Putting Secondary Road Budget, 5-Year Plans Together a Bumpy Ride for Floyd County, Others
Bridging the gap between rising expenses and planning for future projects has been a bumpy road for Iowa’s county secondary roads departments.
During their regular meeting Monday, the Floyd County Board of Supervisors heard the challenges for County Engineers like their own Jacob Page of trying to submit the County’s Iowa DOT Secondary Roads budget and five-year construction program to the state by this Friday.
Page says with costs for road projects jumping dramatically, establishing a budget and planning for down the road has been a difficult process and has called for difficult decisions.
Page says he’s talked with other county engineers who are adding a blanket 25% increase to the yearly budget as well as including no specific projects in Fiscal Year 2027 at this point.
Page says further complicating things is not knowing how much federal funding will be available at the county level.
On top of that, Page has been unable to print out his official report because the Iowa County Engineer Services Bureau website has been down since last Thursday with departments like his scrambling to get their plans submitted. To which he added that only about 10% of county engineers across the state had submitted their Fiscal Year 2023 proposals.
While the Board wasn’t able to approve the secondary roads budget and construction program, they did vote to allow Board Chair Doug Kamm to sign off Page’s proposal when its available for review.
