As the weather gets warmer and drier, crews will be out paving roads in the county and town thanks in part to funding from the state.
After missing out on Indiana Department of Transportation Community Crossings grants last fall, Brown County received $1 million to pave roads in the first round of grant awards this year.
On March 29 Gov. Eric Holcomb was in Nashville to recognize 2019 Community Crossings Grant recipients. He presented checks to representatives from several south-central Indiana communities.
Last week, it was announced that 189 cities, towns and communities received a combined $115 million in matching funds for local road projects. Starting this year, INDOT allows communities two chances to apply for up to $1 million in road funding, but they can only pick one application window — in January or in July — and they’ll have to have enough money on hand to put up their required “match” to the grant.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]For small communities, the match is 25 percent; for larger communities, the match is 50 percent.
According to a press release from INDOT, 229 projects were submitted, “making the call for projects highly competitive.”
Brown County Highway Superintendent Mike Magner said he was “thrilled” to receive the money.
Three county roads are on the list to be paved using the grant money this fall: Bellsville Pike, Greasy Creek and Nineveh roads.
Magner said he is also reevaluating his list for locally funded paving projects, as his department inventories the damage caused to local roads by the February flooding.
Last fall, crews paved portions of Lick Creek and Spearsville/Upper Bean Blossom roads along with Fruitdale Road from Hornettown Road to State Road 135 North before cold, wet weather hit.
The roads still to be paved this spring are 1.25 miles of Sprunica Road, a quarter-mile on both Mt. Moriah Road and Redbud Lane, 4.10 miles of Christiansburg Road and 2.25 miles of South Grandview Road.
Magner said those roads will be paved weather-permitting under the contract the highway department currently has with Milestone.
Magner told the county commissioners on March 20 that his department was in the midst of pothole repair, going through five tri-axle loads of mix since February. They had fixed potholes on several county roads including Bond Cemetery, Lick Creek and Nineveh, he said.
“With 10 guys and 200 miles of potholes, it’s a real issue this year…We’re working as hard and as fast as we can,” commissioner Diana Biddle said.
Magner also reported that crews were doing grading of gravel roads and were going to put a new pipe on Covered Bridge Road to divert water away from a driveway.
Town roads
For the first time in Community Crossings history, the town of Nashville did not get any grant money.
That’s because Nashville didn’t apply this round, said Utility Coordinator Sean Cassiday.
“Believe me, we wanted to; we were all loaded to go,” but at the time the application was due, town leaders weren’t sure they’d have enough money to put up for the required 25-percent match, Cassiday said.
The town does plan to put in an application during the second round of Community Crossings grant requests later this year, he said. The plan will be to rework the intersection of Hawthorne Drive and State Road 46 East, making a dedicated right-turn lane for people exiting the shopping area. The hope is that adding a lane will cut down on the traffic backup at the light.
Nashville received a Community Crossings grant last year to repave Old State Road 46 as well as McGee Road. Cassiday hopes that work will start in early summer. The town council is meeting this week to open bids from paving contractors for those projects.
Old 46 will be redone from Artist Drive to just past Centerstone. It has taken a beating from flooding, and it didn’t have adequate ditching to begin with, so ditch work has begun in preparation for paving, Cassiday said.
