City gets $300,000 grant for pathway
By Ethan Smith
Published in News on November 25, 2015 1:46 PM
The city has received $300,000 from the North Carolina Department of Transportation to ensure the completion of the multi-use path being constructed along the south side of New Hope Road from New Hare Road to Wayne Memorial Drive.
This is the second supplemental agreement between the city and the NCDOT allocating additional funding for this project.
"The original agreement was $500,000, we entered that Dec. 2, 2013," said City Engineer Marty Anderson. "On March 16, 2015, we received an additional $100,000 of funding. This second supplemental agreement is for $300,000 more added to the project, for a total of $900,000. This second supplemental agreement also extends out our project completion to Sept. 11, 2019."
According to Anderson, the additional $300,000 will be comprised of 80 percent federal money and 20 percent state money.
This means that once the $900,000 project is completed -- if no additional money is needed to complete the project -- $720,000 will have come from federal funds and $180,000 will have come from state funds.
The supplemental agreement states that the city will be responsible for any additional costs over $900,000 should no more supplemental agreements be signed.
Mayor-Elect Chuck Allen, during the presentation of this information to the City Council, questioned why the time extension placed the completion date so far in the future.
"They just want to give us plenty of time to complete it," Anderson said. "We only requested an additional year and they said they just wanted it to be 2019."
Now that the supplemental agreement has been signed by the City Council, Anderson said the city will begin advertising for project bids to complete the next portion of the multi-use trail, which will allow the path to be entirely completed following this round of work.
Anderson said he expects to bring the bid award back before the City Council some time between January and March, depending on how quickly the NCDOT can shuttle the supplemental agreement and bid process through.
"I know we went into a meeting one day and we were $300,000 short, and all the sudden we were either going to cancel the project or find $300,000 somewhere," Allen said. "They found $300,000 for us, and that's always nice."
Anderson said the NCDOT likely just "needed a push" to get the additional funding for the project in place so it could be completed. This project's completion will see the opening up one vein of Goldsboro's many disconnected greenway systems.