By Jay Langston

Editor

The conditions of county-maintained roads in Marshall County will be on the agenda at the commission meeting Monday night Jan. 23.

At present, 544.46 miles of county-maintained roads traverse Marshall County according to the 2017 County Road List. Typically, county roads are designated as beginning and terminating within its boundaries. Or in other words, everything that is not a State Route or Interstate highway is considered a county road.

The State of Tennessee allocates funding each year to the county to pave roads that connect State Routes to each other. The state funding provided enough to pave 2.4 miles of county roads during the 2015-2016 fiscal year, according to Marshall County Superintendent of Highways Jerry Williams. “This year they doubled our money, so we paved Lunns Store Road,” Williams said, “which was about seven miles.”

Throughout the county 477 different roads are maintained. These roads are a variety of paved asphalt, oil-and-chip asphalt, gravel and “other.” Road widths range from a narrow nine feet to as wide as 35 feet, and interestingly enough, both ends of the width spectrum are gravel roads. Also typically, rights-of-way for these roads range from 16 to 60 feet wide.

Williams was elected as Highway Superintendent August 1, 2002, and has continued in that office since. During the time he has been in office he has achieved a goal of paving all county through roads -- ones that connect to other roads on each end -- with a minimum of oil-and-chip asphalt.

Spend much time driving on oil-and-chip asphalt and you can tell a big difference in driving quality when compared to driving on a road surface that has been paved with other methods. Williams cited that the difference in cost is approximately $25,000 per mile for oil-and-chip, which compares to about $100,000 per mile for a paved surface.

Williams also cited an increase in the cost for oil-and-chip application and materials since he took office in 2002. Fifteen years ago RS-2, the oil part of the mixture, cost 60 cents per gallon. Today, the cost for RS-2 has risen to $1.30 per gallon.

According to Marshall County budget documents for 2016-2017 fiscal year, the total Highway/Public Works Fund is $3,929,538. That is broken down into $224,199 for administration; $1,764,333 for highway and bridge maintenance; $753,116 for operation and maintenance of equipment; $98,000 for other charges; $47,500 for employee benefits; and $1,042,390 for capital outlay.