Commission accused of unfair road maintenance decisions

The county commissioners were offended during last week’s hearing by the suggestion that road maintenance decisions have anything to do with racism.

Terry McNeil approached the commission to complain about the state of New Haven Rd, which he travels as a driver for the Amish community.

He suggested the road is not properly maintained due to a racist attitude towards the Amish, claiming that the Road and Bridge Department is just covering holes with dirt rather than cutting them out and is only grading as far as the Amish property.

“That’s where you guys even stop putting the gravel on the road, from there on is nothing,” McNeil said.

Complaining that, “It gets very tiring to be driving on a road that should have been fixed,” he said that the maintenance as currently performed is, “Not fixing the problem, it’s covering the problem.”

When Road and Bridge Foreman Morgan Ellsbury said it was “hilarious” that McNeil would “bring race into it”, McNeil acknowledged that this is his personal view.

“Maybe I’m wrong for saying racist, I don’t know – that’s the way I feel about it, because that’s what I see,” he said.

He reiterated that there are areas of the road that are not maintained, saying, “You guys do nothing and it’s very irritating.”

Commissioner Kelly Dennis disagreed with McNeil’s description of the road, stating that he owns land in that area, travels there regularly and believes it’s one of the smoothest roads in the county.

“New Haven is one of the top five highest [priority] maintenance level roads we have,” said Ellsbury.

It’s not true that a portion is not maintained, Ellsbury said – the end closest to the Amish property is just maintained less often, because it is less traveled.

Commissioner Bob Latham explained that the county often receives complaints about roads that are not maintained when there are supposedly “hundreds and hundreds of cars a day” using them.

The county’s response to these complaints, he said, is for Ellsbury’s department to set out the traffic counter to ascertain whether this is the case and therefore whether more maintenance might be needed.

“We let him decide because that’s his job,” Latham said.

Most of the time, he said, the level of traffic is not as high as claimed.

New Haven Rd., according to Ellsbury, is “pushing 200 [vehicles] a day”, but “it gets less the further up you go”.

“It gets graded accordingly,” he said, adding that mag solution is added for stabilization so that it does not need to be graded as often.

McNeil complained that the road still deteriorates, but Ellsbury argued that that’s bound to happen.

“They inherently get rough,” he said.

As the conversation ended, Commissioner Fred Devish made a statement regarding the accusation of racism.

“We are not racist or anything close to that,” Devish said. “Any citizen in this county gets just treatment for their roads that we can provide.”

Ellsbury further urged McNeil to look up the definition of racism, noting that, in this situation, “We’re all Caucasians.”