The Washington County Board met yesterday afternoon and approved of 2 resolutions concerning the Highway Department.  One was to appropriate County Motor Fuel Tax funds for the 2016 calendar year.  Highway Engineer Mitch Burdick reported that this is estimated at $839,625 and is for what they can set aside to spend, not an actual budget.  This also pays half of the County Highway Engineer’s salary.  The other resolution was to appropriate County Highway Engineer Salary funds and transfer from Federal Surface Transportation Program, which pays for the other half of Burdick’s salary.  This frees up money that would normally come out of the Motor Fuel Tax funds.  Burdick also went on to explain the current situation on receiving recently released funding from the state.  IDOT will begin by releasing the oldest payments from July and progress through the year at one per week, so he anticipates being caught up by the end of January, due to holidays.  This includes county, townships and municipalities to get reimbursed.  He believes 2016 payments should be uninterrupted as well through June, so everyone should be in good shape through the Spring.  Also, the MTF budgets for all road districts are complete for 2016 and the first thing they will do will be to get aggregate material bids for roadwork.