Questions answered by Lamar Paris, County Commissioner
Q. We appreciate the excellent job the Union County Road Dept. did on the roads during the bad weather. Do you know how many actual roads they salted?
A. Their records indicate that they salted 102 separate roads and many of the roads were salted several times. It would be equivalent to salting 19/129 all the way to Atlanta. You will not find another mountain county that has as many salt trucks nor that salts and scrapes as many roads. All of our salt vehicles are transformed and utilized everyday on our regular jobs. Even with the tremendous amount of salt/gravel/sand mix that was spread, we did not run out as some other counties did.
Q. My road is a county maintained road, but never did get salted during the snow and ice. Do we have to call the Road Dept. to get salt on our road?
A. We try to salt all main roads first and actually do not apply salt on roads that are paved with tar and gravel (surface treatment) because the salt will eat the tar out of the road with time and ruin the pavement. However, we do apply sand and gravel to those roads. If you live on a county road and your road was not salted or sanded this time and it was a problem, please call the Road Dept and let them know.
Q. Since the county Road Dept can not salt and scrape our private roads, can we pay the county to salt our private road?
A. We prefer that a private contractor do this and would suggest you contact one of the local trucking companies to see if they would be interested. Also, I think there is a small spreader attachment that might be available for an ATV that would certainly be safer on steep slopes for subdivision owners to consider. However, should we have a future situation where the county is caught up with their road work and has the time; we have contacted our attorney to see if we could set up a price for doing salt/snow scraping work on private roads if no other private service is available. However, the main problem on many of the private roads is that they are simply too steep for us to put county equipment or employees on.
While we hope this icing problem we recently experienced will not be a serious problem going forward and has not been for the past nine years, we will be looking for alternate solutions when and if we have this type of weather again.
Q. Has the economy and the weather impacted the golf course operation this past year?
A. It certainly has!! Not only have we had fewer days that the course could be open because of all the rain, but all other revenues are off.
2008 2009
Number of days closed 20 31
due to weather
# 18 hole rounds 20,805 rounds 17,208 rounds
Total Sales $ 795,067 $ 640,581
So as you can see, we were off nearly 4000 rounds of golf and over $150,000 in revenue. While there was only 11 days difference in closed dates, those were almost all on weekends when revenue is impacted the most from the lack of outside play, which pays more than local play.
Q. How is Butternut Creek Golf Course making their budget?
A. It has been very difficult. They have had to trim salaries and cut expenses just like everyone else has. While some of the golf course expenses are variable according to the number of rounds played, there are so many fixed costs that are the same regardless of the amount of play. While irrigation costs were reduced because of the wet year, the amount of rain causes more turf diseases and the amount of chemicals necessary to prevent that are very expensive.
Q. Is the weather impacting other parts of the county operation?
A. The winter weather hampers just about everything we do in the county. It impacts people’s wages, cuts down on expendable income because we are all suffering with high utility bills, and in general can be outright depressing at times. Spring will be here soon and we will hope to see sunshine and warmer temperatures until then.
Q. Are flue shots still available and is it too late to have one?
A. It is not too late and they are available at the Union County Health Dept. If you have not had your flu shot or your H1N1 flu shot, you can receive them now. I still hear people talk about being afraid of the H1N1, but it is only a similar vaccine to the regular flu shot and once you are sick, it is too late then. The State Health Dept and the CDC still recommend the flu shots, so just know they are available and they do not hurt.