§ 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.