Residents ask why their road won't be finished this year

Residents who live at Lake Fort Scott learned Tuesday that work on 190th and 195th streets won't be completed until spring.

About a half dozen residents attended the Bourbon County Commission meeting to learn the status of the work. On Aug. 23, Public Works Director Jim Harris reported there may not be enough money to finish the work.

The official word Tuesday is the county does not have the funds to complete the work.

Road crews have milled 190th back to its base and it will remain a gravel base until next spring when the project is moved to the top of the county's hard-surface roads projects list.

Commission Chair Barbara Albright said the Lake Road should be a hard-surface road.

"I'm going to be out of here, but I'm not sure they can maintain everything that's hard-surface in this county," Albright said.

On Aug. 23, commissioners voted for a hiring freeze effective immediately and also a 2.955 mill levy increase in the proposed 2017 budget.

"We can't do it unless we work it on the high priority roads. Lake Road is going to be finished," Oharah said.

He said the roads with the higher traffic count will be the highest priority. After those are taken care of, then the county would look at the secondary roads, he said.

"I'm very disappointed the Lake Road won't be finished this year," Albright said. "When we planned it, I felt like in our planning there was enough to take care of it."

Harris said each year, the commissioners approve a "wish" list of hard-surface roads projects. Harris said the county never compares the list with the amount of revenue the county has from a 1-cent sales tax voters approved several years ago to fund hard-surface roads only. That revenue is typically a million dollars.

On Aug. 23, Harris said that revenue also pays for labor and material for those projects.

Harris said the county has never had enough revenue to complete all the projects on the wish list.

"The benefit of that is, when we get the point where revenue is exhausted, we move those (unfinished roads) up to the top of the list the next year," Harris said. "So it's a good list."

In 2014, Harris and commissioners established a 10-year plan for hard surface roads. During that year, the county had enough sales tax funds set aside that crews were able to re-asphalt 12 miles. Six miles were relaid in 2015 before work had to stop because the department had depleted its cash on hand.