County OKs road maintenance plan

Study to look at gravel route care

Yuma County’s road maintenance plan for 2017-22 was adopted by the Board of Supervisors Monday, including a $1.1 million relaunch of regular maintenance of gravel roads, along with a study to analyze which ones should be paved.

County staff decided to free up more money for maintenance of gravel roads after the board last went over the plan at its April 3 meeting. Deputy County Administrator Paul Melcher said the action comes after staff talked to residents and local leaders about the importance of keeping gravel roads in a driveable condition to get to different parts of the county, and the value it adds to county roads.

“That’s kind of how we morphed this project from just simply looking at paved road maintenance and gravel roads as just separate entities and maintenance, so we’re really looking at a gravel road preservation program as well,” he said.

The new figure is more than double the dollar amount included for gravel maintenance when the study was last presented to the supervisors, as staff came up with a value of $535,000 for the county’s current grading efforts, which are currently done on an as-needed or emergency basis for gravel roads.

To this, they added the expected savings of $324,000 from consolidating chip-sealing projects and contracting them to the private sector, and $200,000 of additional vehicle license tax revenue projected to

come in from the state during the next fiscal year, which starts July 1.

“The plan includes a list of all of the county’s gravel road segments and whether they’re projected to be graded three or five times during the first year of the program. Public Works Director Joshua Scott said initially, segments located in the Yuma Valley are expected to be graded more frequently due to heavy use by agricultural vehicles during the growing season, which tend to drag soils onto the roads and deteriorate its conditions.

“Over this next six months, we’ll really focus on assessing those roads, kind of giving them a score and prioritizing them, and that may change, some of these may fall to more frequently and others to less frequently. Initially, our focus will be on the valley roads.” Scott said.

The road maintenance plan as approved also includes a policy asking for a cost-benefit analysis on the possible pavement of every gravel road in the county.

The total maintenance budget for all types of county roads for fiscal 2017-18 is approximately $1.9 million to $2 million, Deputy Public Works Director Jason Phipps said Monday.

In other action Monday, the board:

• Approved payment of a $30,290 matching grant payment to the Arizona Commerce Authority for infrastructure improvements related to the new Almark egg processing plant under construction at Avenue 4E and 56th Street.

The $151,000 grant from the state Rural Economic Development Grant program is being awarded to the city of Yuma, which has already made the required payment in order to secure the award. The county will reimburse that money from the board’s contingency fund, as a “gesture of goodwill” because as an entity it could not legally offer any incentives to Almark, since its site is in the city.

The board voted 5-0, with Chairman Tony Reyes calling his vote a “painful aye” after he was the only member who’d expressed any reluctance, based on the fact that the city had already paid and the county’s money and Almark is already building, so the county’s money won’t have any actual impact.

• Gave approval during a work session to leasing 6,500 square feet in the Adult Probation building, until recently occupied by the county treasurer’s and recorder’s offices, for a new clinic providing medical and psychological care to the county’s probationers.

Community Health Associates, along with mental health care provider Cenpatico and the county’s adult probation department, is applying for a grant from a $300 million Targeted Investment Program, funded by federal government money passed down to the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System for integration of medical and behavioral health care into the justice system.

CHA is currently working on the application, due at the end of next month. The amount of money to be requested has not been finalized,

Chief Probation Officer Sandi Hoppough said she would still have room left to expand her office if the clinic were to be placed in that building, moving additional employees into the county assessor’s offices, which after this week will be relocated the into county’s renovated building at 197 S. Main St., where the recorder’s and treasurer’s offices are already set up.

She said it would be “a dream” to have a clinic with medical and behavioral health care professionals where probation officers could literally walk their probationers to get treatment, especially for drug addiction and psychiatric disorders that raise the likelihood that they will reoffend.

“I firmly believe we will get some money to get this program started,” she said after the meeting. There are currently about 1,100 probationers under the department’s supervision.

• The board continued to have reservations about implementing a mandatory fire suppression system program for business, which as presented Monday by Chief Building Official Pat Headington could require business owners to pay hundreds of dollars to a licensed third-party contractor for an inspection, even if there was nothing

wrong with them.

Reyes and McCloud in particular were concerned about companies in older buildings being forced to shut down after being told to make cost-prohibitive improvements to their sprinkler systems or similar suppression devices.

“Yuma County has been in existence for 150 years. Why do we need this now?” McCloud asked.

Headington said the suppression systems are required by the county’s fire code, and his department will make every effort to give businesses to comply before imposing fees, as it already does in other types of zoning violation cases.

• Voted 3-2 to approve the scheduling of a public hearing at the board’s June 19 meeting on a proposed increase of the Justice Court Enhancement Fee from $20 to $40. Supervisor Russell McCloud said he opposed raising it because the justice court is “the people’s Court,” while Supervisor Darren Simmons said he wanted more information about how the money would be used.