Crow Wing County Highway Department Looks Back On 2017

It was a pretty standard year for construction on Crow Wing County roads with just a little larger of a budget.

“This is our first full year with the local option sales tax,” said Crow Wing County engineer Tim Brayk. “The revenue from that has allowed us to do a number more projects than we have, so we are on an uptick with construction projects.”

It was a busy year for the Crow Wing County Highway Department as they paved nearly 48 miles of road costing $11.5 million. In addition, 20 miles of seal coating was put in place throughout the county.

“It’s just a really thin layer of rock that’s held together with a glue so to speak and it really helps a little bit on the ride and to keep the road free of water that infiltrates,” Bray said.

The largest chunk of 120 miles was under construction for smaller surface maintenance and crack sealing.

“In general, the construction season went about as good as it can go,” Bray said.

The only challenge they faced was having lots and lots of rain.

“We got a lot of calls about beavers and water in places where it hadn’t been in 40 or 50 years,” Bray said.

And now, with the snow plowing season underway since October, the county is on track to see a similar snow removal cost to last season’s.

“We spent $1.2 million on snow removal, which is a pretty significant number, but that equals about $46 per household in Crow Wing County and we have about 26,000 households and we feel that is a really good value,” Bray said.

So far in the 2017-2018 snow season, the cost per Crow Wing County household is currently at $14.

“We’ve had a lot of what we call nuisance snows – nothing really significant, probably three inches in the maximum, but those are a little bit tougher to deal with,” Bray said.

But overall, the department is pleased with 2017 and ready to tackle the many projects for 2018.