5/28/26, Janesville Gazette – Rock County and the City of Janesville have a need for road maintenance and repairs. It goes millions of dollars beyond what’s currently reimbursed by the state of Wisconsin.
That’s not a new problem. But what is new, as of right now, is a sudden piling-on effect.
Rock County officials and a City of Janesville economic development official said at a roads funding summit Thursday they face the same fixed costs in the road budget — but with added costs from a flood April 17 that washed out bridges, culverts and roadsides.
The repairs, which are still being calculated, divert labor needed for scheduled road work, and they’ll cost multiple millions of dollars on top of roads spending already on the boards the next few years.
City Economic Development Director Jimsi Kuborn said the City has $16 million in scheduled roadwork in 2026, and $13 million in 2027. That’s as the municipality is seeing 40% jumps in costs for some road infrastructure on recent projects at city business parks.
Compare that to $3 million in expected state aid for roads for Janesville, a city of 66,000 with multiple, major arterial highways and Interstate 90/39, running through it.
On top of that, a city inventory readied for FEMA and state officials shows the city sustained “at least $10 million” in damage to city property during the April 17 flooding — much of it to bridges washed out or damaged after almost five inches of rain fell in Janesville in less than four hours, Kuborn said.
In addition to regular capital spending, she said the city is “also going to have to figure out how to tackle the damage that was just done.”
Kuborn’s statements came during a Transportation Development Association roundtable Thursday at Woodman’s Sport & Convention Center in Janesville.
The pressure of a systemic funding crunch statewide is one that roadbuilders, towns, counties and cities have long been familiar with.
Rock Road Companies Vice President Steve Kennedy, a Janesville road builder, spoke at the roundtable.
He told a group of about 200, including town, county and municipal officials, state lawmakers and candidates for the state Legislature, that the state has not increased the gas tax since 2006, and it has left vehicle registration fees unchanged for years. those are the two main ways state road aid is funded.
Inflation has put a spike in project materials, and ultimately project costs — a factor that towns, counties and cities alike say they can’t fully absorb.
To Kennedy, it’s not a partisan political problem.
“It’s necessary. Roads need to be there for people,” Kennedy said. “We just need to find a way to fund this thing.”
Kennedy told The Gazette at the event that he would like to see the state return to a cost-indexing system put in place that once tied road funding aid increases to the rate of inflation, which helped offset growing costs.
That indirectly helped the state avoid cost spirals tied to roads slipping into major disrepair — something that can happen when funding shortfalls cause state or local road projects to be shelved or delayed.
The indexing was brought about through bipartisan state agreements led years ago by Republican Governor Tommy Thompson and late Democratic state lawmaker Tim Cullen, a Janesville resident.
The indexing got phased out a half-decade ago.
Rock County Highway chief Duane Jorgenson showed images of ways the highway department has used new types of materials and applications on roads in an attempt to get the surfaces to last longer.
Jorgenson said industry “best practices” focuses on replacement of a given road surface every 24 years, but with the current funding setup between county, federal and state funding, the county is unable to keep up with that schedule.
A newer stretch of road completed by the county on Highway M outside of Milton, built with different materials and processes, Jorgenson said, is intended to last longer than a 24-year span, possibly as long as 30 years.