Top Line: Every journey starts with one step, but the cost of each step is usually not $935,000.
That’s how much New York will spend repairing each of the 77 stairs leading to the magnificent entrance of Albany’s Capitol Building after over a decade of neglecting maintenance. Costs gradually increased $17 million In 2014 $72 million today.
Important facts: Inspectors closed public access to the granite Eastern Approach stairs in 2014 after finding rusty steel support and loading bricks so that rusty steel support and loading bricks could be removed by hand. According to the New York Times. An investigation commissioned by then-Governor Andrew Cuomo estimated the repair bill to be $17 million.
Cuomo never allocated the money except for $120,000 for emergency repairs in 2016. When Gov. Kathy Hochul finally secured the funds in 2022, the costs rose to $41 million.
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In February this year, New York announced that it had hired Louis C. Allegrone, Inc. to repair the procedure at a cost of $72 million. According to the case, only one other company submitted its bid was New York PostThey also found internal documents indicating that the administration is ready to spend more than $80 million on the stairs.
This post didn’t show why the cost was more than four times as high as the 2014 estimate. The spokesman posted, “By law, we cannot comment further while the procurement process is in progress.” Opinion writer Andrea Paiser said he “don’t know of any laws that prohibit citizens from excessive depriving them of how civil servants are blindly taken away.”
Generation Services Director Janet Moy later said Albany Times Union That inflation, rising construction costs and worsening have all contributed to the increased costs.
In reality, deferred maintenance of the Eastern approach goes back even further than 2014. The New York Sun published an article in 1924 claiming that the stairs were approaching “complete doom” and that repairs would cost $1 million.
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background: Oddly, this is not the only gorgeous staircase that New Yorkers have recently funded. New York City fired $30 million For the 28-stage staircase in Times Square 42nd Subway station on the streets in 2022.
summary: Given the likes of New York’s spending, it is fitting that lawmakers cannot step into the Capitol without lawmakers stepping on taxpayer’s wallets.
Syndicated with permission from RealClearWire.
