Roadway drainage and retention area maintenance includes cleaning and unclogging pipes under driveways and roadways. The drainage maintenance team also cleans and rebuilds drainage swales as necessary adjacent to County roadways and maintains and rebuilds drainage retention areas, manholes, and basins where needed. Contract support, when needed, includes sod installation.

Roadway maintenance includes pavement repairs such as potholes, grading of lime rock roads, placing and repairing of millings, and repairing sidewalks.  We have grader crews, one grader for smaller roads and one patching crew.  

We are always looking for ways to improve methods and approaches in our maintenance programs.  A couple of years we purchased an infrared patching truck which fuses the old asphalt to the new during patching operations - this provides a patch which is seamless and will last for years rather than days.

Road Grading

The Department of Public Works maintains 220 miles of lime rock roads within the County that are designated as County Maintained Roadways. These roads are inspected periodically by the Department for required maintenance. The Department also maintains 34 miles of lime rock roads that are designated as Emergency Maintained Roadways. These roads are not periodically inspected and require a citizen to notify the Department that work is required to make the road passable.

• County Maintained Roadways – Inspections are done every 10 weeks from September through mid-June each year. If the road requires grading as a result of the inspection, the Department will schedule the grading work for a later date as soon as resources are available. During the rainy season, our crews are working full-time on citizen requests.  Citizens may submit a service request anytime utilizing our website or via telephone (during normal operating hours).  
• Emergency Maintained Roadways - Roadways designated as “emergency maintained” are repaired when a road is deemed "impassable" by the Department once submitted as a Service Request by a concerned citizen.
• County Non-Maintained Right of Ways – County owned right of ways are not maintained unless an approved County maintained or emergency maintained road is within the right of way.
• Private Roadways - Privately owned roadway or easements are not maintained by the County. The citizen does have the option to upgrade their roadway to county standards, and then request that the Board of County Commissioners accept their roadway for maintenance.  An alternative method would be to submit a petition for a Municipal Service Benefit Unit (MSBU).

Millings

The department implemented a millings program to upgrade county-maintained lime rock roads to milled roads.  Millings are a temporary solution to several issues associated with lime rock.  Use of millings is not the long-term solution for unpaved roadways.  Millings can only be applied to rural lime rock roads only with roads that have Traffic Volumes < 250 vpd (vehicles per day), are relatively straight roads, with minimum driveways and cross streets).

The traffic control team include skilled tradespersons who maintain 85 signalized intersections, school zone signals/markings, and over 400 street lights.  This highly skilled team understands the complexities of electronics and depth of safety standards required to maintain safe intersections 24/7.

Some of our critical intersections are monitored using video cameras which are extrremely important during times of heavy rains and storms.   The video is a continual live stream video and does not allow us the opportunity to provide recorded video of accidents or various incidents. It is used entirely to monitor the various intersections.

Signs include a wide variety of street name, regulatory (stop, speed limits, etc.), and cautionary (turn ahead, curve) signs which are made in-house at our shop and are deployed to replace worn or damaged signs or those that go missing.

Contract support includes most pavement markings such as road center liens, stop lines, etc.

Streetscape maintenance includes mowing adjacent to the county's roadways (Right-of-Ways); tree trimming; trash and debris pickup; and mowing and edging of multi-use paths. This effort is accomplished by tractors, tree trimming crew, grapple truck crew, and trail maintenance crew. These crews are supplemented by an inmate crew, contactor support in tree care/removal and right of way mowing contractors.