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Show Communities To Pay For County Road Work By MARK D. MICKELSEN TARMINGTON Communities utilizing utiliz-ing Davis road department services will now be required to pay for all materials, county manpower and equipment, according accord-ing to the county's new policy for assisting municipalities. IN THE past, the road department completed com-pleted work for the cities for only the cost of materials and fuel. "The new policy is that the cities w ill pay for the materials, fuel, plus a fee for (county) (coun-ty) men and equipment," Com. Glen Saud-ers Saud-ers said. COUNTY OFFICIALS say the reason for the new policy is two-fold. First, since many communities do not use county services, ser-vices, only those that do should be required to pay for them. "Many of the communities handle all of their own road maintenance," Com. Saunders Saun-ders said, "and we did not feel it was fair for the county to be subsidizing the operations opera-tions of some of those communities." THE SECOND reason for the policy is that past budgetary restrictions have limited li-mited the volume of work completed by county crews. By channeling fees paid by the cities back into the road department budget, the volume of work performed in a given year can be greatly increased. Saunders Saun-ders explained. Fees charged the communities are dependent de-pendent upon the types of road equipment used, he said. THE COUNTY has asked that each city desiring assistance furnish the road department depart-ment with a description of the road improvements im-provements to be completed by Sept. I of each year. The policy statement says "a five-year listing of projects would be very helpful." Com. Saunders said priority projects w ill be set according to the date of the request. He said some cities have been using county road services more than others. THE COUNTY will try to balance the amount of time spent in each community, he added, so as not to favor one city over another. The road department's first priority prior-ity will be taking care of and rebuilding county roads, he said. Com. Saunders said the county has been charging fees for city road service since early January "and we have had no negative nega-tive response from the cities. The cities have a very cooperative attitude presently." present-ly." he said. |