State Department Of Transportation Maintenance On The Bridge St. Bridge To Last Several Months

The state Department of Transportation has had scheduled maintenance for the Bridge St. bridge since 2020. They originally intended to begin maintenance last week but delayed it to the 9^th at the request of the city.

The project will entail several months of work, and at least one lane at a time will have to be closed. The plan is to close one of the four lanes on the Bridge Street bridge at a time. “Where the bridge meets the land, they’re going to dig that up and pour new cement,” said Corradino.

The cement will take 28 days to cure. With four lanes of traffic, that means that the Bridge St. bridge will have a lane shut down for the rest of the year. Corradino jokingly asked the DOT, “Can’t you get cement that dries quicker than that?”

The recent closure of a lane on Bridge St was not due to the DOT project, but the decision to replace a sewer grate.

As the community has seen, the Utica St. bridge was closed for some time. This has been part of the $8 million infrastructure project. While this already congested traffic, the Oswego DPW closed a lane of traffic to fix the sewer grate two weeks ago. “The timing wasn’t perfect,” explained Corradino, “they closed one lane down to fix the sewer grate, and the same day we closed down the Utica St. bridge.”

Corradino acknowledges that people were upset at the decision to slow down traffic, compounded by the returning SUNY Oswego students and Labor Day weekend. “It was poor planning, and we discussed it internally, and are going to make sure something like this doesn’t happen again,” said Corradino.

Some rumors have been swirling around town regarding the executive session, with Corradino reportedly scolding other council members. The public and media are not allowed to attend these meetings, so leaking information in any form is a breach of a councilman’s duties.

The purpose of the meeting is to allow discussion on specific, legally defined topics such as litigation, collective bargaining, confidential personnel or financial matters, and real property transactions that could be negatively impacted by public knowledge.

Typically, the decisions made at an executive session become available to the public. “We bought the Shapiro property; we didn’t talk about that in a public forum until it was presented to the full council,” said Corradino. The reasoning given for not immediately telling the public about potential deals is not to get undercut by people who hear the city is buying property.

Regarding potential leaks, Corradino said, “I was a counselor for 8 years, so I had to live by those rules also. We all took an oath to follow the charters and laws. When someone violates that, I think it’s wrong; my job in giving the remarks was to remind people of their responsibilities.” The leak was allegedly posted in a Facebook group created by members of the Oswego community, called “You Know You’re From Oswego If…

During the interview, Corradino spoke about the new budget for Oswego. “Last year was a challenging year, just like every year, the cost of everything is going up. We had to do a tax increase last year, and I couldn’t use any of the reserve account,” said Corradino. “Since then, budget amendments have been at a minimum. Our sales tax revenues have been above our estimates. Any extra sales tax money goes into Oswego’s reserve account. ” The additional funds from sales tax ended up totaling around $2 million, which was able to be used to offset any potential tax increase.

“I’m a taxpayer too, I’m also fiscally conservative, I’m not going to spend more money than I have to as the mayor of the city,” said Corradino, “I’m happy to offer the residents of Oswego a zero-tax increase.”