Flathead County's chip-sealing costs remain affordable

It was a good summer road construction season for Flathead County’s road crew, Public Works Director Dave Prunty told commissioners last week.

Road department employees chip-sealed the surface of 39 miles of county roads in eight days in August at a cost of $18,500 per mile, Prunty said.

The cost for the county to chip seal paved roads has hovered near that dollar amount for three years, he said.

The county purchases oil and some years has to buy some chips, but mostly uses chips crushed at a county gravel pit.

Flathead County’s costs fall right in the middle of the range for chip sealing incurred by other government entities, he said. He compared the price per yard spent by the county — $1.37 per square yard — to $2.25 per square yard spent by the city of Whitefish and $1.09 per square yard spent by the Montana Department of Transportation.

The cost differences are related to volume, Prunty said. Whitefish chip-sealed fewer miles of road than the county and the county chip-sealed significantly fewer miles than the state.

“What this tells me is we’re being competitive with our work,” Prunty said. “I’m real comfortable with our cost accounting and our price versus bidding it out. I like where we’re at.”

Commissioner Jim Dupont agreed with Prunty’s assessment.

“So the argument that we should bid out that work and close the county shop is bogus,” Dupont said.

“Yes,” Prunty responded. “I want to know if we’re being efficient and if we’re not, we’ve got to address it.”

In September, county employees “spent a lot of time on road overlay projects,” Prunty said, completing that work on 13.4 miles of paved county roads.

With the exception of paving around the county courthouse, which will happen soon, the department’s paving work for this year ended last week, Prunty said.

“We’ll button up the plant probably this week,” he said, speaking of the county’s asphalt plant.

With this week’s arrival of rain, road employees are tackling maintenance issues on gravel roads, which mostly involves blading roads. Fall maintenance of gravel roads usually takes three weeks, he said.

Road department employees are beginning to turn their attention to winter preparations, Prunty said.

Flathead County uses a mixture of 90 percent sand and 10 percent salt to spread on icy roads.

“We’re set on sand,” Prunty said. “Salt has turned into an interesting critter.”

Typically, the county tags its salt shipment onto trucks hauling salt purchased from Salt Lake City by the state transportation department. But transportation department officials have so far been unsuccessful in finding a trucking company to get the salt to Montana. Usually the salt arrives in October, but this year’s shipment could be late, Prunty said.

Another issue related to winter road sanding is the absence of a pug mill to mix the sand and salt, he said. In past years, the county has rented that piece of specialty equipment from a Missoula company, but that company sold its mill.

Prunty has leads on renting a pug mill from a Billings company and from a Sacramento company, but no deals have been worked out. If a pug mill can’t be rented, the 20,000 pounds of material used in Flathead County may have to be mixed on the ground with loaders and blades, as was done many years ago.

Reporter Shelley Ridenour may be reached at 758-4439 or sridenour@dailyinterlake.com.