What Every Town Board Member Should Know About Their Highway Department

The structure of local highway maintenance departments varies, but one distinction is especially important: whether the department is led by a civil engineer or an elected highway superintendent. A professional engineer brings technical training and familiarity with asset management, budgeting, and compliance standards. An elected superintendent, on the other hand, may have decades of hands-on experience, but little formal education in management, budgeting, or recordkeeping. (I worked for three elected highway superintendents and two of them, despite spending decades employed as highway department workers, seemed clueless about their responsibilities. They were, however, excellent at staring at their phone screens.) In either case, the town board is ultimately responsible for fiscal oversight, policy direction, and ensuring that sound practices are in place.

Recordkeeping and Documentation
The first question every board should ask is, “Who does our recordkeeping, and how is it done?” Every public works department should be maintaining detailed, defensible records of its daily activities. This includes road inventories, work orders, inspection logs, paving histories, sign and stormwater infrastructure inventories, drainage maintenance reports, and fleet service records. These records are not optional. They are essential for audits, FOIL (Freedom of Information Law) requests, and budget justification. Towns that still rely on paper files or scattered spreadsheets risk data loss and lack the transparency that modern asset management software can provide. Software designed specifically for municipalities allows every road, sign, culvert, and vehicle to be tracked and documented, providing instant access to reports when needed.

Road Maintenance Planning
Board members should also understand how paving and maintenance decisions are made. Does the superintendent use a data-driven approach, such as pavement condition index (PCI) scoring or surface condition ratings, to determine which roads need resurfacing? Or are paving schedules based on informal judgment and constituent complaints? A professional department should have a written, objective method for prioritizing work based on measurable conditions and lifecycle costs. Before approving a paving budget, a town board should ask to see a list of roads ranked by need, along with the data supporting that ranking. If someone asks to review the past ten years of paving activity, those records should be readily available.

Signage and Traffic Control Devices
Traffic signs are another area of critical importance, as well as legal exposure. The Federal Highway Administration’s Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) requires towns to maintain minimum levels of retroreflectivity for all regulatory, warning, and guide signs. Every board member should know whether the highway department performs regular sign inspections, whether those inspections are documented, and how sign condition is measured. Some towns follow an age-based blanket replacement plan (for example, replacing signs every seven to ten years), while others use a retroreflectometer to measure actual reflectivity. Either approach must be documented. Without inspection records, the town may have no defense if a lawsuit arises after a nighttime accident allegedly linked to a missing or faded sign.

Fleet and Equipment Management
A town’s highway fleet - dump trucks, loaders, graders, and pickups - represents millions of dollars in capital assets. The board should know whether there is a written fleet replacement plan outlining the expected service life of each vehicle and a replacement schedule based on age, mileage, and maintenance cost trends. Vehicle maintenance must also be properly documented. If the town is ever audited, or if a vehicle-related incident occurs, the department must be able to produce service records to show that the equipment was maintained in a safe and responsible manner. Without such documentation, even honest operations can appear negligent.

Financial Oversight and Accountability
Ultimately, the highway department’s credibility, and the board’s fiscal oversight, rests on defensible records. When the state comptroller or an auditor requests documentation for fleet expenses or paving contracts, the records must clearly show how taxpayer dollars were spent. An organized recordkeeping system doesn’t just protect the town; it also helps justify future budgets. For example, the superintendent who can demonstrate that “we spent $85,000 on cold-patch repairs last year because 27% of our paved roads are beyond their service life” is in a far stronger position than one who relies on anecdotal explanations.

Why Board Awareness Matters
Board members are not expected to micromanage, but they are expected to govern. Understanding how the department measures performance, plans work, and tracks expenses allows the board to make informed budgetary decisions and to defend those decisions to taxpayers. It also ensures that the town’s largest physical assets - its roads, signs, drainage systems, and fleet - are managed responsibly and transparently.

In short, good governance depends on curiosity and accountability. A well-run highway department can only exist under a board that asks informed questions, insists on proper recordkeeping, and supports modern management tools. Asset management systems, clear policies, and consistent documentation aren’t luxuries; they are the foundation of public trust and long-term fiscal responsibility.