GREENFIELD — Nearly seven miles of Greenfield’s worst roads will soon get a $3 million facelift, thanks in large part to a state grant.
The city was awarded a $1 million Community Crossings grant last fall from the Indiana Department of Transportation, and was awarded another half-million-dollar Community Crossings grant from INDOT last month.
Both are 50:50 match grants, meaning the city is required to chip in the same amount as the grant.
“This is going to be a great year for the City of Greenfield’s streets, with around $3 million worth of construction slated. It is much needed due to the shortfall in tax revenue over the past two years from COVID,” said the city’s street commissioner, Tyler Rankins.
Work will soon begin on the fall grant project, which will repair approximately 4.4 center-line miles.
Areas include both side streets and main roads, including parts of Mackenzie, Blue and Jaycie Phelps roads, Broadway and Apple streets and McClarnon Drive.
Another 2.4 center-line miles of roads will be improved through the spring Community Crossings grant, focusing on Davis Road from Franklin Street to Ind. 9, in addition to neighborhood roads.
City engineer Jason Koch said work on the roads funded by the fall grant will start in early summer while the roads covered by the spring grant will go out for bid in June, with work starting in mid- to late summer and possibly stretching into next year, depending on the weather.
Each road closure could last anywhere from a couple of days to a couple of weeks, he said, depending on the length of road and the depth of repair.
Most of the repair work is repaving, with some work on sidewalks and sidewalks ramps, but other areas will require more in-depth resurfacing work — pulling up sections that need full-depth replacement. The Greenfield Street Department has already been doing some patch work to prepare for repaving.
Mayor Chuck Fewell said the grants are a huge gift to the City of Greenfield.
“We went from spending $1.5 million on paving to being able to spend $3 million,” said Fewell, who hopes awarding back-to-back contracts will also help the city’s purchasing power.
“Thank goodness we have the money to make that match because some communities don’t have that ability,” he said.
Koch said the matching funds for the $1 million grant will come out of TIF funds while the matching funds for the half-million dollar grant will come from money set aside through the American Rescue Plan Act, the federal COVID-19 stimulus package set up in 2021.
Greenfield’s ARPA working group made a plan to set aside a half million dollars of ARPA money each year over the next four years to pursue Community Crossing grants, said Koch, with the hopes of doing $1 million worth of resurfacing work each year.
“That will help tremendously, added with the (Motor Vehicle Highway) and (Local Road and Street) money we currently receive,” said Rankins. “We hope to keep utilizing the (Community Crossings) grants over the years to leverage these funds at a 50:50 ratio. The future of the city streets is looking very bright.”
The Community Crossings matching grant program was launched in 2016 to provide funding to cities, towns and counties across Indiana to make improvements to local roads and bridges.
According to the INDOT website, Community Crossings is a partnership between INDOT and Hoosier communities — both urban and rural — to invest in infrastructure projects that catalyze economic development, create jobs and strengthen local transportation networks.
Since 2016, the state has awarded over $1 billion dollars in state funds to support local road and bridge projects throughout Indiana.
In April, 224 Indiana cities, towns, and counties received a combined $133.4 million in Community Crossing funds, which are a component of the Governor’s Next Level Roads program.
Koch said Community Crossings grants are awarded based on PASER ratings, otherwise known as Pavement Surface Evaluation and Rating, which assess the quality of roads throughout the state on a scale of 1-10.
“We are trying to catch them before they get to the point where they are unsavable, so generally we’re looking for fours and fives,” he said. “By the time you get to ones, twos and threes, the pavement is already to the point it’s trashed and you have to start all over again. Luckily, we don’t have many of those at all.”
Counties, cities and towns are required to update those ratings every two years, which enables the state to see not only which roads are in need of repair but to gauge how well ongoing repair efforts are working.
“The state wants to see that improvement curve as we’re spending all this money to ensure that the roads are getting better and taxpayers are getting what they paid for,” said Koch.
Maintaining the city’s roadways is an ongoing job, he said, given there are 120 center-line miles to tend to.
“You’re always looking for the lowest numbers and working to get those numbers up. It’s an endless cycle,” said Koch.
