AMERICAN FORK — Provo Mayor John Curtis met with American Fork’s city council on Thursday afternoon to offer advice on how that city should deal with a “crisis” of crumbling roads.

American Fork is mulling the idea of taking out $20 million in loans, which would cost taxpayers $6.2 million in interest alone over 20 years. Half the loan would be spent to repair aging infrastructure, such as 90-year-old pipes, American Fork mayor J.H. Hadfield said. The other $10 million would go toward reconstructing damaged and neglected roads.

Fixing ancient infrastructure under the roads before doing road work makes the most sense even though it costs more, because “it is ludicrous to put new asphalt on top of 1920s pipe,” Hadfield said.

Because of pinched budgets, regular maintenance on roads has been neglected, said Hadfield. The city should have been spending $4 million a year, but has been spending just $500,000. As a result, “we are long past salvageable roads,” he said.

Damage to many roads is now so bad that they need to be reconstructed to the tune of $10 million — cash the city does not have. Officials are considering every avenue, and for that reason asked Curtis to explain how Provo pays for its roads.

The answer is — not easily, Curtis said.

Provo takes money from its utilities to use for road maintenance and has cobbled together road funds from cutting other budgets and a variety of other sources. Provo has vowed not to borrow money through bonds to pay for roads, because bonding is “one-time” money for an ongoing problem. An ongoing stream of money is the only real solution to road maintenance.

Roads are simply expensive to keep up, especially given Utah’s brutal winters.

“Asphalt has doubled in price but we are collecting the same gas tax as we were in 1998,” Curtis said.

City staff said that American Fork now gets just $200,000 a year from gas taxes — not nearly enough to cover the $4 million annual need for road maintenance.

Provo would like to see a 5-cent per gallon increase in gas taxes to pay for roads, but there is little legislative love for the proposal. Provo officials also have asked the Legislature to dedicate a property tax percentage to roads, again without much hope the idea will go anywhere. Hadfield said Utah County mayors should make a group appeal to the Legislature for such a permanent remedy to road funding.

Provo hopes in 2016 to switch the money its residents now pay for bonds, which expire in 2016, to a permanent tax increase for maintaining roads. The city would accomplish that by holding a state-mandated Truth In Taxation hearing before a council vote.

“I don’t think that would be a hard sell to residents,” he said.

Provo’s decision to eschew bonds has been a long time in coming.

“We looked for a long time for one solution to funding,” he said. “What we ended up with is this total patchwork.”