Good morning,
We have had another busy week this week. The seal coat crew finished up chip seal operations on Tuesday and they are starting to fog seal in the SW part of the county today. Limestone hauls continued in District 5 and other district crews continue to prep their local roads for improvements. Our contractors made great progress on some of our major road reconstruction projects.
On Tuesday, we completed our quarterly budget review with the board at their working session. As I mentioned last week, overall, we continue to be in a stable position budget-wise. We recommended a few adjustments to the 2022 budget, which will be considered at the August 2 board meeting, including:
- An increase of nearly $5 million in township contributions thanks to an especially strong township participation for our Local Road Improvement Program. Of course, this also means that we are performing a lot of work on our local road system.
- Increase of nearly $1 million to advance the Huron River Dr resurfacing project to 2022. As you might remember, we had to close a major section of Huron River Dr in Webster Township during this year’s spring thaw. We originally planned to resurface the road in 2023 with millage dollars but are recommending that we move that project up to this year to avoid a closure again next year.
In addition, we talked with the board about challenges we are facing with supply chain issues and inflation. For example, we ordered 11 new heavy trucks last fall and are now expecting delivery in 2023. This means that part of the fund balance that we will be showing at the end of 2022 will include more than $2 million in carryover funds to pay for these trucks. We are also seeing higher fuel costs and material costs and recommended increasing our expected expenditures for these items.
Lastly, we provided a lookahead to 2023 and 2024 budgets. We have some big expenditures planned in 2023, including a new salt storage building at the Main Yard. A lot more to come on this topic but we continue to feel confident about where we are trending.
A huge thank you to everyone involved in our budget process, it is a large task but a very important undertaking every year.
I hope you can stay cool and get some rest this weekend.
Take care and stay safe,
Sheryl
