Centre County’s $5 vehicle fee is set to sunset. Will commissioners vote to extend it?
Centre County Commissioners are gearing up to vote on whether to extend the fee for local use that that is set to sunset this year.
The fee for local use is the $5 vehicle registration fee that the commissioners enacted in 2017 through the ACT 89 transportation bill. In 2021, Centre County received roughly $600,000 in fee for local use revenue.
The county started its local transportation funding program with a variety of funds (liquid fuels, fee for local use and Act 13 “at risk bridge” fund) to improve transportation. The program has helped the county provide municipal funds for roadway improvements and matching funds for various grants.
A resolution to extend ordinance 2 of 2017 (the implementation of a fee for local use) for another five years to collect an annual county fee of $5 for each non-exempt vehicle registered to an address located in Centre County will be on next week’s agenda.
Commissioners spent “a great deal of time on” before enacting the ordinance five years ago, Commissioner Michael Pipe said during Tuesday’s meeting. The board heard from several residents and municipalities before voting.
Since then, Pipe said the funds have been used in a number of productive ways and has been successful.
“We just saw out in Pittsburgh, most recently, a collapse of a bridge that was a pretty striking reminder that our infrastructure is unfortunately, in many cases, deteriorating and any investments that we can do saves us money in the long run from potential total reconstructions that may be needed in the future. But if we can rehab it beforehand, we’ll be saving some money,” Pipe said.
He said every year, they continue to see requests from municipalities for projects they have to defer due to funding.
Higgins explained that state and federal money can’t be obtained for projects without also having local money. Local townships and boroughs already have to come up with up to hundreds of thousands of dollars annually to try to maintain what they have, he said. With the liquid fuels program, the county received up to $2 million in requests last year but only had $160,000 from the state to assist them.
“This program brings in hundreds of thousands of dollars that allows us to assist municipalities. At this point, we’re looking at the $266,000 of assistance, which is more than liquid fuels, but even so it’s still well under half of what the municipalities requested just from the county this year. So, looks like at least for the next five years we’re going to continue to need the program,” Higgins said.
But Dershem said he “continues to struggle” with the program. One of his major concerns, he said, was that he wants to see how this money can be leveraged against the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law money that will be coming in from the state and federal government.
“I am not saying that I don’t support ... the expansion of opportunities to improve our road system,” Dershem said. “When you have a $10, $12 fee on a vehicle and you increase that by $5, I struggle with that, particularly when it comes to trailers.” He also said Centre County doesn’t own any roads and struggled with that philosophically.
The item will be up for a vote during next week’s commissioners meeting. Along with that will be final approval of the Fee for Local Use allocations that staff is recommending once the June funds are received.
Senior transportation planner Anne Messner gave commissioners an overview of the projects, which totaled $266,906. She said they are projects that had been submitted last fall for Fee for Local Use, but the county could not cover them. The requests include:
- $25,000 for streetscape safety improvements on South Spring and West Bishop Streets in Bellefonte Borough
- $57,150 to fix the deterioration of Blue Row (T486) and Middletown Road (T504) in Curtin Township
- $3,066.37 for signs for Bitner Hollow (T453), Grenoble (T459,) and Bluebell (T470) Roads in Gregg Township
- $13,788.99 for 83 signs and an equipment accusation (Kubota with boom mower and front-end loader) in Millheim Borough
- $83,816.25 to improve McCord Road (T626) so opposing traffic can pass in Rush Township
- $84,094 to improve deteriorating roadway on West Sunset Avenue in Snow Shoe Borough.
