Limestone County Commissioner Ben Harrison has long been vocal about the need for more revenue for county roads, and he would like his fellow commissioners to share his enthusiasm.

Harrison planned to put resolutions on the agenda for Monday’s meeting that could have provided a path to more funding but decided not to. He said Friday he wanted to wait until he could do more research on the issues.

Just as importantly, there is a lack of support from his fellow commissioners for the funding options Harrison brought to the table. Commissioners Stanley Hill, Steve Turner and Jason Black all agree more money is needed for county’s roads, but they’re not in favor of the scenarios previously discussed by Harrison.

At a Nov. 29 work session, Harrison laid out three options. The first would involve an idea already implemented in other states but would take action by the state Legislature to establish. Essentially, Alabama would create an exchange by which federal road dollars are put in a large pool. The state would allow the counties to swap federal-aid funds for local-aid funds at an exchange rate of 75 percent to 100 percent. Creating the exchange would loosen federal regulations regarding how the money can be spent, which Harrison said would result in a cost savings.

The second scenario would be to divert some of the county’s Simplified Sellers Use Tax from the general fund to be used for road projects. At Wednesday’s work session, Harrison said the county could keep up to $220,000, but he would like anything above that to be put toward roads.

The tax was passed by the state Legislature in 2015 and went into effect last year. Sometimes referred to as the “Amazon Tax,” it provided at least $200,000 to Limestone County during the previous fiscal year.

Commission Chairman Mark Yarbrough has asked Harrison not to consider using those funds because the county’s TVA-in-lieu-of-tax appropriation has dipped, so — in the previous fiscal year — the Simplified Sellers Use Tax proceeds were used to offset the shortfall.

The third option would be to ask the Limestone County Legislative Delegation to reapportion TVA-in-lieu-of-tax dollars and take it from Athens-Limestone Hospital, which is now part of the Huntsville Hospital System. The hospital currently receives about $360,000 from TVA-in-lieu-of-tax funds, and Harrison said he would like those funds to be put toward county roads.

Prior to 2015, the county had allocated as much as $1.5 million to the hospital. It now provides about $150,000 annually, to match the $360,000 in TVA-in-lieu-of-tax funds.

Harrison explained it’s been two years since the commission’s decision to reduce funding to the hospital, which was to be phased out of a three-year period.

Commissioners react

Hill, Turner and Black all said it’s likely they wouldn’t have supported any of those resolutions had they been on Monday’s agenda. And while they said something needs to be done to find more dollars, they had no definitive plans.

Hill, who represents District 1, said he wouldn’t be in favor of making any funding changes until the next budget process rolled around again. The county’s budget runs from Oct. 1 through Sept. 30, so the 2018 budget was approved a little more than two months ago.

He said if the county could get its reserves up, more taxpayer dollars could be shifted to road projects. Reserves are at about $4 million now. County Finance Director Emily Ezzell said she would like to see reserves hit the $10-million mark.

“I just don’t want any taxes,” Hill said.

Black said he would like to see the state provide some definitive ideas on how to help its 67 counties. A bill to raise the state’s gasoline tax would have benefited county roads statewide, but it failed.

The original plan was to raise the tax by 2 cents, but the final bill raised it by 6 cents. Black said the lack of transparency may have been why it failed to gain traction.

“They should just be upfront and honest about it,” he said.

Black said he has plenty of roads in his district that aren’t the best, but he doesn’t have any “below grade.” He plans to begin re-striping roads soon to improve safety.

“I don’t think it would be beneficial at this time,” he said when asked about Harrison’s proposals. “I don’t see us reinventing the wheel.”

Turner was the most vocal about road funding because commissioners’ covet his position — he receives the same amount of funding as the other commissioners but has the least amount of road miles at 185.

Turner has a different set of problems, however. Because his East Limestone district continues to boom with new subdivision development, his roads must be built to a higher standard — plant mix (asphalt) and with curb and gutter.

At Wednesday’s work session, Harrison suggested using Turner’s dollar-per-mile ratio and bringing all other districts up to that level. Turner said if his district becomes the standard, it needs to be based on the roads that cost him the most to build or maintain.

For example, because Turner has to build curb-and-gutter roads, it costs him $2 more per square yard than it does to resurface a road in Harrison’s district. The curb-and-gutter construction means the roads have to be milled before they are resurfaced, which costs more.

Turner also pointed out that even though each district receives a little more than $1 million each year for road funds, there isn’t much left after overhead is paid. For example, each district pays $350,000 to cover expenses in the county’s engineering department. Turner then has about $200,000 in employee expenses, and he also has the expense of paying for utilities in his district. Those utilities include any streetlight or stoplight on a county road. After those expenses are paid, Turner said he has about $350,000 left for road projects for the entire year.

As an example of how far that gets him, he pointed to the ongoing project to resurface a portion of Huntsville-Browns Ferry Road. That project is a joint project between Turner, Black and the cities of Madison and Huntsville. The cost to resurface that 4-mile portion of road is $777,000.

“That $350,000 I had left over wouldn’t have gotten me very far,” he said.

Turner said he understands Harrison’s plight but is at a stalemate with his fellow commissioner on how to move forward.

“I applaud Ben for trying to find more money for his district and sticking up for his people, but at no point in time will I back down on my resolve to stick up for my people,” Turner said.

The way forward

Harrison said Friday he would continue to look at the options already presented to commissioners but also explore other proposals. He still believes diverting a portion of the Simplified Sellers Use Tax could be a viable option but added he keeps running into “all kinds of roadblocks.” He added all three of his proposals would “generate significant improvements for everyone.”

“I’m the only one working (on proposals) to provide more funds without a tax increase,” he said. “I’m the only one wanting to prioritize our budget to give more emphasis to the road and bridge situation. It seems like all I’m running into is people throwing obstruction in front of that.”