“Let me say that again: $20 per foot of road per year, just for road maintenance. I’m going to use this number to estimate the cost of maintaining all of our ro

“Let me say that again: $20 per foot of road per year, just for road maintenance. I’m going to use this number to estimate the cost of maintaining all of our roads.” So $100K/yr for a mile of road maintenance in Galesburg. That is about an order of magnitude higher than nationwide/global estimates from other, more professional, sources. “…local roads are a different animal altogether. A 2015 study by the Cornell Local Roads Program found that the annual cost of managing a mile of road in a handful of New York towns and cities varied from $4,429 to $10,440. Meanwhile, a 2016 analysis of Washington State’s county roads came up with a range of $1,528 to $23,651… Outside of the U.S., a 2005 study by the World Bank looked at a sample of developing countries (Albania, Laos, Lesotho, Peru, Zambia), and found that (adjusted for inflation) asphalt roads cost $5,273 per mile to maintain, while gravel roads cost $2,371…” https://blog.midwestind.com/much-cost-maintain-mile-road/ https://blog.midwestind.com/much-cost-maintain-mile-road/ This took 30 seconds of online research to find. This damages the author’s credibility in my eyes unless Galesburg, indeed, is the home of FBI-investigation-worthy corruption. There is always the gravel solution. “The ASCE’s 2017 Infrastructure Report Card notes that at least 27 states have “de-paved” roads in the past five years in order to reduce ongoing maintenance costs. In one particularly notable example, Stutsman County, North Dakota — which spends $32,000 per year on each mile of their 233-mile asphalt road network — estimates that if those same roads were de-paved, the cost per mile of maintenance would drop to just $2,600.” In Santa Fe NM, some of the most prestigious homes ($1M+) are on gravel roads. That still doesn’t get the order of magnitude reduction.