MONROE — County residents and their political leaders may not have an appetite for another new, multimillion dollar building project, but they are going to need to do something to keep the highway department operational.

That’s the message county officials appear to be taking to the 31-member Green County Board on September 8 — a meeting in which the highway department facility is the only item on the agenda.

In June, the county paused the $49 million project, even as they were poised to vote on a bond issue to cover the cost.

Highway Commissioner Chris Narveson said that — intentional or not — the meeting’s sole focus reflects the urgency of his department, which was reeling before it lost space to the adjacent $86 million jail and sheriff’s office currently under construction.

And some of that space given over to the jail/sheriff’s office project wasn’t in the original plans, so it hit the highway department just as it was already outgrowing what is essentially a cobbled-together assemblage of buildings — including the main brick structure that dates to 1937; and a Quonset-style building that was recently torn down to make way for the new jail.

“There’s a cost to doing nothing,” Narveson said, adding that highway materials such as guard rail and signs also are stored at the Pleasant View Complex and elsewhere around the county. “We’ve got (equipment) everywhere, in old barns, and in people’s sheds.”

With that dispersed operation, the logistics of moving, servicing and maintaining heavy equipment, especially during winter, are costly in terms of manpower, time and fuel, according to Narveson.

What’s more the county is ordering larger trucks to keep reducing heavy road-salt usage during the winter months in favor of less corrosive treatments like brine. The tight quarters also aren’t the safest in which to operate, officials said.

“They pushed this down the road so far and now we can’t have people working in an unsafe environment, especially one that you know is unsafe,” said Narveson. “You just have to do something.”

The June decision to pause the project came just as many officials agreed that taxpayer support for any new construction waned substantially after the Monroe High School and jail facilities were approved; and the overall economy soured amid crushing inflation.

County Administrator Nic Owen said the upcoming meeting is actually the second of three related meetings to prepare the county board to take some action; and he agreed that doing nothing is no longer an option, saying the highway department has been reduced to being able to plan operations — with any degree of certainty — to only a year’s time.

The next meeting will provide options and prices for the county board to act and then it’s up to the board, he added.

County officials previously said waiting would end up costing them in the long run, due to a current rate of inflation that can add 6 to 8 percent or more per year to the price tag of a project — or in the case of the inflation spike of 2022, as much as 15 percent or more.

With planning help from contractor Kraemer Brothers Construction, the county had agreed on a 160,000-square-foot county highway department garage to be built at the Pleasant View County complex; and to likely to cost from about $42 million to $48 million to build.

They say they aren’t expecting the board to commit to the old project, but to funding some kind of fix that extends their operations and planning beyond that one-year mark.

“We’re just laying all of the information out there so they can make a decision,” said Owen.