Putting the Public in Public Works

Public Works Officer Shane Stack started working for the Montana Department of Transportation as a teenager and came to Missoula County in 2019. As Shane prepares to retire this summer, he reflected on the challenges facing public infrastructure, the ill-fated 2020 gas tax and how his department has gotten creative with funding solutions. 

Related links:

• Snow plow routes map (works best on desktop)
• Report a road maintenance concern
• Bridge maintenance updates

Thank you to Missoula's Community Media Resource for podcast recording support!

Transcript

Juanita Vero: [00:00:10] Welcome back to the agenda with your Missoula County Commissioners. I'm Juanita Vero and I'm here with my fellow commissioners Josh Slotnick and Dave Strohmaier. And today we're joined by our own Shane Stack, chief public works officer for Missoula County. Shane, this is your third time.

Shane Stack: [00:00:26] On second or third somewhere in there? Yeah.

Juanita Vero: [00:00:28] Okay, so we've just had a really snowy weekend, um...Tell us, Public works.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:00:35] You guys are kicking back? Probably. Yeah, I suspect.

Shane Stack: [00:00:38] Yeah. And so normally we'll, you know, it's a five day work week. So they were out and this week was a long weekend. It was a three day weekend. Crews were called out. And so they're working Saturday Sunday Monday when normally everybody else has the day off and we're out working.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:00:52] And Juanita and I went out there to say hi to the crew at 5 a.m., and they were already those trucks were are already leaving the compound to do their work.

Juanita Vero: [00:01:02] We even had donuts and no trucks were already rolling out.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:01:07] No...

Josh Slotnick: [00:01:08] I just have to say that I was out of state or I would have been there too. Yep.

Shane Stack: [00:01:10] No that's okay. Josh. No they are they are dedicated. And I think a lot of the public probably they don't recognize the fact that those folks are out the door that early and to to do all the, you know, take care of all the miles of roadway. We've got 450 miles of roads that we've got to clear, you know, every snow event. And so it.

Juanita Vero: [00:01:29] Takes a while. How do you guys prepare for that? Yeah. Give us a little education on.

Shane Stack: [00:01:34] So that starts in the summer. We are stockpiling material. We have our own crusher. And so we're crushing material that we're going to place during the wintertime generally. I think crushing probably around 15,000 yards and then trying to stockpile. And so we'll stockpile in the Seeley area, the Condon area. We've got a site in in Potomac that we stockpile. And then here in Missoula, we've got the the pit at Miller Creek that we have some stockpiled sand there and then we've got sanding material out at the Y and then we're stockpiling clear out in the nine mile area.

Juanita Vero: [00:02:07] Nothing further south than Miller Creek. We don't have.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:02:09] Anything.

Shane Stack: [00:02:10] We do have we have a site in Lolo. Okay. Yeah.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:02:12] So. So, Shane, is this different than the compare and contrast the city of Missoula and Missoula County because they don't use sanding material within the city limits. Is that correct?

Shane Stack: [00:02:22] Yeah, yeah, because of air quality issues. They don't use it. And and we don't generally use the sanding material in like the urban area. But as we get further out we're using sanding material. But we do have deicer. So we've got a mag chloride and a deicer truck that we use in the urban area, just like the city does. Obviously there's a that's part of the preparation to we've got two large tanks that we keep on site at Public Works that we fill with mag chloride for winter maintenance, and then part of that we use to in the summertime for dust abatement. But I guess just additional preparation in the summertime. Two you're repairing plows that may have been damaged the previous winter. So the mechanics are focused generally in the summertime and in the in the fall months, making sure that we're prepared with equipment for the coming winter. And so, yeah, that's repairing Sanders. So, you know, we've got dump trucks that we convert to plow trucks. So we've got to mount the plows on the dump trucks and then the truck bed itself. So that dump bed, then we slide a what a sander box in. And so that takes, you know, it takes time to do all of that.

Juanita Vero: [00:03:25] How many miles of road are you guys responsible for?

Shane Stack: [00:03:28] Roughly 450 miles.

Juanita Vero: [00:03:29] 450 miles. And we have a crew of how many?

Shane Stack: [00:03:33] 17 down in in Missoula that operate. And then five in, in the Seeley area. Seeley. Condon.

Josh Slotnick: [00:03:39] So with all those roads and the snow falls on all the roads at roughly the same time, right. How do you prioritize which roads get plowed first?

Shane Stack: [00:03:46] So we look at, you know, school bus routes are probably the main focal point, right? So we want to make sure that the and that's why they're leaving at five. They got to they got to try to beat all the school busses so that they have clear roads when they're moving the kids to school. And then we also, you know, in the urban area where the mountain lion operates, we want to make sure we're clearing the mountain lion routes as well too, along with the school bus routes. And then it's prioritization, then focuses more on where are higher volume roadways, where those collectors where most of the people driving. So your residential streets are probably not going to be hit until later. And we've got a priority one, priority two system. And those those residential streets are generally on a priority two. So they're probably going to be hit the next day right? With with the plow. They may not be getting service that first day, although they'll try they may not get there.

Juanita Vero: [00:04:31] Can people see a map of this.

Shane Stack: [00:04:33] We do have a we do have a map on our website that you can go.

Juanita Vero: [00:04:37] What's the website.

Shane Stack: [00:04:38] Called? Uh.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:04:39] We will get it linked to this.

Shane Stack: [00:04:42] I would just say link it. Thank you. I don't have I do not have that memorized. Okay.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:04:46] Shane, speaking of mapping and responsibilities and such, are there any shared Responsibilities or agreement to swap responsibilities within the city limits.

Shane Stack: [00:04:57] Yeah, we have an agreement with the city where it makes sense for them. Just because of annexation. The city has annexed spots where, you know, there's portions of county roads that are sort of inside the city boundaries. Still, it's kind of a weird annexation boundary system that exists today. And so it doesn't make sense for the county to go plow a short segment of of county road where the city is, you know, plowing up to it. So what we've done is we've sat down with the city and said, all right, where does it make sense for us to trade? And they pick up locations and we pick up locations for them. So, yeah, it's good to have that collaboration with the city.

Josh Slotnick: [00:05:34] So before we turn the mics on, we were talking about how this latest snow event went and what people's calls were most about. And it seems like there's some misconceptions out there around plowing. Yeah. Well, can you speak to that?

Dave Strohmaier: [00:05:49] Myth busting.

Josh Slotnick: [00:05:50] Myth busting.

Shane Stack: [00:05:51] Well, there's I think there's general myths in general with what we do, but I mean, if you're just focused on on the winter maintenance, I think the, the most common comment we receive is, you know, I pay my, my property taxes and our road should be cleared by now. And the sad reality is, is that the amount of revenue that we collect through property taxes is $67.

Juanita Vero: [00:06:12] Goes to the road fund.

Shane Stack: [00:06:13] Yeah. Whatever that number is. Right. Like, it probably pays for one trip. You know, the the entire amount they pay property taxes. Probably pays for one trip to get a plow truck out to out to their site. And so.

Speaker5: [00:06:25] Can we.

Juanita Vero: [00:06:25] Break that down a bit, because that makes it sound like the entirety of their property taxes pays for one road trip. What you really mean to say is.

Josh Slotnick: [00:06:32] If you took the amount of money that they pay that goes to the road fund, it would it would cover one trip with a plow down the road.

Juanita Vero: [00:06:39] I guess what I'm getting at is people need to understand like that, that that very small portion goes to the road, or.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:06:44] A very cheap wheelbarrow and a shovel from Ace Hardware. Yeah.

Shane Stack: [00:06:49] Yeah, but you're right, Juan. And I think if you look at it, I would say, I mean, just rough average. I've not actually gone out and looked at what the exact number is. If, if, you know, on average, what would you know. What's the road fund received from one property. But I would say you're probably in the neighborhood of like $100 a year, an entire year. And so, yeah, the cost of paying for fuel, the cost to pay the operator, the cost to buy the, the truck, if you add all that up, you know, that's probably it would account for the one trip out to them. And so yeah, I you know, I think, you know, combine all the, all the funds, you know, then we're able to provide a, you know, a service where we can get out there on at least on a daily basis. But so I think, you know, back to the misconceptions. I think there's a, you know, a clear misunderstanding, maybe of the value that, that they're receiving, you know, versus the amount of money that they're paying in taxes. And, you know, I think if you look at this holistically, though, I always try to compare this to, you know what, folks pay for other services and I'll, I'll use like my internet service or my cell phone service where I could or my wife and I were we had three phones. We were paying, I think, $150 a month for a cell phone service. Right. That's what you might pay for just an entire year for your road service.

Shane Stack: [00:08:05] Wow. And so and that's just one example. But if you look at like, your garbage and your Netflix. Yeah, right. Your Netflix, like all of those things added up. Like we provide a pretty good service for what you're having to pay in property taxes. Like you're getting a ton of service for for what folks pay in property taxes. And so I think that's probably the biggest misconception of just like the broader picture, snow removal, I think the biggest challenge is, is, you know, when we were talking about this earlier, before we we got on, is that we don't have the ability to stop at every driveway and approach to clear their snow. And so they, you know, the drivers are out there pushing snow. They're clearing the road, they're focused on clearing the road. And that means that that snow is getting pushed to the side of the road, and it ends up blocking driveways and approaches, and there's no way that we can clear every driveway just because we have so many miles. They're just trying to get the road cleared. And so that falls back on the the folks that want to use those approaches. And that's probably the the most common call we receive is that you've I just cleared my driveway and you came through and plowed snow. And it's not intentional and it's not something that, you know, our operators are out trying to cause problems. It's just they have so many miles to go get through that they just don't have time to go clear every driveway.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:09:19] So and the alternative is not plowing the road at all. Yeah. Yeah. Which we're not going.

Josh Slotnick: [00:09:24] To do that.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:09:24] We're not going to do that. We're not going to do that.

Josh Slotnick: [00:09:26] So Shane you're on you're on the edge of a big transition. Yeah. And interestingly been involved in public works and transportation and your whole working adult life. Yeah.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:09:37] And even maybe adolescent life because Shane is only 35 years old.

Josh Slotnick: [00:09:41] So he's super young to be moving on. He just started so young. What are some some lessons learned here? You think people should know about someone who's been working in the world of roads and transportation.

Juanita Vero: [00:09:51] For 20 plus years? Retirement as while you're still young and healthy?

Josh Slotnick: [00:09:55] Yeah, that's a good one. Start working for MDT as a teenager.

Speaker5: [00:09:59] Right.

Shane Stack: [00:10:01] Out of my entire career. The biggest takeaway is just relationships. Probably I can go back and look at just from my engineering career, starting back in college, even I, you know, I was not focused. I would say I was a good student, but I wasn't focused on like, I want to get A's. My goal was to get out of school like I wanted to just get the diploma, get out work. Which meant that, you know, when I got out of school, I was I felt like I was pretty intelligent. But there were a lot of folks that, you know, were getting straight A's that were super smart. So they didn't come out of school with, like, this bank of knowledge of like just really understanding every concept. And the engineering world, I think we're we're became successful is the ability to just work with people, have good relationships, partnerships, across collaboration across agencies?

Juanita Vero: [00:10:45] Or is that your background?

Speaker5: [00:10:48] What's that?

Dave Strohmaier: [00:10:48] I guess we're.

Josh Slotnick: [00:10:49] Asking similar things. I was.

Juanita Vero: [00:10:50] Wondering.

Josh Slotnick: [00:10:51] Can you teach that? Like, can you learn that in school, that sort of emotional intelligence, or do you feel like you just have to have it.

Juanita Vero: [00:10:59] From your family?

Shane Stack: [00:11:00] Uh, I don't know that it was, uh, anything I learned in growing up or from family, I don't think. I think, boy, I don't know where you learned that. I think that's just a.

Speaker5: [00:11:09] Life not to do it right.

Shane Stack: [00:11:11] Like, maybe that's just a life lesson growing up. Just, you know, having friends and doing those things. But I think it's trainable.

Josh Slotnick: [00:11:16] Like, could you train employees?

Shane Stack: [00:11:18] What I would say is, like, I would much rather hire employees that are just easy to get along with, right, than that have skill sets. Just just because I just don't know that I've ever seen where that's just something that you train people on, if that makes sense.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:11:32] Oh, totally makes sense.

Shane Stack: [00:11:34] But, you know, at the end of the day, though, when you ask me, like, what's my, you know, what are what are some big takeaways? I would just tell you, like, you know, as far as just being an engineering professional, it wasn't like the knowledge that I had that I'm relying on. I have some basic knowledge and concept and, you know, I got an engineering license, right? Like, I was smart enough to get through the the process to get a license. But I'm not like one of those engineers that are like, just just know so much and have detailed background in a specific area. I think the success I have in, in the engineering world comes mainly, though, from just being able to get along with people and build those relationships. I would tell you that, you know, the best information I ever got from anybody that I worked with was one of the district administrators at MDT, and he had started out in the maintenance world driving plow trucks, and he worked in, you know, worked all the way up to becoming the district administrator, which is that's a that's a huge thing. He didn't have a college degree, and he was leading a, you know, one of the five districts in Montana. You know, his advice to me, and I think this was something that came intuitive to me, but he put it into words, was like, you know, you got to take any opportunity to help people because you never know when you're going to need help. Right. And if you're that attitude of like, well, just, you know, help as many people as we can, you know, you're going to get that back returned at some point in your life, your career, whatever.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:12:55] So. Well, and I absolutely appreciate the kind of the sensibility you've brought to public works here in Missoula in terms of how do we get to. Yes. Oh, yeah, government too often and oftentimes deservedly has the reputation of quickly defaulting to saying no. But how can we work with folks to actually help them out?

Josh Slotnick: [00:13:16] I've seen you do great work in public. I've said, Shane, put the put the public in public works dealing with neighborhood groups who oppose each other and do a great job of listening to them and demonstrating a little bit of empathy and explaining the situation without losing your cool, even if they have already lost theirs, and ending up with these two neighborhood groups who don't agree. Come talk to us and say we don't like this, but Shane was great.

Speaker5: [00:13:40] Shane was awesome and.

Josh Slotnick: [00:13:42] I don't like blah blah.

Speaker5: [00:13:43] Blah.

Josh Slotnick: [00:13:44] And that's exemplary. It's it's how we ought to behave.

Juanita Vero: [00:13:47] Yeah. And that dedication to service. Yeah. An incredible example.

Shane Stack: [00:13:51] So, Dave, back to your comment of having to get to. Yes. Though what I would tell you is working at MDT for a long time it was more focused on policy and rather than how do we get to. Yes, with the communities. And so and.

Juanita Vero: [00:14:04] Why was that?

Shane Stack: [00:14:05] I don't know, I think that's a you know, that's a leadership decision one. And I and I think it's probably ingrained, you know, you got 2000 employees at MDT and you you have that kind of mentality ingrained over time. I think it just kind of sticks. But not every community is the same. And how you treat whitefish would be different than how you treat Hamilton, right? Like the things they want and the culture they have in their communities are completely different. And I think MDT had the you know, this is not a criticism on them. It's just a just a fact. It's just a fact. It's just a matter of fact. They, you know, they treated everybody the same. And not every community, you know, had the same expectations. And so what I really love and enjoy about working with the county and U3 specifically is that you have that attitude of, you know, we want to find a way to. Yes, and not all the communities are the same and they all have different wants and needs. And how do we how can we best provide the services that those communities want? And I love that. And so I've been super happy working here. And it's you know, for me to leave is not because I don't like working here. It's because I can I can leave for one and two. I've got a four year old that I just want to I just want to spend as much time with him as he grows up as I possibly can. And I'm fortunate to have that opportunity.

Josh Slotnick: [00:15:17] That's great. So, uh, what are the biggest challenges Public Works face right now?

Shane Stack: [00:15:22] Uh, funding. And and I don't know that that's any different from any other organization. And whether it's water, wastewater, roads, bridges, you know, infrastructure funding that's available at the local level is nowhere near the needs that that are there to to cover the costs. So anyway, over.

Juanita Vero: [00:15:39] The course of your career, has that ever been different? Nope.

Shane Stack: [00:15:41] You know, when I started at MDT, you know, I think it was probably my third year at MDT. I was, you know, given a position where I had to manage pavement preservation across like the western fifth of the state. And I remember, you know, we put together all this information. You'd have the miles of roadway and each road specifically broken out, like, what are the what are the improvements that are needed on each segment of road and the costs associated with that? And, you know, we would be given a budget of, say, like $15 million to cover the cost of pavement preservation across that western fifth of the state. And, oh, I recall it being somewhere in the neighborhood of like $250 million in needs. And it was.

Speaker5: [00:16:21] 250.

Josh Slotnick: [00:16:21] Million with 15 million. Right?

Speaker5: [00:16:23] Right.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:16:24] And I suspect the public expectations for level of service has not gone down.

Shane Stack: [00:16:29] No, no. And it was you know, it would be brutal. Like, you know, we would have I would you know, we would get our maintenance staff together or construction staff together, and we would sit down and try to prioritize. Where is that 15 million go? What where are we going to get the biggest bang for our buck? And at the end of the day, I mean, you're just like it was clear, you know, there were winners and losers. And it's unfortunate because the needs were always there. But we were never able to to do everything we we could do. So it's no different than here. And, you know, I guess maybe just some numbers. We've I've sat down and we've crunched numbers on what the needs really are for our roads and just the paved roads alone.

Juanita Vero: [00:17:07] If we're talking just roads, not bridges, not dirt roads, not.

Speaker5: [00:17:11] Just paved roads, and.

Shane Stack: [00:17:12] There's 200 and what, 65 miles, roughly of paved roads in Missoula County that we maintain. And if you look at if you looked at a basic maintenance process and service of that asphalt, we should be doing a chip seal and an overlay, say year one and a chip seal and year ten and year 20. You know, maybe you do another overlay. Ideally, maybe you get another chip seal, but and get another ten years out of that. So you get 30 years out of your your pavement before you.

Josh Slotnick: [00:17:38] Have to completely.

Speaker5: [00:17:38] Redo it. Do it again.

Shane Stack: [00:17:39] Yeah. And so, you know, if you were going to do something like that, we should probably be spending, you know, in the $2.5 million range on our, on our asphalt and we probably spend 500,000. And so we continue to go backwards in our asphalt, continue to degrade.

Josh Slotnick: [00:17:53] And have we seen a really steep jump in the, the price of asphalt greater than the rate of inflation?

Shane Stack: [00:18:00] Josh I would say it's probably greater than the rate of inflation. When I started six years ago, we were I think we were around $45 a ton for just a commercial grade B asphalt, and we are at 71 or $72 a ton right now.

Juanita Vero: [00:18:14] Why? Why is that? Or what are the contributing factors?

Shane Stack: [00:18:17] This is me speculating on it, but there's a couple of factors.

Juanita Vero: [00:18:20] Obviously the 2019 versus 2025.

Shane Stack: [00:18:22] Yeah I think the price of oil has gone up. And so there's there's that right. So asphalt is an oil based product. But you also have I think there's another factor of the material costs of just the gravel itself. You guys experience this when you've got a gravel pit down in the, in the Bitterroot area that they want to expand. And, you know, there's opposition to that. So that's a that's a resource that is hard to come by now. And so the local gravel companies have to they're basically hauling in material from miles away. Because the only way they can get it is to get into more of these rural portions of Montana and haul that in. And so there's a haul cost that increases the cost of that material. And I think another factor is, is that we only have one provider in Missoula.

Speaker5: [00:19:06] That's that's.

Shane Stack: [00:19:07] Got it. So there's not a there's not stiff competition to keep our prices low. And so I think all of those factor into the cost of the asphalt.

Josh Slotnick: [00:19:15] Yeah. I mean those numbers you just rattled off I mean that's like 7,580% increase in six years. And inflation has not been that high over the last.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:19:24] And I and I hate to even bring this up as a possibility, but are we reaching a point where we might have to contemplate tearing out? I guess, I guess just abandoning some of our paved roads and turning them back into just gravel roads?

Shane Stack: [00:19:38] Yeah. Yeah. And I. And we haven't done that yet. We do have a reclaimer. And so, you know, instead of, of, you know, completely abandoning the asphalt. And one thing we could do is, is and basically what a reclaimer does is if you can imagine a, a rototiller that you don't use in your garden, you just use it on asphalt. Right. Like or a beast.

Josh Slotnick: [00:19:59] Of a machine.

Shane Stack: [00:19:59] Yeah. Right. Or you can use it. We use it on our gravel roads too, but it just grinds up the material and we can add an emulsion in there. So you can essentially kind of repave a road for a very low cost. We haven't tried that yet. We've done it with placing Millings and we've had good luck with that.

Speaker5: [00:20:15] I was just going to ask.

Josh Slotnick: [00:20:16] You to talk about Millings because, yeah, unless you're in this world, you probably wouldn't know what those are and how they play into cost savings.

Speaker5: [00:20:22] Yeah.

Shane Stack: [00:20:23] So the millings we receive, it's essentially ground up asphalt when MDT goes and resurfaces, they'll call it a mil infill. So they'll mil off, say four inches of material and then repave four inches back. Those millings are offered up to local governments, and so we've been taking advantage of that over the last several years, and we've been able to resurface. Gosh, I'm going to throw out like maybe 20 miles of road plus or minus, somewhere in that neighborhood of gravel road that has now has a basically a hard asphalt surface. What we picked up last year was the reclaimer. And so what we can do, instead of grading those millings with a grader and then rolling them and then adding an emulsion on top of it, what we do is we inject that emulsion in, is that Pulverizer grinds up the millings as we've placed them already.

Juanita Vero: [00:21:07] So it's a one step process instead of three.

Shane Stack: [00:21:09] Yeah. Kind of. We'll still have to roll it. But so you'll grade it. We'll hit it with a grader, kind of get the crown on it, get the alignment set, and then you come back through with that pulverizer that you have the emulsion in it that acts as a it's a new binder, if you will, to too. Keeps the rocks bound. Then come in with the chipseal. And so I think we're probably 5000 a mile in cost for the adding that emulsion. Right. And so.

Speaker5: [00:21:34] To, to.

Shane Stack: [00:21:35] Compare that we're, we're anywhere in the neighborhood of like probably and this is depending on the thickness of asphalt and the width of the asphalt, somewhere in the neighborhood of 120,000 to 180,000 per mile to put down asphalt. Right?

Speaker5: [00:21:48] 5000 compared to 5000.

Shane Stack: [00:21:49] Right. And so the millings is, you know, has been a pretty good savings for us where we can turn what we're gravel roads into asphalt roads. And as long as MDT is willing to continue to give us the millings, we're willing to take them and place them. We've got 30 000 yards stockpiled in Lolo right now, which is a it's about equivalent to another 9 to 10 miles of of gravel roads in the Lolo area that will be turned to asphalt essentially. So it's a really affordable way for us to get a paved surface.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:22:17] And for folks who've stuck with us this long and are wondering what MDT stands for, that's the Montana Department of Transportation, folks.

Speaker5: [00:22:25] Yeah.

Josh Slotnick: [00:22:27] More dirt tomorrow or something.

Juanita Vero: [00:22:30] We were talking about those cost savings. Do we want to talk about equipment or how?

Speaker5: [00:22:35] Yeah. Yeah, that's.

Josh Slotnick: [00:22:35] A great thing. Yeah. Because you've done an awesome job of getting good cheap equipment.

Juanita Vero: [00:22:40] Some more myth busting.

Speaker5: [00:22:41] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So our.

Josh Slotnick: [00:22:42] Friends to the.

Speaker5: [00:22:42] South, well.

Shane Stack: [00:22:43] And really across the country. So I think in the first or second year that I started, one of the mechanics had suggested like, hey, look into federal equipment. They have got excess equipment. And, you know, he worked for a fire department and they were able to get something. And we're like, we looked into it and sure enough, we were able to pick up like seven over a course of several years, about $750,000 worth of equipment, excess equipment that the feds had, they were no longer using it. They give it to you. You just have to go get it right. So the only cost we had was get it delivered to Missoula and we gosh, we picked up things as far as like Virginia. So I mean, we're hauling stuff across the country. So there's a, you know, a little bit of cost there, but when you compare it to the cost of something brand new. We were doing well and we got really important pieces of equipment like, you know, side dump. We got, we picked up a couple loaders, which are super expensive. We're just looking at trying to buy a used loader right now for $200,000. And you know, we we could get one for probably 10,000, you know, with repairs and delivery. And so that that was a pretty big thing as far as the trucks go. Yeah. We're in a situation where our trucks were really old and a lot of miles, and they're breaking down a lot.

Shane Stack: [00:23:51] The cost of a of a new plow truck is you're probably in that 250 to $350,000 range. They're very expensive pieces of equipment. The interesting thing is, is we we were looking around kind of the western part of the, the country with different dealerships, just trying to pick up some used affordable equipment. And we just happened to run into a dealer that had picked up a bunch of plows from Salt Lake County. And so we bought a few of those and then reached out to Salt Lake County and said, hey, how often are you replacing your equipment and there like we do it pretty much, you know, annually. And so we've been able to pick up trucks from them for a very low price. We're picking up seven of them right now. We're working on a purchase to acquire seven plow trucks. They're all single axles. They all have less than 50 000 miles. So that 50 to 30 000 mile range, they're selling them to us for 49,000 a truck. They come equipped with the sanders, the plows. So they're like, you know, I would say I'm not going to say they're turnkey. We'll get them and we'll have to do some repairs. We'll probably replace the plows. We like a different style of plow. So we keep our old plows and we mount those on. But for the, I guess the the price of one truck, we're getting three, four, five trucks, right.

Speaker5: [00:25:02] Like it's that's creative. You know.

Shane Stack: [00:25:04] We have to do those things because we can't afford to get new equipment. There's just not room in the budget to do it. But I would say this we were very far in the hole when it came to equipment. And over the last six years, I think we've been able to to get ourselves in a situation where it's not so critical. But part of that too is like we've communicated to you as commissioners, like we needed more funding and you were able to provide that funding. And I think without that, we wouldn't be able to do these things right. So I think you guys deserve a lot of credit, too, for figuring out how to get us funding.

Speaker5: [00:25:33] So and I think.

Josh Slotnick: [00:25:35] If it wasn't your first day when we had a chat in the hallway about the gas tax. Yeah. And then went on a year long epic making it happen. You want to talk about the gas tax for a minute?

Shane Stack: [00:25:44] Yeah. You know, that.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:25:46] Way to pull a scab.

Speaker5: [00:25:48] Off of that for.

Shane Stack: [00:25:50] People that don't know and that are still listening, that might be interested. State law allowed for local governments to have their own local option gas tax. And it you know, it maxed out at $0.02. You could have anywhere from.

Speaker5: [00:26:03] You know, I've been on.

Juanita Vero: [00:26:03] The books for 45 years and.

Speaker5: [00:26:05] Nobody took advantage of it. Yeah.

Shane Stack: [00:26:06] Thank you. One I didn't know that time frame, but yeah, it had been around a long time and nobody took it. And I think it was back in 20 the the 2017 legislative session or was it 2017 or 2015 Legislative session.

Josh Slotnick: [00:26:18] 2017 where they said, you guys should just don't come asking for more money, just go do this.

Shane Stack: [00:26:24] Yeah. Yeah, right. So the state at that time, you know, MDT and the locals were saying we need more state gas tax. And it hadn't that hadn't been increased since like I think I want to say I'm going to throw out 92. I think that was the last time that it had been increased. And you're right, at that legislative session, they they did do it was a graduated increase. And I think that graduated increase was, you know, over I think like a 4 or 5 year period. I can't remember the specifics, but it was, you know, a certain, you know, like 2 or $0.03 a year, it would increase and then 30% or 33% would go to counties, 33 would go to cities, and 33% would go to the state. And during that process of creating Barsa, the It's the Bridge and Road Safety Accountability Act is what Barsa stood for in the process of creating that, many legislators pointed to the fact that local governments had this ability to create a local option gas tax and said, you know, if you guys need money so much, you need to go create this local option, gas tax, go pass it.

Shane Stack: [00:27:22] And we had had those discussions at the MPO or the Metropolitan Planning Organization at that level for several years. Nobody was willing to try to take advantage of it though. And so when I started here, I always thought it was a good idea. And so that was my first conversation with Josh is like, we should probably look into this because we could generate a serious amount of money and take advantage of the folks that are coming from out of state that use our roads, where otherwise we're paying for it in property taxes. And those folks that are coming from out of state or out of county aren't paying for any of it. We're paying all of it locally. And so it made sense to try to diversify what our income, but also make it more fair so that all the users were paying and not just the folks that are paying property taxes. And so we did, you know, we worked with a local group and got it on the ballot and passed it. Unfortunately, I think we probably passed it at the most inopportune time because once it was.

Speaker5: [00:28:14] Passed right, it.

Shane Stack: [00:28:16] Was. The next legislative session was right around the corner, and it was obviously easy pickings for some of the folks at the legislature to get.

Speaker5: [00:28:24] Rid of it. Why did they.

Josh Slotnick: [00:28:26] Want to take it away?

Shane Stack: [00:28:27] I'm just going to speculate. I don't know. You'd have to ask them, but I think there were obviously the petroleum lobby didn't like it for whatever reason. You know, I think.

Juanita Vero: [00:28:36] Other counties were considering it.

Speaker5: [00:28:37] Yeah.

Shane Stack: [00:28:38] Yeah. There were other counties, I think from a, you know, sales perspective, if you live on the very or if you're your gas station is on kind of the outskirts of, of the county, you could easily argue and say that, well, the next gas station down doesn't have to worry about this $0.02. And we do. And then we're going to have loss of sales. But from what we saw, the prices weren't greater than the prices that were outside of Missoula County. Even with that $0.02, they were still they were still lower than the competing surrounding.

Speaker5: [00:29:06] Area, which is all.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:29:07] The more ironic since the state legislature here in Montana is quick to try to get the federal government out of their business. Yet here is the heavy hand of state government inserting itself into a local issue that was even adopted by the voters in Missoula County. Not the three of us just scheming. No, they.

Josh Slotnick: [00:29:27] Overrode the will of the voters and people, unelected by the folks who live here, had their will stomped on from afar.

Shane Stack: [00:29:34] Back to why funding is important. We talked about just the asphalt's, right? So we're probably short $2.5 million annually.

Speaker5: [00:29:42] And that.

Juanita Vero: [00:29:42] Gas tax would have it brought in. How much?

Speaker5: [00:29:46] Uh, well.

Shane Stack: [00:29:46] It was at that time we were gosh, I want to say 1213, one four somewhere in there annually. And we split that with the city. But I think it's even more now. I think you're probably 1.5 million. And then we split that. You're you're 750,000. I'm just total, total guess. But I almost guarantee. But I think if you look at the needs on the bridges, too, like we have 126 bridges in the county that we're responsible to maintain. And if you look at the cost of replacing those, we should be spending in that $3.5 million range on our bridges, in addition to the million we get right now for for bridges through property taxes, we need another three and a half to cover the cost of maintaining those structures. And that basically means if we were going to get a 75 year life span out of every bridge at the cost of $1,000 a square foot to replace that structure, right? So if you just look at the cost of replacing a bridge, it's about if you look at the deck surface, it's about $1,000 per square foot. I think mdt's numbers, it's about $1,200 a square foot. So I think the 1000 is pretty conservative. Like we're not trying to, you know, gouge people. It's a very fair number, but we're nowhere near that. We need another 3.5 million to do things correct. And so what we're seeing right now is that we've deferred maintenance on the bridges. So Boy Scout Bridge is closed right now. We just got a five ton load limit posted on Classic Placid Creek Road for the first Owl Creek Bridge. That's impactful. Like you go from having the ability to to haul whatever you want to a five ton load limit. There's no more concrete trucks going back through there, right? There's logging.

Speaker5: [00:31:23] Logging. Right.

Juanita Vero: [00:31:24] Yeah. Vehicles. Yeah.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:31:26] Shane, do you have concerns about what is happening at the federal level with transportation funding? Because as far as near as I can see, if we thumb our noses at federal funding, we're not going to be able to backfill at the local level to, to cover these, these major, uh, investments.

Shane Stack: [00:31:46] Yeah. And just, I guess, to paint the picture of where we are today as this is being recorded, you know, Trump's been in office for, I don't know, 3 or 4 weeks.

Speaker5: [00:31:53] Yeah.

Shane Stack: [00:31:54] And, you know, lots of lots of cuts being made. And, you know, I don't want to get too political, but what I would just say is that the Biden administration allocated billions of dollars for local governments, for infrastructure, state and local governments or tribal governments, and more than any other administration had previously, which we need, we absolutely need. I think where we're seeing the risk, Dave, is like, you know, that particular funding bill is sunsetting coming to an end? What is the next funding bill going to look like? But what we saw under the Biden administration, Missoula County or in the city of Missoula, the MPO, even the airport, I don't know how many. I would speculate we were over easily over $200 million of of federal funds that we were able to bring in that we otherwise wouldn't have had. That's 60 million that goes to Russell Street, and that now is probably up in the air whether or not we're going to receive, because we just got word probably a month ago that we received that funding. Highway 200 in East Missoula. There's potential that, you know, the $24 million for that goes away. We don't have grant agreements on that. And so we're not certain if that funding is going to be available or not.

Shane Stack: [00:32:59] And so, yeah, there's I have a lot of concerns that we're not going to get the funding that we need to improve the infrastructure. I would also say just to like we've been submitting applications for bridge repair. We've submitted two build grant applications last month for both for in the neighborhood of $20 million to replace bridges that are fairly critical and are not in that great of shape. And we're going to submit a protect grant application. That one's replacing four bridges in Missoula County, and it's a little bit smaller. That one requires a match. Those the build grant did not require match. And so we can we can get up to 25 million. So that's you know if those types of programs go away. What I see, unless we figure out a way at the state level to try to fund our infrastructure because we can't do it at the local level, I just don't see it happening unless we get a gas tax back and a sizable one. We can't rely on property taxes. Here's what's going to happen. We're going to close more bridges and it's not Missoula County. We are not in this alone. This is happening all over the state.

Speaker5: [00:33:58] That's an important message. Yeah, yeah.

Josh Slotnick: [00:34:00] Are you concerned about, apparently, a memo from the Trump administration to the US Department of Transportation, asking that they prioritize grants towards areas that have high birth rates and high marriage rates. And we've been looking at bridges that need to be repaired, regardless of the birth rate or marriage rate in the area. It was the bridge, not the populace, that we were concerned about. And a bunch of these bridges that you mentioned are in rural parts of our county where the population is aging and the birth rate is low, and they've been married for a long time. Right.

Shane Stack: [00:34:32] Yeah. No. Am I concerned? Yeah. I don't know that that's the best way to try to prioritize your infrastructure funding. Right. Like, I think it should be based more on where your needs are. What the what the infrastructure needs are. Yeah.

Speaker5: [00:34:44] And these are competitive grants.

Shane Stack: [00:34:46] They are. Yeah. And I think we've been able to tell compelling stories to receive the funding. And like I said, we've been very successful as a county, as a city, as an MPO to receive federal funds to to take care of the infrastructure. We don't have the tax base or the, the ability to to cover the cost to do these. So.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:35:03] Well, Josh and Juanita and I will be doing our best to officiate weddings in the coming year to bolster our competitiveness.

Juanita Vero: [00:35:11] We're all ordained ministers. We're all ordained.

Speaker5: [00:35:13] We're all ordained. Yeah, well, I.

Shane Stack: [00:35:15] Think advocating to at the, you know, at the congressional level, reaching out to Sheehy Daines.

Speaker5: [00:35:19] Well, I'm going to be there in two weeks.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:35:21] Yeah. We'll be back in Washington, D.C.. And I think this this is a bit of a wake up call for anyone who is in our listening public out there. If you are concerned about infrastructure. Contact your congressional delegation. Because this is kind of a call to arms. The dollars that are headed this way and might be headed this way are truly in jeopardy.

Speaker5: [00:35:42] Yeah.

Josh Slotnick: [00:35:43] Well, Shane, before we close, we ask our guests the same question. Anything you've run into in the past couple of weeks that really bears repeating. So anything you picked up in a book or a podcast or a conversation, a song, anything, any tidbit of culture that you feel worthwhile.

Shane Stack: [00:36:01] Oh, man. No.

Speaker5: [00:36:04] I'm trying to.

Shane Stack: [00:36:05] I was trying to think of some little word of wisdom from my four year old.

Josh Slotnick: [00:36:09] Oh. That's good.

Speaker5: [00:36:10] Oh, yeah.

Shane Stack: [00:36:11] It's amazing what the what the little ones can come up with sometimes. I'm always amazed.

Juanita Vero: [00:36:15] Favorite song right.

Speaker5: [00:36:16] Now?

Shane Stack: [00:36:16] Oh, I don't think he has a favorite song.

Juanita Vero: [00:36:18] What do you read to him at night?

Shane Stack: [00:36:20] Uh, so right now we are reading the. I don't know if you guys are familiar with the Treehouse books.

Speaker5: [00:36:26] Um.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:36:27] I am not.

Speaker5: [00:36:27] Magic treehouse? Yeah.

Juanita Vero: [00:36:28] Magic treehouse.

Shane Stack: [00:36:29] I read generally read one of those and he's for, I don't know, I think the age range for that one is probably close to, like, a nine year old. Ten year old? Um, I a.

Juanita Vero: [00:36:38] Little humble brag.

Speaker5: [00:36:39] There. Well, yeah, he's he's he's he's a smart kid.

Shane Stack: [00:36:43] Well, I'll tell you a story about it, but he's, um. And everybody thinks their kid's, like, the smartest kid ever, right? But, no, he he's he loves those stories, and I. I'll generally be one of those books. I'll try to read one book a night to him. And they're long like the they some of those are like 100 pages And like it's an hour.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:37:00] Do you ever skip any pages?

Speaker5: [00:37:02] No. Oh, jeez. But he'll he'll listen.

Juanita Vero: [00:37:04] About the series. What? Yeah. What what's what's the insight or what? What does he like about them?

Shane Stack: [00:37:09] The cool thing. What I like about them are. Is that, like, there's historical nature, right? Like, so they're, they're, they're able to to time travel a little bit and go back into, you know, you know, see dinosaurs or.

Juanita Vero: [00:37:20] Oh, there's some dinosaurs. Of course there's dinosaurs.

Speaker5: [00:37:22] Well, there's I.

Shane Stack: [00:37:23] Mean, you know, that's not the only thing like it's just it varies, right? So they like San Francisco, you know, fires in San Francisco, right? Um, you know, it's just historical moments. There was, I don't know, there's all kinds of different topics. But I think the cool thing is, is that there's, you know, some of them are historical, like in nature. And then he gets to learn from it, right? And he remembers those things, which is a cool way to teach. Right. And he just listens to the story and he's just happy. Yeah. Um, but what I would say, like, you know, as far as reading to him, every time we go to Costco, he wants to go to the book section and he wants to pick out a book, which is really cool. So, Like it was. He was this was he was three when this happened. So it was like this past summer. And so I got him a book and I'm hauling, you know, if you go to Costco, you got to haul like all the groceries into the house. And so I've got like the books sitting out on the deck on our table, and he's sitting at the, at the table and I'm just walking back and forth, you know, a few times bringing stuff in. And so I come back and I sit down, I'm like, all right, you're ready to read. And he's like, yeah. He's like, I want to read chapter one. And he tells me the title of the chapter. And I look at his mom, I'm like, did you tell him? She's like, no, my wife is a speech pathologist. And she's like constantly whenever she reads to him, she's like sounding out words. And so he's trying to learn how to read. And so he's it's one of those moments where you're just like, oh my God, wow, wow.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:38:42] Aware of more than you.

Shane Stack: [00:38:43] Realize, right? Yes, exactly. So anyway.

Shane Stack: [00:38:46] There you go.

Josh Slotnick: [00:38:47] Thanks for joining us, Shane.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:38:49] Thanks for all of your work for Missoula County and the citizens of Missoula. Yeah.

Josh Slotnick: [00:38:53] Glad to be around for a little bit more. Yeah.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:38:55] Thanks, Shane. Yeah.

Shane Stack: [00:38:55] Thank you guys. Thanks, everybody. Goodbye.

Josh Slotnick: [00:38:58] Thanks for listening to the agenda. If you enjoy these conversations, it would mean a lot if you would rate and review the show on whichever podcast app you use.

Juanita Vero: [00:39:06] And if you know a friend who would like to keep up with what's happening in local government, be sure to recommend this podcast to them.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:39:12] The agenda with the Missoula County Commissioners is made possible with support from Missoula Community Access Television, better known as MCAT, and our staff in the Missoula County Communications Division.

Josh Slotnick: [00:39:24] If you have a question or a topic you'd like us to discuss on a future episode, email it to communications@missoulacounty.us.

Juanita Vero: [00:39:31] To find out other ways to stay up to date with what's happening in Missoula County, go to Missoula.co/countyupdates.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:39:39] Thanks for listening.