Frederick has drastically whittled down its road maintenance in recent years because the state has cut back the share of highway user revenue it sends Maryland’s cities and towns, city officials said.
“Some streets will completely fail before we ever get them the attention required,” Mike Winpigler of the Department of Public Works told his directors in an email.
In a good year, the city paves and maintains seven to 10 miles of its 300 miles of streets just to keep up with annual needs, said Marc Stachowski, deputy director of public works in an email.
Instead, about half a mile of work will be completed this year because the city has a quarter of the money to do what is needed, Alderwoman Karen Young said.
Four maintenance projects are scheduled to be completed this year. The city would do eight to 10 more “if we had more funding,” Stachowski said.
The share of state dollars headed to municipalities has dropped since 2008 by as much as 96 percent. Last year, a municipal lobbying effort succeeded in returning 25 percent of the funding needed, instead of just 4 percent for fiscal 2012, which ends June 30.
“While a continued 75 percent cut in highway user revenues is severe, it is in fact an improvement over the 96 percent cuts in municipal highway user revenues suffered in the prior two fiscal years,” the league said recently.
Young said the annual cost to keep up with Frederick’s roads on schedule is about $3.6 million.
The state was sending Frederick between $2 million and $3 million in highway user revenue before cutting it 90 percent in fiscal 2010.
This fiscal year, the city received $657,000, compared with $101,000 in fiscal 2011.
Winpigler said the city cannot assume pavement will have a 25-year life expectancy without sufficient maintenance.
“We have probably put the roads repairs off too long already,” Young said. “It will now be more expensive to fix.”
Frederick leaders and the Maryland Municipal League plan to lobby the state legislature again to get more of the highway user revenue they need from the Transportation Trust Fund, as they did last year.
The revenue that is shared with localities comes primarily from fuel and vehicle titling taxes.
“We are currently playing catch-up from the maintenance aspect,” Winpigler said. “As we stand now we have very difficult decisions ahead.”
The first 12 years of a road’s life require little maintenance and repair, he said. But patching and sealing of cracks is needed for the road to have a chance of lasting 25 years.
Young and Alderwoman Carol Krimm, who serve on the league, said state representatives must be encouraged to restore the revenue levels.
The municipal league had a list of 13 possible legislative action requests for the 2012 General Assembly session, and it settled on one priority: restoration of shared state revenues, “specifically highway user revenues and police aid.”
More than half of all municipalities in Maryland rely on state money for police, which has been cut about 35 percent, the league said. Frederick uses both police aid and highway revenue for public safety.
“The police funding cuts are definitely affecting our ability to hire police,” Young said.
Highway user dollars from the state go a long way toward providing better and safer streets for the public to travel, Winpigler said.
Copyright 2011 The Frederick News-Post. All rights reserved.
