VALDOSTA —
The City Council of Valdosta voted Thursday to sign a contract with the Georgia Department of Transportation that will net the city payments of $3,500 in state funds per mile, doled out in equal monthly payments over the next year to pay for the maintenance of 26.58 miles of state roadway within the city limits.
The stipend will help reimburse city expenditures to maintain the state routes, which the city is required to do under state law. The agreement will automatically renew each year until 2055, with the distance of roads within the city limits the only part of the contract to possibly fluctuate.
The current state roadway mileage will earn the city $96,030 over the next year, but the payment is not a one-time per-mile fee. It will be split into monthly payments of $7,752.50 to maintain the entire state route system within city limits.
The GDOT offers this same contract to every city in Georgia — $3,500 per mile — according
to GDOT spokesman Craig Solomon.
Cities that elect to turn down the contract are still responsible for the maintenance of local state routes under state law, whether GDOT pays their governments for the work or not.
However, according to Lowndes County Manager Joe Pritchard, the county has a similar agreement with DOT but has not been paid in years. He estimates the county has roughly twice the number of miles of state highways to maintain as the city does, including Interstate 75 right- of- ways.
“We have an agreement in place but DOT tells us they don’t have the funds to pay,” said Pritchard. “We are going back to DOT to see how they can pay the city but can’t pay the county.”
The City has been contracting with the GDOT for state route maintenance in some form since 1974, according to City Manager Larry Hanson, but the newest version of the contract has recently come under closer scrutiny. In 2005, the contract was updated to reflect a more accurate measurement of state route mileage, which fluctuates.
Hanson said, “They came up with a program to provide some level of compensation for that cost. However, it does not pay the total cost of maintaining the road.”
Neither the city nor GDOT could provide an average cost per mile for maintaining the roads, which changes depending on the circumstances, according to both institutions.
In the contract, the city is responsible for “routine and normal maintenance,” including patching and leveling pavement, mowing and cleaning, shoulder maintenance, ditch cleaning, reseeding and resodding, maintaining guard rails and snow and ice removal.
The DOT will remain responsible for reconstruction and major resurfacing, reconstruction of bridges, maintenance of DOT signs, painting and striping, furnishing guard rails and bridge rails and “other major maintenance,” the contract states.
“If you cancel the contract, that means you won’t get paid; it doesn’t mean you won’t have the responsibility (of maintaining state routes),” Hanson said. “But you lose money doing it. There’s no way you can maintain a road for $3,500 per mile.”
The city fought for additional compensation, Public Works Director John Whitehead said, but found that the payment is a standard that the GDOT uses for every city.
“We can always say it’s not enough, but it’s $90,000 we don’t have to pay,” Whitehead said. “We can not take the money, but we would still have to pay for the work.”
The GDOT is unable to make an exception for any city because the agreement is uniform across the state, Solomon said.
The agreement used to offer cities $2,500 per mile, but the stipend has been changed to $3,500, according to City Engineer Pat Collins.
Pritchard said Lowndes County is in the process of contacting GDOT to discuss past due compensation for the work the county has performed on state roads in recent years, including mowing on I-75 entrance and exit ramps and mowing and maintenance on Bemiss Road and other state highways in the county.
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