Franklin County Awarded $100K Grant for Road Improvement

Franklin County will be receiving a $100,000 grant for road improvements.

At their regular meeting Monday night, county commission chair Thomas Bridges started the session off with the announcement.

Bridges said earlier this year, he asked county manager John Phillips about securing grant funds to widen two roads in the county.

“Sometime back, I was talking to Mr. Phillips about what we could do about widening Turkey Creek Road so the school buses would be so close to each other and he said we could apply for a grant through the Three E’s program,” Bridges explained.

Another road Bridges said he wants to see widened and improved is Langford Road, which runs alongside Kautex, Inc. off SR17 in Lavonia.  Bridges said Phillips told him about applying for another grant through the State for funding for that project.  Kautex is building an extension to their current plant in order to expand their business and need to have Langford Road widened.

Bridges said he met in early March with State Representative Alan Powell, State Senator John Wilkinson and Georgia Department of Transportation Commissioner Keith Golden.

He said at that meeting he asked Golden for state funding to widen the two roads.

“He (Golden) looked at the first request and right away I knew it wouldn’t be good news,” Bridges said. “He said we could use local funds to widen Turkey Creek Road.”

But Bridges said Golden said he had funds available to widen and fix Langford Road.

“He said he felt it would be appropriate to submit a grant application for $100,000 because he (Golden) said they (GDOT) like to use money to help local economies expand and bring in jobs.”

Bridges said the County must come up with a 30% match as part of the grant package.

Bridges thanked Phillips for being proactive in securing the grant information.  Neither Bridges nor Phillips gave a timeline for when the county would received the $100,000 grant.