We've been doing a lot of stories lately about our roads and how to cover the costs to fix them.

That prompted a lot of you to write in saying you're not sure road crews are using the money they already have wisely

In fact several of you wanted to know why, on days when the roads are clear do you still see snow plows driving up and down the streets.

Good question. I took the concerns to the area's busiest road commission and the answer is tonight's Fact Finder Report.

We've all seen them, road commission plows patrolling the streets when the roads are as clear as the skies.

It was too much for Patty from Traverse City. She wrote in asking "I don't understand it. If our road commission is so broke, then why are they out sanding and scraping roads that barely have anything on them????... I say only send them out when the weather is bad. Save the gas in the truck for the really bad weather, not the sunny days."

Grand Traverse Road Commission Manager Mary Gillis says she's heard it before, but she's not sure why.

She says, "For some reason there's the idea out there that we're out wasting money and that's not the case."

So what does she say is going on? Let's start with the basics, and contracts.

The first is a maintenance contract with the state that requires them to have a night crew during the winter.

Then there's the contract with the crews themselves.

Gillis says, "What we're working with right now is a collective bargaining agreement that basically has them working 40 hours a week and anything over 8 hours a day or 40 hours a week is overtime."

Some of you have asked why not have crews work longer when it's snowing and send them home early when it's not.

She says, "It's something that's come up. We pushed pretty hard at the last union negotiation to try and work out some kind of balance work plan like that so that if it snowed the first three days of the week we could work them 30 hours and only pick up 10 on the last 2 days, we tried that and it did not end up getting approved in the collective bargaining agreement."

Basically she says the crews can't work less.

So what are they doing?

Gillis says, "So we keep people on the road when it's not actively snowing we may be pushing back shoulders we may be looking at the road for potholes. The crews also look for tree removal to be added to the list."

But you wanted to know, do they have to drive in the plow trucks to do that maintenance?

She says, "Plow trucks are the way our crew gets around. There are legitimate reasons we're out there unfortunately we don't have enough pick up trucks that we could take the crews out of the big trucks and send them out in pick up trucks to do some of the reconnaissance for other work."

Gillis says taking care of the roads is more than just clearing snow and when there's a break from snow days they can take care of everything else that gets put on the back burner during a snow emergency.

She says, "I think people don't understand our whole job. Our job is really to make it look seamless so they don't have to think about what we're doing but we think about it every day."

So you asked, what do you think of the answers? Many of you said you'd like to see road crews work more efficiently, especially since the county and state are each asking for more money to repair the roads. What would you change?

Leave your thoughts and ideas below.