Highway superintendent warns nearly half of Keith County’s paved roads are in poor condition and urges long-term funding

Highway Superintendent Thomas Wilbur told the Keith County Board of Commissioners that about 48% of the county’s paved roads are in “poor and worse condition” and urged the board to commit to long-term, predictable funding to stop what he described as a system-wide decline.

Wilbur gave a 45‑minute presentation on the county’s road network, equipment and staffing, saying the county maintains roughly 810 miles of road and has identified about 5 miles that require full reconstruction. He said preservation work such as chip sealing costs roughly $75,000 per mile and that some rebuilds could cost millions: “We have 5 miles that need rebuilt … and we’re looking at 8 and a half million dollars if we had to rebuild those,” Wilbur said.

Wilbur described pavement deterioration as nonlinear: preservation buys time but repeated chip seals eventually fail and roads move into rehabilitation or reconstruction. He said the Paxton–Elsie corridor was an example where a profile mill and additional mat thickness could extend life, and said a mill-and-fill approach could restore some corridors to a long service life. “At its current state we can go in there, we can profile mill, we can add 3 to 4 inches to the mat of that road,” he said.

The superintendent walked through a three‑phase approach he favors: a short-term stabilization phase to stop further decline, a catch-up phase to reduce the backlog on the worst corridors, and a long-term sustainability phase aimed at predictable maintenance rather than reactive rebuilding. He also recommended aligning the county’s formal 1‑and‑6‑year road plan with the county budget process so priorities and funding match the capital cycle.

Wilbur highlighted related needs: replacing about 650 noncompliant 9‑1‑1 sign sets to meet the new MUTCD standard, addressing staffing shortages for grader operators and CDL-qualified crew, and modernizing records and asset-management systems. He said equipment condition is mixed — praising the county’s motor grader fleet while noting several dump and plow trucks are past their useful life — and said improved preventive maintenance reduced equipment costs by roughly 40% since he took over.

On funding, Wilbur urged the board to consider multiple options, including grant opportunities and savings mechanisms. He said he had previously proposed a sinking fund and that other counties have adopted similar approaches to smooth year-to-year spikes in road spending. During discussion, commissioners asked about specific corridor costs and trade-offs between hot‑in‑place recycling and traditional mill‑and‑fill; Wilbur cautioned that some recycling approaches deliver shorter service lives in his experience.

The board did not vote on any new funding measure at the meeting; commissioners thanked Wilbur for the report and indicated they would continue deliberations about priorities and potential funding sources ahead of upcoming budget decisions.