Calls Out Collins for Hoarding Millions of Dollars of Job Creating
Funding Instead of Using it to Rebuild County’s Infrastructure
ERIE COUNTY, NY – County Executive Candidate Mark Poloncarz blasted Chris Collins’ failed record of addressing the county’s crumbling roads and bridges and his refusal to spend millions of dollars in federal job creation assistance on much-needed infrastructure improvements. During a press conference today, Poloncarz illustrated the true condition of county roads with a multimedia presentation showing photo and video evidence of the poor condition of many county roads and bridges.
“Chris Collins has failed to address the rapidly deteriorating and often dangerous conditions of our roads and bridges,” said Poloncarz. “Many roads across Erie County are in extremely poor condition, they have been identified as being in extremely poor condition, yet Collins refuses to fix them,” Poloncarz said. “Once again, the fact that Collins is hiding behind misleading campaign commercials only highlights his record of failure. The people of Erie County who travel these roads know better and can’t be fooled by commercials that try to make things better than they actually are.”
Specifically, Poloncarz noted that many of the worst roads in Erie County as identified by the most recent Erie County Highway Pavement Assessment, compiled in 2009, only a handful have actually been repaired. (See Table 6 of that assessment which lists the poorest road scores 5 or less with traffic counts greater than 1,500 vehicles per day.) Over the past several weeks, the Poloncarz campaign visited many of these county roads to see their disrepair firsthand. Poloncarz personally took videos of Goodrich Road and the intersection of Strickler and County Roads in Clarence and Kenmore Avenue in Tonawanda, which can be seen on his campaign YouTube Channel, along with more than a dozen photos on his Flickr site.
“Making matters worse, Collins decided to play politics with tens of millions of dollars in federal assistance provided to the County that could have created hundreds of jobs working on long needed infrastructure improvements. During his 2010 State of the County address he proudly noted he did not spend a cent of more than $40 million in Stimulus assistance to balance the budget. What he didn’t tell the hard working men and women of the County is he didn’t spend the assistance at all and just so rolled it over into a manufactured surplus. He did much the same in 2010. In effect, he refused to spend tens of millions of dollars of job creating assistance to protect one job – his own. Now that the election is approaching he is finally started to spend the Stimulus assistance on some job creating measures. It is obvious that he cares more about his own job than the well being of his constituents. This is unacceptable and you deserve better,” stated Poloncarz.
The Poloncarz campaign invites Erie County residents to show Chris Collins the real condition of our county roads by emailing photos of bad conditions to information@markpoloncarz.com.
“Anyone driving around Erie County, especially in the rural towns can plainly see that our roads are not getting the attention they require,” Poloncarz said. “As County Executive, I pledge to address our crumbling roads and bridges based on priority, not politics. I will create a tip line so that residents can call in and report poor road conditions and get real answers on when a road will be fixed, not the lip service and empty promises of the current administration. I also pledge to be proactive and mandate regular check-ups and maintenance of our county roads.”