No Community Crossings dough for city this year

Tuesday, November 20, 2018

After several years of being granted significant amounts of state and federal dollars for various street and municipal projects, including the granddaddy of them all -- the very first Stellar Community Grant valued in excess of $19.5 million -- the City of Greencastle has been shut out in the latest round of Community Crossings funding.

An unfazed Mayor Bill Dory advised the City Council of as much at its November meeting.

“We did receive indication from INDOT,” Dory said, “that we will not -- repeat, not -- be receiving any Community Crossings funds this year.

“That’s not really a surprise,” the mayor continued. “We’ve gotten more than our fair share from them the last few years, starting most recently with South Street, with People Pathways that basically closes out Stellar, and Zinc Mill Road, Locust Street, and for funding the first two rounds of Community Crossings.”

Dory said when he looked at the list and compared notes with Greencastle’s local contact at INDOT, it was obvious “a lot of money was being distributed to smaller communities that had not gotten some in the past two rounds.”

“There will be a couple of rounds in 2019,” the mayor said, “so hopefully we’ll have success next year.

“But really we don’t have a lot of room to complain because we have been pretty successful.”

Councilman Steve Fields questioned whether or not missing out on this round of funding would impact any work the city has in place.

“No,” Dory replied, “it’ll impact our schedule of streets we were planning to do next summer. So we may readjust the scope a little bit. We’ll certainly evaluate those streets that, if we can put them off, and they might be more competitive for a Community Crossings grant (we’ll do that).

“Quite frankly, a lot of the streets we have in the system that we proposed last year were more residential streets, and didn’t have the traffic counts that were as competitive as some of our early awards, and it is a competitive process.”

Putnam County likewise was shut out on funding this time, the mayor pointed out, as was neighboring Montgomery County and the city of Crawfordsville.

“I think maybe this is the first year they’ve concentrated on small towns like Fillmore that got funding ($18,000),” Dory said.

“Like I say, we really can’t complain, we’ve done pretty well in the past rounds.”

City Attorney Laurie Hardwick said she and City Engineer Garth Hughes attended a meeting at INDOT’s Crawfordsville District headquarters, where it was noted that 50 communities within the district applied for Community Crossings grants and only 19 were awarded funding.

Greencastle’s Community Crossings grant application had 13 projects with an estimated $767,765 covering projects in three areas -- street overlay, overlay plus curb and surface treatment/crack sealing.

The work included $392,804 in asphalt overlay:

-- Elizabeth Street, from Rockville Road to North Jackson Street, $25,825.

-- Frazier Street, from Jackson Street to the CSX Railroad tracks, $16,408.

-- Sherwood Drive, from Albin Pond Road to Tulip Trail, $32,840.

-- Woodhaven Drive, from Primrose Lane to South Street, $40,069.

-- Elm Street, Locust Street to Maple Street, $30,692.

-- Deerfield Drive, from Fawnview to Quail Ridge, $15,600.

-- Quail Ridge Court at Deerfield Drive, $9,100.

-- Ridgeland Road, quarter-mile from end of the new pavement to Round Barn Road, $222,270.

An estimated $200,059 in overlay and curb work was also included:

-- Apple Street, from Crown Street to Illinois Street with curb along the south side, $67,630.

-- Shadowlawn Avenue, from College Avenue to Arlington Street with curb along north side, $132,429.

Also included were three projects involving surface treatment and crack sealing at $174,902.

-- Seminary Street, from Madison Street to Wood Street, $41,041.

-- Berry Street, from Jackson Street to Putnamville Street, $116,557.

-- Howard Street, from Locust Street to Main Street, $17,304.

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