Lodi Township Road Millage To Begin Planning This Winter

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The five year road millage approved by Lodi Township residents in the last election hasn't started work yet, but roads will start finding crews on them in the spring. Lodi Township actually had to ok the resolution to go through with what the voters approved twice this month.

The board accidentally approved a millage of half a mill, before realizing their mistake and calling a special meeting on November 13 to repass a resolution adopting the full one mill that voters actually voted for.

We still don't know what roads are going to be fixed yet, however. Washtenaw County Road Commission Communications Manager Emily Kizer said that we won't know what roads will be fixed until spring, after employees from the Road Commission spend the next February and April assessing what needs to be fixed first in all of Washtenaw County’s 20 townships.

“We’re already having preliminary conversations about what roads the township is interested in. We’ve made our own recommendations, based on roads conditions,” Kizer said.

The millage will last for five years. Once the Washtenaw County Road Commission and Lodi Township agree in upcoming resolutions on what roads will be fixed this year, they will be put on the schedule.

Road funding has been underfunded for years because the way we fund the roads through the road tax and license and registration fees, was not increased with inflation for decades, creating a disparity in how much funding the roads got, until quite recently, according to Kizer. A millage like Lodi’s, therefore, are the most expedient way to get local roads fixed.

Whether the work will be completed by the Road Commission is also another matter. Some projects are done by the county's dedicated crews and some of it is done by contractors. The road commission will let the township choose between what it would cost for its crews to repair certain sections of roads, versus what it would cost for a contracted private company to do the work.

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