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City Sets Sights on 2018 Street Resurfacing Projects

Information reprinted with permission of the Courier Times, local newspaper New Castle, Indiana www.thecouriertimes.com

City sets sights on 2018 street resurfacing projects

City leaders are planning to do a lot more street resurfacing next year than is usually the case.

Mayor Greg York said the city has accrued $500,000 for street paving projects and plans to use those funds to leverage an additional $500,000 from the State of Indiana via the Community Crossroads matching grant program.

The mayor said a road assessment the city had done last year will be used as a guide to determine which streets will be paved first, with the ones in the worst shape being given priority status.

“We should be able to pave $1 million worth of roads in 2018,” he said. “The road assessment plan was done by somebody totally neutral, not Jimmy that lives on Broad or Mikey that lives on Main. The company that we had do it is totally neutral and they rated every street on a scale of 1 to 10 depending on what kind of shape it’s in. So,we’ll be doing the worst roads first.”

York said this approach will be used with the first 75 percent or so of the funds available, and the other 25 percent or so going to repair Indiana Ave., Bundy Ave., and other main thoroughfares that have seen extra traffic due to Broad Street being closed this summer for the reconstruction of Ind. 38.

He added that neither the state nor Milestone, the contractor working on Broad Street, is obligated to help pay for repairs to other roads impacted by the Broad Street project, with one exception.

“In the very beginning, when they closed down Broad Street, we made a stipulation with the state that they will pay for any damages done to the railroad crossing on Indiana Avenue there around the 1500 block, which we just put in brand new about a year ago,” York said. “If the extra traffic from Broad ends up trashing that crossing the state is going to help fix it.”

York said the city’s initial paperwork associated with obtaining the Community Crossroads funding has already been submitted and that he hopes to know by the end of July whether or not the city met the requirements needed to qualify for the matching funds.

“The money is there, and there should be no reason that we wouldn’t get it,” he said. “We just have to make sure our application is in order.”

The following is a list of the streets the city intends to repave.

• S. 14th Street, from J to M Avenue.

• Kentucky Avenue, from Woodward to Plum.

• O Avenue, from Cherrywood to Locust.

• 12th Street, from Indiana to Lincoln.

• Indiana Avenue, from 5th to 18th.

• Riley Road, from Ind. 3 to Brentwood.

• Bundy Avenue, from Ind. 3 to 11th.

• Washington Street, from 20th to Hillsboro.

• 27th Street, from D Avenue to Walnut.

• Main Street, from Riley Road to Woodbrooke.

• 20th Street, from Washington to Ind. 103.

• 25th Street, from Ind. 38 to I Avenue.

• I Avenue, from Grand to 25th.

• Hosier, from Bundy Avenue to Stewart.

• Stewart, from Bundy Avenue to Hosier.

• Erie Avenue, from 17th to Goodwin.

• Cresent, from 17th to Goodwin.

• Cresent, from Riley Road to Fair Oaks.

• Richards, from its terminus to Micheal Road.