LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — On Monday, Metroplan officials announced a list of nine cities and two counties that will be receiving a combined $17 million for road improvement projects throughout central Arkansas.
“We receive roughly $17 million a year,” executive director Casey Covington said. “We allocate that to our members, including Saline County, Pulaski County, Lonoke County, and Faulkner County.”
He said that Metroplan’s funding comes from a federal gasoline tax.
The money collected from that comes to the state of Arkansas and Metroplan gets a portion of that as a Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO).
Covington said that every year, cities and counties around the area line up to receive Metroplan funding.
“Our board [consists of] mayors and county judges and they ultimately make that decision,” Covington said. “People apply for it and it's based upon things you might expect like traffic volume, congestion relief-- those are two of the big things that we're looking at.”
The largest chunk of the funding announced Monday will go to Jacksonville-Cato Road in Sherwood.
Sherwood Mayor Mary Jo Heye-Townsell said that road floods easily and has dangerous hairpin curves that this funding will help fix.
“So one way or another, we have to get this road done,” Heye-Townsell said. “So what that would have meant is that we would have had to dip into reserves. We would have had to find some way to get this road completed- this was a must-do project for us. It was too critical to not do, so this does really lift that heavy burden.”
Cabot Mayor Ken Kincaid echoed that sentiment. His city was given $480,000 to improve Kerr Station Road, which he said wasn’t originally meant to be traveled as much as it currently is.
"We're very fortunate to be selected," Kincaid said. "And I know our city council is very happy about it, and I know our citizens will be too."
Kincaid said the money will help with some of the hidden costs of an effort like this one.
“People don't realize how expensive projects are,” Kincaid said. “They think you can just go out there and take a tractor and line some road and put some concrete down. There's more than that. You have to move utilities. You have to get right of ways. You have to make sure that all the EPA things are right. You have to make sure of what drainage you're going to have to do.”
It’s these parts of the project that the Metroplan money will help with.
Covington said generally, Metroplan provides 80% of the funding for a project. Since the Jacksonville-Cato project was projected to cost $5 million, they gave Sherwood $4 million.
The same goes for the Kerr Station project, which has an estimated cost of $600,000.
Covington said the funding Metroplan provides can complete or speed up a project that a city or county might’ve taken years to get the funding for.
“A project that we may fund that's a $5 million project, we can put $4 million in,” Covington said. “The city can put a million in and make that a reality. Most cities don't have $5 million to do that.”
The full list of which projects received the money, and how much each one got, can be accessed here.