Better Roads for Platte County: it’s a Coordination Problem We Can Solve

Over the past few months, I’ve been going door to door across Platte County, listening. One topic that keeps coming up is the state of our roads.

Public safety and public infrastructure are the core missions of the county.  Bringing focus to those missions is among reasons I’m running for office. They’re core to what county government exists to do. So when residents tell me the roads are a problem, I hear them, and I went looking for answers.

I sat down with Bob Heim, Platte County’s Public Works Director, for a conversation about our roads, our curbs, and how we got here. Bob is good at his job. He cares about this county. But he’s also constrained, and what he’s constrained by is the real story.

What I’m seeing and hearing out there

• Highway N, by the fire station. The road has eroded. Collapsed, really. Right next to a piece of critical public-safety infrastructure. That isn’t a cosmetic problem — it’s a life-safety problem.
• Highway 45, finished only a few years ago. The curbs are already crumbling, and not in small chips. We’re talking four- and five-foot boulders breaking off. The repair crews aren’t replacing them. They’re stacking the broken concrete on top of the existing curb like a rock garden. Drive Highway 45 and you can see it for yourself.
• The Highway 45 median. I’m not talking about weeds. I’m not talking about overgrown grass. Trees. Full, woody, barky trees, growing out of the median and out of cracks in the curb. Highway 45 is a major thoroughfare into one of our communities. It’s also become an undeclared county arboretum.
• The potholes that won’t die. One resident I met showed me a two-foot-wide pothole in front of his driveway that’s been there as long as he’s lived in that house. He’s called. He’s asked. Nothing.

These aren’t isolated complaints. They’re a pattern.

Nobody owns the overall problem

Here’s what I learned from Bob, and from the residents I’ve talked to. There are three different organizations maintaining roads in Platte County.

• Platte County Public Works. They handle County Road District Number One — basically the rural areas that aren’t inside one of the special districts.
• The Special Road Districts. Each has its own elected board, its own staff, its own equipment, and its own property tax levy.  Some are highly engaged, some – not so much.
• MoDOT, the Missouri Department of Transportation. They own the interstates, the U.S. routes, the numbered Missouri routes like Highway 45 and Highway N, and all the lettered farm-to-market routes.

Three jurisdictions. Three budgets. Three sets of priorities. Three sets of politics.

When a resident calls about a road issue, they usually start with the county. Bob’s team does the right thing — they look it up. If it’s a county road, they handle it. If it’s a MoDOT road or a Special Road District road, they tell the resident who actually owns it. That’s an honest answer.

The breakdown happens next. The resident calls MoDOT. MoDOT says, that’s not on our priority list this year. They call the Special Road District. They get pointed back at MoDOT. The fingers point in a circle, and the pothole stays where it is.

The county isn’t the problem here. The problem is that once the call leaves the county, nobody owns the outcome. That isn’t accountability. That’s an excuse machine.

As Truman said: the buck stops here

Let me say this plainly. It is not acceptable for MoDOT to tell a Platte County resident that their road isn’t a priority. These are our roads. We fund them — through fuel taxes, through vehicle sales taxes, through property taxes that flow up to the state and the special districts. The money is generated here. It should be applied here.

The Special Road Districts levy their own property taxes on Platte County residents. If that money isn’t producing visible, maintained roads, residents have every right to demand to know why. And we as a county have every right to bring those boards to the table and ask the question on residents’ behalf.

I don’t believe anyone is doing a bad job on purpose. I believe these things just aren’t being treated as priorities. That changes when somebody at the county level decides to make them a priority — to coordinate, to escalate, to put names and dates on commitments, and to call the question publicly when commitments aren’t met.

What I’ll do as County Commissioner

Work through Bob Heim’s team and Public Works. Bring the four Special Road District boards to the table on a regular cadence. Bring MoDOT to the table — not as a third-party bureaucrat located hundreds of miles away balancing the needs of an entire state, but as a partner who answers to the people who fund them. Put accountability in front of all three.

Best-in-class public infrastructure isn’t unattainable. It’s simply a matter of:

• Accountability: Every road belongs to someone. Every commitment belongs to someone. When promises slip, residents know who to ask — and so do I.
• Knowledge: Knowing which roads belong to which jurisdiction, so residents stop getting the runaround.
• Coordination: Using the county’s role to stop the finger-pointing.
• Budget: Making sure money raised in Platte County gets spent on Platte County’s roads.
• Maintenance: Fixing the potholes. Replacing the curbs. Cutting down the trees — yes, the literal trees — growing out of Highway 45.

Basic stuff. Brilliantly executed. That’s the standard. The buck has to stop somewhere. As your Commissioner, it’ll stop with me.

If you’ve seen a road problem in Platte County and gotten the runaround, I want to hear about it. Email me, or stop me on the street — I’m out there knocking doors most evenings.