JCJDC's footie pajamas
CSX Corp., the community-spirited owner of all things rail, especially in the north country, has told the Jefferson County Job Development Corp. that if it doesn’t begin to pony up $7,500 a year to maintain the switch that controls the corporation’s access to a rail siding in the City Center Industrial Park, it will pull the switch and disable the siding.
This has the JCJDC board debating whether to even bother with the cost, since no companies in the park now use the spur. In fact, the $370,000 hunk of steel and wood and cinders has NEVER been used, in the seven years since it was built.
The issue raises a number of questions that no one wants to ask, let alone answer. For example, in 2001 the Times reported the plans for the siding in a story that included the following paragraph:
“The construction will cost about $370,000, including $85,000 being paid to CSX for the switch. The JCIDA has a $340,000 state grant to pay for most of it. It hopes to recoup the remaining $30,000 and pay for maintenance by charging a fee for the rail's use.”
After seven years, it appears, CSX wants to take back a switch that it has already received $85,000 for. While it’s hard to argue CSX shouldn’t be paid for its maintenance of the switch, shouldn’t someone be asking if it should be allowed to remove it?
Another troubling question is one often ignored with quasi-governmental agencies like JCJDC – just how wise was the investment of $370,000 in a rail siding that has NEVER been used? You have to wonder just how much research went into the decision; did, for example, the board ever survey existing and potential industrial park tenants to see if it was important? Did it look at the future of rail, or the trends in industrial growth, before it agreed to buy into this project?
Finally, somebody reading this is already saying “What’s the big deal – it was a grant.” And that brings me to the final troubling point: isn’t it time governments and agencies stopped taking every grant that comes down the pike simply because the money is dangled before them? When does that million-dollar grant become not worth pursuing? Perhaps when it goes for a rail siding that may never be used, or a walking trail that actually could be provided with existing sidewalks (remember the Lowville debacle?), or some other municipal bauble that never occurred to anyone until some government agency came along and said “Hey, don’t you need a giant carousel in your city square?”
The rail siding in City Center Industrial Park could stand as a metaphor for bad policy. JCJDC acted like an out-of-touch aunt; the rail siding is a lot like the footie pajamas present in “A Christmas Story” – embarrassingly inappropriate. The grant money – all $340,000 of it – has been completely wasted. The $30,000 the agency put out will, apparently, never be recovered. And CSX wants its switch back – the one JCJDC paid for. This boondoggle will end the way most do – brush will gradually overtake the siding, hiding it, and the memory of how this all came to pass will be obscured by the undergrowth and the passage of time.
