Ravalli County officials host public meeting on proposed roads levy

Ravalli County Commissioners held a meeting at the fairgrounds Monday evening to discuss the proposed roads levy for the June ballot.

Commissioner Chairman Dan Huls read the resolution and how it will be written on the ballot. He said a nearly $3 million annual funding shortage is the main reason for the levy. If approved by voters, the levy will have a 10-year duration, set at an amount of up to $2,909,500 per year, paying for the cost of materials only, with the purpose of improving public safety.

“We need to do a better job with our roads, and roads are an important part of our county infrastructure,” Huls said. “And frankly, probably the thing that we get complaints on the most.”

Commissioner Jeff Burrows agreed with Huls that the biggest complaint from county residents was road conditions. Burrows said with the current level of funding they have, which is roughly $5 million a year, they are only able to do around four miles a year in paving and around 12 miles of chip sealing.

“When you have 550 miles of road, 300 of them are paved, we're losing ground significantly right now,” Burrows said.

Burrows said they are not deciding whether the levy moves forward, they are just asking the community what the level of service they want done on the county roads. He said, in his opinion, the levy would put the county at a sustainable point of keeping up with road degradation, and they made it temporary to give room for change if people are not happy at the end of the 10 years.

“We are proposing it for 10 years, and that way citizens could reevaluate after that ten years if they don't think that that level of service is where it should be,” Burrows said. “And we can reevaluate from there.”

Commissioner Greg Chilcott said less than half of the $5 million they have for roads is from property taxes. He said they also receive an amount of the gas tax based on a formula dealing with the miles of road in Ravalli County.

An underlying funding problem, Chilcott said, occurred back in the '70s and '80s when Ravalli County got 25% of the road funding from logging in the National Forest. He says the county would receive around $1 million or more annually, and since the '80s there has been a decline in logging within the county.

“We used to be a pretty strong, robust logging economy here that started a steep decline in the late '80s and continued to decline to what we've seen lately,” Chilcott said. “That revenue, I think, this last time we had a check on the 25% fund this last year was like $8,000 and I pulled that number out of memory, but very low number.”

Chilcott said the county fought against the federal government because of how their regulations would change the logging economy. The federal government then created a program called Secure School Funds to help pay for roads but according to Chilcott that funding has declined annually. Chilcott said the first check he remembers was just north of $1 million and the most current one was around $400,000.

“That's put us in a position where these roads have become old and they need maintenance and they need work done," Chilcott said. "We only have so much money, and so we spend all we can on them, but it's not enough."

Chilcott said many of the roads that were once paved are now being milled back up and turned back into gravel because there are not enough trips made by cars on many of the roads to warrant the cost of repaving. He said they have a list with more roads being turned back into gravel if they don’t do something soon and at this point a mill levy is the only solution the commissioners can come up with.

Burrows addressed a question about why the money will going toward the cost of materials only, saying they wanted the public to trust that the money would be going directly to the roads and not in their pockets for things like a new road department building or other items. He also said they want it to be marked for materials only so if a new group of commissioners come in during the ten year period, they couldn't allocate the funds elsewhere.

During the public comment period, community members said they support the roads being fixed, but would like to see an itemized breakdown for the $5 million.

The commissioners agreed it would be beneficial to get people a breakdown and understanding of what is included in the levy. They said building a web page connected to the county government website would be the best way to get the information to as many people as possible so they can make an informed decision when voting.