to lavish fulsome praise on Executive Director Lefebvre, sound the alarm that the District had sabotaged their proposal? Quite clearly, although the District has a new administration, nothing has changed.

The solution: Send yet another complaint to the Governor, who appoints the District's board. You’ll find his address in the March 10 BBAC Newsletter.

Take a hard look at the page of "allowable floating dock configurations" that appeared in the Fall 2004 issue of the District's Waterline newsletter. The District sent you a second copy of the configurations when it returned your approved access permit earlier this year. The problem: Most of the existing floating docks on the lake are in violation.

The District did not include any text explaining the rationale behind these configurations. That’s understandable because how do you explain regulations that are arbitrary and capricious? For example, a "floating dock with float" is now supposed to be no wider (left to right) than 8 feet and no deeper than 12 feet. How do you moor a big power boat to an 8-foot-wide dock? And if an 8-foot by 12-foot dock is OK, then why is a 12-foot by 8-foot dock in violation? And why can't these docks be larger (as they already are in practice)? I sent Mr. Lefebvre a three-page letter of complaint (copy available upon request), and he promised to include the configurations as part of the District's pending review of all its rules and regulations. However, if these new configurations present a problem to you, now's the time to sound off:

Richard H. Lefebvre
Executive Director
Hudson River-Black River Regulating District
350 Northern Boulevard
Albany, NY 12204

465-3491/661-5535
HRBRRD@choiceonemail.com

A recent property revaluation in the Town of Broadalbin resulted in lakefront property tripling or quadrupling in assessed value. One BBAC member, whose appraisal surged 400 percent, calls this "unfair and discriminating against the lakefront owners." He urges everyone to stick together. Please keep me posted.

The lake's level is currently at about 747 feet above sea level. That's one foot below the minimum target level and about 18 inches below its level at this time last year.

The next District board meeting will be held at 9:00 a.m. on Monday, April 11, at the Water’s Edge Inn & Conference Center, Route 28, Old Forge, NY.