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Botch the street, feel the heat

OBSERVER Photo by Rebecca Cuthbert Hanover Town Board members discuss damage done to town roads recently by a private contractor hired by a resident. From left are Deputy Supervisor Kevin O’Connell and Councilman Wayne Ashley.

HANOVER — When builders seem more like demolition professionals, there’s a problem.

At Monday’s town board workshop, Hanover officials discussed a recent case of construction-gone-wrong in Hanford Bay — and mistakes like that cost a lot of money to fix.

“We have three new houses going up in Hanford Bay,” said Deputy Supervisor Kevin O’Connell, who chaired the meeting in the absence of Supervisor Todd Johnson. “The standard procedure is when they do the road cuts, there’s a $2,000 deposit to cover the cost of any damage to the road. (The work) gets inspected by the Highway Department to make sure it’s done correctly. But what we don’t have is a deposit on changes to our water and sewer infrastructure, and the group that was in there doing the construction had some difficulties.”

Guess who they called when they broke the town’s stuff? Hint: It rhymes with “Meve M’Angelo.”

Yep. Steve D’Angelo, highway superintendent, and his crew had to clean up the mess.

“We had to have our employees down there helping them. They didn’t have the parts they needed to fix some of the things, and we had to use some of our parts,” O’Connell explained. “We have since billed this company for the damage they’ve done, but really, anytime, in my opinion, we have someone touching any of our infrastructure, they should pay a deposit, so it’s not an after-the-fact issue, it’s an upfront issue. They know if they mess something up, they have to pay for it.”

Jeffrey Passafaro, town attorney, asked if there was anything helpful in the existing sewer laws regarding regulations for tying into the system.

“The only thing is that (the work) has to be inspected, but that’s it,” answered O’Connell. “Nothing regarding a deposit, or who’s responsible or the liability if they damage something.”

O’Connell said the town should create a formal policy to protect the sewer and water infrastructure, just like it has in place for roads.

“We’re doing a good job protecting roads, and Steve’s guys are there, making sure they do it right,” he added.

D’Angelo said the contractor didn’t do any favors for the town’s roads, either.

“This last deal with the contractor (in Hanford Bay), we’ve run into a lot of things. This is probably the worst road cut that we’ve ever had. … This last deal, it was slipshod work, is what it was. It was bad. I had to have one of my guys down there on overtime, and that (overtime pay) was incorporated into the sewer and water bill (that) we billed the contractor. This is the worst we’ve ever had,” he said.

O’Connell said he would work with Water Department personnel and Code Enforcement Officer Tom Gould to come up with an amendment to the current policy, so that water and sewer infrastructure will also be protected from corner-cutting contractors.

“I want to be a little proactive, so the money is sitting there if (builders) mess it up, then we don’t have to go out searching for it,” said O’Connell.

D’Angelo didn’t mince words with the offending contractor. No more road cut permits for you, D’Angelo told him.

“We just do not want (him) working on our roads. We’ve got some good roads, and you start letting them do shifty work on them, and down the line, we’re going to pay for them,” D’Angelo said.

The town board preferred not to mention the name of the contractor — but, word spreads quickly in a small municipality, and that business owner may find himself less busy in coming months, at least in this neck of the woods.

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