Allen County Engineer's Office Funding
As shown on the pie chart below, the major sources of funding for the Allen County Engineer's Office are License Plate Fees and Gasoline Tax. The current $25 license plate fee in Allen County is divided up and disbursed to the county engineer, townships, and municipalities, based upon a a statutory formula. License fees in Allen County have not been increased since 1968. Gasoline tax is also a major source of funding. Although motorist pay approximately 40 cents in taxes for each gallon of gasoline purchased, the county engineers receive only 1.9 cents of the gas tax with the majority of the tax going to the state and federal governments.
Other sources of funding utilized by the Allen County Engineer are federal funds, Issue 2 funds, permissive license tax, court fines, interest, and road permits. Matching Federal funds and Issue 2 funds are secondary sources of funding that have helped the county engineer stretch local funds without increases in the gasoline tax or license fees. These funds must be applied for and have certain requirements attached to them. The county engineer is in direct competition with other counties and cities and must follow all of the rules and procedures to receive these funds. A typical federally funded project may take up to 8 years to be completed due to all of the plan reviews and requirements. Issue 2 projects are funded by the sale of bonds by the state and are administered by the Ohio Public Works Commission and its local District 13 Committee.
A common misconception is that the county engineer receives funds from property taxes, county sales tax or the county general fund. While his tax map office is funded from the general fund, no general fund money, sales tax money or property tax money has been used in recent years for road and bridge maintenance in Allen County.
Funding for the engineering, construction and maintenance of county petitioned ditch projects comes from separate funds set up from assessments to landowners within the watershed of those ditches. These funds are set up by law to be used on ditch projects and may not be used for any other purpose.
Due to limited sources of funding, increased costs of fuel and materials and no increases in license plate fees or gasoline tax in recent years, the Allen County Engineer's office has been forced to reduce its work force from 77 employees in 1975 to around 60 employees in recent years. Mechanization of tasks has helped to reduce the need for more employees and a summer work program for post high school students has supplemented the county's work force during the construction season.