Assets assessed

After three local municipalities were awarded state funds to help improve local roads earlier this year, Jay County is ready to get part of the pot itself.
The county has completed an asset management plan that will be required to apply for the next round of matching grant funds.
County engineer Dan Watson said he’s heard that round is likely to take place in the first quarter of 2017. However, he said it’s possible there will be changes to how the program is run based on issues that have occurred in the initial round of awarding the funds.
In August, Portland, Dunkirk and Redkey were awarded a combined $340,000 through the state’s new Community Crossing Matching Grant Program.
Indiana Department of Transportation had capped the amount of funds awarded to $1 million per local unit.
“I’ll have roughly a million dollars matching funds so we’ll come up with about $2 million dollars worth of projects,” Watson said. “Hopefully we get $2 million worth of work for a million dollars is what we’re looking at.”
The county’s asset management plan, completed by Choice One Engineering, included inspecting the pavement on approximately 510 miles of county-maintained roads and rating their condition.
Overall, county roads were found to have an average rating of 7.07 out of 10, with the report deeming they “are generally in good condition.”
The report suggested 10 roads that “would benefit from structural improvements” within the next five years.
Currently, the county is planning on submitting a proposal to use the majority of the potential funds — $1.6 million — for major paving projects on three of the roads identified for improvement by the plan.
The projects call for paving a 6.25-mile stretch of Boundary Pike from the Portland City limits to county road 300 East, a 5-mile portion of Mt. Pleasant Road from county road 200 South to Como Road and 3.75 miles of Como Road from Mt. Pleasant to County Road 900 South.
The three projects are estimated to cost around $660,000, $575,000 and $400,000 respectively.
Watson said each are major routes that have never had any work done other than chip-and-seal.
The remaining funds would be used for chip-and-seal work on various county roads.
Watson said he believes the asset management is a good tool, but that it’s also a fluid plan.
“It’s always going to be a fluid thing because … a road might rate good now but then you come into the spring and for one reason or another, maybe this road received a lot of damage or didn’t hold up,” he said.
“It’s a good starting block because it shows the need I think more than anything. I think that’s what the state’s wanting with these asset management plans.” he added. “Part of the whole funding for roads, they thought they could encourage every municipality and county to come up with an asset management plan that goes through the state so they have all these plans, it’ll help them show the need more than for the legislature.”