County won't pay for stone road treatment (4/19/05)

If Jay County residents want a dust control product put down near their property this year, they’re going to have to foot the bill themselves.

Jay County Commissioners decided Monday that the county can’t afford to pay more than $1,000 per mile to apply a calcium chloride dust control product to the majority of the county’s stone roads.

The commissioners had previously considered the county picking up the tab on treating its approximately 270 miles of stone road.

For years, residents who live on stone roads have been asked to pay for the dust control on a per-foot basis. The cost in 2004 for the first year of the calcium chloride (salt) product was about 30 cents per foot.

At that price, doing 250 miles of gravel roads would cost the county almost $400,000, the commissioners said recently.

Commissioners Milo Miller Jr., Gary Theurer and Faron Parr met with county highway superintendent Ken Wellman and Dennis Lipscomb of AJP Corp. of Goshen on Monday to discuss the cost of the proposed countywide project. The estimated cost for that firm to treat all of the county’s stone roads was $273,105 — or about $1,011 per mile.

“We decided that we couldn’t do all that” because of the cost, Miller said Monday afternoon. “We don’t have anything (budgeted) really for dust control,” except for what the property owners pay.

If the commissioners had opted to proceed with the project, the funding would have come from the county’s infrastructure fund. The current balance in that fund, which comes from payments from the Jay County Landfill, is approximately $580,000, Miller said.

“I don’t want to deplete that fund” because the county has other projects pending that need to be funded, he added.

One of those projects, Miller said, is the possible acquisition of a vacant building across Walnut Street from the courthouse, which would be razed to create space for additional courthouse parking.

The building is located west of the alley behind the Ritz Theatre.

The commissioners can’t move forward and obtain two mandatory appraisals until a resolution expressing interest in the purchase is approved by the Jay County Council. The council’s attorney George Lopez will draft that resolution, which will be considered at the council’s May 11 meeting.

Also Monday, the commissioners:

•Approved a zoning change requested by Ken Brinkerhoff for self-storage units southwest of Portland.

Brinkerhoff, who operates a used car lot at the intersection of Ind. 67 and county road 200 south, plans to construct a 30-foot by 150-foot storage unit on land he recently purchased to the north and west of that lot.

Members of the Jay County Planning Commission voted Thursday evening to recommend re-zoning 12.36 acres commercial, from its current agricultural/residential status.

•Heard a report from Jay County/Portland Building and Planning director Bill Milligan that the department’s phone number will remain the same after the office relocates to the Jay Pride Building on Meridian Street from the county courthouse. Although it will no longer be housed in the courthouse, calls will be able to be transferred between that office and courthouse offices.

•Heard county treasurer Fran Milthaler report that she plans to close her office for a few days after May 10, which is the deadline for paying county property taxes. Closing the office, she said, will enable her staff to get all the mail posted and collect payments made at area banks.

Milthaler has less part-time help than previous treasurers.

•Heard a request from Richland Township resident Matt Weaver for funding from the county’s sewer system loan program, which was created by the commissioners last year.

Loans are repaid through 20 payments over a period of 10 years and are charged 10 percent interest, regardless of the amount of the loan.

Weaver’s next step is to obtain and submit an engineer’s estimate with his application and project plan. He also must submit two loan denials from banks and two contractors’ estimates for the planned work.

•Accepted all bids for oil emulsion, asphalt and equipment rental for the county highway department.

•Signed a $40,000 contract submitted by county assessor Anita Mills for the assessment of new construction to be done by Wells County resident David Schaddt. That two-year contract will run through April of 2007.

•Appointed Portland resident Barbara Laux to a four-term on the Jay County Public Library Board of Trustees. She will replace Bruce Hedges.

•Re-appointed county residents Donna Chittum and Regina Dunlavy to one-year terms on the Jay County Tax Assessment Board of Appeals. Mills and two members named by the county council also serve on that board.

•Heard from John Knipp, an educator with the Jay County office of Purdue University Cooperative Extension, that the county’s farmers market would run from May 1 through Nov. 15. The market, which can be open any day, will be held at the county-owned lot at the corner of Ship and Water streets.

•Heard an update from Jay County community developer on projects within the county during 2004 and so far this year.[[In-content Ad]]