When school starts this fall, the roads around the new Walnut Grove Elementary School will be upgraded to make way for increased traffic from school drop offs and buses.
The Johnson County Highway Department is examining bids to reconstruct roads near the new elementary school in Center Grove and the county council has OK’d spending more than $1 million of taxpayer money to complete the project. County leaders are working with Center Grove Schools to decide what portion the school district will pay for to finish the project before about 550 students start at the school in August.
The county council voted earlier this week to allow the Johnson County Highway Department to spend $1.6 million on the road projects with the intention that the projects would be done before students begin classes for the first time at the new elementary school.
County leaders said the current roads around the newly constructed elementary school, at 4079 S. Morgantown Road in Bargersville, cannot handle the increased traffic that the school is expected to bring, with tight roads making it difficult for even one school bus to pass by a vehicle.
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How much the school district is giving to the project is unclear and county council members, commissioners and county highway department employees are meeting with school officials to see how much they would be willing to give to the project and to get started so the project can be complete by the time school starts.
The school district routinely works with the Johnson County Highway Department when road projects are around schools, and the district is willing to financially help this project as well, Superintendent Rich Arkanoff said.
However, the school district is still working with the county to come up with an exact amount. A timeline for an agreement between the county highway department and the school district has not been set, he said.
"We don’t have a dollar amount or commitment of any sort at this point," Arkanoff said.
The plan would add a turn lane of more than 300 feet on County Road 144 for traffic to turn onto County Road 450 West to help accommodate increased school bus traffic expected once school buses are regularly using the roads. The plan would also shift 144 traffic and widen some of the roads in that area, Luke Mastin, Johnson County Highway Department director, said.
The school district and highway department have been meeting about the necessary roadwork. School officials trust the recommendations from the highway department and are supporting their recommendations for the project, Arkanoff said.
“We are really happy with the attention they give to the roads to support the community and of course the school district," he said.
The county highway department received bids on the project earlier this week and Mastin is reviewing them. The bids came in higher than what the council had previously appropriated for the project and Mastin and highway department employees are looking to see where they could get the cost down, Mastin said.
The first plan is to complete the project in its entirety before school starts. However, a second plan that would complete the project in phases as they are needed would be considered if the county and school could not fund the entire project, he said.
Both the commissioners and county council discussed the project at their meetings earlier this week, with the council voting to allow the highway department to spend the money with the hopes that a plan would soon be reached for the school district to foot some of the bill.
Multiple commissioners and council members said they were leery about approving the money without knowing the school district’s financial commitment to the project.
However, the project is time sensitive, with school starting in about three months. And council members cited the time issue and the dangers of the smaller roads and their inability to currently handle increased traffic as why they voted to allow the money to be spent.
"I don’t like going into this without knowing what their portion is going to be," county council member James Ison said.
