Road Maintenance Fees Could Be A Priority This Year

County Councilman Trey Whitehurst says simple math could force county officials to take a look at increasing road maintenance fees.

“This is just a mathematical problem,” Whitehurst said at county council's recent planning retreat. During the retreat, council members listed issues they feel need addressing, which will be considered as county plans its future agendas.

“We've got the cost of asphalt going up, the number of roads we're added to the county is increasing, divide how much money we've got and how many roads we've got,” Whitehurst said. “Our roads are getting paved every twenty years or so?”

“Somewhere close to that,” County Administration Chap Hurst replied.

Council Chairman G. Neil Smith said the county should be on a 17-year road paving rotation.

“We're getting a little bit behind,” Hurst said.

Whitehurst said a new method called fogging could help with the problem.

“It's a really strong aggregate, almost like a glue,” Whitehurst said. “It's an advanced sealant.”

“This may actually save us a lot of money on it,” he said. “I just think we ought to try to keep those roads at the life that they should be, as opposed to trying to stretch it out further than it needs to be.”

“Does it work?” Smith asked, of the fogging process.

“If you don't let the roads get real bad, it'll work,” Hurst said. “I'm saying it might get your 4-5 years before you have any issues. If the base is still good, if we get there before that, it'll work.”

“You're not talking high-traffic roads, you're talking about neighborhood roads and stuff like that?” Smith said.

“That's right,” Hurst said.

“We've got some pretty good neighborhood roads …. but they start to crack,” Smith said. “The water gets in the cracks, it freezes and pops it up.”

“The most important is any road surfacing is the foundation, is the structure underneath – that's what fails.” Whitehurst said. “If you see the cracks, the foundation has failed. The problem is the state comes in and throws stuff down on stuff, puts a layer of asphalt down, and then it cracks in two years, because they never addressed the real problem. They just patch-worked it. If we have a good solidation foundation to begin with, fogging may be a way to extend it.”

Hurst said the cost of road maintenance has continued to go up over many years and “the amount of money we're generating is not going up.”

“It's pretty constant,” he said. “About $1.8 million a year.”

“And we're adding roads,” Whitehurst said.

“That's really the issue,” Hurt said. “We've been supplementing it some lately with C-Fund money.”

Smith said council allocated $1 million several years ago to help with the problem.

“At one shot, trying to catch us back up,” Hurst said.

Councilman Jeff Martin said the public needed to understand the road maintenance fee also covers county bridges.

“We're doing both,” Hurst said.

“The public will put up with a bump in the road or a crack in the road, but they won't put up with a bad bridge,” Martin said.

“They can't,” Hurst said.

“Especially if they find out the bridge they've been driving over could have easily killed them, if they found out there's no support underneath,” Smith said.

Council members discussed the Eighteen Mile Bridge, which dropped a foot last year and remains closed.

“That wasn't one of the ones identified,” Smith said, referring to a list of bridges in the state identifie as needing repair or replacement. “That wasn't on the list.”