DelDOT Looking To Future A message from Nathan Hayward III, Secretary, Delaware Department of Transportation

4:44 p.m., July 29, 2005--It's been another very busy year at DelDOT--new leadership, new challenges, lots of accomplishments--many wins, a few losses, and some I'd call a draw.

Literally thousands of hours of DelDOT staffers' time--planners, designers, project managers, public relations officers, finance and traffic specialists--have been devoted to working with dozens of communities to craft workable transportation solutions, often under very challenging environmental, sociological and political constraints. We'll never earn a perfect A+ but never in the department's history have so many state professionals worked with other levels of government and the constituents of Delaware to make intelligent and long-lasting choices.

Lately, there's been lots of press about DelDOT's future finances. Because we have been so successful in getting projects conceived, designed and built, DelDOT has been outrunning its traditional sources of financing--gas taxes, tolls and motor vehicle fees.

The governor and the General Assembly now recognize how critical this problem is and have pledged to fix it in FY 2006. A special task force is already at work developing options and recommendations. Toll increases on I-95 go into effect on Oct. 1, 2005.

In the meantime, we've had to make some tough choices about which projects to aggressively pursue and which to scale back on. But to put some rumors to rest, let me highlight our strategy for the new Fiscal Year:

We will spend more operating and capital money (state and federal) in FY 2006 than we did in FY 2005;
No current employee of DelDOT will lose his or her job (or promotional opportunity) because of a funding shortfall. Our current vacancy rate of 11 percent is still too high;
We will not compromise on critical safety hazards--our list of "must do" improvements is unaffected by the reduction in our originally proposed state capital budget. Increased federal support will help soften this transition;
We will honor all of our outstanding construction contracts;
We will push hard and fast to get three very large projects underway--improvements along I-95 from the toll plaza through to the Route 141 exit;
Award and construction of the Indian River Inlet Bridge
Selection of the Route 301 alignment and the commencement of design and right-of-way activity;
We will have to slow down and scale back our work on a large number of smaller projects that are still in the working group, project development and design phases;
We may have to delay the award of some ready to go construction contracts, at least until we see how the numbers shake out;
We'll have to make do with fewer dollars for equipment, facilities, computers and the like. But our legislators and every municipality will weather through similar cuts in Community Transportation and Street Aid programs; and
We will have to suspend the official "pipeline" process for a while. Adding new work to the out year plans just doesn't make sense right now until we can find a long-term, predictable source of funding.

As I've said to people for a long time, when DelDOT's Transportation Trust Fund was created in 1988, the concept was to set aside some state revenue and make sure it was dedicated exclusively to construction. That was the concept, and that worked for a few years until the early 1990s when the state's economy began to suffer under the nationwide recession. And the Legislature, to help solve the State General Fund crisis, took some of the operating expenses for DelDOT and moved them out of the General Fund and put them into the Trust Fund.

As a result, in fiscal year 2006, the Trust Fund is paying approximately $197 million of operating expenses which under the original plan would have been used for construction projects.

Another point that I've made consistently is that our State General Fund has grown very, very actively, 74 percent over 10 years. Meanwhile, our Trust Fund over the last 10 years has only grown 29 percent, which essentially says we have no inflation-sensitive sources of revenue.

The third impact that I keep banging away on is this growth in Delaware. Every new house that's built, every new condominium unit that's built, brings with it new automobiles, new trucks, new RV's, new things, and that creates more pressure on the State's road system. Traffic in Delaware is up 33 percent over 10 years ago.

And the last point that I keep reminding people is that, we buy steel, we buy concrete and we use fuel. We have to buy land to do all of these projects, and all of those factors of production have increased much faster than we've been able to keep pace with.

You take those four items and you add them together and you wind up with a fiscal crunch, and that's what we've got.

There's now a long list of projects on which we're going to have to scale back. But we are not abandoning them. If we have money encumbered for a consultant to help us on a design for a particular road, we'll continue to work on that and we'll continue to let people know what the choices are.

I thank you for listening.

Please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions, by calling 1-800-652-5600 or (302) 760-2080, e-mailing [dot-public-relations@state.de.us] or writing to DelDOT Public Relations, P.O. Box 778, Dover, DE 19903.

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