LEE COUNTY, GA (WALB) -
John Baldree describes living on a dirt road as difficult. He recently moved to Armena Road in Lee County and has experienced headaches driving every day on an unpaved road.
"It's just Chaotic, its really hard on your vehicles. The front end tears up a lot and the mud gets in your brakes when it rains."
And when it rains puddles and potholes form. And driving in dry weather kicks up lots of dirt and dust.
Baldree says, "I like the area but it needs to be paved; if it was paved it would be much nicer. We pressure wash our house and an hour later it will be the same way."
The County Public Works Director says maintaining dirt roads isn't easy.
Bob Alexander Lee county Public Works says, "It takes a lot of equipment and time to continually scrape the roads and redo the roads."
Lee county has been dealing with sub par roads for many years. A recent evaluation gave the county's roads a low score.
Bob Alexander, the director of Lee County Public Works says, "The standard is that you have to have a score between 65-70 and we came up at about 59."
Some residents appealed to County Commissioners to allocate more money to paving more dirt roads. The county made a list of dirt roads it planned to pave using money from the previous local option sales tax, but the money ran out before the work was finished.
Alexander says, "There is a commitment to pave these roads, but we have to have the funding to do it."
The county is even having trouble properly maintaining paved roads and Public Works doesn't get much money to keep up paved and unpaved roads.
Alexander says, "Its obvious that the $300,000 that we are spending every year to maintain the roads is not going to be enough, that's the bottom line."
A bottom line that can end in deteriorated roads.
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