Cullman County government already had boosted its road budget ahead of this year’s busy summer road paving season — but the sight of construction crews along rural county roadways is likely to be even more common next year.

A big leap in road funding highlights the newly-approved county budget for the 2023 fiscal year, passed at Tuesday’s regular Cullman County Commission meeting as a $72,481,099 overall package that includes a significant increase — almost $4 million — in additional road spending over the current year.

Roads will claim $17,797,163 of the county’s FY 2023 budget, an increase of $3,937,236 over this year’s road budget of $13,859,927. The big jump comes as the county commission continues to allot portions of more than $16 million in overall COVID-19 relief money, its share of the federal relief package handed down last year to municipalities nationwide under terms of the American Recovery and Rescue Plan Act (ARPA).

The commission learned earlier this year that $10 million of its $16.2 million total ARPA allocation will qualify for General Fund spending, thanks to a stipulation in final federal rules that allows municipalities to spend a portion of their ARPA funds as compensation for “lost revenue” — revenue, that is, that local governments may presume was negatively affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. For FY 2023, $5.7 million of the county’s ARPA funding total has been folded into the road budget.

“If you look at the [new] road department budget, it’s a bigger figure,” said commission chairman Jeff Clemons. “But that’s thanks to the ARPA money that we’re able to use for roads. It’s our goal, for the next two years, to do a lot more with this money. We want people to be able to see that we’re trying to do a better job with our infrastructure, because we know, with Cullman County growing as it is, we’re having to play catch-up while we can, because the roads have been so bad for so long.”

With more than 1,800 miles of roadway under the county maintenance system, Clemons said the Cullman County Commission maintains more rural road mileage than every county in the state except for Jefferson.

“We deal with the second most miles of [county] roads in Alabama. There are 2,200 miles of roads in Cullman County, including municipal and state roads, and our county commission is responsible for about 1,800 miles of that,” he said. “If you look at Blount County, they have 500 miles; Morgan County, which has a lot bigger budget and bigger population — they have 600 miles. So with all the mileage that we have to maintain, we’re really trying to address a lot of those needs that have gone unaddressed for a long time.”

Overall, the 2023 county budget is growing in size over the one it will replace when the new fiscal year kicks in on Oct. 1. This year’s total budget of $72,481,099 represents an increase of just more than $5 million over the current year’s $67.4 million budget, with the General Fund growing from the current year’s $22.4 million to $24.7 million next year. The Cullman County Sheriff’s Office will receive $15,058,011 out of the General Fund, just more than 51 percent of the General Fund total.

Beginning with the 2023 fiscal year, the county will be free from nearly $1 million in annual payments on a 20 year-old bond issue to fund the original construction of the Cullman County detention center. The current year’s total of $963,000 in debt service on the jail marks the final installment in one series of general obligation warrants first issued in 2002 to build the facility; the county also will be free from an additional recurring annual amount of $292,000 on another round of related jail warrants, once the 2023 fiscal year has come to an end.

By department allocation, the county water department is set to claim the next-highest chunk of funding after the road department’s $17. 8 million, with almost $13.5 million allocated for the water department for the 2023 fiscal year (compared with $11.7 million in 2022). Unlike other county departments, though, the water department is a cost-recovery revenue-generating operation that recoups its expenses through the resale of water to customers. The sanitation department will receive more than $7.8 million for 2023 (compared with the current year’s originally-budgeted figure of slightly less than $7 million).

In the coming days, the commission will post its FY 2023 budget, including department-by-department spending breakdowns, at the county’s official website. Visit www.co.cullman.al.us/commission.html and scroll to the “Budget Information” section (near the bottom of the page) for information on current and past county budgets dating back the past five years.