SPLOST Projects From 2008-10 Collections Make Improvements To Roads In Whitfield County

  • Monday, September 15, 2014

Officials said extra pennies of sales tax collected from 2008 to 2010 are still paying dividends for motorists in Whitfield County.

Special signs placed at the completed projects by the county’s Public Works Department that  feature a photo of a shiny penny and the words “Improvements Made Possible by2007-2010 SPLOST.”

The Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax, approved by voters in 2007, wound up collecting $51 million over the next three years, enough money to fund more than 50 badly needed  road projects, according to County Engineer Kent Benson.

Mr. Benson’s task over the past six years has been to oversee the engineering, acquisition of right-of-way, bid letting, and construction of these projects.

The work has ranged from simple projects such as repaving of some 125 miles of roads in the city and county to very complex projects such as the Brooker Road extension, rated the No. 1 item on the priority list that was presented to voters seven years ago.

“The most important projects typically are the most complex,” Mr. Benson said.

That complexity explains why grading is just now underway on Brooker Road and the project isn’t due to be completed until Nov. 1, 2015.

The new road  will connect the North Bypass with Dawnville Road and  will take pressure off Fleming Street and especially the Cleveland Highway/Dalton Bypass intersection, which ranks as the busiest in North Georgia, Mr. Benson said.

“The new road catches east Whitfield and Murray County traffic coming into town on Dawnville Road, and if they’re going to Dalton Middle School or anywhere on the north side of town, then they won’t have to go through the Cleveland Highway/North Bypass intersection,” he said. “It will relieve a lot of the pressure at that intersection, and it also opens up some land for development that hasn’t been available before.”

While the Brooker Road extension was tops on the priority list as well as the most expensive project at $5.5 million, that doesn’t mean the other projects aren’t helping local motorists.

“We’ve heard nothing but positive things about the Fleming Street reconstruction project, which was a widening of an existing road,” Mr. Benson said. “It was a narrow two-lane road with sharp drop-offs in the ditches on both sides, and people were using that road to cut through to avoid the Bypass and Cleveland Highway intersection because it took so long to get through there. Since people are going to use it as a shortcut, we should make it safe for them so we widened that road to three lanes and added curb and gutter and sidewalks.”

Also paying benefits for motorists are the two Glenwood Avenue projects, which added left turn lanes at Waugh Street and East Morris. “There were no turn lanes on Glenwood, so anytime somebody was turning left onto Waugh or East Morris, traffic would back up on Glenwood,” Mr. Benson said.

He also praised the Lakeland Road/Callahan Road project.  He said there  have been many accidents there over the years involving both passenger vehicles and tractor-trailers.

While the Lakeland-Callahan reconstruction was a stand-alone project, other  safety projects were paid for through a designated portion of the SPLOST, said Whitfield County Public Works Director DeWayne Hunt.

“Safety SPLOST really wasn’t a list of specific projects,” Mr. Hunt pointed out. “It was set aside for safety upgrades or repairs to be identified later.”

For example, the county had been hoping to receive some federal bridge funds to repair the Dunagan Road bridge and save the SPLOST money, but when a hole opened up in the bridge, they were able to use the Safety SPLOST money to make emergency repairs.

“Fortunately, we had the Safety SPLOST funds to fix that bridge,” Mr. Hunt said. “Otherwise, that might have been a tough project to rake up the funds for since it cost $1.1 million. It’s a nice insurance policy to have where we can repair something like that bridge or a culvert failure, things like that.”

The county is hoping for no more surprises since “what’s left in the Safety SPLOST is spoken for, pretty much, with the Carbondale rail safety projects and the big culvert replacements on Beaverdale and East Nance Springs roads,” Mr. Benson added.

The general SPLOST funds also have filled a key need for repaving of existing roads in the city and county over the past six years, Mr. Benson said.

“We were able to do a lot of extra paving thanks to the SPLOST – roughly total county and city combined, nearly 125 miles of paving,” he said.

Mr. Hunt pointed out that the county’s goal is to repave all of its roads in a 20-year cycle. “That’s a rough cycle - some are repaved every 10 years, some 15 years, and the majority 20.  We’re not on that cycle yet, but the extra SPLOST funds help you catch up. It was a big deal for us.”

In fact, the SPLOST in general has been a big deal for the city and county, Mr. Hunt said.

“Without this $51 million SPLOST that voters approved in 2007, these projects would not have been done,” he said, “and they have definitely made life better for drivers here in a lot of ways.”

Mr. Benson says he remembers the first project that was completed in 2008 – installation of the signal at the entrance to Home Depot on Shugart Road. “I’m sure people remember how hard it was to get out of Walmart and Home Depot before that signal was there,” he said.

He is also proud of the Reed Road improvements.

“I know it wasn’t a big project, but Reed Road is a lot safer now,” he said.

Mr. Benson noted there were more than 60 accidents from 1998 to 2004 around a dangerous curve on the road near the pond.

“It’s laid out a lot better now with a better design,” Mr. Hunt added. “There was no design on the original road. It was just paved.”

Speaking of better design, the Cross Plains intersection at South Dixie Highway is a good example of the value of engineering a road properly. “Trucks used to come out of the terminals down there trying to beat cars coming over the hill and the load would shift on them and their trailer would go over. They would have a trailer a month or so turn over. I don’t think they’ve had a single turnover since we did that project in 2010.”

Meanwhile, the city’s biggest project is coming up soon, Mr. Benson said.

“The City of Dalton is buying the right-of-way now on the Veterans Drive extension from Underwood all the way  to East Morris,” he said.

Since the widened road will pass through several neighborhoods, the right-of-way budget is $2.5 million with 84 parcels to be obtained. Then the construction budget is another $3.2 million, but the project will offer a big improvement for motorists, Mr. Benson said.

Perhaps the best thing about the SPLOST, Mr. Benson and Mr. Hunt pointed out, is that all the projects will be paid for when they are completed, with no additional property tax required and no money borrowed.

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