Madison County to pay higher price for road salt
By Randy Pierce • Higher fuel costs mean Madison County now pays much more for road salt that will be used this coming winter.
While the middle of June is not a time many people would give much thought to this subject, it is when the suppliers of materials like road salt need orders from those who use it so that the preparations can be made for production and delivery when necessary.
At the regular monthly meeting of the Madison County Board held on June 17, a contract with Morton Salt Inc. of Chicago called for providing its product to the county and 40-plus other local government entities was approved.
The listing of township road districts which are getting this salt, as a result of the administration of the calling for bids in late May by the Madison County Highway Department, includes Collinsville, Edwardsville (which covers Glen Carbon), Helvetia and Saline (Highland), Jarvis (Troy), Marine and St. Jacob.
Also included in the contract, subject to the approval of the Illinois Department of Transportation, are the cities or villages of Collinsville, Highland, Troy, Glen Carbon, Maryville and St. Jacob.
When reporting to the county board’s transportation committee, chaired by Bobby Ross of St. Jacob, earlier in June concerning this matter, the engineer from the highway department, Adam Walden, called attention to how the bid awarded to Morton consists of a $20 per ton jump from what it was a year ago, from $75.60 to $94.25.
“This is definitely due to fuel costs,” Walden told the committee, referencing the fact that the supplier is required to take care of seeing to it that the salt gets to the county.
Another issue Walden said he encountered concerns how the supplier wanted a guarantee that the county would take delivery of at least 80% of the estimated total of the salt tentatively placed on order.
“I responded with, ‘We’re not going to do that,’” Walden added. “And since it’s not something that’s being forced upon us, I didn’t see why I would voluntarily add that to our contract. I have no intention of doing that.”
The reason for Walden’s reaction in this regard relates to the storage of the material because of the difficulty in determining just how much would be used until the winter weather events actually occur.
“If we go out and we say we want 6,000 tons of salt,” Walden shared with the transportation committee, “and everybody else around here says they want a bunch of salt and then we have no events over the winter, these companies have already ordered this salt and barged it up here and they’ve got to get it out. Well, the problem is we’ll be in the same situation they are.”
The shed where the county stores its salt, he went on, is full right now so if it would be a mild 2026-27 winter with no need to use much or any of it, there is no way more could be received “because we have nowhere to put it.”
Efforts are made, Walden noted, to maintain a 100% capacity stockpile of salt so there is never a risk of running low or out if a winter storm comes by surprise. The ordering of more will transpire when what is there starts to get used.
The source for this expense is the county’s motor fuel tax fund, which is paid on the purchase of gasoline at the pump by consumers and is regulated by the Illinois Highway Code with the restriction that it only be used for costs related to transportation improvements or roadway maintenance. That figure is set to be increased to 49.6 cents per gallon effective on July 1.
Administered through the Illinois Department of Transportation, the motor fuel tax, characterized in government circles by its initials, MFT, currently stands at 48.3 cents per gallon of conventional gasoline or gasohol with higher rates for diesel fuel and other forms of liquified or natural gas petroleum acquired by customers.
The logic involved in the setting up of this MFT program many decades ago is that when drivers pay the tax upon purchasing fuel, it comes back as a benefit to them in the form of safe roads to use for short- and long-term travel. The restrictions for how the money is spent have been made more liberal in recent years than when this program was originally established as long as there is a direct connection to the use of thoroughfares, streets, roads and highways by motorists.
The county is required to report all such expenditures to the state department of transportation, fully documented, including advance estimates and bid documents as applicable.
