(Spirit Lake)—Revenue not keeping pace with the ever increasing cost of construction had Dickinson County Engineer Dan Eckert sounding an alarm at this week’s board of supervisors meeting. Eckert warns the county will be forced to make some very difficult decisions if the current trend keeps up much longer…(click here for comment.) “As a result, when you look at diesel prices and the construction index being way higher over the years, there’s less and less funding for road improvements, so we kind of need to have a plan on the table that if we’re not going to increase the tax levy for property owners and we’re not going to increase the gasoline tax, what is going to be the plan then as there is less and less revenue for building roads and bridges?”
That plan, or plan “B” as Eckert puts it, would have the county cutting back on summer road maintenance staff. He says that would be accomplished by increasing the size of maintenance districts from 45 miles currently to 60, thusly reducing summer road maintenance staff. He says that would likely be done through attrition…(click here for comment.) “I think at the end of the day we have to look at larger motor grader districts. Obviously the rural portion of the county has a lot of road miles that no longer have people living on them, no longer have livestock confinements of any kind on them, so we have to start getting smarter about what we’re doing with the real rural segments of the county when it comes to maintenance in my mind. And again, it’s something that’s going to be continually up for discussion but we need to kind of prepare because it doesn’t look like there’s going to be extra revenue in the future.”
Eckert isn’t sure how much longer the county will be able to operate on the status quo, but he says if things don’t change, he says they’ll probably be forced to take the action as soon as within the next couple of years.
Eckert says other counties, cities and states are being forced to look at a similar scenario in the event revenues don’t increase. He says it’s either that or quit building new roads and bridges…something he says surely won’t sit well with the driving public.
