Public works on Tuesday presented commissioners with a line‑by‑line view of the county road fund, a multi‑year capital program and three scenarios showing how continued levy diversions would erode maintenance and capital capacity.

What staff presented: The department summarized the asset base it maintains — roughly 620 miles of county roadway, about 100 reportable bridges and more than 3,400 culverts — and walked the board through a six‑year Annual Construction Program (ACP). Staff noted a handful of pressing needs: a backlog of fish‑passage culvert replacements (roughly 40–50 culverts identified as needing priority work), failing courtroom AV systems (reflected elsewhere in the meeting), and increasing costs for contracted surfacing and bridge work.

Three scenarios: Public works modeled three funding assumptions for 2026 and beyond:
- Plan A (no diversion): Maintain the current levy allocation to roads, preserve capital reserves and deliver the ACP projects. This produces an estimated year‑end capital reserve (after the 2026 ACP) in the low millions and allows most ACP projects to proceed.
- Plan B (modest diversion): Model a near‑term diversion of about $1.08 million. To balance that, staff identified personnel holdbacks (vacant positions left unfilled), delays in selected ACP projects and other cuts totaling roughly one million dollars. Those changes would reduce the capital reserve and force project rescheduling.
- Plan C (larger diversion): A hypothetical larger diversion (about $2 million) would require deeper reductions — larger ACP project cuts and prolonged vacancy holds — and could push some projects into later years or reduce county capacity to respond to culvert failures and resurfacing needs.

Why it matters: Commissioners were shown that past levy diversions have already reduced the county’s pavement preservation progress. Staff illustrated the scale: historically diverted levy dollars could have funded dozens of miles of chip seal or hundreds of thousands of tons of asphalt. Public works staff emphasized that, while grants and outside funds have helped (the county brought in significant federal and state grants in recent years), the core local levy and motor‑fuel taxes remain the critical, recurrent source for day‑to‑day maintenance and small‑to‑mid‑sized capital projects.

Commissioner discussion: Commissioners pressed staff on options to preserve core maintenance and to use one‑time sources to avoid cancelling high‑priority projects. One option discussed was a short‑term transfer of $2.5 million from the county’s “future roads” reserve into an active construction fund to ensure high‑priority ACP projects stay on schedule. Commissioners also discussed the need to refine the county’s 20‑year prioritization for fish‑passage culverts and bridge needs and asked for additional detail on per‑project grant match requirements.

Next steps: Public works will return with a refined list of proposed ACP cuts tied to each diversion level and options for phased funding (including the requested $2.5 million transfer). Commissioners asked staff to provide clearer project‑level cost estimates and to identify which projects would be postponed under each diversion scenario.