Increasing road costs puts bumps in the road for maintenance

LOWNDES COUNTY, Miss. (WCBI) – Lowndes County residents are facing bumps in the road while they wait for paving in some areas.

One speed bump Supervisors are having to deal with is the increasing cost of road maintenance.

Lowndes County Road Manager Mike Aldridge said there are several factors slowing down their progress.

“The main thing we are running into first is the cost of asphalt. You know, it’s 40% higher than it was 18 months ago the second problem we are running into is equipment problems we have pavers that have minor parts breaking down that we can’t seem to put our hands on anymore,” said Aldridge.

In a recent meeting, the State engineer informed Aldridge that the heavy oil needed for new paving equipment is in high demand and low supply.

This is a major cause of the increase in asphalt and that bigger cost is leading to smaller stretches of the road getting repaved.

“Used to we could pave with the budget we’ve got like 10 miles of roads to 12 miles of roads. Now, we are at three, four, and five miles is all we can pave in a budget year so people that were getting five or six roads paved in a district now are down to one or two roads in a district to get paved,” said Aldridge.

Lowndes County District 3 supervisor Jeff Smith said it’s important that the board stays transparent with taxpayers about the paving progress and the bumps they have hit in the road.

“We don’t control vendors going out of business, we don’t control the price of asphalt, what we do control is sharing information with the public so they are aware of the challenges that we have in serving them,” said Smith.

With major industrial development West of the Tenn-Tom waterway, many of the roads in that part of the county are used to transport needed commodities.

Sometimes more progress on one thing means holding off on another.

“With progress comes change sometimes that change is not immediately positive. Sometimes you have more traffic on those roads and those roads have to be maintained that will allow that progress to take place and take hold. Those roads are being used about 10 times more than they normally have been used and it’s taken a great beating on those roads but in time those roads will be repaired,” said Smith.

While the cost of maintenance may be up, the quality is non-negotiable.

“We want to do it the right way. We want the people to see when we do something that we are doing it with quality and it’s there to last as it can possibly last,” said Smith.

The Lowndes County road Manager said that when everything thing comes together it should only take a few weeks to finish the projects in their books.

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