ST. JOSEPH – Louis Csokasy certainly has an interesting job. As managing director of the Berrien County Road Commission, he has to handle everything from citizen complaints about snow plowing and potholes to general concerns about road funding.
Before taking the position at the road commission, Csokasy worked as the Cass County Administrator for a few years and before that as the director of the road commission for Cass and St. Joseph counties. Now 70, he spent most of his career working in manufacturing in the Elkhart area before getting jobs in government.
“Some of my opinions might be a little different than the typical political person,” he said. I’m not a politician. I’m a retiree who stumbled into a road commission job … I have a different point of view … Coming from industry, I’m used to different skill sets and equipment.”
Csokasy noted that the road commission, which is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year, is a unique governmental body that is fairly autonomous. “The only thing the county does is appoint individuals to the road commission (board) and set their compensation,” he said.”The county has no other authority over us. They don’t fund us.”
“There are 83 counties in Michigan and most road commissions are set up in the same way,” he added. “That allows us to be non political and be very focused on being efficient and effective … We’re the 13th largest road commission in the state.”
The Berrien County Road Commission has six engineers, a total that has doubled over the last three years, and 47 union employees. “We have a total of around 66 employees which is not a lot, but would be one of the larger firms as a construction service firm,” he said.
The road commission’s budget was $18 million last year and $26 million this year, due mainly to an increase in the number of grants received. The road commission gets most of its money from the state gas tax but also gets $2-$3 million from townships and $125,000 from the county each year.
As he noted, the road commission is yet to see any money from the state’s new gas tax increase and he remains skeptical about how much the road commission here and others around the state will get. He expects to see the Berrien County Road Commission’s funding to increase by $1 million this year and next year by another $1 million.
Money from the new road funding package approved by the state last year will be distributed with 40 percent going to the Michigan Department of Transportation, 40 percent going to county road commissions and 20 percent going to villages and cities.
Part of his work involves making sure the road commission’s fleet of trucks are working properly. “When I came three and a half years ago, the average age of the trucks was 17 years old, now it is 14 years old and we hope to to get it down to seven to 10 years,” he said. “Each one costs $250,000.”
The winter season is one of the road commission’s two busiest times. “We have 45 routes in the county we do, it’s the equivalent of going from here to Salt Lake City with every snow,” he added. “On any snow event, we start plowing with our 50 snowplows at 4 a.m. We don’t allow vacations in the winter.”
During the summer season, the road commission is in charge of taking care of 1,500 miles of road, of which 200 miles are gravel roads. Csokasy noted that the commission’s goal remains to keep all county roads in good repair and pave roads when necessary.
“We repave, chip and seal, regravel and fix potholes,” he said. “Last year we did 70 miles of road and we need to do 70 or 80 miles a year to stay even.”
“I call the roads in Michigan a slow disaster,” he added. “We will fix roads that collapse but we don’t do all the other roads that are decaying … I tell people that the job of the road commission is not to fix potholes but to make roads that don’t have potholes.”
Besides roads, the road commission is also responsible for making sure the county’s culverts and bridges are in good shape. The county has 104 bridges and the road commission tries to replace two each year at a cost of at least $750,000 each.
Culverts and sink holes have been in the news in recent months in other parts of the state and the country and the Berrien County Road Commission has had its share of projects to deal with.
The road commission completed a $1.6 million repair on a culvert failure and sink hole on Red Arrow Highway a year and a half ago. This year, the road commission will spend over $1 million to fix a section of Territorial Road which in his words is in a “critical situation.”
“Many were put in in the 1950s and 1960s and are ready to be replaced,” he said. “We have 500 major culverts in the county and we should have replaced 100. We did four or five at a cost of $40,000 to $50,000 each … Infrastructure concerns is a real issue but nobody knows how to pay for it.”
Another part of the road commission’s work that most people don’t think about is signage. The road commission is the only one in the state to have its own sign shop. “There are over 13,000 road signs in the county and we replace 700 signs a year,” he said. “We actually are reducing the amount of signage each year. If there are too many, people ignore them.”
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