Supervisors Heated Over Roads
Oskaloosa, Iowa – The Mahaska County Board of Supervisors met on Monday May 2nd for their regular scheduled meeting.
The board opened a public hearing that would establish a policy for construction and reconstruction of county roadways.
The ordinance would be adopted to help Mahaska County during a disaster situation in coordinating with FEMA for reimbursement for damages from such events as floods. Since the county follows Iowa DOT standards, it was recommended that the language of the ordinance indicate that.
The Board then also discussed a procurement policy is designed to outline how the Mahaska County Secondary Roads handles purchases during an emergency situation, such as a federally declared disaster.
The policy measure was passed by the board on a 3-0 vote.
A budget amendment for secondary roads was brought before the board for review.
“The reason for the budget amendment is to replace a truck that was lost in an accident and a motor grader, but it’s also for the additional rock that we hauled because of last spring’s very wet weather, and very soft weather, or soft road conditions, and we’re kind of running into the same thing now. We’d hoped that it’d been dry for awhile, that we might have been able to get through the rest of the year, but it looks like with the rains that we’ve had, we’re going to have to be putting more rock out there,” said David Shanahan, Mahaska County Engineer.
Shanahan said that a half-million dollars would go into the road portion of the budget.
Mahaska County Supervisor Chairman Willie Van Weelden said that Shanahan has used 82% of his budget for the fiscal year, “and you have $973,000 left for two months. So what are you going to spend that $500,000 on, because you’ve got about $200,000 in salaries. That leaves you $700,000 for expenses for two months.”
“Well, buying rock has been running us right around $300,000 a month. And so, we put rock on there to keep the roads rocked and we do have some patching that we have to do,” says Shanahan.
Mahaska County Supervisor Vander Molen moved to approve the Secondary Roads budget amendment. Mahaska County Supervisor Mark Doland seconded the motion, saying that at least half of the expenses have come up as unforeseen expenses.
Over the 2015-16 budget year for Mahaska County Secondary Roads, they expect to be at least 10% over budget for the year. Shanahan explained that rock and patching are large culprits in the extra expense.
“You know, I was on a road the other day that gets maybe 2 cars a day Dave, and it had a fresh coat of rock from one end to the other. A mile and half. I have trouble with some of these things, and I had a report from down at Fremont that there’s an unused road that had gotten rock on it. So are we managing where we are going with this rock pretty good, because that road by me gets no traffic. Nobody lives on it,” said Van Weelden.
“It’s a Class A road and you still have to maintain it to the standpoint that it’s a Class A road,” said Shanahan, who says that an accident had recently taken place because there wasn’t enough rock on a road. “How do you know if someone’s going to be on there or not?”
“We can’t pick and choose where we put all this stuff. All roads that are Class A need to be addressed,” says Shanahan.
Van Weelden then commented that it may be important to look at turning Class A roads into Class B roads that no longer have residents living along them.
“You’d have to go through a public hearing and see if they [public] would allow it to be downgraded to a B,” says Shanahan.
Vander Molen and Doland voted in favor of the budget amendment, while Van Weelden voted against the measure.
In separate discussion, Van Weelden asked if dust control measures have been applied to the gravel road that runs along the Lacey Complex.
Shanahan said that county policy is that those requesting the dust control measures pay for that.
Van Weelden said that with the amount of usage by the public at the facility, it would be a good gesture by the county to apply the dust control agent to the road way.
Vander Molen spoke up, pointing towards the policy that the agent be paid for by those requesting it. “If you start making exception to policy, you create one exception, you have two exceptions, you have five exceptions. You’ll have 15 people in here every year asking for an exception. So I think it makes sense to just abide by our policy.”
“If we do it for one, we have to do it for everybody,” said Doland.
“You don’t do that when you give money to the country club up in New Sharon,” said Van Weelden. “You gave them money, and they’re a private organization.”
The motion was then made to adjourn the meeting; it was seconded.
