NORTH WEBSTER - A quorum of the North Webster Town Council gathered briefly on Friday to sign a contractual agreement with Commonwealth Engineers of South Bend, which was represented by Chris Harrison, business development manager.
Town Councilman Dave Waliczek was not present at the meeting.
The newly signed document authorizes Commonwealth to manage the $294,000 Community Crossings grant the town received from the state of Indiana. The matching grant money is to be used to improve streets and roads within the North Webster town limits.
“The Community Crossings grant is basically for road construction projects with the communities. It’s a 75-25 matching grant up to $1 million,” said Harrison. This means that to receive the full $1 million from CCG, the municipality would need to raise approximately $333,000.
“With that, the town has an asset management plan to score the conditions of the roads,” continued Harrison. “To upkeep and maintain the condition of those roads, they look at the roads that need to be rehabilitated by either milling or repaving. This could be crack filling, this could be an overlay. Whatever conditions the roads need as far as improvement. The asset management plan is carried forward, so once these projects are completed, they’ll update that asset management plan and reevaluate the existing roads. It gives a great mechanism to keep the roads up.”
Commonwealth Engineers’ role in the process and the reason for the contract is essentially as the project’s manager.
“What we are looking at is the design bid and construction assistance with the project. We will oversee the project and make sure everything is up to par moving forward,” he said.