LOCAL - B-N / McLean Co - County Road Maintenance Burden

The roads more traveled By M.K. Guetersloh mkguetersloh@pantagraph.com Complete Story - Click Here. BLOOMINGTON - As the city of Bloomington continues to grow to the east, adjacent Old Town Township continues to shrink. With city subdivisions being planned and annexed east of Towanda Barnes Road, the township loses the land and the tax revenue tied to the property. While transferring the land jurisdiction to the city, township officials would like to see that responsibility for more of the associated roads go with it. They say they simply can't afford of the cost of maintaining township roads that are used more and more while their tax dollars shrink. "When they start building houses, I want out," said Phil Reynolds, Old Town Township road supervisor. A recent example is the roads around The Grove at Kickapoo Creek, a 450-acre subdivision near Ireland Grove and Towanda Barnes roads. The city and the township are trying to hammer out a deal as to when the city will take over McLean County roads 2100 East and 1300 North, which are township roads near the development. In the meantime, the city has agreed to take over Ireland Grove Road. Target traffic levels Bloomington is proposing that it take over 2100 East and 1300 North when traffic rates reach a daily average of 1,500 vehicles.Bloomington City Manager Tom Hamilton said 1,500 cars a day is a fair number to warrant the city picking up the roads. However, he said the roads should be fine structurally with 1,500 cars a day. Most of the traffic will be commuter traffic. "It's the heavy trucks in the springtime that really tear up the roads and cause the problems," Hamilton said. Reynolds said in the time it takes to get up to 1,500 cars, the roads will deteriorate to the point of being a safety issue. With a $354,000 budget to cover 50 miles of road, Reynolds adds there is not a lot of money for road maintenance. "It's about $10,000 a mile just to seal-coat a road," Reynolds said. "Then when you go to upgrade and widen, we are looking at my total budget to pay for one mile." But it's not just the large subdivisions. The township is seeing several road problems with the addition of rural subdivisions. County Road 2000 East, about a mile from Towanda Barnes Road, is another road that concerns township trustees. The hilly, narrow road is carrying more traffic with the addition of more houses. "These roads were not built for this kind of traffic," Old Town Township Supervisor Mark Lovelace said. "It's difficult to maintain access roads to those subdivisions." The township is levying at its maximum property tax rate and is limited in how much new tax money it can ask its 2,700 or so residents to pay. But even if the levy could be increased, Reynolds said it's unfair to ask the farmers in the township to pay for road upgrades to accommodate traffic for the new subdivisions. The trustees' efforts to slow growth by delaying approval for rural subdivisions may give the township board a reputation of being against new developments, trustee Tim Norman said. "I love the growth and expansion," Norman said. "What I don't want to see is more trees popping up in memory of someone (at an accident site). It gets dangerous when you try to put city traffic on a country road that amounts to a little more than a goat trail."