Warren County Highway Department braced for a bad winter and now it is coping with damage to roads.

Road Superintendent Levie Glenn has been allowed by the full Warren County Commission to transfer $220,000 within his budget from equipment to contract services, and use that money for paving. 

“We’ve had a bad winter and I felt like it’s important to move the money around and try to do some paving,” said Glenn, to members of the county Highway and Bridge Committee.

While the area received minimal snow, it did receive recurrent bouts of freezing and thawing which creates potholes.

“I believe it’s been the hardest winter we’ve had since I’ve been with the Highway Department as far as the deterioration it’s done to the roads,” said Glenn.

When asked by the Standard which roads will be given priority, Glenn said Petigap Road, Brown Prater Road, Kirby Road and Caney Branch Road are all in need of repair.

“I think that’s a wise decision,” said Commissioner Gary Prater. “We’ve got some pretty good equipment right now. I know you know this too, but we’ve got some roads that have taken a beating. We had, pretty much, 30 days where the temperature stayed down to freezing. Freezing will get the roads.”

The measure was approved and presented to the county Budget and Finance Committee on Friday by Prater, where its approval continued.

“After seeing some of these roads, Levie has decided to not buy anymore equipment this year and put this money into contract service which will be paving,” said Prater. “That was a good decision on his part, I thought. We approved it. The roads just have a lot of age on them and we had a real bad winter. Even though we didn’t have a lot of snow, we had a lot of rain and a lot of freezes.”