With more than 25 percent of Catoosa County’s unincorporated roads in either “poor” or “very poor” condition, Catoosa Public Works Director Donald Brown is stressing the need to set aside SPLOST funds in the upcoming five-year cycle to improve the county’s roads – before it’s too late.
Officials are just beginning the work of determining how the money raised should be allocated. The next SPLOST is set to go into effect in 2019.
During an intergovernmental meeting between Catoosa County and the cities of Ringgold and Fort Oglethorpe earlier this month, Brown explained that roads can get exponentially more expensive to repair the longer they are neglected.
The “poor” quality roads, of which there are approximately 95 miles in the unincorporated areas of the county, will need structural improvement in order to prevent failures in the base of the roads. Once the base of a road fails, repavement is no longer an option, he explained, and the road is qualified as “very poor,” meaning a total reconstruction is required for it to be safe for travel.
“At that point it can cost four or five times as much as it would have previously,” Brown said in a followup interview. “I’d say it would take about five to seven years for a road to go from poor to very poor, depending on weather and traffic during that time.”