MADISON — Two townships in Green County and one in Lafayette County will receive a combined $288,000 for road projects, Gov. Tony Evers announced March 4.

The funds that the towns of Sylvester and Jordan and the Lafayette County town of White Oak Springs were awarded are part of the one-time $75 million Multimodal Local Supplement grants given to 84 towns, 34 cities and villages and 34 counties statewide.

Every Green County town was encouraged to apply and in total the Department of Transportation received more than 1,600 funding requests exceeding $1 billion.

“We were very fortunate to get the money considering how many applied,” said Daniel Moehn, town chair of the town of Sylvester.

The $177,038 grant will allow the town to repave and add shoulders to Rechsteiner Road. The town evaluated all of its roads and concluded Rechsteiner receives the heaviest use for the relative condition it’s in, Moehn said.

“There’s a lot of farm equipment that uses the road and people traveling from Monticello or to Juda,” he said.

Adding shoulders slows erosion of the road bed and allows farmers some room to pull over their equipment to allow other motorists to pass, Moehn said.

Moehn believed the town board will be “excited” about the prospects of the state road aid as it is double the town’s $85,000 annual road budget.

“We couldn’t do this project without the state money,” he said.

Moehn expects the project could be completed this summer. The town pays the cost of a two-inch asphalt overlay and building the shoulders upfront and will be reimbursed 70% of the cost by the DOT.

The town’s request for funds for Ladwig Road wasn’t approved.

Green County Highway Commissioner Steve Narveson said the road aid program is the best one available to local governments.

“(Other) programs have a 50-50 cost share and the criteria to get the funds is much higher than (the MLS) program,” he said.

The county unsuccessfully applied for funding for County N, he said.

So many governments applied for funding that the initial 90-10% share had to be changed to 70-30% to include more projects and requests in excess of $1 million weren’t considered.

“Funding for both Sylvester’s and Jordan’s projects are well deserved,” he said.

The Town of Jordan will received $119,228, which will be used to pave about 1.3 miles of N. Loop Road which is currently a “gravel-mud road,” said Town Chair Lauren Meinert.

“It will be widened and brought up to town standards. There’s been issues there in the past as it’s the route people take when there’s flooding in the spring. The road breaks up in the spring thaw, too. A four-wheel drive couldn’t get through it then,” he said.

Meinert said he’ll consult with Narveson about bidding and scheduling construction of the project.

The $119,228 grant nearly matches the town’s $120,000 to $140,000 annual road budget. 

The town increased its property tax levy this year by $70,000 in order to have more money for roads, he said. 

Meinert, who been on the town board about 20 years, said it’s getting more difficult to keep roads in good shape as property taxes could only be increased by a few percent in the past decade but asphalt and other expenses associated with road construction increase much faster.

The Town of White Oak Springs will receive $51,832 to replace a bridge on Blackhawk Road.

Town Chair Neal Redington said a concrete box culvert is “about ready for fall down.”

“It’s old and corroded and … we’ll put in a new aluminum bridge to replace it,” he said.

Engineering to design a new 24-foot-wide bridge could take up to a year and then about three months to install it, he said.

The bridge’s estimated cost is $90,000, which will cost the town about $20,000, which is the amount the county has agreed to pay for the balance remaining after the state grant.

“That $51,000 makes it feasible for us. I know the bridge will collapse eventually and we couldn’t fund it without raising taxes, which leads to problems,” he said.

The town has an annual road budget of about $38,000, mainly funded through state aid, said Redington, who took office five years ago.

“We’ve put more money from the general fund into the road budget in the past few years but it still doesn’t go far enough,” he said.

The town has 17 miles of road to maintain but it can cost $17,000 just to seal coat one mile of road, he said.