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Photo by Elliot J. Sutherland/The Ottawa Herald
John C. “Butch” Riddle, right, Democratic candidate for Franklin County Commissioner, 2nd District, talks with Leroy Fredricks, Homewood, Tuesday night during a candidate forum. Riddle likely will face Republican incumbent Ed Taylor and Independent Gene Hirt in the Nov. 4 general election.
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County road upgrades surface as rough topic
By CLEON RICKEL, Herald Senior Writer
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Minimum-maintenance roads in the county got maximum exposure, as did pay raises for commissioners during Tuesday’s forum for Franklin County Commission candidates.
Most candidates expressed little interest in upgrading the 70 miles of minimum-maintenance roads, which are public roads but receive no maintenance, in the county.
Counting purchases for road rights-of-way, building new bridges and ditches, it would cost at least $5 million to upgrade all of the county’s minimum-maintenance roads, Commissioner Ed Taylor, a Republican who’s running for re-election to his 2nd District seat, said.
“It wouldn’t be feasible,” he said.
Most of the minimum-maintenance roads have no houses along them and only serve farm fields, Scott Barnhart, an independent running for the 3rd District, said.
“There’s no benefit to upgrading them,” he said.
However, Gene Hirt, independent, defended his position that the county should upgrade all of its roads over time.
Anderson County, a much smaller county, has no minimum-maintenance roads, he said.
“It’s going to be a long process and we have to have the actual costs for upgrading them,” Hirt said.
David Hood, Republican candidate for the 3rd District commission seat, agreed, saying that the upgrades would boost rural residential development and the county’s property tax revenues.
As might be expected, incumbents Taylor and Roy Dunn didn’t object to the commission’s proposed 5-percent pay increase for commissioners and elected county department heads in 2009. Although they technically haven’t approved the salary hike, they have included money for the raises in next year’s budget.
And as might be expected, the challengers said commissioners shouldn’t get the pay hike.
“For the number of hours they put in, they’re well compensated,” John “Butch” Riddle, a Democrat who’s challenging Taylor, said.
There’s only one primary for the county commission — Hood is challenging Dunn for the 3rd District seat — and although the forum was for the primary, all candidates were invited.
The general election field is crowded, with the rare situation of two independents, Barnhart and Hirt, in the race. Barnhart will face the winner of the Dunn-Hood primary. Hirt and Riddle are challenging Taylor.
Other forum issues included:
• Ottawa/Franklin County Economic Development Corp. The county pays O/FCED to recruit industries to the county. In turn, O/FCED contracts with the Ottawa Area Chamber of Commerce to handle recruiting and research.
All the candidates expressed support. However, Hirt and Riddle said that any offers of tax breaks to industry and business should result in meaningful, high-paying jobs.
• Should the county accept a local bid if it isn’t a low bid for goods and services?
All the candidates said that if the price differential isn’t too great, they would accept a local, but slightly higher, bid.
• Dealing with large budgets.
Candidates said they believed they would be able to oversee and work on the county’s large budget.
All commissioners had no experience with the budget when they were first elected, Riddle said.
“The budget is already set from the last year,” he said. “You go over last year’s and figure out what you need to operate for next year ... you have to sit down and work on it.”
Dunn said working on the county’s budget isn’t much different from a family, farm or business budget.
“Most budgets are a matter of scale,” he said. “You move the decimal point over.”
• Scrapping the county’s road system and going back to a township rural road system.
Most candidates weren’t interested.
Taylor and Hood said that going back would cause unnecessary duplication of road equipment and be efficient.
Hirt said he would be willing to put the issue to a vote.
Barnhart said that the county needs to do a better job of supervising and communicating with road grader operators.
• Candidates said they realize that Ottawa residents also pay county taxes and they said they would be willing to work cooperatively with the city.
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