Franklin County BOC Considers Best Way to Spend LMIG Funding

Franklin County will concentrate on resurfacing existing paved roads, rather than pave more dirt roads when they receive the next round of Local Maintenance and Improvement Grant monies from the Georgia Department of Transportation.

The county will be receiving $395-thousand dollars in grant money from the GDOT.  

At a special called work session Monday evening, the board of commissioners discussed how best to spend that money and decided without taking a vote, that resurfacing was the most cost-effective.

“When you start talking $500,000 to improve a dirt road, that eats up your funds very quickly,” said Interim Franklin County manager John Phillips.

By contrast, he said it would cost the county around $70-thousand a mile to resurface an existing paved road.

Phillips submitted a preliminary list of some 24 potential roads for asphalt resurfacing and went over the top eight with the board.

Those, he said, the county could resurface using current SPLOST monies.  They include Wolf Den Road, Telford Road, Brickyard Road, Diamond Lane, Burgess Road, Burgess Lane, Hill St., and Beasley Road.

Phillips said the county has about $416-thousand dollars in special purpose local option sales tax revenue designated for road projects.  Total cost for resurfacing all 24 roads on the preliminary list, according to Phillips is just over $931,216. To fix the same roads using a tar and gravel mixture would come to about $773-thousand dollars.

After hearing from Phillips, Commissioner Jeff Jacques said he believes resurfacing would be a better way to spend the road monies than paving dirt roads.

“In all honesty, I don’t think we’re going to have anywhere near the funds to take a dirt road and do a grade, drain, base and pave project with our current levels of funding. I don’t see that,” Jacques said. 

Jacques then asked Phillips to compile a cost list, noting which roads on his preliminary list would be the most cost-effective to resurface.  The board plans to review that list at their work session on October 29th.

Franklin County must have a list of road projects submitted to GDOT by the end of the year in order to receive the LMIG monies.