Pave by the numbers

Will county judge’s approach meet residents’ needs?

Keeping up with paving and repairing roads is challenging for a lot of communities. Leaders of cities and counties regularly cite a shortage of resources to keep up with the demands for maintenance on networks of roads that get more and more fragile as the years pass.

Just Tuesday, the New York Times reported on an interesting approach in Omaha, Neb., where the mayor and her administration say they don’t have the hundreds of millions of dollars to catch up on roads that have been poorly built and/or neglected for decades.

The solution? The city is returning some city streets to gravel.

Not surprisingly, the mayor faces challenge from four candidates.

Roads are critically important to the people of Northwest Arkansas. Although there’s a growing sentiment that the region cannot pave its way to a better future, it’s a stretch to suggest the reliance on automobiles is going to go away soon. Keeping what streets, roads and highways we have in working order is critical.

That’s why we like Benton County Judge Barry Moehring’s plan to hire a firm to collect data on the county’s paved roads. It’s not cheap at $65,500, but compared to the millions of dollars it takes to keep infrastructure in working order, it’s a small investment. The county has limited money to spend, and the new county judge wants to spread that money based on observable facts, not on political influence or seat-of-the-pants guesswork.

Government policy based on provable facts? Perhaps Benton County didn’t get President Trump’s memo. Or his tweets.

Moehring says his administration is not “going to just eyeball the roads and make subjective decisions on what work is done. We’re going to make data-based decisions.”

Bella Vista Mayor Peter Christie has used the same approach. He said it’s a needed replacement for the “squeaky wheel system” that drives a lot of communities’ infrastructure spending.

Of course, the road to somewhere toasty is paved with good intentions, they say. Moehring’s system will only be great as long as it’s the standard and county government sticks to those principles. That will be easier said than done. Data, it turns out, doesn’t vote, so it will be interesting to see how Moehring’s approach plays with his constituents who can’t wield their influence to get their roads improved. You know, the way it’s “always” been done.