What began at the May 1 Cass County Commission meeting as a selective enforcement complaint against Road and Bridge Supervisor Robert Leeper by Lake Annette Mayor George Pruett turned quickly into a 20-minute bare-knuckles face-off between county residents and the commission on the overall condition of county-maintained roads.</p><p>Pruett, whose construction firm is in the midst of hauling dirt by the truckload from Brickplant Road to the new Harrisonville Marketplace site at Commercial and Mechanic, said he was warned recently by Leeper about leaving dirt on Commercial Street.</p><p>“When we checked the road in question, there was no more dirt on it than there would be normally. But to keep peace with the so-called road boss, I had an employee take a push broom out there and clean it off,” he said.</p><p>Pruett said the scenario repeated on several occasions, until he had had enough.</p><p>“Nothing about this road was anything to cry about unless you want to retaliate against a citizen for exercising his First Amendment right of free speech,” he said.</p><p>“I’m probably one of the most outspoken citizens against our current county roads and the waste of our tax dollars,” Pruett said. He contended that he was singled out by Commissioner Jon Seabaugh and Leeper “in my personal business so as to try to cause me to lose a very lucrative job. This is not politics as usual, but politics at its worst.”</p><p>Seabaugh denied involvement with the incidents, and Leeper defended his decision to approach Pruett on the matter.</p><p>Pruett brought photographs of the Commercial Street area, as well as photos of dirt on the road in front of Leeper’s house. Leeper pointed out that according to his view of the photos, the dirt on Commercial was “deep enough that if you come out on that road and hit it — well, you don’t hit it, you swerve around it.”</p><p>Pruett was backed at the meeting by more than 15 county residents, many who live in the Lake Annette area, who took turns questioning Leeper and the commissioners about the conditions of county roads. A home owner on 215th Street related to the commission how the road had “torn up her vehicle, and I’m sure it’s done the same to others. We appreciate what you have done to help us, but there are still potholes and I’m wondering why we didn’t just fix the whole road once and for all?”</p><p>Leeper agreed some potholes still need to be filled. That task has to be completed by hand, he said, and it is a time-consuming process.</p><p>“But basically the reason we didn’t do the whole thing? Money.” A resident of the Lake Annette area was particularly angry about the repair bills she had recently paid out for tire and front end repair on her vehicle, an expense she related directly to the road condition. “I want to try to preserve my car, because God knows I’ll probably never be able to buy another new one. I know we can’t have all new roads, but whoever’s in charge of checking the repairs that are being done on these roads is doing a lousy job.”</p><p>Leeper said he will continue to make sure procedures for smoothing the patchwork are being followed. Presiding Commissioner Gary Mallory said he shares residents’ concerns, but insisted an evaluation process is under way which is intended to give commissioners and residents an idea of what it would cost to do a complete upgrade of the county road system.</p><p>“We’re in the process of doing traffic studies of all the roads in the county right now and we’ve hired an engineering firm to evaluate the conditions of all the roads in the county as well. That way we’ll have some kind of an idea where we are and what it would take to get these roads up to some type of standard. The only inhibiting factor right now is cost, we have only so much money and we need to figure out what we have,” Mallory said.</p><p>He indicated that once the studies are complete, which should be sometime in the next couple of months, a bond issue might be the only solution.</p><p>“It would make sense and I’d love to do it,” Mallory said.</p><p>“When it’s complete, we can go to the people and say, ‘here, if you want asphalt roads, it’s going to take a bond issue of this much money. Do you want to do it?’”</p><p>The current system of “nibbling along, piece at a time,” is not bringing the roads up to standard, he said. “The county operates on sales tax money and when we go through a year that we have a dip in sales tax, we’re going to have trouble doing anything,” Mallory said.</p><p>That was why the Aquila settlement funds went directly into reserves, “so we can continue to operate when we get into a situation like this.”</p><p>There is an additional $350,000 coming from Aquila at the time the firm’s Special Use Permit is approved for the South Harper Peaking Facility, and those funds will go toward roads, he said. But meanwhile, Mallory said, he is equally frustrated with the county road situation.</p><p>“George, I know your deal is roads,” Mallory said. “I know you’re upset with some people here and I understand that. But I also know you’re in construction and you know the cost of doing business right now. I don’t care if I’ve promised to do 40 miles of roads. When it comes right down to it and I can only afford to do 20, I can’t do 40.”</p><p>Pruett responded, “except when the mayor makes ev­ery­body mad, then we (Lake Annette residents) get ignored.”</p><p>Mallory disagreed.</p><p>“Now George, we can go through that sales tax money and you’ll find out that per capita there’s been more money spent on Lake Annette than any other road in the county.”</p><p>Mallory said the priority for this year is to asphalt the truck routes, in addition to general pothole repair. But even that is limited by funds available.