Many Cook County roads are in need of repair, no doubt. But no road was talked about as much as the crumbling Pike Lake Road at the county board’s special meeting to discuss implementing a retail sales tax that would benefit the county highway department.
The meeting at 6 p.m. on Monday, August 15 saw about 30 people listening and in some cases, giving input.
The county board is considering implementing a Greater Minnesota Transportation Sales and Use Tax of one half cent per dollar spent on taxable goods with proceeds going to fix roads, bridges, and infrastructure for the highway department.
County Highway Engineer Dave Betts laid out a wide variety of reasons why the county should establish a transportation sales tax. Cook County, said Betts, is 82nd in terms of population and is the 13th largest county in terms of landmass with 1,606.5 square miles, with 91 percent of the land publicly owned and therefore not taxable. With 3.6 people per square mile, the county ranks 87th out of Minnesota’s 87 counties for population density.
Betts explained the county maintains two categories of roads. Roads 1-23 are county and state aid roads and roads numbered 24-103 are county roads maintained through levy dollars. Betts said the county also has an arrangement with the U.S. Forest Service to plow The Grade in the winter. All told the county has 297 miles of roads to maintain, said Betts.
Bridges in the county are in need of repair, said Betts. The county has 59 bridges (a bridge is defined as any elevated structure or culvert that spans more than 10 feet) with 15 of them deemed structurally deficient. Two are functionally obsolete and one bridge is closed.
Then too, Betts said the county garage in Grand Marais and other facilities in Tofte and Hovland are in need of replacement, estimating $14 million to bring those facilities up to speed.
Betts introduced a list containing about 200 road and bridge repairs that need to be done that totaled $162,383,422.
While the county receives state highway user tax funds for road 1-23, it would take 50-plus years of construction allotments to fix those roads from those proceeds.
Roads 24-103, which are only funded through tax assessments on property owners, the project list includes $54,057,801 in expenses and only $125,000 per year is currently budgeted for maintenance projects out of the county’s $1,887,524 allotment to the county highway department in 2015.
“At these funding levels it would take 432 years to fix our county roads,” Betts said.
When the public was given a chance to speak, Jim Boyd, director of the Cook County Chamber of Commerce, said most Chamber members were supportive.
“Of all the responsibilities of county government that support a strong local economy, maintaining safe, well-constructed roads and bridges is Number 1,” Boyd said.
Boyd said, “It is estimated the .5 cent retail sales tax would generate about $750,000 per year. The county would sell bonds to finance the road projects now and use the yearly retail sales tax receipts to pay debt service [principal and interest] on the bonds.
“By doing it this way, the county can ensure that 70-80 percent of the cost of these road projects is paid by visitors to Cook County who buy things while they are here.
“This approach also makes great economic and fiscal sense because the county has a very low level of bonded debt, interest rates are at historic lows now, and the federal, state and local economies could use the boost in jobs and income that road projects would provide,” said Boyd, adding “This is a much fairer, more effective and more efficient method for funding longterm road projects than using the local property tax, which concentrates the burden of paying for roads and bridges on locals who live here year round and own businesses here.”
Steve Persons said he was opposed. “What I am seeing is a long list of projects and I don’t see how $750,000 per year is going to put a dent in this.”
Persons said he would like to see the project list “carefully vetted and gone over with a fine tooth comb.”
Bob Pranis, Pike Lake, questioned why roads 1-23 get state funding and the other roads don’t? And he asked if the state took into account how tourists driving on the roads were affecting them. He also wanted to know if the county could have more roads classified as state aid roads.
Betts said the county hadn’t tried to reclassify any roads since 2008 and that it was a difficult, time-consuming process.
David Turk of Hovland was also opposed. He asked Betts how many roads he was going to take off the list. “If I can’t maintain what I have, I start cutting back,” he said.
He said the county should become self-sufficient and not rely on government handouts. Directing his comments back to the county board, Turk added, “You have already signed, sealed and delivered this tax. Shame on you. You are going along to get along.”
Pam Dorris wanted to know if locals would be hired to do the road repairs, and Betts replied that any project costing more than $100,000 had to be bid out and any qualified bidder could seek the work. Dorris asked if locals could be absolved from paying the half-cent tax on goods, and Commissioner Heidi Doo-Kirk said that wouldn’t be possible.
While she would like to see Pike Lake Road repaired, Pat Campanaro, who lives in the Pike Lake area, said, “I can’t support this tax because it will hurt the people in the county who have the least.”
Jim Daugherty has been living on the Pike Lake Road for most of his life. He said the road really started to crumble about 10 years ago and he suggested the county might have made a mistake when it capped the road with class 5 gravel. He added that county workers were doing the best they could to make ditches wider and drain water from the low spots, and he hoped the road could be brought up to a safe level to drive on as soon as possible.
Pete Harris, Croftville, asked the county board to pass the tax, picking out the most critical projects from the list of 200 Betts presented. “This has been working well for St. Louis County. This is something worth trying for a period of time,” he added.
Other members of the Pike Lake community spoke, asking why over the years their complaints about the road had not always been answered.
Doo-Kirk replied, “The board hasn’t had it fixed because there hasn’t been enough money to fix it.” She asked Betts to give an estimate of the cost to repair Pike Lake Road and he responded that it would take $1.4 million just for the engineering plans and as much as $10 million to actually bring the road up to a safe standard.
Betts added that if the county started now, because of planning and permits, it would take five years before the county could even start to redo Pike Lake Road.
Because this tax would benefit the whole county, Nevin Holmberg of Hovland said he was in favor of the tax. He added that with limited funds in the county’s budget commissioners should stop giving money to things like the golf course, tennis courts and other projects that don’t benefit the whole community.
Following the public meeting commissioners held a brief discussion. Commissioner Frank Moe asked that if enacted, the tax only be spent on roads and bridges and not on buildings. That was a point of concern for several members of the audience.
The county board will vote on the tax at its August 23 meeting. If approved, no money would be collected until January 2017.
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