The Lane County Board of Commissioners is considering asking voters to approve a vehicle registration fee to pay for maintenance of county roads.
The proposed fee would amount to an additional $35 a year for Lane County residents. That would almost double what it currently costs to register your car. Board Chair Jay Bozievich says the fee could be passed by commissioners but they wanted to go to voters.
Bozievich: "Lane County's road system which is over 14 hundred miles and 400 bridges was built using timber funds in the past. And we had a large reserve in our road fund that was left over from the timber funds. And over the last 5 years we've slowly spent that reserve down."
Bozievich says without an infusion of funds, there's a projected $9 million annual hole in the road maintenance budget. The proposed fee would raise $11 million a year. A portion of that would go to city road funds. County Commissioners are taking phone and email comments on the proposed fee. The public hearing is 1:30 p.m. on January 27th.