First Posted: 2/21/2015
LIMA — When it comes to maintaining local roads and bridges, it is all about doing more with less.
The responsibility for keeping a county’s infrastructure in order falls to the county engineer, with funding for roads and bridges coming primarily from a state gasoline tax and a portion of license plate fees, in addition to federal and state funding. However, engineers have seen gradual declines in available funds.
“The local funding consists of the gas tax and license fees, and license fees have stayed flat and the gas tax has been going down for the last four to five years,” Allen County Engineer Tim Piper said. “The 88 counties in Ohio got $8 million less [from last year’s gas tax] than we got in 2008.”
The revenue engineers receive from the gas tax is based on the number of gallons sold, not on the price paid at the pump. Therefore, while fuel-efficient vehicles may benefit the motorist at the pump, they reduce available funds for road and bridge maintenance. Adding insult to injury is the fact expenditures continue to rise.
“The last time the federal gas tax was increased was 1993,” Auglaize County Engineer Doug Reinhart said. “Asphalt was $24 a ton then, and today it’s $80.”
The state legislature has made efforts to alleviate some of those shortfalls with a reauthorization of Ohio public works funds, also known as Issue 1, but engineers are still left with less spending power.
“The statewide funding is going up to $175 million a year, which is a tremendous amount of money,” Reinhart said. “But the first program in 1989 had $120 million. What we need now to equal that $120 million in 1989 is $350 million.”
The Ohio Department of Transportation is also dealing with financial uncertainty, despite funding from selling bonds for the Ohio Turnpike.
“What really hurts us is the inability of Congress to fund a long-term transportation bill,” ODOT District 1 Deputy Director Kirk Slusher said. “I think the last bill was 18 months, and that does states no good because we can’t plan for the future.”
The situation has forced engineers to look for alternative funding, either through the state legislature or other means.
“The County Engineers Association has talked to the state legislature about increasing the gas tax or license fees, and basically, there is no consensus down there to do that,” Piper said. “We are working on getting federal funding for our bridges.”
In the meantime, engineers continue to prioritize projects and perform smaller maintenace, trying to keep the current infrastructure viable for as long as possible.
“We’re doing a lot of crack sealing, a chip seal program, everything we can do to try to hold the integrity of that pavement together until we can find the money somewhere to pay for the traditional hot mix overlay,” Reinhart said.
With uncertainty about future funding, ODOT is continuing to plan for future projects, hoping that the money will be available when it is time to break ground.
“It’s not a good model, but it’s the best that we have,” Slusher said.
While engineers continue to try to make the most of what they have, more funding is needed to avoid more expensive fixes down the road.
“For these bridges that currently have a posted weight limit of five or 10 tonnes, if we can’t get funding in the next five years, we may have to close them,” Piper said.
“I hate paying taxes as much as anybody, but as engineers, we look at the gas tax and license plate fee as a user fee,” Reinhart said. “If you want to drive a road and feel safe crossing a bridge, there are user fees.”
