Mild winter start brings relief to Taylor County highway budget

While the mild start to the winter season has some people unhappy, Taylor County’s highway commissioner Ben Stanfley said it is giving a much needed budget boost following last winter’s record- setting expenses. At Tuesday’s highway committee meeting Stanfley told committee members that the November winter road maintenance expenses were the lowest they had been since 2017 and that December is also looking good with forecasts not predicting anything major coming.

However, he cautioned this could change quickly. He noted that last year at this time the county was in a similar situation for road maintenance, but that January through May 2023 as the highest winter cost in at least the past 10 years.

The county uses other highway budget areas such as road improvements to shore up the snowplowing and salting costs so when there are few winter maintenance costs, this means money can go back into other projects.

“Overall the budget is looking good,” Stanfley said, noting they should have money to apply to next summer’s road projects.

State contract

Taylor County will get $872,200 from the state government to maintain state highways in the county. According to Stanfley while this is the same total amount as last year, the state shifted where the funds will be spent such as putting more toward asphalt for patching while taking some away from work on road shoulders and administration.

Stanfley said the county doesn’t ever line up exactly on the amounts for each area of the agreement and was not concerned with the changes saying overall that it is about the same as in the past.

Committee members voted to approve the routine maintenance agreement with the state.

Bridge aid

Committee members approved a bridge aid request from the town of Maplehurst for Burma Ave. The plan is to replace two 60-inch by 48 foot galvanized pipes located about a quarter mile from Clark Dr. with a No. 90 aluminized arch pipe that is 64 feet long. Stanfley said the existing pipes are rusted out in the bottom.

The total cost is $29,301. Under the county’s bridge aid program the county will cover half that cost of $14,650.50.

In other business, Stanfley:

Reported that a new patrolman was hired for a vacancy in Gilman. He said they had interviewed five people and all five were good candidates. The new patrolman lives on the state highway near the shop and comes with experience plowing snow on Hwy 29 and in road construction and winter maintenance. He will start on January 2.

Updated the board on the remaining costs for the Rib Lake shop building. The new shop was budgeted at $3.1 million and Stanfley said he expects it to be about $47,000 over budget once all the remaining costs are paid out. He explained that there were about $94,000 of unexpected costs due primarily to the county finance department choosing to put the money from the sale of the former Rib Lake highway shop toward other budget areas rather than keeping it within the highway budget. He said the total project will be about 1.5% over budget.