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Stalemate Between Tuscola Commissioners and Road Board Continues
Mary Drier/Mike Kaufman
Mon, 12 Jan 2026 21:09:31 EST
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The standoff between the Tuscola County Board of Commissioners and the county's road commission continues.
County commissioners requested a member of the road commission attend Monday's meeting, to give an update on signage requests and on finances. That didn't happen.
Instead the road commission countered with the proposal to form a committee to review issues with two members from the road commission meeting with two county board members.
County commissioners initially accepted that proposal and selected Commissioners Nancy Barrios and Matt Koch to represent the county board, but that fell by the wayside as discussion continued.
Barrios is a liaison to the road commission, and Koch has vehemently pushed to have additional safety measures of flashing lights and/or rumbled strips added to the six intersections that have had a significant number of accidents.
After discussing the issue for over an hour, the proposed plan is for the county to spend about $22,000 for the safety signals for the intersections for the road commission install, and if they don't install them then a company will be hired to do that.
However, because it was a committee meeting of the whole, no formal decision could be made.
Decisions for action can only be done during a board meeting. The next meeting where the board could take action is 8 a.m., this coming Thursday (Jan. 15).
However, Barrios did come back from road meeting with a wealth of information to share.
According to what she was told: before any changes can be done a road study is necessary and that could take seven years, flashing red light on a stop sign costs about $2,000 each, there are 1,500 intersections in the county, there were 2,058 crashes from 2020 to 2024 that occurred at 437 intersections.
Her report also noted that rumble strips are noisy, can have issues controlling a motorcycle, and could hurt the horse and buggy the Amish use.
