JCDOT crew working on a Spring Arbor Township road project. Courtesy photo.
By Brad Flory
JTV
Never did I imagine living long enough to see what is happening at the agency formerly called the Jackson County Road Commission.
Suffice to say, no one ever described the old road commission as a breeding ground for bold innovation. But suddenly the revised version of the agency – now called the Jackson County Department of Transportation – has become so bold that county leaders may soon look like either forward-thinking geniuses or reckless fools.
In case you haven’t noticed, the Department of Transportation has borrowed a whopping $53.2 million since 2016. Another proposal is now on the table to borrow $20.8 million more.
If the old appointed road commissioners ever went $74 million into debt in four years, the elected Jackson County Board of Commissioners would have almost certainly assumed they lost their minds. But six years ago county commissioners eliminated the entire road commission system and started making road decisions themselves. They appear reasonably certain that they have not lost their own minds.
Borrowed money has been used to buy equipment, fund construction projects, and to embrace road-building technologies used almost nowhere else in the world, let alone Michigan.
Millions were invested in cutting-edge road-recycling equipment. A prototype pothole-patching machine with a robotic arm and a cool name, the Python 5000, was purchased last year. Now Jackson County wants to become the second place in the United States to use recycled plastic as an ingredient in asphalt.
All of this is happening because of Christopher Bolt, managing director of the county Department of Transportation since 2015.
If you picture road builders as loud talkers who wear cowboy boots and frequently spit into plastic cups, Bolt is nothing like that. He is like a college professor who enters the room armed with spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations.
Without using these exact words, Bolt has convinced commissioners that when it comes to roads we cannot keep expecting government to “do more with less.” He wants to do more with more.
Bolt has expanded Department of Transportation staffing, equipment inventories, and duties. Over and over, he has persuaded commissioners that debt will pay for itself by creating savings.
All self-respecting skeptics must wonder if that sounds too good to be true.
“If this saves so much money, why isn’t every county in Michigan doing the same thing?” I once asked Bolt. His answer, although phrased more politely, was that people who run county road agencies tend to be timid about trying new things. He is not timid.
If things go wrong, Jackson County may face a massive case of buyer’s remorse. One risk is that benefits of new technologies will be less than expected and costs will be more than expected. The Python 5000 has already developed a nasty reputation for always being in the repair shop, although Bolt said it is now fixed. The point is, taxpayers will pay for this stuff for many years, so it had better work as advertised.
But if things do work as advertised, Jackson County could soon be a model for how a small community can fix its roads by taking bold action to get things done.
Either way, this most definitely is not your grandfather’s road commission.