Small towns: Where the streets have no cash

There aren't many streets in New Trier, Minn., population 105.

But potholes and stretches of cracked, bowing and crumbling pavement are plentiful in the Dakota County hamlet southwest of Hastings.

And it's likely to stay that way, at least for the foreseeable future, because fixing them would cost more than $600,000 -- something like $15,000 per household.

For the town of about 40 houses, two restaurants and one towering historic church, that's a hefty price tag.

"We can't afford to do anything right now," said Joshua Geurts, who along with his wife, City Council Member Dorine Geurts, has been searching for a way to pay for road repairs. "We're not even coming close."

Aging infrastructure, especially streets and bridges, is a problem across Minnesota. But in small towns from New Trier to Montrose to Shafer, where people and financial resources are scarce to begin with, keeping even a few miles of roads in good condition is difficult.

A League of Minnesota Cities survey this year found that nearly one-fifth of the state's smallest cities had streets in need of reconstruction. On average, those cities said 37 percent of their streets need to be replaced. The average cost of reconstruction is $130,769.

New Trier City Clerk Kathy Fritz said the City Council will continue discussing street repair options, including patches and fixes for one road at a time, at its meeting this month, along with pressing water tower repairs that could cost $20,000.

The town's 2009 tax levy was $33,606, up 17 percent from the year before. Even if the council raises the levy again -- Fritz said the council plans to add about $6,000 for 2010 -- it won't be nearly enough for all the road repairs.

"In front of our house, it's kind of cracked," Fritz said. "But the closer you get to [County Road] 50, there's some pretty big gouges where chunks of asphalt are coming out."

No money to fix the roads

Road work for just a few blocks can cost thousands, sometimes millions. Yet cities with fewer than 5,000 people are not eligible for municipal state aid, money for transportation projects that comes from the state gas tax.

"Small cities in particular really have their hands tied when it comes to getting these projects done," said Anne Finn, a League of Cities transportation lobbyist.

Their tax bases are smaller, they lack economies of scale and they don't do particularly well in applying for competitive grants because their road improvements serve a relatively limited number of people.

For cities with fewer than 1,000 people, the cost of the needed repairs in the League of Cities study ranges from $500 to $1.5 million. Road reconstruction projects came with estimated costs of $2,900 to $2 million.

Montrose, a town of nearly 2,500 northwest of the Twin Cities, has about 4 miles of municipal roads, most of them in pretty good shape, said city administrator Barbara Swanson. But Crystal Lane, Mindy Lane, Sherri Lane and Charity Circle are rough.

"It's probably been about 10 years," Swanson said. "There's a lot of wear and tear, and they do need work."

An engineer's informal estimate of the cost of repairs was $100,000. That's not huge, Swanson said, but it would be a significant chunk of the city's $850,000 budget -- a budget that cut road maintenance to a minimum in 2008 and 2009 to save money. Road spending will likely be removed from the budget in 2010, too.

"You don't really want to put that on the back burner," Swanson said. "But at the same time, in this economy, there's not a great alternative."

Small towns dwindle

Dakota County Commissioner Joseph Harris' district includes New Trier and other small towns, such as Vermillion, where most of the roads are still gravel.

"Small town America is unfortunately slowly beginning to have major financial issues," Harris said. And in small towns where politics is incredibly personal, he added, "nobody wants to make the hard decision to raise taxes, to raise a dollar. But you've got to plan for the future."

Shelly Pederson, president of the City Engineers Association of Minnesota, said cities of all sizes are guilty of trimming road maintenance in times of tight budgets. But small cities face some unique challenges.

For example, she said, large cities have been able to set up natural rotation for street maintenance by adding roads as the city grew over time. But many small towns paved everything at once, sometimes in ways that were affordable but less durable. Now as they try to fix roads, they find the road beds need extensive work and curbs and gutters must be installed to improve drainage.

"That's the expensive part, when they have to reconstruct it," she said.

Shafer public works director Terry Campbell said his city's streets are of pretty high quality and have good drainage.

"We can get another maybe five years out of our roads if we do a little upgrading now on the maintenance issues," he said.

The town of about 860 west of Taylors Falls kept road maintenance in the budget this year, but that doesn't mean there are funds to spare. The assistant city clerk and a maintenance staff member were laid off. "Things are kind of stalemated," he said.

Katie Humphrey • 952-882-9056