Highway district shows strong ROI to taxpayers

Lakes Highway District plans to continue setting the standard for being responsible to the taxpayer.

We’re continuing to improve our public service, with zero tax increases over the last six years. We feel we are setting the standard all agencies should follow: Doing more with less, and doing so by becoming more knowledgeable about what we’re doing, when to do it and ultimately being more efficient.

In the last six years, with no tax increase, our levee rate has decreased from $72.00 per $100,000 of taxable value to an estimated $43.00 per $100,000 this next budget year. Unfortunately, we are also recognizing that values are increasing, which we can’t control. What we can control, however, is continuing to improve on what we’re doing to provide great service.

With the programs we’ve implemented, every year our roads are getting better, with new paving and reconstruction of our older roads. We can prove it with our pavement management program that starts with annual inspections and performing recommended treatments at an appropriate time to extend the life of our roads for the longest time possible at the lowest cost. Waiting for a road to deteriorate to the point where it obviously needs work isn’t the correct timing or cost approach to maintaining an affordable road system.

We try to keep our roads in good condition because we know roads are cheaper to maintain in that condition vs waiting until they need heavy maintenance or reconstruction. For those roads that have needed heavy maintenance or reconstruction, we have sought and obtained grants.

We’re also strong on applying the right treatment at the right time. This no longer means we just chip-seal our paved roads or apply more dust-abatement products to keep the dust down. Our philosophy on this matter is that we treat it like eating an elephant, one bit at a time. We prioritize improvements based on conditions, traffic and grouping projects to attain an economy of scale and lower contract bid pricing. We try to bid on attractive projects and group those with less desirable projects that also need attention. This is to create a competitive bid environment to address all our needs at a low cost to our constituents. We believe this has been very successful.

This year we resurfaced, with new pavement, 20 miles of roadway and another 20 miles of chip-sealed roads. Five miles of our new pavement that will be completed this year is by means of a grant, and the remaining used revenue we received in property and fuel tax. We’re also in the process of completing the management oversight of a new bridge project and many new development roads being created in our district. So, we’re busy.

Other efficiencies that we can show are our snow-plowing operations and equipment choices. Snow wings are a perfect example of efficiencies we heard wouldn’t work. Snow wings added to the side of our plow trucks, in addition to the front snowplow, reduce the need for our crews to make a second pass on the same stretch of road to fully plow the road.

Now we can really just plow more roads during a single snow event, and in most cases, we plow the same roads multiple times during a day, fully clearing the road in a single pass in each direction. We’ve improved service with our choice of equipment, using the same manpower we had 20 or more years ago.

This year we have eight-each, 10-wheel plow-truck routes fixed with plows, wings and sanders. We have six-each, 6-wheel plow trucks with wings and de-icers that not only plow our roads, but also clean and treat intersections. We also have the capability to provide three-graders to cut snowpack floors to pavement and wing back snow to provide a storage area for the next event.

This is done to plow nearly 600 lane miles of road in our jurisdiction.

Every year we keep getting better, and our tax rate continues to decrease.

The bottom line is we’re not increasing taxes.

Lakes Highway District Board of Commissioners, Rod Twete, Chairman