WATERLOO -- The roads in Black Hawk County's oldest and biggest industrial park are crumbling faster than they can be repaired, and a solution to the crisis eludes engineers and elected officials.

The industry is agriculture, and it has a $300 million impact on the county's economy. The problem is the deteriorating system of rural roads and bridges required to move corn, soybeans and other products from field to market.

"About 64 percent of our paved roads are in acceptable condition, but we're losing about 2 percent a year at our present funding level," said County Engineer Richard King, who has been sounding the alarm for years without success.

He projects only a third of the county's 220 miles of paved roadway will be in acceptable shape by 2025 unless changes are made soon. That means more closed bridges and more roads embargoed for truck traffic -- moves that could severely hamper the local farming industry.

The combination of federal, state and local dollars expected to be available to resurface paved farm-to-market roads over the next five years totals $13 million, well below the $32 million in critical needs on the books. When stretching the road plans out into future years, the funding gap grows to $29 million.

Major projects on the "unfunded" list include resurfacing Dubuque Road from Raymond to Jesup; paving Gilbertville Road south of Gilbertville; fixing Ansborough Avenue south of Waterloo; and paving busy Osage road east of Waterloo, which was the subject of a large petition from residents urging the county to fix it "before someone is killed."

"They're definitely going to get worse before they get better, and then it will cost even more to fix them," said Supervisor Scott Jordan. "It's a matter of where to find the money. There's no magical answer."

Board chairman Tom Little said the supervisors need to find a solution to the problem before the roads reach a point of no return.

"It's been talked about every year and nothing gets done," Little said. "It's time we have a work session and see if we have people who are willing to address it."

Money left on the table

King said the county didn't begin paving rural roads in earnest until 1952. Those roads began to fail in the late 1970s and had to be resurfaced, with some getting two new layers of asphalt since being built.

While those original roads were designed to carry small tractors pulling grain wagons, they weren't prepared to handle the large farm equipment of today or the semi-tractor trailer trucks now hauling crops from the farms. The additional stress is contributing to the rapid surface deterioration, which also makes conditions unsafe for nonfarm traffic and threatens the ability for emergency vehicles to reach their destinations.

"If you go down in the south part of the county there's some roads that are really in bad shape," said Eric Sage, president of the Black Hawk County Farm Bureau. "I don't know how we got behind the 8-ball so far, but something really needs to be done. … It's an economic development issue."

A review of the finances directed to the county's farm-to-market roads shows the increasing shortfall is a product of economic conditions and political choices that left the county not fully utilizing all of the revenue streams available.

The county gets about $990,000 annually in state farm-to-market road funding, which comes from road use tax generated through fuel taxes, vehicle registrations and automobile purchase taxes. That revenue has been flat in recent years, and actually declined when computed with inflation.

Meanwhile construction and material costs have ballooned well beyond the consumer price index. The cost of overlaying a mile of asphalt road today is $200,000, double the bill 10 years ago.

The county is also eligible to collect a maximum amount of property taxes for farm-to-market road construction, but must collect at least 75 percent of the cap to receive its full complement of state funds. Since 1983, the county supervisors have chosen to collect only the minimum 75 percent, boosting it slightly for the coming fiscal year to 82 percent of the limit.

"If you took the dollars at 100 percent and accounted for inflation, that's $26 million worth of construction that we haven't been able to do" since 1983, King said.

Under state law, the maximum general tax levy for roads -- paid by all county taxpayers -- is 16.88 cents per $1,000 of property value. The county budget taxes for this at the full amount, generating $628,610 for the coming fiscal year.

The maximum rural fund tax levy for roads -- paid only by residents who aren't paying city tax bills -- is $3 per $1,000. But next year's budget only utilizes $2.25 of this cap, losing about $410,000 in possible tax revenue.

While voters in Waterloo and Cedar Falls have approved using proceeds from a 1 percent local option sales tax entirely for street repairs, voters in the unincorporated portions of the county chose to use their $2.6 million share for property tax relief. The current rural county tax levy is, therefore, the lowest in the state at just 28 cents per $1,000, well below the second lowest rural levy of $1.47 per $1,000 in Winneshiek County, according to figures compiled by the Iowa State Association of Counties.

Who pays the load?

King has broached the idea of using the rural county's share of local option sales tax money for road repairs, noting the process has helped the cities get ahead of the curve on street repairs. Some other urban counties -- such as Dubuque and Pottawattamie counties -- have dedicated all or a large share of their option tax proceeds to road projects.

But that idea hasn't flown with rural voters, who ultimately decide at the ballot box how the money is spent.

Sage, with the Farm Bureau, said the county shifted costs, such as sheriff patrols, from the general fund to the rural fund when the option tax became available.

"One of the Farm Bureau's positions is that the sheriff's patrol expenditures ought to be paid for out of the general fund," he said. "If you did that, it should free up $2.2 million for road maintenance."

Sage acknowledged, however, that if the sheriff's patrol was pushed back into the general fund, it would prompt an increase in the countywide tax rate.

King and some county officials have also discussed selling general obligation bonds to cover the $19 million shortfall between road needs and the current funds available, although it hasn't been fully investigated for potential legal issues or whether it would require a referendum. Those bonds would then be repaid with property taxes collected from both urban and rural residents.

County Finance Director James Bronner said a major bond issue approved to construct the Black Hawk County Jail is set to be completely paid off after 2010. That retirement, along with several smaller bond issues, will cut out $1.4 million annual debt service payments. It has been suggested payments on road construction bonds could fill in that gap rather than reducing taxes by that amount.

The county is expecting this year to begin issuing some bonds for rural road projects, including $400,000 to help replace the Winslow Road bridge and more than $200,000 to construct a new secondary roads maintenance garage -- items typically funded from the roads budget.

All of the options for raising additional local dollars for rural road construction carry a policy decision related to who foots the bill. Using the option tax or boosting the rural tax rate puts the onus squarely on the shoulders of rural residents. Issuing bonds requires all residents, including those paying city taxes, to carry the load.

But that's an issue Supervisor John Miller hopes to avoid.

"I don't want to have this become a rural-urban conflict," Miller said. "I don't want the urban people believing they are having to pay not only for their own streets but also those in the county.

"We're all in this together," he added. "The rural economy does generate about $300 million of economic development each year, which is beneficial to the county as a whole."

Such a battle has already been waged at the Statehouse, where a group of city officials has lobbied to change the road use tax formula and designate a greater percentage of that money to urban roads.

Statewide problem

Black Hawk County is not alone in its rural road dilemma. State legislators, prompted by the Iowa Department of Transportation, are looking at options to boost road funding across the state to deal with highways, city streets and rural roadways through a potential new Transportation Investment Moves the Economy in the 21st Century Fund, or TIME-21.

A report issued by IDOT in December said the state needs to generate a minimum of $200 million a year in new revenue for road projects just to meet critical needs. Potential revenue ideas to fuel TIME-21 include new fuel taxes, exports on ethanol, toll roads, boosting vehicle registration or driver's license fees and adopting development impact fees.

"As with the rest of the nation, Iowa is on the verge of a transportation crisis," the DOT report states. "This is the result of flattening revenues, dramatically increasing construction costs, aging infrastructure, increasing usage and deferred maintenance. While the system is not yet broken, it is at the tipping point where the cost to recover will grow exponentially if action is not taken now."

The report also focused on the farm-to-market roads counties struggle to maintain, noting the focus on Iowa's ethanol and biodiesel industry will put more stress on the system.

"At the county level, the large number of structurally deficient bridges and deteriorating conditions on the farm-to-market road system are impacting the efficient movement of people and goods," the DOT planners found. "If these needs are not addressed, more bridges will have to be closed and roads vital to the movement of agricultural products will deteriorate, impacting local, regional and statewide economies. These roadways and bridges are even more important with Iowa's burgeoning biofuels industry."

Miller said the county will soon be discussing several options to deal with the problem, ranging from moving the county's rural levy to its maximum for road projects to issuing bonds for repairs.

"We're going to have to increase some taxes somewhere along the way, and that's the bottom line," Miller said. "And while I'm not excited about doing that, somebody's got to pay.

"But this didn't happen overnight," he said. "And we're going to have to do this gradually."

Contact Tim Jamison at (319) 291-1577 or tim.jamison@wcfcourier.com.