Oakland County passes short-term roads fix

County will spend an extra $2M on patching potholes

WEST BLOOMFIELD, Mich. – The failure of Proposal 1 this month left Oakland County no choice. Either do nothing and allow its pothole problem to get worse or allocate some emergency monies toward patching while Lansing tries to come up with a comprehensive solution to our $1.2 billion-plus infrastructure problem.

The Board of Commissioners moved $2 million to a one-time expenditure for short-term road repair.

"Are we hopeful there will be a solution, yes," said Board Chairman Mike Gingell. "Do we know when that might occur, no but what we do know is that in Oakland County we stepped up and allocated these funds."  

The county is working with the road commission to prioritize projects and emergency repairs but the longer it takes to get a funding solution in place the more expensive the fix becomes.

For example, the number Lansing uses is $1.2 billion but there are plenty of legislators who think that dollar amount is much higher simply because there has been no real fix done yet. 

Gingell agrees with the grim assessment: "The reality is our road situation is pretty dire; just in Oakland county alone we believe we need an estimated $100 million beyond our current budget to fix the problems we have."

At this point there is no consensus in Lansing on how to fund the problem.


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