Secondary Roads wins asphalt awards

MARENGO — The Iowa County Secondary Roads team was named Eastern Iowa Engineer’s Office of the Year by the Iowa Asphalt Paving Association and received the Smoothness Award for its repaving of H Ave, said Iowa County Engineer Nick Amelon earlier this month.

“I believe Pelling is a big player, and I think that Pelling really does like our plans and how we do things,” Amelon told the Iowa County Board of Supervisors Dec. 12 when he announced the awards.

A snowstorm prevented Amelon and his staff from attending the Iowa Asphalt Paving Association conference to receive the award in person, Amelon said.

The awards recognize Iowa County’s engineering and secondary roads departments for doing a good job designing and building the roads, said Amelon last week. This is the second time “in the last dozen years” the county has been honored by the Association, he said.

2025 in review

Iowa County Secondary Roads has about 35 employees, 10 motor grader districts, 10 snow routes, 130 miles paved roads and about 180 bridges, Amelon told Supervisors during his year-end report.

The department has four or five “piggy banks” from which it can spend money. Each “bank” is regulated and can be spent only on certain things.

“We get [farm-to-market] money for [farm-to-market] roads,” said Amelon.

Federal Highway Bridge Program money can only be used on bridges that are listed on the National Bridge Inventory database, classified as either structurally deficient or functionally obsolete and have a sufficiency rating below a certain threshold

Statewide Transportation Improvement Program money is federal money that is dispersed locally.

Tax Increment Finance money from the county’s wind turbines is nearing its end, but Amelon has one more project he wants to use it for. TIF funds can be used only on roads in a specific area of the county.

Local funds, which come mostly from county supervisors, pay for everything else, such as salaries, gravel and new equipment, Amelon said. Local funds allocated to the department have not kept up with inflation, he said.

At the end of fiscal year 2025, the County’s FM fund was negative by $1.5 million, Amelon said. The county receives $1 million each year. A $2.5 million project on F52 in the summer of 2026 will eat up that million.

The county uses between $600,000 to $650,000 for gravel for farm-to-market roads, Amelon said. “And that’ll leave us at essentially the same balance that we have today.”

Bridge funds, ended the fiscal year in October with $2 million. “We get $800,000 a year,” said Amelon. This year the county will spend about $2.3 million on two bridges on W Avenue, leaving a balance of $1.6 million at the end of June 2026.

“What this says is we can continue to build two of these nice bridges, big concrete ones, every year for the foreseeable future,” said Amelon.

TIF funds have paid for bridges on H Avenue, D Avenue and 190th Street and for paving of H Avenue and 265th St. “We have one project left,” said Amelon — paving F52 in the summer of 2026 at a cost of about $1.5 million.

The total of projects funded by TIF is about $6.4 million, according to Amelon’s report.

“These funds have been real… nice,” Amelon said. “Got a lot of good projects done with them.”

Amelon said he spent $103,000 in local funds last fiscal year making V77 safer.

“Last winter we did the culvert extensions on V77,” Amelon said. “That guard rail was real tight to the road.” His department extended each side of the road and moved the cable guard rail back a few feet.

“I think it looks really nice, and our guys really like it,” Amelon said.

Local money paid for a couple of box culverts that the county put in itself. Secondary Roads can take out an old bridge, put in a box culvert, “and from the road you don’t know if there’s anything down there,” Amelon said.

The cost for the box culvert is about $100,000 and labor for county employees and use of county equipment is another $55,000, Amelon said,

Future projects

Right now Amelon is waiting for possible grants for projects, he said. The summer of 2027 is riding on these.

One project is the straightening of F46 and T Avenue curves, Amelon said. “We would straighten out about a half mile there.

“Right now… each curve has a radius of 350 feet,” said Amelon. The Department of Transportation says that for a road with a speed limit of 50 miles per hour, the curve should have a radius of 900 feet.

“I’m hoping that ours will be about 1300, so you shouldn’t … slow down at all,” Amelon said. “Right now … you gotta slow down quite a bit.”

The county built only two bridges in house this year because money was a little short, Amelon said. He’d like to put in two bridges using county employees this year, at a cost of about $350,000 in addition to replacing two bridges using Bridge funds.

At some point Amelon will talk to Johnson County about paving the section of the Iowa/Johnson Road that heads down to Wellman. “We spend $50,000 to $100,000 every year to patch that road,” Amelon said.

Splitting the cost of paving with Johnson County will be a good investment for Iowa County, Amelon said.

Budget concerns

Since Amelon started working for Iowa County in 2014, inflation has gone up about 60%, said Amelon. The State has done a good job of keeping up with some of that inflation.

Revenue from property taxes and local option sale tax have stayed essentially the same.

Amelon said he’s concerned about “little stuff” that’s not covered by FM and Bridge funds. “I think our road situtation’s going to be pretty good,” Amelon said. “And it’s those little buggers that I fear for coming up.”

If the TIF district is expanded to include the whole county, Amelon will be able to use that money for more projects. “Our guys can do a lot of this. And we’ve got six to eight bridges that we could just line up and go to town,” Amelon said.

“I have 10 projects here that our guys can do and just no way to pay for them,” said Amelon. “So I think with some money… they can keep hammering stuff out, and it’s a lot cheaper for them to do it than to hire it out.” He doesn’t want to give up these projects.

“They do a phenomenal job and it saves you guys money,” said Amelon.