Other counties pave the way

MORLEY, Mo. -- The black patch of asphalt in front of Lee Cook's home on Scott County Road 413 is a sign of progress to Presiding Commissioner Martin Priggel.

Scott County invested $50,000 last year in a hot-mix paving machine, allowing county road crews to lay 2 inches of asphalt over crumbling chip-and-seal surfaces. The longer-lasting asphalt should help reduce costs for the dust control program the county pursues to reduce complaints from residents who live along gravel roads.

The cost of dust control fits the county's budget for maintaining about 350 miles of roads, of which about half are paved. The county doesn't plan to pave the remainder, most of which have lengthy stretches that run along farm fields, Priggel said.

"We originally tried to chip and seal for four or five years," Priggel said. "In some places it would work, while in other places it would not, and we were back doing it every year. We think the hot mix will last."

Dust control has become an important issue for Cape Girardeau County as voters contemplate Proposition 1, a permanent half-cent increase in the sales tax that would accelerate county road paving and expand the sheriff's department. When first proposed in May, the spending plan for use of the $5.9 million of sales-tax revenue was silent on dust control. A public hearing in June, however, impressed commissioners that residents along the 400 miles of county roads are anxious to rid themselves of the dust churned up by passing cars and trucks.

Another controversial aspect of Cape Girardeau's paving program requires every resident along a stretch of road to assign wider easements on their property to the county before asphalt is laid. In some other first-class counties that have tackled paving, widening has often been ignored in order to plunge ahead with the program.

Both issues will be placed before the County Road and Bridge Advisory Board, a new body created by the commission last week to set policies for roadwork regardless of the fate of Proposition 1 on Aug. 8. Membership on the 11-person board hasn't been set, and commissioners want anyone who wishes to be considered to send an application.

Cook and his wife, Judy, are pleased with the appearance and the effectiveness of Scott County's dust control efforts. "It makes a big difference, especially when those trucks come by hauling grain," Cook said.

"It also cut down on the noise," Judy Cook added.

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Like Cape Girardeau County, Greene and Boone counties turned to a sales tax to propel their road programs forward. And like Cape Girardeau County, leaders in Greene and Boone counties cut back or eliminated road and bridge property taxes to give voters an incentive to pass the local tax.

Greene County passed its sales tax in the 1980s, Presiding Commissioner David Coonrod said. In less than a dozen years, every mile of the 1,300 miles of county road was paved, making Greene County the only county besides Jackson and St. Louis counties to cover every gravel road, Coonrod said.

One way Greene County, which includes the city of Springfield, succeeded in the speedy road program was by making pavement the priority, not easements.

"We went out and paved what we had," Coonrod said.

Some roads were covered with a chip-and-seal surface for their entire length, while others used an asphalt layer called cold mix. Cold and hot mixes differ in texture and durability, with the name based on the temperature when applied to the road surface.

Now that every road has a hard surface, the county plans improvements based on where growth has increased traffic or where safety is a concern.

Greene County, unlike Cape Girardeau County, negotiates directly with landowners for the additional right of way, moving fences to new locations at no charge and working to eliminate blind exits from driveways. In Cape Girardeau County, one neighbor must convince another to provide an easement or the paving work will not take place.

Cape Girardeau County commissioners have promised that eminent domain will not be used to speed paving projects. Greene County has no such policy, Coonrod said. "If we had a situation where we had a road that desperately needed to be widened or improved and the landowner would not sell or give the right of way, we would have to consider some kind of taking through eminent domain," Coonrod said.

Greene County, with a 2000 Census population of 240,000, has a far larger tax base than Cape Girardeau County, which had a population of just under 69,000 in 2000. Boone County, which has had a half-cent sales tax in place since 1993, had about 140,000 people in 2000, including the city of Columbia.

Boone County has nearly 800 miles of roads, of which about 200 miles are asphalt, 56 miles are chip-and-seal and 30 miles are concrete with curbs and gutters.

In recent years, road paving in Boone County has been hampered by increasing maintenance costs and has even considered returning chip-and-seal roads to gravel surfaces. "After you have had these hard surface roads for awhile, they have to have maintenance," Boone County Presiding Commissioner Keith Schnarre said. "You have to maintain them to keep them."

Chip-and-seal is the cheapest form of hard surface, but it is also the most brittle, succumbing easily to hard winters or heavy rains. It must be reapplied often, in some cases yearly.

Boone County also had problems early in its program securing the easements needed to make roads the desired widths. When it moved to adding asphalt to roads without acquiring those easements, criticism developed over drop-offs into ditches becoming safety concerns.

As a result, some Boone County leaders have responded by taking a stance that residents want solid, long-lasting roads without the problems associated with crumbling chip-and-seal or narrow lanes.

The increasing cost of maintenance is also forcing Boone County to limit plans to expand the miles of paved roads, Schnarre said. The Boone County tax will be up for renewal next year, and he sees little likelihood that voters would reject a tax to which they are accustomed.

But making a renewed effort to put more asphalt on gravel roads would require additional revenue, Schnarre said.

"Just to renew the half-cent, I think we can justify it," he said. "What we need to do now is add more to it to do more capital improvements."

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Cape Girardeau County commissioners didn't explore deeply the success or problems of other counties faced before putting Proposition 1 on the ballot. Instead, they relied on anecdotal reports from other counties and their own experience dealing with local roads to set their agenda, Commissioner Larry Bock said.

For example, he said, Cape Girardeau County abandoned the chip-and-seal method of dust control in the 1990s because of expense and high maintenance.

Chip-and-seal surfaces were applied based on a cost-share program with landowners along the road, he said. The agreements usually called for three applications, but when maintenance was needed after that the county was required to bear all the expense.

Bock has been skeptical of dust control as a goal since the discussions first turned to that issue after Proposition 1 was unveiled.

"It is a stop-gap measure," Bock said. "The money Proposition 1 will bring in, to me, we just need to get those roads hard-surfaced."

Moving ahead with paving roads as they are rather than requiring wider easements, as in Greene and Boone counties, can lead to other problems that are best avoided, Bock said.

Some roads would have a driving surface that is only 16 or 17 feet wide, he said. That isn't enough space, especially when cars and trucks are moving at higher speeds because of the better roads.

Paving without wider easements is always an option, but it isn't the best option, Bock said.

"The key to the whole thing is you just have to go out and work with people," he said.

rkeller@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 126