Niagara Falls striving for 25 street paving projects this year
May 4—Falls Mayor Robert Restaino says he has learned more in the last four years about the intricacies of building and maintaining roads than he ever imagined he could.
That's because, the mayor said, few things animate residents as much as the condition of the roadways they travel on.
"People are concerned with the condition of the roads in front of their homes and the roads they commonly travel," Restaino said. "So if we aren't committing the resources to address this, that will be obvious to people."
With that belief in mind, the mayor said from the first day of his first term in office, improving and maintaining the city's streets has been a high priority.
"I think it's been critical," Restaino said while showing a reporter a map of the city that showed all the roads that have been repaired and repaved since 2020.
In that four-year period, the city has spent $15.25 million to either repave or rebuild 90 roads that crisscross the 17.5 square miles that make up the Falls. The work has covered streets from LaSalle to DeVeaux and into both the North and South ends.
This summer, city Department of Public Works crews, and a few independent contractors, are expected to repave 25 streets. The work, which will launch in the LaSalle area is expected to begin in the later part of May.
Restaino said the work has been funded through a combination of federal infrastructure funding, New York State's Consolidated Highway Improvement Program (CHIPS), which reimburses municipalities for expenditures on road repair projects, and the use of Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funding.
"Some of the older CDBG programs had become troubled, so we set out to reprogram some of that money," the mayor said. "We were looking at how to best pour that money back into the community."
Restaino also said investing in the city's streets is important to making a good first impression with tourists.
"From April to November we entertain the world so it's important in our core areas of downtown to maintain our roads," the mayor said. "Like any Northeastern city, our roads get beat up. It's a function of where we live."
The mayor said the Falls is also exploring potential opportunities to address the city's system of alleys. He said officials are working with a vendor who may be able to provide a "new way to restore (the pavement in the) alleys."
OUTSIDE THE CITY
The Town of Porter has two main road projects this year, one carried out by the town highway department and the other by an outside contractor.
East Avenue between Lockport Street and Blairville Road will be repaved, the mile-and-a-half road being worked on over two days in July.
Town Highway Superintendent David Burmaster said that since Porter shares its road paver with the towns of Lewiston and Wheatfield, the exact days they work on East Avenue depends on the other municipality's work. He plans on bringing in trucks from outside municipalities to help out.
Dickersonville Road between the Townline and Balmer roads will be micro-sealed sometime in June, with Cortland-based Suit-Kote carrying out the project.
No timeline was given on how long the work would take.
Larry Wills, the Village of Lewiston's DPW superintendent, said while the village has road improvement projects planned, he does not know how many will happen. He is currently waiting for the final state Department of Transportation CHIPS road improvement numbers to come in.
Mitch Zahno, the Lewiston town highway superintendent, and Greg Quarantillo, the DPW superintendent for Youngstown, could not be reached for this story's publication.
