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Publication: The Dominion Post
Release Date: 12/01/2008
DOH strapped for road funds
Need $350 million more per year, but funds declining
The Dominion Post, November 30, 2008
The state of West Virginia needs to acquire an extra $350 million per year to keep up with needed maintenance demands and highway construction, W.Va. Division of Highways officials said. “Yes, the DOH is strapped for cash,” said John Walker, state highway engineer of maintenance for the department of transportation. “The costs of construction materials have increased very significantly over the past four years. We have a large number of needed improvement projects that are unfunded. Our limited funding is being used more and more to maintain the existing 37,000 miles of roads and 6,800 bridges in our inventory.”
The Statewide Transportation Improvement Program (STIP) document notes that the state road fund budget is about $1 billion for Fiscal Year 2009, but the demand for work exceeds that amount. Monongalia County gets a share of that, but a bad winter could make it difficult to even keep area roads salted, officials said.
West Virginians for Better Transportation, a coalition of business leaders and community groups, has conducted an educational outreach program called Keep West Virginia Moving “to express concerns about West Virginia’s transportation crisis and to call on state leaders to develop long-term solutions,” according to its Web site. Studies and reports linked on the site — including the Reason Foundation’s 17th Annual Report on the Performance of State Highway Systems — note that 27 percent of West Virginia’s major roads are in poor or mediocre condition and the state leads the nation in percentage of narrow lanes, with 67 percent of its major roads less than 10 feet wide.
During this fiscal year, the DOH began using a new annual plan formula that will increase funding to the 55 counties by 3.5 percent. Monongalia County has seen slight increases in its annual DOH maintenance budget over the past three years, but the increase for fiscal year 2009 (July 1-June 30, 2009), is larger under the new DOH annual plan formula. Maintenance funding for Mon County in fiscal year 2009 is $3,895,097 — a $218,267 increase (5.9 percent) over its 2008 budget of $3,676,830.
The 2008 budget reflected a $38,696 (1 percent) increase over the 2007 budget of $3,638,134. The 2007 numbers reflected an increase of $123,029 (3.5 percent) over its 2006 budget of $3,515,105. The new DOH annual plan formula uses these factors to determine each county’s maintenance budget: personnel costs, snow and ice removal, utility and janitorial bills, and miles traveled on the county’s roads.
DOH spokeswoman Karen Zamow said that the formula assesses each county’s individual needs. There is no DOH ranking system that allots more maintenance funding to some counties than others. “The previous formula was based on several factors including climate, geology and vehicle density,” she said. “This formula was problematic as it underestimated the maintenance need of county organizations and had to be adjusted frequently. The new formula is much more efficient and better addresses the maintenance needs of DOH county organizations.”
For DOH fiscal year 2009 — July 1, 2008 through June 30, 2009 — Mon County’s maintenance funding amounts to about $13,478 per day for labor, materials, equipment, utility bills and janitorial services, said Jeff Pifer, assistant engineer of maintenance for DOH District Four office in Clarksburg. DOH District Four contains six counties with a total 4,850.7 miles: Monongalia, 894.93 miles; Harrison, 929.29 miles; Marion, 789.60 miles; Doddridge, 550.64 miles; Preston, 1,272.25 miles; and Taylor, 413.99 miles.
“From July 1 to Nov. 15, we reduce the per day amount to try and come into winter with a 5-percent surplus to cover snow and ice costs which are hard to accurately estimate since we are dealing with Mother Nature,” Pifer said. To gather the surplus, Mon County spends about $11,900 per day during that period — equipment and labor run roughly $11,000, and materials and invoice costs take up the remaining $900.
“One 10-ton load of blacktop runs almost $800, so the money doesn’t go very far,” Pifer said. “If we have a mild winter, we should have a surplus of money to work with come spring. Conversely, a bad winter will most likely result in very little funding to work with in the spring.”
Prices on salt and asphalt have also gone up: Salt was $42 per ton last year and now costs $125 per ton; asphalt was $45 per ton and is now $75 this year, Pifer said.
“From a salt standpoint, every state in the country faces a looming salt shortage,” said Department of Transportation spokesman Brent Walker. “We’ve got enough for this season, but salt is going to be a growing problem for the country from a funding standpoint. We will be fine. One area of the state is not going to have to stay frozen. If it’s an extremely tough winter, we will move resources throughout the area.”
Construction funds
The DOH’s draft STIP document for 2009-2014 shows that funding isn’t likely to improve — in fact, it’s projected to decline. Combined revenue (federal and state) for FY 2009 is $1.131 billion. That will drop to $1.114 billion in 2010, and drop steadily to $1.037 billion in 2014. Because of inflation, the actual purchasing power will be even less. The STIP shows that 2014’s $1.037 billion will be worth only $764 million in 2007 dollars.
The DOH road fund is projected to be $106 million in the red at the end of FY 2009. It expects to have a deficit at the end of four of the five following years. It projects operating in the black at the end of 2011, with a surplus of $7.8 million.
The STIP authors note that a shortage of funds is sometimes challenging for the public to understand when the road fund is about $1 billion. “The concepts of fiscal constraints and limitations are frequently difficult for individuals to grasp,” the document says, “when they know that WVDOH has an annual budget of approximately $1 billion. ... A rudimentary tabulation of the needs that exist indicates that highway needs exceed funding available to meet them. The costs associated with some identified needs, such as fixing all deficient bridges, could consume all available state highway funds.”
The $1.131 billion gets divided in several ways, according to the STIP. For FY 2009, about $50 million goes to debt service; $68 million goes to administrative costs; $272 million goes to routine road maintenance. A variety of mandatory “set-asides” takes up another nearly $40 million. What’s left — about $264 million from the state and $465 million from the federal government — is available for highway improvements.
Most DOH operations are paid for through the annual state road fund, derived from fuel taxes; vehicle registration, title and permit fees; and federal reimbursements distributed to first-priority road projects with a high number of vehicle miles traveled.
“Because the division of highways does not have an unlimited budget, it is necessary that construction projects be prioritized to work within the given budget,” Zamow said. “Routes such as interstates and U.S. highways are the most heavily traveled in the state, thus making them first priority for construction and maintenance operations such as snow removal and ice control.”
Second-priority routes are county routes and routes with a lesser volume of traffic; third-priority routes have an even smaller amount of traffic, the STIP document says.
Mon projects
Current Monongalia County roadimprovement projects include constructing a turning lane on Beechurst-University Avenue; a W.Va. 705 connector that includes building a road and a bridge; and adding turn lanes on Patteson Drive, according to STIP document.
Construction of turning lanes on Beechurst-University Avenue and Patteson Drive are scheduled to begin in spring 2009; the W.Va. 705 connector project is still in the design phase, Zamow said.
Monongalia County Commissioner Asel Kennedy, who is chairman of the Morgantown Planning Organization, said the group is involved in the design work for the University Avenue turning-lane project. The plan does not include removing any University Avenue businesses to make room for the turning lane, he said.
Resident concerns
In e-mails to The Dominion Post, local residents expressed their concerns about the poor condition of some lower priority roads that receive little attention, and the number of trucks that travel on downtown Morgantown roads.
H. Frank Hazelwood, of Morgantown, said parts of Williams and Lawless roads near Kmart, in Morgantown Commons, are in a dangerous state. Hazelwood said he has contacted the DOH several times about maintenance and was told that the repairs are on a project list. “There are seven blind curves, weeds are laying over to the center of both sides to the middle and [there are] very large holes. ... We asked to repair the road ourselves and we were told that we are not allowed to fix anything,” he said.
Zamow said that “while citizens may become frustrated, the entire division, including county and district offices, must work within allocated budgets and prioritize improvements accordingly.”
Residents who are waiting on road improvements may submit a written request for a traffic study or contact their local government or congressional members in an effort to help the DOH try to secure more funding for road improvement projects, she said.
Rick Landenberger, of Morgantown, said the DOH should restrict truck travel in Mon County, so fewer repairs would be needed. “I have been a resident of Morgantown for 15 years and have always been amazed at the amount of heavy truck traffic in the downtown area,” he said. “They have a tremendous impact on the roads by buckling the pavement and creating potholes. Of course, the impact they have on air quality and quality of life [their noise] has significant costs to the community as well.”
If a truck is adequately licensed and hauling a load that meets the road’s weight requirement, the DOH cannot restrict truck travel, Pifer said.
The DOH is working with the statewide coalition West Virginians for Better Transportation to help spread awareness about the division’s operations and funding challenges. “We have spent a lot of time explaining, educating and collaborating with the Legislature, the general public and anyone else on how the DOH is funded,” Zamow said.
Since forming in 2006, West Virginians for Better Transportation has acquired about 215 coalition partners who support its mission. “West Virginians for Better Transportation has really kind of carried the water to educate the public, about how we are funded, about the importance of investing into the infrastructure of our roads and bridges,” Brent Walker said. “They have really been a third party that has worked hand-in-hand with the DOH and on behalf of the DOH to educate corporations, as well as citizens, on how we are funded, where the money goes to and on the shortfalls we see.”
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