How Lincoln County roads are funded

Where does all the money for our county roads come from? You may be surprised to know that, in Lincoln County, only about 15% is generated from property tax revenue that is received from parcels of land in the unincorporated areas of the county. Parcels of land in our towns do not pay property taxes for county roads. About 21% comes from the federal government. Most of this money is for competitive projects that the county has applied for as well as safety money for guardrails and emergency money for such things as the Porcupine Bay Road landslide repair.

The bulk of the revenue, 62%, comes from the state fuel tax that is generated throughout all of Washington. Of the 49.4 cent per gallon state tax, counties collectively receive just a little over five pennies. This money is administered and distributed to all 39 counties by the County Road Administration Board or “CRAB”. CRAB is a unique state agency in that the Board is appointed to serve three-year terms by the Washington State Association of Counties.

The Board structure is set by RCW 36.78.040 and is comprised of six County Commissioners from the large, medium and small counties and one County Engineer from each of those categories. It is a distinct honor to have been appointed to CRAB in 2013 and to be subsequently reappointed to three additional terms. I currently serve as the Chairman of the CRAB board.

CRAB has statutory oversite of all 39 county road departments and provides professional and technical assistance to County Engineers and staff. To be eligible for state fuel tax, each county must comply with the strict “Standards of Good Practice.” These standards hold counties to a very high level of accountability on such things as engineering, design, maintenance practices, equipment and personnel policies, as well as budget and accounting procedures.

Per state law and through CRAB, fuel tax is broken into several programs:

The General Distribution is based on a complicated formula that includes population, road costs and money needs. This is the single biggest revenue line item for the county road fund.

The Rural Arterial Program (RAP) is a competitive reconstruction program for roads and bridges. Only paved roads qualify for this program and since the need to rebuild county roads in the state is very high, this program is extremely competitive. Once a project is submitted and approved for funding, it can take as long as 4-5 years before construction begins.

The County Arterial Preservation Program (CAPP) is designed to preserve existing pavement. This program in not competitive and is distributed by CRAB based on each county’s percentage of the total statewide paved county road lane miles. This is the money that the county uses for chip-sealing and crack-sealing and can be used in conjunction with federal safety dollars as well to enhance and extend chip-seal projects.

Lincoln County has the distinction of having more miles of gravel roads than any county in the state and the third most total road miles. By the way, it is worth mentioning that we maintain those roads at a lower cost per mile than any other county. Unfortunately, there are many high-use gravel roads in the county that do not qualify for any of the funding programs mentioned above, leaving only local funding available. These funds are typically used for maintenance blading, snow plowing, equipment and wages leaving little money left for expensive projects like paving gravel roads.

Lincoln County has identified three roads, Hanson Harbor, Hawk Creek and Level, as candidates for improvements made with local dollars, only as funds become available. These roads have been added to the county’s six-year Transportation Improvement Plan but currently have no available funding source. To date, a 1.3-mile section of the Hanson Harbor Road is all that the restrictive budgets have allowed the county to improve without state or federal help. That project was the first section of road that was paved with local dollars and it has helped greatly to offset the cost of routine maintenance.

Lincoln County did receive some ARPA recovery money from the federal government recently and road improvements are one of the eligible uses. We are currently working on plans to use some of the money for just that. However, with hyper-inflation out of control, it could be a while before the county has the extra funding for more of these types of improvements.

– If you would like more information about how county roads are funded, check out http://www.crab.wa.gov for more information or feel free to reach out to me anytime.