The Warren County Commissioners have obligated a large portion of the county’s remaining ARPA funds to catch up on road maintenance before moving forward with paving new roads in the coming years.
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The Warren County Commissioners have obligated a large portion of the county’s remaining ARPA funds to catch up on road maintenance before moving forward with paving new roads in the coming years.
Presiding Commissioner Joe Gildehaus said there are a number of county roads in need of repair and the use of the ARPA funds will allow the county to catch up on those repairs, and establish a consistent schedule for repairs in the future.
“We’re trying to get caught up to that point, so that way moving forward we can overlay ‘X’ amount and then we can put in new (roads) every year,” said Gildehaus. “But if we keep on putting new, new, new, we’ve still got to maintain what we have.”
There are roughly 290,000 miles of roads in Warren County and the county government is responsible for maintenance on a considerable portion of them.
Gildehaus did name the roads that the county hopes to overlay, and pave in 2025, although he was careful to note that those plans are still subject to change depending on bids they receive and engineering estimates.
The county has allocated $3.7 million of its remaining ARPA funds to those improvements and is currently working on bid materials for those projects. Per the ARPA Final Rule issued in 2022 all ARPA funds had to be obligated by the end of 2024 and must be spent by the end of 2026.
Gildehaus said the county will have spent those dollars well before the deadline.
As of Feb. 20, the roads the county plans to overlay in 2025 are as follows: North Stringtown Road, Honey Locust Road, Township Line Road, Muenz Road, Sunnyside Road, North Stracks Church Road, County Farm Road and Pendleton Lost Creek Road.
One improvement that both Gildehaus and Northern District Commissioner Matt Flake said was a certainty was they will be paving Links Road near Marthasville.
“Links, we’re going that for sure, that’s brand new,” said Gildehaus.
Those improvements will account for 15.5 miles of the county’s roads, along with any other repairs that come up during the year.
He also said there is a $1 million line item for any miscellaneous or unexpected repairs caused by weather or any other negative impacts.
Gildehaus also addressed concerns taxpayers may have about the lack of newly paved roads in this year’s plan, saying they hope to ramp up those efforts in the coming years.
“We’re trying to catch up with maintenance of previously paved roads before we go out and pave new roads,” said Gildehaus.
He continued saying if they dedicated too much time to new roads they would create an untenable situation where they could not maintain their existing ones.
“Then you never catch up, right? You just keep paving, then you wind up with a situation where you’ve got all these roads deteriorating and you haven’t done any maintenance to them,” said Gildehaus.
He said the county is planning for the future and is already preparing similar plans for 2026 and 2027 so when they are ready, they can resume the paving of new roads.
