County asks state for road money
Repairs could cost $5 million

County road crews grade and lay fresh gravel Tuesday along Cedar Bluff Road near the Gallup Port of Entry. The wet winter has created a lot of extra work for the county crews as they struggle to get some 100 miles of roads back into shape. The county has requested $1.4 million for the state to help with the repairs. (Photo by Jeff Jones/Independent)

By Bill Donovan
Staff Writer

GALLUP — McKinley County officials have sent in a request for $1.4 million to the state to help bring county roads back to the condition they were in last December.

County Manager Tom Trujillo said the county doesn't expect to receive the full amount but anything right now will help as rural residents in almost every part of the county are complaining about road conditions.

And he pointed out that whatever monies the county does receive, it can only be used to bring the roads back up to the same level they were before the rains and snows hit the area this past December.

He said that the county should know within the next few days just how much it will receive.

After almost three months of rain and snow the most this area has seen in more than 100 years by this time of the year county officials are estimating that about 100 miles of roads in the county are nearly impassable.

The worst areas, said Scott Daugherty, assistant director of the county road department, are near Cousins and Twin Lakes.

Intermittent rains and snow have left many of the roads with deep holes and ruts and a menace to almost every driver who tries to make his or her way to work or home.

But this isn't even the worst that Daugherty has seen in his 23 years with the department.

"I can remember that in 1986 or 1987, it was worse," he said. "That was the year we had a lot of snow."

This year, however, isn't much better as the 25 members of the road crew have been trying to keep up with the demand.

"We can't do a whole lot if the roads continue to be muddy," he said.

That was the problem for most of the past three months as the area would be hit by either a rainstorm or snowstorm and just as it was getting dry, another storm would hit the area.

With the area dry now for more than a week, the county road crews have been busy trying to repair the worst damage.

Asked if the county tended to those area that received the most complaints, Daugherty said that while the complaints help the county pinpoint where some of the worst areas are, the decisions are based on which roads need the attention the most.

He said the county crews also travel on many of the roads on a periodic basis so they know first-hand just what areas need to be worked on first.

There are two problems facing the county crews.

The first, of course, is money.

Doing the math, with 100 miles roads in need of being repaired and the average cost to grade one mile of road placed at $50,000, the total cost to bring all of the roads up to a decent level would be about $5 million.

The second problem deals with legal issues.

As county officials have pointed out time and again in the last three months, the county doesn't have signed rights of ways for many of those 100 miles and while they can use county funds to repair the roads, state and federal funding sources require everything to be signed and legal.

So why don't property owners sign the forms since it means better roads?

A couple of answers have been given.

First, some people just don't trust the government and refuse to sign anything. After all, one reason some people move out to the county is to get away from the rules and regulations that they would have to deal with if they owned property in the city.

The second is that some people would rather put up with difficult travel on roads rather than have roads that are passable because this only means that cars will be speeding along those roads at all hours of the night.

For right now, Daugherty said that the county road crews are doing the best they can with the money they have.

All they ask is that county residents just be a little more patient.