Need vs Timing
I don’t think anyone questions the need to fix roads in our county. We are all for that. What we need to talk about is the decision that went into doing it now!
No doubt we are in a recession. The cost of materials is skyrocketing. We know. Construction costs are almost doubted. So why do we need to overlay road 32 at this time?
Cheyenne County’s project revenue for 2021-2022 was just around 9.5 million according to the 2021-2022 budget.
32S overlay cost $1.3 million to the taxpayers.
Could this HUGE part of the budget have been delayed a year or two until the cost of the materials normalized? We don’t know, but it is a question for our leaders and our residents.
This took our normal road budget from basically 1/2 million in the 2019-2020 cycle to 2.2 million in the 2021-2022 cycle. Almost 250% increase.
As we said, we are not questioning needs at all. Just the timing because you have to raise taxes when you’re going to expend this much of the budget during a recession.
We hope we all can discuss this. 