The Road Commission for Oakland County (RCOC) Board of Road Commissioners, at its regular meeting Thursday, Sept. 21, adopted the agency’s Fiscal Year 2018 budget.
The $146.9 million budget represents an increase of about $17.8 million compared to the $129.1 million 2017 budget adopted in September of last year. The 2018 budget increased primarily due to an anticipated increase in state and federal road funding.
Federal funds are awarded on a project-by-project basis, and the amount RCOC receives tends to fluctuate from year to year. These funds can be used only for heavy construction projects and not for routine maintenance activities such as pothole patching, grading gravel roads, plowing, etc.
RCOC anticipates slightly more than $88 million in state road funding, compared to just over $78 million received in the current year. State road funding is derived primarily from state-collected fuel taxes and vehicle-registration fees.
These state dollars continue to represent RCOC’s largest source of funding and its main funding source for operations. The anticipated increase is the result of the increased road-funding package enacted by the state Legislature in late 2015 which took effect in January 2017.
The 2018 budget includes plans for approximately $49.7 million in road improvement projects such as road widenings, reconstructions, resurfacings and gravel road paving or work toward future road-improvement projects; $32.4 million for road maintenance efforts such as pothole patching, gravel road grading and salting and plowing in the winter; and nearly $12 million for maintaining traffic signs, signals, pavement markings and guardrails among other activities. The remainder of the budget is dedicated to operating expenses including customer services, vehicle maintenance, staff wages, buildings and grounds and administration.
Additionally, the budget sets aside $5.75 million for “preservation overlay” projects, which are simple resurfacing projects intended to preserve roads that are in moderately good condition, and $1 million for concrete-slab replacement projects, which remove particularly bad concrete slabs on roads that are in otherwise moderately good condition.
RCOC’s fiscal year runs from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30.
Among the planned 2018 road improvement projects listed in the budget are:
- Widen and reconstruct Baldwin Road between Morgan and Gregory roads in Orion Twp. (continuation of project started in 2017)
- Widen and reconstruct Dequindre Road between Long Lake and Burningbush Drive on the Troy/Sterling Heights border (continuation of project started in 2017).
- Intersection improvement at Adams and Gunn roads in Oakland Twp.
- Resurface Opdyke Road between Auburn and Perry on the Auburn Hills/Pontiac border
- Reconstruct Tripp Road between Dixie Highway and Van in Groveland Twp.
The full budget is posted on the RCOC Website, www.rcocweb.org (click on the “About Us” tab at the top of the home page, then select the “Publications” item from the pull-down menu and scroll to “RCOC Financial Documents”).
-- # # # --
