Miner announces $10M in state funding for Syracuse infrastructure projects

SYRACUSE, N.Y. — The City of Syracuse will use $10 million in state funding for local infrastructure improvement, maintenance, and repair projects.

Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner announced the grant funding on Thursday morning at 121 Nelson Street in the city’s Tipperary Hill section, where the city’s water department had equipment set up for routine maintenance on a hydrant line.

New York State Assemblyman William Magnarelli (D–Syracuse) secured the grant funding.

“We, every day, are faced with news of our deteriorating infrastructure largely, frankly, as a result of the age of our city,” Miner said in her remarks.

She added that the city’s infrastructure “has become a rallying cry for me,” noting the many water main breaks that crews have repaired in 2015.

Syracuse has had 251 water main breaks so far this year, according to a news release on the topic from Miner’s office. In 2014, the city had a “record” 391 water-main breaks for the full year.

The city’s office of innovation will work with the city’s departments of water and public works to examine where the city has had water-main breaks “where we believe we have had weaknesses,” Miner said in her remarks along Nelson Street.

The process will involve the use of maps and GIS (geographic-information system) to evaluate which Syracuse streets are “particularly bad.”

City officials will also use the data to “drive towards a system where we can efficiently use this money” to operate under a “dig once” policy, Miner said.

The work will target road and water-main reconstruction and other infrastructure that crews find in the ground, she added.

“The goal is to use this money to leverage other money from the state, perhaps federal government and local government as well, to make sure that we can have as much reconstruction-infrastructure design built as possible,” said Miner.

Crews won’t handle any new construction with funding from the grant during this construction season, Miner added.

It’s “obvious” that the city of Syracuse has “infrastructure needs,” Magnarelli said in his remarks at the Thursday morning event.

“I hope it also lets people know, especially in Syracuse, that state government is there; that we are looking for ways to help; and that we will be advocating for more infrastructure monies, not only now but in the future as we go on,” he added.

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com

PHOTO CAPTION:  Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner on Thursday morning announced a $10 million state grant that New York State Assemblyman William Magnarelli (D–Syracuse) has secured. Miner made the announcement on Nelson Street in Syracuse’s Tipperary Hill section. (Eric Reinhardt/BJNN)