§ 234. Powers and duties of an applicant. An applicant shall have the
power and authority to:

1. undertake and carry out any project for which state assistance is
received or to be received pursuant to this article and maintain and
operate such project;

2. expend money received from the state pursuant to this article for
costs incurred in conjunction with the approved project;

3. perform such other and further acts as may be necessary, proper or
desirable to carry out a project or obligation, duty or function related
thereto;

4. for local street or highway projects outside the city of New York,
determine, subject to the approval of the commissioner, the
suballocations, of the allocation determined for such county pursuant to
subdivision two of section two hundred thirty-three of this chapter that
should be made available to the towns, cities, villages, within each
county and to the county itself. Such suballocation determination shall
be based on information and data furnished each such county by the
commissioner for such purpose. The applications for state assistance
shall be made in accordance with such suballocations and within the
total allocation determined to be available to such county;

5. enter into contracts with the towns, cities and villages within
such county with respect to undertaking local street or highway projects
on the town highway, or city or village highway, street or road systems
respectively; and

6. for local street or highway projects, to undertake the work of the
project either with its own forces or by contract, however, whenever the
estimate for the construction contract work exceeds three hundred fifty
thousand dollars such work must be performed by contract let by the
competitive bid process.