Kalamazoo Township voters will decide next Tuesday whether to approve a nearly $10 million bond issue to fix the township’s battered roads.
Township officials say road upgrades and repairs are badly needed. When the County Road Commission surveyed Kalamazoo Township’s roads, Trustee Pamela Brown Goodacre went along for the ride. She says it was a bumpy one.
"People understand our roads have to be fixed, and they understand that there’s no free lunch, we have to pay to have them fixed," she says.
According to the Road Commission, only about a quarter of Kalamazoo Township’s roads are in good shape. A number are in fair condition, which means they’re okay now but need preventive work or they’ll eventually fall apart. And a little more than 40 percent have already deteriorated into poor condition.
"It’s much less expensive to keep the road in good shape, to the tune of maybe $2000 or $3000 per mile, versus a road that’s fully deteriorated which is over $400,000 per mile to reconstruct," says Supervisor Ron Reid.
He says that gives the township a “financial incentive” to fix the roads now before they get even worse. But Reid adds that the costs far outpace what the township can afford from its general fund, even with matching dollars from the road commission.
A May ballot proposal to raise road funds statewide wouldn’t help. That’s because virtually none of that money would go toward township roads.
But if the bonding proposal goes through, Reid says the township would have "a very high percentage of good roads, and there would still be a mix of some fair roads in there, but we would not have any poor roads when we get all done."
If the proposal is approved, property owners would pay the debt back over a decade at an expected average rate of two and a half mills per year. If it fails, Reid says he’s not sure what will happen next, but says in his personal opinion special assessment districts might be the next best option.
