Photo courtesy of Houghton County Road Commission. A road commission plow is shown clearing a Houghton County road. The commission is facing a double whammy as this winter's heavy snowfall is causing more equipment repairs, amidst a funding shortage.

HANCOCK – The Houghton County Road Commission is experiencing equipment breakdowns as a result of this winter’s frequent snowstorms, additionally, high repair costs are more problematic as the road commission is facing funding reductions.

Road Commission Highway Engineer/ Manager Keven Harju said that last week one of the Road Commission’s OshKosh plows ran off the road and struck a tree, totaling the vehicle. “Thank God, the driver wasn’t hurt,” Harju said.

Around the same time, the transmission on a $550,000 grader broke down, which Harju said will cost $47,000 to repair.

As heavy use of machinery takes it toll, said Harju, recent changes in Michigan’s taxes have left the Road Commission with less funding than last year.

Michigan’s 2025 transportation funding package was billed as delivering more than a billion dollars in new road funding for Fiscal Year (FY)2026, the Citizens Research Council reported last week.

However, road agencies have experienced a greater than 15 percent decrease in distributions of state funds in the months following adoption of the package. This discrepancy, between a promised funding increase and realized funding decrease, is due largely to differences in formal state accounting and the timing of distribution of funding to road agencies. Additional delays and uncertainties are imposed by statutory details and bureaucratic complexities related to new funding sources provided by the 2025 transportation funding package.

As Harju explained it, while the Michigan gas tax changes were supposed to increase funding to the road commissions across the state, Lansing did not account for the corporate income tax and the marijuana tax not being collected yet.

“So, we’re seeing a 20% reduction in all of our Michigan gas tax (funds),” Harju said, “so, we’re our revenues down this year from last year.”

The road commission is also experiencing difficulties similar to those of municipal road crews throughout the U.P. this winter, said Harju. As snow continues to pile up, people are more frequently pushing it back into the roadways and he said it’s been difficult to control. Harju said when plow drivers witness people doing that, they talk to them, explaining the hazards.

“I know it’s tempting, because their yards are filling up,” Harju said, “it’s difficult, but it makes it difficult for us to plow.”

Harju said the potential safety risk is drastically increased on rural roads, particularly in high-traffic areas where 55 miles per hour is typical.

“If our plow truck is driving down the road and there’s drifting, he thinks he’ll hit it and it (the drift) will go, but it’s hard-pack from someone pushing it there, it’ll cause the plow to veer hard to the right. If a car or a school bus is coming from the other way, it could be a traumatic collision.”

Harju said it was not long ago that road crews were able to get out and cut snowbanks back, but it needs to be done again.

“You can hardly tell we did it,,” he said, “because as soon as we’re gone, there’s always a couple that want to push the snow back out in the road.”