KTIBBEHA COUNTY – Officials are reviewing county roads and finding many in worse shape than anticipated, raising questions about how the county can repair them on a limited budget.
The county’s public works department is roughly halfway through an inventory of Oktibbeha’s roads, with Districts 1 and 4 already mostly completed. Even at this early stage, Road Manager Victor Collins has found many miles of road so far degraded that standard maintenance is no longer possible. Putting them on a standard grading chart, he estimated that 20% of the roads surveyed would get an F, requiring a full tear-down and rebuild.
“Our F roads have passed the state of repair, and the only thing we can do is reclaim them,” he said. “That would consist of grinding them up, resetting them, adding material to some of them and repaving them. … These roads have multiple types of deterioration throughout their length.”
Collins estimated only 5% of the roads might get an A, mostly ones resurfaced in recent years. The rest hovered around a C or D, meaning they’ll require resealing in the years to come.
He declined to name specific roads at an F grade, saying he would not release that information until after the survey is complete.
While Collins is optimistic the county could work its way back toward a well-maintained road network, the sheer scale of the work required is beyond what public works could be expected to do by itself in a reasonable timeframe.
The board of supervisors has already contracted with private road firms on specific projects like Sturgis Maben Road, and Collins said getting more outside help would be the most straightforward approach. But citizens at a recent comprehensive plan meeting expressed dissatisfaction at the work some private contractors have done in the past, and showed near-universal disdain for raising taxes, which might make a large-scale hiring of private contractors difficult.
10-year or 4-year road plan?
District 3 Supervisor Marvell Howard, who serves as the board’s president, wasn’t surprised to hear that the roads were in need of repair when he spoke with The Dispatch on Thursday.
“When it comes to our gravel roads, they’re in constant need of maintenance,” he said. “We do keep a maintenance schedule for them. But we’ve got built and paved roads that are starting to deteriorate on us too, I’d guess at least 50% of our built and paved roads are now in need of attention. We’re getting into the building and reclaiming season as the weather gets good, and we can get quite a bit done.”
Howard was circumspect about the challenges, viewing the issue mostly as a question of keeping an eye on which roads are nearing the end of their lifespan and trying to catch them early in that decline when a simple surface resealing can keep them intact.
District 2 Supervisor Orlando Trainer also said the county needs to get better at planning, which is part of why public works is taking an inventory in the first place. He suggested the county may be better served by 10-year roads plans that include maintenance, instead of the 4-year plans that today focus mostly on paving and construction, often going largely unfinished.
“I’d say we should have every road in Oktibbeha paved and on a 10-year maintenance docket, but that’s wishful thinking,” he said. “We have some that we’ve repaired, but we haven’t made plans to go back and do maintenance on a regular schedule. That’s what gets me. We build a good road and then just wait until it tears up, and that’s costing us more money.”
Trainer also suggested the county may have to raise taxes if it wants to actually do all the paving and maintenance its residents request. Waiting may just result in an even more expensive task the county has no choice but to undertake later on.
“The county should consider making a major project (out of this) even if it includes a tax increase,” he said. “If we don’t repair these roads now, we’ll need to do a tax increase for it anyway. So many people out there expect to be able to utilize safe roads that can get them home to enjoy their property. We need a long-range plan to put all our roads on a routine maintenance schedule.”
Raising taxes?
In Fiscal Year 2024 the county spent $2.6 million on road construction and $4.5 million on road maintenance. Together those accounted for roughly 12.5% of the county’s $57 million budget. Those numbers increased slightly but kept the same proportion for Fiscal Year 2025’s budget.
Previous county estimates have priced road paving at $200,000 to $250,000 per mile, but those numbers get higher every year and don’t account for the expense of tearing up an old road.
Trainer said that if a tax increase is suggested, the county would first publish a notice of intent before supervisors went to their constituents for feedback. While raising taxes got near-universal condemnation from residents at the recent comprehensive plan meetings, Trainer said a proposal that includes specific quality of life improvements might get a warmer reception.
Collins, for his part, was resolved to do what he could, with more funding required if the county wants all its roads addressed.
“We can’t do them all at once,” he said. “They’re going to have to decide which ones they want to address first. There’s no way the road departments can reclaim them all, we just don’t have the manpower and equipment. … We’re going to have to have a little bit of help to do it. It will depend on what kind of funding we can find, and that will determine how much we get done.”
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 35 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
