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Jan. 6, Adair County Engineer Nick Kauffman went before the board of supervisors with his budget request for the upcoming 2021 fiscal year.
The secondary roads department's budget is the largest of any other segment of the county's overall budget.
Considering all of the sources of funds Kauffman deals with when assembling a budget, and the regulations and restrictions that go with all of those sources, you might liken the process he goes through to create a budget that balances out to a jigsaw puzzle. But when all the pieces come together, roads and bridges are maintained well enough to the point that it helps the world move.
"Every year you've got to look at what your balances are currently and then decide if you can do a project or how big of a project. You've got to find projects that fit into what you've got available," Kauffman said. "You've also got to look long term to see if I've got a big project coming up, do I need to build that fund balance so I can do that project down the road?"
Areas Kauffman looks at when creating his yearly budget are maintenance, construction and office. Ray Palmer is the Roads Superintendent, overseeing the maintenance side of the operation. Sawyer Hansen is Kauffman's assistant and oversees a lot of the construction portions of the department. Nichole Queck is the office who handles operations of the office.
Kauffman explained that there are several ways funds come into the budget.
The county receives Farm to Market funds totalling about $850,000 annually. These funds can be carried over for up to three years.
Surface Transportation Program (STP) funds are federal and will be used this year for a resurfacing project on P-28 (Stuart Rd.). These funds equal approximately $185,000 each year and are pooled between Adair, Adams, Taylor, Union and Ringgold Counties.
The $3.1 million in these STP funds Adair County plans to spend this year on Stuart Rd. have slowly been accumulated and will affect the other four counties in the region and their ability to use that money in the future. Each of those counties signed off on the Stuart Rd. project before Kauffman proceeded.
The Highway Bridge Program (HBP) generates funds only for bridge projects, but totals approximately $250,000 coming in each year. There are carryover limits on this fund stream and only certain bridges, based on the geometry of the bridge, its condition and its traffic count, are eligible for projects using these funds.
The county has Local Option Sales Tax money it uses solely on bridges. The money the county has received in this way in the last four fiscal years has skyrocketed. Adair County is projected to bring in about $904,000 in the fiscal year 2021 after it only brought in about $460,000. All of these funds can be spent by secondary roads.
Kauffman said wind turbine components that are delivered to the Adair, Morning Light, Arbor Hill and Orient Wind Farms are taxed in Adair County, and are what has pumped funds into the LOST account most recently.
"The big jump is because of the wind farms. As long as those components are delivered to the county, we collect the penny," Kauffman explained. "If their yard was in Union County, we wouldn't collect the penny, but they are here."
Other funds the county receives come from property taxes and from the road use tax.
The county additionally has tax incremental financed (TIFed) various areas which benefits certain projects in those areas. Kauffman expects that the board of supervisors will eventually TIF the areas within the Orient and Arbor Hill wind farms, which could greatly affect the amount of embargoed bridges that are in those areas.
"Up around Adair, the original wind farm area, when we did that urban renewal, all those roads up there, there isn't a single embargoed bridge," Kauffman said, continuing to say that the Massena and Morning Light wind farms have since been added to the county's TIF plan. "If you can take all the embargoed bridges off the map with TIF money, then you've got LOST money, HBP money and everything else to get rid of all the others."
Other sources of funds that are available to the county is FEMA, Hungry Canyons Alliance, Emergency Watershed Program (EWP) and Highway Safety Improvement (HSIP) money.
In all, the secondary roads department has over 1,000 miles and 285 bridges to oversee.
When Kauffman arrived in Adair County in 2002 for the first of two stints he has worked here, he said there were 190 bridges that had an estimated remaining life of a decade or less. That meant that the secondary roads department would need to do 19 bridges per year for a decade to keep up with potential closures.
A large reason projects have been able to progress at a faster rate is because different funds have spiked so much in value, like TIF or LOST. In 2002, those fund sources didn't even exist.
"If you were going to build a new grain elevator somewhere in the county, you wouldn't just throw a dart and pick a spot. The first thing you'd do is look at what the road's like and what is the access," Kauffman said. "From 2002 to about 2004, there were a lot of people telling me the roads are getting worse and it was going to get to the point where farmers weren't even going to be able to make a living because the roads and bridges are so bad. We needed money, and the board has delivered. It'll never be enough, but we're doing pretty darn well, really."
Kauffman estimated that what his job really comes down to is "helping people."
"It's our job to go out and make improvements. Believe it or not, everything we do is centered on making things better for the residents and the people who are driving through the county," Kauffman said. "That's the bottom line, we're out here to help people. It affects everything."