Operational Funding

The major sources of funding for the Wyandot County Engineer's Office are License Plate Fees and Gasoline Tax. A portion of your license plate fees in Wyandot County are divided up and disbursed to the County Engineer, Townships, and Municipalities, based upon a statutory formula. Wyandot County does not have additional permissive taxes added to vehicle registrations and intends to keep it this way for as long as possible. Gasoline tax is the second major source of funding. Although motorist pay 28 cents in state taxes for each gallon of gasoline purchased, the County Engineers less than 2 cents of the gas tax with the majority of the tax going to the state and federal departments. A breakdown of the funding can be found here.

Other sources of funding utilized by the Wyandot County Engineer are federal bridge funds (LBR), Ohio Public Works Issue 1 funds (OPWC), court fines, interest payments on deposits, and road permits. Federal bridge funds and OPWC funds are secondary sources of funding that have helped the county engineer stretch the limited local funds without increases in the gasoline tax or the addition of permissive fees on vehicle licenses. These funds must be continually applied for and have many requirements and loads of red tape attached to them. Wyandot County is in direct competition with all 87 other counties and must follow all of the rules and procedures to receive these funds. A typical federally funded bridge project may take up to 8 years to be completed due to the federal government requiring drawn out plan reviews, ever changing environmental regulations and permit requirements tied to the federal money. OPWC projects are funded by the sale of bonds by the State of Ohio and are administered by the Ohio Public Works Commission and its local District 13 Committee.

A common misconception is that the Wyandot County Engineer receives funds from property taxes, county sales tax or the county general fund. No general fund money, sales tax money or property tax money has been or will be used for any road and bridge maintenance or project in Wyandot County.

Funding for the engineering, construction and maintenance of county petitioned ditch projects comes from separate funds set up from assessments to landowners within the watershed of those ditches. These funds are set up by law to be used on ditch projects and may not be used for any other purpose.

Due to limited sources of funding, increased costs of fuel, materials, coupled with no increases in license plate fees or gasoline taxes for a decade, the Wyandot County Engineer's office has been forced to reduce its work force by close to 40% over the years.