Winter-road funds increase by $18 million

Cash shift covers 200 hires, gear, emergency expenses

After a winter in which it endured harsh weather and even harsher criticism, the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department has adjusted its budget to better prepare for and react to icy roads.

The budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1, made public at an Arkansas Highway Commission meeting Wednesday in Little Rock, shifts $18 million to hire 200 additional full-time employees, purchase new equipment and give the state's 10 highway maintenance districts more money to buy material such as sand and salt.

The new budget was prepared after an unusually harsh winter during which traffic on major corridors ground to a halt and the department's handling of the ice and snow provoked rare criticism from Gov. Mike Beebe and others.

The department's 2014-15 budget also includes a $3 million reserve fund the districts would be able to tap if they exhaust their budgets for material purchases, as one district did this winter.

But increased spending on its winter-weather response will mean the department will spend less in other areas.

"There's less available for construction," said Randy Ort, a department spokesman, said.

The new budget the Highway Commission approved Wednesday leaves $88,662,700 in state money available for road construction for the fiscal year beginning July 1, significantly less than the $109,206,800 available in the budget year ending June 30.

The state money available for construction is in addition to state highway construction initiatives that voters approved -- a $1 billion interstate repair program and a $1.8 billion road construction program focusing on regionally significant projects.

The 200 new hires will cost the department $5.8 million in the first year.

"Increasing the crew complement will help" the department better react to winter storms, Scott Bennett, the department director, told commission members.

The department now has about 3,600 employees, said Ralph Hall, the agency's chief engineer.

The state has about 85 maintenance crews with 12 to 18 people in each crew. As a cost-saving measure, the crew complement has been limited to 85 percent of the recommended level for about 10 years, Hall said. With the addition of the new employees, the crews will be at 90 percent of recommended staffing levels.

The crews have never been at 100 percent of the level recommended by a study conducted for the department several years ago, he added.

Entry-level maintenance employees are paid between $25,000 and $28,000 per year, Hall said.

Joe Sartini, the district engineer for District 6 in central Arkansas, which includes Garland, Hot Spring, Lonoke, Prairie, Pulaski and Saline counties, said the extra personnel will help throughout the year, not just winter.

His district has 17 crews, including four in Pulaski County, and four districtwide crews.

"We have something to do every day," Sartini said. "We look forward to every [new employee or piece of equipment] we get. We will utilize all of it."

With the extra manpower, Sartini said his district also can increase its presence 24 hours a day in case of ice or snow.

The equipment budget next year will be $18 million, up from $12 million this year. Bennett said the increase in the budget for equipment wasn't just to purchase better equipment but new equipment to reduce the age of the agency's fleet of dump trucks to avoid breakdowns when the equipment has to run 24 hours a day because of bad weather.

On Wednesday, the commission finalized the purchase of six dump trucks equipped with belly plows, which are more effective in removing snow and ice than the front-end plows the department has used for its trucks in the past. Each truck costs about $153,000.

Bennett said the agency will acquire six more trucks next year. All 12 will be stationed in central Arkansas to provide a "strike force" that can be deployed anywhere in the state, he said.

Arkansas was hit with two major storms this winter, the second of which paralyzed much of east and northeast Arkansas for several days after rapidly deteriorating weather conditions immobilized traffic on parts of Interstates 40 and 55. The problems were compounded by several days of subfreezing temperatures after the March 2 ice storm, which dumped an unusually large amount of sleet in a wide area that included Mississippi County.

That last storm and the department's response led to criticism from Beebe and others, as well as a legislative hearing.

Beebe, apprised of the department's new budget through a reporter, reacted favorably, said Matt DeCample, the governor's spokesman.

The governor said "it sounds like a very well-thought-out response and a good step for the department to take," DeCample said.

Rep. Prissy Hickerson, R-Texarkana, and a former member of the state Highway Commission, said that given the criticism the department received, adding equipment and manpower was proper.

"The only thing that would have helped was to have better equipment and more manpower," she said.

Earlier this year, the department moved forward with a plan to hire a custom weather-forecasting service, concluding it needed more timely and specialized weather information than traditional news outlets and government forecasters can provide.

The Highway Department's 2014-15 budget projects receiving $402,775,000 in state revenue, $11 million more than the $391,783,000 it will receive in the current budget. The increase mostly is because of higher revenue from the natural-gas severance tax, said Larry Dickerson, the department's chief fiscal officer.

Under commission policy, proceeds from the natural-gas severance tax go to roads in the Fayetteville Shale to repair the damage from the heavy traffic generated by natural-gas development.

Metro on 06/05/2014

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