County looks at road paving project, funding

By Samantha Pidde

CLINTON — A little over a dozen members of the public attended the Clinton County Board of Supervisors’ discussion of a petition to pave a gravel road in Hampshire Township.

A petition of 61 names had been presented to the board last week. This petition calls for an approximate four-mile stretch of 170th Street to be paved up to Iowa 136. The thought voiced was that since it was paved up to U.S. 67, this should continue to Iowa 136.

“The question is basically, what kind of priority is this for the county. What's the possibility of us doing this project,” asked Chairman Dennis Starling.

“It does kind of make sense as far as a, I guess, a short cut or cut-off road for either people traveling north out of Clinton or south into Clinton to get over on the Two Mile Road, all the way over to 67,” said County Engineer Todd Kinney.

Kinney said the first step of the process would be to conduct a traffic count on the road to evaluate if it should be paved. He said in the last count done by the Iowa Department of Transportation in 2006, the road was shown to have an average of 80 cars daily on the low end and 120 vehicles daily on the high end. Kinney said he would conduct his own count by burying sensors in the road and recording the data for a week. He would do this count within the next two or three weeks, because he wants to wait until school is in session to get accurate results.

Kinney said gravel roads, are of course, cheaper to maintain than paved roads, However, this count would allow him to use an equation scale to see if the cost to the citizens would be lowered and if they would sufficiently benefit from having the road paved.

“It seems to me that this is a logical road that would be paved, because of the connection. And then we're going to have to sit down and try to find out how to pay for it,” said Starling.

Kinney said once the count was done, he would report the results to the board. The board would then decide whether to place it on its required five-year plan and look for ways to fund it. Kinney wanted to emphasize that just because it would be on the five-year plan would not mean it would take that long. Items on this plan can be moved around, based on funding and necessity.

“There is a possibility to do this. But one thing I think we need your help on is we need an increase in gasoline tax. The consumption rate has just gone down in Iowa, which is good. But that means less tax revenue for us,” said Starling.

Kinney said the gasoline tax’s last increase was in 1989.

“We would be in a better position to do more projects like what we're talking about if they had kept the gas taxing structure in line with at least with inflation. That's 20 years ago and the tax rate has not changed in 20 years,” said Kinney.

The people involved in the petition were told they could contact their legislators about the gasoline tax if they wished. However, Kinney warned that he felt a gas tax increase is unlikely as an election year is approaching and legislators are less likely to pass a tax increase. Another idea Kinney offered for possible funding would be changing how the Secondary Roads Department is funded.

“But some counties, instead of using the local option sales tax for property tax relief, like what Clinton County does, they take that local option sales tax and they earmark it for paving projects. It cannot be used for anything else but road, new road and bridge construction. So on average, we would get around $800,000,” said Kinney.

In order to use these funds as Kinney suggested, a new vote on the referendum would need to be held. Kinney said people would also need to be aware that if the local option sales tax was removed as funding from the Secondary Roads Department, other funding for the department, which is from other taxes, would need to increase.

The board accepted the petition and placed it on file. Kinney said the traffic count will begin in the next few weeks and the board will hold a discussion on the subject again when the data is ready.

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