(C) South Dakota Searchlight
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Higher taxes and fees fix hundreds of bridges, but some local governments don’t participate [1]
['Makenzie Huber', 'More From Author', '- August']
Date: 2023-08-18
In 2015, nearly 25% of locally owned bridges in South Dakota were in poor condition.
Eight years later, more than $142 million in taxpayer funding has been spent on 500 local bridge improvement grants through a state program. As of 2022, the number of locally owned bridges in poor condition had decreased by 46 while the number in good condition had increased by 138, but about 20% of the counties in the state had never received a grant.
Trying to fix the state’s bridges is like swimming upstream, said Mike Vehle, a former state legislator who led the effort to create the state’s Bridge Improvement Grant program. The state is making progress, but bridges are still aging and “getting worse all the time.”
“It’s a slow go,” Vehle said.
Legislators created the BIG program in 2015 with a bill that generated millions of dollars in additional funding for roads and bridges across the state through increases in gas taxes, excise taxes and license plate fees. It was a monumental effort — taking seven years for Vehle to convince the public and other lawmakers that higher taxes and fees would be worth it.
As Vehle looked at it, South Dakotans could either start paying slightly higher taxes and fees immediately, or pay a much higher price for crumbling bridges and infrastructure in the future.
Now, Vehle serves on the South Dakota Transportation Commission, which awards bridge improvement grants to counties and cities across the state.
Vehle said the program has been successful. It’s putting the state — and the counties participating in the program — in a better position than if the program didn’t exist, he said.
“If we wouldn’t have done this, we would really be in a hole,” Vehle said.
BIG is a ‘critical local government program,’ officials say
South Dakota has about 5,700 publicly owned bridges, around 3,900 of which are owned by local governments. Most of those local bridges were built before 1980, and 93% of the bridges from that era are in poor or fair condition.
About 75% of the bridges statewide that are in poor condition, based on square feet, are owned by local governments.
“We have an aging infrastructure in our local government systems,” said Mike Behm, director of planning and engineering for the state Department of Transportation. Behm presented the data earlier this summer to legislative members of a study committee on county funding and services.
The summer study focuses on regionalization and consolidation of county services, how the state can partner with counties to make mandated services more affordable, and an analysis of county funding models and revenues.
The state has awarded nearly 500 bridge improvements grants since 2016 — 120 for replacement, 95 for preservation and 283 for preliminary engineering.
The program has been “very successful” in Black Hills-based Lawrence County, said state Sen. Randy Deibert, R-Spearfish. When he was elected to the Lawrence County Commission seven years ago, the county hadn’t built a new bridge in nearly 10 years.
Since then, the county has received over a dozen grants from the program.
“Without the BIG program, we wouldn’t have been able to afford them,” Deibert said. “… I think without it we would have had bigger problems.”
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https://southdakotasearchlight.com/2023/08/18/higher-taxes-fees-fix-hundreds-bridges-but-some-local-governments-dont-participate/
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