With county road crews working to make the most of what remains of this year’s paving season, the Cullman County Commission is looking at the road ahead for next year and beyond, when decisions made today will determine how the last local infusion of federal funds under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 will affect area drivers.
At its August regular meeting, the commission signed off on a number of road spending measures to allocate close to $1 million in remaining ARPA money before the allocation deadline expires at the end of this year. The biggest spend will fund a $520,387 paving machine purchased from Alabama-based Cowin Equipment, Inc., alongside $247,548 for a trio of Massey Ferguson tractors (from Coblentz Equipment of Montgomery) and an additional $173,821 for a shoulder widening machine from Daphne-based Pittman Tractor Co.
Major purchases all, the one-time splurge on new road department equipment is aimed at making the best use of federal funds — funds the commission knows it can’t count on, in typical years, to shore up its annual road budget, according to chairman Jeff Clemons.
“We knew that we had this federal rescue [ARPA] money that has to be spent by December of this year,” said Clemons, noting that projects funded before the December deadline under the program can still commence after that deadline has passed.
“We were running out of time on deciding how to spend the remaining money. There’s a lot of equipment at the road department that’s 20-plus years old, so we decided to order some key pieces of equipment that will serve this county for a long time.”
At the same meeting, the commission also approved its county transportation plan for 2025 under terms of the gas tax-funded Rebuild Alabama Act. Though approving the plan is a road measure separate from ARPA and one that each of the state’s participating municipalities must also approve annually in order to be eligible for RAA awards, Clemons said the commission has attempted to integrate all of its road planning — wherever the money comes from — in order to stretch the distance that road crews can cover along more than 2,000 miles of county-maintained roads.
“With 2,000 miles of roads, we know Cullman County is massive,” he said. “But with every road we pave this year, it’s one more we won’t have to pave next year. It’s a process, and it does take time. But I think the citizens, in the next few years, will see a lot of good things taking shape for our roads.”
Alongside a longer list of smaller projects still in the planning stages, the commission has identified four county roads to be targeted next year via a combined $1.8 million in RAA and county-budgeted road funds. Those include County Road 1282 (which connects Vinemont and Battleground), County Road 223 (which runs southeastward toward Dodge City from Smith Lake), County Road 719 (which winds southward from U.S. Highway 278 beginning at East Point), and County Road 1386 (which runs north to south in northern Cullman County just east of the Cullman Regional Airport).