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KITTITAS COUNTY <br />DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC WORKS <br />PUBLIC WORKS — BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS <br />STUDY SESSION STAFF REPORT <br />STUDY SESSION DATE: November 14, 2016 <br />TOPIC: 2016 Road Fund Budget <br />ACTION REQUESTED: Informational Only <br />LEAD STAFF: Mark R. Cook <br />RECOMMENDATION: <br />None. <br />BACKGROUND: <br />During early October 2016, staff identified a budgeting issue within the Road <br />Maintenance portion of the Road Fund budget. Investigation confirms that the <br />maintenance budget has been overstating its annual funding need by <br />approximately $1.5 million. Corrections have been made bringing the <br />maintenance budget in line with expenditure history. We believe this came about <br />during initial formulation of CRAB's (County Road Administration Board) <br />maintenance standards and associated units of measure. <br />Last year (2015), Public Works revised its approach to setting the annual <br />construction and six year transportation plans. Rather than showing unfunded <br />projects with "possible funding sources", we elected to show actual need against <br />known funding. We also solicited maintenance for known preservation (existing <br />infra -structure) deficiencies. Additionally, we began a more critical evaluation of <br />the County's bridges. <br />The Board may have noticed that Public Works has not aggressively solicited <br />County residents for input on the proposed 2017 six-year plan. We have <br />intentionally avoided public outreach believing that we are not well served to <br />create false expectation with rate payers. We recently adjusted our six-year <br />proposal (11-4-2016) significantly reducing projects. We wanted to interact with <br />the Board prior to conducting public outreach on our proposal. <br />DISCUSSION: <br />We know that maintenance and administration account for approximately $7.5 <br />million annually. This very closely matches annual road levy and gas tax funding <br />sources. Owing to the lack of preservation work during the past several years in <br />Public Works, this work now requires expensing through Road Fund reserves. <br />Page 1 of 2 <br />PUBLIC WORKS BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS WORK SESSION STAFF REPORT <br />