It looks like the Jefferson County Public Works Department is terminating a road maintenance agreement with Valley Oaks, a subdivision off Seckman Road in Imperial. The department decided to terminate that agreement after completing its first audit of the county’s street maintenance program, Public Works Director Jason Jonas said.
He said his department is auditing 11 subdivisions that were accepted into the program at its inception in 2018.
After that, the Department will continue auditing all 105 subdivisions in the program to evaluate how much the county is spending to maintain their roads, with those audits to be conducted when each subdivision reaches its seventh anniversary of being accepted into the program.
Under the program, once a street or series of streets is approved, the county’s Highway Division assumes responsibility for maintaining and repairing those roads. Additionally, the county takes care of snow removal and weather treatment on the roads.
Jonas said in the case of Valley Oaks, which has more than 2 miles of streets, Public Works has spent far more to maintain and repair that subdivision’s streets compared to what it spends in other subdivisions.
According to county documents, the Department spent $932,924.20 over seven years to maintain Valley Oaks streets, equating to an annual investment of $133,274.88. The annual cost per mile of street was approximately $52,594.66.
From 2018-2025, the county allocated about $25,000 per mile for each subdivision in the program, meaning Valley Oak required more than twice the amount the county had budgeted to maintain and repair its streets.
“If this program is going to have longevity and stability, we can’t keep subdivisions like that in the program,” Jonas said. “It’s not fair to the normal taxpayer that we would invest that much above the average.”
In addition to the steep financial costs to maintain Valley Oaks, Jonas stated in a memo to the Jefferson County Council that some of the subdivision’s trustees “have been verbally abusive to Public Works Department staff, supervisors and management.”
“The trustees and lot owners have not been satisfied with the quality or quantity of services provided,” he wrote. “The Public Works Department refutes all their negative claims. Our Department believes that good quality and adequate services have been provided since the subdivision was adopted into the program in 2018.”
The council voted unanimously on Aug. 25 to terminate the agreement with Valley Oaks. That was a preliminary vote, and the council was expected to finally vote on the matter on Monday, after the Leader deadline.
Councilman Charles Groeteke (District 4, Barnhart) represents the residents in Valley Oaks. He said the decision to end the agreement is a difficult one.
“This goes against the citizens who live in my district; these citizens want the streets maintained,” Groeteke said. “But we’re only allowed a little over $6 million for Mr. Jonas and Public Works to maintain the publicly run streets of this county, and Mr. Jonas has done a good job of running the Public Works Department. His documentation shows that (the road work in Valley Oaks) has become a detriment to this program that we instituted in 2018. It’s a difficult decision, but I do support it.”
Criteria
Jonas said the county Public Works Department budgets about $2.2 million for road maintenance and repairs and about $350,000 for winter operations each year. The county also hired 10 employees due to the implementation of the program, who collectively receive an annual salary of about $400,000-$500,000. The employee pay is not included in the budgeted amount for road maintenance and snow removal.
The finite budget means Public Works must put into place a criterion that a subdivision must meet to be accepted into the program. Jonas said that while more than 100 subdivisions have been accepted since 2018, about 185 communities have been denied.
The criteria changed in 2022, after the county updated its unified development order, which affected residential streets. The update mandated that concrete streets be made with an aggregate base rather than a concrete slab over dirt grade.
Based on the new criteria, 20-plus-year-old subdivisions like Valley Oaks would not be approved for the program if they applied today, Jonas said.
“The program was meant for subdivision street maintenance, not subdivision street replacement,” he said. “We did a great job (maintaining the streets), but at the end of the day, it’s too much for a public program. There are so many other streets that will never, ever have this situation that (Valley Oaks) is in, because we caught them early enough that they’re not going to get into this situation.”
Patrick Stoll, Valley Oaks resident and homeowners’ association trustee, said at the Aug. 25 meeting that the reason the cost to maintain his streets is so high is because of the “mismanagement of the Public Works division.”
“(Jonas) has been spending money at a breakneck pace to fill pothole after pothole and never fixing the problem,” Stoll said.
“Just sending crews out to patch and patch, that’s not fixing the infrastructure – it’s kicking the can down the road.”
Jonas said, in general, some residents in older subdivisions have expressed frustration with the maintenance program, expecting the county to completely replace their aging and crumbling streets.
“They know their streets are falling apart; they know their streets need a ton of investment, and they don’t see us investing what they think is enough,” he said. “To them, they want everything replaced. We just can’t turn the clock back to zero for them.”
Which subdivision is next?
The Public Works Department is finishing its first round of audits now, Jonas said, looking at the first 11 subdivisions accepted into the program back in 2018.
He said the department will then audit the next round of subdivisions – those accepted into the program in 2019.
Jonas said the Department is only looking at subdivisions that have been a part of the program for at least seven years.
Of the 105 subdivisions in the program, he only expects the county to terminate agreements with two to six of them due to higher-than-average maintenance costs.
Jonas said those living in subdivisions that participate in the program will be notified if the county intends to terminate the maintenance agreement with their subdivisions.
“I don’t anticipate more than a small handful (of terminations) over the next seven years,” Jonas said. “It’s not going to be like a deluge of cancellations in the near future; more like a tiny trickle, maybe one a year.”