RID chip seal costs a focus of Lincoln Government Day

The June 4 Government Day meeting served as the first in a series of projected meetings in Lincoln to discuss the funding for maintenance of Lincoln’s hard surface streets.

Lincoln is generally on a seven to nine year cycle for chip sealing to preserve the paved streets in town. The streets in town were last chip sealed in 2014. They were originally slated to be redone this year, but due to COVID-19 meeting restrictions, Lewis and Clark County officials opted to push it back a year to ensure they could hold the necessary public meetings.

Jessica Makus, special districts program coordinator with the Lewis and Clark Public Works Department, provided a detailed look at the projected assessments that benefitting property owners in the Lincoln and Lambkins Rural Improvement Districts will face to the project.

In 2014, the county commission approved resolutions that, at that time, were expected to bring in enough money to fund both chip seal projects that year, while also funding the projected cost of a full second chip seal in the Lincoln RID in 2021, and fund half the of a chip seal in the Lambkins RID.

However, increasing costs changed that equation over time.

“This year they were scheduled for the chip sealing. Neither fund has the money to do them this year,” Makus said, and addressed the options for moving forward to get the work done next year.

Property owners in the Lincoln RID, who currently pay a debt service assessment of $44.84 for the 2014 project on top of a baseline maintenance assessment of $59.45, won’t see much of a change to their tax bill if everything moves forward as projected.

“To get this chip seal project done on all the hard surface roads, and dust control on gravel surface roads within the Lincoln RID, we’re looking at a total project cost of … $206,221,” Makus said. “The current balance of $135, 000, we’ll put that toward it. That RID is looking at a loan of just under $75,000 to complete that project.”

On a seven-year debt cycle, property owners in the Lincoln RID will be looking at an additional cost of about $40 per year for seven years, a decrease of around $4 per year.

However, the Lambkins RID, which is assessed at $.001972 per square foot

per year rather than by parcel, will likely see an increase.

Makus explained the Lambkins RID account currently has about $21,500 in it, but the total project cost is estimated to be nearly $59,400.

Property owners in that RID, which covers the streets in the northeast corner of town, behind the school, paid an average of about $32 per lot for their baseline maintenance assessment, and an additional $70 on average in debt service for the 2014 chip seal. The upcoming chip seal will require a loan of $40,000, which averages out to about $83 per year for debt service for the next seven years, above the annual maintenance assessment.

Caleb Marcus, the construction coordinator for the county’s 150 Rural Improvement Districts, said the costs in the plans are the highest they are planning for.

“We estimate these a little bit high because we are a year out,” Makus said. “We want this to be our worst case scenario, as far as the higher end of what we would have to borrow to make sure things move forward. “If we underbid it and we put it out, everything falls flat and we have to do it again. “We keep it a little bit high, but the loan amount is only for the construction costs.”

Lewis and Clark County Public Works Director Eric Griffin noted the county has had to rebid numerous projects this year and has had to scale back some of their projects because the price of asphalt has gone up so much.

“With storms, with mother nature, with COVID, with everything else going on right now…things are out of control right now,” he said. “This isn’t always a popular move, but it’s a move we have to make to keep the roads up here hard surface.”

Makus said that to get the loan needed to do the improvements, they first have to circulate a petition within the community

“Once we get 20 percent support, we can take it to the commissioners for a resolution of intention to get this loan and change this RID to get this amount,” she said. A series of public meetings will follow and they’ll do the resolution of intention. Property owners in the RIDs will receive notices and will have a 30-day period to get comments and protests back to the commission. If greater than 50 percent protest the amount, the project can’t move forward and it will not happen.

“My hope is this will be supported and we can move forward with it,” Makus said. “If we can get levied and assessed by March, we can get in on next year’s bid process to get this asphalt work done.”

In 2013, during one of the preliminary RID conversations that go round, Griffin suggested the county could look at changing the Lambkins RID from the per-square-foot model to the more common flat rate assessment by parcel. Though such a conversation apparently never happened, Makus said under state law, they can still look at changing that assessment, although such a change, if approved, wouldn’t take effect for several years.

Marcus said they hope costs will come back down so they won’t have to pull nearly as much money.

“If it comes in under, the loan amount will be for the actual construction and the assessment will be adjusted accordingly,” Makus said.