County to consider new tax for roads

For at least three decades, Gunnison County commissioners have wrestled with the same question every fall when finalizing the budget: how to pay for road and bridge maintenance. A combination of factors — from stagnant state revenue to dramatic cost increases in every aspect of maintenance operations — has steadily increased the gap between what is needed, and the resources available to do the job.

Commissioners are now considering whether to ask voters to approve a new tax — either an increase in property taxes or sales tax — to help close that gap with dedicated, sustainable funding. In contemplating that move, commissioners say they recognized a lack of hard data with which to describe and assess the magnitude of the problem — and the potential cost of fixing it.

That has now changed. At a work session on Tuesday, commissioners received a report from Public Works Director Martin Schmidt and representatives of KLJ Engineering. It presented an inventory of county roads, rated their state of repair in half-mile increments and made recommendations about what improvements are needed and what those would cost.

To gather the data, KLJ employed a system called Road AI, which allowed public works employees to survey and assess county roads using smart phones installed in county vehicles during the course of routine operations. Advanced software detects and analyzes a wide range of conditions and rates the road accordingly, saving hundreds of hours of inspection time.

Engineers concluded that the total amount needed to catch up on “deferred maintenance” over the next 20 years, and to bring county roads up to even modest quality standards, is over $38 million — or roughly $1.9 million per year.

This year, the county’s road and bridge budget for managing 418 miles of road and 44 bridges is roughly $6 million for all activities. That includes plowing 100 miles every winter, which can cost as much as $1 million in some years. However, the money available for maintaining or improving county roads fluctuates from $400,000 to $600,000, depending on the year. Lack of funding has meant that projects are delayed, eventually putting a road at risk of more costly repairs.

“We started doing treatments at two to three times the recommended length,” Schmidt said. “If it says five to seven years, we were doing those treatments at 14 to 17 years. We had a chip seal that needs to be done that looks like it might not happen this year. That should have been done about five years ago, and so we're going to defer it for another year in order to deal with the funding uncertainty.”

Colorado raises revenue for road and bridge maintenance through the Highway User Tax Fund (HUTF) — a 40-cent tax on every gallon of gasoline sold in the state. However, because the tax is a flat amount, rather than a percentage of the sale, which is common in some other states, the amount collected has not increased proportionately to the cost of fuel. Further, the state disburses the funds using a weighted system that favors urban areas with high traffic.

What’s left over for rural counties like Gunnison is “insufficient,” even if it is “predictable,” Schmidt said.

“The reality is, HUTF was set in 1991 and 1995,” he said. “We were probably reasonably funded in the mid to late 90s, and since then, because it hasn’t been adjusted, we've been operating on a steadily decreasing purchasing power.”

That is compounded by the fact that the county is prohibited by law from using revenue raised in property taxes to fund road and bridge maintenance. The ballot language that authorized the county’s mill levy in 1979 specifies the money can only be used for "capital projects.”

To compensate for the perennial shortfall, the county has had to draw funds from a variety of sources that are inconsistent from year to year. For example, a federal program called Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILT) is intended to compensate counties containing large amounts of public land for the loss of property tax revenue that would otherwise be collected. However, PILT is subject to annual congressional appropriations, which can cause the amount to vary widely. Payments are generally made in June, but even then the funds are not dedicated to road and bridge maintenance and can be used for other things at the commissioners’ discretion.

Another source of revenue tapped by the county is severance tax, which is assessed by the state on the extraction of non-renewable natural resources within county boundaries. As with PILT, these funds fluctuate.

“The last two years, we've received a little over $1 million in severance taxes,” Schmidt told commissioners. “We received a report yesterday that because of some oil and gas tax incentives and reduction in extraction, we're going to see a cut from an anticipated $110 million available in severance taxes to, statewide, about a million and a half in that pot.”

With the data collection phase complete, KLJ is in the process of creating a website to share the information with the public and solicit input. According to KLJ engineer Jason Reimer, that is an indispensable part of the process. It allows the people who drive roads frequently to add their experience of its “driveability,” something the software doesn’t capture.

“That will allow the community to have access to a map they can leave comments on,” Reimer told the commissioners. “What they're going to say — something this software doesn't do — is profile the road, where they drive it for smoothness. A road can look great from a surface issue, but smoothness depends on how well it's been used, or what kind of vehicles are on it.”

The deadline for reserving a place on this year’s ballot is July 25. That’s when approved ballot language must be filed with the Gunnison County Clerk’s office. Commissioner Laura Puckett Daniels questioned whether that was sufficient time.

“Between now and July 25 in two months, do we have the runway to get people to understand this and buy in?” she said. “Yes, you have four more months after that to do a lot of the storytelling, but I feel like for us to make it, I don’t know.”

Schmidt emphasized that the estimated $38 million cost over 20 years is for addressing the current pressing need. But even roads presently rated as “very good” will continue to deteriorate over time and need maintenance, he said.

“If we don't step up our level of maintenance, every one of these roads that's rated ‘good’ is going to go down, every one of the ones that's rated ‘fair’ is going to go to ‘poor.’ A 20-year $1.9 million per year expenditure doesn't account for the fact that what we fix then starts to deteriorate.”

“This is a huge thing that we're going to have to address,” Commissioner Liz Smith said. “I don't think that I realized how huge until today. It's just so much worse than I think I was prepared for.”

(Alan Wartes can be contacted at 970.641.1414 or publisher@gunnisontimes.com.)