Issue of the Month: Kent County Road Commission

One question I am asked a lot is to do something about our roads in Kent County. I always answer that roads are the purview of the County Road Commission, and the County Commission does not have direct approval/disapproval authority to spend road money. That is written into the State Funding Act. The County Commission only gets involved with Road Commission activity through the appointment of a five member Road Commission. The allocation and decisions about actual road projects is made by that body. The Road Commission is managed by a Director and has 226 employees to carry out their duties. There are nearly 2,000 miles of county roads and 177 bridges maintained by the Commission. In FY 2012 the Road Commission had less money to spend than in the early 2000’s ($48.5 million vs $54.2 M). The biggest share of this funding comes from the state, although there are local match funds with some projects, and periodic federal grants for specific projects. As all of you know, the state’s ability to fund road improvements has been diminishing the past decade, and our roads are getting worse. Because of limited funds, the Commission is forced to spend an increasing amount on ‘road maintenance’ rather than ‘construction and preservation’. Like all governmental entities, the Road Commission is reaching out to other units of local government to do things more cooperatively, and this results in some savings.