The majority of work on a long-planned street improvement project in the Village of South Jacksonville is being pushed back a little longer.
The Village of South Jacksonville’s Board of Trustees approved a Motor Fuel Tax allotment of $188,652.00 during Thursday’s April regular meeting.
During discussion of the motion, Village President Dick Samples told the board that the planned work to South Diamond Street is going to have to be pushed back until early 2024.
Utility Superintendent for the Village of South Jacksonville, Brian English says, the issues surround a potential problem with a sewer connection. “Basically what we are doing with Diamond is, we are trying to get more ideas with the [storm] sewer that we are trying to get down to the city. It was going to be going into the ditches down there, and I believe the city was going to try to tie into us at some point.
So we’re trying to push it back as much as we can to see if just tie in together. But we will put the project out for bid by the end of this year. It’s not so much pushing it off, we were just trying to make it right and not just blow all the water down on the city.”
The project does have a deadline, however, as part of the project is set to be paid for out-of-state grant funding that has a sunset date for starting the project.
Samples says construction will likely begin next year, however, if they meet certain criteria before the end of 2023, the Village will still be able to utilize the funds. “We’re going to do it but we just don’t have anything prepared at this present time and we’re at a point where we have to spend some money because we’ll lose it if we don’t because it’s grant money. It could be built next year, but we have to have it bid and accepted and all that stuff this year.”
English says in the interim, a larger focus will be put on the oil and chip projects for a number of roads in the village. He says the village is taking a different approach to that process this year than it has in the past.
“Our new idea of what we’re going to try to focus on is one territory and try to work our way across the village. We were bouncing around quite a bit last year during my first year and I didn’t know why. So we just decided to focus on one point, work our way through town and see what happens.”
The increased MFT funding approved at the meeting was in part to include more oil and chip to be laid down, beginning with areas around the South Diamond Street project area.
Samples said during the meeting, the MFT fund balance is currently nearing $500,000 so there is a cushion in the event of an unexpected repair need while still being able to cover any initial costs for South Diamond.