The engineer’s office designs, builds, and maintains 266 miles of county and township roads, 398 bridges, and 927 culverts. Cities in Butler County manage their own road maintenance and paving programs, but county engineer Greg Wilkens’ office bids and supervises township road projects, and the townships pay for the work.
In the past few years when Wilkens has reported his plans he has lamented the huge price hikes in asphalt paving largely due to the pandemic-induced inflation.
“This year is an anomaly, the price went down almost 20% in our asphalt paving,” he said. “Which I can’t remember when I’ve seen that significant of a decrease which we surely welcome. Not knowing where it goes next year but it’s helped us significantly this year. We were looking at $11 million in an estimate and we’re down to about $8 (million).”
Credit: Nick Graham
Credit: Nick Graham
Wilkens told the Journal-News he asked the contractor who won the paving bid why the prices were so attractive this year and was told the state has cut back on its projects so contractors are hungry for work which “tickles us to death we just hope it continues.”
He will be repaving six county roads and eight main streets in Fairfield, Hanover, Liberty, Oxford, Ross, St. Clair and West Chester townships for a total of 35.3 miles. Roughly 2 miles in Liberty Twp. will also be resurfaced with black mat sealant.
The bulk of Wilkens' to-do list this year is fixing bridges, to the tune of $13.4 million.
The largest bridge project is $3 million to replace the Kyles Station bridge in Liberty Twp. There won’t be any pesky detours because only the design work will be done this year. Wilkens said they received 100% federal funding for this project and can save 10-12% because they are utilizing what is known as “Design-Build” where the contractor designs and builds the structure and design cost is covered by the grant.
Another big federally funded bridge project is on Schoenling Road over Lee Creek in Morgan Township with a $2.2 million price tag. Wilkens received federal and state funds to pay for the $963,412 Trenton Franklin Road bridge project. The rest of the bridge work is being funded with a combination local and state funding.
There is only one big intersection improvement slated for this construction season and that is installing a roundabout on the north leg of the Millikin Road and Lesourdsville West Chester Road with an estimated cost of $1.36 million. The south leg of the “jog” in the road was upgraded to a roundabout a few years ago.
“The difference in cost between those two projects in five years is an 81% increase,” Wilkens said. “And quite honestly the other project was more complex, it had four legs to it, this one has three.”
County Recorder Danny Crank was in the audience at the commissioners' meeting and asked Wilkens if electric cars are decreasing gas tax revenues.
“It’s not been a major impact, they put additional fees on for those electric and hybrid in reference to that we’ve not seen, but if this continues it really has a significant concern for me,” Wilkens said. “We need to find a different funding mechanism, I’ve been a proponent for years of vehicle miles traveled, that levels the playing field for everybody, it’s the amount of miles you drive no matter what you drive. But there’s been push-back on that in reference to Big Brother watching over you and all that, but that’s in the technology today quite honestly.”
The county received $3.87 million in gas taxes last year compared to $2.9 million in 2019. He said the state sends the money in a lump sum so he can’t differentiate between the gas taxes and fees for the new vehicle types.
The county increased Wilkens’s budget by $5 million this year.
Commissioner Don Dixon said they will “look at it year by year” as far as future funding goes. He said he still wants the main focus of the funding to be road repair and improvement.
“This frees up his budget to do other things, so although he might earmark this for bridges, this is going to give him some relief to use more money on the roads,” Dixon said.
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