HANCOCK COUNTY — Hancock County Highway Department and the street departments of New Palestine and Cumberland are among the communities around the state that are receiving substantial grants through the Indiana Department of Transportation for road repairs in the latest round of Community Crossings grants.
They are among 214 Indiana cities, towns, and counties that received a combined $126.5 million in state matching funds for local road projects through the Next Level Roads: Community Crossings Initiative. The program has become a major source of funding for road improvements in the state.
The Next Level Roads program is set to spend billions of dollars on upgrading and maintaining Indiana roads over the next 20 years.
Hancock County will receive $996,220 in Community Crossings money for 2020. New Palestine will receive $112,158; and Cumberland will receive $774,522.
County highway commissioner Gary Pool said the largest project for the county will be the complete resurfacing of County Road 600W between highways U.S. 40 and Interstate 70. The remainder of the money will be spent on re-sealing streets in neighborhoods around the county.
Bidding is currently out for those small micro-sealing projects on dozens of residential streets in the county. A full list can be found at hancockcoingov.org/current-advertised-bids.
In New Palestine, the grant money will be used to get paving, curbs and mill work done, and the projects will start as soon as possible, said town employee Steve Pool, who is coordinating the project.
The town missed out on the previous round of Community Crossings money due to the fact some of the roads the town submitted in its application were not listed in the town inventory. Officials have since rectified the problem.
“It’s great to get this money,” Pool said. “The funding that we didn’t get last year, the money would have been for this spring and summer anyway.”
Jim Robinson, the acting town manager, said he’s still not pleased about funds the town missed out on. A portion of the hundreds of thousands thought to have been lost would have come through the Community Crossings program in recent years.
“When you apply and don’t get grants, it’s not like we have an abundance of funding or a coffer we can pull out of, so no matter which way you slice it, we lost money,” Robinson said.
The funds will be used to mill and repave streets in the Seifert Creek subdivision, off South County Road 450W. The town also will upgrade curb ramps to the latest standards of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The town also will repave the large cul-de-sac on South Westside Drive; and repave North Coventry Court, near McDonald’s and Speedway.
In Cumberland, Benjamin Lipps, the town’s director of public works, said the town’s projects will include re-doing one of Cumberland’s most-trafficked residential streets, Valley Brook Drive.
Other projects will include rehabilitating 18 total street/road segments throughout the town’s five districts. Lipps said the choices were prioritized by the need for repairs and will also be starting soon.
Lipps said receiving grants from Community Crossings over the last several years is resulting in major improvements for Cumberland.
“It will really make a huge impact on the community,” he said. “Our roads are in way better condition than they would be without the grant.”