Staley Road may get funds from feds

Residents say it’s been a rough road to get repairs

By Karen Carr Keefe

Senior Contributing Writer

There’s a list Staley Road residents wanted to be on: The 2025 town paving program.

They didn’t make it.

A number of speakers at Monday’s Town Board meeting expressed frustration that their safety concerns could go unanswered for yet another year.

Staley Road resident Paula Sciuk was the first of several people at the mic during the public comment period at the end of the meeting.

“I noticed that Staley Road is not on the paving program for 2025,” she said.

But Town Highway Superintendent Dick Crawford said Staley could be on the road to federal funding that would address residents’ concerns.

These include: complaints of speeding; heavy truck traffic to pharmaceutical companies at the west end of Staley; and the need to widen the road’s shoulders so residents can safely walk to their mailboxes, ride their bicycles or even back out of their own driveways.

Retired engineer analyzes Staley’s flaws

Resident Jim Daigler also told the board that drainage is a big problem; culverts along the south side of road are getting clogged, with flooding that damages residents’ property and the subsurface of the road.

His wife, Debbie, has monitored traffic on Staley and counted up to as many as 300 trucks and passenger vehicles going back and forth twice a day to the pharmaceutical companies. She and other Staley Road residents have asked the town to convince the companies to chip in on the cost of highway repair. Town officials say are in talks with company management on the issue.

Jim Daigler, retired owner of Daigler Engineering P.C., said he got a grading permit and has set up a drainage system on his own property, “putting up channels and receivers and trying to get rid of the ponding.”

He’d like the town to follow his example.

Missing pavement and cracking near 2255 Staley Road is “the result of inadequate shoulder maintenance,” said James Daigler, who shot this photo.

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Residents formed a committee

More often than not, Daigler speaks out during Town Board public comment opportunities, detailing the nature of problems and suggesting solutions to the Staley Road dilemma.

His diagram of the road near his home shows the narrow pavement as having one lane that’s 10 feet wide and one that’s 12 feet wide. His photos show a road with crumbling, narrow shoulders that measure in inches, when they should be 4 feet wide, and a center line that is barely visible.

More than three years ago, a group of Staley Road residents formed a committee and circulated a petition to lobby for road improvement. They pushed for lowering the speed limit to make their neighborhood safer.

But last July, the state denied the town’s request to lower to 40 mph the speed limit on Staley Road, from Grand Island Boulevard to West River Road. The denial has disappointed a number of committee members.

Timeline of complaints, responses

At Monday’s meeting, committee member Sciuk gave a timeline of Staley Road residents’ complaints and town responses, from 2022 to the present. The dates and actions were written in a letter emailed to the town earlier Monday from Debbie Daigler.

Sciuk read from the letter: “Fall, 2024 – in a meeting with Jim Daigler, Dick Crawford stated the town has the money and the contractors to fix the shoulders.”

Sciuk said, however, that in March 2025, the town said it would pursue money from other sources to upgrade Staley Road with paving and other needs.

“I am flummoxed. I am disappointed by the continuing hamster wheel we all are on as residents. We want our road fixed. I don’t understand why it’s getting pushed back,” Sciuk said. “Are you waiting for a fatal accident before our street’s speed limit is lowered?”

Referring to her letter and the fall 2024 meeting, Debbie Daigler told the Town Board, “I would like to know where the money is. Is it being put aside for Staley Road and you’re waiting for something?”

Crawford came up to the mic and gave his answer: “There’s been a lot of moving parts with this project, as it started under one administration and morphed into another administration. And one town board cannot hold another town board accountable for their actions.”

Severe cracking and missing pavement has occurred along Staley Road “due to lack of shoulder maintenance,” said resident James Daigler, who shot this photo.

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Federal grant opportunity

“An update for today is: The Town Supervisor’s Office, Supervisor (Peter) Marston and his assistant, Rhonda Diehl, completed an application with Sen. (Kirsten) Gillibrand’s office and with state Sen. Sean Ryan’s office, to go after some additional funding,” Crawford said.

“When this project was originally brought to a previous Town Board, they were looking, at that time, at fund balances they had, to use to potentially cover the cost to do the road. So, the project has changed a couple of times with additional drainage that was going on.”

Crawford said the Staley Road project was delayed because there was another project in front of the board for a pond installation, with clay mining occurring as it was built. He said the town’s thinking was that it would work in tandem with that project. But, he said, “That project never happened.

“So, the continuation of the project is coming out of the supervisor’s office looking for funding that was brought to us by Sen. Gillibrand’s office, which is a positive point when they come to us, asking us to apply for funding for a highway grant.”

He said preliminary work has been underway on Staley: “We continue to look at upgrades that we’re doing ‘in house’ on the crossovers and the drainage, and we will continue to make every effort to get that project done in a very timely fashion. I cannot put a date on it at this time, again, because we’re waiting on funding and answers from these other political subdivisions.”

Paving plan detailed for other streets

Earlier in the meeting, council members approved the Highway Department’s 2025 paving program, which includes Crawford’s request to bond $750,000 to undertake the work.

Roads that Crawford listed as badly needing milling include: Enola, Evelyn Court, Carol Lane, Riverdale, Crescent, and Broadway from East River Road to Baseline.

Roads listed as in need of micro-paving include: West River, Bush and East Oakfield, as well as Sunset Drive, Westwood, Independence, Amy, Sawmill, Monica, Woodlee and Jenell.

Meeting follow-up

On Tuesday, NFP asked Crawford several follow-up questions to clarify what happened to the money that had been earmarked, but not spent, on repair to Staley Road.

He explained, “In the general fund that the Town Board oversees, there’s fund balance. They have money in there that they can earmark toward projects.

“When the residents first brought this to the Town Board – John Whitney was the supervisor at the time – and John and I had been talking about roads, and the longevity of some of them that were getting to the point where they needed some attention.”

Crawford said Staley Road was one of six or seven of the longer roads that he and Whitney determined were going to need some types of road maintenance work done to them.

“From the report we had an engineering firm do, we decided that Staley Road would be moved up (higher on the list), upon having further discussions with Staley Road residents.”

Also at that time, he said town officials talked about trying to find grants to fund the work “and also talking with the pharmaceutical companies about what we were experiencing.”

Crawford said there were concerns over heavy traffic and littering along Staley Road as vehicles went to and from the plants.

Problems were compounded by drainage problems that residents contended with, he said.

“We have more drainage work than we originally started out with,” Crawford said. “The politician changes, different people’s opinions and scopes – and that’s where we’re at today.”

Crawford also said the multiple problems with Staley Road exceed the parameters of simpler paving projects on streets that did make the 2025 paving list.

“From the inception of the discussion we had, my talks with the Town Board were, this wasn’t part of our annual paving program, this would be more of a capital project that needed a different funding source than what I request and what other highway superintendents have requested in the past,” he said.

Summing it up, Crawford said, “I understand frustration by the people on Staley Road. Every member of the Town Board also is understanding of it. On the other side of planning it, it’s become a bigger project than what it was when we first started, and different ideas by different people have us now applying for money to the political substructure of our federal representatives and our state representatives.”