Brown County has received $1 million in Community Crossings matching grant funding through the Indiana Department of Transportation.
Brown County Highway Superintendent Mike Magner said the money would be used to pave all of Becks Grove Road from State Road 135 to the county line; Mt. Liberty Road from Bellsville Pike to Rinnie Seitz Road; and the southern end of Lick Creek Road south of Cottonwood Road to State Road 45.
Brown County was one of 214 cities, towns and counties to receive a combined $126.5 million in state matching funds for local road projects through Community Crossings.
Magner applied for $1 million to pave the three county roads for a total of 11 miles. The total cost of the work listed in the grant application was $1.5 million.
The grant requires a $333,000 local match.
“(I am) very excited to receive the full requested amount for our share of the program funded by the state legislature,” Magner said last week.
“In light of our current situation, I find it completely amazing,” added county commissioner Diana Biddle. “We were very much afraid that we were going to have to put the brakes on a lot of the repairs that we’re making, so this is just going to be a boon to the area and a boon to our economy,” she said.
“We generally work with, depending on the contractor — we generally work with either Milestone or E&B — I know both of those companies have employees who live in Brown County and work on those projects. It’s great. It’s just wonderful.”
In past years, Magner waited to see if the county received matching grant funding from the state before deciding how much would be spent from local funding to pave other roads in the county. Which roads those will be hasn’t been decided yet.
Along with Community Crossings funding, money to pave and maintain county roads also comes from gas and excise taxes through the state and from the wheel tax you pay when you register vehicles in Brown County.
Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Magner anticipates that local funding will be lower this year because not as much gas tax will be collected statewide, as residents are encouraged to stay home to avoid spreading or getting the coronavirus.
Around five years ago, Magner and the commissioners set a goal to pave 20 miles of county roads a year. But that might not be the case this year due to the pandemic.
“That might not happen if we see a drop in monthly income to local highway funding due to decrease in gas tax collection,” Magner said last week.
When Magner took over as highway superintendent at the end of 2014, he inherited a budget for 2015 that had $100,000 set aside for road paving for the entire year. He restructured the budget and made paving roads a priority for his department. The county began taking out loans and started applying for Community Crossings grant funding.
The county has 400 miles of roads, and about 220 of those are hard surfaces (not gravel).
The highway department paved a little over 116 miles of the hard-surface roads in the past five years using Community Crossings money and local funding. Greasy Creek Road was included in that total since it was funded under last year’s Community Crossings grant, but was not repaved before cold weather hit. It will be paved when the weather warms up this year.
Last week, Magner said his department would be advertising for construction bids immediately for the grant projects and that construction would begin after the money is received from the state.
Last year, money was received in the fall, but Magner is hoping to get it sooner this year.
