By ANDY GARDNER

MASSENA -- The village will seek funding to complete the Aluminum Trail, a troubled project they have struggled to complete for more than a decade.

The Board of Trustees on Tuesday voted 4-0 to submit a grant application to the Northern Regional Boarder Commission for the funding.

The village has hired the Greenman Pederson Inc. engineering firm to reduce the project scope to something the village can afford, DPW Superintendent Hassan Fayad said.

"[They're] modifying the existing prints to fit the budget amount we currently have without expending additional village funds," Fayad said.

He said the federal government will give out up to $1,153,000 towards the project, the price tag within which the engineers are now trying to make the project fit. The village will have to pay an additional $94,000 on top of what they’ve already paid out.

"We are hopeful we will be authorizing that to be rebid at our next board meeting," Mayor Tim Currier said.

Fayad said two agencies had pledged grants, which now may be in jeopardy because the project is being scaled back. The New York Power Authority had said they would give $185,000 and Massena Electric Department was to have given $30,000 of in-kind services by installing lighting.

MED’s was contingent on the footbridge deck and railings being replaced, which the DPW chief said won’t happen. NYPA had said they would give their money when the project was supposed to have gone from East Orvis Street to the Intake on state Route 131.

“When they (NYPA) initially awarded it to us, the intent of the project was to go from East Orvis Street all the way to the Intake,” Fayad said. “The project has scaled back so much I don’t know” if they will still give the money.

The project started over a decade ago under then-mayor Ken MacDonnell. After many years of inaction, it was been reduced to improving the footbridge.

So far, the village has spent $315,000 and $252,000 of that was reimbursed through the Transportation Enhancement Program, administered by the state Department of Transportation, which they will have to repay if the project doesn’t get done.

The village board on Sept. 5 voted to back out of the Aluminum Trail project, which would have put the village in debt $252,000 to the state Department of Transportation. The vote followed Fayad saying the project would have cost more than a half million dollars to complete.

Currier said they are in talks with the DOT to get the trail finished.

"We're still working with the DOT. This project I believe has to be completed by the end of 2018," Currier said at the Tuesday meeting.