Where is the Money Going: Follow Up Report
Bridge Avenue Bridge in Cohoes, How much paid to workers?
Back in the Spring, CBS 6 News started pulling apart all of those local stimulus projects, finding out how many jobs they were likely to create.
The main question, though, was, "Where is the money going?"
Now, we are revisiting those million dollar projects with some new questions.
It was April when Jerry Gretzinger first ventured out to Cohoes to get the skinny on the Bridge Avenue Bridge project. At the time, nothing had begun and city officials were still waiting for the Governor's office to sign off on the stimulus money. Things can certainly change in 6 months. The bridge is now gone and work is underway on its replacement. But the stimulus money was supposed to do more than just build bridges. "Is it living up to expectations?" Ed Tremblay, the director of community and economic development for the city, told us in April that lots of people would be put to work on the bridge. "Are we looking at a dozen jobs or dozens of jobs?" Jerry has asked. "Oh dozens of jobs," said Tremblay. "It's a major construction." When asked this month about how many jobs it created, Tremblay said the construction firm "averages about 12 jobs per day on site." So did $6 million of stimulus money only create 12 jobs? No, says Tremblay. "When you take all those other parts, cement, steel, it adds up to more than just the 12 full-time jobs with the construction company here." Tremblay says the full-timers average about $50 thousand annually. Combine that with all the other ancillary jobs (pouring the cement and moving the steel) and he estimated millions would wind up going home in paychecks. But Jerry wanted to know exactly how much had already been paid out in worker salaries. It took some persistence, but Tremblay delivered. With just 2 months on the job, $595,152 has gone into people's pockets. The total by the end of the project, says Tremblay, will be around $3.5 million. A few workers told Jerry before this project got started, some of them were out of work. In that regard the stimulus dollars are doing what they were supposed to. Putting people back on a payroll. Tremblay says they're about 2 weeks behind schedule, but expect to have the bulk of the work to be done in the river completed before the dead of winter is upon us. Projected completion date? The fall of 2010.
