A stretch of well-worn highway in northern Morgan County will be updated within the next year.
The Morgan County Commissioners approved a resolution of expenditures for repairs to County Highway 123 Monday morning. Morgan County Engineer Matt Coultas says the work will be paid for by a combination of funding.
“Basically what I brought to the board today was basically documentation that sets an agreement between the state and the county on funding sources. The state manages our surface transportation rural funding, and we were able to receive some TARP funding through application. Basically, the state would like the county to say that we’re going to pick up the main portion of it with local funds.
Basically what the state requires is an agreement between the two. So not only the local roads documentation with that agreement, but they also require a resolution sent by the county board stating that we would be responsible for a portion and remaining additional costs for that project.”
Coultas says the project is being made possible by a large amount of Truck Access Route Program funds, also known as TARP funding. “We were able to receive $800,000, and I think the limit is $900,000.
They had a number of projects sent to the state for consideration and they were able to fund, I think, a majority of those projects to a limit of $800,000 so we were just short of the maximum amount. That will be a nice piece to add to our project.”
The project will resurface Highway 123 for a little over ten and a half miles north and east near Prentice to the Morgan/Cass County line.
Coultas says he expects the project to be included in the June or July bid letting process, and depending on the workload of the chosen bidder, work would begin either late this summer or early spring of next year.