Commissioners hoping for help on road funding

Custer County commissioners met at length Monday morning with three representatives of the Oklahoma Department of Transportation and adopted a paper they hope will increase state funding for their maintenance of county roads.
The increase isn’t expected to be large, but the commissioners say they have been maintaining some roads out of their regular budgets that aren’t on ODOT’s certified mileage list and they would like them to be so they can receive state money to help with the maintenance.
Sam Coldiron, head of the SAPM Division of ODOT which keeps track of county roads and mileages, didn’t think there would be a problem for the ones the commissioners requested. District 3 Commissioner Lyle Miller said he had 18 sections of road which he thought should be on the ODOT list but aren’t, and Commissioner Wade Anders thought he had three in his district. Commissioner Kurt Hamburger did not say how many he has.
Miller emphasized that the lengths in his district are in most cases short and it was not 18 miles of road that he was asking for help on. Anders, on the other hand, said he would gain roughly 10 miles of roads in his three parcels.
“I don’t want to inherit more roads than I need, but I want to get credit for what I maintain,” he said.
Miller made a motion to adopt ODOT’s County Action Report which should correct the ones that were pointed out Monday as not being attributed to the county when they should be. Anders seconded, and the vote was 3-0.
Anders also thanked Coldiron and two other members of his department, Gwen Johnson and Kelli White, for coming out and discussing the situation.
Hamburger, the board chairman, said there are roads which he and his cohorts have been maintaining that may not be on all the appropriate maps. Examples he noted were dead-end section lines and roads that may be inside city limit lines. This is particularly true around Weatherford and Clinton, which have expanded their city limits in recent years to include more roads that were previously certified as the county’s responsibility.
Miller mentioned some roads around lakes, particularly Foss Reservoir which is in his district, that may be the responsibility of the State Parks Department.
“This one the county has maintained forever,” he said, pointing to one running north and south on the west side of the reservoir. “You’re saying it should be lake maintained.”
It was also indicated this would be a good time to discuss the matter because of the upcoming 2020 census. Coldiron indicated the maps are supposed to be updated after each census and seemed surprised that his predecessors might not have kept up this time.
He said his division has people who drive around the state looking for roads where there are no gates, trying to make sure the proper agency is maintaining them.
But he said ODOT won’t automatically change the responsibility without conferring with commissioners first.
“We leave it as potentially (a county road) until you actually tell us it is,” he said.
Hamburger said there also have been people “who burned a trail upstairs (to the District Attorney’s Office) telling them I was maintaining private property.” He asked if that could be corrected.
    “Oh yes,” replied Coldiron. “We just did it in Ellis County. I just testified up there about it.”
Hamburger said the City of Weatherford had expanded its city limits to include a couple of county roads that he had been maintaining. The inference was that he no longer should have to do that, that they have become the city’s responsibility.
Mike Galloway, Custer County’s emergency management director, was interested too. He said it looks to him like county planning and zoning are coming.
Miller assured him that was not the case, at least as far as he he’s concerned.
“We are not looking at planning and zoning at this time,” he said with emphasis. “Anybody who wants it – they have to come to us. I’m not bringing it up again.”