Barry County roads are rated by the state at 6.5 to 7 on a scale of 1 to 10. The Barry County Road Commission borrowed $4.5 million in 2016, and unrestricted some other funds for its projects and is close to not having a backlog of projects, Road Commission Managing Director Brad Lamberg told Barry County Commissioners in an annual report Tuesday.
The road commission has been relying less on townships for funding in the past few years, he added. However, he said while the county’s roads are stable and slightly improving, there is still significant need, and “most other local agencies are in much worse shape…having enough funding to do the right repairs at the right time would allow the BCRC to address most road needs at an overall lower life cycle cost, saving the taxpayer money in the long run.”
Legislation passed in 2015 began providing money for roads in 2017. He said 2018 is the first full year of new revenue going to roads. Beginning this year, the state is phasing in an additional permanent $600 million and will eventually raise an additional $1.2 billion per year for Michigan roads by the year 2021.
After a decade of shortfall in funds that didn’t cover sharply rising costs on materials, especially from 2004 to 2008, “the new 2017 funding surely will help, especially in Barry County,” Lamberg said.
“However in most areas of the state, that funding was way too little and way too late. Governor Whitmer’s push to fix the roads is definitely needed. The current proposal is for a 45 cent per gallon gas tax increase. Infrastructure and funding discussions in 2019 will certainly be interesting.”
He noted if the 45 cent increase is passed, much of the increase will go to the MDOT, The proposed law would bring $1.5 million to Barry County; the current funding formula would send $5.3 million to the road commission.
When asked what he would like to see for the county roads in five years, he replied he would like “to maintain where we are now.”
The 32 road commission employees are responsible for 344.58 primary roads, 722.18 local roads, 593.45 paved roads, 473.31 gravel roads, 68.01 all season roads, 76.17 subdivision/plat roads, 7.69 seasonal maintenance roads and 10.73 natural beauty roads and 43 bridges.
In addition to Lamberg, the road commission has a three- member board of directors; David Solmes, D. David Dykstra and Frank Fiala.
In other business, commissioners approved spending $206,220 for new law enforcement Records Management System and Jail Management System from CentralSquare Technologies to be paid from the Data Processing Fund and $48,222 to replace the chiller at the sheriff’s office to be paid from the Building Rehabilitation Fund.
