Sunday, February 22, 2015
YOUNGSTOWN
The Mahoning County Engineer’s Office is caught in a squeeze between rising road salt and asphalt prices and stagnant revenues, said Engineer Patrick Ginnetti.
Fuel-tax revenues have suffered in recent years because high fuel prices combined with more energy-efficient cars and electric and natural gas-powered cars have caused people to buy less gasoline, he said.
The engineer’s office’s operating income comes from gasoline and diesel fuel taxes, auto registration fees and motor-vehicle license plate fees, and the office gets no sales tax or real-estate tax income.
The office’s annual operating revenue rose from $10.3 million in 2010 to $10.8 million in 2011, but it has remained between $10.7 and $10.9 million each year since then.
“The cost of materials is going up. The infrastructure’s aging,” Ginnetti observed. “It makes it much more difficult for us to manage and repair everything” he said of the financial squeeze.
“We have limited funds that we use for local matches” to secure state and federal construction grants, he said. “All county engineers are suffering the same impact.”
Ohio’s 28 cents-a-gallon gasoline and diesel fuel tax hasn’t changed since 2005.
Federal fuel taxes per gallon of 18.4 cents on gasoline and 24.4 cents on diesel haven’t changed since 2007.
Those tax rates apply regardless of the prices of gasoline and diesel fuel.
License-plate fee revenue to his office has remained constant at about $1.7 million annually in recent years, Ginnetti said.
Mahoning County’s regular annual road-paving program is paid for by fuel tax and license-plate fee revenues with assistance from state and federal grants.
The average price the county engineer’s office paid per ton for hot mix asphalt was $57.63 in 2013 and rose 97 cents to $58.60 last year, said Kristin Barrett, the office’s special projects coordinator.
The amount of road paving the office can afford to perform is linked to the price of asphalt, Ginnetti said.
With the county’s salt price having risen 532 percent from $27.50 per ton last year to $146.18 this year, the county can no longer afford to treat roads with 100 percent salt, and instead uses a 3-1 slag-to-salt ratio, together with a liquid de-icer made from sugar beets and molasses, Ginnetti said.
His department could not afford to pay $1.61 million for the 11,000 tons of salt it bought in previous years, he added.
If it did, no money would remain for pothole patching, paving, roadside grass mowing and ditch maintenance or bridge repair, he said.
Last year, county roads were treated with either 100 percent salt or a 50-50 slag-and-salt mix, he said.
Salt prices vary by county in the state cooperative purchasing program, Ginnetti said, noting that Trumbull County saw a 430-percent increase and Portage County more than a 400-percent increase.
Trumbull County is treating its roads this winter with a mixture of slag, salt, liquid brine and the liquid de-icer made from sugar beets and molasses, said Gary Shaffer, an engineer with that county’s engineer’s office.
The Mahoning County engineer’s office is responsible for 493 miles of roads and 320 bridges.
The Trumbull County engineer’s office is responsible for 457 miles of roads and 377 bridges, and it has an operating budget of about $10 million.
Ginnetti noted that various proposals have been made to remedy the budget squeeze, such as taxing vehicles based on the number of miles they’re driven and funding county engineers’ offices with taxes on alternative fuels, such as compressed natural gas.
“There’s got to be a lot of studies done,” concerning alternative funding ideas, he said, without committing himself to backing any one alternative.
Ginnetti said he was not sure whether he’d support putting another road or bridge improvement bond levy on the county ballot, similar to the $25 million bridge bond levy that passed in 1986.
That levy, which expired about seven years ago, enabled Youngstown and Mahoning County to obtain more than $120 million in federal matching funds to replace more than 100 bridges, according to Randy Partika, Mahoning County bridge engineer.
Trumbull County has not had such a levy.