Open Agenda TV S3 E54 Is there Progress with Public Works Projects

You're watching Open Agenda, here's your host, Mike Goldberg.

Welcome to Open Agenda, I'm your host, Mike Goldberg, and I'm joined today by Jim Atkins.

Welcome, Jim.

Good morning.

And Joe White.

How are you?

Doing well.

Thanks for being here.

Today, folks, we're going to talk about some unfinished projects that have been on the

back burner for quite some time that we really don't know what the status is of these various

projects.

They haven't been cheap, and some of these projects are very essential to conducting

commerce in our county.

So we haven't heard anything from the executive branch.

We haven't heard anything from the legislative branch, from the county council, because they've

been kept largely in the dark, as far as we know.

So we're going to ask some of the questions, and hopefully this will prompt the legislative

and executive branches at some point in time to give us the answers that we need on these

projects.

And just for a little preview, we're talking more specifically about the landfill, Cell

7 construction, dredging of the Wicomico River, and a couple of other projects that we'll

go into some detail with you about.

So stick with us, we'll be back in just a minute.

You're watching Open Agenda.

Welcome back to Open Agenda, we're going to continue our discussion about a number of

projects and imperatives that have been on the table for quite a few months, and the

executive and the county council have been hopefully trying to make some progress on,

but we're not really sure exactly where we stand on these various projects, because they

haven't come up at any meetings, to my knowledge.

And I think the most prominent one right now that has the most people concerned would be

construction of Landfill Cell Number 7.

Joe, can you bring us up to date as to the status of that project, to the best of our

knowledge at this time?

Well, I mean, I think the good news is the landfill is still currently open all six days

of the week it's supposed to operate.

However, we were told in the summer of 2025 that by about this time that the landfill

would be out of space as Cell 7 was not complete.

I would imagine that if it was complete and they were using it, we would have seen a press

release, we would have heard about this at some level.

We just haven't.

And I've even asked county council folks that I know, and they don't seem to have an exact

knowledge of where the process is.

So again, good news is the landfill is still open, but for how much longer?

That's what we don't know.

I mean, we do know that the contract completion date was to be about October 17th, as I recall.

And then that's the substantial completion date was October 17th.

But the new Cell Number 7 should have been ready to be operational by October.

October is almost upon us and we're not quite there yet.

So of course, people are asking questions.

Jim, do you have any idea of what might have held up getting Cell Number 7 complete?

No, no, not at all, because when we were told probably back in April or May that it would

be completed by October, that was with the caveat that we didn't have any bad weather,

we didn't have rainy summer, we didn't have this and we didn't have that, and we went

through a drought summer.

So the rain did not create it.

I don't know if any permitting problems were arisen out of it, but the bottom line is nobody

knows anything because there are no updates being given to let anybody know what's going

on.

What time line we're on, are we on schedule, ahead of schedule, behind schedule?

Nobody knows because there is no information being given.

One of the nice things that I was able to do last summer back in 2025 was take a tour

with Adam Corey, who was the superintendent of the landfill at the time and now he's the

deputy director of public works.

I recall we did a show about that too of your tour.

Yeah, a little over a year ago.

One of the things they had discovered at that moment, but they had already corrected for,

was there was some trash previous, I mean I'm talking 50, 60 years ago, that had been

put at what was at the bottom of cell seven.

So they made a decision, and I actually think they made a wise decision, rather than dig

it out and they would have to place that in cell eight, which is the one that we're currently

using that we were supposedly running out of space on, they moved the level up so that

the bottom of the new cell seven would not disturb that existing trash that was there.

So that would have limited cell seven's capacity to some degree, but it should not have slowed

down the timeline.

I thought that was a great solution.

Has there been other challenges and where do we stand?

Also again, back to not having a work session, if we were a year ago that we were going to

close the landfill, what's the capacity left in the current cell eight?

I've asked some folks and they're like, "Well, it looks like we still have plenty of room."

But what is plenty of room?

I don't know.

No, that's an ambiguous term.

Just so everybody understands, cells eight and 10 were constructed before cell seven,

which is currently under construction.

And I believe that they actually found some reserved space in there that they are able

to utilize-

For cell eight?

For cell eight, yes.

And they had to build a new haul road to be able to move that material around, make those

portions of cell eight that had previously been closed accessible once again.

Yeah, they did that.

I mean, they found some room doing that and then they also eliminated the out of county

haulers from coming into the county and dumping in the county, which bought them some work

on and should have been done all along.

But it's just the frustrating part to me is the total lack of any kind of updates to the

public or even the county council on where we're at, what we're doing.

It doesn't have to be great detail.

We're on schedule, we're going to be there and let you know and nobody knows.

Well, it's particularly frustrating because the construction, the design and construction

of cell seven is way behind schedule before they even started.

Yeah, we realized that it was about two and a half years late.

At least.

And then we were getting some conflicting information from the Department of Public

Works during the engineering design process as to just how far along design was.

So that once you get to a certain point, the plans may not be complete, but they're complete

enough to be able to put it out for bid.

And the permitting.

I mean, the permitting, you can't put a shovel in the ground to get the permits.

No, you sure can't.

So we continue to be concerned about that timeline and we hope that there is, in fact,

sufficient reserve space in the older, previously closed cells, should this take any longer

than we presently anticipate.

The question I've had, and I've asked multiple council members this, is have you had an update?

And their response has been, well, we've sent an email to the executive's office to get

an update.

If they've received information back, they've held it to themselves.

There's been a couple of public comment sessions that I've actually spoken up to say, hey,

look, give us an update only because a year ago there was this crisis.

And the crisis in my mind hasn't really been avoided, other than, as Jim said, they did

curtail out-of-county dumping, which was a smart move.

But at the same time, you can't go from crisis to silence.

That's scary.

And as much of anything, I actually want details only because I'm concerned about the fiscal

responsibility here, because I already know they had to make one change, which I thought,

again, I thought was a smart move, but where does it put us with the budget that was allocated?

Because we bonded those funds.

I know that landfill's an enterprise fund, but the construction of Cell 7 was bonded.

That means the county taxpayers are on the hook.

And I think that if they're on the hook, they are at least owed updates.

And I'm a little concerned that the council hasn't at least made a public statement about

it.

If you look at only the two contracts, we're looking at up to $6.8 million.

So it's not exactly chump change.

I just hope that the project can be completed for that contract sum.

There's some related projects to construction of Cell 7.

We're also going to be looking at a horizontal expansion across Brick Kiln Road, because

Cell 7 is it, once Cell 7 is filled, there's no more space on that side of the road.

And the other side of the road, it's wooded property right now, isn't it?

It is, but there's already permits that allow that to be cleared and set up for landfill.

And there will have to be discussion about moving the power lines, there will have to

be discussion about moving Brick Kiln Road, and there will be options there that will

cost different amounts of money, but will give the landfill various capacities for the

future.

But in the meantime, this is the one project we're working on now, Cell 7.

There doesn't seem to be a lot of money budgeted for the horizontal expansion at this point

for 2027, only $300,000, I believe, plus $100,000 for the WAGA site work for that.

For the propane capture.

Yeah.

WAGA's propane capture.

I think the thing that ties together this, and we heard Vice President Jeff Merritt bring

this up when they discussed the tipping fees.

The landfill is supposed to be an enterprise fund.

It is supposed to be able to collect enough fees to govern itself, including the amount

of money they need to cap it in the future.

That's a state requirement.

So we always have to keep X amount of dollars in the bank, and of course that rises as years

go on because, well, the cost of everything goes up.

But as Jeff Merritt and Dave Ennis brought up back in May during the budget process,

our tipping fees by today's standards should actually be double where they're at.

We're already the highest tipping fees in the Lower Eastern Shore of Maryland.

So every penny that we have to spend as we talk about brick kiln road, moving power lines,

15 cell 7, right now it is high potential that the taxpayers will be paying for that.

So if that's the case, we should be meeting at least quarterly to discuss where we're

at with that, I think.

I would certainly hope so.

But you might also recall that when there was supposed to be a work session some months

ago between the council and the executive, the executive didn't come for other things

to do that day.

So it makes me a little bit skeptical as to just how much information that we're going

to get from the executive branch based on that history.

That it's up to the council to also make a statement saying that they've asked for this

stuff and they have not.

Absolutely.

Well, enough talking trash.

We're going to move on to some other topics of other projects that are in the works that

we don't know the status of, and we'll talk about that in our next segment.

So stick with us.

We'll be right back.

You're watching Open Agenda.

Welcome back to Open Agenda.

We're going to continue our discussion about the status of various capital and other projects.

And the other big one that's on the table that we need to find out a little bit more

about is dredging of the Wicomico River.

This is a vital project because our local economy is very much dependent on the river

remaining navigable.

And there's $225 million worth of goods are shipped up and down the Wicomico River between

Salisbury and points elsewhere.

So that gives you some concept of just how important river navigation is to the economy.

Jim, we're ready to do the next dredging project.

I know the river is being dredged in various segments.

Are you familiar with what the upcoming segment of dredging is supposed to be?

Yeah, it's supposed to be the middle section of the river, which would be kind of like

from Whitehaven up to probably around Sharps Point or that section, the middle section

of the river.

I mean, I think the last section that was done that I can remember being done was the

lower section.

And as they dredged that, they were able to pump all that over towards Deagle Island for

land reclamation.

And wasn't this middle section supposed to have been done last year?

Wasn't that the schedule?

Well it actually was supposed to have been done the year before.

Army Corps of Engineers has a three-year rotation.

They do a, the river is divided into thirds, and they do a third each year.

So on the fourth year, they're back to where they started, and then they just keep working

up the river again in that cycle.

But we let the land that the county had to put dredge material on, we let that land fill

up, and apparently no attention was paid to the fact that there was no storage availability

left.

So when the Army Corps came in to dredge, they have requirements, and they found out

very quickly that they had nowhere to put the dredge material.

So they started out, when the county came before the council to do it, they had a period

of time in which they had to move the first, I believe it was 150,000 square, or cubic

yards of dredge material out.

And emergency legislation, quote-unquote, to get money from the council to hire dump

trucks and everything to move this stuff.

And then unbeknownst to everybody, until later on, within two days after this meeting where

this was an emergency and had to be done, the Army Corps had notified the county that

they were already out of rotation, they weren't going to do it this year.

So we'll give you another year to get this stuff moved, and if you get it moved, we'll

be back.

And that would be right now?

Yeah.

So just as with the landfill, there was a very late start in getting this done, and

now the county's potentially a little bit behind the eight ball.

Yeah, and one of the major questions that the council had at that point in time was

the council had budgeted, I think it was $350,000 a year, I think $2.1 million, and that should

have been in that account, but was not in that account, had been used for something

else, and they didn't have the money, so they had to come before the council and ask for

money to get this material moved, and they didn't.

I think they had roughly $1.2 million left in the account, but they didn't want to spend

that because they wanted to use that for silt fencing and other things.

Clean up more of the Sharpless Point property, which they have done that, but we've spent

over $11 million to this point, moving upwards of 400,000 cubic yards of materials.

That was passed and budgeted for and paid for, but are we starting dredging this October?

Well, it's scheduled to start this October with completion, I believe scheduled for February,

but we haven't heard a thing, so we really don't know.

We do know that the county traded some property with a property owner down there that had

some property that was ideal for storing the dredge material, and the county had a little

piece of property, and it was just kind of an even swap, so they're able to, instead

of trucking a lot of the sludge out of the Sharpless Point area, they're able to pump

it, pipe it to a different location, and move it that way, keep it off the roads and out

of the trucks, and just be able to pipe it to a different location and store it, so they

are making progress, but it's like a lot of other things that we've talked about and probably

will talk about.

We just don't know the updates and how we're coming, and whether or not we've got a crisis

looming out in front of us, or whether or not everything's under control, and that's

one of the, not only with the executive branch, but that's a problem I have with the county

council, and I've had with them for four years.

There's never a lot of follow-up on items that are discussed, or projects that are discussed.

Once it's discussed, and you've got a plan, they move on to something else.

They never come back and update you, old news, old business.

Our back burner's getting awful full, and speaking of that, I mean, there are some other

things that I've been waiting to hear updates on, especially as we wind down this political

season.

The fire service agreement, and this was brought up back in May, Mayor Randy Taylor's come

right out and said that we have until July 1st of 2027 to have something figured out.

I don't agree with everything he said, I really don't, but at the same time, I don't want

to wait until June 30th of 2027 to figure it out.

That's what the dredge spoil situation was, they come to the council and needed money

that day so they could start removing the materials two days later, and yet the river

didn't get dredged.

You can't wait until the last minute.

In a similar vein, the Verizon building, and Jim, I don't know if you've heard anything

specifically about the Verizon building, but it's almost as if it doesn't exist in the

last four months.

Well, the last I heard about the Verizon building was during budget season in May when they

were talking about $8 million, and the county executive came in there and said she would

not support an $8 million project out there, which was good, I applaud her for that, because

we shouldn't have.

We bought a building that was supposed to be real close to walk-in ready and go to it,

and now somebody's sitting there saying, "Well, we need $8 million."

But here again, you have the same process for two years.

The council is asked to see drawings, plans, or proposals, and all they get is, "We need

$8 million," and no, no, you can't.

Well, if there's any plans, they certainly haven't been put out for bid on the county's

procurement website, so I don't think there are any plans.

We're still trying to get architectural drawings and all, and I know Joe and I have talked

about it on this show, and we've talked about it in council meetings.

In the 16 months that the county owned that building after it bought it and was collecting

rent from Verizon for that building, yes, we could not go in there and use that building

because we were collecting rent from an occupant, but we had 16 months.

We could have gone in that building and gotten architectural drawings so that when that building

became ours, the lease was expired, we could have started working that day.

And keep in mind, this is only tenant improvement design.

This is easy stuff that shouldn't take months and months and months.

It's just a matter of doing a needs assessment, and then the interior walls are going to go

here, here, and here.

Even the lower number, and I use that term very, very loosely that was given in May,

was over $3 million.

Yes.

Which is absurd.

Well, and if we were going to buy that building back in 2024 when it was proposed and told

that it was turnkey, and that was the words they used, then we would not have spent a

total of almost $7 million to buy and upgrade a building that wasn't worth $7 million in

that form.

So which is it?

Now, back in May, to Jim's point, we realized it was a disconnect.

And even the county executive got involved and said, "Hey, look, this is out of bounds."

So why hasn't there been work done on it in the last four months?

Yes, we missed the boat on those 16 months when we could have collected rent and got

our ducks in a row, but we've also missed the last four months, or at least any public

knowledge.

Well, the 16 months, really, again, because we had a year after it became ours that we

didn't have plans and drawings.

In fiscal year '25, the council asked for plans and drawings.

And then when they come around to '26, we're in the same boat.

At one point, there was going to be a $2 million elevator.

Yes.

And again, absurd numbers, especially for something, again, their words, because it

was turnkey.

I mean, the only positive thing in that whole business deal, in my opinion, is the fact

that we got property out there.

Not the property that the building sits on, but the two additional...

They don't have anything on them.

Right.

I mean, that property's worth something.

But it's another example, we've got to have this, we've got to have this, we need it right

now, and boom, we got it.

Go back to the landfill for a second.

Last year, we had to buy the Potts property adjacent to the landfill because it had a

certain type of clay and certain type of soil that they needed at the landfill to put the

cap on everything.

Okay, great.

So the county bought that for a million dollars because we needed the soil, we needed this.

A couple months ago on the county website for bids, they had that property out for bids

for agricultural, for a farmer to lease that property to raise crops on.

I thought we needed it.

I thought that the point of buying the Potts property was to cap the landfill when it was

done, but we did spend $1.2 million purchasing the Potts property.

When I look at the grander scheme of what's going on, yes, the Verizon building is important,

and the Potts property and the landfill is important, but talking to volunteer firefighters

and also watching the budget, the SWOT analysis and the fire service agreement are going to

probably hit most residents in the face long before these other things do.

And when you get your back burner so filled up, and keep in mind, we just added adding

a nursing home commission to this.

We've just spent the last summer having a crisis at the nursing home that they finally

now have legislation and a commission coming in.

There's only so much you can put on your plate at one time, and when you continue to let

some things just kind of fall by the wayside, they go from being a project to a crisis.

And from a fiscal standpoint, it costs you so much more money.

So you buy the Potts property, which I think was a good investment, but at the same time,

that $1.2 million was used to buy that property, and we're bonding construction at cell seven,

which doubles the cost over a 20-year period.

So at some point, government officials from the executive's office and the council have

to be accountable to the taxpayers and say, "Are we using your tax dollars in the most

wise way possible?"

The thread through all of these things that I see, the landfill, the dredging, the Verizon

Center, Salisbury Fire Agreement, the SWOT analysis, the one common thread I see through

it all is nothing is done until it becomes a crisis.

And then all of a sudden, "Oh, we've got to fix it today."

Why does nobody see this stuff coming?

It's obvious.

Anybody can see it coming.

- Well, we attend just about every meeting, and so those updates would not slip by us.

We both have run businesses.

You've been in the credit lending institution.

This is just not how you can expect success.

- No, it's reactionary.

- You can expect to get away with it from time to time, and sometimes you do need to

be lucky to be good, but it's just better to be good, and we're just not.

- Well, there just seems to be a problem executing and pulling the trigger to get whatever requisite

work such as engineering and design, getting it done, and getting the trigger pulled to

get a project under contract and getting it completed.

But this is the common thread that I see that they cannot seem to execute.

The executive branch can't seem to execute, and the council is very passive in everything

they're doing.

Instead of hammering the executive branch, "Why isn't this done?"

- Exactly.

- They remain silent.

- They have spent most of the last four years not getting along, which hasn't been productive.

So if things are going well, and I'm sure things are going well in lots of these projects,

talk about it.

- Yeah.

Make everybody know.

Put the communication out there, and maybe also you're learning from your successes as

much as you're learning from your mistakes.

And if you're gonna put some money behind something and do good for the county, I'd

shout it from the treetops.

But most certainly, hearing nothing just grows to speculation, especially when we've seen

that we've spent most of the last three years going from one crisis to the next.

- Now we have another one that may wind up on the back burner, the nursing home commission

that's been discussed so much over the last couple of months.

We have to do something about keeping the Wicomico nursing home operational, and part

of that solution was to establish a commission.

What do y'all think they're gonna do?

They're gonna get off dead center on this?

- One good amendment that they did put in the emergency legislation they passed in September

was they moved the setting up of the commission from November to the fiscal year, starting

July 1st of 2027.

So they gave 'em, instead of giving 'em about five or six weeks, they gave 'em seven or

eight months, which is obviously much more, you know, ability to accomplish that.

Again, it will take follow-up to say, okay, well, have we found three people on the commission?

'Cause it's supposed to be seven or eight.

Are we at five?

Are we at seven?

You know, where are we at with this process?

Again, if we wait until budget season of next year, which is the fiscal year '27, and then

ask the question, then you get whatever you get at that time.

The time will have run out.

- Well, at the rate they're going, many of the people who might be qualified to serve

on the commission will instead be residents of the nursing home, 'cause they will be so

elderly by the time the local government gets around to getting it done.

Let's hope that's not the case.

Folks, I think that's about all we got time for today.

Thanks very much for being here, and thank y'all for joining us.

We'll be back again next week with another episode of Open Agenda.

We'll look forward to seeing you then.

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