Staff writer
Main St. from Locust St. east to Marion’s city limits will be resurfaced in 2017, and Kansas Department of Transportation will be paying the lion’s share of the cost.
KDOT released Thursday a list of City Connecting Links grant winners, with Marion named as one of 22 cities in the state that will receive funds.
“It’s a great thing for our city,” city administrator Roger Holter said. “This really is taxpayer money that goes to Topeka, so it’s nice to get some of that back.”
Holter said the city applied for the grant anticipating that the eastern portion of Main St. would sustain damage when US-56 traffic was detoured through the city in the summer.
“The older section, which hasn’t been touched in seven years, we were afraid it was going to take quite a beating, and unfortunately it did,” he said. “Part of it was speculatively, but part was we were confident we were going to have damage.”
The city applied for the grant several months ago, and Holter said city officials weren’t exactly confident it would receive the grant, given the competition statewide for the funding.
“We were not confident, and I have to express our appreciation to Joe Palic, district engineer (for KDOT),” Holter said. “He very much became our advocate on this project and application.”
The project cost is $295,000 with $221,000 coming from state funds. The remaining portion, just under $75,000, will be budgeted for by the city over two years. Holter said a special portion of the city’s general fund is designated for Connecting Links projects like these.
“The rest will be budgeted, probably out of street and alley funds,” he said. “We could possibly do a bond issue, but we don’t see a need for that at this point.”
Holter said the project will likely commence in early summer 2017, and would take around three weeks to complete.