Iowa Transportation Day was last week in Des Moines and Greene County Engineer Wade Weiss says that the county could see some positive impacts.

Since 1989, Iowa hasn’t raised the gas tax.  Weiss says that over that time period, Greene County has been trying to balance out the road use tax fund by cutting back on resources and personnel because he knew that with the increase in fuel usage and other factors it would come to a critical point.

He expresses that the critical point is here and something must be done otherwise counties might have to cut certain services altogether.  However, one thing Weiss likes about the gas tax is the availability once its generated.

“The thing that impresses me about it is, its always been one that once its generated, it comes back to where its going to be put back into use for transportation-related issues.”

Right now, Weiss explains that a plan is to slowly accumulate to a dime over the course of three years.  The first two years would be a three cent increase and then the third year would be a four cent increase in the gas tax.

Weiss adds that Greene County would receive an increase of $450,000 in the maintenance side of the Secondary Roads budget and an increase of $100,000 on top of the $750,000 in the construction budget.  Weiss notes that the budgets are slim considering the county has over 1,000 miles of roads and 151 bridges to maintain and rebuild.