City, county seeking compromise on road swap

Dothan City and Houston County staff are working on a road swap that would end split maintenance on some highly-traveled roads, and assign ownership exclusively to either the city or the county.

The county and city are intermittently responsible for the maintenance of sections of several roads in growth areas in the city where annexation has occurred.

Officials hope to trade off some roads to eliminate confusion for the public, and to continue to maintain a high level of service, said Dothan Public Works Director Jerry Corbin.

“Citizens are often confused, believing if they are in the city it is city maintained, which it is not always,” Corbin said. “A lot the roads coming into the city have been county or state maintained.”

The split maintenance roads are often arteries into Dothan. Most are outside Ross Clark Circle and include such roads as Fortner Street, Campbellton Highway, Park Avenue, and Flowers Chapel, Webb, Kinsey and Harrison roads.

“We are working with staff to resolve the variable road maintenance in situations where you see a sign that says ‘Dothan maintenance starts here,’ and 100 feet down the road is another sign saying ‘Dothan maintenance ends here,’” said Houston County Commission Chairman Mark Culver.

Culver’s idea is to road swap so the city will have all the maintenance on one road and the county will have all the maintenance on another. “What I would like to see is something drawn up where they maintain inside the city limits, and we swap for something outside,” he said.

The respective engineering departments of both the city and county have discussed the matter but a proposal has not been drafted for approval by either entity.

There is some disagreement over a fair and equitable swap.

The county currently maintains about 80 miles of roadway inside the city limits, Culver said, although 1995 state law dictates once the city annexes property, the maintenance responsibility falls to the city.

Corbin said there are many county roads, with county rights-of-way, inside the city that the city has been maintaining, doing the stripping, signage and signals when they are not obligated to do so.

Corbin said the city has done the maintenance for years because used to, the county did not have the equipment to do it. Now, they do.

“This has gone back and forth for a pretty good while,” Corbin said. “To make this equitable, this part of the overall maintenance has to be straightened out.”

Corbin said the county has presented its list of roads for swapping, but from the city’s perspective the list is not well balanced.

“We can’t afford to keep doing their roads,” Traffic Engineer Charles Metzger said. “Those roads, like Webb, Kinsey and Fortner, they are their’s anyway. We want them to take care of their responsibility.”

Another issue is the gas tax money, the bulk of which goes to the county. A certain percentage goes to the city based on its population. Some cities have passed legislation to get more of these tax dollars because the larger towns carry the bulk of the traffic.

And, Corbin said, most of the gasoline sold in the county is sold in the city limits of Dothan. However, gas taxes are distributed based on state-wide sales.