Roads need attention? Commissioners are ‘doing the best we can’

According to Oklahoma Mesonet, last week’s rains dumped 5.81 inches of water on Sallisaw, but some portions of Sequoyah County received closer to 7 inches.

Localized flooding occurred and some roads were inundated. 911 director David Slaughter reported that the 911 office received 213 calls from Thursday through Sunday, many due to the weather.

While the county needed rain, the past week may have been too much.

“It was a busy weekend,” District 3 Commissioner Jim Rogers observed Monday during the commissioners’ weekly meeting. “We had our guys out all weekend. We had washouts. It’s going to be pretty costly to put a lot of these back together, something we didn’t want to get hit with.”

And something none of the three county districts can afford to address. But county residents aren’t very forgiving, even if it’s something the commissioners can control.

“I saw a text where people are complaining that with all the property tax money that they paid, that we should be keeping the roads in better shape,” Rogers told his colleagues.

Then he made sure there was no misunderstanding about the amount of money from property taxes that the commissioners have to address road issues.

“I want to make this known right now, today, this is what we get in property taxes for roads,” Rogers said, holding up his right hand, forefinger touching thumb to form a zero. “None of that (property taxes) goes to the roads. We get zero dollars for the roads. We get none of the property taxes for roads. None of that goes to road maintenance. “There’s nothing we’d like better than to have the funding to go out here and blacktop everybody’s road, asphalt everybody’s road. But that’s (limited funds) one of the biggest challenges we face,” Rogers said.

Rogers said roads that are used the most take priority over side roads with less traffic count.

“We do the best we can to keep them put together, but when we (commissioners) average $300,000 to $400,000 a year to take care of 300 miles of road, that math doesn’t work. So we do the best we can. It’s a real challenge. It’s frustrating. Probably the most frustrating part of our job. We do the best we can with what we have to work with.”

Jim Rogers

Following the meeting, Rogers explained that the commissioners actually received more than the $300,000 to $400,000 he quoted, “but by the time we’ve maintained and done the upkeep on our dirt roads and prepped our roads, put pipes and stuff in during the course of the year, if we’re lucky, we have about $300,000 to $400,000 per year to address our paved roads.”

Rogers said a half-cent sales tax is in place for county roads. “If we’re lucky, it averages about maybe $60,000 a month apiece.”

Rogers said he and District 2 Commissioner Beau Burlison each receive 37% of the sales tax each month, and District 1 Commissioner Ray Watts is allotted 26% of the tax. “Ray’s got a little less mileage [to maintain] than Beau and I do,” Rogers explained.

“It’s just kind of frustrating — you can’t control the weather, you can’t control Mother Nature — and when everybody starts bashing us …,” Rogers said. “We get zero dollars of property tax for roads. Eighty percent of [property taxes] funds the schools, 10% comes here to fund the [county] offices. It goes different places, library, health department, different places. But most of your property taxes, that’s to fund the public schools.”

Meanwhile, the county commissioners will continue to do the best they can with the resources they have.