Sugar City ID – A $100,000 grant has been issued to Sugar City to fix up 7th E widening the road and putting in a turning lane the Mayor said.
Seventh East lies between 3rd S and highway 33 on the east side of the high school. The Mayor of Sugar City, Glenn W. Dalling, said that this is a main source of entrance to the high school and will help buses and vehicles get in and out easier.
Aaron Swenson, a project engineer for Forsgren Associates Inc., the company who helped lobby for the grant, said that 100 applications were submitted and Sugar City was ranked number eleven.
The grant came from Local Highway Technical Assistance Council (LHTAC) who assists cities and counties, with small populations, manage their streets and the highways running through them.
What helped boost Sugar’s chances of getting the grant was that they were able to partner their small road construction with Madison County and the city of Rexburg’s bigger project in paving the east corridor.
“The county and the city of Rexburg just want to preserve a right-of-way for future growth,” Swenson said.
This street will go around Rexburg but where it will finally terminate is still being discussed, 7th E in Sugar City has been one of many suggested alternatives.
The grant was applied for in fall of 2009 and Swenson said,
“They were formally notified of their award in January of this year, however we were informally told sometime last fall that they would be getting the money.”
Swenson said that Forsgren Associates Inc. has been working with Sugar City as a “private consultant” and had helped them in past years in planning out their needs and planning how to use their budget most effectively. They also discussed what projects they needed done that would work well with outside help, or had the highest probability to get funded, such as with LHTAC.
Swenson attended the Sugar City Council meeting Thursday May 12 talking to the council about the grant and what they can and cannot do with the money. It was clarified that the city is only allowed to use the money on construction and not for engineering fees. Any design services the city uses will have to come out of their own pocket, not from the grant.
The city is also not allowed to use any of the money to improve other roads in the city, not even for crack or chip seal.
The city has to use the grant money by the end of LHTAC’s fiscal year, which will be ether the end of September or the beginning of October of this year.
Swenson said that he will be having a follow up meeting with the city council to possibly help them put together a simple design plan they can put up for bid to contractors.
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