MONROE — It seems the second time is indeed a chime for county highway workers, as a roughly $49 million highway garage replacement project slated for the county’s Pleasant View site won final approval at the Nov. 5 County Board meeting.

In June, the county paused the proposed facility project — just as they were on the verge of a vote on a bond issue to cover the cost. But after additional study, education efforts, and multiple presentations to the 31-member county board, the need for such a facility won out over the lesser proposals and stopgap measures to avoid the big-ticket price.

“We were shocked,” said County Administrator Nicholas Owen. “We went over a number of options with the board,” prior to the vote.

County officials were indeed surprised, as local taxpayers seemed to have soured on big-ticket projects following completion of a new high school; and work beginning on a $86 million jail/sheriff’s office. Making matters worse, the jail project adjacent to the aging highway facility ended up using more space than anticipated.

“It just gets dangerous here sometimes, especially in the morning when everyone is getting ready to go out,” on the roads, said Highway Commissioner Chris Narveson, who added that the existing site has been squeezed to 5.5 acres due to jail construction.

As they ramped up the effort to design a new highway facility, officials previously said waiting would even end up costing them far more in the long run due to a current rate of inflation.

The garage is needed, Narveson added, due to aging heating and ventilation systems, and a lack of space to store and service many of the county’s biggest and most expensive vehicles, he said.

Those include trucks with large tanks to handle both regular road salt and the cheese brine the county has increasingly relied on to treat slippery roads.

He points out that one of the main highway shop buildings dates to 1937.

With planning help from contractor Kraemer Brothers Construction, the county agreed on a 160,000-square-foot county highway department garage to be built at the Pleasant View County complex; and likely to cost from about $42 million to $48 million to build.

And the impact on taxpayers: An estimated 60 cents added to the mill rate, meaning the site could add about $180 a year in county taxes for the owner of a $300,000 house, officials said.

That’s on top of the addition of roughly $1 to the county portion of the mill rate related to borrowing to fund the jail/sheriff’s office.

“I certainly understand the taxpayer side of this thing there was quite a bit of back-and-forth on the tax implications,” said Narveson. “It’s still kind of difficult thing for people to swallow.”

Construction on what is likely to be a multi-year project is likely to begin in late spring or early summer, officials said.