Potholes take aim at the county budget as material costs rise

Asphalt roads take a major beating

The potholes are aplenty this year in Gunnison County, and could make balancing road budgets a challenge. Assistant county manager Marlene Crosby gave the Board of County Commissioners the heads-up last week that increasing supply costs may force the county to make some tough decisions when it comes to road maintenance.

“Asphalt roads took a major, major beating this year,” Crosby said. Wet conditions at the beginning of the season and the subsequent thaw cycle have left county roads in bad shape.
Add scheduled maintenance to the mix, and it’s going to be a struggle. The budget for road maintenance is funded largely through the gas tax, which has remained the same since the mid-1990s.
“I went back and looked at budgets, all the way back to the mid-’90s,” Crosby continued. “The numbers are basically the same. We have basically the same amount of money we had then, and it’s pretty well balanced, but there are two things that are killing us. We chip seal about every five to seven years, and the price of mag chloride has doubled—and that’s a lot of money when you’re talking about $500,000—and the price of oil has tripled.”
Chip sealing is a surface treatment that can be used to make paved or gravel roads more durable and less susceptible to moisture. In the past, Crosby has been able to overspend on the mag chloride supply as needed and balance it out with other line items in the budget, like gravel or asphalt. But that’s not an option this year, according to Crosby, because every penny in the budget is spoken for.
“It’s not the small [projects] that kill us,” Crosby told commissioners. “It’s the large ones like Kebler or Cottonwood Pass.”
“Is there any discussion of paving Cottonwood?” asked commissioner Phil Chamberland.
“Not until [current work on] Taylor is done,” Crosby said.
“We’ve looked at the part on Cottonwood where it hits from the beginning there at Taylor Road to the Forest Service guard station,” she continued. “It’s always bad. It’s corduroyed—maybe that’s an area where we put chip seal down.”
Another area of concern is on Kebler Pass. Aspen trees overhanging the road on the Paonia side of the pass contribute more moisture to the road, according to Crosby, which makes the road more susceptible to potholes from hauling trucks and commuters traveling at faster speeds.
“We will look at every possible way to balance costs and revenues,” Crosby told the commissioners. Larger projects on Kebler and Cottonwood and fixing potholes may mean that smaller projects are put off, but no final decisions have been made.