Citizens Call For Help in Buffalo County Subdivision Roads

As a driver, it’s common to see ambulances on the highway rushing to reach an area where someone seeks medical attention.

In some circumstances, it’s possible to see an ambulance turn off on a gravel road onto a low-maintenance road. Since the road is very little maintained, this makes it harder for the medical team to do their job as they would have to drive slower and proceed with caution.

Time can be deadly.

This is just one effect of low-maintenance roads.

Subdivision roads are being criticized by local citizens as it’s considered a low-priority basis.

However, many people still utilize those roads and Buffalo County is threatening to stop road maintenance overall because of the overwhelmingly tight budget. Therefore, Buffalo County should offer tax programs to help build roads and owners commit themselves to higher property taxes for a period of years to pay for the maintenance of subdivision roads.

The maintenance of subdivision roads has always been a fight for the citizens who still use these specific roads because of the potential public safety issues due to environmental factors, the amount of time to discover poor road conditions, the maintenance of subdivision roads, and the tight buffalo county budget.

To further, there could be potential problems with public safety if all roads, including subdivision roads, aren’t maintained.

If roads are no longer maintained by Buffalo County, vehicle damage or injuries could be at risk due to possible environmental factors. This is a potentially dangerous situation when it comes to weather conditions like flooding and snow. Vehicular traffic on dirt roads causes dust to become airborne and contributes to road erosion problems as well.

With all this in mind, bad roads make it harder for emergency vehicles to reach people who seek medical attention living on subdivision roads.

Buffalo County could be at fault.

To determine who is at fault, state laws typically allow the government a reasonable amount of time to discover poor road conditions by two ways either through individuals reporting a dangerous condition and by conducting regular surveys of the roadways.

If Buffalo County decides to stop maintaining these roads, then citizens could make a report as it’s their duty to make sure conditions of the county's roads are up to the state and government standards.

What does maintenance include?

Maintenance includes grading and spreading gravel for public roads once a month. Yet, subdivision receives maintenance once every year.

Which is quite odd for Buffalo County as they have a large inventory full of a considerable number of other pieces of equipment valued at $8,056,656 and only have 7 rural subdivision roads to deal with.

The maintenance budget is tight.

Buffalo County receives a certain amount every year to maintain roads. Not only that but Buffalo County employs 49 full-time positions and must pay out of pocket $49,999.25.

If Buffalo County considers tax programs to help build roads and owners commit themselves to higher property taxes for a period of years to pay for the maintenance of subdivision roads, then Buffalo county wouldn’t have budget problems.

At this moment, Buffalo County continues to have a budget problem.

It will affect the citizens, road conditions, maintenance of roads, and buffalo county budget if not properly dealt with.

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