LAKE COUNTY ? Help to fix roads is on the way after the Lake County Board of Supervisors adopted criteria for using county funds for the repairs Tuesday.
The board adopted guidelines for accessing $200,000 the county budgeted to aid communities who need to establish benefit zones to make road repairs, and whose citizens can”t afford the cost. Benefit zones are created when property owners in an area that needs road repair agree to pay a set amount per year to reimburse the county for the cost of the repairs.
“It”s hard for folks to vote in extra payments for themselves, and if they do, this is a way that they can get help,” Rushing said.
When a community in need of road repairs agrees to reimburse the county for doing the work up front, a benefit zone is established. The county assesses the roads, decides how much the repairs will cost and proposes a reimbursement plan. The plan includes a set amount each property owner will pay annually for a set number of years, depending on cost of repairs, and the community votes on the plan.
“Generally I”m receiving something, especially with fixed incomes or a lot of seniors, somewhere around $125, and we”re keeping it to five, six years. If we”re going to put product down on the road, you don”t want a 30-year mortgage for something that has a 10-year life,” Lake County Public Works Director Brent Siemer said.
According to the criteria, a community can request county funding when the average annual household income in the zone is less than $35,000 and the community agrees that the amount each property owner would pay is cost-prohibitive.
Supervisor Jeff Smith said it would be ideal if homeowners could pay back the cost of road repairs. The reimbursed money goes back into a revolving account that funds road repairs in benefit zones established elsewhere in the county.
“Two hundred thousand dollars doesn”t go far in a road fund like this, and it”s needed in so many other areas that I don”t think we”ll have any problem using these funds with a complete repayment plan on it, even if it”s stretched over a long period of time,” Smith said.
“If we had $1 million and we could put $200,000 in each district, that would be one thing, but we”re so limited right now, and I don”t see too many of these happening for a while,” Supervisor Rob Brown said.
Other criteria include at least a 50-percent contribution from the community for road repairs, a requirement that property owners pay at least $120 each for five years and a requirement that says a project can use no more than 40 percent of the annual budgeted amount in the county”s fund for road improvement aid.
Contact Tiffany Revelle at trevelle@record-bee.com, or call her directly at 263-5636, ext. 37.
