July 23, 2014 at 2:10 p.m.
County workers defended (2/17/04)
Editor's Mailbag
By To the editor:-
I must respond to Mr. Duane Starr’s letter in the Thursday, Feb. 12 issue of The Commercial Review.
“Lack of effort,” please! Tell that to the drivers who worked 12 to 14 hour days for two straight weeks. How disheartening it is to get roads in fair shape, only to have rain/freezing rain overnight and have to start from square one again the next day. These drivers have done all they could with the conditions we had.
Comparing Jay County to surrounding counties is unfair at best. We have 260 miles of stone road. This is so much higher than the surrounding counties. If not for the condition of the ice on our gravel roads, only two to three days of school would have been missed. It is much easier to de-ice the blacktop roads.
As far as equipment goes, maybe we could use more salt trucks, even if we only used them all one or two weeks every few years. Sometimes you just can’t budget for all the things Mother Nature dishes out.
And on the budget, that’s another story. We run a very tight budget with no deficit. We do not rely on a dime of county property tax money for our funding. The only local tax that goes directly to the highway department is the wheel tax, which generates approximately $275,000 a year. The rest of our funding comes from gasoline tax and vehicle registrations that are distributed by the state based on a formula that does not benefit rural counties.
The amount of funding has only increased 23 percent from 1989 to 2002. That’s less than two percent a year. Until the gas tax was raised last year (3 cents, even though only 1 cent was distributed back to the county level) we had no significant increase.
As for equipment and maintenance, in 1989 74 percent of our expenditures were for equipment and maintenance; 25 percent for personnel. In 2002, 72 percent was spent on equipment and maintenance and 28 percent on personnel. I doubt if any surrounding counties could boast these percentages.
We have done this by tightening our belts on unnecessary spending, reducing the number of employees, etc. — all to provide as much funding as possible to the maintenance of our county roads.
It is very difficult to maintain 750 miles of roads at the same level each year as costs continue to rise but the income stays the same.
So maybe instead of questioning the highway department, the commissioners or the county council, complain to the state that we need more funding. They are the ones who control the funding for the highway department. County officials have rallied at every legislative session for years to get increased funding for highway departments.
In closing, we can’t let two weeks of unusual weather dictate the way we budget our department for the remaining 50 weeks.
Dan Watson,
Jay County Engineer[[In-content Ad]]
“Lack of effort,” please! Tell that to the drivers who worked 12 to 14 hour days for two straight weeks. How disheartening it is to get roads in fair shape, only to have rain/freezing rain overnight and have to start from square one again the next day. These drivers have done all they could with the conditions we had.
Comparing Jay County to surrounding counties is unfair at best. We have 260 miles of stone road. This is so much higher than the surrounding counties. If not for the condition of the ice on our gravel roads, only two to three days of school would have been missed. It is much easier to de-ice the blacktop roads.
As far as equipment goes, maybe we could use more salt trucks, even if we only used them all one or two weeks every few years. Sometimes you just can’t budget for all the things Mother Nature dishes out.
And on the budget, that’s another story. We run a very tight budget with no deficit. We do not rely on a dime of county property tax money for our funding. The only local tax that goes directly to the highway department is the wheel tax, which generates approximately $275,000 a year. The rest of our funding comes from gasoline tax and vehicle registrations that are distributed by the state based on a formula that does not benefit rural counties.
The amount of funding has only increased 23 percent from 1989 to 2002. That’s less than two percent a year. Until the gas tax was raised last year (3 cents, even though only 1 cent was distributed back to the county level) we had no significant increase.
As for equipment and maintenance, in 1989 74 percent of our expenditures were for equipment and maintenance; 25 percent for personnel. In 2002, 72 percent was spent on equipment and maintenance and 28 percent on personnel. I doubt if any surrounding counties could boast these percentages.
We have done this by tightening our belts on unnecessary spending, reducing the number of employees, etc. — all to provide as much funding as possible to the maintenance of our county roads.
It is very difficult to maintain 750 miles of roads at the same level each year as costs continue to rise but the income stays the same.
So maybe instead of questioning the highway department, the commissioners or the county council, complain to the state that we need more funding. They are the ones who control the funding for the highway department. County officials have rallied at every legislative session for years to get increased funding for highway departments.
In closing, we can’t let two weeks of unusual weather dictate the way we budget our department for the remaining 50 weeks.
Dan Watson,
Jay County Engineer[[In-content Ad]]
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