County grapples with road woes

SANDPOINT — The amount of work needed on Bonner County roads and the amount of available funding to do the work are usually miles apart.

But the gulf is widening further as the county remains gripped by one of the most punishing spring breakup periods in recent memory.

Commission Chairman Lewie Rich has lived her for more than three decades and said he has never seen such chewed up roads.

“I’ve never seen a thaw like this. This is the worst I’ve ever seen — there’s roads coming apart that I’ve never seen come apart,” he said.

Commissioners toured the county with Road & Bridge Director Ryan Luttmann on Monday to inspect road failures and other impasses in all three road districts.

Commissioner Mike Nielsen said typical annual road appropriations won’t even come close to addressing all the needs of county-maintained public roads.

“This is going to be a budget buster. We’ve got serious damage,” Nielsen said.

Commissioners admittedly discussed potential means of alternate funding during the tour, but no minutes were kept and they were mostly mum about what they are contemplating.

They insisted no decisions had been made.

“There were things discussed as far as possible remedies. Those won’t be made public until we actually have a budget discussion with our Road & Bridge manager,” said Rich.

Nielsen granted that he would be willing to support a tax hike to tackle road woes, but only if the question were put to a vote of the public.

“I’m not opposed to that — giving you the choice to make that decision,” he said.

Residents, meantime, are growing frustrated.

“We’re lucky to get Eureka Road bladed once a month and most of the time they roll the surface off into the ditch instead of rolling it from the outside in and spreading it out. So we just keep cutting the road down. There’s no road left,” Sagle resident Len Akkerman told commissioners on Tuesday.

Akkerman said mail deliveries have ceased for several days because postal and shipping vehicles can’t traverse the road. Some residents receive their prescription medication through the mail and Akkerman doubts an ambulance would fare any better.

“It’s a life-threatening situation in some cases,” said Akkerman.

Landowners along roads which are public but not maintained by the county have to fend for themselves. The county won’t accept a road into its maintenance program unless it’s brought up to a fairly rigorous design standard.

Elmira resident Cindy Peer said she and her neighbors banded together to elevate Jenkins Road to a higher standard by buying and spreading gravel.

“We were almost there and this winter that came along and destroyed what we had,” said Peer, who asked commissioners if they would be willing to contribute gravel if she and her neighbors spread it.

Luttmann said state law forbids him from allocating any resources to public roads outside of the county’s maintenance program.

“That’s not something the Road & Bridge Department can do,” said Luttmann.

County officials concede there are some roads that are in the system which fall short of standard. Many were adopted prior to the formation of a road department.

Commissioner Cornel Rasor said there are two ways roads have been typically accepted in.

One is a political decision that could date back to the founding of the county and another is a grader perhaps bladed a road one day, which gave way to a long-standing expectation that managed to endure.

“There’s just no way to know how some of these roads got into the system,” Rasor said.