Communities get street funds
By Ty Johnson And Steve Herring
Published in News on October 25, 2011 1:46 PM
Goldsboro doesn't have any big plans for the $995,879.48 the city will receive through Powell Bill allocations. City street maintenance will take up a large portion of that total.
The disbursement is based on two factors, with 75 percent of the equation riding on population and the remaining 25 percent dependent on the total mileage of municipality-maintained roads in a particular city.
Goldsboro's population is listed at 36,489 with 168.9 miles of roads. Half of the funds, $497,939.74, were received Oct. 1, with the remaining half due to be distributed Jan. 1, 2012.
Finance Director Kaye Scott said the bulk of the Powell Bill funds go toward maintaining the city's streets through right of ways, engineering costs and construction.
Planning Director Randy Guthrie said because there was no appropriation made for street resurfacing this year, it wasn't likely there would be many projects outside of paying down debts on street bonds and basic maintenance for the city's streets.
Ms. Scott said another use for the Powell Bill money could be improvements to the traffic signal system, but both she and Guthrie said there had been no discussion of using any of the funds for the Center Street Streetscape project outside of paying down street bond money debts. $800,000 of street bond money has been earmarked for the renovations to the downtown street.
Other municipalities don't have much on their plate either, as smaller populations and mileage totals don't leave other Wayne County towns with much overhead after basic maintenance.
"By the time we do basic maintenance and things like that, there's not a lot left," Fremont Town Manager Kerry McDuffie said of his town's $42,921.53 allocation, half of which was received Oct. 1. "It's hard for a town as small as Fremont to do sizable projects."
McDuffie said there are a few streets that need to be resurfaced, but there were no immediate plans to do those projects. The resurfacing may be planned in the next few years, he said.
Mount Olive Town Manager Charles Brown said the town's $133,957.19 allocation may go largely toward the resurfacing of the 100 block of North Center Street.
Other local distributions include:
*Seven Springs: $2,153.62 of $4,307.24.
*Calypso: $9,969.01 of $19,938.01.
*Faison: $16,108.57 of $32,217.14.
*Pikeville: $11,111.35 of $22,222.70
*Walnut Creek: $17,183.36 of $34,366.71
This year's statewide figure represents a $4 million increase from 2010. Since the program began in 1951, nearly $3.5 billion has been allocated to municipalities.