Douglas County staff asks commissioners to raise pavement maintenance budget to address backlog

Douglas County Public Works presented commissioners with a multi-year analysis of road maintenance Thursday and recommended increasing the contracted pavement-maintenance budget from $1,200,000 to $1,700,000, plus a $500,000 supplement from the county's Capital Improvement Program (CIP), to move closer to a maintenance cycle adopted in 2010.

The presentation, given by Chad of Douglas County Public Works during the 4:00 p.m. work session, laid out the department's analysis of past mill-and-overlay and chip-seal work, material cost trends and a proposed annual funding target of roughly $2.6 million to fully meet the 2010 plan. "So today we wanna talk about funding for pavement maintenance, and this would lead into our 2026 budget discussion coming up this summer," Chad said.

Why it matters: County staff said the current $1.2 million baseline, which has been held since 2020, is insufficient to maintain pavement on the schedule the county adopted in 2010. That plan envisioned new asphalt kept in service for 7 to 10 years, followed by periodic chip seals and periodic mill-and-overlay cycles. Public Works' analysis shows the…