During Monday’s Marshall County Commissioner meeting the condition of county roads came up.
Marshall County has experienced substantial road damage due to the severe winter weather we had again this year. Roads around the county have blown up all over.
Highway Superintendent Jason Peters mentioned that they had a county highway truck stuck at 5th and Gumwood Monday morning and said, “I do think we’re probably going to have to leave some roads ground up for a year. I just don’t see how we are going to be able to fund repairs to them.” He said there are just way too many issues.
Commissioner Kevin Overmyer said he talked with L-TAP (Local Technical Assistance Program) at Purdue and a guest speaker will be coming later this month to talk at a joint, evening meeting of the Commissioners and County Council. He will discuss how Marshall County can generate some funding for the county roads. Overmyer said, “It would just be for information at this time, so we would have the information needed to make a decision.” He continued, “The highway will also have to put a plan together for how we are going to work through this.” He continued, “This isn’t going to be an overnight fix, it’s going to be a 5 to 10 year project to fix these roads.”
Peters commented, “This is well beyond our two year plan.” The county receives about a million dollars during the course of a year to work on roads but that’s not enough money. Peters confirmed the county’s road mileage at 950 to 1,000 miles of paved roads and 84 miles of gravel roads. He also noted that it costs $68,000 to $70,000 a mile to do a road.
During Tuesday’s What’s Your Opinion Show on WTCA Overmyer confirmed that finding additional funding for roads could be the implementation a wheel tax or CEDIT (County Economic Development Tax) Tax. He explained a wheel tax would be about $25 per vehicle each year and would raise approximately one million dollars a year while the CEDIT would be shared with other taxing entities in the county.
Overmyer indicated that the County Council and Commissioners would look at all possibilities of funding a major county road over-haul but noted it would take years to complete and the regular funds are not enough to do the necessary work.
