County highway department budgets solar, bridge and Wilbur Avenue cleanup work

Jeff Blue, Champaign County engineer, told commissioners the highway fund will support operations, equipment purchases and several capital projects in FY26 and that solar panels recently installed at the highway facility should go online in the coming weeks. "They're trying to get all the wiring done," Blue said of the solar installation. Blue said the department plans about $500,000 in equipment purchases for 2026 and is transferring $140,000 to a highway building capital fund to preserve money for facilities. He said the highway fund balance has been intentionally built — the slide deck showed roughly $4.3 million — to allow larger projects such as a proposed cold storage facility and to cover demolition of the old nursing home if the county proceeds. The budget lists $750,000 for demolition of the old nursing home and anticipates that demolition would draw down the building-capital balance. Blue described the continuing Wilbur Avenue job as complicated by contamination discovered during a preliminary environmental site assessment, saying "anytime you have contamination, obviously, you gotta deal with it and you gotta clean it up." He described large road projects completed or planned: about $7 million spent this year on work between Homer and Sidney including cold-in-place recycling and a planned hot-mix overlay after Labor Day, and a planned Monticello-to-Seymour project expected near $5 million. The county bridge fund supports township and small-municipality bridge matches; Blue said a previous state increase in the township-bridge program expanded local allotments. Motor fuel tax revenues were described at roughly $4 million, and Blue noted motor-fuel revenues fluctuate with vehicle mileage and vehicle fleet composition but are paid per gallon, not as a percentage of price. On technical practices, Blue explained cold-in-place recycling — milling existing asphalt, adding binder on-site and laying it back down — and said it is about 75% as stable as new hot-mix asphalt but can extend life and reduce fatigue cracking. Board members asked operational questions including whether the county will acquire the full nursing-home lot; Blue described negotiations as ongoing and said a space-needs study is in progress to determine how much property is required for a storage facility. No votes were taken; the presentation described FY26 budget estimates and project priorities.