COLUMBUS, Ind. — Four Bartholomew County communities will receive additional funds to improve streets and roads.
Columbus, Edinburgh, Elizabethtown and Hope are among 229 Hoosier towns, cities and counties that will receive a combined $119 million through the Community Crossings matching grant program for road and bridge projects.
The city of Columbus will receive $334,057 through the second and final round of the 2022 grant program. Most money obtained through this program is spent on repaving deteriorating streets, Columbus’ director of public works Bryan Burton said. Exact locations of the overlay projects will be announced at a later date.
Based on recent years, it will likely be late January to early February before the money is deposited into local coffers. Work on the projects will likely get underway in late March or early April.
The amount of road work that can be accomplished with the available money will be limited due to inflation and supply-chain problems.
For example, Bartholomew County government received a $1 million matching grant during the first round this year for a list of particular projects, but the Community Crossings request was made before crude oil soared to historic heights.
The cost of putting down a new layer of asphalt cost the county $140,000 per mile during this year’s construction season, compared to $79,018 per mile cost in 2021, county highway supervisor Dwight Smith said earlier this year.
But if the county did not do all work outlined in their application, the state would lose the entire grant, county highway engineer Danny Hollander said. As a result, Bartholomew County taxpayers paid $1.8 million to both match the state grant and make up for the shortfall caused by inflation.
In the most recent round of awards, the town of Hope will receive $107,566. That money will be used to repave portions of Hauser Drive, West Drive and Union Street, Hope Town Manager Jason Eckart said.
Since the northeast Bartholomew County town has fewer than 50,000 residents, the town of Hope is obligated to match only 25% of the grant, Eckart said.
In Edinburgh, a grant totaling $595,846 will be received this winter. The money will be spent on an ongoing program to upgrade street crossings to make them more compliant with the Americans with Disability Act, Edinburgh Planning Director Wade Watson said.
The long-time effort to install an updated wastewater treatment plant is a significant reason why Elizabethtown received a grant of $99,652, town council president Rick Mullins said. The project required using heavy machinery that has damaged a six-block stretch of West St. on the town’s northwest side, Mullins said. The money will allow the Sandcreek Township community to fix the damage and place a new layer of asphalt on it, the town council president said.
Like Hope and Edinburgh, Elizabethtown residents will only have to pay a 25% match, due to their small population. The new wastewater treatment facility is expected to become operational next year, Mullins said.
For more on this story, see Friday’s Republic.
