Starke County Highway Superintendent Rik Ritzler ran through some budget numbers with the commissioners during their meeting on Monday night.
He said the Motor Vehicle Highway (MVH) and Local Roads and Streets (LRS) funds have experienced losses from the COVID-19 pandemic with the reduction of gas tax revenue, but all doesn’t look too dire.
“Our draw was about 13 percent down in May and about 20 percent down in June,” explained Ritzler. “There’s some good news though. Overall for the year we’re down just about 5.43 percent on the MVH and 3.80 on the LRS. The traffic volumes are up to about 96 percent of what they were pre-COVID. It looks like we have to weather storm in July and August a little bit and then the next month should be better.”
Ritzler noted that an overall decrease in the budget will be about five to 15 percent for MVH and LRS Funds.
“It’s still above pre-gas tax levels even with this decrease so we’re doing pretty. I think we’re going to compensate for all of the revenue loss.”
Ritlzer added that about 41 percent of this year’s budget has been spent on roads this year with some items that are more costly pushed back in the year. He hopes that the loss will be made up if they watch spending in the second half of the year. If the Highway Department ends up getting the lost revenue, Ritzler said it will be put into the road program.
In the meantime, Ritzler presented an overview of his 2021 budget where more than five percent of the budget was cut which amounts to about $221,000.
