Clay County Commission

Dan Haglund

Clay County engineer Justin Sorum sometimes has a dirty job to do. And specifically, keeping the county in gravel.
Sorum is budgeting an extra $200,000 next year for that raw commodity, as a highlight of his Highway Department annual report to the Clay County Board of Commissioners on Tuesday morning in Moorhead.
As an overview, Sorum oversees the roads and bridges portion of the Highway Department, which accounts for about $5.45 million, and comprises just under one-fifth of the overall $29.24 million general revenue fund.
Sorum broke down that portion of the budget, comprised of four areas.
First is road maintenance. Much of the numbers carry over statically from 2025, but there is a larger variance with gravel.
The budget for road materials went up $200,000, from $1.2 million to $1.4 million.
“The reason I increased it by $200,000 is just the rising cost in gravel,” Sorum said. “And then also trying to build a stockpile for ourselves, because you never know what’s going to happen in the future.”
Sorum mentioned that in the past three years, there’s only been one competitive gravel bid, so having a stockpile is a high priority. And when there are no competitive bids, the materials have to come from somewhere.
Sorum said he also lowered the budget for road maintenance by $100,000, from $400,000 to $300,000, to help offset the gravel stockpiling.
Another area Sorum pointed out as an expenditure benefit to the county is the CDL policy course, through which six employees have received training, and all have remained with the county. Two have already surpassed their two-year commitment as well.
“I feel like it’s been a really good recruitment tool for our department,” Sorum said.
As far as projects, there is a bridge reconstruction tabbed at about $2 million on 12th Avenue by Glyndon which adds considerably to the construction budget, Sorum said. The county has been working with Glyndon Township to get that bridge replaced.
Much of the remaining construction budget will remain similar to last year’s numbers, Sorum said, but there will be a shifting of dollars from a 40th Avenue turnback project, which is concluding, to increased county highway sealcoating (patching) and striping next year.
Sorum said for the administration portion of the budget, there were not many changes and the dollar amounts remain close to this year’s budget.
As for the county shop, Sorum said the past two winters have been quite mild so the amount of worker weekends and overtime hours expended in a tough weather winter just didn’t materialize.
Equipment repair and maintenance is up $50,000 from $300,000 to $350,000.
“So just trying to capture what it costs to fix some of our equipment,” Sorum said. “These numbers obviously with the last two years, we’ve had two transmissions go out in two separate motor graders, so that has not helped our case whatsoever.”
Sorum said fuel expenses also reflected the mild winter, and came in quite a bit under budget.
“You have three or four bad blizzards,” Sorum said. “It can significantly change that line item.”