Supervisors jostle over secondary roads, passport program

During another marathon meeting that ran for around two hours, the Grundy County Board of Supervisors went back and forth on budget figures and attempted to resolve disagreements over road funding and additional pay in the auditor’s office for the passport program.
           
As it stands, the Secondary Roads department has requested $1.85 million in county funding for the upcoming fiscal year, and Supervisor Jim Ross argued that it should either be reduced or include $15,000 for the attorney fees associated with the Grundy Road paving project along the Black Hawk County line. Ross, who represents the Beaman, Conrad and Ivester areas, has been the board’s fiercest critic of the proposal.
           
“If we go ahead with that project, secondary roads is going to have to squeak by and cut somewhere,” he said. “I don’t know how we’re going to take care of (roads and bridges) with another new road.”
           
Fellow Supervisor Chuck Bakker of Dike, who supports the road project, agreed with Ross that the county should attempt to pay for some of it in the annual budget rather than relying entirely on bonds to avoid dramatically raising the levy in the future. 
 
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