Henry County is fighting a losing battle against pot holes.
Joe Wiley, Henry County Highway administrator, said the county has $1.7 million to fix about 802 miles of road, but that isn’t enough.
“We have more problems than what we can remotely take care of,” Wiley said. “We know that we don’t have 20 percent of the money it will take to fix the roads we already have on the list.”
Funding for road repairs is generated through the 18-cent per gallon state highway tax, Wiley explained. Indiana collects gas taxes and disperses the money to local entities based on the number of vehicles registered in each county. Larger counties with more registered vehicles get more funds, he said.
Wiley said the concept of the state highway gas tax began in 1923 at a price of two-cents per gallon. It’s remained at 18 cents-per gallon since 2008.
The county highway department began making road repairs as soon as snow plows were taken off the trucks, Wiley said. But cold, wet weather isn’t conducive to making long-term repairs.
“We can only do fast-type repair work at this time of the year, like filling a hole with gravel,” Wiley said. “We can only keep people from busting their wheels by patching and patching and patching. We have to go back and finish it with paving or chip sealing when the weather is warmer and dryer.”
Wiley and the Henry County Commissioners recently discussed lists of roads the department intends to repair. The lists divided the county into three districts, north, central and south. Roads creating the greatest hazards will get first priority.
“If it’s a danger, that’s what we try to apply the money to first,” Wiley said. “After that, we look at the number of citizens that use that particular road. We score them for the amount of traffic on the road, and the number of citizens that may live on that road. We had several roads that just fell apart on us. So our plans have changed already. It’s kind of a moving target at times.”
On the northern end of the county, roads on the repair list included portions of Wilbur Wright Road, Mechanicsburg Road, Messick Road, Buck Creek Pike, Prairie Road and numerous county roads.
In central Henry County, roads slated for repairs include sections of Messick Road, Mechanicsburg Road, County Road 400 South, County Road 50 North, Greensboro Pike, Kennard Road, Clover Drive, Hillsboro Road, Spiceland Pike and Brown Road, as well as several other county roads.
In the southern portion of the county, roads that made the repair list include Dublin Pike, Spiceland Pike, Bentonville Road, Kennard Road, Old National Road, County Line South, Mill Road and Grant City Road, as well as several county roads.
Commissioners President Ed Yanos commended the highway department’s efforts thus far, acknowledging that bad weather hasn’t helped matters.
“The harsh winter weather and the resultant frost damage over the last month have dealt a severe blow to our roads, our highway budget and to our highway construction plans,” Yanos said. “We hope everybody will try to understand that the list of road priorities we are releasing was formulated last winter, has had some revisions recently, and will continue to be revised because road conditions are very fluid and declining with every rain event.”
– Courier-Times Staff Writer Kevin Green contributed to this report.