La Plata County’s long-standing struggle to fund its Road and Bridge department has reached a breaking point, county officials say.
At the most recent “On the Road” meeting, Commissioner Marsha Porter-Norton – meeting with Vallecito residents – described the department as being “functionally bankrupt.”
“That doesn’t mean they have no money,” she said.
What it does mean is that the department doesn’t have enough revenue to complete the necessary road and bridge maintenance, improvements and repairs necessary to keep up with needs and demands.
The department has kept services running despite chronic shortfalls, but without a sustainable source of long-term funding, residents will soon notice the difference, said Superintendent Mike Canterbury.
“In a nutshell, they’re going to see services disappear,” he said.
To address the $10 million shortfall in the Road and Bridge department – as well as shore up the county’s overall budget and support essential services such as the La Plata County Sheriff’s Office – the county is asking voters to approve a 1% sales tax increase on the November ballot.
The county has described that measure as a lifeline. Without it, they say the current level of road maintenance and snow removal will not be possible.
“If the ballot does not pass, the Road and Bridge department will do maintenance only, at reduced levels,” Porter-Norton wrote in an email to The Durango Herald.
Between now and 2045, the county needs $203 million for roads. Of that, $125 million would be used to perform maintenance along 74 miles of paved road and $78.5 million would be used to improve 73 miles of gravel road.
The Road and Bridge department maintains 653 miles of county roads serving about 56,000 residents across four districts: Marvel, Durango, Ignacio and Bayfield. Of those, 222 miles are paved and 431 are gravel.
Its staff of 32 employees – the same number it had in 1984 when Canterbury first started – is responsible for plowing snow, cleaning drainage ditches, replacing signage, assisting with emergency response and keeping up with routine road maintenance.
Much of the infrastructure is aging, with older bridges and culverts not designed for today’s traffic volumes or safety standards.
Several years ago, for example, the county planned to replace the bridge on County Road 122 over the La Plata River. County resident Cathy Behr said she still drives across it regularly despite concerns about safety.
“That was years ago. Nobody’s replaced it. They don’t have the money,” she said. “I drive across that little bridge every time I go to town, and every once in a while I think, ‘I hope it’s still OK.’”
A plethora of capital improvement projects, theoretically, need to take place across the county, Canterbury said.
The county uses traffic counters and Average Daily Traffic counts to decide which roads need paving. Gravel roads are generally supposed to be paved once they hit 200 ADT, but some county roads now see up to 1,000 ADT and still haven’t been paved because of funding constraints.
The department has also had to scale back chip sealing, a cost-effective method of road preservation. The process involves laying down a thin protective layer of asphalt and gravel, which can extend the life of a road by five to seven years. County staff says it can no longer afford to apply it at the necessary frequency.
Instead, crews spend much of their time applying magnesium chloride, a chemical treatment that helps gravel bind to dirt and reduces dust.
But that process takes six to eight weeks to cover all county roads, and by the time crews finish, complaints have already started coming in about the first roads treated, said Recy Reider, the department’s office manager.
Inclement weather only compounds the problem. Heavy snowfall, freeze-thaw cycles, spring runoff and summer monsoons accelerate wear and tear, wash out gravel roads and damage bridges.
Reider fields most of the complaints, which are often about dusty, deteriorating roads. She said many residents expect county roads to look like Colorado Department of Transportation highways, but CDOT has five to six times the funding in this area to maintain its asphalt roads.
In winter, CDOT can keep state highways nearly snow-free by using more chemicals, whereas county crews are limited both by budget and the fact that gravel roads are harder to clear.
“There just isn’t enough money to ever ensure the roads are completely void of any snow,” Reider said.
The funding shortage is not just apparent to county staff. Residents say they see it in their daily drives.
“Out here on the Dryside, we’re all faced with roads that are just – I think – horrible,” Behr said.
She noted that La Plata Highway (Colorado Highway 140), maintained by CDOT, is in good condition, but nearby county roads are not.
“Every once in a while, these huge cottonwoods fall across the road, and then these poor guys from Road and Bridge come out, and you just feel like these guys aren’t appreciated at all,” she said.
At the Vallecito meeting, residents pointed to deteriorating conditions on County Road 500 north of the reservoir, where the chip seal has visibly broken down. Staff members said preservation projects were planned but have been repeatedly delayed because of budget cuts.
Regardless of the financial woes, both Canterbury and Reider said their department has a lot to be proud of.
As they’ve adjusted to their dwindling budget over the past years – the services have continued at largely the same rate.
“We really respect every penny we get,” Reider said.
Graders don’t start plowing snow on gravel roads until 4 to 6 inches have fallen in order to save on fuel, and this winter, snow removal shifts were cut from 12 hours to 10, leaving four hours of the day unaccounted for, but they still managed to do the necessary work.
And the biggest success, they’ve found, has been the employees. Although the department is woefully understaffed, it’s managed to continue countywide services because of the highly dedicated staff, Reider said.
“The employees here are exceptional,” she said.
“It really is a thankless job,” Reider said. “Occasionally we’ll get compliments, but those are really few and far between.”
jbowman@durangoherald.com
