The West Virginia News

MUST THE WASTE OF LOCAL ROAD
MONEY CONTINUE?

Dissatisfaction with the results obtained from district road funds is widespread in Greenbrier county. We have no doubt that this is also true of other counties, but some counties at least appear to have found a way to get better results than we are obtaining, and practically all the criticism is of the system, or rather the lack of system, that has been inherited by the present authorities, and for which they are not to blame. From the time when it was really mandatory that citizens actually do a prescribed amount of work on the roads, it has been the custom to gather up Tom, Dick and Harry in the districts and have them do some road work. Long since the method of collecting a tax for road maintenance in place of requiring a days labor to be done has been in vogue, but we still adhere to the unsystematized and inefficient method of expending these funds. Tom, Dick and Harry still do the work according to their several ideas without much of any supervision, and the work consists largely of throwing some loose dirt and ditch muck and wash from where the rains have washed it back into heaps in the middle of the road. This is tragically futile work--it lasts only until the first light shower, when the very fact that it is washed back to where it was, really makes the road more passable to modern traffic--even though extremely rough on motor vehicle life.

The observation of the method employed by the state upon state road maintenance has caused many to express the belief that a similar method of organized and systematized maintenance would get remarkable results and give universal satisfaction without any additional cost over the present loose and ineffective method. The county of Greenbrier proposes to collect from the districts for district road work and maintenance a total of $32,128.00 This comes from the district road tax. There are said to be approximately 1,000 miles of roads, all told, in the county, some of which have been taken over for maintenance by the state. Some of the remaining road mileage is now neglected entirely and has been for some years. In all probability there are less than 600 miles which are given anything like yearly attention at present. Thirty-two thousand dollars would allow slightly more than $50 per mile to six hundred miles of district roads. Fifty dollars effectively spent on each mile of dirt road per year would do wonders to our roads. Thirty-two thousand dollars would constitute a fairly good yearly budget for an organized, well-supervised road crew, which could work from district to district throughout the working season. At the head of such a crew should be a well-drilled road man, who would keep in touch with modern methods and profit from experience day to day; he would be well-paid, on the job every working minute, with his crew, and constantly directing the work. Both he and his employees would be expected to deliver the goods. He would not tolerate time-servers under him or be a time-server himself.

A county court which organized and put into effect such a system, would earn the gratitude of the county's people. It would be worth trial, since our present results are as futile as though the money spent were thrown into a sinkhole.

Unless some modern method is adopted (aside from a few taxpayers being able to heave a sigh of relief and say to themselves that they have put in so much time on the roads and thus have an offset against their taxes) the following sums will be thrown away in the coming fiscal year:
Anthony's Creek district, ...$ 640.00.
Blue Sulphur district, ...... 2,364.00.
Falling Spring district, .... 2,832.00.
Fort Spring district, ..... 2,720.00
Frankford district, ......... 2,322.00.
Irish Corner district, ...... 3,230.00.
Lewisburg district, ..3,420.00.
Meadow Bluff district, ....... 6,900.00.
White Sulphur district, ..... 4,190.00.
Williamsburg district, ...... 3,510.00.
Total, ...$32,128.00.