County delays street repairs
By Steve Herring
Published in News on October 25, 2015 1:50 AM
Just weeks after assuring subdivision residents that the county would work with them to get their potholed streets repaired, Wayne County commissioners Tuesday morning threw up a roadblock to the process.
By a 6-1 vote, the board delayed any action until the state Department of Transportation completes a statewide assessment next year of subdivision streets and repair costs.
Commissioners cited the unknown costs and a fear that doing the work locally would embolden the state to shift all road maintenance to counties as reasons for their decision.
"Mr. Chairman, this is not an amendment to the motion, but I would like to make a comment about county commissioners dealing with local roads," Commissioner John Bell said. "We worked on this thing for about four years back in 2000 when state legislators were trying to dump all of these local roads onto the boards of commissioners.
"It took us a long time for us to get legislators to reverse that attitude. This is not anything against subdivision people, but if we start into the road business, it wouldn't take anything but the stroke of a pen for the legislature to say, 'OK. You take over all of the local roads.'"
Commissioner Joe Daughtery, who made the motion, said he had spoken with local legislators who are watching what the county is doing as far as the roads are concerned.
They are worried that the county's actions could throw the rest of the state's 99 counties "under the bus," he said.
Over the past several months subdivision residents have pleaded with commissioners to help in making street improvements and getting the streets into the DOT maintenance system.
State law allows counties to create a special assessment paid by property owners to cover the cost of bringing the streets up to DOT standards. The ultimate goal of doing so is so that the state will add the roads to its maintenance system.
Property owners would be assessed for the work that would initially be paid for by the county. The assessment would show up on the property owner's annual property tax bill.
The first step is for the property owners to petition the county.
One such petition has been prepared by the county Planning Department and another is in the works, County Manager George Wood told the board.
Commissioner Ray Mayo voted against the motion saying it would not cost the county anything to follow through on the petition process.
The topic was not on the board's agenda, but was sparked by comments made by past Wayne County Republican Party chairman Bob Jackson during the meeting's public comments section.
"I cannot find a way that it is win-win situation," Jackson said. "I don't know how you do that. If you start to borrow money, where do you stop? At what point does it hurt your credit rating which means the monies you have already borrowed, the rate will go up on them.
"So the ultimate outcome could very well be a tax increase which would be horrendous for Wayne County."
Daughtery took up the issue following Jackson's comments saying he thought the board was "moving too fast" on the issue.
"I have spoken with NCDOT, our own legislators and many others about this proposed plan for the county to borrow monies to repair subdivision streets and bring them to NCDOT standards," he said. "This issue is not only here in Wayne County, it is throughout the entire state."
The problem is such that the General Assembly has mandated that the DOT complete a full study of all subdivision streets and what the delay is for DOT not accepting the streets into its maintenance system, Daughtery said.
Currently there are no reasonable cost estimates on any of the projects, he said.
As the county borrows money, it is limited on seeking financing for other areas such as schools or any of the other state-mandated areas, Daughtery said.
Daughtery asked Wood if the county would be limited to three ways to pay for such work -- cash, borrowing or increasing taxes.
Wood said he would not recommend using cash or increasing taxes.
"Borrowing to me is what makes sense because what the statute says is that you can allow people to repay it up to over a 10-year period," Wood said. "So if you match the borrowing with the 10-year period to repay, you can spread the cost out over a 10-year period, and (property owners) are repaying the principal and interest.
"So there is no need for a tax increase on that. There is no need to use your cash. You would borrow the money, and the way it would be paid back it would only be paid by the people who are assessed for the improvement of their property."
"I'd like to amend that motion to say this, that the process that the county has started, as far as getting estimates and doing a petition in no way puts this board into an obligation area," Mayo said. "We can still move forward in getting this information that is necessary without tabling everything.
"We can still do this for this reason, that the DOT and the state, if it takes them three to five years to do that study, they are still not going to do the repairs. It is still going to be probably up to the citizens of this county and other counties to foot the bill to get these roads back."
Daughtery said he did not understand the amendment and failed to see what it accomplished.
Commissioner Bill Pate asked if Mayo's amendment was to continue the petition process, but not commit any funding. Wood said he was not clear on that either.
Mayo eventually withdrew the amendment, saying he would vote against Daughtery's original motion.