The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted all areas of the economy, and transportation is no different. Due to the pandemic, people have been traveling less, buying less gas, and fewer new vehicles. That impacts transportation funding from the State of Minnesota for County State Aid Highways (CSAH).
Polk County Highway Engineer Rich Sanders said the State of Minnesota is anticipating a 15 percent reduction in funding. With that, Polk County will likely have to use the two tax options it has, a Wheelage Tax and Local Options Sales Tax, to make up that difference. “With the whole COVID thing, people stopped driving and using gas,” said Sanders. “And stopped buying new vehicles. The State is estimating that the counties are going to take a 15 percent hit in their County State Aid Highway funds for 2021. Since 2008, the counties have had the option to do a Wheelage Tax of up to $20 and a Local Option Sales Tax up to .5 percent.”
Polk County currently has a .25 percent Local Option Sales Tax, and Sanders said there is a need to come up with the maintenance dollars for county roadways. “Early on, the county did a $10 Wheelage Tax,” said Sanders. “Then, two years ago they took the Wheelage Tax off and added a .25 percent Local Option Sales Tax. I provided the County Board some information that with the 15 percent reduction, that’s about $1.4 million that will be reduced from my budget because it won’t be coming from the State. About 40 percent of that is maintenance. Well, you just can’t make that up anywhere. You have to come up with it somewhere because you can’t just quit maintaining roadways.”
Sanders believes the county make up the 2021 shortage of funds for road maintenance and construction, plus prepare for upcoming major projects, by raising that to a .5 percent tax and adding a Wheelage Tax. “If you look at the $20 Wheelage Tax, it’s pretty much equivalent to what we’d lose in maintenance dollars,” said Sanders. “And if you look at adding the .25 sales tax to the Local Option Sales Tax, it’s basically what we’d lose in construction funds for the year. In the future, we could use those funds for other projects such as the Nielsville and Climax Bridge, bridges between Fertile and Winger, and other county road projects that will need to be done such as the CSAH 62 project.”
CSAH 61 is a gravel road that currently has problems with being soft and muddy. Sanders said this year has been worse than many while the full reconstruction is still several years away. “This spring has been worse than many years,” said Sanders. “There are different maintenance things we can do. Some cost more than others, and we’re trying to do what we can to make it harder, but the main thing is in 2024, we’re going to have to reconstruct it. Get rid of all that bad material in the middle of the roadway, allowing us to put a good base underneath it, and hopefully, after that, have a decent gravel road.”
In the meantime, the county is trying to find alternatives to improve the condition of roadways like CSAH 61 for the short-term without wasting dollars by putting in a solution that will be torn out during reconstruction before it’s life-span ends. “You could go in and put crushed concrete or whatever in the middle of the road now, but in 2024 you’re going to be pulling that all out again and wasting it,” said Sanders. “There’s been years where it has been dry where the road has been fine, not great, but fine. Then, there are years like this where you had a wet fall, and now you have a wet spring, so frost boils are still coming out of the middle of the road, and the road doesn’t want to perform. And that’s what we’re dealing with.”
The County Board will be asked to consider both the Wheelage and Local Option Sales Tax to help maintain and construct Polk County roads in 2021 over the next month. Sanders said if the county makes a change to its taxing, they’ll need to notify the State by the end of August. “The Department of Revenue requests if you’re going to make that change, you notify them by August 31,” said Sanders. “So, I’ve just given the information to the board hoping to have a discussion with them later in July or early August to see if we can’t make up some revenue.”
MAPLE LAKE EAST SHORE
Polk County recently completed a project to reconstruct the public beach on the east shore of Maple Lake. Sanders said the initial feedback was negative, but as more people have been educated on how to park and been using the beach, they seem to be warming to the new layout. “It’s going well,” said Sanders. “I haven’t heard a whole lot more since you did your story on your website and Facebook. Originally, it was the worse project we could’ve done. Now I think people are warming to it as they use it, and we’re starting to get good comments on it. I just want to thank KROX for educating people on how to back-in diagonal park and also showing the project we did out on east shore.”
More information about the back-in diagonal parking and the reconstruction of the beach on the east shore is available here.
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