His capital improvement plans over the past two years totaled $24.4 million each. The difference, “my staff is very good at securing grant money.”
“About 46% of our total construction costs are done by grants, using OPWC, safety money, federal money and all that we’ve secured,” Wilkens told the county commissioners during his annual project presentation on Tuesday. “If you’re dealing with your own funds we’d be nowhere in this realm to even begin to keep up with maintenance of the capital improvements we’ve got.”
Wilkens’ office designs, builds and maintains 266 miles of roadway, 402 bridges, and 870 culverts. Cities in Butler County manage their own road maintenance and paving programs, but Wilkens’ office bids and supervises township road projects, and the townships pay for the work. This year, the various townships will contribute $4.1 million toward the $7.8 million paving contract.
Wilkens’ office secured $15.3 million in federal funds, just over $2 million in Ohio Public Works Commission money and $9 million from other local entities such as the SW Regional Water District, Warren County, MetroParks and others for joint projects.
The commissioners have also been helping with the effort to keep the county’s ground transportation system in good working order. In 2022, they allocated $10 million of their $74.4 million American Rescue Plan Act windfall over two years to improve county and township roads.
They allocated $1.25 million for county roads, a $225,000 base for each township plus additional stipends based on the number miles the jurisdictions maintain for a total of $5 million per year in 2023 and 2024.
They have continued to invest $5 million a year for Wilkens’ capital projects and the engineer told them he has been able to leverage the money to cull grants for more projects. He was able to add four projects totaling $1.1 million to the list he planned to fund with $10 million from the commissioners.
“Many of these projects we couldn’t secure grant money for, they had to come out of our budget and we didn’t have the money for that,” Wilkens said. “With the advent of you delivering the money we’re able to do these projects and set our whole infrastructure in a better position for tomorrow.”
Not a word was said during the meeting about continuing annual contributions to Wilkens’ capital improvement project. The Journal-News polled the three commissioners and Cindy Carpenter was the only one who is a definite yes at this early juncture.
“I think we absolutely have to,” she said, adding Wilkens asked them for many years before they agreed. “It’s kind of amazing to see how much he’s done with that amount of money, so I’m definitely going to continue to support it.”
With the possible elimination of property taxes if the AxOHTax movement is successful, the other two commissioners are reserving judgment.
“Nobody knows what this economy is going to bring, this oil price thing is a little scary and you never know what’s going to happen. In today’s world you’ve got to be on your toes,” Commissioner Don Dixon said referring to the war in Iran. “We’ll have to watch this whole thing play out and see where we are, my guess right now I’d say 50/50.”
Closer to home there is an effort afoot to get a constitutional amendment on the November ballot that would eliminate property taxes altogether. That revenue stream is how the townships pay for services like roads.
Commissioner T.C. Rogers said there are multiple things to consider, but the finances are strong, and, “we have remained flexible and able to adapt to whatever comes up that is unbeknownst to us at the beginning of the year.”
“If there’s any validity to there being no property tax then all the townships will be in a struggle more than the county will be,” he said. “There’s a lot of subjects and expenses which will have to be addressed if that happens.”
Wilkens doesn’t generally partner with the cities, but he is undertaking joint projects with Hamilton, Monroe and Oxford this year. With $975,079 from Hamilton and a $3.6 million federal construction grant through the Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana Regional Council of Governments, Wilkens is managing the first step in the massive, decades-long North Hamilton Crossing project.
Bids will go out later this year for dual roundabouts at Northwest Washington Boulevard, West Elkton Road and North B Street.
The project is a joint undertaking between the Butler County Transportation Improvement District and the city. TID Director Dan Corey told the Journal-News Wilkens is managing construction of this first leg of the project — with a very rough prince tag of $200 million — because part of it is within St. Clair Twp.
They have secured $5.9 million in federal funds for the roundabout project that is estimated to cost $6.5 million including construction, design and right-of-way acquisition.
“Some of this is being paid for by OKI some of it by the city,” Corey said. “The county isn’t bringing cash out of pocket, the county is bringing manpower to the effort.”
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